On Repo Man: Continuously engaging and often very funny, Repo Man is not a satisfying film. Both its qualities and its failures, however, bring into sharp focus what most films about and for young people consistently blur: the experience- inescapable, given the realities of contemporary culture- of alienation and impotence. Clearly, the films attractiveness lies in its absurdism, perhaps the most insidiously tempting of all cop-outs- it is no coincidence that a film given over wholly to nihilism should contain half-a-dozen of the most irresistably funny moments in contemporary American cinema.... (On the climax) It is as if The Day After suddenly turned into Close Encounters of the Third Kind- indeed, Repo Mans imagery refers quite clearly to both. The film suggests not only that nihilism and fantasy are the only two options available to young people today but that they are really two sides of the same option: the cynicism that lurks just beneath the surfact of the Lucas and Spielberg movies is here fully dramatized. What Repo Man predictably lacks is any sense that there might be a constructive alternative. In other words, the film dramatizes nihilism in order to reinforce, not refute it. In doing so, it crystallizes, without at any point transcending, the hopeless impasses that our culture has foisted on its young. -Canadian Forum, 1984.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 04:13:52 +0000
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