Thursday, 9 January 2014

WATCHING AMERICAN HUSTLE



People believe what they want to believe.

America is everywhere. Far away and close at hand. A taxi ride to a complex that houses the American dream. The cultural storm centre we all whizz around. The hustle. The con.

The watcher takes the short taxi ride to a popular culture vortex in a light-industrial zone where quick-fit sheds encase a plethora of entertainments: an arcade of play machines; a ten-pin bowling alley; a restaurant; a diner, where drinks are regular or large, never small or irregular; and a seven screen cinema.

America is immersive, loud, brash and colourful.

American Hustle is showing on Screen 4.

The watcher alights from the taxi and readies for bamboozlement.

The watcher sees a fetishised 1978. American Hustle is a nexus of necessity, survival, corruption amidst biff/bash politics and religion.

Always take a favour over money. I think Jesus said that as well.

There are leggy women with canyon-like cleavages, a bald man with a comb-over, wigs and curlers galore and an era-defining soundtrack.

The watcher sees Roslyn Rosenfeld, played expertly by Jennifer Lawrence, collapse into the arms of a Mafia mobster and sob that she can't handle change. She speaks the American fear.

The watcher is not surprised when this charming American hustler moves to Miami, to join her new mobster lover. As a reader of Elmore Leonard's glorious crime novels, the watcher knows this Miami.

Flowers! But with garbage.

The watcher and the entire audience laugh during the stand-out scene involving a science oven (microwave) and Roslyn Rosenfeld's Mametesque riff.

Bring something into this house that's gonna take all the nutrition out of our food and then light our house on fire? Thank God for me.

The watcher is in the film. The watcher is in America and in the hustle. America and the hustle are everywhere.

Did you ever have to find a way to survive and you knew your choices were bad, but you had to survive?

Survival is a life's work.

Those who survive in the arts in Ireland are tough, intelligent, highly organised and relentlessly entrepreneurial.

The watcher leaves the complex and climbs into another taxi, which pulls out of the parking rank as iRadio plays

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain.

America.







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