This is a serious but predictable examination of the life of a Hollywood movie star and the humanity that is robbed from him. This is as accurate as we can expect coming from someone as intimate to this lifestyle as Ms. Coppola is. And it is not a wonder then that we hear about drug addictions, drug overdoses, and suicidal attempts that come out of those humans who are simply promotional vehicles, spigots for corporate income as it were.

The film does not tend one way or another in suggesting the morality of the character or of his environment. Even at the climactic cry for help with no one to listen to him because, frankly, no one cares who he is. Yes, the film makes it very clear people care about what he represents, but this form of celebrity and fame that he carries around his neck is really just an inlet for people to exploit him. The most common perpetrator of this exploitation in fact is not his employers, who shuffle him around the globe for their business interests, but the women that are constantly around him. And they all want to fuck him, as quickly as possible. Toward which end however? It’s almost a form of pseudo-masturbation, that they are attracted and even obligated by the social status of the man to use him. But the practice of copulating is not toward anything higher than a girlfriend story. They don’t actually see him as being a father as much as a glorified dildo which they can generate pride and validation for having used.

Of course he is complicit in the delivery which is why no one will find sympathy for him. Yet that, I think, is what ought to be had. His rudeness and inconsideration toward his fellow female actors clearly depicted months later shows that his behavior or rather his personality does not need to be refined in order to bed anybody. He himself as playing the dildo is not looking for anything higher and doesn’t need to develop a perfectionistic attitude toward living. This is even clear and typical in Hollywood for his lack of propriety while inhabiting luxurious destinations. And to a larger extent, this is a commentary on the results of capitalism toward benefiting people not with things they do not deserve, but rather, things that they do not know how to handle.

He is in crisis as the film finishes because he got what he wished. Spiritual refinement was completely unnecessary. And this is the clear distinction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and the clear crisis that exists in capitalism: it revokes the necessity of having a spiritual life in order to survive one’s humanity.

Grade: A