O hai guyz. I hope everyone's getting into colleges. I hope everyone is equally uneasy about the fact that, ten years from now, the average human being is married with children. And I hope everyone will listen to my bitching, as is the norm...
So I saw Never Let Me Go last week. It's astoundingly photographed and flawlessly acted, but underdeveloped characters make the experience a bit less than it could be. Still, it's the kind of Oscar-ready film that will probably be mistakenly hailed as a classic for years to come. It got me to thinking; what films truly got off easy when it came to public approval. What slices of sorry treacle has been masquerading as masterpieces for too, too long? I don't mean the slightly over-hyped (The Dark Knight), or the decent sentimental goop that bleeding-heart soccer moms put on a pedestal (Forrest Gump....shoot me, the heartlessness comes with the religious territory)-I'm talking the really awful stuff that's been passed off as the really great stuff. I'd be shocked if the remainder of this post doesn't piss a few people off. In fact, I'd be dissappointed.
West Side StoryThe Consensus: With its lush score, intricately choreographed dance numbers, and ingenious re-imagining of the traditional tragedy, this is one at the summit of stage-to-screen adaptations.
Jew Says: Okay, the greatness of Jerome Robbins choreography isn't up for debate. Viewed out of context with the actual story, the sangin' and a-hoofin' are both impeccably orchestrated and captured with infectious energy by Robert Wise's camera. But, judged as a part of the movie's whole, they reveal that this one's attempting the damning practice of having its cake and eating it, too. West Side Story the motion picture doesn't work for the same reason West Side Story the show doesn't work-its two conceivable reasons to be cancel each other out. The gangsters in Guys and Dolls could sing and dance up a storm convincingly because they weren't really gangsters; they were broadly rendered caricatures who, despite their "fuhgeddaboutits" and hackneyed scowls, never dipped deeper into the pool of vice and vanity than a little gambling. Here, however, the members of the Sharks and Jets are supposed to be the real thing, hot-blooded, impetuous hoods who open up old wounds in midnight "rumbles" just to feel something. So why are these people we're supposed to be at least little afraid of doing ballet? The story could've worked as a straight examination of the gang mentality-there's certainly potential there. Or, it could've been a parody of said gangs, reveling in the singular absurdity of its dancing ruffians. As it is, WSS attempts to manufacture menace in the dialogue scenes, and then undoes the effects of that menace by reaching fervently and frequently for jazz-hand glory. Or, looked at the other way, it creates a inventive, winningly idiosyncratic musical conceit that's constantly being abandoned for scenes of jarring violence. In the end, both incarnations of this piece commit artistic suicide in so many ways that all I can do is weep for what could've been done with such a talented roster of writers, choreographers, and actors. Wow, have I ever incurred the wrath of the theatre kids with this review. Please still talk to me guys! I like My Fair Lady and Hello, Dolly! as much as the next guy!
La Dolce Vita
The Consensus: Federico Fellini was the greatest visual stylist in the history of film, and he puts his talent to good use here, exposing the seedy underbelly of celebrity life and creating an erotically despairing vision of Italy that still astounds today.
Jew Says: Fellini had serious behind-the-camera chops (see 8 1/2 and La Strada), and judging by this picture he knew it too. The film follows a cadre of disillusioned starlets, raging hubbies, greasy hucksters and hungry paparazzo for seven tempestuous, oversexed nights of vacuous happiness and camouflaged misery. As you may have noticed, it's not the most tightly focused plot, and the director chooses to tell what little story there is in a series of whiz-bang setpieces that are individually thrilling but cumulatively empty. Every scene is staggeringly self-conscious; you can always feel the auteur behind the curtain weaving wonders just to show off, straining to entertain us for his own ego's sake. The picture reminds me of those too-talented musicians who can jam incessantly and ostentatiously for hours without ever settling on a coherent melody. For all its beauty, it's just too high on itself to leave some kind of lasting impression.
Jew Says: Fellini had serious behind-the-camera chops (see 8 1/2 and La Strada), and judging by this picture he knew it too. The film follows a cadre of disillusioned starlets, raging hubbies, greasy hucksters and hungry paparazzo for seven tempestuous, oversexed nights of vacuous happiness and camouflaged misery. As you may have noticed, it's not the most tightly focused plot, and the director chooses to tell what little story there is in a series of whiz-bang setpieces that are individually thrilling but cumulatively empty. Every scene is staggeringly self-conscious; you can always feel the auteur behind the curtain weaving wonders just to show off, straining to entertain us for his own ego's sake. The picture reminds me of those too-talented musicians who can jam incessantly and ostentatiously for hours without ever settling on a coherent melody. For all its beauty, it's just too high on itself to leave some kind of lasting impression.
Raging Bull
The Consensus: The screen's answer to Othello, Scorsese's peak, and the best film of the last 30 years.
Jew Says: Look, any subject can be made watchable. Schindler's List could've been agony, but juxtaposing the compelling story of Oskar's personal evolution with what critic Owen Gleiberman terms "grace notes of cruelty" made it bearable enough to sit through without doing injustice to the nerve-frying horrors of the Shoah. Cool Hand Luke gives us plenty of keenly observed, deeply felt moments of comradery between the prisoners, which softens (but doesn't dull) the effects of the Captain's startling sadism. Hell, Scorsese himself did it in Goodfellas by leavening the gore of mob life with the chintzy glamor. Here, we have a film about Jake LaMotta (Robert Deniro), a man who beats people up in and out of the boxing ring and makes his wife and brother into mental punching bags so as to vent his sexual insecurities. And that's it. No moments where we're allowed a relief from the anger, the tension, the impotent fury. Not a second where someone isn't shouting or clearly building to a shout. Scorsese can find nothing to do but stage fight after fight after fight, so that every punch and epithet becomes a little less effective than the last, because, quite frankly, we're just worn out by it all. To see how this sort of personality is corrected portrayed onscreen, see A Streetcar Named Desire, where Kazan and Brando probe the simple, stormy soul of a man with animal tendencies. Here, because Scorsese finds no technique to make Lamotta's story anything less than hell to sit through, I felt like I was watching an Animal Planet documentary on a creature that incidentally shared some traits with homo sapiens. DeNiro puts his heart and soul into realizing Scorsese's vision, but the vision itself is one of the few flawed ones in the director's career.
Dances With WolvesThe Consensus: A great American epic the likes of which we don't see anymore, gilded with spectacular production values and boasting the first accurate cinematic portrayal of Native Americans in ages.
Oh come on now, kiddies. That's just bullshit. No one can deny the waving wheat and rampaging buffalo fill the screen and the speakers impressively, but my problem with this shameful, pandering wreck of a film is how earnestly it pretends to be exactly what it isn't. As former Civil War combatant John Dunbar (Kevin Costner, directing himself and therefore miscasting himself) becomes an observer of, participant in and activist for Sioux culture, we're treated to scene after scene of Nice Indians and Big Bad White People. Okay, for accuracy's sake, I should mention there is one mean Indian who-spoiler alert-turns out to be a good ol' boy deep down, and this revelation did indeed move me-to get up and find a toilet to vomit in, that is. The point I'm trying to make here is that flagrant oversimplification is a two-way street. For years, Hollywood was viciously vilified for casting the entire Native American people as spear-brandishing armies just waiting to get plowed down by John Wayne and co. Costner was showered with Oscars and box-office moolah for finally breaking the mold, but think about it. Isn't this picture just a three-hour act of revisionist racism? Now the whites are the sneering sociopaths, and the Indians get the saint role. Is canonizing an entire people any better than condemning them? God, how I hate this movie so! Costner's "magnum opus" (ha ha, he's done TONS better) is a meat-and-potatoes Western stretched to bladder-busting length and drenched in sickly-sweet preachiness; in short, pleasing to the eye, downright offensive to the intellect.
The Third Man
The Consensus: Carol Reed's stunningly shot thriller doubles as an insightful character piece that says something eerie but essential about the post-WWII world. Also, its score is among the best ever written.
Films should either A) Give us a story told with energy and originality or B) in the absence of conventional narrative, provide us with characters whom are interesting enough that our desire to study them supplants our agitation with the lack of conventional plot. In short, get me into the events, or the people. Or, if you can, both. This film does neither. Our lead Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) is an incalculably dumb pulp writer who's capable only of smart-ass remarks and shows no real emotion, so the Interest In Character technique doesn't work. And, seeing as the entire film consists of Martins walking around post-war Vienna trying to uncover what led to the death of his BFF Harry Lime (Orson Welles), intercut with the occasional random close-up of a "random" figure in shadow, we know that, unless the screenwriter really intends to rob us of our monies, the dead dude is really alive and-gasp-is the guy whose been lurking around the whole time! Some films are said to "telegraph" their plot twists; this one grabs a megaphone and shouts it louder and for longer than a senator the month before election time. Of all the films I've talked about in the course of this post, it is this one's success that baffles me most. How can you praise the depth of a character who undergoes no real change-who goes from slightly bitter to really fucking bitter, not gradually, but suddenly because the plot requires him to? How can you laud camerawork and background music so showy and pretentious that it's at right angles to the barely existent drama? Most importantly, tell me; how can you praise this as a great work when every single personage involved in the making of this film also produced masterpieces of inconceivably greater quality?
Hopefully I've made you re-think some "classics" (lawl). Your turn. What are your picks for the most overrated films ever made? Ready set go.
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