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In Reply to: Thanks, (more analysis - long. . . .) posted by Tyson on October 24, 2000 at 07:49:33:
***You know, it is interesting, I see a lot of criticism of Kubrick's films that I just don't really understand - case in point, people who give the backhanded compliment to Full Metal Jacket when they say how great and intense the first half of the film is and what a let down the 2nd half of the film is.I said something close to that, but not that it was a let down, just that it lost some of its drive and passion.
***I, however, thought the 2nd half was just as riveting as the 1st half, just slower paced. I always thought the movie was really about that point where normal men become "inhuman" and able to kill basically without conscience.
Well, here, again, you are talking about the story. I could not care less about the story in any of Kubrick's films. They are all pretty lame to mediocre (Barry is the only exception, perhaps, but here too the story only helped, not dominated). His method, on the other hand, is anything but weak.
***I also thought it was brilliant to contrast the very structured, very demanding boot camp sequence with the boredom punctured by random voilence in the 2nd half.Now you ARE talking about something other than story, and I agree.
***The soldiers go from a highly structured environment to one almost without any structure at all. I really like how he juxtaposed the 2, but all I hear from most people is how great the 1st part was, meaning of course that they thought the movie was halfway good. I think it was all good. But that is off topic.Yes.
***Addressing the EWS phenom, I think that it is actually a rather virulent attack on a lot of underlying values that many people just sort of absorb from the American culture (or should I say Western culture?).
It is about the story again. How about art?
Sorry, the story is beyond boring. But that doesn't matter. It could have been turned into a masterwork. It just wasn't.
If you want to see how it CAN be done, look at the Adrien Van Ostade's "The Fishwife", or, getting closer to the EWS - Gerard ter Borch's "Soldier Offering a Young Woman Coins" - there is more sex in there than in the whole "orgy" (the palest one on screen).
That is how art is supposed to take any insignificant subject and raise it. EWS did the opposite.
***But like I said before, I don't think people "not getting it" is a result stupidity - far from it, some of the most intelligent people I know "don't get it". I think to "get it" you must be comfortable with a certain ammount of introspection, and perhaps lived a bit outside of mainstream culture, or at the very least be acutely aware to what extent the dominant culture has influenced you and your life decisions. I think that for many intelligent people the movie was to savage & would hit too close to home for them to really open themselves up to it. Of course, I also know some not very bright people that saw the film & hated it too. In fact, my wife and I are the only people I know that really really liked this film.Hated is perhaps too strong a word. It was disappointing, like a former star athlete losing by 100 points.
***BTW, I loved the orgy scene - incredible. Did you notice that the people having sex made no sound? Just the sound of flesh slapping together?
Well, maybe we should stay away from that one. I thought that was the weakest point in the film. The most boring.
Again, if you are looking for strong philosophy, then EWS is not the right place, all those htings have been described far better before.
***Anyway, that is how I see it anyway - I would love to hear other people's serious interpretation of the movie (and not why it sucked).
You want to hear only how good it was? Sorry.
Again, unforutnately all your interpretations are of the story, not the film.
As I stated before, any insignificant story can be made into a great film, so I have nothing against the story per se (I have not read it, but it seems pretty mediocre by all I know about it).
After the movie came out, I spent some time in the Kubrick news group. That was one of the most boring groups. People were fixated on the story elements, was she the same or wasn't she, who was that girl, stuff like that. It seems that every discussion of the EWS is still dominated by the story analysis.
But I think we are already repeating ourselves.
Follow Ups:
> > Again, unforutnately all your interpretations are of the story, not the film. < <I don't really think you can divorce the story from the means of telling that story. Taken together, these two elements are what make a film great, or not. Obviously you can break the 2 apart for reasons of analysis, but in the end, the movie must be judged as a whole, as a union of all its parts. I personally thought all of the elements that went in to EWS were strong. You did not like the story, or the particular way it was presented. Okay, fine, you are certainly entitled to your opinion. My opinion of the story and the way it was told is quite different. I was enthralled by the story & at many times I was litterally on the edge of my seat. To each their own, no need for everyone to agree. My analysis of EWS above was meant to point out what I found interesting and great about the film, nothing more. When I see something I think highly of attacked over and over for being "boring, too long, with no point or plot", I felt a reasoned response was called for pointing out specifically why I disagreed with people who thought it was boring, etc. . . But art is so highly personal, that I realize the futility of any effort to "change people's minds" - I mean, if you don't like Beethoven's music no ammount of analysis or explanation of why it is great music will ever change your mind. In fact, my response was really written for those people that DID like EWS, rather than as a pure rebuttal for those that did not. I know they are out there and I was hoping my response might initiate a dialogue on the movie. In esssence, I wanted to say, "I did not find the movie boring, etc. . . because of the following reasons, are there others out there that also liked the movie & what did you like about it". That is why I invited other "serious interpretations of the movie". Hell, even a well reasoned analysis of why the movie was not good would be ok with me, but to dismiss it with *Yawn* is just not a criticism I can take seriously. Later on you had more thoughfull criticisms, and I respect that completely, but I still disagree with you.
Tyson, first let me say that the one-liners like that "Yawn" do have place in the discussion forums, especially after the subject has already been beat to near death many times over. But I understand that it can cause strong negative reaction in someone.So going over some of your points...
***I don't really think you can divorce the story from the means of telling that story.
But you can. This is the crust of the argument and it is never going to be resolved, so we shall spend just a bit of time here.
I always say that the art is not about the subject, it is about the means. To me work of art can be built on ANY subject, however insignificant, and I tried to demonstrate this with few examples - things like the tired servant women in many Dutch paintings, for example. Or simply a flower or a tree.
I agree that it doesn't have to be that way, and if the subject is of great interest in itself, this is not necessarily a detriment, but it CAN be, when the subject matter is so provocative, so strong that it dominates and therefore obstructs our ability to see beyond that. In some way it is like a very bright light beam that prevents us from seeing the subtle vibrant colors. Example? Take that famous photo of an arm inserted in the anus. To the great majority of people this is the instant show stopper, invoking the emotions so strong and so different from what was intended, that any artistic merit of such work is lost hopelessly.
Story and means can be intertwined. There was a tremendous storyteller in Russia called Irakly Andronnikov. An extremely smart, educated and talented man. His delivery was mesmerizing and riveting. But was that the result of the story lines? Hardly. Once stripped of his artistic proves, they would become perhaps curious little bits, but not much more. If told by me - there would not be any audience. Here we have an example of how the story IS important, for he needed a story to tell, but only as a foundation.
His example is different, because in his case his means were words, and words can't exist without a story.
Images are different.
Movies have more in common with paintings than with novels. By many accounts the movie art is all about images. While the paintings can not deal with certain emotions due to their frozen image nature. According to Gessing, the portrayal of the strongest, the highest emotions can not and should not be attempted by sculpture or painting for the simple reason that if lasting forever, they lose their poignancy. The suffering of Laocoon doesn't touch us as much because in real life such pain can not be anything other than very brief. The challenge of the painter or a sculptor is, therefore, in finding more indirect ways of relaying such strong emotions.
There is no such limitation on movie art. There the artist has absolute right to go for the strongest emotional impact, and often as direct as he wishes. But what about the story in all of that?
I remember when the Tarkovsky's Mirror came out. I was grasped by the incredibly powerful images in that film and I could not sleep without seeing them again, and again, every one exploding in a sequence of thousand of follow-up images, all invoked by the artist's mastery of such manipulation. None of them was direct. Story? I don't think there was any.
Of course, that movie had produced an avalanche of discussions among the intelligencia. As you can probably guess, 99% of them centered on "Was that woman indeed his mother? And if yes, doesn't that mean scene A happened before B, or vice versa?" It was all done at strictly intellectual level, and apparently there was enough food for such discussion in that movie.
Me? I did not participate in these. I just sat there, for frozen in my memory was the face of Solonytsyn, stepping over the fence and wiping that drop of blood off his cheek. I the decades of going to the movies, that image remains one of the strongest ever, carved into my memory. Is there a story behind it? I really don't know.
***Taken together, these two elements are what make a film great, or not. Obviously you can break the 2 apart for reasons of analysis, but in the end, the movie must be judged as a whole, as a union of all its parts. I personally thought all of the elements that went in to EWS were strong.I am somewhat losing track of the EWS now. It has been long time since I saw it and since it did not create any strong emotions, I am less equipped to talk about it now.
***You did not like the story, or the particular way it was presented. Okay, fine, you are certainly entitled to your opinion. My opinion of the story and the way it was told is quite different. I was enthralled by the story & at many times I was literally on the edge of my seat. To each their own, no need for everyone to agree. My analysis of EWS above was meant to point out what I found interesting and great about the film, nothing more. When I see something I think highly of attacked over and over for being "boring, too long, with no point or plot",You need to be fair here - I never said THAT. I don't even know what the "plot" of the "Wild Strawberries" was.
***I felt a reasoned response was called for pointing out specifically why I disagreed with people who thought it was boring, etc. . . But art is so highly personal, that I realize the futility of any effort to "change people's minds" - I mean, if you don't like Beethoven's music no ammount of analysis or explanation of why it is great music will ever change your mind. In fact, my response was really written for those people that DID like EWS, rather than as a pure rebuttal for those that did not. I know they are out there and I was hoping my response might initiate a dialogue on the movie. In esssence, I wanted to say, "I did not find the movie boring, etc. . . because of the following reasons, are there others out there that also liked the movie & what did you like about it". That is why I invited other "serious interpretations of the movie". Hell, even a well reasoned analysis of why the movie was not good would be ok with me, but to dismiss it with *Yawn* is just not a criticism I can take seriously. Later on you had more thoughfull criticisms, and I respect that completely, but I still disagree with you.I usually don't set the goal of converting people. This forum is just for expressing opinions, and you are doing just fine with that. So thank you for interesting discussion. Time to do some soldering.
As in Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim.At least I got Laocoon right...
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