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Texasville (1990)
You wouldn't believe how this country's changed.
In a shot echoing/contrasting with the opening of 1971's The Last Picture Show, Texasville (shot 19 - and set 30 - years later) opens with a television antenna pointing up towards the sky - a sign of changing times which lays the foundation for what's about to follow.
In a sense, the death of film/filmgoing as depicted in its much- lauded predecessor, comes to match a sense of loss experienced by the main characters in Texasville - the loss of an empire (Duane), of a son (Jacy), of his mind (Sonny). A more ethereal but equally engulfing sense of collective loss - which is to remain largely inscrutable to us - shapes character and diegesis all the way through. As a result, Texasville doesn't merely depict these people as they move into (and past) middle life - it strives to point out how this emptiness that afflicts them has fallen over them and cast a giant shadow over their lives.
This change is in the basis of the radical aesthetic departure put forth in the film. Whereas the original film took place in a world of silence, dread and melancholy, Texasville perseveres in a state of faux exhilaration, as if the characters are afraid to be left alone with their thoughts and feelings. The sad, introspective country music plays on, but nobody listens to it anymore - that is, nobody other than Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms). More so than before, the past is best left forgotten - and Sonny's inability to let it go is precisely what costs him the drive to live his life, as well as the possibility to lead his own narrative.
Promoted to a leading position, Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges) now molds the plot and supplies it with a subjective viewpoint, which results in a great many things left unseen and unsaid. These gaps are deliberate and feel deliberate, with numerous significant developments left off-screen - always in capacities where Duane feels completely at a loss (most notably his wife's relationship with Jacy), only reaching a degree of clarity at the end, once our lead has sorted out part of his problems - and positively dealt with his crippling midlife crisis.
In plain contrast to the original film, Texasville has a very caustic and witty tone, the reason for which is twofold. For one thing, we're accompanying a set of characters (as mentioned, fronted by Duane himself) who no longer believe in themselves and whose past assuredness has been disfigured by a life of self-confessed failures - a need for empathy has devolved into a tragicomic existence, and Bogdanovich has framed it accordingly. The other reason for a shift relates to the evolving spirit of the times, which takes us back to the opening shot and the overriding theme in the film - whereas the existence of the characters in Picture Show mirrored the nature of the films they watched, the characters in Texasville echo the sitcom-like sensibilities of TV. Duane's family comes as the prime example of this trait, but just about every other character in the film seems willing to flirt with the seemingly vacant, raunchy, comedic sensibilities Bogdanovich knowingly imbues his film with.
Unsurprisingly, only Sonny seems like he's orbiting around the narrative as though he belongs in a whole different film - perhaps somewhere in-between the landscapes of Picture Show and the wild shenanigans of Texasville. Bottoms' sensitive performance is flawless in terms of physicality and internal probing but he really knocks it out of the park in how he tackles the concept on which the entire aesthetic of the film - a comedy with an unspoken tragic undercurrent - is built. Bridges is entirely convincing throughout and never less than splendid in his ability to hint at the sorts of feelings his character is going through but unable to deal with (or even to understand). Cybill Shepherd is more convincing than in the original film, but the third real standout here is Annie Potts as Duane's wife Karla, who is an impeccable match for the material - uncovering a quiet dignity in her role, slipping in a variety of small, inward touches within the bigger/louder demands of her role in the picture.
Bogdanovich does a wonderful job throughout, his camera lingering intuitively on his characters' wistful gazes (usually to punctuate the ending of a scene), carrying his vision through a sinuous, meandering story which - barring the very end where a key development brings all characters together - never truly coalesces into anything resembling dramatic momentum. One of the best things about the film is precisely how it eschews average plot progressions (which seems rather in keeping with a set of characters who run around without ever getting anywhere special) and challenges our expectations of what may be in store for these people. In a crucial and frankly satisfying development that comes to challenge our expectations behind the entire film, Jacy doesn't ever even seem to consider a romantic reunion with Duane - instead developing a growing affection for his dog, his family and finally his wife, much to his bewilderment.
At the end of the day, while it may not be as breathtakingly well crafted as Picture Show, that's just not what this film was aiming for. In a sense, no film with this design could ever hope to achieve perfection in the sense that its predecessor damn nearly attained. Texasville has very different prospects in mind; it wants time and place to dictate form as well as content; it wants to bristle with ideas and all sorts of social, human, psychological insights; it wants to convey how the death of film came to affect a small town in Texas, and how television changed the landscape of narrative as we know it. What it strives for, it achieves with resounding success. Like Picture Show before it, Texasville is a masterpiece of filmmaking, only of a completely different - and far more inscrutable - variety.