At one point Miller says "You get stuck up on specifics you miss out on the whole thing." I think that is part of the point of pastiche, mash up all the genres and make the whole movie about visuals. With the mash up of genres you need to really pay attention to understand the movie, but by paying attention to the overall storyline you miss out on some of the more subtle parts of the movie and their meanings/impact.
ie: What's with the one brother wearing a hair net? is it a subtle reminder of the menial drudgery of a short order cook vs the crazy life of a repo man? And what about the security guard knitting...can't even start to figure that one out. Or all of the Smiley Face buttons?
This movie reminded me of several other movies such as
Mother, Jugs and Speed
Super Troopers
Ghostbusters
and a tiny bit of Back to the Future
and the Steven King book From a Buick 8 (horrible book by the way)
I really enjoyed this movie and its sometimes blatant mocking of the genres
You know, maybe the decay of the dead aliens is incredibly radioactive and therefore vaporizes feeble humans. I could see that. I really don't think the vaporization was meant to be understood anyway. Hahah and the part about the hairnet made me laugh because I totally didn't understand that either.
ReplyDeleteThe hairnet is part of a west coast low rider look. They were supposed to be stereotypical Mexicans.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, I think that the car was just supposed to be incredibly radioactive. There was some serious cold war paranoia in the mid-80s, which at that time had everything to do with the fear of nuclear war, and also nuclear energy. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl had both happened shortly before.
Should I watch Mother Jugs and Speed? Is that more of a 70s movie? Is it worth watching?
I just thought the car was an alien instead of having aliens (dead or alive) inside of it. There was a lot that didn't make sense and wasn't explained.
ReplyDeleteI didn't think there was any explanation behind the fact that the aliens vaporize people but professor McRae's comment about Three Mile Island and Chernobyl bring up interesting connections that I hadn't even thought of.
ReplyDeleteI like that you pointed out that Miller says, "You get stuck up on specifics you miss out on the whole thing." This definitely applies to a movie like Natural Born Killers in that many people get hung up on the violence or crazy changes in images that they miss what the film is actually saying. But I'm really wondering if it applies to Repo Man. Do you think there is any reason behind what is being done? Does it matter?