Multo.com :: Visual Magic

Making Movies That Matter

I’ve been home with a cold, watching movie after movie. This is my favorite part of being sick – alleviating the boredom of couch napping and coughing.

This weekend, I watched a range of movies, from “Sideways” to “Millions”. I noticed several key issues with the movies being produced inside the Hollywood system or its close, well-funded “independent” cousins (Miramax, etc). I also noticed something astonishingly fresh in films made low budget, foreign or on the fringe, topically.

First film up – “Sideways”. I have to admit I HATED this film. I hated it from start to finish. I hated the acting, the cinematography, the music, the characters, the story and the annoyed feeling of being desperately bored. In a business that last year alone included only 7 films made by women in the top 200, or that has yet to bestow an Oscar on a woman director (only 3 have ever been nominated), it still astounds me that Hollywood paid big bucks to make a film about two middle aged yuppie miscreants looking to get laid. The brown landscape outside the main character’s car windows reflects the lack of vision and imagination that lets this story thud towards its uninteresting end. This was supposed to be a comedy but I found nothing amusing in the self-absorbed, neurotic babbling of two men clearly in the need of a cosmic ass kicking. Wine as a story device is weak, boring and pretentious. It was like listening to a long-winded amateur sommelier impressing himself with long descriptions of florrid bullshit, saying absolutely nothing. Basically, it is a “who cares?” movie – the kind of film that eats a few hours and leaves you with very little but dull details.

When I go to the theater, (and these days that is less and less, thanks to the women-hostile storylines and depictions), I go to escape, but not just rampant eye candy escapism. I go to be inspired, either by the story of an underdog doing good, a search for justice, a story of freedom, or of magic and fantasy. I want to go on a journey with the characters and see archetypes come to life. Even cinema verité has a goal – to educate and enliven the cultural collage with a slice of life that inspires with its purity or simplicity. Wallowing in someone’s misery or neurosis is not something I find amusing or inspiring.

I also saw “The Ice Harvest” and what a horrible, ham fisted attempt at film noir this was! I didn’t care about any of the characters, the plot was predictable and the entire presentation was formulaic. It was the sloppy lauding of criminality or ducking responsibility or, well, that’s the point – there didn’t seem to be a point. Except grab the money and run. Or killing your friends is the same as killing your enemies. Or…well, you get the point. Perhaps either the director, (shockingly, the usually very funny Harold Ramis), or writer couldn’t quite keep to one noir topic or theme. The result is forgettable, unlikable and boring. The payoff simply just wasn’t worth it.

I remember a professor of mine saying something that has stuck with me – where is the love? If the film has nothing to love, why should the viewer care? Why should a person spend hours with poorly developed characters, in a badly crafted plot, just because it has Hollywood’s window dressing – nice sets, nice costumes, nice lighting, etc. Nice eye candy, and utterly empty.

I saw “Millions”, sandwiched somewhere between the two above. Danny Boyle did a masterful job creating a film that is simple, sweet and has an inspiring message. It was, as the Irish say, brilliant! With a tagline like “Can anyone be truly good?”, I knew I was in for a good ride. Two young brothers struggle over found millions and look to god, their dead mother and the stars for guidance. Sounds heavy-handed and cloyingly sweet, but instead, it is a fresh presentation of the age old question of man against himself.

Perhaps films lacking message are the reason for the rise of the documentary. People want to be moved and inspired, and Hollywood just can’t seem to do that anymore. But real stories, of real people’s lives, rivet audiences to the screen. It is becoming harder and harder to care about a millionaire portraying a poor man or action hero, while his lifestyle and marriage is more newsworthy. Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, Brangelina, Bennifer, the list goes on and the coverage is endless. How much of this focus is created from the outside looking in and how much is orchestrated from the inside?

Hollywood no longer respects its audience. In fact, most films are written for a grade school vocabulary, and dialogue is getting sparser in Hollywood movies. Why? It makes films easier to export worldwide and cuts down on subtitling. It is easier to understand the physical motion or visual/music cues than complex dialogue. “Simple-stupid” is a common term in making films more “palatable” to the general public. I think that’s a gross miscalculation of the human desire to connect and learn.

Movie watching is both communal and solitary at the same time. The flickering glow of the screen harkens back to our aboriginal collectives around the tribe fire, listening and watching stories come to life. In the circle of light, the shaman tells the tale, while rows of eager faces stare at the combination of light, sound and emotion. We commune with our collective pasts in the shared laughter or scream during a good movie. We recognize the communal messages and feel comfort in sharing our similar reactions. We came, eons ago, to be inspired, to learn about the stars, the darkness, the purpose of life and death. Now, we have rambling speakers with lots of glitter but no message. The communal reaction is shared in our increasing displeasure with stories that tell no tale but the obvious and frivolous, and our resulting decrease in box office attendence. We, the supposed unwashed masses, yearn for meaning and message.

Peace,
Melissa

NOTE: Check out Guerrilla Girls for more info on Hollywood’s discrimination against women filmmakers.