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I'm Very Tired
Sep. 8th, 2007 04:57 amHaving bad insomnia. This may be incoherent. But of course it seems vitally important to me right now, and possibly writing it down will allow me to sleep someday.
Today, again, I read a blog entry talking about how Requiem for a Dream is an incredible movie, but is so painful the blog author can't bear to watch it again. I hear this a lot about Requiem; it seems like the standard reaction. I hear the same thing about Brazil, another of my favorite movies.
I don't get it. I can't think of anything I've ever watched, or heard, or read that I thought was good but too sad to experience again. I don't want to rewatch Schindler's List, but that's not because it's sad - it's because I thought the performances were overwrought, the camera work was intrusive, and the script was mawkish. In contrast, Requiem is daring and brutal but never flashy or maudlin. When the film ends, sure I'm sad, but I'm also elated because I've just watched an incredible piece of art. Yet Ciro is the only other person I can think of who I've heard talk about it in this way, and who is always willing to rewatch it.
Is it something about movies specifically? I mean, everyone dies in Hamlet and Antigone, few popular operas end happily, and dearly loved poems contain lines like "things fall apart; the center cannot hold" or "look on my works ye mighty and despair." We like paintings like "The Scream" and stuff by Edward Hopper. We obsess over songs that make us cry, over photos of the Great Depression. Is it because we look to movies for entertainment? Or is the medium overwhelming in its combination of sound and moving images? Isolating because it is absorbing, unresponsive, and without interruption?
Certainly, I don't want to watch something that only exists to hurt me - that sets up likeable characters just to kill them arbitrarily, or that chains a puppy to a radiator just for the sake of chaining a puppy to a radiator. But all that's bad storytelling - pathos without substance. And everyone agrees Requiem and Brazil aren't - there's something personal and real being communicated in a skillful way.
What gives? Why not watch the movies again? Sure, they're sad, but one obviously thinks they're worth it.
Maybe I am just not understanding this because I cry at everything. I cried at The Simpsons Movie.
I would also like to say that The Fountain (same director as Requiem) is very good, and I think one of the reasons it did poorly is that it was advertised as science fiction, which it isn't really. I mean, on one level it's possible to interpret it as being about time travel, but all of that is mainly metaphor about the overwhelming and all-encompasing nature of grief and fear of loss. It's a subjective, internal film, and calling it science fiction confused a lot of viewers who tried to graft science fiction linearity on to it and then got angry and thought it made no sense. Whereas without that "find the science fiction" precondition, the movie is pretty straightforward. Nuanced, but straightforward. With an amazing central performance by Hugh Jackman that shows emotional reactions I see frequently in Ciro but rarely on film.
Today, again, I read a blog entry talking about how Requiem for a Dream is an incredible movie, but is so painful the blog author can't bear to watch it again. I hear this a lot about Requiem; it seems like the standard reaction. I hear the same thing about Brazil, another of my favorite movies.
I don't get it. I can't think of anything I've ever watched, or heard, or read that I thought was good but too sad to experience again. I don't want to rewatch Schindler's List, but that's not because it's sad - it's because I thought the performances were overwrought, the camera work was intrusive, and the script was mawkish. In contrast, Requiem is daring and brutal but never flashy or maudlin. When the film ends, sure I'm sad, but I'm also elated because I've just watched an incredible piece of art. Yet Ciro is the only other person I can think of who I've heard talk about it in this way, and who is always willing to rewatch it.
Is it something about movies specifically? I mean, everyone dies in Hamlet and Antigone, few popular operas end happily, and dearly loved poems contain lines like "things fall apart; the center cannot hold" or "look on my works ye mighty and despair." We like paintings like "The Scream" and stuff by Edward Hopper. We obsess over songs that make us cry, over photos of the Great Depression. Is it because we look to movies for entertainment? Or is the medium overwhelming in its combination of sound and moving images? Isolating because it is absorbing, unresponsive, and without interruption?
Certainly, I don't want to watch something that only exists to hurt me - that sets up likeable characters just to kill them arbitrarily, or that chains a puppy to a radiator just for the sake of chaining a puppy to a radiator. But all that's bad storytelling - pathos without substance. And everyone agrees Requiem and Brazil aren't - there's something personal and real being communicated in a skillful way.
What gives? Why not watch the movies again? Sure, they're sad, but one obviously thinks they're worth it.
Maybe I am just not understanding this because I cry at everything. I cried at The Simpsons Movie.
I would also like to say that The Fountain (same director as Requiem) is very good, and I think one of the reasons it did poorly is that it was advertised as science fiction, which it isn't really. I mean, on one level it's possible to interpret it as being about time travel, but all of that is mainly metaphor about the overwhelming and all-encompasing nature of grief and fear of loss. It's a subjective, internal film, and calling it science fiction confused a lot of viewers who tried to graft science fiction linearity on to it and then got angry and thought it made no sense. Whereas without that "find the science fiction" precondition, the movie is pretty straightforward. Nuanced, but straightforward. With an amazing central performance by Hugh Jackman that shows emotional reactions I see frequently in Ciro but rarely on film.
