Bonnie and Clyde

Sometimes, you can see a classic movie and while you may not like it, you understand why it has the reputation it does. For me, a perfect example is The Shining. I agree wholeheartedly with Stephen King that it is a hatchet job on his book (never mind the director being an abusive prick), but judged in isolation, I get why it is held in high regard, even if I don’t share the esteem. I do not get why Bonnie & Clyde is so beloved. The terrible accents, the only score being fast-pick banjo music, the repetitive cycle of “commit crime, run”, the choppy editing, the way the narrative jumps without warning because the movie has to get to the next story beat somehow (Bonnie’s sudden homesickness is the best example), the glaring tonal issues of presenting these murderous, amoral lunatics as heroes while making the movie a light-hearted romp, all of these are flaws. And I could maybe, MAYBE, look past them. But the anchor that pulls this movie down and drowns it is the fact that at no point is there any attempt to develop a character or an arc for anybody. The movie tells us Bonnie is bored, but the movie literally opens on their meet-cute and she immediate runs away with him. How do we know she’s bored? Because Clyde assumes it? And why is she so bored that robbing banks and committing murder is an acceptable cure for said condition? How did Clyde slide so far down the moral barometer that he went from petty thief to murderer and is okay with it? Why is his brother okay with joining in? Why is his brother’s wife going along with it, even though she makes it clear this isn’t a life she wants? Nobody gets an arc here. Nobody has any character development, so the movie has no arc. It’s just a straight line to the end, as dull and emotionally bankrupt as a timeshare pamphlet. It never generates excitement or fear or anger or concern, because it doesn’t want to. And it sure doesn’t waste time on the characters of anybody else; the cops are faceless uniforms at best and redshirts at worst, so the movie can’t even get them a nemesis to play off of. I felt nothing watching this movie but boredom, because the movie wasn’t interested in giving me a reason to feel anything. I was just supposed to be wowed by the cinematography (it is nice) and the tonal whiplash of zany antics to wanton bloodshed (it’s weird). And I wasn’t. I can appreciate the beauty of it, and Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty have a good chemistry, and Gene Hackman is fun in the supporting brother role. Even MichaelJ Pollard’s simpleton role is fine enough. And the movie does have energy, but only energy to go in a straight, unbroken line. The ending should feel like a giant catharsis, or a heart-wrenching denouement. Instead, it just feels like the movie stopped because it had reached the end of the line. A movie should never leave a viewer in exactly the same emotional place it started, and that’s what Bonnie & Clyde did. I started a movie because I was bored, and I was still bored when it ended.