Here’s to You, Mr. Nichols

trizzlor says:

I can’t think of another director starting out with such a strong and diverse streak of films (and in only five years): Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, Catch-22, and Carnal Knowledge are all masterworks. Catch-22 is often overlooked but it’s amazing what Nichols was able to do with a seemingly un-filmable book.

I agree with @Pinky that there is some kind of hollowness to those films, but I think it’s a reflection of the main characters. These four films, in particular, are about individuals that are lost in a changing world and only know how to react in self-destructive (and I would add, typically male) ways – by lashing out at at those around them or shutting themselves off. The movies feel like they just run out because the characters are incapable of leaving the spirals they are in. Even in The Graduate, which has by far the happiest ending, Nichols lets the camera rest on Ben and Elaine as a visual ellipsis. It makes us realize that these two people continue to exist after the cameras stop rolling, and their lives still have to move somewhere – maybe forward, maybe not – with all the same hangups and conflicts they had that morning.

Nichols may have relied on this ellipsis a little too much in his later films, but, man, in those first four he’s completely on fire.Report