Carnal Knowledge (Nichols, 1971)

Carnal Knowledge (Nichols, 1971)
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“Why don't you leave me?... For God's sake, I'd almost marry you if you'd leave me.”

The cool thing about reading Roger Ebert’s old reviews is to see what he thinks about movies, directors, or actors/actresses when they were new and just on the scene. This is 1971, and Jack Nicholson has not yet proved himself, and Ebert says, “Nicholson, who is possibly the most interesting new movie actor since James Dean, carries the film”. And he does! What a joy it is to watch a young Nicholson, acting like the typical charming prick he plays as for the next three decades.

“Carnal Knowledge” is about two college friends (misogynist, manly Jack Nicholson and sensitive, shy Art Garfunkel) and their relationships with women, following them for the next few decades of their lives, as they go through girlfriends, marriages, and affairs.

The movie is mostly dialogue driven, and while it doesn’t make me want to tattoo the name on my chest, I still think it is underrated. It’s almost like a Woody Allen movie on relationships, except with less Jew and more anger.

“Women today are better-hung than the men.”

The plot does not flow very well, since it is split in different time eras with new female characters, I did lose interest a few times. I’m traditional when it comes to film structure, and once the three acts are messed around with, I lose interest, unless the movie does it skillfully, and this movie doesn’t. It just fades to white, few years pass, and we have new characters.

But the dialogue is killer.

In a fight with his girlfriend, Nicholson, “Is this an ultimatum? Answer me, you ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitch! Is this an ultimatum or not?”

And if I ever get into a fight with a woman, I’d going to try my best to sneak that into it. Ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitches!

“I don't mean "weak" kind the way so many men are. I mean the kindness that comes from enormous strength, from an inner power so strong that every act, no matter what, is more proof of that power. That's what all women resent. That's why they try to cut you down, because your knowledge of yourself and them is so right, so true, that it exposes the lies by which they, every scheming one of them, live by. It takes a true woman to understand that the purest form of love is of a man who denies himself to her, of a man who inspires worship, because he has no need for any woman. Because he has himself, and who is better, more beautiful, more powerful, more perfect... you're getting hard... more strong, more masculine, more extraordinary, more... bust. It's rising, it's rising... more virile, domineering. More irresistible. It's up, it's in the air ...”

4/5