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In Reply to: Re: Straw dogs, anyone? I did not posted by jamesgarvin on May 31, 2005 at 10:28:28:
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.
Follow Ups:
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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