Sight and Sound (2002) Greatest Films Club - Page 107

Martin Teller · 01-10-2007, 04:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by george kaplan

When I'm confused about something, I will admit it. I'm confused. Are you the pot or the kettle?

And no matter which, what does that make Martin?

The "T", of course!

Anyway, this might be my last word of the subject, because it's definitely starting to feel like banging my head on the wall....

Not all opinions are equal. Some opinions are based on more careful thought and knowledge than others. An opinion that is well-explained and well-defended from someone schooled in the art and history of filmmaking is more worthy of consideration than the first impressions from a layman (if you're interested in more than a layman's perspective, that is).

Does that mean you should accept a critic's word as gospel? Absolutely not, and I don't think anyone here is saying that. But critical viewpoints can go a long way towards helping you appreciate the value of a film that you might have overlooked the first time. Maybe some people don't care (or, as I suspect, are just too stubborn), but I always WANT to find meaning where it eluded me before.

rich_d · 01-10-2007, 04:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Elliott

Me = Self taught = smart enough to prefer great films no matter what category they fall

Anyone who needs to be influenced by a critic, teacher or anyone else is simply missing the point. These so called experts might have a leg up on your typical Joe 6 Pack but if someone decides to watch enough film and spend enough time with it then their opinion and thoughts are just as valid as any expert. I've yet to meet any critic or expert that wasn't bias towards one genre, one director or one actor whether it be positive or negative. I refer to Dylan when he sang: Don't follow leaders....

Look at all those experts that just told us why Ohio State will win and by how much. Where are they now? Just moved on and still flapping their gums.

I feel the same way about some so-called experts in film. Where someone tries to impress with some theory they've come up with and then proceed to make points to support their theory. Very easy and quite worthless.

All that is necessary to appreciate film is to enjoy films. On top of that it is nice when someone has some perpective and perhaps an awareness for things.

By perspective I mean, yes, it is good when someone has seen enough films to have a perspective about what may be terrific and perhaps why. Elton John wrote a song called I've Seen That Movie Too. Speaks volumes to me.

Michael Elliott · 01-10-2007, 06:07 PM

Quote:

Not all opinions are equal. Some opinions are based on more careful thought and knowledge than others. An opinion that is well-explained and well-defended from someone schooled in the art and history of filmmaking is more worthy of consideration than the first impressions from a layman (if you're interested in more than a layman's perspective, that is).

If we're talking film critics then I doubt very many would fall into what you've just written. These are the guys who won't step out on a limb, probably have a very small knowledge of film and they certainly are bias in certain directions. A film expert (let's say someone like Scorsese) is going to be more trustworthy.

I agree with your opinion thoughts though. I personally don't take anyone serious if they say the greatest film ever made is WAYNE'S WORLD without going into reasons. If they haven't seen a movie made before 1990 then I'm certainly not going to take them serious. If they hate silents, I won't take them serious. If they hate subtitles, I'm not taking them serious. It doesn't mean their opinion is wrong but I'm just not going to take it serious.

Quote:

All that is necessary to appreciate film is to enjoy films. On top of that it is nice when someone has some perpective and perhaps an awareness for things.

We agree but at some point a little knowledge can help. I don't think anyone can gain any worthy knowledge by just listening to an expert. The greatest way, IMO, to gain any real knowledge is to keep watching movies and forming your opinion on the film, films of its time and so on.

I don't have a problem with someone saying Whale's FRANKENSTEIN is the greatest film ever made. It's their opinion. However, I would appreciate their opinion more if they had seen something to compare it to. If they had seen the films that influenced it (The Golem perhaps).

Brook K · 01-10-2007, 06:14 PM

I'll be the pot. You can't cook chili or clam chowder in a kettle.

Quote:

In other words, if I tell you a joke and you don't laugh, it's got to be cause you don't understand the joke. It's not possible that you could understand the construction and meaning of the joke and still think it's not funny.

I don't want to put words in Thomas' or Martin's mouths, but for me, I just want you to acknowledge that there is a joke. Liking/not liking aka value judgements are not what I'm looking for. I actually agree with your first several paragraphs George; you actually break down Blow-Up's themes/subtext and then conclude that you still don't like the film's ending because you feel it betrays your investment as a viewer. Great, I'm totally with you.

It's the "Antonioni's a lazy buffoon who couldn't think up a good end to his movie" kind of stuff that hacks me off. Or the denial of meaning in a given work simply because you don't like the movie. The refusal to acknowledge a director's own statements about their film as being any more than one opinion about what the film could be about, but of course isn't since you disagree with it.

None of this has anything to do with liking, not liking, "connecting", emotional responses, etc. (and I've never denied that these are important things in their own right. I think if one were to tally my reviews I write much more about my own emotional respones to a given film than performing any objective analysis of it)

This is about my firm conviction that films (and not all films obviously) do have definitive thematic subject matter. Theme is not in, in most cases, in the eye of the beholder. Sure aspects of theme may be more important to some than others who may favor a different aspect, while still other viewers may not care that the theme exists at all, but it is still there.

To use the Sirk example, All That Heaven Allows is not a stupid soapy melodrama, it is a critique of the hypocracies of the social and moral fabric of American society as Sirk saw it at the time in studio-enforced soap opera clothing. Now maybe you think it's a bad critique, or you don't care about the critique because you think the movie sucks anyway, and even your statements that subtext is rendered meaningless if the viewer doesn't care about the package, is something I can understand.

But you take it a step further in denying that any meaning exists at all beyond the opinion you hold of the film. Contrary voices are just seeing what they want to see, critics change with the wind, experts don't know any more than me, etc., thus I can tune out their arguments or rationalize the argument away by saying that since there is no grand arbiter of film, than what I think is just as valid as what anyone else does.

Perhaps this is simply semantics but I think there's an important philosophical point here.

You obviously acknowledge the critically agreed-upon themes for films you like, such as Hitchcock for instance. If I tried to argue that Vertigo is really about soggy pickles who like to take tours of old monastaries while wearing ladies undergarments, I'd be laughed off the board. Why? Because Vertigo is about what it is about. Just like All That Heaven Allows, L'Avventura, and Tokyo Story are about what they are about. And these things are not nebulous concepts that ebb and flow with time based upon the whim of a single viewer, but rather are known through the words of their creators and a weight of critical thought and argument.

It's not a matter of getting it, not getting it, liking it, not liking it.....I just want the acknowledgement that the "it" exists on more than a "well that's just somebody's opinion" level.

Martin Teller · 01-10-2007, 06:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brook K

I don't want to put words in Thomas' or Martin's mouths

No problem here, I agree with every word you said.

(Except the stuff about Sirk, I've never watched his movies.)

Adam_S · 01-10-2007, 08:53 PM

great discussion going on here.

I don't think either I or Thomas was arguing that you need an education to appreciate any type of film. He simply made an 'injoke' comment about the different focuses of a cross-town college rivals. I liked great films of all stripes long before I ever came to college, (my top three in high school were Lawrence of Arabia, Grand Illusion, & City Lights) and I'd expanded my own cinematic vocabulary through readings and viewings quite extensively on my own.

If anything my (as Brook pointed out) hypocritical attacks on the intelligentsia stem from a subconscious resentment of a culture (within educational institutions) that places too much value on decoding oriented analysis--I think that can create an elitist environment, and that makes me deeply uncomfortable. And as George pointed out, those who think they 'know' often treat intelligent disagreement as lack of knowledge. Running into that attitude too often has made me a bit bitter with a tendancy to occasionally post a poorly thought out attack.

But Brook has also made me think about my own shifting attitudes toward films. I have been a bit more close minded towards challenging films in recent months, and I think that was residual bitterness towards my education due to not having a job for several months.

The 'not-getting-paid' frustration got taken out on some undeserving films, most like. Plus, I burned out on film watching a couple of times because I watched too many for the sake of completing a list rather than genuine pleasure or interest. Luckily I reprioritized and dealt with that more than a year ago.

George's post was terrific, as was Brook's. this continues to be on of the best discussions ever on this thread.

Thomas J. · 01-10-2007, 10:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by george kaplan

not even caring if you "got" it, I truly don't understand such an approach to the filmgoing experience.

Let me further address this one.

Look, to me, a viewer always "gets" it, at least the "it", I consider important. A viewer may not be able to tell you "director Z was trying to do X to me", but the viewer can say "the film did Y to me". Frankly, what the film did to the viewer (and only the viewer knows that) is all that matters. Not what the director was trying to do, nor how well the viewer has figured out what the director was trying to do.

Let me ask you a question. Let's say Godard sets out to make a film that does X to the audience. Four people watch his film.

1 understands X and thinks the film did X to him.
2 understands X and thinks the film failed to do X to him.
3 thinks the film is trying to do Y (which is wrong), and concludes that the film did Y to him.
4 thinks the film is trying to do Y (which is wrong), but thinks the film did X to him.

Now, let's say all 4 of these are the 4 greatest and best trained film critics in the world. Each writes a review. 1 and 3 call it successful based on your criteria, and 2 & 4 call it a failure.

Which is it? A success or a failure? A great film or a poor one?

I always find it funny when people say you can't break down film analysis to a mathematical science because it's about art's personal affectation on the individual viewer which is too emtionally-grounded to mathematically quantify...and then those same people use mathematical principles to prove their point. lol

Anyway, I would say all four critics approached the film with the appropriate frame of mind, because they're doing what I wrote in my "Tendency in Contemporary Criticism" thread that a critic should do: they're trying to figure out the film's goals (I think that's what you mean by "understands" and "trying to do"), and then deciding how well the film accomplished them (I think that's what you mean by a film "doing something to them").

Thomas J. · 01-10-2007, 10:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joe Karlosi

What could be more elitist and "pompous" than to say "you are incorrect about how to feel about this film; this is the 'proper' way..." ?

Don't you believe that some films are open to individual interpretation? Or do you always figure that there's inherently got to be a definite "right" or "wrong" way to feel about a movie? But I want to get a little clarification...

If you're talking specifically about when a director wants to send a certain message out there and then the viewer misses it, I guess you can say he "didn't get it". Let's go back to 12 ANGRY MEN -- let's take the scenario where Lee J. Cobb keeps voting the young defendant "guilty" until the very closing sequence where he rips up the photo of his own son who's disappointed him. Now, this was intended by the director to illustrate that the man was voting "guilty" only because of his own personal problems/prejudices. If some viewer doesn't realize this (say he thinks Cobb was just so angry that he had to tear anything up for no special reason), then I think it's correct to say "he didn't get it, he missed the point". Is this the type of thing you're talking about, Thomas?

On the other hand -- if you're just claiming there's a definite "right" or "wrong" way to be affected by a film, or what you get out of it emotionally, that's a load of nonsense. It's all subjective as to how any individual moviegoer feels about a film, or is satisfied or not.

I don't usually respect many "professional critics". Most of them follow a rigid agenda and certain films are automatically denounced (say slasher films). I do agree with something you've said - where you have to ask yourself "what is this movie trying to accomplish and how well does it achieve that?". Something like FRIDAY THE 13th PART 6 isn't attempting to be CASABLANCA.

I will definitely take into consideration a majority's consensus of a film, and sometimes I have seen things differently, but in the end I will not somehow sway myself to either liking or hating any movie based solely on "the majority reputation" or to somehow appear "right and respectable as a knowledgable critic". To hell with that. Too many people I see who review films carry on as though there is only one "correct" way to feel aesthetically about movies, and so they don't dare say they hate a "classic" and won't admit they love a "bomb". I personally don't regard their opinions.

Joe, feel free to actually go back and read my posts, will ya?

I feel as if I'm retreading the same ground by this point.

First, you called me elitist. A part of me says...thank you. There's much worse things to be called. And just to fan the flames, yes, I do care about the underpriviledged. Just look back at my knock on the Sight and Sound list for being biased toward white males directors, which conspicuously nobody responded to.

Anyway:
I'm talking more along the lines of the 12 Angry Men example. I never said there's an absolute right or wrong way to be affected by a film. Please go back and read my posts. This whole time I've been talking about the correct APPROACH to watching films. I'm talking about a viewer dissing Antonioni for not making a classical Hollywood film with L'Avventura or Blow-Up, when Antonioni didn't even intend to do so to begin with. I'm advocating we analyze a film for what it is and intends to accomplish rather than what our prejudices wish it would have accomplished.

Hopefully this is the last time I have to explain that.

Thomas J. · 01-10-2007, 10:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by george kaplan

I am drowning in a Kafkaesque sea of elitist attacks.

Rather, it's about desiring and striving to be correct with one's analysis.

And who pray tell is the judge of the correctness of this analysis?

First, thank you for called me an elitist. Actually, most liberals don't mind being called that.

And I've already stated in depth what the correct approach to film analysis is. Why are you asking that question of me. *Sighs*

The rest of what you wrote was just your twisting of what I wrote to mean what you want me to mean instead of what I actually wrote that I mean...and then your reaction to that twisting of my point. And then you go off into seriously talking about God's take on movies and what not...