This sounds like total crap to me… Americans are incapable of creating a multi-layered, delicate and intelligent psychological film? I’m sorry, that looks like some kind of an absurd nationalist bias. Your entitled to your oppinion on Les Invasion Barbares, but you hardly have the right to make such wild assumptions about American cinema. If you haven’t found an American film that fits your description, you’re probabally not looking hard enough. Ever tried Kubrick? Aronofsky?
Vertigo, Taxi Driver, Casablanca, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Chinatown, Raging Bull, On The Waterfront, The Godfather, Sunset Boulevard, Apocalypse Now, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Graduate, The Maltese Falcon, L.A. Confidential, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Do the Right Thing, It Happened One Night, The Bridge On The River Kwai, The Best Years of Our Lives, Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, Streetcar Named Desire, The Conversation, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, The Searches, Rear Window, North by Northwest, The General, Trouble in Paradise, Rebel Without a Cause, Nashville, City Lights, Stagecoach, The Deer Hunter, American Beauty, Mr. Smith goes to Washington, Modern Times, Paths of Glory, Intolerance, The Birth of a Nation, Manhattan, Annie Hall, 12 Angry Men, His Girl Friday, Ben-Hur, The Big Sleep, Greed, Amadeus, White Heat, The Exorcist, Rocky, Shawshank Redemption, Boogie Nights, The Killers, Freaks, The Matrix, Fury, The Big Heat, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Terminator, The Roaring Twenties, Forrest Gump, Leaving Las Vegas, Field of Dreams, The Killing, Eraserhead, Poltergeist, Animal House, Election, Our Hospitality, Stalag 17, The Big Lebowski, Birdy, Synecdoche, New York, and American Movie.
Yeah, you’re right.
American Cinema hasn’t done shit.
Canadian cinema has made much better films….
Fargo.
Beware broad generalizations.
Then how come you rated Citizen Kane and Lawrence of Arabia 5 stars and Les Invasion Barbares 4/5 stars. Also 5/6 of your favorite auteurs worked in or are working in US cinema
ok
I did not like Arcand’s The Decline of the American Empire because his characters lived in an ivory tower.
Since my film criticism obviously is true enough to create a generalization about a wide range of people, I guess that means Arcand fans live in an ivory tower too.
—PolarisDiB
If those are your touchstone for American cinema, I’m taking Strange Brew as my touchstone for Canadian films.
Charles Burnett? Lodge Kerrigan? Kelly Reichardt? Ramin Bahrani? David Gordon Green’s _George Washington? Mark Rappaport? Morris Engel? Cassavetes? Etc etc.
Troll.
“Make Way For Tomorrow” was pretty good, right?
I found Les Invasions Barbares a great large piece of turd just like Le Déclin de l’empire Américain with all those wannabe Pasolini dialogues (just wannabe, cause it fails hard and endsn up being pseudo-intelectual), by the other hand I seriously think you gotta watch some more american movies which has way (WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY) more intellectual movies without having to use those awful dialogues.
It’s true that Hollywood produces a lot of movies the world definetly does not need nor want, but you can’t say that “no American film ever achieved or will ever achieved such an intelligent, delicate and multi-layered psychological film”.
You asked how could Up In the Air be an award winning movie, it’s not exactly an award winning movie, it’s more like an oscar like winning movie, no one (except the general public) gives a damn shit about the oscar, it won oscar awards like just like Les Invasions Barbares won the oscar over City of God which is totally outrageous.
We should also note the fact that Quebec is not the center of Canada, or even Canadian “culture” (whatever that is). It’s a subnote. Quebec is Quebec, Canada is Ontario, Nunavut and the north is its own thing and the rest is pretty much “the west” except for the tiny Vancouver region which has more in common with Hong Kong than the rest of the North American continent. Saying that Americans are too dumb to understand a “Canadian” movie is a bit laughable. Please, never leave Quebec.
Vertigo does not describe human complexity, its a mystery film.
Taxi Driver gets close but its still tries to amaze you with violence and exagaration of the psyche.
Casablanca thats a romance film,
2001: A Space Odyssey absolutely not human,
Chinatown detective film ala film noir,
Raging Bull I agree with this one,
On The Waterfront,
The Godfather is a gangster film,
Sunset Boulevard extremely formaluaic and over the top, typical american during the 50s,
Apocalypse Now is more about the madness of war,
Now dont get me wrong some of these films are my favourite, i never said that American cinema sucked, far from it. But I believe its simply not in the mentality of Americans to do film dealing with human nature. Thats most apparent due to the fact that most of you mentions movies that have nothing to do with this theme.
Cassavettes entire catalogue
I rated Lawrence of Arabia and Citizen Kane 5 stars because they are perfect from a technical point of view and express the beauty of cinema.
Les Invasions barbares is another type of cinema, dealing with a scenarion involving normal humans in normal situations. BUt it is definitely not comparable in terms of cinematography to most of the American masterpieces.
I could not stress enough on the facts that most of the Americans have large difficulties separating well-made films from human films.
Canada is still a new country and have a smaller population, which makes the business pratically inexistant, this is why Canada «hasent done shit». Cinema is not as much part of our culture. Cause yeah QUÉBEC IS PART OF CANADA WHATEVER YOU SAY.
Its also interesting to note that the two most financially succesfull movies ever directed (Avatar and Titanic) are made by the Canadian James Cameron
@Yamamoto You have to admit that American film pretty much always miss the point when it comes to psychological film, and by that I mean that they do it your way. EXPLOSIONS, ACTION, FIGHTING SCENES, WOOTTT!!! Ok great… but this dosent surpass a great dialogue for me.
That must be why you prefer City Of God, cause its like an american movie, lot of action, shooting, gangsters and all. Dont get me wrong its a fantastic film though.
I’m not american and in my opinion you’re so wrong…
Try watching Hal Ashby’s, Peter Bogdanovich’s, Griffith’s, Cassavetes’, Nicholas Ray’s, Fuller’s, Woody’s, etc… movies.
I think you’re having difficulties to associate the american naturalism with humanism.
I prefer City of God most cause it’s way more cinematographic than Les Invasions Barbares. The way it deals wiht the time using a different photography and different filmming style, not due to the explosions, action, fighting scenes and stuff, differently than Les Invasions Barbares and Le Déclin de l’empire Américain which are movies totally based on dialogue. Those coud’ve been good books, or even plays, but not movies.
And seriously, why can’t an explosion and violence be human?
Cause the INTENTION are to AMAZE THE VIEWER WITH LOUD ACTION so that your entertainable brain thinks that you are watching something great, while you are just getting satisfied with a basic envy of seeing violence and deaths on screen.
Take Saving Private Ryan for example: They try to make you think that this film is about heroism, but Speilberg really takes WWII as an opportunity to make an action film. Well made, yes I agree, but its an Action film none the less similar to Black Hawk Down.
Some action/violence scenes which are amazingly human:
Unfortunatelly I didn’t find some more to post such as the ending of Raoul Walsh’s The Roaring Twenties, the ending of Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono, the ending of Nicholas Ray’s They Live By Night, the death of the kid in Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, the scene where the guy is shot in Rome, Open City, the ending scene of Fuller’s Steel Helmet, the rescue in the middle of the mines on Fuller’s Fixed Bayonets, the ending of Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause, and we cannot forget the most humanist movie of all times: Jean Renoir’s The Great Illusion, which is a war movie!
Two more action human scenes:
Apocalypse Now is more about the madness of war
…you do know this is basically just Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, right? About the madness of war? I’m sorry, no, that makes no sense. As for your take on American cinema, I think you’re a total nut job. That’s nothing more than cultural steriotyping.
Yes I know its based of Conrad’s novel… Whats your point? Apocalypse Now is totally about the madness of war.
Thats not cultural stereotyping, the Americans always want to offer a big spectacle.
No, Heart of Darkness is about the evil inherant in the heart of man. Here’s a Wikipedia article: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_c%C5%93ur_des_t%C3%A9n%C3%A8bres
I dont care with your Wikipedia article. The madness of war is a totally valuable interpretation of the film. Now stop trying to steal other people words and find someting constructive to say.
Its also worth mentionning that there is always a difference between an original work and its adaptation.
Anyways thats not even the point.
“Thats not cultural stereotyping, the Americans always want to offer a big spectacle.”
^
This sentence is hilarious.
@Zack: Yes its hilarious, as much as Bush decision to declare war on Irak at 6 pm in order to offer the Americans the spectacle they want on the news. But its not as hilarious as filming it and showing it on tv for ratings of course…
This conversation is closed, he brought up George Bush. There’s nothing left to say, this thread has crossed the “total crap” line.
Of course, lots of Americans like to watch violence. So it naturally follows that any American director using violence must only be doing so for the purpose of mindless entertainment. It must also follow that no American director is able to/has ever made a film with delicate psychological nuance. I suppose it must also follow that delicate psychological nuance and violence cannot coexist in the same film.
Arnaud
After watching the great «Les invasion barbares» by Denis Arcand, a french canadian, that I am, it became clear to me that no American film ever achieved or will ever achieved such an intelligent, delicate and multi-layered psychological film.
It might be the mentality (by that i mean different, as in spectacular, not inferior) or it might be because of hollywood, but it seems strange to me that in a population of 300 millions people, no film particularly standout for its hability to explain the human condition. They are wheather really fake or they miss the point.
You might have films like To Kill A Mockingbird, but its really not about human rather than society and even there its all about moralising our thoughts about racism and justice, etc.
But what annoys me the most of American cinema is that they are not able to go deep in psychological themes. They always imply a moral about the american dream and the importance of hope. And the problem still remains nowadays… Look at «Up in the air» for exemple… How can this be an award winning film? I think americans still have to make the distinction between an auteur’s film and well made entertainment cough The Dark Knight cough
If your American you might not understand where im coming from, for the simple reason that you are OVERSATURATED with this subliminal storytelling methods.