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Art vs. "Art"
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  • From today's New York Times:

    Unlike, say, David Lynch in “Mulholland Drive,” Mr. Anderson tells a story that’s easy to grasp with one viewing: Two men meet and one, Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), tries to influence or seduce or break the other, Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix). The mystery is in characters that Mr. Anderson refuses to explain; instead he presents their actions, reactions, rituals and conversations and perhaps clues. Quell means to silence, pacify. But is Freddie quelling Lancaster or the reverse? Deciding is part of the film’s pleasure and one reason I look forward to seeing it a third time. Its mysteries seem more in line with those in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Avventura” as exemplified by his observation that “eros is sick; man is uneasy, something is bothering him.”

    At least some of the movies we’re talking about, though — certainly “Cloud Atlas,” maybe “Holy Motors,” a surreal and episodic fantasy from the French director Leos Carax — are what one theorist, Thomas Elsaesser, calls “the mind-game film.” Once upon a movie time you went to a film, and after it played on the circuit, it disappeared, perhaps showing up later on television. Home video changed our relationship with movies — suddenly we could watch a title when we wanted as many times as we wanted — a relationship that shifted further with the introduction of DVD, which gave viewers even more and possibly deeper ways into a film with special features, directors’ cuts and hidden jokes and clues called Easter eggs. This new film-audience relationship may help account for the emergence of these new, complex narratives.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/movies/films-dispense-with-storytelling-conventions.html?pagewanted=all

  • Picking up on Shian's distinction between "open" and "closed" films, it may be possible to distinguish, with shameless ease, genuine narrative mystery from formula or mystfication in the movies, just by identifying where authorial control is exercised.

    A filmmaker who allows, or has the talent to permit, the material to be ambiguous at the foundational level, of unconscious, myth and the religious impulse, with the material growing out of those roots, is going to make a very different movie than one who asserts authorial control very near the surface of conscious will and observance of movie conventions, to create suspense or "mystery" by misleading or manipulating the audience in obvious ways.

    This distinction could be one reason why (for example) Tarkovsky is mysterious, but Hitchcock, Kubrick, Welles and Spielberg are, despite their technical control and visual imagination, not at all mysterious, or only rarely so; the latter's manipulations are evident at every turn and inform every development on screen. Absolutely nothing in most of their movies suggests openness or possiblity exceeding the filmmaker's own will to make the movie or, in some cases, to make money from the movie. It's a lifelessness at the heart of the venture, however elegant and accomplished it may be.

    Consider the scifi genre, as the most obvious example of a movie which is supposed to be mysterious, at least on the surface. Tarkovsky can put 3 men on a railroad car trolley, and do nothing but move it through desolate countryside, and yet this scene goes very deep, somehow or other. Far more so, say, than that ambiguous refrigerated museum gallery at the end of 2001, or those lovely iconic reflections on the astronaut's helmet.

    Is this distinction too simple or simple-minded to be true? Somehow I don't think so ... at least, not for the movies.

  • The things that this thread has taught me:

    1. Vitaliy is actually kinda funny. I LOL'd at his comments and participation.

    2. You should be careful of "industry" folks on the internet. It seems they don't work in the same industry as you do, or they live in an alternate universe.

    3. Some people really need a LOT of attention. So, while VK sees them as monkeys? They're more like cats, to me; after sifting through this thread for the LuLLz, I'm all out of yarn.

    4. I am a horrible manager of my own time: should've left this thread halfway through the first post.

    <3

  • But you didn't.

  • @jrd

    Some interesting interpretation of the seemingly superficial Kubrick.

    http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2012/02/stanley-kubrick-and-reality-stargate.html

  • For those who took this thread WAY TOO seriously - my apologies. I was making a point about something that had nothing to do with anyones opinions; likes or dislikes. I know now that it offended a great many. But the point I was trying to make doesn't hit home unless you get upset.

    And sometimes text doesn't accurately convey intentions. Oft to my detriment. I need a less dry sense of humor I suppose.

  • Dropped this thread a while ago, but I recently found this:

    Related, unrelated, it´s a nice little clip all the same.

  • This thread brought to mind the Mulholland Drive DVD I'd been meaning to check out for several months. I just finished viewing it in a single, uninterrupted session, with no advance knowledge of the plot. While I was once a fan of David Lynch, in his Eraserhead and Blue Velvet periods, I eventually burned out on Twin Peaks and really despised Fire Walk with Me.

    Mulholland Drive, however, kept me guessing the whole way through, and left me enthralled with Naomi Watts and Laura Harring's compelling performances. When Lynch is inspired, he can somehow imbue the most hackneyed tropes with a combination of unnerving passion and surreal alienation.

    But I can see why many would resent Mulholland Drive's moralistic take-down of Hollywood, because it is neither sarcastic nor bitter, but compassionate and psychotic. Lynch's characterizations combine heart-felt emotion with sociopathic ambition, a deeply unflattering portrait of a town that is more typically mocked for its superficial fixation on fame and glamour.

  • One of the best "Lynchian moments" I've even seen never actually occurred in one of his films but to Lynch himself in Berlin when he was on tour promoting (his?) idea for building a network of TM centers.

    However much I love films and especially films that expand my sense of "mystery" and understanding of "story" (Lynch films particularly don't for me), those experiences usually pale in comparison to the complexity of (real) life. Or to put it another way, I've sometimes wondered about those who are obsessive over certain "genius" monkeys as if they need to uphold the image of a genius to give themselves a certain sense of belonging or satisfaction in life?

  • @MirrorMan quite ironic (and tragic), isn´t it that Lynch himself got sucked into such a cult? (detached from reality, deep inside the rabbit hole)

  • @RRRR I was in fact surprised when this whole thing came out, to find that TM was more of a (business) cult than anything else and that Lynch was some how deeply involved with it. Although I do like a few of his films, I have to admit that this did taint my view of him... but really I guess its not at all that uncommon since many cults target people with money and influence.