Now as far as rating films highly because they say something. They might say something very important but they don't say nothing as brilliantly as Hitchcock says nothing. I'm being rhetorical. Hitch is saying lots just by mirroring life in a way that is so exactingly honest in a way that is completely beyond 99% of other directors. I'm underestimating. We have Kurosawa and Kubrick and Bergman, who are that incisive. If you want to say that Bergman is "better" because he "says stuff" in his films, that's fine and a matter completely of taste. Nobody made a film like Hitch. OK Kurosawa. Hawks...erm Spielberg early on. I won't be silly to make a point. its say its a finite exclusive club. Melville. Wilder......I'll stop.
This reminds me of the days when a film was merely about a plastic bag flying in the wind. It didn't say anything. It's merely life on-screen. I guess there is a charm to that that I haven't quite grasped. We millennials are spoiled with movies heavily focused on narratives, as opposed to abstract films about nothing. So, it will take me a significant amount of period to adjust and appreciate that style of old.
Say a decade or two.
I'm just kidding. You might be surprised, but I have enjoyed similar stories about nothing in the past. There's this anime,
Mushishi, that's about
nothing. Like, literally just a doctor who goes around curing people. That's the plot. The drama is minimum, though there existed some exposition. And this form of storytelling you're describing is often called the "slice of life" genre, right? I personally enjoyed the genre on some level in anime (I've always preferred animation over real people; more interesting). I find them boring sometimes because there's no story, but I could at least appreciate the sentiment of watching life imitated on-screen. So I might just come around to Hitchcock's realistic portrayal of life in his movies in the future.
That being said, I never did associate Hitchcock with slice-of-life. He's always been the suspense director for me, the predecessor to Fincher. I mean, he's the Master of
Suspense, c'mon.
So you should understand why I was caught a bit off guard going into RW. I was expecting to have my mind twisted and turned the way Fincher so often did to me, the way I felt watching Vertigo.
Maybe shift this list of shame thing into the thread that's here. Let others in on the journey. Get them to pick a film for you.
I really want to. Believe me, ever since I've taken an interest in the Top 100 Club, I wanted to join in on the List of Shame thread too. But now is just not really the time, I feel. I mean, working through Teproc's list alone was exhaustive enough, but working through my own list of Kurosawa, Bergman, Truffaut, and whatnot? Uh uh. It would just be like Coppola and The Godfather trilogy all over again. So yeah, I want to take it slow, on my own pace. One day, I would be in a mood for profundity, and that's when I'll probably post my list in the List of Shame thread.