Reviews

I remember when this movie released nationally when I was only a kid. I'm only in my 30s and was still a toddler when the evacuation of Saigon commenced, however I have been touched by the Vietnam Conflict in many areas of my personal life. Having viewed this feature over and again, it wasn't until I watched Charles Keyselyak's documentary on the making of this film when I realized and remembered the full scope of this magnificent piece of American cinema (one of the view to win best feature as well as best director). As one user on this board illuminated, Platoon, "was also a success at the box office grossing $250,000,000 world wide, making it the third highest grossing film of 1986." One of those three films was the jingoistic piece of fluff "Top Gun"; a film so anathema in tone to Platoon and iconic of the Reagan-Era. It was a privilege to view this film as a 12 year old boy and I went on to study History at the graduate level, this film contributing greatly to my ambition to understand how these moments, brutal periods in history transpire. My first employer had been shot up on an armored personnel carrier on the Cambodian border, my best friend's father had served in a tank company and was very troubled emotionally and the man who helped my family adopt my younger sister from South Korea lost both legs to an anti- personnel mine. I'll never forget seeing, at the time, adult men leaving one of the theaters in my home town weeping. I didn't understand what was going on at the time, but this is one of the most poignant memories I carry of this film and its impact. Sadly, Stone says in the documentary on the film that he hopes younger generations will be smarter, "when some politician tries to sell them a used war like this one". As of 2007, being in Iraq, it seems America has not learned the lessons, the sharp, divisive, horrific lessons of Vietnam enlighten the country and her government.

Big S isn't playing with taboos or forcing an agenda like, say Mencia or Chapelle (though I like them both). She states the obvious in subtle, near subliminal remarks. Her show won't change the World, nor is it meant to. But, along with the hilarious Brian Posehn and Paget Brewster's ex-boyfriend Jay Johnston of "Mr. Show" fame, this is one mean show with an appetite for destruction! My side's were thoroughly wrecked by the first episode. Look, I love this woman and like her famed boyfriend, Jimmy Kimmel, she just delivers the lines and lets the viewer run- with-it. The best kind of comedy around. Spoofing anything and anyone, like "Mary Poppins" in the second episode when she sings to the fake birds on to quick hitting commentary on society and college aged existential nonsense. This one is highly recommended, but only for those who still have a funny bone (and didn't lose it in their most recent lippo-suction treatment or boob job).

I've studied Bergman's films and have seen all of them, yet Persona stands alone as his most brilliant and indeed, the most visually striking (thanks to the genius of Sven Nykvist).

The story concerns a cracked actress (Liv Ullmann-Bergman's long-time lover), in hospital for treatment under the guise of a rather insecure nurse (Bibi Andersson). As the tale of care- giver and patient plays out, the nurse, Sister Alma, fills the void left by Liv Ullmann's complete silence and regression by offering a series of confessions on her own life. These confessions, most poignantly, consist of Alma's infidelities to her husband, a secret abortion and a unwanted pregnancy to please her husband. Through the course of the movie, set mainly in a summer retreat, the two women, left in seclusion, seem to drift into one another's personae. However, Bergman's dialogue turns more to first person confessional and not a tale of two women. Eventually, the viewer comes to the realization that the two women are actually two sides of the same person. Liv Ullmann represents, in pop-Freudian terms, the superego as Bibi Andersson is the ego or in other words, the 'actress' is actually the nurse and Liv Ullmann, the caretaker/observer.

Elisabet Vogler is actually Bibi Andersson's persona; the one who answers to the external world, whilst shutting out the sensitive, introspective and broken inner persona, Liv Ullmann. The movie comes to a sad conclusion, wherein the actress wins out over the delicate, fractured woman deep within. As the lines in the movie say, they agree to "nothing", keeping the facade intact to the rest of her reality and keeping distant from her older husband and abandoning any attempt to love her son, born to please her husband.

A line in the movie states blatantly that everyone has two personae; the one external and the one internal. This movie is one of the greatest human dramas with a psychological force rarely, if ever, seen today. Along with Casavetes' "A Woman on the Verge" and Lynch's "The Elephant Man", Bergman and Nykvist commit to film one of the most introspective studies of mortality, sanity and the human condition.

A masterpiece.