“Nonsense. I don’t have to reinvent the wheel because Carney chooses to ignore its existence. Carney’s thousand word argument was refuted before he wrote it.”
If you decide to affirm that Carney’s readings are trite/shallow/whatever you have to support your claim with evidence. If you can’t understand that then I don’t know where to go with this. Carney doesn’t merely say the work of Hitchcock is shallow and then go on to denigrate it wholesale. He gives reasons to back up his points. You may find those reasons to be inadequate and if that’s the case please elaborate. Saying things like, “Carney’s thousand word argument was refuted before he wrote it.”, just makes you look foolish.
“That seems a fair reading, but from a philosophically pragmatic point of view, substituting the concept of “reality” for the concept of “truth” doesn’t get you anywhere.”
I guess what I mean to say is subjective reality. Rather than trying to pin down the objective Truths that filmmakers in the “visionary” style attempt to grab hold of, Carney is saying the pragmatic aesthetic is more interested in the subjective truths obtained from experience. More interested in the steaming nature of reality where truths come and go and Truth is never found.
truth = what is
Truth = what should be
“behind the bare, phenomenal facts… there is nothing” – William James
“Unless we’re saying actual = truth . . . erasing the distinction between surface and depth”
According to Carney there is no depth. The surface is as deep as it goes.
subjective truths obtained from experience
Make sense to me – there is nothing philosophical, theory-wise.
The surface is as deep as it goes.
Which necessitates doing, for there to be ‘being’ – that would be the only option left, if there is no depth.
Matt, there’s a difference between real and realistic.
“If that’s what Carney is saying…” I don’t think it is.
“Unless we’re saying actual = truth . . . erasing the distinction between surface and depth.”
That’s what we’re saying. There’s no leap to be made. The experience of the film is the statement a filmmaker is making. You don’t have to go deep into what this shot or that sound “really means”.
Actual = Truth makes sense, don’t you think?
It sounds very blue-collar, if you have ever worked blue-collar.
Adam – Sorry if it seemed like I was avoiding your question. I’ve been at work for the past few hours. For the most part Matt Parks has answered your questions for me.
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Carney has some preconceived notions about what a great movie ought to look like, and that when a movie doesn’t fit into those notions it is dismissed without much regard. Talking about Hitchcock and Carney is a little difficult, mainly because Carney hasn’t said too much of substance about Hitchcock’s films (at least in anything that I’ve read). Therefore, it might be a little presumptuous on my part to say that Carney is rejecting Hitchcock (and others) because they don’t fit his preconceived notions. But none the less, that is what it seems he is doing.
Carney does not like: Style, symbols, glamour, or tightly constructed narratives. He does like humanity(?). When he comes at Hitchcock, he sees an overflow of style, symbols by the dozens, glamour galore, and very tightly constructed narratives that revolve around genre conventions and expectations. What Carney seems to fail to understand is that you can actually explore our world (or humanity or the soul or whatever) within those constraints. A work of art can utilize all the possibilities within it’s form and still be meaningful.
Wonder what Carney would say about a film like The Taking of Power by Louis XIV…
-there’s a difference between real and realistic.-
And there’s yet another difference between those terms and “realism.” Still, a work of art can be experienced as “realistic” (similar our experience of “real”), but it can’t be actually “real” in the same way that actual life is “real.” It’s art, and we experience it as art.
-I guess what I mean to say is subjective reality.-
OK, but here’s Carney again:
“pragmatic film jettisons point-of-view photography and the subjectivity editing convention to employ photographic techniques that resemble documentary filmmaking.”
So, pragmatic film—no point of view, no subjectivity, only surface. Documentary-like (realism). How would one get to a subjective reality from there?
Yes, I’m having a hard time coming to terms with what exactly it is Carney is saying or places a value on. His article that Robert linked to earlier on Psycho and Casablanca conflates two different films with two distinctly different methods of understanding and tries to link them into some single formula of “visionary” filmmaking that really doesn’t seem to make much sense to me in that he is choosing to emphasize certain aspects of each film, or in the case of Psycho interpretations of the film rather than the film itself at times, and suggests that the experience or understanding of each film is simpler than it seems to me to be. It appears that when a “conventional” film, as if Psycho is remotely conventional in any normal understanding of the word, approaches some of the ideas or techniques or what have you that he finds pragmatic or of value in someone like Cassavetes he shunts his viewing from that experiential area into a more generalized one. If Psycho does anything, it certainly ruptures the stereotypical link of identification and moves towards what Adam suggests above a more experiential and subjective truth, albeit using those fancy camera “tricks” that Carney seems to disregard or devalue regardless of use or context. I have a hard time understanding his reasoning there especially if, as seems to have been suggested, he is a fan of Shakespeare who seems to violate most of the principles Carney holds dear. I mean if you substitute the long subjective monologues in Shakespeare, where the protagonist tells you exactly what he is thinking using symbolic terms, allusions, and abstract ideas, for camera work and other filmic techniques I can’t see much of a difference in method, even if there may be in ultimate quality. Carney’s thinking on inner subjectivity of characters versus outward action or appearance seems particularly fraught with inconsistency given how I believe we apprehend the world and others, and it doesn’t seem to fit with what I see in some of the films he champions like those of Cassavetes. Is Killing of a Chinese Bookie really so radically different than Psycho in any way other than the method used to capture the images on camera?
@ Nathan I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Carney has some preconceived notions about what a great movie ought to look like,
We have to overlook the wacky stuff and consider the substantive things.
He IS telling us what a movie should look like and then telling us he isn’t dong that:
To define something IS to exclude something else.
But within what he says, he thinks there is an open space he calls life.
One steps out of that space if you use symbolic/ideal/visionary technique.
: this amounts to being prescriptive
@ Greg coming to terms with what exactly it is Carney is saying or places a value on.
The only way to do that is analyze a film.
I have a hard time understanding his reasoning …… Carney’s thinking on inner subjectivity of characters versus outward action or appearance ….. given how ….. we apprehend the world and others.
Yes, but film is not "real’ – this is an incredible flaw in his thinking. Style-wise he is probably correct.
Leigh and Cassavetes conform to his analysis. Leigh’s approach to shooting a film should produce Carney’s description of the result. Listening to Al Rubin, Cassavetes’ DP, say he had no clue what he was doing indicates how he got around conventions.
So we have Leigh recording actualities to write a script and Cassavetes telling Ruban to do whatever he thinks is right.
The result is NOT how (we) believe we apprehend the world and others.
It is NOT actual it is NOT real.
EDIT: NOT the totality of life
btw, Al Rubin:
Love Streams1981 Jet Lag 1979/I David 1977 Opening Night 1976 The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
1974 A Woman Under the Influence (uncredited)1968/I Faces
Yes, his descriptions are largely accurate, at least on the most basic level even if he alters his style of “reading” the films he talks about to fit his descriptive needs sometimes. I’m still not at all sure of what the advantage? or even ultimate difference is to an audience member is in the two styles or methods Carney is describing, especially given that audience members, through their own unique veils of subjectivity don’t respond to the experience or vision or whatever of any film in the same way, particularly those who train themselves to watch films in a less passive manner. Basically, I’m just becoming more confused here rather than less, so, yes, some specific film “readings” or discussions might be nice because this abstract talk is circling in on itself.
Keep in mind that pragmatism defies a reductivist view; it defies an Archimedean point.
I am saying that to head-it-off-at-the-pass. We have to accept some nonsense in order to move beyond it.
ultimate difference is to an audience member
Have to go there – work with films.
Does anyone (former student maybe) know if Carney has ever written or attempted to write anything creative
(non-scholarly that is)?
I recall he wrote that he has served as a consultant on scripts for the highest of the high in Hollywood. Of course, his famous 3-part article, Paths of the Artist, is filled with advice/instruction on creative filmmaking….
curious if he has attempted to apply it.
I am not implyig anything with this question – I am genuinely curious. Interesting to me that he offers a great deal of advice on filmmaking; but, rarely, if ever, on screenwriting. I wonder how many amateur filmmakers have been stalled or set-up for failure because they have not learned to get it on paper yet, and attempt to jump right into “action” without working out multiple drafts of a screenplay?
I wonder what advice he can truly offer if he has not gone through the long way and made one himself.
I don’t believe Carney has participated in the actual filmmaking process, but can’t say for certain. Since the screenplay is little more than a codified thing (thanks, Hollywood!), my guess is Carney views it as an artifact, of little interest.
Those precepts within “The Path of the Artist” are useful for getting one oriented in a certain direction, especially if one is already inclined to go there. They help to clarify what such a person may previously have struggled with as inchoate.
The vague, unformed, uncertain creative impulses definitely do find direction and structure from Carney’s advice. He definitely provides a faith in the power of creativity and an increased perception of the worth and possibility of filmmaking. But, too close adherence to his likes and dislikes can become stultifying. That’s not his fault – it’s the fault of the imitator. The one who chooses to view and pursue film via artificial Carney’s lenses cheats himself out of what Carney tries to teach. And, I believe he would be the first to say (and I believe he has) learn from the teacher, master his teachings, and then forget him. You have to kill your heroes. Have to. Have to. Fans have limitations.
Oh, yea and this thing about screenplays being an artifact – which you are right about – is a mistake. One of the reasons film is in the state that it is in. The essential rules of creativity do not change. Film kids itself if it thinks it does not have to go the long way through writing and re-writing. First thought best thought? Right, how’s that working out? Ever read a Cassavetes screenplay? The words, the language, the structure were critical – all his meaning was in the language and the bodies. In both. Screenplays as a chore/duty and not the heart and soul – I believe is a mistake. But, I am a minority and have been down that road with this forum and I accept everyone thinks I am wrong. So, ignore everything I just wrote.
I agree whole-heartedly, Chris. For what it’s worth.
Oh, man, I can talk about screenwriting as a form all day long. There’s tons to say about them. Not so much about the gurus and their manual-driven approach- blech! Chris, I’ll shoot you a piece Diane Johnson wrote years ago, after having just worked with Kubrick on “The Shining”, where she muses upon the form, it’s limitations and possibilities.
That would be great, thank you.
Here’s an exercise that might be interesting. Anyone that’s interested, have a watch of this film keeping in mind the philosophy I’ve been discussing: that the experience of interacting with a film is more important than a deep statement the mubi is hiding:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1363883214517046901#
“The vague, unformed, uncertain creative impulses definitely do find direction and structure from Carney’s advice. He definitely provides a faith in the power of creativity and an increased perception of the worth and possibility of filmmaking. But, too close adherence to his likes and dislikes can become stultifying. That’s not his fault – it’s the fault of the imitator. The one who chooses to view and pursue film via artificial Carney’s lenses cheats himself out of what Carney tries to teach. And, I believe he would be the first to say (and I believe he has) learn from the teacher, master his teachings, and then forget him. You have to kill your heroes. Have to. Have to. Fans have limitations.”
I wouldn’t consider myself to be an imitator, as I don’t think you can possibly ‘imitate’ anyone, regardless of how much you agree with them. The main lesson I’ve taken from him is to always keep yourself open to art; to resist the temptation to apply a strict criteria to art that must be adhered to for it to be good, because that obviously defeats the object of everything he’s ever written.
In life, you take many different lessons off many different people when shaping your being. It’s a tendency of younger people to latch onto a certain person who they feel can teach them a lot, but they end up unattaching eventually and start hacking their own path through life. To limit yourself to one viewpoint is a tragedy and nobody worth knowing does such a thing.
Unexpected double post.
-Carney’s thinking on inner subjectivity of characters versus outward action or appearance seems particularly fraught with inconsistency given how I believe we apprehend the world and others, and it doesn’t seem to fit with what I see in some of the films he champions like those of Cassavetes. Is Killing of a Chinese Bookie really so radically different than Psycho in any way other than the method used to capture the images on camera?-
Right, at times he seems to suggest that a “true” or “real” experience of life is objective, so in order to properly capture the “true”/“real,” the “pragmatic film” must:
“[jettison] point-of-view photography and the subjectivity editing convention to employ photographic techniques that resemble documentary filmmaking.”
i.e. become quasi-objective (third-person limited) camera and editing.
However, is this really how we actually experience life? Generally speaking, pure objectivity (again, this would be what I would call an idealist notion) is considered mind-independent, so any experience we have is to some degree colored by subjectivity. It seems to me that it’s the acknowledgement of this subjectivity in Hitchcock, and the resultant attempt to place the viewer’s own subjectivity within that subjectivity, that Carney is objecting to. If there is a conversation between two people, Carney wants the film to unfold as if we are a third, unseen and unacknowledged person watching the interaction, trying to make sense of it (presumably from within his/her own subjectivity, but not having access to the subjective perspective of either party. I have no issue with that as a preference, but he doesn’t convince me that one is more “real”/“true” than the other. Especially in the absence of a very specific definition of what he means by “real”/“true.”
-In life, you take many different lessons off many different people when shaping your being. It’s a tendency of younger people to latch onto a certain person who they feel can teach them a lot, but they end up unattaching eventually and start hacking their own path through life. To limit yourself to one viewpoint is a tragedy and nobody worth knowing does such a thing.-
Yes, I think Carney has some significant value if you approach his work like this rather than attempting to adopt his aesthetic personality wholesale.
Have the acolytes thrown in the towel? FTW, the skeptics?
Seriously, are we going to analyze a Carney type film that he hasn’t identified yet?
Btw, skeptics are the only ones who believe in the existence of truth – that is why they never stop looking, never accept that it has been found.
“What Carney seems to fail to understand is that you can actually explore our world (or humanity or the soul or whatever) within those constraints. A work of art can utilize all the possibilities within it’s form and still be meaningful.”
The point that Carney is trying to make is that if you attempt to explore our world through these constraints you end up finding yourself in a world much different than ours. You find yourself in a world where objects have double meanings, where the light on a person’s face can give you insight into their nature, where people can express their emotions perfectly through our languages. This is not the world we live in. So any truths these constraints lead us to are ultimately false. The world we live in is fraught with obscurity. We don’t have these majestic tools to enter into a person’s subjective emotional state. It’s much more messy than that. We have to deal with the fact that we cannot always know a person’s motives. Removing ourselves from reality, into some sort of abstract intellectual realm, in order to find these Truths is something that comes at a cost.
“pragmatic film jettisons point-of-view photography and the subjectivity editing convention to employ photographic techniques that resemble documentary filmmaking.”
So, pragmatic film—no point of view, no subjectivity, only surface. Documentary-like (realism). How would one get to a subjective reality from there”
The point that films aren’t actually real keeps getting brought up. I don’t think this is really an issue. To begin, we all know that while watching a movie we are most certainly watching reality and fiction at once. The reality is the people on the screen acting. The fiction is the story we are being exposed to. I believe the point that Carney is trying to make, when he talks about how pragmatic films are more real, is that they are more representative of reality during the fictitious part of the film. All films are going to have a sense of realism since the filming is grounded in reality (I guess animated films could find a way around this). However, pragmatic films accurately reflect the way the world works during the fictitious parts as well. The actors emote with the complexity that people do in the real world. The films don’t give us any insight into the characters that we wouldn’t have by simply observing them (perhaps like a documentary). But pragmatic films are by no means limited to this “fly on the wall” style. Look at Love Streams or the work of Matthew Barney. Carney isn’t afraid of worlds that don’t resemble ours at first glance. He is merely rejecting works that refuse to acknowledge the complexity of our world. He is rejecting films that give us smooth access and clarity into a characters subjective reality. In Love Streams Cassavetes gives us glimpses into characters inner thoughts. However, when doing this he doesn’t eliminate the rough edges of expression. Nothing is clear. Characters remain opaque rather than becoming transparent and easy to understand.
“If Psycho does anything, it certainly ruptures the stereotypical link of identification and moves towards what Adam suggests above a more experiential and subjective truth, albeit using those fancy camera “tricks” that Carney seems to disregard or devalue regardless of use or context.”
Those “fancy camera tricks”, the ability to converse telepathically, the way in which the lighting reveals truth, are all rooted outside of reality. This isn’t how the world works and is by no means how we experience it. This is the problem that Carney, and many of those who respect his work, has with films operating under the “visionary” style. The subjective Truth that these films attempt to showcase is the exact opposite of what I’m talking about. Filmmakers like Hitchcock and Kubrick use these tricks and styles to pin down what they believe to be Truths about the world. Pragmatic filmmakers don’t believe that these Truths exist. Or at the very least don’t believe that we have the ability to find them. When I say subjective reality, I am merely alluding to the flickering, fluttering, and constantly flowing stream of lived experience. Subjectivity being an inexact science where we cannot make objective Truths out of what we see. We can only gain tentative insight from being exposed to a new experience.
“I have a hard time understanding his reasoning there especially if, as seems to have been suggested, he is a fan of Shakespeare who seems to violate most of the principles Carney holds dear.”
“Words in Pinter, Shakespeare, and Chekhov are never free from the obliquity, ulteriority, and imperfection of all other human expressions of meaning.” – Carney
@ Adam our world through these constraints you end up finding yourself in a world much different than ours. You find yourself in a world where objects have double meanings, where the light on a person’s face can give you insight into their nature, where people can express their emotions perfectly through our languages. This is not the world we live in.
world much different than ours
Yes, art can do that – imagination can do that. This is partly how we find beauty in a harsh world – to imagine it as other than it is.
This is not the world we live in.
Not only is it the world we live in, but art helps us survive the world we live in.
where the light on a person’s face
That is a stylized representation of something – no one is saying it is ‘real’.
where people can express their emotions ….. through our languages
I have to take out the word perfect because it is hyperbole and I don’t know what it means.
Bless the poets for trying to express their emotions ….. through our languages.
We’re not going to get anywhere until we have a film to apply the thought to, imo.
-The point that films aren’t actually real keeps getting brought up. I don’t think this is really an issue.-
-all rooted outside of reality-
Herein lies a logical inconsistency: it is being admitted that the ad hoc “real” in pragmatic films is different from the actual real, i. e. “real” is relative. Then, later, we’re attempting to justify dismissing “idealist” films (of which Hitchcock is drawn as an example, even though I don’t really agree that this is a good description of what Hitchcock is doing) by suggesting that these films are “rooted outside of reality,” which I think is fairly difficult to substantiate once we’ve established that “real” is relative . . . unless we’re saying that the things Hitchcock, for example, does in Psycho are rooted outside of the that film’s own ontology (we can try to go their if need be, but questions like that involve some heavy lifting).
-We don’t have these majestic tools to enter into a person’s subjective emotional state.-
Or so goes the argument, yes. We do if it’s our own, though. And, conversely, one could argue that Hitchcock’s films are an argument that we don’t have “the majestic tools” to escape our own subjective emotional state.
Does Carney like Kelly Reichardt? I’d think something like Old Joy would be right up his alley.
“Yes, art can do that – imagination can do that.” – RPIII
Art as a product of our imagination…who would ever think of such a thing?
Over on Jazz’s thread about profundity in great films I floated the notion that great music, especially classical music, doesn’t carry inherent meaning. You cannot find any profound truths in any of Bach’s two part inventions. Carney has been known to champion Bach. How does instrumental music – of any kind – fit into Carney’s framework? Without a lyrical text, music is totally abstract, a purely aesthetic experience. Sure, the music in Moonlight Sonata might suggest…moonlight, but what’s so profound about that? What realms of truth am I gaining access to? If Carney can support the abstract imagination of Bach or Mozart, why can’t film art also be abstract? Art abstracts life as a means of exploring it. A movie is a photoplay; it uses narrative, scenario, and dialogue as it’s most basic building blocks. Why can’t humans be abstract? Why must we be concrete?
double post.
Matt Parks
-Truth is not a property of the actual world-If that’s what Carney is saying, isn’t he also saying that pragmatic films only have access to the actual world?:
“the pragmatic artist declines to make that move. He says that however mutable or turbulent they may be, there are only surfaces, and that our job is (to adapt Emerson’s metaphor) to skate on them. "
If the pragmatic work is skating on the surface actual, how can we also be making a transcendental leap beyond the actual to truth? Unless we’re saying actual = truth . . . erasing the distinction between surface and depth.