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In Reply to: 21 Grams posted by Bulkington on April 19, 2004 at 07:29:02:
abstracts because of how they worked, as well?
A person should judge a work of art by how they react to it...viscerally. If one comes with all these pre-judgments, i.e. no narration, no time-looping, well...why stop there? Let's eliminate all artistic variations and be left with ONE way to interpret "reality."
Personally, I found it fascinating. You get up, have coffee, kiss the wife, hug your child...with no thought that a catastrophic event may be just around the corner. Present and past are trumped by the future. Doesn't seem fair, does it?
I drive more carefully, myself, since that movie...
Follow Ups:
Wrong.If one comes with all these pre-judgments, i.e. no narration, no time-looping, well...why stop there?
Don't disparage. Read my posts. I don't like most narration because on the whole I find it to be a short-cut that undercuts the inherent dramatic strength of the medium. I think that sometimes it's used well; but much of the time it isn't and often it's outright redundant and functions to the detriment of or with little faith in what's on screen. That's not a pre-judgement.
As for my objection to the film's "time-looping": they're specific to this film. Don't generalize. You're arguing with a straw-man.
Let's eliminate all artistic variations and be left with ONE way to interpret "reality."
Yikes! Again, my criticism is of this particular film, not all films that would employ its style. You or the director can claim that the stylistic choice interprets reality in a particular way. What I'm saying is that I don't think the style makes good on that claim. My visceral response to the film's structure, when the film had come to an end, was that it was unnecessarily fragmented and that that fragmentation amounted to a trick suggesting additional depth that the actors might have provided by themselves had they not had to share the stage with it. I've yet to be convinced otherwise.
Apocolypse Now
Platoon
American BeautyThese films would have suffered sans narration. I'm sure there are plenty more.
BladerunnerO Lucky Man
Moby Dick
"And then, as it must to all men, Death came to Charles Foster Kane.""The magnificence of the Ambersons began..."
There has been at least one filmmaker who knew how to use narration.
Also Kubrick's "The Killing" and (the beginning of) "Dr. Strangelove" and "A Clockwork Orange" and "Barry Lyndon".
nt
Hey den.
______________________________
Stranger than that, we're alive!Whatever you think it's more than that, more than that.
-Incredible String Band
I think, I think I am, I think.
Of course you are my bright little star.
I've miles
And miles
Of files
Pretty files of your forefather's fruit
And now to suit our
Great computer
You're magnetic ink.
I'm more than that, I know I am, at least, I think I must be.
keep as cool as you can
face piles of trials with smiles
it riles them to believe
that you perceive the whip they wield
and keep on thinking freeI feel like I Left something out.
I assume you know that he considered this but eventually discarded the idea.
;^)
I think becomes twice the film when you watch it while pretending the narration isn't there. Take the opening. Everything the narrator describs is exactly what is happening on screen. Why do we need him? That he leads a sad, suburban existence and that he's wearied by it is clear. The narration adds nothing to that film, as far as I'm concerned, apart from "brightening" it. Take the narrator out and it becomes much more dark and the ending more unsettling.I think narration serves Apocolypse Now well. To provide the same information to the viewers dramatically instead would have been unmangeable, would have required dramatic exchanges contrived purely for exposition.
I need to revisit Platoon.
Spacey's voice is the critical piece: it's "welrschmerz" incarnate. The cold-bloodedness in his expression shows the power of the spoken over the written word (try reading "Hamlet" and then just listen to...Richard Burton's interpretation on cd).
All your impassioned argument aside, you do seem quite prejudiced.
I think American Beauty provides an interesting test-case, though. Next time you watch it, ignore the narration as best you can and think about how different (not necessarily better, but certainly different) the movie becomes without it. I'd like someday to get a hold of editing equipment to make a narratorless American Beauty (and a narratorless Sheltering Sky, and original theatrical release of Blade Runner--I think the director's cut is superior for lacking narration, but some of the violence has been edited out and looks abridged, to me at least, at those moments).
Next time I watch American Beauty, I will try to imagine it without the narrative. An interesting option for DVD releases of such movies would be to allow the viewer to omit the narration. The scene in Apoc Now in which Martin Sheen is drunk in his hotel room would definitely suffer without the narrative.
I agree. One of the many briliant touches here is that we are told the entire story at the outset of the film, just like in the newsreel in "Citizen Kane". There's even a quick flash forward shot showing Willard coming up out of the water, something we see again at the end.
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