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February 9, 2006And so the question of small demands on movies that speak to the great issues of our day...
It would be so easy to simply say, "Most people don't like to be challenged." But perhaps it is as easy as that.
Art history is loaded with great talents who were unappreciated during their lives. There is a romantic notion about Van Gogh's ear and Basquiat's addictions and even the accessibility of Shakespeare's work. Was Shakespeare the Steven Spielberg of his time, so unappreciated for the flowery prose and melodrama of Romeo & Juliet that he sought to push for greater critical triumph in Titus Andronicus? ("That scene where Titus makes his adversary eat the flesh of her own children... well, let's just say it... it's an embarrassment... it's so over the top!" Toddius MakCathius I, Variety.quill) Was Van Gogh misunderstood or perfectly understood and simply disliked? The arguments about whether Basquiat (and Warhol, for that matter) was a great artist or simply a showy charlatan continue to be had.
Personally, I am suspect of anyone telling me what qualifies as art. And I am equally suspicious of anything that has been lionized and put on a pedestal. Is "A Million Tiny Little Pieces "actually a different book because James Frey made a lot of stuff up? Is Oprah upset because the book isn't as good because some of it was fictionalized or is she simply personally embarrassed? Is the amalgamation of many stories, including Frey's own, any different than any film interpreted from true events? Is this book less important? And, most importantly, what does it say about the audience when we get so narrow minded about the aesthetic of any artistic endeavor? If you think what you read in the paper is Absolute Truth, you better not look too closely or you'll end up writing to Oprah to expose that unreality too.
How much of film - and the commercial part of the medium is unique in the arts because of the expense - should be about satisfying the audience, how much is about the artists' goals, and is there any room left for having the "right" experience, except for in a single-digit portion of the filmgoing community, much less the larger community for whom movies are only a miniscule part of their entertainment experience?
Personally, I have always been, and been encouraged to be, one of those people who will buy a book after seeing a film that moves me... will look for other films by the filmmaker and about the subject... and will seek to be challenged in my thinking in the most intense way possible. Star Wars vs. Star Trek (and now, vs. Battlestar Galactica) is certainly very important to a lot of people... not that there's anything wrong with that. But with due respect both to those who don't care and to the filmmakers of the film I am about to denigrate, shouldn't more of us be pissed off that Hotel Rwanda is the gold standard of Rwandan genocide movies in the American culture? At least one often-very-commercial director, Michael Caton-Jones, saw that film as he was prepping one of his own, and was pushed to even greater lengths to make a film that more accurately represented Rwanda and what the country had been through. The film is called Shooting Dogs... and it still doesn't have a distributor in the United States.
People wonder why I have issues with Brokeback Mountain being called a breakthrough film. Well, it's because I saw Taxi Zum Clo 23 years ago... and it taught me more about the agony of being in the closet and the fear of being dragged out of it, and even though I am still a little disturbed by some of the remembered graphic images of golden showers and such, it stamped into my head the reality that people (gay and straight) have all kinds of passions and judgment is far too easy when the passions are not your own. (My standard has been, and i,s that the line stops at the inclusion of others who are either unable to make informed decisions about their choices, are easily manipulated, or are forced into participation. Aside from that, if you want to want to challenge yourself and/or your fully consenting partner in pretty much anything, you have my blessings... even if hearing about it makes me wince.)
Ironically, Todd Haynes made a film, Far From Heaven, about sexual repression just a few years ago and the outed gay husband had a more fulfilling existence in expressing his sexuality than the wife or her potential black lover in the film, than either character in Brokeback Mountain is allowed. The repression in Brokeback Mountain of any joyous expression of gay life aside from sex... and even that is mostly repressed in the film... makes it a regressive gay film in my eyes. It is kind of horrifying to me that the gay experience that is being touted as a cinematic revolution can accurately be reduced to "two men have sex every few months over 25 years, destroy their marriages and families, never come out... one ends up alone and the other ends up dead, perhaps in a hate crime, but at the very least an endless loop of a hate crime in his surviving lover's head." Is that progress?
Well, in a world desperate for even remotely images of gay men on the big screen, yes. I do understand that. But I find it sad. Ironically, Jeffrey Wells' love of the film at least has led him to an honest analysis of it. If pushed, he will acknowledge that the reason he loves the film is because he sees it as a movie about a miserable man who cannot move forward in his life in any way... a beautiful loser... and Jeff admits that he identities with that. But he is a rarity.
If people are engaged by a drama about someone who is stuck and can't move forward, that is an aesthetic that I can live with others loving. But what concerns me is that the standard for the revolution, so tightly connected to gay self-empowerment, is set so low by this film.
Yes, there was a time when coming to dinner was a big deal for a black man. But even Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, which seems a bit dated now, demands a lot more from the audience because it challenges people who see themselves as liberal to consider just how liberal they really are. The same was true of one of Stephen Sondheim's most quote-from flops, Company, which was really about the New Yorkers who were filling the seats for Sondheim and the revolutionary shows on Broadway at the time, like Hair and Oh, Calcutta. The narrow cast of the Broadway audience rejected, to some degree, the reflection of Company. Guess Who's Coming To Dinner was a hit, in great part, because it was soft and couched in the powerful presences of Tracey and Hepburn. But the Oscar that year went to In The Heat Of The Night, in which Portier challenged a racist society and not a liberal society. I love In The Heat Of The Night, but which film demanded more from the audience?
In an odd way, Crash is this year's In The Heat Of The Night. The targets are easy. The moneyed, white Angelinos are the least formed participants in the story. There are, as someone pointedly noted recently, no jews in the movie. For the most part, it is a movie about "them." And it is very well intended, very well delivered, very well acted... but is it very challenging? I suppose if you walked into the theater already disposed to the anger that Sandra Bullock's character engenders after being assaulted, it might piss you off and getting past that would be a feat. But the artistry of filmmaking is greater than the power of the messages. It is a snack that feels like a meal.
Capote is a more aggressive, more complex look at a gay American, in great part because the film is not about being gay. There is a romantic subtext within the relationship between Capote and Perry Smith and there is Capote's long-time relationship. I don't know whether Harper Lee was gay or not. But the challenges of going to a small town, of being "the way I am," as Capote puts it, are not primarily about being gay, but literally about being the way Truman was... which included, but was not exclusive to, being gay. Capote is not an important film about being gay - any more than the far more overt and grotesquely underrated Breakfast on Pluto is - but like Gods & Monsters, it is a far more complete portrait of being a gay American in a more challenging time for anyone who was different than the norm.
Good Night, And Good Luck is smart, sumptuous, important, and completely Black & White in every way. I am glad the film was made and I am completely respectful of George Clooney's intentions... and it is an entirely unimportant for the Hollywood community, where there is no "other" answer to the questions that are posed. It is a wonderful historic document, like a good Holocaust movie that reminds us to never forget. But no one is going to be rooting for the Nazis.
I am very proud of the Academy foreign language committee for embracing Paradise Now, a film that is ultimately in agreement with what most liberals believe, but still challenges in subtle, complex ways along the way.
The doc nominee Street Fight is another film that challenges us to reconsider our well-intended predispositions, following the political battle between the younger black candidate of the future and the veteran black survivor who has held on to the mayorship of Newark, NJ for decades. The film certainly leans to the young, for all kinds of legitimate unbiased reasons, but as viewers, we must consider the value of the ground onto which this young man walks, tilled by the scrappy vet.
So... I'm not sure I answered my own question. And I dragged myself into another discussion of Brokeback Mountain for which I will be attacked some more. But if you don't crack some eggs, what is the point of starting the conversation? We can always push a little harder. And thank goodness some filmmakers and some distributors and some marketers and some audiences still do.
January 3, 2006 - Reflections On A New Year
January 6, 2006 - Sundance Preview
January 5, 2006 - The Business Of 2005, Pt 1
January 9, 2006 - The Business Of 2005, Pt 2
January 11 - Munich In Sequence | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3
January 12 - V For Vendetta
