The Clairvoyant Zoopraxiscope

The kind of debates that take place in Bertolucci's The Dreamers remind me of the sorts of conversations you might find in Dr. Zhivago or Anna Karenina, long aesthetic discussions which might take several pages, might have nothing to do with the plot, and yet are nevertheless reaches out into the world beyond the story which are essential. The conversations, to me, seem utterly genuine, a certain kind of display of intellectual macho which takes place all the time, even now, even in culturally bereft 2004. Sure it's embarassing to listen to, sort of a Woody-Allen-cutting-room-floor type thing, but that's neither here nor there. The response they evoke does not make the conversations themselves invalid or gratuitous.