Midnight Cowboy
We spent some time with the classic movie tonight. Mr. Tungsten had seen it but I never had.
My verdicts:
Einz)
It's is a startling portrayal of the self-loathing that went on among gay people before Stonewall. I was so curious about the timing that afterwards I even looked it up: this film premiered in May of 1969. The Stonewall riots happened at the end of June. Midnight Cowboy was clearly a movie about a hotspot in American culture at the time.
At one point the character named Towny even says "You're a nice person, Joe, I- I- I should never have asked you up here, you're... You're a lovely person, really. Oh, God, I loathe life, I loathe it! Please go, please."
Zwei)
There's so much nihilism. I think I would've been more strongly affected by this had I seen the film at a younger age. Now I realize that it's only one way to look at the world. Mr. Tungsten let me know that this point of view is typical in art films of the period and that he also bought into that point of view more when he was younger. His pithy quote: "it's a great little time capsule of a movie."
Drei)
Even though the lot of gay people is better nowadays, the isolation, the commercialism, and the craziness of life in a big city are just as relevant today, if not more. In fact, the movie reminded me a lot of Trainspotting: misfits the forgotten. Trying and failing to make it work, to make some sense of things.
Vier)
I can totally see why it got an X rating. Those graphic flashbacks seem almost tame by today's standards; I've certainly seen worse in movies like Deliverance and pretty much any film where a woman gets raped (don't get me started). But back then all that stuff would have been as shocking as Pulp Fiction was in the '90s. And the gayness was even more overt than almost any movie I've seen.
Fünf)
Overall, a great movie. Lots to talk about and lots to see.