I, too, am a bit of a movie snob, but there are a couple of TV shows that I enjoy, most notably Arrested Development (props to Mitch Hurwitz and his team) and the BBC’s Black Books just because Dylan Moran is stinking hilarious.
In general, I am of the opinion that new technology is usually bunk. BR looks really nice, but there are so many films that don’t require it in order to make any significant difference in overall viewing experience (at least in my own opinion). I think it depends on several factors, the first of which is “what kind of films do you tend to watch?” if you watch a lot of Michael Bay films/big, special effects laden blockbusters it is likely that the difference between dvd and blu-ray is likely to matter a great deal to you. For someone like myself, who tends to watch mostly old b&w films, I don’t see a whole lot of point in upgrading. My dvds look just fine on my hd tv. However, as someone before has mentioned, there are some films that i think would be worth viewing on the biggest screen you could find with the highest quality equipment available. Films like Baraka, Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, and anything else that was shot in 70mm.
Personally, I’m poor. And lazy. And stuck in my ways. So upgrading to blu-ray, while I’m not being a nazi against it, doesn’t look like something I’ll do anytime in the near future.
to some extent i agree, but my personal opinion of the film is that there was enough good stuff there from the writing and the ideas that provide the underpinnings of the film that it was still emotionally and intellectually effective. it was not the best film of last year. wendy and lucy had my heart last year, but the bottom line is that i walked out of the theater thinking that id just seen something completely new. even synecdoche’s faults were the times that i was frustrated with the film, and upon reviewing i have to say that those moments could be interpreted as part of the intended effect.
has anyone else heard much about this film? has anyone heard of duncan jones? ive read the one review here on the forums and it is positive. on rotten tomatoes, they say it hearkens back to 2001 and solaris. its been too damn long since ive seen a great sci-fi so im hoping that this is as good as a few people are making it out to be.
@kow3- i agree that synecdoche is polarizing in a similar way to the watchmen. that may be the only available comparison between the the two.
not to turn this into a discussion about the watchmen, but having read the book for the first time many years ago and having fallen in love with it, i was very underwhelmed with the film, though that is certainly mere opinion. the biggest difference between kaufmans film and snyders is that kaufman wrote and directed something that sprung directly from his own mind and experience which is something that not many can do or can at least find financial backing for these days. snyder, while certainly having a very specific vision of what his film was to be, didnt require a great deal of creativity. like almost everyone has said, the watchmen was, frame for frame, the book which, to me, feels less like filmmaking and more like transposing.
all that to say, that the amount of love and care that went into making the watchmen was certainly large, and i have no problem with anyone having enjoyed it; it was not to my personal liking. the distinction i want to make is that of creativity. i would like to see more films come from scratch or, if they are adapted from a book or some other medium, the director to be bold in his interpretation of the source material.
and at the end of the day, the very fact that we feel it important enough to be discussing synecdoches “flaws,” if you want to call them that, is a testament to its quality as a piece of art.
hermann, thomas newman, philip glass, howard shore, shigeru umebayashi (in the mood for love even though it wasnt composed specifically for that film), carter burwell, jonny greenwood (there will be blood)
ill put in for boondock saints and crash. crash might be the one i hated most in recent years. every single character felt two dimensional, and i felt like i was being proselytized too the entire time. also pretty much and george stevens film. i have never seen what people liked about shane or giant.
@filmy andy- i whole-heartedly agree. i saw it for the first time with my wife at the theater and she walked out bawling while i was simply trying to process it. i wasnt moved the way that many people were the first time, but kaufman, himself, has said many times that he writes films with the intention that people will get more out of it with subsequent viewings. this was true of synecdoche for me. i rented it from the library when it released on dvd and cried like school boy who just had his undies flushed down the toilet. the emotional gravity of the film hit me like a brick the second time around whereas it didnt penetrate the first for whatever reason.
does it even have one? does it even have a place in any modern art form? im interested in what everyone thinks. i would assume that many of the people on the forum are non-religious/agnostic/apathetic toward religion, but perhaps im wrong. regardless of what faith you are or are not. and if you think it does have a role, do you think that it should be specific to one religion, for example, should there be a section of film culture that is devoted to “christian artistic film” (if thats even possible) or perhaps buddhist film (maybe like why has the bodhi dharma left for the east?), or islamic, hindu, etc? if they are a part of the human experience and film attempts to document and understand all human experience, should it seek to understand any particular religion from the inside and not simply observe from afar. i dont mean films like fireproof or facing the giants (i think thats the right title). im not talking about evangelical films, but maybe films that are directed by people who are of a particular faith who tell a story with those sensibilities in the background, (not preachy) in some ways not unlike bresson. do you think these kinds of films can or are being made today? should they be?
this is my general thought about it too. scorsese is someone i always bring up when i get into a discussion about religion.
however, it seems to me that apart from him, no one these days is making films that deal with the really murky areas of religion. if there is religious criticism in recent years, it is always vague. and i look forward a few years, i dont see anyone willing to take on these issues. scorsese is no spring chicken. he doesnt have that many more years before he will be out of commission. who, then, will deal with these difficult issues?
agreed on both statements. you just have to empathize with your characters. that all you really need to make any film.
but no unfortunately, i have not yet made it to ordet. there are several dreyer films that are about 30 slots down on my netflix queue. should i move that one up? ive heard excellent things about it, and i was completely in awe of the passion of joan of arc.
i guess it seems like no one makes any nuanced religious films these days. i have noticed a few films that are aimed at people with more middle-of-the-road politics a la jason reitman films like juno and thank you for smoking, but that doesnt seem to have made it into the religious arena. it seems right, morkeleb, that it is at least in part due to the rift between the religious and academic that gives us these polarized views of religion. and in light of that, i wonder if film, as an art form, can bridge that gap? can film create a space somewhere in the middle for us to discuss the widening gap between these 2 camps? my personal feelings are that i think that i am a fairly intelligent person and that want to be a rational human being that can participate in the academic world, but i also dont think that is mutually exclusive with having some kind of faith, no matter in what capacity, and being able to be a part of that world as well. where is the cinema for people like me?
i will have yet to see a man for all seasons. ill have to check that one out, but flowers for st francis (though it can get a bit boring in parts) is a good religious film. and dont even get me started on how great the bergman films are.
that is something that has occupied my mind of late. film really does seem to me to be a secular art form primarily because it deals in images taken specifically from the world. but at the same time, i have to wonder if buddhists or christians or hindus see that any differently. its true that film has a difficulty expressing the metaphysical, but i cant help but wonder how someone like kieslowski would have dealt with it had he perhaps been more influenced by the greek orthodox church. film today does not deal with the evocations of god but that does not necessarily mean that it cant. in this day and age we may feel that film lends itself to more existential quandaries, but in another time we may have thought differently about it.
in reality, i think that if religion is to deal with and be even the slightest bit relevant to the world we live in, i think it needs to take its focus away from the things it has focused on, historically as per example the fireproof, passion of the christ, etc that we have been getting. if religion wants to really compete for our attention, especially in film, they need to deal with the larger world issues (sociologically, as nathan suggests). the problem that i see that stands in their way is that i think that they are having problems reconciling those issues with their own beliefs right now, much less being able to make art thats based on those ideas.
i, too, am fascinated with the films that deal with the metaphysics of the actual world as well. things that we can see in the world but that, for whatever reason, seem to have a connection to something else, a symbolic quality, perhaps of ourselves and our nature, like justin said.
i think what started me thinking about this in the first place was the bergmans faith trilogy and tarkovsky and a few of the other aforementioned films and the issues of morality therein. most of those films are more than 20-30 years old. have we finished dealing with those issues? have we moved on? personally, i havent. my mind still dwells on those themes, and i wonder if there will be any filmmakers in the future that deal more with the metaphysical than the political or the things that we see right before our eyes.
thank you, nathan. i think thats very well put. it seems accurate to me that many of the people that hold the cards (at least in the way of providing some type of financial backing to make a film) on both sides would not be willing to get behind something of that nature. i, for one, would be intrigued to see what kind of work that part of society could do with the art form given the right direction. we talk about religious people being those that have cloistered themselves from our culture. have set themselves so far apart that they no longer resemble who the rest of us are, when the truth is that i know plenty of people who live lives of faith, but still live in our world. thats not to say that they do everything right, but they are people who act like anyone else, but they believe in a god.
you could very easily be right justin. i still think we are too close to the situation to be able to tell for sure. but as for any kind of art that intends to be didactic, to instruct or evangelize in whatever capacity is not art in my humble opinion. any part of society, be it church, anti-religious groups, the government, the aclu, whatever. but thats my point, i think that there is a possibility out there (this is all theoretical and in my head) that there could be a religious cinema, that doesnt instruct or try to convince people of anything. it is something that resembles much of what already exists in the secular culture. more than anything, i just want muslims and christians and anyone else with religious convictions to be able to have an artistic voice like the rest of us, whether its in film, literature, visual art, music, or anything else. maybe they already do to some extent, but everything i hear about is so trite, so aloof and unconcerned with the world of everyone else that doesnt believe like they do. and i know that everyone that is in those groups doesnt believe that they are the center of the universe. it just doesnt seem like those people get to have a way to express themselves, especially artistically. id be interested to hear what they have to say.
on a sidenote, with all the negative vibes going around the forum lately, i just wanted to thank you guys for being mature about what could potentially be a particularly incendiary topic. just goes to show you that real film people are probably the most nuanced and understanding people of the world. kudos to all of you.
bresson, tarkovsky, and bergman all make metaphysical or religious themed films, but those films are more than 25-30 years old. when did filmmakers stop being interested in this? or perhaps they dont have anything more to say about it than their predecessors.
@berjuan- there are certainly films today that deal with metaphysical ideas and issues of the soul (really, almost every film has something to do with the idea of a human soul if you think about it in a certain way). there will be blood and taste of cherry in particular are good examples of that. im not making the argument that these issues arent being dealt with these days, but perhaps it is the way in which they are being dealt with. when i look at bergmans faith trilogy and several of tarkovskys films they seem to be rapt in these almost other worldly qualities. the atmosphere of these films is drenched in these metaphysical ideas. taste of cherry i think is the last film i can remember having even a small part of that feeling, but even it did not capture the almost ineffable qualities that i love in bergman and tarkovsky.
permit me an example. throughout most of fanny and alexander, the characters move through a very physical world, especially in the scenes that have adults in them. one scene in particular from that film has always haunted me: its the one in which alexander gets up in the middle of the night at the gypsys house and encouters “god” behind a cracked door. after the short conversation the door opens and god turns out to be a large, stringed puppet of an old, bearded man. it turns out that the puppet is being controlled by (if i remember correctly) the son of the gypsy, and it scares the living hell out of alexander. the question then becomes, is bergman trying to say that god is a conception of man? im still not entirely clear on that after repeated viewings. but even if he is saying that, as the viewer that has become a part of the artistic process, does that mean that i have to interpret it the way its intended? i dont think so. that scene affected me so deeply, i was so convinced of the “truth” of that scene that i cant help but interpret it in several different ways. i think that its completely valid to look at that scene from a religious standpoint and find some personal interpretation that validates the existence of god. or a god. or at least something beyond ourselves.
please forgive all that rambling, but the point im trying to make is that i think all people believe in some sort of “god.” i imagine that to many people on this forum, in particular, film or art is a god. if art and film did not elevate our ideas of our own existence, challenge us in some way, we wouldnt waste our time watching it. and perhaps, in that sense, all films are religious and this thread is bogus.
but the question still remains, of the established religions of today, there seems to be a lack of that probing, questioning nature of issues specifically related to belief in the film world. and i think nathan and a few of the others have provided a compelling answer for this. both the religious and secular sections of society have grown so far apart in recent years that they can no longer accept each other as they are. it seems that both entities are at fault. what i would like to see in the future and what i will fight for in the coming years is some sort of reconciliation between the two so that we can have the best of ALL possible worlds in film.
Favorite Films In Which the Heroes Die about 3 years ago
Cries and Whispers, Royal Tenenbaums, Siodmak’s the Killers, Sword of Doom, Le Samourai, La Haine
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TV SHOWS about 3 years ago
I, too, am a bit of a movie snob, but there are a couple of TV shows that I enjoy, most notably Arrested Development (props to Mitch Hurwitz and his team) and the BBC’s Black Books just because Dylan Moran is stinking hilarious.
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K.U.B.R.I.C.K. about 3 years ago
1. 2001
2. Paths of Glory
3. The Killing
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What's your stance on bluray? about 3 years ago
In general, I am of the opinion that new technology is usually bunk. BR looks really nice, but there are so many films that don’t require it in order to make any significant difference in overall viewing experience (at least in my own opinion). I think it depends on several factors, the first of which is “what kind of films do you tend to watch?” if you watch a lot of Michael Bay films/big, special effects laden blockbusters it is likely that the difference between dvd and blu-ray is likely to matter a great deal to you. For someone like myself, who tends to watch mostly old b&w films, I don’t see a whole lot of point in upgrading. My dvds look just fine on my hd tv. However, as someone before has mentioned, there are some films that i think would be worth viewing on the biggest screen you could find with the highest quality equipment available. Films like Baraka, Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, and anything else that was shot in 70mm.
Personally, I’m poor. And lazy. And stuck in my ways. So upgrading to blu-ray, while I’m not being a nazi against it, doesn’t look like something I’ll do anytime in the near future.
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Where are you from? almost 3 years ago
As far as I’m concerned, I live in the only place worth living in Texas which is the great city of Denton.
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Best modern day cinematographers? almost 3 years ago
deakins, doyle, and ron fricke, wally pfister. all of which pale in comparison to sven nykvist.
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Does someone else think that Synecdoche, New York was flawed? almost 3 years ago
to some extent i agree, but my personal opinion of the film is that there was enough good stuff there from the writing and the ideas that provide the underpinnings of the film that it was still emotionally and intellectually effective. it was not the best film of last year. wendy and lucy had my heart last year, but the bottom line is that i walked out of the theater thinking that id just seen something completely new. even synecdoche’s faults were the times that i was frustrated with the film, and upon reviewing i have to say that those moments could be interpreted as part of the intended effect.
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duncan jones moon? almost 3 years ago
has anyone else heard much about this film? has anyone heard of duncan jones? ive read the one review here on the forums and it is positive. on rotten tomatoes, they say it hearkens back to 2001 and solaris. its been too damn long since ive seen a great sci-fi so im hoping that this is as good as a few people are making it out to be.
thoughts?
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Does someone else think that Synecdoche, New York was flawed? almost 3 years ago
@kow3- i agree that synecdoche is polarizing in a similar way to the watchmen. that may be the only available comparison between the the two.
not to turn this into a discussion about the watchmen, but having read the book for the first time many years ago and having fallen in love with it, i was very underwhelmed with the film, though that is certainly mere opinion. the biggest difference between kaufmans film and snyders is that kaufman wrote and directed something that sprung directly from his own mind and experience which is something that not many can do or can at least find financial backing for these days. snyder, while certainly having a very specific vision of what his film was to be, didnt require a great deal of creativity. like almost everyone has said, the watchmen was, frame for frame, the book which, to me, feels less like filmmaking and more like transposing.
all that to say, that the amount of love and care that went into making the watchmen was certainly large, and i have no problem with anyone having enjoyed it; it was not to my personal liking. the distinction i want to make is that of creativity. i would like to see more films come from scratch or, if they are adapted from a book or some other medium, the director to be bold in his interpretation of the source material.
and at the end of the day, the very fact that we feel it important enough to be discussing synecdoches “flaws,” if you want to call them that, is a testament to its quality as a piece of art.
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Who is the greatest film composer? almost 3 years ago
hermann, thomas newman, philip glass, howard shore, shigeru umebayashi (in the mood for love even though it wasnt composed specifically for that film), carter burwell, jonny greenwood (there will be blood)
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Movie's you just don't like. almost 3 years ago
ill put in for boondock saints and crash. crash might be the one i hated most in recent years. every single character felt two dimensional, and i felt like i was being proselytized too the entire time. also pretty much and george stevens film. i have never seen what people liked about shane or giant.
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Does someone else think that Synecdoche, New York was flawed? almost 3 years ago
@filmy andy- i whole-heartedly agree. i saw it for the first time with my wife at the theater and she walked out bawling while i was simply trying to process it. i wasnt moved the way that many people were the first time, but kaufman, himself, has said many times that he writes films with the intention that people will get more out of it with subsequent viewings. this was true of synecdoche for me. i rented it from the library when it released on dvd and cried like school boy who just had his undies flushed down the toilet. the emotional gravity of the film hit me like a brick the second time around whereas it didnt penetrate the first for whatever reason.
watch this movie twice.
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Best modern day cinematographers? almost 3 years ago
@grey daisies- you are absolutely right about zeitlinger. totally forgot about him.
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Who is the greatest film composer? almost 3 years ago
@nessa- im with you on preisner.
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Does someone else think that Synecdoche, New York was flawed? almost 3 years ago
@kob3- well said.
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Last movie you saw and rate it almost 3 years ago
sunset blvd.: 9/10
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role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
does it even have one? does it even have a place in any modern art form? im interested in what everyone thinks. i would assume that many of the people on the forum are non-religious/agnostic/apathetic toward religion, but perhaps im wrong. regardless of what faith you are or are not. and if you think it does have a role, do you think that it should be specific to one religion, for example, should there be a section of film culture that is devoted to “christian artistic film” (if thats even possible) or perhaps buddhist film (maybe like why has the bodhi dharma left for the east?), or islamic, hindu, etc? if they are a part of the human experience and film attempts to document and understand all human experience, should it seek to understand any particular religion from the inside and not simply observe from afar. i dont mean films like fireproof or facing the giants (i think thats the right title). im not talking about evangelical films, but maybe films that are directed by people who are of a particular faith who tell a story with those sensibilities in the background, (not preachy) in some ways not unlike bresson. do you think these kinds of films can or are being made today? should they be?
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role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
this is my general thought about it too. scorsese is someone i always bring up when i get into a discussion about religion.
however, it seems to me that apart from him, no one these days is making films that deal with the really murky areas of religion. if there is religious criticism in recent years, it is always vague. and i look forward a few years, i dont see anyone willing to take on these issues. scorsese is no spring chicken. he doesnt have that many more years before he will be out of commission. who, then, will deal with these difficult issues?
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role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
agreed on both statements. you just have to empathize with your characters. that all you really need to make any film.
but no unfortunately, i have not yet made it to ordet. there are several dreyer films that are about 30 slots down on my netflix queue. should i move that one up? ive heard excellent things about it, and i was completely in awe of the passion of joan of arc.
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role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
duly noted. pulling up nf now.
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role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
i guess it seems like no one makes any nuanced religious films these days. i have noticed a few films that are aimed at people with more middle-of-the-road politics a la jason reitman films like juno and thank you for smoking, but that doesnt seem to have made it into the religious arena. it seems right, morkeleb, that it is at least in part due to the rift between the religious and academic that gives us these polarized views of religion. and in light of that, i wonder if film, as an art form, can bridge that gap? can film create a space somewhere in the middle for us to discuss the widening gap between these 2 camps? my personal feelings are that i think that i am a fairly intelligent person and that want to be a rational human being that can participate in the academic world, but i also dont think that is mutually exclusive with having some kind of faith, no matter in what capacity, and being able to be a part of that world as well. where is the cinema for people like me?
i will have yet to see a man for all seasons. ill have to check that one out, but flowers for st francis (though it can get a bit boring in parts) is a good religious film. and dont even get me started on how great the bergman films are.
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role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
that is something that has occupied my mind of late. film really does seem to me to be a secular art form primarily because it deals in images taken specifically from the world. but at the same time, i have to wonder if buddhists or christians or hindus see that any differently. its true that film has a difficulty expressing the metaphysical, but i cant help but wonder how someone like kieslowski would have dealt with it had he perhaps been more influenced by the greek orthodox church. film today does not deal with the evocations of god but that does not necessarily mean that it cant. in this day and age we may feel that film lends itself to more existential quandaries, but in another time we may have thought differently about it.
in reality, i think that if religion is to deal with and be even the slightest bit relevant to the world we live in, i think it needs to take its focus away from the things it has focused on, historically as per example the fireproof, passion of the christ, etc that we have been getting. if religion wants to really compete for our attention, especially in film, they need to deal with the larger world issues (sociologically, as nathan suggests). the problem that i see that stands in their way is that i think that they are having problems reconciling those issues with their own beliefs right now, much less being able to make art thats based on those ideas.
i, too, am fascinated with the films that deal with the metaphysics of the actual world as well. things that we can see in the world but that, for whatever reason, seem to have a connection to something else, a symbolic quality, perhaps of ourselves and our nature, like justin said.
i think what started me thinking about this in the first place was the bergmans faith trilogy and tarkovsky and a few of the other aforementioned films and the issues of morality therein. most of those films are more than 20-30 years old. have we finished dealing with those issues? have we moved on? personally, i havent. my mind still dwells on those themes, and i wonder if there will be any filmmakers in the future that deal more with the metaphysical than the political or the things that we see right before our eyes.
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role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
thank you, nathan. i think thats very well put. it seems accurate to me that many of the people that hold the cards (at least in the way of providing some type of financial backing to make a film) on both sides would not be willing to get behind something of that nature. i, for one, would be intrigued to see what kind of work that part of society could do with the art form given the right direction. we talk about religious people being those that have cloistered themselves from our culture. have set themselves so far apart that they no longer resemble who the rest of us are, when the truth is that i know plenty of people who live lives of faith, but still live in our world. thats not to say that they do everything right, but they are people who act like anyone else, but they believe in a god.
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role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
@ justin- does that mean that you think a church couldnt seek to make a film that was not intended to convert?
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role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
you could very easily be right justin. i still think we are too close to the situation to be able to tell for sure. but as for any kind of art that intends to be didactic, to instruct or evangelize in whatever capacity is not art in my humble opinion. any part of society, be it church, anti-religious groups, the government, the aclu, whatever. but thats my point, i think that there is a possibility out there (this is all theoretical and in my head) that there could be a religious cinema, that doesnt instruct or try to convince people of anything. it is something that resembles much of what already exists in the secular culture. more than anything, i just want muslims and christians and anyone else with religious convictions to be able to have an artistic voice like the rest of us, whether its in film, literature, visual art, music, or anything else. maybe they already do to some extent, but everything i hear about is so trite, so aloof and unconcerned with the world of everyone else that doesnt believe like they do. and i know that everyone that is in those groups doesnt believe that they are the center of the universe. it just doesnt seem like those people get to have a way to express themselves, especially artistically. id be interested to hear what they have to say.
Go to Comment
role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
on a sidenote, with all the negative vibes going around the forum lately, i just wanted to thank you guys for being mature about what could potentially be a particularly incendiary topic. just goes to show you that real film people are probably the most nuanced and understanding people of the world. kudos to all of you.
Go to Comment
role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
bresson, tarkovsky, and bergman all make metaphysical or religious themed films, but those films are more than 25-30 years old. when did filmmakers stop being interested in this? or perhaps they dont have anything more to say about it than their predecessors.
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role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
@berjuan- there are certainly films today that deal with metaphysical ideas and issues of the soul (really, almost every film has something to do with the idea of a human soul if you think about it in a certain way). there will be blood and taste of cherry in particular are good examples of that. im not making the argument that these issues arent being dealt with these days, but perhaps it is the way in which they are being dealt with. when i look at bergmans faith trilogy and several of tarkovskys films they seem to be rapt in these almost other worldly qualities. the atmosphere of these films is drenched in these metaphysical ideas. taste of cherry i think is the last film i can remember having even a small part of that feeling, but even it did not capture the almost ineffable qualities that i love in bergman and tarkovsky.
permit me an example. throughout most of fanny and alexander, the characters move through a very physical world, especially in the scenes that have adults in them. one scene in particular from that film has always haunted me: its the one in which alexander gets up in the middle of the night at the gypsys house and encouters “god” behind a cracked door. after the short conversation the door opens and god turns out to be a large, stringed puppet of an old, bearded man. it turns out that the puppet is being controlled by (if i remember correctly) the son of the gypsy, and it scares the living hell out of alexander. the question then becomes, is bergman trying to say that god is a conception of man? im still not entirely clear on that after repeated viewings. but even if he is saying that, as the viewer that has become a part of the artistic process, does that mean that i have to interpret it the way its intended? i dont think so. that scene affected me so deeply, i was so convinced of the “truth” of that scene that i cant help but interpret it in several different ways. i think that its completely valid to look at that scene from a religious standpoint and find some personal interpretation that validates the existence of god. or a god. or at least something beyond ourselves.
please forgive all that rambling, but the point im trying to make is that i think all people believe in some sort of “god.” i imagine that to many people on this forum, in particular, film or art is a god. if art and film did not elevate our ideas of our own existence, challenge us in some way, we wouldnt waste our time watching it. and perhaps, in that sense, all films are religious and this thread is bogus.
but the question still remains, of the established religions of today, there seems to be a lack of that probing, questioning nature of issues specifically related to belief in the film world. and i think nathan and a few of the others have provided a compelling answer for this. both the religious and secular sections of society have grown so far apart in recent years that they can no longer accept each other as they are. it seems that both entities are at fault. what i would like to see in the future and what i will fight for in the coming years is some sort of reconciliation between the two so that we can have the best of ALL possible worlds in film.
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role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
@justin- exactly. that is an important distinction and one i had in mind when i created the thread.
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role of religion in film? almost 3 years ago
oh good.
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