Not big on animation (although
Mask of the Phantasm still has some nostalgia value) plus I've read that everybody is hating on it.
@Dragonlordxxxxx, anything to add?
We're on the same wavelength, but I'd go beyond escapism/wish-fulfillment, which connote triviality/naivety, to
affirmation. The relevant passage of Rand's that brought this into focus for me is the following, in which she talks about "thrillers" and why they're so awesome:
'What people seek in thrillers is the spectacle of
man’s efficacy: of his ability to fight for his values and to achieve them. What they see is a condensed, simplified pattern, reduced to its essentials: a man fighting for a vital goal - overcoming one obstacle after another - facing terrible dangers and risks - persisting through an excruciating struggle - and winning. Far from suggesting an easy or “unrealistic” view of life, a thriller suggests the necessity of a difficult struggle; if the hero is “larger-than-life,” so are the villains and the dangers. An abstraction has to be “larger-than-life” - to encompass any concretes that individual men may be concerned with, each according to the scale of his own values, goals and ambition. The scale varies; the psychological relationships involved remain the same. The obstacles confronting an average man are, to him, as formidable as Bond’s adversaries; but what the image of Bond tells him is: “It can be done.”
What men find in the spectacle of the ultimate triumph of the good is the inspiration to fight for one’s own values in the moral conflicts of one’s own life. If the proclaimers of human impotence, the seekers of automatic security, protest that “life is not like that, happy endings are not guaranteed to man” - the answer is: a thriller is more realistic than such views of existence, it shows men the
only road that can make any sort of happy ending
possible.
Here, we come to an interesting paradox. It is only the superficiality of the Naturalists that classifies Romanticism as “an escape”; this is true only in the very superficial sense of contemplating a glamorous vision as a relief from the gray burden of “real-life” problems. But in the deeper, metaphysical-moral-psychological sense, it is
Naturalism that represents an escape - an escape from choice, from values, from moral responsibility - and it is
Romanticism that trains and equips man for the battles he has to face in reality.'
All of this sounds good to me. It sounds
right. I can't reconcile it, though, with what you go on to talk about:
Shitty example aside (
) I want to somehow hold on to the Randian idea of art-as-affirmation as well as this idea of art-as-expression. I don't want to go as far as Rand and argue that, if a film is
not about man's triumph, then it
can't be "good." That's bullshit.
Citizen Kane is extraordinary. So is
Raging Bull, and
Barry Lyndon, and
Once Upon a Time in America, and
The Sand Pebbles, and a million other examples.
It would seem that I have two options (at least I can only see two at present). First, I could use
Hannibal logic and say that movies like the ones I listed are valuable as negatives that allow people to see the positives more clearly. By providing "cautionary tales" and the like, they still serve a useful and beneficial purpose in - are "good" for - the human quest for happiness and betterment. Second, I could put a ceiling over
how "good" movies like the ones I listed can be; I can appreciate them for the reasons you mentioned, but only to an extent, and not more than more optimistic and affirming movies.
Right now, I'm leaning more towards
Hannibal logic
The very first thing I ever submitted for publication, I submitted on the recommendation of a professor who'd previously published something in that journal (and the guy who runs the journal was my professor's dissertation supervisor years before). I got rejected, but in a ruthless, borderline unprofessional fashion, so I responded in kind. Had a nice e-mail battle (totally burned that bridge but I'd do it again in a heartbeat) and one of the things he said was I had too much jargon. I responded by saying the stuff my professor wrote for him, including the essay he published in his journal, had ten times the jargon. The response I got: "Well that's different."
The joys of academia.
I think I'm going to spend the next few months working on my own shit, maybe picking up another TV show after I'm through with
South Park, trying to stay disciplined working my way through Fight Pass, and then when I want to take a week or two off from full-on research mode, I'm going to go through every last fucking one of these Marvel movies in chronological order, come up with Venn Diagrams and bar graphs and pie charts, and then we'll see where the function's at.
Seriously, though, I forgot to bring this up earlier, but the top dog film scholar David Bordwell has a blog, and since he's always loved dealing with storytelling mechanics, he recently put up a guest post by some dude in the UCLA film production department who talks about character arcs that I thought would be right up your alley:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2...the-character-arc-a-guest-post-by-rory-kelly/.
I'd disagree with the first part but I'd have to agree with the second part. However, I'm not as pessimistic as you that this is something that is structurally unchangeable for Marvel movies.
I get uncomfortable with gestures to the ineffable (even when they come from Bruce Lee
).
To bring some of these threads together, are you in the subjective camp? It sounds like this is leading to a "If it works for you, it works and it can't be explained; if it doesn't work, it doesn't and no explanation can ever change that."
When I look back over my own experiences - which is always my first move even before I come in here to argue with all of you - this isn't the case. When we were arguing about
Edge of Tomorrow, you opened my eyes to an aspect that didn't work for me initially but that,
after your explanation, clicked. To go back to the Mad Max heresy, I still think the movie was a turd, but by you and
Flemmy spending so much time elucidating the thematic goings-on, so many elements were brought into focus that I'd missed on my own, elements that then fed into my later reappraisal.
I'm not a fan of the "First watch - thumbs up or thumbs down - case closed" trajectory. Plus, as I mentioned, I'm not a fan of the ineffable as an answer.
I might as well just ask if you support the existence of
Death Proof, but if you support from where I started that scene to that stupid girl actually saying "gulp" like she was a fucking Looney Tunes character, then we're through.
I haven't watched anything of theirs beyond the Matrix movies, but on this description, it sounds like I'd like their newer stuff.
This is why your above description sounded weird to me, because they sure as fuck abandoned the mythological trajectory in the Matrix movies.
Comparing their shit from the last decade, Nolan is WAY out in front IMO.
First off, I just have to laugh at your response to reading a landmark piece of film scholarship by the premiere living film scholar.
I'll start by addressing the points you do have regarding what Bordwell had to say:
1) "It tried to find conventions shared with nothing but examples of films made 50 years ago or more"
The arthouse exploded in the 1950s and 1960s and that essay was written in 1979 (think about that: Bordwell was writing that while Bergman and Tarkovsky were active arthouse Gods). So, in the context of Bordwell's argument, that was actually very contemporary and relevant. From our current standpoint, it's still relevant because those movies and filmmakers are the progenitors of the Von Trier's and the Refn's of today.
2) "The sample size is too small."
Over the course of that essay, Bordwell invokes the films of Fellini, Bergman, Wajda, Truffaut, Polanski, Godard, Resnais, De Sica, Pasolini, Buñuel, Herzog, Antonioni, Ray, and even Dreyer. That's not a small sample size.
Moving beyond your points, for a summary of the essay, Bordwell is saying that the art movie is just as formulaic as any other mode of filmmaking, and he maintains that, by contrasting the art movie formula with the classical Hollywood formula, it becomes easier to recognize its particular formula.
In contrast to classical narrative filmmaking, where cause-and-effect logic generates a narrative that "projects its action through psychologically-defined, goal-oriented characters," art movies tend to loosen - if not outright reject - cause-and-effect logic. As Bordwell writes: "In
L'Avventura, for example, Anna is lost and never found; in
Breathless, the reasons for Patricia's betrayal of Michael remain unknown; in
Bicycle Thieves, the future of Antonio and his son is not revealed."
However, Bordwell notes that it's not merely the presence of these devices that is important to note, but, paging
Ricky, their function. The art cinema is, as Bordwell observes, "classical in its reliance upon psychological causation"; however, "whereas characters of classical narrative have clear-cut traits and objectives, the characters of the art cinema lack defined desires and goals. Characters may act for inconsistent reasons (Marcello in
La Dolce Vita) or may question themselves about their goals (Borg in
Wild Strawberries and the Knight in
The Seventh Seal). Choices are vague or nonexistent. Hence a certain drifting, episodic quality to the art film's narrative. Characters may wander out and never reappear; events may lead to nothing. The Hollywood protagonist speeds directly toward the target; lacking a goal, the art film character slides passively from one situation to another."
This is not to say, as Bordwell is quick to point out, that the narrative trajectory of the art movie protagonist is
completely random:
"It has a rough shape: a trip ... an idyll ... a search ... even the making of a film ... Especially apt for the broken teleology of the art film is the biography of the individual ... Thus, the art film's thematic of
la condition humaine, its attempt to pronounce judgments on 'modern life' as a whole, proceeds from its formal needs: had the characters a goal, life would no longer seem so meaningless."
Further exploring the nature of the character arcs redolent of art movies, Bordwell posits:
"The art cinema is less concerned with action than reaction; it is a cinema of psychological effects in search of their causes. The dissection of feeling is often represented explicitly as therapy and cure ... but even when it is not, the forward flow of causation is braked and characters pause to seek the aetiology of their feelings. Characters often tell one another stories: autobiographical events (especially from childhood), fantasies, and dreams ... The hero becomes a supersensitive individual ... [who] often shudders on the edge of breakdown ... [and] unrelieved misery."
Moving from characters to directors, Bordwell then discusses the conventions that follow from the emphasis, both in production and in reception, on the auteur:
"The competent viewer watches the film expecting not order in the narrative but stylistic signatures in the narration: technical touches (Truffaut's freeze frames, Antonioni's pans) and obsessive motifs (Buñuel's anticlericalism, Fellini's shows, Bergman's character names) ... [as well as] foreground[ing] the narrational act by posing enigmas. In the classic detective tale, however, the puzzle is one of story: who did it? In the art cinema, the puzzle is one of plot: who is telling this story? how is this story being told? why is this story being told this way?"
Lastly, and most holistically, Bordwell discusses the solicitation of the art film given its MO:
"The art film is nonclassical in that it foregrounds deviations from the classical norm - there are certain gaps and problems. But these very deviations are
placed, resituated as realism (in life things happen this way) or authorial commentary (the ambiguity is symbolic). Thus the art film solicits a particular reading procedure: Whenever confronted with a problem in causation, temporality, or spatiality, we first seek realistic motivation (is a character's mental state causing the uncertainty? Is life just leaving loose ends?). If we're thwarted, we next seek authorial motivation (what is being 'said' here? What significance justifies the violation of the norm?). Ideally, the film hesitates, suggesting character subjectivity, life's untidiness, and author's vision. Whatever is excessive in one category must belong to another. Uncertainties persist but are understood as such, as
obvious uncertainties, so to speak. Put crudely, the slogan of the art cinema might be: 'When in doubt, read for maximum ambiguity' ... A banal remark of the 1960s, that such films make you leave the theater thinking, is not far from the mark: the ambiguity, the play of thematic interpretation, must not be halted at the film's close. Furthermore, the pensive ending acknowledges the author as a peculiarly humble intelligence; s/he knows that life is more complex than art can ever be, and the only way to respect this complexity is to leave causes dangling [and] questions unanswered. With the open and arbitrary ending, the art film reasserts that the ambiguity is the dominant principle of intelligibility, that we are to watch less for the tale than the telling, that life lacks the neatness of art and
this art knows it."
You can supply your own examples if you don't know/like Bordwell's, but this is how the art film works. They're not unique snowflakes in comparison to the sausage machine that is Hollywood. AIl cinema - indeed, all storytelling - comes down to formula and function.
What's so different about the gap between
Eraserhead and
Stalker compared to the gap between
Commando and
Out for Justice? Or
Scream and
The Collector? Or
Pretty Woman and
The Proposal? Can you actually back this up or is it just a guiding assumption that you take for granted based on the sedimented dogma of artistic elitism?
You have perfectly rendered the paradox here. The way you respond to Refn's films
is perfectly in line with the way he wants people to respond to his films. You are being faithful to the author's intention. As you should be. As we all should be.
Take note, JB: An art movie guy is backing Bordwell
Have you
never gotten more than just nostalgia?
The Green Hornet was off the charts nostalgia for me, to the point where I was fucking jumping up and down in my seat in the theater and with wood harder than is possible with any amount of Viagra, but I also enjoyed
what they did with the material, which was a pleasant surprise. My uncle also always goes on about how, as a lifelong Star Trek fan, he is beside himself with how much he's loving what they're doing with his beloved material in these new movies, including some of the tweaks they've made.
Is it possible that you and
europe are just immediately face-palming the second you get even a whiff of nostalgia rather than following its path through the new storyworld?
