I don't mean to be critical, but a minor housekeeping note: without a title on the post, the recent comments column ends up a bit weird. It looks like Mathew harvey is commenting on nothingness.
I haven't seen this movie, but I'm intrigued by your "movie depicting Bad Thing that doesn't say Bad Thing is bad" is ok assertion. Last summer, I saw the French film 5x2, which pissed me off a lot. Basically, the film includes one out-and-out rape scene, and a couple other quasi-rape scenes, such that basically all the sex in the film (and it's French, so there is a lot) is rape-like. There is no discussion of this or even allusion to the fact that it's problematic. The female lead (and it happens right at the beginning of the movie, so this isn't a spoiler) is essentially raped by her ex-husband, and she's goes and cries in the bathroom, and then is like "ok, I'm going to go now." I just thought... it's irresponsible to put artfully-filmed (and thus erotic) rape scenes in a film to get people all a-twitter about your movie without saying something, explicit or otherwise, about it.
So now I want to see Hustle and Flow to see whether I'd think that, too, about it.
Didn't I read somewhere that being a blogger meant never having to say you're sorry? Just delete my comments and put a title such as Hustle and Flow on the post. Or not. Whatever pleases you just tickles me plumb to death, as Dusty said to the school marm in one of those old westerns.
3: Hmm. It's hard to tell whether I would defend that movie, not having seen it. If it gave time and consideration to the women's reactions, I might. There's a corollary I just thought of: movies (or other works of art) that loudly and moralistically denounce Bad Thing while delivering the thrill of Bad thing to the audience. The Smartest Guys in the Room is an example of this--they spend two and a half minutes telling us Lu Pai is a perve because he likes strippers, all while showing about two and a half minutes of stripper footage on screen.
Or, say, Apocalpyse Now. Intended message: War is hell. Delivered message: Surfing to The Ride of The Valkryies as the bombs drop? Pretty fucking awesome.
Are you condeming Apocalypse Now for making the point--unquestionably true in my mostly second-hand experience--that war is simultaneously terrible, thrilling, inspiring and absurd? Is it necessary that movies take a side?
No, just making the simpler point that depicting almost anything with attention is not likely to convey unmixed disapproval of it. Scorsese almost certainly wasn't trying to make a movie that would make people react "Wow, that looks like fun"; nonetheless, he did.
Actually, I think Coppola was trying to make something more than an anti-war movie:
Francis Ford Coppola described his own motivation in the making of the 'quest' film, with elements borrowed from the horror, adventure and thriller genres: "to create a film experience that would give its audience a sense of the horror, the madness, the sensuousness, and the moral dilemma of the Vietnam War."
Coppola, Scorsese, tomato, tomahto. (In other words, whoops.) I didn't intend to make a strong claim that the director intended to make an anti-war tract -- just that he was probably not out to make war actively appealing (see "horror, madness" above.) Nonetheless, the movie he did make can be perceived, without too much difficulty, as doing just that. This doesn't make it a bad movie, or him a bad director -- it just means that portraying anything, whether war or the relationship of a pimp with his whores, in attentive detail, is not generally a successful means of convincing people that it has no redeeming features. Obviously, that may not be what you want to do.
LB: I have a film-buff friend who says that it's impossible to make an exciting anti-war film, especially not in color, because bright-colored exciting things are the very definition of fun.
A black and white war film which consisted of troops sitting in the trenches for days on end, occasionally getting blown up unexpectedly, would be an anti-war film, but no on would go to it.
I'd link to Sarah Vowell's op-ed in today's Times, but I don't think I can. It was about how little she wants the CIA and other counterterrorist operations to torture people, and yet how much she likes watching JacK Bauer do it on 24.
I think the comment that it is difficult to make an film about war that doesn't glamorize it in the process of filming it is usually attributed to Francois Truffaut. (see: "When reviewing movies about war, critics, in accordance with union bylaws, are occasionally required to cite Francois Truffaut's contention that it is impossible to make an antiwar film, since the medium inevitably glorifies combat.")
Most recently I remember seeing a discussion of the topic in the article "Valkyries Over Iraq" in Harper's Magazine (no link because the article isn't online, but see here)
Just to say that this is a very old topic in film criticism.
I have heard it claimed that J'accuse! succeeded as an anti-war film, but haven't seen it myself).
Personally I love Apocalypse Now and think that reducing the value of the movie to the question of whether it is successful in protraying the horror of war (which LB explicitly does not do) is really beside the point.
Apologies if I sound cranky, but I think it's possible to truthfully say both what Tia says, "critics confusing the depiction of Bad Thing with the endorsement of Bad Thing if the artwork doesn't essentially run subtitles that say "Bad Thing is bad!" and what Scott says, "The film, which he wrote and directed, feels both naïve and cynical, which may turn out to be the key to its success. It's hard to hate a movie that falls so completely for its own hustle." (I'd like to reference School of Rock here, but I can't decide if it falls for it's own hustle or if it's just calculating).
The ending of Apocalypse Now makes me think that one would be wise to think carefully about joining book clubs.
A black and white war film which consisted of troops sitting in the trenches for days on end, occasionally getting blown up unexpectedly, would be an anti-war film, but no on would go to it.
Not quite the same thing, but Paths of Glory has combat and is quite strongly anti-war. I'm sure I've mentioned this before in the same context.
A black and white war film which consisted of troops sitting in the trenches for days on end, occasionally getting blown up unexpectedly, would be an anti-war film, but no on would go to it.
Apologies if I sound cranky, but I think it's possible to truthfully say both what Tia says, "critics confusing the depiction of Bad Thing with the endorsement of Bad Thing if the artwork doesn't essentially run subtitles that say "Bad Thing is bad!" and what Scott says, "The film, which he wrote and directed, feels both naïve and cynical, which may turn out to be the key to its success. It's hard to hate a movie that falls so completely for its own hustle."
You don't sound cranky. But I took that sentence of A.O. Scott's to be supporting another criticism of the movie--that it was too Hollywood given it's pretensions to grit--not the criticism he had that I engaged--that it was sexist. I don't agree with that assessment either; I thought the characters were authentic enough seeming (okay, what do I know from Memphis ghettos, but I only have my impressions), and that's the only hurdle a movie has to jump for me. Sometimes I wonder if there isn't a hostility to movies about a poor black people that doesn't portray them as utterly degraded, or maybe not as totally degraded but their condition as hopeless, but it's very possible I'm being unfair to Mr. Scott. It just seemed like the mixture of "somewhat degraded, but still with a real core to some of their relationships," "Poor and desparate, but maybe with a shot out because they were lucky," was too much for some people to take.
Again, I haven't seen Hustle and Flow so I can't comment on that and have no position to take in your frustration with Scott.
I would just argue that one can think of many movies about which it could be truthfully said that they fall for their own hustle, and that it will inevitably be a case by case judgement call. I think frequently a movie both succeeds and fails on different levels, and that of such criticism is made.
Part of the dynamic in play is that almost every movie has some desire to provide "spectacle" -- visual and cinematic excitment and that can be in tension with the desire to tell a story that is either tightly constructed or meant to be downplayed.
Thinking off the top of my head I would say, for example, that you could easily argue that Apocalypse Now falls for it's own hustle and that is a cause of both the movie's greatness and it's failings. If you watch the documentary Hearts of Darkness (The making of Apocalypse Now) you will see that Coppala frequently had now idea what he was doing with the movie (or, at least, that he was writing great scenes while struggling to articulate a vision for the movie as a whole). In the case of Apocalypse Now the "hustle" that it would fall for would be the idea that it's possible for spectacle to engage the viewer actively and intellectually rather than to distance the viewer.
Fight Club would be an example of a movie that I think falls for it's own hustle and fails badly because of it. Perhaps the movie was never taken meant to be taken seriously, but I've had too many friends tell me that fight club really makes you think to believe that it was all intended as a joke.
I have the same feelings about Memento -- that it gets so caught up in it's own cleverness that it fails to provide a legitimate plit. I thought the first third of the movie was great but as it moved along I became frustrated with the feeling that it cheated too much in it's plot (does it cheat more than an Agatha Christie mystery? Perhaps not, but is that really the appropriate standard).
To go back to hustle and flow, I have the sense that in almost every movie the stars always want to look good and that almost all of the re-writes that happen after casting is complete are to make the star parts more likable (I am thinking here of a William Goldman book on screeenwriting that I read recently). I haven't seen H & F, but it seems reasonable that if you're a critic and if you've had to watch movies look Good Will Hunting where the drama is distorted by the main characters gradually becoming as free of flaws as possible that you would be attuned to look for that in movies. He may be wrong in this case, but I don't think it's necessarily just a sign of confusing portraying something with endorsing it.
Whack away with your limp dirigible.
I know I should be addressing the substance of the post, but this sentence is just awesome.
Posted by Matthew Harvey | Link to this comment | 02- 4-06 10:13 PM
I don't mean to be critical, but a minor housekeeping note: without a title on the post, the recent comments column ends up a bit weird. It looks like Mathew harvey is commenting on nothingness.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 02- 4-06 10:22 PM
I haven't seen this movie, but I'm intrigued by your "movie depicting Bad Thing that doesn't say Bad Thing is bad" is ok assertion. Last summer, I saw the French film 5x2, which pissed me off a lot. Basically, the film includes one out-and-out rape scene, and a couple other quasi-rape scenes, such that basically all the sex in the film (and it's French, so there is a lot) is rape-like. There is no discussion of this or even allusion to the fact that it's problematic. The female lead (and it happens right at the beginning of the movie, so this isn't a spoiler) is essentially raped by her ex-husband, and she's goes and cries in the bathroom, and then is like "ok, I'm going to go now." I just thought... it's irresponsible to put artfully-filmed (and thus erotic) rape scenes in a film to get people all a-twitter about your movie without saying something, explicit or otherwise, about it.
So now I want to see Hustle and Flow to see whether I'd think that, too, about it.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 4-06 10:32 PM
Didn't I read somewhere that being a blogger meant never having to say you're sorry? Just delete my comments and put a title such as Hustle and Flow on the post. Or not. Whatever pleases you just tickles me plumb to death, as Dusty said to the school marm in one of those old westerns.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 02- 4-06 10:32 PM
t looks like Mathew harvey is commenting on nothingness.
Perhaps we all are....
Posted by Matthew Harvey | Link to this comment | 02- 4-06 10:34 PM
1 gets it right, if it's said to the cable guy.
Posted by greg | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:38 AM
3: Hmm. It's hard to tell whether I would defend that movie, not having seen it. If it gave time and consideration to the women's reactions, I might. There's a corollary I just thought of: movies (or other works of art) that loudly and moralistically denounce Bad Thing while delivering the thrill of Bad thing to the audience. The Smartest Guys in the Room is an example of this--they spend two and a half minutes telling us Lu Pai is a perve because he likes strippers, all while showing about two and a half minutes of stripper footage on screen.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:30 AM
Or, say, Apocalpyse Now. Intended message: War is hell. Delivered message: Surfing to The Ride of The Valkryies as the bombs drop? Pretty fucking awesome.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 11:19 AM
RE: 8
Are you condeming Apocalypse Now for making the point--unquestionably true in my mostly second-hand experience--that war is simultaneously terrible, thrilling, inspiring and absurd? Is it necessary that movies take a side?
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 11:41 AM
No, just making the simpler point that depicting almost anything with attention is not likely to convey unmixed disapproval of it. Scorsese almost certainly wasn't trying to make a movie that would make people react "Wow, that looks like fun"; nonetheless, he did.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 11:45 AM
re: 10
Actually, I think Coppola was trying to make something more than an anti-war movie:
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 11:59 AM
Coppola, Scorsese, tomato, tomahto. (In other words, whoops.) I didn't intend to make a strong claim that the director intended to make an anti-war tract -- just that he was probably not out to make war actively appealing (see "horror, madness" above.) Nonetheless, the movie he did make can be perceived, without too much difficulty, as doing just that. This doesn't make it a bad movie, or him a bad director -- it just means that portraying anything, whether war or the relationship of a pimp with his whores, in attentive detail, is not generally a successful means of convincing people that it has no redeeming features. Obviously, that may not be what you want to do.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 12:20 PM
LB: I have a film-buff friend who says that it's impossible to make an exciting anti-war film, especially not in color, because bright-colored exciting things are the very definition of fun.
A black and white war film which consisted of troops sitting in the trenches for days on end, occasionally getting blown up unexpectedly, would be an anti-war film, but no on would go to it.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 12:33 PM
I'd link to Sarah Vowell's op-ed in today's Times, but I don't think I can. It was about how little she wants the CIA and other counterterrorist operations to torture people, and yet how much she likes watching JacK Bauer do it on 24.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 12:52 PM
Isn't something like, say, Gallipoli a successful anti-war film?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 12:53 PM
I think the comment that it is difficult to make an film about war that doesn't glamorize it in the process of filming it is usually attributed to Francois Truffaut. (see: "When reviewing movies about war, critics, in accordance with union bylaws, are occasionally required to cite Francois Truffaut's contention that it is impossible to make an antiwar film, since the medium inevitably glorifies combat.")
Most recently I remember seeing a discussion of the topic in the article "Valkyries Over Iraq" in Harper's Magazine (no link because the article isn't online, but see here)
Just to say that this is a very old topic in film criticism.
I have heard it claimed that J'accuse! succeeded as an anti-war film, but haven't seen it myself).
Personally I love Apocalypse Now and think that reducing the value of the movie to the question of whether it is successful in protraying the horror of war (which LB explicitly does not do) is really beside the point.
Apologies if I sound cranky, but I think it's possible to truthfully say both what Tia says, "critics confusing the depiction of Bad Thing with the endorsement of Bad Thing if the artwork doesn't essentially run subtitles that say "Bad Thing is bad!" and what Scott says, "The film, which he wrote and directed, feels both naïve and cynical, which may turn out to be the key to its success. It's hard to hate a movie that falls so completely for its own hustle." (I'd like to reference School of Rock here, but I can't decide if it falls for it's own hustle or if it's just calculating).
I will have to watch Hustle and Flow now.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 1:24 PM
The ending of Apocalypse Now makes me think that one would be wise to think carefully about joining book clubs.
A black and white war film which consisted of troops sitting in the trenches for days on end, occasionally getting blown up unexpectedly, would be an anti-war film, but no on would go to it.
Not quite the same thing, but Paths of Glory has combat and is quite strongly anti-war. I'm sure I've mentioned this before in the same context.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:01 PM
A black and white war film which consisted of troops sitting in the trenches for days on end, occasionally getting blown up unexpectedly, would be an anti-war film, but no on would go to it.
All Quiet on the Western Front?
Posted by chris | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 8:20 AM
Apologies if I sound cranky, but I think it's possible to truthfully say both what Tia says, "critics confusing the depiction of Bad Thing with the endorsement of Bad Thing if the artwork doesn't essentially run subtitles that say "Bad Thing is bad!" and what Scott says, "The film, which he wrote and directed, feels both naïve and cynical, which may turn out to be the key to its success. It's hard to hate a movie that falls so completely for its own hustle."
You don't sound cranky. But I took that sentence of A.O. Scott's to be supporting another criticism of the movie--that it was too Hollywood given it's pretensions to grit--not the criticism he had that I engaged--that it was sexist. I don't agree with that assessment either; I thought the characters were authentic enough seeming (okay, what do I know from Memphis ghettos, but I only have my impressions), and that's the only hurdle a movie has to jump for me. Sometimes I wonder if there isn't a hostility to movies about a poor black people that doesn't portray them as utterly degraded, or maybe not as totally degraded but their condition as hopeless, but it's very possible I'm being unfair to Mr. Scott. It just seemed like the mixture of "somewhat degraded, but still with a real core to some of their relationships," "Poor and desparate, but maybe with a shot out because they were lucky," was too much for some people to take.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 8:34 AM
Did people go to those two movies? They don't have the legendary status of Apocalypse Now.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 8:43 AM
Again, I haven't seen Hustle and Flow so I can't comment on that and have no position to take in your frustration with Scott.
I would just argue that one can think of many movies about which it could be truthfully said that they fall for their own hustle, and that it will inevitably be a case by case judgement call. I think frequently a movie both succeeds and fails on different levels, and that of such criticism is made.
Part of the dynamic in play is that almost every movie has some desire to provide "spectacle" -- visual and cinematic excitment and that can be in tension with the desire to tell a story that is either tightly constructed or meant to be downplayed.
Thinking off the top of my head I would say, for example, that you could easily argue that Apocalypse Now falls for it's own hustle and that is a cause of both the movie's greatness and it's failings. If you watch the documentary Hearts of Darkness (The making of Apocalypse Now) you will see that Coppala frequently had now idea what he was doing with the movie (or, at least, that he was writing great scenes while struggling to articulate a vision for the movie as a whole). In the case of Apocalypse Now the "hustle" that it would fall for would be the idea that it's possible for spectacle to engage the viewer actively and intellectually rather than to distance the viewer.
Fight Club would be an example of a movie that I think falls for it's own hustle and fails badly because of it. Perhaps the movie was never taken meant to be taken seriously, but I've had too many friends tell me that fight club really makes you think to believe that it was all intended as a joke.
I have the same feelings about Memento -- that it gets so caught up in it's own cleverness that it fails to provide a legitimate plit. I thought the first third of the movie was great but as it moved along I became frustrated with the feeling that it cheated too much in it's plot (does it cheat more than an Agatha Christie mystery? Perhaps not, but is that really the appropriate standard).
To go back to hustle and flow, I have the sense that in almost every movie the stars always want to look good and that almost all of the re-writes that happen after casting is complete are to make the star parts more likable (I am thinking here of a William Goldman book on screeenwriting that I read recently). I haven't seen H & F, but it seems reasonable that if you're a critic and if you've had to watch movies look Good Will Hunting where the drama is distorted by the main characters gradually becoming as free of flaws as possible that you would be attuned to look for that in movies. He may be wrong in this case, but I don't think it's necessarily just a sign of confusing portraying something with endorsing it.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:23 AM