“I'd like to see you with your pants off, Mr. Reed.”
I watched this on Criterion Channel as part of their collection on method acting, if you’re a subscriber I’d highly recommend checking it out. There’s a great 40 minute intro video with Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Isaac Butler that dispelled a lot of my own misconceptions around the Method.
I saw this for the first time back in high school and loved it then as much as now. Today, it feels even more pertinent to my life as I try to live as a polyamorous Queer anarchist in a world that feels increasingly hostile to those principles. I love how flawed all the characters are allowed to be, how human. My favorite scene may be when Bryant and Reed arrive at the Russian border and see the wounded troops who have defected from the front. Their personal squabbles fall away as they remember the gravity of the events they’re living through. And yet, they aren’t chastised for being human, and in fact the inhumanity of both the American State and later Soviet Union are exactly what the movie is opposed to. Some might read Beatty’s speeches about individuality as the typical American liberal homilies about the failure of the Soviet union, but I read them as a far more nuanced political critique. An individual can only be part of the collective if they are allowed to be an individual. The performances are, of course, incredible. Beatty is plausible and charming as ever, but it’s Keaton and Nicholson who really blow the doors off the place. Nicholson gets to be nasty and hurt, the two things he’s best at, and he makes the most of his limited screen time. But Keaton really is the star of this movie. She fully embodies Bryant’s many contradictions and develops her from a rebellious society wife to an iron-willed revolutionary without ever changing her essence. Perfect casting, perfect performance. I only wish Beatty and Nicholson weren’t such bastards off camera.