Indulge me on this one. The dental drill-to-torture scene in Marathon is legendary and one I'd wanted to review as I once learned that clove oil really does fix tooth nerve pain. Gareth and I were having a friendly bicker on twitter some time back over best actors, and for my money Sean Penn (and one other I cant remember) totally outclass Olivier and Gielgud, though to be fair stage and screen aren't a level playing field.
So I rewatched the film earlier today and it's got a script that stinks to high heaven. It's riddled with credibility gaps even though I love U.S. films of the 70's with great New York city and neighbourhood photography. However, the suspense filled diamonds down the drain scene pitching evil Nazi against brutalised and innocent history student set my Saturnalia alarm off.
As you may recall, a hexagon is a 2D representation of a 3D cube which takes it into pure Saturnalia country. I doubt that's why Schlesinger filmed the scene here but it stuck out like a sore tooth so I thought I'd make a note of it.
The water swirling around the hexagon is a Saturn-like ring too.
