Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
This is a weird, oddly moving time trip. If you can't quite connect to the characters, or the country wholesome slightly offbeat lower class middle America circa 1973 you won't enjoy it. Because it's about absorbing the mood as a two young people fall in love and find that being in love is hard.
Which it is. Ellen Burstyn as a single mom is pretty amazing, very convincing, avoiding glamorous clichés (not that she isn't beautiful in some Hollywood sense, but she's real). Her counterpart is played by Kris Kristofferson, who isn't really much of an actor, he holds his own most of the time, but in general he drags the movie down. Everyone, including Kristofferson, survives partly because it's about being normal, about the mundane, about being an average American.
It's filmed with a surprising beauty--but not the kind that draws attention to itself. There are parts where the camera moves with surprising fluidity, quickly following the characters. Other times, it's just the light that is so beautiful, and the color. Let's give Scorsese credit. He makes it affecting without making it false. A beautiful film. It's modest, somehow, not sensational, but thankfully not. Heartfelt above all.
This is a weird, oddly moving time trip. If you can't quite connect to the characters, or the country wholesome slightly offbeat lower class middle America circa 1973 you won't enjoy it. Because it's about absorbing the mood as a two young people fall in love and find that being in love is hard.
Which it is. Ellen Burstyn as a single mom is pretty amazing, very convincing, avoiding glamorous clichés (not that she isn't beautiful in some Hollywood sense, but she's real). Her counterpart is played by Kris Kristofferson, who isn't really much of an actor, he holds his own most of the time, but in general he drags the movie down. Everyone, including Kristofferson, survives partly because it's about being normal, about the mundane, about being an average American.
It's filmed with a surprising beauty--but not the kind that draws attention to itself. There are parts where the camera moves with surprising fluidity, quickly following the characters. Other times, it's just the light that is so beautiful, and the color. Let's give Scorsese credit. He makes it affecting without making it false. A beautiful film. It's modest, somehow, not sensational, but thankfully not. Heartfelt above all.