Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Victor Khomenko (i) on June 11, 2001 at 07:35:30

In Reply to: Peter Greenaway and revolting... posted by Rich H on June 10, 2001 at 20:06:45:

So it sounds like you see no redeaming values in his work. I do, however, I too have to struggle to get to them through the moutains of often gratuitous and seemingly unnecessary stuff that obscures rather than emphasizes the beauty of his films.

There is no question that he is a master and an artist. The question is whether his agenda is sometimes stronger than his artistic taste. Whether or not he is governed by the desire to shock more than the sheer drive to create art. Perhaps Pasolini was another example of such struggle, where his enormous talent was simply directed towards the open war with the stale Italian public.

Many artists wage such wars at one time or another, and it is often distracting to be caught in the crossfire, but even then I can't overlook these two guys tremendous abilities to achive the deep emotional impact - one of the main purposes of art.

Disassociating the means from the subject is often hard, but must be done in order to enjoy many a work of art. Otherwise we are bound to dismiss many works simply because we do not find the subject matter to our taste, and many different tastes we do have...

This is easy to say, but in reality we all fall into this trap, and usually not when dealing with a "trully and purely artistic" endevours, which are most commonly simply branded "boring", but rather when facing the works that contain extreme cases of subject overload. Often this would contain the subject with great shock value (just look at the "Salo"... one of the all-time prime examples of such overload, as much as I LOVE that film), making it all too easy to get up and leave.

It IS a balancing act and we randomly fall on one side or another at different times, often depending upon our present moods. Art is ALWAYS personal...

In case of Greenaway I tend to fall on the side of cutting him slack, even though certain parts of the "Cook..." are nothing but cheap shockers in my view, albeit artistically done. Is that attitude of mine going to change at some point in time? That is entirely possible. I just might say: "OK, Peter, enough is enough, you are now getting just boring" and move onto Cameron's next "masterpiece" or simply start watching NBA games. That time has not arrived yet - for me, anyway, as my wife is much closer to that outburst and I would have to twist her arm gently to make her see his next work.