Wednesday, December 01, 2004

James Wolcott: Nowhere Men:
"The Life & Death of Peter Sellers, premiering Sunday night on HBO, is as brilliantly done as could be dreamed...But the nagging question remains, was it worth doing?...by the end of two hours, we're no wiser as to the pathology that drove him...this emptiness is never accounted for, nor the sadistic meanness."

I wonder if that is indeed the point: that sometimes you can't "account" for every facet of a person's behavior. Personally, I welcome a film that doesn't pretend to have "figured out" its subject as many a biopic does. With what we now know about how the brain is built and functions, facile explanations based upon upbringing or traumatic events just seem ludicrous. It sounds like this film asks more questions than it answers. That is as it should be.

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