Cinema Purgatorio #15 - "The Abandoned Sunset"

[laughing_tree]

Comments

[laughing_tree]

Does anyone else feel this series is really dragging? As if Moore's actually run out of material for more episodes but can't just end the anthology prematurely for obvious reasons? Each new episode's just more of the same now: Some description of another sordid story from Hollywood's past, told in a clever fashion that does save it from being pure didactic history lesson but only barely; surrounded by a framing device that just hits the same note of cyclical powerlessness and mild despair again and again.

[tcampbell1000]

What I said about this one a couple years back:

The focus on old films is somewhat novel and Moore still knows how to make a conversation flow while delivering his big ideas with a wink, but this is a neat idea for a short story that's expanded into an ongoing series where nothing happens.

That's sort of the problem with Hell, from a writer's perspective: it's a place of endless horror and so there can be no development, no growth, in any meaningful sense. This leaves you two options: either do a short hot take on your philosophical ideas (like Sartre's No Exit) or have characters who don't belong in Hell, and who therefore can grow and change, journey through it (like Dante's Inferno). With its endless variations on "Hell is living in someone else's essentially unchanging fantasy" and endless processions of newbs who don't quite get it, Cinema Purgatorio seems like a little bit of both but not enough of either.

It's become more about the history of film production than its art since then, but other than that, my impression hasn't really changed much.