"That's it! I'm through with Star Wars! I don't care anymore."
These words were spoken by a friend of mine after he went to see the Clone Wars animated movie a few summers ago. In all fairness, we were kind of asking for it.
Both of us were born in the pop cultural landscape of the 1980s, and so were part of the tail end of the group that could be described as "the children of Lucas of Spielberg" ("les enfants du Lucas et Spielberg" sounds classier). Not ardent Star Wars Fans with a capital F, but...you know, the sort of young movie buffs who first grew to love Hollywood adventure through VHS tapes of Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, and E.T.
With that bedrock of fondness, we hit adolescence during the whole prequel deal. The problems with that particular trilogy have been critiqued often and vehemently (and with great hyperbole) over the last decade, and there's really no need to go into it. But Lucas, for his part, seems fairly unfazed by the wave of negative criticism, and it's worth noting that in a recent interview, he used the Hollywood Nuremberg defense: kids like it. In fact, Lucas claimed that a whole new set of kids prefers the prequels to the originals. I'm totally willing to buy that this is true. But it may also mean that the root problem with the latest mediocre Hollywood blockbusters (including some with Spielberg's name on it) is not entirely on Hollywood's end. It's not hackery or a lost touch, but a shift in cultural tastes towards having everything bigger, louder, faster, and shinier, irregardless of content. Maybe the real monster is us.
In that broader context, it's easy to see where my friend was coming from after he left the Clones Wars, which was basically a Saturday morning cartoon that they decided to release in theaters. His desire to not care anymore was like both a rebellion against the tentpole system (which relies on the marketing clout of established franchises) and the bitter nostalgia of post-adolescents who already sound like stodgy old men when they claim that the series peaked in 1980. Indifference towards any new entries in a once-reputable franchise didn't seem like a bad idea.
The strategy of calculated indifference, though, was challenged recently. When I swung by yahoo the other day, I was caught off-guard by a front page headline--next to a slightly less disturbing one about Nic Cage going blond--announcing that a Star Wars sitcom is in the works. At first, adding a sitcom to the Star Wars canon seemed wildly off. My first thoughts were that either a) they realized that when you set a laugh track to the romantic scenes of Episode II, it attains a level of ironic poetry; or b) George Lucas had decided to dig until he hit rock bottom.
But then I found out that it would be spun off of the Robot Chicken spoofs of Star Wars--essentially free-style comic riffing--and the announcement took on a subtext other than selling out. It was an official sign that the franchise was going to embrace self-parody. Maybe that's not a bad thing. If anything, the prequel trilogies took themselves--their mythology, their love story--too seriously. I'm sure this announcement has already sent rage ricocheting around the internet, though I haven't felt like checking. I honestly have no idea how this will turn out, or if I'd give in to marketing clout and tune in out of curiosity.
It can be best not to care.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Kevin Smith, Auteurism, and the Mass Culture Debate
The following post is informed by nostalgia and media theory.
A new episode in the mass culture debate happened last week, involving Kevin Smith.
Smith, aka "Silent Bob," is an independent film icon from the 1990s, and could be accurately described as something along the lines of a "raunch auteur." His breakthrough flick, Clerks, which he made for less than $30,000 by maxing out his credit cards, is a case of the cinematic American dream in action. And throughout the 90s, he sketched his own self-contained universe, a New Jersey suburb filled with aimless, hyper-articulate post-adolescents who have nothing better to do with their time and energy than debate Star Wars. At their best—and they're often inconsistent—his 90s films alternately show sensitive insight (Chasing Amy), on-target satire (Dogma), and strong character-based comedy (Clerks). (Mallrats, though a critical flop, is the perfect movie for a middle schooler to watch when his parents aren't around.) As many have noted, including Smith himself, he isn't particularly remarkable when it comes to directing. But that never really mattered, since he wrote some of the wittiest comic dialogue in 1990s America film.
This decade, though, has seen Smith become more of a Hollywood hitman. When I saw the trailer for Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which he wrote and directed, and which was a pretty solid raunch comedy, what surprised me was that the trailer didn't mention him or his past work at all. Compare that with Dogma, which positioned itself as "from the creators of Clerks and Chasing Amy." (As far as credits go, Smith, I believe, likes to emphasize group collaboration over the whole auteurist claim of individual authorship—which I actually find very admirable.)
The transformation seemed complete when I saw the trailer to his latest flick, Cop Out, a film in which, sigh, a comically irresponsible black dude and a comically stern white dude team up to fight crime. Not only did it look like a formula star vehicle, it wasn't even his script. It looked like a sign that his identity was being subsumed by Hollywood formula, and nothing I heard since did anything to change that impression.
But all of that was just a prelude. As Anne Thompson notes at indieWIRE, Kevin Smith caused something of a stir recently (an internet stir) by insulting the critics who panned Cop Out--which was, as Thompson points out, his highest gross to date.
Smith's post is a long one, touching on the righteous (the ridiculousness of rabid hating, the mellow enjoyment of simple pleasure) before going into his take on critics, complete with a long, incredibly detailed politically incorrect metaphor. Take a deep breath. His accumlated posts, which came in response to fan question about film theory, are as follows:
And I think there are, to this issue, a great many nuances.
On the one hand, I think that movies should be fun--or rather, that there should always be a place for fun movies. But I'll never buy the argument, which I see over and over again, that critics don't like fun films.
A brief detour to Rotten Tomatoes shows that recent blockbuster hits like Iron Man and Star Trek got rave reviews—to pick a gender-flipped example, Julie & Julia got strong critical notices as well. (Or, to pick something older, Singin' in the Rain continually tops lists of the greatest films of all time, and I defy anyone to find a happier, more bubbly movie). I think critics do like "movies," they just like them to bring something to the table. Entertainment is a good thing--not the only thing, but a good thing--but most bad movies don't qualify as entertainment by the pure fact that they don't entertain. At best, they only qualify as distraction.
Of course, one man's entertainment is another man's distraction, and having times when you can turn your mind off can be a great privilege. But I don't think people should be discouraged from reading or thinking about the media they consume. And if extremely low ambition is the producer's defense, I'm not sure that's an argument worth winning.
I'm reminded of a quote by Ebert, who is hardly an intellectual elitist (no one can be and give Vin Diesel's xXx three-and-a-half stars at the same time). Ebert wrote--in a discussion of the most unapologetically intellectual director in film history, Jean-Luc Godard--that we live in a time when the mainstream audience expects to be "congratulated for its narrow tastes, and catered to." The use of "narrow" rather than "bad" is key. And I agree: currently, the idea of intellect in the public arena is too often seen as something to be sneered at.
Snobbery is its own problem, and it should be avoided. After all, it occurred to me that I watch movies by Jean-Luc Godard for the same essential reason that someone else watches, say, Cop Out: it's what we like to do during our spare time to keep ourselves busy and make us contented. But I can't get on board with Smith here. I think people should be encouraged to poke around, to read up on films, to look into what makes all these ostensibly-great movies so great instead of just uncritically accepting the latest execution of a formula. And in the meantime, I hope we see more movies from the creators of Clerks and Chasing Amy.
A new episode in the mass culture debate happened last week, involving Kevin Smith.
Smith, aka "Silent Bob," is an independent film icon from the 1990s, and could be accurately described as something along the lines of a "raunch auteur." His breakthrough flick, Clerks, which he made for less than $30,000 by maxing out his credit cards, is a case of the cinematic American dream in action. And throughout the 90s, he sketched his own self-contained universe, a New Jersey suburb filled with aimless, hyper-articulate post-adolescents who have nothing better to do with their time and energy than debate Star Wars. At their best—and they're often inconsistent—his 90s films alternately show sensitive insight (Chasing Amy), on-target satire (Dogma), and strong character-based comedy (Clerks). (Mallrats, though a critical flop, is the perfect movie for a middle schooler to watch when his parents aren't around.) As many have noted, including Smith himself, he isn't particularly remarkable when it comes to directing. But that never really mattered, since he wrote some of the wittiest comic dialogue in 1990s America film.
This decade, though, has seen Smith become more of a Hollywood hitman. When I saw the trailer for Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which he wrote and directed, and which was a pretty solid raunch comedy, what surprised me was that the trailer didn't mention him or his past work at all. Compare that with Dogma, which positioned itself as "from the creators of Clerks and Chasing Amy." (As far as credits go, Smith, I believe, likes to emphasize group collaboration over the whole auteurist claim of individual authorship—which I actually find very admirable.)
The transformation seemed complete when I saw the trailer to his latest flick, Cop Out, a film in which, sigh, a comically irresponsible black dude and a comically stern white dude team up to fight crime. Not only did it look like a formula star vehicle, it wasn't even his script. It looked like a sign that his identity was being subsumed by Hollywood formula, and nothing I heard since did anything to change that impression.
But all of that was just a prelude. As Anne Thompson notes at indieWIRE, Kevin Smith caused something of a stir recently (an internet stir) by insulting the critics who panned Cop Out--which was, as Thompson points out, his highest gross to date.
Smith's post is a long one, touching on the righteous (the ridiculousness of rabid hating, the mellow enjoyment of simple pleasure) before going into his take on critics, complete with a long, incredibly detailed politically incorrect metaphor. Take a deep breath. His accumlated posts, which came in response to fan question about film theory, are as follows:
@coked_up_jesus “I gotta say that every day I hate film theory & film students & critics more & more. Where is the fun in movies?” Sir sometimes, it’s important to turn off the chatter. Film fandom’s become a nasty bloodsport where cartoonishly rooting for failure gets the hit count up on the ol’ brand-new blog. And if a schmuck like me pays you some attention, score! MORE EYES, MEANS MORE ADVERT $. But when you pull your eye away from the microscope, you can see that shit you’re studying so closely is, in reality, tiny as fuck. You wanna enjoy movies again? Stop reading about them & just go to the movies. It’s improved film/movie appreciation immensely for me.
I find this to be a very interesting entry in the basic mass culture debate—which is also, for that matter, the root of a great many internet arguments: populism ("don't overthink, just enjoy") versus intellectualism ("this is mediocre").Seriously: so many critics lined-up to pull a sad & embarrassing train on #CopOut like it was JenniferJasonLeigh in LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN. Watching them beat the shit out of it was sad. Like, it’s called #CopOut; that sound like a very ambitious title to you? You REALLY wanna shit in the mouth of a flick that so OBVIOUSLY strived for nothing more than laughs. Was it called “Schindler’s Cop Out”? Writing a nasty eview for #CopOut is akin to bullying a retarded kid who was getting a couple chuckles from the normies by singing AFTERNOON DELIGHT.
Suddenly, bully-dudes are doing the bad impression of him, using the “retart” voice. The crowd shifts uncomfortably. And you may impress a couple of low IQ-ers who’re like “Yeah, man! Way to destroy that singing retart!” But, really? All you’ve done is make fun of something that wasn’t doing you any harm and wanted only to give some cats a some fun laughs. It was just ridiculous to watch. That was it for me. Realized whole system’s upside down: so we let a bunch of people see it for free & they shit all over it? Meanwhile, people who’d REALLY like to see the flick for free are made to pay? Bullshit: from now on, any flick I’m ever involved with, I conduct critics screenings thusly: you wanna see it early to review it? Fine: pay like you would if you saw it next week. Like, why am I giving an arbitrary 500 people power over what I do at all, let alone for free? Next flick, I’d rather pick 500 randoms from Twitter feed & let THEM see it for free in advance, then post THEIR opinions, good AND bad. Same difference. Why’s their opinion more valid? It’s a backwards system. People are free to talk shit about ANY of my flicks, so long as they paid to see it. Fuck this AnimalFarm bullshit.
And I think there are, to this issue, a great many nuances.
On the one hand, I think that movies should be fun--or rather, that there should always be a place for fun movies. But I'll never buy the argument, which I see over and over again, that critics don't like fun films.
A brief detour to Rotten Tomatoes shows that recent blockbuster hits like Iron Man and Star Trek got rave reviews—to pick a gender-flipped example, Julie & Julia got strong critical notices as well. (Or, to pick something older, Singin' in the Rain continually tops lists of the greatest films of all time, and I defy anyone to find a happier, more bubbly movie). I think critics do like "movies," they just like them to bring something to the table. Entertainment is a good thing--not the only thing, but a good thing--but most bad movies don't qualify as entertainment by the pure fact that they don't entertain. At best, they only qualify as distraction.
Of course, one man's entertainment is another man's distraction, and having times when you can turn your mind off can be a great privilege. But I don't think people should be discouraged from reading or thinking about the media they consume. And if extremely low ambition is the producer's defense, I'm not sure that's an argument worth winning.
I'm reminded of a quote by Ebert, who is hardly an intellectual elitist (no one can be and give Vin Diesel's xXx three-and-a-half stars at the same time). Ebert wrote--in a discussion of the most unapologetically intellectual director in film history, Jean-Luc Godard--that we live in a time when the mainstream audience expects to be "congratulated for its narrow tastes, and catered to." The use of "narrow" rather than "bad" is key. And I agree: currently, the idea of intellect in the public arena is too often seen as something to be sneered at.
Snobbery is its own problem, and it should be avoided. After all, it occurred to me that I watch movies by Jean-Luc Godard for the same essential reason that someone else watches, say, Cop Out: it's what we like to do during our spare time to keep ourselves busy and make us contented. But I can't get on board with Smith here. I think people should be encouraged to poke around, to read up on films, to look into what makes all these ostensibly-great movies so great instead of just uncritically accepting the latest execution of a formula. And in the meantime, I hope we see more movies from the creators of Clerks and Chasing Amy.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
One German company's battle against narrative exhaustion
Last summer, Paul Schrader--a film scholar, the screenwriter of Raging Bull, and a bona fide member of the cinematic old-guard--wrote an op-ed for The Guardian called "Beyond the Silver Screen." If you haven't seen it, it's worth checking out in its (short) entirety.
But basically, he says that in a world already drowning in media, audiences suffer from "narrative exhaustion." We know the formulas, we've seen it all before. And so, to engage and maintain interest, entertainment shifts: becoming, among other things, more "reality"-based (with reality in quotes) and more participatory. In closing, he speaks of cinema in the past tense as a medium on its own way out:
Movies were the artform of the 20th century. The traditional concept of movies, a projected image in a dark room of viewers, feels increasingly old. I don't know what the future of audio-visual entertainment will be, but I don't think it will be what we used to call movies.
This seems melancholy. I certainly hope the traditional concept of movies never goes completely, though as a member of the new-guard who has the greatest respect for the old-guard, the sense I get in the brave new world is not melancholy, but rather a tentative enthusiasm for new directions and possibilities.
Which is why I found this article from Gizmodo interesting. It's about an interactive system that sounds pretty experimental, and that a company in Germany has used to spice up the genre with perhaps the most ruthlessly repeated formula: horror.
Essentially, The Last Call is the "first interactive horror movie." At the start of the screening, everyone in the audience provides their phone numbers, which get lodged in a computer. During the movie, the frantic heroine (chased by whatever) dials a number in her cell phone, and the companies computer dials an audience number at random. That audience member then answers and engages with the movie: the heroine will ask which may she should go, what should she do, and the viewer can tell her. Observe their trailer, which does a lot to play up the new angles that Schrader was talking about:
I think this sounds like a very interesting experience in a number of ways--aside from the fact that it requires a narrative logic where the main character is relying on life-or-death advice from a stranger over the phone. At the very least, it represents an even more explicit embrace of horror as a genre that people use for a kind of offbeat, somewhat campy party experience. Not to mention the genre where people most like to shout at the screen.
But there are a few things I have to wonder about it. Just in theory, I wonder if this makes the audience more engaged in the characters' lives, or less. That is, does it keep you at arms length from the story, making it even more clear that the images on screen are playthings? (And of course, the choices are few and random and would all presumably have to lead to a certain running time). As far as narratives are concerned, giving random advice to a character seems far more suited to gimmickry than investment--though horror is a genre that does just fine with gimmicks.
On a logistical level, I'm curious how it works. I imagine it could be interesting to the viewer who gets randomly called, but less so to everyone else. Or the rest of the audience would want to get involved to, as they do in the video, calling out advice. Everyone in the video seems cool about it, united by a sense of solidarity (more in tune with a ride than engagement in a narrative). But theater etiquette would definitely be an X factor.
It doesn't sound like the sort of thing that could go wide and into theaters everywhere--it seems far more suited to a Star Tours style theme park attraction. It's almost certainly more of a curio than the Future, but I'm curious, and it shows the ongoing use of technology against narrative fatigue.
But basically, he says that in a world already drowning in media, audiences suffer from "narrative exhaustion." We know the formulas, we've seen it all before. And so, to engage and maintain interest, entertainment shifts: becoming, among other things, more "reality"-based (with reality in quotes) and more participatory. In closing, he speaks of cinema in the past tense as a medium on its own way out:
Movies were the artform of the 20th century. The traditional concept of movies, a projected image in a dark room of viewers, feels increasingly old. I don't know what the future of audio-visual entertainment will be, but I don't think it will be what we used to call movies.
This seems melancholy. I certainly hope the traditional concept of movies never goes completely, though as a member of the new-guard who has the greatest respect for the old-guard, the sense I get in the brave new world is not melancholy, but rather a tentative enthusiasm for new directions and possibilities.
Which is why I found this article from Gizmodo interesting. It's about an interactive system that sounds pretty experimental, and that a company in Germany has used to spice up the genre with perhaps the most ruthlessly repeated formula: horror.
Essentially, The Last Call is the "first interactive horror movie." At the start of the screening, everyone in the audience provides their phone numbers, which get lodged in a computer. During the movie, the frantic heroine (chased by whatever) dials a number in her cell phone, and the companies computer dials an audience number at random. That audience member then answers and engages with the movie: the heroine will ask which may she should go, what should she do, and the viewer can tell her. Observe their trailer, which does a lot to play up the new angles that Schrader was talking about:
I think this sounds like a very interesting experience in a number of ways--aside from the fact that it requires a narrative logic where the main character is relying on life-or-death advice from a stranger over the phone. At the very least, it represents an even more explicit embrace of horror as a genre that people use for a kind of offbeat, somewhat campy party experience. Not to mention the genre where people most like to shout at the screen.
But there are a few things I have to wonder about it. Just in theory, I wonder if this makes the audience more engaged in the characters' lives, or less. That is, does it keep you at arms length from the story, making it even more clear that the images on screen are playthings? (And of course, the choices are few and random and would all presumably have to lead to a certain running time). As far as narratives are concerned, giving random advice to a character seems far more suited to gimmickry than investment--though horror is a genre that does just fine with gimmicks.
On a logistical level, I'm curious how it works. I imagine it could be interesting to the viewer who gets randomly called, but less so to everyone else. Or the rest of the audience would want to get involved to, as they do in the video, calling out advice. Everyone in the video seems cool about it, united by a sense of solidarity (more in tune with a ride than engagement in a narrative). But theater etiquette would definitely be an X factor.
It doesn't sound like the sort of thing that could go wide and into theaters everywhere--it seems far more suited to a Star Tours style theme park attraction. It's almost certainly more of a curio than the Future, but I'm curious, and it shows the ongoing use of technology against narrative fatigue.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Baseless Predictions '09 (Why I don't expect Avatar to win)
I like the Oscars. Yes, there’s something inherently ridiculous about the glitz/glamour, and their picks often feel like a kangaroo court--subject to hype and only judging on a very conventional axis of cinematic quality. But more importantly, it’s a celebration of “movies” as an idea. As an abstract concept. As a set of shared cultural memories worthy of uncynical praise and endless, endless montages. And that’s something that I can get behind.
Plus, it’s always interesting to see the Academy's ongoing quest to get people to actually watch it, from shrinking the Best Song performances to moving the lifetime achievement awards to their own separate ceremony. For last year, they announced cryptically that the Oscar ceremony would hold "surprises" and "many, many risks" for the nominees, which I found oddly funny (though any hopes for a Streep-v.-Winslet Thunderdome match went unfulfilled). This year, they expanded the number of Best Picture nominees from 5 to 10, thus broadening the pool.
What I found refreshing about this year’s nominations, actually, was how little of it seemed annoying. Upping the Best Picture crop from 5 to 10 has allowed several interesting smaller films to have space in the spotlight. Some of my favorite films of any size this year, like A Serious Man and An Education, have gotten their due, which makes me happy even if they still have no chance of winning. And even beyond that, very little this year strikes me as egregiously overrated. (The source of my mellow contentment may be that I haven’t seen The Blind Side, whose sports clichés left many critics unimpressed, and whose "nice white lady" narrative has apparently ignited a particularly redundant battle in the ongoing culture war.)
It’s traditional for a prediction breakdown of who’ll win the top prizes. Brief caveat: as far as inside scoops are concerned, I’m completely unqualified.
BEST PICTURE
Though there are 10 nominees, the word a while back was that only 5 of them were really contenders. Or rather, only 2: The Hurt Locker and Avatar. Think of it as the likable prestige picture vs. the blockbuster. My instinct was that it would be a fairly safe lock for The Hurt Locker, though I've seen analyses that predict Avatar would come out on top, for the basic reason of Avatar's record-breaking box office.
"Hollywood ♥ Money" sounds like solid conventional wisdom, but the parallel I'd draw is Star Wars. Back in 1977, Star Wars was, like Avatar, an unprecedented technological breakthrough, an unprecedented moneymaker, and a Best Picture nominee. But at the end of the day, sci-fi/fantasy blockbusters hit hardest among the younger crowd, and Academy voters are adults—and thus are far more likely to give the top prize to a movie that addresses more serious adult issues. (The winner that year was Annie Hall.) Lord of the Rings only did it on its third try, after several years running as a cultural phenomenon. I would give The Hurt Locker the edge over Avatar, since it has more of that prestige weight behind it as the first awards season success about the Iraq War.
The X factor, of course, is that one of The Hurt Locker’s producers slipped up and recently sent out an email to Academy voters asking for their support. Since such direct campaigning is against Academy rules, he essentially committed a major breach of etiquette with only a few days left before the ballots were due. (I was not familiar with the nuances of Oscar campaigning, so for me, the most visibly inappropriate part of his email was the gigantic run-on sentence.) But he’s apologized and has been officially chastised by the Academy, and whether or not it affected the vote remains to be seen. I’d still bet Hurt Locker, but at least now the ceremony has an added twist of suspense.
BEST DIRECTOR
Historically, Picture and Director walk hand in hand the vast majority of the time—though this last decade has brought plenty of exceptions. The easy tabloid subtext is that this year’s frontrunners, Avatar’s James Cameron and The Hurt Locker’s Kathryn Bigelow, used to be married. My bet is Kathryn Bigelow, not only because I want her to win, but also because the Academy has already given James Cameron an Oscar for making the biggest movie ever and would have to really be in the mood to do it again.
The other key factor, which can’t be ignored, is that a Kathryn Bigelow victory would be historic: she could very well become the first woman in the 82-year history of the Oscars to win Best Director. Only four women, including her, have ever been nominated. Her win would be interesting in a number of ways, not least of which is that she makes films in a stereotypically male genre: “high-octane” action (The Hurt Locker doesn’t even have a central female character). Depending on who you ask, this is either a good or a bad thing, symbolizing alternately that a) women can do anything men can do, or b) women have to be one of the boys to succeed. Regardless, The Hurt Locker is incredibly well-directed, and there’s a very real chance that the first woman to win Best Director will be the auteur behind Point Break, the ultimate Keanu Reeves action/surf/buddy flick (apologies to Sofia Coppola).
BEST ACTOR
This race is an almost certain lock for Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, which slightly bothers me. It’s not that I don’t think Jeff Bridges deserves an Oscar—he does, and has for a while now. It’s what it says about award season.
Jeff Bridges' character in Crazy Heart, who spends most of the time being charming and nostalgically wasted, bears a not-ignorable resemblance to Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski—a comparison that the film actively invites with an in-joke early on. So he’s essentially playing a country singer variation on the Dude, with a few melodramatic staples mixed in: calling his long-lost son, losing and then regaining the love of a good woman, and dropping homespun wisdom about getting by. (I believe he refers to his beat-up car as “ole Bessie” at one point, though it’s possible that I was so caught up in folksy homilies that my memory added that detail). Placing Jeff Bridges front and center and letting him go, Crazy Heart is as much a Best Actor reel as it is a movie (ask me about my problems with the narrative). So it's dramatic, but in such a conventional way that it almost feels contrived. And it kind of bothers me that that’s an Oscar lock when a role like the Dude—whose heroic passivity in a land of ambition made him a more interesting character and, in an odd way, a more authentic one—only got nominated for a Satellite Award.
But who else would it be? George Clooney as a suave but cynical charmer? Morgan Freeman as an unimpeachable beacon of inspiration? (Both of whom have won before.) Jeremy Renner is too new, and Colin Firth hasn’t had the awards season momentum. Jeff Bridges has the veteran-who’s-owed-one cred, and he’s been winning all the pre-Oscar awards accordingly. And though I wasn’t particularly crazy about the movie itself, Bridges is wonderful in it—he pretty much carries the movie by himself. And when he wins, it’ll be overdue.
Still, I’d love to have seen more off the beaten path performances, like Souleymane Sy Savane in Goodbye Solo, at least get a moment in the spotlight with a nomination.
BEST ACTRESS
Since this category seems pretty much like a lock as well, I feel like I might as well make a digression.
Best Actress is generally the category I find the least interesting, and it’s not because I don’t see interesting leading lady performances. It’s more about the Academy’s tendency towards very conventional movie star roles.
In 2008, my favorite actress of the year was Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky, who was her character so completely and so engagingly that if I ever met her in real life and she was somebody else, I’d be surprised. Despite winning the Golden Globe, she wasn’t even nominated for the Oscar.
The conventional movie star performance, nominated instead, would be exemplified by Angelina Jolie in Changeling: a major star slightly deglamourizing herself, putting on period costume, and forcefully emoting lines like “I want my son back!” Which is well and good and compelling enough to watch, but you never forget that you’re watching a movie star and not a character. In other words, the Academy won’t give Kate Winslet an Oscar for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where the slightest flicker is a character note (and the slightest smile can break your heart), but they will give Kate Winslet an Oscar for The Reader, where she puts on period costume and old-person makeup and fiercely intones, “I learned to read.”
Maybe that’s why deep down this year, I’m rooting for either Carey Mulligan in An Education or Gabourey Sibide in Precious: because I can more easily see them as character rather than star.
The lock this year is Sandra Bullock.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR & ACTRESS
The Supporting category I find almost always more interesting, at least in terms of the roles. Here's a category for villains and comics and oddities, unburdened by the need to have a conventional Best Actor/Actress arc. But wow, pretty much all the acting contests are locks this year. The winners will be Mo’Nique for Precious and Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (making Best Supporting Actor the annual award for Villain of the Year for the third year running). Anything else would be a big upset.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The screenplay awards may in fact be my favorite category of the year each year, just because they’re the place that small, outsider films have the best chance of getting attention. And to that effect, I’m glad that In the Loop gets a presence. But on to the winners.
I bet Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner's script for Up in the Air will (deservedly) take this one. Reitman is 3 for 3 at the moment for popular/acclaimed movies. He’s an insider who’s been nominated before, and the Academy clearly likes his film. I’d be surprised if it were anyone else.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
If this is indeed a Hurt Locker year, it could very well pick up the Original Screenplay award as well, which would slightly bother me, since it’s not so much a writer’s movie as a director’s movie. But then, the screenwriter Mark Boal has personal experience going for him, since he wrote it inspired by time spent as an embedded journalist. And it’s been on a screenwriting award roll, picking up at both the Writer’s Guild of America awards and the BAFTAs. However, Quentin Tarantino’s script for Inglourious Basterds was deemed WGA-ineligible, so at the Oscars, The Hurt Locker’s WGA edge might very well give way to a Tarantino victory. I predict it will.
So that’s it for my main predictions for the 2009 awards. Tomorrow I'll be posting running commentary on the Awards show.
And in the event that you haven't seen it yet, check out the trailer for every Oscar movie ever. Get excited.
Plus, it’s always interesting to see the Academy's ongoing quest to get people to actually watch it, from shrinking the Best Song performances to moving the lifetime achievement awards to their own separate ceremony. For last year, they announced cryptically that the Oscar ceremony would hold "surprises" and "many, many risks" for the nominees, which I found oddly funny (though any hopes for a Streep-v.-Winslet Thunderdome match went unfulfilled). This year, they expanded the number of Best Picture nominees from 5 to 10, thus broadening the pool.
What I found refreshing about this year’s nominations, actually, was how little of it seemed annoying. Upping the Best Picture crop from 5 to 10 has allowed several interesting smaller films to have space in the spotlight. Some of my favorite films of any size this year, like A Serious Man and An Education, have gotten their due, which makes me happy even if they still have no chance of winning. And even beyond that, very little this year strikes me as egregiously overrated. (The source of my mellow contentment may be that I haven’t seen The Blind Side, whose sports clichés left many critics unimpressed, and whose "nice white lady" narrative has apparently ignited a particularly redundant battle in the ongoing culture war.)
It’s traditional for a prediction breakdown of who’ll win the top prizes. Brief caveat: as far as inside scoops are concerned, I’m completely unqualified.
BEST PICTURE
Though there are 10 nominees, the word a while back was that only 5 of them were really contenders. Or rather, only 2: The Hurt Locker and Avatar. Think of it as the likable prestige picture vs. the blockbuster. My instinct was that it would be a fairly safe lock for The Hurt Locker, though I've seen analyses that predict Avatar would come out on top, for the basic reason of Avatar's record-breaking box office.
"Hollywood ♥ Money" sounds like solid conventional wisdom, but the parallel I'd draw is Star Wars. Back in 1977, Star Wars was, like Avatar, an unprecedented technological breakthrough, an unprecedented moneymaker, and a Best Picture nominee. But at the end of the day, sci-fi/fantasy blockbusters hit hardest among the younger crowd, and Academy voters are adults—and thus are far more likely to give the top prize to a movie that addresses more serious adult issues. (The winner that year was Annie Hall.) Lord of the Rings only did it on its third try, after several years running as a cultural phenomenon. I would give The Hurt Locker the edge over Avatar, since it has more of that prestige weight behind it as the first awards season success about the Iraq War.
The X factor, of course, is that one of The Hurt Locker’s producers slipped up and recently sent out an email to Academy voters asking for their support. Since such direct campaigning is against Academy rules, he essentially committed a major breach of etiquette with only a few days left before the ballots were due. (I was not familiar with the nuances of Oscar campaigning, so for me, the most visibly inappropriate part of his email was the gigantic run-on sentence.) But he’s apologized and has been officially chastised by the Academy, and whether or not it affected the vote remains to be seen. I’d still bet Hurt Locker, but at least now the ceremony has an added twist of suspense.
BEST DIRECTOR
Historically, Picture and Director walk hand in hand the vast majority of the time—though this last decade has brought plenty of exceptions. The easy tabloid subtext is that this year’s frontrunners, Avatar’s James Cameron and The Hurt Locker’s Kathryn Bigelow, used to be married. My bet is Kathryn Bigelow, not only because I want her to win, but also because the Academy has already given James Cameron an Oscar for making the biggest movie ever and would have to really be in the mood to do it again.
The other key factor, which can’t be ignored, is that a Kathryn Bigelow victory would be historic: she could very well become the first woman in the 82-year history of the Oscars to win Best Director. Only four women, including her, have ever been nominated. Her win would be interesting in a number of ways, not least of which is that she makes films in a stereotypically male genre: “high-octane” action (The Hurt Locker doesn’t even have a central female character). Depending on who you ask, this is either a good or a bad thing, symbolizing alternately that a) women can do anything men can do, or b) women have to be one of the boys to succeed. Regardless, The Hurt Locker is incredibly well-directed, and there’s a very real chance that the first woman to win Best Director will be the auteur behind Point Break, the ultimate Keanu Reeves action/surf/buddy flick (apologies to Sofia Coppola).
BEST ACTOR
This race is an almost certain lock for Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, which slightly bothers me. It’s not that I don’t think Jeff Bridges deserves an Oscar—he does, and has for a while now. It’s what it says about award season.
Jeff Bridges' character in Crazy Heart, who spends most of the time being charming and nostalgically wasted, bears a not-ignorable resemblance to Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski—a comparison that the film actively invites with an in-joke early on. So he’s essentially playing a country singer variation on the Dude, with a few melodramatic staples mixed in: calling his long-lost son, losing and then regaining the love of a good woman, and dropping homespun wisdom about getting by. (I believe he refers to his beat-up car as “ole Bessie” at one point, though it’s possible that I was so caught up in folksy homilies that my memory added that detail). Placing Jeff Bridges front and center and letting him go, Crazy Heart is as much a Best Actor reel as it is a movie (ask me about my problems with the narrative). So it's dramatic, but in such a conventional way that it almost feels contrived. And it kind of bothers me that that’s an Oscar lock when a role like the Dude—whose heroic passivity in a land of ambition made him a more interesting character and, in an odd way, a more authentic one—only got nominated for a Satellite Award.
But who else would it be? George Clooney as a suave but cynical charmer? Morgan Freeman as an unimpeachable beacon of inspiration? (Both of whom have won before.) Jeremy Renner is too new, and Colin Firth hasn’t had the awards season momentum. Jeff Bridges has the veteran-who’s-owed-one cred, and he’s been winning all the pre-Oscar awards accordingly. And though I wasn’t particularly crazy about the movie itself, Bridges is wonderful in it—he pretty much carries the movie by himself. And when he wins, it’ll be overdue.
Still, I’d love to have seen more off the beaten path performances, like Souleymane Sy Savane in Goodbye Solo, at least get a moment in the spotlight with a nomination.
BEST ACTRESS
Since this category seems pretty much like a lock as well, I feel like I might as well make a digression.
Best Actress is generally the category I find the least interesting, and it’s not because I don’t see interesting leading lady performances. It’s more about the Academy’s tendency towards very conventional movie star roles.
In 2008, my favorite actress of the year was Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky, who was her character so completely and so engagingly that if I ever met her in real life and she was somebody else, I’d be surprised. Despite winning the Golden Globe, she wasn’t even nominated for the Oscar.
The conventional movie star performance, nominated instead, would be exemplified by Angelina Jolie in Changeling: a major star slightly deglamourizing herself, putting on period costume, and forcefully emoting lines like “I want my son back!” Which is well and good and compelling enough to watch, but you never forget that you’re watching a movie star and not a character. In other words, the Academy won’t give Kate Winslet an Oscar for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where the slightest flicker is a character note (and the slightest smile can break your heart), but they will give Kate Winslet an Oscar for The Reader, where she puts on period costume and old-person makeup and fiercely intones, “I learned to read.”
Maybe that’s why deep down this year, I’m rooting for either Carey Mulligan in An Education or Gabourey Sibide in Precious: because I can more easily see them as character rather than star.
The lock this year is Sandra Bullock.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR & ACTRESS
The Supporting category I find almost always more interesting, at least in terms of the roles. Here's a category for villains and comics and oddities, unburdened by the need to have a conventional Best Actor/Actress arc. But wow, pretty much all the acting contests are locks this year. The winners will be Mo’Nique for Precious and Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (making Best Supporting Actor the annual award for Villain of the Year for the third year running). Anything else would be a big upset.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The screenplay awards may in fact be my favorite category of the year each year, just because they’re the place that small, outsider films have the best chance of getting attention. And to that effect, I’m glad that In the Loop gets a presence. But on to the winners.
I bet Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner's script for Up in the Air will (deservedly) take this one. Reitman is 3 for 3 at the moment for popular/acclaimed movies. He’s an insider who’s been nominated before, and the Academy clearly likes his film. I’d be surprised if it were anyone else.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
If this is indeed a Hurt Locker year, it could very well pick up the Original Screenplay award as well, which would slightly bother me, since it’s not so much a writer’s movie as a director’s movie. But then, the screenwriter Mark Boal has personal experience going for him, since he wrote it inspired by time spent as an embedded journalist. And it’s been on a screenwriting award roll, picking up at both the Writer’s Guild of America awards and the BAFTAs. However, Quentin Tarantino’s script for Inglourious Basterds was deemed WGA-ineligible, so at the Oscars, The Hurt Locker’s WGA edge might very well give way to a Tarantino victory. I predict it will.
So that’s it for my main predictions for the 2009 awards. Tomorrow I'll be posting running commentary on the Awards show.
And in the event that you haven't seen it yet, check out the trailer for every Oscar movie ever. Get excited.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Birth of a Nation's Relatively Inoffensive Younger Sibling: Weighing in 94 Years Too Late and Giving Redundant Advice
I apologize for taking so long to post, but I was watching a D.W. Griffith film.
Keeping in mind the Mark Twain quote on how a classic is something that "everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read," I've lately made it a goal to actually go back and watch all the old canonical classic films. It's all the satisfaction of a job with none of the pay, and this blog may be dipping in and out of the quest from time to time--provided the commentary isn't too redundant (Citizen Kane is good, etc.). First was a matter of choosing a canon, which is a post for another time). But D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916) is one that appears in seemingly all of them.
Intolerance was Griffith's follow-up to his hated/admired film The Birth of a Nation (1915), which will now and forever be one of film history's most problematic milestones. For those who aren't familiar with the film, or for whom it only rings a faint bell, The Birth of a Nation is famous primarily for two reasons.
First, it's a bona fide cinematic landmark. At a time when movies were seen as more of a novelty than an artistic medium, Griffith together techniques we take for granted (cross-cutting, close-ups) into a multi-threaded epic that demonstrated the possibilities of cinema on a grand scale.
Second, the film is blatantly, virulently, and unforgivably racist. Not even as a subtext--more like a flare shot up into the sky. The movie's historical perspective is essentially that the South goes to hell after the slaves are freed, and all seems lost until the KKK ride in to save the day. Even in its time--over a half century before the term "politically correct" became popularized--the film was met with protests. Today, it seems almost too grotesque to believe that anyone ever took it seriously. The most mind-blowing part is that Griffith was reportedly taken aback by charges of racism, which can still make your head spin, considering the ostensibly-happy ending of the film is that the KKK keep black people from voting. But he was so put off by accusations of intolerance that he decided to make his next movie an epic morality tale about the evils of intolerance, titled in its full form: Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (a 3+ hour movie with an apparently all-white cast, where black people make a split-second cameo as train porters...don't blink).
And "throughout the ages" is the emphasis. Intolerance is, in fact, four different stories about the price of intolerance, each set in a different time period: the Fall of Babylon, the Death of Christ, the Massacre of the Hugeunots, and a modern tale, concerning labor strikes, city crime, and social crusaders. The film hops back and forth between the stories, as each arcs and climaxes at the same time. It's a technical achievement, the biggest film of its day, and a step forward in narrative complexity. Audiences at the time were baffled, but its stature has become legendary in its own way. And since its ideological content is far less troubling, Intolerance--which diplomatically replaced Birth on the American Film Institute's most recent Top 100 list--is the canonical way to give Griffith his due as a filmmaker without praising a film that essentially functions as KKK propaganda. Much ink on this has already been spilled, and for anyone who wishes to know more about Birth of a Nation and its problematic place in film history, I would actually recommend this essay from Ebert.
Intolerance remains equally praised in the world of film, but less prominent in American history. So with a mixture of curiosity and tentative cynicism, I sat down and watched all 197 minutes of Birth of a Nation's lesser known and relatively inoffensive younger sibling.
And I have to say, almost a hundred years later, the sheer scope of it remains staggering. The amount of sets, costumes, and extras--in the earliest age of film technology--is jaw-dropping. As an example, here's a shot of Babylon:
And that's just for one fraction of the movie.
There's also the court of the French royal family, a car vs. train race, a menagerie of animals, a monumental siege, and what appears to be an Bronze Age flame-tank. In short, the embodiment of old Hollywood spectacle to the nth degree.
As for its ideological content, Intolerance is fairly but not entirely unproblematic . Most of the movie is devoted to preaching basic messages about how Intolerance with a capital "I" is wrong. Different sides barrel towards war based on sanctimony, greed, or misunderstanding, and good people are caught in the middle. Often, the lesson is delivered bluntly with a title card (NOTE: The title cards often have a NOTE at the bottom, much like this one, to offer surface-level or oversimplified historical tidbits). "Simple," in fact, is a good way to sum up the film's worldview.
The more objectionable parts come in the 20th century story, where one of the many villains Griffith sees descending in the modern world is a group of frumpy suffragettes hell-bent on "reform." To be fair, the villainous reform they have in mind is not women's rights, but a crusade against social behavior they deem immoral, such as dancing (think of it as a Wilson era Footloose). So that, per se, is not too problematic. But then you have this title card, in which, with customary subtlety, the narrator informs us: "When women cease to attract men, they often turn to reform as a second option."
The idea that such a sentiment--not to mention the film's rather traditional, homogeneous view of paradise--might foster the very intolerance Griffith wishes to denounce is an irony that sails cheerfully over the film's head. If nothing else, Griffith's body of work makes for a handy artifact on how we all share the same basic abstract values of love and fairness, but can be totally blind to the ways we break them.
But moments like that are relatively small, at least by the standards of retrospective politics. The bulk of Intolerance is more like a big-budgeted after school special, and the explicit messages are, for the most part, simply those kind of basic abstract ethics that I'm sure more or less everyone can get behind. Some of it actually hits a moral potency--peace, love, understanding, and even a kind of religious pluralism. Admittedly, its pluralism is limited to sects of Christianity and ancient Babylonian religions that have long since ceased to be politicized. But hey, baby steps.
So how does Intolerance hold up as a movie/film/not a historical artifact? I have to say, it weaves its narratives together admirably, but as a story it's not terribly exciting, which is a consequence when surprise takes a backseat to theme. Most of it is spent preaching a very direct point about societal ills. It's not that its targets--hypocrites, warmongers, self-righteous moralizers--are particularly objectionable, just that sermons aren't as interesting as drama, at least not over 197 minutes. During the running time, there are a lot of moments, both big and small, that hold up very well. But largely, with few compelling or surprising plot turns, it basically boils down to a message and a spectacle.
But then, as it gets to the end: the cross-cutting! Oh, the cross-cutting! Rolling on and on for what must be the last 30 minutes, building tension into a cascade of climaxes, tragedies, and ultimately triumph. Still works.
In fact, watching Intolerance, I found it very interesting how much from the silent era has been passed down to current film and American popular culture. Examples:
--The tone of the battle scenes. I'm not quite sure how to put it. Their sense of excitement is not too far removed from Spielberg. The way the tomboyish Mountain Girl dances comically in triumph during a non-climactic battle reminds me of pretty much every comic sidekick in a Hollywood action epic. In one scene, amidst battle and chaos, a normally helpless damsel in distress knocks out a bad guy from behind with a pot--and it occurred to me that that basic action trope has been circulating in the movie industry for a century.
--The yearning for a pre-modern rural America as a kind of paradise, to be defended and restored.
--The split view of sex. Victorian purity is held up throughout as the ideal for women. And then the camera lingers with fascination on an exotic Babylonian harem, as scantily clad women recline luxuriantly for long takes. This may have less to do with Griffith than the nature of the movie industry; the scenes were reportedly added after the powers-that-be requested that the film have more sex. Still, moral values sit side by side with the principle of "sex sells," which is a longstanding cultural trend if there ever was one.
Hell, even its size seems like a distinctly American heritage. If there's one thing about world cinema history that seems inarguable, it's that America makes the biggest movies. See James Cameron, who once proclaimed that "size does matter," and who's set out to make the biggest film of the time, for several times in a row. And giant, pet-projects epics expressing a personal populist sentiment have popped up in the new millenium as well. Just see Mel Gibson.
Ultimately, if this boils down to a review, I can't really recommend seeing Intolerance for most people (and I know you were planning to). Film history completists with a free afternoon can go wild, but it's largely a question of "having had" seen it, rather than seeing it.
But I should also say that none of my hesitancy has to do with it being a silent film, a medium that holds up incredibly well in an age when everyone is piling on stimuli. The avant-garde ones still have an edge, yes, but what first surprised me was how many are still gripping--easy to follow, smoothly paced--after almost 100 years. For anyone who's never seen a silent film and is curious about how it can be as good as anything with sound, I'd recommend starting with this one.
Keeping in mind the Mark Twain quote on how a classic is something that "everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read," I've lately made it a goal to actually go back and watch all the old canonical classic films. It's all the satisfaction of a job with none of the pay, and this blog may be dipping in and out of the quest from time to time--provided the commentary isn't too redundant (Citizen Kane is good, etc.). First was a matter of choosing a canon, which is a post for another time). But D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916) is one that appears in seemingly all of them.
Intolerance was Griffith's follow-up to his hated/admired film The Birth of a Nation (1915), which will now and forever be one of film history's most problematic milestones. For those who aren't familiar with the film, or for whom it only rings a faint bell, The Birth of a Nation is famous primarily for two reasons.
First, it's a bona fide cinematic landmark. At a time when movies were seen as more of a novelty than an artistic medium, Griffith together techniques we take for granted (cross-cutting, close-ups) into a multi-threaded epic that demonstrated the possibilities of cinema on a grand scale.
Second, the film is blatantly, virulently, and unforgivably racist. Not even as a subtext--more like a flare shot up into the sky. The movie's historical perspective is essentially that the South goes to hell after the slaves are freed, and all seems lost until the KKK ride in to save the day. Even in its time--over a half century before the term "politically correct" became popularized--the film was met with protests. Today, it seems almost too grotesque to believe that anyone ever took it seriously. The most mind-blowing part is that Griffith was reportedly taken aback by charges of racism, which can still make your head spin, considering the ostensibly-happy ending of the film is that the KKK keep black people from voting. But he was so put off by accusations of intolerance that he decided to make his next movie an epic morality tale about the evils of intolerance, titled in its full form: Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (a 3+ hour movie with an apparently all-white cast, where black people make a split-second cameo as train porters...don't blink).
And "throughout the ages" is the emphasis. Intolerance is, in fact, four different stories about the price of intolerance, each set in a different time period: the Fall of Babylon, the Death of Christ, the Massacre of the Hugeunots, and a modern tale, concerning labor strikes, city crime, and social crusaders. The film hops back and forth between the stories, as each arcs and climaxes at the same time. It's a technical achievement, the biggest film of its day, and a step forward in narrative complexity. Audiences at the time were baffled, but its stature has become legendary in its own way. And since its ideological content is far less troubling, Intolerance--which diplomatically replaced Birth on the American Film Institute's most recent Top 100 list--is the canonical way to give Griffith his due as a filmmaker without praising a film that essentially functions as KKK propaganda. Much ink on this has already been spilled, and for anyone who wishes to know more about Birth of a Nation and its problematic place in film history, I would actually recommend this essay from Ebert.
Intolerance remains equally praised in the world of film, but less prominent in American history. So with a mixture of curiosity and tentative cynicism, I sat down and watched all 197 minutes of Birth of a Nation's lesser known and relatively inoffensive younger sibling.
And I have to say, almost a hundred years later, the sheer scope of it remains staggering. The amount of sets, costumes, and extras--in the earliest age of film technology--is jaw-dropping. As an example, here's a shot of Babylon:
And that's just for one fraction of the movie.
There's also the court of the French royal family, a car vs. train race, a menagerie of animals, a monumental siege, and what appears to be an Bronze Age flame-tank. In short, the embodiment of old Hollywood spectacle to the nth degree.
As for its ideological content, Intolerance is fairly but not entirely unproblematic . Most of the movie is devoted to preaching basic messages about how Intolerance with a capital "I" is wrong. Different sides barrel towards war based on sanctimony, greed, or misunderstanding, and good people are caught in the middle. Often, the lesson is delivered bluntly with a title card (NOTE: The title cards often have a NOTE at the bottom, much like this one, to offer surface-level or oversimplified historical tidbits). "Simple," in fact, is a good way to sum up the film's worldview.
The more objectionable parts come in the 20th century story, where one of the many villains Griffith sees descending in the modern world is a group of frumpy suffragettes hell-bent on "reform." To be fair, the villainous reform they have in mind is not women's rights, but a crusade against social behavior they deem immoral, such as dancing (think of it as a Wilson era Footloose). So that, per se, is not too problematic. But then you have this title card, in which, with customary subtlety, the narrator informs us: "When women cease to attract men, they often turn to reform as a second option."
The idea that such a sentiment--not to mention the film's rather traditional, homogeneous view of paradise--might foster the very intolerance Griffith wishes to denounce is an irony that sails cheerfully over the film's head. If nothing else, Griffith's body of work makes for a handy artifact on how we all share the same basic abstract values of love and fairness, but can be totally blind to the ways we break them.
But moments like that are relatively small, at least by the standards of retrospective politics. The bulk of Intolerance is more like a big-budgeted after school special, and the explicit messages are, for the most part, simply those kind of basic abstract ethics that I'm sure more or less everyone can get behind. Some of it actually hits a moral potency--peace, love, understanding, and even a kind of religious pluralism. Admittedly, its pluralism is limited to sects of Christianity and ancient Babylonian religions that have long since ceased to be politicized. But hey, baby steps.
So how does Intolerance hold up as a movie/film/not a historical artifact? I have to say, it weaves its narratives together admirably, but as a story it's not terribly exciting, which is a consequence when surprise takes a backseat to theme. Most of it is spent preaching a very direct point about societal ills. It's not that its targets--hypocrites, warmongers, self-righteous moralizers--are particularly objectionable, just that sermons aren't as interesting as drama, at least not over 197 minutes. During the running time, there are a lot of moments, both big and small, that hold up very well. But largely, with few compelling or surprising plot turns, it basically boils down to a message and a spectacle.
But then, as it gets to the end: the cross-cutting! Oh, the cross-cutting! Rolling on and on for what must be the last 30 minutes, building tension into a cascade of climaxes, tragedies, and ultimately triumph. Still works.
In fact, watching Intolerance, I found it very interesting how much from the silent era has been passed down to current film and American popular culture. Examples:
--The tone of the battle scenes. I'm not quite sure how to put it. Their sense of excitement is not too far removed from Spielberg. The way the tomboyish Mountain Girl dances comically in triumph during a non-climactic battle reminds me of pretty much every comic sidekick in a Hollywood action epic. In one scene, amidst battle and chaos, a normally helpless damsel in distress knocks out a bad guy from behind with a pot--and it occurred to me that that basic action trope has been circulating in the movie industry for a century.
--The yearning for a pre-modern rural America as a kind of paradise, to be defended and restored.
--The split view of sex. Victorian purity is held up throughout as the ideal for women. And then the camera lingers with fascination on an exotic Babylonian harem, as scantily clad women recline luxuriantly for long takes. This may have less to do with Griffith than the nature of the movie industry; the scenes were reportedly added after the powers-that-be requested that the film have more sex. Still, moral values sit side by side with the principle of "sex sells," which is a longstanding cultural trend if there ever was one.
Hell, even its size seems like a distinctly American heritage. If there's one thing about world cinema history that seems inarguable, it's that America makes the biggest movies. See James Cameron, who once proclaimed that "size does matter," and who's set out to make the biggest film of the time, for several times in a row. And giant, pet-projects epics expressing a personal populist sentiment have popped up in the new millenium as well. Just see Mel Gibson.
Ultimately, if this boils down to a review, I can't really recommend seeing Intolerance for most people (and I know you were planning to). Film history completists with a free afternoon can go wild, but it's largely a question of "having had" seen it, rather than seeing it.
But I should also say that none of my hesitancy has to do with it being a silent film, a medium that holds up incredibly well in an age when everyone is piling on stimuli. The avant-garde ones still have an edge, yes, but what first surprised me was how many are still gripping--easy to follow, smoothly paced--after almost 100 years. For anyone who's never seen a silent film and is curious about how it can be as good as anything with sound, I'd recommend starting with this one.
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