Movie Mondays: "Crazy Love"





       Usually on Movie Mondays I review adult films but over the weekend I came across a story by which I’m so spellbound that if I could come to all your houses and we could watch it together I would. It’s called “Crazy Love,” a documentary by Dan Klores and Fisher Stevens that played the Sundance Film Festival in 2007 and it concerns one of the most bizarre tales of love and terror…and then love again…that I’ve ever heard.
       It’s told quite beautifully here in the Washington Post by Paul Schwartzmann, but the nutshell version is this: in the 1950’s Burt Pugach was trying to woo Linda Riss and when she dumped him he hired an assailant to throw lye in her face, partially blinding her. When he was released from prison he proposed to her. AND SHE MARRIED HIM.
       Sweet insanity of humanity! And it gets weirder!! I’m not going to tell you anymore – you should read the Post story or rent it like I’m going to do. It comes strongly recommended by my friend in-the-know at Enzian, Florida Film Festival Programming Coordinator Brian Quain who says "The twists and turns in the film make the pacing excpetional. It has everything. And it's CRAZY."
    Already, though, it’s made any idiot thing I’ve ever done in the name of love look as grounded as the subway. It’s just further proof that the minute dopamine, norepinephrine and oxytocin seep into your life that all your previous views on romance, priorities, yourself, your worth, the world you live in, who you thought you were, what you thought you wanted and the most basic tenets of human behavior, irrespective of culture, can go kaput. It’s the only mental illness everyone of us wishes for. 
PS: I couldn’t wait – I rented it from Stardust Video & Coffee and it was even better than I expected. The 50’s photographs, the old Bronx women and their 3 pack-a-day voices and the most bizarre turns of events you can imagine – all with the drop-shadow of a real attempt to understand these two, it all made for the best doc I’ve seen since Anvil. If this movie doesn’t make you doubt the existence of karma you’re just refusing to learn. 

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