I haven’t seen the film in awhile but I recall that my understanding of the last scene was that the fat girl was perversely proud to have been the one the rapist chose to rape and let survive. It was a graphic, perverse illustration of how wanting to be the winner in the game of sexual selection turns everyone into a monster. In the poor fat girl’s mind being rejected was tantamount to being killed and being raped was a form of acceptance. In a world or psyche overly determined by physical desirability, to be fat (shorthand here for undesirable) is to be dead, invisible. To be wanted—even by a rapist—is to be a winner, to be loved (and to be alive). I don’t think Breillat is taking the extreme position some feminists have taken that all sexual intercourse is a form of rape, but she seems to be saying that sexual selection is akin to rape, especially when it is so driven by fetishes and consumerism (like what a desirable body is) instead of being driven by things like curiosity, respect for the community at large, in helping each other find happiness too, etc. In other words, our free will to compete for the most desirable of mates has turned us into monsters. Our sexuality has turned us into monsters who only care about not being old maids or elderly bachelors, with little regard for our brothers and sisters or neighbor’s happiness.
Are you going to this year’s New York Film Festival and if so which films are you going to see/have seen (it began this past Monday)? I’m going to see nine films, in this order: “Police, Adjective,” “Trash Humpers,” “Antichrist,” “Henri George’s Clouzot’s Inferno,” “Independencia,” “Everyone Else,” “Hadewijch,” “Bluebeard” and “Around a Small Mountain.”
This Friday, October 2 at 7:30pm at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble there is going to be a panel discussion of the film criticism of Manny Farber. Speakers will be Greil Marcus, Geoffrey Brown, Kent Jones and Robert Polito (who edited the new Library of America collection of Farber’s film writings.)
Farber was also a terrific painter. Here is a link to a good Richard Thompson interview with him and his frequent writing partner Patricia Patterson:
http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/nd08/manny2.htm
and I will quote here his useful checklist of Thompson’s estimation of the Farber critical method:
“1. Per Max Kozloff, Farber’s critical method is one of connoisseurship.
2. ‘The place where all criticism of American film should start: at the point where you feel ghastly after seeing one.’
3. A critic’s critic whose greatest influence has been on other writers.
4. Extreme importance of the position from which he works; like Daniel Boone, he instinctively moves to new territory when too many people begin working near him.
5. Deep dish American-ness. Aggressive use of contradictions: his own, the movie’s, the culture’s.
6. Depends on alert, active work by the reader. Always writes in non-specialized, non-academic, stubbornly vernacular language.
7. Criticism in which the movement from specification to continuation (see interview) parallels the movement from description to analysis.
8. Unlike more programmatic critics, Farber’s first step is to locate precisely the qualities of the work; his second is to organize a set of questions specific to those qualities.
9. Consequently, analogic rather than binary thought; a system which features complexity, simultaneity, and multiple positions."
Your examples remind me of a joke that comedian Todd Barry told awhile back. He said he was exploring myspace for the first time and he learned some interesting facts, such as “Donnie Darko is the greatest film of all time!” The joke there is that myspace is used primary by younger people who often think that the last great film they have seen is the “greatest film of all time.”
Personally it doesn’t bother me if people say such things. Also, if people can’t appreciate a film I like why would I want them to be forced to like it or feel like they should like it? In discourses like science, opinions can sometimes become facts (but hopefully never facts that aren’t open to question when further evidence contradicts them). In the arts, many opinions can become widespread without having any need to cite facts. Picasso is clearly important in a certain, canon-ized timeline of modern art, but nevertheless, there are millions who couldn’t care less about his paintings and who cares if they don’t? What value would it be to society if they revered him? So that they would finally understand the difference between analytical and synthetic cubism? I certainly want filmmakers and artists and writers that I admire who are under appreciated to get more attention but I don’t want people to revere them because I can point to some canonical list or fact that says they should.
Making your friend admit that “X Men Origins” isn’t the greatest film of all time would be like getting him or her to admit that their child isn’t the prettiest baby of all time. They know it’s not true. And proving them wrong won’t enlighten them—it will just alienate them.
I wouldn’t blame you for rolling your eyes and saying (WITH A SMILE!) “Of all time? And how many films in the 100-plus years of film history in hundreds of languages have you based this estimate on?”) and then just let it drop.
My one-line summation of the best explanations I’ve heard:
The ambiguity, abstraction, plasticity and strangeness of the monolith is a placeholder for anything that encourages an evolutionary leap in human consciousness.
I saw this film at the AFI theater in D.C. back in the early 1980s and remember being amazed by both the imagery and the unique portrait of unrequited passion. I’ve been wanting to see again every since and I regret missing the recent screening of it here in NYC (Walter Reade theater) with Skolimowski present. I can play region 2 disks but I’d rather this come on Criterion.
I’ve found that people who really love music (who listen to it and think about the way a song is orchestrated, think about the different sounds and how the melody is constructed, etc) will be open to new music all of their lives, whereas people who listen to music superficially only like the music of their youth because it reminds them of their youth.
The same principle sometimes holds for films as well—people who really love film will always be looking for good new ones, while people who are casual viewers often prefer the films of their youth or ones that resemble them.
I don’t think the answer to your original question has much to do with critical reception. I think popular music is more tied into the politics of identity than mainstream films. Also, except for serious cineastes (or film nerds or mubians or whatever term you prefer), I think young people consider music to be more important to them (and to their identity) than film. I think the ’60 was the last time film seemed as important to most young people as music.
Does anyone get 'Fat Girl'? over 3 years ago
I haven’t seen the film in awhile but I recall that my understanding of the last scene was that the fat girl was perversely proud to have been the one the rapist chose to rape and let survive. It was a graphic, perverse illustration of how wanting to be the winner in the game of sexual selection turns everyone into a monster. In the poor fat girl’s mind being rejected was tantamount to being killed and being raped was a form of acceptance. In a world or psyche overly determined by physical desirability, to be fat (shorthand here for undesirable) is to be dead, invisible. To be wanted—even by a rapist—is to be a winner, to be loved (and to be alive). I don’t think Breillat is taking the extreme position some feminists have taken that all sexual intercourse is a form of rape, but she seems to be saying that sexual selection is akin to rape, especially when it is so driven by fetishes and consumerism (like what a desirable body is) instead of being driven by things like curiosity, respect for the community at large, in helping each other find happiness too, etc. In other words, our free will to compete for the most desirable of mates has turned us into monsters. Our sexuality has turned us into monsters who only care about not being old maids or elderly bachelors, with little regard for our brothers and sisters or neighbor’s happiness.
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What films are you going to see? over 2 years ago
Are you going to this year’s New York Film Festival and if so which films are you going to see/have seen (it began this past Monday)? I’m going to see nine films, in this order: “Police, Adjective,” “Trash Humpers,” “Antichrist,” “Henri George’s Clouzot’s Inferno,” “Independencia,” “Everyone Else,” “Hadewijch,” “Bluebeard” and “Around a Small Mountain.”
Go to Comment
Manny Farber Book Discussion 10/2/09 in NYC over 2 years ago
This Friday, October 2 at 7:30pm at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble there is going to be a panel discussion of the film criticism of Manny Farber. Speakers will be Greil Marcus, Geoffrey Brown, Kent Jones and Robert Polito (who edited the new Library of America collection of Farber’s film writings.)
http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/event/62119
Farber was also a terrific painter. Here is a link to a good Richard Thompson interview with him and his frequent writing partner Patricia Patterson:
http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/nd08/manny2.htm
and I will quote here his useful checklist of Thompson’s estimation of the Farber critical method:
“1. Per Max Kozloff, Farber’s critical method is one of connoisseurship.
2. ‘The place where all criticism of American film should start: at the point where you feel ghastly after seeing one.’
3. A critic’s critic whose greatest influence has been on other writers.
4. Extreme importance of the position from which he works; like Daniel Boone, he instinctively moves to new territory when too many people begin working near him.
5. Deep dish American-ness. Aggressive use of contradictions: his own, the movie’s, the culture’s.
6. Depends on alert, active work by the reader. Always writes in non-specialized, non-academic, stubbornly vernacular language.
7. Criticism in which the movement from specification to continuation (see interview) parallels the movement from description to analysis.
8. Unlike more programmatic critics, Farber’s first step is to locate precisely the qualities of the work; his second is to organize a set of questions specific to those qualities.
9. Consequently, analogic rather than binary thought; a system which features complexity, simultaneity, and multiple positions."
Go to Comment
Is there a point where an opinion is no longer an opinion? over 2 years ago
Your examples remind me of a joke that comedian Todd Barry told awhile back. He said he was exploring myspace for the first time and he learned some interesting facts, such as “Donnie Darko is the greatest film of all time!” The joke there is that myspace is used primary by younger people who often think that the last great film they have seen is the “greatest film of all time.”
Personally it doesn’t bother me if people say such things. Also, if people can’t appreciate a film I like why would I want them to be forced to like it or feel like they should like it? In discourses like science, opinions can sometimes become facts (but hopefully never facts that aren’t open to question when further evidence contradicts them). In the arts, many opinions can become widespread without having any need to cite facts. Picasso is clearly important in a certain, canon-ized timeline of modern art, but nevertheless, there are millions who couldn’t care less about his paintings and who cares if they don’t? What value would it be to society if they revered him? So that they would finally understand the difference between analytical and synthetic cubism? I certainly want filmmakers and artists and writers that I admire who are under appreciated to get more attention but I don’t want people to revere them because I can point to some canonical list or fact that says they should.
Making your friend admit that “X Men Origins” isn’t the greatest film of all time would be like getting him or her to admit that their child isn’t the prettiest baby of all time. They know it’s not true. And proving them wrong won’t enlighten them—it will just alienate them.
I wouldn’t blame you for rolling your eyes and saying (WITH A SMILE!) “Of all time? And how many films in the 100-plus years of film history in hundreds of languages have you based this estimate on?”) and then just let it drop.
Go to Comment
Trying to find films referenced in "Everything is Cinema" - book about Godard over 2 years ago
Histoires du Cinema is available from amazon.uk, a region 2 DVD (i.e., you must have a region-free player to play it):
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jean-Luc-Godard-Histoire-Cinema-DVD/dp/B0015VI3DY
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Your Favorite/Your Interpretation of the Monolith over 2 years ago
My one-line summation of the best explanations I’ve heard:
The ambiguity, abstraction, plasticity and strangeness of the monolith is a placeholder for anything that encourages an evolutionary leap in human consciousness.
Go to Comment
DEEP END on DVD (FINALLY) over 1 year ago
I saw this film at the AFI theater in D.C. back in the early 1980s and remember being amazed by both the imagery and the unique portrait of unrequited passion. I’ve been wanting to see again every since and I regret missing the recent screening of it here in NYC (Walter Reade theater) with Skolimowski present. I can play region 2 disks but I’d rather this come on Criterion.
Go to Comment
Barring classical music, why do music tastes seem more generation-sensitive than film tastes? 13 days ago
I’ve found that people who really love music (who listen to it and think about the way a song is orchestrated, think about the different sounds and how the melody is constructed, etc) will be open to new music all of their lives, whereas people who listen to music superficially only like the music of their youth because it reminds them of their youth.
The same principle sometimes holds for films as well—people who really love film will always be looking for good new ones, while people who are casual viewers often prefer the films of their youth or ones that resemble them.
Go to Comment
Barring classical music, why do music tastes seem more generation-sensitive than film tastes? 13 days ago
I don’t think the answer to your original question has much to do with critical reception. I think popular music is more tied into the politics of identity than mainstream films. Also, except for serious cineastes (or film nerds or mubians or whatever term you prefer), I think young people consider music to be more important to them (and to their identity) than film. I think the ’60 was the last time film seemed as important to most young people as music.
Go to Comment