OTC50 #114

COPPOLA TURNS LAST SHOWS INTO LIFETIME OF TRAUMA

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Director Gia Coppola turns the last shows of a dance revue into a historical film loosely based on the lives of dancers as they face an uncertain future.

Le Razzle Dazzle has run two shows a day for the last 33 years in a casino along the Las Vegas strip until the girls get the announcement that the revue will end in two weeks.

Coppola creates a frenzied anticipation of the dancers preparing for the curtain to go up by close cropping the scenes on hands and feet moving in quick succession. Coppola then lets the adrenaline drop to extreme lows in subsequent scenes as the dancers worry about their future without the revue.

Pamela Anderson stars as the senior dancer, Shelly, who has been with the revue from the opening curtain and who now faces barriers inherent in the profession, such as no money to retire, and too old to get another job as a showgirl in Vegas.

Jamie Lee Curtis costars as Annette, a showgirl who had already aged out of the revue, and who now works as a cocktail waitress in a casino.

The screenplay was written by Kate Gersten who based the script on an unpublished play she wrote that was inspired by the real life revue, Jubilee!, that ended after 23 years in 2016. Shelly’s trauma is inspired by a showgirl who had been with the Jubilee! for 23 years.

Coppola creates a little society of showgirls past and present to highlight the personality of the showgirls and the limits to their relationships as dance artists competing for the limelight.

An impromptu girls night out at Shelly’s house has the showgirls chatting and gossiping in closely bonded friendships. And Annette tries to show what empathy and advice she can in her own present dire situation when the news about the end of the revue is told to them by Eddie, the revue’s producer.

Eddie, played by Dave Bautista, who has been in the background all 33 years, knows the girls but only at a distance, just outside that society of showgirls that has been created from performing together for so long.

When Shelly’s estranged daughter shows up, Coppola underscores that Shelly has nothing to show for her sacrifice for her part as one of 80 dancers in the revue, not even a healthy relationship with her daughter.

A wraparound brings the curtain down as Shelly starts the film at an audition for a new Las Vegas show and ends the film confronting the barriers in the audition she faces in having aged out of a dance career.

Coppola layers in little details of the set design and little subtilties in the character’s personalities and backstory that make the two weeks to the end of the revue more dynamic than one might expect.

Overall, the film is an interesting vignette into the life of Las Vegas dancers, and of celebrities in general, as they often sacrifice alternative life paths for a moment in the big show.

WHITE SEPARATISTS MILITIA WENT ON ROBBING SPREE

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The anti-government militia movement three or four or five steps before the January 6 Capital Riots began with the splintering of a white separatist church into cells bent on violence.

Director Justin Kurzel brings his art form to Spokane, Washington and Hayden Lake, Idaho where Bob Mathews began to espouse faster systemic social change through domestic terrorism.

Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult costar on opposite sides of the moral divide as the Federal Bureau of Investigation becomes suspicious of a series of killings and bank robberies.

Hoult portrays Mathews as cool and calculating with his sights set on leading a violent rebellion against the United States Government. The militia first raises funds by robbing banks and armoured cars. This real cash is needed to wash money made from a counterfeit machine.

Mathews is totally in charge, while Terry Husk, the FBI agent tracking him down, must stay in line behind FBI Agent, Joanne Carney, played by Jurnee Smollett. The contrast in structure illustrates how the militias were able to succeed for a time.

Once the evidence is in though, the storyline becomes more of a manhunt that ends with the FBI burning down the remotely located home in which Mathews becomes hold up.

Ten years later, Randy Weaver is burnt to death at Ruby Ridge, and then David Karesh at Waco, Texas, before the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh, who would be quickly executed by lethal injection.

Kurzel creates a compelling piece showing how the Federal Bureau of Investigation desperately sought to end the momentum, being created by the white separatist militias in the United States, so as to prevent the nation from erupted into more widespread violence.

Law is cast well together with several talented supporting actors. Tye Sheridan plays an inexperienced police officer who provides his local knowledge of the people and issues. Morgan Holmstrom plays the police officer’s loving wife who likes life the way it is but anticipates nothing good to come from the presence of the FBI in her community. Alison Oliver plays Debbie Mathews who loves the idea of Bob, but she has a reason to betray him in the end.

The Order is an Amazon Studio original streaming on Prime Video.

15th DAY OF MONTH