Films You've Seen Recently and Don't Know WTF to think

[e/y]

Well at the start of Solyaris, Kris is standing in some swaying grass near his parents' home, too. And his wife lays in his bed after the whole door thing...that's what I thought luka meant.

I've only seen Ivans Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solyaris (which is probably my favourite movie) and Stalker...need to watch the others.

 

[luka]

solaris is enervating. mirror was the grass in the wind/woman on the bed film cos im fairly sure i havent seen sacrifice.

 

[luka]

im not very good at watching films though. i get bored easily. what do you two like about it?

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

primer is interesting but it seemed a bit too in love with its own cleverness. though that might just be cos i didnt know wtf they were going on about for most of it. still cleverer than inception though.

 

[IdleRich]

"im not very good at watching films though. i get bored easily. what do you two like about it?"

Mirror I thought was just basically the story of someone's life told in a kind of cubist or cut-up way so that you get a mixture of actual events and imagined events and dreams that add up together to tell you more about the person than a simple biography would. It's also kinda tied up with how Russia changed over that time and so it's both personal and general and although you can't always tell the significance of individual events or even what's happening you always feel as though they are important or can see why and how they made an impression on a child who may not have understood them either. When you see it all then it comes into focus and makes sense as a whole even though the individual bits may not actually do so themselves.
I think that there are a lot of films that try techniques that are similar but none seem to be so beautifully made or soulful as Mirror. I rewatched The Singing Detective the other day and that sort of struck me as similar - the way that the various storylines seem totally unrelated but add up to give you a whole picture of a man's life, from childhood to now, and show you how certain things still affect you. Obviously it's not as abstract but it's still kinda surreal and ultimately very powerful when it all comes together.
ps yeah the famous grass scene is definitely Mirror - I think it's one of those scenes like the last one in Antonioni's The Passenger where no-one could figure out how it was done.

 

[outraygeous]

Any one catch Trash Humpers?

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

yeah. the scene with the kid and the baby doll was a bit tough for me to watch. but i liked the whole thing, just as a complete 'wtf is this' kind of film, and also cos i loved how it looked - all those found footage films have nothing on trash humpers lol. not sure i want to watch it again though. it would probably be best as a kind of art installation film.

 

[luka]

Mirror I thought was just basically the story of someone's life told in a kind of cubist or cut-up way so that you get a mixture of actual events and imagined events and dreams that add up together to tell you more about the person than a simple biography would.

really? i didnt realise it was about a persons life just thought it was a load of annoying disconnected portentous imagery. idont think i'd watch it again though

 

[IdleRich]

Well, I'm not saying I'm totally right but it's definitely not entirely disconnected - there are characters that recur although it's confusing because the same actress is sometimes his mother and sometimes his wife if I remember correctly.

 

[baboon2004]

the idea sounds really interesting. will have to watch it now. Only 107 minutes, unlike Nostalghia (the one I saw) which was about 1070 minutes.

another reason Primer intrigued me was the 75 minute (ish) length. More stuff should be short. They also apparently shot a 2:1 ratio of overall footage:final footage, which is extraordinarily minimalist I believe.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

totally agree more films should be short. not that i dont like an epic 3 hours like inland empire but theres nothing wrong with those old hollywood films which are 60-80 minutes. doesnt mean its not a feature just cos its not 90 mins.

 

[baboon2004]

absolutely - too often it's extra padding and poor storytelling that means films are extended beyond that length. Applies (even more so?) to novels too imo.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

i think a lot of publishers seem to be editing less, yep. esp if its a big name like irvine welsh or whoever. but even white teeth i remember was really unnecessarily long and badly in need of an editor and that was her first book. i think i read something a while ago about how a lot of book shops/chains like the bigger novels as they look more attractive.

 

[baboon2004]

and give people the misguided impression that they are of necessity reading something more weighty in more than one sense.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

ive also noticed that a lot of books seem unnecessarily/over generously spaced. im sure they could save a lot of paper if they just did single spacing or 1.5 spacing and used a slightly smaller font. or maybe that would be too intimidating.

 

[IdleRich]

"absolutely - too often it's extra padding and poor storytelling that means films are extended beyond that length. Applies (even more so?) to novels too imo."

Completely agreed here - I think it's cos there is no real outlet for novellas and no-one can make money out of short stories any more - it just makes more sense to spin your idea out a bit and charge full whack for it never mind if it's at the expense of tautness.

"the idea sounds really interesting. will have to watch it now. Only 107 minutes, unlike Nostalghia (the one I saw) which was about 1070 minutes."

The Mirror? Do it, I think it's totally amazing. Somehow achieves epicness (if that's a word) while also being personal despite the fact that you never quite know exactly who the central character is. The bit (presumably found footage) where you see the children being evacuated and this father grabbing his child and desperately kissing him/her really hard is heart-rending.

 

[zhao]

Spring Breakers may be the single most relevant and important film anyone can make of and about our time. Or it may be ridiculously vacuous drivel. But certainly it is both. At the same time of course.

the fantasy and boredom which fuels it, the empty desire for meaningless experience, and the pathetic symbols which function as substitute for meaning, are more than American. The film precisely captures not only the specific economic and social conditions generated by this particular stage of capitalism's evolution, and also how it is represented in pop culture.

 

[zhao]

but of course at least some part, maybe a big part, of my assessment is based on knowing the history of unbearably uncomfortable and difficult to sit through films which have come from the film maker... if it was done by anyone else i wonder if anyone would attribute any cultural (critical?) significance to it.

 

[zhao]

I was really hoping that this thread would be not about films that make you wonder which side you're on, but about films that make you think nothing other than WTF

Korine fits in this thread perfectly in this sense lol

 

[baboon2004]

Larry Clark, for perhaps obvious reasons, fits into that bracket too. Very good or shit, it's often hard to know.

Saw a film called Please Give the other week - very good indie fare of the type that the States and Canada churns out pretty relentlessly every year, and a film that trod a very fine line between a critique of nuclear family normativity, and sometimes seeing to tacitly endorse that same normativity, in a way that I thought was very effective and unsettling. Without giving it away, the final scene was a complete headscratcher.