Richard Cante wonders:
"1.  I finally saw LEAVING LAS VEGAS and found it to be notably
unimpressive--aesthetically, intellectually, and emotionally.  Is it the
film's "bankruptcy" on these registers that's supposed to make it
valuable?  If that's the assumption, I'll stick with CASINO anyday.
 
It's not the raving acclaim being heaped heaped on LLV from the
industry/press that has me confused, since I'm not at all surprised
that a film like this would commission such a response.  Rather, it's the
enthusiastic response of many of MY FRIENDS that has me baffled!"
 
 
I certainly can't speak for your friends, here are some of my thoughts, FWIW:
 
LEAVING LAS VEGAS is an impressive film which has left me thinking about it
for days.  Probably my reaction was heightened by seeing on the same day
and immediately after SENSE AND SENSIBILITY(!).  What I like about the film
especially is its determination to play by its own rules--two characters who
live their lives and accept their lives (degraded as they may be) without
apology.  The film could easily have veered to Kitchen Sink realism or
Movie-of-the-Week uplift (Cage and Shue move to Minnesota, check in to a
12 Step program, and live happily ever after), but the film moves inexorably
to its pre-ordained end.  The contrast with SENSE AND SENSIBILITY actually
suggested to me not only differences but similarities:
 
S&S--A world of depth and plenitude (a firm social structure, stately homes
        built for display, fields in full bloom, Nature waiting to be experienced)
LLV--A world of shiny surfaces and no depth (desert sameness to the weather,
        cheap motels and tacky apartments, an *apparent* lack of social structure
 
S&S--A world in which context is everything: what family you come from, how you
        comport yourself, what you say or do not say, what you have done in the past
LLV--A world without context: Why does Ben drink?  Why is Sera a hooker?  Why
 are
        the (Russian?) gangsters after Yuri?  The answers are resolutely avoided
        and don't really matter (we can guess at them easily enough).
 
But then come the variations.  In LLV, what one says or does not say is almost
 as
important as it is in S&S.  It also turns out that beneath the veneer of the
 lack
of social rules (you can drink yourself to death, be a prostitute, gamble,
even have sex in public) there is still a rock-hard stratum of rules.  Just
 count
the number of times Ben or Sera is politely but firmly told to Leave and Not
Come Back from one place or another because they have transgressed the Rules.
 
One thing I haven't heard much discussion of is Figgis's use of distancing
techniques--the echoey timbre of much of the dialogue, the backgrounds where
people stop and stare or completely ignore the characters, the *lack* of
background to provide what normally would be important visual information,
the bitterly ironic use of Sting singing pop standards like "My One and Only"
and the love theme from THE THIRD MAN (a pretty ironic film in its own right).
 
There's much more I need to think about--and I probably need to see the film
 again,
but if this film is a measure of our times, the desert heat turns out to be
quite chilly indeed.
 
 
Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)
 
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