The Decline of the American Empire (1986)
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The Decline of the American Empire Movie Review
The Decline of the American Empire is a 1986 Canadian comedy drama film directed by Denys Arcand. It’s such a sophisticated conversational piece.
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“Love —
the kind that makes your heart race —
lasts two years at best.
Then the compromises begin“
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The film follows a group of intellectual friends as they engage in a long dialogue about their sexual affairs, touching on the issues of adultery, homosexuality, group sex, BDSM and prostitution. I find this subject matter both fascinating and very important, even more so today than it was during the eighties. And it’s a dialogue film so of course I was bound to love it.
The movie so cleverly explores the effects of the sexual revolution by thankfully dealing with in an unbiased way by looking at it from both sides. Never does it condemn nor does it glorify sex or hedonism, but as is the case with everything in real life, this issue is twofold and existing in grey areas.
The ending of the movie showcased particularly through STDs and cheating the dangers of living hedonistically and fully exploring your sexual urges. But the rest of the movie showed how wonderful and fulfilling it can be to live your life to the fullest. I was truly amazed by how honest and real and raw the movie was.
The characters themselves are also very well developed and I particularly liked the structure of the film where we see a group of women and a group of men talk about sex and eventually the two groups join each other to again talk about the sex.
I liked that the gay man was in the male group and how accepting they were of him, that was so groundbreaking for this period. The women also frankly talked about sex and their adventures which was also very refreshing. I found the character interactions stupendous, but the cheating and various intermingling between them was a bit annoying at times.
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The movie explored BDSM and group sex particularly well in all of its pleasures and dangers. The dialogue is absolutely fantastic throughout with many stupendous conversations to be had here. The movie is entirely consisting of conversations and it’s riveting throughout with just the third act losing a bit of its steam.
With many fascinating, very sophisticated discussions and great character interactions, The Decline of the American Empire is a highly intelligent conversational piece which is mostly very riveting in its dialogue and which explores sex, fetishes and the hedonistic lifestyle in an admirably unbiased manner with all of its pleasures and dangers.
