Questions posed by EWS

[keith woodward]

>keith:
>>Not for myself, at least.  What I find seriously disturbing are the social
>> >issues (to which I rarely pay any attention) in the film that are
>>seriously >behind the times.
Rich:
>The spectre of AIDS and blind lust behind the times?

Perhaps not, but neither are they *primarily* social issues (the former is
a medical and the latter is a psycho-sexual issue)...they're social in a
secondary sense, but hey, so's everything else.  [more below]

>  I suspect that much of the negativity also centers
>>around the heavy-handedness and self-consciousness of the film's being
>> >disturbing.  It's not as disturbing as it thinks it is (my wife and I
>>often >found ourselves chuckling uncontrollably at those disturbing
>>moments, Keith
>>------------------
>child prostitution, AIDS, these are scary. We are overtly familiar w/ these
>things.  Still creepy every time ya hear about it. To think Harford was
>close to losing his sense of reality, and just barely avoided going over the
>edge was pretty compelling to me. Think of all the instances he coulda made
>the wrong choice or not been helped out.  He's lucky at the end of the
>flick, and he knows it, but it's come at a price, a big price.  I also
>thought the music was appropriate to the action, sparse at times, baroque in
>others.

Yes.  But his obsession with his wife's fantasy, his epiphany upon seeing
the mask in bed, the homosexual/emasculation under/over/over/undertones,
&c. are all fairly rediculous and overdone.  The AIDS bit is really only
compelling because it (in sonme sense) punishes the viewer for engaging (if
he/she does) in the fantasy of intercourse with the prostitute by
reintroducing reality.  But come on, AIDS, child prostitution?  So what?
If that's all it takes, save $10 and go watch 20/20 or Nightline.  I don't
think Cruise's character ever had a very plausible sense of reality to
begin with.  And, what's the price?

Keith