Similarly, making an anti-war film that depicts war is hella difficult, because fighting and shooting and explosives and camaraderie are cool. Even the simple act of showing how horrible things can get must tautologically be shown on screen, which means straining the reality through a visual story, which is exactly what makes audiences show up; my reaction to violent war movies as a young man, seeing all the blood and tears and horror, were more along the lines of “Wow, things got *real*” instead of “we must ban war”, and the horror and terror seemed to favorably compare to a banal life of empty modernism.
I think the closest thing I’ve seen to a show that depicts war’s brutality but doesn’t totally glorify it by accident is *Generation Kill*, set in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The preponderance of scenes are simply not violent at all- Marines playing cards and bitching about their officers and running into supply issues and screwing around- and while several fights depicted on scene are visceral and thrilling and crazy, there are also numerous scenes of incredible violence that are devoid of conflict.
Marines shooting kids on a whim because the ROE technically allowed for it and then dealing with their weeping mother afterward; watching a family vaporize from a stray artillery round; shooting civilian drivers who don’t know to stop at checkpoints; seeing the end result of air strikes hours after the fact.
It’s hard to get a secondhand war high off of that second category.
You would think! And yet even though the training phase is supposed to be about the dehumanization and destruction of Pyle, I think Gunnery Sergeant Hartman is so funny and so powerful that I think the same thing happens! He's too cool! I used to know Marines who would watch the movie for laughs.
Maybe the answer, if it is indeed impossible to make an anti-war film, is that young men respond to the idea of organized violence on a deeply instinctual level, and you can't really get away from that. And maybe the best we can do is to try to channel that into the less-awful versions that involve more discipline and honor and less pillaging and raping. Which in turn makes me wonder whether movies like FMJ or Apocalypse Now that highlight nihilism and absurdity are actually counter-productive, and we'd be better off with tales of soldiers who are basically decent and who at least attempt practice restraint in difficult circumstances.
Never seen the movie but I’ve read the book several times, the first as a teenager, and it stays with me even though I usual don’t remember books well.
In Das Boot, there is a scene where you hear a wail of despair from the crew. Not because of their hopeless situation - but because they found out on the radio their soccer team is losing. This shows the absurd side of the great camaraderie on the sub.
Someone (Werner Herzog?) said you can't make an anti-war film because no matter how you depict it, it's glamorous, due to the high stakes and teamwork etc. etc. and having seen a lot of them, this might be an overstatement but not much if so. That said, I think the most effective anti-war film I've seen is the documentary "Letters Home From Vietnam" which is footage plus read-aloud letters from actual soldiers in chronological order.
It may have been said by multiple directors. I first encountered the idea in Jonathan Rosenbaum’s writing about Samuel Fuller. Rosenbaum claimed Fuller had said the only way to make a realistic war movie would be to put a machine gun nest behind the screen and shoot at the audience.
Something the Sopranos also did was to occasionally give you glimpses of Tony's violence from his victim's point of view. I'm thinking especially of the scene (I think near the end of season one) where Tony assaults Melfi and breaks her table. At least there the show conveyed that this is a terrifying person to be around.
That was a powerful scene. A perfect climax to the season that came before it. And Gandolfini's acting was amazing. The audience can see Tony getting tense and angry, and see Melfi missing the signs.
Probably the scene that affects people the most is when Tony goes to see Pussy's widow Angie and threatens her while he pets her dog. The potential violence against the animal really freaked a lot of people out in a way that his actual violence against actual people didn't.
I'd never seen that Sopranos clip, I gave up on the show sometime in season 2 after the absurdly stupid episode with a trip to Italy and the introduction of Furio. This clip is masterfully written.
This is why I hated the Irishman, while all the typical mob fan boys loved it - the characters were empty shells designed just to create the kind of violence-is-cool mob movie garbage. It's too bad because Hoffa was a real life anti-hero.
Agree on Sopranos-- growing up in Chicago these guys were not anti-heroes.. 2-bit punks looking to be made. Agree on the Irishman-awful movie. The casting was awful. De Niro has nothing about him that is Irish or complex (or Irish at all).
I do like very much another anti-hero (hero) in film -- Tommy Shelby, a real Irishman in life & in Peaky Blinders.
I have tried to watch The Irishman front to back three times and never finished it. I can't quite articulate my why but something about it leaves me disinterested. Like, normally if I dislike something enough I'm still _feeling_ something and I'll stick it out, but with The Irishman I am grasping for something to latch on to and finding nothing. I don't dislike it, but when I'm watching it I get to a point where I'd rather watch anything else and so I turn it off.
It's disappointing. Other Scorsese movies usually hook me with the juxtaposition of pop music and violence and from there I'm eager to follow where the story goes. The Irishman is not like that. It's like a chore I would do anything to put off indefinitely.
Maybe I'm missing something. I feel like I have to be missing something.
I appreciate the fact that you can talk about morality in film without devolving into a sneering, judgmental attitude toward people who liked the films anyway.
After all, that attitude, more than anything else, is what drove me away from Film Twitter. It was EVERYWHERE on that site. Like you said, it's not necessarily the politics, it's the expression.
As you allude to, I think it's just nearly impossible to make a show centered on one person that people will want to tune into for 60 hours and not have them be interesting, complex, and charismatic.
Which I think points to something interesting about the human mind where just time and familiarity seem to sand down the sharp edges of anger and moral judgment. Trump is certainly an example of someone who is personally reprehensible but, by virtue of being in the limelight for decades, gets a large number of people to do the "yeah, sure he's kind of a lout but..." I mean, just today, there will probably be thousands of families (mothers, wives, kids) trudging to prisons across America to see their loved ones who are murderers, rapists, abusers. Our affiliative natures winning out over our moral ones more often than not is, to me, really interesting. Don't know enough to say whether this is ultimately a good or bad thing in the long run.
"just time and familiarity seem to sand down the sharp edges of anger and moral judgment." Scorsese gets a lot of mileage out of First-Person narration, too. Compare to the cool and uber-distant Narrator of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. We enjoy the Upstart's ascent but are denied, by Kubrick, the VR-tight ride.
It's also not always clear who the author is – it's not like a TV show is a dictatorship – nor whether his publicly stated intention is their intention. I remember having a discussion with someone about rape scenes in HBO shows, and saying they took me out of it because they always made me imagine a bunch of executives thinking – correctly – that viewers are going to get a kick out of watching them. She countered that the characters discuss the morality (I think this was Westworld) and condemn it, so they belong there. So was the screenwrite the author, or the producer who wanted more nudity? Well, they get to have their cake and eat it too.
I think a big part of the appeal of anti-hero narratives is that they're superhuman, übermenschen who bend the world to their will. If you win every battle against formidable opposition, you're going to look cool. Sticking a speech at the end about how they suffered just doesn't cut it. And you can say your intent was to condemn it, but if the scenes you film revel in it, was your intent really what you say it is?
Thank you for posting that scene with the psychiatrist. I'm a fan of the show, bit did not remember it. So powerful and moving. The clarity of moral authority.
That clip is also one of my favorites, not just for what it says about Tony, but also for what it says about Carmela. She's perfectly happy to be complicit in his crimes, as long as she gets her share. She'd be fine with his career of murder, violence and theft, if only he would be faithful to her. Or, perhaps more accurately, if he would be unfaithful more discreetly so she could pretend it wasn't happening.
But this scene is a perfect example of the biggest thing I dislike about the show. I think any person at all familiar with story telling tropes would understand this to be pretty heavy foreshadowing. Carmela is told, pretty straight out, where this life of hers leads, but it never really goes there, except for the final scene in the diner...maybe.
Chase sets up things left and right throughout the series and very few of them pay off in any real or interesting way.
Also what it says about Melfi, when the shrink says “I’m not charging you because I won’t take blood money.” Suddenly all the stories Melfi (and the audience) has been telling herself to justify what is essentially a fascination with the perceived glamor of the mafia falls like a house of cards.
Good point. It takes a long long time for Melfi to come to the realization that's she's been complicit in his criminal activities.
Although, to be fair, for the first couple seasons Tony is dealing with real issues and there's at least some idea that, if he resolves them, he might find a way out of the life.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood... is a great example of Tarantino doing this for me. He sets Pitt up as cool, he looks cool, he takes care of business at the Spahn Ranch, he kicks ass and cares about old friends – but it's also set up that he kills his wife. The movie doesn't dwell on that, doesn't offer him redemption, just drops in that this confident dude who's good with violence and takes down the Manson Family while tripping and giggling is also a wife-killer. So lionise him all you like, but he's already damned.
Tarantino is gleefully unapologetic about using the power of film to make you like a guy who is actually awful. In his appearance on Conan’s podcast he revels in the idea that Hans Landa is charismatic and brilliant despite being the worst guy imaginable, and by getting the audience to invest in him he’s played a fun trick on us. Tarantino is most interested in what will thrill us and satisfy us as an audience and as an admirer of trash cinema he is unashamed of hitting us in our most base instincts. The morality of his films is that violence is thrilling and satisfying, revenge is good and sadism is okay when it’s directed at bad guys. In real life who knows, but definitely in movies and these are movies so them’s the rules. I used to find this troubling but now it feels refreshing. The real problem is that people look to movies and tv for a moral example in the first place. Because Tarantino is right, it’s a visual sensory medium and our lizard brains are always going to love violent revenge.
There's a wonderful early interview with him after Reservoir dogs where he talks about the scene where Mr. Pink cuts off the cop's ear. "You see Mr. Pink, you see the knife, you know what's about to happen. But then he turns on Stuck in the Middle With You, you like the song. He does a funny little dance and you enjoy that. And then you gotta pay."
Whatever Tarentino's intentions, I found Once Upon a Time to be the most deeply reactionary major movie of the last decade at least, more so than even anything Clint Eastwood's done.
When did the left land on this idea that the only way to judge fiction is on how well it conveys a clear moral lesson to the audience? When I was growing up I always thought it was bizarre how Christians would judge movies purely based on how well they conveyed godly values and nothing else, but now it's the left who has taken this puritanical approach. "Did the filmmaker fail to 100% convey to his audience how to live their life like a good, progressive citizen? What a tragic mistake, they must not have realized they missed the mark." Or, maybe they just wanted to portray a thing and trust the audience to have the maturity to know that, you know, murdering and defrauding people is wrong? Because they're not toddlers?
It would be nice if people like you didn't interpret "I think this film did a poor job of expressing its intended themes" as "I wish all movies only showed good people doing good things"
So for a story to exhibit a moral judgment on a character it has to explicitly show bad person -> bad result?
I think that disharmonizes with what we see all around us in the world every day. The world is full of awful people doing awful things and then living long lives surrounded by family a friends (I shy away from calling them "happy" because I don't want to pretend to know their minds). If everything were as simple as good things happening to good people and bad things happening to bad people, being a good person would be a breeze. But the reality is that sometimes being an awful person works out for the person being awful. And sometimes being a good person has an enormous cost. That's a balance everyone has to engage in within themselves.
I personally think the Sopranos hit the balance perfectly, continuing to remind us that Tony being able to constantly indulge his id does have a certain attractiveness to it while also keeping a crystal clear moral clarity about who Tony is. Truly he is half animal and half god, just an exaggerated version of all of us.
When I was watching the AFI 100 American Movies recently, I made similar critiques of The Searchers, and while I think reasonable people can certainly disagree on how effective a piece of media is at sending a message, the central critique I got (including from professional media critics) was "what a dumb baby you are, for only wanting Good Guys on film, it's because of people like you we don't get any moral nuance in media anymore"
People are apparently not capable of seeing the difference between the argument you are making here and "bad guys should always be punished explicitly by the narrative"
I don't think you'll get any angry pro-Tarantino comments. This is mostly anecdotal, but what I've noticed is that while Tarantino has legions of admirers - people who speak highly of his "craft" and refer to him with words like "auteur" - he has surprisingly few obsessive diehard fans. And I think that lack of a coherent moral perspective is a big reason why. There is, to me, something a little hollow about his movies. Great fun, brilliant filmmaking, stylish as hell, but they lack - not just a moral dimension, but a human one.
I remember seeing Django Unchained with my dad and brother and getting seduced by QT's whole spiel at the time about how it was the first major movie to directly deal with slavery as an American holocaust and talking about how it was so brilliant with them afterwards. Then we saw 12 Years A Slave two years later (I think they were both holiday movies) and in the car driving home I remember saying something like "I'm so ashamed that I thought Django Unchained was a moral representation of slavery, because it wasn't, and that British guy got it way more right than any American has ever gotten it." I don't think Steve McQueen was out there talking about slavery as an American holocaust, he was just doing it.
I really enjoy Tarantino, and I tend to see his movies as pulp fiction. Tarantino's movies are irresponsible fantasy for adults, he's a hedonist, and I enjoy spending 2 hours in those ridiculous spaces.
I suppose his characters are like comic book characters, but I don't think that realistic or fleshed out is the point. I like Tarantino because I have a strong emotional response to his movies, and I get to explore thoughts and emotions that are ... well, not appropriate for everyday life! Power fantasies are probably not good if you indulge them frequently. But watching Tarantino is a rare event, and I can safely enjoy it without hurting anyone. Tarantino is not morally different from action flicks, or vampire movies, or scores of other genres that people take less seriously. Its just that Tarantino makes you take unserious stories seriously; that's the artful part to me. The characters might not be well rounded humans, but the movies allow me to explore all aspects of my psyche, including parts that are regularly repressed to be a functioning member of society, and I find that very humanizing for me, the viewer.
Also: not angry at Freddie. He can have any opinion he likes.
My favorite thing about Tarantino is the language, but it's not a take I hear very often. He clearly loves words, and I think he actually has a more literary imagination than most film directors. My personal theory is that he's comparable to some aspects of Thomas Pynchon ... Pynchon can feel hollow too ... that kind of "postmodern" writing is more interested in the blend of known styles and references and tropes.
I disagree that his films are not moral or human. I think it's just a different mode of storytelling than a more naturalistic or straightforwardly moral storytelling. He writes pulp faerie tales, lurid wish-fulfillment. I think he wants to insist that there's a kind of human innocence behind those wishes. That's at least one part of the human / moral angle for me, though admittedly obtuse.
It's also the most humane, and to quote PTA as Alma Edson talking about Reynolds Woodcock, most "tender" of QT's movies. I've seen Jackie Brown more time than any of his other movies and I'll probably keep watching it every few years or so because it's just achingly beautiful.
This is excellent. Having just watched PTA's The Master for the first time since I was a teenager (when I definitely didn't get it), I really felt this. Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character is so charismatic, so compelling, so magnetic, that I found myself desperately WANTING to find meaning in the things he was saying. As a person he's clearly full of shit, clearly skimming money off of people with full knowledge that he's not leading them to salvation, but I came out of the movie with a deep sympathy for all of the people who got taken in by him.
I think that's part of what the anti-hero trope can do as well. It's not just examining the intent of the main character - it's the way that a society that is fundamentally devoid of meaning can draw regular people into their orbits.
I wish more people were picking up on FDB's PTA hook than his Tarentino one. Let's talk about Phantom Thread and There Will be Blood and Inherent Vice!
I hated The Master so much in theatres, and watched it last year and thought it was the most brilliant thing I'd ever seen. The Phoenix/Hoffman relationship made me want to call all of my male friends and talk for hours about the ways we love and hate each other.
Breaking Bad is the best visual media ever made.
Similarly, making an anti-war film that depicts war is hella difficult, because fighting and shooting and explosives and camaraderie are cool. Even the simple act of showing how horrible things can get must tautologically be shown on screen, which means straining the reality through a visual story, which is exactly what makes audiences show up; my reaction to violent war movies as a young man, seeing all the blood and tears and horror, were more along the lines of “Wow, things got *real*” instead of “we must ban war”, and the horror and terror seemed to favorably compare to a banal life of empty modernism.
I think the closest thing I’ve seen to a show that depicts war’s brutality but doesn’t totally glorify it by accident is *Generation Kill*, set in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The preponderance of scenes are simply not violent at all- Marines playing cards and bitching about their officers and running into supply issues and screwing around- and while several fights depicted on scene are visceral and thrilling and crazy, there are also numerous scenes of incredible violence that are devoid of conflict.
Marines shooting kids on a whim because the ROE technically allowed for it and then dealing with their weeping mother afterward; watching a family vaporize from a stray artillery round; shooting civilian drivers who don’t know to stop at checkpoints; seeing the end result of air strikes hours after the fact.
It’s hard to get a secondhand war high off of that second category.
You would think! And yet even though the training phase is supposed to be about the dehumanization and destruction of Pyle, I think Gunnery Sergeant Hartman is so funny and so powerful that I think the same thing happens! He's too cool! I used to know Marines who would watch the movie for laughs.
Maybe the answer, if it is indeed impossible to make an anti-war film, is that young men respond to the idea of organized violence on a deeply instinctual level, and you can't really get away from that. And maybe the best we can do is to try to channel that into the less-awful versions that involve more discipline and honor and less pillaging and raping. Which in turn makes me wonder whether movies like FMJ or Apocalypse Now that highlight nihilism and absurdity are actually counter-productive, and we'd be better off with tales of soldiers who are basically decent and who at least attempt practice restraint in difficult circumstances.
A lot of my friends loved Generation Kill and one of them joined the army not long after it came out
Ugh
I guess it hits different if you watch it after you’re already in
Yeah. If you want unparalleled realism you have to go to video games:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTkgi7scKo
All Quiet On The Western Front is a pretty good anti-war film.
Generation Kill is just too much fun to be really anti-war.
Never seen the movie but I’ve read the book several times, the first as a teenager, and it stays with me even though I usual don’t remember books well.
In Das Boot, there is a scene where you hear a wail of despair from the crew. Not because of their hopeless situation - but because they found out on the radio their soccer team is losing. This shows the absurd side of the great camaraderie on the sub.
Someone (Werner Herzog?) said you can't make an anti-war film because no matter how you depict it, it's glamorous, due to the high stakes and teamwork etc. etc. and having seen a lot of them, this might be an overstatement but not much if so. That said, I think the most effective anti-war film I've seen is the documentary "Letters Home From Vietnam" which is footage plus read-aloud letters from actual soldiers in chronological order.
It may have been said by multiple directors. I first encountered the idea in Jonathan Rosenbaum’s writing about Samuel Fuller. Rosenbaum claimed Fuller had said the only way to make a realistic war movie would be to put a machine gun nest behind the screen and shoot at the audience.
Maybe it was him! I don't remember that part, but that's good.
The death of the author! The creator’s intent is irrelevant to art criticism.
Something the Sopranos also did was to occasionally give you glimpses of Tony's violence from his victim's point of view. I'm thinking especially of the scene (I think near the end of season one) where Tony assaults Melfi and breaks her table. At least there the show conveyed that this is a terrifying person to be around.
That was a powerful scene. A perfect climax to the season that came before it. And Gandolfini's acting was amazing. The audience can see Tony getting tense and angry, and see Melfi missing the signs.
Probably the scene that affects people the most is when Tony goes to see Pussy's widow Angie and threatens her while he pets her dog. The potential violence against the animal really freaked a lot of people out in a way that his actual violence against actual people didn't.
I'd never seen that Sopranos clip, I gave up on the show sometime in season 2 after the absurdly stupid episode with a trip to Italy and the introduction of Furio. This clip is masterfully written.
This is why I hated the Irishman, while all the typical mob fan boys loved it - the characters were empty shells designed just to create the kind of violence-is-cool mob movie garbage. It's too bad because Hoffa was a real life anti-hero.
Agree on Sopranos-- growing up in Chicago these guys were not anti-heroes.. 2-bit punks looking to be made. Agree on the Irishman-awful movie. The casting was awful. De Niro has nothing about him that is Irish or complex (or Irish at all).
I do like very much another anti-hero (hero) in film -- Tommy Shelby, a real Irishman in life & in Peaky Blinders.
My criticism of The Irishman is exactly the opposite. None of the characters are interesting at all.
By the time we get to the final 30 minutes or so of the movie, where we get to the point of it, I found it impossible to care about any of it.
I have tried to watch The Irishman front to back three times and never finished it. I can't quite articulate my why but something about it leaves me disinterested. Like, normally if I dislike something enough I'm still _feeling_ something and I'll stick it out, but with The Irishman I am grasping for something to latch on to and finding nothing. I don't dislike it, but when I'm watching it I get to a point where I'd rather watch anything else and so I turn it off.
It's disappointing. Other Scorsese movies usually hook me with the juxtaposition of pop music and violence and from there I'm eager to follow where the story goes. The Irishman is not like that. It's like a chore I would do anything to put off indefinitely.
Maybe I'm missing something. I feel like I have to be missing something.
I appreciate the fact that you can talk about morality in film without devolving into a sneering, judgmental attitude toward people who liked the films anyway.
After all, that attitude, more than anything else, is what drove me away from Film Twitter. It was EVERYWHERE on that site. Like you said, it's not necessarily the politics, it's the expression.
As you allude to, I think it's just nearly impossible to make a show centered on one person that people will want to tune into for 60 hours and not have them be interesting, complex, and charismatic.
Which I think points to something interesting about the human mind where just time and familiarity seem to sand down the sharp edges of anger and moral judgment. Trump is certainly an example of someone who is personally reprehensible but, by virtue of being in the limelight for decades, gets a large number of people to do the "yeah, sure he's kind of a lout but..." I mean, just today, there will probably be thousands of families (mothers, wives, kids) trudging to prisons across America to see their loved ones who are murderers, rapists, abusers. Our affiliative natures winning out over our moral ones more often than not is, to me, really interesting. Don't know enough to say whether this is ultimately a good or bad thing in the long run.
"just time and familiarity seem to sand down the sharp edges of anger and moral judgment." Scorsese gets a lot of mileage out of First-Person narration, too. Compare to the cool and uber-distant Narrator of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. We enjoy the Upstart's ascent but are denied, by Kubrick, the VR-tight ride.
It's also not always clear who the author is – it's not like a TV show is a dictatorship – nor whether his publicly stated intention is their intention. I remember having a discussion with someone about rape scenes in HBO shows, and saying they took me out of it because they always made me imagine a bunch of executives thinking – correctly – that viewers are going to get a kick out of watching them. She countered that the characters discuss the morality (I think this was Westworld) and condemn it, so they belong there. So was the screenwrite the author, or the producer who wanted more nudity? Well, they get to have their cake and eat it too.
I think a big part of the appeal of anti-hero narratives is that they're superhuman, übermenschen who bend the world to their will. If you win every battle against formidable opposition, you're going to look cool. Sticking a speech at the end about how they suffered just doesn't cut it. And you can say your intent was to condemn it, but if the scenes you film revel in it, was your intent really what you say it is?
Thank you for posting that scene with the psychiatrist. I'm a fan of the show, bit did not remember it. So powerful and moving. The clarity of moral authority.
That clip is also one of my favorites, not just for what it says about Tony, but also for what it says about Carmela. She's perfectly happy to be complicit in his crimes, as long as she gets her share. She'd be fine with his career of murder, violence and theft, if only he would be faithful to her. Or, perhaps more accurately, if he would be unfaithful more discreetly so she could pretend it wasn't happening.
But this scene is a perfect example of the biggest thing I dislike about the show. I think any person at all familiar with story telling tropes would understand this to be pretty heavy foreshadowing. Carmela is told, pretty straight out, where this life of hers leads, but it never really goes there, except for the final scene in the diner...maybe.
Chase sets up things left and right throughout the series and very few of them pay off in any real or interesting way.
Also what it says about Melfi, when the shrink says “I’m not charging you because I won’t take blood money.” Suddenly all the stories Melfi (and the audience) has been telling herself to justify what is essentially a fascination with the perceived glamor of the mafia falls like a house of cards.
Good point. It takes a long long time for Melfi to come to the realization that's she's been complicit in his criminal activities.
Although, to be fair, for the first couple seasons Tony is dealing with real issues and there's at least some idea that, if he resolves them, he might find a way out of the life.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood... is a great example of Tarantino doing this for me. He sets Pitt up as cool, he looks cool, he takes care of business at the Spahn Ranch, he kicks ass and cares about old friends – but it's also set up that he kills his wife. The movie doesn't dwell on that, doesn't offer him redemption, just drops in that this confident dude who's good with violence and takes down the Manson Family while tripping and giggling is also a wife-killer. So lionise him all you like, but he's already damned.
Tarantino is gleefully unapologetic about using the power of film to make you like a guy who is actually awful. In his appearance on Conan’s podcast he revels in the idea that Hans Landa is charismatic and brilliant despite being the worst guy imaginable, and by getting the audience to invest in him he’s played a fun trick on us. Tarantino is most interested in what will thrill us and satisfy us as an audience and as an admirer of trash cinema he is unashamed of hitting us in our most base instincts. The morality of his films is that violence is thrilling and satisfying, revenge is good and sadism is okay when it’s directed at bad guys. In real life who knows, but definitely in movies and these are movies so them’s the rules. I used to find this troubling but now it feels refreshing. The real problem is that people look to movies and tv for a moral example in the first place. Because Tarantino is right, it’s a visual sensory medium and our lizard brains are always going to love violent revenge.
Hans Landa did kinda redeem himself when he shot Jordan Belfort, though.
There's a wonderful early interview with him after Reservoir dogs where he talks about the scene where Mr. Pink cuts off the cop's ear. "You see Mr. Pink, you see the knife, you know what's about to happen. But then he turns on Stuck in the Middle With You, you like the song. He does a funny little dance and you enjoy that. And then you gotta pay."
Whatever Tarentino's intentions, I found Once Upon a Time to be the most deeply reactionary major movie of the last decade at least, more so than even anything Clint Eastwood's done.
When did the left land on this idea that the only way to judge fiction is on how well it conveys a clear moral lesson to the audience? When I was growing up I always thought it was bizarre how Christians would judge movies purely based on how well they conveyed godly values and nothing else, but now it's the left who has taken this puritanical approach. "Did the filmmaker fail to 100% convey to his audience how to live their life like a good, progressive citizen? What a tragic mistake, they must not have realized they missed the mark." Or, maybe they just wanted to portray a thing and trust the audience to have the maturity to know that, you know, murdering and defrauding people is wrong? Because they're not toddlers?
Who are you taking about/to? I have said literally nothing about that.
It would be nice if people like you didn't interpret "I think this film did a poor job of expressing its intended themes" as "I wish all movies only showed good people doing good things"
"Look, but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow."
--John Miton
That's the high-wire act to aim at.
So for a story to exhibit a moral judgment on a character it has to explicitly show bad person -> bad result?
I think that disharmonizes with what we see all around us in the world every day. The world is full of awful people doing awful things and then living long lives surrounded by family a friends (I shy away from calling them "happy" because I don't want to pretend to know their minds). If everything were as simple as good things happening to good people and bad things happening to bad people, being a good person would be a breeze. But the reality is that sometimes being an awful person works out for the person being awful. And sometimes being a good person has an enormous cost. That's a balance everyone has to engage in within themselves.
I personally think the Sopranos hit the balance perfectly, continuing to remind us that Tony being able to constantly indulge his id does have a certain attractiveness to it while also keeping a crystal clear moral clarity about who Tony is. Truly he is half animal and half god, just an exaggerated version of all of us.
No, and I said no such thing.
What has happened to my comments section? What the fuck?
I EXPLICITLY SAID THE FUCKING OPPOSITE
Are you OK, man?
When I was watching the AFI 100 American Movies recently, I made similar critiques of The Searchers, and while I think reasonable people can certainly disagree on how effective a piece of media is at sending a message, the central critique I got (including from professional media critics) was "what a dumb baby you are, for only wanting Good Guys on film, it's because of people like you we don't get any moral nuance in media anymore"
People are apparently not capable of seeing the difference between the argument you are making here and "bad guys should always be punished explicitly by the narrative"
I don't think you'll get any angry pro-Tarantino comments. This is mostly anecdotal, but what I've noticed is that while Tarantino has legions of admirers - people who speak highly of his "craft" and refer to him with words like "auteur" - he has surprisingly few obsessive diehard fans. And I think that lack of a coherent moral perspective is a big reason why. There is, to me, something a little hollow about his movies. Great fun, brilliant filmmaking, stylish as hell, but they lack - not just a moral dimension, but a human one.
I remember seeing Django Unchained with my dad and brother and getting seduced by QT's whole spiel at the time about how it was the first major movie to directly deal with slavery as an American holocaust and talking about how it was so brilliant with them afterwards. Then we saw 12 Years A Slave two years later (I think they were both holiday movies) and in the car driving home I remember saying something like "I'm so ashamed that I thought Django Unchained was a moral representation of slavery, because it wasn't, and that British guy got it way more right than any American has ever gotten it." I don't think Steve McQueen was out there talking about slavery as an American holocaust, he was just doing it.
I really enjoy Tarantino, and I tend to see his movies as pulp fiction. Tarantino's movies are irresponsible fantasy for adults, he's a hedonist, and I enjoy spending 2 hours in those ridiculous spaces.
I suppose his characters are like comic book characters, but I don't think that realistic or fleshed out is the point. I like Tarantino because I have a strong emotional response to his movies, and I get to explore thoughts and emotions that are ... well, not appropriate for everyday life! Power fantasies are probably not good if you indulge them frequently. But watching Tarantino is a rare event, and I can safely enjoy it without hurting anyone. Tarantino is not morally different from action flicks, or vampire movies, or scores of other genres that people take less seriously. Its just that Tarantino makes you take unserious stories seriously; that's the artful part to me. The characters might not be well rounded humans, but the movies allow me to explore all aspects of my psyche, including parts that are regularly repressed to be a functioning member of society, and I find that very humanizing for me, the viewer.
Also: not angry at Freddie. He can have any opinion he likes.
My favorite thing about Tarantino is the language, but it's not a take I hear very often. He clearly loves words, and I think he actually has a more literary imagination than most film directors. My personal theory is that he's comparable to some aspects of Thomas Pynchon ... Pynchon can feel hollow too ... that kind of "postmodern" writing is more interested in the blend of known styles and references and tropes.
I disagree that his films are not moral or human. I think it's just a different mode of storytelling than a more naturalistic or straightforwardly moral storytelling. He writes pulp faerie tales, lurid wish-fulfillment. I think he wants to insist that there's a kind of human innocence behind those wishes. That's at least one part of the human / moral angle for me, though admittedly obtuse.
The exception here being Jackie Brown, which is based on an Elmore Leonard novel.
It's also the most humane, and to quote PTA as Alma Edson talking about Reynolds Woodcock, most "tender" of QT's movies. I've seen Jackie Brown more time than any of his other movies and I'll probably keep watching it every few years or so because it's just achingly beautiful.
This is excellent. Having just watched PTA's The Master for the first time since I was a teenager (when I definitely didn't get it), I really felt this. Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character is so charismatic, so compelling, so magnetic, that I found myself desperately WANTING to find meaning in the things he was saying. As a person he's clearly full of shit, clearly skimming money off of people with full knowledge that he's not leading them to salvation, but I came out of the movie with a deep sympathy for all of the people who got taken in by him.
I think that's part of what the anti-hero trope can do as well. It's not just examining the intent of the main character - it's the way that a society that is fundamentally devoid of meaning can draw regular people into their orbits.
I wish more people were picking up on FDB's PTA hook than his Tarentino one. Let's talk about Phantom Thread and There Will be Blood and Inherent Vice!
I hated The Master so much in theatres, and watched it last year and thought it was the most brilliant thing I'd ever seen. The Phoenix/Hoffman relationship made me want to call all of my male friends and talk for hours about the ways we love and hate each other.