It’s been quite a few years since the name Warren Beatty really made in impact within film culture — barring the latest Oscar mix-up and film school-centered discussions of Bonnie and Clyde. This makes his subtle return to cinema last year with Rules Don’t Apply as both actor and director all the more profound, especially when considering its subject matter. A new video essay by Scout Tafoya as part of his “The Unloved” series for RogerEbert.com, delves into how Beatty explores his own struggles with mortality, fading (or, perhaps, faded) stardom, and digital cinema through the lens of another who walked a similar path: Howard Hughes.
“The movie feels in some ways like an explanation, though not a particular apologetic one, for Beatty’s reticence about participating in public life,” writes Matt Zoller Seitz at the site. “It also feels at times like a glimpse into Beatty’s working methods. The glimpses of Hughes’ obsessive-compulsive perfectionism in Rules Don’t Apply sync up with stories about Beatty taking years, and in this case over a decade, to make a new movie, and then obsessively re-cutting and re-cutting it until the list of editors is long enough to field a bowling team.” (Note: Olivier Assayas is also a fan.)
Within the video essay, Tafoya delves into the delicate tone and inner grapplings that Beatty cannot shake, and how they permeate the film via mise-en-scené and thematic arcs. See the essay below, and read our review here.