Nozze-Foto Review of Americana

Americana (1981)

The moral of this movie is: maybe some dreams should be allowed to die.

[13 May 2002]

I started out liking this movie, the photography is great, the plot simplistic and convoluted at the same time, the characters so enigmatic as to inspire many debates among film buffs. So what happened? With only 10 minutes of running time to go something happened to change my opinions 180 degrees and I shut the movie off without finishing it . . .and I never will. Why? Read on! David Carradine is a disillusioned ex-officer just back from Vietnam. He is wandering around the countryside and pauses in a one-horse town where he becomes fixated on a decrepit merry-go-round and decides to restore it on his own. Why does he do it? Maybe because it represents an easier time of life, his own life, that he is trying to recapture. We never know for sure. The locals are amused by this and finally come around to believing in the project. Of course we have to complicate the plot because if it went too easy it wouldn't be any fun. The local garage owner gives David a job and admits he would like to see the merry-go-round fixed up too. Problems arise when he insists David join him at the local "sport", rooster fighting, and David balks. Suddenly the whole town turns against him because as one character puts it "We town folk stick together." This is where the trouble began, for me at least. David puts on his old uniform and goes to collect 6 months of back pay that he was too busy wandering around to get prior to this. To get the one essential part he needs to get the ride going again he agrees to a wrestling match proposed by his ex-pal the garage owner. Here's the catch, the fight is against an attack trained dog. Stick with me on this: David fights the dog and wins the uneven match by killing it. Now don't get me wrong, I am not naive enough to think he really killed the animal! It is just that the sound of breaking bones and the dog's final cry IS very disturbing even if it was dubbed in during Post Production. David left town after refusing to join in the rooster fight. By returning and sinking to the level of the isolated townies isn't he showing he is just as bad as they are? I mean, yeah it was the only way to get the part he needed to realize his dream but did he have to turn backwoods redneck Neanderthal to do it? Couldn't he have stuck to his own principles and just allowed his dream to quietly die? One good thing about a dream that dies, it leaves you wiser than you were before. Like I said, that was the point where I turned the movie off so I do not know how it ends and I no longer care. One other thing: just who is Barbara Hershey's character supposed to represent? Is she a Muse, a Forest Nymph, a physical manifestation of something in David's subconscious? Or is she just a hippie chick who's habits include boffing her old high school friends every chance she gets? Like I said, there is enough in this plot for many film school style debates.