Robert Altman
Il Lungo Addio

Marlowe is a man of few pretensions, ragged and calm, swinging between fawning cats and welcoming pseudo-hippie neighbors, one cigarette after another in an attempt to pass the time or bring death closer to the elegant sound of a Jazz pianist.

Marlowe moves quietly with his gaze fixed on the ground, having little desire to look at the Los Angeles surrounding him that he knows all too well, an eye like his has a mountain of experience weighing on his back that makes him keep his head down; there's no point in looking up, he already knows what's around, and it's nothing particularly good.

Marlowe is a calm and honest man, ironic and sharp, wandering between a night supermarket and a modest, cozy little apartment on the outskirts with a panoramic view and a small balcony. If you ask him a favor, he won't deny it, he won't ask questions, and he won't request anything in return, but don't pester him too much; he's content in his stupor and has no intention of leaving it.

In Malibu, there’s a cocaine-white residence, villas crammed side by side, and pretty girls with tennis rackets, washed-up drunken writers, and singed, teased women.

In Malibu, there’s a limbo suspended between Hollywood and the ocean, a stand-in for reality with a gate, a guard at the entrance, and four handfuls of suntan oil on top, a community floating in the air in a calendula soap bubble, a privileged human category that, when it gets its ass dirty, has to turn to the "normal" world outside to clean up; it has to appeal to ragged, calm types like Marlowe.

And so detective Marlowe enters the bubble, it doesn’t burst, it engulfs him and closes around him; there's no scent of calendula from the inside, there’s too much to clean, replant, rehydrate, too much crap around to be shoveled.

And then go on detective, armor yourself as you know with your cunning and your fearless tongue, shovel in hand and elbow grease, after all, doing the right thing is rewarding, it regenerates soul and mind... and then it's your job for God's sake!

How? You dig, dig, and can't see the bottom? Would a tracked bulldozer be needed to make a path through all that filth? Would it take a divine purifying wave from that ocean that watches over and swallows everyone without distinction?

No Marlowe, forget it, no intervention from above here in the limbo, if you want help, you have to be that wave, remember you must administer justice?

What? I can't hear you... that stench is confusing you? You no longer know what's right and wrong?

Well my friend... you always have a gun.

"The Long Goodbye" is the noir of tar cooked under the California sun.

Marlowe is all of us, sheep cornered by this false and corrupt world, forced to act like wolves.

Good for him.

Smoke!