This is how much I love you people: at this moment, it's 3:30 on a
weekday morning, and I've spent the last three hours watching a
40-year-old western musical that features an intermission, two
distinct forms of polygamy, and a singing Clint Eastwood. The unlucky
among you will have already guessed I'm wrapping up Western Month with
Paint Your Wagon, one of the most bizarre movies I've ever
stumbled across.
Maybe it's because he's staggering drunk at the time, but prospector
Lee Marvin doesn't know what he's in for when he buys Jean Seberg at
auction. In a small mining town with no other women, the male
attention his new wife attracts drives Marvin so crazy he has no
choice but to hijack a stagecoach full of prostitutes.
That's one corner of the plot, anyway. Paint Your Wagon tries
to cover more territory than Lewis and Clark. It's aggressively
time-wasting, unafraid to bust out in song at any moment, totally
unconcerned it's got enough sideplots to fill a sideplot factory.
Yet I went into this expecting a serious Big Awful Friday candidate
and came out indescribably entertained. Not because it was great--it's
much too big a mess for that, and for all its fun, it often feels like
a chore--but because it's so dang crazy you can't help but get swept
along.
It's the mixture of depravity, sentiment, and wholesome comedy that
really makes it weird. After Marvin buys his wife, how are we supposed
to feel when the whole town shows up to sing along at his riverside
makeover? Or when he's so fall-down drunk at his wedding (there's more
keeling over in Paint Your Wagon than when the Brazilian
rainforest gets clear-cut) he can't even say "I do"?
There are few things on earth more stupefying than listening to
drunken quasi-rapists tenderly croon their feelings about women and
the wind and then get tree-climbingly excited about the incoming
shipment of kidnapped whores. It's especially confusing when these
things aren't presented as sleazy or even all that questionable, but
with the good-natured cheer of a Broadway musical.
After all that lawless excitement, the climax is heartlessly
judgmental, a huge, stupid showstopper that only seems to be there
because the story had to find a new way to top its own excess.
Paint Your Wagon is a wrecking ball of contradictions: perverse
yet clean, serious and silly, tedious yet fun. If you're going to
tackle this one, I'd recommend doing so with someone else in the room.
Disaster is always best survived in the company of friends.
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Aries
March 21-April 19
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take care not to be too Spartan or you will never stick to your
program. Find ways to enjoy the things you like in moderation or on
special occasions. A current intellectual pursuit will lead to
something bigger.
Lucky Number
946
Financial Outlook
poor
Compatible Sign
Virgo
Taurus
April 20-May 20
Your intuition serves you well today as you negotiate your
power base within your primary relationship. The results will set the
tone for how you and your partner treat each other on an intimate
level. If you want this to work, be as open and honest as you possibly
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Lucky Number
780
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