They Shoot Horses in Mesopotamia, Don't They?

Catching up on my back-blogging, I didn't want to miss recognizing the passing of the great director Sidney Pollack (and actor: no progressive film-lover should miss his performance in the capitalism-gone-mad masterpiece Michael Clayton, which he also produced).

Specifically, I wanted to single out his exceptional 1969 picture They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Released at just the moment it became obvious that the Vietnam was a stalemated, sanguinary catastrophe—obvious, that is, to everyone but the bloodthirsty right—Horses offered the spectacle of a Depression-era dance marathon: financially desperate competitors "danced," with singular joylessness, until they could no longer stand, so that the last one lef standing could "win." Any imaginable victory was a body- and soul-killing defeat; and yet the only reason to keep on throwing bad dancing after good was because—well, they'd been dancing so long, it would be dishonor, or something, to all that sacrifice to simply "cut and run."

The allegory is of no relevance to American foreign policy at present, however.