The Official Review Thread of 2006

[Greg]

criddic, our so-called "War On Terrorism" is really the neocon's misguided attempt to deal with this problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

A much better way to deal with the problem can be found here:

http://cohesion.rice.edu/Natural....ton.pdf

[Mister Tee]

You ever get the feeling criddic's exposure to American history has mostly been through Young Adult biographies ("Teddy Roosevelt: Hero of San Juan Hill!")? Most of us have moved on to the grown-up version, where even the best leaders have to navigate swamps of self-interest, and even the best countries do ghastly things.

It's of course possible criddic will be open to this view when someone from the other team (i.e., a Democrat) is in charge.

[flipp525]

And even in the 1800's our imperialist notions were fleeting and far from the damaging power-mad greed seen in Ancient Roman times.

We are the new Ancient Romans, criddic! Don't you fucking get it yet?! Gah!



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[Penelope]

And even in the 1800's our imperialist notions were fleeting and far from the damaging power-mad greed seen in Ancient Roman times.

Sweetie, it was probably worse; if you think American imperialism in the late 19th century was all noble intentions, you should read one of the most famous declarations of American imperialism (strangely enough, missing from high school history books today ??? ). Even he states clearly that imperialism is about establishing "commercial supremacy [over] the world," and that's basically what it's about today.

[criddic3]

I don't know if every nation goes through a form of totalitarianism, but it could be argued that every nation has experienced a form of imperialism, either as the aggressor or the aggrieved or both.

Though we don't like to think of ourselves that way, the United States has been an imperialist nation since 1804; today's imperialism is a bit different, but the determination of the Bush crowd to "bring democracy to the Middle East" has in it the same evangelistic arrogance that led McKinley to subjugate the Phillippines in 1898 as well as echoing the "Civilizing Missions" of the British and French empires of the same era.

To say that government isn't one of our problems is laughable; the structure of our government is fine, though, as all things are, it has its flaws; its how our government has been corrupted over time, to where it now is, indeed, become an overbearing entity -- not USSR/Big Brother style overbearing, but in the wrong hands, it can be. It's the people in government that are the problem, and right now we have perhaps the worst selection of individuals, on both sides of the aisle, that have led our nation in its entire history; I'd like to think that we are at the nadir and can only get better, more humane, just and fair, but, sadly, history teaches us that just as things can get better, they can also get worse.

I don't thnk the concept is simply to bring Democracy to other nations, but to bring the idea of freedom to those nations. It has been said many times that, for example, Iraqis will have to decide what kind of a Democracy they will be. Clearly it is better to give some measure of hope to a previously oppressed people than it is to allow terrorism and hopelessness to fester. I think the idea is a noble one, but the end result has yet to be determined in the latest case of this.

The difference between 1800's mentailty on this issue and the thinking now is that we have no imperialist intentions here. And even in the 1800's our imperialist notions were fleeting and far from the damaging power-mad greed seen in Ancient Roman times.



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[Sabin]

(just to segue...)

'Conversations with Other Women' is a solid piece of work. By the end, it's a little too pat with its character trajectories (I called them early on) but the use of the split-screen is inspired as are the performances. Helena Bonham Carter especially. I liked the movie quite a bit.

[ITALIANO]

and, even deeper, it's constantly connecting this critique of "evil" fascism not only to militaristic father-figures, but also to the notion of punctuality, efficiency, all the trappings of rigidly regimented modernity.

Yes, I know, but honestly I guess it's almost impossible to deal with fascism without (even unintentionally) touching these issues too. No, really, the way the movie treats fascism is very superficial - and the fact that it's seen through the young girl's eyes, while perfectly understandable, still doesn't make it dramatically satisfying or intellectually profound. As for patriarchy and misoginy and the children's world, I think of another, much better movie - Fanny and Alexander by the much hated, on this board, Ingmar Bergman - and I easily see the difference between Del Toro and art. (I don't see anything wrong with not liking Bergman's movies - still for some reason, and it would be too complicated to explain why, I think one should go through a phase of liking them before rejecting them - and in any case, they can't be easily dismissed).

I'm almost sure it was Tullio Kezich on La Repubblica. He's a very traditional critic, you are right, and he wasn't saying that Lucio Fulci or Umberto Lenzi are better than Fellini - he just meant that their movies were a better reflection on their times, while probably Fellini was more metaphysical, more immersed in his own world, less interested in the political aspects of society. It was also the time when Italian critics suddenly realized that, unlike for example the French, they had never given Italian genre movies (and especially gialli) the attention they deserved, so there was a kind of sudden collective conversion to the cause even from unexpected names. But it's true that Silvestri is a more profound critic, and definitely more politically sound.

[Big Magilla]

I think Reza has me beat, and many of the younger posters will have seen more movies than I have by the time they're my age the way they're going.

Well, Reza probably owns more films than you, Big, but my guess is that you've seen more.

Damien you are absolutely right.

As I am growing older the pressures of work (the bank and the horrors of constructing a house) keep me from watching films. Easier to buy but difficult to find time to actually sit down and watch.

Now that I'm retired I have the time but not the inclination to sit down and watch movies all day long. Still, I do make an effort to see as many critically acclaimed films as I can. I am less inclined to see every box office hit that comes along and will wait for DVD or even HBO and Showtime to see some films, if I bother to see them at all.

Spiderman 3 is the first commercial film in some time that I'm actually looking forward to seeing in the theatre.

By the way, Reza, when you find the time you might want to update us in the miscellaneous section on your adventures in building your house. Shouldn't it be fininsed by now? ???

[Johnny Guitar]

Italiano, I think Del Toro has a feeling for his subject matter, but it's not the same thing as one finds in Resnais or Pontecorvo or even "prestige" Spielberg. The only other Del Toro film I've seen is Mimic (well, also Blade 2, which is awful), a decent mainstream Hollywood genre film--and there are a lot of similarities between that film and Pan's Labyrinth: a slow and tense unfolding of drama, obscure motives and allegiances, a very dark and bold color palette if I recall. It's all about mood and texture and small ideas, which are the areas in which one cultivates connoisseurship in a particular genre. A good defense of the film wouldn't focus on its big ideas and the way its conception and form are intertwined (as in the case of Hiroshima, mon amour) so much as its moment-to-moment feeling within a more predetermined dramatic and conceptual structure. Something I do want to say in Del Toro's defense is that he doesn't simply equate evil monstrosity with fascism--that is, he does do this, and yes it's basic, but it's not all he does. The film is very critical of patriarchy and misogyny for instance (in this it stands in stark contrast to any typically Hollywood approach), and, even deeper, it's constantly connecting this critique of "evil" fascism not only to militaristic father-figures, but also to the notion of punctuality, efficiency, all the trappings of rigidly regimented modernity. I think this sets the basic reality vs. fantasy conflict in relief as a critique of something lost on a larger historical realm--the transformation of experience from something personal (and hence possibly mystical) into something universal (and controlled by patriarchy, wielding pocketwatches). This doesn't mean the film is a philosophical investigation, it's not Heidegger or Benjamin, but I think it's fueled by an interest in some of the same problems, the same energies, and for this reason has a certain social resonance that makes it stand out among most genre films today.

I'm not saying it does or doesn't make the result great art; I'm only suggesting that Del Toro's indeed thoughtful about the connections he's making and the effects he's trying to produce. (Plus, I like the fact that the film so brazenly quotes Un Chien andalou.)

Speaking of Tullio Kezich--the name rang a bell--I've not read his books, but I did read an essay he wrote for the magazine Cineaste on the state of international film criticism today (people from all over the world were selected to contribute). He didn't strike me as the type of figure who'd ever place gialli above Fellini! (On the standard of these pieces in English in this single magazine, I was much more impressed by Roberto Silvestri of Il Manifesto, whose politics seemed more incisive and whose taste seemed both more expansive & expert. But I admit I'm juding on far too small a sample, and not even in native language, of course.) Do any other UAADB-ers recall this Cineaste symposium, or the purely American one from 2000, with as much fondness as I do?

And you shouldn't be impressed with my knowledge of soccer, which is pretty basic. While it's not one of the major sports here, soccer does have a devoted if minority following among Americans (and, of course, among many immigrants). If anything, my attention towards European football is something of an "American" interest itself, because I want to watch the best, period, and our professional league, while indeed respectable, doesn't reach the same heights as England or Italy or Spain, obviously. (I'm doing a bad thing--as a lover of the sport, I should be encouraging US participation in it. But I can't seem to invest myself.) So I watch teams I'll mostly never see play in a stadium, and I cheer for a team to which I have no "real" connection.

[ITALIANO]

Italiano, re: "importance" and complexity in Pan's Labyrinth ... let me see if I can conceptualize the problem a certain way and you can tell me if you agree with it. When a generic effort engages with political and historical questions, it usually has to "reach out" to these and imbricate them within the generic (i.e., dramatic, iconic, or tropological) content. There are two general ways that films like these go about it--one is to subtly, or not subtly!, interweave contemporaneous concerns into a work (this is the case of many gialli, for instance, which you've vocalized an affection for in the past); the other way is to appropriate a certain historical struggle and prop the generic conflict and the historical conflict together (so there's something closer to allegory: the generic content gets grafted onto a preformed historical content, i.e., "Franco's forces are monsters"). This former option occurs in all sorts of films from all over the world; the latter is perhaps a "more American" option, conceptually if not always empirically, simply because it follows the Hollywood tendency to cash in on any kind of struggle (cf. Godard's excoriation of Schindler's List, or even Full Metal Jacket). I think this might be another way at characterizing the root of what bothers you about Pan's Labyrinth. It bothers me too (the tendency, not the singular case of Del Toro's film). But I have no faith in commercial cinema, and I expected certain conceptual compromises going into Pan's Labyrinth, and I thought it was quite strong.

I agree. My beloved gialli (I'm glad you remember) worked even as a mirror of the political and social tensions - and changes - of Italy (and maybe more generally the western world) in the 70s. This was very subtle, and probably partly unintentional - but still, as I think Italian critic Tullio Kezich wrote, if one wants to understand what Italy was during those years, and what it was going through, these movies would be more useful and interesting than, say, works by celebrated "auteurs" like Fellini or Visconti or even Bertolucci. (You could say the same about American film noirs in the 40s, for example). Some of those directors - while probably not true "artists" in the conventional sense of the word - were intelligent enough to - you are right - interwave the "big" issues of the time with the more typical, even sometimes predictable aspects of the genre they were working with. This is what makes those movies so interesting today - you feel the urgency, you feel that they tried to say more than they openly could.
Still, it was mainly about contemporary questions. And I have to admit that when you deal with the past - even recent past like the Spanish civil war or Nazi germany - what you call the "American option" is sometimes necessary or at least acceptable, for dramatic or narrative reasons - I don't see anything necessarily wrong about that. It just depends on how it is done. There is still a difference between, say, Shining Through and Schindler's List, and I'm not just referring to the value of the two movies, but even - though this is always more difficult to be sure about - to the director's honesty (or lack of it) in "using" a certain historical background. Now, I'm not saying that Pan's Labyrinth is like Shining Through of course, but I found its dealing with that historical context to be not really sincere - more a clever narrative device than a deeply-felt need to say something meaningful about it. You feel that the director doesn't truly care, that it could be about anything else (the fact that he's not Spanish maybe plays a role in this).
And in this case it's not even about art vs entertainment - some movies which I consider masterpieces, like Hiroshima Mon Amour or Kapo, could be accused of conveniently "using" the same device - still you can't doubt their directors' honesty, their urge to say something not banal, even complex and daring, about those times, those places.

My team is a smaller one, but still in the Serie A - Atalanta (from the city where I live, Bergamo, which is very close to Milan, but proudly still not Milan!). But I like Roma too. How come you know so much about football? I thought Americans were more into other sports. But of course I always felt that you were an European deep inside...



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[Reza]

I think Reza has me beat, and many of the younger posters will have seen more movies than I have by the time they're my age the way they're going.

Well, Reza probably owns more films than you, Big, but my guess is that you've seen more.

Damien you are absolutely right.

As I am growing older the pressures of work (the bank and the horrors of constructing a house) keep me from watching films. Easier to buy but difficult to find time to actually sit down and watch.



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[Damien]

I think Reza has me beat, and many of the younger posters will have seen more movies than I have by the time they're my age the way they're going.

Well, Reza probably owns more films than you, Big, but my guess is that you've seen more.

Of course, folks in their 20s and 30s will have us beat because they grew up with VCRs and DVDs, meaning films are so more readily available than when we were growing up and had to depend only on what showed up on TV -- and Million Dollar Movie showed the same damn movie like 20 times in a week!



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[Johnny Guitar]

Greg, you're right--my embarrassing mistake, thanks for pointing it out. I could have swore I heard that, but yeah, I see he died in 1958, and what I did was conflate his famous quote, and this book on string theory (which I'd read about before) ...

Whoops!

[Greg]

And the stuff Criddic wrote is--to borrow the famous line of Wolfgang Pauli about string theory--"not even wrong."

Actually, I think Pauli's time was before string theory. For what it's worth, I did a brief check on wikipedia, and Pauli would say "it's not even wrong" for any untestable/unclear theory that came his way. I guess some people that disparage string theory simply pull up the old Pauli quote to do so.



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[Big Magilla]

Magilla, Pan's Labyrinth certainly played in several New York multiplexes, for what it's worth.

I believe it played in at least one in San Francisco as well, but not in the hinterlands. I had to schlep to the only art house in a 30 mile radius in order to see it, but that's nothing new. I had to commute to the same theatre to see Little Children, Notes on a Scandal, The Last King of Scotland, The History Boys, Infamous and The Queen among others last year as well. Of last year's major Oscar baiters, only The Departed and maybe Babel opened at my local multiplex in saturation bookings. Even Little Miss Sunshine and Dreamgirls didn't play on one of their 14 screens until they became established hits. I suspect that's typical of most of the country.



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