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A rogue enfant terrible "critic" at large: A great Dane or a stale danish? After a Lars von Trier Retrospective at The American Cinematheque in Los Angeles in March 2004, nando issues his own film manifesto: a critique of Lars von Trier’s perverse melodramas and an essay on the current state of filmmaking—with a pointer or two on where to go from here. |
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"The significance of [film director Joseph] Losey’s story is to show up the deadly stupidity of too much criticism and the uneasy public role of the director as an artist." —David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film |
David Thomson |
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I started the theory and practice of these "impressions" in late 1998 when the Austin Film Society (AFS) did a retrospective of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's films in the fall of that year at the Alamo Drafthouse Theater in Austin, Texas, U.S.A. I decided to see each film as it was screened, write something about it right afterwards and post it on the web for anybody who cared to read it. I invited others to do the same. (Someone did take me up on it for the following major retrospective on Shohei Imamura in 1999.) | |
| I like watching a film that I know as little as possible about and as little as possible about the filmmaker responsible for it and then I like writing a very visceral, shoot-straight from the hip, reaction to it, right after the screening, while the impression the film has made on me is still fresh on my mind. I call this an "impression." | ||
| An "impression" encompasses the whole film viewing experience: | ||
| when: during the premiere and/or the initial theatrical release, a revival house run, a retrospective, on TV, on video or DVD (the last two are intrinsically "suspect" due to the ability to stop, rewind or fast forward the film, and due to the absence of a "real audience." Even if a video or DVD is watched with a group, the experience may be different from a theater). When also determines at what point in your life you saw the film. | ||
| where: theater screening at a multiplex, art house, revival house or cinematheque, film society or museum retrospective (MOMA, LCMA). In what city, in what country? Where determines in large part the audience with whom the film was seen. There is a great difference in seeing a film with a rowdy, and somewhat cynical, audience at the Alamo Drafthouse Theater in Austin, Texas, or with a more "serious" museum type audience (say, at MOMA in N.Y. or LACMA in L.A.). | ||
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how: If the film was seen at a cinematheque, film society or museum retrospective, was there an "introduction"? Were there handouts or reading material before the film? | |
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At the risk of sounding "ignorant" and/or sacrificing historical perspective, I prefer seeing a film and writing these "impressions" without having read any criticism or background information at all on a film or its director. Most academic film criticism is intrinsically "cannibalistic" and/or "in-breeding" in nature. Academics and film critics, like sharks, can go on an intellectual "feeding frenzy" and feed off of each other. Case in point? The last Mel Gibson film, "The Passion of the Christ." (Like sharks, indeed!). And all that affects one's perception of a film. If I'm going to see any film through any prism, through anybody's eyes at all, it should be my own and the director's, not the critics', not the commentators'. I believe a film should speak to me now as it is and for what it is regardless of the time or cultural context in which it was made and regardless of the intention of whomever made it. Sure. It's important to know about all of that afterwards but I don't believe that it's crucial to my appreciating a film at first, before I see it. If it there is anything in it worth appreciating at all, I will connect with it somehow. Or not. |
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| Tarantino, for instance, loved the highly cinematic gore in "The Passion of the Christ." (L.A. Weekly, April 16-22, 2004, "Kill Bill...Or Else" by John Powers). He said he couldn't believe the film had been made "by an actor." Now that is an "impression"! 'nuff said! But I doubt, for all I know, that he is a very religious person who connected with or cared about Gibson's putative intention in his display of gore; that is, the sacrificial nature of the whole spectacle, the religious meaning behind it, anymore than I would. |
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Some of us have lost our "innocence." By that I don't necessarily mean that we have become cynical but that we know too much about film and about the machinations, motivations, and intentions behind films. We'll never be able to see a film with the pure, uncontaminated, naive "eyes of a child" again. The films we saw as children will never feel the same if we re-see them again as grown-ups. | |
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Some of us have developed too much of a "critical eye." Depending on the film and the director, that may be a way of saying that a director or filmmaker who makes his presence felt too much may not be necessarily the best. We may admire Hitchcock's artistry but part of our admiration comes from seeing his "hand" barely enough and never too much on what's going on on the screen. Traditionally, the more "disguised" or "natural" (e.i., uncontrived) the mise-en-scene, the better the directorial artistry. With a few great exceptions (see next paragraphs), the less we see of a director's hand, the better; the more we see of a director's "hand", the more critical we'll get. |
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| A lot of my negative "impressions" on Fassbinder and von Trier will come from this fact. You can see the "hand of God", the director's, at work in the films and it feels contrived, contrived for maximum effect, to the point that—at least to me—it comes across as cynical in the extreme. These guys are not Godard, they are not Fellini. So what are they up to? | ||
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When it comes to Godard or Fellini, you know you are watching a "Godard," you know you are watching a "Fellini," and that is a different type of director; a different type of mise-en-scene; and a different type of film and film experience altogether. By the time Fellini made "Satyricon," his actors were practically "puppets." And you can see that. "Ciao Federico!", a documentary on the making of "Satyricon," and the very funny interviews in the documentary "Fellini: I'm a Born Liar" with Terence Stamp, who played "Toby Dammit," and Donald Sutherland, who played "Casanova," only confirm this. But you know that and you enjoy it. Part of what one loves about Fellini is seeing the playful theatrical "puppetmaster," il burattinaio, at work on the screen. When it comes to Godard, you know he's giving you "Alice In Wonderland"! ...e voila! amuse-toi bien! |
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| There is no such a thing as an absolute film viewing experience. The film viewing experience is always relative, relative to all the factors mentioned above. | ||
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My philosophy on the foregoing (especially on the importance of seeing these films in a theater with an audience) is more fully developed and expanded throughout the "impressions" on Fassbinder, Imamura, Preston Sturges and now von Trier. Even though I saw most of the films, I didn't have a chance to write "impressions" on Bresson, Sirk, Monte Hellman, Eric Rohmer, Jean Eustache, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, Hsiao-hsian Hou, and Kinji Fukasaku but meant to and I did set up the Bresson site. At the American Cinematheque, I saw ALL of Orson Welles's films, even the rarest of stuff, including his Japanese whiskey commercials and what's available from "The Other Side of the Wind." I will write the "impressions" on Sirk, et. al., later even though some of them have faded a little by now and I may have to re-see all the films. If the "impressions" are not written immediately, right after seeing the films, they just start to fade away. | |
| I have probably seen at least a hundred films or more since the last retrospective I saw in Austin. That's a lot of "impressions"! They start to pile up. You have to write it right away, right after seeing the film, right after the experience, or it starts to fade away or it gets "contaminated" as you talk or read about the film or as other "impressions" on other films start to pile up on top and take precedence. | ||
| Another way to look at these "impressions" is then to consider them a kind of "film journal." Each "impression" is a "journal entry." If you don't write the journal entry for a certain day, for the way you felt about what you experienced that day, you lose it forever. It will not be the same to write it a week, a month or a year later. | ||
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I should perhaps confess that it is easier and a lot more fun to write about films and filmmakers that provoke strong reactions in you than about filmmakers you love. It was just too easy to like Preston Sturges, and even though I wanted to do "impressions" on his films, I found myself having too little or nothing much to say except how great I thought his films were! (Well, I did have a minor gripe against "Lady Eve".) In a way then, these other filmmakers (Fassbinder, Imamura, von Trier) and their fans should take my reaction to their films as a compliment, as a form of praise. Sometimes attention, any attention, even negative attention, is better than indifference (Ask anyone who's ever done anything highly controversial whether they loved the free publicity or not!). If I have given them all this time, thought and effort, they and their films must be worth something to me, too. It would be stupid on, say, von Trier's part not to appreciate the potential exposure this site can give him (not that he needs it or even cares. I'm sure there are other unofficial sites out there). If it can awaken in ONLY ONE more person who hasn't seen his films enough interest to go see them, it should be worth it for him. It's free advertising. And I've done all the work for him basically for free. Gratis! It doesn't get any better than that. I don't know of anyone who doesn't appreciate free publicity. |
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If there are any factual errors in these "impressions" it is because of my aversion to reading anything on the films or the filmmakers before seeing their films and writing these "impressions". I actually thought that the L.A. Weekly cover story on Lars von Trier before the release of "Dogville" in L.A. read: "Lars Attacks! von Trier in Hollywood!" rather than "Trollywood", the studio in Sweden, as it actually said. It was only after von Trier's assistant e-mailed me pointing this out to me that I double-checked and realized that I did, indeed, have it wrong. I had barely glanced at the cover and at the article inside and had simply caught one important quote—hopefully not taken too out of context—that I have used significantly in this big "impression" on his work. This happened because I refused to read anything on these films before writing my "impressions" on them. I couldn't help listening to Jean-Marc Barr and Udo Kier at the American Cinematheque, but that's about all I knew about von Trier before writing this critique (plus having read, of course, the "Dogme '95" declaration). I had never seen any of his films before except the "Riget" (A.K.A. "The Kingdom") made for TV series. |
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| There are several different kinds of "film criticism." There is academic criticism (mostly in book form), there is film industry analysis (trade and film magazines: mostly business-oriented and/or technical), there is film review criticism in the media (Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert, Anthony Lane, David Denby, Vincent Canby, Richard Corliss), there is David Thomson (unique!), and then there are "impressions"! Everybody has "impressions"! | ||
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I am sure somebody is going to mistake these "impressions" for some kind of film review criticism, so let me say a word about that. David Thomson says that newspapers get a large part of their revenue from the movie industry and therefore feel obliged to review every single film released by the industry. Whether there is a connection between positive film reviews in those papers and how much advertising they get, I don't know. All I know is the obvious fact that positive quotes from film review criticism are used glaringly in movie advertising (just pick up any newspaper and look at the movie ads and you'll see what I mean). Whatever its true source, its intention is clear: film review criticism tries to sway or shape public opinion about a film. Whenever everybody in the media is attacking a film (say, "The Passion of The Christ") or over-praising one (say, "The Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King"), listen to the dissenting voices or go see the film for yourself and have your very own unfiltered, unadulterated , uncontaminated "impression." |
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| Film review criticism can be fun to read, though. Sometimes it can be even more fun than going to see the film! It's especially good and especially fun when a reviewer like, say, Andy Klein of L.A.'s City Beat puts down a film. This is my favorite kind of film review criticism and I only read it when I don't care to go see the film (usually a Hollywood "blockbuster"). Case in point? Andy Klein's review of the just released "Troy" ("Oy, It's 'Troy.'" City Beat, May 13-19, 2004, p. 21). It's not one of his best, but it's a classic put-down and it's fun to read. |
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| Let me say that the only reason I'd ever go see this particular film "Troy" would be because it was photographed by Roger Pratt, one of the most interesting and knowledgeable cinematographers around today, something that Mr. Klein glaringly fails to mention in his review. Roger Pratt also photographed "Batman," and if you ever wondered what you liked about that je ne sais quoi film noir-ish look of "Batman," the answer may lie in Roger Pratt's cinematography. I suppose that only filmmakers appreciate good cinematography and that probably all that matters to Mr. Klein's City Beat readership is the story (plot), the story, the story and the acting. It's a very, very two-dimensional way of looking at film, which I suppose it's fine for his City Beat audience. |
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| If you'd like to understand what these "impressions" are all about, then please understand that I'm interested in a multi-dimensional way of looking at film, in appreciating all the elements that make up a film, not just in the "story" and the "acting" and which "stars" are in it but in how all those elements interact and work together along with all others like the cinematography to create a unique cinematic experience. And that could be another name for these "impressions." An "impression" is a "cinematic experience." Sometimes one single outstanding element can make a film worth seeing. If the cinematography by Roget Pratt is particularly good or spectacularly crisp and sharp in this film "Troy", that alone might be a good reason to go see the film. (As a filmmaker, this is a cinematographer I might want to work with someday, somewhere, somehow—if I can afford him! It's good to be familiar with his work). | ||
| Reading film criticism colors your "impression" of a work before you see it. It raises or lowers your expectations. It plants preconceived ideas in your head on what you're about to see before you have a chance to experience it for yourself. To me, it's like hearing too much about a place before going there or about a person before actually meeting them. The reality never matches your expectations. | ||
| It's one of my pet peeves about the media. They have given me more disappointments about people and places than I care to remember by building them up disproportionately to a level they could never possibly live up to in reality. Think about the first time you had sex, especially if you are a woman, or visited a foreign country or met a celebrity. Did any of those experiences meet your expectations? Wouldn't it have been better to go into it without any expectations at all? Wouldn't it be better to dive head-on into an ocean of discovery to be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised? And that's the key word, surprise. | ||
| Madison Avenue, the whole machinery of advertising, has been set up to raise your expectations about goods and services, including films. But they are not the only ones playing with your expectations. Academics, religious people and politicians are also playing the same game. When a professor stands before an audience before a film screening, he/she is trying to raise or shape your expectations on what you're about to see. But advertisers are, in a sense, more "honest". You know what they want: they want your money. The forces or academia, religion and politics, though, are a little more insidious: they want YOUR MIND (and heart and soul, too!). So their intentions are never too clear and should be questioned and resisted as much as, if not more than, the marketing forces. THINK FOR YOURSELF. Don't let ANYBODY (myself included, of course) tell you what film to go see or to like and why. If there is any point at all behind these "impressions", that is it! | ||
| To me, reading or listening to film criticism before seeing a film is like eating pre-chewed food or taking a bath in someone else's bathwater. The food just wouldn't taste, the water just wouldn't feel the same. I love the element of surprise. Reading or listening to film criticism before seeing a film ruins completely the element of surprise for me. | ||
| I especially dislike listening to so-called "introducers" pontificate about the "film we're about to see," especially if they reveal anything about the plot or the characters. I had a BIG problem with this in Austin at the AFS screenings. Sometimes professors from UT, representing the forces of academia, would introduce the films and they would practically give a "lecture" and reveal almost everything about a film we hadn't even seen! | ||
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The American Cinematheque in L.A. is A LOT better on this issue. However, Eddie Muller, the co-programmer and organizer of the great yearly "Festival of film noir" at the American Cinematheque, almost committed the unforgivable sin of sins and incurred the "wrath of nando" this year when he introduced "Mildred Pierce" and said that a "femme fatale could even be a sixteen-year-old." See what I mean? Wouldn't it have been better if we had figured that out by ourselves or talked about it AFTER the film? He planted a pre-conceived idea in our heads. He told us what to expect! He practically gave it away when he said that! Introducers just can't help themselves, can they? He's done a great job organizing the festival and he is a great introducer who does take care not to reveal too much before a film. Because of that I held back and didn't say anything. |
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"Hell is other people" |
I especially dislike "introducers" if they spew sycophantic praise at the film's director. Take for instance Austin filmmaker Richard Linklater's introductions to Fassbinder's "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul," "The Merchant of Four Seasons," and "The Year of 13 Moons" back in 1998 at the above retrospective in Austin. I couldn't help liking "Ali," that's a great little film on its own and a wonderful remake of a Sirk film (when I liked a Fassbinder film, I really liked it. When I didn't, I really didn't. Fassbinder gave me very strong and very extreme "impressions."). I didn't have a chance to write about "The Year of 13 Moons (Linklater called it "un-fucking-believable!"). But you can read here just how strongly I reacted against "The Merchant of Four Seasons." I even quoted Sartre directly to Linklater ("Hell is other people," which just about sums up this film, "The Merchant of Four Seasons," for me) as if my "impression" had been a response, a reply, a rebuttal to his. I realized later that I was reacting not only to what I had just seen on the screen but just as much to what the introducer had said, to the philosophical " bag of beans" or the sycophantic praise I was being sold along with the movie. |
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| After all, when it comes to over-praising a filmmaker at a retrospective of his life's work, you are doing only one of two things: 1) preaching to the converted or 2) "casting pearls before swine." The people in the audience are there either because they are fans already or because they are curious or because they are detractors (e.i., "critics"?). If they are curious, there is nothing you can tell them to make them fans that the films themselves cannot do on their own (and sometimes you can feel or hear their exasperation at long introductions: "Get on with it and show the film!" they seem to be saying). If they are detractors, you are confirming their worst suspicions and helping their cause by pontificating, by basking in your own glory, by trying to dazzle them with your great film knowledge instead of letting the films speak for themselves. | ||
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I believe that a film should be given the chance to be seen and to speak for itself FIRST and then to be talked about later, ONLY after everybody has seen the film —NEVER before the film. In one of my "impressions" on a film by Japanese director Shohei Imamura, I complained publicly to the AFS about this problem and, taking a cue and an analogy from books, I suggested that we implement a policy of AFTERwords rather than FOREwords for film. | |
| I know that a lot of Hollywood advertisers, academics, critics, video store clerks, ex-film school students and even friends (not to mention the grandma on the ticket holders line!) have an agenda: like parents and teachers, they'd love to tell you what to like and how to like it, and everybody who knows the key to a mystery thinks they hold the keys to El Dorado or the map to the Fountain of Youth. Everybody who ever saw Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques" or Jordan's "The Crying Game" thought they knew something you didn't and couldn't wait to tell you about it. Everybody who knows an inside joke or great little detail about a film production can't wait to tell you all about it. This adds to their sense of superiority over you and, in the case of critics, academics and even video store clerks, it justifies their jobs. |
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If I had worked with Tarantino at Video Archives, I wouldn't have committed suicide because he was bound for fame and I wasn't, like some idiot there supposedly did (who cares about "fame" anyway? It's not only potentially dangerous to be famous, it's even overrated!). I would have "killed" him for his arrogance (figuratively, of course, not literally! meaning, "I would have put him in his place"!). As a famous director, his arrogance is understandable as part of his persona. It's actually child-like and even funny sometimes. As a video store clerk, I imagine he must have been a bit of a condescending, patronizing royal pain you-know-where! | |
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As an "introducer" to his large collection of films, Tarantino is someone unique. His AFS-sponsored "QT" Festivals are really something special and the whole idea is that you are a "guest" in his house and he's having you over for a film and a meal and a drink. At the movie theater where they hold these festivals, you can order meals and even beer and wine while you watch the films. The Saturday night show is an all-nighter (8:00pm to 8:00am!) with a breakfast buffet at 6:00am! So that is a totally unique and different experience. That is also a different kind of " introduction." At his "home" at the Alamo in Austin, he can say anything he wants! Actually, it's a lot of fun to listen to what Tarantino has to say. He puts on quite a performance as good as or sometimes even better than what you are about to see onscreen! You can read more about Tarantino's "QT" Festivals later on in this critique (If you ever go, though, expect Richard Linklater to be telling you not to ask Tarantino for his autograph, not to hand him your screenplay, and not to ask him how to break into show business! what? Who needs him?). |
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| Even though, like St. Paul, I admit to being "the greatest sinner of them all" and sounding arrogant, too, sometimes, I am neither a critic, nor an academic nor a video store clerk! (I did work at video store for five long years myself while going to college and hated every minute of it). I am interested in the art of cinema, in enjoying and talking about films with film savvy, intelligent and pleasant people without a "film knowledge superiority complex". That's why I am sharing these "impressions". I am also interested in making films for others to enjoy, not in arguing over stupid trivia (I left that *&%$# video store a long time ago and have no intention of ever going back!). My "agenda" is a different one. | ||
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A hundred years from now, I'd like to be remembered as someone who made a contribution—however small and insignificant—to the art of cinema. I'm not interested in "fame" or self-serving "success" but in being completely involved in what I love. Like Godard, like Truffaut, like Rohmer, like Tarantino, I am someone who lives and breathes film. | |
| If I am so ambivalent about "film criticism", especially film review criticism, what then is the point of these "impressions"? | ||
| In a sense, these "impressions" are really meant for the filmmakers themselves first and foremost. If you read this whole critique, you'll notice that I address von Trier directly, albeit parenthetically, several times throughout (And the first thing I did after I finished writing this critique was to mail him a hard copy to his production company in Denmark. We're not messing around here. We mean business!). If you read my "impressions" on Fassbinder, you'll notice that some of them are addressed to "Fass' from Beyond the Grave." I address Fassbinder directly as if I had access to the world beyond and pretend to have a conversation with him threatening him to make him "turn over in his grave" if he continues making perverse stuff as the retrospective wears on. Rather than put the films down mercilessly, I poke light-hearted fun at Fassbinder and his films I didn't like. | ||
| Even though I believe all criticism is really meant for the filmmaker himself first as the person behind the film, there is also a time and a place for us to express and share our own "impressions" as well. | ||
| Films, like children, like the product of somebody's mind that they are, need to "grow up", they need to be able to stand on their own, to speak for themselves and make their own way in the world, away from their "parents," the filmmakers. Films do take a life of their own. We talk about Hamlet and Othello as if they were personalities we heard about in the news: the celebrity guy who fought and killed his uncle for having killed his father and married his mother; the jealous husband, who, instigated by a demonic gossipy neighbor, killed his wife and then himself in a fit of jealous rage. Stripped of the mythic cloak of poetry Shakespeare put on them, they sound just like everyday people from the news. | ||
| So are characters from any movie—or from the best movies. So much so that Tarantino talks about "hang out" movies and says that when he is in a town where he doesn't know anyone and feels lonely, he rents "Dazed and Confused" and "hangs out" with the characters from that movie. That means that those characters keep him company and mean something to him and to others. They have taken on a life of their own, the life that those who like them want them to take on. |
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| While I believe that non-academic "film criticism" should be initially intended for the filmmaker himself, films do take a life of their own and need to be talked about on their own, independently of their maker. Sarah Kozloff says in her book Overhearing Film Dialogue that "Tarantino is talking too much about his own films." She's right. Like a "father" talking too much about his children, he needs to let them go. He needs to let go of his "children"! He needs to let them "grow up"! Let them speak for themselves! And we need to talk more about these films and what they mean to us as separate breathing entities with a "life" and "personality" of their own. Otherwise, they are like children who are nothing or who would have been nothing without their parents standing right behind them. | ||
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Towards the end of these
"impressions" on von Trier, I myself write,
There is something, if not a lot, to be said for the art and—why not?—for the entertainment and business of cinema. But there should be a lot less to be said for the cult of personality, the idolization of directors (even Orson Welles, Fellini and Antonioni! mea culpa: I have sinned. I know!), the self-aggrandizement of some. There is something touching and just great about the unpretentious beauty and simplicity of a film like Ken Loach's "Kes." When the credits roll at the end of one of the most wonderful little films ever made, it simply reads, "This film was made by..." listing everyone who participated in its making without any fanfare or pretense. Lovely! |
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| This is part of the problem I have with the von Trier films (thereby my accusations of self-aggrandizement). I feel that they are way too closely identified with him. He is too proud that they bear his BIG name and have his great cinematic "genes." They are beginning to feel like a Bush or Kennedy type Dynasty whose viral off-spring wants to take over the cinematic world. That's partly why I find them a bit irritating, threatening or even annoying. And the big (premature, in my opinion) retrospective fanfare and the big "famous actor" introductions and comments didn't exactly help. | ||
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I am reacting to all that as much as I am reacting to the films themselves. When somebody makes it big, like von Trier probably did with "Zentropa," he should have started becoming as humble as possible, He should have started maximizing his art and minimizing his persona, not the other way around! To use an analogy from pop music, when The Beatles, or even Bob Dylan, stopped touring, that's when the works of genius really started pouring out! (Bob Dylan even went into seclusion.) von Trier doesn't even travel! Nothing is about art, nothing is about real creativity, nothing is about real accomplishment anymore. It's all about names and personalities. These "impressions" on von Trier have been revised and toned down for the web. Still, expect some very strong words! |
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Steev, with whom I saw the Imamura films, has called this critique on von Trier, "a psycho piece of work." (hehehe.... I'm psyched about it alright! You can read Steev's reactions to my "impressions" on Imamura.). If that doesn't whet your appetite to read these "impressions," nothing ever will! Remember, though, that, according to Louis Menand, Francois Truffaut was the most savage of film critics at Cahiers du Cinema, so savage, in fact, that he was denied a press pass for the Cannes Film Festival one year! I don't consider myself a "film critic" nor would I want to become one. But if Truffaut's strong stance is any indication, there's hope for me yet as the rebel-rousing rogue revolutionary renegade filmmaker, the enfant terrible of cinema, I have every intention of becoming. So catch what I have to say now. Once I start making films, I'm going to be as "mute" as Kubrick! The films must speak for themselves! But I will LISTEN carefully to everybody's' "impressions" on my films. They can only make me a better filmmaker. Right? | |
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As a matter of fact, I intend to call my production company "RRRRRRRRR Films": R x 9 = "Rough-Riding Radical Rebel-Rousing Rogue Retro-Revolutionary Renegades" (We'll throw the "Retro" and the "Rough-Riding" in for good measure! hehehehe... And because it needs a few extra "r's", three pairs of "r's", to make it sound real good). Our motto comes from "The Wild One" (or is it "Rebel Without a Cause"? One of those!): "What are you rebelling against?" someone asks. And Marlon Brando (or was it James Dean?) replies, "What have have you got?" If Tarantino is what's "hot" and he represents the current domestic "mainstream," we'll rebel against that and go in the opposite direction. If Lars von Trier is what's "hot" and he is the current foreign "mainstream," we'll rebel against that and go in a different direction If we ourselves are getting too complacent and becoming the "mainstream" (most unlikely!), we'll rebel even against ourselves and go in a different direction. We don't want to be defined by others, though. We don't necessarily want to be defined as "reactionaries" against something else. We want to lead. We want to be on the cutting edge and be way ahead of the pack. |
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| In a way, this critique is our first "salvo" against both the established domestic Tarantino and the emerging foreign von Trier "mainstreams". Retro-paraphrasing Jean Francois Revel's Neither Marx nor Jesus, it's "Neither Lars nor Quentin" for us! | ||
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We want to be defined by CREATIVITY, UNIQUENESS, ORIGINALITY, VITALITY AND VERSATILITY. We don't want to "enter [our] house justified" like a character in some Peckinpah movie. What "house"? The "art house"? The world is still a HUGE place! You may be a "dud" in America but "big" in Germany (hey, look at David Hasselhoff! hehe...). It's all culturally relative. Even in old age, better to be "Don Quixote" fighting windmills than "Dante" in Paradiso! Like Peckinpah himself, we want to remain "outlaws" looking for adventure FOREVER! |
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Unless we can have the creative freedom of, say, a Kubrick, a Woody Allen, a Tarantino, better to be Orson Welles struggling to make independent films on a shoestring "out there" or a Michael Moore or Errol Morris making documentaries than to be a "cog-in-the-machine" of some RKO-type studio that re-edits and releases your "Magnificent Ambersons" with a different ending and thereby botches a masterpiece or of a studio that refuses to produce your "Heart of Darkness" script because there would be too many Africans in it (this did happen to Welles in 39-'40 before "Citizen Kane"! "Heart of Darkness" was actually the first film he wanted to make). We want to stir things up a little; we want to create a little cinematic pandemonium! |
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There hasn't been a single studio-financed "revolutionary" film, from "Bonnie and Clyde" to "Easy Rider," that didn't face an uphill battle to get made and be released theatrically. When Warren Beatty screened "Bonnie and Clyde" for Jack Warner, the old man reportedly said, "What the fuck is this?" He didn't say, "hmmmm... interesting. What can we do with this? Will it work?" He just dismissed it outright without even giving it a chance. It was only after a series of fortuitous events including support by the likes of Pauline Kael in The New Yorker and a lot of Academy Award nominations, that he had to admit he had been wrong. And not only wrong but totally misguided about the future of American films. Most of the great films of the late 60's and 70's from "The Wild Bunch" to "The Godfather" and "Taxi Driver," films that did very well at the box office, owed something to "Bonnie and Clyde." The gritty display of graphic violence wouldn't have been possible without "Bonnie and Clyde" paving the way. Typical of studio heads: very few have the vision. |
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But never mind intractable Hollywood studio corporate profit-minded mentalities of yore or today. The most exciting area of filmmaking today is actually not the nebulous and risky one of feature films at all, but that of documentaries! Whoever thinks he's going to be the next "Tarantino" is dreaming! But the next "Michael Moore" or the next "Errol Morris"? Easy! (Well, relatively easy) There are literally hundreds, thousands of films like "Bowling for Columbine" and "The Fog of War" and "Capturing the Friedmans" and "My Architect: A Son's Journey" out there waiting to be made. The hottest area of filmmaking today is the documentary essay. No question about it. As of this writing, Michael Moore is about to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his documentary essay "Fahrenheit 9/11": "The temperature where freedom burns." If that's not hot, I don't know what is! |
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| The times they really are a-changin': with film festivals, cinematheques and film societies, cable TV—especially HBO, Direct-to-Video-and-DVD and the internet, who needs studios and distributors? This is the Golden Age of Independent Filmmaking! | ||
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Or independent publishing! I doubt, say, The New Yorker, would have published these "impressions" in their present form, or any form, and allow me to say what I really want to say. So I'm not even bothering. I'm by-passing them altogether and going straight online where I can potentially reach the people I want to reach and say what I want to say anyway. |
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| Because of all the above reasons, I must say that these "impressions" are really meant for the filmmakers themselves and for those who have seen the films and care to read and talk about them in more depth. | ||
| I am not interested in rating movies with stars (ridiculous!) or in declaring them "good" or "bad." (absurd!) | ||
| I like challenging filmmakers and audiences—just like I'll be challenging myself as a filmmaker—to be their original best. By challenging filmmakers and ourselves to make and like something better, we are helping them to make better films, great films, the films we all would like to see. | ||
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nando
May 15, 2004 (revised May 24, 2004) |
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© 2004 All rights reserved A Cinema-Is-Fun-and-Art nando Kosmik Production |
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English, italiano, français, español, Deutsch, ivrit spoken here |
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