Pretend It’s a City | Mini-Series (55)

In Fran Lebowitz’s face, Scorsese certainly finds something besides the belly laughs (or extra years of life) she seamlessly gives him. It must be a retreat to some kind of melancholy needed at a certain age, especially when we examine his sensibilities throughout the millennial era.

The new seven-part mini series does not even try to imagine taking itself too seriously, for a unapologetic retreat to witticisms can be seen as an ultimate comfort food. It could be stated that the cynical, yet filled with emotion, view of gentrification does not offer anything new or even insightful to recent renderings of the same subject, and it is even arguable that Scorsese takes some kind of satisfaction letting Fran doing her thing besides the laughs themselves. I figure that her behaviour and public persona can also be viewed as something the people she shows contempt for actually find fascinating, and that in itself is an act of an ultimate sardonian prankster.

Scorsese himself lets everything fall on her witts, which is a testament to how he feels she represents some of his own sensibilities, or even vulnerabilities - I choose to read this portrayal as an act of revelation by repetition. Fran never stops to repeat herself in vicious circles, and Marty lets this flow, with the consequent fumes being ones of loneliness, and the fear of death.

If this is an attempt to examine how difficult it is to let go, coming from people who cannot let the idea of things they once knew to get away from their minds, then I cannot blame their need to film it too.