What’s Aged the Best?
The score, class dynamics, supporting performances, Oscar debate, career-changing roles, New York locations, and the hero’s heightened senses lead the discussion.
In the discussion (11)
Approx. transcript time · 00:22:30Read transcript
- Thomas Newman's score is praised as an active character in the movie.
- The prep-school conflict between inherited power and the scholarship student remains a sharp depiction of class and old-boy protection.
- The running joke in which the colonel calls Jack Daniel's 'John Daniels' is explicitly offered as something that aged well.
- James Rebhorn is praised as an elite supporting actor at playing polished men with sleazy interiors.
- The boarding-school setting belongs to a strong run that also includes Dead Poets Society and School Ties.
- Pacino's advice that a young actor should never marry an actress is recalled as a colorful set anecdote.
- The movie sits at an early point when public arguments over Oscar winners became part of mainstream movie culture.
- The performance helped establish the cynical idea that an actor could win awards by playing a disability or other conspicuous obstacle.
- The coveted Charlie role is used as an example of the career-changing parts that many young actors once competed to win.
- The Waldorf and Oak Room footage preserves an appealing pre-reservation-app vision of New York access and luxury.
- The colonel's heightened smell and hearing are treated as entertaining superhuman powers attached to a disability.