Musings 2: Objectifying personality.

[Capo]

Originally posted here, though I think SVSG would have had a better response posting it on here. This is the film board, after all. I don't think he'll mind me posting the entire discussion here.

SVSG said:

Resurrecting this thread to throw another question into the debate.

Note, I am not necessarily talking about the 'greatest' or 'best' but at least a film that you would classify as 'good'. Till now (as you can see from my response in the beginning of the thread), I have been maintaining that the basis for classifying a movie as good should be entirely based on your subjective opinion and the effect the movie has on you rather than some third party metric of what constitutes a technically well-made film or critics' view or popularity of the movie and such. But lately I am questioning my view and want to introduce the 'creativity' and 'originality' aspects in the discussion. I give a couple of scenarios to explain my point:

1) Mr X madly loves chinese martial-arts movies and he will watch any number of no-brainer movies from that genre with great interest and will never get bored. Mr Y in Hollywood is a genre-leading producer of hongkong based martial arts movies, one indistinguishable from the next (except probably by an avid fan like Mr X). Mr Y releases yet another kung-fu movie this year and Mr X promptly watches it and is all praises for the movie.
Now Mr Y has done nothing great, just rehashed the formula from his database of martial arts movies to come up with yet another predictable film. The bottom line is lack of creativity (not marketing wise, but with respect to the medium). Now if I were to go by my original theory, the effect on Mr X is great, so he will classify it as a good movie (not necessarily great/best) regardless of the actual merit of the movie. Don't you think something is wrong in this scenario? No creative effort whatsoever from Mr Y, but his film is hailed as a good one by someone. You can extend this concept to die-hard fans of some director/actor/actress/whatever who will praise a film regardless of its actual merit.

2) Mr Z is a script writer who watches an old and obscure movie with a great concept from some not-so-famous country/language and rewrites it to great critical acclaim. I am not talking about subtle influences which everyone is subject to, sub-consciously, but an active 'lift' of concept. Again originality and creativity wise, no points should be given. But somebody might be greatly influenced by this movie and term it excellent. Isn't something wrong with the judging criteria again?


Do we need an objective measure (if at all it is possible)? Or at least a standard set of subjective measures that includes creativity and originality? If so, what should be those subjective metrics used. Some have mentioned 'rewatchability' and 'lasting effect'. What else?

To which I replied:

1) The scenario between Mr. X and Mr. Y is being judged already: you called those films "no-brainer movies". On whose terms are they no-brainer movies?

2) My problem with remakes is that they rarely add anything personal or new. Like Wet Dog, I'm not against the process of remaking a film, but I more often than not will approach one with caution, because from experience they hold very little merit. Jackson's King Kong was fantastic and rare: it updated the effects and action by CGI, but also showed a rare enthusiasm from its director towards the original, with self-reflexive action and intertextual dialogue thrown in for good measure. Scorsese did exactly the same with Cape Fear. I think the Bond movies are in need of a lot of remakes too. Now that Casino Royale has been finally been given justice, I'd love to see the makers remake the series in the order Fleming wrote them.

I think a lot of people have a problem with originality. Originality to me essentially means creating something which strikes one as new, as having not been experienced before. I value it greatly, but often overlook it at first. I might even be put off by it. People forget that Cinema itself is original, it is still a very new medium. People also forget that there is so much more potential to be had from the whole idea of using a camera, of not only recording reality but producing it. They forget that what they're watching is an illusion. That's how powerful Cinema is, but it's overlooked on a mass scale. People value stories and characters, I think, more than anything. Like I've said before, there's nothing particularly cinematic about stories or characters. But as an example I've experienced many times before, I've asked a lot of people what they thought of Lost In Translation, and they've said, "It's boring, nothing happens." What they mean is story-wise; Coppola, its director, belongs to that misunderstood category of "Art Cinema", and her films are often successions of repeated situations in order to develop character. The film itself is one of the best films I've ever seen; it has a fine sense of not only narrative rhythm, but evokes loneliness through framing compositions and volume levels, not to mention creates a fine sense of place through sound and cinematography.

But I think it is important to note that originality is often dismissed; a lot of people find it repulsive. When you think about the term originality, what it really means is going against what we already know; I'm not sure if it is transcending traditional value or rejecting it - either way, original works are often misunderstood. How many times, for instance, have you read or heard somebody call Lynch, Jarmusch or Greenaway (to name but three very original directors with very individual styles) "pretentious" or "weird just for the sake of being weird"? I got into quite a heated verbal debate with someone recently who said Lynch was pretentious because he considered himself above his audience. When I asked how that was so, the answer I got was that he dismissed story in his films, and even took pleasure in making them confusing.

There are three fundamental questions I think everybody should ask themselves after every film has finished:
a) Why do I watch films?
b) How would I define Cinema?
c) How original was the film I've just seen?

These three films help you be objective in your opinion - that is, as honest as you can be inside your own perishable, subjective bubble.

Question 'a' helps you to understand why you're even watching the film in the first place. If you come to the conclusion that you're watching it to pass the time, then the likelihood is you're going to be easily pleased. If you're watching it to know the meaning of life, the chances are you're going to be dismissive of a lot of films, such as "no-brainer comedies". (I say that not because the meaning of life cannot be found in such films, but because the kind of person who seeks such frivolous and objective answers in something as abstract and subjective as Cinema is not the kind to be open to something as "irrelevent" as a Will Ferrell film. He's approaching Cinema with an agenda that limits and restricts his opinion and chances of enjoyment, not to open him to more pleasures.)

Question 'b' helps you to know how well the film fits to your perceptions or definitions of Cinema. How cinematic it is, how relevant it is to bringing you closer to enjoying or appreciating the medium - that is, how well you enjoyed the film as a work of Cinema. And I think it is important to be aware of the medium you're watching. I've met many people on my film studies degree recently who have turned their noses up at the likes of Battleship Potemkin, and their reasons showed quite a disdain for Cinema itself...of course without them knowing it. In my opinion, you shouldn't be judging films about how "morally acceptable" or how "socially relevant" they are, because that places works of art in a cage, in a time vault, which limits their impact across what John Fowles called the "horizontality of time". You should watch films and judge films by how closer they bring you personally to your love for the medium itself - and story and character is rather quite irrelevant to the medium. The primary window through which I engage with a film, for instance, my first connection with a film, when the lights in the cinema go down and the celluloid strip is projected onto film, is either (and most often) the image. The image, the frame, the illusion, of what the camera has captured, of what we are being allowed to show. If it isn't the image, it is the sound. Images and sounds, and the way they are edited together. It is convenient to edit such images and sounds together so as to create a coherent, accessible story. Stories interest me little, but I am fascinated by narrative - narrative is the way in which stories are told, or the way in which films unfold. I go into this further here.

Question 'c' is pretty much self-evident. I value creativity, and being creative, the process of being creative, lends originality to a work. How original you rate a film will depend on how many you've seen, and how many you've seen that are like it. But original films are often those which make more use of the fact they are being made with, or because of, a camera. But when people are sitting in a darkened theatre, they'll nevertheless forget the fact, or ignore the fact, that they're watching something only because of a camera. People are rarely interested in the visual, in the image.

If you know what you're interested in, if you know what drives you personally, what fascinates you and excites you, I think you can offer analysis of and elaboration on films with a lot more conviction and sophistication.

These three questions, as I've said, help you know yourself, or your interests and tastes, on a much deeper level... but of course a lot don't ask them because they are afraid that the answers might conclude that they in fact are repelled by Cinema, by the medium of Cinema, by the whole notion of being "cinematic"...and how else would they pass their time?

I'll pose a question to you, now (and anybody else who might be reading): What would you be more interested in reading, the AFI's Top Ten, or the individual AFI members' choices?

[svsg]

1) The scenario between Mr. X and Mr. Y is being judged already: you called those films "no-brainer movies". On whose terms are they no-brainer movies?

On terms of a person who does not have a blind allegience to a genre, like Mr X. Or to a director, actor, actress etc. On terms of a person who is not prejudiced (how is it different from taste? This question just get more and more complex )

2) My problem with remakes is that they rarely add anything personal or new. Like Wet Dog, I'm not against the process of remaking a film, but I more often than not will approach one with caution, because from experience they hold very little merit.

What about my original example where only a select few experts know the (obscure) source of a brilliant idea used in a film? The viewer is going to be affected genuinely by the film and would term it great, but an objective originality metric will immedietely disqualify the film from being anywhere near good.

I think a lot of people have a problem with originality. Originality to me essentially means creating something which strikes one as new, as having not been experienced before. I value it greatly, but often overlook it at first. I might even be put off by it. People forget that Cinema itself is original, it is still a very new medium. People also forget that there is so much more potential to be had from the whole idea of using a camera, of not only recording reality but producing it. They forget that what they're watching is an illusion. That's how powerful Cinema is, but it's overlooked on a mass scale. People value stories and characters, I think, more than anything. Like I've said before, there's nothing particularly cinematic about stories or characters.

I agree. I have put some of my thoughts on the abstractions in another thread (Musings - Emptiness of Story). I would like to see your response to that. All the films that play with the entire potential of this medium are not appreciated enough and sometimes ridiculed. That might change with time.

But as an example I've experienced many times before, I've asked a lot of people what they thought of Lost In Translation, and they've said, "It's boring, nothing happens." What they mean is story-wise; Coppola, its director, belongs to that misunderstood category of "Art Cinema", and her films are often successions of repeated situations in order to develop character. The film itself is one of the best films I've ever seen; it has a fine sense of not only narrative rhythm, but evokes loneliness through framing compositions and volume levels, not to mention creates a fine sense of place through sound and cinematography.

It is one of my favorite films as you might have known from my review in gangsterBB.

But I think it is important to note that originality is often dismissed; a lot of people find it repulsive. When you think about the term originality, what it really means is going against what we already know; I'm not sure if it is transcending traditional value or rejecting it - either way, original works are often misunderstood. How many times, for instance, have you read or heard somebody call Lynch, Jarmusch or Greenaway (to name but three very original directors with very individual styles) "pretentious" or "weird just for the sake of being weird"? I got into quite a heated verbal debate with someone recently who said Lynch was pretentious because he considered himself above his audience. When I asked how that was so, the answer I got was that he dismissed story in his films, and even took pleasure in making them confusing.

I like Jarmusch's movies (Seen only Dead man and Broken flowers both of which are amazing) very much, but didn't enjoy Lynch's movies (Seen only Mullholand Drive and The lost highway). Jarmusch is exploratory and inconclusive and deals with great themes, so I think about them so much after viewing the film. I really want to see Broken Flowers soon. Lynchian movies are great visually, but both the movies I saw had the basis in either dreams or fantasy or some other mental disorder etc which IMO are easy tools to show random stuff and then say that the whole thing is left to audience interpretation. My question is does he have an interpretation? Doesn't look like from his interview. Vercetti once gave me a link to the popular interpretations of Mulholland Drive. It is ok for me if the audience interpret something different from what Lynch intended, but I want him to talk about what he thinks. If he doesn't, then your friend is right about Lynch. Note that I have nothing against his originality.

There are three fundamental questions I think everybody should ask themselves after every film has finished:
a) Why do I watch films?
b) How would I define Cinema?
c) How original was the film I've just seen?

These three films help you be objective in your opinion - that is, as honest as you can be inside your own perishable, subjective bubble.

Question 'a' helps you to understand why you're even watching the film in the first place. If you come to the conclusion that you're watching it to pass the time, then the likelihood is you're going to be easily pleased. If you're watching it to know the meaning of life, the chances are you're going to be dismissive of a lot of films, such as "no-brainer comedies". (I say that not because the meaning of life cannot be found in such films, but because the kind of person who seeks such frivolous and objective answers in something as abstract and subjective as Cinema is not the kind to be open to something as "irrelevent" as a Will Ferrell film. He's approaching Cinema with an agenda that limits and restricts his opinion and chances of enjoyment, not to open him to more pleasures.)

I agree.

Question 'b' helps you to know how well the film fits to your perceptions or definitions of Cinema. How cinematic it is, how relevant it is to bringing you closer to enjoying or appreciating the medium - that is, how well you enjoyed the film as a work of Cinema. And I think it is important to be aware of the medium you're watching. I've met many people on my film studies degree recently who have turned their noses up at the likes of Battleship Potemkin, and their reasons showed quite a disdain for Cinema itself...of course without them knowing it. In my opinion, you shouldn't be judging films about how "morally acceptable" or how "socially relevant" they are, because that places works of art in a cage, in a time vault, which limits their impact across what John Fowles called the "horizontality of time". You should watch films and judge films by how closer they bring you personally to your love for the medium itself - and story and character is rather quite irrelevant to the medium. The primary window through which I engage with a film, for instance, my first connection with a film, when the lights in the cinema go down and the celluloid strip is projected onto film, is either (and most often) the image. The image, the frame, the illusion, of what the camera has captured, of what we are being allowed to show. If it isn't the image, it is the sound. Images and sounds, and the way they are edited together. It is convenient to edit such images and sounds together so as to create a coherent, accessible story. Stories interest me little, but I am fascinated by narrative - narrative is the way in which stories are told, or the way in which films unfold. I go into this further her e.

I have replied with my opinions there. Though I agree with you that 'social/moral relevance' is of little relevance to cinema, I disagree with you on your definition of the medium. I think you are one of the purists. Why include even sound? There are people who think that a silent movie which is a purely visual medium is great cinema. Some think that playing a sad music for a sad scene and happy music for a happy occasion etc is manipulative and so on. There is no end to the level of purity one would want to achieve in a medium. But my view is more flexible and inclusive. I like visual, dramatic and literary aspects of a film. For example, as a pure visual thrill, I like a very long scene in Rambo, where he makes weapons inside a cave, with no dialogue whatsoever. Alternately I like some nice exchange of dialogue between Matt Damon and Robin Williams in 'Good Will Hunting'. What appeals to me is different in each film.

Question 'c' is pretty much self-evident. I value creativity, and being creative, the process of being creative, lends originality to a work. How original you rate a film will depend on how many you've seen, and how many you've seen that are like it. But original films are often those which make more use of the fact they are being made with, or because of, a camera. But when people are sitting in a darkened theater, they'll nevertheless forget the fact, or ignore the fact, that they're watching something only because of a camera. People are rarely interested in the visual, in the image.

How about Memento. The trick was in 'time'. Not the audio-visual part or the story. I treat 'time' as a great tool in cinematic medium. Or in other words editing.

If you know what you're interested in, if you know what drives you personally, what fascinates you and excites you, I think you can offer analysis of and elaboration on films with a lot more conviction and sophistication.


These three questions, as I've said, help you know yourself, or your interests and tastes, on a much deeper level... but of course a lot don't ask them because they are afraid that the answers might conclude that they in fact are repelled by Cinema, by the medium of Cinema, by the whole notion of being "cinematic"...and how else would they pass their time?

Thanks for the two 'musings', I have been thinking about these questions for some days now.

I'll pose a question to you, now (and anybody else who might be reading): What would you be more interested in reading, the AFI's Top Ten, or the individual AFI members' choices?

I don't know how the AFI top 10 is compiled. Is it not some statistical result of the choices of individual members? My answer will depend on that.

[Capo]

But if you're judging Mr. X's taste (or "blind allegiance"), then you're in no position to be saying what it good or bad. Can an allegiance ever be blind? Go on Myspace and you'll find millions of girls on there who under their favourite movies list, "Anything with Johnny Depp". I don't see a difference between saying "anything with Johnny Depp" and "anything which hits me personally". They're as blind as the other. I have a blind allegiance to films that I love. That means I fail to understand the films I dislike. It's like Ebert saying Finding Nemo is shit (I don't know what Ebert said about it) but a young child loving it. One connects, one doesn't, one can probably word his thoughts better, and thus he is the one who people listen to in terms of deciding whether it's a good or bad film.

Why are dreams less great than what Jarmusch might be exploring? I'm not too familiar with Jarmusch, really, I can't talk at length about his films because I haven't seen much of his work. I love what I have seen, though, and I rank him as one of the most "self-evident" directors there are, in that you can use his surname as an adjective for other films. Greenaway is exactly the same, but the thing with Greenaway is beautiful because nobody, to my knowledge, makes films - or event wants to - that are remotely like his. Lynch is probably adjectified the most out of the three because he's been more influential on a wider basis, or because dreams are a more popular or more familiar theme in filmmaking. There's something very close in the relationship between how the camera or moving image impacts upon our consciousness, and the way we relate it to dreams.

In The Magus a character says, "Answers are always a form of death." Why should an author feel obliged to offer "answers"? I completely empathise with filmmakers or artists who do not like talking about their work directly - my favourite painter Francis Bacon, for instance, can only verbalise his thoughts on his work with peripheral reference to his love for beautiful things or beauty, on wider, vaguer, broader concepts. Lynch doesn't like talking about his films because he feels talking about them isn't enough, or doesn't do the films justice. He's said himself that Cinema has a language of its own, and that it's so sad that we have to keep translating its language into words. If you watch an interview with him he's very animated, repeats himself often, pauses a lot, and fidgets with his fingers a lot, and the word he uses more than any others is probably "beautiful". He finds a lot of things beautiful and makes films about them. The way he synopsises Inland Empire is "It's about a woman in trouble", which doesn't get me very excited really, but when I saw the trailer for it I almost ejaculated in my pants. Nobody manipulates me with as much ease as Lynch. He understands the effects of sound, too, which is just as important for affecting the unconscious of the viewer.

What is there to be confused by in Mulholland Dr.? I'm not saying it doesn't confuse me, but if I did it would only be in relation to its story, trying to find solutions or answers to things that haven't really interested the originator of the ideas found in the film, so I'd be trying to extract something not very cinematic. Sort of like asking an author of a novel to paint his favourite scene of his own novel.

But my view is more flexible and inclusive. I like visual, dramatic and literary aspects of a film. For example, as a pure visual thrill, I like a very long scene in Rambo, where he makes weapons inside a cave, with no dialogue whatsoever. Alternately I like some nice exchange of dialogue between Matt Damon and Robin Williams in 'Good Will Hunting'. What appeals to me is different in each film.

I'm more open than you think; in fact I'm more open than a lot of people think. What I mean in my emphasis on the image is that it is my primary way of connecting with a film. When I sit down in a dark room and a film begins I see it before I find a story in it. Finding a story in a film's narrative is a convenient way of describing it to others. In fact I think so-called professional critics waste too much time telling us the story of a film. If you read William Berger's Ways of Seeing, the opening line is, "Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognises before it can speak." It doesn't mean I completely switch off to all other aspects.

Why include even sound? There are people who think that a silent movie which is a purely visual medium is great cinema.

I include it because it is insanely significant in the film-viewing experience. Silent Cinema should be written in speech marks, I think, because it was never without in-film sound by choice, but by technical restriction. And besides, films were never watched without a musical score, whether live or recorded.

As for Memento being about 'Time', I agree. Editing lends a film rhythm, it gives it energy and very much controls the way we react to a film. Man on Fire put a lot of people off with its 'over-editing', Songs from the Second Floor does because of its lack of editing in scenes altogether. But the first image we see in Memento explores or foretells, the nature of the subsequent narrative, does it not? A shot of a Polaroid (an image of an image) developing, only it's reversed, so that it's an image of a polaroid "un-developing" (an image in reverse of an image reversing itself). Not to mention the change in the scenes going forward, in black-and-white, and the scenes going backwards, in colour, and then how the two merge at the end of the film. But I agree, Nolan is a filmmaker who not only pays interest to the visual, but is also a master at connecting scenes together in editing. The Prestige is one of the most exciting, incredible films I've ever seen, probably the best of last year, and to review it with any kind of justice I would have to go to strenuously abstract and intellectualised ends.


As for the AFI question, forget it and replace it with Sight & Sound's recent "Best of 2006" list, compiled via votes from all their regular critics. I was less interested in the final list than I was in reading the personal responses from the critics themselves. I'm not really interested in institutionalising or objectifying values of taste; but I love reading one person's love for films. I love listening to Scorsese talk, for instance. I value Wet Dog's post on The Godfather Part II and why he absolutely hates it than reading an entry for it in, say, Time Out's "Top 1000" films.

[svsg]

But if you're judging Mr. X's taste (or "blind allegiance"), then you're in no position to be saying what it good or bad. Can an allegiance ever be blind? Go on Myspace and you'll find millions of girls on there who under their favourite movies list,"Anything with Johnny Depp". I don't see a difference between saying "anything with Johnny Depp" and "anything which hits me personally". They're as blind as the other. I have a blind allegiance to films that I love. That means I fail to understand the films I dislike. It's like Ebert saying Finding Nemo is shit (I don't know what Ebert said about it) but a young child loving it. One connects, one doesn't, one can probably word his thoughts better, and thus he is the one who people listen to in terms of deciding whether it's a good or bad film.

OK let me put it in a different way. Pleasing the girl who says "anything with johnny depp' is very easy, simply cast johnny depp But take another girl who says 'any movie that affects me personally' is not easy to satisfy. Same theme but different director, or same director but different actors, or similar such might affect her differently. This is exactly how many people react to movies. That is when a meaningful list of favorites or best comes (even though it is highly subjective and from the viewpoint of that girl).

Why are dreams less great than what Jarmusch might be exploring?...................
.............
There's something very close in the relationship between how the camera or moving image impacts upon our consciousness, and the way we relate it to dreams.

I can't see many movies with this theme, I get bored. I thought that 'lost highway' and 'mulholand drive' were very similar. But the foremost reason is not the similarity, but the basic fact that dreams are full of garbage, at least the ones I get. In that sense, lynch probably recreated very beautifully his version of the garbage. I can't make any sense out of my own dreams, sub-conscious desires and fantasies. They still puzzle me. Why on earth would I bother deciphering his ? (Assuming he is trying to communicate something to his audience through his film).

In The Magus a character says, "Answers are always a form of death." Why should an author feel obliged to offer "answers"? I completely empathise with filmmakers or artists who do not like talking about their work directly - my favourite painter Francis Bacon, for instance, can only verbalise his thoughts on his work with peripheral reference to his love for beautiful things or beauty, on wider, vaguer, broader concepts. Lynch doesn't like talking about his films because he feels talking about them isn't enough, or doesn't do the films justice. He's said himself that Cinema has a language of its own, and that it's so sad that we have to keep translating its language into words. If you watch an interview with him he's very animated, repeats himself often, pauses a lot, and fidgets with his fingers a lot, and the word he uses more than any others is probably "beautiful". He finds a lot of things beautiful and makes films about them. The way he synopsises Inland Empire is "It's about a woman in trouble", which doesn't get me very excited really, but when I saw the trailer for it I almost ejaculated in my pants. Nobody manipulates me with as much ease as Lynch. He understands the effects of sound, too, which is just as important for affecting the unconscious of the viewer.

By that argument, the thought in the director's brain is the only pure source. Cinematic expression of that thought is also killing that magic, leave alone speaking about it.
I agree that an artist is not obligated to talk about his work. See, it is not like he is making a film inside his house and keeping it locked. He is marketing it in some form or the other, whether film festivals, dvds, direct to tv or cinema theaters or whatever way he chooses. By that I assume he wants to connect to some audience through his films. But the problem is, he makes such abstract stuff that no one really gets what he is trying to convey. Isn't that bad communication ? Isn't it ineffective use of the medium? Or is it that bulk of the audience is dumb? Is it unreasonable to expect him to talk about his work to his audience? I repeat the question your friend asked, is he above his audience?

What is there to be confused by in Mulholland Dr.? I'm not saying it doesn't confuse me, but if I did it would only be in relation to its story, trying to find solutions or answers to things that haven't really interested the originator of the ideas found in the film, so I'd be trying to extract something not very cinematic. Sort of like asking an author of a novel to paint his favourite scene of his own novel.

How do you know, he was not interested in the story/plot etc. Maybe he just goofed up with the dramatic structure (I am not necessarily saying he did). Both of us have only seen his film, the end result. How can you defend him, unless you know what exactly he started out with. That is why I am emphasizing the need for him to speak about this work. If he says 'all I am exploring in the film is dreams through random images that caught my fancy', I am fine with it. That can be a valid cinematic expression. But what if he had a bad script (I heard that he doesn't use a script, then this may not apply)? What if he conceived of a plot and story and botched it up while filming?

As for the AFI question, forget it and replace it with Sight & Sound's recent "Best of 2006" list, compiled via votes from all their regular critics. I was less interested in the final list than I was in reading the personal responses from the critics themselves. I'm not really interested in institutionalising or objectifying values of taste; but I love reading one person's love for films. I love listening to Scorsese talk, for instance. I value Wet Dog's post on The Godfather Part II and why he absolutely hates it than reading an entry for it in, say, Time Out's "Top 1000" films.

I agree with you that individual experiences are much more fun and valuable than reading a list. But unlike you, I do not watch 300 movies a year So the lists give me a starting point to explore some good movies. That is not ideal, but a practical way for me. maybe you can suggest me a better way. I have never heard of most of the movies or directors you guys discuss here. I am trying, I am trying....

[Capo]

svsg said:

OK let me put it in a different way. Pleasing the girl who says "anything with johnny depp' is very easy, simply cast johnny depp But take another girl who says 'any movie that affects me personally' is not easy to satisfy. Same theme but different director, or same director but different actors, or similar such might affect her differently. This is exactly how many people react to movies. That is when a meaningful list of favorites or best comes (even though it is highly subjective and from the viewpoint of that girl).

Okay, I agree with that, I think. But, what's your point? Sorry, I've forgotten.

I can't see many movies with this theme, I get bored. I thought that 'lost highway' and 'mulholand drive' were very similar. But the foremost reason is not the similarity, but the basic fact that dreams are full of garbage, at least the ones I get. In that sense, lynch probably recreated very beautifully his version of the garbage.

I wasn't saying Lynch explores the relationship between the camera and dreams. I don't think Lynch is doing that at all; he's using a camera to explore dreams, or dream logic, or realities or other worlds, however you wish to put it.

But what I did mean is that the very nature of accepting something as artificial as a projected image, the principle notions of being drawn into this 'reality', is something very similar to the logic of dreams. If dreams or that kind of 'other world' possibility don't really interest you, the chances are Lynch isn't going to communicate much to you, that you will fall way short of negotiating some kind of meaning from his work.

I can't make any sense out of my own dreams, sub-conscious desires and fantasies. They still puzzle me. Why on earth would I bother deciphering his ? (Assuming he is trying to communicate something to his audience through his film).

What do you actually mean by dreams "puzzling" you? Or even by wanting to "decipher" them? I think I know what you mean, but you might have to help me out. I assume that again, you're taking them as something literal and tangibly decipherable in the first place. You're trying to relate them to something outside of their own framework, in order to shed some comfortable rationality on them. I'm not really interested in that, in finding out what dreams might mean or why I have a certain dream. If I did I'd read Freud or go to an analyst like Tony Soprano does.

Lynch's films are interesting to me because they're deeply, almost constantly suggestive, not of answers, not even of questions, but of meaning. Raw meaning, if you like, without a context, without a story. What I mean by "story" there is something scientifically or physically possible, which could practically happen (ie. not "role swapping", but even then that is to reduce Lost Highway or Mulholland Dr. to something I'm trying to get away from). I rolled my eyes at Lost Highway the first time round, but now I think it is grounded very deeply in something which I would find very difficult to talk about and lend meaning (that is, solution) to. It is "raw" meaning, if you like, and to try and place it into the context of questions and answers, of story and solutions, of even my own form of meaning that has been gained and which exists outside of the film, is to reduce the film to the very thing that makes its realisation essential in the first place. Lost Highway's existence is necessary because without it there is nothing. It breathes by itself, lives on its own fuel. You can't really raise any "questions" which might be formed by the film without watching the film in the first place.

With these films, Lynch is tapping into something specifically and significantly cinematic for me. A few years ago, when I was a lot less perceptive in my appreciation of film, I said he's a master of atmosphere and emotions. I'll return to that statement now as I think it is still very true; people seem to miss the point of creating emotion and atmosphere for the sake of it. It results in common responses like, "Weird for the sake of being weird". What pisses a lot of people off is that Lynch's films are self-contained "blankets of meaning", which neither ask for questions from the viewer or answer the viewer's own questions. They're full of recurring visual motifs and teasingly elusive ideas, and to want to dig beneath their surface you have to assume that there is in fact no motivation behind the images, no motivation behind characters or their actions, because to do so would be to place the film in the world of the ordinary or expected, or to expect from the film something which you might find in another film. Lynch's films and narratives only deal with themselves, with their own form, their own meanings, their own existence.

By that argument, the thought in the director's brain is the only pure source. Cinematic expression of that thought is also killing that magic, leave alone speaking about it.

I've said this before, that if an idea or a concept is pure, then Art is the destruction of that purity. As soon as an idea comes to physical fruition, it is killed. That's why artists are often torn perfectionists, and also the reason they create in the first place, to escape the suffocation of purity. (I've never understood such phrases as "flawed masterpiece" or "it is a film with flaws".) But there are a lot of filmmakers who see potential in the camera, in its capabilities, and also in how images can relate to and reject one another to create new emotions and meanings and contexts. See some of Herzog's films, for instance. Or for a more aggressive example, Harmony Korine's.

I agree that an artist is not obligated to talk about his work. See, it is not like he is making a film inside his house and keeping it locked. He is marketing it in some form or the other, whether film festivals, dvds, direct to tv or cinema theaters or whatever way he chooses. By that I assume he wants to connect to some audience through his films. But the problem is, he makes such abstract stuff that no one really gets what he is trying to convey. Isn't that bad communication? Isn't it ineffective use of the medium? Or is it that bulk of the audience is dumb? Is it unreasonable to expect him to talk about his work to his audience? I repeat the question your friend asked, is he above his audience?

I think an artist is simply the first audience of his own work. When I make films the end product raises new questions in me that I didn't have at the time of making it. And so I'll make a new film, and so new questions raise their ugly head, and so on. An artist is in a neverending maze of ideas and questions, like an endless game of Pacman, in which the ghosts are the emotions and passions and ponderings that, if not killed (realised), might kill the player. I'm talking metaphorically, in abstraction, for a reason. Francis Bacon said, "In order to convey fact, you can only ever do so through distortion."

The possible problem with Lynch isn't necessarily that the audience is dumb, but perhaps far too literate, or literal, in their approach to a medium whose very power lies in its sublimity. When the possibilities and capabilities of the camera, a device to record images, and the revelation that these images could be passed off as 'real', over a hundred years ago, who would have thought that people would be bothering themselves with such frivolous matters as story or social revelance or historical significance? Who would have thought that Cinema would be expected to ask the same questions that existed before it? It may as well not have been formed for some people. People often ask from Cinema for things they don't need Cinema for. They're ill-equipped for the twenty-first century.

The perpetuality of the camera, the way twenty-four frames a second hit our eyes, touch our brains and produce in us the same but magnified emotions that real-life events cause. Films are a way of connecting us to events past, and bringing us closer to our own perceptions. I've italicised that because it is quite a difficult concept to grasp, to be brought closer to something intangible, to something that is neverending and perpetual and inside of you but relying on that which is external. I'm not even sure if I understand it myself. That kind of stuff interests me a great deal, because in the end I am, before anything else, driven by what I am driven by. That's not the same as saying "I am what I am," but is more like saying, "I am interested in why I am interested in what I am interested in." And the more films I see, the more I fear, or relish, the prospect that the answer lies in abstractions and emotions, in images and sounds, and not something as slippery as words. "Cinema is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates." (Herzog)

How do you know, he was not interested in the story/plot etc. Maybe he just goofed up with the dramatic structure (I am not necessarily saying he did). Both of us have only seen his film, the end result. How can you defend him, unless you know what exactly he started out with. That is why I am emphasizing the need for him to speak about this work. If he says 'all I am exploring in the film is dreams through random images that caught my fancy', I am fine with it. That can be a valid cinematic expression. But what if he had a bad script (I heard that he doesn't use a script, then this may not apply)? What if he conceived of a plot and story and botched it up while filming?

That's a good point, and one I used to tear myself up thinking. But if audience interpretation is such a ridiculous thing (and it is, sometimes), then why can't author intention be placed alongside it? Like I said, an author is only the first audience of his own work. What matters most is the work itself, which is there to be ripped apart or masturbated upon at will. I'm aware of the kind of language I'm using here, but in a way I'm very serious. Critics fell in love with Ridley Scott's Alien, seeing in it great allegory concerning femininity and birth and the human race; Scott turned round and said he just wanted to make a scary film. It's too easy to intellectualise or dismiss something; if you need to ask the filmmaker about something, it's not bad communication on his part, but a case of you needing to question yourself and why you're watching films in the first place.

I don't mean that discouragingly, but there lies a certain truth in it even so. I place as much responsibility on myself as a viewer as I do on the originator of the ideas; and from that I can love or hate whatever I wish, because in Art there lies little responsibility to things other than the self.

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"I think that, by reducing it to its most obvious ideas we cannot avoid a mere string of clichés. That is always what happens when you try to isolate "themes" [...] Furthermore, there is little to that can be said outside the aesthetic framework of the film. Otherwise I would have written a newspaper article instead of making a film. I do not think that my opinions on these "themes" are of much interest - nor should they be - I am not a forger of "opinions". The interesting thing about a table is its quality, its shape, its functional nature, the way the material was shaped, not the cabinetmaker's opinion." Michael Haneke on Code Unknown.