One thing to be always be aware of is that “insight” needn’t be thought of as, well, thought precisely. Most movies, and by most I really mean the vast majority of them, aren’t going to provide some startling new insight into man or the world, but they might provide some “insight” into how we apprehend it, the feel of it, or make some connection, visceral or poetic, that enables us to really appreciate some aspect of our existence in a “new” or more intense way.
One of the problems with analyzing movies is in trying to translate the “felt” experience into words. So we end up summarizing the film, usually by emphasizing the story and the characters, and fail to adequately account for the effect of the film on us, why some particular scene or image had power or how it made us “feel”. It’s these things which make art important, not the surface elements of plot or character alone, nor some essentialized “message” we might take from it. To be sure, there is an ideological component to our appreciation as well, and that will shape our response and how we speak of the film, but that often is either overemphasized or misapprehended to better fit what we think we want to get from a movie.
^
That was great.
This may not be exactly what you are talking about, but one problem is that we watch too many movies. Sometimes I’ll read a book or watch a film just so I can tell myself I that have done it. After a while it all becomes part of a stale process.For some people this isn’t a problem, but for me, even the greatest of films seem sort of banal when I get in this state of mind. If I slow things down a bit the banality wears off. I watched like 10 Kurosawa films last summer just so I could tell myself that I watched all of his films. None of them are memorable, despite how great they may have been.
I also don’t think it matters how much life experience you (a generic “you”) have or how many great Russian novels you’ve read, there is always some new experience or idea or feeling, etc to glean from great art, which never really goes stale. Bad art might gets worse and worse though.
Greg: Most movies, and by most I really mean the vast majority of them, aren’t going to provide some startling new insight into man or the world, but they might provide some “insight” into how we apprehend it, the feel of it, or make some connection, visceral or poetic, that enables us to really appreciate some aspect of our existence in a “new” or more intense way.
Very Proustian: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
Jazz: As time goes on, it can be harder and harder to find insights, ideas and artistic expressions that feel fresh and original.
Creativity and the poetic are by their very natures impossible to be stale; one can always “see” (or more to the point “feel”) something fresh from within a poetic artwork no matter how many times one experiences it.
… As time goes on, it can be harder and harder to find insights, ideas and artistic expressions that feel fresh and original… hmmm, there’s that word again Jazz. At the risk of getting back into that “originality” debate again, there’s a difference between originality and freshness; originality is very uncommon whilst freshness permeates our lives in abundance if only one can keep one’s mind open.
I thought that we went over all this in that other thread recently i.e. pursuing “originality” is not particularly constructive in pursuing a meaningful artistic experience, and your OP here Jazz sort of proves that much.
Bad art might gets worse and worse though.
That^. Gotta agree with Flani too, good art just gets fresher and fresher.
Part of this also goes back to the Kael Trash and Movies article where she was saying how “we” want the same things we’ve always enjoyed from movies, but in new or “fresh” ways. While that may be what she wanted, for me my interests have changed over the years and what I “want” from movies changes with those interests. Are there a lot of movies made which aren’t very fresh or interesting, sure, always have been. But that doesn’t mean that knowledge and experience needs to lead to feeling jaded about movies, as if you’ve seen all there is to see. I can assure you, any you, that you have not. Not only are there more than enough “different” movies out there to last a lifetime, you can learn to see the old ones in different ways that can lead to greater appreciation or understanding of them or the art in general. You have to let go off your expectations and biases first though, which sounds easier to do than it is to actually accomplish. Greater knowledge also need not lead to more absolute judgment, where fewer and fewer things are “worthy” of your attention. It can go that route if you want to only celebrate the very “best” films by whatever method you determine that status, but it can also bring a broader interest in films where more and more things become interesting, not less and less.
One might also add that while the adult may not continue to appreciate that which appealed to the child, the child can also be confounded by what appeals to the adult.
I can feel that in the responses of some people to certain films, when for example they go on to enumerate the ‘themes’ of Marienbad – time, memory, identity, etc – as though a film is made so you can decode a list of items.
The world of difference between insight and the banal, is the difference between reasoning and actually embodying something that is its own in-sight.
“It’s these things which make art important, not the surface elements of plot or character alone, nor some essentialized “message” we might take from it.”
So all that matters is our ‘feelings’ then? Are you a fan of Moore by any chance? ;-)
Feelings can be deceptive. They are not trustworthy. So to say that is the primacy of what matters in art appreciation is a very suspect claim in my eyes. If that isn’t what you are saying, then i suggest you be a little more careful with your wording, because that is essentially how it reads, as you have divorced that from ‘rational’ components such as plot, character and message.
“To be sure, there is an ideological component to our appreciation as well, and that will shape our response and how we speak of the film, but that often is either overemphasized or misapprehended to better fit what we think we want to get from a movie.”
I really wish that was true.
Chaos: “I can feel that in the responses of some people to certain films, when for example they go on to enumerate the ‘themes’ of Marienbad – time, memory, identity, etc – as though a film is made so you can decode a list of items.”
So we shouldn’t try to rationalise the films we watch then? We should just treat films, as well as the world around us, as being full of incomprehensible floating signifiers that are beyond our understanding?
Humans create/find meaning because that’s what we do. It’s essential for our existence. It’s how we make sense and relate to the world around us. To deny the validity of that, or to it as a bad thing, is foolish at best, and empty sophistry at worst.
“The world of difference between insight and the banal, is the difference between reasoning and actually embodying something that is its own in-sight.”
That is a meaningless statement without the use of examples.
Never rationalize, that is my view. Nothing in life that has power to deeply affect is something you reason with. I mean, if you have only gleaned ‘themes’ and nothing else that allows you to practically observe the thing in the fabric of life around you, for instance how memory obscures the present moment and how that is an actual thing that happens instead of vague ‘philosophy’, you’re simply indulging an intellectual pastime, no different or more powerful than solving a crossword.
Examples: Inland Empire is not something that you have to separately create meaning for, you could but what’s the point? It is internal landscape that is itself, a woman is hurt and you have these incomprehensible swirls and eddies in the fabric of the film.
Coming up with story-answers is its own satisfaction, which is why mysteries hook us in, from the Bermuda Triangle to JFK to Mulholland Dr.
Which reminds me of that antiquated notion of ‘explaining’ dreams. The air of the thing is what it means and there is that, trying to piece something together from story and individual trinkets inside the dream is a bit like describing what a potter does by simply watching him do it: he moves his hands a certain way, the clay, but how do you describe immersion in the process?
Anyone who is a skier will know what I’m talking about. You don’t consciously maintain balance, you groove on imbalance.
For now I’ll just quoted something you linked to earlier, Jazz:
“The movie is about what happens to you while you watch it. So, pay attention — to both the movie and your response. If you have reactions to, or questions about, what you’re seeing, chances are they’ll tell you something about what the movie is doing. Be aware of your questions, emotions, apprehensions, expectations”
That is a good quote.
For the record, it’s Jim Emerson, here .
(haven’t read yet but off to doctor this morning and wanted to put my two sense in before I go).
All that matters on insights is that the characters get them in a way that is not banal to them.
“Chaos: “I can feel that in the responses of some people to certain films, when for example they go on to enumerate the ‘themes’ of Marienbad – time, memory, identity, etc – as though a film is made so you can decode a list of items.”
So we shouldn’t try to rationalise the films we watch then? We should just treat films, as well as the world around us, as being full of incomprehensible floating signifiers that are beyond our understanding?"
False dichotomy.
Last Year at Marienbad’s experiential/emotional results are too many to elucidate (emphasis on lucid ) in a rationalist breakdown of elements, but nevertheless the work as a whole can be analyzed and deconstructed in a rational manner.
One of the reasons I have a significantly difficult time praising Jodorowsky’s works is because I’m suspicious that his signifiers are completely empty —> that there is no end or rational-thought-out ‘theme’ behind them, as opposed to something like Marienbad or Bunuel’s work where there are end and thought-out themes but the signifiers are kept open enough to adjust to the totality of the audience’s experiences.
Differentiating between open and empty symbols is difficult. It requires many levels of abstract thought with increasing gray areas and a lot of perception.
So relating to the thread, one thing worth mentioning is that open symbolism is difficult and rare, so most movies merely state a rational theme or themes. These over time can start to feel banal simply because they rehash ideas that will become familiar the more often you consume media (any media), so movies with more emotive, open symbolism and a larger handle of our human experiences with these rational themes will tend to compel more because the viewer can bring his or her own experiences into the movie and, quite literally, ‘relate.’
The problem is, it’s difficult to pull off. Typically those who attempt to provide ‘the audience has room to choose their own meaning’ do so in problematic or even banal ways; a good example is the ending of Gone Baby Gone, where Affleck claims the ending was kept ambivalent ‘for the audience to debate’, but it feels to me quite clear what Affleck’s stance is on the matter, or moments like the whisper at the end of Lost in Translation, which first off requires we already feel related enough to the characters to care for that sort of ambiguity, but secondly is clearly a moment meant to entitle the audience to an opinion on the resolution of the narrative via projection but is really only an empty symbol to the point of ‘fill in the blank.’ Or, lastly, the gold light in the suitcase in Pulp Fiction, which is pretty much Tarantino saying, “You want symbolism? There’s symbolism. Knock yourself out. In the meantime, I love feet and gangster movies.”
—PolarisDiB
Feel Joks, not simply feeling as in happy, sad, angry, etc. Apprehension in the sense I mean is allowing yourself to fully absorb the film and then process it through more than an essentialized process where certain tidbits are pulled out for message. I’m not suggesting one shouldn’t use one’s intellect when watching a film or reflecting on it, I’m saying that one can’t rely entirely on intellect alone or let it get in front of the screen, which is the more common problem. It’s too easy to see what you want to see, or curse the film for not giving it to you, than it is to really apprehend what is presented without those preconceptions or rationalizations. I’m not saying I or anyone else can do this successfully all the time or anything, rather that is the goal as art isn’t “trying to do” something, other than as a very loose way of speaking, it simply is and responding to what is there is all we can do. This requires going to the work rather than having the work come to you, and it definitely requires the viewer questioning themselves at least as much as the work they are viewing as we are the ones who are providing the “meaning” of the work, the art itself certainly doesn’t care about such things.
Oh, and if feelings lie, what can one say about the intellect?
“False dichotomy.”
You obivously didn’t read his response before posting Polaris. I sensed he was putting forward a kind of life philosophy and i was right in suspecting that.
Nothing false about it.
agree about Jodo though.
“I’m saying that one can’t rely entirely on intellect alone or let it get in front of the screen, which is the more common problem”
Fine.;-)
I think that for art to be really special it has to uniquely offer some quality that no other film quite does.
So it’s possible for your first exposure to a genre to seem unique and special, only to see with more experience that it’s just rehashing common themes in a slightly different way.
@Greg
Just to be clear, are you saying a film never disappoints you because it seems cliched or banal? Because that’s what I’m talking about here.
Actually, based on your posts, I wouldn’t be completely surprised if you answered in the negative. My sense is that you can find something of interest in any nuance or variation, and that is often sufficient for a rewarding film experience. That’s not the case with me. I may be able to identify those nuances, but sometimes there’s not enough.
And to be clear, I’m not just talking about ideological or intellectual components of the film. Take war films for example. I grew up watching them. I had seen the TV version of All Quiet on the Western Front, and I’m pretty sure I saw other anti-war films. But when Platoon came out, it floored me in a way the other films hadn’t. But the films that depict the horrors of war that I saw after that often felt flat. It wasn’t until the Normandy landing in Saving Private Ryan that I felt moved by a war scene. But I’m no longer affected in the same way when I watch films that depict the horrors of war (or it’s very rare).
This may not happen to you, but I’m pretty sure what I’m describing happens to other people, and I’m interested in hearing others share their observations on this issue.
@J&K
Sometimes I’ll read a book or watch a film just so I can tell myself I that have done it. After a while it all becomes part of a stale process.For some people this isn’t a problem, but for me, even the greatest of films seem sort of banal when I get in this state of mind. If I slow things down a bit the banality wears off.
I hear what you’re saying, but I suspect this is something slightly different. Your frame of mind seems to be preventing you from fully absorbing the film or you’re just overwhelmed by the number of films you’ve seen and haven’t taken the time to fully digest them.
I’m not talking about that. Instead, suppose you actually are giving the film your full attention and allowing yourself to absorb it, but you’re left with very little. And the words that you’d want to use to describe the film would be “banal,” “flat,” “dull,” “cliched,” etc.
Oh sure, there are films that I find banal, but it sounds like considerably less of those than you seem to find. Mostly I just don’t think much about those films at all as they just become a sort of bland noise. There are also movies I actively dislike, which outwardly may even be “better” in some ways than the bland films but which grate on my nerves much more dramatically for whatever reason. Woody Allen’s late films or something like Inception, for example, drive me up a wall to the point I have a hard time finishing them, in part because there is some feeling of self importance to them which isn’t present in something as absolutely mediocre as Yogi Bear, which I could finish watching without a problem. Partly this is because I found myself somewhat interested in why they made the decisions they did in putting together the Yogi film. That doesn’t make the movie itself any “better” but it kept me from feeling the experience was a complete waste of time.
Mostly though the movies I watch aren’t quite like either the Allen films or Yogi Bear where there is either something which actively irritates me or where there is nothing positive in the films worth attending to. Most movies I see tend to have a mix of cliche and interest to varying degrees. Most films I watch are pretty self evident in what their story is going to be and in how it is going to be constructed on the broader levels so at this point I don’t really expect any significant surprises there as even if you don’t pretty much know the direction of the movie before you watch it, which is the case most often, then you figure it out within a few minutes of putting it on.
What is often more interesting though is the way each story is told, the discourse of the film in other words, and the more specific choices being made or enacted in the movie, by which I mean the way the individual components work or are put together, and what and how the film “means” and how it fits into the culture are also often points of significant interest for me. In other words, I tend to focus on what distinguishes one movie from another more than the things which make it like others. That is part of what I was getting at when I spoke of a kind of directionality in movie watching, going from the specific to the general rather than the general to the specific.
If one categorizes movies and looks at them generally, one can be forever annoyed by focusing on how films within a given category are similar to each other. War movies have tropes that will be common among the vast majority of them, romantic comedies tend to be an awful lot like other romantic comedies, action movies are built to be action movies and follow patterns common to the genre and so on, even “art” movies often have recurring patterns which make them like one another. That’s how genres work and why it is more interesting to look at the individual variations within rather than the broad strokes of the story without.
“What is often more interesting though is the way each story is told, the discourse of the film in other words, and the more specific choices being made or enacted in the movie, by which I mean the way the individual components work or are put together, and what and how the film “means” and how it fits into the culture are also often points of significant interest for me.”
Right:
“Takashi Miike rips off what Kinji Fukasaku has already done, only without understanding the point.”
vs.
“Takashi Miike is obviously influenced by Kinji Fukasaku, and whereas his themes might not be as urgent and concerned, the comparison nevertheless shows how the relationship between things like violence and the role of the Yakuza in Japan has changed over time, or at least shows how these two different directors regard said violence or roles.”
—PolarisDiB
(deleted my comment. seemed like I missed the point of the thread)
@Jazz
I had seen the TV version of All Quiet on the Western Front, and I’m pretty sure I saw other anti-war films. But when Platoon came out, it floored me in a way the other films hadn’t. But the films that depict the horrors of war that I saw after that often felt flat. It wasn’t until the Normandy landing in Saving Private Ryan that I felt moved by a war scene. But I’m no longer affected in the same way when I watch films that depict the horrors of war (or it’s very rare).
I can identify with what you’re saying here, although for me it happened with different films. I found Platoon too heavy-handed. The final scene with Samuel Barber’s Adagio For Strings nearly made me gag, it was so overblown and melodramatic. Shortly after I saw Platoon though I saw Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket which blew me away. Funnily enough I thought that I’d become immune to the depiction of the horrors of war after Saving Private Ryan much like you, but then I saw, for the first time All Quiet On The Western Front (1930) fairly recently and although some of it’s cheesy it blew me away, I think because there’s a complete lack of cynicism exhibited, which made the brutality all the more affecting.
You know what’s really fun?
Watching Schindler’s List as a story about Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome
Pay attention to your response to it. Are you feeling as manipulated as the Jews who worked in his factory to evade being victims of the same process of factorization that enabled their victimization are feeling? Do you have the same dazed expression at the end that they do when Schindler’s running around hysterically throwing valuables around calculating their net worth in lives he could have saved?
Of course this is just an ironic reading, not intended by Spielberg, and there’s no ‘exaggerating the symptoms’ of the Holocaust. But nevertheless, ‘be aware of your questions, emotions, apprehensions, expectations.’ Schindler’s List’s intended message may be banal, but the banality of the message may underscore a certain tendency in human beings to want to be saviors for selfish or unhealthy reasons. Perhaps banality itself isn’t all that banal.
—PolarisDiB
@Greg X
Woody Allen’s late films…for example, drive me up a wall to the point I have a hard time finishing them
Just out of curiosity, which film is the cut-off point for you?
Oh . . . the other thing I wanted to say, Jazz, is to caution you against trying to parse the entirety of your experience of a film into various forms of binary thinking where every thing is either this OR it’s that. You know, for example, one way one might define really effective realism would be “insightful banality” (and on different grounds Duchamp and Warhol might be described with the same words).
Hard to say as I may have missed some that I either might have enjoyed somewhat, but Mighty Aphrodite was probably the first instance of finding his manner of filmmaking increasingly unbearable. Not entirely sure why Allen is such a chore for me, but it has something to do with dialogue, voice, and how he examines concerns of the characters and thus the film.
entirely sure why Allen is such a chore for me
Is it because you get ‘the joke’?
Hard to say as I may have missed some that I either might have enjoyed somewhat, but Mighty Aphrodite was probably the first instance of finding his manner of filmmaking increasingly unbearable
Me, too. And I was watching his films live as they were released at that point. I’m pretty sure that’s the last film of his I saw in a theater.
I haven’t been able to watch a Woody film in years now. I used to think he was profound and funny, but now I have absolutely no use for him.
For me it was one film earlier, Bullets Over Broadway.
Jazzaloha
One of the reasons that movies have become harder for me to enjoy and appreciate, as time goes on and I see more and more films, relates to the topic of this thread. Over time we experience more—both in terms of movies and life in general—and, hopefully, we learn, grow and expand our perspective and consciousness. If this happens, then inevitably the films and ideas that we found insightful and fresh when we were young may now seem banal and cliched. That’s not to say that some films won’t have staying power—clearly, some do. But we may tire of certain ideas, story lines, characters, conventions—especially as they appear in recent films—partly because frequent exposure can make these things feel stale and boring. As time goes on, it can be harder and harder to find insights, ideas and artistic expressions that feel fresh and original. At least that is how I feel.
I’m curious to hear how many others feel that way.
And if some have not experienced this to the degree I have, I’d like to discuss the way your sense of a film’s freshness and insight evolve over time. I’m interested in hearing if people notice this evolution and to share some of their observations about this change.