Anyone care to explain the movie "The Singing Detective" to me?

[Popular]

Posted: 6/27/09 at 11:33pm

One of the weirdest (in an interesting way) films I have watched but I have no clue what the heck was going on!

[Chrysanthemum62001]

Posted: 6/27/09 at 11:44pm

Hahaha! I would LOVE to be able to explain this movie to you, but when I watched it years ago, I too had no idea what was going on. It was cool, though!

[Popular]

Posted: 6/28/09 at 11:55am

Thanks anyway. Just trying to figure out what he is suffering from aside from his skin condition. Split personality? hallucinations from the drugs the have him on? depression? trauma from seeing his mom abused and then murdered (that's what happened, right?)... what is real and what isn't in this movie. Aaaahh!

[tommyboy]

Posted: 6/28/09 at 12:04pm

Actually -- It is the story of a young boy who had a family of Jehovah Witnesses as his guidance. It was totally F@#$ed up, as all JehWits are.

(OK you can delete this post now)
((But I don't care))

Any hoo, he had this skin condition that turned his skin from black to white.

And he was not GAY...just a pedaphile OKAY?!?

[Jon]

Posted: 6/28/09 at 9:59pm

Serious answer:

The film "Singing Detective" is based on the BBC mini-series of the same name that ran in the 1980's.

The same writer also did "Pennies from Heaven" - a BBC with Bob Hoskins, later adapted as a movie with Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters and Christopher Walken.

Both pieces featured fantasy sequences in which the actors lip-synched to authentic recordings fronm the period.

[Popular]

Posted: 6/28/09 at 10:06pm

Thanks, Jon! Yes, I researched a bit and realized this after I first posted.

I guess my question (to be more specific) is, if I were diagnosing him with a mental disorder, which would it be? I'm certain he has several associated with either his medical condition, his medication, or the trauma he experienced as a kid. Maybe a combo, just curious to know what those who have seen the movie, that might be in the field think.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 6/29/09 at 9:45am

I haven't seen the film, but I'm a big fan of the original BBC series.

In the series, at least, he doesn't really seem to be suffering from anything as extreme or as classifiable as schizophrenia. Marlow just seems to have been brought very very low indeed by his illness and by his general awfulness and abusiveness to everyone in his life, and he is lying there in that hospital bed, sick as hell, trying to put his life in something like order.

Seek out the original series, if you can. It is dense as hell, and requires repeat viewings to really get what's going on. But it really repays those repeat viewings. The acting is some of the best you'll ever see.

[Pgenre]

Posted: 6/29/09 at 8:45pm

The film is absolutely FANTASTIC. I adore it. Keith Gordon is a fantastic director. I much prefer the film to the miniseries but the miniseries is more dramatically compelling, I suppose.

LOVE this property. If you can get past the gore and medical milieu it is a wonder of a story. Robin Wright Penn has never been better! Sex on wheels.

P