Obey, oh boy

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• Chris L. says:

  August 20, 2012 at 10:08 pm

  Also just read the Siren’s four-star rave at the NY Post. Should make for a real dis­cus­sion here, since the debate on this film isn’t cast along gender lines to the degree one might expect.
  Indeed, I’m unsure what to make of such diver­ging ana­lyses (and won’t be able to see the film unless it shows up on VOD), but I won­der if the “Beasts of the Southern Wild” fracas has many view­ers wary of a dir­ect­or’s pos­sible con­des­cen­sion toward dis­ad­vant­aged char­ac­ters. If, indeed, that is hap­pen­ing here. Or there.

• Peter Labuza says:

  August 21, 2012 at 2:12 pm

  No this movie is bull­shit. GK is much more bal­anced and fair to it than I am, but I don’t think its fair to say that the aware­ness of prob­lem­at­ic polit­ics in “Beasts” is respons­ible for the response to “Compliance” (for one thing, GK was mostly on board with the former; and the première of the lat­ter was not exactly without hos­til­ity: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/risky-business/sundance-2012-compliance-première-283782). I think the dif­fer­ence in the films is that in the former, Zeitlin kind of acci­dent­ally stumbles through polit­ic­al mater­i­al, but that’s not his interest at all. Zobel dir­ectly wants to say some­thing about our state of author­ity and the psy­cho­logy of the reces­sion, he just does it in a very con­des­cend­ing way. I was actu­ally some­what (read: some­what) on board with this film for about the first 30 minutes (though sub­tract the god-awful first ten), because I did­n’t actu­ally know the true story. So when Zobel pulls the cur­tain much too early, the only thing left is “how far can they go,” which excuse my lan­guage, is frankly bullshit.

• Chris L. says:

  August 21, 2012 at 5:32 pm

  I was­n’t call­ing Glenn’s per­spect­ive into ques­tion, but rather weigh­ing the broad­er response to these films. (Again, haven’t seen “Compliance,” and may nev­er see it.)
  When the movie sur­faced at Sundance, it seemed Mr. Labuza’s view would be by far the dom­in­ant one. (See also Amy Taubin’s notice in Film Comment.) Consensus then seems to soften upon com­mer­cial release. Your points are well taken, though.

• Tom B. says:

  August 22, 2012 at 12:16 pm

  Reading Glenn’s plot descrip­tion, I think “Compliance” is a soft, Hollywoody ver­sion of the key “real-life” incid­ent that inspired the film. (I sup­pose I should see it to com­pare it to real­ity.) Said incid­ent happened 20 or so miles from where I live in Kentucky. The class issues and per­ceived con­des­cen­sion are part ‘n’ par­cel of the real event. Pretty much unavoid­able if you want to be reas­on­ably accur­ate, I’d say, based on the news cov­er­age I read. You could look it up.

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