One Man’s Lent
Reviewing 40 Days and 40 Nights.

Mr. Podhoretz is a columnist for the New York Post.
March 1, 2002, 2:20 p.m.

any liberals who claim to do everything they do in defense of the "family" don't like violence on film and television. They claim fictional violence inspires real violence, and that's why they lobbied on behalf of a TV-program-blocking feature they liked to call the "V-chip." The V stands for violence.

Many conservatives who are similarly family-focused are most profoundly offended by sex on film and television. They believe fictional depictions of sexuality have tempted teenagers into promiscuity and have lead to the spread of diseases both literal and moral. They tend to see little difference between the display of an unclothed breast and hard-core pornography. They'd probably prefer to call it the S-chip.

The liberal attitude against the display of violence comes from a post-Vietnam pacifistic core, according to which violence of any sort no matter the context is upsetting and haunting and corrupting. The conservative attitude against the display of sex comes from a fundamentally religious core, according to which carnality of any sort is a sin. When you add to that conservative attitude the feminist conviction that the exposure of the female form is inherently exploitative of women, you have a powerful mixture indeed.

These negative attitudes toward the depiction of sex and violence have had a significant impact on Hollywood, even though the S-chippers and the V-chippers both have a vested interest in saying it isn't so — and those who don't spend a lot of time paying attention to these matters are often inclined to believe the worst about an industry they detest without knowing all the facts. That's particularly true in relation to violence. Broadcast television today is far less violent than it was in the 1970s, though pay cable is more violent. And with the exception of gross-out teen comedies like American Pie, the depiction of sexuality on screen is far more muted than it was 25 years ago, when female nudity was almost de rigueur on screen.

That's why the arrival of a full-out, no-holds-barred sex comedy at movie theaters this weekend comes as such a surprise. 40 Days and 40 Nights is the dirtiest American movie in memory. It's so totally and completely incorrect in attitude and spirit that it seems to have time-warped in from 1979. There are dozens of naked breasts on display, every single conversation concerns intercourse and foreplay and every plot development hinges on a single question: When will Josh Hartnett be having sex next?

Josh Hartnett is a very handsome young actor playing a twentysomething Internet guy in San Francisco who takes a vow of celibacy for Lent. In Hartnett's world, every woman is beautiful, dresses like a high-priced call girl, and is willing to have sex with him at the drop of a file folder. Director Michael Lehmann, who made a wonderfully stylized black comedy about teenagers called Heathers, has done a terrific job turning San Francisco into a giggly erotic playground for straight people. There's more sheer fantasy here than in Lord of the Rings, more science fiction than in The Matrix.

The entire city becomes engrossed by Josh's battle to live unclimactically. Bets totaling more than $20,000 are placed about whether he can hold out. The bettors, hoping to make a killing, spike Josh's orange juice with Viagra. Women kiss in front of him, hoping to tempt him from his course. Then the worst kind of temptation arises in the comely person of Shannyn Sossamon, whom Josh meets in a laundromat and falls in love with. She knows nothing of the bet. She can't figure out why he won't take her to bed, and when she does find out, she's mad and disappointed.

S-chippers will take one look at 40 Days and 40 Nights and see the end of the world in it. They may be right, and Catholics in particular might take offense at the portrayal of Hartnett's Catholic-priest brother. Certainly, there are things in 40 Days and 40 Nights that I detested (there's only so much clinical sex humor I can stand). But there's still something winning about its anarchic sensibility. Anarchy leads to political and moral chaos, I know, but it can be very entertaining for an hour and a half, particularly in an age when crusaders think computer chips inside television sets can be used to save us from temptation.