‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’ is the best film of 2003
July 14, 2009 by wondersinthedark
by Sam Juliano
After Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King won eleven Academy Awards to tie the all time record with Ben-Hur and Titanic, the film, inevitably was doomed to widespread backlash, which has persisted to this very day. It is fashionable for film snobs to now dump on the film, and the trilogy it concludes, but truth be said the most telling award of all won by the film was announced in December of 2003, when the New York Film Critics Circle in a rather shocking decision named the film best of the year. The Gotham scribes rarely give their biggest prize to mainstream fare, opting for small independents and art house films. The year before, in 2002, they named Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven the year’s top film. The artistic validation bestowed on the film in the Big Apple was duplicated throughout the nation with critics’s group after critic’s group giving their top award to Peter Jackson’s film. In any case The Return of the King, against all odds is the best of the three films in the trilogy, and the one that blends all the elements of the others films-ferocious battles, epic conflicts, ethereal landscapes and an operatic sweep that elevates the film to level of emotion and exhilaration that nears spirituality. While the first film The Fellowship of the Ring, introduced the hobbits and the magical characters that were essayed in the subsequent installments, and The Two Towers was in large measure a prolongation battle, the third delivered the emotional payoff, and was the defining coda of the long journey that for its staggered release was actually filmed in one continuous stretch.
To say that The Return of the King is majestic, awe-inspiring and extraordinary is to be painfully obvious, but in the absence of a better way to convey the experience these generalizations must suffice. From the outset, Jackson has stressed the necessity of having seen the previous entry to fully grasp the launching of the new installment by way of character and narrative. Hence, the hobbits Frodo and Sam commence on their journey to Mordor’s Mount Doom to obliterate the sacred One Ring, while the emaciated and “bi-polar” guide, Golum tries to bring danger to Frodo and lead him to oppose Sam in a secret attempt to steal the ring for himself. The mission to obtain the ring is exhausting for Frodo, but Sam gains the necessary strength to allow them to achieve the success they have their lives to achieve. Still, Frodo’s inch-by-inch journey, which includes peril at very turn over with twisting stairs and a terrifying encounter with an enormous spider, Shelob. The astonishingly delineated and realistic arachnid stings Frodo and quickly wraps him into a mummy. Sam comes to the rescue and engages the beast with sword in hand, in another unforgettable and choreographed set piece. the eventual safe return of Frodo at the bowels of Mount Doom is a scene of specious power which also suggests an unachieved spirituality.
Meanwhile, Gandalf and the hobbit Pippin, with the monumental battle of Helm’s Deep concluded, embarked on the city of Minas Tirith to alert the inhabitants of an imminent invasion, while the human warrior Aragorn and three other elves and dwarfs look for assistance in the final battle for Middle Earth. Jackson then introduces a two-part assault on the sense, with a pair of battles, the Siege of Minas Tirith and the Battle of Pellenor Fields, a one-hour action sequence, replete with plotting, military strategy, and narrative progression that must surely rank among the most riveting and electrifying of its kind in the history of the cinema. Only near the end of this battle is there what appears to be an artistic misstep, when Aragorn is forced to enlist the support of the “dead” against the Orcs. Within the parameter of fantasy and myth of which this film falls squarely within, the device contains rather dubious special effects that make the these figures look like green ghosts gliding across the field. Deftly weaving through time periods and locations that made Tolkien’s original novels such challenging reading, Jackson minimizes the narrative confusion that normally would inform such an auspicious undertaking and faithfully returning to threads that were temporarily abandoned for various shifts of focus.
Subsequently, Frodo puts on the Ring, but Gollum bites off the finger and dances for joy, as Frodo counter attacks, lunging at Gollum and ending up hanging at the side of a rock. Sam pulls him up, but they are trapped on an island of an ash pile. One of the film’s most breathtaking moments occurs at this point, when Gandalf flies on an eagle, safely carrying the Frodo and Sam to safety in a sequence that so imbued with celestial splendor and awe-inspiring aural operatic accompaniment, that it stretches the capabilities of what cinema can accomplish in wedding image to emotion. It’s at this point that the full realization of the invaluable contribution of composer Hans Zimmer, whose score here is as important to The Return of the King as any other contribution. There’s an other-worldly grandeur that underscores the ravishing visuals supplied by Jackson, cinematographer Andrew Lesnie and production designer Grant Major. The creativity in all the technical departments, evident in the first two installments, has been intensified here. The most painterly visual sequence of all is the wedding set piece with Aragon and Arwen, and the former’s coronation, where the warrior tells the hobbits: “My friends, you bow to no one.” The whole population of Gondor bows to the hobbits, who then return to their home country, the shire. It is at this point that Jackson refuses to let go, and a succession of “final” endings are attached to the final reel that incurred critical disdain, especially among the few that were not adherents of the series in the first place. But the physical tapestry of these final encores add, rather than detract from this inexhaustibly beautiful canvas.
Jackson’s veteran cast, all familiar with their developing and developed characters, render an added level of poignancy to their roles that reaches full consummation in this final part of the trilogy. The heartfelt bond of Frodo and Sam is beautifully evoked by Elijah Wood Jr. and Sean Astin. Astin, who was something of a sidekick in the first film metamorphosed into one of the work’s most vital and inspiring figures. The frustration and fear he feels in losing Frodo to the power of the ring is intimately felt, as is the strength he feels in himself to carry on. Andy Serkis, with CGI assistance used to mimic his movements, is simultaneously haunting, endearing and terrifying as Gollum, and Ian McKellen again delivers a commanding performance of great warmth as Gandalf after being left off the second installment’s cast. Of course Viggo Mortenson as Aragorn is that physically endowed warrior that any action or adventure film would dream for. Billy Boyd is perhaps the most impressive (as Pippin) of the remaining roles, though Liv Tyler looks great as Arwan.
One caveat: If you haven’t seen the extended edition DVD, you are depriving yourself of the intended version, as the theatrical version leaves out vital narrative information, which not only improves the arc of the story, but also brings character development to full fruition. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in this extended form is unquestionably the best film of 2003, and a strong contender for the top spot in cinematic achievement since the beginning of the new millennium.
Note: This review is part of the Zeros project, an onrunning venture involving some of the best film bloggers, who are convening at the tireless home of Ric Burke at the incomparable ‘Films For the Soul.’ It will appear there soon.
But the physical beauty of these final encores add, rather than detract from this inexhaustibly beautiful canvas.
Bravo, Sam! I couldn’t agree more. Although I wouldn’t place it at the top of my list (I’m assuming this is in preparation for Counting Down the Zeroes) I think it’s a worthy top 10 selection. Too many people want to dismiss it as populace art — and my response is: why is that a bad thing? I loved the ending of the film (and you’re right about the extended version) as I remember needing the extra moments to get my emotions back to normal (the film is about as exhaustive and emotionally draining as any epic I have seen)…kind of like the “cool down” function after a good 30 minutes on the treadmill. Hehe.
I don’t have much more to add…this is fantastic stuff (as always) and really makes me want to re-watch all of these again. Your claim that such a popular film is the best of 2003 will surely rile people up, but since when did popular become synonymous with bad?
I’d be interested Kevin, in knowing where this would place on your final list. This piece is slated for posting at the project this week, a place where YOU have been the most prolific contributor!!! Your Dardenne piece is one of the finest I’ve seen there, both for writing and for content.
Thanks Sam. I really loved writing that Dardenne piece. It’s one of my favorite films of the 2000’s. Return of the King is probably in the 7-10 range on my best of list — but that’s just off the top of my head right now. I need to look good and hard at the other films that were released that year to know for sure.
I will say that I have never really cared for Jackson’s films, but his take on Lord of the Rings (which I am unfamiliar with the source material) and his re-make of King Kong are making me like him more and more as a big-budget filmmaker who is interested storytelling just as much as big, extravagant action scenes. I see Del Torro as being the better of the two (they are a lot alike), though, as his Pan’s Labyrinth is easily one of the 10 best films of the 2000’s.
“To say that The Return of the King is majestic, awe-inspiring and extraordinary is to be painfully obvious, but in the absence of a better way to convey the experience these generalizations must suffice.” How true, Sam. Beautifully said.
There is nothing wrong with popular art. The assumption that if the masses like it, it is automatically bad has been going on forever. The Beatles were popular art as was Dylan and Michael Jackson.
Indeed John indeed. The corellation you make there is simply irrefutable. This is once instance where popularity equates to greatness. Thanks again for your much-appreciated insight.
You always pick the worst screen-caps to head a review. The shot should always be a moment thaqt clarifies a major theme from the work. In this case you should have chosen the shot of 6rodo being carried to safety over the boiling lava by the King of the Eagles. It’s this moment of the film that represents Tolkien’s ultimate theme on the powers of friendship. It is THiS theme that ultimately pervades all the other themes that Professor Tolkien (and ultimately, Mr. Jackson) were striving for here. Great review Sammy, I know of your love for this one. I share your enthusiasm as well but not just for this one. The trilogy itself is an amazing achievement. I remember looking forward to each one of these films as a life preserver in the event of a shitty cinematic year!
I do not agree that this film (or its prequels) are popular art. The books that they are based on were embraced, upon original printing, by fans of fantasy and sci-fi within the book-reading intelligentsia of the U.K. and Europe who are more in tune to symbolic mythologies than here in the states. When the books his the US they were, until about ten years ago, basically read and loved by (pardon what I’m about to say) GEEKS that have always been able to sift through the mounds of literary bullshit produced, and produce a diamond in the rough. The films themselves were NEVER thought, even by the GEEKS, to be possible considering the gigantic nature of their volume and Prof. Tolkiens obsessiveness to minute details. That these filns became POPULAR is primarily due to Jackson’s immense cimmand to the artistry of film and HIS obsessiveness to the details of the books. These were, all three, independently backed films that just happened to luck out and catch lightning in a bottle.
Ralph Bakshi, tried and failed, in animation in the late 1970’s. Rankin and Bass tried and failed with two animated televisionproductions in the late 70’s and mid 80’s. Jackson succeeds primarily because NEW LINE and MIRAMAX wew the only independent houses out there that had not, at least fleetingly, dipped their feet into the fantasy genre. Both houses combined took the “make or break” risk on these films as either their saving achievements (one that would finally legitimize them as major players in Hollywoof and rescue them financially) or be the straw that broke the camels back. JACKSOn is the true hero here. It is his obsessive love for these books that communicated to every single fan of Prof Tolkiens work that these films would be as close to page-by-page faithfulness as possible and by whetting the appetites of every kid dissappointed by OTHER Hollywood delvings into the fantasy realm (STAR WARS anyone?).
Dennis, let’s make things clear about one thing. We pick caps as we have instantly to hand, we cannot always rush to a DVD to pick out the exact moment.
This is my predicament – forget Sam – he never posts the thing in wordpress and when he does he contrives to lose it when saving. Remember Sam is unable to do anything beyond the kindergarten electronically (all he can do is comment, that’s pretty much it, the posts I largely put up and reformat, the main site admin and appearance – and some of the posting – is poor Tony’s lot in life).
Let me put it in movie terms. Teaching Sam to do things is like that immortal scene in Cinema Paradiso when the idiot kid comes up to the blackboard and is asked to work out 5×5 and Toto is fratically gesticulating Christmas symbols to make him think 25. And then he says Christmas. Me and Tony are Toto trying to tell him things.
He emails the pieces to me to post in the morning before I head to work and I have precisely 10-15 mins to scour the net or my cap collection for a suitable picture. Picking off DVDs requested caps means going upstairs, getting the DVD, clicking DVDRegionFree to allow it to play, scouring through the film search, selecting a cap, saving it, reopening it on Photoshop, making necessary adjustments and changing to JPEG, Then going into WP and inserting at the top without it crashing on you.
And for The Return of the King, just type in Return of the King in Google Pics and see what it brings up – THOUSANDS of wallpapers, hardly any caps, no matter what size or specifications you put in. I had the view of Minis Tirith on a screensaver to hand and used it, and I used the other cap as it was one I did manage to find online. Oh, and I didn’t even know the Return of the King piece was coming my way, that was a special thing Sam left me in my inbox as a surprise, like the cat slinking away after taking a dump in the litter tray you’ve just cleaned. Not to suggest Sam’s piece was shit, far from it, it’s the best of his 2000 series.
In other words, requesting caps from authors will, from this moment on, generate only one response…PROVIDE THE CAP YOURSELF. Sorry to be brusque, but sometimes criticisms are made without thinking of the reasons behind choices.
I read all four of these books (THE HOBBIT stars the ball rolling) when I was in Middle School, and have read them all twice since. Like so many, I took the stance that these could NEVER be produced faithfully to screen. It was every Tolkien fans DREAM to see it materialize but our intelligence that made us know it was an impossibility. However, the moment Ian McKellan took the cart ride to Hobbiton in the second sequence of FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, all the obsessive fans of these books lost their jaws to floor. Every passage, every detail, every theme was on the screen. McKellan, as Gandalf, was LITERALLY the character walking off the page of the book. Moments from these wonderful films have stayed with me and haunted me since I saw them. The etheral meeting with Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) in FELLOWSHIP. The falling journey Gandalf makes with the Bal-RoQ in TWO TOWERS,and the aformentioned rescue by the Eagle King in RETURN are some of the most amazing cinema in thirty years. This trilogy is a triumph!
“Me and Tony are Toto trying to tell him things.”
That’s “Tony and I”, my gramatically astute friend.
LOLOLOLOL!!!!!! I can’t fault you, Allan, on one thing you’ve said here Allan. Considering the state of confusion Sam is often in, I’m shocked he has a moment in the day to collect his thoughts to write a sentence much less a review. But, then again, he’s often neglegting his job, the upkeep of the house, the gassing of the car etc to make time for his obsessions here. Sorry if I stepped on your toes here Allan. I didn’t know the process was so complicated. Sam basically told me all you got to do is leave a list to which cap you want and “ALLAN WILL DO THE REST, THAT’S WHAT HE’S THERE FOR”. I didn’t know this process was curtting into your regular work regimen. BTW-Your line about the cat box dump was priceless!!!! LOLOLOL!!!!! Be well. Thanx, Dennis
“ALLAN WILL DO THE REST, THAT’S WHAT HE’S THERE FOR”.
Dennis: Very funny, but I didn’t quite put it in those terms. I have a lot to learn in managing word press, but I am not as helpless as Allan suggests, though his extended rant does make for wonderful humor. It’s what sets Wonders in the Dark apart from every other site.
So, am I still invited to dinner tonight? I’m bringing Salad and Dessert! LOLOLOL!!!!!!
Now nown Dearest Schmulee, you know damn well that’s EXACTLY how you worded it. Anyway, the review IS your best so far in this series, I’ll agree with Allan on that. I just hope you”l take my suggestion and focus your attention to more worthy films in your next reviews for the series. You told me which ones you had chosen for the next two and I must admit I was let down by your choices. Surely you can come up with better to enhance what is, so far, a very nice and intelligent collection of films to present for the best of the decade 2000. You know what I’m talking about.
I NEVER NEVER NEVER said anything remotely close to “That’s what Allan is there for!!!” I said that Allan handles the technical side of the site, although I have been slowly picking up new capabilities.
As to the choices in this series, I honestly do not regret a single one, and the response has validated both my taste and conviction that these were forgotten and/or undervalued films. As I stated in a previous post, I plan to do most of the following over the upcoming three weeks:
I Never Sang For My Father (Cates; USA)
Fiddler on the Roof (Jewison; USA)
The Emigrants/The New Land (Troell; Sweden)
Love (Makk; Hungary)
Godspell (Greene; USA)
Being There (Ashby; USA)
Killer of Sheep (Barnett; USA)
Mon Oncle Antoine (Jutra; Canada)
I may also have a surprise or two.
Unfortunately, I don’t agree with you here. I found Return alternately turgid and bombastic, overwrought with CGI-infested battle scenes and saddled with a series of faux climaxes, some of which were laugh-out-loud ridiculous (the hobbits cavorting homoerotically on a bed while Gandalf peeks in through the door with a weird expression on his face). As a non-reader of the books, someone just looking for a good movie experience, the first was the best of the trilogy: a simple, straightforward, exciting adventure film, not overburdened with flashy effects or endless battles, but a chase, with interesting characters. After that, I feel things got out of hand.
Definitely not the Best Picture of any year of the Zeroes, particularly the one in which Lost in Translation came out!
And when Jackson followed this with the wretched King Kong remake he became one of my least favorite directors of the decade…
Fellowship of the Ring is the most polished film, with its elegant episodic pacing. We start in the idyllic world of the hobbits and flee with Ringwraiths hot on our heels; we rest in Elrond’s sanctuary and plunge into Moria; we come out grieving and console ourselves in Galadriel’s safe (yet unsettling) dream-wood, and then wind up surrounded by Uruk-hai. This is a quintessential fantasy road-journey containing three episodes within an episode, each beginning in a haven and followed by a dark journey. The pacing is flawless, and the plot unfolds to a perfect beat.
Two Towers is the ambiguous film. It’s excellent (or at least the extended version is) but structured in a way that the hobbits become sidelined by the Rohan story. As they are the soul of Tolkien’s epic, we feel slightly nonplussed at their consignment to B-storylines. Ironically, the film is a showcase for cgi characters Gollum and Treebeard, who manage to steal the show from within these storylines.
Return of the King is the most dramatic film, tragic on almost a biblical level, and certainly the most satisfying. I can understand why Elijah Wood calls it “better than one and two combined”. It centers on the hopeless mission to Mount Doom, which, as every fan knows, is the heart of the story. Around this we’re bombarded by apocalyptic chaos and destruction on the Pelennor Fields, followed by Aragorn’s hopeless march on the Black Gate. We finish at the Grey Havens, the best ending in literary and cinematic history, which encapsulates all of Tolkien’s themes: courage, friendship, suffering, and passing on. It just doesn’t get better than this.
Peter Jackson deserves more accolades than I’m capable of heaping to the point of overkill. Minor quibbles aside, the extended versions of these films are masterpieces to be treasured as much as the books. Tolkien’s classic may be pure, but the movie’s cinematography takes us where even the written word cannot go. Tolkien’s writing is irreplaceable, but Howard Shore’s music taps deeper into Middle-Earth’s soul. The text is sacred, but the scriptwriters changed it anyway so that it could actually work on screen. The entire project has been too good to be true, and I’m still in awe of it.
One of the all-time greatest films I have seen in my lifetime. This is one of your best pieces Sam. I love the way you assess the film’s artistry.
These three films are simply beautiful, and the last one is the best of all. I’d say few films have jogged the emotions like these, and that Peter Jackson is one of our greatest artists.
Jacksons KING KONG was not only a terrific follow up to his RING trilogyn but one of the very best of that year and a loving homage to the classic 1933 film. He invested the film with a new sense of epic proportion and WISELY diferentiated his film from the classic by playing up the ROMANCE of Anne and THE BIG GUY. Jackson’s interpretation of one of the greatest of all films respectfully paid tribute to something he loved and also opened the doors to those who had never seen the original by making a film so good it would inspire them to investigate the original. I do agree with the concensus that FELLOWSHIP is the bast of the rthree RINGS films although I admire and respect the sequels.
If by “epic proportion” you mean stretching out the prologue to a pointless hour and if Maria means by “one of our greatest artists” a man who has the poor taste to use cheesy shaky-cam effects (to no apparent purpose) which would be out of place in a 7th grade media project…then I agree! In all seriousness, Dennis, we agree on the superiority of Fellowship (and obviously Apocalypse Now, though I still think I kind of like the leaner version better than the Redux overall) but very strongly disagree on this film!
Obviously, Jackson is not talentless, and he is apparently an excellent manager of resources and manpower. But I find him to have incredibly poor taste and judgement, exacerbated over time between Fellowship & Kong. I am not familiar with his earlier work, which I’ve heard is quite good, and often in different ways than his 00s work, so I’ll suspend judgement on that.
When I say he’s one of my least favorite auteurs of the decade it doesn’t mean that I think he’s the worst…just that his mistakes irk me more than those of others, that he tends to be overrated, and he is incredibly, incredibly self-indulgent, in the worst way: an artist like Godard of Rivette (or for that matter, Spielberg) invests personal vision in their work but that hew to some sense of filmic discipline – even when their work is all over the place, its anchored by a sensibility which understands how cinema works at its core. Jackson’s sensibility seems to that of a distractible 10-year-old.
I liked about the first 2 minutes (1 minute maybe?) and then it was all downhill. The only great sequence was the attack of the giant insects and there were only a few good sequences besides that, mostly involving the Kong love story which was actually a quite nice idea, had it not been drowned out. Really, the film should have been 1 1/2 hours; though this would not have taken care of the CGI excess, it would at least have allowed the better elements to float to the top and make a tolerable movie, if not a masterpiece by any stretch…
It also bothered me that Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, a taut, well-executed thriller, which used CGI sparingly and showcased the director’s excellent storytelling skills and craftmanship was widely disparaged, often by the same people who later celebrated the sloppy, smug, over-indulgent Kong as great cinema. The discrepancy between the receptions (take Ebert, whom I like and respect, but who placed the film on his top 10 for the year while offhandedly dismissing Worlds because he “doesn’t like tripods!”).
But I respect all of your opinions, and appreciate that Dennis attempted to lay out what he felt worked about the movie. It certainly does have plenty of admirers, but (in case you were wondering after this screed) I’m not one of them!
But, and I say this truthfully, I respect .ovieman’s opinion anf fight for anyones right to make a stated opinion. Anyone who loves APOCALYPSE NOW as much as I do will always have a comrade in arms for life.
Fantastic, beautifully-written review Sam!
This is the pinnacle of epic movie-making. It is what Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and so many others strove for and missed time and again. Peter Jackson has raised the bar for every director of the future with The Return of the King, the breathtaking finale of The Lord of the Rings.
Fantasy, action, drama, romance, humor – nearly every genre can be found to some degree in this film. From the unexpected beginning, which details the chance finding of the Ring at the bottom of a lake, to the action-packed climax and satisfying ending, The Return of the King is a beautiful final chapter of Tolkien’s saga, and I think it runs around four hours in the extended cut that is being discussed at this thread. People with short attention spans need not apply to this entertainment workshop.
Honestly, I don’t think the first two films in this trilogy are in the same sphere as this last installment. (Tremendous review, by the way) Everything comes together here, and as you and others here have stated the emotions are not active until the final hour of ‘Return.’ The second film is mainly one long battle, while the first, pretty though it is, sets up the ground rules for what is to come. Of course it introduces some of the characters that continue on.
I couldn’t agree with you more about Howard Shore’s music. It’s got to be one of the greatest ever.
I don’t want to hijack the debate, but this excellent review reminds me of how hard it is for me to separate the three movies. I’m not making the argument that they are all one movie (such as some claim with GF1 and GF2, which I disagree with), simply pointing out how effective Jackson and company are in making 9+ hours of filmmaking gel. The entire thing flows so well that they are all come together.
I had absolutely no experience with the Tolkien novels and did not expect to like these much going in… then, bam!, I enjoy them all. That is a great feeling.
I actually liked THE TWO TOWERS best of the three, but I can’t argue with feeling the last installment brought it all together. You have quite a talent Sam.
Sean Astin as Sam was the real star of the film, as his character develops the most. I think your warning at the beginning of the review has come to pass in a few of the reactions here. I think Kevin J. Olson says it best, when he questions why ‘popular can’t also be good”. What I think some have forgotten here is that all three of the films were originally seen as ‘art house’ and only after they caught fire at the box-office where they then categorized as ‘blockbusters’.
There will always be people who will attempt to buck the trend. No work of art is 100% accepted. But Return of the King comes close.
The funniest thing about Sam not doing the pictures is when I went to stay with him. Every other day for the entire duration I’d be reminding him about what he needed me to show him, but he always put it off until I finally manhandled him into sitting down (the day before I left) and watching me do this simplest of tasks. Rather than watch himself, he shouted in trademark fashion “LU!” and Lucille came scuttling down to watch me and then Sam, every two minutes would be telling her “you’d better be getting this” like an irritated businessman to a beleaguered secretary. We love him and wouldn’t change him, but God…hear me bashing head against wall… 🙂
I’m with MovieMan here, but we’re outnumbered, so I’ll leave this for another day. Either way, this is a fine, fine review with enough of Sam’s signature trenchant observations to keep even detractors of the film interested.
However: If you haven’t seen the extended edition DVD, you are depriving yourself of the intended version, as the theatrical version leaves out vital narrative information, which not only improves the arc of the story, but also brings character development to full fruition
I find this interesting, because while I agree that the extended edition “improves the arc of the story,” many of the scenes drag and suffer from clunky editing (I’m thinking in particular of Christopher Lee’s death sequence, which is one of the worst in the trilogy–thank god it got cut). But, this is one man’s opinion, and the man happens to have a borderline personal vendetta against the work of JRR Tolkien for reasons he’s not about to divulge, so take it for what it is.
John R. That’s exactly what I said in an earlier statement.
I agree with Dave that movies blend together, but at the same time they are fairly easy for first-timers to understand and put together.
And MovieMan, I was eager to hear your alternative selection for 2003 until you mentioned Lost in Translation! Ugh!
Regarding screen caps, I’ll just offer that in the interest of time and laziness I usually take from the galleries linked from a movie’s IMDb “Photographs” (not “Photo Gallery”) page. In the case of LOTR: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167260/photosites
Indeed, there are a lot to choose from, but over time you learn the top 2 or 3 to go to everytime. OutNow! (for LOTR: http://outnow.ch/Movies/2003/LordOfTheRings3/Bilder/) and CinemaBlend often have great selections.
This may get into copyright infringement territory, but for the purposes that they’re used for I’m almost certain it’s appropriate.
Daniel & anyone else who can find this comment buried up here:
I find the best pictures/screen-caps to come from DVD Beaver. Lately I’ve “endeavored” to use my own screen-caps but I put that in quotes because to date the only time I pulled that off is for the Fred & Ginger post back in May (unless you count scanning my books for the list…). Also, usually if you google for a few pages, you’ll find an image that is both arresting and rarely seen. I always try to get something interesting for the top of my posts, though it’s usually thanks to someone else’s uploading!
Both Sue and I are longtime fans of the Tolkien books and these three films, but this final installment is the best for sure. Complaining about the ‘CGI battle scenes’ is similar to bemoaning the Siege of Atlanta in ‘Gone With the Wind’. The battles are central to the story- and the film’s philosophy- in print and on screen. Jackson utilized state of the art is stunning effect and few were anything but dazzled. I don’t say every battle worked, I say as a whole the methods used were largely effective. This is quite the impressive review, but this is becoming standard for you now.
Peter,
“Complaining about the ‘CGI battle scenes’ is similar to bemoaning the Siege of Atlanta in ‘Gone With the Wind’.”
Except that the Siege of Atlanta is achieved mostly by suggestion and keeps its focus on the central characters; it also lasts for a few minutes rather than half the movie. Furthermore, its flaming sets have not dated nearly as much in 70 years as the “state of the art” cartoony CGI has in 6 years – but then I thought it looked cheesy even in 2003.
Daniel,
Lost in Translation is one of those films – like Mulholland Drive, which I also love (I would consider the two of them by far the best films I’ve seen from this decade) – which instigates violent reactions, either love or hate. I think I can defend it adequately, but that will have to be done at another time!
I’m with MovieMan and Joseph here (and yes we are vastly outnumbered) I think all three ‘LotR’ movies are a huge waste of ones time, the cinematic equivalent to the ‘Star Wars’ saga. I could, if prodded, name at least 10 to 15 more interesting films from 2003. Seeing this was a weak year for films that says a lot. oh well.
for my tastes I’ll take ‘Heavenly Creatures’ (probably his masterpiece as of right now), ‘Dead Alive’ (my favorite), and even ‘The Frighteners’ and ‘Bad Taste’ to any of ‘LotR’s series. These ‘Lord of the Rings’ films “…makes cinema an illustrated book which, when you think of it, doesn’t sound very exciting” (Greenaway). I couldn’t agree more, absolutely vanilla filmmaking and storytelling. Something my parents put on before falling asleep. And to think this review (taking nothing away from Sam’s actual prose) is posted after a review of ‘Céline et Julie vont en Bateau’, can there ever be a clearer division made?
i know this may insight a riot, so flame on.
Jamie, though we disagree about Star Wars (though we seem to have a shared affinity for Greenaway), it’s nice to see someone else on the barricades! (shakes virtual fist at Jon for abandoning his post!)
I don’t feel quite as harshly about the movies as you do, but I share your astonishment at the film being celebrated alongside more visionary and personable works… “an illustrated book” is fine on its own terms, but would you call it a masterpiece? I probably wouldn’t.
(shakes virtual fist at Jon for abandoning his post!)
Hey, I posted as “Joseph” above! I was accidentally logged into WordPress and it mangled my handle. Doesn’t that count? 😉
I like Jamie/Greenaway’s point about LOTR being an “illustrated book” rather than a film, although there are a handful of other highly literal adaptations of novels I find engaging (a perfect example is John Huston’s “Wise Blood,” which I’m covering for the next issue of Bright Lights). So I guess the lesson here is that if you’re going to illustrate text, at least choose the right source material. LOTR’s blithe Judeo-Christian allusions and ham-fisted rip-offs of Scandinavian sagas never quite appealed to me, but again I confess to having autobiographical motives for the rejection (I don’t trust my aesthetic reactions here, which is one of the reasons I’m staying out of this).
Interestingly, my favorite film of 2003 by far was “Dogville,” which is nearly as long as “Return of the King” but moves along with brisk, calculated plot turns and enough philosophical conundrums to keep one busy for a lifetime. Plus, it doesn’t even have a full set (although there is one digitally-enhanced shot)! Take THAT, Jackson!
LOTR’s blithe Judeo-Christian allusions and ham-fisted rip-offs of Scandinavian sagas never quite appealed to me, but again I confess to having autobiographical motives for the rejection (I don’t trust my aesthetic reactions here, which is one of the reasons I’m staying out of this).
great point, and I think that’s were a lot of my points come from as well.
i’m overall not a huge fan of epics, especially ones that favor CGI to realism. Jon if you want to ponder meta-philosophical questions, ask yourself what the reaction to these would have been had the books never existed; never is a review or praise of these films literature free. sure one has to admit source material, but at what point does one’s love of the novels allow one to swallow anything as excited, great film making?
i agree also on your point about following novels closely is inherent that the books are also interesting. This was more or less seen with ‘No Country for Old Men’, an interesting novel with deep themes, translate to the screen faithfully and much of the cerebral qualities follow. I guess my problem lies here; faithfully following a book for young adults will never yield interesting brain food (to me at least), as I’m no longer a young adult (here I run for the covers thinking about a Judy Blume ‘Superfudge’ faithful film adaptation).
Jon if you want to ponder meta-philosophical questions, ask yourself what the reaction to these would have been had the books never existed; never is a review or praise of these films literature free. sure one has to admit source material, but at what point does one’s love of the novels allow one to swallow anything as excited, great film making?
I think it’s more than that — I think that reviews of adaptations more or less take two forms: 1) they wind up unwittingly reviewing the source material and not the film, 2) they wind up complaining about how the film failed to live up to the source material. That having been said, the “adaptation” is so pervasive in film, and even great film (“The Godfather,” etc…which is one of a handful of movies to vastly improve upon its source) that most critics would likely exhaust themselves trying to sort it all out. That having been said, I always feel pangs of guilt when I review a film that is based on a novel I haven’t read and criticize, or laud, plot turns and dialog: I don’t know how much is from the filmmaker and how much is simply transcription. Robert Rodriguez jumped a motorcycle over these meta-textual shark tanks by deeming “Sin City” a “translation” rather than an “adaptation” — and indeed, it’s basically a moving comic book, for better or for worse (usually worse, in my opinion). I’m not saying it doesn’t take skill to adapt the same as to create, it’s more like the old form vs. content or style vs. substance dichotomies (all hogwash, of course). A book’s relationship to its film adaptation is a difficult and incestuous one — maybe that’s why most critics are more than happy to let it continue unbothered under the sheets.
I guess my problem lies here; faithfully following a book for young adults will never yield interesting brain food (to me at least), as I’m no longer a young adult (here I run for the covers thinking about a Judy Blume ‘Superfudge’ faithful film adaptation).
I don’t know if I’d dismiss the entire genre (that might throw out “Shane” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” although I’d be glad to defenestrate “Where the Red Fern Grows” and “Old Yeller”). As for Judy Blume, we’re all still waiting for “Are You There God” to tear through cinemas with its sexist ob/gyn pedagogy…and everyone knows “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” is the real jewel of the Fudge series (the short-lived TV show, however, was only slightly less fun than castration).
Jon, interesting insights as usual. You appear to be, in a roundabout way, somewhat putting your finger on my ultimate reluctance to be a critic (or the minor league version- blogger). First off my obsessive compulsion, I would constantly feel inadequate reviewing films where I haven’t read the source material, even if I never would have otherwise. I know one can’t read everything (our lives are too short, and there are just two many other books I want to read), but still I’d feel like I wasn’t doing my job ‘correctly’ (at best) or being just plain lazy (at worst). Then there’s part of me that always feels like the Oscar Wilde quote, “The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.” This of course says nothing of the criticism you seem to favor: criticism that uses the original source (be it the film in this case) as the jumping off point to creating something new; something artistic in it’s own right. Then there’s watching and then having to comment at length films I would never have seen to begin with and (now that I have) now detest.
I’m not sure where I am going with this, but it’s something that’s been on my mind recently. I suppose I should just plug my nose and cannonball in and let the splash fall where it may. We’ll see.
But going back to the original discussion, I think we are starting to embark on how people read, and more importantly why people read. Watching ‘LotR’ and seeing it’s original impression on a roommate years ago that loved Tolkien’s books said as much to me. I suppose any kind of reading is fine, I prefer to read words and phrases as ideas and emotions. Something to alter or enhance my specific world view. A tale of hobbits (a fantasy creation) in a fantasy world, protecting a ring that can potentially destroy that (fantasy) world seems like stakes that I can not invest myself into for more then something to pass time on a train ride. I would guess that Peter Jackson’s connection is similar, even though he has deep personal connections that fill any emotional deficiencies found in the books. At this point I can start to make connections why he reads, and where, and maybe even how.
I have been reading (or I am always at some point reading as it’s a collection of essays) Camus’ “Rebellion, Resistance, and Death’, and it’s always occurred to me that most of what is happening isn’t existing on the page; again it’s a book of ideas. One that when collectively read could change the real (non-fantasy) world around us. For a filmmaker I’ve always thought Godard gets this as good as anyone, as I was rewatching his ‘Vivre sa vie’ the other week and perceive this quite well. the scene where a man reads the end of ‘The Oval Portrait’ (by Edgar Allen Poe) you understand it’s reading as a life effecting, shaping activity. Not as something to help us withdraw into a ‘Middle Earth’ fantasy world. Everything we need to comment on is right here on earth and in our heads (collective consciences) and is infinite. I will almost always reject most anything else.
(I also applaud your Judy Blume knowledge, I must say I only read the one series as a kid, and didn’t really even like it that much. To me ‘Sideways Stories from Wayside School’ was the opus for my life ages 8-11)
You bring up a lot of interesting ideas here, Jamie, ones that I don’t feel quite right responding to point-by-point but that I will, in keeping with the spirit of the conversation, proceed to “riff” off of here.
I prefer to read words and phrases as ideas and emotions. Something to alter or enhance my specific world view…. and it’s always occurred to me that most of what is happening isn’t existing on the page; again it’s a book of ideas.
This is very near to my personal aesthetic (again — you’re SURE we’re not related, right? haha). I have reductively deduced that there are two kinds of “readers” or appreciators of narrative artworks (although the two bucket approaches can also be applied with slight tweaks to non-narrative modes as well): those that favor ideas and concepts (maybe a kind of left-brain dominance) and those that favor stories and characters (ie right-brain, although the split isn’t all that cleanly). I prefer more cerebral fiction when both reading and watching because my mind is constantly converting the “event” of the art into a concept rather than emotionally identifying with the action (as is, say, my wife’s manner of reading/watching). Moreover, I can adore works of art with characters I abhor, because the “experience” of them is not so crucial as what they represent, at least to me. My wife is the opposite: if we’re watching a movie and a character is getting on her nerves, or a protagonist she happens to like is being tortured, she has to distance herself. Part of this might be squeamishness, too, but it’s an apt illustration of the difference between “narrative” watching and “idea” watching. I’m less concerned with the cohesiveness of a storyline than I am with what that storyline has to offer (again, as I see it, and I don’t mean what is often referred to as “the point” of a film but the complex network of notions frittering away underneath it). On the other hand, when I disagree with other “idea” watchers/readers it tends to be a conceptual disagreement. “2001” is a fine example; I find the ideas in/below the film vacuous and confused, but others see great cosmic significance.
Oddly, however, I often dislike overly ambitious social or universally-themed films because the “ideas” tend to be glib and superficial: as a lover of ideas I’m more fascinated by what films are *trying* to say than what they’re *telling* me, if that makes any sense. Unsurprisingly, I prefer non-fiction to fiction prose as well and also value expository writing with a subtext of ideas that seem at odds with — or at least somewhat exclusive from — the surface action. The existentialists are a great example of this (“La Peste” is more or less my definition of a “perfect” novel, even if I might reach for something like “The Invention of Morel” first, which might be the greatest “idea” narrative ever written). While conclusions are being drawn (and quartered), there’s a bed of conceptual “feelers” with ends just barely touching one another for the savvy reader to critically explore. Films that allow for this kind of analysis are also some of my favorites, even when the recondite “ideas” or “morals” are swaddled in the orderliness of narrative functions (ie the aforementioned “Dogville,” which feels like an overt allegory until you make the attempt to decipher the allegorical elements).
The problem with books by Tolkien and CS Lewis is that, while resting on a rich foundation of ideas, the ideas themselves are mostly trite, not to mention didactic, Biblical inquiries (with the possible exception of the positively spooky “The Last Battle”) — or in the case of “The Hobbit,” musings on “Beowulf” by a fuddy-duddy and unoriginal English/Norse professor. People read them because they’re a textbook of epic clichés — although I’ve never met anyone who didn’t view the books as a challenge. The films were, to me, equally challenging to sit through, but that’s me.
Then there’s part of me that always feels like the Oscar Wilde quote, “The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.”
I love Wilde, because he WAS a critic, and this quote is so deliciously tongue in cheek. But anyone who makes the distinction between “critics” and “artists” is delusional.
I favor reading, and writing, criticism that says more about the critic than the film in question, even if not traditionally autobiographical, because (as Lopate points out) the investigative thrill and the humanistic cohesiveness we feel from overhearing confessions is part of the reason we read in the first place. There is something personally revelatory in all prose, even taglines for Hallmark Cards, and as part of the context for the “ideas” I read into things I enjoy guessing, or outright inventing, those juicy, testimonial details. One might say that the subtle motive of all expression is the bearing of inner perversity — in my case it’s just not all that subtle.
Keeping in line with this, I prefer to view my writing now like the contemporary view of the female orgasm. Women are not “given” climaxes and do not “respond” to male penetration; they “experience” climaxes with the “aid” of a partner or manual stimulation. Likewise, I do not “respond” to films in my criticism — I “experience” essays on a myriad of topics with the help of other artforms (film, music, text). This might be egotistical, but it’s ridiculous to view the content of a film or an LP as an isolated intellectual/emotional collection of stimuli when it comes to us through a filter of other countless factors — some physiological and some cognitive. I “respond” to films the way I “respond” to conversations — in both cases, the “response” is more or less determined by variables that are aligned before the conversation or film viewing takes place (though this may run contrary to Sartre’s view, which I know you happen to agree with). I’ve written introductory paragraphs to reviews before watching the movies in question, and every single time my exordiums have been perfectly aligned with the deconstruction to follow. Why? Maybe a work of art will always meet your expectations, even if only halfway. Or maybe it’s because reading, and watching, and listening to art involves inventing your own similar and parallel but still distinct work of art as a method of absorption and processing. And that, my friend, is where the ideas come from, at least in my case. In writing about “The Searchers” I become the author of it in a sense, if only for a few glorious hours.
this is really snowballing into something quite interesting. i’ll riff more or less like you have.
I’m glad you seem to be in direct line with me in regards to the creation of something wholly new and original when offering film criticism–or any medium for that matter. From a design/painter standpoint I always cherish the projects that I am in direct dialogue with something else, i.e. a poster for a theater play is obviously more appetizing then an ad for budweiser. at some point you become more then a conduit for which something passes through, and an actual active participant. What the play says to how the actors act is as important to what you’ve said or visuals you’ve created. from ‘the lord of the rings’ stand point I feel this is where jackson fails the worst. One must view themselves as vital, alive, with their opinion on the subject worthwhile to assert.
philosophically this says volumes about how I feel; the power of the individual. the sole solitary intellect as everything that should always be inserted and represented at all costs. you almost go as far as to say this is ‘egotistical’ (or perhaps you even do), I think it’s about as far from egotistical as one can get. you and i (and our ilk) should never apologize for striking out into new directions and looking for (and finding) ‘obvious’ connections between Cy Twombly, the Jam, and PB Shelley (off base I know but I’m writing something that tries so its on my mind); or whatever these connections are. after all thats why they were created in the first place right?
you seem to view art as I do, and McLuhan too, it’s just the initial starting point for conversation, the theater merely a place for individuals to meet and mingle. The root of course in all this is the artist, isolated blending everything into creation, then beating the bushes for everyone to emerge and converse. And his original creation the hub around which the entire wheel spins.
somewhere Sartre is here too, at least to me. his stripping away of past ‘baggage’ (for lack of a better word), to me exists not as a set in stone principal when taste is concerned. I wipe the slate clean before experiencing anything (the best I can) only to have everything rush back into my head the second I start receiving information. this seems like the best possible combination for taste (using past experience) and for an unbiased experience/critique. For me this is the only way I’ve found to be able to attain ‘the blank slate’ Pinker speaks of, without denying my personal real emotions. Sartre sees writing (any creation really) as the first step to engagement with others. This seems to articulate what we’ve both said, no? He really blows me away with his ‘Literature and Extentialism’, if you’ve never read I can’t recommend it highly enough. (I ask ‘If’ because you seem to understand many of it’s elementary ideas already). But also at the base ‘seeing everything as it is’ (a record is nothing but a plastic disc) is important to me because it levels the playing field between little old me and something I idolize and cherish. How else could I ever critique a Manic’s record?
on this matter of past experience and blank slates colliding says nothing of your left brain/right brain analogies, which of course have something to play it to it as well. I think where art is concerned this will determine how one likes something (if at all) and what in particular they like. I have movie nights with friends every other week and I’m amazed how often my abstract more artistic aesthetic coincides with a friends scientific analytical mind. often we’ll both just respond to something base, a color, or a cut say. But he’ll say the color’s appeal is for an actresses eyes, I’ll say it’s for mood (in me). There’s much venn diagram overlap happening here, even when at face value we are different (he and I are similar aged, and have much in common politically and religiously though), yet aesthetically and thought processes worlds apart.
to close on a completely new, but connected point, I’d say I always view art as a sniper in a bell tower and not a mushroom cloud. populist art cannot, by definition, be interesting of accurate in the least. once any idea is homogenized and watered down to appeal to the most it will cease to be ‘true’ in the slightest. In other words as you put it: “Oddly, however, I often dislike overly ambitious social or universally-themed films because the “ideas” tend to be glib and superficial: as a lover of ideas I’m more fascinated by what films are *trying* to say than what they’re *telling* me, if that makes any sense.” It makes perfect sense. I hope I have as well.
all this from an atheist(!) who knew it wasn’t all about gloom, nihilism, and death (three things I romanticize anyway).
I get it now Jon, it’s all about wanking…
Jamie, it may surprise you, but it has all been said before.
Sartre was a poor novelist – your don’t fashion great fiction from sterile ideas. His muse Simone de Beauvoir wrote far better novels such as The Blood of Others and The Mandarins, which come from the feminine if not the soul.
I don’t know if ‘poor’ would be the word i’d use, but I understand your assessment. All i’ve read from Beauvoir is ‘The Mandarins’ you mention, and I do agree with your assessment here, i’ll seek ‘The Blood of Others’ as well asap. I like literature from the female perspective.
Jamie, Jon, MovieMan, intellectual snobbery is fine, but when you break through the stratosphere out of the earth’s atmosphere to the stars glimpsed in daylight by Sam Shepard’s Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, you are becoming a laughing stock.
To say Return of the King is inferior to 10-15 films, Jamie, is about as sound as saying that you can find 15 more boring pasttimes than watching the polar ice caps melt.
Quite frankly, though everyone’s entitled to their opinion, though I hate the usual populist trash, the laws of probability state that, occasionally, maybe as occasionally as the passing of Halley’s Comet, but occasionally, popular can equal great.
Or maybe, you just want to see Antonioni’s Lord of the Rings, where Frodo and the ringbearers wander around aimlessly in Fangorn forest seeking intellecual motivation to comb their hair.
Such criticism basically amounts to cryogenically freezing yourself in a state of perpetual hibernation, leaving the rest of us on terra firma no option but to do a HAL and have the warning signs flash up LIFE FUNCTIONS CRITICAL.
It’s one of the major films of the 2000s. Live with it.
However, guys, if you really do want to see a masterpiece discussed on the site, following my no 16 post tomorrow morning there will be a dissection on another life-changing film from the 1970s which I’m sure, as it was not based on the works of old JRR, you will approve of…
See you tomorrow.
Is the above the critical equivalent to “Nixon goes to China”? In all seriousness, I cannot speak for Jamie, but I don’t want to see Antonioni’s Lord of the Rings (though it would probably be less boring than Jackson’s Return of the King) – Spielberg’s would be just fine. I love popular entertainment when it’s done right, with a regard for classical storytelling, a discipline to the effects – and it never hurts to have a personal vision as well (I don’t see Jackson’s in Return of the King and while this is not necessarily damaging – Gone With the Wind doesn’t really have a personal vision either, at least not in the director’s chair – it does make celebrations of him as a master auteur somewhat confusing).
I just don’t see what all the fuss is about. Though Jamie apparently does not like Star Wars either, at least the first film had personality and a sense of fun and humor, both of which Jackson’s work seems to lack (except in the obvious & strained or unintentional vein…)
Really, I have to wonder why disliking this film automatically makes one a snob or anti-populist. I don’t see anything in my comments that would indicate any such proclivity…
And I have to admit I really don’t get that polar ice cap line! Though this surely is not your intention, it sounds like you are saying that watching Return of the King’s interminable battle scenes and huggy reunions is like watching snow dissolve slowly. In which case, I agree!
(In case anyone thinks I’m getting angry here, I’m not – this is really kind of fun! I find I become much contentious – enjoyably so – on the subject of contemporary cinema, I think…)
Movie Man, how is the labrador in a harness?
Either this is British slang I don’t understand, or someone has fed Allan one of Celine & Julie’s candies…
Allan, interesting clue there…is there any connection to the Lord of the Rings trilogy with this #15, or are you dangling a red herring in front of our eyes. (Or are you making fun of Sam’s forgotten film series again… 😉 )
Movie Man, Allan is making reference to a decadent film from the 70’s that will top his #16 (not #15, he erred there). So Allan will have two posts tomorrow. I have read his ‘special post’ on that aforementioned ‘decadent’ film, and it’s really magnificent. I am preparing now to enter my comprehensive response to you and others on this amazing thread.
Hmmm, I’m guessing Satyricon, which I have not seen (at least that’s the first that pops to mind for decadence though I have a more far-out guess I’ll withhold for the moment, at the risk of sounding like a bluffer if I say I was right later on…).
Sam, thanks for launching us on this discussion!
I normally wouldn’t chime in on this since my feelings about the LOTR films can pretty much just be summed up as total disinterest, but seeing that the film’s detractors are so outnumbered here, I’ll add my voice. I agree with MovieMan and others here: these films strike me as bloated love letters to CGI, and not very good CGI at that. Any sense of character or introspection or nuance gets lost in these noisy, video game epic battles that feel like they’re two hours long all by themselves. The first film has the most air, the most space to breath, and is thus my favorite of the series, although that’s not saying much. Not to mention the suspect-at-its-core notion of slavishly trying to translate a book’s narrative to the screen, just about the most unimaginative possible way to make a film. Especially when brilliant filmmakers like Rivette, Rohmer and Jarman have done such interesting things with adapting literature in ways that are faithful to the text while still maintaining a personal perspective on the material. What’s Jackson’s perspective on these books? A fan’s awe of an idol? It’s really high-budget, super-polished fanfiction.
My personal picks for best films of that year would be a close tie between Rivette’s late masterpiece History of Marie & Julien and Raoul Ruiz’s darkly comic Ce jour-la, neither exactly busting box office records back then, to say the least. The same year also yielded, to name a few, Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf, Lars von Trier’s divisive but powerful Dogville, the first half of Kill Bill, David Gordon Green’s All the Real Girls, etc. Even the minor pleasures of Lost In Translation are preferable to LOTR. But I know I’m in the minority here, as the big Oscar lovefest surrounding these films more or less proved.
“It’s really high-budget, super-polished fanfiction.”
This is brilliant, but I think it’s even more applicable to Jackson’s King Kong…it’s as if he sat there watching the 1933 film and though, wouldn’t it be awesome if at this moment the camera swooped in and jittered all around the main character as he typed S-K-U-L-L-I-S-L-A-N-D in slow motion on a typewriter? Ironically, Kong is far more auteurist (in the sense that Jackson’s self-indulgence emerges unfettered by strict adherence to a text) but that’s not a good thing! One almost wishes for the more “vanilla” filmmaker of LOTR to return…
Yes yes yes! YES! Allan, Sam botching all things technical is infamous. His skirting the blame for his electronic incompetence to everyone, including dead relatives, is legendary. Don’t go about feeling too hurt by his shunning off your help or kind words of enthusiasm to help him. I’ve been his friend and cohort for damn near 20 years now and have tried to grow a thick skin to weather his barbarism and bombasity. When it comes to organization, learning new things pertaining to the computer, or just simple things like changing a fuckin light bulb, the man is a laughable MESS!! As far as Lucille (Sams wife), its a wonder they haven’t carted the poor woman away to the booby hatch to take lessons in painting the lawn furniture-if ever one would be pardoned for murdering their spouse because of sheer annoyance it would be Saint Lucille. Just a few days ago he repurchased a new all-regions DVD player because he couldn’t find the remote for the previous one. AMAZING.
Just the other night Sam decides to screen Ken Loach’s KESS for me as I have never seen the film. His five kids are in attendance. He tells the kids not to make noise and to stop fidgeting when the film is on. The film begins. Sam gets up for a drink. Sam gets up to set the lights. Sam gets up to blog. Sam gets up to piss. Sam gets up to screw with the volume. His 9 year old son, and purest psychopath, Danny taps me on the shoulder and pointing to his father says: WHAT’S WITH THIS FUCKIN’ GUY?!?!? See what I mean Allan? LOLOL!!!! But, considering all his bombastic attributes I wouldn’t change him in a million years as he has been a constant sourse of laughs and entertainment, not to mention one of the sweetest guys around and the most loyal of friends. But, if you want more funny stories you can reach me by phone. LOLOL!
Danny never uses that word, and hasn’t done so once in his life to this date. The other observations though are close enough.
Dennis, I dislike LOL as an expression, but this choice vignette had me LOLing! I think you and Sam should get together and pitch a sit-com about nothing to NBC.
My response to ED HOWARD, MOVIE MAN, JAMIE and JON:
But especially to Ed:
Ed: Far more significant than the “Oscar Lovefest” you note are the far more significant citations for Best Film from the arty New York Film Critics Circle and seventeen other critics group nationwide in 2003. Point is, some of our greatest critics, whose reviews can be easily accessed at RT and MC, have sung its praises:
David Edelstein (Slate)
J. Hoberman (Village Voice)
Ed Gonzalez (Slant)
Nick Schager (Slant)
Andrew O’Hair (Salon)
Phillip French (UK Observer)
Elvis Mitchell (NY Times)
Anthony Lane (New Yorker)
Are you telling me that this list of our very finest critics contains people who are fooled by the kind of summary dismissals that you are now aiming at THE RETURN OF THE KING? And when 17 film critics’ groups say this is the Best Film of 2003, well before the Oscars even chimed in, that’s telling.
Edelstein went as far as to say that THE RETURN OF THE KING was SO GOOD that it “made the other two films better.” And it’s rare to have the SLANT colleagues Gonzalez and Schager both in unified and effusive praise for a single film.
No it’s not about 11 Oscars remotely, it’s about what (overwhelming) the intellectual establishment has chimed in about this film.
Sam, my “Oscar lovefest” line was just tossed off, not meant as anything more than an indication that I’ve got a minority opinion on this. It shouldn’t be about either the Oscars or what the “intellectual establishment” (yuck!) has to say — it should be about one’s own reaction and thoughts. I respect most of those critics, but not so much that they can make me unsee what I see for myself in these films: namely, empty bombast, lousy CGI and a crippling devotion to the books that precludes any deeper personal engagement on Jackson’s part. And if my dismissals are “summary,” it’s only because I haven’t revisited the films since first seeing them.
Fair enough Ed, if that’s the way you see it, of course that is really the bottom line. I will try now and put together a more comprehensive response as to why I completely concur with this group and reject that ’empty bombast’ and ‘lousy CGI’ argument.’ But you, and all th eothers have lives to lead, and waiting to hear what Sam Juliano says about RETURN OF THE KING is hardly a priority. I say that sincerely, and with no intent of irony. I will gather my thoughts now, nonetheless.
He used that word the other day! LOLOL!!!!!
Well , I just ran upstairs like a mad man and asked him. He said he never used that word once in his life. But back to ROTK.
The perfect example of Sams obsessions with always being right. He ran (you can’t run) to ask his son if he ever used profanity. Duh, what do you think the kid’s gonna say? “Yes Daddy I did use the F word”? You are so gullable. But we love you anyway. See you later. Dennis
funny Allan, I thought my heightening of some of Jackson’s OTHER films showed that I don’t mind populist stuff when it’s done interesting or at least daring. For you to say that ‘LotR:tRotK’ is just populist fun is exactly why I detest it so, if it was made just to be fun then I’m sure it would be a better film. In stead it labors on and on trying it’s hardest to be pretentious, epic award season fodder– something I assume you think I want it to be.
how can one be accused of snobbery when one has already stated he is a great admirer of Jackson’s ‘Dead Alive’? another populist film from that same year, ‘Kill Bill I’ exhilarates and astonishes more then this film ever does (at about half the running time it seems). I never thought I’d see the day Allen defends populist fare while accusing others of film snobbery…
i don’t want Antonioni’s Lord of the Rings, what I want is for a book to remain a book, and to inspire a film. After all if I wanted a sentence by sentence, visual by visual of the book, I’ll read the book.
can i say it better then Ed? I don’t think so, “Especially when brilliant filmmakers like Rivette, Rohmer and Jarman have done such interesting things with adapting literature in ways that are faithful to the text while still maintaining a personal perspective on the material. What’s Jackson’s perspective on these books? A fan’s awe of an idol? It’s really high-budget, super-polished fanfiction.
My personal picks for best films of that year would be a close tie between Rivette’s late masterpiece History of Marie & Julien and Raoul Ruiz’s darkly comic Ce jour-la, neither exactly busting box office records back then, to say the least. The same year also yielded, to name a few, Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf, Lars von Trier’s divisive but powerful Dogville, the first half of Kill Bill, David Gordon Green’s All the Real Girls, etc. Even the minor pleasures of Lost In Translation are preferable to LOTR. But I know I’m in the minority here, as the big Oscar lovefest surrounding these films more or less proved.”
we are already at 6 films… what did I say 10-15? how about we add ‘American Splendor’, ‘Coffee and Cigarettes’ (this one is debatable sure), ‘Code 46’ (again debatable), ‘The Dreamers’, ‘In the Cut’, ‘The Barbarian Invasions’, ‘Ju-on: The Grudge’ (debatable for non-Horror fans), ‘A Mighty Wind’, ‘Mystic River’, ‘Monster’ (debatable), ‘Oldboy’ (definitely), and ‘Whale Rider’.
I mean if you want overblown Oscar fodder, is this film better then that year’s ‘Seabiscuit’? heck I’d even watch Stuart Gordons shlock fest ‘Beyond Re-Animator’ again over this trash, and the Coen’s flawed ‘Intolerable Cruelty’ too.
If one wants populist expressive use of CGI (with auteurish film grammar), one should look no further then ‘Speedracer’, a film I’m sure would not receive the love around here this one above has.
(i’ll also add to Movie Man the original two Star Wars, ‘A New Hope’ and ‘Empire Strikes Back’, I enjoy quite a bit).
Somebody should get Jamie a tranquilizer. Are any of Micheal Jackson’s doctors reading this?
Somebody should get Jamie a tranquilizer. Are any of Micheal Jackson’s doctors reading this?
**jamie seen reaching for ice after receiving unsubstantiated cheap shot in nether region**
Indeed Jamie. We are lucky to have all your brilliant observations here today and always. Ignore it.
Sam’s son just told me to tell all of you to calm the fuck down.
Sam I have a fresh bar of Dove if this problem persists.
Well to be honest Jamie, Dennis likes to “embellish” for darmatic ‘effect’ if you know what I mean. Danny is only 10, and never has used this language. But I agree that soap is the way to go should I be surprised here……..LOL Movie Man!!!!!!!!
Jon: Von Trier’s DOGVILLE opened in January of 2004 in the USA, so it’s considered a 2004 film. It is actually my #1 film of 2004, and I will be writing a review for it here and for the Zeros project.
Ed: As I just said to Jon, DOGVILLE is a masterpiece, and one of the great films of the new millenium.
Ed: The Rivette and Ruiz films are most fine, but neither fo rme among their director’s best work.
ELEPHANT was my #2 of 2003, behind ROTK; TIME OF THE WOLF my #5 and KILL BILL #10.
I agree with Daniel Getahun in that LOST IN TRANSLATION is grossly overrated. I saw it repeatedly in theatres and still found it ponderous.
thanks for above comment Sam. glad to see you take my dislike of this film as not personal to you, as you should.
i believe most are putting ‘Dogville’ in 2003 because it was in competition for the Palme d’Or at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival (lost to ‘Elephant’). but yes it opened in the US in Jan. 2004 as you say.
Jamie: If you look back at 2003 you will find DOGVILLE made few ten-best lists, as few had seen it to that point. It did win the Palme d’Or in 2003, but only got wide release and exposure stateside after that January 2004 opening. Subsequently, it made many lists at the end of 2004, which is where I have it myself. I named it best film of 2004, with BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN as best of 2005; THE FOUNTAIN tops for 2006; ATONEMENT for 2007, and WALL-E for 2008. If someone put a gun to my head right now and asked for the best of 2009 so far I would say either the French SUMMER HOURS or the British OF TIME AND THE CITY.
But of course you can consider it 2003; it’s open game.
Of course I don’t remotely take your position personally. I am honored that you even come here as often as you do and I am always enriched by your insights and vast film knowledge, which ranks with the bets here. I see where you are coming from in your rejection of Allan’s Antonioni comment. I know you were disappointed in what you (and Ed, Jon and Movie Man) saw as a ‘surface transcription.’ But I argue otherwise in a later response on this thread.
Thanks again for all you have done here.
‘the fountain’ best of 2006 very interesting…. only saw it once at the theater, and liked it well enough. maybe i should revisit?
all the others seems like Sam picks, or what I am starting to believe your taste to be. which is great to know!
Ah, Jamie, I believe you pretty much know my taste. THE FOUNTAIN, odd enough does fit in, apart from the technical pyrotehnics. At its center its really a ravishing love story.
Sam, perhaps you saw “Lost in Translation” under its other name “The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” and vice-versa. Hence the confusion. 😉
Yes, Sam still sticks by when a film opened int he US, so Melville’s The Army in the Shadows is a 2005 film, not 1969. He’s retarded that way.
A film is of the year it first played publicly. Period. Not just in the colonies.
Allan!!!
I go by what the USA critics go by!!!!!! My lists are published here, not in Madagascar. The US critics consider DOGVILLE for 2004. CHECK THE YEAR-END LISTS OUT!!!!
as far as ARMY OF THE SHADOWS, wher ethere was nearly a 40 year difference, well I did NOT include that masterpiece at all in 2005. I drew the line there.
Yes, but you consider films from those years even AFTER the year end lists are published, that’s the problem. It’s inexcusable. In the year in question, fair enough, in broader context, it’s a joke.
I conform the USA film criticism. I live here so it makes sense.
It’s un-American to do otherwise, goddamn it! I’d die before I’d refer to a film by its Frenchie or redcoat release date! Anyone who says or does otherwise is a rotten commie!
(Although I’ve already referred to “Dogville” as a 2003 movie, so I’ve probably spoiled my own joke pre-emptively. Rats, he says in his best Charlie Brown voice…)
hahahahaha Jon!
Well even though Allan thinks I’m a “homer’ I am far from it. I am a left-winger through and through. I just choose to maintain some consistant criteria to make year-end lists. Allan argues that ‘down the road’ I need to revise the dates, but the truth is this: why are there any governing, overring rules? Why not just let everyone ‘do their own thing?’ What’s important is that we both agree DOGVILLE is a masterpiece–you have it as best of 2003, I have it as best of 2004………
Ha Movie Man! Good one!
Well, both THE RETURN OF THE KING and LOST IN TRANSLATION secured the effusive praise from about 95% of critics worldwide. So it appears that both of us are in the dark for 1 out of 2 here! Ha!
Your guess on FELLINI SATYRICON on Allan’s post tomorrow is incorrect. It’s far more depraved.
The quip about the labrador with the harness was Allan’s way of telling you that you are blind….i.e…”seeing eye dog”
I see…I thought it had something to do with being more aggressive than I let on, i.e. gee, if that’s your labrador in harness I’d hate to see it out… but that didn’t make sense to me as I don’t think of labs as especially vicious. Guess I was too “blind” to get it…
One thing I like about this blog…I can hit refresh every few minutes and a gaggle of new comments shows up! Can’t think of many others where I can do that…
Ha Movie Man! Well, I’ll admit that some threads really are on fire like this one and previous ones on MANHATTAN and THE GODFATHER. But like any other blogsite we have our ‘dead phases’ too. Today has been a hot one.
Come on, guys, let’s have the first 100+ comments in a day on one piece…
Allan, we had 135 comments for our WIZARD OF OZ 30’s poll thread, and I believe one other went over 100.
This is a truly extraordinary post Sam. I’ve browsed through this entire discussion and enjoyed it as well. Unfortunately I have always found the LOTR trilogy a little tedious. Many times I wanted to revisit the ‘extended’ versions (which I have copies of) but somehow never got around to it. I will say this — your very fine piece here has inspired me to give this another shot. I will start backwards this time!
Incidentally I don’t think too highly of the books either.
For those interested check this out:
Kaleem, fantastic addition here, thanks so much! I’m thrilled the thread has inspired you to check these out again.
Sam, NOT IN 1 DAY!!!
True enough.
In all fairness to Ed Howard and the others I aimed by post with the critic appraisals at, there was one critic, whom I consider in the same hallowed company as those others, and that is Jonathan Rosenbaum, who had very mixed feelings about the film.
Yes, but remember Rosenbaum also dissed GoodFellas, Schindler’s List and numerous other accepted 90s monuments while favouring Texasville and Matinee. I like Rosenbaum, but his opinions on films post 1970 are really way too outré.
I believe Ed Howard is a big fan of Rosenbaum, or at least respects him, but I’m not completely sure. Kaleem for certain is a huge fan of his criticism. He does often have peculiar tastes.
Rosenbaum does have a number of iconoclastic views. Too many to list here. But he is to my mind nonetheless the greatest critic of the age and I concur fully with Godard who called him the Bazin of our times. I think a lot of his views become comprehensible as one reads through his work and truth be told even within the individual essays. For example as someone who reveres Kurosawa I consider his indifference to the director a bit heart-breaking (!) much as I find his preference on Rhapsody in August over some of the great samurai films mystifying and yet I can see where he’s coming from as a general matter. To be honest I most like critics who enable me to think differently about the ‘canon’ in addition to of course being thought-provoking at all times. For me the idea that Citizen Kane is a great film or that Vertigo is so is accurate but also banal. I want new vistas on why these films are great. At the same time if someone considers Kane overrated I don’t have a problem with it as long as a case is being made. The larger point I’m trying to make (and of course you’re familiar with this Sam) is that I am more interested in a discussion that expands the range of one’s views on a film as opposed to just the ‘boxing in’ procedure (we are all guilty of it) where films are just given ranks and stars and that’s the end of the debate. So for example Allan not so long ago expressed reservations about the Passenger and does not include it in his top 50 for the decade or whatever. I doubt there is a critic alive (or dead!) who would agree with that view but I don’t have a problem with it. Because I am not looking for everyone to pay homage to a temple for the Passenger or any other important film. But again it should not be iconoclasm for its own sake. I don’t believe Rosenbaum is guilty of this.
“The larger point I’m trying to make (and of course you’re familiar with this Sam) is that I am more interested in a discussion that expands the range of one’s views on a film as opposed to just the ‘boxing in’ procedure (we are all guilty of it) where films are just given ranks and stars and that’s the end of the debate. ”
Indeed Kaleem. It’s a point you’ve persuasively argued before, and it is truthfully irrefutable. That said, I know I am as guilty as the next gut when it comes to list and star ratings. It’s the drama queen in me!
Fantastic post here! But no surprise.
Hey, I like “Matinee”! John Goodman, a horror film crossed between “Them,” “The Fly” and “The Tingler,” and the Cuban missile crisis!
(don’t mind me, just helpin’ the goal of 100 comments along…)
Jon, of those the best is definitely THEM! THE TINGLER is pretty lame, but THE FLY in both orginal and Cronenberg form isn’t half bad.
I like these films, but I am not quite the fan Sam is, and I think the first film is the best. I fall somewhere in the middle of this debate. What turned me off were the extended battles. They were a bore.
Why you dirty rat Bob! Ha! just kidding!
I love Matinee! (I win for most worthless comment!)
Kevin, do you REALLY love MATINEE? I know Jon is pulling my leg and I bet you are too! But you started this incredible thread early this morning burning th emidnight oil in Oregon, and I still haven’t addressed that fantastic lengthy submission! I think I’ll now reply RIGHT UNDER IT!
Sam, I’m not kidding. The film is no masterpiece, but for someone who was raised on late 50s-early 60s culture (albeit re-appropriated for the 90s) with a penchant for shlock horror in particular, it’s a gem. Dante is far from a great director, but “Matinee” quite lovingly defends his ethos via white-washed autobiography: it’s a reminder that “escapism” in the movies isn’t always an opiate, but is often a way of confronting the too-palpable terrors on our doorstep with soothingly Jungian, motif-challenging devices. Could Japan have survived the aftermath of the atom bomb without “Godzilla”? Could we have survived the Cold War without “Tarantula”?
And btw, I love “The Tingler,” too, in spite of its “lameness”…!
Jon: Excellent defense there!! I wonder what you think of GOONIES?!? And as far as that William mCastle film goes, I’ll say I do like the campy HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL a lot from him!
“Goonies” was clever, but a bit too cute for my tastes — plus, the depictions of the Asian boy and the deformed, mentally handicapped individual that the fat boy befriends were borderline tasteless. I’m fairly convinced that Amblin films are where legitimately un-PC stereotypes go to die in a blaze of glory.
“House on Haunted Hill” is another classic, definitely! Gotta love that ending…
count me as another ‘Matinee’ fan. but my horror credentials are never up for debate. after all i list ‘Dead Alive’ as jackson’s best film.
I wonder what others feel about this? (i know Kevin likes horror yet I haven’t seen his opinion either way).
as for ‘Goonie’ that’s a movie I never ‘got’ as a kid. though I was watching ‘Big Trouble Little China’ weekly for about a two years. This says volumes about my taste to this day; fringe, absurd, lo-fi, and definitely not sentimental (see ‘Goonies’).
Jamie: I quite agree with you and Kevin on GOONIES, though it’s very popular in this house with my wife an dkids, who have watched it an ungodly number of times. Go figure!
Trumped!
Aye Jon, that ending is the wine cellar with the vat of acid and the skeleton is a hoot, but watching it on Chiller Theatre decades ago, I was terrified.
Sam:
I remember really liking Joe Dante’s film when I was a kid. Of course, I could have been giving him a pass because of awesome I thought (and still think) Gremlins 2 was.
My comment wasn’t anything special — just agreeing with you about the merits of the movie despite the people who like to bash it (in the same way they bash the-not-as-bad-as-people-want-to-believe James Cameron film Titanic.
And yes…the best part about being the teacher is burning the midnight oil during the summer! Haha.
Kevin: In view of what you and Jon say here I will look at this film again! And yes the summer does allow for cheating, but there’s always a price!
Here is Kevin J. Olson’s piece on the Dardenne’s THE SON:
http://kolson-kevinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/counting-down-zeroes-2003-son.html
And I see OCTOBER SKY is up; I rather like that film myself too, and haven’t heard about it in awhile. After supper I will read it for sure!
Thanks for the plug Sam. I look forward to your thoughts on October Sky.
Oh man, Sam. Don’t I know it! I woke up today at 10am and felt like I lost a huge part of my day, hehe. I was up late last night trying to catch up with the DVR and comment on Blog posts that I had missed on during the day. I am soaking it in, though, as in one month I will be married and all of my “freedoms” will be gone as I don’t think my wife (who is usually out of it by 10pm) will enjoy my 4am bedtime… (I kid, I kid…she’s amazing and puts up with my odd hours).
It stands to reason Kevin that after you marry (and it sound slike you have a great girl there!) your blogging will have to be compromised, much like Troy’s though.
I dislike Goonies a great deal. What saddens me is that it’s become this hipster classic, and people really draw attention to the mentally handicapped character. I agree with Jon about the Amblin films of that era…totally un-PC. I never liked it as a kid, either. (although I was busy watching Robocop, hehe).
Jamie:
I do not like Jackson’s horror films at all. I never thought they were clever, not even in a campy way, and in no way are they scary. I didn’t get into his films until The Lord of the Rings series. I remember seeing The Frighteners in the theater and even then, I must have been in middle school, I thought the film was too ridiculous to be considered a real horror movie. There’s no problem with having fun in a horror movie, but Jackson’s stuff was always too goofy for my tastes. I liked Matinee, though, because those William Castle films and the films like Them! did not have their tongues in their cheek like Jackson’s horror films. The horror films of the 50’s were legitimate horror films — meant to horrify and entertain…kind of like Sam Raimi’s recent Drag Me to Hell…which feels at home in the types of films Dante alludes to in Matinee.
What is your taste then of Stuart Gordon? In my opinion he’s nothing short of a genius. ‘From Beyond’, ‘Re-Animator’ (whole series really), ‘Castle Freak’, I think are about as fun as film viewing gets. “take that accusations of film elitism!”
‘From Beyond’ is the underrated camp classic of all time, IMHO. and it was made in an era (1980’s) when camp classics were coming out of the woodwork.
Jamie: Stuart Gordon is talented in the realm of camp and who could not like RE-ANIMATOR? For utter campiness though I’m an Ed Wood fan before all others.
I am not that well versed in Gordon’s films. My only experiences have been Re-Animator which is a classic, campy horror film, and the recent King of Ants which I watched on free tv sometime last year (the movies was terrible). I’ll have to take a look at From Beyond…I’ll put it in the queue.
Ok, I’m going to respond to Jamie & Jon down here to try and do away with the “fragmenting” of this thread (you see, I’m an anti-postmodernist and I like to hew to a grand narrative).
I will not wade to deeply into the thicket of ideas you laid down, but merely offer my 2 cents. I try to span the intellectual/emotional spectrum of viewing films, and usually succeed in doing so – though not simultaneously. Since I have begun blogging, the intellectual side has taken over…far too much, I think. I have a bias for the emotional, visceral response but it’s hard to capture that in writing, which is something I hope to do in the future, but which in the mean time has led to lots of cerebral analysis, particularly of themes and sociology. Jon has said he views films as having the closest affinity to novels – I prefer to see them as akin to music (which tended to be how I saw/judged them a few years ago) but blogging, along with a complete drop-off in filmmaking which I had engaged in in whatever capacity possible since I was 9, has led me closer to his view – even further perhaps, as now I tend to see them as essays.
Great conversation, here. Yeah, Sam & Allan, I think we beat the record…
What a magnificent thread! I’m truly astonished. Sam and I were watching it climb in comment numbersd after dinner and I’m sure he said we had a record for one day! Anyway:To MOVIEMAN: I do love ;ackson’s KING KONG and stand by my reasons for praising. However, I don’t want you or anyone to think my assessment of Spielbergs WAR OF THE WORLDS was any less effusive. That film was, to me, a brilliant metaphor on the nature and tactics of terrorism and I was often heard saying it was one of the directors supreme ” message” films. Everyting from the special effects, to the music, even Tom Cruise’s performance were dead on. Like his earlier MINORITY REPORT, it was one of his great offerings into the realm of Sci-fi. Sam and I almost came to blows over my opinion on that film.
Interesting; I’ve heard that argument before. I loved War of the Worlds, but on a more or less visceral level (strengthened when I stepped back to admire the effort and thought that went into achieving that reaction) – I did not give much thought to its metaphorical aspects, other than the obvious playing on people’s fears in the terror era.
MovieMan says: I’m an anti-postmodernist and I like to hew to a grand narrative.
But where’s the fun in that? Hehe.
Hmmm, a conversation for another day (because I was only partially kidding!) Actually, I’ve addressed that elsewhere but frankly I find postmodernism, by my understanding and definition, to be somewhat boring. So much of my enjoyment of art relies on a tension – in the material itself, between the material and the structure, or the material and the style, between different elements in the style, etc., and perhaps especially between all these different elements and a kind of greater context – the specific details and the grand narrative; the subversion and the grand narrative, etc. I find that true postmodernism, by disdaining a larger context and cultural tradition, makes hash of all this, and the result, while sometimes slick and nominally pleasing, is underwhelming as a whole and dissolves into mush. The power contained in a “great” work is lost as the authors eschew the possibility of such greatness, an attitude which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I don’t think there have been that many truly postmodern films (and I consider Godard a “modernist,” which I love, rather than a postmodernist, which should tell you perhaps something about my definitions) so I’m thinking more of literature, essays, currents of thought, artworks, etc. – I just find postmodernism to be a dead end and I would like to see our culture return to a more modernist standpoint: conversant with the currents of culture and history, but connected to that sense of loss and disillusion which characterized the twentieth century.
I figured you kidding a little bit, as was I, but I think postmodernism is often misunderstood because of some of the more recent authors who have given it a bad name. I agree, in the wrong hands (just like any form of art), postmodernism seems too easily distracted or irresponsible. (I’m looking at you Dave Eggers). Often times authors (like Eggers) want live in the realm of magical realism (which is just a name to call postmodernism without having to really call it that due tot he problems with calling your work postmodern…make sense? Hehe) and not think about what their writing is trying to say — oooh great you have a picture of a stapler on a page of your book and underneath it you write: this is a staple — sooo postmodern. I hate the po-mo that Moe talks about on The Simpson’s (“you know, weird for the sake of being weird”), and I think I’m reading that that is the kind of postmodernism (the irresponsible) that you can’t stand.
However, and I only feel like I can come at this from a literature standpoint because that’s what I studied for my last two years in undergrad, I think if you look at the great postmodern writers of the 80’s from Britain you’ll see a movement that is both linguistically playful, but interested in explicating the past in order to learn something about the future. True, postmodernism is always asking the question of “why?” in regards to the “grand narrative”, because at any given moment someone could push a button and everything would be gone — but that doesn’t mean that these authors like to stay in that realm of nihilism –I think more than anything they try to elevate their characters above the “absurdity” (another favorite postmodern word) into a world that makes sense.
The prime examples of this are: Graham Swift’s Waterland, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion. All three accomplish the feat of intertwining history (one of the key elements of the “grand narrative”) with the present in an attempt to better understand family/personal histories and love (another important element of “the grand narrative). It’s true that the past is paranoiac and mythologized, but that’s what makes them such seminal postmodern pieces. They play with the past in order to find out some truths about the present.
The most famous, and playfully nihilistic, is the brilliant, un-PC Martin Amis novel Money which pretty much is a one-stop postmodern novel ridiculing everything about Thatcher and Reagan’s 80’s.
You also have some authors like Ian McEwan, Peter Carey, and J.M Coetzee who since the turn of the century have been moving away from postmodernism and steering the whole thing towards a more nuanced realism. Sarah Waters does the same thing, too. They all seem to be going back to the realism of Dickens (McEwan’s classic war story Atonement is also a kind of Great Expectations, and Carey’s Jack Maggs, if you’ve read it, is another obvious example). All of these authors (more so Waters and Carey) the past is not mythologized or paranoiac a la Winterson, Rushdie, and Swift; in fact, authors like McEwan, Carey, Waters, et al seem to be “correcting” the problems you mention with postmodernism.
Even some of the forefathers of po-mo don’t partake anymore…sure they may dabble, but three years ago Martin Amis wrote a pretty straight forward historical novel about Russian gulags…a huge departure for him. I think a lot of these authors still use postmodern devices such as narrative structure and things like the unreliable narrator — but their work seems to be less self-reflexive these days — less aware of itself. It seems that American authors, like Dave Eggers and Chuck Palahniuk don’t understand what makes postmodernism so much fun for me — their stuff is too obvious or blatant, and without charm. Basically I hate the wink-wink kind of postmodernism literature, and that’s a lot of what is out there now (and in film, too).
Quickly to wrap up this much-too-long comment: as far as film goes it’s harder to quantify…but I think naything as far back as Fellini’s 8 1/2 can be called postmodern. The perfect recent example of a classic postmodern films (with all of its tropes…and knowing that it’s a postmodern film) is QT’s Pulp Fiction.
Whew…okay, sorry this was so long. But as you can tell I love talking about this stuff.
Kevin, a great and thoughtful response to what was more or less a summary dismissal. I am nowhere near as well-versed in literature (certainly conetmporary and I would assume older as well) as you are – and my reactions to the term “postmodernism” are based more around the discussions surrounding these works and the general philosophical atmosphere than the works themselves.
My suspicion, based on what I have read and what I’ve gathered, is that even with these more accomplished and thoughtful authors, I would still have problems with the concept – even at it’s most thought-provoking, there still seems to be something arid about the concept, at least to me, and based on my limited experience with works that grapple with it directly. It’s interesting that some of the “founders” so to speak are trying to move beyond the idea, but I wonder how far they can get making basic presuppositions that stem from that era. Among other things, it seems that every new book I read/read about follows the Kurt Vonnegut by way of John Irving plot style – lots of zany antics, usually dealing with a big subject but in a way which says “what can we really say about this?”. That is essentially a superficial analysis – and by the way, I think Vonnegut has a lot more weight than Irving but that he was kind of the forefather of this style. At any rate, there seems to be a taken-for-granted lightness most authors utilize now, like it would be a sin to take themselves too seriously – would a Melville or Dostoevsky be possible today? Whenever I read contemporary fiction, even good stuff like White Teeth, which I enjoyed, or the aforementioned Irving books, I miss that element of grandeur that you get in 19th century literature or even, in its highly conscious way, later 20th century novels. And I see this attitude creeping up (or taking over completely – see painting) in the other arts too.
I have bare minimum schooling in literature of course, and the fiction I’ve read is severely limited, so take this all with a grain of salt. I’m definitely out of my element discussing contemporary literature, but perhaps you can clarify some of my ideas and/or see where I’m coming from here.
In film, I could see 8 1/2 as postmodern though I tend to classify most avant-garde or experimentally-styled narratives of the 60s as “modernist.” I could definitely accept Pulp Fiction as pomo, but to me that film works because of its breathless style (I always find the endless conversations with the French girlfriend quite tedious, however). The film’s ultimate charm lies as much in its musical delivery, something you can probably get away with more in film than literature, as in the ideas it presents.
I understand what you’re saying. You should really give writers like Sarah Waters (The Night Watch), J.M. Coetzee (Disgrace), and Peter Carey (Oscar and Lucinda, Jack Maggs) a shot. I think you would like them as they evoke Dickens and the other classic authors you mentioned in your post. The books I would suggest starting with, if you care to, would be the ones I listed in parenthesis.
BTW-Sam and I also looked through RETURN OF THE KING on his gigantic plasma after dinner and all I can say is the final thirty minutes alone moved me all over again. This is an emotionally operatic film that could be compared to Wagnerian opera and is at once a visual/audio experience. After looking at it again I cannot, for the life of me, think it could be placed under any of the other films from its release year spoken about on this thread today. BOB MCCARTNEY: you thought the battle scenes were boring? How would you know? You can’t keep your eyes open past an hour mark if you tried.
Bobby is not a big ROTK supporter, and I would much rather that he be honest at the site here. I don’t want rubber stamp approval, I want truthfulness, which serves the discourse far better. And yes, Wagnerian is an apt description, methinks.
I just did a quick count.. NOW up to 127 comments strong! Big round of applause to Schmulee and everyone here at WitD! The review sparked off probably the most tremendous thread I’ve seen since I joined the group! Great work Sammy, think you can safely say this was your best review in the series as your passion sparked this whole thing!
The review was OK. It was the follow-up DISCUSSION that was tremendous.
And while I scrolled through the thread I noticed you mentioned TIME AND THE CITY and another film as the Besr of 2009 so far, Sam. Please tell me you haven’t forgotten Pixar’s UP as a contender for the top slot. You wrote a dazzling review for that one, which I concurred with you on. It is one of the most visually dazzling films in years and the first thirty minutes alone are so perfect its got the complete running times of most live action films this year taking cover.
UP is definitely another contender for the top spot, even as I wince at pondering another animated film to top a year-end list, after I named WALL-E last year. But yes, UP is one of the year’s best, and still could end up on top.
And if there were an award for BIGGEST SURPRISE of the tear that would definately go to JJ Abrams reinvention of STAR TREK! Of all the films I thought would not work, it snuck up out of nowhere and floored its viewers.
STAR TREK is another one of those films that won 96% of the professional critics including some of the most respected in the nation, but leave it to the blogger-critics, who always think they must shoot down unanimously-praised films to look better than everyone else. It’s not a #1 contender, but it’s definitely in the top 5 or 6 to this point I would say.
I must admit it drives me to distraction when people say that just because a particular critic doesn’t agree with concensus (even a 96% concensus!) that they must be just a contrarian, that they’re only trying to buck a trend, that they’re doing it to be cool and “look better than everyone else.” No offense, but it pays to assume that others’ motivations are sincere, that the critics bashing *Star Trek* are doing so because they genuinely don’t like it, not because they’re trying to make a name for themselves. It’s a lousy movie, with a jaw-droppingly awful script (even by the admittedly low standards of the series as a whole), and an ADD visual aesthetic that quickly becomes aggravating. It has its moments, but far too few. And to say it belongs among the best of *any* year? Please.
Ed: The statement I made there had much to do with the astonishing disparity between the professionals and the bloggers, which led me to conclude there was intended backlash. I would never question your own aesthetics, but you are in a class of your own. It is rare that a movie with such an ‘awful script’ would collar a nearly-unanimous response nationwide from all the crtics across the country. Wouldn’t at least a few have seen those problems? Yeah there were a few, actually, but there was far more appreciation by the vast majority for the chemistry among the characters, the old campy humor, and the engaging time-travel story. I found it easily the best film of all the STAR TREKS, trumping the likes of WRATH OF KAHN and STAR TREK VI. After reading dozens and dozens of effusively favorable reviews in all the major publications, I then come upon bloggers, who then find issues that I simply didn’t share. I agree with you that the ‘critic’s card’ can become obnoxious, and I apologize for using it here (and yesterday) but I am looking for some comparative aesthetics here. At the end of the day we react that what moves us emotionally above everything else (or at least that’s my primary aesthetic) and both STAR TREK and LORD OF THE RINGS succeeded grandly on that point. However, to make a statement like “STAR TREK as the among the best of any year” as a preposterous notion is to make the same condescending blight as one who uses critics for leverage. Heck, the French SUMMER HOURS, the Japanese TOKYO SONATA and the Swedish EVERLASTING DELIGHTS are among my top films of 2009, but there are a few American films in the mix, and amazingly STAR TREK against all odds is one, along with UP and a recently-seen war film, THE HURT LOCKER. Having STAR TREK in the top ten (and there are still over five months to go, so it’s probably a long-shot) is no more shocking than some including those endless superhero movies in the past alongside the foreign and independent gems.
Still, as I said earlier, I know YOU don’t play those games, and honestly appraise the works as you see them, so what I say above may be a moot issue anyway. It’s just a general position I felt I must broach.
That said, I can’t blame you for calling me out on this point as frankly I would do the same had you gone down this road. Again, you know how much respect I have for you. A lot. (and ignore Allan if he comes back here to say I’m an ass-kisser! Ha)
Fair enough Sam; I’m sure you did like it and I’m sure all the mainstream critics who liked it really did as well. I’m just kind of amazed at the positive reaction to that film; I was cautiously looking forward to it, wasn’t expecting much more than a good time with lots of action, and it still managed to disappoint me. Its script/narrative problems seem apparent to me, particularly the lack of emotional and dramatic investment that the film places in as important an event as the *actual destruction of the planet Vulcam*, which shockingly fails to make any impact. But hey, everyone sees films differently.
I do think there’s often a rift between bloggers and “pro” critics these days, but I don’t think it’s because the bloggers are trying to be contrarian or orchestrating a backlash. Quite to the contrary, I think the blogs are, more and more often, the place to find really insightful, probing, thoughtful criticism that has something to say rather than just accepting received notions. There are countless blogs, including this one, that I’d rather read than checking out one of the few remaining newspaper critics.
A resounding AMEN to everything you say there Ed, and likewise a visit to ONLY THE CINEMA does honestly leave ANY publication I read in the dust.
Let me beg to differ here on film blogging. Most film blogs including mine are amateur affairs and do not rank in the same class as established critics. Few have anything original to say and the writing is pedestrian at best. What is really valuable is the open discussion that blogging engenders, and this thread is a classic example.
Tony,
I agree that critical prose is usually superior, as writing, to that to be found online – and I include my own work in that analysis (though I will be working on improving that soon enough). In considering this, it’s worth remembering that critics work for pay – the quality of their work having a tangible reward – and that the best also work within an establishment where editors push for the quality of their work and copy editors push for the precision. In other words, the difference between the quality of writing by bloggers and “professional” critics may have less to do with the writer than with the context they are working in. Which of course does not discount your point at all (you may not even disagree with me in this regard) – just felt it was a necessary caveat to make note of lest we become too worshipful of the “superior” professionals.
I do disagree with your “originality” argument. Ok, I will admit that out of the millions of movie blogs out there, a tiny percentage break out of the mould, but that still leaves a volume of original and interesting blogs which can compete with or even dwarf professional criticism. I find most professional criticism to be stocked with received ideas and a general timidity (one could be generous and call it humility) and a deference to the establishment. Even in the highest echelons of criticism, removed from the rigors and pressures of daily reviewing, we can find some ossification has set in – all in all, I don’t think that many original ideas or approaches are coming out of the critical establishment right now. I find the blogosphere more intellectually stimulating probably because it is freer from constrictions of academia, the marketplace, and other outside controls.
“Pedestrian at best” does, I think, a disservice to the cream of the crop and the potential of blogging; and kowtows to the “pros” a bit too much to my liking. I find some of my writing to be much better than others, and even the best to be a little disappointing when analyzed ruthlessly, but if I thought I was only capable of pedestrian essays at my highest exertion and effort and concentration, I’d probably throw in the towel. I’m self-indulgent, but I’m not THAT self-indulgent that I’d waste my time on such pettiness…
Finally, to end a note of rare accord, I wholeheartedly concur on the values of the discussions which arise from online discussion, whether here or on message boards. I actually think this is a bit rarer than you do, but when it works – as it does here – there’s simply nothing in print to compare.
Also, I once remember popular blogger and friend Rick Olson of COOSA CREEK CINEMA politely telling me on another thread that basically as bloggers, we shouldn’t be following the company line or doing what’s politically correct so to speak. That argument is basically the same as the one Ed is discussing above, and I would be insane to disagree.
Gee, I liked Star Trek too. But I see there is another firestorm developing.
Joe, let’s just say that STAR TREK worked for me. It didn’t work for Ed. Fair enough. As with the long discussion yesterday with LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING it basically all comes down to personal taste, a fact that is often ignored. A few weeks ago, I argued with Jason Giampietro over a film called THE LIVES OF OTHERS, a German masterwork by Von Donnarsmarck. Jason though it was a lousy film, despite the spectacular reviews it received. At the end of the day, it again comes down to TASTE. It would be hard to mount a serious challenge to this film’s construction, context and execution without a potent response. What one sees as a flaw, another sees as an attribute.
I think it’s a combination of factors. Taste leads, but it shouldn’t determine everything. I try to keep my taste as broad as possible, and then still counter it with analysis of the work. I think this can help one to appreciate movies that didn’t “work” for you but did for others – you can reach a more objective view this way, and maybe even nudge your subjective view a little.
For example: Rules of the Game. It’s considered by many the greatest film ever made yet it did nothing for me on first viewing. It seemed grossly overrated. Over the years, I’ve watched it a few more times and come to appreciate the values others see in it. Certain sequences, the hunt and serio-comic chase through the estate “reach” me in ways they did not on first viewing (particularly in the latter case, as the former always seemed somewhat impressive). It’s still not really one of my favorites, but I appreciate it much more and would watch it again in a flash. Most importantly, I have a bit more understanding of why it “works” in an objective sense.
Obviously one can’t do this in all cases, and I don’t claim to always – or even most of the time – achieve this. But it is the ideal, and I think it’s good to remind oneself of this, so that one doesn’t fall into a relativism of the “you say to-may-toe, I say to-mah-toe” variety.
The ideal response to a film is what I could call “the highest subjective” – an intuitive appreciation and involvement with the film’s world and style, but at least half-situated in the cinematic qualities of the work, the decisions of the auteur and his/her collaborators: in other words, not entirely or even mostly on elements we the viewer bring to the work and project onto it. (Ebert is getting at a similar idea in his recent treatise on why Transformers 2 just isn’t a good movie, though he doesn’t entirely flesh it out.)
MovieMan gets at a good point here. I think the best criticism balances subjective “taste” with a more objective appreciation of a film’s formal qualities, how it does what it does. This is what Jim Emerson argues all the time — the idea that criticism is all about “opinions” is frankly damaging to the critical enterprise. What criticism is about, primarily, is describing how a work of art functions, how it fits together, what it’s trying to do and how it does it, and only secondarily about like/dislike. Criticism that only asserts like/dislike preferences is pretty much worthless and ephemeral, useful only as a kind of buyer’s guide for what to see. The criticism I enjoy (and that I try to write, at least *sometimes* successfully I hope) goes beyond that, into matters of aesthetics, themes, ideas, form and content, style, etc.
Interestingly, The Rules of the Game is a good example for me as well. It’s a film I’ve come to admire for its skillful construction, but not one I really connect to personally. And it doesn’t help that its central scene, the one all the critics seem unified in appreciating, bothers me because the hunting sequence, which supposedly symbolically demonstrates the cruelty and violence of the bourgeois, actually reveals the cruelty of the filmmakers, who killed countless animals for a brief scene in a film.
Ed, you actually raise a good point here about Rules! It is more than a bit hypocritical of the film to use the hunt as demonstration of its characters’ barbarity when the hunt was staged for the purpose of the shoot (it would be another thing if Renoir documented a hunt already in process). At the same time the scene is “cinematically” a marvel – if an upsetting one.
.”….seem unified in appreciating, bothers me because the hunting sequence, which supposedly symbolically demonstrates the cruelty and violence of the bourgeois, actually reveals the cruelty of the filmmakers, who killed countless animals for a brief scene in a film.”
Very good point there Ed! I am not sure I have the same issue there but it is definitely a sound one. I’d be curious to know what Rick Olson thinks, as he’s a huge Renoir fan. I do agree with you Ed that its a sometimes tedious film that is tough to warm up to, yet I’ll admit I have always been intimidated by its reputation, and several other Renoirs are dearly loved by me.
As to the “taste” discussion Ed, you are right to site coming to the table with all those added perceptions that mitigates against taste as the ‘end all’ but that is providing that everything things are less than ‘even.’ Hence, when you get some very intelligent bloggers who are experienced and culturally astute, and explain themselves eloquently and perceptively, then taste is the main point of differentiation.
Conversely, when a neophyte comes armed only with an “opinion” it will be easy to negate it.
At the risk of making the bad faith assumptions Ed warns against, albeit in the opposite direction, I suspect many film critics are pressured – from within and without – to go easy on blockbusters. In recent years, there has been increasing disparity between critical faves and audience faves. Plus, this era has been so stuck in the cinematic doldrums, that critics are getting desperate and perhaps lowering their standards. I think this was partly responsible for the warm reception greeting King Kong, among others. I’m not saying that critics don’t like these movies or are lying about them in the reviews, just that they’re probably going easier on them than a lot of bloggers for several reasons: pressure from editors (and the constricting marketplace) to please readers, weariness with movies that don’t work at all so that they’re trying to find something to latch on, concern about being too harsh and “elitist” (which – let’s remind ourselves – is reinforced by the blogosphere, much of which is devoted to celebrating work that those of us here seem more bent on criticizing – in this sense, the critics are surrounded on all sides by bloggers and damned if they do, damned if they don’t).
Like Ed, I usually find more persuasive, thoughtful, and, well, critical (in the best sense of the word) arguments in the blogosphere than in print, though print is usually more polished and facile – in both senses of the word…
I agree with this. It’s also hard to underestimate the effect of “pro” critics being obligated to see all these mainstream blockbuster and Hollywood comedies as they come out, while bloggers obviously go see what they want to see. I know if I was being exposed to every stupid movie Hollywood puts out these days, I’d be pretty desperate for something, anything, about which I could be at least a little positive, find something good about it. And that pressure does come from above, too, because few publications want their critic to be known as always trashing the films “everyone else” seems to love (unless you’re talking about Armond White, of course). I mean, look at the big uproar back when No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood dominated the Oscars — everyone was whining about how out of touch “critics” were with popular taste.
Another good point. Just the other day I saw the first 2009 new release I’d seen all year. And it’s July! (What’s more it was a documentary.) Granted, there are economic as well as aesthetic reasons for this, but it’s still a bit embarrassing. I can’t judge critics too harshly for breathing a sigh of relief when a marginally intelligent and sophisticated big-budget Hollywood picture comes along; to them, it must really seem like an oasis in the desert. I still wish they’d apply a little more critical rigor to their judgement but I should refrain from casting too many stones until/if I’m in that hot seat (by the same token the taxation of these films is purely mental, as they don’t have to pay for tickets, so there’s that.)
Then again, though, “96% ratings” can be misleading…I’ve read “positive” and “negative” reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic and discovered that they were largely mischaracterizing a critic’s reserved opinion – or even getting it dead wrong.
I’ve always wondered why RT and its ilk doesn’t include a neutral/so-so indicator for mixed opinions. Few reviews are all-positive or all-negative, and some indication of that would make the ratings more useful. If a critic goes back and forth between positive and negative elements throughout the course of a review, how does one classify that? And how does one classify a lukewarm “it was OK” kind of response? I suspect that in the case of Star Trek, a good proportion of that 96% was more like “it’s pretty decent” rather than “wow, it’s amazing!” But the stat that “96% of critics think Star Trek is at least passable” isn’t nearly as impressive as “96% of critics think it’s great!”
Ed: that argument about RT not providing a barometer for “mixed opinions” has been broached so many times with me by Allan, who won’t even allow me to mention RT. If I do I get a barage of insulting e mails where he practically calls for my extermination.
Meta Critic is problematic too, but at least they showcase the cream of the crop so to speak.
Now I must leave for a 12:30 show of HARRY POTTER in Edgewater with Lucille and the five eager ones. Ha. It got 95% at RT!!!!
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I need to join in Movie Man’s fascinating points when I get back at around 3 to 3:30…….Thanks everyone.
“Another good point. Just the other day I saw the first 2009 new release I’d seen all year. And it’s July! (What’s more it was a documentary.) Granted, there are economic as well as aesthetic ……”
Wow Movie Man, I am shocked. But tyhis has not been a great year so far, and a handful will get you even for sure.
Sam, me too – at the same time, I have been watching numerous DVDs and TV screenings of classic movies (as well as some retro big-screen showings, and a few 2008 releases earlier in the year).
The bottom-loading of quality pictures has become increasingly ridiculous over the years, though, so it fuels this type of behavior, oftentimes half of the memorable movies from a year come out literally in the last few days of the year, and then only in major cities. They used to at least be spread out over the fall, but now it seems even that’s too long for Oscar voters’ memories.
Quite true Movie Man. You’ll be able to catch up with what’s essential is no time, while poising yourself for the traditional year-end prestige run.
Sam, take an audience of a 100 or a 1,000 people – put them into a darkened cinema and then play them ‘Return of the King’ followed by ‘Mystic River’. Or reverse the order of those films. I would put my money on ‘Mystic River’ winning by a huge, huge margin as the better of the two films. Hell, put ‘Intolerable Cruelty’ up against it and I still think ‘Return’ would come out second.
Relying on the MT and RT sites will just lead to another instance of ‘The Emperrors New Clothes’ syndrome. All that shines…
Going by that criteria, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, ‘Vertigo’, ‘The Searchers’, ‘Shawshank’, ‘The Terminator’ – all of which got middling to negative to positive responses wouldn’t be worthy of consideration at the time they were made.
I found the original ‘Fellowship of the Ring’ to be moody and thrilling with so much that was superb and the 9 hooded Night-Riders gave a frission of danger and mystery that carried the plot forward. But in the thrall of the film, there was a slight distubance that got my logical mind awake and thinking. It occurs towards, I think the last third of the film, when our valiant group come across
a large giant of a troll. He enters, there is some chaos and fighting, they avoid him or lose him and then he enters again. It was almost a sense of déjà vu and I was puzzled why he would repeat the same sequence almost in its entirity.
The second film had its virtues…..
But, my o my, what a mess the last film is. Repetitive battle scenes, swirling carmera work and an over reliance on CGI was bad enough but combine that with killing characters off only to bring them back, one of the worst sins of comic-book hokum (in all media), is one of those cheaply conveniant plot devices used to get audiences to invest in a psuedo-death.
And then there were the endings. Just when you thought it was finished, another one and another one. It’s like one of those glitzy high-budget action films that thinks that nothing less than 3 spectular ending will do. As Billy Crystal wittily put it at the Oscars awards, one Oscar for each of its endings.
I don’t care about it being populace art or elitest art, my question is – is it good art?
Jackson’s ‘King Kong’ would no doubt be regarded as a modern classic if they pesky orginal wasn’t around. The problem with Jackson is that he simply doesn’t have artistic displine. Less is more sometimes. His Kong has 3 T-rexs instead of one from the original, a rampaging horde of brontosaurs rather than the one from the original that so memorably emerged from the misty-fog shrouded swamps and took out the barge and then went after the loan sailor atop a tree. It’s not unusual to find that hours upon hours have been put into the Ring dvd releases.
I agree with others that Spielberg’s ‘War of the Worlds’ was a vastly supperior picture. But even that I found wanting. Not in its execution but in its ambition and reach. Too much of Spielbergs missing father neurosis, too much obvious pat comparisons with terrorism. It was too influenced and retarded by the ’50s George Pal version, for me. I would have preferred them to have adapted the Wells novel and kept to the period. The screenwriter stated that they had to update it because we know that aliens never came to invade at the turn of the century. If only the man had read some SF he would have known that there is entire subset mini-genre about alternate realities; what if Hitler has won WW2 (‘The Man in the High Castle’) or if the South had won the Civil War (‘Bring the Jubliee’), ect. The Film could have started with Welles famous rendition of Wells peotic prose, that ends with “Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”
Followed by a caption: “In and Alternate Reality”……. “1895, England”
I would have loved to have seen an invasion montage rythmically cut to Holst’s ‘Mars- Bringer of War’, something to match Kubrick’s use of classical music in 2001.
That sure would have made for a most unique period film.
As for watching the new ‘Star Trek’ films…..oh, my. I feel like George Bailey must have felt like when he went from Bedford Falls into Pottersville. It is everything that the opposite of what the original was at its best. Thoughtless instead of thoughtful, shallowness instead of depth, stick figures instead of characters, fuzzy, flashier than flash, amatuer chaotic mtv style camera-work instead of the beauitful compostions and framing of the original (by Earnest Haller and Jerry Finnerman). The film flimsily takes place an alternate universe – not to explore any ideas from the idea of alternate timeline, but because it and its sequels will so many liberties that fandom would be in an uproar. Also, it allows all the characters to act out of character and be able to justify it. Lt. Uhura taking her kit off and smooching with Spock, no probs. The films is too stupid to be called SF, so sci-fi it is for an Mtv generation who would never watch something before they were born.
PS:
For those that would love to know what happens when great SF written primarily by great SF writers comes into contact with superb film-making in the Star Tek Universe, these are the six greatest episodes from the original show.
Where No Man Has Gone Before
The Corbomite Maneuver
Charlie X
The Balance of Terror
The City on the Edge of Forever
Amok Time
Thats’ the level at which it has to reach for it to be in my top 10.
At least Return of the King is a fantasy-epic meant to be verbose and operatic (and it is successfully those things) — Mystic River was just clumsily and painfully over-the-top. It’s easily one Eastwood’s worst directed movies (Gran Torino gets the award for worst, both are clunky, poorly edited films), and I would probably put money on Jackson’s film coming out on top against Eastwood’s and the lesser Coen Brothers film you mention (which really wasn’t technically their film).
Okay — maybe I’m a bit to harsh on Eastwood — but my god Mystic River does not age nearly as well as Jackson’s virtuoso epic.
Also, Bobby, it depends on what kind of people you’re filling the theater up with…
Indeed Kevin. I rather feel the same way there. We were writing at the same time! LOL! Thanks very much.
Guess what, guys? Here’s one for you, and one for you. I agree with Bobby J. on Return of the King and Kevin J. Olson on Mystic River. I found both overrated and profoundly irritating (though in Mystic River’s case, mostly due to the hypocritical and self-satisfied ending).
MovieMan, I am pleased! We actually agree on something. I too found the ending of Mystic River hypocritical and self-satisfied.
But I am no fan of Eastwood anyway. Both Mystic River and Gran Torino are crypto-fascist, where the protagonist’s violent vigilante justice is elevated to some kind of heroism.
Woohoo! We agree! I also concur that Eastwood is overrated. Unforgiven is quite good though even that is a bit too self-serious for my liking (does the main character’s name have to be “Muny”?). I did not see “Gran Torino” but your analysis of “Mystic River” aligns more or less with my own.
How I defend that, given that in the past I’ve said ideological concerns should not determine a film’s worth? Well, in a few ways, but primarily because, as I’ve indicated before, it’s not so much the film’s philosophy as the way it goes about it which I find offensive. In Mystic River’s case it betrays the character’s arcs to make them fall in line with a pre-determined conclusion. Suddenly Penn’s wife is Lady Macbeth and the movie lurches confusingly between . Ambiguity may be Eastwood’s and Lehane’s intention but the rest of the film has been so over-the-top (Penn is supremely talented, but Eastwood does not reign him in and he and the rest of the movie are embarrassingly excessive here) that they just can’t achieve this effect in the botched conclusion. Instead we’re left with the implication that it was ok to kill Tim Robbins because he was suffering (huh?) which I guess makes the film morally consistent with Million Dollar Baby, though at least there she asked for it! This is, needless to say, morally repugnant but I’ve accepted morally repugnant works in the past if they’re honest about their intentions and approaches, and I don’t think Mystic River is.
But this is as far as I can go at the moment. As with Return of the King, I haven’t seen the film since its first release and I’ve already buried myself too deeply in multiple thoughts on this thread!
I will say in closing that perhaps my favorite Eastwood films is Space Cowboys, because it’s so incredibly silly and goofy – like his other films it doesn’t seem to recognize its own absurdity but since the story’s so light that dissonance is harmless in this case.
“Suddenly Penn’s wife is Lady Macbeth and the movie lurches confusingly between approving of Penn’s actions and implying they were wrong (the wandering widow in the crowd, Bacon’s perplexing finger-gun salute though it’s hard to know what the hell Eastwood was thinking there, looks almost like a “hey big guy” greeting to Penn).”
I found Mystic River’s bombast grating and presumptuous. It was a potboiler with pretensions – the worst of both worlds. But that’s true of so many films of the zeros, years in which the aims of entertainment grew higher while its dramatic range shrank and its depth flattened.
Bobby, as always I am deeply gratified at the time and effort you put in at this site, and I do miss you when you are not here.
Well, we must agree to disagree. I am less concerned about the RT and MC sites than I am by the 17 Best Pictures accolades the film won in both the US and the UK, including the London Film Critics Circle and the New York Film Critics Circle. That to me is far more telling than all the Oscars and the composite grades. As far as MYSTIC RIVER, I liked that film when it released, but now it seems to me rather formulaic. It wouldn’t even make my Top 10 of that year anymore. The only serious challenger for me for the #1 spot would be Gus Van Sant’s ELEPHANT.
What you see as a “complete mess” in THE RETURN OF THE KING, I see as a cohesive and inspired blend of all the disperate elements that made the books come togaether at the end, and now the film. For me, the film achieved a spiritual epiphany, and stirred the emotions like few films I have seen in my lifetime, while broaching all the inherent philosophical threads that ran through the literary works, while still focusing in the adventure/fantasy underpinnings.
That ethereal scene when Gandolf sweeps down on an eagle to rescue Frodo, is one of the most breathlessly beautiful sequences in all of cinema. Subsequently the wedding at the end, with the strains of Hans Zimmer’s greatest musical creation, is as exhilarating as anything ever witnessed in a movie theatre. If this operatic treasure was such a “mess” it wouldn’t have attracted the overwhelming emotional reaction that the likes of MYSTIC RIVER, an HBO styled potboiler could only dream of. THE RETURN OF THE KING is one of those rare films that make you sit back in wonderment at all the possible beauty that can come to us in this world from out cultural exposure. It’s practically life-changing.
As far as STAR TREK, again, I think you are giving short-shrift to the “emotional” connection one has with the material. I found it by a country mile the very best of all the STAR TREK films, and for more than just one or two reasons. But I’ve written a full review here at the site, so I won’t be redundant, even if to counter a point.
As to your list, well I do agree with you on two there, while admitting all your other choice are most fine. Here are my Top 6:
The City on the Edge of Forever
Amok Time
The Menagerie (Parts 1 and 2)
This Side of Paradise
Errand of Mercy
Mirror, Mirror
Again, whether we agree or disagree, I greatly appreciate that you consider us important enough to share thoughts with.
Oh — and I just found out they’re remaking Let the Right One In…so that justifies my grumpiness in the previous post…hehe.
LOL Kevin!!! I don’t blame you for being pissed off about that!!! I can only imagine how that one will go down. Like you I do love the original.
Kevin if you liked ‘Let the Right One In’ (as did I) look for ‘Linkeroever (Left Bank)’ when it comes to DVD. it’s pretty great moody/atmospheric Belgium horror.
in my opinion the best horror right now is from mainland western europe, and it’s thriving.
I agree with what you say there Jamie, about the quality horror coming from Western Europe. I don’t know that film you mention there, but I know many who adore THE ORPHANAGE, which I was more mixed on.
well, if they can remake Star Trek, then they can remake anything.
As for Eastwood, I think he’s one of the best 10 directors since at least ‘Unforgiven’ and ‘Mystic River’ one of his masterpieces. Well have to agree to disagree. By the way, the crown of 1,000 would be a cross section of the population, tho I think even if it consisted of geeky computer gamers it would still win. I wonder what other WITD readers would vote for.
Bobby, remember that the first nine films were essentially “remakes” of material from the television series.
I like Eastwood too, don’t get me wrong. But I see LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA as his masterpiece, with UNFORGIVEN as the runner-up. As I said, I am less impressed now with MYSTIC RIVER, but find his worst film to be that manipulative MILLION DOLLAR BABY.
I too would go with Letters from Iwo Jima and then Mystic River. But I am fond of very many Eastwood films since he first started directing in the 70s. White Hunter Black Heart is another favorite.
Yes indeed Kaleem, I know you have always valued those greatly. I am not so sure that you cared much for GRAN TORINO though.
Gran Torino was alright. I really liked the ending here but I think more could have been done with the subject. Still an Eastwood dominated film is hard not to enjoy!
I’ve always loved ‘A Perfect World’ the most for Eastwood. it’s perfect.
i also like ‘White Hunter, Black Heart’ as Kaleem said, then there’s ‘Play Misty for Me’, ‘Letter from Iwo Jima’, and ‘Unforgiven’ for the top 5 (not necessarily in that order).
Jamie, A PERFECT WORLD is one of Eastwood’s most entertaining films, no doubt about it, and I remember PLAY MISTY fondly.
I’d take Outlaw Josey Wales over Perfect World and Play Misty..
What a discussion this developed into, and it all started only about 35 hours ago, or so. While I am not at all surprised that so many people adore this film, I am startled that there is a small but very eloquent group here who are making a strong defense. One person even tried to say that taste is secondary, when that is the prime matter in expressing an opinion. What you said Sam, about the field being even is so true.
And you were one of the original posters Peter! Yes, when you are dealing with the likes of Kaleem Hasan, Movie Man, Jon Lanthier, Ed Howard, Jamie, and Bobby J., you must really be prepared to defend yourself!
Sam, ‘Star Trek the Motionless Picture’ was a remake of ‘The Changling’ but Khan was a sequel, and no parity exists for Star Trek III or Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country (by far the best – most entertaining). It’s Manchurian Candidate plotline isn’t orginal but far more enjoyable.
I fI could put curse on any future Treks, I would. Why, oh why can’t viewers grow up and try something new. Leave the dead past alone.
The new Trek will rake in a lot. But I do hope the fickle mtv kids watching it, tire.
LOL Bobby!!!!!
You really feel that strongly, eh?
I believe that the new Star Trek movie is the best one of all. I also liked #4 and #2.
So many tributaries and meanderings, so much intellectual posturing and grandiloquent mini-essays, and hot air.
Let’s get back on course. The great mass of movie-goers visit the cinema to be entertained, and it may be wise for some on this thread to fly back to planet earth. LOTR and Star Trek are entertaining films fashioned for a wide audience, and they are great films on the only fair criteria that can be applied to them. Setting up elitist hurdles is the worst form of film criticism.
Again with the assumptions of bad faith and the insulting of people who dared dislike the movie. Tony, to say that the only “fair criteria” of greatness is the volume of audience size is astonishing in its anti-intellectualism. You are obviously a smart guy yourself, and God knows you have strong opinions, often on popular films. So why this constant self-effacing populism?
What’s so wonderful about the viewpoint of people who treat our great interest as a mere diversion? I would never presume myself a greater expert on baseball than a baseball fan, nor a sharper food-taster than a foodie. So why on earth shoudl I accept the opinions of those who are not deeply interested in cinema as superior or equal to my own? This makes absolutely no sense to me. If I respect others’ opinion on their own areas of interest and expertise, why shouldn’t I respect my own?
Movie Man:
I have no issue with the main thrust of your argument, which supports my earlier contention that as long as everything is ‘equal’ we can proceed. A cinematic neophyte who sees four films a year and then attempts to inject the “personal taste” argument really doesn’t have a valid defense, unless he or she brings some profound critical acumen to the discourse. (which is rare) If fellow “intellectuals” disagree on a film, and both sides can offer eloquent and meaningful divergences, then we must look at taste and value judgement to be the great equalizer. I do dare say that both sides on this remarkable thread have defended their positions with zeal, experience and informed sensibilities. We can’t ask for more.
I know I am being repetitious, as I have broached this in earlier comments, but I can’t stress enough how vital this understanding is.
MovieMan, life is too short for this kind of earnestness. To say that there has been intellectual posturing is not necessarily to accuse anyone of bad faith. Just how did I insult anyone?
Again, you have put words into my mouth: “to say that the only ‘fair criteria’ of greatness is the volume of audience size is astonishing in its anti-intellectualism”. If you read my actual comment dispassionately, you will see I said nothing of the sort. In the interests of redundancy, lower down I have used the words of someone more eloquent than me to restate my argument.
Well, Tony – which kind of earnestness? The kind that objects to self-effacing populism, or the kind that objects to a “reactionary” social message in a film? We’re all guilty of some kind of earnestness on these boards!
Tony, I stand by my assessment of your words, particularly as below you wrote: “By “intellectual hurdles” I mean setting oneself up as a superior judge of quality.” This can only mean that you DON’T think we’re capable of being superior judges of quality to other people. Hence my response above.
The Perkins quote is a backtrack which I found more reasonable, but still I had objections and responded below. If you did not mean to imply that the sie of an audience decides a film’s worth, perhaps you should have chosen your words more carefully. “The great mass of movie-goers visit the cinema to be entertained, and it may be wise for some on this thread to fly back to planet earth. LOTR and Star Trek are entertaining films fashioned for a wide audience, and they are great films on the only fair criteria that can be applied to them.” very strongly implies the reading Ed and I assumed…there’s a reason everyone seems to have “mis-interpreted” it!
And while it may be a (slight) stretch to call “intellectual posturing,” “grandiloquen[ce],” “hot air,” and particularly “setting up elitist hurtles” (not to mention being guilty of “worst type of criticism”) assumptions of bad faith, they certainly are insulting!
As always, Tony, you add a good deal of spice to these conversations but I wish the tone did not get so holier-than-thou, as if you’re the only sensible person in the room and you’re setting us all straight. We’re all movie lovers here and it’s ok to remember and even celebrate that, instead of constantly putting it down as if it’s some kind of leprosy. I’m not sure how else to read the frequent denigrations of high-falutin’ criticism and the dismissals of arguments and the shrugging off of counter-arguments because “life’s too short” to care.
But I suppose that’s neither here nor there; it’s just worth reiterating because you seem to run from or deny the implications of your statements at times. Thank you for posting the rest of the Perkins quote below – I will respond to that.
Let’s just say I am an ‘agent provocateur’… there is a method to my madness.
hey Tony, nice to hear from you.
I don’t think box office criteria can be the sole or even the central value of populist film. All the films that I mentioned in my orginal post were failures at the box office and some critically drubbed yet have proven to be the near the apex of the director’s concerned filmography. Both the ST film and the last of the LOTR film bored me intensely even tho I love the first one and enjoyed the 2nd LOTR trilogy immensely. These films are marketed at teenagers by huge corporate propaganda campiagns, who have even been known to create fictious critics, lobby well-established reviewers and are blitxed into 10,000 plus screens for opening weekends grosses. Unlike the old Studio system, word of mouth has very little to do with it. And the teenagers with raging hormones and nothing better to do flock to them.
As I said, I loved the first of the rings films but the last one meandered far too much and had flaws (probably from the scource novel) like killing two of its characters and bringing them back, not knowing when to finish up and end and these are legitimate criticisms of Peter Jackson himself and his other films.
After having watched it, I had the same reaction that C.S. Lewis had when he read drafts of the original for his friend, he wanted to kick the next hobbit he came across.
Elitist criticism is one thing and I’d agree, but I haven’t seen it here. I’d apply the same criteria to popular and critically lauded films as ‘Casblanca’, ‘Spiderman 2’, ‘Superman -the Movie’ (all of which I love), and any other films.
I’ve loved the original ST show since I was kid and to see vulgerised, cheapened, dumbed down, well, it’s like the Queen trying to wear hot pants! lol
It’s just a trend of dumbing down and aiming for the lowest common denominator.
The ’70s had ‘I, Claudius’ we got ‘Rome’….
Check this out, it’s for a Pre-Raphaelite drama for BBC Two:
“The story of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood group of 19th century British painters is to be made into a TV drama, the BBC has announced.
Desperate Romantics will dramatise the activities of the group of painters, poets and critics.
They rebelled against the art establishment of the time by creating a blend of Christian spirituality and veiled eroticism.
The “colourful and rude gang drama” will be screened on BBC Two in 2009.
Desperate Romantics paints a modern, vivid and irreverent portrait of this group of painters whose attitude to the establishment makes them comparable to the punks a hundred years later
Executive producer Kate Harwood
The BBC says the six-part series will show the men striving to find fame, fortune and “quite a bit of sex along the way”.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood formed in 1848 as a reaction to what they saw as the historical painting of the Royal Academy.
Executive producer Kate Harwood said: “Desperate Romantics paints a modern, vivid and irreverent portrait of this group of painters whose attitude to the establishment makes them comparable to the punks a hundred years later.”
A BBC spokeswoman said the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were like “the boy band of the 19th century”.
……..this is the world from whence this ST has grown. It’s the boy band of the 23 century.
Bobby: Superb submission here. Let me add further and clarify my position with another train of thought.
As we discussed earlier in the thread, (and this has come up in CHINATOWN, where you have basically embraced this conviction) the overriding issue when watching films, reading literature, listening to music and experiencing theatre is the kind of emotional reaction the work yields for us. Put aside whether THE RETURN OF THE KING made bundles, or won a boatload of Oscars, or was recipient to an agressive PR campaign. When the film opened it was a prime candidate for disdain and dismissal by a number of critics who make it their business to maintain the highest standards of scrutiny, especially when the work being considered is coming with all this baggage.
The way all of us (or I think most of us anyway; I can’t say every person conforms) judge a film begins I think with this:
1.) Did we LIKE the film?
2.) If we did, let’s gather all our aesthetic ammunition to support that position.
3.) If we didn’t like the film, let’s gather ammunition that attacks many of the film’s components.
Any film ever made can stand up to a well-defended negative review. CITIZEN KANE, THE RULES OF THE GAME, PERSONA, 8 1/2, POTEMKIN, etc. It’s not a given that any of these is beyond stringent examination and summary indifference. When I tried yesterday to use the ‘critic’s card’ and mass numbers with Ed Howard, I was shot down as well as I should have been. At heart I sometimes act like a 10 year old, trying to gain ‘leverage’ by using the voice of others to back up what I felt. (hey you don’t like, I don’t care, everyone else agrees with me) It is admittedly a bad way to approach this argument. Yet, even this bullying tactic has a silver lining from a critical perspective, and it has to do with a specific person’s judgement. Movie Man and Ed spoke about our tendency to overestimate “taste” when one comes fully armed to the table with specific issues about the filmmaking that failed. It was mentioned here that the CGI effects were cheesy, that the battles were too long, that the story was convoluted, that the screenplay was a straitforward conscription of the Tolkien books (Jamie) and so on. Yet, in the mission of spelling out the bone of contention, nothing was mentioned by any of the nay sayers about the operatic sweep of the film, the astounding character development, the visual tapestry that yielded some of the most breahtaking sequences and images in all of cinema, and an emotional level rarely experienced in a movie theatre–one that transports the viewer to that consumate artistic experience, similar to what one feels while witnessing Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” or listening to Beethoven’s ‘9th’ or watching a superbly staged ‘King Lear.’
I had these feelings. They were deep. They were lasting. They were imbued with a deep spirituality that lisfted me to th erafters of the auditorium, and made me feel that this was life’s essence.
When someone (not you, but anyone) attempts to dismiss or compromise this kind of incomparable and extraordinary experience by quibbling about the CGI or some narrative inconsistencies, I feel artistically violated, as much as I know what I feel, someone else may not.
So, being that we are all (basically) expressing ourselves on the same intellectual plane, with the same capacity for emotional resonance, and with similar abilities to see through things that are leaden, shallow or bombastic, again I say that TASTE and what we VALUE most in a work is what informs our reaction.
I don’t care that the battle scenes were long–nor do I feel that narrative blemished can mitigate even partically my approach to the gates of heaven.
Sam, this is an excellent response – one of the best things, comments, posts, or otherwise I’ve read from you. It has a clarifying power – and it may very much humor you (as it does me) to learn that I simultaneously and unknowingly posted a similar comment on Filmdr’s review of Lost in Translation – the mirror image of this in that it says you did not “get” an emotional aspect of that film, just as I did not “get” an emotional aspect of this film.
So I can only bow in your direction and acknowledge that in a sense, you are quite right. My only defense is to say that your objections to Lost in Translation appear to be emotional ones – i.e. tied in to the fact that you didn’t “get” it, i.e. saw it as distancing and ponderous – whereas many (though not all) of my objections to Lord of the Rings are intellectual ones, which would remain even if I could connect with the film on “emotional” grounds, which I’m not really (though I could to a certain extent with the first film).
Of course, this does not at all end the argument. After all, many great movies are far from perfect and could engender a lof of intellectual objections, which are not deemed sufficiently relevant when weighed against the film’s visceral power. In a sense, I cannot adequately judge Return of the King until I experience the emotional highs that you did. Then, when I come back down to earth (and I use that phrase in a very different sense than Tony and Allan did above), I can interrogate and investigate these feelings and see if they hold up alongside more objective scrutiny. Some of my favorite films are not ones I would consider great. But I do agree that it’s best to know of what the film’s lovers speak before dismissing the work altogether (I said the same of Rules of the Game above). And so, I can only say that my criticisms of the film should not be read as a complete dismissal, but rather reservations and correctives to the enthusiasm relayed before I chimed in…and that’s it’s entirely possible I could re-weigh the film’s values on a later viewing and find the balance leaning more heavily towards achievement than failure.
I can’t go much further with this because, as I indicated to Tony below, I just can’t devote too much time and effort to these fascinating questions right now. Other matters loom. But I heartily thank you for initiating the conversation, and hope my own efforts to elucidate, explain, and (occasionally) attack have also been illuminating.
Thank You very much Movie Man! Touche!
Bobby, I did not apply “box-office criteria”. I spoke of the audience for a film and its aims. By “intellectual hurdles” I mean setting oneself up as a superior judge of quality.
A look at the IMDB stats for the current rating of 8.8/10 is instructive:
Cohort-Votes Average
Males 224,960 8.8
Females 40,256 8.9
Aged under 18 7,955 9.1
Males under 18 5,986 9.1
Females under 18 1,962 8.6
Aged 18-29 177,967 8.9
Males Aged 18-29 150,279 8.8
Females Aged 18-29 26,806 9.1
Aged 30-44 64,533 8.8
Males Aged 30-44 55,662 8.7
Females Aged 30-44 8,115 8.8
Aged 45+ 14,391 8.2
Males Aged 45+ 11,317 8.4
Females Aged 45+ 2,882 7.3
IMDb staff 41 8.5
Top 1000 voters 822 7.9
US users 92,696 8.8
Non-US users 172,474 8.8
IMDb users 312,342 8.8
“Setting up elitist hurdles is the worst form of film criticism.”
No, the worst form of film criticism is this “oh it’s just a movie, lay off” kind of stuff. Not to mention accusing others of intellectual posturing. What is criticism worth if critics aren’t allowed to dig into the “entertaining films fashioned for a wide audience”? What is the only proper response to these films? “Oh they made a lot of money and they’re popular…” Nobody needs critics to tell us that. The job of a good critic is to examine a movie’s form and content, its style, its ideas (if any, a sadly needed qualifier). Part of that is analyzing what the movie’s trying to do, and if the only answer to that is “entertain a bunch of people,” well, clearly the film’s not going to be criticized in the same terms as a Jacques Rivette film. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be criticized at all. There are good blockbusters and lousy ones, and sometimes the lousy ones make shitloads of money despite being so lousy.
Ha Fair enough Ed. I can’t argue with any of what you just said there. I just tried again to defend where I am coming from (above) in the response here to Bobby J, where I mention you, Movie Man and others. However, while I do support your further delineation here of Tony’s original statement, I still support at face value waht he says: “Setting up elitist hurdles is the worst form of film criticism.” If that were the case, then it would seriusly compromise said criticism.
Ed, why the quotes? I did not say anything like “oh it’s just a movie, lay off” or “Oh they made a lot of money and they’re popular” . What I said about criteria is quite clear.
To elaborate, film scholar V.F. Perkins in his influential 1972 book (which is still in print), Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (p. 188) says this:
“The weakness of much criticism is its insistence on imposing conventions which a movie is clearly not using and criteria which are not applicable to its form. Useful discussion of achievements within the popular cinema, in particular, has been obstructed by an insistence on the value of the films that are not made, and a corresponding insensitivity to the value of the actual product. Intelligent behaviour, sophisticated dialogue, visual elegance, profound investigations of character, sociological accuracy or gestures of compassion are demanded from pictures which quite clearly propose to offer nothing of the sort.”
Sorry for the quotes, I obviously wasn’t quoting you but citing some typical attitudes about criticism and popular movies. You didn’t say those things but that was what I gathered you were implying. If not, my apologies. What you seem to be arguing for though is lowering the standards of criticism for movies that just aim to be entertainment.
That Perkins quote is especially enlightening: “Intelligent behaviour, sophisticated dialogue, visual elegance, profound investigations of character, sociological accuracy or gestures of compassion are demanded from pictures which quite clearly propose to offer nothing of the sort.”
Well OK. So for movies that offer up dumb behavior, dumb dialogue, prosaic visuals, slight characterization, sociological ignorance, and no compassion, we should judge them based on what they propose to offer. Which, from the sounds of it, isn’t much. I get that to a point. If a movie aspires to be a big blockbuster entertainment, it doesn’t make sense to judge it as if it’s trying to be Great Art. I don’t think anyone’s doing that here. But criticism dies if we can’t apply high standards to the cinema, if we have to be always making excuses for movies that fail in various ways. If we can’t judge a movie based on visuals (it’s a visual medium!), writing, acting, characterization, or thematic content, what exactly is left? What are the alternative criteria you imagine? Just being entertaining? And by whose standards? Apparently millions of people are entertained by two and a half hours of Michael Bay blowing stuff up, but that’s not *my* idea of a good time.
Of the elements Perkins uses here, how many would apply to THE RETURN OF THE KING?
Intelligent Behavior NO
Sophisticated Dialogue YES and NO
Visual Elegance YES !!!
Profound Investigations of Character YES
Sociological Accuracy NO
Gestures of Compassion YES
This has absolutely nothing to do with what Perkins is saying, but th efact that ROTK does contain these elements by his way of reasoning would enhance the film from that low level he still supports.
Tony, though I am trying to take a break from blogging/commenting on blogs, Sam has lured me back to this board with tidbits of this conversation. Perkins’ quote strikes me as far more reasonable than what you seemed to be saying above. But I still have problems with your notion of “elitist hurdles.” Isn’t it condescending to have one set of standards for Lord of the Rings, another for a European art film? You have celebrated B-movies in the past but I don’t recognizing their strength lies in ignoring the qualities they lack, but rather in recognizing the power they DO have.
So I’m less interested in Perkins’ and your negative assessments, telling us what doesn’t matter in judging the movie, than in a determination of what does matter, and how a movie CAN be judged, if at all (and if not, we’re all wasting our time here, aren’t we?). What are the rest of Perkins’ thoughts on the matter? What’s left after disregarding “Intelligent behaviour, sophisticated dialogue, visual elegance, profound investigations of character, sociological accuracy or gestures of compassion”? Or does he feel that a film should contain one or more of these qualities, it just need not contain all of them at once?
All of these meaty and fascinating discussions unfortunately come at a poor time for me. I would love to sit down and type off detailed analyses of Lord of the Rings’ flaws, analyze how and why a critic can employ semi-objective criteria, and flesh out my own views on the film and the values of criticism. But I’ve already allowed one night to be swallowed up by blogging I promised to avoid, so I’m going to try and keep my involvement here to a minimum.
Hope my inquiries and comments have helped clarify my own point of view and the arguments of others.
This thread is getting way too long and confusing, and to allow MovieMan a respite, let me just say one final thing and again enlist Perkin’s support. Sam coherently argued his case for this film. To reject his assessment, the case must be argued on his terms.
I will re-quote Perkin together with a further extract (my emphasis):
“The weakness of much criticism is its insistence on imposing conventions which a movie is clearly not using and criteria which are not applicable to its form. Useful discussion of achievements within the popular cinema, in particular, has been obstructed by an insistence on the value of the films that are not made, and a corresponding insensitivity to the value of the actual product. Intelligent behaviour, sophisticated dialogue, visual elegance, profound investigations of character, sociological accuracy or gestures of compassion are demanded from pictures which quite clearly propose to offer nothing of the sort…
“So long as we see the definition of criteria as a means of validating enthusiasm rather than contempt, our standards of judgement will be useful for what they include but will have limited reference. The limits are not destructive but necessary. A positive claim, provided that it is rationally sustained, should be given greater weight than a denial of value. If we fail to perceive functions and qualities it may well be because we are looking for them in inappropriate ways. The corollary is that values which are claimed should be argued in the clearest and most positive terms. A failure to discern quality is not a demonstration of its absence, but equally its presence cannot be indicated by the kinds of negative statements which movie reviewers have too frequently invoked in the past decade to solicit approval for films which ‘escape the confines of narrative’ and so forth. The negative rhetorical question, invoking comparisons with developments in music, painting or the novel to demand of us a reason why the film-maker should not tread the same path, is an evasive device. It frees the critic from the necessity of arguing the value of developments in the medium invoked, and it assumes a direct transferability of methods and values from one medium into another. Since there are no rules which the critic is entitled to impose on the film-maker, it is folly to acclaim a movie because it ‘breaks’ them, and all the more important that criticism present a positive statement of the achievements it claims to have located and a clear definition of the formal discipline which made the achievement possible. It may then contribute to a productive collaboration rather than offer a merely rhetorical elaboration of private responses.”
Tony, thanks for expanding on this. There’s a lot to chew on here, but I do think Perkins is being used slightly out of context here. His beef seems primarily to be with people criticizing film by values imposed from outside (social relevance, questions of form more applicable to other arts, etc.) rather than the values more in tune with the medium’s possibilities. I don’t think that LOTR’s critics are guilty of that; if anything, it’s the film’s defenders who use the book as a source of a value, saying that the film fulfilled their vision of what was on the page.
The key to what you write is that a positive claim should be “rationally sustained.” Which means that Perkins is in agreement exactly with what I wrote above: “You have celebrated B-movies in the past but I don’t [think] recognizing their strength lies in ignoring the qualities they lack, but rather in recognizing the power they DO have.” Obviously, the film’s detractors feel the film’s negative qualities far outweigh its positive ones, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t favoring positive qualities in the balance, just that said qualities seem few and far between while the negative seem soverwhelming.
Here Sam’s formulation that among more sophisticated film-lovers, taste becomes the differentiation point seems eminently reasonable. He has defended some aspects of LOTR intellectually, but at the core his response is emotional. As I conceded above, it’s hard for me to tread too deeply into that territory at the moment because I saw the film once, years ago, and did not experience the “emotional high” he did. Perkins seems to agree that emotionalism is a kind of no-man’s land, because he writes “it’s all the more important that criticism present a positive statement of the achievements it claims to have located and a clear definition of the formal discipline which made the achievement possible.” We CAN go further but it requires detailed analysis. Show the picture of Gandalf riding the eagle and locate the aesthetic sources for the welling up of emotion. Analyze the battles shot by shot and determine how they build up audience involvement. This is the “rational sustenance” that Perkins speaks of.
In theory (and I say in theory because in fact I’d like to see this conversation die down so that I can extricate myself and move on) I would like to see the film’s defenders launch such a detailed response. This would require an in-depth formal analysis, probably the use of screen caps and clips with footnotes. But as you are fond of saying, “life’s too short” so we’ve reached an impasse.
However, it would be an intresting approach in the future to set aside a thread for this sort of analysis – which you often seem to crave, given your frustrations with praise which is too generalized – and letting it roll for a few months, encouraging poster to take their time before responding, maybe limiting the participants, choosing a representative of each camp and seeing where the chips fall. However, the problem with this approach would be that ultimately it gets uncomfortable; we all like to assert our opinion but get (rightly or wrongly) uneasy about “forcing” other people to share it – even if at heart, we think it’s more valid. So this kind of thing probably will not happen here.
That’s all for now, folks.
Sam, your response above was one of the best responses that you’ve made so far.
I and Tony have been in agreement in the past about elitistism in movies that are emotionally sterile before and couldn’t connect with most and are meant for a select elite.
I agree with Movieman0283 and Ed that even the most popular has to be put under stringent critical mualing if it doesn’t work. But if I don’t like a certain type of movie and criticise if for qualities that it never intended to have or were out of its remit, that is one thing. Like complaining that a gross-out comedy isn’t Lubitsch.
My criticism came from someone who’s really dug the first LOTR and was an avid fan of the original ST (the others are worthless, apart from ST:TNG which occasionally did something comparable like ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’).
That the new ST has jettisoned everything that made the original distinctive in favour of mtv style sensibilities and values is my complaint. ST done as a mtv music video and with the breathless pacing of Star Wars and the intellectual content of Baywatch.
I love those Perkins qoutes.
Movie Man: There isn’t much more I can add, as it’s true that this thread has gone the distance. Of course, if some of us had time to painstakingly analyze the film shot by shot, we could enrich an already thorough and infinitely rewarding discussion. Your own role here is remarkable. Just about every submission you made here was a mini-masterpiece in the depth of writing and formulated theories.
To have you, Kaleem Hasan, Ed Howard, Jon, Kevin Olson(who started this thread with a fantastic submission), Jamie, Bobby J., John Greco, Frank Gallo, Peter, David Noack, “GoodFella” Dave, Joe, Dennis, and of course Tony and Allan in top form, it will be one discussion I will return to often as it will always be here on these pages.
I tip my cap to you and this stellar cast for making this happen, and know the time and sweat that’s gone into this. We are honoted that all of you–intellectuals of the highest order–have made this site so much beter.
Thanks again! Movie Man, you do deserve commission here. You are something else. And I smiled when I read how much you and Tony agreed on MYSTIC RIVER!!! LOL!!!
Sam, did you also consider ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ and ‘The Two Towers’ as the best films of their respective years?
And did Mr. Fish consider ‘The Return of the King’ as the best film of 2003?
The thread here is beyond belief, so I felt I must be a part of it, even at this late stage.
Well Fred, thanks for joining in the fun. To answer your query, neither of the first two Ring Cycle entries made my Top 3 of their respective years, though FELLOWSHIP was #4 of 2002, and TWO TOWERS was #7 of 2002.
2001:
1) A. I. Artificial Intelligence (Spielberg)
2) Mulholland Drive (Lynch)
3) Oui, Mais (Lavandier)
2002:
1) Far From Heaven (Haynes)
2) Talk To Her (Almodovar)
3) Chicago (Marshall)
After taking a look at this thread, I’m concerned that the internets are full.
Unfortunately, I can’t add anything substantive about Return of the King because I’ve only seen the first installment of the series. Sam’s review, however, has renewed my interest in correcting this travesty.
And regarding Eastwood, I regard Letters from Iwo Jima as his best. But I really like A Perfect World and consider Kevin Costner’s work in that film to be his best (though I realize that’s not saying a great deal).
Pierre: I am happy that your interest in seeing the concluding two installments has been renewed. Of course RETURN inmy estimation is the most essential one, without beating a dead horse. Ha! I will look forward to your assessment.
I completely agree with you on LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA as being Eastwood’s greatest film ever, and like you I do like A PERFECT WORLD, which our friend Jamie is particularly smitten with.
Now HERE is a link to a piece in Cinematical about RETURN OF THE KING that’s most interesting!
http://www.cinematical.com/2009/06/26/iranian-protestors-inspired-by-lord-of-the-rings?icid=sphere_wpcom_inline
And it continues on! What started as a discussion of the film has moved into a wider consideration of the validity of film criticism. I found myself nodding my head with much of it.
Just as Peter Jackson felt that LOTR had to be made as one large, three-part, cinematic piece, I decided to write my IMDb review of all three movies as a single, multi-part essay. Click on my screen-name and hit “Chronological” to view my reviews of the Fellowship and Two Towers. I make no guarantees about the quality and consistence of my review, but I do guarantee that these three films offer very high and very consistent quality from beginning to end. The acting, cinematography, art, and direction simply can not be beat.
Which of the three movies is my favorite varies with my mood – and the same holds true for Tolkien’s books. When I am immersed in the story, ROTK is my favorite. When I simply want to have fun with the whole experience, I love Fellowship. And when I want something intense, evocative and thoughtful, I go for the Two Towers.
Frodo, Sam and Golem are on their way to Mount Doom and their bodies, nerves, and relationships have borne the greatest burden on middle earth. The rest of the fellowship is rallying to the defense of Minas Tirith, and preparing for even more deadly battles to come.
The heroism and romance are incredibly moving – when was the last time you saw an entire audience leaving a theater after a fantasy movie rubbing their eyes? The sets are breathtaking – even moreso than in the previous two films.
The casting and acting are superb.
The film delivers at every level and is the jewel in the trilogy’s well-earned crown.
Return of the King offers a resolution of all of the major story arcs in LOTR. As with the classic Tolkien trilogy, however, you may be able to predict some of what will occur, but never all of it and you’ll never guess how you will get there. The same fatalistic and paradoxically unpredictable feeling of Tolkien’s grand plots is present throughout ROTK especially. The major theme in ROTK, however, is the varied ways and means of heroism – both intentional and unintended, and Tolkien’s examination of sacrifice and heroism is as inspiring as it is subtle. Amazingly, it all comes through in the films.
Even more than the previous two films, Jackson and his writers took liberties with the story-line. Like the others, however, this serves the film better than simple adaptation from one medium to another. By reordering some of the chronology and adding scenes and plot devices which are consistent with Tolkien’s world and characterizations, the film-makers actually do a better job of preserving the concepts and themes of the story than they could have with a pure adaptation. The lengthy epilogue in Tolkien’s book is greatly reduced, reordered, and somewhat changed in order to work in the film. Some parts actually appear very early in ROTK. And some aspects of Tolkien’s epilogue are disclosed in the Two Towers, though not directly depicted. But all of the really important components of the epilogue are, at least strongly implied if not well illustrated in ROTK.