Beyond Euphoria: Our Liberated Movies

Anybody who has been going to American movies for the past five years must know that things have been turned inside out since 1948, when Robert Warshow complained that “America as a social and political institution is committed to a cheerful view of life” and “euphoria spreads over our culture like the broad smile of an idiot.” Fantasies of doom have replaced fantasies of escape; Slaughterhouse Five made a big impression at the Cannes Film Festival last year because Europeans assume it takes great courage to express antiestablishment values in a big commercial movie. They applaud the director’s platitudes about “man’s capacity to rationalize violence” because they don’t under...