The Last Picture Show (1971) 9/10
In the bleak Texas town of Anarene, in 1952, a group of high school seniors (Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd) face adulthood as they observe the compromises and sorrows of the adults around them.
You can look at The Last Picture Show and see the impossibility of desire. No one is happy for long. Love is unfulfilled. Sex is unsatisfying. Happiness is always a memory, and never exists in the present moment. But that doesn’t really tell the story. What tells the story is that desire is grabbed at, happiness is chased after, dissatisfaction is rejected with cold fury.
When The Last Picture Show ends, you wonder how well you know the people of Anarene. Some you think you know well: Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), who is kind and wistful and stern, a kind of town mentor; Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman), whose loneliness has reduced her to a brittle and delicate condition, but who is still able to reach out with grace and longing. Others are more opaque; Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) is wistful and observant, and tries to be a good person. But he is fundamentally passive, acted upon rather than acting, both the love he receives and the grief he endures happen while he just watches.
Jacy (Cybill Shepherd) is perhaps the most interesting, and the most opaque. The “only pretty girl” in high school, she is sure, absolutely sure, that she should be able to parlay her beauty into a good life. She just doesn’t know how. Her mother, Lois (Ellen Burstyn), assures her she should set aside love and lust in order to gain a good husband from a wealthy family. But then again, Lois isn’t that sure; that’s what she did, and she’s not happy.
There are moments of intense passion in The Last Picture Show, but none of them are during the frequent sex scenes. The sex is perfunctory, flat. Women clench their eyes shut or say “hurry up.” Men grab and thrust without art, without preliminaries. Clothes are taken off as matter-of-factly as brushing your teeth. The passion is in a first kiss, a memory, a greeting, a fight; moments come upon unawares. Sonny’s friendship with mute and “simple” Billy is passionate; when Sonny hurts Billy, his apology is more deeply felt than almost anything else he says or does in the movie.
The Last Picture Show has the honesty and emptiness of a snapshot. Here I am, looking off into the distance I’ll never reach.
