NETWORK review
There’s a lot of movies where I’m floored by the acting. For me, it’s not usually found in big, long soliloquies or barrages of emotional tirades. It’s when the actor is listening to his scene partner, and you can see transformation, or paradox, or self-reflection take hold. There was a moment like that in the very last shot of IDES OF MARCH, where Ryan Gosling sold me he just wasn’t a flash in the pan but the real deal. The best moment in NETWORK includes one of these moments, a scene where William Holden is analyzing his relationship (or the failure of it) with Faye Dunaway. He verbally eviscerates her, calling her a sociopath in definition rather than name. Dunaway’s reaction is sublime: confused and shocked, yet still holding her indifference. This is an actor who understands her character so well she ignores the human reaction to show vulnerability and instead embraces her character’s obliviousness to it. The scene is summed up wonderfully as Holden tells her, “You’re madness Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you.”
NETWORK is filled with these kinds of moments, as well as its fair share of big, wonderful speeches that go on for minutes: Ned Beatty’s brilliant conglomerate businessman via revival preacher, Robert Duvall’s vein-throbbing tirades, Beatrice Straight’s grasping to hold onto her marriage, Peter Finch’s scene stealing “Mad Prophet of the Airwaves” sermons. The script is brilliant in its dialogue as much as its prescient plot line, the TV landscape we’ve been living in since COPS started airing in 1989.
Lastly, it’s the satire — the smart satire — I love so much about NETWORK. One of my favorite moments involves a group of lawyers hunkered down in a dilapidated shithole, bartering over distribution points with a group of communist terrorist thugs they want to make TV stars. It’s ridiculous and chilling, and altogether too real. When I see the news on my internet feed, seeing larger than life headlines — Trump, Pharma Bro, the War on Christmas — I can’t help but think of this as a universal joke, that our culture is nothing more than a satire to some unseen audience. On this, NETWORK’s one-upped us: at least it’s just a movie that can eventually end.