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The Last Time I Committed Suicide by Stephen Kay
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DVD detailsActor: Adrien Brody, Claire Forlani, John Doe, Keanu Reeves, Thomas Jane Director: Stephen Kay Brand: Universal Writer: Stephen Kay Producer: Donald Kushner Producer: Edward Bates Producer: Elizabeth Robinson Producer: Estelle Lasher Producer: J.P. Guerin Writer: Neal Cassady DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Unknown); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language) Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled Picture Format: 1.33:1 Running Time: 92 minutes DVD Release Date: 2005-09-13 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Reviews of The Last Time I Committed SuicideDVD Review: Cassady, a life lived only in retrospect. Summary: 4 Stars
The cinematography is intentionally choppy, skewed and angular. It slowly lets you enter the doorway to the world of Cassady.However,just when you think you may be sinking into the mire of his life, you are yanked out and thrown haphazard against a wall of antic jazz.
Back then, men had no desire to come in touch with their feminine side. They would have said "WTF are you talking about? " Men remained detached and bonded over beer and pool. Not so difference from today? There was a feeling of freedom and utter carelessnes for those few who chose not to enter the conventional roles. After all, the war was over and the future promised and held anything we yearned for. Summers were long, pleasures were simple...get high, ride the roads in a cool, hopped-up convertable, or hot-rod, if you were lucky. If everything really came up trumps, that back seat saw some major action!
There is no way to get inside a man who lived for the moment, chased etherial dreams and earthly pleasures. Some lives you can nail down, twist the ends so the pinion can not be removed, and only then you can define the meaning of it all. Others, like Cassidy's, turn into mist and fly away. So what are we trying to glean from this study of a misanthrope? Cassady took that one part of us that analyses everything, desires everything, and figures there must be a way to make it all happen, and forged something akin to a life. Most of us just drag this part of our psyche out once in while, and when we are done musing, tuck it back away in some safe, dark place to hibernate til the mood hits us one day when we are lonely, weak or depressed.
Back then rules were rules, not just guidelines. Guilt shadowed us everywhere like a demon on our heels. If you fell in love,got pregnant etc. marriage was the next step. No one questioned that. It was the dream for which men and women had fought and died. Who would question that? Cassidy did! All of us did a little, though we might not have said so around the Sunday dinner table. We needed to fit in, to assimilate into the culture of the time.
Here comes Cassady....he followed the less taken path. True, he felt all the basics... lust, passion, hunger for it all. Some people say men never get older than 12. Maybe that is true. For Cassady 12 seemed to be a great age to be....full of the mysteries of being! He grabbed onto moments like a drowning man grapples for a rope. Each moment was a patch on an unfinished quilt. The overall effect of said quilt is exquisite when you stand back and view the whole. It is only when you zoom in on each individual scrap can you see the the tears, sweat, and the blood from needle-pricked fingers. Cassady, a life lived only in retrospect.
Thomas Jane captures the vibrant, sometimes exhilerating, spirit that was Neal Cassady, in this homage to a troubled soul. Taken from letters written by Cassady, a smoky, untethered glimpse into what we may only surmise is a tortured attempt to define a man, this movie doesn't answer any questions, but then again, it never intended to! It lets us be a fly on the wall. For those of us who go back that far, the characters in this movie remind us of people we once knew, hung out with at the corner gas staion, and with whom we rode "chicken"" races along country highways etc. For the younger viewer, unless you are a 40's/50's buff, it may not hold much for you. You need to have lived in a less complicated time to understand how such unequivicable simplicity of life illicits such passion, such pain, such agony of living.
What was Cassady doing? He was chasing a dream only he hoped to understand! Wanna come along for the ride? Be aware there are bumps and detours and dead ends along the way!
P.S. fine supporting role for Keanu...clean, precision acting in his lesser role!
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Description of The Last Time I Committed SuicideNeal cassady is living the beat life during the 1940s working at the tire yard and philandering around town. However he has visions of a happy life with kids and a white picket fence. When his girlfried joan tries to kill herself he gets scared and runs away. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 09/13/2005 Starring: Thomas Jane Claire Forlani Run time: 93 minutes Rating: R Director: Stephen Kay
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