Movie Thoughts 1-21-10
Thoughts on Bully, All that Heaven Allows, and Irma La Douce after the jump!
Bully
dir. Larry Clark
2001
This is a problematic film on several fronts, the most prominent being that Clark doesn’t do well with linear plots-both in his film work and his work as a still photographer, he excels in creating a bleak, nihilistic, but ultimately compelling mood. The fact he records the seemingly meaningless lives of his subjects grants them some small sort of dignity life denied them. However, in order for Clark to achieve this, he needs space for the narrative to breath-space which counteracts the mood of suspense which he tries to create here.
As a result, Clark relies on overly obvious musical cues throughout to set the mood instead of his own camera work. Actors who look far more attractive than their real life counterparts are used (especially in the case of Marty Puccio’s girlfriend, who is quite cute here and in real life looked something like a beached whale) and the element of steroids which played such a major part in the actual Bobby Kent murder case is completely neglected in this treatment. This has the dual effect of making character motivation slightly nonsensical (why would a beautiful girl like that cling to a clear to a loser like Puccio?) and undercutting the pretense of documentary realism Clark is so clearly striving for. Associations are made through montage and camera movement between the violence and the sexual thrill of teen protagonists, with the most obvious case being when Lisa comes up with the plan to murder Bobby and then starts passionately making out with Marty. So much for subtlety…
The parents are all 2-dimensional and entirely unconvincing. Also, the narrative starts to fall apart after the murder takes place.
Skip it, go for Kids or Ken Park instead.
All That Heaven Allows
dir. Douglas Sirk
1955
The use of color in this film is so extreme and abstracted-primary colors shine throughout with little variation. The blues are icy and cold, the reds deep and passionate, the yellows…well…yellow. The oddly blank performances given throughout the film are revealed eventually to be a brechtian device as opposed to simply flat acting. The influence on later films is so clear that at times I was experiencing deja vu-the use of doorways as a frame and separation by columns of domestic architecture so prominent in Todd Haynes’s Safe is all here.
There are many moments where the film is campy and (unintentionally?) amusing, and some bizarre irony appears when the later outed Rock Hudson tells Jane Wyman she “has to be a man” for him. Jane Wyman as the shunned woman eventually cuts through the cheese and the scene where she experiences the cold disapproval of her peers is masterful.
Irma La Douce
dir. Billy Wilder
1963
This is a bizarre film, and a hard one to evaluate. It’s a musical with the songs torn out of it. Much of the humor is severely dated (though Jack Lemmon proves himself to be a very able physical comedian here), and much of the plot makes no sense. It works in musical logic. Yet there is a lot here to like. The metaphor of the false front of nobility put on by the lower middle class drawn out to its absurd extreme in Lemmon’s Lord X character, the idea of a man jealous of his own projected self, Shirley Maclaine dancing in green tights and a skimpy green top…
Still very sub-par, especially for Wilder. I love the animated trailer though.
Tags: larry clark, sirk, wilder
January 31st, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Ugh I hate larry clark.
Anyway, I wanted to take this opportunity to request a Best of the Decade list! It seems that we’re around that time (if a little late). I’ve been working on mine recently and I would be interested to see a few from you guys.
February 1st, 2010 at 4:31 pm
I should be honest and say that I’m asking this as a bit of a dare, or a challenge. I get the sense that you aren’t all that interested in contemporary cinema (except for a very few pet favorite directors) and so I throw down this gauntlet.
February 4th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
anyone? anyone?
February 4th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
Haven’t seen enough movies made in the last ten years to give any kind of listing I’d call definitive, comprehensive, or even interesting.
The movies I think that were from the last decade that I liked in no special order, with a few qualifying remarks:
-”Synechdoche, NY”. I wrote a lengthy essay on this film that can be found through the site search engine. The best project Charlie Kaufman has ever been attached to.
-”Funny Ha Ha”. Captures the bland directionless quality of boring white people so delicately and astutely that it sometimes drags itself, more a sign of the viewer’s (non-?)immersion in the activities shown than any qualitative deficiency in the film itself. No soft indie soundtrack, no hamburger telephone, just sad, bored people with too much education. “Mutual Appreciation” was good too.
-”Junebug”. Well observed, had a good deal of wit to it, very compassionate naturalism.
-”Dogville”. Wrote a (rather mediocre) piece about that a year ago.
-”Elephant”. The headline cash-in is distasteful, but the construction of the sound is brilliant.
-”Capturing the Friedmans”. A very good companion-piece to “The Bed You Sleep In”, we see accusations seemingly unravel-the home movie footage is riveting.
-”Los Angeles Plays Itself”. Great film analysis-how does the creator relate to his environment?
-”Children Underground”. Great verite documentary in the tradition of the neo-realists. Sad, tragic. The final portion when the filmmakers revisit the girl dubbed “Macarena” is the most heartbreaking scene I’ve encountered in the cinema of this decade.
I plan on watching “La Commune” by Peter Watkins over the weekend, and chances of it making this list are very high.
Movies I actively disliked:
-”Batman Begins”. Incompetent as an action film-not entertaining on any front and actively grating on several.
-”City of God”. Too much cutting, too formulaic a plot. My notes on it I just found just say “Fat Albert+junkyard gang w/firearms”
-”The Royal Tenenbaums”. I thought that mopey self-indulgent ‘my parents made me miserable’ movies went out with Freudian psycho-analysis. I was wrong.
-”Tarnation”. See my comments on Tenenbaums. Thefootage of Caouette in drag as a teenager, acting out an intense monologue is haunting and effective. If only the rest of the film had followed.
February 6th, 2010 at 11:12 pm
So I guess my original suspicion is sort of provisionally confirmed. I mean do you think this was just a bad decade that you lost track of or does it signal a more general lack of interest in contemporary cinema (as I suspected)?
You should watch the original 1980 Elephant.
February 7th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
I suppose a generational lack of interest. I like old things and going to movie theaters is an expensive habit.
Seen the 1980 Elephant, I was impressed. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen anything by Alan Clarke I’ve disliked.
I’d also like to add “Broken Flowers” to my list. Forgot about it when I was typing up the initial response.
February 8th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
I did a blog post on why I’m less interested in “contemporary cinema.” http://procrast-nation.com/?p=2695
February 16th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
I’m sorry to say so Pythag, but I have absolutely no idea as to how that post relates to contemporary cinema in any way. Are you saying contemporary directors are lacking in intellectual rigor? That there are too many of them? What?
I just hate the bullshit mentality that so many pseudo-film-scholar types have towards contemporary film. It seems like the attitude toward anything made after 1990 is something like this “If it isn’t Criterion or directed by one of our randomly chosen indie heartthrob directors (i.e. Von Trier, Kaufman, Jarmusch, Van Sant, charlatans all), it probably isn’t worth seeking out and probably isn’t very good.” I just don’t understand. How lazy are you exactly? You’ll run out of Bresson movies to watch at some point I promise you.
The worst part is the ridiculous and uninformed arguments people like you give. “There were no great films”, “There are no true auteurs (auteur theory is bullshit by the way) working today” blah blah. And then when I ask people like that something like “Oh that’s interesting. Have you seen any of Giuseppe Andrews’ work? Jia Zhangke? Lots of Pedro Costa I assume? Tsai Ming-liang? Hou Hsiao-Hsien? Or any of the other Thai Second New Wavers? Any Lynne Ramsay? Takashi Miike (the most underrated director of our time, and certainly the most guaranteed to go down as one of the greatest ever, once history gets its shit straight)? Apichatpong Weerasethakul? Claire Denis? How many Michael Haneke films have you seen? Oh just the one really? Have you gotten the chance to see Loren Cass? Police, Adjective? Taxidermia? Ballast? Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks? Have you been keeping up with any of the totally brilliant work James Benning has been doing this decade? Any contemporary avant garde cinema whatsoever? You wouldn’t happen to have any additional biases against legitimately brilliant mainstream films (i.e. WALL-E, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Miami Vice, etc.) or certain genres (e.g. horror) that would only add to your already irrational and idiotic bias against modern films would you? Seen any Jafar Panahi? Any Sion Sono?”
Usually this type of questioning is met only with blinks and crickets. And my guess is I’ll get the same from you two. The sad thing is, none of that stuff is really even digging that deep into what’s going on today in cinema and it’s really sad that so many people are just ignoring it.
February 16th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
The comment will be met with a hearty laugh.
I’ll admit it takes a little thinking to connect my article with its implications. I like to let my readers do some thinking. Thinking that you haven’t done yet. Or didn’t you read the article? I thought that one was fairly straight forward. I believe it even makes a mention of contemporary film at one point.
Okay, so essentially you’ve built a straw man and set it on fire. I don’t ever remember promoting any of the arguments above that you’ve “debunked.”
If I had written the above comment, I would be legitimately embarrassed for reacting so strongly to absolutely no provocation.
If you would like to make a film suggestion(s) I’m sure Bigblotbob and I would each be keen to critique it. And I’m sure this would work a lot better to support a constructive discussion than a giant name drop and sophistry session.
February 16th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Yep. Read the whole thing (a terrible waste of time). Nope. No mention whatsoever about contemporary cinema. Just some bullshit about Michael Moore and Roger Egbert (sic). Look man, aside from the rudimentary grammatical and word-usage mistakes in your little pseudo-philosophical attempt at social science, just how it applies to CONTEMPORARY cinema (as opposed to any cinema from any era, to which it seems the phenomenon of “selling out” as you conceptualize it would just as readily apply) remains totally mysterious to me, yes, but also, I would imagine, to any intelligent person outside of your little personal coffee shop group who reads this blog.
I was just preempting your arguments. Have any others? I would really like to hear them. The question is, “Why don’t you like contemporary cinema?” If you have any other answers than “no good movies” or “no good directors” I’ll be happy to deal with them on their own merits, but my guess is that anything you come up with will really just fall into one of those two categories, not to mention being based on a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny and bad sample of the films produced in whatever time-period we want to designate as “contemporary.” Ready when you are.
You want some film suggestions from me for you to critique? Like a great film from recent times for you to sink your little teeth into?
Ok.
the film I choose is
“As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty” directed by Jonas Mekas.
Discuss.
February 16th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
I can’t really think of many ways for this conversation to continue healthily, given its sudden change in tone. I’ll give it a stab, at least. Essentially all of your premises are invalid. You are arguing with a ghost entity - an idealization of an enemy that you’d like to argue against. Not me. I’m not entirely against contemporary film. Nor do I hate every film after a given time period. It seems to me that when you read my article you read it to confirm suspicions rather than to understand what it was saying. Additionally, we’ve had a history of miscommunication. And it _is_ just between you and I - the many individuals I’ve asked to read my articles understand them and, while they sometimes do not agree with me, they understand what they purport to disagree with.
I won’t be goaded into arguing against contemporary film, because… well I’m not really against contemporary film. This is just kind of something you took for granted. I don’t think Scratch Corwood here took the bate either.
Anyway, I hope you will continue to participate on this blog and enter in dialogs. Your traffic and every intelligent comment you have to post are appreciated.
I’ll look into “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty.” For the record, I did watch “My Kid Could Paint That,” as I promised some time ago.
February 16th, 2010 at 11:55 pm
Now you’re just talking. Just saying words. What are my premises? How are they invalid (a premise cannot be invalid by the way, only an argument can. premises can either be true or false)? Be careful here, as you’re talking to someone with a significant background in philosophy and logic.
You just flat out state that I’m making stuff up and arguing with ghosts, but you have yet to provide any beef for this and have not answered any of my substantive criticisms. It seems to me that your article has very little to do with cinema at all, and specifically contemporary cinema. I told you why (because your complaint would seem to apply to all cinema, from all eras equally well) and you have chosen to ignore this criticism. I’m beginning to think you linked me to the wrong thing. I was supposed to read An N-Many Conversation correct? I mean look, I’m asking you to explain yourself. What was your point? I’m sorry if I’ve missed it or misconstrued it, but I genuinely don’t see how it applies at all, so please help me out. Just telling me I didn’t understand it isn’t helpful.
I’m not goading you into arguing against contemporary film man. YOU ASKED ME TO SUGGEST A FILM FOR YOU TO CRITIQUE. I assumed you meant a contemporary one since that’s what we’re talking about. So that’s what I did.
So you’re not against all contemporary film, you’re just “less interested” in it is that right? What does this mean really? What’s the difference? It seems like you’re having to do an awful lot of backtracking and reinterpreting here.
February 17th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Sorry about the goof with premises and arguments. You are right that a premise is only true or false and that arguments are valid or invalid.
Here are responses to your “substantive criticisms”:
“I’m sorry to say so Pythag, but I have absolutely no idea as to how that post relates to contemporary cinema in any way. Are you saying contemporary directors are lacking in intellectual rigor? That there are too many of them? What?”
The fact that you thought the article might mean that there are “too many contemporary films” shows that you didn’t understand what I was trying to say. You even admit that you don’t understand what the article has to do with contemporary cinema. But then you go off in a tirade, like I was advancing all of the arguments you’d like to imagine I would. It had no real substance - it didn’t have to do with anything any of us said - just a position you imagine “the type of small-toothed pseudo-philosophical people we are” would support. And so the comment doesn’t really need to be answered other than to be called out (which I did). This is why I told you that you’d built a straw man and set it on fire. It’s also why I suggested that you put forward a film suggestion - because we seem to be very bad at communicating well with one another and I believe that a discussion about a modern film would be a good enzyme for constructive conversation.
“Yep. Read the whole thing (a terrible waste of time). Nope. No mention whatsoever about contemporary cinema. Just some bullshit about Michael Moore and Roger Egbert (sic). Look man, aside from the rudimentary grammatical and word-usage mistakes in your little pseudo-philosophical attempt at social science, just how it applies to CONTEMPORARY cinema (as opposed to any cinema from any era, to which it seems the phenomenon of “selling out” as you conceptualize it would just as readily apply) remains totally mysterious to me, yes, but also, I would imagine, to any intelligent person outside of your little personal coffee shop group who reads this blog.”
I never even considered that someone charge ‘n-many’ and ‘2-many’ to be “rudimentary grammatical and word-usage mistakes.” It didn’t even cross my mind. Certainly this is lithography I’ve invented myself - but it’s part of the vocabulary of my idea. To talk about “a conversation with a variable n number of people where n is sufficiently large” is wordy. Plus introducing ‘2-many’ and the others allowed some small word play. I’m sure you’ve read several works where authors propose new terminology. I’m sorry if you had trouble reading it. Hardly something to harp on, I thought - still, perhaps I should relax the way I communicate my ideas so that I can include more people? (Hint: that’s a reference to the implications of the article.)
You said “in your little pseudo-philosophical attempt at social science.” Again your tone is extremely aggressive - like it has been again and again in our discussions. I’m sorry you don’t like the ideas in the article. (Outside the current conversation - could take some time to apply your significant background in philosophy and logic to come up with a more constructive way to discuss my article? The comment section of said article would be a good place for that.)
All of this being said, I was glad to see that you provided a film for all of us to watch.
“It seems to me that your article has very little to do with cinema at all, and specifically contemporary cinema.” I think your previous comments about my article applying equally well to all eras of film said it better. I’ll try to summarize the N-Many article and how I think it applies to film.
The N-Many article has to do with inclusivity. It identifies an inverse relationship between inclusive ideas and those with ideas worth sharing. This is because to include as many people as possible, you’ve got to construe your idea so that it is easily digestible by as many people as possible. In doing so your idea is warped to become less genuinely creative and novel. An example using film - pick the artistic film you think did best in the mind’s eye of “the people.” Compare this to the box office results of “Transformers 2.” (Here I do not mean to serve “Transformers 2″ as a “tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny and bad sample of the films produced” but rather as a symbol for other great many films that are equally as bad and just as successful.) My N-Many article hoped (again to use film as an example) to point out that wild success in box offices and torrent sites doesn’t imply greatness - in fact in general should give a moviegoer a chance to question its greatness and save themselves $12.00. The stab at Micheal Moore and Ebert fall along these lines. Their works are intended to sweep as large an audience possible. They practically calculate their works so as to get the “largest market share.” In doing so they restrict themselves to only those ideas will be digestible and accepted by the large audience that they have. Again these fellows are symbols. In fact, the stab was meant more as an attempt at humor. My article does apply in the very same way to old film.
Have I seen modern film that I adore? I thought that Wendy and Lucy, (again this is just an example) whose director and producer I don’t even know, did a remarkable job capturing love in its entirety in a heart wrenching almost-monologue. I would even say that Wendy and Lucy could be digestible and accepted by the mass market. (The N-Many article purports only to identify a general rule.)
My argument isn’t any of the arguments you’ve imagined above. My argument is that, in general, those films that have had wide public acceptance are less likely to contain any novel contributions. Hollywood, having become the monstrous symbol for Capitalistic success that is is today, judges its work by public acceptance, and therefore minimizes the amount of true novel contributions it can bring to the table. This is NOT to say that all contemporary film is terrible, or that there are no contemporary films worth seeking out. You could search inside of Hollywood and find a few counterexamples. You could search outside of Hollywood and find a large number of great films.
The reason I wanted you to propose a contemporary film is to show you that I DO think that there IS contemporary film worth seeking out. Of course if the film you posted in god awful I would have to identify it as such. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to be, though. On the merits that you’ve probably chosen the film you thought would get Scratch and I to reconsider our opinions and that the film you chose wasn’t a gigantic Capitalistic success.
“So you’re not against all contemporary film, you’re just ‘less interested’ in it is that right? What does this mean really? What’s the difference? It seems like you’re having to do an awful lot of backtracking and reinterpreting here.”
In so far as a film has had wide commercial success - I am definitely less interested in it. This isn’t a catch all statement - there are a few counter examples I could point to. But the general trend is there, and my N-Many article points to (some of) the reasons why. In so far as a film is suggested to me from a trusted source - I don’t remember ever asking when the film was made.
Yes backtracking - as requested by you. No reinterpreting.
February 17th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Ok. So I guess only a few things need to be said.
1) I won’t take the time to point to the specific mistakes I was referencing in your article. It would be sort of vulgar, but suffice it to say that I was not at all talking about your neologisms, and frankly, it’s sort of weird that you would assume that you knew what I was referring to.
2) Okay so I did understand your article and I was right that it doesn’t relate to contemporary cinema. You seem to be sort of on and off conflating “contemporary” with “big budget Hollywood”, which is entirely bizarre to me. I get that your essay was a criticism of big Hollywood films (I still think it doesn’t work very well as a model for that), but that has nothing to do with what I was talking about, which was contemporary cinema (Hollywood or not). Remember, you cited that article to me as a reason why you were not interested in contemporary cinema in general. The article did not address that, but only addressed why you don’t like big budget Hollywood fare generally (contemporary or not). This is what I meant when I said your article does not relate to contemporary cinema. At best it relates to the tiny slice of cinema as a whole represented by Hollywood. In saying “My article does apply in the very same way to old film,” you’ve conceded my entire point. Maybe you meant to imply that the phenomenon is worse or more pronounced today than before, but you still have all that work ahead of you as far as I can tell.
What’s interesting to me is that I would imagine (based on what I’ve seen you write about before etc.) that most of your favorite films would either be pretty large ones made recently (Wendy and Lucy being a good example, as I think I saw that at a Regal theater…though it’s a good film for sure) or ones that were exactly the kind of thing you were talking about (big budget, popular, perhaps Hollywood) back in their day. I’m open to being corrected on this with a list of favorite films or something, but that’s my guess.
Humbly submitted
sr
February 17th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Just browsed the discussion a bit and realized that Ross mentioned one I forgot to put on the end of the decade list: Wendy and Lucy. What a beautful film-it captures the landscape of small towns in modern times so brilliantly.
Miami Vice is a great film?? Really?? (Though I suppose you might say the same to my defense of “Artists and Models”)
I have the Mekas film but haven’t set aside the necessary chunk of time to give it a proper screening yet.
February 18th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
1.) Would you be kind enough to include the grammatical corrections (however vulgar) along with your reaction to the post in its comment section? It’s funny. The only other comment I got on the article mentioned that it was “well written” and that “attention was paid to style and structure.” The parity between what you say and between what others on the blog say always seems to remains the same. Might explain some of the angst in all of our conversations.
2.) Judging from your initial comments you didn’t understand my article, although I believe that you do now. The posting of that article, in retrospect, doesn’t really say what I wanted it to about contemporary film. This is my usual response to people who try to defend contemporary film because they usually do mean big budget Hollywood. I hope that clears up the confusion. While you definitely where arguing against a ghost entity, so what I. As I mentioned before I never remember asking someone whose given me a film recommendation what the date of production on it was.
The N-Many article, then, is more closely matched with your rant under Apoth’s top move list about distrust in the public opinion. The difference is that the article tries to identify some of the forces at work.
I do mostly watch films on recommendation, and this hobby does not take up a lot of my time. Scratch Corwood is one of my largest sources of film recommendations, although he surely isn’t the only one. The film recommendations I get from the modern era are primarily big budget Hollywood films. As for a top ten list in alphabetical order:
2001: A Space Odyssey
A Woman Under the Influence
Aguirre, The Wrath of God
Crazy Love
Dog Symphony
Eraserhead
Julien Donkey Boy
Pickpocket
Seven Chances
The Emporer’s Naked Army Marches On
I whipped up this list very quickly and so probably forgot some things. Still, it should give you an idea.
It should be noted for the sake of honesty that Scratch suggested nine out of ten of these movies to me (the exception being 2001).
February 21st, 2010 at 2:35 am
It feels good to know my recommendations have some bearing on something. Also, I’m trying to get a grasp of cinema’s larger history as well, so that eats into modern movie watching time.
Also, with “Dog Symphony”, do you mean “Dog Symposium”?