(no subject)
I watched Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans last night. Really mixed feelings about it. Nicholas Cage was just brilliant in it; he radiated pain, both physical and mental. I hope he and Herzog will continue to work together, because clearly he is an actor willing to go to the places Herzog wants his actors to go. Eva Mendes was quite good as well, breathing new life into a clichéd hooker with a heart of gold character. The plot was alright, though it felt derivative of The Wire in several places (I know, the original movie/story predates The Wire, but you can't change perception).
The big problem I had, and I think it speaks to the criticism sometimes leveled at Herzog that on some fundamental level he does not get America*, was that you cannot set a story in post-Katrina New Orleans and not have the city be an important part of the story, especially if you are going to throw in shots of devastation and spray-painted houses and so forth. Maybe Herzog thought he was making the city part of the story with those establishing shots, but I am hardpressed to think of a single character that spoke with a New Orleans accent. In fact, any sort of Southern accent was largely missing. We never got background on Nicholas Cage's character, so he could get a pass on that. But the rest, especially characters who were clearly people who had grown up in the city, shouldn't be speaking in generic US MidAtlantic voices. This created enough of a jarring effect for me to throw me out of the story's narrative and destroy much of the atmosphere. There were some cultural things thrown in, but they felt almost gratuitous next to the lack of accents. Oh look, voodoo, we are in New Orleans! I think the iguanas are mentioned in nearly every review I've read of the movie, so I don't think I'm giving much away to mention them again, but because my mind was already distracted by the city not being the place it should be, the iguanas and other things didn't integrate into the film at all. I assume the idea behind them was some kind of Southern magic realism via Hunter S. Thompson, but without establishing the Southern part of it, the idea fell flat. I'm not from the South, let alone New Orleans, so maybe there were things Herzog did do right that I am not able to see. But that's not exactly a good thing in a movie intended for a wide audience.
*he gets individual Americans, to be sure. But the ones he gets are the outsiders. The Timothy Treadwells. Or when he does successful fictional films set in the US, his main characters are outsiders looking in, not natural residents. Brad Dourif's alien character in The Wild Blue Yonder.
All in all, it's worth watching for the performances and some well-written dialogue and scenes, but I wouldn't expect a really Herzog experience out of it, just a film that is vaguely evocative of Herzog, the same way it's vaguely evocative of New Orleans.
Stayed home sick yesterday but am back at work today. At least there's air conditioning here.
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The big problem I had, and I think it speaks to the criticism sometimes leveled at Herzog that on some fundamental level he does not get America*, was that you cannot set a story in post-Katrina New Orleans and not have the city be an important part of the story, especially if you are going to throw in shots of devastation and spray-painted houses and so forth. Maybe Herzog thought he was making the city part of the story with those establishing shots, but I am hardpressed to think of a single character that spoke with a New Orleans accent. In fact, any sort of Southern accent was largely missing. We never got background on Nicholas Cage's character, so he could get a pass on that. But the rest, especially characters who were clearly people who had grown up in the city, shouldn't be speaking in generic US MidAtlantic voices. This created enough of a jarring effect for me to throw me out of the story's narrative and destroy much of the atmosphere. There were some cultural things thrown in, but they felt almost gratuitous next to the lack of accents. Oh look, voodoo, we are in New Orleans! I think the iguanas are mentioned in nearly every review I've read of the movie, so I don't think I'm giving much away to mention them again, but because my mind was already distracted by the city not being the place it should be, the iguanas and other things didn't integrate into the film at all. I assume the idea behind them was some kind of Southern magic realism via Hunter S. Thompson, but without establishing the Southern part of it, the idea fell flat. I'm not from the South, let alone New Orleans, so maybe there were things Herzog did do right that I am not able to see. But that's not exactly a good thing in a movie intended for a wide audience.
*he gets individual Americans, to be sure. But the ones he gets are the outsiders. The Timothy Treadwells. Or when he does successful fictional films set in the US, his main characters are outsiders looking in, not natural residents. Brad Dourif's alien character in The Wild Blue Yonder.
All in all, it's worth watching for the performances and some well-written dialogue and scenes, but I wouldn't expect a really Herzog experience out of it, just a film that is vaguely evocative of Herzog, the same way it's vaguely evocative of New Orleans.
Stayed home sick yesterday but am back at work today. At least there's air conditioning here.
.