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In Reply to: Virgin Suicides posted by Victor Khomenko on October 02, 2003 at 07:01:54:
How is it sugar coated? I don't really think of it as a film "about good people for good people" at all. I think the tone of the film was meant to achieve a rather simple aim, namely conveying the dreaminess and melancholy that hang around *those* girls in high school, in adolescence...the unattainable otherworldliness of pretty young girls when you're an awkward young boy. More broadly, I thought it was largely 'about' the feeling of adolescence in general, the sense of momentousness that accompanies everything, the strange distance between people who are filled with emotions but incapable of expressing them, and the tragedy of parents (understandably) attempting to thwart the inevitable maturation of their children.Flaubert has some line about Madame Bovary being his attempt to convey a certain shade of yellow. I thought Virgin Suicides was just as much about colors and tones as it was about the story, these serving to lend exactly the right sense of softhued strangeness to things.
I guess I can see what you mean about a certain 'made for TV' flavor, but I don't think of this as a cautionary tale or melodrama at all. Allegory, maybe, but not melodrama. More a distillation of the mood of adolescence, which has the romance of suicide and the poignancy of sexual confusion and distance at its apogee.
And she was 28 when she directed Virgin Suicides. It's hard for anyone, even a Coppola, to get a feature film made at that early an age these days. The time of youthful heroism and unbridled experimentalism is over. If you get a movie made or a book published or a painting shown in a museum before you're 30, you're one of the very, very lucky ones. Trust me.
Follow Ups:
tho the horror was greatly downplayed, there were no soaring violins or orchestral background to establish moods, and the film is all the better for that. The teenagers were played as immature, awkward, sappy and melodramatic, which is how a great many kids of that generation would have been
It would have been quite a challenge to recreate all that fragile angst credibly, the scene where the kids are playing records back and forth over the phone and they play Todd Rundgrens Hello Its Me was when I realised she had a firm focus on her subject
My 17 year old daughter watched this film and thought the girls were pretty but so starry eyed naive and sappy she didnt believe in the characterisations and had little emotional connection with the story, about the same reaction she would have if she was beamed back in the time machine to spend a week at that school in 197X I am sure!
The 30 years from that generation to hers is a mighty gulf to cross indeed and I think Ms Coppolla could have done far worse with that film, I thought it was a gem
Eric
I already wished Sofia best of luck, but you are dead wrong about that before 30 thing. Kubrick made his Killer's Kiss at 27, Tarovsky his The Steamroller and the Violin at 28 - and both were far more mature films.However, I didn't hold her age against her - just noted that fact.
Killer's Kiss came out in 1955, Tarkovsky's film came out in 1960.Breton wrote the Surrealist Manifesto when he was 24. Joyce finished Dubliners by 25. Et cetera. The 20th century is a bygone era. It ain't that easy to be brilliant today, post-Kubrick, post-Tarkovsky, post-Breton, post-Joyce, and so on. Being a 'young artist' today means being under 40. To get anything made today you have to be rich and/or exceedingly well-connected. And even then it's difficult. You have the occasional 25 year old whiz kid, but the fact of their being 25 is used as a marketting angle, and they get to leap frog to the front, perhaps before they're ready.
It's after the end of the avant gardes, it's after the end of an adventurous Hollywood. Kubrick and Tarkovsky were operating in a different world, a world notably free of the influence of, say, Kubrick and Tarkovsky. It's a damn sight harder to do anything noteworthy today, and it's exceedingly difficult to do so as a 'young' artist.
But, again...could you say what it was about the film that you found sugar coated, or specifically lacking? What did your wife think was expecially weak?
First, I strongly disagree with your characterization of the last century as something unique and of the last frontier nature. Artists have always faced exactly the same "acceptance" challenges throught the history. The 17th century Dutch masters had to jump through the same hoops as someone making his first film today.Besides, you seem to be giving that aspect far more attention than I did - I only mentioned it passingly, no heavy point there.
Regarding the sugar coating... I definitely see that as the modern-time American tradition, and it always bothers me.
When I first came here I was truly revolted by the typical American girl's room interiors - you know what I mean, those pastel colored furniture sets with painted flowers, etc. The idea was to treat the girls like they were dolls, not humans. There is definite sense of infantilism in that treatment, and it was unfortunately present in the movie.
The girls themselves were perhaps the best part of the film - I liked them all. But their surrounding could have used the more, shall we say, down to Earth treatment. I understand about the shades of yellow, but here it was more the shades of the timeless kindergarten. And not just about the girls. The whole movie spoke "I am just a little cute girl".
I asked my wife today what she disliked, and she had to force her momory, as to her that was an immediately forgettable experience - and she has an accute sense of art.
She particularly disliked the rather shallow characters - pretty much all of them, but especially the parents. She could not for the life of her see the reason for the four girls' suicide... and neigher could I - we both felt that was simply done for the sake of the plot, and came completely out of blue. The first one... well, rather forced too, but OK as the opening shot.
She didn't like the music - but she is such an unforgiving person in that respect - I usually cut some slack, and in that case the music was I thought inoffensive for the type of music used. Surely I would much rather see them use Verdi...
Her largest criticism was along the lines of age and experience. She said, when a new artist appears with his first work, it better be something original. Let it be rought, but not just another common one. This film is the opposite - it is the rather common work overall, but with an attempt at making it more polished, more fit for human consumption.
It isn't just a matter of acceptance that makes it hard to be a fledgling artist of whatever sort today, and it isn't just a matter of having to work to get inside the system...it's much more a matter of there being little new to be done, little that anyone can do that can't be smacked down as being '______ian', as being too overdetermined by influences one might not even know one has. The only option alot of people see is to go straight for shock value, but even that's run its course. This is something I've posted about before, with regards to Dylan. Before there was a Bob Dylan, or a Beatles, it was alot easier for there to be a Dylan or a Beatles. Afterwards, it's hard to either avoid their influence or build on it without being derivative.I don't think I can disagree with your assessment of the movie, so long as it's considered as having some kind of realist bent. I thought it was much more impressionistic, again, more about evoking a mood than getting across a message. As for the specific issue of why they committed suicide, well, on the one hand I'd say they had an overbearing mother and were dramatic teenagers incapable of understanding the terminal consequences, and on the other I think that's kind of the point of the film, to build it around this mysterious, apparently quite arbitrary act. The boys who were the girls' fans were puzzled as well. Bottom line, they were young, and they died young, before all of the momentousness and romance and dreaminess of adolescence could sour. So, again, I think the overall thrust of the film is to evoke that strange sadness that accompanies adolescence and its end.
Of course, you're right about sugar coating being the de rigeur mode of Americana, and in real life there is nothing endearing about the dollhouse aesthetic of modern girls' bedrooms. But, hey, it looks great on film.
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