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 Todd Haynes, |
Long before the current return to the seventies, Haynes had already covered this fantasy of pop culture in an immaculate melodramatic style. With not a single comedian in sight, but making use of a whole regiment of Barbie dolls, and by means of micro-stagings in mini-sets, filmed by means of minimal camera movements (including vertiginous elevations by crane), he was able to tell the story of the young blond girl from Downey in California whose velvety voice accompanied the whole nation into the seventies. The "Barbie ofMalibu" meets Bertolt Brecht or the yin and yang of identification and alienation : the synthetic life of Karen Carpenter is also the nightmare of a whole society plunged into the super(market) horn of plenty. Whereas her "Yesterday Once More" symbolises the intact image of the happy American suburban family, Haynes succeeds in giving a striking illustration of another unforgettable title, "We've Only Just Begun", by showing the catastrophes of the time. In the midst of cheap kitsch, the bombing in Cambodia, Richard Nixon and "The Poseidon Adventure" display the bitter reality. Karen Carpenter, who is incapable of coping with her fame and with her authoritarian parents' ruthless planning of her career, dies of anorexia at the age of 30. In Superstar, the collapse of her dream life takes on epic proportions when the plastic actors turn old before our very eyes and end up with wrinkled skins and aged features. The film credits at the beginning already tell us that we are in for "A dramatization"! |
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 History and Memory |
 Heidi |
 Middle East Trilogy |
 No other Possibility |
 Fade to Black |
 Videogramme einer Revolution |
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