VAN GOGH and THE BAD LIEUTENANT
A ten-step two-film review by Ron Hogan
Copyright 1993 Ron Hogan
1) "There is no 'film culture'...just an awful lot of films." Orson Welles, THIS IS ORSON WELLES
Okay, I'm pissed. I just spent an hour typing up the first version of this review, and emacs decided to eat it rather than save it. So I'm not in a good mood, and I don't necessarily feel like retyping the long justification I had of lumping these two films together. Let's just say that I don't feel like writing full reviews for both of them, and that they each address a point that I have made passing reference to in previous reviews. Rather than spread that point too thin, I'd like to deal with it a bit more fully in one posting.
2) First, let's clear away the stuff in VAN GOGH that isn't relevant to THE BAD LIEUTENANT: the biographical issues. I've dealt with those before, too, and will again when I get around to seeing CHAPLIN. What makes VAN GOGH different from any biographical film I've previously reviewed for rec.arts.movies.reviews is the conciseness of its scope: "the last 67 days of the great painter's life." Both HOFFA and MALCOLM X tried to provide the "big picture" to one degree or another--VAN GOGH's scale is smaller on purpose, probably in the view that the clues to Van Gogh's condition, the factors that led to his violent end, would be found in concise form in those sixty-seven days. It's important to keep in mind that in what we've falsely called a "film culture," the subject of Van Gogh is not new, and so VAN GOGH must be considered not only in comparison to other biographical films, but also in comparison to other Van Gogh films. Most prominently, there is LUST FOR LIFE, starring Kirk Douglas, which combined the biopic with the genre at which its director, Vincente Minelli, most excelled--the melodrama. More recently, Robert Altman released VINCENT AND THEO, which focused on the relationship between the two brothers. Both of those films place a high degree of importance on the paintings--Minelli holds them up as signs of Van Gogh's genius, and of the film's authenticity; Altman uses them as objects of value and exchange, economic objects (most notably in the beginning). VAN GOGH has its obligatory moments of painting, but seems to care more about the artist than the art.
3) Van Gogh is not a pleasant person. "You're cranky to everyone," one character berates him, and in fact he is, often violently so. But it's not that Van Gogh is an asshole on purpose. He's sick. As Dr. Gachet outlines it, Vincent suffers from overexhaustion and hysteria, and other complications brought on by his lifestyle, which includes liberal usage of absinthe. Van Gogh leads a destructive life, so much so that at 37, he is (in the words of one friend) "burned out."
4) That's an interesting anachronism--I assume it's an anachronism-- to use to describe Van Gogh, because it is loaded with modern resonances that I picked up on throughout the film. The life of a creative genius, struggling to create a new art form in the face of harsh criticism ("the colors are like puke"), living a self-destructive lifestyle, and then embarking on an affair with a girl who can't be more than 15, 16 tops. If it weren't in French, I'd have thought I walked in on GREAT BALLS OF FIRE instead of VAN GOGH. (Note--Alexandra London, who plays Marguerite, has a rough similarity in style to Winona Ryder. Note 2-- Jacques Dutronc is a French rock star.) Or if you want to stay in the 19th Century, a film about Edgar Allan Poe.
5) "For the psychopath is better adapted to dominate those mutually contradictory inhibitions upon violence and love which civilization has exacted of us, and if it be remembered that not every psychopath is an extreme case, and that the condition of psychopathy is present in a host of people...it can be seen that there are aspects of psychopathy which already exert considerable cultural influence."--Norman Mailer, THE WHITE NEGRO: superficial reflections on the hipster
From which we also get a definition of the psychopath: "If the fate of twentieth century man is to live with death ... why then the only life- giving answer is to accept the terms of death, to live with death as immediate danger, to divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self." Hence the scenes of Van Gogh debauching himself in a Paris bordello, complete with can-can dancers, attempting to get his teenage mistress to take part in a menage a trois (she later becomes the recipient of pseudolesbian affections while he watches), drinking absinthe, plunging himself into the river in a spontaneous death wish, etc. And the most intense scene of the film: Vincent alone in his room, staring down the barrel of a gun, repelled and fascinated by the options that it presents.
6) Not every psychopath is an extreme case. But the Bad Lieutenant, played by Harvey Keitel, is. This New York cop snorts, shoots, buys and steals drugs, extorts from thieves--the litany of his sins can go on for more lines than I care to type. Yet every depraved act that he commits has a purpose; "the drama of the psychopath is that he seeks love. Not love as the search for a mate, but love as the search for an orgasm more apocalyptic than the one which preceded it." This is literalized in a scene in which the Lieutenant pulls over two teenage girls--in his review, Peter Travers of ROLLING STONE (I don't usually quote PopCrit, because most of it is banal and endlessly pursuing the quickie blurb for use in advertising--Travers is especially guilty of this, but this time he's on to something, despite the usual PopCrit hyperbole) says, "the obscene horror of exploitation has never been so searingly rendered." Which is close enough to the truth for practical purposes--this was a scene which drove about three people out of the theatre.
7) Travers is also the source of BEST BLURB 1992: "Harvey Keitel whacks you like the business end of a Louisville Slugger." This became my mantra for November and December, as the trailer was shown every time I went to the Nuart in Santa Monica, which was the exclusive venue in the Los Angeles area. It got to the point where I would recite the trailer as it rolled yet again .... But the main point is that the Lieutenant also whacks himself. I don't mean that in the vernacular, though that happens too. I mean that in his search for the perfect orgasm, the Lieutenant commits violence upon himself, through drug use and injudicious gambling among other acts, as much as he commits violence upon others. The Dead Kennedys said it best: "I don't need your fucking world / this world brings me down / I look forward to death."
8) Contrasted to the Lieutenant is a good nun, whose rape serves as the cynosure for the total desecration of moral civilization implied by the film. The amazing thing is that she forgives her assailants: "Like many of the poor, they were rude, and they took what they needed...I ought to have turned bitter semen into fertile sperm, turned hate into love." She refuses to name the rapists; the Lieutenant is astounded. "Get with the program," he pleads with her. Vengeance is all he knows; the idea of forgiveness is completely alien to him. She suggests that he talk to God.
9) God comes in for a good bit of abuse. "Where the fuck were you?" the Lieutenant screams, and it isn't an entirely unreasonable question. Getting past that rage, though, is impossible--the Lieutenant is reduced to the howls of a beast in pain. Most of the time, Keitel stares death in the face and bluffs it. "I can't die ... I'm blessed ... I'm a fucking Catholic." He invites his bookmaker to come after him, knowing that he can face any danger down. But at a gut level, the Lieutenant knows that his actions are self-destructive, that his quest for the perfect high leads to doom. Vampires have the luxury of feeding on others, one of his suppliers muse, but "we gotta eat away at ourselves until there's nothing left but appetite." And nothing can save the Lieutenant--not even Jesus. "I try to do good," Keitel screams. "I'm too fucking weak!"
10) There is no direct equivalent in THE BAD LIEUTENANT of the scene in VAN GOGH where Vincent stares into the barrel of the gun (which in itself seems close to a scene from LETHAL WEAPON I in which Mel Gibson goes so far as to swallow the barrel), but there are countless rough equivalents, including a relentlessly slow scene of Keitel shooting up into his veins (five people walked out on that), and a scene in which two women engage in light bondage while the Lieutenant drinks himself into oblivion, with Johnny Ace music blaring (note--Johnny Ace died playing Russian Roulette, the psychopath's solitaire). The level of their psychopathies was different, but Vincent and the Lieutenant are two sides of the same coin--the former was able to channel his rage into art for a while, the latter channels his rage into pure violence. Neither one can have ultimate control over their rage, or their inevitable destiny--at least on the terms offered within the films.
For related texts, see WHITE JAZZ by James Ellroy, which is to the LAPD what THE BAD LIEUTENANT is to the NYPD, and Bret Easton Ellis' AMERICAN PSYCHO, which deals with the psychopathy of upscale New York.
Van Gogh related material is too vast to mention.
Ron Hogan rhogan@usc.edu comments welcome
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