Film and Episodic Content Discussion Thread

ARCHIVE81 started out as a podcast/radio drama? I had no idea.

 

As I said about the writer's strike.... more deals getting cancelled under "force majeure":
https://variety.com/2023/film/news/writers-strike-force-majeuer-deals-terminated-1235682117/

""The deals for major creators – at the level of a Ryan Murphy, Shonda Rhimes, Taylor Sheridan or Tyler Perry – stipulate that their pacts cannot be jettisoned unless a given studio enacts that clause for all of the term agreements they hold."

"More than one literary agent found this kind of protection for mega-deal holders ironic. The WGA has been lobbying for a better contract on the message that the streaming economy has led to a disappearing middle class of TV writers. With the big names shielded by better terms, this leaves mid-range creatives with first-looks and overalls more vulnerable to force majeure."

Big name writers and showrunners are protected as the lower class "icky poors" get fucked. The rich get rich the poor get poorer and the middle class disappears. What else is new?

 

I just saw Oppenheimer. It's a remarkable film, one that deserves more than a quick comment now, and I need some time think about it. It's impressive, for sure. But it's also quite annoying and frustrating.

The sound mix is pretty poor. It's hard, at times, to hear what people are saying, although it's not as indistinct as Tenet. As bad is the soundtrack. It doesn't always work. At some times it's intrusive and distracting. At others, it's used to build tension in scenes that otherwise aren't tense. And this speaks to a bigger problem with the film - its constant state of tension, which gets in the way of the film being as rewarding and satisfying as it could be.

Nolan does his usual auteur thing by interweaving several narrative strands, each of which belongs to a different chronological moment. Sometimes this works pretty well in his films, as with Dunkirk, which wouldn't have been all that meaningful were it not for Nolan playing around with time. The intercut time sequences in his films are clever, sometimes too clever by half, and I'm not convinced they're all that profound - more magician than philosopher (and that can be a good thing, as entertainment, in some of movies like Inception).

Here, though, Nolan switches between these time periods far too fast and frequently. There's barely a scene in the movie that lasts for more than a couple of minutes. More often, it seems like a scene lasts just 30 seconds. And the point of view almost constantly shifts. There are too many edits and jump cuts to count. They're far too intrusive. They left me constantly on edge, never able to settle into any of the storylines. It's as if there's no depth to the film. You can't get drawn into it. And to try to counterbalance all these distracting shifts and make the movie work as a longer, overarching narrative, Nolan relies on constantly cycling through moments of built-up tension, and, again, the soundtrack is made to do this when his visual storytelling doesn't (or can't). Nolan's done this before with that repetitive, at times near-constant whine in the last of his Batman movies.

The intrusive edits, the jumps in chronology, and the constant state of stress all gets too tiresome. I was aware at one moment, early on, that I might be watching a masterpiece. But I quickly became conscious that I was constantly on edge, not able to settle into the story. Without a proper release, the repetitive ratcheting up of tension, over and over again across 3 hours, becomes tiring and all-too-obviously manipulative. I would have loved to have watched a long tracking shot. Or a scene with a stationary camera and the people in the frame talking at length. Or anything that would have drawn me into the movie and made it absorbing.

Maybe this was intentional? Maybe Nolan needs a different editor? Either way, it's a shame. What could have been a great, weighty, impressive story ended up being like the experience of reading a novel written only in five-word sentences. I wish Nolan would give up his narrative schtick of playing around with time. It's less like his defining quality as an auteur and more like he's a one-trick pony. Here it gets in the way of telling a great story.

 

With directorial flourishes like those you describe, there's a fine line between "expressive" and "oppressive." Too much of it quickly becomes difficult to sit through.

I recently re-watched one of my favorite Steven Soderbergh films, THE LIMEY. It's filled with brief directorial flourishes: slowing down then speeding up the editing; sudden shifts in camera perspective; reframing of close-ups; changes in focus; and subtle motifs in the soundtrack to mark these moments. The point is always to reveal the subjective impact of actions or conversation on the mind of the character played by Terrance Stamp.

This consistency of purpose, as well as the skill with which these flourishes are executed, make them useful expressions of the subjective state of the tough, grieving father character--a man with zero problem taking harsh action to accomplish his objective, but who spends the entire film circling the mystifying death of his daughter, trying to understand what happened, why it happened, who she really was, how to best avenge her.

In later films Soderbergh did much less of this kind of thing. By then his style was more taut and linear; lucid had become pellucid. But it worked well for him in 1999. I'll have to see OPPENHEIMER for myself, but from your comments, it sounds like Nolan overdid it.

 

but like, it’s better than tenet, right? It’s better than tenet?

 

Haha, yeah. Many moments where I couldn't understand the dialogue, but it was WAY better than Tenet... and I got enough of it to where I could follow the story. I didn't properly review Oppenheimer, but I felt its strengths outweighed its weaknesses. Though I can totally understand how it would leave alot of people cold. I actually felt how you felt about Oppenheimer, but about Dunkirk, where I was completely held at arms length and could never sync with the film and the whole thing left me cold. Nolan's problem is that he is too cerebral and views narratives as puzzles to be solved rather than emotional experiences to be realized. This is why quite often what should be emotional and effectual character moments fall flat or feel perfunctory or phony. He can't seem to create a stable enough narrative to allow for spontaneous emotional beats that feel authentic. Everything is too... logical. He is Spock after Star Trek 3 (80s), he forgot how to relate to people.

Even further, his problem can be directly tied to his brilliance. This video in which he explains how he tackles the pretzel like narrative of Memento show his genius with puzzle like films. The problem is he applies this to EVERYTHING, even when its not appropriate, which is why you get movies like Tenet. And for some people, movies like Oppenheimer.



Oppenheimer is an intense film, but its an intense subject matter, which is why I excuse alot of what Nolan does here that is usually a liability in his other films.

 

This is actually the major difference between Soderbergh and Nolan. The Limey was not intended to be edited in that fashion... originally it was a much more straightforward, chronological narrative. The reason it changed was because after the first cut, Soderbergh realized the film didn't work and that they needed a more radical approach to realize the thematic potential. Soderbergh saw a problem and fixed it.

On the flip side, Nolan tries to solve problems that don't exist, creating even more problems... which is why his narratives always seem overly complex and hard to penetrate.

 

It is, and there’s a lot to like about Oppenheimer, too. The acting's excellent, as is the casting (for the most part), and Cillian Murphy really is outstandingly good (it’s high time for him to be the star of a big movie). The story is excellent, too, as is the dialogue, and the attention to historical detail is evocative. (Los Alamos could have done with being a more populous than it's shown as having been - IIRC, a thousand or more people worked there yet in the flim it’s kind of empty, much like Dunkirk’s beach). Best of all are the accessible but intelligent ways the movie talks about science and its powerful way of presenting the moral dilemmas raised by making the bomb and the effects of these dilemmas had on those who made it.

Spoiler: For what little it’s worth, I quite liked Tenet.

The mumbling was appalling. Had I not been able to see it the first time with subtitles, I’d have hated it. The plot was preposterous and incoherent, of course. And Kenneth Branagh, sadly, was laughably unconvincing as the Ruskie baddie. For all this, though, John David Washington was awesome as the lead character. Robert Pattinson did a decent job at being louche, but he needed to be much heavier and sweatier to pull it off properly (where’s the method acting these days? lol). Elizabeth Debicky is very tall.

I could put up with the plot’s mind-boggling silliness because it didn’t have to make sense - for me, at least - so long as it set up plenty of fun action sequences and exciting visual effects. I guess I was in the mood for some escapism when I saw it. It kinda worked, then, as a preposterous action movie. It's effectively a sci-fi take on a Bond film, complete with laughably un-scary villain and without the sinking baggage of the Bond series.

What ultimately ruined it, though, is that the opening scene’s opera house had glassed-in boxes. Like, seriously, wtf?

I don’t want to be too harsh about Nolan. He is, after all, one of the few directors who makes serious, intelligent, adult blockbusters, as everyone points out. His movies, if nothing else, are a desperately-needed reminder that good tentpole movies can be made. He also does something else very well in Oppenheimer: I typically find biopics to be some combination of tedious, trite, cliché-ridden, and hagiographic; all too they follow the same essential cut-and-paste template regardless of the inevitably troubled and flawed but nonetheless “great” historical figure they portray, but here, in Oppenheimer, Nolan has done something that’s both a novel biopic and something much more than that.

Thank you, you put that perfectly - that's precisely what I was trying to get at.

I should acknowledge that the frenetic, flitting edits make sense when it comes to conveying Oppenheimer’s torment and anguish. My gripe is that this conceit is taken too far when applied to the whole movie (and for 3 hours).

Like the Limey, Darren Aronofsky employed highly-intrusive and disturbing edits effectively in Requiem for a Dream, from what I remember (it's not a film suited to repeat watching). The same could be said for Black Swan, I suppose.

I think this is exactly what prompted me to vent in the post above. You're entirely right, of course - and this was the closest any of his movies have come to providing that emotional experience. This is why I found it so frustratingly disappointing. With that emotional dimension, he could have pulled off a masterpiece. Murphy's acting is certainly up to this task.

That's a great insight.

 

Looking forward to Oppenheimer. Inception and Interstellar were excellent IMO. Tenet sucked badly OTOH.

I'm still hoping for an Inception 2 one day.

 

Ok, in a turn away from Barbenhemier or whatever they're calling it now--this cultural moment, which is already waning...

what are your favorite 3 documentaries?

Mine are:

1) Shoah (masterwork, end of story, will always be #1)
2) Hoop Dreams (watch when sick or taking a mental health day, curl up w comfy blanket an maybe a masala and enjoy)
3) Sans Soleil (he did Le Jetee, c'mon)

 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101655/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2

 

Errol Morris' THE THIN BLUE LINE: not only for the ingenious/influential film itself, but also for the brilliant soundtrack by Philip Glass (my first exposure to minimalism). And BTW, this documentary resulted in its wrongly accused subject getting out of jail.

 

this man documentaries. errol morris lit made all the visual tropes we now associate w the genre.

also his ingenious camera invention, the Interrotron. and his son lmao, his son.

 

Not a film, but I love the documentary series How To by John Wilson. Nothing else like it on TV. You can find it on Max streaming. There are two six-episode seasons complete, with a third just beginning.

For films, agree that Shoah is an all time great. Worth the effort to watch it in full. I saw this in one sitting with a break for lunch. Gripping the whole way through.

I just rewatched Some Kind of Monster the doc about Metallica recording St. Anger which is quite good. It’s on Netflix. The band is clearly struggling creatively and interpersonal issues are causing conflict. I was surprised at the honesty and unvarnished access we get given Metallica’s wealth and status in the industry.

I can’t help but recommend the official behind the scenes docs on the making of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. These are just amazing documents of what happens when no one is empowered to tell the boss “no”. Many gripping moments of a train wreck in the making.

 

Just remembered another, more recent documentary that impressed me: SCREWBALL.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8819596/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

This documentary about the baseball doping scandal uses a narrative tactic I've never seen before--child actors who represent key baseball characters & dramatize their interactions. It took awhile for this to really resonate with me, but before long it became very amusing, particularly the kid who portrayed Alex Rodriguez (who could star in pretty much any doc about pathology in sports).The tone is light, ironic, subversive. The mendacity & maladjustment of the participants are served up with gusto. IMO the success of this engaging documentary is primarily due to its irreverent, novel style.

 

"That's gonna be great"
"It's gonna be great"
"That's gonna be great"

 

(Lightbulb moment - having seen neither movie): is this the reason so many people are talking about 'Barbenheimer'?

 

So there was hope of the WGA strike finally coming to an end this week, nearly 100 days after it began (just like the previous strike in 2007, which lasted exactly 100 days), with the guild set to meet with the studios back at the bargaining table. But that has been torpedoed by, what is becoming increasingly clear, a delusional and fanatical leadership. The old stereotype of unions ending up hurting those they're supposed to represent, as rich leaders who can weather these kinds of storms continually ignore the needs of their poor and middle class members who cannot weather the same storm. What else is new?

The studios have plenty of back catalogue to feed hungry viewership ('Friends', an ancient show is still the most watched on Netflix) for a very long time and know that most writers do not have enough savings to survive longer than a few months and will eventually either force leadership to cave or go "fi-core (financial-core)" which allows you to remain in the guild but ignore its rules so you can secure work. Many famous writers have gone fi-core before including George Lucas (who long ago told Hollywood and the unions to go f**k themselves), Francis Ford Coppola, Sylvester Stallone, George Clooney, Steven Soderbergh...

And if things get really bad studios will just start outsourcing writing and/or acting duties to other countries like every other goddamn thing in the states does... they already do this with visual FX work. Hollywood is not worried about this, trust me. Consumers already have lots of other options for entertainment (porn, video games, social media, youtube), and will not care about new movies or TV, and will just watch old shit like Friends and X-Files in between jerks and multiplayer.

The industry tends to shut down after October for the holidays and don't ramp up again until the new year. So if this strike doesn't get sorted out in the next month or so (which isn't looking likely at this point), the industry may crumble as writers and actors will be forced to find other employment and Hollywood will start becoming more of a global industry rather than domestically focused. Get ready for even more foreign content.