Six Degrees of Separation

Rating:
Summary: one of the best i've seen
Review: If you never see any other Stockard Channing movie... at least see this one. In this amazing tale of a con-artist in nyc, Channing plays one of her best roles ever. She is captivating and wonderful and i have watched this movie over and over becuase of this. Many say they don't understand this movie, or what's the point.... i can't give you an answer to this question , you will have to think about this yourself, but this film will have you glued to your seat the entire time. Rent this movie if you want to be pondering it for days.

Rating:
Summary: 100 degrees of inspiration...
Review: Impressively well made film with Will Smith,acting against type as a gay young con artist and a talented cast led by Stockard Channing and Donald Sutherland.Ian Mckellen and Anthony Michael Hall should also recieve special mention. Im told the strictly hetero Will Smith insisted on a once only take for the kissing scenes. Best scene is when he makes himself at home at the Kittredges apartment,you know hes too good to be true but go along just the same,waiting for disaster to happen.The title refers to a theory that everyone on the planet is related in some way by a minimum of six other people! Enough said. Great script with some great photography of New York. Channing should have been nominated for this one,shame...

Rating:
Summary: It's A Small World After All.
Review: One night in a posh Manhattan apartment a young black man (Will Smith), appearing to be mugged enters the home of Flan (Donald Sutherland) and Ouisa Kittredge (Stockard Channing). The man who says his name is Paul, claims to be friends of the Kittredge children. Over the evening Paul flatters the couple and a buisness guest they are hosting with his exotic tales and fascinating life stories. However, things aren't always what they seem to be. Like the painting in the movie, what is chaotic on one side, may be controlled on the other and vice versa.

This was the first major film breakthrough for Will Smith, proving that he isn't just the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and is a serious actor. Donald Sutherland does a superb job as the stuck-up art dealer who makes millions of dollars but spends more than he can make. However, the real star of the movie is Stockard Channing. Her performance is perfect and her portrayal of Ouisa's self-disovery, realization, and spiritual redemption could not have been better.

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION has become a part of the American pop conscience (thanks largely to the Kevin Bacon game). However, the movie is much more than a pop cultural reference. It is a movie for the critical movie viewer. It explores questions of great magnitude and in the end, concludes on a comic, rather than tragic, note. It is a small world after all, just six degrees of separation.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating. Brilliant acting and screenplay.
Review: One of the decade's better movies. Stockard Channing is superb; Will Smith never acted like this before or since. Get the tape; it's definitely worth it!

Rating:
Summary: The deep longing of the social classes
Review: Puzzling offhanded moody film. (Critique for those who have seen it, primarily.)

I was struck by what seemed the underlying assertion: the deep if unconscious longing of the divided social classes in our country for each other. The deep longing to heal the rift of "separation" -- the wealthy and the disenfranchised -- that the whole class system perpetuates through how people behave, who they associate with, who is considered desirable.

The rich couple and especially Stockard Channing's character of Louisa is caught up in an affluent world of witty pretentious empty existence -- one they are exceedingly skilled at, and are able to milk to good profit. When they meet Paul (Will Smith's character), they are drawn to his directness, his charm -- he is skilled at being relaxed and conversant in their cultured world, yet he lacks the pretense of the elder members or the (satirically exaggerated) spoiled disaffection of the younger members, their children. They both relish telling the story - and their friends seem undyingly riveted by it -- and Loisa especially tastes of a richness, a directness, a spark to life that she does not have.

Will Smith's character of Paul also longs for a life he does not have, their Upper East Side life. For the wealth, certainly, but also for the very real values of education, ideas, and that spark of art that is separate from the worldly commercial side of art's buying and selling. The slap that Louisa joyously gives to the hand of God in the Sistine Chapel.

Both sides are profoundly hurt by the rift, the gulf, that exists almost never to be crossed between Paul's ghetto and the Kittridges' beautiful penthouse. There may be a "mere" six degrees of separation between them - but as Louisa meditates, how to broach them? How to find the people that came connect you?

(In "Six Degrees" it is interesting and telling that it is the gay member of the set that serves as the crossover person, the means by which Paul can make his more profound crossover. Somehow, those who are owning-class gay stand with a foot in both worlds - they have a large degree of entree into the worldly affluent classes, yet they are also outcasts.)

As a comment outside the movie, it's my opinion that the class system is kept inexorably in place so that the wealthy might never have human relationships as equals with those whose labor they exploit, so as to avoid the pangs of conscience about benefiting unjustly from their labor. (One of Gandhi's seven root causes of injustice is: Wealth Without Work. In a just world, every person reaps the product of her or his own work; while to be wealthy, one generally must have people working for you from whom you derive some percentage profit of their work.) But while this may sound radical, my further belief is that not only does this system hurt the poor, it also hurts the wealthy in profound ways. They get the wonderful apartments and private access to the Kandinsky, but their lives are empty and they don't see a way out, they must keep going to the obligatory mannered dinner parties at the price of a life that feels rich and alive with imagination.


Rating:
Summary: Six Degrees is a masterpiece
Review: Six Degrees of Separation is an excellent film. Stockard Channing is amazing in her role as Ouisa Kittredge, a woman who's outlook on life is about to be profoundly changed by a chance encounter with a con man. This profound film explores the idea that life's experiences are not always what they seem on the surface. We learn how much we are interconnected, and how much we affect one another. The film is poetic in it's composition, and captivating in it's dialogue. "The imagination - that's God's gift, to make the act of self-examination bearable."

Rating:
Summary: Witty take on the intelligentsia
Review: Six Degrees of Separation transports us to upper-crust Manhattan and draws us into a rarefied world of art, intellectual conversations, and posh penthouses before turning this setting upside down and exposing its inherent hypocrocies. What could have been clumsy, heavy-handed satire is instead two hours of delightful repartee in which the characters relate an engrossing narrative about a young man who charmed his way into their world under false pretenses.

Those who know Will Smith only as the Fresh Prince of Bel Air are likely to be astounded at the depth of his acting talent. Additionally, Stockard Channing's Oscar-worthy performance leaves the viewer thinking about the movie long after it has ended.

Unfortunately, the DVD version is skimpy on extra features. While it features the original trailer, interviews with the cast or more information about the true story that inspired the play would have been a major enhancement.

Rating:
Summary: Strange story -- I have no clue about the POINT of it?
Review: Stockard Channing gives a great acting performance, so do Donald Sutherland and Will Smith (I'm a fan of all 3!), but with all of the twists and turns they lost me somewhere. It was intriguing to follow the plot, but I still don't get it. The title's significance is the theory that when going back 6 generations, one can find a common anscestor with ANY person. Six degrees of seperation is all it takes. Great. What else are we to learn from this dog-chasing-his-own-tail kind of story line? If someone figures it out, please e-mail me, so I can get "clued-in".

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps one of the BEST films of our time
Review: Stockard Channing, Will Smith and Donald Sutherland are rivetting in this unusual and awe-inspiring film. This is Smith's best role in spite of being his least popular. The writing is so magnificent that the acting just flows. This is a must see for any ARTISTICALLY minded film lover. It is not, however, for anyone looking for a run-of-the-mill Will Smith film. In other words, you'll have to have a brain to enjoy it. :)

Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: Thank you MGM for your "Contemporary Classics" release of this wonderful movie. More ideas spin through this screenplay than you'll hear in 50 other rentals. A production that relies on the sheer beauty and fireworks of language to carry it forward, along with Stockard Channing's indelible intepretation of NY socialite Ouisa Kittredge. (I love you, Holly Hunter, but I will never forgive you for stealing the Oscar away from this master.) It's an astonishing performance and an astonishing script, with a climax that moves you--and yet leaves you wondering why you were moved. It's not "Beaches," after all, but the story of a woman who is forced to re-examine her life, and then to joyously embrace her rebirth. I could go on and on. Rent it!