By Dan Jardine
I am not of the Pauline Kael School of film criticism that argues that your initial impression of a film is the only one that matters, and to revisit and reevaluate a film is a fool’s errand fraught with the potential for emotional and intellectual dishonesty. Indeed, I can think of plenty of legitimate reasons to take stock of a film anew. What if there were mitigating environmental factors -- such as problems with the projector or the sound, or even with the audience itself -- that hampered your ability to enjoy the film? What of format issues? I mean, what if, like me, your first experience with Lawrence of Arabia was on television, in full screen format and interrupted by commercials? Or what if you were in the wrong head space after a fight with your partner or a bad day at work and weren’t able to give the film the attention and scrutiny it deserved?
More importantly, and more to the point of this piece, what if you just aren’t ready for the film? What if you are too raw, too young, simply too damned inexperienced to appreciate the qualities of the film in question? Would you not have an obligation to assess these films again, once you had put the necessary miles on your odometer? Such has been the case many times over the course of my lifetime as a film viewer and reviewer, and it has occasionally led me to startling revelations. As I am limited to discussing five films on which my opinion has done a complete 180 degree turn, I have arbitrarily chosen to look at films I first saw I when was not yet ready to fully appreciate their wonders.
1. Too Cinematically Inexperienced: Citizen Kane. It’s a cliché to be among the hordes who confess to being confounded by all the praise heaped on this movie. It seemed to me merely a mildly engaging character study of an overly ambitious man. I’m just glad I stuck with it, watched a truckload of good movies from the era, and did my homework by reading my fair share of film analysis, then gave the film another chance when I could better appreciate why it is not simply a cinematic milestone, but also a reel blast. Kane is, as Roger Ebert ably notes, “a gathering of all the lessons of the emerging era of sound,” but if anything, he soft sells Welles' accomplishments. Remember, Kane's debued when films were still in their infancy -- barely half a century old -- and just as Cervantes brought together many of the elements of the novel and through some sort of artistic alchemical experimentation managed to create Don Quixote, so too did Welles draw on all his knowledge and that of brilliant collaborators like Gregg Toland, to craft a film of rare influence and importance. As such, it is understandable how today an inexperienced viewer might miss out on things like Welles’ theatrical use of set designs and lighting and his innovative use of deep focus photography to suggest the inner workings of his main character (check out the expressionistic horror of Xanadu once Kane has lost all that is dear to him, or the insightful manipulation of same to convey the implosion of Kane’s world). Further, it was only after I’d spent time with James Joyce that I could appreciate what Welles was up to with the stream-of-consciousness-inspired, a-chronological narrative dance that marks the structure of this film. And while Kane represents the pinnacle of cinematic achievement for its day, an accumulation of all that film could do up until that point, it is equally clear that the film’s legacy -- the ever-lengthening shadow it cast over moviegoers and moviemakers -- continues to grow. However, if I’d been content with my first impression, I would never have had the chance to find myself resting in its shade.
2. Too Emotionally Inexperienced: Ikiru. Here is where you will begin to see some overlap in the explanations accompanying these choices. When I first saw Ikiru, I was also too cinematically inexperienced, with few foreign films under my belt. Furthermore, I was also in the wrong headspace because at that point, my experience of director Akira Kurosawa consisted solely of Seven Samurai, and I was childishly hoping for more of the same (see Dr. Strangelove for more of the same phenomenon at work.) But getting to the nut of it, I just wasn’t ready to be confronted by a story about a mousy old man whose life is filled with regret and fear. However, after years of struggling with the social forces of conformity, as well as awakening to the dawning realization that our bureaucratic world is filled with a seemingly incessant demand to compromise our personal dreams -- and not to mention my time spent with the existentialists (see The Conversation below for more on same) -- I was finally able to appreciate what Kurosawa had accomplished. And the iconic scene of Watanabe (the peerless Takashi Shimura) singing and swinging in the playground during a snowstorm certainly resonates more with those who know personally the terrible suffering associated with such loss.
3.and 4. (a tie) Too Intellectually Inexperienced (aka “Dumb & Dumber"): Dr. Strangelove and The Conversation. Again, you will note some category overlap. With both films I had only seen one film by each director at that point. With Kubrick, it was 2001, which I saw in the theatres at the tender age of 10. I was gobsmacked: I was equal parts fascinated and flabbergasted by Kubrick’s vision, and I went to see Dr. Strangelove hoping for more of the same. Unfamiliar with the entire canon of Kubrick, who never repeated himself, I was decidedly unimpressed by the results. With Strangelove, at least 75% of the jokes were lost on me (what can I say? I was a teenage rube from the sticks) and it wasn’t until years later that I realized that Peter Sellers (a) played 3 (and was penciled in for 4, until he broke his ankle) roles (b) was a comic genius. With The Conversation, all I knew of Coppola was The Godfather, which, as an early teen, I had to fight my parents to see, and which threw me for a loop. Literary and cinematic inexperience played a large part in my inability to appreciate Coppola’s vision—I knew nothing of existentialism or the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, nor would I for at least another decade. However, once I found them, and to some degree myself, I was able to give The Conversation the benefit of my more experienced participation, meeting the film part way, and wrapping my head and heart round the uncertain life of one of cinema's great everymen, Harry Caul.
5. Victim of (anti-) hype and the Terrible Weight of Expectations: Heaven’s
Gate. Who hadn’t heard all the tales of Michael Cimino’s cinematic Waterloo months before the film’s release? As one who had been devastated by his previous film, The Deer Hunter, I was anxiously and excitedly awaiting the release of Heaven’s Gate. That is, until the stories started to circulate about how the film was months over-schedule and tens of millions over budget. And while Cimino was spending money recklessly, he apparently did not have a coherent narrative to show for it. I admit to being swayed by these reports, and my hopes for the film dropped precipitously. And it probably didn’t help that when I did get to see the film, it was not Cimino’s cut, but the studio-orchestrated version; United Artists excised nearly half of the film’s original running time (in the interest of narrative coherence, if studio hacks are to be believed). This shortened version was a crushing disappointment, leaden-paced and consistently confusing. It was going to be years before I saw Cimino’s original version (which I will not call the director’s cut, because even this version was not Cimino’s final cut, but rather a rush job forced on him by a studio that wanted to meet the release date at year’s end). The difference between the two cuts is startling, but I shamefully admit to having been unable to see just how great the longer version of the film was until I revisited it a second time only a few years ago. I clearly needed all that time away from the “scandal” associated with the making of the film to fully appreciate the work of art before me. I’m now convinced that, despite its flaws, Heaven's Gate is a messy, bloody and profound masterpiece, an anti-epic exposing the callousness and cruelty of what passes for Truth, Justice and The American Way. Like Welles, that other great American iconoclast who spent almost the entirety of his career outside the studio system, Cimino found the followup to his greatest triumph ripped from his hands and hacked to pieces for theatrical release. In many ways, Heaven's Gate is Cimino's The Magnificent Ambersons, only with Cimino we're lucky enough to have something approximating a director's cut to look at.
So, what are the lessons we can take away from the errors of my misspent youth? Most obviously, one would be well-served by ignoring the propaganda of studio publicity machines. And one would do well to keep inexperienced teenagers away from movies of substance. Nothing will ruin a great movie quicker than being exposed to it at a too-tender age. Of course, that leads inevitably to a Catch-22. How does one get experience, unless someone gives it to ‘em, so to speak? I really don’t know. However, being able to recognize when you are ready for a film is among a cinephile’s greatest responsibilities and most important skills. To meet an artist halfway and participate as fully as possible in the artistic experience requires time, patience, experience, education and a whole lotta living. So, excuse me while I go work on all of these just a little more. I’ve got some Ozu to watch later, and I wanna be ready for it.
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Dan Jardine is a contributor to The House Next Door, the publisher of Cinemania, and a contributor to Cinemarati.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
5 for the Day: 180 Degrees
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56 comments:
Great idea, Dan, and a great post about it.
I have two off the top of my head:
1. The Long Goodbye. The first time I saw this, I thought my cineaste friends who'd sang its praises to the high heavens were out of their minds. I was a Chandler fan, and the Marlowe of this movie was the antithesis of what Marlowe should be: the anti-Bogie, in fact. On a (much) later rewatch, though, I got it and I got it in a big way. The anachronistic hero, the 70s-style hedonism, the necessity of changing the ending - all these things suddenly elevated the film, rather than dampening it.
2. Mulholland Drive. This is cheating a bit, as the final 20 minutes or so fundamentally changes the perspective on the what has happened to that point. On first viewing, though, I thought it was worse than Lost Highway. Now I think it's Lynch's best since Blue Velvet.
My biggest cinematic turn-around was with Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. I first saw it when I was 15 or 16 and hated it. I thought it was slow, boring, and didn't have nearly enough violence (all of the violence in the film is stacked at the end, so the entire film went by at a mind-numbing crawl until he shaves his hair into a mohawk and starts killing people). Revisting it after a couple years in college (and with a ton of experience in that short time with art and foriegn films), I found it to be about as technically perfect as a film can be. I also found myself more drawn to the first half of the film than the second. I think with a few years experience of being on my own, I was more drawn to the character of Travis since I found it easier to relate to him.
I had similar experiences with your first four choices, though not with Heaven's Gate, which I have not seen. But I think you bring up a point that's very appropriate to film criticism itself, as a whole. The cinema is not an "objective" phenomenon. All the subjective factors you mention, and more, contribute to our experience of watching. Not to mention that we are participants in giving meaning to what is a series of still pictures projected on a screen, along with sound.
It always irks me when critics make pronouncements as if they could possibly come up with a definitive judgement about a film. This betrays a lack of understanding of the experience. It is "ME," and my present state of mind, my background, and my desires, who essentially creates the experience, in cooperation with the unspooling piece of film. The variability of this "ME" is too great to warrant pretending to a wholly objective evaluation.
I focused entirely upon films that I reevaluated in a more positive light over time, choosing to ignore those that have degraded in my estimation over time. I wonder how many of us have looked back in shame at films we had once deemed marvellous, only to realize that the movie in question has lost some of its lustre? As an example of such a film I'll offer up Richard Rush's The Stunt Man, a film that I absolutely loved for its audaciousness and cheeky irreverence, but which I re-watched a few months back and came to the conclusion that outside of O'Toole's great performance, the film doesn't really stand up all that well. What was once provocative now seems rather quaint and even somewhat silly.
Great post, Dan. You're gonna love Ozu. I seem to have a very delayed reaction time with David Lynch. I hated Blue Velvet when I saw it the first time. It wasn't the evil parts that disturbed me, which I could laugh at as over the top, but the naive Disney-like innocence. The contrast was too stark for my young mind. Plus, for some odd reason, I never related to highschool characters when I was the same age. Except for A Straight Story and Muholland Drive, I usually start out disliking Lynch's work. His movies are like time bombs that go off in my mind a year or two later.
I remember poopooing The Godfather the first time. Silly me, I even said it was like Friday the 13 with a major character arc. Put that in the category of me thinking I knew more than I did.
For a 180 the other direction, I'll choose Sex, Lies, and Videotape. I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread once, and now I can't stand it and think Soderbergh is a boring director.
Some movies are touchstones we should see every 5 years or so. I come away from Citizen Kane with a different view of it each and every time. I also think that Hitchcock, like Ernest Hemingway,is someone who at various periods we might foolishly think we have outgrown; but we are always wrong about that.
I've gone the other way on a few movies. Network leaps most readily to mind.
The last time I watched Citizen Kane I was amazed at how much I saw, or heard really, the influence of Welles' radio days.
The Thin Red Line seems to be a popular one among people around my age. I first saw it at 17 and couldn't figure out why it was paced so glacially (fortunately, I did not fall into the "not enough explosions" camp). I later saw it in a college film class and was blown away by it.
Thanks, Wagstaff. I should mention that I've seen plenty of Ozu. I was merely on my way to see some more--specifically, more of his silent films, which I've seen very few of.
And, damn straight, he's great.
I've changed my mind about a number of movies over the years, sometimes after fixing my opinions definitively in print. The number one example is Carlito's Way, which I treated somewhat dismissively on the grounds that I'd seen this particular story before. For a complete re-appraisal, see this piece in ReverseShot's new Brian De Palma issue.
I was also pretty bullish on Jurassic Park -- mainly because Spielberg had come off three movies in a row that disappointed me to varying degrees -- but now I find it dull, treacly and (in the scenes with the kids) condescending, though the action sequences are of course superb. (I like The Lost World better, though it doesn't so much rectify the original's flaws as replay them on a much grander, darker scale, and the grandness and darkness counts for a lot.)
I was too kind to Titanic, for the simple reason that it was the first movie I saw with my wife in a theater after our daughter was born. The blunt adolescent romanticism of the movie, couple with its immensity (we saw it at the Astor Plaza theater in Times Square, a great venue) overwhelmed me. I saw it again in a theater and was impatient almost from the beginning, and when I've checked in on it again on cable, it's seemed dumber and more pointlessly overlong and profligate each time.
I gave They Live a vicious pan in my college newspaper 19 years ago, but now I think it's one of Carpenter's best and most unmercifully satirical movies -- maybe a classic.
I hated Blade Runner when I first saw it on a crappy VHS copy while camped on the carpet of a buddy's summer house. Found it obtuse and dreary and was thoroughly unengaged by the plot which really made no sense. I've gone back and watched it under more ideal audio/visual circumstances and read up on the film (in a post-screening, "these people are out of their minds" harumpf) and even played the rather well-done computer game which fills in a lot of the gaps in the plot and back-story and after many, many viewings I now consider it one of my favorite films. Ditto for Scott's Alien which plays horribly on video but is mesmerizing in a dark, cavernous theater.
More recently, I despised The Devil's Rejects when I saw it in a theater but I found going back a second time, knowing how events would play out, with much of the violence robbed of its shock power, I developed a sort of grudging admiration for it.
On the flip side, I had much the same experience as Matt did with Titanic, as I saw Amelie on a first-date with a girl I'd been trying to get notice me for months and I left the theater in full on swoon mode as it seemed the perfect marriage of cinema and circumstance for amour. Now I can barely watch more than a few minutes of the film at a time as I find it overly-precious and has much the same effect as doing lines of Pixie Stix.
Andrew: Re Amelie: Am I to assume, then, that you're not still with the girl in question?
Matt:
No we're no longer together, although my interest in the film waned before it did in the girl.
A few memorable 180s:
1. Donnie Darko. Seen in a nearly-empty theater shortly after 9/11, it seemed hauntingly profound (and profoundly haunting). Each time I've seen it since it's seemed clunky and fatally uneven (especially in the humor department), a classic case of a first-time filmmaker's reach far exceeding his grasp. Listening to The director's self-absorbed "I'm going to tell you exactly what this movie is really about, no matter how lame my ideas are" DVD commentary didn't help. Also, Jake Gyllenhal's man-child routine gets on my nerves.
2. Wild at Heart. On first viewing, I thought it was shit - the worst Lynch I'd seen. A year later, on second viewing, I had a ball from beginning to end. It doesn't have the visionary depth of Lynch's best work, but taken as a tongue-in-cheek goof, it's all pretty hilarious in a nightmarish, blood-soaked kind of way.
3. Natural Born Killers. How many times did I watch this movie in high school? I've lost count. How many minutes into it did I give up the last time I tried to watch it? Ten, maybe fifteen. If nothing else, Trent Reznor and Oliver Stone are a good match; I think I surpassed them both in emotional maturity around the same time - about the time I hit voting age.
4. Pink Floyd: The Wall. See #3.
5. Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. As a kid (which I was in 1985) I always dismissed this movie as lame and stupid (although I would watch it anyway if it happened to be on, just 'cause I was a lazy kid who would spend hours in front of the TV no matter what was on); I think I assumed it was aimed at kids younger than me and didn't watch it very closely - the first time I saw it as an adult, the entire James Brolin movie-within-the-movie conclusion was totally new to me.
Anyway, the first time I actually sat down and gave it my undivided attention, it became not only my favorite Tim Burton movie, but also one of my favorite comedies, and probably one of my all-time favorite films, period.
I had the opposite Kubrick experience. I first saw Dr. Strangelove when I was about 14 or 15 on cable (this was shortly after pay TV was introduced to Australia) and was in love. Instantly the very best movie I had ever seen.
Up until that time my movie watching experience had been very limited, I saw the mainstream stuff they showed on Sunday night TV or occasionally at the cinema, Speilberg, Lucas, Zemeckis etc. and being the youngest of four in my family, trips to the video store, which was small and not well appointed, usually ended in my siblings renting the same movies they'd seen a hundred times.
So when I saw Stangelove I was in shock. I would have to wait until university before I really started thinking about cinema the way people like us do, but Strangelove was the first step. My cultural experience had been so limited, but I took the whole thing in first viewing. It was a revelation to me that cinema so darkly funny like that existed, and I was missing out. Everything George C Scott did made me fall out of my chair laughing. I was developing the perspective to comprehend the satire as I was watching it.
That Kubrick didn't do anything that funny again or previous, disappointed me, and it took me a second viewing of 2001 to fully appreciate it.
From dislike to like:
1. Blue Velvet
From like to dislike:
1. The Breakfast Club
2. Platoon
3. Born on the 4th of July
That's all I can recall off the top of my head. If I disliked them initially, I usually don't go back, but there are a lot of cases of films I like less on later viewings, just not complete 180s.
Edward Copeland says in passing that, for the most part, after disliking a movie he doesn't seek it out again. Seems to me his honesty about this points to the hole in the whole of this 180 Degrees festival.
If you think a movie is basically lame the first time round, what could possibly induce another round? Sure, accidents happen, especially to cinema junkies trapped in a hunting lodge with a stack of laser discs. And sure, if you didn't think it was totally crappy but just sorta sucked, you might be open to giving it another go, especially if you're on a long-term contract cleaning the basement of the Canadian embassy in Malaysia. But really now, if you consciously revisit a film, especially years later after you hope your cultural intellect has developed enough to embrace the work... well, that's the point, isn't it? You're smart enough now to know that you were too stupid then and the about-face you experience now was preordained by your revisionist disposition. The gig is rigged. Especially by those who take their cue not from advertising but from criticism, who throw undefrosted freezer snacks at their children so they can post internet comments about the thematic similarities between Last Year At Marienbad and Son Of Flubber; not the Robin Williams remake, shit man, the Fred MacMurray original!
The opposite vector, now that's a serious situation. When you come back to a film because you remember it with great admiration and affection, because it figured large for you, and it fails to move you as it did before - that hurts. And there's not much comfort to be taken from recognizing that you've become a sophisticated cinema aesthete. Because the raw fact is, you've lost a friend. That film was a companion to you and now it offends you somehow or even worse just bores you. Unlike the film you disliked before and planned never to consider a second time, this film you were counting on loving or at least bloody well liking until your last supper... and the goddamn Judas has betrayed you. Of course, it's your own fault for taking your cue not from advertising but rather from criticism, especially your own, but it's still sad, isn't it? And yet, if not this then some other show must go on and the frozen food continues to find its way into the kids' faces.
Then - Ben
When I was about 16 I discovered Alex Cox with Sid and Nancy; I was so blown away by the film I immediately sought out Repo Man and loved it.
It took me a while, but I finally found a store that had a copy of Walker. And at the time, I was utterly confounded by it. I didn't hate it, but I sure as hell didn't like it. I understood vaguely what Cox was commenting on but I found the film too disorganized. I couldn't tell if Cox genuinely cared about his subject or was just trying to flip the bird to the studios and critics my making an intentionally impenatrable film.
But every few years or so, I would rent it again, just to see what I was missing, And eventually, it clicked. Particularly after 9/11. It's a brilliant satire of American hubris, and how well-intentioned intervention can spin out of control if the wrong people are involved. All too often, they are. I consider it an underlooked masterpiece.
I loathed Freddy Got Fingered after the first time I rented it, but when I'd see a clip of it from cable later I'd admire the sort of anarchy of Green basically taking millions of dollars from a studio and using it to throw up some of the most ridiculous shit imaginable. What keeps the film from succeeding, though, it's Green's smarmy insincerity- he really, truly cannot act.
Great topic!
I never disliked True Romance, but I did find myself having a craving to revisit it that was disproportionate to my initial reaction.
My most recent 180 is probably Day of the Dead, which I loathed on first viewing but now consider to be on a par with--and maybe even superior to--its predecessors. I doubt I'll ever come around on Land of the Dead, though.
180s in reverse: Jerry Maguire. It made my Top 10 of 1997; now I think it would land on the same year's Bottom 10.
Bill: "I doubt I'll ever come around on Land of the Dead, though."
I thought that one was excellent -- on par with the other three, to be sure -- so give it another shot. You might pull a 180 on that one as well.
Coming around to some types of films is I think a function of age and maturity. I never much liked classic movie musicals when I was a kid, even though I was in a few in high school (and I loved the experience) but I enjoy them tremendously today.
I loved the Bond films uncritically when I was a kid but I'm a tougher on them today--tougher, frankly, on all violent action fare. When I was a kid it was the bloodier, the better, but I've become sensitized (or re-sensitized) to casual, amoral brutality in films as an adult. Which is probably why I respect the intriguingly considered UNFORGIVEN now more than I did in 1992, when I was more interested in watching a simple oater. [But I still prefer Eastwood before his anointment into respected old guard legend.]
To name one other example, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS did nothing for me in 1993, when I was feeling low, but I got a kick out of it subsequently when I was in a better frame of mind and enjoyed the 3D reissue very much.
Great post Dan. I'm fortunated that I didn't see any of those films too early. The closest to a 180 might be Citizen Kane, though I liked it the first time around and simply grew warmer to it over the years.
Matt: I like The Lost World better [than Jurassic Park]
Wow, I never thought I’d hear that! My eye roll meter read high on both pictures, but with the Lost World it was simply off the charts. I liked the first one well enough – though I’m sure it wouldn’t quite hold up. Perhaps the sequel is a 180 in my future.
I’m also hesitant to watch Titanic again. I saw it two or three times in theater – which is what, 9 hours? I just don’t have the wherewithal to endure another 3 hours – especially if it proves that the previous 9 were ill-spent.
The film that comes to mind with 180s for me is Silverado. I saw it close to opening day and was way too excited, being a Lawrence Kasdan movie (which I associated with Indiana Jones). I wanted to like it so bad that I think I came home that night and told my brother it was the greatest movie ever. Now, it represents everything negative to me about 80’s (and beyond) Westerns – bloated, trying to be the end-all-be-all of westerns, multiple climaxes. The genre wouldn’t shake that off until Deadman. Someday, if I happen to rewatch it and find that I truly love Silverado, will that be a second 180 or a 360?
When I first watched "Quiz Show", when I was in college or shortly thereafter, I turned to the friend watching it with me, and we both said pretty much the same thing. "But it was just a game show." In other words, much ado over nothing.
At the time I failed to appreciate the ways in which the media, and in particular television, shapes and distorts our view of reality. If the truth does not matter, than we can be made to believe anything, and that is the beginning of the end of democracy.
Now, I can't turn off "Quiz Show" when it comes on the air. Just about every performance is, in my mind, flawless. (Though Rob Morrow's New England accent is a bit much.) The film's portrayal of Charles Van Doren's oedipal relationship with his father was quite effective, and Martin Scorcese's cameo as the CEO of Bayer was downright chilling. His remarks to Dick Goodwin (Morrow) are as disturbing in their own way as his comments to Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver."
I, too, find this topic fascinating as this year has seen one of my most drastic reversals and I've only seen the film once: MIAMI VICE.
Upon viewing the picture I thought its "skeletal screenplay" was cloying and couldn't grasp the surehanded present tense filmmaking. I'll have to see it again to refine these ideas but as I spent the month following MIAMI VICE's release in the Grand Canyon, I couldn't shake the film's images and it kept playing in a loop in the back of my brain. Whenever I saw a thunderhead I thought of that aerial shot of the plane slicing through those painterly clouds. Needless to say I can't wait to see the DVD release.
Earlier this fall my girlfriend forced me to re-watch FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS and I was able to appreciate it a little more than before but it wasn't quite a 180, more like 90: there's still long, unwatchable stretches in the film that only irritate me.
Lastly: Slowly but surely I'm growing to love THE LIFE AQUATIC, despite that last scene in the submarine. I hated it when I first saw it but now respect all the risks Wes took expanding his world while keeping it rigidly within his framework. That and it's straight up funny as shit.
I really despised Blade Runner the first time around. It had that stupid Harrison Ford voice over, and I thought Rutger Hauer's howling was ridiculous. It wasn't until I delved into film noir and took a few classics classes that I began to truly appreciate what a magnificent work it is. I don't think Ridley Scott has topped it.
From the like to dislike department, (and with similar subject matter to Blade Runner) I'd have to say A.I. The first few times I watched it, I was shattered. Or I thought I was. The emotions are overstated, and I feel Spielberg misses the point. IIt sounds shallow, but I can't help saying it: If only Kubrick could have made it ...
Ben Livant opined:
"If you think a movie is basically lame the first time round, what could possibly induce another round?"
My retort:
My initial post answers that question, no? In short, cuz at some point the viewer realized s/he was too young/inexperienced/biased to give the film a fair shake in the first place. Also, sometimes the weight of critical opinion is just so oppressive, the viewer is forced to revisit films in order to clarify opinions and interpretations of such films.
Lastly, I find the question curious coming as it does from the fella who watched Mulholland Dr. three times, and still gave it a thumbs down.
Heh.
Ryland: "Miami Vice" is a movie I loved right away but had a hell of a time convincing other people to (a) see or (b) consider meaningful, as opposed to a "guilty pleasure." I'm pretty evangelical about that and "The Black Dahlia" and " A Prairie Home Companion," 2005 releases that have evoked very strong loved it/hated it reactions.
Jonathan: I thought "Quiz Show" was a great film when I first watched it. Then sometime around the turn of the century -- probably inspired by the disdain/condescension many NY critic colleagues have for Redford -- I rewatched it a couple of times and decided it was very good for what it was (a polemic with elements of domestic drama) but it wasn't as visually audacious as I wanted. Then I saw it again earlier this year and thought it was a classic on every level -- including visually; lots of great subjective camerawork by Michael Ballhaus that gets us inside the emotions of the contestants, and that blurs the line between reality and media artifice (supporting and deepening the script). So now I'm in love with it all over again.
So, is that a 360?
Silverado is negated by Deadman. There is a worthwhile analog between Quiz Show and Taxi Driver. There is a deep conceptual unity when the double bill is Last Year At Marienbad and Son Of Flubber. I love you guys, really, I love you like... well, like I love those people in the house next door. I just don't grasp exactly what is being advanced by the 180 degree proclaimers. I'm precisely referring to the cases here of a revolutionary upheaval years later after a position has solidified, not the evolution of a position through incremental reconsideration over a relatively continuous period. What's the source of such radical change?
In answering this, please permit me to state from the outset that my intention is not to abuse the subjective focus of this 180 degree exercise. Far from it. All this sort of top ten list-making is fundamentally about the list-maker and not the contents of the list. Moving from favorites in general to particular types of lists, it is the organizing principle of a given list that actually delimits the knowledge and taste of the organizer. So, for example, if someone is able and willing to rate the many Rambo movies; the rating matters not, what matters is being willing and able. Of course, I can proclaim this because I personally take it for granted that any Rambo movie is a smear of shit on celluloid. So, I'm not giving anybody a hard time here about the subjectivity involved.
Indeed, it is this 180 degree festival that is obsfucating the subjectivity involved, your assumption that you are talking about the development of your film consciousness notwithstanding. The participant in this discussion who honestly believes that she changed her mind about such-and-such a film AFTER she watched it a second time is trying to package her subjective development as an objective process, as if she is a scientist of cinema, open to new data that can reverse a previous hypothesis. Nonsense. You went in with extreme prejudice the second time planning to have your mind changed. Your mind was re-made up BEFORE you took another look on behalf of transforming your existing interpretation.
Why is this obsfucated here? The simple answer is pride. Once we learn to disregard the advertising function of most reviews and seek to educate ourselves by consulting genuine criticism, we flatter ourselves as having entered the cinema intelligentsia. This goes to our heads and the next thing you know, comparisons are being made between Last Year At Marienbad and Son Of Flubber. No worries there. But what also goes to our heads is a bogus sense of aesthetic self-sufficiency, as if we watch films in atomic isolation from the opinion of others, as if we have no teachers before us and among us, as if our subjective development is determined purely subjectively without any social milieu at all. So it is that we can pretend we revisit a film with an open mind when in fact the cause of our revisitation is a mind instructed to think again by somebody else.
If not for Dan Jardine lending me films from his collection and responding patiently to my ignorant assessments of them... naturally, he should not be held responsible for the Manienbad/Flubber book I'm working on. Having acknowledged my teacher, I will elaborate here what I've already indicated to him in personal correspondence. It may appear modest and even courageous to admit publically that once you didn't care for Citizen Kane but eventually you got with the program. Well, sorry, it ain't. Because the program was there to be got with and your supposedly 180 degree declaration is really but a confession that you let someone else teach you something after all.
Festivals may be fun but let us enjoy them without delusions. In the meantime, I'm waiting to hear someone announce that he absolutely loved Citizen Kane the first time but caught it on cable recently and now he thinks it's a load of bullocks. Now THAT would be a 180.
Then - Ben
Ben: "Because the program was there to be got with and your supposedly 180 degree declaration is really but a confession that you let someone else teach you something after all."
Yeah, that's pretty much it -- and it's a useful exercise, because as Dan says at the outset of his piece, to regard one's opinion as fixed forever based on one viewing -- particularly a viewing of a movie that provokes division rather than consensus -- is not a sign of wisdom, only stubbornness.
I agree that if you revisit a movie you didn't like at first, it's a sign that you've already (maybe subconsciously) realized your mistake and are looking to change your opinion. But what's wrong with that?
You also write, "Why is this obsfucated here? The simple answer is pride. Once we learn to disregard the advertising function of most reviews and seek to educate ourselves by consulting genuine criticism, we flatter ourselves as having entered the cinema intelligentsia. This goes to our heads and the next thing you know, comparisons are being made between Last Year At Marienbad and Son Of Flubber. No worries there. But what also goes to our heads is a bogus sense of aesthetic self-sufficiency, as if we watch films in atomic isolation from the opinion of others, as if we have no teachers before us and among us, as if our subjective development is determined purely subjectively without any social milieu at all."
I don't think anything's being obfuscated here. The whole point of this post is to abandon pride and admit you were wrong about something, or (related) to admit, at the very least, that one's taste and judgment shifts ofter time, often in direct relation to how many films you see, how much reading you do and how many conversations you have with other people about the subject. Nobody so far has argued anything like a scientific/objective hypothesis for an individual's changing taste, or trumpeted a superior taste developed in isolation. Quite the opposite. If there's any dominant emotion linking the various comments here, it's a kind of sheepish relief at not having to pretend that we're hurling critical thunderbolts from atop Mt. Olympus -- that aesthetic judgment is mysterious, deeply personal process, affected by life as well as education.
Regarding your last paragraph, I liked "Kane" from the beginning, but I did change my mind about "Pulp Fiction" (my Dallas Observer review was a rave, but over time I've grown to find it merely clever and brutish -- a movie that's guilty of all the sins often wrongly ascribed to Scorsese -- and now when it's on I change the channel).
Performance. The first time I saw it I walked out repulsed by the violence. Somehow mangaed to see the second half a year or so later, which is like a whole nother film. all drugs and confusion and decadence and James Fox tripping and "this is a very noice tible" and Anita Pallenberg and of course Mick Jagger's Turner. I would probably dislkike it now but who knows. not sure it's on DVD yet.
Matt notes:
"...[To] regard one's opinion as fixed forever based on one viewing -- particularly a viewing of a movie that provokes division rather than consensus -- is not a sign of wisdom, only stubbornness."
Me again:
Ben, I think you really should watch Mulholland Dr. again. Heh he.
When I first saw Goodfellas, I really couldn't see the forest for the trees, or the trees for the forest for that matter. All I could see was that it was taking everything I had loved about The Godfather a year before - all that lush romanticism - stuffing it in a garbage can, and lighting it on fire. I did not appreciate this at the tender age of 14, but then, I also didn't really have any idea what Scorsese was doing. I just knew that I fucking hated every second of the that movie's second half. It took me a couple more viewings before I realized how completely I had bought into the glamorous lies at the beginning of the movie, how thoroughly Scorsese had played me, and how brilliantly.
More recently, I caught the last half hour or so of Summer of Sam on cable - a movie I first saw back in the summer of '99, and hated at the time. This time it struck me as some very strange shade of brilliant. I now feel obligated to rewatch the whole bloody thing.
Hi Dan, I am embarrassed to fess up that I missed your retort to my previous posting. Too busy preparing my next blow-hard masterpiece. Responding to my question about why anyone would take a second look at something deemed lousy to begin with, you make a couple of points.
Your first point begs the question: If you now realize that you were previously too inexperienced intellectually, emotionally, whatever to appreciate the film, how is it that you now realize this?
The answer to this question is provided by your second point: The weight of critical opinion. This weight you refer to as "oppresive," insofar as the movie buff is "forced" to look at the film again.
OK, that's what I was harping on about myself, although I was trying to give this community of opinion a much more positive spin.
As for me watching Mulholland Drive three times, well, unlike my book on Marienbad and Flubber, my teacher is to blame. You didn't hold a gun to my head but I subjected the film to close scrutiny given the weight of your critical opinion. For the record, it's not as if I changed my mind.
Turning to Matt's response to my diatribe, hi Matt. I sincerely did not mean to attack anyone having fun at this festival, whatever rhetorical tactics I employed that might have suggested otherwise. The "pride" of which I spoke was not observed by me in any of the individuals sharing their concrete cases here. It was rather noted at a level of abstraction in keeping with my concern for how we change our minds, generally theorized, albeit, specifically in terms of film appreciation. Thus, I had the theoretical arrogance to address all involved with the clause, "your assumption that you are talking about the development of your film consciousness notwithstanding." In attempting to posit a sociological context for aestheic judgement, I misconstructed my exposition in speaking of the festival "obsfucating" my theoretical object, as if intentionally and for sinister purpose. Rather than this critical misconstruction, I should have formulated my contribution here positively as the recognition of film lovers exploring their changed minds, as did Dan from the get-go.
Having taken ownership of my crimes, however, I do want to highlight the case of the person who actively wants to 'get' a film now that she knows she 'did not get' then. I do this in order to challenge the immediate relevance of Matt's truism that "aesthetic judgement is mysterious" as well as the adequacy of his concession that this revisionist person is operating "maybe subconsciously." What's at stake here is the conscious understanding of error. For the big issue about changing your mind under the influence of a community of opinion is that you were wrong. Matt is quite right to indicate that it is a matter of realizing one's mistakes but it is misleading to imply that this is anything other than a process of education. To achieve the unification of knowledge and taste in aesthetic judgement is politically problematic as hell, but unless we are going to resort to the capitalist consumer credo that any choice made between Citizen Kane and Rambo is nothing other than a mysteriously determined private shopping selection, it becomes necessary to cultivate - dare I say - objective standards. Again, this is politically problematic as hell and will always be an ongoing historical and socially relative process. Yet it seems to me that the subjective transformation celebrated in this festival is mostly about an individual becoming educated about these very standards.
Matt, I was not bemoaning this. I was promoting it.
Then - Ben
Ben writes, "Yet it seems to me that the subjective transformation celebrated in this festival is mostly about an individual becoming educated about these very standards. Matt, I was not bemoaning this. I was promoting it."
I can see that now. I also agree that there are certain "objective" standards that would -- or should -- prize "Citizen Kane" over "Rambo."
Also -- to ride this horse a bit further, just for the heck of it -- you seem to suggest that if we all become educated -- through whatever meandering process -- then eventually there will be unanimity of opinion, or at least something like a consensus. To a limited degree, this happens over time, as critical fashion erodes and people have time to really live with a work of art, and separate the faddish from the durable. But the process only goes so far. Thirty-five years after their release, there is still nothing approaching unanimity of opinion on the deeper merits of "Straw Dogs" and "A Clockwork Orange" (beyond being well crafted); there are still plenty of intelligent people who find Bresson dull, Kubrick cold and shallow, Bergman coldly theoretical, and all of them overrated. And there's the additional distinction of repecting a work (i.e., acknowledging its significance or at least its longevity and influence) and thinking it's enjoyable or good (much less loving it). John Ford, for instance, is acknowledged as a master of film craft by anyone with eyes and a brain, but there's nothing resembling unanimity on his greatness as a storyteller, and there are those who find his tendency towards American mythmaking more gung-ho than sophicated -- i.e., with certain exceptions, he reproduces the favored ideology rather than challenging it. (Spielberg isn't dead yet, but he already seems to be entering Ford country -- his name spoken with a certain respect even among those who think he's self-indulgent, obvious, condescending, and more interested in pandering to the American middle than challenging it.)
I think there's more than a process of education going on here. Caveat: Cinema is still young, so it could be decades before, say, Peckinpah, Scorsese, Spielberg, Kubrick and other still-controversial auteurs either claim a permanent spot in the canon or don't.
I'm opening up additional cans of worms here, just to see what you say, Ben, for no other reason than I enjoy reading your responses.
Matt notes:
"Caveat: Cinema is still young, so it could be decades before, say, Peckinpah, Scorsese, Spielberg, Kubrick and other still-controversial auteurs either claim a permanent spot in the canon or don't."
Matt, the key to this process of processing the wheat and culling the chaffe is in this comment. Sometimes a master is immediately evident: folks in Italy knew that Michelangelo had the goods. Sometimes, it takes a bit longer to determine; introducing a witness for the defense, Vincent van Gogh. Hell, much closer to home, Orson Welles wasn't exactly universally exalted, was he?
Anyways, as cinema is only a little over a century old, and we're still working out the standards of measurement for greatness, it could very well be many decades before we approach some sorta critical consensus on our more controversial filmmakers.
And finally, sometimes artists are destined to inhabit a grey area, neither completely embraced nor completely rejected by the critical establishment.
Bill, you really should give Land of the Dead another shot. That film kicks privileged people's asses all over the block. i love Romero, and love that film.
And Ben, I am fully aware that you've never come around on Mulholland Dr. But rather than that being a result of critical acumen, couldn't that just as easily be evidence of an innate mule-headedness?
I'm just asking, is all.
Dan, I don't know what does and what does not constitue mule-headedness. In response to your so-called question, I can only quote Bertrand Russell, admitedly in a paraphrased form: "Don't confuse open-mindedness with empty-headedness."
Matt, yes indeed, there are many worms wriggling in that can. I hardly have a comprehensive response to offer. The most I can do is pick up on my previous observation that the determination of aesthetic standards be understood as a political problematic.
With respect to this, one thing I can confidently clarify, it is crucial not to conflate what I called earlier a "community of opinion" with what you rightly imply is both impossible and undesirable; namely, unanimity of opinion. Unanimity is easy to achieve through the barrel of a gun, at least according to Goebbels who claimed to want to reach for one whenever he heard the word "culture." So let's instead start with the alternative category you employed, consensus, as it is first and foremost a category of democratic politics.
We need to make it axiomatic that any means to consensus should not be dictatorial, either by an elite strata or a majoritarian tyranny. Substantive and open dialogue and debate are therefore presumed. Further to this, the kind of consensus pursued can only be of the most general nature, almost purely formal, analagous to legal principles as opposed to particular laws.
What I reckon this amounts to in practice is an approach to aesthetic judgement that regards standards as being more about what passes for legitimate questions rather than answers. This might sound like a cop-out on my part and it might just be. On the other hand, once we find ourselves engaged with concrete artisitc material, what we find ourselves drawing upon in order to experience it, intellectually if not emotionally, are what I am now suggesting are standards of inquiry. These may be motivated by strictly technical concerns or ideologically entrenched concerns and so on. The point is, there are standards pertaining to how to ask questions about these concerns, all on behalf of establishing an aesthetic judgement more or less shared by a community of opinion.
These pretty rules of the game are oblivious to the real world, of course. Out on the street, commercial communication dominates all discourse on art, both popular and high-brow. The latter is additionally sustained by academic polemics either in denial about the intellectual hegemony of advertising or out to make a virtue of this vice though some postmodern sophistry or what-not. Blogs such as this one traverse a middle ground between shared diaries and movie clubs, on the one hand and on the other, media adjuncts of the culture industry's promotional campaigns; for let's be candid, the function of the mainstream review corps is to sell product.
In all of this capitalist reality, I cannot identify the arbiter of taste in a structural analysis. All I can notice is that rather than cultivating my cherished standards of aesthetic judgement, the market is much better at selling only the latest and the most despicable content by making a fetish of form itself for those who still have a habit of critical engagement.
Hence, I speak longingly of a community of opinion, a genuinely public process of forging values, as is presently germane, aesthetic ones.
That's the best I can do for now. Believe it or not, those jokes I made about throwing food at kids in order to make time for computer conversations... my time's up and the joke's on me. I just want to say that your and Dan's emphasis that cinema is a relatively new art form and therefore harder to judge aesthetically at this early date does not strike me as too convincing. On the contrary, movies emerged with no previous history of a split between folk film and bourgeois fim so the class contradictions in the society are replicated intinsically in the art form itself. This is not the case in music, painting, literature, theatre and such, which all had to undergo mass society transformations, still in progress. Movies were, more or less, a mass society entity from their inception and for all their capital intensity in production and marketing, it is precisely in their popular basis that their democratic potential lies to challenge the class-divided society from whence they came. Keeping in mind the validity of treating aesthetics as a political problematic, it would seem that movies in their youth should be especially fertile for this radical political treatment.
Matt, forget to tease you before about Pulp Fiction. I knew it was merely clever and brutish the first time. So, the second time, brought to me by my teenage son, I enjoyed it's style and humor along with the boy... only tolerable because I knew he knew it was basically decadent trash. Damn straight, he already had a leg up on those pesky standards.
Then - Ben
Ben: Re "Pulp Fiction" -- Congratulations on being right about it the first time. You're still wrong on "Mulholland Drive," though, and I'm happy to say I called that one right the first time.
The Tarantino question will be explored at the House in the near future. He has many passionate and articulate defenders who will, I'm sure, turn out in force.
I wish I could join in the 180 degree fun, but the fact is that I don't often get to watch many movies more than once. And I often only watch things that I'm either sure I'll like, admire, or find interesting. I don't watch movies for a profession or even semi professionally.
The 180 degress I do have is more often in reassessing certain directors, like from admiring Woody Allen for attempts at artistry to pretty much dismissing him for artist pretensions, or dismissing the Farelly Bros or Weitz (bros and solo) as juvenile to seeing a lot of personal touches and humanism.
But I think those assessment has more to seeing the development of the directors and so forth, rather than a certain movie as a point in time.
Ben, it took me a while to parse what you were saying from how you said it, but I think your issue boils down to an endorsement of consensual standards of aesthetic judgment separate from the stain of consumerism, which I think many people who think and/or write about movies would agree with. You seem to think that people here are denying that such standards exist, but I suspect most posters are aware that these standards exist and how they have been framed.
Film criticism has been around as long as films. Some of the past giants, like Agee, Kael, and Sarris, have been working from very specific parameters, and the point of this exercise has been to challenge one of Kael's core tenets: that you can understand a movie with a single viewing. No Kael, no lists here.
But the fact that the critical community agrees that there are some undefined standards about the aesthetics of moviegoing doesn't mean that any two critics would agree on what those standards are, which may be your point. However, as with any statistical trend, if you want to define those standards, you don't look to any particular data point (let's call this data point a critic), but to the corpus. Once you've uncovered the trend, you're going to find plenty subtle gradation where critics concur about the importance of some particular aesthetic factor but disagree about the why, because we're in the realm of complex ideas rather than widgets produced over time.
Getting back to this exercise, all of the participants - all of the people who read this blog - are a self-selecting population, the type of people who pay attention to others like them. These critical standards are, therefore, also self-selecting, by us and for us. When we re-watch a movie and our opinion either flips or doesn't, this opinion has been naturally influenced by our peers. Isn't that exactly what a democratic aesthetic standard is supposed to be like? Or are we supposed to then attempt to engage those who don't care about this aesthetic experience? Doesn't that sound a bit imperialistic?
Let's consider how Solidarity worked in Poland, as an example of how democratic standards (your political problematic, I believe) spread. The people who made the general strike work were all shipyard workers in Gdansk who knew each other, and, most importantly, knew how to communicate with like-minded people outside of their sphere, but they had limited ability to do so. As word of the strike spead outward from Gdansk, many people who concurred with idea of democratic institutions joined in with the strike, but they weren't privy to the deliberation that had led to Lech Walesa's stance in negotiating for worker-run unions. They had never engaged (democratically, natch) with the standards of the shipyard workers except in the abstract. Consequently, Solidarity flared briefly and ultimately failed in its first attempt. Later, though, after Walesa and other people directly involved in the Gdansk shipyard strike had had the opportunity to meet in person (cladestinely, natch) with other like-minded individuals, Solidarity was more successful on its second run.
Applying this to the aesthetic experience of watching Rambo is a bit absurd, but it does lead to my critique of what I believe your issue to be: if most of the critical community hates it, but the moviegoing public apparently loves it (and there's issues there because ticket sales and love aren't exactly the same thing), is there an obligation on the part of any side to consider the other's position? I say probably not because the objectives of each group are different. The critical community are in the shipyard (this is an analogy that pains me to make, so how did I end up here?) and have learned how to speak with each other through repeated engagement over issues that directly concern them (or us, as the case may be). The public hasn't been privy to this conversation and can only arrive at the consensual judgment from the outside without engaging the conversation.
OK, that was long-winded and muddle-headed, so I'm quitting now before I embarrass myself further by comparing Jack Valenti with, say, Brezhnev.
Matt: re: Dahlia:
As well written and convincing yours and Keith's essays in favor of THE BLACK DAHLIA are, I doubt I'll make the time to revisit it. I've never been that big a De Palma fan to begin with (another re-appraisal worth investigating given the internet onslaught of appreciation since the DAHLIA buildup) so it's hard for me to engage his films honestly, without bias. I don't really know what it is that puts me off so vehemently as I like plenty of excessively stylistic films (I mentioned Wes Anderson). I do appreciate De Palma's ability to orchestrate but the screenplay of DAHLIA, and the acting of its leads (save a wasted Eckhart) really killed it for me. By the time the film tried to wrap things up I couldn't care less. And the ending just reminded me of CARRIE, which I know is a blithe dismissal but I can't shake it, no matter how good it is in theory. Also, at Sean Burns' heedless recommendation I watched FEMME FATALE and didn't see what all the fuss was about: basically, Rebecca Romijn doesn't live up to the role's necessities.
That all said, I want to give De Palma a second chance and feel like CARLITO'S WAY is a good place to start over again as it's one I haven't seen and your mention as it being somewhat of an apologist text for SCARFACE is pretty intriguing. And I should probably give BLOW OUT a second chance after gushing so hard in favor of THE DEPARTED, a similar venture, last month. Also, what do you think about his collaboration with Schrader, OBSESSION?
Hello Hayden. Thank you for returning to the discussion. I have posted here at The House a few times in the past and Matt is always very welcoming, still I tend to feel self-conscious about always politicizing the topic and effectively torturing it to death by way of theoretical investigation. So, at the very least, this time I have provoked someone else to help me spoil everyone' recreation.
I find your comments thoughtful and worthwhile, particularly because the political problematic I imposed on aesthetic judgement is situated by you in politics proper and a real, historical case of it at that. Your reference to Solidarity and analgous application of this example to our topic was in no manner "absurd." Granted, the analogy has only limited validity, but this is always the way it is when one empirical case is the template for another. Ergo, the need for theoretical abstraction for further explication.
As I understand it, your central concern has to do with the potential and often real split between the mainstream audience or general public or mass society at large and the snob seating or cultured strata or intelligentsia. This is a thorny issue to be sure and I can only offer a few disjointed thoughts.
In my estimation the genuinely democratic approach requires an active rejection of an aristocratic interpretation of the issue. This means that the public not be viewed as a great unwashed mob of stupidity but rather a reservior of untapped intelligence. This is troublesome enough in itself, what with its condescending undertone that must be checked to ensure it doesn't mutate into patronizing paternalism and then, uh-huh, aristocratic pretention. Nevertheless, if the name of the game is education - and what else should we call the expansion of aesthetic judgement? - then the project is a matter of facilitating, enabling, empowering people to think for themselves. And to have this goal in mind, it must be an article of faith that they have the potential to do so.
I used the term "expansion" above and I want to set this off from Hayden's worry about this possibly being "imperialistic." I really want to refrain from fancy footwork, (it's not like I'm running for office here), so I will say straight up that the danger of imposing and inforcing standards is always there; by social forces with big money and real power, that is, the elements of the intelligentsia not in a corporate pocket are severely marginalized, in fact. But again, in a hypothetical scenerio where an intelligentsia is relatively automous and exercises significant authority, the threat of catholic domination by an ossified clergy of opinion-bearers must be prohibited
by on-going democratic procedures.
Another way to come at this and perhaps a better one is to see the process as being not about expansion but rather inclusion. People who have hiterto been denied the opportunity to think for themselves using the standards of inquiry I highlighted before are admitted to the community of opinion by being introduced to those standards. Once more, this is education.
It needs also to be said that respecting the potential and assuming the desire of people to be educated is just one side of the relation. Those self-appointed members of the intelligentsia who would be teachers need to keep their feet on the ground. This is to say that they ultimately must locate themselves as part of and not apart from the people they claim to lead intellectually. Simply put, teachers have to take sides. The knowledge and tools you disseminate you do so either to reproduce the status quo or to aid struggles for radical change.
Sorting this out in practice is not a black and white matter but even so, class analysis of the intelligentsia is the main thread of what I am braiding here. My father taught me when I was a kid: "The middle class is the class that's in the middle and doesn't know what it's in the middle of." Capitalist ideology in all its forms and from all its sources has pretty much everybody convinced that they're in the middle class. It is not germane here to deconstruct this false consciousness, to dust off a Marxist clunker. My present point is that if any sector of society is in the middle class, it's the intelligentsia and boy - talk about not knowing what you're in the middle of; heck, it's almost refreshing to run into an academic professor or media pundit who explicitly recognizes that he's a running dog for capital. But I am starting to rant. All of this was meant to reinforce my notion that the democratic project is not just about bringing more people into the community of opinion, it's simultaneously about orienting that community in the society as a whole.
Well, that's as much as I have to give for the moment in regard specifically in to the question of leadership in the community of opinion. I will close with a philosophic reminder on behalf of a general argument for treating aesthetics politically. I offer this especially to anyone reading this who may be offput by my own politics.
Aesthetics as a distinct domain of philosophy arose from numerous angles but it never broke off from ethics with any certitude. Today it remains classified as a branch of axiology, that is, normative or value-determinative pursuit. While I would never deny that it is one thing to differentiate between what's right and what's wrong and quite another to differentiate between the beautiful and the ugly, I would just as adamantly insist that they are connected. Remembering this moral connection will render a politicized treatment of aesthetics requisite to the degree that morality in practice is necessarily a political affair.
Hayden, thank you again.
Then - Ben
Ryland: The Black Dahlia is a hard sell even for De Palma boosters because it's so dense yet elliptical (very much like James Ellroy's crime fiction in that way). It's also passionate yet very contained, even constrained; it feels numbed by grief and longing. I'd like to think that repeat viewings would let its peculiar energy sink in, but as I always say, your mileage may vary.
As for Obsession, I think it's an interesting failure -- a failure because it remains so theoretical even as it piles outrage upon outrage and twist upon twist, but interesting for how explicitly it cops to De Palma's Hitchcock, er, obsession. Hard to say what, exactly, the problems are; I think Cliff Robertson is one of them (he's just a bit too bland and remote; the part could've used somebody with a streak of madness in him, or at least more passion). Schrader himself might be another problem, which sounds funny since the picture would not exist without him. Schrader's one of those directors I admire more than I like; more specifically, I admire his stubborn integrity, the idea of a guy like Schrader, but his movies often feel too much like case studies crossed with theoretical film texts and then performed by actors. Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg were able to make similar movies with a lot more oomph; they italicize everything but somehow (at their best) they still carry you along on a current of sensuality, decadence and dread. Seems to me that Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, Egoyan's Exotica and De Palma's own Body Double get closer to what I wanted and needed from Obsession -- a balance of cool intellectual puzzle game formalism and intense, at times unhinged passion.
That said, working solo, Schrader has made four movies that really sing: American Gigolo, Cat People, Mishima and The Comfort of Strangers. They're meticulously, almost punishingly controlled -- very Calvinist somehow -- but you can also feel the mad emotion coursing through every frame. They're all movies that smart friends of mine insist "don't work," but they work for me.
The first time I saw "Full Metal Jacket", I loved the first half but hated the 2nd half (everything after 'Me so horny'). I thought the Vietnam scenes were cliched, boring and far inferior to the Parris Island sequence. Over time, I've grown to love the film as a whole and if forced to make a choice, I prefer the Vietnam half. When I first saw it in a theater, I was an active duty Army puke, and I thought I knew what the military was all about. As I've matured, I realize what Kubrick was doing with the two-part structure of the film and how the brutal murders at the end of each sequence symbolize each end of the War/Peace dichotomy that Joker struggles with: Pyle's killing of Hartmann showing the loss of his humanity, Joker's killing of the female sniper showing the salvation of his. It's such a sad film, and I wish more people would see it, especially before signing off on sending more young men off to the meat grinder.
Tully: In this comments thread, of all the examples of life experience altering one's opinion of a movie, yours is the one I'm most grateful for. Thanks for sharing it.
A while back Matt and I found common ground about Stone's Born On The Fourth Of July. Matt drew on the perspective held by his uncle who had served in Vietnam. I was moved by his uncle's point of view about the film, based as it was on first-hand experience and subsequent contemplation.
Tully Moxness has spoken here out of his own experience and just like Matt feels now and just like I felt before with respect to his uncle, I am moved by Tully's contemplation of Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket after his personal experience of war. What is more for me personally - and Dan Jardine can confirm this because I've shared it with him previously - Full Metal Jacket is my own ultimate 180 degree turn around.
Unlike many of the cases we have heard about thus far, my about-face was not the result of seeing the film a second time years later. I saw the film and underwent the same relation to it as did Tully, without his military experience though. Initially, I felt confident that I had 'got' the first half but I was totally confused by the second half and even more confused about how it might relate to the first. I was disappointed and frustrated by the film, especially because I had seen a good handful of Kubrick's pictures and thought highly of most of them. I tried to chalk this one up as a failure but damn if I couldn't stop thinking about it.
I wasn't watching that many films at that point in my life, looked at no television at all. But my inability to stop thinking about Full Metal Jacket was not the result of me not having a steady diet of cinema. It haunted me, for about six months. Finally, I was overwhelmed by an interpretation essentially along the lines of the one Tully has shared here. Since then, I have held on to the position that Full Metal Jacket is the best anti-war film ever, bar none. I watched it for the second time with my son last year and I stand by that award. (Incidentally, the greatest class analytical critique of the militarist state, not to be equated with war as such, is also by Kubrick, Paths of Glory.)
Tully, thank you for your posting. I haven't been participating in blog discussions for very long and I'm still a bit skeptical about them connecting people in a truly meaningful way. This is the first time I feel that I really heard another human being speak from the heart and I hope you can hear that I am speaking from the same place.
Then - Ben
Platoon. Not, Born On The Fourth Of July, Platoon was the film criticized in common by me and Matt and Matt's uncle. I can only reckon I confused these two Stone titles by being focused on the fact that Matt's uncle and Tully survived their military time and have things to tell us, not unlike Ron Kovac.
Then - Ben
Hey, Ben, I appreciate the great response and think I understand your point. Unfortunately, I don't think I have the grey matter to follow-up accordingly, so I'm going to keep it relatively brief.
What I hear you saying (so to speak) is that film criticism, which is mostly the province of the middle class, should embrace the more inclusive and democratic goal of speaking and listening to working class consciousness(es). I agree that film criticism is a middle-class concern, mainly because I think you have to take your leisure time seriously to have time to take pop culture seriously, and this is a luxury of the middle classes.
I don't agree, though, that the public is a great unwashed mob of stupidity in need of education or that the goal of film criticism is education of others. I think the film-watching public that prefers Rambo to Renoir is probably more or less getting what it wants out of cinema and most people have no more desire to be educated by film critics than, say, carpenters would wish for their union to be overrun by well-meaning sociologists. There's no false consciousness here, and ultimately not that much at stake.
But I don't really know what most people want from movies because I've never asked them. I do know what I want from movies, though, which is to be affected mentally and emotionally, and I know what some people who are also interested parties want from movies, because I can read their comments out here and, in a few cases, talk with them over beer. I know that my own mental and emotional states change with time and that when I re-read books or listen to music that I loved or hated as a youngster, my opinion has changed (in many cases, without reading a word of criticism to sway my opinion). Why would movies be any different?
Anyway, I hope you do continue to pursue your interest in blogging. I don't think it's much different than any good conversation, except online I have time to mull over my garbled, half-assed thoughts instead of spitting out my usual garbled, quarter-assed statements, as I do in person. Fewer people will punch you in the nose for online comments, too, which has its ups and downs.
Hayden, always good to hear from you. One thing I've always wondered about. Why do we speak of such-and-such being half-assed (according to you, it can get as bad as quarter-assed) when we mean that such-and-such is relatively more and not less full of shit. Shouldn't we be talking about the ass in exponential terms rather than fractions? What say I call George Carlin about this and I'll get back to you? I've always found his linguistic correction of "take a shit" as "leave a shit, thank you very much" darn appropriate to my own practice.
You've read me right for the most part and what is more, you've got my number when you realistically tweak the ersatz importance of well-meaning sociologists. I do have to challenge, however, a few of the notions running through your comments. By the way, in what follows I will employ, as you did, the phrase "most people," keeping in mind that a time-honored cheap tactic when theorizing is to generalize with utter disregard to empirical substantiation.
I agree with you that most people couldn't care less about film criticism and I also agree with you there is not that much at stake even for those who do care. But I was not speaking to or mainly about most people. I was speaking to and mainly about you and me; on our behalf, assuming the mantle of the intelligentsia that was my object of discussion. If to assume this was to make an ass out of you and me, I take the full blame; which is to say, the ass that I am is full and not halved or quartered. Certainly my purpose was to promote a sense of pedagogical responsibility among us, the preposterous nature of committing to an educational mandate without being commissioned to teach acknowledged.
You say that what most people want from movies is unknown to you. With all due respect, constructing the point in this manner may be modest but such modesty does not preclude declaring that what most people want from movies is fundamentally unknowable, period. It's a very short step from here to market religion about consumer sovereignty and no accounting for personal taste. Well, I can't help noticing that the entertainment conglomerates in the film industry have too much invested to leave the matter to such faith in unprompted individualism. As much or more capital is devoted to selling movies as to making them. Advertising - understood in the broadest sense to include all commercially based cultural discourse - is the mode through which capital "educates" an audience. It is in opposition to this sorta-totalitarian capitalist propaganda, indoctrination and insidious acculturation that my well-meaning sociology stands.
You signal to most people as preferring Rambo in a choice between that and Renior. It is precisely this choice, however, that I do not see most people having. Considering that capitalist freedom is predicated on consumer choice,it is painfully ironic that there is actually so little of it. Or more precisely, so much of it, among things at bedrock the same. To cite another of my father's lines: "Capitalist freedom - fifty flavors of Jell-O." Last time I checked, the shelves at Blockbuster Video (that name says it all) were full of this week's Rambo and precious little Renior. Nevermind all of my eighth-assed attempts to devise profound theory. The issue of exposure to alternative fare is alone a major part of my devotion to enlarging and deepening the community of opinion.
This major part is hardly sufficient though. If it was, the market worshippers would be right that more and better markets are all that's required. Hey, maybe if these markets really were free and open rather than dominated by monopoly capital, exposure might be all there is to it. But they're not and it isn't. So alternative avenues for the advancement of standards of inquiry for aesthetic judgement must be sought. I believe that this cannot and will not generate spontaneously. I believe it demands leadership of some kind and I threw out some sixteenth-assed democratic theory on behalf of this leadership.
If memory serves, it was Dorothy Parker who said: "You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think." This is witty to be sure and just as cynical. Hayden, I don't find you nearly this cynical, (and I find neither of us nearly this witty), but your comments lean in that direction, at least in comparison with my self-righteous, do-gooder mandate to liberate the world through sensitive Renior tributes. Seriously though, I fall back on the moral connection I pushed last time. I guess I lied at the start here when I said that I agreed with you about there not being much at stake in all of this. The mass marketing of Rambo is not separate from the real militarism that spawned it and which it in turn reinforces. Forget about your previous fear that a cluster of tweedy film radicals (or blogger geeks?) pushing their agenda could amount to imperialism. Rambo is part of the real thing; indeed, little more than an advertisement for it. Like I said before, you gotta take sides.
Then -Ben
Damn straight there's something at stake here. Movies hold up a mirror to society, reflecting or--all too rarely--reacting against the dominant culture (which is to say, what the bosses want us to believe.) If we don't like what we see, we have an obligation to raise a stink about it. And if we do like what we see, there's an equal or even greater obligation to shout it from the rooftops. And of course a community of such people has a much greater chance of being heard than a lone voice.
Will any of this change the world? Sure, incrementally. If we didn't believe it, would we continue to spend so much time and energy on such an endeavour?
I've really enjoyed the unexpected turn this thread has taken. Please, carry on.
Ok, you both got me: I do think there's a lot at stake, too, or I'd never spend a second involved in discussion about movies, criticism, and culture in the first place. However, I'm uneasy with the analogy of the general moviegoing public with the working class and especially with the false consciousness corollary that the working classes need intellectuals to educate them about what's important.
The two most prominent domestic social movements of the last 50 years were the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Rights Movement (and I think the Gay Rights Movement is running a close third). One of the many interesting aspects of the CRM was that when the intellectuals got on board, they found the shock troops already in place. The movement was built and launched without them because people being kicked know that they are being kicked. With the WRM, the intellectuals were in on the ground floor, because the many of the women who pushed the nation past the sexism of the 60s and earlier were the intellectuals who joined the CRM. Again, though, they were being kicked and knew it. The GRM is similar to the WRM, being mostly an intellectual battle for the hearts and minds of the voting public. I should say that being a straight white boy from Alabama, I didn't learn much about any of these movement until college, so without knowing much about those movement firsthand, I know a lot about racists, sexists, and homophobes from the other side, and I knew that they were wrong before I knew about the opposition.
The difference here is that general moviegoing public isn't doing anyone (but, perhaps, themselves, passively) any harm by preferring Rambo to Renoir. I think that maybe that preference does lead us down a slope to more widespread idiocy and homogenation of culture under a corporate banner, but hell, what are we going to do, send suicide bombers into Jerry Bruckheimer's house?
Y'know, I can't remember how we got here from the discussion on critical consensus. Did one of y'all leave a trail of breadcrumbs?
Oh, I should also tell you, Ben, that you are one full-ass funny writer. I cracked up some three times while reading that last post, which is no mean feat, my friend.
Hayden notes: Ben, that you are one full-ass funny writer.
Dan retorts: And you haven't even met the man. He fits that description so very, very well, and in ways I'm sure were light years from your original intention.
Even though I'm yet another dull heterosexual, I must say I'm flattered that Jardine has been checking out my ass.
But the big flattery is from Hayden. Dude, thank you so much for the compliment. What can I say? I guess I have to fall back on the ol' Marxist line about being not just for Karl but also Groucho.
You are right that I equated the general movie-going public with the working class for the purposes of my argumentation and I admit that this is just asking to be deconstructed. Honestly, I am not this reductionist. I was just trying to kick-start something. It really is beyond my time and energy right now to dig deeper into the democratic politics required to relate and reinforce specifically class oriented struggles with other emancipatory agendas - yikes! Suffice to acknowledge here that the various RMs you have identified are heartily invited by me into the radical community of opinion for which I am banging the drum.
On another occasion, however, depending on the focus, I may advance a notion about the primacy of class. Not in people's subjective experience of oppression but structurally in determining their objective position in the system. But that begs the question of what system and blah blah blah. Besides, we're getting along so nicely and I feel it is only fair here not to forget about film entirely.
One clarification to close, though. You seem to think that I think that the general movie-going public has "false consciousness." I didn't dare blow the dust off that clunker for our aesthetic concern. I applied the false consciousness term to the notion most people hold that they are in the middle class. It is this that I take to be a - reach for it Ben -misunderstanding... to put the previous term in euphemistic liberal language. In order to adumbrate this misunderstanding, however, I would have to take up that objective class analysis stuff I promised not to, for now at least.
And now I will go away and try not to feel too pressured to be funny. Have you guys seen that doc about Jerry Seinfield hitting the road to work up one solid hour of new stand-up material; you know, the one where we hear from a bunch of comedians, all of them neurotic to the max? Hummnn... come to think of it, maybe I will be able to be funny next time.
Then - Ben
The passing of Philippe Noiret reminded me of how much I've come to admire Hitchcock's dry-ice TOPAZ, a movie I found instantly dismissable till I saw it on DVD a few years back.
I have always loved Heaven's Gate (not many in that category I am afraid). A film I changed my mind (in the downward slope way) was Blue Velvet. I love Lynch (Mulholland Dr. is one of the ten greatest films ever made in my humble opinion) and when I first saw Blue Velvet (I was just 19) I loved it. I just saw it again (the first time since - now aged 39) and was very underimpressed. It is a better film than the messy Lost Highway, but still a reversal in thought. Going the other way, when I first saw Wild Strawberries I pegged it as lesser Bergman - now (twenty years later) I believe it to be the best Bergman.
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