Serious Movie Discussion 39

[Bullitt68]

The problems with episodic stuff arise when the central conceit (in this case, the serial-killer-a-week thing) doesn't inform the ideas of the show.

Seriously, Ricky: In no other show in the history of TV has the "episodic stuff" done a better job at informing the ideas of the show!

I said that the conceit (serial-killer-a-week) works towards unveiling character, Hannibal primarily, and the more peripheral ones fall by the wayside because writers can't quite cover them as well through the case-of-the-week.

To preserve your connection between Hannibal and The Wire, you seem to be trying to force the former into the latter's template (a template which isn't exclusive to The Wire, of course, one which is more accurately and generally the HBO template from Oz through The Wire up to True Blood) and it's continually distorting Hannibal. To say that Hannibal can't "cover" the entire cast implies that it wants to. It doesn't. Now, if you want to criticize that, it's open season, but so long as your criticisms are pitched at the right level. Hannibal isn't an ensemble series in the strict sense. All of its actors are skilled performers, and if a digression into, for example, Jack's wife's cancer can serve to probe deeper into the dark recesses of the human experience and better illuminate Hannibal and Jack, Fuller won't hesitate to follow that thread, but at the same time, he was not trying to make an HBO-style, "all right, now that we've seen what this character is doing, let's see what this other character is doing" type show.

And I think a contributing factor here is your later postulation:

Ideas seem incidental to Hannibal for me.

It's not that the show lacks an "overarching idea." Rather, it's that there's no way to get at the overarching idea without working through the depths of the lead characters. It can't sacrifice in-depth character work for the sake of an abstract meditation on a theme. These two things which you are artificially separating for the sake of exegesis are indissolubly linked in this series. Hannibal is interested in the fragility, the vulnerability, the depravity, and the resiliency of the human mind. To attempt to broach this intellectual water in an abstract fashion would lead down a path to surrealism. Instead of surrealism, Fuller opts for melodrama. It's a subtle distinction, but it cannot be claimed to be a distinction without a difference, because even though Fuller is skilled enough to work in elements of the surreal, he knows he cannot go all the way down that path because in doing so he would lose the essential, human element that the show needs and that it gets by virtue of the relationship between Hannibal and Will.

Hannibal is a game of cat-and-mouse and each episode takes the form of a chess board on which Hannibal and Will are moving their pieces. Indeed, it would be accurate (if not appealing to your sensibility, which is perfectly understandable) to call the supporting cast "pawns" in the literal chess sense, especially when it comes to the way Hannibal maneuvers people in Will's orbit. And even though I would characterize Hannibal as melodrama, it's amazing the way that, for as over-the-top as it is, it's so small, so deliberate, so nuanced. The key to the show is not that "nothing is what it seems," because more often than not, it is what it seems. More to the point, the key is that nothing is just what it seems. Everything has layers upon layers of significance, implications, consequences, which makes for such a high level of tension and excitement, and when you add on top of that the exceptional acting from Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy, I just don't know how things could get any better.

Events on these shows/films revolve around these ideas. What does Hannibal revolve around?

When I read this, I immediately thought you sounded like William Fichtner in The Dark Knight :icon_chee

[YT]H-rkpgchJOA&start=67&end=78[/YT]

I'd be lying if I said the entire universe hasn't been vehemently suggesting The Wire to me for years though. I think I will really enjoy it, but I also have a feeling I will really get into Hannibal as well. I need to start that soon. Maybe later in the night since I have nothing better to do.

Definitely go to Hannibal first. Unmatched TV aesthetics, shockingly dense writing, and amazing acting. You already seem keen to check it out, and you won't be disappointed.

 

[Bullitt68]

True Detective was really good overall [...] I like that it plays like a movie more than a show, and the writing was really damn good, as far as narration/dialogue goes. Kind of felt like the climax was episodes 4 and 5 and it unfortunately never got back to that level of captivating. The final conversation between the two made for a satisfying ending though.

If you care, these were my thoughts after I finished True Detective:

I watched HBO's other show set in Louisiana with the word "true" in the title, and let me tell you, True Detective is no True Blood. I'd add True Detective to the list with The Wire and Breaking Bad as overrated crap the popularity and critical acclaim of which I just cannot fathom. What was it? McConaughey's hobo-hippie hairdo? Woody being Woody? The ten-cent Wiki-existentialism?

True Detective is essentially the short bus Hannibal. They wanted to make a smart, philosophically-charged show but then they realized that nobody on the writing staff knew diddly shit so they just started writing random gibberish for McConaughey's Hippie Heidegger character to jabber on about at interminable length for 8 agonizing episodes. I will say that, buried beneath the cheap philosophy and the artificial atmosphere, there was a fantastic show waiting to be told. Episodes 6 and 7 when they were in the present-day with the snuff film and the burned-face guy were the strongest of the bunch (though they even managed to fuck that up with the retarded way they decided to end that story in the first half of Episode 8). If they would've tried to cross 8MM and Angel Heart, they might've had something great with the creepy ritualistic stuff, the disturbing snuff stuff, the religious conspiracy stuff, and the "Yellow King" stuff. They had a ton of awesome material that they buried under a boring story about two losers, and that makes me hate True Detective even more than The Wire and Breaking Bad because between the three of them it's the one that had the most potential.

As far as bullit trashing, TD... Not surprised. I'll take the guys views on movies all day, but shows? Idk about that. The only thing similar between Hannibal and TD is the fact that there are murders and cops involved. Very different shows going for very different themes

You guys know I'm never a contrarian just for the sake of it, I never try to be "cool" by not liking the popular stuff, but I've found, with TV more than movies, my taste is almost never in line with the majority. True Detective is just the latest popular and critically acclaimed show to miss me by a mile.

He's watched something completely different.

I didn't watch something different. I wanted to watch something different than what I was stuck watching, which IMO was disappointingly unoriginal and hackneyed.

The murders are simply one aspect of a conversation Pizzolatto is having with the audience about men and women, and how we (incorrectly) think that the thought processes that lead to such murders are so distant from the things happening in our homes (Marty's reaction to his daughter sleeping with multiple males in a car).

This is never followed through on, though. If it's about relationships and "things happening in our homes," what happened in the home of the Yellow King? What were his relationships like? We never actually understand what is happening or what led to it, and more to the point, neither do the characters. I won't deny, I really liked the dialogue where McConaughey complains about how they didn't get everybody involved and Woody responds, "And we ain't gonna get 'em all, that ain't what kind of world it is, but we got ours."

I like the idea of a finite character-world where not every last thread will be tied together to make a dramatically perfect story, but at the same time, I felt cheated by how little I did get dramatically speaking. It's one thing to try to go a different route from the standard hour-long police procedural where every last loose end gets tied up before the end credits roll, but after eight episodes and however many diegetic years during which time McConaughey devoted his life to putting that puzzle together, I wanted a hell of a lot more than what I got.

If that's more me bitching than it is me identifying crucial flaws in the overall conceptual edifice, I'll accept that, but I think it's a valid criticism of elements which, if handled better, could've elevated the series rather than weigh it down.

Also, all the stuff about how McConaughey is a walking Heidegger ignores its purpose - organic character arc, and even in terms of veracity, is far more rooted in research than the pop psychology sessions in Hannibal (I've only seen Season 1 though). Screw that even because, you know, fuck veracity; everything Cohle says (especially the "time is a flat circle" speech) ties in perfectly with how the story plays out.

Realism isn't my primary concern. It's part of the problem with the way McConaughey's character was written, the way it felt so abstract and not grounded in the concrete situations in which his character was enveloped, but realism is not a prerequisite to great storytelling. In fact, I find the hyperbolic nature of Hannibal to be its greatest strength.

I think there's a point about Kubrick paradigmatically explicated in this surprisingly solid internet write-up that will prove equally relevant for a critical context in which to assess Hannibal.

Kubrick once told Jack Nicholson, "We're not interested in photographing the reality. We're interested in photographing the photograph of the reality."[2] Stanley Kubrick's films are not fictions but psychic documentaries. Suspending our disbelief

 

[Bullitt68]

More on True Detective:

This was the little metaphysical soliloquy that told us what the show was about. It outlines the truth of our perceptions as audience members, no, fourth-dimensional audience members, looking in (at story). As an audience staring at our LEDs at a visual story, we have numerous luxuries. We can see Cohle and Hart in 2014, in 1995, in 2001. Given our fourth-dimensional vantage point, we can see the threads that connect one character to the next, one theme to a set of characters. Hence, it is natural for us to hypothesise, theorise, to try to find answers, to connect the dots. But, as fourth dimensional beings, to us "it's a circle". It isn't as multi-faceted as a sphere. It only exists so we can make broader connections, not connections that tell us about the yellow king specifically, but about men like the yellow king, men who, whether they are within the frame or without, constantly affect the circumstances of women and men.

I don't know anything about quantum theory, but my interpretation of that M-theory stuff is that the fourth-dimensional vantage point is better, at least in the sense of being able to see everything from a teleological perspective. Neither McConaughey nor Harrelson can perceive a telos inasmuch as they are barred from a fourth-dimensional perspective. According to your contention, that the fourth-dimensional perspective is a distinctly spectatorial (in every sense) perspective (and therefore our perspective as the spectators of this series), the fact that we are just as unable to perceive a telos should signal our placement at a different dimensional vantage point, one shared by McConaughey and Harrelson.

Without wanting to go too far down the theological rabbit hole, a fourth-dimensional perspective that can not only recognize but chart beginnings, middles, and ends; a perspective that sees, knows, and understands all, that sounds to me like the perspective of a creator, not a spectator, which is to say, an author. And this is why I'm so hard on True Detective: The author of this series threw so much shit at the wall that it all splattered together and I can't even tell what stuck. The fourth-dimensional perspective stuff sounds "deep," but it opens up so many incoherent character, spectatorial, and authorial positions that it ends up confusing more than illuminating.

It's not necessary for us, as fourth dimensional viewers, to understand the specific thought processes of The Yellow King, but to understand it's place in the larger story.

I'm not following you here. What do you mean it's "not necessary?" And, in support of my earlier complaints, how can we be expected to understand the "place in the larger story" of the Yellow King without understanding the Yellow King?

So when Cohle is near death, he reaches out into this fourth dimensional space, and gets a sense of the view that we have as a fourth-dimensional viewer. He feels his own existence within the larger story. All this time he's needed to find out the details (his crazy John Nash room) but once out there, even for the short time that he was, he sees only what we've seen. That The Yellow King is simply part of this larger story. That as a character within his story on earth, not only can he not see the threads that we can, but he can't even see the rest of the members of the cult, because he is bound by the realities of being someone on earth, like you and me when we read about a captured serial killer and worry about whether he has influenced/affected/killed others.

Here again you've gotten tripped up by equating the fourth-dimensional perspective with a spectatorial position. If McConaughey truly occupied a fourth-dimensional perspective, he should've been able to see all of the players and all of the threads, but because he is "someone on Earth," he therefore couldn't have possibly achieved for even a brief moment a fourth-dimensional perspective. You also went from placing us above McConaughey ("not only can he not see the threads that we can") to placing us on the same level ("he is bound by the realities of being someone on Earth, like you and me"). I'm losing track of which dimension I'm in.

It took their transcending to this other world, even if only momentarily, for them to understand that they wiped out a truly evil being, and that light had replaced it, however small the difference might appear in the night sky.

Again, I don't quite support the idea of slipping between dimensions, but on your point about the Yellow King being "a truly evil being," this would seem to invite a linkage between True Detective and the concept of the multiverse. Rather than thinking about dimensions, with a fourth-dimensional perspective representing an ostensibly omniscient perspective, I think the idea of multiple universes (e.g., the McConaughey/Harrelson universe versus the Yellow King/cult universe) and our privileged view into only one is a better approximation of our spectatorial position. Added to which, for me as a spectator, I always find it compelling when multiple universes interpenetrate (I'm thinking here of the two films I mentioned earlier in connection with True Detective: Angel Heart and 8MM), something that unfortunately never happened in True Detective.

 

[HUNTERMANIA]

Bullitt don't be mad at me! I PROMISE as soon as I finish Lost (almost done) I will watch Burn Notice. But I totally agree with everything you said about Hannibal, so Ricky take Bullitt's response as if it were mine as well because he can explain it much better than I do but we have the same sentiment on every point. I will also say that initially I thought Bullitt was going a little bit too far when he said Hannibal was better than True Detective, but that's only because I didn't fully understand what I was watching in Hannibal at that point in time. I like True Detective, because I like it's style and I like how all the 'philosophical gibberish' as Bullitt phrases it, lol, is put in the show. I think it fits in perfectly, and I don't really agree that it's gibberish. HOWEVER, Hannibal IS better on every level. Hannibal is the only show I've ever watched that I thought I was actually being taught about the nature of human psychology while watching. Like, I draw conclusions, I reach for ways to connect every film and tv show to my own life and that's how I enjoy most entertainment - understanding the characters through the prism of my own experience. Hannibal, however, forced me to learn and think about myself and human psychology through the CHARACTER'S experience, not my own, which was totally unique for me. I think this is because of how complex the story is, how layered the characters are, and how deep the psychological development of every scene is. Every single bit of Hannibal, besides the black comedy comments here and there (it's actually a brilliant comedy as well, which is fucking amazing), builds on itself. Every little detail matters. There is no fluff.


I'm not liking this 5th season of Lost really at all

 

[speakhandsforme]

Maybe you cinephiles and film aficionados can help me out here. One film that received fairly widespread critical acclaim that I just can't appreciate is Scorsese's The Departed. From the stiff acting, to the generic plot that too often strays aimlessly into unnecessary scenes, to the horribly cheesy and unnatural dialogue, I cannot understand how it can be regarded as a great film, let alone a modern gangster classic. I honestly feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I hear people recall the film with such admiration. While I don't think it's terrible, I think it's far closer to being terrible than it is to being a classic film.

Does anyone else agree?

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

If you care, these were my thoughts after I finished True Detective:

If you thought breaking bad was crap i'd stop listening there.

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

Maybe you cinephiles and film aficionados can help me out here. One film that received fairly widespread critical acclaim that I just can't appreciate is Scorsese's The Departed. From the stiff acting, to the generic plot that too often strays aimlessly into unnecessary scenes, to the horribly cheesy and unnatural dialogue, I cannot understand how it can be regarded as a great film, let alone a modern gangster classic. I honestly feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I hear people recall the film with such admiration. While I don't think it's terrible, I think it's far closer to being terrible than it is to being a classic film.

Does anyone else agree?

It's plenty good.

 

[theskza]

Bullitt don't be mad at me! I PROMISE as soon as I finish Lost (almost done) I will watch Burn Notice.


I'm not liking this 5th season of Lost really at all

Yeah it got weird lol

 

[HUNTERMANIA]

Flemmy have you watched Hannibal yet


Ok, that was the most annoying 8 episode stretch ever in season 5. I'm hoping it turns around now.

 

[KOQ24]

Maybe you cinephiles and film aficionados can help me out here. One film that received fairly widespread critical acclaim that I just can't appreciate is Scorsese's The Departed. From the stiff acting, to the generic plot that too often strays aimlessly into unnecessary scenes, to the horribly cheesy and unnatural dialogue, I cannot understand how it can be regarded as a great film, let alone a modern gangster classic. I honestly feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I hear people recall the film with such admiration. While I don't think it's terrible, I think it's far closer to being terrible than it is to being a classic film.

Does anyone else agree?

nope,its in my scorsese top 3 and ive seen 90% of his films.
the only thing thats "overrated" about the movie is nicholsons performance

 

[HUNTERMANIA]

Ok, season 5 is starting to turn around.. I was starting to feel like violated, like, I had been wronged by watching the first 8 episodes of this season I was so frustrated, lmao, but it's getting back to something decent again.

Also, is it just me or is Alex the sexiest girl on there? She's got that look to her, IDK how to describe it, it's different...I like it, lol.


But these DI people are annoying as fuck, like for real for real.

 

[SoulBrotherNo1]

Maybe you cinephiles and film aficionados can help me out here. One film that received fairly widespread critical acclaim that I just can't appreciate is Scorsese's The Departed. From the stiff acting, to the generic plot that too often strays aimlessly into unnecessary scenes, to the horribly cheesy and unnatural dialogue, I cannot understand how it can be regarded as a great film, let alone a modern gangster classic. I honestly feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I hear people recall the film with such admiration. While I don't think it's terrible, I think it's far closer to being terrible than it is to being a classic film.

Does anyone else agree?

For my money it might be the best in its genre. But it doesnt touch Scorseses best films, like Taxi Driver and Goodfellas.

 

[SoulBrotherNo1]

Finished Breaking Bad by the way. Incredible series. There were some points in season 2 and 3 when I felt its dragging, as they spent a bit more time with family drama as it was necessary, but damn it was worth to stay around for the final two seasons.

Started Walking Dead, Im in mid season 2. This is the first zombie-anything I have seen, it started of surprisingly well, but it already starts to turn into a bit repetitive cliffhanger-fest. Hope its just temporary.

 

[Ricky13]

At first glance, I think it's safe to say that the problems you ran into with HUNTER stem from your phrasing. First, to say the show "devolves" into an episodic structure is to miss the design (no pun intended ) of the series, with the episodic feel not only mirroring but enhancing the (psychoanalytic) sense of weekly "visits" with the characters (the "good" doctor in particular). Even acknowledging the collaborative and contingent nature of TV production, with the way that show runs, I'd be hard-pressed to find anything in the series that escapes Bryan Fuller's vision and the idea of the series devolving from an original, virginal purity is off the mark.

This is all preference. Towards the end of the first season, by the the time Eddie Izzard comes on to the scene with his terrible American accent (he's my favorite stand-up comedian ever, by the way), I was pretty out of it.

"Devolves" in the context of my use of the word equates more to diminishing returns. Yeah it's steady. Yeah you get to know more about the characters. For me, week in, week out, it felt like more of the same.

You're right, the vision is never lost. It knows what it's doing. I just don't care for the format. One of the things I disliked most about the show was the conversations between Hannibal and Will. Will's development through Hannibal always seemed very tenuously linked to the murder of the week. Just felt like a lot of trying too hard, and the kind of psychological back and forth that was constantly proving to itself how clever it was. It reminded me of House when the the titular character would meet his intellectual/emotional match every few episodes. There's a ceiling to how interesting that can be for me.

I am very willing to acknowledge there's some bias on my part here with regard to the format. But I know my psych. Some of it made me cringe. I enjoy simpler psychological ideas embedded in plot (see my bit about No Country...).

My favorite bits ended up, ironically, being its style. I loved the editing. The mapping out of Graham's vision of a crime scene. It functioned best when it used its aesthetic to realize its imagined dreamscapes. That was awesome.

I don't dislike Hannibal. I think it's slick as hell, and if I'm in the right mood, a lot of fun. It doesn't stay with me though. But I do need to see Season 2.

Second, saying that the show tries to "remain propulsive" implies that it fails, a point on which I (and I think it's safe to assume HUNTER as well) would disagree. In fact, I'd argue that the show's propulsion is virtually unmatched on the basis of the extraordinarily dense webs of competing motivations between Hannibal and Will (with Jack Crawford circling on the periphery).

I always see narrative propulsion as a function of cause-effect. This happens therefore this happens but this happens next so this happens next and so on.....

With Will and Hannibal instead of therefores and buts, I get thens. Serial killer kills, then Will and Hannibal meet, then serial killer kills then Will and Hannibal meet. Sure, what goes on around them, with Dr. Bloom and that girl etc. feeds into it, but it all seemed very cyclical when I first saw it. Very lather-rinse-repeat until the final episode.

Third, to claim that the character work occurs "on the fringes" or, at best, as an "oblique" result of a given episode likewise misses Fuller's design: The episodes themselves (i.e., the killer of the week plots) occur on the fringes. The killings and the situations into which Hannibal and Will are thrown are melodramatic, over-the-top (indeed, theatrical) but it's always for the sake of the show's stunning exploration into human behavior (both at its most noble and its most depraved) which is elaborated through the relationship between Hannibal and Will.

Just out of curiosity, and I don't mean this as any sort of challenge, what does this show explore? What did you glean from the sessions?

I like the melodramatic aspect of it, for what it's worth. I love everything it does tonally.

To preserve your connection between Hannibal and The Wire, you seem to be trying to force the former into the latter's template (a template which isn't exclusive to The Wire, of course, one which is more accurately and generally the HBO template from Oz through The Wire up to True Blood) and it's continually distorting Hannibal. To say that Hannibal can't "cover" the entire cast implies that it wants to.

I know it doesn't want to. From the very start of this conversation I've talked about how it's functioning differently from The Wire. I was simply explaining why I preferred the approach of The Wire. I like how Bubbles ties into the ideas of the show. I love how every little bit sergeant reflects the show's view. I'm constantly reminded of its ideas. I like how in Fargo, even Mike Yanagita had a purpose aligned with the central idea of the film. How McCauley is the flip side to Hanna. This is my favorite kind of viewing.

I actually disagree very little with you. I think we both have the same understanding of how Hannibal works. You like it. I don't so much. Where we disagree: I think stories that start from an idea forces one to build better characters. And that starting from character will loosen reliance on an idea.

It's not that the show lacks an "overarching idea." Rather, it's that there's no way to get at the overarching idea without working through the depths of the lead characters. It can't sacrifice in-depth character work for the sake of an abstract meditation on a theme. These two things which you are artificially separating for the sake of exegesis are indissolubly linked in this series. Hannibal is interested in the fragility, the vulnerability, the depravity, and the resiliency of the human mind. To attempt to broach this intellectual water in an abstract fashion would lead down a path to surrealism. Instead of surrealism, Fuller opts for melodrama. It's a subtle distinction, but it cannot be claimed to be a distinction without a difference, because even though Fuller is skilled enough to work in elements of the surreal, he knows he cannot go all the way down that path because in doing so he would lose the essential, human element that the show needs and that it gets by virtue of the relationship between Hannibal and Will.

Forget my earlier question (What is it exploring?). I see your answer here. I'll look more closely when I watch it again.

Surrealism, though, is not the only way outside of melodrama to explore this. Media can be dry as a bone and explore this stuff as well. You just like this better's all. I'm sure it helps that it's veeery purty.

so Ricky take Bullitt's response as if it were mine as well because he can explain it much better than I do but we have the same sentiment on every point.

I like you and all, but I won't do this. You disagree with me? Use your words. There's a reason when Bullitt quotes someone I ignore that part of his post. I want your ideas. Not his.

Maybe you cinephiles and film aficionados can help me out here. One film that received fairly widespread critical acclaim that I just can't appreciate is Scorsese's The Departed. From the stiff acting, to the generic plot that too often strays aimlessly into unnecessary scenes, to the horribly cheesy and unnatural dialogue, I cannot understand how it can be regarded as a great film, let alone a modern gangster classic. I honestly feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I hear people recall the film with such admiration. While I don't think it's terrible, I think it's far closer to being terrible than it is to being a classic film.

Does anyone else agree?

The acting is phenomenal. I will never understand how easily people dismiss acting. I only struggle with Leo because in all his "tortured" roles (The Departed, Inception, Shutter Island), he doesn't seem to work enough on the "pro" side of his character. I can never buy that he's a cop or a master thief.

The film itself is well-directed. Infernal Affairs is better written. It's not one of favorite Scorsese films.

 

[HUNTERMANIA]

I did use my words - my perspective on why I liked Hannibal separate from rebutting any of your points, but Bullitt explained point by point exactly what I think in response to your criticisms. You don't have to make an argument against me again or something over the same points he made, I'm just saying, I agree with Bullitt lol.


and dude... OF COURSE the serial killer kills someone and THEN Hannibal and Will meet, that's the whole basis of their interaction - how the hell else would it work? Our point is that these interactions are extremely meaningful... but also, Hannibal sets up some of these interactions himself, so it's not always incidental, it is causal like you say you want.

 

[Ricky13]

and dude... OF COURSE the serial killer kills someone and THEN Hannibal and Will meet, that's the whole basis of their interaction - how the hell else would it work? Our point is that these interactions are extremely meaningful... but also, Hannibal sets up some of these interactions himself, so it's not always incidental, it is causal like you say you want.

I'm sure there's more causality than I'm willing to give it credit for. They meet in organic ways, and because the murder has happened.

However, do that every week and it seems less causal and more convenient, hence a "then". So enjoyment comes down to how much you enjoy the interactions. As explained to Bullitt, I didn't care for them. Some of the back and forth I really couldn't stand.

Funny thing is, I was waiting more for the murders than for those sessions. They were far more cinematic to me than anything going on between Hannibal and Will.

 

[HUNTERMANIA]

I'm sure there's more causality than I'm willing to give it credit for. They meet in organic ways, and because the murder has happened.

However, do that every week and it seems less causal and more convenient, hence a "then". So enjoyment comes down to how much you enjoy the interactions. As explained to Bullitt, I didn't care for them. Some of the back and forth I really couldn't stand.

Funny thing is, I was waiting more for the murders than for those sessions. They were far more cinematic to me than anything going on between Hannibal and Will.

Why couldn't you stand it? You said earlier some of the psych made you cringe, which parts?

I'm about to rewatch the show and I'll go through episode by episode what parts stand out to me as meaningful like you asked Bullitt in your last post. And, you have to remember, a lot of what is happening to Will is off-screen in the 1st season because we don't know what is going on, we just have Will's perspective... and that was super meaningful to me because I know what it's like to have problems you can't find answers to, to feel like doctors are lying to you, to get brain scans, etc etc. Obviously not on the same level, but his whole manipulation/transformation really resonated with me.

But there is more than enough seen from how Hannibal slowly points Will and others in the direction he wants them to go in, it's just very subtle, and everything he says has a purpose whether it's true or not, it's not intended to be true necessarily, he's only trying to manipulate whoever he's talking to.


Also, as far as the incidental - Hannibal is appointed as Will's psychologist/psychiatrist, so their meetings are separate from the murders as well... which I can't believe I didn't mention to start with. The whole thing makes perfect sense: Will goes back into the field, Hannibal is appointed his psychologist to check on him to make sure he stays stable bc Will has a history of problems dealing with these things. Now, if you want to argue the fact that the murders just HAPPEN to relate to things going on with Will and Hannibal and how that's incidental, then sure, but every show and movie has things like that, otherwise they would just be random stories.

 

[speakhandsforme]

The acting is phenomenal. I will never understand how easily people dismiss acting. I only struggle with Leo because in all his "tortured" roles (The Departed, Inception, Shutter Island), he doesn't seem to work enough on the "pro" side of his character. I can never buy that he's a cop or a master thief.

The film itself is well-directed. Infernal Affairs is better written. It's not one of favorite Scorsese films.

nope,its in my scorsese top 3 and ive seen 90% of his films.
the only thing thats "overrated" about the movie is nicholsons performance

I just can't appreciate the collective performance, especially given the immense talent on board, though I think it's mostly due to a poorly adapted script and dialogue. Some of the intended one-liners are just so ridiculously unnatural to me and some of the scenes just seem really unnecessary and disruptive, which could also be owed to post-production and trimming the film down past its optimal length.

While I'm not a huge fan of DiCaprio, I think he's obviously done some good work, but that this was one of his stiffer performances. Wahlberg, I believe, stepped up his game, but he's just not a very good or believable actor in the first place. Nicholson is obviously an incredible talent and has had some of my favorite roles, but I thought this was one of his less impressive performances. Damon is actually the guy who I think performs his duties best within the cast: I'm still not sure he was the best casting for the role, but I think the did a good job.

The acting, though, is not the main fault with the film. It's the writing and, though I feel like a heretic saying it about Scorsese, the direction.

For my money it might be the best in its genre. But it doesnt touch Scorseses best films, like Taxi Driver and Goodfellas.

Wouldn't you consider both Goodfellas and The Departed to be in the mob film genre?

For me, Scorsese's movies (that I've seen) go:

1. Raging Bull
2. Taxi Driver
3. Mean Streets
4. The Last Temptation of Christ
5. After Hours
6. Cape Fear
7. The Aviator
8. Goodfellas
9. Shutter Island
10. Hugo
[considerable drop off]
11. The Wolf of Wall Street
12. The Departed

Also, I should note that this list is heavily tilted by my personal preference. Goodfellas would likely be much higher if I didn't not enjoy it all that much personally.

 

[Bullitt68]

I PROMISE as soon as I finish Lost (almost done) I will watch Burn Notice.

I'm holding you to this now, HUNTER. Since I've been twisting your arm, though, I'll say that, if you end up not really digging it by the end of the second season, you can move on to something else. I don't want to force you to plow through all seven seasons if it stopped clicking much earlier (or, even worse, never clicked with you at all). The first season lays the groundwork, although it's a credit to the show that it doesn't need much time to get going, and then the second season is an incredible step-up. The second season has always been my favorite, plus it's the one with Tricia Helfer, so if you're not sold by the second season, you never will be and I won't bitch if you decide to move on.

Going in, though, keep in mind that Burn Notice features the most extensive utilization of the doppelg

 

[SoulBrotherNo1]

You think The Departed is the best crime movie ever made?

Nope. But its my favourite thriller. I like it more than Silence of the Lambs, or any Hitchcock (okay, there are a few close calls there), or any Fincher, etc.

There are plenty of better crime movies, but they are all dramas, first and foremost.