Rating: 3.5/5
Hooptober 4.0 | 17/31 | Before 1970 5/6
To begin again…
A sweaty man watches Arthur Hamilton from a distance. He follows Arthur through Grand Central Station, pushing through the crowd. Just before Arthur boards his train, the main puts a piece of paper in his hand. “Mr. Hamilton,” he says and disperses. The train leaves and Arthur watches in confusion as the man leaves.
He glances at the paper. 34 Lafayette Street.
Later that night, he receives a call. “Art, it’s me again. Charlie Evans.” Arthur believes Charlie is dead. But Charlie recounts personal details that no one else could know. Charlie pleads for Arthur to go to the address. “I’m alive,” Charlie says. “More alive than I’ve been in the past 25 years.”
He sleepwalks through his job at the bank. He then goes to the address given to him — a meat-packing plant. They give Arthur workman’s gear and put him in the back of a truck. He arrives at an office where they put him through a labyrinthine process to arrive at their proposition: to fake his death, give him reconstructive surgery, and a new identity. Well, it’s more of a demand than a proposition.
You understand that it's true — there's nothing anymore.
The film sounds like a Twilight Zone episode. The execution is much weirder — it feels like a Charlie Kaufman story, where desire is a prison and fulfillment is a business transaction. What can touch that void when want is a negation — anything but this?
He fought so hard for what he had been taught to want. When he got it, he grew more and more confused. The silences grew longer. We never talked about it. We lived our lives in polite, celibate truth.
The camera exaggerates and distorts the world around him. It’s not psychedelic, but sweaty and delusional, like a nightmare on cold medicine.
James Wong Howe’s handheld cinematography amplifies the instability of the whole arrangement and our lead.
The movie’s most significant failure is relying on Rock Hudson to give the required dramatic performance. As a physical specimen, he perfectly encapsulates that 60s “ideal man.” As an actor, he does little more than look lost.
Movies like Infinity Pool want to be a more transgressive version of this without understanding why this movie was initially transgressive. Yes, the bacchanalian nude partying was shocking for audiences in the 60s. But the real transgression is to suggest that they are just as miserable as the man stuck in a mediocre office job — that environment does not fix the soul.
Overall, the movie is quite good, and I like a lot about it. I don’t love it how some folks do, but I appreciate it all the same.