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In Reply to: Straw dogs, anyone? I did not posted by tinear on May 31, 2005 at 09:07:27:
The question is whether you paint with a broad brush. If a subject is not to your liking, do you judge the work based upon whether YOU like the subject matter? Which is what I think you are suggesting. YOU do not like Scorscese's subject matter, and critique what his films are about rather than how they are about the subject. There is no difference in that analysis than someone who is aghast at public nudity concluding that David is vile and without merit. I believe that would be the position of our former United States Attorney General. Such a opinion would render a fair number of paintings at the Met as being mediocre.Too many people on this forum, I feel, spend too time discussing the qualities of a film on the basis of there being too much violence, sex, dialog, etc., as though a violent, sexy, comedy, etc., cannot be good.
My own take is that Scorscese is one of the best filmmakers making films in the last thirty years. That is my opinion. There is no right or wrong answer. There have been a few times that I have not enjoyed a film, gone to rotten tomatoes, seen that 80% of the professional critics enjoyed the film. I am not arrogant enough to think that those others got it wrong, and I got it right. I am grounded enough to think that maybe the problem is with me, rather than the film. Maybe I did not see something I should have. Maybe I did not appreciate either the culture, the history, something that would have snapped the film into focus for me.
Unfortunately, our society has decayed into this me first mentality, where the weak links are with something or somehere else. If I did not like the film, it was because it was not good. Not because I did not understand it. If I do not make enough money, it is because society held me back. Well, have you ever thought that maybe the problem, for lack of a better word, is with you?
Scorscese grew up in Hell's kitchen, at a time when Hell's kitchen was every bit of the word. He says that his films come from the types of people that he knew, and saw on a daily basis. I was not there. I could not imagine living there. Have you lived there? Was your existence violent, having either lived it or seen it on a daily basis? If there was no humanity in that life, and those characters, why should Scorscese put them there in his film.
Some have this misguided impression that, while art can take you to a better place, it can also show you a place that you would not otherwise have knownn. In other words, educate you. If Scorscese is showing us the characters he knew, and the places he knew, than I want to see it, warts in all. If I want humanity, then there are other videos on the shelf.
Follow Ups:
sale on them this week, or what?
Again, I have no problem with violence or the subject matter: I like and admire Tarantino.
No, my problem is the perspective, the lack of humanity in Scorscese's vision. He exalts the violent. To watch him work is to see sadism and mayhem lifted to an altar of worship.
Ultimately, that is also the major problem I have with his friend Coppola's Godfather. The Pacino and Brando characters are elevated to sainthood. Oh, sure, Michael is shown to be nasty to his wife and murdering his brother but these become insignificant in his "character"'s life, which is about carrying on the family business, i.e. crime (murder is ok but, horrors, not drug-selling!).
Neither of these gentleman have a moral bone in his body and THAT is my objection. Both cross over the lines of portrayal from depiction to empathy and then sympathy.
Again, your are missing the creative origin of their respective works, which, to be fair, should be considered in your evaluations. Tarantino never pretends that he culls the violence and lifestyles of his subjects from his personal experiences and observations. They are purely from his imagination. The purpose of his films are not to educate the filmgoer, but rather to entertain. I do not doubt that there are some that can be entertained by pure violence, but Tarantino uses style, I think inventive and creative use of the English language, and creative conversation, to offset the violence.Scorscese, on the other hand, uses his personal knowledge of those he has witnessed, and the community he grew up in, as a source for his more violent films. Why? Because he is attempting to bring that experience to your living room. You know, there are people that do not want to know what happened in Cambodia, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany. And there are people who do want to know what happens in the seedier side of American society. And that is fine.
But do not look through the window, decide you do not like what you see, then complain that the communicator did not present the truth to you in a way that you did not appreciate. Simply look the other way. Is there humanity in the Mafia? I am no expert, but I have read Valachi's and Fratiano's books, and there was no humanity therein. And they had no moral bones in their bodies, either. Should the books not have been published? There is no question that the older mafia types disliked making money from drugs, and there numerous gangland murders for no other reason than some older mafioso refused to reap the financial rewards of drugs, and so were seen as a hindrance to the organization. In corporate America, you are laid off, given your pension and a new watch. In organized crime, you are murdered. That is reality. Why criticize Scorcese because he gives you a dose of reality? Must film always be a fantasyland? Must it always make a judgment for you? Have we lost the ability to see evil even when the film maker does not hold a sign to the camera and tell us that killing is bad? Can film never educate? I like my fine steak without steak sauce, thank you.
Therefore, to compare Scorscese with Tarantino is unfair, because the two are trying to do different things with their films. I try to appreciate both for their individual visions, and what each tries to accomplish with their films. Would you compare Jerry Rice with Emmitt Smith because Rice is faster than Smith, or Smith can run through more defenders?
change the topic when cornered or is it purposeful?
The Mafia books you mention (I'll throw in Mario Puzo, as well) do not ascend to art, and to be fair, they don't attempt to. Scorscese DOES in Mean Streets with his emotional portrayal of the underlying friendship between the Keitel and the DeNiro characters...and then fails in subsequent films about the mob to so humanize them. We are left with a squalid, brutish vision of the world. There is no redeeming value in any character. None.
By focusing his lens so closely, Scorscese fails to place his subjects into context. An example: one can make a film about Nazi concentration camps w/out just showing the torture and killing. Films such as Schindler's List do so and rise to art.
Scorscese fascination with ugliness and thugishness lowers him into the sewer. He is so bereft of feeling he won't even look upward.
There was no redeeming value in Amon Goeth in real life or the film and in fact Spielberg and Ralph Fiennes did a fantastic job of giving Amon a multi-dimensional persona that is fitting to the pre-emininant historical novels by Christopher R Browning (Ordinary Men...) and Daniel Goldhagen (Hitler's Willing Executioners).Goodfellas (which should have won best picture and director as most pro critcs acknowledge) lead character had redeeming qualities relative to many of the others. People in this world you may be surprised to know value greed and the easy life above all else and love to have power. Nowehere is that more clear than in Goodfellas and indeed Schindler's List. Gang mentality doesn't go away, desire for power is capitalism and if you can;t play within the system you create your own or your the sheep like most of us forum posters who do our job for X amount of money and lead vanilla lives.
Scorcese grew up in anything but a vanilla world and his world is our world -- just the part we like to hide under the covers. His characters in the films I believe work best Taxi Driver and Goodfellas have redeeming characters or at least pitiable characters even tragic. I have not seen Mean Streets - I bought the Scorcese Box Set(first one) and will look through the films to see where I stand when I see a larger sampling of his earlier work.
I'm not convinced that he is necessarily any better a director than Steven Spielberg --- Frankly from what i can tell Scorcese is successful in a narrow subject matter and far less successful when he he strays from the seedy. Spielberg can do it all whether it's the big stupid cheesey popcorn movie that is just one bag of fun or when he does something like Schindler's List which transcends the movies and is by quite a wide margin the best film I have ever seen. The anti-Spielberg crowd can kiss my hairy butt on this one.
Spielberg also has made some of the biggest dung heaps I've ever seen -- so at least when he misses he misses BIG. I'd have it no other way.
I am not changing the subject. I referenced the mafia generally, and the books on the mafia specifically, only to demonstrate that what Scorscece depicts in his films are real people, as did Coppola in the Godfather films. My use of those books was only to buttress my argument that what Scorscece is doing is different than what Tarantino is doing, and to compare them is to compare apples and oranges. Once again, for the learning impaired, Scorscece is attempting to give you a window into a world that you are probably not familiar with. Tarantino is not. Scorscece is attempting to portray real type people in a real environment. Tarantino is not. Scorscece is trying to educate you, in addition to entertaining you. Tarantino is not. If you have a problem with viewing a film which attempts to depict violence that takes place in parts of our country as it is perpetrated by amoral people, who have not a humanistic bone in their body, and would rather have a film maker tell you that violence is bad, and provide you some style, panache, and, at the end, that all the bad guys in black hats get their commupetance, then the limitation is with you, not Scorscece. Ironically, you enjoyed Tombstone, with it's "humanistic" portrayal of Doc Holliday, a ruthless killer. So, maybe your preference is that the film maker rewrite history to make images tidy. To each his own.I am merely asking you to carry your analysis to the logical extreme, and you refuse to do so, for reasons which are obvious. When you compare Scorscece to Tarantino, I write that you are comparing apples to oranges. I provide you specific reasons why. I provide you specific examples for Scorscece's window on his world. Yet you refuse to address any of those arguments. Why? Would you compare Tarantino to Hitchcock, and then conclude that Tarantino is somehow lacking? Oh darn, there I go changing the subject again.
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