Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Victor Khomenko (M) on January 29, 2004 at 06:24:55

In Reply to: Re: No mud, and brief posted by Roxanne on January 28, 2004 at 14:41:23:

A polite response? I am afraid to think of what AuPh has been telling about me all this time... :-)

The historical achievements? I am a rather conventional guy with mostly classical tastes, so in terms of what I consider the great achievements, it is mostly the works of the directors that AuPh has listed in his post... there are a few other, fringe type, less known, but the majority of what I consider references come from the great masters, and we all know who they are. It is things like Cabiria, Bicycle Thief, Persona, Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, Paths of Glory, Grand Illusion, Barry Lyndon, Ivan the Terrible, The Discrete Charm, and many like these that truly define the scale of the absolute values, plus some modern directors like Claire Denis and even more obscure Lavinia Currier.

So nothing really special there, but I believe one must know the classics and fundamentals before rendering his judgement. And I don't mean you in this case, as there is little doubt you and AuPh have covered most of that, it is just that you decided to take a different direction from there. A somewhat nihilistic direction, in my opinion, but that is your choice.

I also strongly disagree with you when you say all modern art is garbage. While we all have seen such cases (there is a broken snow shovel on display in the Phily Art museum...) the modern art is rich with talents - too many to mention, really. Needless to say, all great movie directors could arguably be considered modern artists.

There is another notion one hears often. It goes along the lines of "Oh, you don't really like Bergman, you simply say you do because you are supposed to!"

While some of that undoubtedly exists, I can assure you that I never force myself to love something... I am too old for that, so I allow myself to simply absorb the work and go with my skin reaction, and if it turns out I don't like a particular work of a great master (enter Satyricon), then so be it.