Forman has always been drawn to free spirits and outsiders in his biopics, from Amadeus to Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon, but one also can go back further for this to fictitional representations such as R.P. McMurphy in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Here, the re-invention of America's self-appointed pornographer-in-chief, Flynt, as a figurehead in the fight for free speech is a potentially far pricklier take on essentially the same subject matter.What saves the cause Forman wishes to present is a combination of the casting of the ever-folksy Woody Harrelson in the lead role, whose assured performance turns the real life Flynt's potentially unpalatable inconsistency and truculence into a display of compelling self-conviction, and an easily achievable cartoonisation of the already parodic scenes in Flynt's life story. The handling of his struggles with the authorities lends itself readily to comedy since they were already so polarised; confrontations between a basic civil right and the stolid apparatus that sought to suppress it. Whether any of this faithfully represents Flynt as a real person is by-the-by: it works as drama and in that sense his story has been pressganged to serve a wider point.
7/10
No comments:
Post a Comment