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Author Topic: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time  (Read 50775 times)

1SO

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #360 on: June 28, 2020, 02:17:58 PM »
I'll add the poll for the 30s once you post on The Godfather Part II.

For all of Andrei Rublev's ambition, it's a film that doesn't stick with me. Perhaps that's the question a filmmaker should ask, if you're going to inflict animal abuse, is it so essential to your film? Is it going to be the only thing your film is remembered for? That thought probably doesn't enter into their minds, but if it did there'd be a lot less instances. Of course we all have a different answer about it. I think it doesn't become the only thing memorable about Wake in Fright and does fit what that film is doing. I don't remember the balloon or the bell in Andrei Rublev, but I remember the horse. (I also remember a slow motion shot of a horse rolling over but I think that's a different part of the film.)

Similar to all the TV shows going back and removing episodes because of blackface. Many of these are recent shows and they know what they're wading into. Often these are presented as toned down versions, but they're still aware. This morning it was an episode of The Golden Girls. You can argue that it's barely offensive and that they're acknowledging directly that it's not blackface, but even doing the joke is doing blackface. Does the episode need this joke? Absolutely not. Does it mean cast and/or writers on The Golden Girls are secretly racist? Absolutely not. It's that comedy often works better when it's not considering political correctness. So the episode was okay at the time and not harmful, but now it's harmful and not okay.

The difference is it's easier to remove one show from a rotation of 170 episodes. For a movie, you have to pull the entire project or else recut it into something different. That sounds even worse, but I think that would be on par with the digital people added to Eyes Wide Shut to secure an R rating. A compromise of the director's vision, but preferable to not seeing the film at all.



Fun Fact: At one time, Disney was in negotiation to release Song of the South on Criterion. It would not contain the Walt Disney name and to acknowledge the issues there was going to be an introduction. At the time, the person they approached to do that introduction... Bill Cosby.

Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #361 on: June 28, 2020, 07:33:51 PM »
Any thoughts on how the context vs message distinction affects your reactions?

Each of the three films you mentioned (Birth, GWtW, The General) promote white supremacy, among other sins, in their own ways. There are degrees to which these things are done, but the fact that it's overt in Birth and and almost incidental in The General make a difference, but not THE difference in my end judgment that they are bad. To write it in your script because you are racist (Birth), to soft-pedal slavery (GWtW) or to simply play a Confederate sympathetically because Yankees can't be sympathized with (The General) are all errors too critical to overlook, even if you might not conflate them as being equal.

All is to say, the worst, most overtly racist message is probably more damaging than something that uses context to promote racism (consciously or due to implicit bias and blinders), white supremacy, or just a softening of the horrors of slavery, but they are all very bad.

Regarding the list, I guess I'm far more contrarian because I think I'd be majority negative on the films in the marathon, though none of the three you propose be cancelled particularly bothered me and I particularly liked Imitation of Life and The General. I feel like your objection to IoL was more contextual than message as well, it was about the casting of a "white" actress in a Black role less than what the film itself says about race?

The biggest problem with IoL in my book - and I don't want to relitigate to whole thing, but clarity is good - is the use of the Mammy caricature via Juanita Moore's Annie Johnson.  The white-washing comes next, and is a big problem is and of itself.
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #362 on: June 28, 2020, 07:51:12 PM »
I'll add the poll for the 30s once you post on The Godfather Part II.

First film of July!

For all of Andrei Rublev's ambition, it's a film that doesn't stick with me. Perhaps that's the question a filmmaker should ask, if you're going to inflict animal abuse, is it so essential to your film? Is it going to be the only thing your film is remembered for? That thought probably doesn't enter into their minds, but if it did there'd be a lot less instances. Of course we all have a different answer about it. I think it doesn't become the only thing memorable about Wake in Fright and does fit what that film is doing. I don't remember the balloon or the bell in Andrei Rublev, but I remember the horse. (I also remember a slow motion shot of a horse rolling over but I think that's a different part of the film.)

It's interesting, my reactions on Rublev and Wake in Fright are just about reversed, probably because I responded to the rest of Rublev much more strongly than you did, and the kangaroo hunting scene in Wake in Fright just haunts me every time I think about the film, and even when I'm not trying to. They are both horrors, though. Obviously in Rublev, it was done for the film, which reflects a lot worse on its director and maybe ought to degrade the picture to a higher degree. I also saw a horse getting choked with a rope during the fighting scene, too, though maybe that doesn't get talked about because it didn't die? Just using my own two eyes, there's more animal cruelty in that scene than just the obvious, most horrific, most well-documented incident. With that said, I still can see the other scenes of Rublev beyond the horse and see it as a superior film to Wake in Fright; with Wake in Fright, though I certainly remember just about everything that happened and that it's a good film, the kangaroo hunt is way too central in my mind clouding my view of everything else.

The difference is it's easier to remove one show from a rotation of 170 episodes. For a movie, you have to pull the entire project or else recut it into something different. That sounds even worse, but I think that would be on par with the digital people added to Eyes Wide Shut to secure an R rating. A compromise of the director's vision, but preferable to not seeing the film at all.

I don't know how I feel about editing a film to remove blackface or animal cruelty. Like you said, removing an episode from 170 is one thing, it doesn't significantly alter the show or the themes it explores. With a film, I think you have to carry it, maybe do what Junior talks often about and add an explanation at the beginning or end. I think editing it after the fact is - to go again to Inglourious Basterds because this example just works in so many ways - like letting the Nazi getting away and blend into regular society without cutting that swastika into their foreheads. I don't know that it's like Eyes Wide Shut, because in one you're just talking about softening the sexuality to get an MPAA rating that would allow you to sell tickets to children with their parents/guardians, while in the other you've given an out to a film that ought to be seriously re-thought or cancelled (censured, discarded, shunned, however we want to approach cancellation).

Fun Fact: At one time, Disney was in negotiation to release Song of the South on Criterion. It would not contain the Walt Disney name and to acknowledge the issues there was going to be an introduction. At the time, the person they approached to do that introduction... Bill Cosby.

Not crazy considering how Bill Cosby got to present himself then. CRAZY in the context of what we know about him today. Wow.
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #363 on: June 30, 2020, 05:39:58 AM »
Rashomon
AKIRA KUROSAWA, 1950
4 STARS OUT OF 5

June deadline approaching, three reviews coming today!

I love what Rashomon is at a very fundamental level: a commentary on how we see ourselves and the world around us in a self-centered way. I suspect it’s a survival impulse, and it’s represented full-on in the four stories that recount the murder of a samurai and the rape of his wife. It’s the perfect “star of our own story” film, where even a suicide makes for a noble, if totally melodramatic final act. Maybe just as fundamentally, I love the shots at court, such as the one above, where the witnesses get their turns in the front, in focus, and then are relegated to the back to emphasize that their time being the center of attention is up. It is from the court that each flashback begins, and it may seem like a familiar device to us today, but I think this is one of the great exemplars of its effectiveness.

In our online age, we are consistently recreating our image to cast ourselves in the best light in context of our times, the lives of our friends, or whatever else seems important that hour/day/week. In Rashomon, the bandit Tajomaru paints himself as a ladies’ man with honor, seducing instead of raping the woman, and cutting her husband free after he had tied him up in order to allow him to defend his honor, before killing him. A lot of people online today love to project both an image of power, honor, and sensuality. These are the basics of classic masculinity, and two, maybe all three are ever present in what we now call toxic masculinity. The woman’s story claims rape on behalf of the bandit and suicide on behalf of her husband, because if we are into slut shaming today, imagine 1950 when the movie was made, or the 8th Century when the film was supposed to have taken place. Insofar as the dead samurai’s account is concerned, he makes suicide seem like the only act, which places him in a sympathetic light far more than would admitting he was killed in combat by a bandit. Now, the woodcutter, who didn’t want to tell his story at court, had the most convincing account. Of course, that does not make it true. If you’re not projecting power and alpha status on your Facebook or Twitter, humility is certainly attractive in another.

Ultimately, the murder and rape in the rearview, the woodcutter commits the only truly meaningful act in the film and takes the abandoned baby to be raised with his family. After exposing human beings as creatures of ego and self-centeredness, the film shows we can be good, too. To continue with my extended metaphor, I’d say people are often much better and worse than their online presence might suggest, riddled with flaws and contradictions, but real and probably more apt to behave decently in the “real world” (whatever that truly is) than they are online.

Rashomon ultimately deals in universal wisdom and truth that’s easily to apply to our era. It could also be another great film to see with commentary to understand what’s going on frame-by-frame. The camera’s perspective, at times front and center, at others behind the overgrowth in the forest when the crimes took place, is a whole other dimension of this film that I picked up on but didn’t full dissect, as it was my first time with Rashomon and I was just trying to keep the stories straight. There are also some fantastic performances here, especially from Toshiro Mifune as the unhinged, amoral bandit, who I first encountered in a show-stealing performance in Seven Samurai. This guy rocks my world with his crazed laughing and total embodiment of his role. He’s pretty method with his. But ultimately, in this rather short, efficient package in Rashomon, we have gotten a clear vision of who Akir Kurosawa is as a creator, a man looking for an emotional and universal samurai story, featuring well-choreographed action and philosophy, with a few tricks up his sleeve, from the flashbacks, the compositions of various shots, bringing the sunshine and rain to play with our expectations and failings, and even in full command. He’d have many more great films to make, including some massive epics (one coming up soon on this list), but Rashomon certainly shouldn’t be one to get lose in the shuffle.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2020, 06:46:26 AM by etdoesgood »
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Bondo

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #364 on: June 30, 2020, 11:01:38 AM »
I feel like Rashomon deserves cancellation as much as any of the others you’ve struggled with in this marathon. The one thing all four views agree on is victim-blaming.

Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #365 on: June 30, 2020, 03:47:37 PM »
I feel like Rashomon deserves cancellation as much as any of the others you’ve struggled with in this marathon. The one thing all four views agree on is victim-blaming.

I'm game. How so?
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Bondo

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #366 on: June 30, 2020, 07:30:12 PM »
I mean, I watched it like 15-20 years ago, so I can only really work off Wikipedia for specifics:

Bandit's Story: Woman feels shame for being seduced by the bandit, thus portraying her sexuality negatively, and making her the cause of the violence.
Wife's Story: Woman feels shame for being raped by the bandit to the point that she feels she needs to kill herself. Maybe kills her husband because he judges HER negatively for being raped.
Samurai's Story: Woman is raped, but then falls for her rapist, making her the cause of the violence. Also the Samurai is more apt to forgive the bandit than his wife.
Woodcutter's Story: Woman is raped, man holds it against her and won't defend her honor. Again she is ultimately the cause of the violence.


Four viewpoints, including hers, all suggest sex (even rape) taints a woman, and holds her responsible for subsequent violence. The best defense one can make, perhaps, is that it reflects the misogyny of the time, but I don't know that you would use that justification for other films (i.e. it represents the racism of the time). I think the structure could say something about rape culture, but it would need at least one viewpoint that absolves her. It fails that and thus to me is morally irredeemable.

Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #367 on: July 01, 2020, 01:16:58 AM »
I mean, I watched it like 15-20 years ago, so I can only really work off Wikipedia for specifics:

Bandit's Story: Woman feels shame for being seduced by the bandit, thus portraying her sexuality negatively, and making her the cause of the violence.
Wife's Story: Woman feels shame for being raped by the bandit to the point that she feels she needs to kill herself. Maybe kills her husband because he judges HER negatively for being raped.
Samurai's Story: Woman is raped, but then falls for her rapist, making her the cause of the violence. Also the Samurai is more apt to forgive the bandit than his wife.
Woodcutter's Story: Woman is raped, man holds it against her and won't defend her honor. Again she is ultimately the cause of the violence.


Four viewpoints, including hers, all suggest sex (even rape) taints a woman, and holds her responsible for subsequent violence. The best defense one can make, perhaps, is that it reflects the misogyny of the time, but I don't know that you would use that justification for other films (i.e. it represents the racism of the time). I think the structure could say something about rape culture, but it would need at least one viewpoint that absolves her. It fails that and thus to me is morally irredeemable.

No, I don't like hiding behind the "popular views from the time" defense. This bears consideration. I'm not in a rush to defend or condemn Rashomon in the moment. In a sense, since we never will know what actually happened, then the perceptions are all that matter. In regards to the woodcutter's story, was the blame on the woman for them fighting, or their own masculinity eating at them and her coaxing words working as a catalyst to conflict? Is the film as a whole saying she's to blame, or is it exhibiting how men have traditionally used women as scapegoats to rationalize violence? Just some thoughts, I always like a good challenge to my own thought process.
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #368 on: July 01, 2020, 01:18:22 AM »
In the Mood for Love
WONG KAR-WAI, 2000
1.5 STARS OUT OF 5

Whatever interesting insights to time, love, and regret this film tries to pack in at its conclusion, nothing covers its mass irritations, which were obvious the first time and equally grating the second. Part of it is simply Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow are so driven not to repeat the mistakes of their spouses that they rather waste each other’s time and ours. I’m one that thinks personal restraint, especially in terms of love and sex, is oppressive. Another part are the recurring musical and visual motifs that take In the Mood for Love from a simple melodrama to all caps, all bold, 100-point font MELODRAMATIC. Thus, a chaste love affair with the melodrama turned up to a billion, where the outcome is that both parties kinda sorta (in the case of Mr. Chow, not really?) move on. And it’s tied for the 24th greatest film of all-time per Sight & Sound.

Let’s talk sexual restraint and its value in this film. Essentially, we have two spouses whose spouses are cheating on them with each other, and they’re basically stuck in their little rented rooms in Hong Kong, while their husband and wife lie to them and play together. Is it some sort of noble thing that they decide not to have sex? To not do as their spouses do? It seems to be a major talking point of the film, and to me assigning any value to having or not having sex in this situation is oppressive. Some of the interaction and conversation gives insight into the feeling of being left behind, of not being enough, and also mourns passions forsaken, i.e. writing that book you’ve been meaning to write, for the sake of marriage and forming a family. There is also the hiding game they play, trying not to arouse suspicion of their chaste affair from the families with whom they live, who are next door neighbors. That’s not really anything so tense, I never felt worried they’d be found out, or cared one way or another. I don’t know if this is because of my own beliefs regarding sex and love, which are extremely liberal, where I don’t think making a fuss about having or not having sex is worth the energy or concern. I expect people to cheat, marriages to dissolve, love to be messy, and if we don’t make contingencies for such possibilities, we are fooling ourselves. Might be a culture clash here, but the point is, I think you have to feel both the sexual tension between them and understand the will to remain chaste as something moral or spiritual, or even something that matters, and I can’t.

Save the themes, and there is still a repetition of motifs that increase the melodrama to unneeded proportions. First, you have the areas where the frame rate is decreased and fractures the movements of the characters, turning up the apparent profundity and sadness of the moment. They seem inconsistent at best, and I like a good drop in frame rate when it works. Last year’s Ms. Purple, which utilized similar musical and visual motifs as In the Mood for Love, was a better film to me because the stakes were so much higher, even though it was just as sentimental, and the drops in frame rate were incredibly moving. For a more popular example, Danny Boyle used the dropped frame rate to perfection in Slumdog Millionaire. Here, it’s just like piling on the emotion the film was already trying to squeeze out of its material. Then, you have the repeated musical motifs, one a waltz, and then the other are two Spanish-language pieces (or maybe one, with two different parts utilized, the “Aquellos ojos verdes” and “Quizas, quizas, quizas”) and their repetition matches the overall repetition of Chow and Chan’s interactions, so there is certainly sense to it. The second Spanish-language song repeats the words (paraphrasing, I’m not looking up the exact order of questions), “I ask you when, how, where, and your response is maybe, maybe, maybe,” and that makes sense in terms of these two people not being able to figure their shit out. The overall issue is, watching them is a combination of boring and just a touch frustrating.

Maybe I’m just not romantic enough. Actually, for sure I’m not all so romantic, not in this way. My bottom line practicality in love make In the Mood for Love a tough sit. I don’t take it as merely subjective, though. The two protagonists go through a lot of unnecessary fuss in this film, and I never felt all so acutely the tension that should arise from their hidden and quiet romance. Like I said, it bored me. And as their little game ran its course, so did hearing the same clips of songs and seeing the same visual tricks over and over again. Eventually, everything from that little era was forgotten to time, or so the seemingly profound conclusion of the film tells us. OK, then. It wasn’t all so fascinating or wonderful to begin with.
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #369 on: July 01, 2020, 05:51:59 AM »
Ordet
CARL THEODOR DREYER, 1955
1 STAR OUT OF 5

What’s a heathen to do with Ordet? While my conclusion is simple, and I came to it simply, I’ve thought a good deal about this work. Viewing the film was a relative breeze, another Dreyer work connected to the stage, with minimalist settings and terrific editing-in-scene that draw you toward the characters and their battles with and of faith. While I get the attraction, I’m reading things about it being “the summit of mise-en-scene”, while Roger Ebert said he couldn’t sleep after watching it, that it had “found its way into my soul,” and I find the hyperbole misplaced. There are a lot of works of cinema that leave me entranced, that I have a hard time getting off of my mind. After I’m done shotgunning the 100 greatest films per Sight & Sound, I want to get back to my favorites and watch them spread far, far apart, because once one would infect me with its vision and humanity, I’d be starting the next. But I can name them quite quickly to you: The Spirit of the Beehive, Fanny & Alexander, Yi Yi, A Brighter Summer Day, and Pather Panchali. Oh, and Play Time, especially if the day or week or month had not been going as planned. Also, the theater being closed has killed me because that’s where I really feel the religious experience of seeing a divine picture on screen. Last year, I saw Tigers Are Not Afraid twice at FilmBar, and twice I was left misty eyed with my fist pumping (the BEST reaction to have toward a film), and twice I was walking out of a theater with someone different totally going off about all we had seen in Parasite (just about as good). Ordet gives me absolutely no feeling that the best home rental let alone the best theater experience can give me, not even if it didn’t have that ending that had me rolling my eyes ‘til the final music cut out and I was back on the Criterion page for the film. It was good until then, but my goodness, it didn’t have me standing on my chair praising the smoggy respiratory hazard that is Phoenix sky that such a gift had fallen into my lap. But cheers to you, if it did. We all have to have the works we love. I just don’t get it.

This film deals with people with different degrees of faith. For the Borgens on the bountiful farm, it is perhaps that they glorify God through their life, prosperity and relations, while the Petersens hold a more Puritanistic fire and brimstone version of religious faith. The outlier, of course, is Johannes Borgen, who has the delusion that he is Jesus, but also Mikkel Borgen, who is a nonbeliever. No one in the film believes in the possibility of miracles, not even the new pastor in town, except Johannes and his youngest niece, whom he’s convinced of, at minimum, his ability to bring her mother back to life after she’s died. Now let’s say that there was a Jesus who was born, died, rose, and ascended into heaven: Would he be different than Johannes? I mean, how would you truly identify the veracity of his claims without the miracles? I think this is where the test of faith comes for the Borgen and Petersen heads of house with their petty battles over two sides of the same coin, as neither of them seem to have the fullest conviction of their faith to follow it to its most extreme ends that include subverting the whole natural order at the whim of the one true God. They do bury the hatchet and agree to marry their children at the funeral of Mikkel’s wife Inger’s funeral, so it is the winning of the human spirit that should get a little credit for some of the good of this film, even if the understanding had to come at so great a cost. Then, of course, a miracle is performed at the end, and Inger, who died in child birth, is resurrected after Johannes points out to everyone that they mourned her death without thinking to ask God for her life. Of course, Mikkel comes to believe, and we end with her being told her son, who died at birth, is with God. Hence, lukewarm faith and implicit reliance and belief on a natural order as opposed to a spiritual order aren’t enough. You have to go the whole damn way. At least that’s what I get out of Dreyer’s supposed challenge to faith. It does explore the quality of true faith in a highly dedicated and singular way.

I just don’t know how I, as a nonbeliever, can get much out of this film thematically, given that it’s addressing the fabric of faith, as opposed to, say, the moral teachings of Jesus. The former I have so little thought to give because I don’t have anything like religious faith; the latter can be quite interesting, and I don’t mind discussing it even if I don’t believe it came from a divine place, but that we created the divine place and inserted some pretty good ideas (and yes, some pretty horrible ones) into the belief system. The actual portrayal of a miracle actually draws me out of any spell the film would have cast on me and reminds me specifically that I’m watching a film, almost like breaking the fourth wall. Kiarostami could hardly have been more subtle with his conclusion of Taste of Cherry. But somehow, I don’t think that’s the point of Ordet. And whether it’s a spectacular work of mise-en-scene, a brilliant adaptation of the stage to the screen, or a compelling commentary on the quality of faith, it all comes down to that miracle at the end for me. I dreaded it. I sort of knew it was coming, and I said, for all that is good, please no! And Inger rose, and I threw in the towel.
« Last Edit: July 01, 2020, 06:24:43 AM by etdoesgood »
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