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Author Topic: Something in the Air  (Read 1265 times)

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Something in the Air
« on: October 03, 2013, 10:10:28 AM »
We don't have a topic on this film yet? Do you people hate cinema?  :P


Anyway, making this thread because my thoughts are super spoilery:

Revolution. It is simultaneously a movement that is always new but always familiar. In our own age, we’re quick to speak of how media and technology are enabling a new form of revolution, one in which the ubiquity of cell phones and the Internet enable the voiceless to have a voice. And while that certainly changes some of the specifics of a revolution and how it is enabled, in some ways all revolutions are the same.

Something in the Air draws strong parallels between the Youthful French revolutionaries in the late ‘60s and our modern Occupy Wall Street movement. Both are movements with nebulous values and goals, mostly comprised of privileged, first world youth that are loosely organized. And yet writer/director Olivier Assayas is only tangentially interested in revolution. What Something in the Air is truly about is media and counterculture.

In this regard, a worthwhile examination must be contextualized by the Jean-Luc Comolli and Jean Narboni’s classic film piece “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism.” In this piece, they argue that the production and distribution of film promotes a capitalist system. There is no such thing as neutral media. Media is promoting ideas, and in the minds of Comolli and Narboni, these are ideas of harmful capitalist oppression. They outline a way in which a film can both technically and aesthetically subvert the capitalist system to make a truly counter-culture film.

Assayas is certainly aware of this piece as one sequence in his film has an audience member at a showing of revolutionary cinema inquire why the filmmakers are using the style of the bourgeois, the enemy they are trying to attack. It’s the closest the film comes to being self-aware of how it itself is structured as an enticing coming-of-age story built around the world of a counter-culture movement. Instead of ignoring the dissonance, Assayas embraces it.

Something in the Air is also a human drama, and one of the root conflicts of the film is how all the characters struggle with the conviction of their ideas against their desires to live a happy life. The young men amp up towards big revolutionary movements, but often get distracted by the pursuit of women. It’s not a condemnation; it’s just natural that one will always have to juggle the pursuit of personal life against the values of a movement.

What happens to the “revolution” of these French youth is the same thing that happened to the Occupy Wall Street movement: the personal lives of the members became more important than the battle. Assayas isn’t interested in the ethics of the movement or whether or not it was right or wrong, but that it fails to gain any real traction and why it fails to gain traction.

But it’s more than just the personal lives of its characters. Media must also be put into the equation. Posters, newsletters and films are used to promote the revolution, but the ultimate problem is that people aren’t seeking media to be shaken into revolution. There’s a delightfully funny scene where a sparse audience watches a piece of revolutionary cinema. As the light comes on, everyone quietly shuffles out of the room. Life goes on. After all, it’s just a movie.

The protagonist of the film ends up working on the set of a trashy sci-fi flick. Here is popular cinema: something loud, dumb and devoid of thought. This is what people want to see. They want to escape somewhere fantastical, somewhere safe where they can have an adventure without it challenging their assumptions about life.

While our hero is quick to smirk and think he’s above such pulp, this is after admitting he lives in fantasy.  “When reality comes knocking,” he says, “I don’t open the door.” The film ends on his fantasy, an image projected on a cinema screen of a life he’ll never have. We want cinema to be that dream. Not to say that the dream is bad, but it fails to wake us up to reality. It further sinks us into wishing our lives were better instead of trying to do something about it.


Alan Smithee

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Re: Something in the Air
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2013, 10:43:17 AM »
I hope they review this on SVU since its streaming on Netflix now.

WillMunny

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Re: Something in the Air
« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2013, 11:49:02 AM »
I´m too lazy, just copying and pasting from my blog

Après mai – After May – May 1968 of course, the social unrest didn’t end there, three years later it was still a time of difficult choices for French kids going into adulthood: what was the right thing to do? pursue personal goals or immolating them on the altar of the revolt? 1971 was the year when Olivier Assayas himself had to make his choice, the French director had already set one of his previous film during the years of his youth but while in L’eau froide (Cold Water, 1994) the setting was incidental, Après mai puts the revolutionary setting at the center of the action; in a sense this is a period piece and from this point of view the film is a total success: the look and feel of the Seventies are here and this is only one of the many showstoppers. When I say showstopper I mean it in the literal sense: the film is such a marvel on every technical feature that while watching it I often had the highly unusual desire to stop the screening to re-watch a cut or a scene. The film is effective not only from a strictly technical outlook, this technical bravura creates powerful images and emotional scenes who enhance the movie as a whole, this is true for physical scenes – the police chasing the students along the streets of Paris – and the ambiance ones too, juts like the scene set in an Italian piazza where revolutionary students are watching and discussing a film.
Assayas is a well-known master and as it happens with every director enjoying a similar recognition well-known actors are ready and willing to work with him, but a film like this one – where all the leads are teenagers – needs young faces, so Assayas has made the bold choice – unknown faces don’t lure viewers – to use non-professional actors (with the exception of Lola Créton and India Menuez); it is interesting to note what Assayas has declared about using non-professionals: he has used a lot of tracking shots because such actors are more at ease working this way, since they lack the cinematic mind of the professional actor, who is naturally able to understand every single scene in the context of the whole movie (Assayas interviewed in Positif #621). Putting aside all the good things I have seen in this film, in this autobiographical film, there is a cogent question: how is this story relevant to us spectators? how it is not just a reverie of youth by a director approaching his 60th birthday? Thinking of the Indignados/Occupy movements it’s easy to see that the current youngest generation is the first in forty years to have to make tough choices, I doubt they might have much in common with Assayas’s generation but in the end every generation has to face the same choices when adulthood comes, Assayas doesn’t provide answers but illustrates the struggle.

Pink

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Re: Something in the Air
« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2013, 12:59:18 PM »
Both thoughtful write-ups that help me articulate my disappointment. I admittedly found Summer Hours heartbreaking, so when Something in the Air left me cold, I was puzzled. I can appreciate the technical merits, but felt a lot of the aspects of the story were shallow. Is the coming of age story a Trojan horse for an honest look at the politics of the time or the other way around? The end result is that neither tracks run deep, with lip-service being paid to a movement by a clearly nostalgic director using earnest young actors who seem to be searching for the drama and context in every scene. I think matters of political conviction and alienation among youth can make for an interesting subject, I just don't think you're doing yourself any favors by bringing in unprofessional actors. Maybe there is a fine line between a character lost in a scene and showing a lack of will and an actor doing the same - but by the end I really couldn't tell. Some were better than others, but overall their delivery felt so flat to me.

Alan Smithee

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Re: Something in the Air
« Reply #4 on: November 10, 2013, 02:19:44 AM »
These kids are way to hip to be high school it was like something out of a fashion magazine or Arthur magazine.

 

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