John Hayward Profile picture
Jan 19 6 tweets 1 min read
Watched "The Last Duel" last night, a sadly overlooked but excellent film that shows Ridley Scott is still more energetic and visionary than directors a third of his age when he's excited about the material, and still brings out the best in his cast. But I have a quibble...
I thought the movie suffered a bit by declaring absolute certitude about events that are still somewhat disputed by historians. It might have been better - more intriguing and haunting, less heavy-handed - if it didn't confidently announce what "The Truth" really was.
Striving to avoid spoilers, but I wonder if a younger Ridley Scott - whose landmark films often contained a dash of ambiguity, of unsolved mystery, inviting the audience to supply its own prologues and epilogues - might have trimmed or omitted Act Three of this movie.
"The Last Duel" has a very particular feminist message it wants to convey, and it does so with a version of its tale that is not implausible or indefensible, but evidently not all historians agree with it. The same ideas could have been explored without announcing "The Truth."
As a longtime fan of Scott's movies, I was happier not knowing whether Deckard was a replicant, and MUCH happier not knowing exactly where the Alien came from. I wonder if "The Last Duel" might have likewise worked even better as a question than a statement.
Has Scott developed less patience with framing his stories as questions and mysteries, rather than statements - or do he and his collaborators worry modern movie audiences won't arrive at the correct conclusions unless they are told exactly what to think? /end

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More from @Doc_0

Jan 19
One of the great services media provides for Democrats is giving even their dumbest political narratives instant credibility - like accepting "voting rights legislation" as the correct term for their nakedly obvious ballot-box-stuffing plans.
No one can come up with a single example of anyone whose "voting rights" have been "stolen" with reasonable ballot security measures. Some of the Dems shrieking the loudest, including Joe Biden, hail from states with tougher rules than the "New Jim Crow" policies they denounce.
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Jan 14
Severing the bonds of friendship and family is an important goal of totalitarianism. Nothing is more important than politics. Your ideological comrades are your REAL family. Totalitarian regimes make a point of forcing you to denounce friends and family to prove your allegiance.
This is one reason the Left goes after kids so hard with garbage like trans fascism, critical race theory, etc. They want the kids to denounce their families and accept ideological purity as more important than personal loyalty. Russian and Chinese Communists do the same thing
That's also one reason traditional families were attacked with such ferocity in popular culture over the past few decades. Family bad, State good. Do the "right thing" and denounce your regressive, hypocritical, corrupt family to embrace the progressive crusade.
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Jan 12
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There is a natural tendency in successful free markets for capital to centralize - and political power follows it to become dangerously centralized too. Prosperous endeavors grow, successful investors invest more, and consumers reap benefits from growing corporations.
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Jan 11
You don't need elaborate psychological theories to explain coronavirus mania. You don't need much more than social media plus political tribalization to explain 80% of it. But if you want to go deeper, consider the dissonance between regular people and crisis addicts.
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This is all about crass political opportunism, and reinforcing the claim that left-wingers have a monopoly on "righteous" political violence. When lefties use violence on YOU, it's "mostly peaceful" and you should stop whining and walk it off - even when they kill people.
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