One of the amazing things about this satire is
its timeliness. And its timeliness is due in large part to the
astounding accuracy of Chayevsky's predictions.
"Cops" is just the "Mao Tse
Tsung" hour for a viewing audience that prefers law and
order to revolutionaries when watching mind candy--due in large
part to the fact that we're a lot better off these days than 23
years ago. The onair murder of Finch is still just a bit ahead of
current day mores--but just a bit. And despite all the dire
predictions, we still don't have soothsayers on our news shows.
What I find encouraging--in fact, quite
heartening--about Network is that the news industry has hung on
in 25 years well enough that the core issues addressed in 1976
are still alive today. The network news are still struggling
between their corporate toaster-making masters and their desire
to present hard news. The public is still capricious enough to
value truthtellers briefly and then get bored as their novelty
fades--but we haven't gone over the edge completely. Our vapidity
is cyclical, not linear. Hallelujah.
So Network still cuts right on the edge, just
as Chayevsky intended.
The script is too slow. Its monologues are its
strength and its weakness. I watched the movie again with Spawn
this morning, and he said, "There is TOO MUCH TALKING in
this movie!" Truth. But what monologues. Finch's are the
heart of the movie, of course ("You people are the real
thing! *We* are the illusion!"). Dunaway's speech to her
staff, her ongoing prattle to Holden during their weekend, and
her initial comeon to Holden are terrific. I found Holden's
monologues about relationships tedious in the extreme--as I did
their entire romance--and the biggest drag in the movie.
But what I found marvellous was the plotting;
the two tales of TV--its past and its future--are told separately
and made entirely believable and interesting in their own right.
Then throw in a random--but utterly credible--factor, that of the
godlike Chairman Jensen (beautifully played by Beatty), who has
his puppet properly trained and wants to keep him on the air,
just *killing* the ratings. The last meeting and the coalescence
of these three threads into the perfect solution for their
problem is, again, just that teeniest of stretch into fantasy.
Finch's epochal howl that gets the country to
its windows is still a marvel to behold, as is every moment of
his performance. I particularly bleed for him in the beginning;
he looks so happy in that scene in Holden's office--all in black
and looking *damn* sexy for a 60 year old, I might add--and then
later that night, he is caught in the spell of his demons, that
light shining on his face.
Dunaway is insanely good; I don't think her
performance has dated in the slightest. Political correctness
dictates these days that female characters who are mad for power
be mad for sex as well. However, I know lots of men *and* women
for whom power is the be all and end all--sex is an irrelevancy.
She's not a man in a woman's body; she's a woman all the way--creative,
imaginative, ruthless as only a chick can be, and icy, icy, cold.
Holden delivers in a thankless part ("and
I alone survived to tell the tale"). His age and
worldweariness (not assumed for the movie) play to his advantage.
Straight is an irrelevancy to the movie, she got her Oscar for
that one gem of a speech and it is criminal that Chayevsky
undercuts that "fuck off and die" speech with that
sympathetic "chin up and let's be friends" bit at the
end. Duvall's character and performance is the most dated of the
bunch, but that's hardly his fault. He's a good hack, as always.
As has already been mentioned, Marlene Warfield is superb--her
opening scene with Dunaway is my favorite of her many great
moments, although "You can blow the seminal prisoner class
infrastructure out your ass! I'm not knockin' down my goddamn
distribution charges!" comes a close second.
Wanna know something weird? At the point in the
movie when they are faced with the problem--Jensen wants Beale on
the air, the ratings are dropping, the commies are upset--Spawn
said, "They're going have those revolutionaries shoot Howard.
Then they can get rid of him without firing him."
That kid watches too much TV.
