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Confessions of a Dangerous
Mind details the life of Chuck Barris (Sam
Rockwell), a television producer,
(forefather of reality television as the
creator of The Dating Game, The
Newlywed Game, and The Gong Show) who also allegedly happened to be a CIA
hitman.
The film is a surreal escapade that is at once moody, darkly
comedic, entrancing, and disorienting. Blending Cold War intrigue, spy cliché, campy
television nostalgia, delusions of madness, and a couple of romantic interests, it keeps
you moving scene after scene, wondering exactly what is real. Think of playing Spy Games
with a trunk load of Fear & Loathing while cruising the remote for classic game show
re-runs.
It’s not surprising that Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation.)
is the pen that scripted this jaunt. What is surprising is how well box office
heavyweight George Clooney does at the helm of this project. In his directing debut, he
exercises nothing short of brilliance emulating the likes of Soderbergh and the Coen
brothers, with shots that assault your senses and keep you off-kilter
throughout.
In fact, part of the fun in experiencing this film is
wondering what is really going on:
A) Is Barris really a
hitman?
B) Are these murders just a manifestation of a deluded mind?
C) Are
the murders a metaphorical framework, in which Barris expresses his fear of intimacy and
general lack of creativity?
D) Is the Gong Show host pulling a grand
practical joke?
Answer:
If Hollywood has taught us
anything, it’s never to trust the CIA. Barris has
gone on record stating that he will
take the secret to his grave. And the
film has an uncanny ability to provide evidence
for each one of these
theories, in other words, E) All of the
Above.
By the end of the film, however, the question that lingers isn’t
so much
whether or not Barris was a hitman, but in an age where his signature as the
“King of Schlock” has not just “polluted the airwaves” but strangled them,
we’re
left to wonder which role really is the lesser of two evils…
