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But I knew somewhere theres some seminal films that were really humanistic… Who made them?
Why am I missing something?
Im missing some piece of this.
There are a variety of explanations for this.
Ranking those films isnt easy.
Ashby made seven masterpieces between 1970 and 1979, each of them strikingly different.
Then theres the rest of his films.
To the end, Ashby refused to fit into an easy narrative.
WithThe Sluggers Wife, Ashby wasnt exactly working with the nextBarefoot in the Parkhere, either.
The film suffered a similar fate.
But by the end of the decade, the world had no place for it.
It sat on the shelf, received an extremely limited release, then mostly disappeared.
(Look for a young Angelina Jolie in a key scene late in the film.)
IfThe Landlordsounds like a pat white-guy-gets-woke story, the complexities of the film defy that definition.
But the collaboration almost ended before it began with this first team-up when Ashby fired him mid-picture.
Fortunately, he had second thoughts.
Instead, they feel like tools being used to excavate the emotions of the then-recent past.
Ashby doesnt venture to hide his opinions of the war, butComing Homenever feels didactic.
I didnt like the people inShampoo, Ashby toldthe New YorkTimesthe following year.
But I wouldnt take any cheap shots at them.
I felt sorry for them.
That quote contains a clue as to what makesShampoo, and many of Ashbys other films work.
But that soon changed.
The film is a masterful high-wire act.
An inch in the wrong direction and it could seem too cutesy, or maudlin, or smug.
But its none of these.
Hes a self-styled rebel whos ultimately resigned to toeing the line, whose egotistical outbursts change nothing.
A satire shot through with whimsy and melancholy, it avoids easy jokes in favor of meditative gentleness.
It also defies any easy interpretation for reasons beyond its mysterious final image, a question with no answers.
Ashbys films are full of those.
