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Last night, I rewatched Abel Ferrara’s great transgressive film from 1992, “Bad Lieutenant,” possibly for the first time since it came out. Holy shit—where to begin?
It feels like we are living in a time where there are very real consequences to pushing boundaries in art. There seems to be a question of who has the right to say what and how far the limits of expression can be pushed, particularly with deviant behavior. Maybe I’m wrong, but the zeitgeist in America circa 2024 somehow feels conservative—from the right, the left, and everything in between.
And then I watch this movie and ask myself, “Would I go as far into the darkness of this character as Harvey Keitel did? Would I have the balls to put this stuff on screen?”
And then my next thought is: Why not?