free rentals + wintertime celibacy = insufferable film geekdom
1. Let it bleed
Today I just finished watching Antonioni's "L'Avventura." I was struck by its similarities to "Picnic At Hanging Rock," one of my favorite movies -- was Peter Weir paying deliberate homage? Both movies center around the mysterious disappearance of a beautiful woman during a trip to the wilderness, photographed in extended, disorienting compositions where the human figures are dwarved by the dramatic natural environment. The two movies also have a similar structure, in which the climax (the woman's disappearance) occurs near the beginning of the film, followed by a long slide downward where the lives of the survivors gradually crumble apart.
The central theme of both films is the spiritual dislocation of the upper classes, whose rituals have ossified into empty formality. Lacking any common struggle or purpose, the idle rich in "L'Avventura" are bound together only by inertia; although their relationships retain the surface characteristics of friendship and love, the characters remain spiritually isolated from each other. In "Picnic at Hanging Rock," the Victorian values and rituals of a girls' boarding school become meaningless and absurd when they are transplanted onto the Australian outback. The headmistress tries to maintain rigid stasis amidst an estrogenic cauldron of repressed urges (represented by Mystical Romantic Nature at its down-under sexiest), only to see everything she has built destroyed by Mystical Forces Beyond Her Comprehension. (I'm not belittling it -- I love this movie precisely because I'm an effete Mystical Romantic at heart.)
2. Sympathy for the devil
It must be the sullen goth kid in me, but I'm fascinated by the decay of static and outdated systems as they submit to the law of entropy: the faded aristocracy oblivious to the steady erosion of their foundations, the old theme of Romantic Nature reclaiming the artifacts of a dead civilization (as in that Ray Bradbury story "There Will Come Soft Rains.") This is partially because I can sympathize with the dilemma of characters "born to the purple" in ways that I can't with their righteous usurpers; the sinned-against William Wallaces of cinema are born with their righteousness built in, but the aristocrat has to fight entirely against the grain of historical and social circumstance to be anything more than a dead weight.
In America, of course, it's practically a sin to ask the moviegoer to identify with the corrupt and decaying Establishment. The focus is always on the scrappy underdog, the ragged (er, windbreaker-bedecked?) but pure-hearted "revolutionary" set up to take on the nearest convenient fat cat: Doesn't Che just look dashing on that motorcycle? (I know that's not technically an American movie, but you get what I'm saying.) It is as if Americans are afraid that they will be contaminated by a whiff of death if they dare to take a peek at life on the far side of the entropic deadline. The Godfather movies are an interesting semi-exception, as they track the whole evolution of the Corleones from scrappy outsiders to corrupt powermongers, showing that the eternal price of David's success is that he must become the next Goliath.
Today I just finished watching Antonioni's "L'Avventura." I was struck by its similarities to "Picnic At Hanging Rock," one of my favorite movies -- was Peter Weir paying deliberate homage? Both movies center around the mysterious disappearance of a beautiful woman during a trip to the wilderness, photographed in extended, disorienting compositions where the human figures are dwarved by the dramatic natural environment. The two movies also have a similar structure, in which the climax (the woman's disappearance) occurs near the beginning of the film, followed by a long slide downward where the lives of the survivors gradually crumble apart.
The central theme of both films is the spiritual dislocation of the upper classes, whose rituals have ossified into empty formality. Lacking any common struggle or purpose, the idle rich in "L'Avventura" are bound together only by inertia; although their relationships retain the surface characteristics of friendship and love, the characters remain spiritually isolated from each other. In "Picnic at Hanging Rock," the Victorian values and rituals of a girls' boarding school become meaningless and absurd when they are transplanted onto the Australian outback. The headmistress tries to maintain rigid stasis amidst an estrogenic cauldron of repressed urges (represented by Mystical Romantic Nature at its down-under sexiest), only to see everything she has built destroyed by Mystical Forces Beyond Her Comprehension. (I'm not belittling it -- I love this movie precisely because I'm an effete Mystical Romantic at heart.)
2. Sympathy for the devil
It must be the sullen goth kid in me, but I'm fascinated by the decay of static and outdated systems as they submit to the law of entropy: the faded aristocracy oblivious to the steady erosion of their foundations, the old theme of Romantic Nature reclaiming the artifacts of a dead civilization (as in that Ray Bradbury story "There Will Come Soft Rains.") This is partially because I can sympathize with the dilemma of characters "born to the purple" in ways that I can't with their righteous usurpers; the sinned-against William Wallaces of cinema are born with their righteousness built in, but the aristocrat has to fight entirely against the grain of historical and social circumstance to be anything more than a dead weight.
In America, of course, it's practically a sin to ask the moviegoer to identify with the corrupt and decaying Establishment. The focus is always on the scrappy underdog, the ragged (er, windbreaker-bedecked?) but pure-hearted "revolutionary" set up to take on the nearest convenient fat cat: Doesn't Che just look dashing on that motorcycle? (I know that's not technically an American movie, but you get what I'm saying.) It is as if Americans are afraid that they will be contaminated by a whiff of death if they dare to take a peek at life on the far side of the entropic deadline. The Godfather movies are an interesting semi-exception, as they track the whole evolution of the Corleones from scrappy outsiders to corrupt powermongers, showing that the eternal price of David's success is that he must become the next Goliath.