Do you gravitate towards visual beauty more than story...
Feb 2, 2023 17:12:57 GMT
pacinoyes likes this
Post by ibbi on Feb 2, 2023 17:12:57 GMT
The fact that they can not tell a story to save their lives is definitely an issue... but I've come to wish that they were to be stripped from any ounce of visual style somehow..... then everyone will realize how empty at core movies have become, sooner - and may try to find a solution.
Sending our visionary filmmakers of the day back to the script-writing classes might help... somebody close to Baz "just made his best movie" Luhrmann better like him enough to say "hey... we just wrote those two pointless love scenes for da king of Rock'nRoll... maybe spend the next hour try and build something true between them so the final airport scene actually has anything of emotional substance to the offer the poor viewer?" ... or make Robert Eggers sit for a while and think to himself "Gee, I did my best getting those Scandinavian mythologies details super-duper right and the landscapes look gorgeous! How a 50+ yrs old revenge flick awakens more care in the viewer than my movie? Hell, how a Tarantino martial arts patiche from 20 years ago works better? " ...
Won't call whatever I've seen in recent years as ounces of "heart" either. They feel like showoffs of technicality and budget.
I wasn't actually talking about banal, flavourless, flat stories, but movies that are that way. Like, TV movies, only nowadays they've reached heights of obnoxiousness by color grading themselves to death in post and expecting that to pass for panache.
I guess, when it comes down to it, those kinds of movies might be technically easier to watch, but I feel like they're also harder to really love.
Anyway, to launch into a rant of my own in an attempt to answer @tyler 's original question - Would it have been better for Polanski and Brach to do a good job adapting Tess (don't give me any of that Colin McCabe Criterion excuse making!), or do as he did and simplify it heinously, drain every ounce of life from it (could have used some of that Polanski madness), but film it so prettily that you could hang every frame on a wall?
And my answer is............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................(apologies to pacinoyes for gimmick infringement but I'm thinking deeply)...............................................................................................................................
In an age when pics made on computers pass for epic spectacle, I find myself better appreciating mediocre movies from days gone by like Tess and Zhivago that are not very good, but are filmed outside under the sun and the moon with some of that old John Fordian psychology about horizon lines that make them feel huge a lot more than I once might have.