I was finally ready to see the movie. I remember when it first came out, and I was frankly not ready to see or understand the movie. It had finally come up in one of my queues, and we sat down and watched.
Basically, it was the Squid Games without the glamor. And even though it had no real bloody moments, it was far more brutal and frankly hard to watch.
Surprisingly, one of the reaction videos I watched said the movie was made in response to the Vietnam War and how society at the time was questioning authority. They said the dance marathon was fiction of the filmmakers. The Vietnam War part, I got—because when some see Fonda, they think Vietnam. And the belief that this was fictional history is understandable because we are almost 100 years away from when these dance marathons were a national craze. In the '60s when this movie came out, plenty of film viewers were a part of that craze. I doubt too many people alive are saying "Back in my day..."
This masterpiece of a film did have two what I call major flaws.
One was the opening where grandpa and grandson were running the fields with a wild stallion, grandpa with rifle in hand. Because I go into the film seeing grandpa with a rifle and a horse running in the field, and the name of the movie is "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?", I was waiting for the event instead of embracing the moment.
The second flaw was that during the 10-minute breaks, everything was far too casual. In the movie, the 10-minute breaks seemed like they were hour-long breaks. The movie had to tell me they were 10-minute breaks, and it went contrary to what was on the screen.
Still, the movie is a monumental success in storytelling and acting. And if you check out the historical videos made of this craze, the movie and the book got it right perfectly.
The movie at the time was listed as the movie that came out with the most Oscar nominations without getting a nod for best picture. My feeling was that this was kind of a national shame. We were willing to acknowledge the movie's technical brilliance but not its historical witness to what we were reduced to during the depression.
In retrospect that shame was a good thing. we did our best to acknowledge this although begrudgingly. I'm hoping shame is not a dead thing in this country because we need some now.