SHAMPOO (1975) *** Tremendous, sympathetic but not entirely impressed, time capsule of L.A. ‘68. Against the political backdrop of Nixon's election-meaningless to everyone except for an unethical businessman who believes that it will make America “a better place”-Hal Ashby delivers the frenetic pace of the lala land that Jack Nicholson later referred to as “the world's only modern city.” The action centers on the Warren Beatty character, but it's never so much about him as about what's going on around him, and the way it affects him. Part tragic hairdresser Jay Sebring (of Sharon Tate fame), mostly Jim Morrison (once a client of Sebring), and all semi-lobotomized Beatty...it's almost true that he always plays himself, but is there any other actor able to bring so much of the cosmos from directly within himself? Anyway, not many actors would be credible as a hairdresser with Goldie Hawn, Julie Christie, Lee Grant, Carrie Fisher, and every other woman in the cast trying to get in his pants. In context and given the performance, it's about the only thing that definitely would happen, really. Again, it's not the characters or their physical attributes so much as the emphasis of external forces against them. There are no sympathetic characters. Beatty is a halfwit-albeit one gifted with the illusory gravitas of übercool-so desperately trying to please himself that he can't figure out what he's even trying for. He takes his cues from others, the scene where Goldie screams at him is worthy of any existentialism class. But there are no characters that Sartre would recognize as authentic. Instead there are two camps of falsehood defying one another across an equally contrived generation gap: the old Jack Warden lot who laugh at Nixon but are afraid of anything else, and the decadent young hippies who come off as hopelessly detached and superficial. The characters straddle these groups, or make forays from one to another in search of sustenance or relief. Ashby scrambles the cuts in the disconcerting manner more associated with European directors of the previous decade and Beatty cavorts to the great music of the time (Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield). Beatty gets across his sense that charisma is a cross to bear, that the demands on the King Stud are worse than the distractions, and that the sum of unique talents and worldly gifts is too often just a more spectacular wreck. As he stands on the precipice of the lip of the canyon, in the closing scene, it is a stunning indictment of our culture, our generation, humanity in general, that he can think of nothing else. At the end it's just enthusiastically generated pathological pleasure distraction, and I'm not sure if I'm talking about pop culture or the film. Bits of both I guess, which suggests that there's something more in there, it's just buried so deep that it's hard to get to.
back to Brilliant Observations on 1776 Films page, or Index
go back home, or send me email
Reviews won't do it any more! I need sustained brilliance! I want to buy your novel!