Films and Filmmakers With a New Filmmaking Language in the 21st Century
In the Mood for Love
Mulholland Dr. – the peak of Lynch’s Carreer
There Will Be Blood
Cache
The Tree of Life
Tropical Malady
It may be a case of smaller details that seem fresh and new nowadays, as we await a giant leap forward, following the footsteps of giants and great innovators, so i tend to think of ever decreasing circles. Which may be one reason recent films don’t rank very highly in Sight & Sound polls (along with critics being cautious and conservative?).
I found Dogville’s use of sets interesting, the framing by Oliveira (born 1908) in Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl too. Another Portuguese Gomes has been mentioned and although we’ve had lots of docs mixing fiction and reality (something of an Iranian speciality), yes, Our Beloved Month of August was quite playful. Not a dramatic break-out though.
To be seen as in some way original/inventive isn’t enough; it can be an overrated virtue- we get such shallow Guinness Book of Records mentality in the wider arts world, numerous cases of emperor’s new clothes.
I wonder whether Greenaway has been very innovative with mixing new technology and media. I’ve not followed what he’s been up to.
Oh, i was very impressed with Scorsese’s 3D in Hugo. That film touched me.
I think if people look at the films of Lech Majewski, one can see a filmmaker who is telling stories in a different way.
While I loved The Mill and The Cross, one can also see that in Glass Lips and the film version of his opera the Roe’s Room.
A beautiful film sense is at the heart of the films, but there is also a quiet to his work.
Some have called his work pretentious, but what i think we find, is that filmmakers who try something different, something more contemplative are usually called pretentious because some are not comfortable at looking at film in a different light.
So far, I’m only convinced of one: Lisandro Alonso.
Kim ki-Duk is a horrible filmmaker and the idea that his copy-cat cinema represents anything new should be spit upon.
Michael Mann
^^^nice surprise there Jack!!!
Jerry: just not Liverpool eh?
Kim ki-Duk speaks the language of product placement.
I haven’t seen any of Kim Ki-duk’s films partake in product placement, but I agree that the idea that his cinema represents anything new is a joke.
He’s not a horrible filmmaker though, just not as nearly important as some people make him out to be. He does have a good painter’s eye for composition, and he takes on some very unsavory elements of South Korean society that a lot of people in that country do not want to acknowledge.
I think you can definitely make a case for Trash Humpers, but even that one has a laundry-list of cross-references and cultural codes that it’s working within (the basic operation is taking something like Uncle Goddam or the August Underground films and, well, obviously, giving it focus and less obscenity). I’d also make a case for 2009’s other best film, Enter the Void. Whatever its antecedents, I don’t think I’ve seen a movie that pushes CG quite so thoroughly. I guess we can imagine something like Lady in the Lake as its predecessor (as Noe does), but Void seems like a great leap forward from the long takes in Irreversible to a really exciting breakdown of distinctions between diegeses (and it has a POV shot from inside a vagina?).
And why is it that we’re cutting out experimental filmmakers from this conversation? If we can take about Wall-E, surely we can talk about Joan Jonas?
" he takes on some very unsavory elements of South Korean society that a lot of people in that country do not want to acknowledge."
If his is a new cinematic language, it’s one that contains a lot of profanity.
Hey! Mention of Noe and Korean cinema!
What a coincidence…
Because Lee Changdong used the reverse narrative structure before Noe, and Jin Guang-ho used the POV cinematographic aesthetic before Noe.
Noe - Real innovation is in copying the Koreans -
Man, a few of us are out there sincerely trying, even if not a lot of folks notice or are even given a chance to notice. In practice, innovation is not only discouraged, it is generally attacked. And within the official avant garde (a ridiculous notion, but utterly true), conventions are just as rigid as in industrial filmmaking. Not that the bastards will ever keep me from striving…
Chris Marker (in his very last years) invented a new digital cinema, and, I might add, using only the basic materials he had at hand. Has anybody seen Stop Over In Dubaï?
http://www.gorgomancy.net/HTML/stopOverInDubai.html
Second Manoel de Oliveira.
I keep trying to watch Stopover in Dubai, but I had the Flash player stop loading the movie once or twice on me and I don’t want to invest all the time watching it only to have it freeze on me again towards the end.
Every time I try to use the fast forward bar, his Gorgomancy logo gets in the way.
I haven’t seen any of Kim Ki-duk’s films partake in product placement…
3-iron
Travis Wilkerson is on here? :)
or are even given a chance to notice – well, that’s true. I’m sure An Injury to One was available to watch on mubi at one point. That was a nice chance.
Joks
^^hehe Robert, i just wish i had the time right now to contribute more to these threads!! :-)
I’m not even familiar with a lot of the directors on here, at least not their films anyway. Lav Diaz is a director i’m curious about but i’m time poor right now. Seems like a big investment.