Takes One To Know One
An important tenet of auteurism is that the best films are always driven by an intimate connection between the director and the lead character. Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart‘s Scotty Ferguson in Vertigo, Martin Scorsese and Harvey Keitel‘s Charlie in Mean Streets, etc. And it doesn’t really matter if the director admits to (or is even aware of) self-portraiture. Never trust the artist — trust the tale.
It hit me last night as I was preparing my questions for last night’s q & a with Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow that there’s a certain kinship between herself and Jeremy Renner‘s Sgt. James character — a guy who lives for the thrill of a super-intense job (i.e., bomb defusing) and who isn’t much good at day-to-day normality.
The “tell” is in a 6.25 interview with Bigelow by Movieline‘s Kyle Buchanan.
Renner’s character “thrives on the theater of war and outside it he feels like an incomplete person,” Buchanan notes. “That’s a personality type I could apply to a lot of directors. Only when they’re on set do they feel most themselves. Does that describe you at all?”
“Oh, good question,” Bigelow answers. “I suppose, personally, from my frame of reference, production is very intense and nothing else comes quite close to that. And yet, as a kind of more meta version of myself at that time…I don’t know. I’d probably have to be far more self-aware than I am to answer that accurately. I thrive on production. It feels very much like a natural environment for me. I don’t know if I thrive in normal life.”
Coward that I am, I didn’t put this question to Bigelow last night. I suppose I was thinking that her response to Buchanan (“I’d probably have to be far more self-aware than I am to answer that accurately”) told me that asking this would result in an awkward moment and that she’d probably sidestep it. This is what happens when you come to really like a director personally — you start to feel protective.
But as I sit here this morning I’m fairly convinced of the Bigelow/James connection. It’s arguably why The Hurt Locker plays as well as it does, and why everyone is calling it her best film ever. Bigelow has always “gotten” guys in her films. We hold this truth to be self-evident.
Just for the record, that is not the central tenet of auteurism. Wells acknowledgement: You’re right — I’ve made it “important” rather than “central.”
“The Hurt Locker”? Is that a new movie? Is it supposed to be any good?
Auteurists are about pointing out and celebrating any body of work that has a consistent personality, tone and world view that reflect the personality, beliefs and obsessions of the director. It follows naturally that the main character in a film is often a reflection of or, in the most interesting cases, a mirror-image portrait of the director’s deep-down self. Cary Grant‘s Jeff in Only Angels Have Wings is surely a portrait of who Howard Hawks was on some level. John Wayne‘s Ethan in The Searchers is to some extent a reflection of who John Ford was (or felt he was) — the wandering, tough-talking hard guy, taking no guff, moving from location to location, looking to find or reclaim an aspect of his heritage. I could go on and on.
This is a great film, and a wonderful antidote to the worst summer ever.
I wouldn’t call it the worst summer ever. With Hurt Locker, Hangover, and the promising looking Public Enemies, Funny People, Bruno and Harry Potter (plus Up which I haven’t seen yet) I think we’ve done alright.
Summer 2006 touched bottom.
I wonder what Paul Thomas Anderson shares with Daniel Plainview?
I think “auteur” is being tossed around these days with reckless abandon, almost as much as the word “genius”, that I don’t know if it means anything anymore.
I can understand Godard, Scorsese, Kurasawa, Fellini, Bergman, Hitchcock and a few others being auteurs, but nowadays, it seems like everybody working in Hollywood is an auteur, even if he doesn’t have a big enough body of work to study and evaluate to support that title.
Wells to Steven Kar: N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis wrote the other day that for all his appallingness Michael Bay is unquestionably an auteur. If you’re presenting a consistent personality and worldview in film after film, you qualify.
Wells to GKLondon: A producer friend who claims to know some backstory about Paul’s dad Ernie Anderson, a successful TV and radio announcer/voiceover artist who died in ’97, presented a persuasive case to me that Daniel Plainview is to some degree Ernie. He was allegedly subject to dark moods and could be a bully and a shouter and a domineering tyrant type, she said. Anderson denied this when I popped the question (he called his dad a “softie” deep down) but this description was so different than what I’d heard that I was led to think there might be a little something to it. Like I said, never trust the artist. Or at least always be skeptical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_Anderson
Wells,
That’s what I mean; it’s just too easy now to qualify as an auteur, as if the standards have been lowered or the “rules” have been bent, or something. It has become a joke that someone like Bay can be described as an auteur. And just because that Dargis lady said it, doesn’t mean that it’s gospel. There’s more to being an auteur than the Dargis quote.
Also, let’s say that Bay is “presenting a consistent personality and worldview in film after film”, well in his case, it’s the personality of an immature, crass, brash, loud, juvenile kid obsessed with advertising shit to the world (he advertises, he doesn’t make movies) and his worldview is just laughable. Are we expected to take such a person seriously?
Maybe Dargis should’ve added some word like “intellectual” before “personality” and “thoughtful, challenging” before “worldview,” then I might’ve taken her assessment of an auteur a bit more seriously, and Bay wouldn’t have been able to qualify.
Someone becomes an “auteur” when people begin to make excuses for their shitty movies.
I have a much narrower definition of an auteur film-maker. 99% of films are collaborative efforts representing the collective efforts of numerous artists and craftsmen. But a small percentage of films represent the singular vision of its director. These directors take a pesonal involvement in all aspects of their film – literally everything is under their complete control. To take two examples, Kubrick and Lynch not only direct, but are intimately involved in the screenwriting, cinematography, sound design, set design, and editting. To me, Bay and Spielberg are not auteurs, but craftsmen. They put other people’s screenplays and ideas up on the screen.
George,
Thank you.
Dr. Bob,
Brilliant examples. You beat me to it. I was even going to bring up the whole argument about Spielberg and the auteur theory.
Michael Bay is a stylist.
Tim Burton and David Fincher would fit there too.
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