Best.Movie.Ever.
Thats why nobody remembers it. You'll not see it featured on any premier cable channel. Nobody will reminisce about Chayefsky's devastating screenplay or Finch's self-incriminating powerhouse performance, except to maybe compare it with Ledger's Joker for the haunting madness of their roles that landed them posthumous Oscars. Its a forgotten gem, truth fortified in stone and dropped into the lake of celluloid obscurity. Perhaps its just as well, for its characters often threaten an unwelcome dislocation into real life. In the iconic scene, where Finch's Beale goes mad as a hatter on live television, you see him walk slowly and deliberately off the stage, like a stalking Velociraptor, sending his crew scurrying for cover. The entire film moves that way, sometimes walking right into your living room, trying to shake you out of your stupor.
I am afraid of this movie. I am afraid to review it, ink my thoughts on it. I am afraid i might find the language of television emerge through the heart of what i have to say. I am afraid i cannot think about it, or anything else for that matter, without donning the mask of some on-screen character first. I am afraid we are all mad. Not as hell. Simply mad. Lost and hypnotized. Having the script of our lives read out to us. Terrified by our own thoughts, always seeking validation from the alternative reality only a remote click away. I am afraid Mr. Beale, were he alive, would address me thus:
"We deal in *illusions*, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds... We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even *think* like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! *WE* are the illusion!"
~ Howard Beale, the mad prophet denouncing the hyporcrisies of our time.
