My review for MSN Movies is up. Let’s go.
UPDATE: Also, to paraphrase Orson Welles: “Kent Jones, Kent Jones, and Kent Jones.”
FURTHER UPDATE: The release of this film has provided a pretext for another MSN Gallery, this one on Great American Living Directors, a list inhibited somewhat by space and an obscure in-law codicil. Still might provide fuel for conversation as they say.
Man, excellent review. Particularly excited about Phoenix’s movements and mannerisms from this and previous films.
Two stellar reviews. Wow. Interesting PTA is working with a new DP, one who’s shot Francis Ford Coppola’s last three films.
My grandfather has told me he witnessed other sailors draining torpedo fuel through bread then drinking it in ’45 or ’46. “Those guys would drink anything,” he says. Strangely happy to see this brought to life.
Goddamn is that Kent Jones piece great. Fantastic review there as well, Glenn. Can’t wait to see the movie in 70mm.
I’m seeing this at the Ziegfeld tonight and am positively giddy.
And I am positively comatose. As Manny Farber put it back in 1962:
“The three sins of white elephant art (1) frame the action with an all-over pattern, (2) install every event, character, situation in a frieze of continuities, and (3) treat every inch of the screen and film as a potential area for prizeworthy creativity.”
The Master is the whitest of white elephants. Anderson is fascinated by charlatans and manipulative borderline sado-masochistic power relations. This is a far simpler rendering of same than There Will Be Blood The 70mm is nice, redolent of the “Grand Rapids Style” ie. George Stevens. But without Stevens’ moral conviction. Hoffman has exhausted his bag of tics, while Leaf has grown some new ones – none of them effective.
Having been “rushed” by the Xenu-ietes in their early days (it was turned ino a religion so L. Ron didn’t have to pay taxes) I can say it reproduces its inanities with great accuracy.
So what?
Today Scientology is on the ropes thanks to that “Vanity Fair” piece on Mapother by Maureen Orth (which I hghly reccomend.)
I don’t reccomend The Master at all.
Wait for Amour – a REAL movie.
Here we go.
Here we go where, Tom? Did you see the thing? Do you have anything to say about it?
Excellent review, Glenn. I was lucky to see a 70mm screening in Chicago and, even though there were a lot of things I instantly loved about it, I couldn’t help but also feel disappointed in what you call the lack of a “conventionally revealing climax.” All of the Big Acting Scenes are in the first half of the movie and I was hoping for another Phoenix/Hoffman barnburner at the end to give the film a sense of harmony and closure (even though I fully appreciated the symbolism of Freddie finally accomplishing in the last scene the thing he’d been trying and failing to do for the rest of the movie). However, in the month or so since I saw it, I’ve grown to really appreciate the restrained and ambiguous ending, which is basically the opposite of the galvanizing, exclamation point-like ending of There Will Be Blood. It is truly haunting.
That Kent Jones piece is ridiculously good, so much more than a movie review.
What should be the “climax” is of necessity muted by the story. Freddie (Leaf) is emotionally disturbed and Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman)regards him as an ideal lab rat on which to test his (inane) ideas. Needless to say they don’t work.But being a con man he can’t acknowledge failure. And so Freddie has to be sent away as his continued presence is a reminder of Dodd’s ineptitude. Of course he promises they’ll meet again “in another life.” But a fat lot of good that does for Freddie in this one.
And a fat ot of good it does any viewer who has been paying attention. Ad it’s here tat Anderson and Dodd are one and the same. “The Master” is a vast distraction from an empty center. Ad in this it’s in the tradition of (wait for it)
“Heaven’s Gate.”
So it’s no SpaceCamp, is what you’re saying.
It’s no “Parenthood” either.
Wouldn’t argue that Nolan isn’t a pretty big deal, but I’m genuinely curious why he’s on this list and, say, Tarantino isn’t.
Um, because Quentin Tarantino fans are less likely to make death threats when he’s snubbed?
No, that’s not it. That falls under the category of “genuine fuckup,” if I may be so indelicate. But oddly enough, in all the back-and-forthing about the gallery, which went through a brief period of not being limited to Americans (just imagine!), the name wasn’t even mentioned. Which now strikes me as pretty goddamn odd and something to ponder.
I wonder why Tom Kalin, Gus Van Sant and Todd Haynes aren’t on that list.
On second thought I don’t.
Great list, obviously, but aside from Tarantino, I’m wondering how close to inclusion David Lynch and Michael Mann came..?
David N., if you take “living” as “still making or likely to make features,” that kinda gives one an out on Lynch, who seems really unlikely to do so anytime soon. As for Mann, I know there are plenty of folks who would have liked to see him in either Nolan’s or Cameron’s slot…and I’m willing to take 100% responsibility for that call.
I might have fought more for Van Sant were not “Restless” so green in memory.
Oh really. I think it’s underrated. But it’s difficult to discuss as few have seen it thanks to “Imagine”
Gus remains a key American filmmaker fr “My Oen Private Idaho” alone.
No Gus Van Sant?!? Just in the first decade of the 21st century he expanded the possibilities of cinema (both non-narrative and genre-based) with GERRY; ELEPHANT; LAST DAYS; PARANOID PARK; and MILK. Who else in that decade was that consistently good? Almodovar for sure, but he is not American.
Haynes’ MILDRED PIERCE was great, but he had not been that good since SAFE and Kalin has also been hit-and-miss.
All right, you got me. (Or, in Pythonese, “That’s a fair cop.”) Really, I think my signal contribution to the feature was insisting on “Great” rather than the more self-cornering “Greatest.”
What, no Swanberg?
But seriously, where is James Gray?
And while I don’t think he has quite enough mileage on him to yet be considered Great, given a few more years, and Jeff Nichols ought to bump somebody off that list.
(Van Sant should be there too.) For my taste, I’m a bit relieved to see that Eastwood didn’t get included. I’d take Mann over Nolan any old day of the week. Todd Haynes, too, for that matter.
I just missed De Palma. Not to be over-critical, but ooh, I missed him.
Also, there’s a typo in the piece itself. There Will Be Blood was Anderson’s fifth picture, not his fourth.
Not to be pendantic, but “There Will Be Blood” was Anderson’s 5th feature (unless you’re not counting “Sydney” aka “Hard Eight”.)
Oops – just saw Harry’s comment.
I’d agree with those who’d have Tarantino in there (I’d have him instead of the overrated – at least to me – Nolan).
…and it came out in 2007.
When Dave E refers to Joaquin Phoenix as Leaf I think of the old barber played by Eddie Murphy in Coming to America ranting about Cassius Clay.
Any successful list makes me want to watch or re-watch, so : kudos. The name I expected/wanted but that became more and more improbable as I worked my way up the list was Steven Soderbergh. Did he at least get a cursory toss in the back-and-forth?
Um, Aaawalll, not to be all name-droppy and such but that’s where the in-law codicil was invoked. Also, I dunno HOW that number snafu on PTA came up, I know very well which film “The Master” is…looking into fixing…
The most interesting omission to me is Steven Soderbergh for many reasons, including the obvious. He didn’t even make the runners-up!
And yes, QT deserves a spot way more than Nolan if the criterion is anything other than box-office cache, at least IMO (I also think of all the directors you listed, Nolan’s are the least ‘American’ in character or theme if that has any meaning…or relevance). And De Palma got gypped. 🙁
As for Lynch, fair enough on the ‘working’ caveat, but I’d argue that he’s earned a place on any list of living American director, ever – even if the inclusion’s fucking posthumous!!
Glenn, have you had a chance to read Richard Brody’s piece on The Master? I respect him a good deal as a critic even though it seems I rarely agree with him. I think his piece on The Master really gets at some of the things that are swirling around in my head a day after seeing it.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/09/paul-thomas-anderson-the-master.html
Really surprised Clint Eastwood didn’t make the list.
Pleasantly surprised.
I thought Glenn was in the proverbial tank for him.
Surely that empty chair didn’t disqualify him. Hereafter, Gran Torino, Million Dollar Baby, etc. are far greater crimes.
Gran Torino is Eastwood’s Limelight: like Chaplin, he reconsiders his star persona, recognizes that his character (or his methods) no longer have any place in society and even imagines his own death. So what’s not to like?
(The movie also kinda registered as an anti-war film without any actual war sequences, like John Ford’s Long Gray Line, but that is just my totally unwarranted subjective, uh, impression.)
Any list of Great American Directors that doesn’t include Todd Haynes is a fucking wank. Everyone is talking about PTA being the heir to Kubrick, but I don’t get that at all, because Haynes has already made the great Kubrick film that Kubrick never made, and it’s called Safe. I saw The Master in Santa Monica and it’s fine, it’s good, but why no one is talking about PTA’s complete nutballing of Malick is kind of strange to me. PTA is a good filmmaker and an even better mythologizer. There’s a reason he likes to be called “P.T.”
Charles Burnett, Monte Hellman, Jerry Lewis?
Also, I may not have many comrades-in-arms on this but I was disappointed to see that Francis was the only Coppola on the list.
I understand that this list came about by consensus and that your colleagues are probably more conservative or conventional in their tastes than you, but seeing the likes of James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Joel and Ethan Coen, and David Fincher included on this list, while Terry Gilliam, Gus Van Sant, Todd Haynes, Ken Jacobs, Charles Burnett, Peter Bogdanovich, and, above all, David Lynch are left off, is rather dispiriting (and I happen to think Lynch is much more likely than Cameron to produce something worth watching in the next few years, whether it be a feature, a short, or a commercial for a magical handbag.) But hell, at least Jim Jarmusch was mentioned.
Brad Bird?
Hey, I like this game. Glenn missed out Clint Eastwood, Richard Linklater, Abel Ferrara, Jon Jost, James Benning, Thom Andersen and Stanley Donen and now he’s totally ruined my day (my life?).
LOL, yeah, concocting these kinds of lists, especially for a well-trafficked website is kind of a thankless task, bound to spur more raspberries than plaudits. Enjoyed reading it anyway though.
But +1 to Dale on Lynch.
>Everyone is talking about PTA being the heir to Kubrick
I like PTA well enough (though Hard Eight is still my favorite of his films, and honestly I’m not just saying that to be contrarian! I think…), but are people really calling him the heir to Kubrick?
I can’t think of anyone I would call the heir to Kubrick. Kubrick is about as sui generis as they come, I think…
He’s the heir to Delbert Mann.
Ditto all the votes for Gus Van Sant. What about David Lynch? And if we’re going to put Jarmusch and Spike Lee on there what about Hal Hartley and Richard Linklater who have made at least as many great films.
I’d rather have Todd Haynes over Gus Vant Sant. As much as I love “My Own Private Idaho,” “Drugstore Cowboy” and “Elephant,” he’s made some abysmal films like “Psycho,” “Restless” and especially “Finding Forrester.”
I agree that FINDING FORRESTER is bottom shelf Van Sant; and as for RESTLESS – I was able to see it only once, so I am unsure. But PSYCHO is a remarkable movie and far from abysmal. Van Sant queers the original, eliminating the homophobia (unintended as I have argued elsewhere, and more the result of directoral choices founded upon limited available knowledge, but present nonetheless – hard to fault an artist for not knowing what at the time was unknown), with the result being that Van Sant’s PSYCHO ends up more harrowing than the original. And if one compares the final two images, you have a perfect visual correlative for the transition from modernism to postmodernism.
With ya on Linklater, mr. oates, but HH’s films have not aged very well, IMO, much as I enjoyed many of them at the time of their release. I’d call HENRY FOOL half-great and admittedly do have more than a little love for AMATEUR (peut-être a synecdohe for my more-than-a-little-love for Mlle. Huppert). Beyond those, for me what remains is merely high-ironic Meh-ville in Melville. Which of his films do you consider great enough to rub shoulders with Spike & Jim?
HH was been in the wilderness for a while now, but the guy who made those first three features and shorts gets something of a lifetime pass from me.
That said, I think Linklatter and Haynes are more likely to make more wonderful movies than Nolan, or even Coppola (TETRO was really good, though). If you need some superhero auteurs on the list, I’d put Bryan Singer in the top ranks of Hollywood directors—X2 is the best superhero movie of the current generation, the first X‑Men delivered the goods better than anyone else, and SUPERMAN RETURNS is going to look better and better the further out we get from its release.
Fuzzy– thanks for saying that about SUPERMAN RETURNS, which is actually my favorite of the last decade of superhero movies, and easily the most underrated.
@James Keepnews, HENRY FOOL and TRUST are as good as any of the best films of Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee. But I’m also keen on SIMPLE MEN, SURVIVING DESIRE and the last episode in FLIRT.
So I’ve seen THE MASTER and read a number of reviews now including Glenn’s and Kent’s. And I wish I’d seen the film they describe. The one where all the meandering and not-adding-up nevertheless still perversely adds up. For me it just didn’t. All the more disappointing because I loved THERE WILL BE BLOOD so much and was already interested in THE MASTER’s time/place/setting and cult-a-clef conceit. Phoenix’s performance is the reason to go, but to me it sadly and ultimately feels wasted in a film full of could have beens. The script needed another year of work. As Bergman once said “The film never gets to the wound of the story.”
Brian: Matt Zoller Seitz has become an increasingly vocal advocate for it too. So that’s three of us!
Thinking about it, I’d like to put a good word in for Woody Allen as well, talking about people likely to have a couple more films in them.
“I remember a magazine wanted to do a big photo spread with a bunch of us -— Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, six or seven of us -— the new indies. Maybe I was just an asshole, but I refused to do it.”
– Hal Hartley, 2005
http://nymag.com/nymetro/movies/features/10951/
Ha ha.
Brian (D.), Why is Van Sant’s PSYCHO “more harrowing” than Hitchcock’s original just “because Van Sant eliminates the homophobia”? Now I’ve not seen the remake but “better than Hitchcock” is surely a very bold claim you’re making for the movie.
I did see RESTLESS, however, and it was easily the worst theatrical experience I had last year – two oh so cuddly overgrown teenagers discover death (or “death” if you will, because nothing about dying is anything like that) – and, although I’ve privately heaped plenty of abuse on the movie after I came out of the theatre, here’s the one I could reasonably post- it was essentially a movie without a director. The shots have been designed like most of the shots in Hollywood are now designed: brief and bereft of any sense of framing or composition. And the sensibility – “death” as redemption or whatever, teddy bears and cheap muzak – appears to be more in keeping with the sensibility of Ron Howard (should he be on the list too?) and the generic conventions that govern a “feel-good” movie. Now, say what you will about AH, but he somehow was able to project his ideas and thoughts, even under the repressive influence of Selznick.
I’m probably sounding more surly than I intend here but when you consider that this film sits alongside such hits like FINDING FORRESTER and GOOD WILL HUNTING, I’m wondering right now why you make such a case for Van Sant.
I wouldn’t call THE MASTER my favorite Anderson film – it is a slight comedown from THERE WILL BE BLOOD and MAGNOLIA, but since those, to me, are absolute masterpieces, that’s to be expected somewhat – but I found it interesting and challenging because Anderson made Phoenix’s character someone who seemed to resist Hoffman’s cause (as much as he also embraced it) not because of philosophical differences, or because he felt Hoffman betrayed him in some way, but because of something in his temperament. Maybe this is a sign I need to get out more, but I’ve never seen that portrayed, or at least not in the way Anderson does here. And I also found the last scene between Hoffman and Phoenix an inversion of the climax between Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano at the end of TWBB, and that too was fascinating. THE MASTER is definitely chillier in some sense than Anderson’s other films, and I will need to watch it again, but it was gripping most of the way. I do wish Jesse Plemmons had more to do, but Amy Adams was amazing in this (her part of the whole intervention sequence – for lack of a better term – Phoenix’s character goes through was chilling).
So lipranzer, just what does the dynamic you describe between Phoenix and Hoffman’s characters actually do for the film dramatically or thematically? What’s it all about for you? How does the non-embrace embrace you’re sketching out do something interesting or necessary for Phoenix’s character or the narrative of the film as a whole? What is that elusive “something in his temperament” and if it indeed matters so much to Freddie/Phoenix and to the whole film as it seems too, how come it’s never clear what this quality is or how it ultimately shapes his interactions with Dodd/Hoffmann?
What does it do for me? Well, to me, it’s a story of how there are some people who, no matter how hard you try, you can’t really help. You might not buy that argument – and, to be fair, I’m not sure I entirely buy it either – but the way Anderson presents it I thought was interesting. And as far as “explaining” why Freddie was how he was, I wouldn’t have wanted a facile Freudian excuse as to why he was the way he was – you certainly have hints of it, from what sounds like a not-so-great home life to what we learn of his war experiences to the fact he has a relationship with a girl who’s barely out of her teens to the fact he’s, at the very least, a problem drinker and at most an alcoholic, but none of them are presented as “oh, so THAT’S why he was how he was”, and I think the character is more dimensional because of that. As to the relationship between him and Dodd, well, as from Dodd’s point of view, if he can “save” Freddie, that’s the ultimate validation of his “cause”, and as far as Freddie goes, part of him may want to be saved even though, of course, part of him consciously or unconsciously resists.
Lipranzer, thanks for the thoughtful and detailed response. I certainly appreciate the dimensionality and irreducibility of Freddie’s character and the non-pat hints of his backstory. I just don’t think Anderson’s film does enough with him, once it establishes his troubled animal nature as such. Likewise, I don’t think it’s ever clear what Freddie actually needs or wants from Dodd. Or vice-versa. Although Dodd’s looking to prove his methods on the ultimate trouble case is maybe close to what the film has in mind. THE MASTER seems to want to be a kind of epic character study. But in the end, the two main characters don’t really come together in a terribly significant or revelatory fashion. And I’m left wondering why their meeting mattered, what it did for either one of them, and why they still both feel like ciphers to me after more than two hours.
First: THE MASTER. I am with Warren here – not sure what all the fuss is about. Certainly the movie is now the frontrunner in this year’s Het Male Agonistes Sweepstakes (won last year by THE TREE OF LIFE which shares THE MASTER’s caricaturing of women and veneration of male woe. And just as with TTOF, I am sure that THE MASTER’s partisans are primed to go Freddie Quell all over dissenters).
The movie is straight forward in terms of narrative with modernist ellipses, but the film’s awe of its own solemnity (all 70 mm of it) does not invite a spectator into the film to rummage around – discovering/creating connections and meaning – but instead asks one to genuflect before its seriousness – not only does the film take place in an earlier time, it asks a spectator to assume an outdated posture of viewer passivity (unless the film is a satire of just this request and was executed with such subtlety that the movie itself doesn’t know it is a satire).
As a queer viewer, I doubt I am Anderson’s target audience, but the highbrow bromance aspects of the film left me cold. The movie offers: a) Freddie looking for guidance from Dodd; b) Dodd failing to help; c) Freddie moving on and adopting/adapting Dodd’s methods to use on others. All that spread out over 150 minutes: if Dodd’s second book could be cut down to a three-page pamphlet, THE MASTER could be beneficially reduced to a 20-minute short subject. Warren notes that Freddie and Dodd “feel like ciphers” to him, but I think that they are even less than that. Ciphers (well-executed) invite exploration and curiosity – Quell and Dodd registered for me as bundles of authorial/performative tics seeking applause. For all his talent to combine image with sound, I find that Anderson is painfully constricted when it comes to positing the central dynamics of his films – a parade of male contests that usually take on father/son overtones. Edward Albee knocked off the Oedipus Complex in Act III of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” when Dad murders his blue-haired, blonde-eyed son. Seems times enough for artists to adjust to the new reality and stop misrepresenting the past.
Second: Van Sant’s PSYCHO. Shamus: the three films you mention are not the important works for me in his career. The case I make for Van Sant rests on the films I mentioned along with MALA NOCHE; DRUGSTORE COWBOY; and MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO.
As for VS’ PSYCHO being more harrowing, I posted about it extensively at davekehr.com In brief: I argue that Hitchcock intended Norman Bates to be a sexually undefined Other, neither gay nor straight. In keeping with this plan, Anthony Perkins plays an ostensibly het male role pansy-side up. But time has played a trick on Hitchcock’s film: we are much more sophisticated about sex/gender/sexual orientation so Norman now comes off as strictly gay (due in large part to Perkin’s performance). I found it interesting that a group of straight men who saw the film upon its release said they took Norman as straight, while I and other queers I know who saw the film in later years took Norman as gay. Norman as gay makes nonsense of him spying on Marion, but as society and the consciousnesses it gives birth to change, it is hard to take him otherwise. Van Sant having Norman masturbate to Marion marks him as heterosexual and brings to the fore the theme of male violence against women which Hitchcock’s version ends up soft-pedaling (not intentionally I would argue) by its positioning of Norman (the key scene here is when Norman swishes up the stairs. There is no other character in the scene, so it cannot be argued that he is swishing to deceive within the film – he swishes for the audience in order to signify). AH corrects this error in FRENZY, but it sends the second half of PSYCHO off the rails.
By restoring Norman’s heterosexuality, Van Sant expands the horror of male violence – visually reinforced by the last shot where the camera pulls back indicating the vast expanse of where female bodies might have been buried.
Dunno if I think PTA is Kubrick’s heir (although Kubrick’s influence is all over the place) but I do know I think this is the most evocative “dream movie” since EYES WIDE SHUT. I do think Anderson has changed his game here to making a cinematic time-bomb, the sort of event you walk away from thinking that was good but somehow lacking and then you wind up thinking of nothing else for the next 78 hours. My favorite moment only involved one of the main characters peripherally – a department store model waltzing around as Ella Fitzgerald sings “Get Thee Behind Me Satan.” The one thing I will say is anybody expecting the bravura flourishes that concluded THERE WILL BE BLOOD will be disappointed – but the film offers other muted, low-key rewards, grace notes and an experience that sets off explosions in your head days later.
I always thought Van Sant’s Psycho was like Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, DePalma’s Raising Cain, and Cox’s Walker: a movie partially, or possibly entirely, designed to drive film critics like myself and others insane. Unfortunately, unlike DePalma and Cox, he forgot to make the movie entertaining.
Forget about PSYCHO, Van Sant’s death quadrilogy (GERRY, ELEPHANT, LAST DAYS, PARANOID PARK) is far more interesting work than most filmmakers ever produce, let alone by consciously shifting visual style and narrative interest decades into their careers. For these films alone, even more than the promising early work, he should be considered among the very greatest living filmmakers anywhere in the world today.
@ DeafEars, If THE MASTER is a “dream movie” than I dreamt it had a story and a reason for taking up more than two hours of my life… and then a woke up! That department store tracking flourish would almost be great – if it were introducing us to a character we’d ever seen again. Except, like most other effects in the film, it’s a one-off idea, with no narrative or thematic heft behind it. Kubrickian it is not.
wo, I would never consider HF or TRUST anywhere close to the same level as DEAD MAN, LIMITS OF CONTROL, DO THE RIGHT THING, MALCOLM X or even BAMBOOZLED. But I love 3 3/4s of that Van Sant quartet, so once more: taste != accounting.
And I sure can’t wait to find out what said fuss is about, or is not, about this here latest PTA.
The Master is a film that takes Freud’s ideas to heart – without irony. Could have been better but it does have some fine moments.
Awesome list Glen, but I do think Tim Burton and Clint Eastwood should also feature on that list.
@James Keepnews, maybe it’s because Hal Hartley is both a better storyteller and a director more in control of his less flashy toolkit that it’s a bit harder for you to notice? Spike Lee’s best film is INSIDE MAN… After that maybe 25th HOUR… For a guy who loves few things more than a good Western DEAD MAN is one of the few newer ones I outright loathe and THE LIMITS OF CONTROL is probably the worst Jim Jarmusch I’ve ever seen. The early funny ones are still okay by me if we’re talking STRANGER THAN PARADISE, his best film still or DOWN BY LAW. But they don’t ever move me like Hal Hartley’s best work.
Hey Warren Oates:
Asking for the 10 zillionth time:
You ever consider a name change? For a guy named after Warren Oates, you always seem like kind of a mewling nance. Would WARREN OATES watch Hal Hartley movies? You’re like if Jeff Wells named himself LUCIO FULCI or something. Change the name.
Wow, Lex, steady. Not everyone can be as aptly named as you, Mr. Luthor.
As to wo, maybe it IS because Hal Hartley is both a better storyteller and a director more in control of his less flashy toolkit that it’s a bit harder for me to notice that he’s a better filmmaker than Jarmusch or Lee. Alternatively, maybe not.
First off, DEAD MAN is where JJ’s cinema opens up by opening inwardly – yes, in the “head trip” sense, but also the radical joining of the “opening” of the West to the closing of William Blake’s life. And time will be kinder to LIMITS, much as it was to DEAD MAN – I’ll get nothing done at work today if I try to marshal the aesthetic defense it deserves this morning. But I was transported by it, and find its use of repetition operating at another order of sophistication from anything in Hartley’s work, most especially not in the gauche one-for-ones one finds in FLIRT. INSIDE JOB is a corker of a genre flick, much like CLOCKERS which I admire considerably more, but no more than an entertainment. (Have yet to see 25th.).
But, I’m sorry, it’s because Hartley’s a better storyteller exerting greater control that prevents me from noticing his superiority? Even allowing for the insult, how would such superior skills remaining anonymous obtain logically? And let’s be real – “deadpan” is not synonymous with “subtle”. Stately compositions notwithstanding, whose pan has (had?) more flash than Hartley’s?
Yeah, that’s why Hal Hartley’s remained so relevant these last 14 years.
At the end of “The 25th Hour” I just kept waiting for Norton’s buddy to tell him “Y’know, I can pound your face to pudding if you want me to, but you’re still gonna heal someday, and they’re only gonna bugger you twice as bad when you do”. And that’s even assuming hardened cons would actually be so put off because their victim isn’t in pristine condition that they wouldn’t follow through on the rape.
I just got into Hartley recently. The movies are very much of their time (the pastel hues and synth scores) but the artificiality is so foregrounded it’s ultimately less of a problem than it would be with more naturalistic material. E.g., Hartley’s cluelessness about the Internet just adds another layer of absurdity to HENRY FOOL.
…whose titular character you’d think would be in the Lex pantheon for this monologue alone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aaW_VMMa2E
HH’s lack of current cultural cachet says more about the culture’s e-/devolving attitude towards stylized, unapologetically brainy cinema than it does about HH.
Hartley foregrounds artificiality, alright – that strikes me as a polite way of saying he beats you over the head with it. Compare the “artificial” language in Pinter and Mamet where, if attention is called to it, it is for the disjunctive affect/effect, whereas Hartley’s arch ironisms seem primed for precisely the kind of knowing douchebag titter so roiling the commenters on the “Olio” thread (Glenn, what, Dagmar Krause we’d anticipate by now, but no Newks to adumbrate your points/title through song?) hereabouts.
In fairness, HH did direct the video for Yo La Tengo’s “From a Motel 6,” easily one of my favorites of all time, as it might be for anyone else conversant with the narrative arc that is the band rehearsal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apTwaiAyyPI
There’s a pretty big difference between knowingly tittering at a film you don’t have the imaginative generosity to sincerely engage with (for which the douchebag label may be appropriate) and knowingly tittering at a film that deliberately courts knowing titters. And there are many moments when Hartley’s disjunctive a-/effects do something more elusive and complicated than that, and I doubt most of the people cackling at SINGING IN THE RAIN would know what to do with those.
I take your meaning – I was thinking more about the commenters’ dismay over the Film Forum titter-oisie for whom I feel far too much of Hartley’s cinema amounts to a slow, winking pitch right down the middle of the plate.
(& I didn’t post to the “Olio” comment thread because, beyond its service as a lament, I’m not sure what such threnodies as MZS’ accomplish. Great films are not unsophisticated; we are. Super. Let’s assume you’re right. Now what?)
I’d put off seeing Hartley films for years, because even the rave reviews (not to mention the trailers) made them sound deeply unappealing. I finally relented with FAY GRIM, thinking that a spy comedy-thriller with Parker Posey and Jeff Goldblum will at least be watchable, and serve as a gateway for his other movies. But I hated it.
For you Hartley fans out there – is FAY GRIM an anomaly, or is it pretty representative of his work overall?
(I’m still trying to process THE MASTER, which I saw two days ago. I thought THERE WILL BE BLOOD was the great English-language movie of the last decade-plus, but THE MASTER made it seem simple, accessible and mainstream in comparison).
Bettencourt: I worship Hartley’s great flicks, but I think his action pictures (FAY and AMATEUR, I’m thinking of) are disastrous. To get what the fuss is, I recommend checking out THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH, SURVIVING DESIRE, and for a good later one, NO SUCH THING.
Did anyone see Hartley’s new film, that thing with DJ Mendel?
Personally I think his approach to video, more than anything, has been disastrous. Also, now that I think about it, every Hartley movie not shot by Michael Spiller has been kind of disastrous…
“Bettencourt: I worship Hartley’s great flicks”
I’m also a big Hartley fan, especially his 20th century work. Among the more recent stuff, I think Fay Grim is quite good and underrated, though not great. But along with many, I find No Such Thing pretty problematic
But back to the superior 20th century work: I’ve always found the lack of appreciation for The Book of Life to be mystifying. Not only is it arguably his best film, but the scene of PJ Harvey singing To Sir With Love ranks among my favorite moments in all of modern cinema. Reliably sends shivers up my spine no matter how many times I see the flick.
Gus may “restore Norman’s heterosexuality” but he gives us queers a great view of Viggo’s naked ass – with special attention to the butterfly tattoo just above his crack.
@Lex, I appreciate the name suggestions, but I was kind of expecting something a bit more traditional from you? Aren’t there any females in any of the films we’re talking about that you want to oggle?
@James Keepnews, Jarmusch isn’t really much of a storyteller at all. He doesn’t care about narrative so much as he does about making moments. Which is fine, but not every collection of moments deserves to go on from 90 minutes or more.
Hartley’s visual style is quite elegant, especially in some of those early features. It’s heavily influenced by Bresson and late Godard. The dialogue is stylized but no more so than it is in, say, an older screwball comedy. But really, am I the only one other than TFB and Petey who’s moved by the stories in the great HH films like TRUST and HENRY FOOL? Isn’t that kind of the point of _narrative_ filmmaking?
I have seen MEANWHILE, which is available as a download and a DVD directly from his website. It’s my favorite thing he’s done since HENRY FOOL. A very good but not great return to form. And probably the best looking/best working video feature he’s just made. (At around 60 minutes, it’s a long pilot that got reworked into a short feature.)