"I am still big, it's the screens that got smaller!!" declares Norma Desmon, played with such gusto by Gloria Swanson. Of course, la Swanson didn't spend her later years in despair and delusion, if I can pick any flaw out of a film such as Sunset Boulevard, it is the scene when Norma, convinced that she finally gets her opportunity for a comeback with director C.B. DeMille, hires in a whole team of beauticians to her multi-million dollar mansion for... well, what can only be defined as over all beautification. Her hair needs to be done, her skin is being firmed and toned up by expert, massaging fingers, her figure to be re-measured and her outfits to be re-made. In this particularly sad, desperate scene, she scrutinises her skin in the magnifying glass, and we as audience, see how very well-maintained Swanson's own skin is, there is hardly any wrinkles or signs of aging, even under magnifying glass. But then that is not a flaw, it is a powerful film, wonderful in its brutality and harshness, truthful about Hollywood and the death of a dream. 8 MM isn't a great film at all, it is written by perfectly competent screenwriters (the same screenwriters as that of Seven),
But 
alas, it is ruined by incompetent direction. A good, solid cast, Catherine Keener, Nic Cage, but somehow, it lacks everything that makes Seven a good film. Yet the material is in some ways similar to Sunset. It is the demise of a long-cherished dreams. Except for the girls in 8MM didn't make it, not at any point, like Norma did, she is a falling star, the girls in 8MM, those who go to Hollywood full of dreams and for some more confident, beliefs, they didn't stand a chance, they become statistics, the figure of missing persons. Yet they are someone's children, with a properly given name, they are cherished by someone, by their families and boyfriends who they leave behind in pursue of a dream that is never to be. When I first mentioned to my mother that I would like to give acting a try, she asked, "Well, that's fine darling, but does that mean that you might be better going to America?" I was horror struck. Of course, not everyone who goes to Hollywood ends up in destitution or deaths or disillusioned, but to be told to lose weight otherwise you won't get the part, when the part does not necessarily call for someone skinny (unless one's playing the part of a model or an anorexic). A person becomes expendible. I am not saying that the industry over here in the U.K. isn't the same, but then most of the directors I adore happen to be European, or if they work in Hollywood, they're all either dead or have retired!! It's a funny industry this, mother worries about me being too worked up and too upset should I not make it, as I spoke to her, I realised something. It is an adventure and nothing else. I wish for no fame, but an adventure into the unknown, something that had never been in my consideration whenever I thought about "what will I do with my life now?" The process is far more important than the outcome, that applies to fine art too. 
When the pianist is hiding and running away from the Nazis, knowing that his whole family had died and even if he does survive, there is nothing out there for him but to toil in order to re-build. When what happens next matters not because there is no such luxury for him to contemplate,
There is no home, barely any hope, but to put one foot ahead of the other and to get from one abandoned building to the next, Future is deadend, he carries in his mind and body all his history and the history of all others, those who make it and those who don't. Every time when the gun roared and the relief when he realises that he isn't shot, yet the moment is now.
So, what's not to be content with? The world, when viewed with the fresh and innocent eyes of a child is a beautiful and wondrous place, and it is a blessing in itself to have the luxury to say this. I have a chance, it is minute, but it is alive and it is something to be grateful for.
