Literary Arrogance

Evening Finger Lickers! While lounging in the bath this afternoon, yes it was a very lazy day, I was reading the Times Book supplement and came across an article by David Baddiel about the Academy Awards. Regular Finger Lickers will know my feelings about the Oscars and so I don’t want to dwell on the subject in too much depth, however, I felt that this article deserved a mention.

I have no real feelings about Baddiel either way, I have never read one of his books and have never been a particular fan of his stand-up shows. However, I began the article with neither positive nor negative feelings towards the man. He begins his analysis of the proceedings discussing the swing in recent years from “good book, bad movie” to “good book, good movie.” He then continues to explain how significant it is that the three extremely sucessful films at this year’s Oscars Atonement, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and No Country for Old Men are extremely faithful reproductions of the original text. Going as far as suggesting that Cormac McCarthy’s book was so cinematic in nature that he alludes to McCarthy doing the Coens (love them Coens mmmhmm) job for them. His parting shot is to suggest these filmic adaptations provide a “literary experience” rather than a “cinematic experience” and here’s the passage that really annoyed me:

This is what I mean by a literary experience: you feel challenged, subverted, disturbed and a bit alienated by the movie. You don’t cry, or punch the air, or shout “you go, girlfriend” or think “cool” in response to a really big explosion. Thus it’s more like reading a post-modern novel than going to the cinema. And thus it has won a lot of awards.

What complete and utter literary arrogance, yes this film undoubtedly owes a good deal of its success to Cormac McCarthy’s original text. That I am not disputing. However, the utter arrogance, to suggest that the experience he describes is made up of facets only found in post-modern fiction. Indie film has been pushing the boundaries of mainstream cinema for decades by challenging, subverting, disturbing, and alienating its audience through alternative forms of storytelling. This mainstream success by a film with indie hallmarks is not solely due to its literary roots. It owes a great dept of gratitude to a huge number of indie films that have paved the way and acclimatised the mainstream audience to a different form of cinematic experience. The suggestion that this film owes its Oscar success to its ability to provide a literary experience is absurd, not only because it demonstrates dreadfully narrow thinking, but also because it highlights the author’s utter lack of knowledge about cinema.

K

Be Kind Rewind: Hollywood and American Independent Cinema’s bastard child.

Evening fresh-faced finger lickers! Here’s a quick review of an indiewood flick doing the rounds for you. As I’m sure any film fan worth tuppence is aware Be Kind Rewind is the new film from Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine director Michel Gondry. The flick premiered at this years Sundance film festival and is being distributed by Focus Features.

Gondry’s comedy follows two slackers Jack Black and Mos Def who spend their days hanging out in the local video store in a dead-end town in New Jersey. After Black’s foolish character manages to wipe all the store’s videotapes the two are forced to recreate the Hollywood hit list using only their ingenuity and a VHS camcorder. Hilarity, as you would expect, ensues. However, evil city planning officials are moving to demolish the filmmaker’s slacker haven and build luxury apartments. In order to avoid the destruction of the video store the pair, with the help of the local community, set about making one final and totally original film to top them all.

While Be Kind Rewind entertained and made me laugh out loud on several occasions something was out of whack. Black and Def were well paired; the dialogue good; the cinematography was great and transition between the VHS-look and standard definition was well balanced. I also particularly like Gondry’s inclusion of the 2D elements in the comedy duo’s Hollywood remakes, a technique he took a good deal further in the sometimes-surreal Science of Sleep, which I loved by the way. However, I felt there was a comedy/feel-good balance problem. Rather than interspersing the comedy Gondry seems to have made a film where the laugh out loud comedy ends somewhere in the middle of the second act. He replaces the comedy with an often over pungent feel-good factor. The film turns from a slapstick fast paced comedy ride into an altogether different warm, fuzzy and dare I say it sometimes-saccharine picture. And as a result the film has somewhat lost its indie sensibility by the culmination of the third act.

Overall, this film begins with an indie feel but slowly develops a Hollywood scum on the surface. I don’t know whether this is because of the inclusion of a mainly Hollywood cast or the strange narrative shift. Either way the film leaves you with a confused taste in your mouth. While it delivers an American Independent cinema open-ended conclusion it does so while swimming in Hollywood sentiment. Perhaps that’s what Gondry was after… but I’m not sure he sold it to the audience.

K

Juno cool.

It is an undeniable fact Juno has been a smash hit indie success story. Indie is the new mainstream, or so we’re told by the mainstream. Indie is cool. Juno is cool. TV and Radio presenters are cool because they talk about Juno and play the Juno soundtrack on their cool shows. Diablo Cody is cool because she wrote Juno and Ellen page is the next big thing because she is Juno. Third rate film critics are cool because they dislike the mainstream and express the incontrovertible coolness of Juno. My Mum and Dad are cool because they have “heard of” (read a drab newspaper article about) Juno.

However, it isn’t with my Mum and Dad that I take umbrage. Their foe-indie-enthusiasm is passable. It is with the third rate film critics that jump on the indie bandwagon when they discover it is cool to do so, that give me “the rage”. Now, don’t get me wrong. This is not a case of a indie film geek hating on an indie success story, far from it. I loved Juno I thought the flick was light hearted and refreshing. I was impressed with both Ellen Page and Michael Cera and I thought that stylistically the film was strong. Overall, I was most impressed by the writing and dialogue, Diablo Cody (cool name btw.) is obviously a talent. However, back to them critics.

James King is a classic example. For those of you who don’t know he’s the vacuous and generally shockingly poor BBC Radio 1 “Film Critic”. While I don’t always despise everything that comes out of the man’s mouth – he does talk about the right flicks but he goes into no real depth or detail – he’s normally shallow and generally terrible at his job 90% of the time. Again, this is not an I hate successful critics session, so please no hate mail saying I’m a frustrated film critic crying out for attention, because I’m not. I say good on the man for getting where he is with the diabolical analytical skills he possesses. However, he has, as would be expected, jumped fully and wholeheartedly on the indie cool Juno bandwagon by playing clips from the trailer and berating the mainstream films currently in the cinema. These are the guys normally plugging the latest Rocky bullshit sequel or some other shite. It genuinely makes me wanna vomit that these third rate critics get to trade off the success of a creative talent. I know it’s all good publicity for the flick but still… critics are parasites.

Juno btw, is really cool… go see it! Trends, don’t you just love ‘em!

That’s enough from me…

K