the millennium kids

Plugging myself into the grid.
Kirsten Dunst as Marion Davies and Eddie Izzard as Charlie Chaplin in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Cat’s Meow. A film like this typifies why I hate when people refer to something as a ‘minor work.’ Compact and charming, The Cat’s Meow is about the Hollywood rumors surrounding producer Thomas Ince’s death aboard William Randolph Hearst’s yacht. A film like this shows how beneficial a great director can be to solid material—Bogdanovich gets effortful performances out of his cast of character actors, all of whom seem familiar but unplaceable, and deftly choreographs his action around his single set. The script is up to the task of seduction, but it is Bogdanovich’s rather humane emphasis on the emotional toll that the rash effronteries and crisscrossing trysts may have on Hollywood’s nouveau riche that occasions its specialness. Izzard plays Chaplin as the world’s foremost scalawag; Cary Elwes (as Ince) handles his poor luck poorly, but his fate seems rather cruelly punitive; Dunst, as per usual, stuns, preserving Davies’ integrity to the end; and Edward Herrmann (as W.R.) sinks into Hearst—his protectiveness of Davies, once turned tragic, unveils the crippling insecurities underpinning his strong-arm lifestyle. The film’s narrator announces that history is written in whispers, and there are plenty here, only not just the lurid gossip—Hermann’s best work here comes from stopping the bellows short, from allowing Hearst to pause and truly appreciate the inappropriate and calamitous nature of his limitless power, from taking the lion’s roar and turning it, in the arms of his lover, into something like a meow. (It’s on Netflix instant—check it out if you can).

Kirsten Dunst as Marion Davies and Eddie Izzard as Charlie Chaplin in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Cat’s Meow.

A film like this typifies why I hate when people refer to something as a ‘minor work.’ Compact and charming, The Cat’s Meow is about the Hollywood rumors surrounding producer Thomas Ince’s death aboard William Randolph Hearst’s yacht. A film like this shows how beneficial a great director can be to solid material—Bogdanovich gets effortful performances out of his cast of character actors, all of whom seem familiar but unplaceable, and deftly choreographs his action around his single set. The script is up to the task of seduction, but it is Bogdanovich’s rather humane emphasis on the emotional toll that the rash effronteries and crisscrossing trysts may have on Hollywood’s nouveau riche that occasions its specialness. Izzard plays Chaplin as the world’s foremost scalawag; Cary Elwes (as Ince) handles his poor luck poorly, but his fate seems rather cruelly punitive; Dunst, as per usual, stuns, preserving Davies’ integrity to the end; and Edward Herrmann (as W.R.) sinks into Hearst—his protectiveness of Davies, once turned tragic, unveils the crippling insecurities underpinning his strong-arm lifestyle. The film’s narrator announces that history is written in whispers, and there are plenty here, only not just the lurid gossip—Hermann’s best work here comes from stopping the bellows short, from allowing Hearst to pause and truly appreciate the inappropriate and calamitous nature of his limitless power, from taking the lion’s roar and turning it, in the arms of his lover, into something like a meow.

(It’s on Netflix instant—check it out if you can).

  1. nathanfisher posted this