What a terrible movie. It's like the fantasy of a 10-year-old crying over the fact that his brother is taller than he is. So, here's this fascinating dystopian society, with deep-rooted class inequality, which raises many interesting political, moral and technological questions. The movie notices none of them. The only thing the audience is asked to care about is whether the hero gets to do his dream job. Is there a larger implication here? Will he try to fight injustice or help others? Nope. He just wants to be an astronaut because space is cool.
No one in the underclass besides the hero gets a name. They are all faceless, uniform men. There is only one woman in the movie--the blonde. No, I don't remember her name, why should I. Her job is to be a sex object and tell the hero that she likes him more even though his brother is taller. Their first sex scene occurs immediately after she has, in horror, watched him beat up a cop in order to avoid being questioned about a murder which she, and the audience, have strong reason to believe he committed to pursue his childish spaceman fantasy. This is below the moral level of a fairytale--and not just because the hero murdered an innocent man. At least in a fairytale,
you have to give the beggar some of your bread before she'll
do magic for you. Here, the hero gets special favors from a dozen other characters while
narcissistically pursuing his dream with complete disregard for every
other person besides himself. Disgusting.
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
August 1, 2014
May 29, 2009
Why I can't enjoy film
Reading in our world has a sort of old, sedate, peaceful, slow image, while TV and movies are perceived as fast, exciting and youthful. Many people think that TV is shortening our attention spans! The truth is precisely the contrary: my attention span is too short to do anything but read. With 98% of movies, I get bored after about 20 minutes and start to multitask. Even with the few really good movies, I prefer to watch in 30-minute installments.
Think about it: how many words do you take in per second? Quickly testing it with a fairly easy nonfiction text, I found I read 7-10 words per second. That means that, several times per second, something is happening. In nonfiction, an argument is being presented or an example given. In fiction, even if nothing is happening in the plot, there’s a description, a philosophical aside, or a thought-provoking word choice to focus on.
(N.B.: This assumes you are reading an actually good book. If you are one of those people who read books for their plot, you might as well just switch to TV. I will not miss you.)
If I think the book is going too slowly, I can just read faster. Alternatively, I can skip forward, reading a few sentences every few pages, and see if anything more interesting promises to come.
With film, skipping forward is impossible. Watching TV or a movie in a theatre, there is no way you can figure out what’s going to happen--you have to make an absolute yes-or-no decision about whether to stay and watch. With a DVD, you can of course skip scenes; but that never gives you as much information as skimming through a book. You can skip to the beginning of the next scene, but that might not be the most interesting part. In order to see if it is, you have to watch the whole scene! It’s slavery! You can fast-forward, but all you’ll see will be vague moving shapes; you might be fast-forwarding past the best dialogue in the film, without knowing it.
Moreover, everything moves more slowly in filmed media. Things happen in the superficial sense, but anything interesting takes forever! A ton of any movie or TV show--even the good ones--will be taken up with shots intended to establish the setting or the time period--with shots showing you the characters’ clothes 0r houses or bodies or faces--with shots of their movements or observations--with fistfights and sex. Even in scenes containing dialogue, the actors speak incredibly slowly, compared to the speed at which you would read their words. If you’re familiar with the written text, it’s painful to watch the words dragging and halting by (compare reading “The Importance of Being Earnest” to watching the, nevertheless good, movie!).
I admit that there are certain respects in which the visual image can be more effective; but these are all relatively shallow areas of experience. The sex scene which might arouse male viewers--the sight of an emotional face which appeals to the sentimental--the skeleton jumping out unexpectedly which makes me jump. Anything deeper than these effects which a movie wishes to convey could probably be done as well or better in print.
The exception is comedy, which is actually easier to do in film. With a good episode of “Seinfeld”, for instance, something funny or at least attention-catching is happening every few seconds. (“Seinfeld” also illustrates the fact that in a comedy of whatever kind, all or most emotion must be leached out in order to maintain the comic mood and keep an audience’s interest.) Animated comedies are especially easy for me to appreciate, since their creators usually realize we aren’t interested in lengthy shots of clothes, faces or emotions belonging to animated figures.
I do think, however, that an authentically funny creation is a rare, virtuoso performance, which even the masters can’t keep alive for more than, say, 30 pages or twenty minutes. I honestly can’t remember any non-animated full-length film which I’ve enjoyed for the comedy!
There are other, vaguely personal reasons why I can't enjoy film--but, basically, if I refuse to watch a movie with you; it's not you, it's the entire cinematic tradition.
Think about it: how many words do you take in per second? Quickly testing it with a fairly easy nonfiction text, I found I read 7-10 words per second. That means that, several times per second, something is happening. In nonfiction, an argument is being presented or an example given. In fiction, even if nothing is happening in the plot, there’s a description, a philosophical aside, or a thought-provoking word choice to focus on.
(N.B.: This assumes you are reading an actually good book. If you are one of those people who read books for their plot, you might as well just switch to TV. I will not miss you.)
If I think the book is going too slowly, I can just read faster. Alternatively, I can skip forward, reading a few sentences every few pages, and see if anything more interesting promises to come.
With film, skipping forward is impossible. Watching TV or a movie in a theatre, there is no way you can figure out what’s going to happen--you have to make an absolute yes-or-no decision about whether to stay and watch. With a DVD, you can of course skip scenes; but that never gives you as much information as skimming through a book. You can skip to the beginning of the next scene, but that might not be the most interesting part. In order to see if it is, you have to watch the whole scene! It’s slavery! You can fast-forward, but all you’ll see will be vague moving shapes; you might be fast-forwarding past the best dialogue in the film, without knowing it.
Moreover, everything moves more slowly in filmed media. Things happen in the superficial sense, but anything interesting takes forever! A ton of any movie or TV show--even the good ones--will be taken up with shots intended to establish the setting or the time period--with shots showing you the characters’ clothes 0r houses or bodies or faces--with shots of their movements or observations--with fistfights and sex. Even in scenes containing dialogue, the actors speak incredibly slowly, compared to the speed at which you would read their words. If you’re familiar with the written text, it’s painful to watch the words dragging and halting by (compare reading “The Importance of Being Earnest” to watching the, nevertheless good, movie!).
I admit that there are certain respects in which the visual image can be more effective; but these are all relatively shallow areas of experience. The sex scene which might arouse male viewers--the sight of an emotional face which appeals to the sentimental--the skeleton jumping out unexpectedly which makes me jump. Anything deeper than these effects which a movie wishes to convey could probably be done as well or better in print.
The exception is comedy, which is actually easier to do in film. With a good episode of “Seinfeld”, for instance, something funny or at least attention-catching is happening every few seconds. (“Seinfeld” also illustrates the fact that in a comedy of whatever kind, all or most emotion must be leached out in order to maintain the comic mood and keep an audience’s interest.) Animated comedies are especially easy for me to appreciate, since their creators usually realize we aren’t interested in lengthy shots of clothes, faces or emotions belonging to animated figures.
I do think, however, that an authentically funny creation is a rare, virtuoso performance, which even the masters can’t keep alive for more than, say, 30 pages or twenty minutes. I honestly can’t remember any non-animated full-length film which I’ve enjoyed for the comedy!
There are other, vaguely personal reasons why I can't enjoy film--but, basically, if I refuse to watch a movie with you; it's not you, it's the entire cinematic tradition.
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