As a man of the cinema, I find it a great joy to watch a bunch of films in a short span of time and then realize that there are some very big differences in movies, even at our contemporary moment. I had a busy weekend of going to films, of an evidently wide range of interests.
Thursday -> Friday at midnight, as my last blog post pointed out, I attended the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire opening-night-stravaganza. I’ve read the first five books, but I generally only read them while sick. Literally, I forget absolutely every plot point and detail, no matter the size. Seeing the film was a reminder as to what I forgot, albeit with a difference. It has been widely publicized that director Mike Newell was at first urged to split the book adaptation between two films. He opted to tell the whole story of the fourth book in one fell swoop. While it was probably a good choice for the sake of the franchise, it makes for a film that is almost entirely subservient to narrative, at the cost of most of the interesting details and subplots. My personal allegances lie with the third film for daring to be stylish with subject matter that could make money simply by farting. The first two films, in retrospect, feel like movies with training wheels, as did the books. I hope that the Order of the Phoenix finds a better solution.
I’ve been reading about the liberating power of laughter a lot recently as part of my Film Comedy class. Laughter that comes from the gut and does not stray away from the lower bodily strata serves a useful function in society. Putting these theories to practice, I had a couple of beers and headed off with 14 of my closest comrades to a semi-late night screening of The Aristocrats. It succeeds admirably well at doing what it sets out to achieve, which is nothing short of desensitizing all of its viewer’s responses to dirty words. I have not laughed so hard at a film in the theater since South Park: The Movie, which I approach in the same way as The Aristocrats. While not great films, or in retrospect even all that interesting, they attack you at the balls and do not relent. That they even manage to create a kind of “good” taste along the way is even more amazing, since they take the word FUCK above and beyond the call of duty.
At the opposite end of whatever spectrum I’m currently trampling to death is Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046. A film of intense complexity to say the least, it merges weird sci-fi, writerly losses in love, and a total disregard for logical changes in time. It has been the darling of international critics for a while now and has just recently found widespread release in the USA. I can’t even put too many words to it yet, since I have a feeling that a lot of what I saw won’t “hit” me for a few days.
Each of the films I saw this weekend is worth some amount of time, so do your part in supporting the world wide film industry and populate your local theatre.
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