My problem with the film has always been that it takes a sci-fi concept that has the potential for great inward investigation and human exploration (in the tradition of Tarkovsky’s use of the genre), but seems more interested in whizzing bullets and explosions than actual discovery.
And that’s fine. It’s a smart action film. But nothing more.
Wow some great responses here, far better than anything I could muster. I just wanted to say hi to all the Tarr fans. I don’t have Werckmeister Harmoney deciphered 100% (and of course, I don’t really want to), but I think it’s one of the greatest pieces of art in recent history. I’m curious if anyone else has read the novel, The Melancholy of Resistance, on which the film is based.
Anyways, back onto the film. There are more than a few moments (usually when Mihaly Vig’s score kicks in) that leave me in tears… destroyed.
Young Man With a Horn is a film that most people dismiss as a typical 50’s drama. But it’s got such a great sense of mood and place and self-destruction. Not to mention Kirk Douglas acting his heart out, and Hoagey Carmichael just having a great time.
It’s definitely got a New York “dirty city” vibe almost a decade before Sweet Smell of Success tackled it.
I like to think that I can make up my own opinion (in fact, I do watch most movies alone). But I am always open to changing that opinion. So if someone makes a convincing case for or against a film, that I initially disagree with, I’ll hear them out. Whether you’d call that an inability to have my own opinion, I don’t know.
Usually it’s people appealing for a movie they liked and I didn’t. I’m getting more and more Jay Sherman-y lately.
It’s an interesting point you raise. I can’t say I’ve ever been as obsessive a fan as to feel crushed when a favorite director of mine didn’t deliver. But if the most passionate of fans feel anger when their directors crash, wouldn’t the most compassionate of fans be forgiving (though this leaves us the question of “who are films made for and do we have the right to judge and subsequently to forgive?”)
I guess what I’m getting at is, you said “I don’t demand directors be perfect” and to me that’s the mark of a much truer fan than someone who expects an artist to live up to their expectations. So why do people get angry? I think its easy to fall into the expectation that an auteurs new film will move and inspire you, when all of his/her previous work has done just that. Of course when you’re left wanting, it’s a jarring experience. And it’s difficult not to develop a personal relationship with someone who effects us in such a way. But there’s also a bit of selfishness there, when we demand greatness each time out for the sake of our own reaction.
So to answer your last question about whether anger is inevitable when one is so passionately a fan, I’d say “no, it’s easy but not inevitable.”
Hope that’s not to angry for you. It is an interesting topic. And I’m just trying to do some amateur psychoanalyzing.
Second the love for WALL-E, Paranoid Park, The Wrestler, Still Life, Burn After Reading, Encounters at the End of the World.
I haven’t seen anyone here mention Chop Shop yet. What a great film that was.
It’s interesting that I’m liking The Fall more and more as time goes on. When I saw it, I agreed with most that it was beautiful but flawed. But after swimming in a sea of dull, formulaic Oscar movies lately, it occurs to me that The Fall (though still flawed) is one of the few movies that actually showed me things I hadn’t seen before this year.
The amount that this bugs me is directly proportional to the quality of the film. It annoyed the hell out of me in The Reader. Then again, I’ve never had a problem with the dialogue in Hamlet not being in Danish.
A quick trip over to the IMDb comments page (why do I do that to myself) for my fave Mumblecore film, Mutual Appreciation reveals plenty of disdain for the movement. “Boring” is to be expected. Some say it needs “more fighting and screwing” some say “people don’t talk like this… it’s not even realistic” or the characters should be more “colorful.”
So what is this movement? An honest portrayal of a generation’s inability to understand and vocalize their direction and desire? Or so-minimalist-it’s-unrealistic crap?
How do you deal with the way expectation inevitably affects how we see movies? To use some mainstream examples: Last year The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was highly anticipated since it was announced. It seems like the first group of people who saw it were expecting a masterpiece and disappointed that it was a middling Forrest Gump clone. So word got around that it sucked. I went in expecting crap and was pleasantly surprised. Oh it’s not a great movie, but I was entertained enough.
Or take movies like Gladiator or Chicago that I saw before they were declared “Best Picture of the Year.” I found them entertaining and that’s all I asked of them. But people going in expecting true greatness (don’t know why anyone is taking Oscar’s word for it anymore) was disappointed.
It seems like it’s impossible to avoid the trap of expectation.
Well I suppose I’m trying to use the comments to frame a larger discussion about the two reactions people have to the movement. And I’m asking where in the spectrum of the widely different viewpoints people here fall.
One of the few directors whose entire filmography I’ve seen. Not to mention “favorite” and “best” are two different concepts. I suppose here’s a ranking of the best.
1. No Country for Old Men
2. Barton Fink
3. Fargo
4. The Man Who Wasn’t There
5. Burn After Reading
6. Blood Simple
7. The Big Lebowski
8. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
9. Raising Arizona
10. Miller’s Crossing
11. Intolerable Cruelty
12. The Hudsucker Proxy
13. The Ladykillers
I think it’s fair to have personal moral objections to a film, but one should not allow it to get in the place of the filmmaking. The Birth of a Nation is morally reprehensible but it’s very good filmmaking. Am I offended by some of Hitchcock’s portrayals of gay people? Yes. But that doesn’t stop his movies from being great.
More recently, I despised Sin City. I felt like, among many other things, it was grossly mysoginist. But I don’t feel like that’s a valid criticism of the film.
But thats my very liberal morality. I’m sure there are plenty of people who find a lot of movies to be too violent or sexual, and I think that’s fine, but unless it relates the the aesthetic of the film, it’s not a valid element to base one’s opinion on.
An interesting aside: Apparently before Fox Searchlight scooped it up, Slumdog was going to head direct-to-DVD. If it had, and I’d seen it, I think I’d probably have accepted that as the appropriate release for such a movie.
Still waiting for Waltz with Bashir and Wendy and Lucy to open here. Have to wait for Let the Right one In and A Christmas Tale to hit DVD. Really about 20 more esoteric movies on my “to see list.” So this list is very open to change.
Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler)
Werner Herzog (Encounters at the End of the World)
Zhang Ke Jia (Still Life)
Andrew Stanton (WALL-E)*
Gus Van Sant (Paranoid Park)
Ideas come from all over. My ideas tend to hit me at any time of the day when I could be doing anything at all. The only thing is, I get about 1 good one every 6 months.
*and by “1 good one” I don’t mean a good idea for a screenplay. I mean for a scene or small element of something. Yeah I’ve been writing the same screenplay for a few years now.
I think I’m confused as to having parameters of “Ever” and “2000-2009”
Assuming you mean of the last decade, I can tell you that I’m thankfully ill-equipped to make such a pronouncement, as I try to avoid bad films. That being what it is, I think the worst one I’ve seen was Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.
However a special mention has to go out to Sin City, because, despite having some interesting elements, overall spits on the art-form of film.
3-D isn’t the future of cinema. It’s a temporary gimmick like it’s always been. 3-D shows up every time outside forces freak out Hollywood studios. In the 50’s it was television. In the 80’s it was the VCR. Today it’s the internet. But movie producers don’t have a sense of long-term innovation. They want to get asses in the seats right now. And that’s what 3-D is for. But the novelty of it wears off pretty quickly, especially when the core audience (as is obvious by their marketing) is children and teenagers.
This current fad will have a shelf-life of 5 years, max.
Because it’s bad Dickens. It’s Dickens by way of MTV (and catered to just that audience, who prefer a film to tell them exactly how to feel). Good Dickens takes us through the slums and on occasion ends us with the hope that our character’s life is on track to improve. Slumdog Millionaire solves all of his problems in one big WHAM!
And that’s just such a tiny bit of what’s wrong with this film.
As others have said, the gritty realistic setting and the fairytale plot simply don’t fit together. It’s a cheat. It’s making the white, middle-class audience feel bad and helpless about poverty and then putting their minds at ease because “it’s written” whatever that means.
And speaking of which, usually movies require protagonists who achieve things. By making the film so blatantly about destiny they’ve not only taken away any suspense (people tell me that when they watched it, their theater was shouting and freaking out at the final question, I ask "does anyone actually believe he’ll lose? The movie is pretty obvious about where it’s headed). And by being so blatant about destiny, the film makes Jemal an uninteresting passive protagonist who doesn’t have to work for what he’s going to get since “it’s written”. The one time Charlie Chaplin ended up getting the money and the girl, at least he had to work for it.
And finally the whole fate issue murkys itself up by not being focused on the right element. Jemal’s main priority was finding Latika. So why did fate need to conspire for him to win Millions? What the hell did that have to do with anything? It would be (more) bad writing but at least if the story had set him up so he needed that millions to get to Latika, it would have made sense. I suppose you can get really contrived and say that without his winning streak he wouldn’t have become National news and she’d have never found out about him being on the show. But isn’t that fate making things too hard for itself? If all this shit is pre-determined, then why couldn’t it have been predetermined for her gangster husband to be hit by a bus. There, problem solved.
I just worry. Much of 2007 was thanks to the work of specialty divisions like Warner Independent and Paramount Vantage. But they’re all gone. Was 2007 the last great hurrah? Have the studios learned finally that distributing these films is simply not worth it?
And what effect will 2008 have? Seems like the message for the studio’s taking is that it’s a lot more profitable to make audience friendly movies that are of reasonable high quality than high quality movies that are audience friendly.
Children of Men disdain forum over 3 years ago
My problem with the film has always been that it takes a sci-fi concept that has the potential for great inward investigation and human exploration (in the tradition of Tarkovsky’s use of the genre), but seems more interested in whizzing bullets and explosions than actual discovery.
And that’s fine. It’s a smart action film. But nothing more.
Go to Comment
Werckmeister Harmonies over 3 years ago
Wow some great responses here, far better than anything I could muster. I just wanted to say hi to all the Tarr fans. I don’t have Werckmeister Harmoney deciphered 100% (and of course, I don’t really want to), but I think it’s one of the greatest pieces of art in recent history. I’m curious if anyone else has read the novel, The Melancholy of Resistance, on which the film is based.
Anyways, back onto the film. There are more than a few moments (usually when Mihaly Vig’s score kicks in) that leave me in tears… destroyed.
Go to Comment
stupidest things ever said in a movie over 3 years ago
Another from Star Wars III
Padme: “I love you!”
Anakin: “Love can’t save you. Only my new powers can do that.”
it’s the “do that” that makes it art.
Go to Comment
Underrated Films... over 3 years ago
Young Man With a Horn is a film that most people dismiss as a typical 50’s drama. But it’s got such a great sense of mood and place and self-destruction. Not to mention Kirk Douglas acting his heart out, and Hoagey Carmichael just having a great time.
It’s definitely got a New York “dirty city” vibe almost a decade before Sweet Smell of Success tackled it.
Go to Comment
Are you able to make up your own mind without being influenced by outside opinion? over 3 years ago
I like to think that I can make up my own opinion (in fact, I do watch most movies alone). But I am always open to changing that opinion. So if someone makes a convincing case for or against a film, that I initially disagree with, I’ll hear them out. Whether you’d call that an inability to have my own opinion, I don’t know.
Usually it’s people appealing for a movie they liked and I didn’t. I’m getting more and more Jay Sherman-y lately.
Go to Comment
MORE THAN A FAN over 3 years ago
It’s an interesting point you raise. I can’t say I’ve ever been as obsessive a fan as to feel crushed when a favorite director of mine didn’t deliver. But if the most passionate of fans feel anger when their directors crash, wouldn’t the most compassionate of fans be forgiving (though this leaves us the question of “who are films made for and do we have the right to judge and subsequently to forgive?”)
I guess what I’m getting at is, you said “I don’t demand directors be perfect” and to me that’s the mark of a much truer fan than someone who expects an artist to live up to their expectations. So why do people get angry? I think its easy to fall into the expectation that an auteurs new film will move and inspire you, when all of his/her previous work has done just that. Of course when you’re left wanting, it’s a jarring experience. And it’s difficult not to develop a personal relationship with someone who effects us in such a way. But there’s also a bit of selfishness there, when we demand greatness each time out for the sake of our own reaction.
So to answer your last question about whether anger is inevitable when one is so passionately a fan, I’d say “no, it’s easy but not inevitable.”
Hope that’s not to angry for you. It is an interesting topic. And I’m just trying to do some amateur psychoanalyzing.
Go to Comment
DIRECTORS I NEED TO CATCH UP ON THIS YEAR over 3 years ago
hey Witkacy I’m watching Platform as we speak. Also Still Life is amazing.
Eeenywhoo, for me it’s:
Ozu
Chabrol
Rohmer
Pressburger &Powell
Satyajit Ray
Visconti
Go to Comment
Who Was/Is The Most Beautiful Film Actor Ever? over 3 years ago
Audrey
Go to Comment
The Best Films of 2008 over 3 years ago
Second the love for WALL-E, Paranoid Park, The Wrestler, Still Life, Burn After Reading, Encounters at the End of the World.
I haven’t seen anyone here mention Chop Shop yet. What a great film that was.
It’s interesting that I’m liking The Fall more and more as time goes on. When I saw it, I agreed with most that it was beautiful but flawed. But after swimming in a sea of dull, formulaic Oscar movies lately, it occurs to me that The Fall (though still flawed) is one of the few movies that actually showed me things I hadn’t seen before this year.
Here’s to a better 2009
Go to Comment
subtitles over 3 years ago
The amount that this bugs me is directly proportional to the quality of the film. It annoyed the hell out of me in The Reader. Then again, I’ve never had a problem with the dialogue in Hamlet not being in Danish.
Go to Comment
Mumblecore over 3 years ago
A quick trip over to the IMDb comments page (why do I do that to myself) for my fave Mumblecore film, Mutual Appreciation reveals plenty of disdain for the movement. “Boring” is to be expected. Some say it needs “more fighting and screwing” some say “people don’t talk like this… it’s not even realistic” or the characters should be more “colorful.”
So what is this movement? An honest portrayal of a generation’s inability to understand and vocalize their direction and desire? Or so-minimalist-it’s-unrealistic crap?
Go to Comment
Escaping Expectation over 3 years ago
How do you deal with the way expectation inevitably affects how we see movies? To use some mainstream examples: Last year The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was highly anticipated since it was announced. It seems like the first group of people who saw it were expecting a masterpiece and disappointed that it was a middling Forrest Gump clone. So word got around that it sucked. I went in expecting crap and was pleasantly surprised. Oh it’s not a great movie, but I was entertained enough.
Or take movies like Gladiator or Chicago that I saw before they were declared “Best Picture of the Year.” I found them entertaining and that’s all I asked of them. But people going in expecting true greatness (don’t know why anyone is taking Oscar’s word for it anymore) was disappointed.
It seems like it’s impossible to avoid the trap of expectation.
Go to Comment
Mumblecore over 3 years ago
Well I suppose I’m trying to use the comments to frame a larger discussion about the two reactions people have to the movement. And I’m asking where in the spectrum of the widely different viewpoints people here fall.
Hope that clarifies.
Go to Comment
Favorite Movie Trailers over 3 years ago
The trailer for The Rules of the Game (I’m sure it’s a re-release) that comes on the Criterion is quite delightful.
Go to Comment
Coen!!! over 3 years ago
One of the few directors whose entire filmography I’ve seen. Not to mention “favorite” and “best” are two different concepts. I suppose here’s a ranking of the best.
1. No Country for Old Men
2. Barton Fink
3. Fargo
4. The Man Who Wasn’t There
5. Burn After Reading
6. Blood Simple
7. The Big Lebowski
8. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
9. Raising Arizona
10. Miller’s Crossing
11. Intolerable Cruelty
12. The Hudsucker Proxy
13. The Ladykillers
Go to Comment
The Auteurs "Sight & Sound" Poll over 3 years ago
can I jump on this train?
Go to Comment
WHO IS / WAS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FILM ACTRESS EVER? over 3 years ago
Audrey
Grace
Rita
and anyone French.
Go to Comment
Morality. (lets play nice ok?) over 3 years ago
I think it’s fair to have personal moral objections to a film, but one should not allow it to get in the place of the filmmaking. The Birth of a Nation is morally reprehensible but it’s very good filmmaking. Am I offended by some of Hitchcock’s portrayals of gay people? Yes. But that doesn’t stop his movies from being great.
More recently, I despised Sin City. I felt like, among many other things, it was grossly mysoginist. But I don’t feel like that’s a valid criticism of the film.
But thats my very liberal morality. I’m sure there are plenty of people who find a lot of movies to be too violent or sexual, and I think that’s fine, but unless it relates the the aesthetic of the film, it’s not a valid element to base one’s opinion on.
Go to Comment
Why I didn't love Slumdog Millionaire. over 3 years ago
An interesting aside: Apparently before Fox Searchlight scooped it up, Slumdog was going to head direct-to-DVD. If it had, and I’d seen it, I think I’d probably have accepted that as the appropriate release for such a movie.
Go to Comment
What Film Are You Most Looking Forward To In 2009? over 3 years ago
Shutter Island (Scorsese + Von Sydow.. .yum!)
Tree of Life (Malick is always wonderful)
and I’m hoping Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum gets a US release date for this year. I have been jonesing for some new Claire Denis.
Go to Comment
Best Director 2008 over 3 years ago
Still waiting for Waltz with Bashir and Wendy and Lucy to open here. Have to wait for Let the Right one In and A Christmas Tale to hit DVD. Really about 20 more esoteric movies on my “to see list.” So this list is very open to change.
Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler)
Werner Herzog (Encounters at the End of the World)
Zhang Ke Jia (Still Life)
Andrew Stanton (WALL-E)*
Gus Van Sant (Paranoid Park)
Go to Comment
Half Asleep Writing over 3 years ago
Ideas come from all over. My ideas tend to hit me at any time of the day when I could be doing anything at all. The only thing is, I get about 1 good one every 6 months.
*and by “1 good one” I don’t mean a good idea for a screenplay. I mean for a scene or small element of something. Yeah I’ve been writing the same screenplay for a few years now.
Go to Comment
What is the worst movie ever (2000-2009) over 3 years ago
I think I’m confused as to having parameters of “Ever” and “2000-2009”
Assuming you mean of the last decade, I can tell you that I’m thankfully ill-equipped to make such a pronouncement, as I try to avoid bad films. That being what it is, I think the worst one I’ve seen was Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.
However a special mention has to go out to Sin City, because, despite having some interesting elements, overall spits on the art-form of film.
Go to Comment
Mindfuck Films over 3 years ago
how about The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie? or The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover?
Go to Comment
3-D Discussion over 3 years ago
3-D isn’t the future of cinema. It’s a temporary gimmick like it’s always been. 3-D shows up every time outside forces freak out Hollywood studios. In the 50’s it was television. In the 80’s it was the VCR. Today it’s the internet. But movie producers don’t have a sense of long-term innovation. They want to get asses in the seats right now. And that’s what 3-D is for. But the novelty of it wears off pretty quickly, especially when the core audience (as is obvious by their marketing) is children and teenagers.
This current fad will have a shelf-life of 5 years, max.
Go to Comment
What's the greatest Western? over 3 years ago
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Go to Comment
Academy Award Records over 3 years ago
Complete Sweeps: films that won every Oscar for which they were nominated
Gigi (9)
The Last Emperor (9)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (11)
Go to Comment
how many oscars will slumdog millionaire win? over 3 years ago
How many will it win? Nine, every category in which it’s nominated
How many should it win? One… editing.
Go to Comment
Why I didn't love Slumdog Millionaire. over 3 years ago
Because it’s bad Dickens. It’s Dickens by way of MTV (and catered to just that audience, who prefer a film to tell them exactly how to feel). Good Dickens takes us through the slums and on occasion ends us with the hope that our character’s life is on track to improve. Slumdog Millionaire solves all of his problems in one big WHAM!
And that’s just such a tiny bit of what’s wrong with this film.
As others have said, the gritty realistic setting and the fairytale plot simply don’t fit together. It’s a cheat. It’s making the white, middle-class audience feel bad and helpless about poverty and then putting their minds at ease because “it’s written” whatever that means.
And speaking of which, usually movies require protagonists who achieve things. By making the film so blatantly about destiny they’ve not only taken away any suspense (people tell me that when they watched it, their theater was shouting and freaking out at the final question, I ask "does anyone actually believe he’ll lose? The movie is pretty obvious about where it’s headed). And by being so blatant about destiny, the film makes Jemal an uninteresting passive protagonist who doesn’t have to work for what he’s going to get since “it’s written”. The one time Charlie Chaplin ended up getting the money and the girl, at least he had to work for it.
And finally the whole fate issue murkys itself up by not being focused on the right element. Jemal’s main priority was finding Latika. So why did fate need to conspire for him to win Millions? What the hell did that have to do with anything? It would be (more) bad writing but at least if the story had set him up so he needed that millions to get to Latika, it would have made sense. I suppose you can get really contrived and say that without his winning streak he wouldn’t have become National news and she’d have never found out about him being on the show. But isn’t that fate making things too hard for itself? If all this shit is pre-determined, then why couldn’t it have been predetermined for her gangster husband to be hit by a bus. There, problem solved.
Go to Comment
What is the problem with toda's mainstream cinema? over 3 years ago
I just worry. Much of 2007 was thanks to the work of specialty divisions like Warner Independent and Paramount Vantage. But they’re all gone. Was 2007 the last great hurrah? Have the studios learned finally that distributing these films is simply not worth it?
And what effect will 2008 have? Seems like the message for the studio’s taking is that it’s a lot more profitable to make audience friendly movies that are of reasonable high quality than high quality movies that are audience friendly.
Go to Comment