about that film, which one? Last Tango in Paris

 This was supposed to be Bertolucci's big film. His epic. The one that cleaned up at the Oscars. Well, it wasn't. It didn't win any major awards. Yet I felt after watching it for the fourth of fifth time that Brando should have won for best lead and Bertolucci should have won for best director. The film is very avant garde. Totally new in film. After the fall of the studio system, film was free to meander into different forms and one form it took was this film. It is, perhaps, a precursor to films of the era. Taxi Driver couldn't have been made without this film coming first. The Graduate came before, but never had sex and sexuality been taken so seriously before Last Tango in Paris.

I watched this film in High School and I didn't get it. I watched it again when I was teaching English in Shanghai and I got more of it. But it wasn't until I was a graduate student in Screenwriting that the whole thing came to me. It is such a depressing film. There is no up ending, there is nothing up about this film. It is truly a Paris "bleu" film. Brando's wife committed suicide. And the reason why is never revealed. Why would she kill herself? It torments Brando until the end of the film. Until he follows his mystery lover into her apartment and is fatally shot.

I've had moments of melancholy. I take an anti-depressant. In research it is said France is the largest consumer of anti-depressants. The US is second. And this film is no counter argument to that research. It is thoroughly a trip down the scale. To oblivion. Or at least the consideration of oblivion. To take one's life is the ultimate depression. I recently had a conversation with a friend and I commented how Hemingway said he writes drunk and edits sober. Well, he shot himself so take from that advice what you will. And Tango is like that saying. Live but beware. There are plenty of obstacles to being content. Is that what these characters were seeking? To be content? To live in peace?

The film is great. I noticed this time around that Bertolucci takes a pot shot at Francios Truffaut. The filmmaker that Jean Pierre Leaud plays seems devilishly like Truffaut. Yet it also reflects on memory and it's construction. How do we know our past? Is constantly reflecting on it a prison? If so how do we break free? Suicide? I guess that's what Brando's character thought. There is no exit, to steal from Sartre. We must live until our time comes. We must face banality. Trapped mediocrity.

If that's the case, Tango is anything but mediocre. It is a film that is great and will be in film history for decades to come.