J Edgar

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Did not think it was Clint Eastwood's best work as a director. Perhaps it was the script flashing back and forth between present and past - needed to be a bit more linear.

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I agree. I liked the movie and found it interesting but thought Flags of our Fathers was better.

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The two all male kissing scenes grossed every male in the theater. I'll never think of Leonardo DiCaprio the same again after those scenes.

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The horror!

So since you referenced the male kissing, I'm going to assume they ran with the "J Edgar was gay" version of history? It's still disputed whether he was or not

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I'm going to assume they ran with the "J Edgar was gay" version of history?

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yeah.

I have something outrageously awesome coming for The Arts Board tonight. In the mean time, here's an appetizer:

J. Edgar Near the end of the prophet Samuel's illustrious life, the elders of Israel were concerned with what was to become of their nation without Samuel's guidance. So they made a command: "Now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have" (I Samuel 8). For generations, the people had no king and "all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes." J. Edgar opens in the eyes of a man who sees a world of similar relativism and needs an elixir. The people need a king and J. Edgar is more than willing to take up that banner. So, the movie quickly moves from biography to fable with the Saint Bernard of Clairvaux's leitmotif, "L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontes et desirs, often translated as "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

This portrayal of the plenipotentiary Hoover shows a man sedulous in every way, agog with the excitement only one who knows he is doing the will of God or one who is obsessively compelled to be Oedipus, that he became what he hated. This is the danger that all ideologues face: when we seek to do great things, pride is always waiting at the door. If we are not careful, if we are not always returning to the source of humility, the pride we have will cause us to miss the great good we are called to do. Gone is the good and present is the need to fill that empty, insatiable sack of pride that grumbles as an unfilled belly.

I must confess that I saw much of my own persona in Hoover: a grandiloquent, prideful megalomaniac who may use louche techniques in order to bring about the good as I see it. If I troll to bring down the empires of lust, gluttony, violence, and hatred, am I not of the same citizenship as those whose reign I seek to topple? It is true that we often hate in others what we hate in ourselves, and I think this is where J. Edgar is at its finest. The film is at its very worst in its immense speculative storytelling. The majority of the film is dedicated to what is supposed to be the contretemps homosexual relationship he had with his #2, Clyde Tolson. Although the majority of scholarship does not support this relationship, the movie is fixated on it. Hoover in the film is a puny, punitive man, frightened of the truth, always seeking to blackmail others because he is afraid of his own secrets. It is not a stretch to say that the movie hinges on the accuracy of this homosexual speculation. I don't buy it.

Perhaps the relationship he shared with Tolson is ineluctable for any biography, but the biography should not be built on it. Far more interesting and accurate is the depiction of Hoover's relationship to his mother. This is where psychologists have had a field day and I think the writer did a fantastic job of showing how much of Hoover's drive was the product of his mother. Hoover's mother was at the same time his rock and his chain. She gave him meaning, but she also enslaved him. And even after her death, he is not able to manumit himself from her words and ideas. I found the movie highly entertaining with its psychological analysis and its sweeping view of the early and mid-20th century. But the movie already has fleeted. I was not moved by it. And so, it is a borderline 6-7 movie. 7/10

Might wait until DVD to catch this one.