Random observations/ruminations, March ‘08:
- Michael Haneke shouldn’t play ethics instructor. I love his last five movies, but Funny Games, either version, is a sanctimonious attempt to "implicate" those in the audience with presumably smaller brainpans than his. As Sight & Sound reasoned, he remade it with English-speaking movie stars because the Austrian version only got seen by critics and aficionados, who of course don’t need to be lectured to. Nice to know that both films were not made for me, as if I’d passed a minimum-requirements test and got to skip English Comp 101. But no one’s watching the new version, either. Maybe if he remade it again, on Sesame Street, he’d be assured of getting his laborious message across. Maybe even really dumb moviegoers don’t like sermons.
Parents throw away their children’s toys when the kids aren’t home – the toys that parents perceive as having been outgrown. They do it secretly because they know the kids might disagree. I’ve done it, they all do it, your parents did it to you.
Neither Marxist/historical film theory nor auteurism are sufficient to the work of film criticism – the former ignores the individual artist in favor of amorphous social forces, and the latter places too much emphasis on the artist, who even if he or she were to have everything he or she wanted the way they wanted it are subject to influences and imperatives beyond their control. But together, they are an eloquent answer. Dub it ethno-auteurism, the idea that, simply, many if not most worthwhile movies are most profitably considered as the conflict, tension and/or dialogue that a filmmaker has with his or her social and/or national culture. From the German Expressionists to the Soviet montagists to the "auteurist" natives and emigres working within the Hollywood factory, to the New Waves and the independents and the Iranians and beyond, there’s scarcely a single notable piece of work that can’t be viewed this way, and viewed in a way that appears comprehensible, responsible and profound.
Using "-core" as a suffix has got to stop, because it means nothing.
The deaths in teenage slasher films are not, contrary to decades of scholarly cant and critical dismissal, the punishment dealt out by the filmmakers – or by us all? – as a result of teen sex. Fans of the genre have always seen it differently: they see it as an extreme enactment of the perils and risks they see themselves as facing embarking on adult life, i.e., having sex, living without supervision, experiencing freedom & violence & pain etc. without the mollifying presences of Mom and Dad.
Why is it that the newspapers of today, March 18, feature David Paterson’s admitted infidelity on the front page, while the fact that Gov. Jim McGreevey told the Associated Press outright that he’d had THREESOMES! with his wife and a male co-worker is relegated to the mid-pages?
Is Manoel de Oliveira overrated? Well, provavelmente! Read more, even if the programmer at the Harvard Film Archives publicly denounced me as having "seen too many Bruce Willis movies" for saying so, to which I reply, of course I have, as have we all.
Protesteth too much? I don't understand the uniform critical reaction to Funny Games. What's wrong with having narrative expectations obliterated? That's not an indictment of the stupid audience, but instead a useful tool for understanding the filmic experience for the, um, less stupid. I found the reflection I was forced into, about the very nature of cinematic pleasure, thoroughly invigorating. And the film was just technically perfect.
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OK, but they weren't my narrative expectations, they were the expectations of a hypothetical "them," the great unwashed, who need to be taught, what, not to enjoy violence in movies (which Haneke partakes of often enough)? Your expectations were obliterated? -- you didn't know what Funny Games is before you went? If you did, you're not Haneke's "them." My expectations were for a Haneke film, or a remake of a Haneke film I thought was smug and preachy to begin with. So at least both films can be said to be targeted at and effective only to viewers who don't know Haneke, and don't know anything about the movies, and who dig action-movie-torture-porn mindlessly and need to be "rectified" -- which is not only a pretty narrow agenda with which to make a movie, but a bit of a fascistic position as well. How do you make sure only this little demographic buys tickets? "A useful tool for understanding the filmic experience"? How so?
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Of all of those bullet points, I'm surprised that it was the Haneke and not the de Oliveira that got challenged. I've only seen I'm Going Home, though, which was brilliant.
Funny Games, though....why are we supposed to applaud when a filmmaker makes the point that otherwise peaceful creatures will turn violent when cornered?
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