"No one in the year 2009 will make a better film than Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows), Hiroshima, Mon Amour, or Jules et Jim. No one will make a more daring film than Pierrot le Fou, Alphaville or Weekend. No one will make a more adventurous film than Paris Nous Appartient (Paris Belongs to Us) or a more influential film than A Bout de Souffle (Breathless). No one will make a more anachronistic, stranger film than Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). And no one will make a nuttier film than La Chinoise or Le Gai Savoir (Joy of Learning). This was not a wave, it was a tsunami."Next, Mack Rawden at Cinema Blend reveals his fears for what 3D cinema and its like means for, not just the future of cinema, but the audience and their appreciation:
"I hate most Michael Bay movies because they’re just shiny things. An hour and a half of visually stimulating nothingness followed by ten minute conversations consisting of, “Were you watching when that guy got impaled on the rusty pole?”. But most of you goddamn idiots, most of you goddamn members of Ritalin Generation love Michael Bay movies because, to you, visually stimulating nothingness is everything. Well, going to the movies shouldn’t be vapid, mindless entertainment. You should cry; you should laugh; you should fall in love with the characters; you should fall out of love with the characters; you should think; you should question; you should ponder; you should, flat out, be alive. I’ve never felt any of those things because glasses tricked me into thinking actors were stepping down off the screen. "They're both essentially prophesising the death of cinema, or at least cinema that expects a particular level of involvement from the audience. You hear about this now and then when Hollywood gets a head of steam about something; first it was the popcorn film, then computer generated effects, now 3D. But wacked out innovation is still there. Charlie Kaufmann is still making films and though its true that some areas which used to be the innovation capitals have leapt towards the mainstream, there's some amazing stuff reaching out from the Middle and Far Easts (according to Sight and Sound magazine). Perhaps French style new waves are happening, just not in this neck of the woods.
Yet, in the past decade, the move towards empty experiences has definitely intensified. This week I've watched The Rock, Quantum of Solace and also Hitchcock's first two films, both silents, The Pleasure Garden and The Lodger. All are astounding pieces of cinema, yet both the Bay and Bond films are empty, vacuous things. They're not trying to be anything else; in both cases such incidentals as coherent story, ambiguity and characterisation take a back seat to thrills and there's nothing wrong with that really in this context and I enjoyed watching both of them (though Quantum feels like the second half Casino Royale rather than its own film but that's a discussion for another time). I just didn't love them.
I loved both of the Hitchcocks. Treated as curios these days, they were also made for the same commercial market, with the same intention as the other two, to get bums on seats. But for all that, even though he was yet to become the auteur, you can almost hear Hitchcock talking to you, despite the silence. They're chock full of moments were the director uses imagery to evoke sound elements and trusts that we're paying enough attention to notice what he's doing. He's saying "You can't hear these footsteps pacing upstairs, so I'm going to show you the pacing from below (having constructed a glass ceiling) and you get the idea." True, this was out of necessity, but its amazing idea and grants that you have a modicum of intelligence to see what he's doing.
Modern filmmakers have simply stopped trusting their audience. This isn't a question of directorial voice. This seems to be a trend across the board. Meh etc.
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