People talk about De Palma's pastiches like they're a bad thing, but when you set out to pastiche Blow Up and The Conversation PLUS Zapruder PLUS Chappaquadick PLUS Vertigo PLUS who knows what, you can't say the man's being lazy. But how do you tie it all together? How do you come up with an ending? Well as to the first question, I can only hope it was studio interference that prescribed the John Lithgow psycho, who is as engaging and complex as a sheet of drywall and who totally pounds at the "one bad apple" theory, so you ain't here for politics. And unfortunately, none of the other characters engage as characters either - Travolta's haunted sound-recordist gets more remote as the movie progresses, and you keep waiting for Nancy Allen to have a Kim Novak moment that never arrives. And speaking of Kim Novak, we have the ending. In order for De Palma to have his Vertigo angle (with history repeating itself in the death of a loved one) he has to reach out of the main narrative and impose two matching set pieces - external, extraneous, preposterous set pieces - on the second act and at the climax. I much prefer the tools-of-the-trade process intrigue as sound-guy Travolta pieces together a government cover-up through bits of media. The funny thing is, the process itself is also preposterous. Sure, the magazine published every frame of the home movie in sequence. Sure, he pulls the negative out of the camera WITH THE LIGHTS ON and then sends it to the lab. This, I grant you, may be deliberate head-games, an admonition to look somewhere else for the meaning. I'm not saying it didn't move along nicely, or that it didn't impressively fill the screen in 35mm. And while the denouement may be totally cheap, as such it's a bit shocking, and welcome for that. Badum-bum!
Review of Blow Out
