The Real Unhinged: THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY? (1969)

I've been watching a lot of reality TV 'elimination' shows like Project Runway, Survivor, America's Next Top Model, American Idol, etc.  and they keep me drifting back to the idea they have a direct relative in the depression-era dance marathon. And Jane Fonda's thousand yard stare and Sydney Pollack's unflinching yet compassionate camera eye.

I'm glad I saw HORSES for the first time around four in the morning after I couldn't sleep, alone in my apartment, on a big projector, and hallucinating on fever and cold medicine. The idea of a group of people all forced to live, eat, sleep and occasionally die together while dancing forever in circles always fascinated me as an alternative to the nuclear family. Here under Gig's watch it's both a nightmare and a strange kind of paradise, a grueling metaphor for humanity, etc. etc. but at least they give you free meals, and live music.

Pollack doesn't much care about the over-arching metaphor for humanity involved in this reality show-meets-ensemble drama (the players slowly drop out... who will be the next sent home?). Instead he finds everything he needs right in the eyes of the actors - the way the world-weary disgust that infuses Jane Fonda's as they meet Gig Young's during a late night rest break, and a whole dialogue of seduction, refusal and weary acceptance takes place without a word. The heart attack that grips Red Buttons and seems to lift his skinny sweaty old body (they've been forced to run laps to speed up the eliminations.) like a vulture by the heart and send him shattering to the floor, eyes still bent on winning, and Pollack makes you feel it all, you can almost see Buttons' soul float off into the ceiling in search of his prize money.

It's the idea of all these people being awake for such huge lengths of time, getting only a few hour breaks scattered around the day, driven to exhaustion for the amusement of the rubes, like King Kong spread out over 40 people, until the illusions of sleep and waking being separate are smashed like a times square above ground subway car. Gig Young earned his Oscar as the emcee, not for any sparkle or Satanic gravitas, but because he so brilliantly conveys the duplicitous way humans have of maintaining a vein of compassion even as they torture those around them. They're balanced - all their evil is spoken for, so they can be nice and calm, and Young is. And it's awesome. Though frankly I don't think I can ever see the film again. A friend of mine once watched it over and over for 48 hours straight, and I love her for it. I recognize that depth of feeling and depression. This is a movie that should be watched over and over for that long, but how many of us are brave enough, or tragic and tender enough to endure such a slog?

Pollack knew how to create a space for Fonda to be sexual in ways she just never was while trying to be sexual under Vadim for BARBARELLA or SPIRITS OF THE DEAD. Under a good director like Pollack's or Pakula's wing, like HORSES or KLUTE (1971), Fonda transcends sex, becomes post-sexual, beyond passion's fleeting orgasms and the sense of druggy stupor that sometimes bubbles up in the war against eternal loneliness. If love found her, she fought it, reared back against it like, well, a horse with a broken leg. Pollack loved her like that healing bullet to the mare's wild-eyed head, like a scalpel in the sickness of the 20th century. Together they cut your heart out through a hole in the screen. There will be no refund.