Bob & Carol & Tom & Alice (1969)

This is a pretty entertaining movie, but I'm not sure if it wants to be taken seriously, or if it's a satire on the "free love" culture of the 1960s. I viewed it more as a satire, but with a good message.

Bob (Robert Culp) is a documentary film director. He and his wife, Carol (Natalie Wood), spend a weekend at a place in the woods called the Institute. As the camera swoops in from above, we see naked people lodging, yoga posing, and bathing outside on the deck. They're all naked. What kind of "new age" place is this?

Bob and Carol spend their time inside, however, with a small group taking a 24-hour crash course designed to get them connected to their feelings. One of the group exercises is simple to stare and other members and "get to know each other" by looking. The idea being, we often don't take the time to stop and look at one another. We're too busy looking and thinking about ourselves.

I mention this exercise because something similar will happen at the end when the two couples are on their way to see a concert in Las Vegas. The ending is what makes me finally believe that what I'm watching is satire -- sorry if I'm a little slow on grasping the obvious. Of course, none of the other people walking with the two couples in the ending are involved in a group experiment, but it looks like everyone in this group are carefully selected for the scene -- we even have an Indian in full head-feather regalia, maybe just so we don't neglect to note he's Indian?

The main conflict of the movie, I gather, is that it's very simple to learn a lesson and then misapply it. This seems to be what Bob, and then Carol do. By the end of the movie, maybe they are moving to the absurd conclusion of the misapplication of this lesson, which explains the iconic movie poster situation -- two couples in one King size bed. Why are they sitting like that? Because this movie can't movie from R to X, but also because maybe Bob, and then the rest of them, realize that while they could do what they're about to do, that doesn't mean they should. Is that the real lesson? That you are free to do anything in life you want to do, but ultimately, you need to be the one to put limitations on your own freedom?

Rating: 4/5 stars

Comments

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #4 -- The Federalist Radio Hour

I first heard of Sean Davis last week. He created an online magazine called The Federalist in 2011, and he currently has about 500,000 followers on X. It was about last week that he posted something amazing. He suggested if the Supreme Court doesn't rule the way they should, not only should Trump just ignore the ruling, if they keep obstructing the administration, he should just dissolve the Court altogether. And I thought, wow. This guy is saying outrageous stuff like that, and there's an audience for it. So, I decided I'd listen to an episode of The Federalist podcast: April 17, 2025 -- Deportation, Due Process, and Deference to the American People (40 minutes) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deportation-due-process-and-deference-to-the/id983782306?i=1000703904873 In the 40-minute conversation, the host and guest discussed why due process wasn't required for illegal immigrants. The case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was mentioned for a brief second, but...

In Utero

In 1994, I wore my In Utero shirt to college. I’d walk down the hall, and people would look at the shirt. I still remember a professor looking at it, not apparently hip to the scene. She asked, “Bret, is there something you’re trying to tell us?” I had no idea what I was trying to say. Kurt Cobain had just shot his head off with a shotgun. Before that life-changing event, I hadn’t been the biggest fan of Nirvana, but I did recognize the immediate impact “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had on music, or at least on MTV. Nirvana had seemingly killed and buried Hair Metal, and they had done it single-handedly. What exactly was this “Alternative” sound? It was weird, because soon it felt like everything was “alternative,” and that didn’t make any sense. Once everything is the same, how can it be anything but standard, normal? Nirvana was okay, but at least at the time I was wearing the merch, I was much more into Offspring and Green Day and Tool. And that’s about as far as I went into...

I Must Betray You -- Ruta Sepetys

I appreciate the pacing. The author's epilogue includes her mission statement -- historical fiction as a way to keep history alive. Romanis is an obscure place, but she hopes people reading the book will take an interest in its history. She also makes the point that there are no clean endings. So, the evil dictator and his wife were killed, but the problems they created didn't magically go away, the country still had to find its way and move forward, and it was a process.

The Writer's Poke

Search This Blog