the editors of this film should be ashamed. A very good film is hiding under the edits somewhere. The "Director's Cut" is only ten minutes longer, so I imagine the fault lies in multiple hands.
The first time I watched this I didn't like it at all... it was on dvd and it was the american cut... but I didn't know that! So when they presented it at the World Film Festival of Montreal I learned that there was a director's cut and wow, what a huge difference! It's like watching the happy ending version of Terry Gilliam's brazil and then the real version...
Bernard Tavernier and American Unconscious: Super-Crooks, Super-Heroes and Drunk-Drugged Philistines
Tavernier’s representation of the “American archetype” in “In the Electric Mist” (2010) is a diligent repetition of endless Hollywood films about super-crooks and super-heroes. The American super-crooks are depicted as heroes of social success while being disgustingly cynical characters bathing in luxury, and the American super-heroes are also crooks of another sort – so motivated to get the “devil” that they fabricate the evidence and are merciless and cruel (but the viewers are, as always, on their side because it is so obvious who is super-bad that being just bad already looks like being super-good). As always in Hollywood productions, “badness” is rooted in “perverted” individuals and has nothing to do with the socio-politico-economic system. And this Hollywood-like juicy “realistic” style! – This confident settlement of the director and actors in the flesh of life (without any psychological asceticism and emotional modesty which are inseparable from the ability to deliver at least some meaning). What’s happening with decent European directors when they get American contracts (except Louis Malle)? Whom they are identifying with when they are making American movies? To use Tavernier’s film’s images – they identify with drunk-drugged philistines – they are drunk-drugged with their dream about loud money-success in U.S.A. www.actingoutpolitics.com
By Victor
