A boring night at home alone, so I put "Chappaqua" in the DVD player. I've probably seen this film at least a half-dozen times now, and I haven't come to a solid decision about what I think of it.
It's easy to laugh off the now-cliched 60's multi-exposures and trippy soundtracks, but I try to put myself into the period & I realize how daring it was to take underground styles (a la Brakhage) and insert them into a narrative feature. Beyond that, the homage/parodies of gangster films, vampire flicks, biker/rebel pictures, etc. were at first laughable, but now I'm starting to understand the validity in this film in the pop culture influence on the lead character (media as drug, etc.).
I'm going to place this film along with "Midnight Cowboy" and "Performance" as my favorite avant-garde features of the 60's. I would be interested to hear other reactions to this film, as well as a general response to 60's feature filmmaking that pays homage to New American Cinema (i.e. Brakhage, Anger, Connor, Snow and foreign correspondents such as Godard)
― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 00:53 (twenty-one years ago)