***½/****
directed by Dan Klores and Fisher Stevens
by Alex Jackson Dan Klores's Crazy Love is essentially just another talking-head documentary, but my goodness what talking heads they are! At first, it seems that Klores–to echo that oft-repeated charge against pop-doc filmmakers like Errol Morris, Michael Moore, and Chris Smith–is condescending to his subjects by laying their distinctly Jewish tackiness out to be skewered. But as the picture soldiers on, any emotional detachment dissolves away: these people aren't tactless so much as they're simply candid. They have absolutely nothing to hide and that openness makes it extremely difficult to categorize anybody in the film as a monster or a victim. Burt Pugach was a prominent negligence lawyer in the East Bronx; in the fall of 1957, he spotted secretary Linda Riss, fell in love with her, and successfully seduced her. When he couldn't divorce his wife, Riss left him and got engaged to somebody else. Enraged and deeply depressed, Pugach hired some goons to rough her up. They threw acid in her face, eventually blinding her. Pugach served a stint in prison, and when he got out he proposed to Riss. She accepted–the way she figures it, she's blind and nobody wants her or is willing to be with her except Pugach, who was the one who blinded her in the first place explicitly so that nobody else would want her. He "wins." The picture fruitfully questions your attitudes towards domestic abuse–the "right" choice isn't always the most pragmatic one: if Riss were to reject Pugach, she would still have her self-respect but would probably live out the rest of her days in solitude. Is that really preferable? I actually found it difficult to not feel bad for Pugach, precisely because he doesn't ask for or much expect our pity. He mentions that he was abused as a child by his overbearing mother and had extramarital affairs to rebuild his self-esteem, and I dunno, perhaps I'm a bleeding heart as far as these things go, but it comes off as more of an explanation than a justification. The guy just doesn't apologize. He's basically saying this is what it is. Klores is a very good filmmaker and one of the exciting things about Crazy Love is how he uses period music to reflect the mindset of his subjects; I don't think I will ever again hear Smokey Robinson's "You Really Got a Hold on Me," with its lines like "I don't like you/but I love you" and "I don't want you/but I need you," without thinking of Burt and Linda.
