Film Summary DCVI (Minnie and Moskowitz)

I want to know what magical process John Cassavetes has for making all these strange but fascinating films.
It takes an incredible amount of talents to take mundane conversations and straight up horrible characters and make them generally entertaining to watch.

So I want to get my one gripe with this film out of the way. And it's a problem that's not even the movies fault.
In the first 20 minutes there's a lot of weird edits. Parts of conversations and scenes that just seem to be cut out of nowhere. It screws up the pacing.
As you're in the middle of this severe conversation involving Minnie's love life as she starts to age and then it's abruptly ended by a scene of a plane flying by.
At first I thought it was a weird editing technique by John.
He has a tendency to do really weird things with his films. So I just thought this wasn't out of the ordinary for him.
But it turns out this was actually a studio issue.
Universal Pictures decided to cut out various scenes to shorten the runtime.
An issue that John's dealt with several times in his other movies.
But it seems like this one was just forcefully edited with no Rhyme or Reason given to the story and clearly against the directors will.
This seems to be the only version of the film that exists now. So we just have to live with it.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can look at the real interesting parts.
You've got this guy Sylvester (Moskowitz) who's a low-down disinterested borderline bum. Who just kind of wanders from place to place doing odd jobs, having weird conversations with people and constantly hitting on all types of random women.
He's a real nobody and he's able to convince his mother (Katherine Cassavetes as Sheba Moskowitz. A woman whose attitude is so ridiculously stereotypically East Coast American that it went from kind of strange and annoying to phenomenal and comedic. She's easily the best part of the entire movie and she's only in one small scene of the beginning and then about 15 minutes towards the end. But will get back to her.)

Our other character is Minnie. The ''technical'' protagonist of the film. At first you think she's going to be sharing a half screen time with Sylvester but she really comes into her own.  As the main protagonist of this whole thing.

She's this poor kind of high-class woman That works in an art museum. She was in a relationship with his really abusive asshat of a guy.
That is until he breaks up with her after smacking her around and accusing her of being a secretive drunk.
I don't know what the scenario there was to lead up to that. But it's clear this relationship should have ended long ago.
I'd like to say that she's better off for getting rid of him but it seems her alternatives later on aren't much better.

She has this small date with this other guy (Zelmo Swift played by Val Avery. How is so good at playing this oddball fool)
Who turns out to be a really weird creep of a dude. this leads to her trying to get away and ending up in the car of Sylvester and driving off.
But this poor woman can't catch a break.
Sylvester is just as weird as the rest.
This miserable woman is depressed and surrounded by absolutely horrible men. She becomes a real victim of all their circumstances and general problems.

Now I do have to hold it against her a little bit. She had a few moments where she could have easily have gotten away from Sylvester and save yourself a lot of trouble. But she just keeps going back to the guy.
I don't know if you could blame it on a medical condition or strange upbringing; but she seems to have an interest in this awkward schlubby guy who's generally interested in her. But they're really all the wrong reasons.
Their entire relationship is impulsive, strange and they have absolutely no chemistry. That is to say that the characters have no chemistry. The actors are doing an absolutely terrific job.
Their General talent and overall direction is phenomenal.
And it's a true expertise to how well everything works; that you just want to keep seeing what these people will do.
There not good people, there not even enjoyable people. It's that just kind of miserable and downtrodden, confused; That it makes for some wonderfully tents and kind of disgusting drama. There's nothing vulgar. It's just human and kind of upsetting.
The kind of thing my sad pathetic ass just loves to watch and film.

And it's not like I likes miserable it's not great but I'm better off than most of these people. It just resonates really well. Like we're having a glimpse into The Human Condition.

Anyways these two just keep hanging on as they deal with one scenario after the next. One moment they're happily eating ice cream or dancing in a parking lot. The next moment they're screaming and bickering at each other over one miss said word or an encounter with some other random person that wants to offer assistance to what looks to be a really depressed Minnie.

You keep thinking this is the chance she has to get away from all of this to start new and hopefully have a better life.
But nope.
She hooks up again with Sylvester and the two just keep on going. It gets so intense that they even propose marriage and both of their mothers who they invite out to see them after only knowing each other for 4 days are very much against this marriage.
Sylvester's mother so out spoken about it and Incredibly brutal.
She bad-mouths her son and talks about how much of a bum he is.
Accuses the two of them of possibly having a kid on the way and it's the only reason they would ever be involved in such a marriage.
You'd think this would make the 2 think and maybe take hold of the situation. But they just keep going and they eventually get married. Shown later on and clips to have their own kids and just being forced to live this maybe happy life but probably quite miserable one.

So it should be no surprise to anybody that I loved this film.
It's everything I love in dramatic Cinema. Downplayed significantly and then served up with fantastic dialogue and really solid acting.
It's somehow miserable and Charming at the same time.
There's a lot of secondary plot points and story elements that you could go back and look at and be kind of confused as to why the main story forgot about, but it just really isn't important.

Eventually it just devolves into these two people reacting with each other. You become so enthralled in their lives that you can't help but be kind of happy for them when they try to get together.
Even though every alarm bell in your head is telling you this is a horrible idea and both of these people should really seek out help.
I've been kind of brutal on Sylvester the whole time. But even he doesn't deserve half the crap that happens to him here.
He's weird and abusive and he certainly doesn't deserve to get with Minnie. But he's kind, mild and nice in his own Twisted way. or maybe I'm just acting as irrational as our two main leads.

It's contagious you know.