the last picture show (w&d peter bogdanovich, w larry mcmurtry)

It must be thirty years since I last saw The Last Picture Show. I remember it made an impact then and it still does now. The final scene must be one of the saddest Hollywood scenes ever made. The portrayal of a fading, duststrewn Texas community is as touching as ever. Perhaps more so in that it feels like a second elegy now, or a third or fourth. The first elegy was for the golden days of Hollywood, represented by the town’s local cinema, on the point of closing. A cinema that shows the classics over and over, the narratives that North Americans grew up with for generations, with all their flaws and their virtues. The second is for this small town America itself, seemingly in terminal decline, a decline which has in no way rescinded over the course of the past forty years. A decline which has lead to the vicissitudes of Trump and the slow hollowing out of North American power. Although in the images of the small town of Anarene, one can perhaps perceive a more universal image of America, because the fading town could be Uyuni in Bolivia or Uruapan in Mexico, or any one of a hundred thousand places which have sprung up and faded away since the americas were occupied. Thirdly, and most obviously, the film is an elegy to youth. The beauty and awkwardness of youth, factors which cannot be avoided. The fact that the film’s stars, Shepherd and Bridges in particular, have now aged, just adds another layer of piquancy to this elegy. Finally, an elegy that the film could only have surmised at the time, it’s also an elegy for the idea that Hollywood might produce films which sought to provoke thought, rather than thrills. I realise this is a generalisation, but to watch these film from the BBS stable now, to see the way in which the North American directors were using cinema as a tool to investigate and question their society, is to feel a sense of loss at the way this inflexion has been dulled, neutered. Few films have emerged from the USA’s 21st century conflicts to rival those of the epoch of Cimino, Scorcese, Coppola. Duane is setting off for the Korean war as the film ends. The challenges which lead to the founding of a town like Anarene, celebrated in the films of Hawks and Huston and co are seemingly done now. The USA lacks direction. Like all emerging empires, it will turn outwards, to foreign adventures, whilst its interior slowly fades towards a washed out, dusty two-tone insignificance.