Review of The Last Picture Show (1971) by Nick O — 24 Jul 2011

Death is weird. It's like spinning life full circle then dropping off and you don't know what happened. Or you sort of do by turning it to acceptance, with reservations. The afterlife, in a way, holds all souls and no souls. Not a religious thing. Or even a peeve. The surprise sneaks up while the whole time bargaining the devil's advocate to offer secrets. He lies in the details, but we, us people, are forever trapped in the vague of history in different branches of collective. We move backward to go forward as part of an intimate evolution that always requires hands to change.

But Peter Bogdanovich in "The Last Picture Show" keeps the camera fighting in the ghost town of Anarene, Texas -- and Anarene alone -- a made-up shanty that aches in real desire. Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges) are high-schoolers shaking scrutiny from losing the local's football game to the visiting team, a band of death eaters without a cause. Sonny and Duane rebel as TV titans do by pawing girls around, Sonny's clammy Charlene (Sharon Taggart) and Duane's Jacy (an ambitious and antsy Cybill Shepherd). Sonny calls it quits quick with his bossy beau. Duane hangs tight with Jacy, fears of yielding her in reach of modest celebrity to someone other than the home stable, clocking boondocks patriarch Sam The Lion (Ben Johnson), diner waitress Genevieve (Eileen Brennan), and the class Coach Popper (Bill Thurman).

"The Last Picture Show" juggles so much it's simply amazing screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Bogdanovich were able to hollow laughs and suspense as still and surreal in the movie's versed pretension that running hits harder when swept away by fantastic tragedy. Sonny grows romantic ties to Coach's wife Ruth (enormous emotion from Cloris Leachman). Jacy in playing constant love game tries to oust over the modern ideals of snob mom Lois (Ellen Burstyn). And Duane, made a shifting friend and enemy by a fierce young Bridges, walks the towering nothingness of the everything sprawled before him.

They're canvas criminals in shades of grey, bored and wise to it all. Even atop mountains broken potential can bleed through cracks left unvarnished by goods too true to be real. "The Last Picture Show" has gall enough to transcend the very mortal scars of an era coming to be if only in dreams, shadows held in memories of futures haunted from wake-up to total consciousness.