tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1793728792473426877.post1271727596115581261..comments2024-03-22T14:46:02.911-07:00Comments on Cinésthesia: Tweehouses: "Moonrise Kingdom"Mike McCahillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04422740293868518305noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1793728792473426877.post-2036741160293423052012-06-20T04:42:26.586-07:002012-06-20T04:42:26.586-07:00Thank you for your kind (and encouraging) words - ...Thank you for your kind (and encouraging) words - I recognise that we very much share the minority opinion on this one (do read Jean's cogently argued defence of the Anderson aesthetic above), but it doesn't make it an any less valid one. We naysayers must stick together and stand firm - we want more chaos in our movies! More humanity! More life!Mike McCahillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04422740293868518305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1793728792473426877.post-11240404601531723832012-06-19T06:11:33.114-07:002012-06-19T06:11:33.114-07:00Oh, thank you SO much for your elegantly scathing ...Oh, thank you SO much for your elegantly scathing review....I find the populism of Anderson to unconciously reflect so much upon the "endgame" of this moment in our cultural history....it's as if Rothko was happy hanging his canvases at Starbucks, as if Diane Arbus enjoyed shooting sitcoms for Nickelodeon, as if Lucien Freud liked making cartoons for The Disney Channel. This is some kind of bizarre, twisted entropy.."outsider art" as a kind of Orwellian control mechanism of The State...my god, these people who revel in all this corporatized quirk, this fetid cult of the mass-produced "eccentric"...they would have a heart attack watching Polanski's Repulsion or seeing Brando in Last Tango! What kind of de-evolution is this? Anderson admiring Bogdonavich's "They All Laughed" is very telling...a director whose star rose on the back of his brilliant Method actors and descended with his self-conscious and superficial romanticism...audiences today would flee from the power of an Exorcist or a Chinatown......Anderson is endemic of a cinema in the hands of a generation of well-read and clever eunuchs...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1793728792473426877.post-76599888564318239012012-06-14T20:51:22.919-07:002012-06-14T20:51:22.919-07:00I'm not trying to keep you on your toes, reall...I'm not trying to keep you on your toes, really - it's a universal point that is never not-applicable. Or pointless and never applicable, depending on your feelings. I agree with your point, though - I have to recalibrate my tools every time I watch a film, and especially great films, and in great films I often have to recalibrate multiple times in one film, or in one scene, or in one second. Which sort of makes 'calibrate' a misnomer, it's more like 'grasp at straws'. The key is: a lot of grasping yields a lot of straw.JeanRZEJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04530242176130470336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1793728792473426877.post-39094287865453521882012-06-13T12:39:34.101-07:002012-06-13T12:39:34.101-07:00It's a fair point, and I thank you for continu...It's a fair point, and I thank you for continuing to keep me on my toes - criticism shouldn't be a one-way process, after all, and it's always good to sharpen and recalibrate the tools involved. There's always room to learn and improve... even in regard to Wes's world.Mike McCahillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04422740293868518305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1793728792473426877.post-8801386628532451282012-06-10T11:58:19.713-07:002012-06-10T11:58:19.713-07:00I think Punch-Drunk is a great and clever film, bu...I think Punch-Drunk is a great and clever film, but those things you highlight as differences function to me in the same way that they do in a Wes film. One of the defining features of Wes Anderson, for me, is the way he punctuates his relatively monotone performances with moments of intensity. This is one of the great benefits of his 'very precise' composition, that any and all changes are so very stark. I haven't seen you mention 'The Life Aquatic', so perhaps you haven't seen it (the best one, for me!), but there is a moment where Anderson creates a moment of chaos which certainly rivals the Sandler/Hoffman confrontation in terms of crescendo and import. Who is a filmmaker which allows absolutely no chaos to invade his films? That would be - Eugene Greene! If you compare Le Monde Vivant to this film, though, I feel that Anderson's multifaceted layering of his fairy tale elements wins multiple times over.<br /><br />You obviously need to re-see Wes Anderson's films! Or not, whatever. The important thing is not what you watch, but what you are able to see. If you look in the wrong places - then your review isn't going to be a good 'map' for anyone else. That's my feeling, anyway.JeanRZEJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04530242176130470336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1793728792473426877.post-57960063475455109232012-06-10T09:17:08.177-07:002012-06-10T09:17:08.177-07:00"Punch-Drunk" (which I like a lot) is ce..."Punch-Drunk" (which I like a lot) is certainly the *closest* PTA gets to WA, but even there I think PTA allows elements of chaos (that stray harmonica, the Sandler and Hoffman characters' rage) to punctuate the otherwise very precise frame from time to time, in a way WA wouldn't allow (or hasn't allowed, as yet).<br /><br />Glad you had fun with "Moonrise", anyhow. And you've reminded me I need to see more Eugene Green at some point!Mike McCahillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04422740293868518305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1793728792473426877.post-60344362761424276192012-06-08T22:13:25.066-07:002012-06-08T22:13:25.066-07:00It's sad that you didn't mention Punch-Dru...It's sad that you didn't mention Punch-Drunk Love, wherein PTA rips off Wes A. Or something to that effect.<br /><br />Just got back from Moonrise Kingdom opening here... and it was delightfully detached from realism, overflowing in a gloriously garish color palette, and chock full of bland acting which could almost, almost make Eugene Greene jealous. But not really even close. Still, though, I felt like the acting was sufficiently inert to minimize the effects of potential empathetic connections and I was able to enmesh myself purely in the artifice. Ahh, such wonderful artifice.JeanRZEJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04530242176130470336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1793728792473426877.post-60207911531565410962012-06-04T09:58:19.310-07:002012-06-04T09:58:19.310-07:00Well, you make a good argument. Clearly I am in th...Well, you make a good argument. Clearly I am in the minority on this film in particular - and I remain hopeful that, in the future, I'll see the one Wes A. film that converts me for life (and allows me to see everything he's previously done in a new and more favourable light). As things stand, in the canon of the cinematic Andersons (the magnificent Andersons?), he's at least ahead of Paul W. S. Anderson ("Resident Evil", "The Three Musketeers"), if still some way behind Brad Anderson ("Session 9", "Transsiberian") and Paul Thomas Anderson ("Magnolia", "There Will Be Blood"). Onwards and upwards!Mike McCahillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04422740293868518305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1793728792473426877.post-63859768257826139652012-06-02T20:28:14.778-07:002012-06-02T20:28:14.778-07:00As for the comedy in Anderson's filmography - ...As for the comedy in Anderson's filmography - he's not really a comedian, really, is he? That's the most comfortable slot to put him in, because the comedy isn't incidental to the central point of his films, but he's really more like an arch tragicomic, which is to say that he does comedy and drama together but neither is relatable. I would also describe Greenaway and Andersson in this way. You could throw Jarmusch and Hartley in there with him. Is it comedy for the sake of laughter? Not really, more like comedy for the sake of abstraction, where abstraction is the device which renders all of the expressionistic, intellectual, and whatever else material. I don't really know - they're all sort of peculiar, and I haven't really encountered anyone who has given me the suitable lexicon for describing these sorts of atypical dramatic/artistic approaches, which is perhaps an indication that I need to read more books, but there is a strong fascination that I feel, if cannot always entirely explain. What I do know is that it's not the same as "Borat", as "Funny People", etc. - either in type of humor or in type of film - but I certainly find these few exceptional filmmakers films' more interesting. After all, Borat is a string of situational comedic moments, and entirely bereft of artlessness. There has to be more possibilities than just that, even if they're not as funny. I certainly laughed more at Borat than at all of Anderson's films, too, but I'd call less funny films better comedy without hesitation.JeanRZEJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04530242176130470336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1793728792473426877.post-15557161222552823672012-06-02T20:28:03.528-07:002012-06-02T20:28:03.528-07:00If everyone agreed all the time then we would neve...If everyone agreed all the time then we would never experience anything new. I do have my own critical tenets which I have carved out through experience which say, essentially: There is never anything to be gained from attacking a film, as at worst you merely gained nothing and at worst you are merely attacking the footing of a larger, more interesting whole. Looking back on the films I bashed in the past - they either weren't worth more than a shrug, or they were worth the effort investigating them that I spent crafting elaborate frameworks to miss-the-point with. Now when I see a bash I see two things: One, an elaborate rhetorical exercise which may or may not have anything to do with the target and: Two, an indication that the basher can, if open to new possibilities, potentially greatly increase their appreciation of the given film with some new perspectives, or perhaps a 'blank slate' re-evaluation. This is not to say that all films are in some way great, but when there is disagreement there is always potential for change.<br /><br />Moving on, those three questions you ask at the end are exactly the questions people ask of Greenaway and Andersson. That's why I brought them up! The answer, I would say, is: The life is in the creation, not in the imitation within. Imagine criticizing a puppet show because the puppets don't have realistic enough facial expressions! To film a person imitating what a real person is like is to me far less interesting than creating every detail out of one's imagination, which is what all of the folks I listed do. It seems that you are indifferent to the lot of this type of high-artifice expressionist approach in general though, from your descriptions. To approach these filmmakers' films as impressionistic or empathetic experiences is probably going to fall short. People call Anderson pretentious - but to me there's nothing less pretentious than saying, "I will not attempt to recreate your impressions of the world or the way people really are within that world - and you may enjoy it however you please." It doesn't mean it's going to work for you - but that's fine! You say that every part of his film says, "Look at me! Look at me!" but what is the converse? "Don't look at me, I'm bereft of care and imagination"? When the films start speaking to you it gets confusing, let me just leave it at that. If his films say, "Look at me!" I say, "Thank you for caring."JeanRZEJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04530242176130470336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1793728792473426877.post-65227804417566070142012-05-31T02:31:08.556-07:002012-05-31T02:31:08.556-07:00Hi Jean,
Ah, a deviation - but hopefully not a pa...Hi Jean,<br /><br />Ah, a deviation - but hopefully not a parting! - of the cinematic ways. All I can say, in my defence, is that this is just how I felt sitting in the same room as "Moonrise" - frustrated, alienated and unamused in equal measure. A larger problem with W. Anderson is that his approach is so limiting in its responses: you either get his schtick, or you don't. This isn't quite the same as Greenaway (a filmmaker I've always admired, even if I vary in my affection for individual films, their forms and content) or Roy Andersson (whose films are almost like sketch shows: you can laugh at certain skits, and be bemused, baffled and awed by others). Within three minutes of "Moonrise", I was out of the loop, and if we're claiming Anderson as a humorist, as many do, I have to say I've laughed more at screenings of "Funny People", "Borat" and "Stuck on You" than I have at Anderson's ENTIRE filmography. Where's the life in his films? Where are the human beings, rather than the props? I hope you can illuminate me!<br /><br />Mike.Mike McCahillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04422740293868518305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1793728792473426877.post-76866884608323089302012-05-26T21:31:25.694-07:002012-05-26T21:31:25.694-07:00This is a bash, like any other. If you had managed...This is a bash, like any other. If you had managed to evaluate those elements which actually make Anderson's films interesting, as opposed only to the lacks which don't (and, as all lacks are, are irrelevant), I might have something to say here. But who can comment on something that doesn't comment on anything? You may say that the film does this same service, and you may be right... but I hardly look to Anderson for comment. There's a reason Anderson doesn't belong with the New American Comedy - it doesn't merely retread those things we all know beforehand, it isn't merely 'observational comedy', it is unobserved artifice composed for comedy. The few who populate this field are some of my favorites - Greenaway, Andersson, Terayama... to what extent the list goes on it is surely not long enough, for my tastes. Two of those are surely static and airless filmmakers, and I wouldn't think for a second of comparing any New American Comedy-related artists to the density of their hilarity. Of course, Greenaway is one of my idols, so Anderson's obsession with minute details is anything but alienating...JeanRZEJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04530242176130470336noreply@blogger.com