MIDNIGHT COWBOY
A film review by Chad Polenz
Copyright 1997 Chad Polenz
** (out of 4 = fair) 1969, R, 113 minutes [1 hour, 53 minutes] [drama] starring: Jon Voight (Joe Buck), Dustin Hoffman (Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo), produced by Jerome Hellman, written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy.
"Midnight Cowboy" is a story of a strange attempt at the American Dream gone wrong, which is exactly how the film works. It could have been a great character study, and/or a detailed depiction of the cruelness of reality, but it tells its story in such a bizarre manner it's difficult to follow, much less be moved by.
The film starts off seemingly normal as we meet Joe Buck (Voight), a young, handsome cowboy who is on his way to New York City to make it big. But Joe is arrogant fellow, he fantasizes about women and convinces himself he's every woman's dream. However, the fantasy sequences are inter-cut with strange flashbacks, and they work well to portray the surrealism of the mind. These scenes are scattered throughout the film, but eventually start to become redundant and lose their impact.
Joe arrives in NYC and checks into a hotel and then hits the streets and tries to pick up women. But he's a tall cowboy roaming the streets of New York, and we get typical fish-out-of-water scenes that are supposed to show how cruel people can be, but instead seem more like quick comic relief. When Joe meets a woman and seduces her, we finally learn his reason for coming to New York: to become a "hustler" to rich women. Unfortunately, he doesn't know what he's doing and his plan seems to fail.
Right away, the film's biggest flaw is obvious - why would Joe leave home to pursue such an unattainable goal? Also, how could he have seduced a woman so fast? I found myself asking questions like these throughout the film, and thus became distracted because they were never answered.
One day Joe meets Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo (Hoffman), a small time con man, thief, and all around unsuccessful criminal. Ratso learns of Joe's plan and tries to hook him up with a "pimp," but that plan falls through. Joe becomes furious with Ratso, but when he bumps into him again he doesn't take revenge. Instead, the two move in together in an abandoned building!
Although many events take place throughout the first half, virtually nothing happens in terms of story and plot. Most of the second half is a series of extremely strange events that are only mildly interesting and not nearly as thematic as they intend to be. Up until the encounter with the strange old pimp the film had been relatively normal. From that point on it becomes very strange with scenes that make little or no sense and an overall feeling of vertigo.
For example, Joe, who is the epitome of staunch heterosexuality, has a homosexual encounter with a young man who does not pay him afterwards, yet he hardly seems to mind. Why this happens is beyond me. Does he do it just for the money, or is he possibly bi-sexual? Perhaps the flashbacks were subtle, Freudian hints, but the story is told so choppy nothing makes sense.
The final act starts to become a modernized version of "Of Mice And Men" as we learn the two plan to move to Florida to escape the New York winter because Ratso is dying from it. But unlike Lenny and George, where one was stupid and the other smart but both cared for each other, these men are both stupid and neither seems to care for the other, and why would they? They have nothing in common, Voight and Hoffman have no chemistry, and the atmosphere is too gritty to be believed. The two are self-made victims - it's hard to feel sorry for them.
There is a scene at a psychedelic party where the film itself becomes an acid trip where reality is there, it's just not realistic. This is symbolic of "Midnight Cowboy" - there is reality to it, but because it's bizarre it cannot be taken seriously
Please visit Chad'z Movie Page @ http://members.aol.com/ChadPolenz
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