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The pivotal shot has Burt Reynolds on his back waiting for a fistful of sedatives to take effect, contemplating his fate until his trademark laugh skids into a crying jag. The darkness and silence of the opening credits yields to Ikiru's x-rays and a Paul Williams score, truly a comedy of the terminal. The slick real estate broker receives the diagnosis at the doctor's office with his face pressed against an aquarium, the "period of remission" begins outside as he stops to smell the flowers and retches. The last confession with the priest wet behind the ears (Robby Benson), the last lay with the girlfriend not easily stirred (Sally Field). "The least you could do for a dying man is cum." Getting a karate chop from the ex-wife (Joanne Woodward), saying goodbye to the teenage daughter (Kristy McNichol), borrowing meds from the folks (Myrna Loy, Pat O'Brien), the road to suicide. The cocktail of sleeping pills and milk ends up spewed onto the camera lens ("It looks like Walt Disney threw up"), Dom DeLuise sans trousers welcomes him to the loony bin. Reynolds deconstructs Reynolds thoroughly and finds anxiety, insecurity, and the crippling fear of pain underneath the superstud persona, the corridor swarming with zanies leads to a bare white cell and helpless sobbing. A style between late Blake Edwards and early Albert Brooks, choice clowns—James Best's phone sex-loving patient, Carl Reiner's hearty "death therapy" counselor, above all DeLuise's dervish turn as the paranoid-schizophrenic cracked by one too many Polish jokes—point the way to the epiphany. Sinatra's "My Way" scores the swim into the ocean, a ferocious monologue to the heavens scores the swim back. "Sane people sure make a lot of crazy rules." The best appreciation is Eastwood's in Blood Work. With David Steinberg, Strother Martin, and Norman Fell.
--- Fernando F. Croce |