Corporate executive Donald Beeman is fed up with the rat race and tired of his dull nine-to-five routine. Director Brian De Palma signals Beeman's disaffection by opening "Get To Know Your Rabbit" with a split screen trick shot. During this shot, Beeman occupies the left of the frame whilst his boss, Mr Turnbull, occupies the right. The splitting of the screen is masked by a pair of double doors positioned directly behind the couple, the centre of the doors aligning perfectly with, and therefore masking, the frame's split.
It is only when Turnbull and Beeman finish a banal conversation and walk off in opposite directions, creating the mind-bending effect of a single camera lens seemingly focusing and panning in two opposing directions at once, that we realise that we've been witnessing a trick shot. More than a visual gimmick, the shot quickly sets up Beeman's newfound disassociation with the white-collar world; he's about to terminate his tenure with his company.
Beeman thus returns to his office and prepares his resignation. While he does this, the terrorists from Brian De Palma's "Hi, Mom!" constantly telephone his desk. They've hidden a bomb in his office building and will detonate it in six minutes. But Beeman isn't bothered. Let them blow the place up. What does he care?
Later, when a now unemployed Beeman wanders about his glitzy apartment, De Palma uses a series of complex (for their time and the film's budget) over-the-head tracking shots to trace Beeman's motions. The implication is clear: this is a rat's maze, a giant cage, Beeman surrounded by hollow possessions and tacky furniture. It's thus no coincidence that Donald Beeman's surname is "Beeman". He wants to break free of this cage and "become a man".
In search of freedom, some vague semblance of individuality and job satisfaction, Beeman signs up to a tap dancing magician class under the tutelage of Mr Delasandro. Delasandro, of course, is played by the legendary Orson Welles, who trains Beeman to be a magician and gets him a couple gigs in local bars and night clubs.
After much hard work and perseverance, Beeman becomes one of the best magicians in the business. Spotting potential profits, however, his former boss turns Beeman's "life story" into a "life coaching company", which offers the rich and the wealthy the chance to "change their lives" and "be a magician"...for a large fee of course. And so Beeman's lowly magician business is gradually transformed into a get rich scheme in which all his former coworkers are trained to be magicians so that they too may "achieve individuality" and "happiness". In other words, the film traces the commodification of individuality, dissidence and off-the-grid, new age, alternative lifestyles. Everything is free to be exploited, especially dissent, non conformity and radical non-participation. Everything is enveloped; capitalism increasingly has no outside.
Recognising that his magician job is, quite bizarrely, now the very job he tried to get away from, Beeman jumps into a magician's bag and magically disappears. The film's last shot consists of a slow zoom out of an office skyscraper, the audience left to reconcile the fantastical implausibility of Beeman's escape with the reality that every window in that office building is filled with people naively seeking similar escape. In this regard, the film's command – "get to know your rabbit" - is akin to the numerous existential road movies and counterculture "fantasies" that were common at the time, all of which sported heroes who desired to "escape" and latch onto some modicum of "freedom". What makes "Rabbit" unique is that it points to a distinctly 80s Reaganite mentality as being responsible for the sabotaging of these existential desires. Or rather, capitalism consumes all resistance. You escape on your rabbit, it buys the rabbit. In many ways, the film thus serves as a precursor to De Palma's "Scarface", a film which tore apart 80s glitz before the decade even started.
"Rabbit" contains numerous other comical subplots and sidekick characters, most of which don't work or aren't interesting. Three that do are Orson Welles' funny "wise magician" character, a hilarious subplot about a bra salesman who is so obsessed with bras that he has no interest in women or breasts and a story about a woman who prostitutes her body in order to fund her addiction to newspapers (notice a thematic trend in these subplots?). But mostly it's the last act of the movie which works well. A precursor to "Fight Club", it's interesting to watch as a lowly magic show morphs into a million dollar business model in which high fliers join an underground magician network in order to "reconnect to life".
Beyond this the film becomes an allegory for the careers of both Welles and De Palma, and the Hollywood machine itself, which vilifies artists who don't conform and then comes knocking when they rake in the bucks. It's therefore no surprise that Welles' career is De Palma's in reverse. Known for his magician's bag of camera tricks, Welles was hailed as a maverick but never allowed to be one. His films were continually re-edited, taken away or went unfinanced, such that he was forced to sell his soul, directing dumb thrillers or taking acting gigs to keep working.
Likewise, De Palma's early films were highly avant garde and counterculture, but made virtually no money. He then directed "Phantom of the Paradise", "Rabbit" (his lead actor, always angry, would abandon the picture for days) and "Obsession", three films about characters who sell their souls, their artistic spirit, in favour for the logic of the almighty dollar, before himself embarking on a career (rife with studio interference) in which his own distinct personality, and the subversive qualities of his earlier films, were constantly at odds with the "confines" of mainstream Hollywood and the "structures" of genre.
7.5/10 – Made in 1970, but shelved by Warner Brothers for 2 years. Worth one viewing.
It is only when Turnbull and Beeman finish a banal conversation and walk off in opposite directions, creating the mind-bending effect of a single camera lens seemingly focusing and panning in two opposing directions at once, that we realise that we've been witnessing a trick shot. More than a visual gimmick, the shot quickly sets up Beeman's newfound disassociation with the white-collar world; he's about to terminate his tenure with his company.
Beeman thus returns to his office and prepares his resignation. While he does this, the terrorists from Brian De Palma's "Hi, Mom!" constantly telephone his desk. They've hidden a bomb in his office building and will detonate it in six minutes. But Beeman isn't bothered. Let them blow the place up. What does he care?
Later, when a now unemployed Beeman wanders about his glitzy apartment, De Palma uses a series of complex (for their time and the film's budget) over-the-head tracking shots to trace Beeman's motions. The implication is clear: this is a rat's maze, a giant cage, Beeman surrounded by hollow possessions and tacky furniture. It's thus no coincidence that Donald Beeman's surname is "Beeman". He wants to break free of this cage and "become a man".
In search of freedom, some vague semblance of individuality and job satisfaction, Beeman signs up to a tap dancing magician class under the tutelage of Mr Delasandro. Delasandro, of course, is played by the legendary Orson Welles, who trains Beeman to be a magician and gets him a couple gigs in local bars and night clubs.
After much hard work and perseverance, Beeman becomes one of the best magicians in the business. Spotting potential profits, however, his former boss turns Beeman's "life story" into a "life coaching company", which offers the rich and the wealthy the chance to "change their lives" and "be a magician"...for a large fee of course. And so Beeman's lowly magician business is gradually transformed into a get rich scheme in which all his former coworkers are trained to be magicians so that they too may "achieve individuality" and "happiness". In other words, the film traces the commodification of individuality, dissidence and off-the-grid, new age, alternative lifestyles. Everything is free to be exploited, especially dissent, non conformity and radical non-participation. Everything is enveloped; capitalism increasingly has no outside.
Recognising that his magician job is, quite bizarrely, now the very job he tried to get away from, Beeman jumps into a magician's bag and magically disappears. The film's last shot consists of a slow zoom out of an office skyscraper, the audience left to reconcile the fantastical implausibility of Beeman's escape with the reality that every window in that office building is filled with people naively seeking similar escape. In this regard, the film's command – "get to know your rabbit" - is akin to the numerous existential road movies and counterculture "fantasies" that were common at the time, all of which sported heroes who desired to "escape" and latch onto some modicum of "freedom". What makes "Rabbit" unique is that it points to a distinctly 80s Reaganite mentality as being responsible for the sabotaging of these existential desires. Or rather, capitalism consumes all resistance. You escape on your rabbit, it buys the rabbit. In many ways, the film thus serves as a precursor to De Palma's "Scarface", a film which tore apart 80s glitz before the decade even started.
"Rabbit" contains numerous other comical subplots and sidekick characters, most of which don't work or aren't interesting. Three that do are Orson Welles' funny "wise magician" character, a hilarious subplot about a bra salesman who is so obsessed with bras that he has no interest in women or breasts and a story about a woman who prostitutes her body in order to fund her addiction to newspapers (notice a thematic trend in these subplots?). But mostly it's the last act of the movie which works well. A precursor to "Fight Club", it's interesting to watch as a lowly magic show morphs into a million dollar business model in which high fliers join an underground magician network in order to "reconnect to life".
Beyond this the film becomes an allegory for the careers of both Welles and De Palma, and the Hollywood machine itself, which vilifies artists who don't conform and then comes knocking when they rake in the bucks. It's therefore no surprise that Welles' career is De Palma's in reverse. Known for his magician's bag of camera tricks, Welles was hailed as a maverick but never allowed to be one. His films were continually re-edited, taken away or went unfinanced, such that he was forced to sell his soul, directing dumb thrillers or taking acting gigs to keep working.
Likewise, De Palma's early films were highly avant garde and counterculture, but made virtually no money. He then directed "Phantom of the Paradise", "Rabbit" (his lead actor, always angry, would abandon the picture for days) and "Obsession", three films about characters who sell their souls, their artistic spirit, in favour for the logic of the almighty dollar, before himself embarking on a career (rife with studio interference) in which his own distinct personality, and the subversive qualities of his earlier films, were constantly at odds with the "confines" of mainstream Hollywood and the "structures" of genre.
7.5/10 – Made in 1970, but shelved by Warner Brothers for 2 years. Worth one viewing.