Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by afilado (A) on December 04, 2008 at 17:31:07

In Reply to: RE: I think you hit upon it. Haneke appears to try, in his editing, posted by tinear on December 04, 2008 at 15:39:51

... for no apparent reason, no easily understood reason. In real life.

How will the observer ever understand seeming meaningless acts of destruction if the protagonist himself doesn't? Somewhere there is that germ of motivation, that intersection of action and "reason" however demented it may be.

The film artist, as imaginative thinker/creator is as capable, maybe even more so, as the scientist in plumbing unknown depths of human behavior. In the simple showing of it, in exposing it in honest, cinematic ways the filmmaker gives opportunity for the viewer to expand on the original imagination.

It may be that the artist who produces easily accessible work is the one doing the greater disservice to his most ambitious viewer. His ideal viewer?

Noe has discipline. He shows so much and no more. What is HIS standard for sympathy/antipathy? Is he gauging his work with viewer tolerances in mind or is he just masturbating.

Giving him credit for artistic restraint/management in any degree requires one to take him seriously. Not only a masturbator, a shockmeister. One must then ask where is the artistic relationship between violence and service to story, not if it exists at all.

Who is the more meaningful artist? The one who produces the piece with readymade reasoning or the one who provokes broader opportunities for insight not otherwise available if the showing were never made, however perverse?

I doubt Noe is so crude an artist that he wants simply to shock. What about someone like Damien Hirst?