tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186118329509553435.post3132471356259206399..comments2024-03-09T15:11:29.350-08:00Comments on Exotic and irrational entertainment: Favorites of 2018: Movies and televisionPessimisissimohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04223566131580795337noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186118329509553435.post-84747241376948193782018-12-20T21:05:25.230-08:002018-12-20T21:05:25.230-08:00My reply Part 2
Anti-capitalism and cross-cultura...<b>My reply Part 2</b><br /><br /><b>Anti-capitalism and cross-culturalism:</b> <i>Sorry to Bother You</i> is on our viewing list for the coming year. Anti-capitalism tends to be in the eye of the beholder, but if I had to pick an anti-capitalist film I might well name <i>It's a Wonderful Life</i>, the movie you've vowed never to see again. Capra's film shows the rapacious banker Mr. Potter ruthlessly crushing all who stand in the way of his greed. And in the "world without George Bailey" sequence we see the consequences of Potter's success: people living in filthy slums, hardened against their neighbors in want, while corruption and violence are rampant. (Interestingly, Potter is the one character who isn't redeemed at the end of the film.) I think the presence of Jimmy Stewart and the "happy ending" (really?) tend to mask how strong a critique this film makes of the economic system. But our differing views of <i>It's a Wonderful Life</i> aside, I second your recommendation of <i>Tokyo Godfathers</i>.<br /><br /><b>Documentaries:</b> We haven't seen the Hedy Lamarr documentary, but we're looking forward to it. <i>Bombshell</i>'s news—that Lamarr (together with avant-garde composer George Antheil) invented a frequency-hopping communication system for radio-guided torpedoes that has become the basis of wifi and GPS technology—isn't exactly a bombshell, though. Ten years ago her invention was the subject of a play and articles in <i>Scientific American</i> and <i>Wired</i>; a few years later Richard Rhodes published <i>Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World</i> (Doubleday, 2011).<br /><br />We did see <i>The B-Side</i>; and although we enjoyed it, we found Lacy's film and its subject to be more compelling.<br /><br /><b>Being "more up to date":</b> But why on earth include a film from 2003 (not to mention <i>three</i> films from 1966) in my Favorites of 2018 list? From the start of these year-end surveys I've chosen my favorites from anything first experienced in the previous twelve months. Partly this is because otherwise most of the opera, Indian films, and 18th- and 19th-century literature I seek out so obsessively would be excluded from consideration. And partly it is because there are vast industries, both cottage and mass-cultural, devoted to ranking the "best" books and music and movies released in the previous year. I'm much more interested in conveying the excitement I've felt when discovering something new to me, no matter what year it was produced in. <br /><br />We were pointed to Lacy's documentary by <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n04/john-lahr/so-hard-to-handle" rel="nofollow">John Lahr's (negative) LRB review</a> of David Yaffe's <i>Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell</i> (Farrar, Straus, 2017). I also recommend <a href="https://www.bookforum.com/inprint/2403/18474" rel="nofollow">Carl Wilson's review in Bookforum</a>, "Chords of Inquiry: How Joni Mitchell created her own tradition."<br /><br /><b>Wes Anderson:</b> I'm neither a Wes Anderson hater nor an indiscriminate fan. I'll point out that <a href="https://exoticandirrational.blogspot.com/2014/12/favorites-of-2014-bollywood-and.html" rel="nofollow">my favorite films of 2014</a> included Anderson's <i>The Grand Budapest Hotel</i>. We've seen about half of his films, and it's interesting to me that the ones we haven't enjoyed have both been animated (<i>Isle of Dogs</i> and <i>The Fantastic Mr. Fox</i> (2009)). For the record, the other films of his we've seen are <i>Rushmore</i> (1998) and <i>Moonrise Kingdom</i> (2012).<br /><br /><b>Ignorance is bliss:</b> You write that "Knowing next to nothing about South Asian or Bollywood cinema, I have nothing to say." Had I followed that most admirable principle—to paraphrase Wittgenstein, whereof we are not qualified to speak, we must remain silent—this blog would not exist.<br /><br />Many thanks for your comments!<br /><br />Best,<br /><br />P.Pessimisissimohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04223566131580795337noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186118329509553435.post-88482458957198089052018-12-20T10:34:17.708-08:002018-12-20T10:34:17.708-08:00Cher M. Lapin:
Many thanks for your thoughtful co...Cher M. Lapin:<br /><br />Many thanks for your thoughtful comments and your alternate list of favorites. There's a lot to unpack, but I'll try to be succinct.<br /><br /><b>The big vs. the small screen:</b> More than a decade ago <a href="https://exoticandirrational.blogspot.com/2007/12/chak-de-india.html" rel="nofollow">in one of the first posts on this blog</a> I quoted Pauline Kael's introduction to <i>5001 Nights at the Movies</i>: "If you watch a great movie on TV, you will be committing an aesthetic crime, of which you are the victim." One reason that movies are figuratively as well as literally diminished at home is that the balance among the visual, auditory and narrative elements is changed. In particular, as the visual impact of a film is reduced the story and characters receive more of our attention, and any flaws in the script can become exposed in a way that might not be as apparent (or perhaps not as bothersome) in a theater.<br /><br />So I couldn't agree more that most films were meant to be seen on the big screen, especially those with a distinctive visual style. But thanks to a number of factors, including the demise of many neighborhood theaters, deafening sound levels, showtimes that don't fit our schedules, and poor public transit options, it has become a ever-greater effort to go out to the movies—an effort that we are less and less willing to make given our other interests (see my <a href="https://exoticandirrational.blogspot.com/2018/12/favorites-of-2018-live-performances.html" rel="nofollow">favorite live performances of 2018</a>). So perhaps my favorites movies list should instead be "favorite movies that managed to impress me despite being seen on the small screen."<br /><br /><b>Gentility vs. class conflict:</b> Hmmm. This comment echoes Jenny Diski's disdain for period dramas, or as she once put it:<br /><br />"This 'nothing will ever be the same again' is the single motif that conditions all the plots of the books and programmes, which otherwise are undistinguished stories of love and money lost and won. Mostly the nothing that will ever be the same is the centuries-old entitlement of a small group of highly privileged people, for whom, for various reasons, we must feel sorry."<br /><br />But as I wrote in <a href="https://exoticandirrational.blogspot.com/2012/06/suggested-reading-jenny-diski-elif.html" rel="nofollow">an earlier post</a>, "I think [Diski] has over-simplified the implicit class perspective of many period dramas; it's not all nostalgia and misplaced sympathy. . .[They] can be quite subversive in their attitudes towards the constraints of class and gender." To describe books from the 19th century and earlier (and many of the film and television adaptations that are made of them) as merely genteel is to overlook the intense social conflicts they often depict.<br /><br />In <i>Doctor Thorne</i>, for example, Dr. Thorne's brother Henry can impregnate and abandon the sister of stonemason Roger Scatcherd because his class position in the pseudo-gentry insulates him from any consequences (until he dies after being assaulted by Scatcherd). Admittedly <i>Mr. Selfridge</i> doesn't foreground the economic consequences of the rise of the department store in the same way as <i>The Paradise</i>, but it does show the homelessness, mass unemployment and post-traumatic shock that followed World War I. Sexual coercion, transactional marriages, the plight of those (particularly women) without means—period dramas are not all Rich People's Problems.<br /><br />In a post on the movie <a href="https://exoticandirrational.blogspot.com/2008/01/chori-chori-chupke-chupke.html" rel="nofollow">Chori Chori Chupke Chupke</a> I wrote, "with many Bollywood films, you just have to take the crunchy with the smooth." Perhaps to enjoy period dramas you have to take the smooth (the clothes, the carriages, the mansions) with the crunchy.<br /><br />I'll pause here and continue in Part 2 below.Pessimisissimohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04223566131580795337noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186118329509553435.post-66048163817761072172018-12-19T21:25:12.131-08:002018-12-19T21:25:12.131-08:00Finally, watching Isle of Dogs on the box instead ...Finally, watching <i>Isle of Dogs</i> on the box instead of the big screen is a disappointing experience, indeed (I've seen it both ways). That's why it has to be seen in a theater. I swear, 95% of the visual information is lost—as crucial to the viewing experience as what's going on with the front and center characters (who are, after all, Wes Anderson props, not people). I agree with The New Yorker columnist Moeko Fujii that charges of Orientalism against Wes Anderson are misplaced ("What 'Isle of Dogs' Gets Right About Japan"—<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-isle-of-dogs-gets-right-about-japan" rel="nofollow">https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-isle-of-dogs-gets-right-about-japan</a>). If you're willing to cut <i>Loving Vincent</i> some slack for being visually glorious while having a ho-hum narrative, I ask you to give <i>Isle of Dogs</i> (which actually contains social justice messages, even if a cartoon) a second chance should it come round again on the big screen. It could be you simply don't like Wes Anderson movies (many people do not). But I think it's a remarkable cross-cultural movie achievement.<br /><br />On a related note for recommended viewing, <i>Tokyo Godfathers</i> (2003) has become my favorite Xmas movie of all time. Directed and written by renowned animator Satoshi Bon, a homeless trio (drunk, drag queen, runaway teen) find an abandoned baby on Christmas Eve and set out in search of her parents. It's a remarkable achievement of cultural intersectionality (loosely based on a 1913 American novel, pivoting around a Christian holiday in the modern-Buddhist-Shinto hybrid that is Japan today) rather than exoticism or cultural appropriation. And I just had the good fortune to see a late night screening at the Logan Theater in Chicago (my large scale visual information admonition about <i>Isle of Dogs</i> applies here, too; the characters are much more compelling, however). I'll never watch <i>It's a Wonderful Life</i> again.<br /><br />M. LapinM. Lapinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186118329509553435.post-74128819738686588652018-12-19T21:23:30.176-08:002018-12-19T21:23:30.176-08:00Dear Pessimissimo,
I think you need to go out to ...Dear Pessimissimo,<br /><br />I think you need to go out to the movies more. See them on the big screen. I have a sneaking feeling that some of your disappointments are due to the loss of visual information by viewing it on a small box (assuming, of course, you don't have an 80" flatscreen and surround sound system at home). So, some response comments and a few viewing suggestions...<br /><br /><i>Loving Vincent</i> is a visual feast, endlessly playing with both Van Gogh's tableaux and various animation techniques. The visually gorgeous results completely overwhelm the lame story of a postman father's request for his ne'er do well son to deliver Van Gogh's last letter and to come of age in the process (yawn). But as a gallery walk, it's pure delight.<br /><br />Czech New Wave. I've seen <i>Daisies</i> but not <i>A Report on the Party</i>. I agree Czech New Wave films are required canonical viewing. Yet with the collapse of Soviet Communism, I find it requires the cultivation of a certain historical sensibility to make the films powerful. The cinematic techniques and absurdism-as-political-critique narratives remain brilliant, but the context simply doesn't resonate for me as strongly as in decades past. However, some movies produced in Eastern Europe during the Communist era remain powerful today, either because the critical issues continue to resonate or have reemerged as dark threats. I am thinking in particular of Hungarian director István Szaboó's <i>Apa</i> (Father, 1966). A son's memory search for his father, "disappeared" during WWII, remains powerful not only as a personal story, but as historical trauma and amnesia as well. With renewed antisemitism and the rise of ultranationalism and neofascism in post-Communist Eastern Europe (indeed, across Europe and in the U.S.), the film has immediacy today. I find the latent content of the closing scene, meant to be comforting, deeply disturbing.<br /><br />Knowing next to nothing about South Asian or Bollywood cinema, I have nothing to say. I have seen a few incredible films over the years, though. <i>Nayak</i> will certainly be added to my Satyajit Ray must-view list.<br /><br />I've noted a marked gentility preference over class conflict across media in your biog posts in recent years. I get that. As I age, caring and sensible behavior matter to me immensely. But I'm with Jenny Diski; not at the expense of masking class conflict and pursuing social justice agendas. Here, I'm going to recommend an entirely contemporary movie to nudge you out of the 19th and early-20th centuries and into the 21st: Boots Riley's <i>Sorry to Bother You</i>. On an utterly fantastical level—one that exaggerates reality rather than dishing up a comforting alternative—race, class, sex, gender and personal ambition collide in Oakland, California (sound familiar?). Hilarious and savage, not for the squeamish. NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg pegs it as the most anticapitalist movie ever to come out of Hollywood ("Pop Culture Gets Radical"—<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/opinion/sorry-to-bother-you-dietland.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/opinion/sorry-to-bother-you-dietland.html</a>).<br /><br />For documentaries: here, too, I recommend being more up to date. Two fabulous ones about women artists that came out this year: <i>Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story</i> (PBS, 2018) and <i>The B-Side: Elsa Dorman's Portrait Photography</i> (Errol Morris, 2018). Hedy Lamarr hated being a "bombshell," valuing her mind more than her body on cinematic display (her incredible life as an inventor is highlighted in the documentary). The Elsa Dorfman film is simply delightful, about her life and career as a large format Polaroid portrait photographer. She always photographed two poses, keeping the one she did not sell to clients—the B Side—for herself. M. Lapinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186118329509553435.post-72680967678794086492018-12-19T21:20:34.641-08:002018-12-19T21:20:34.641-08:00I've received a comment from M. Lapin. Because...I've received a comment from M. Lapin. Because Blogger can only accommodate 4096 characters at a time (about 650 words), I've split it into two parts. My response will follow.<br /><br />P.Pessimisissimohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04223566131580795337noreply@blogger.com