I blathered way too much while trying to comprehend my opinions on this film. The simplified version is.
It's a good movie, wonderful acting and it's a wonderful little time piece of just how weird estate we were all enjoying the mid-seventies. If for some reason you want to read the rest of this; be prepared for incomprehensible gibberish.
Network is a Charming little movie and that you can use various plot points and setups from this film to point out every imaginable problem the US has suffered over the last hundred and fifty years. Racial inequality, ideological disconnections, increase violence in the media, dealing with corruption, cold-war antics, resource issues and anything else you can think of. Because in a way a satire on American television is a satire on all of American culture.
But to do that is to miss out on the crucial point of the entire film. A critique / mockery of what was current television. And the possible roads it would go down in the future if he continued to be more interested in attracting butts two seats then exploring legitimate news.
We follow the antics of a television network who over the years has become more and more desperate for increase ratings. One of their news anchors has become depressed because of his own failings in life. He tells the world that he's going to blow his brains out on the next news broadcast a week away from when he's retirement.
This causes a whole slew of problems for the network. They're getting calls and complains in from various people about the unprofessional nature of the news anchor is bad swearing and his overall negative attitude. But they've also noticed that their ratings have gone up significantly and if they can maintain this kind of publicity, they'll make their Network the most viable in the whole country.
There's a whole lot of other smaller things going on as well. Most of which is just internal squabbling between various people working in the network. And a strange conglomerate Corporation that's either bought the network or is in the process of buying the network. And as time goes on we discover there's another company that's planning to buy up the corporation and there's this whole diatribe about how the entire world runs on this really straight-to-the-point money-making capitalist scheme. And I don't think you're meant to take it seriously, it's just meant to be an over-exaggeration.
It's hard to say given that the entire film is overly dramatic.
And I say that as a good thing.
One of the big reasons you want to watch Network is the see everybody's over-the-top reaction and Mindless soliloquies about whatever situation they happen to be in. It makes for a very entertaining movie.
There acting for the most part is pretty darn good. I can't call it phenomenal acting because everyone's reactions are turned up to 11. But still there's something to be said for a movie that's able to keep up that momentum without becoming tripe. My only issue with the movie is this Oddball romance that comes up between this philanthropist woman, who's climbing her way up the corporate ladder by her capability to predict the outcomes of national ratings and one of the old Network heads who was fired because he let his friend stay on the air when he shouldn't have.
They're supposed to have this weird generational romance in where he falls in love, but she doesn't and it's supposed to be a commentary on the different perspectives between generations and perhaps the unworkability of a professional relationship in a world where your job demands all your time. Or something like that. Maybe there was no point to it at all and it was just there to fill in time.
This is one of those movies I probably should have talked about yesterday when I actually saw it. I would have been able to articulate all my different opinions on different parts of the film and maybe Express how certain things work and others don't. but I didn't do that. And now half of the ideas that were in my head yesterday are gone. And I can't be bothered to go back and try to rethink through the whole process again. Maybe that's a fault of the movie. It's good, it's entertaining but you probably won't remember most of what happened in the middle of it.
The wonderful thing about watching a movie like this is; It causes you to question just how much of your opinions are actually yours.
As you realize that all of your information comes from some other source which is probably altered by people who want to make it as captivating as possible. And then you start to wonder if anyone's opinion is actually their own or if we're all just squabbling at each other because a few random people sitting in a dark room somewhere put a bunch of random images together and said ''this will make for an interesting story. It might even cause a division somewhere down the line. That will make her even more entertaining news.''
Comments
Post a Comment