It was like opening a time capsule from the seventies. The movie is earthy, with shag carpet, a Gen X latchkey kid and long haired dudes. Unlike period movies of the sixties and seventies made now, there is a raw, unpolished look to this interesting movie from 1974 starring Ellen Burstyn and Kris Kristofferson. I didn't even realize till I finished the movie that it was directed by Martin Scorsese.
We follow Alice, a single mother with a penchant for co-dependency and her precocious 12 year old son Tommy, in search of a place in the sun and a living wage, with their ultimate destination set as Monterey, CA. This movie's female-centric story and its mature treatment of the theme was something I had not have expected from Scorsese with his later movies like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Gangs of New York which are all very masculine. In fact when you think about it Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is an odd-one in Scorsese's filmography stretching to his most recent one - Killers of the Flower Moon.
The performances by the leads like Burnstyn (Alice), Kristofferson (David), Harvey Keitel and Alfred Lutter as Tommy are convincing and realistic. Alfred Lutter who reminded me of a young Bill Gates' went onto become a CTO many famous tech companies including Lynda.com
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