92 in the Shade (Thomas McGuane, 1975)

 

Thomas McGuane’s 92 in the Shade is, often simultaneously, a film made out of almost nothing (even at a late stage, it spends extended time observing one minor character instruct another in the names of fish) and one driven by profound existential tension: somehow, the meeting of the two creates something rather uniquely gripping, its essentially irresolvable quality indicated by the existence of two versions with alternate endings (I’ve only seen the bleaker and I imagine more haunting of the two). Peter Fonda plays Skelton, aspiring to become a Key West fishing guide, blowing up a boat owned by Warren Oates’ Dance as revenge for an elaborate practical joke; Dance then vows to kill him unless he quits the business. Skelton doesn’t seem to doubt Dance’s resolve, but keeps going anyway: it sums up the film’s evasive charm that one can hardly guess to what degree he’s driven by fatalism versus self-confidence versus idiocy, et cetera. The film frequently cuts off scenes that feel like they could have gone on longer, or refers to incidents and conversations that one might typically expect to have been part of the movie: while that could be held up as a failure of craft (Fonda for one was unhappy with the editing), it also lends it a kind of goofy authenticity, a sense that we’re peering into sometimes near-random chunks of the sunbaked intertwined lives. The fine and happy-seeming cast includes a blissfully unhinged Burgess Meredith (who even more than most of the others seems to be making it up as he goes along, especially in his scenes with Sylvia Miles), a wonderfully light-spirited Margot Kidder, Elizabeth Ashley demonstrating her baton-twirling skills, and William Hickey, recounting how he failed dismally at operating a whorehouse; it says something that Harry Dean Stanton has trouble stealing any scenes.