What did one or two black coffins matter in those eyes, their immensity of reach?" The power of a novelist can be intoxicating too, and this sneakily profound book shows how even a writer as fundamentally unheroic as Alan Sheriff can avoid that sad habituality, the potentially lethal illusion of mastery.
His only truly significant film was John Huston's The Misfits (1961), giving his subtlest, most poignant performance opposite Marilyn Monroe as a sad loser in thrall to the illusions of the American Dream.
But as long as you're watching her, you experience the illusion of extremely funny, subliminally sad full-frontal confession.
The sad trompe-l'oeil backdrop, with its flimsy illusion of prosperity, is thoroughly undermined by the random wooden board that encroaches at left.
In just one foolish -- there's the foolish part -- remark, one hears self-revelation, self-mockery, infinitely sad reflection, regret, painfully real reprimand and glimmers of illusion shattered, like glass.
And what is even more sad is that perhaps you are the very evil and illusion that becomes your very own stereotypes of black success.
Sad as it sounds, a final victory over terrorism is an illusion that cannot be achieved.
Their program included "Street of Dreams," the Marlene Dietrich chestnut "Illusions," the venerated cabaret staple "Ballad of the Sad Young Men" and other midnight reveries that require a singer to dive deep inside its fantasy.
Everything is already known in this sad, ugly universe; any sign of discovery or wonder would disturb the illusion of a world without hope.
You have to mourn your loss not of what was, but of what you believed could have been: but the sad fact is that your real loss is that it was all an illusion.
