"...it is a movie about passage—a "parade" West. Only briefly is "home," the antinomy of passage, suggested. And immediately upon its suggestion, it is abruptly refused by the film, which obstinately cuts back into flashbacks, back to passage rather than fulfillment, back to the past, to distance." - Tag Gallagher
Disparate groups of people working in tandem towards a communal goal, history moving under them "subject to the labours of the centuries" in the exact way Straub described.
Similar to Anne of the Indies in its blatant artifice and parade of individuals trying on false, performative identities under the shadow of capital, though here Minnelli explicitly argues for a knowing embrace of camp fantasy as a means of escape in the final musical number. Intentionally, satirically, and earnestly ridiculous. In no way the failure it's often dismissed as.
Minnelli "worked like a homosexual" — in a way that we've largely abandoned in the ongoing soulless transition to respectability…
Pushed every one of my buttons: it demonstrates the exploitative, dehumanizing nature of class hierarchy, the contempt the rich have for the poor, and the fundamental need for genuine collectivism.
