Strange Bedfellow
Not that the New Yorker‘s Richard Brody is strange, far from it, but his views over the years have sometimes felt apart and exotic from my own. Which is fine. It’s just that “not everything distinctive is good” struck a chord.
Not that the New Yorker‘s Richard Brody is strange, far from it, but his views over the years have sometimes felt apart and exotic from my own. Which is fine. It’s just that “not everything distinctive is good” struck a chord.
If you call a film pretty good but then provide countless links and postings highlighting all of its supposed flaws and weaknesses, can that be described as hate-mongering? You know, like what you’re accusing the critics of SLP of doing currently?
I say again it’s not the Spielberg hate as much as the line about “not everything distinctive is good.” I’ve never heard it put quite that way before. It’s a thought that applies every which way to everything.
What Richard says feels right. But distinctiveness and personality matters, too. A movie can not work and yet still be worthwhile or at least interesting if it’s made with enough passion or feels like there’s an authorial sensibility at play. (Isn’t Brody an auteurist?) So I would say distinctiveness matters, even if it’s not the whole ball game.
Brody is saying that distinctiveness alone, in and of itself, isn’t enough.
On my short list of the best film critics in America, Richard Brody is way up near top. And we don’t even agree on Godard, so I must really hear something in his voice: independence, intelligence, nuance, on a bedrock of tremendous cultural literacy.
Like this point: we could use this yardstick to rip up our papers on a dozen of our “top” filmmakers and then go after our own “favorites.”
Good stuff.
Devin Faraci (@devincf):
“2nd viewing cements the wonder of LINCOLN. DDL is unmatched. Only a heathen, a movie hater, would be against this film.”
By the way, Jeff, have you actually seen any films in Vietnam or has it all been sightseeing so far?
“not everything distinctive is good”
True enough but then again, being distinctive is a pre-requisite for being great.
Wells to BlindMice: The Hanoi Film Festival begins on Sunday evening. Do you want me to call them up & tell them to start it earlier?
This is probably a flame-worthy comment, but I wouldn’t consider the ‘Berg’s style to be that distinctive at all, certainly not in the way that Lynch or Mann or Malick have an unmistakable style. To me, his style is more highly polished, almost to the point of lacking personality, than distinctive. Speilberg has this polished classicism that can be almost anonymous – if you were completely ignorant of the film, it might take you awhile to figure out it was Speilberg, at least until he does one of those “Bet you didn’t think all this shit was just right over here!” pan reveals he’s so in love with.
Jeff should grow a matching beard.
Yeah, it’ll be a cold day in Hell before Brody ever gives Spielberg any kudos. His “Lincoln” piece didn’t, if I recall, pan it all that badly, but bent over backwards to assure us that it only interesting because of Kushner.
That said, “Not everything distinctive is good” should be heard by people who inexplicably liked the godawful “Cloud Atlas”.
“Distinctive” only works when it’s connected to something else that’s vital, ie a provocative intellect, a poetic soul, an outlaw spirit, a corrosive humor, a humanitarian vision.
Kieslowski, for instance, has all of the above.
You can make a list of all of the successful, distinctive working directors who have NONE of the above.
Those attributes areall fatal impediments to the corporatized system of the entertainment manufacturing industry.
Hollywood is a “no monkey wrenchers allowed” zone.
Kieslowski told me “I don’t want to work in Hollywood because you won’t let me do two things that I must do: You won’t let me edit my own films and you won’t let me smoke.”
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