By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Pat O'Neill
Starring: Kane Crawford | Lilia Barsegian | William Lewis
Country: united_states
Year: 2006
Running time: 74
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275295/
Bruce says: “THE DECAY OF FICTION is an original. In spirit, it is more akin to GOODBYE, DRAGON INN than any other film that comes to mind; the films of Guy Maddin are closest in style. It is impossible to draw comparisons with conventional fare. In a perfect world this type of film would not be such a rarity. Then again, the avant garde might seem boring were it to become the new standard.
“The Ambassador Hotel opened in 1921 and closed in 1988. It was an instant hit with Hollywood, especially The Coconut Grove nightclub, legendary in its time; several Academy Award ceremonies were held at The Grove. Over 1,000 Hollywood films have connections to the hotel (so we learn at the end of the film) and the hotel bungalows housed many Hollywood notables. Best known now as the site of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, the Ambassador also was where the jurors for the Manson trial were sequestered.
“Today, the Ambassador stands but an empty shell which is tragic in every sense save one: O’Neill uses the abandon hotel as an eerie background for THE DECAY OF FICTION’s paying homage to the golden days of Hollywood (quite ironic coming from a distinctively non-Hollywood avant garde filmmaker). The people and furnishings are all ghosts, mostly black and white images perfectly imposed on the faded, tattered empty rooms. The dialogue comes from a dozen or so films from the 1930’s and 40’s. The snippets of dialogue are dreamlike, the type one hears from several tables away in a restaurant or from passers-by on a busy street. Sentences drift away before they are completed.
“To familiarize the viewer with the terrain, the camera moves from vacant room to vacant room. Paint is peeling from walls and ceilings. Slowly people begin to appear. By the end of the film we have been through the lobby, up and down elevators and through mazes of splotchy corridors and underground passageways.
“People cluster around the pool, watch a floor show while having supper at The Coconut Grove, and sunbathe on bungalow terraces. Tidbits about murder and infidelity are overheard. Gossip abounds. Shots ring out and a body is rushed out of the kitchen on a gurney. At the end of the film a masquerade lends a final bizarre note. Naked men and women cavort, some wearing giant masks that could easily have been designed by David Lynch. Some animation is mixed into the fray. Every so often we get glimpse of Los Angeles – the skyline, the thruways. Outside the hotel, time-lapse photography tracks the moon moving up the sky like a jet plane and helicopters darting around like fireflies. Shadows of palm trees dance their way across the lawn in a matter of seconds.
“THE DECAY OF FICTION is a beautiful scrapbook of Ambassador fantasies and memories. The individual parts of the film add up to a magnificent spellbinding whole. 5 cats”