Analysis Of The Film 'Rules Don T Apply By Marla Maybrey'

On Wednesday afternoon, a couple friends and I went to see the film Rules Don’t Apply at Living Room Theaters in downtown Portland. I am a sucker for any movie illustrating the exuberant characterizations of 1960’s cinema, and was very intrigued by the possibility of a behind the scenes look into that world.

Written, co-produced, directed, and starring Warren Beatty, Rules Don’t Apply was publicized as a thrilling tale of forbidden love and enlightenment from the constraints of religious ideology. However, I believe the true overarching theme of this movie followed more closely to the issue of contextual morality as presented in the Janro text (2016).

Loosely based on the real life of billionaire, entrepreneur Howard Hughes, the movie follows

Marla Maybrey, first introduced as a small-town, devotedly religious beauty queen on the rise to achieve stardom, is a girl who’s strict, unwavering standards contradicts those of the laissez-faire society of Hollywood in the 1960’s. The opportunity to enter a world with different rules of engagement then what she previously knows, exposes her to the prospect of questioning the ideals she once held as absolutes, presenting the idea that morality is relative and shaped by

The character Howard Hughes is a superlative example of Machiavellian inspired dictator who spends the entirety of the movie pursuing his own hedonistic desires at the expense of others. However, this perspective begs to question whether he was truly acting out of self interest or merely acting in the way that was anticipated and necessary by those who surrounded him. The character himself was obsessed with the idea of DNA, and further claimed that this basic unit of all living things held the essence of who his father was and wanted him to be. This additionally argues that in some cases, perhaps those that seemingly live for themselves are under both the unconscious and conscious pressure of living solely for others and how they expect others to conclude they will act. In turn, those who desperately seek to take advantage of these kinds of people are paradoxically the ones, whatever their reasoning, who are perpetrating this contextually reprobated