Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron)

[Ezee E]

IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454468/?ref_=sr_1)

[Pop Trash]

I hope you eventually edit posters in all these threads once you get back to Cali, Ezee. My latent OCD can't deal.

[Stay Puft]

Most of the thread titles are just the film title, too. No director in parenthesis like the other threads. That's not a big deal I guess but the egregious lack of consistency does make my eye twitch a little whenever I check the forum.

[Henry Gale]

The first twenty minutes or so of this might be one of the most breathtaking and almost overwhelmingly intense pieces of cinema I've ever experience. Oh, it's also done as one simulated take.

It's really, really good stuff, made even more so by how little I can evenly compare it to. It's also not without some minor elements I'm either not sure how I feel about and maybe even have outright issues with, but they also might not have been as detrimental to it as they felt to me in the moment given my prior sky-high (or space-high! Hyuck!) expectations and the opening portion being as masterful as it was. Either way, nitpicking its narrative or even Bullock's essential but only intermittently strong performance still doesn't even come close to knocking it down from being an absolutely singular, excellently crafted and often devastating (both in its beauty and terror) viewing experience.

I also can't stress enough how much this stands as almost a complete ideal for big-budget Hollywood filmmaking. The fact that the movie even had the technology to do what it did, let alone the money and studio confidence, let alone the vision to do what it does is almost just something to marvel at in itself. I was someone that had a few concerns as to how some of the effects looked in the trailers (whether it was on television, online, and in theatres), but whatever that awkwardness in my mind was in small doses did not cross my mind whatsoever while watching it all in its entirety. (OK, maybe one or two effects, but they're so brief and mildly spoiler-y that it's barely worth it, especially since everything else is rendered so seamlessly.)

Cuarón has not only accomplished something very few others have attempted, he's entirely accomplished something that seemingly no one has ever managed to put on screen. There were times when my breath shortened and stalled when the characters' did, I felt dizzy as they spun, and my legs even went kinda numb once the credits came along. It's like a great, vivid dream of going to space that someone actually managed to capture and convey on film. It just makes perfect sense that that person would be Cuarón.

Having said all that, there is something nagging at me subconsciously that I know I didn't feel as entirely satisfied by it the same way I did at the end of Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambien or maybe even Prisoner or Azkaban. It takes a lot of turns I didn't expect, but that I eventually appreciated when I realized how they weaved into the larger story. Some have brought up and even complained about the film's overt sentimentality, but I found that to be a huge emotional asset to it beyond just its overarching, more visceral sensations that plays into a bigger allegorical reading I'm kinda content with viewing the whole thing as. Maybe it really is that I can't tolerate Sandra Bullock a lot of the time, but she also does work here as good as or even better than anything I can recall, especially since so much of the movie relies on here to navigate it. Basically, I'm elaborately complaining that I'd only hail it as a 9 instead of an unabashed 10 out of 10. First World Problems of the Pretty Great Movie variety.

tl;dr version: This little experimental movie from some Mexican director is good! You guys should make the time to check it out!

[Ezee E]

I think I'm going to see this at the revamped Chinese Theater. It now has the biggest IMAX screen in the world.

[NickGlass]

I wrote my thoughts here (http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/10/toronto-international-film-festival-2013-gravity-review), as I saw it during TIFF (in IMAX, no less). The fanboys are already starting with the death threats. Oy. Half of my review is praise of its technical achievement, anyway. So silly.

[Morris Schæffer]

I think I'm going to see this at the revamped Chinese Theater. It now has the biggest IMAX screen in the world.

I'm jealous. How big would you say it is? Ten greyhound buses stacked on top of each other?

[D_Davis]

I wrote my thoughts here (http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/10/toronto-international-film-festival-2013-gravity-review), as I saw it during TIFF (in IMAX, no less). The fanboys are already starting with the death threats. Oy. Half of my review is praise of its technical achievement, anyway. So silly.

I dealt with that shit all the time. The funniest one is when I got death threats and suicide-wishes over my Silent Hill review. Hilarious.

[Watashi]

I wrote my thoughts here (http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/10/toronto-international-film-festival-2013-gravity-review), as I saw it during TIFF (in IMAX, no less). The fanboys are already starting with the death threats. Oy. Half of my review is praise of its technical achievement, anyway. So silly.

"You probably like Ashton Kutcher movies."

He's got you there, Nick.

[Ezee E]

I wrote my thoughts here (http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/10/toronto-international-film-festival-2013-gravity-review), as I saw it during TIFF (in IMAX, no less). The fanboys are already starting with the death threats. Oy. Half of my review is praise of its technical achievement, anyway. So silly.

Armond White's Successor? is my favorite.

[Ezee E]

I'm jealous. How big would you say it is? Ten greyhound buses stacked on top of each other?

No idea. I'll know soon.

[Henry Gale]

Nick, your review is the odd sort that I am in almost complete agreement with in its criticism, and yet I still have a wildly different opinion of the film itself. I love the movie, I was moved by it almost all the way through, but you definitely pegged on a lot of my hesitations along the way.

I think people's opinions of the film once it comes out are very much going to be shaped by their feelings of it as (the major, all-encompassing mechanic) of the over a visceral, atmospheric experience rather than a logical, narratively structured one. If it doesn't strike a chord with them as the former, then I don't think it'll really hold up amongst much scrutiny otherwise. Luckily for me, I found it pretty enrapturing, and think it works well with one very specific allegorical reading*, but if it simply doesn't for others, then I can't disagree with what's beyond that. It all hinges on craft, and luckily I thought Cuaron nailed it on those terms.

*Don't read unless you've seen it, but to me the film can be seen as very much about a mother getting over the grief of her child's death. Bullock's character plunges herself to literally as far a place as she can to escape the reality of what happened, feeling safe knowing it's literally a world away, but once the disaster of the shuttle occurs, she is brought right back into the weight of what happened, spiralling out of control both emotionally and physically, slowly having to re-acknowledge the feelings of her existence and the loss of her daughter as something that is now a part of her that she will never be able to un-do and develop the strength to see the value of her own life and survive. Once she finds exactly the right tools in her mind to repair the damage of her psyche and the control panel in front of her in (that scene with Clooney), she's able to push herself to want to live through all of it. When she (BIGGEST SPOILER) eventually comes back down to Earth, that's her ultimate moment of getting through and becoming stronger from every experience she's now endured, struggling out of the black depths of space into the bright, beautiful paradise (with the ocean being a brief, but equal, dark, sucking entity of gravity to potentially pull her back down even on Earth) giving her all worldly means to move on.

[Robby P]

I wrote my thoughts here (http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/10/toronto-international-film-festival-2013-gravity-review), as I saw it during TIFF (in IMAX, no less). The fanboys are already starting with the death threats. Oy. Half of my review is praise of its technical achievement, anyway. So silly.

It's amazing how people can get so worked up over a negative review for a movie which they haven't even seen yet. You have my sympathies.

[baby doll]

Is there any compelling reason for me to watch this in 3D and/or Atmos sound? (For the record, I'm not counting the blind worship of technology as a compelling reason.) The glasses itch my nose and I'm a miser, so unless there's some specific reason why I wouldn't be getting the full experience in 2D, I'm just going to see it the normal way.

[Ezee E]

Is there any compelling reason for me to watch this in 3D and/or Atmos sound? (For the record, I'm not counting the blind worship of technology as a compelling reason.) The glasses itch my nose and I'm a miser, so unless there's some specific reason why I wouldn't be getting the full experience in 2D, I'm just going to see it the normal way.

Director intentions?

[baby doll]

Director intentions?Well, I assume that Cuarón was contractually obligated to produce a 2D version for the theatrical release, DVD, airplanes, etc., and therefore shot and edited the film with an eye towards making it work in both formats.

Frankly, I'm not that excited about seeing the movie in either format (especially if it's a big hit and the theatre is packed with people), so the idea of paying more money to look at a darker image is almost enough to put me off the film entirely. I mean, sure, Y tu mamá también was great, but that was like twelve years ago, and since then he's been on a non-stop campaign to establish himself as the Mexican James Cameron to Guillermo Del Toro's Peter Jackson.

[Ezee E]

Odd reasoning.

[D_Davis]

Well, I assume that Cuarón was contractually obligated to produce a 2D version for the theatrical release, DVD, airplanes, etc., and therefore shot and edited the film with an eye towards making it work in both formats.

Frankly, I'm not that excited about seeing the movie in either format (especially if it's a big hit and the theatre is packed with people), so the idea of paying more money to look at a darker image is almost enough to put me off the film entirely. I mean, sure, Y tu mamá también was great, but that was like twelve years ago, and since then he's been on a non-stop campaign to establish himself as the Mexican James Cameron to Guillermo Del Toro's Peter Jackson.

At least you're going in with an open mind.

[number8]

I wrote my thoughts here (http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/10/toronto-international-film-festival-2013-gravity-review), as I saw it during TIFF (in IMAX, no less). The fanboys are already starting with the death threats. Oy. Half of my review is praise of its technical achievement, anyway. So silly.

You assumed they actually read it as opposed to just seeing the rotten symbol on RT. They don't care what you like or don't like about it. They care about preserving the rating.

[Henry Gale]

If something like the image being dim is a major concern, then you have nothing to worry about, baby doll. It's one of the most seamlessly well-adjusted 3D films I've seen in terms of brightness and contrast coming through.

It's going to sound like a quote-bait sort of line no matter how I try to say it, but Gravity really is the sort of film that 3D was made for. It actually betters the film, especially since it's designed as an experience mostly hinged on immersion and tension, and the additional depth and layered plains to the image completely strengthened the illusion of the frame in pulling me in.

[megladon8]

The Mexican James Cameron?

What??

[baby doll]

At least you're going in with an open mind.Maybe this is an extreme reaction to having posted at Rotten Tomatoes, but I don't see any point in whipping myself into a frenzy about a movie I haven't seen. My definition of a fanboy is someone who enjoys anticipating movies more than watching them.

I'm not a big fan of Pauline Kael, but one of her best lines is that reviewers are the only source of independent information. The guys who flame Nick for writing a less than stellar review of the film (and they're all guys) have been drinking the kool-aid of advance hype for months and months, and then here comes Nick who says the movie isn't as great as the hype promises. This does not compute with their worldview. Corporate hype is the new religion and fanboys are the devout lashing out at skeptics who dare to question their beliefs.

Maybe Gravity is a terrific movie, but I'll believe it when I see it and not before then.

[Dead & Messed Up]

The Mexican James Cameron?

What??

baby doll.

[baby doll]

So here's what happened: I got to the theatre and thought, "What the hell, I might as well check out the 3D version." But then the chick at the counter tells me I have to buy the glasses; I can't just pay a deposit and hand them back after the show. As for the 2D version, it turns out that it's one of those "VIP Screening Room" rip-offs where you pay three times the price of a normal ticket to watch the film on a much smaller screen. So I'm gonna wait till the movie comes out on video.

[Ezee E]

Where the heck do you live? I've never been to a theater where you have to buy glasses.

[baby doll]

Where the heck do you live? I've never been to a theater where you have to buy glasses.I know! Fucking Hong Kong. It's not like this on the mainland, I can tell you that.

[ledfloyd]

Fantastic direction, but I really wish he'd had a better co-writer because the dialogue is pretty terrible. Or maybe an actress better than Bullock would've been able to sell it. Still, everything else is spectacular.

Edit: Also, this may have eclipsed Hugo as my favorite use of 3D.

[Skitch]

Well, Cuaron said "If you see it 2D, you're only seeing 30% of the film." That's one hell of motivator for me to see it 3D.

[TGM]

Absolutely mesmerizing. A masterpiece of intensity.

[Sxottlan]

Pretty incredible. I'd say it's my current top film of the year.

I don't know if it was a cathartic moment or what after the intensity of the previously 85 minutes, but when Stone decides to embrace life and rides the escape pod down like she's Kong on top of the atom bomb, I got pretty emotional. Maybe seeing the debris streaking across the atmosphere reminded me too much of the Columbia.

I'm not sure why I wasn't anticipating this film more. I think it was because of Bullock. I am not remotely a fan of hers, but I'm thinking it's probably her best performance. Did not see The Blind Side. Did not want to.

Really can't think of anything really wrong with the film with the only goofy moment being the fire extinguisher scene lifted from Wall-E.

[ledfloyd]

Really can't think of anything really wrong with the film with the only goofy moment being the fire extinguisher scene lifted from Wall-E.
Nothing wrong with that scene.

I thought you were going to mention the horrible scene when Clooney's ghost visits her to tell her how to pilot the Soyuz. Ugh.

[NickGlass]

Luckily for me, I found it pretty enrapturing, and think it works well with one very specific allegorical reading*, but if it simply doesn't for others, then I can't disagree with what's beyond that. It all hinges on craft, and luckily I thought Cuaron nailed it on those terms.

*Don't read unless you've seen it, but to me the film can be seen as very much about a mother getting over the grief of her child's death. Bullock's character plunges herself to literally as far a place as she can to escape the reality of what happened, feeling safe knowing it's literally a world away, but once the disaster of the shuttle occurs, she is brought right back into the weight of what happened, spiralling out of control both emotionally and physically, slowly having to re-acknowledge the feelings of her existence and the loss of her daughter as something that is now a part of her that she will never be able to un-do and develop the strength to see the value of her own life and survive. Once she finds exactly the right tools in her mind to repair the damage of her psyche and the control panel in front of her in (that scene with Clooney), she's able to push herself to want to live through all of it. When she (BIGGEST SPOILER) eventually comes back down to Earth, that's her ultimate moment of getting through and becoming stronger from every experience she's now endured, struggling out of the black depths of space into the bright, beautiful paradise (with the ocean being a brief, but equal, dark, sucking entity of gravity to potentially pull her back down even on Earth) giving her all worldly means to move on.

That's essentially the emotional core (or grief allegory), and it comes through quite clearly, but I just found it fairly feeble in its exploration of grief and the reconstruction of confidence in the face of adversity. I'm glad, beyond craft, this is working for many people--but I really, really can't overlook how downright corny the screenplay is, and therefore the so-called catharsis lacks the expressiveness necessary. My visceral immersion into its atmosphere was just consistently shattered by dialogue. Woof woof.

[Wryan]

This is very strong...stronger when no one's talking, though.

[eternity]

I think it's safe to say that I have no idea what any of you saw in this. The plotting sucks this movie dry of any and all tension its aesthetics may have been able to produce. For 90 minutes, Sandra Bullock's character proceeds to be unlucky, then suddenly very lucky, then immediately back to being unlucky ad infinitum. This movie is structured like a video game and each set piece is a level; in fact, it's very easy to say that it's essentially Uncharted in space. Like The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the repetition of events and how the protagonist seems to get in and out of situations in the same way in the same amount of time makes everything tedious. Then consider the stilted dialogue and the absurdity of George Clooney's character as a whole. and what you get is a technically impressive but ultimately forgettable film.

Sorry, but there's just no "there" there.

[eternity]

Nothing wrong with that scene.

I thought you were going to mention the horrible scene when Clooney's ghost visits her to tell her how to pilot the Soyuz. Ugh.

What a chickenshit fakeout too. If that was actually happening, the change in pressure would have made Sandra Bullock's exposed head pop like a cherry tomato, right?

[ledfloyd]

What a chickenshit fakeout too. If that was actually happening, the change in pressure would have made Sandra Bullock's exposed head pop like a cherry tomato, right?
Which is why it was immediately clear it wasn't real.

[Spinal]

Well, Cuaron said "If you see it 2D, you're only seeing 30% of the film." That's one hell of motivator for me to see it 3D.

I would agree that 3D is fairly essential to the viewing of this movie. What the film does best, it does better than anything that I have ever seen.

I liked both the screenplay and the acting. I liked that the emotional core was just enough to humanize the two main characters. Both Bullock and Clooney seemed well cast. I felt like they were strong in the way that I would expect these two characters to be strong. They could have gone for more emotional vulnerability in certain places, but I don't think it would have been true to these particular characters.

[Lazlo]

Saw this again tonight and it loses nothing. Just a wholly visceral and engrossing experience from beginning to end. The emotional hook is strong, Bullock is fantastic, and the technological achievement is just incomprehensible. It's been said it's like an amusement park ride and that's true and a huge compliment from my perspective. It's absolutely delightful.

[Lazlo]

What a chickenshit fakeout too. If that was actually happening, the change in pressure would have made Sandra Bullock's exposed head pop like a cherry tomato, right?

You'd have about 15 seconds before you blacked out but you wouldn't explode.

[slqrick]

Thought it was incredibly filmed...just wish that there was less dialogue. Wouldn't that also save more oxygen?

[ledfloyd]

A silent version would be pretty cool.

[Irish]

That's essentially the emotional core (or grief allegory), and it comes through quite clearly, but I just found it fairly feeble in its exploration of grief and the reconstruction of confidence in the face of adversity. I'm glad, beyond craft, this is working for many people--but I really, really can't overlook how downright corny the screenplay is, and therefore the so-called catharsis lacks the expressiveness necessary. My visceral immersion into its atmosphere was just consistently shattered by dialogue. Woof woof.

^ Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiis.

Gravity was a let down for me, but only because the critics on twitter have been hyping the hell out of it as the best-movie-ever.

Fantastic visuals. Saw this IMAX 3D and it was worth it. I think it will translate badly to 2D and smaller screens (similar to Avatar).

My biggest problem is that I never bought into the "story." I never bought into Bullock's character. I never bought into Bullock.

The dead kid angle on Bullock's character (and her resulting 'arc') felt REALLY forced. Too pat, too clean. Hollywood formula screenwriting 101. Why couldn't we just have a cool story about this woman trying to survive? (similar to Castaway, but without the shitty product placement).

Clooney was playing Clooney. That role was terrible. When Captain Squarejaw was doing the noble thing and floating away into the deep black, I could practically imagine the parodies on "Family Guy" and "The Simpsons." (Because, c'mon, Peter and Homer would be all over that shit).

Clooney's reappearance in the third act to deliver happy Hallmark horseshit nearly ruined the entire movie for me (and it completely undercut Bullock's character).

Also, the music was too loud and too overplayed. Like they were trying too hard to shore up weak emotional moments.

The last act was mostly annoying. She decides to commit suicide? Yeah, totally believable coming from a character played by an A-list actress in a mainstream, studio movie. Ditto with the water landing and her almost drowning. It's like, Jesus, we KNOW she's not gonna die so stop fucking around and wasting our time.

Woof, woof indeed.

PS: Also, there were what seemed to be a couple of little nods to "2001" which was, if that's what they were, a really really bad idea.

PPS: Voting "yay" for IMAX 3D. Voting "nay" in any other context.

[Pop Trash]

While I agree with some of the criticisms here, I appreciated the movie more in retrospect once it dawned on me that the whole last act is a metaphor for

the birth experience. Dropping into earth's atmosphere = the birth canal. Dropping all the space suit gear and swimming up to surface = taking our first breath. Walking on land = an infant's first steps (a few months later but it fits). It all worked for me since the visceral experience was very well done.

I feel like Clooney doing his Clooney shtick was an intentional red herring to lead up to that Psycho moment when the seemingly (charming Handsome Actor) lead character just up and dies 1/3 of the way into the movie. I do agree that the dream sequence w/Georgey later undercuts that.

[Ezee E]

I'm excited to see this again. The whole scene with Bullock/Clooney afterward is so surreal, that I knew it was a hallucination. I was perfectly fine with it.

Great idea with the metaphor observation. I won't stick with it for myself, but that's a good one.

[Mal]

I paid $18 to see this in DBox 3D. This was definitely the kind of experience worthy of paying the premium. But it should not surprise anyone that the strong visuals of this film does not have equally strong scripting and acting to go with them. Clooney was good though...
when she had the vision that he was in the pod with her, it was like a breath of fresh air.

[Spinal]

I feel like Clooney doing his Clooney shtick was an intentional red herring to lead up to that Psycho moment when the seemingly (charming Handsome Actor) lead character just up and dies 1/3 of the way into the movie. I do agree that the dream sequence w/Georgey later undercuts that.

To me, this was a fairly clever way for Cuarón to have his cake and eat it too. He is able to squeeze another scene out of his matinee idol, and yet still stick to the logical consequences of the situation. I thought it was artfully done.

I do agree that Cuarón might have been better served with someone other than Clooney who might have been able to capture some self-deprecation to balance out the arrogance. When Clooney says he's devastatingly handsome, it's on the nose and he comes across like a bit of an ass. Whereas with someone like, I don't know, Bruce Willis, you'd understand that it's simply bravado.

[Raiders]

To me, this was a fairly clever way for Cuarón to have his cake and eat it too. He is able to squeeze another scene out of his matinee idol, and yet still stick to the logical consequences of the situation. I thought it was artfully done.

I do agree that Cuarón might have been better served with someone other than Clooney who might have been able to capture some self-deprecation to balance out the arrogance. When Clooney says he's devastatingly handsome, it's on the nose and he comes across like a bit of an ass. Whereas with someone like, I don't know, Bruce Willis, you'd understand that it's simply bravado.

Well, it was initially Robert Downey, Jr.

[Lazlo]

While I agree with some of the criticisms here, I appreciated the movie more in retrospect once it dawned on me that the whole last act is a metaphor for

the birth experience. Dropping into earth's atmosphere = the birth canal. Dropping all the space suit gear and swimming up to surface = taking our first breath. Walking on land = an infant's first steps (a few months later but it fits). It all worked for me since the visceral experience was very well done.

It made me think about evolution, the first life leaving the oceans. Something about look how far evolutionary progress and the survival instinct has taken us. But yours is a cool insight too.

[Irish]

To me, this was a fairly clever way for Cuarón to have his cake and eat it too. He is able to squeeze another scene out of his matinee idol, and yet still stick to the logical consequences of the situation. I thought it was artfully done.

It was artful as a red herring but:


- It undercuts the power of his character's sacrifice, gives the audience another feel-good moment where they can be charmed by Clooney (so, I guess, we don't dwell on the fact that Captain Squarejaw is, in reality, a human popsicle orbiting the earth forever).

- It also, I think, undercuts Bullock's character in a weird way. I bristled a bit that this "strong female character" (gag) needed a visit from the Spirit of Captain Squarejaw in order to remember what she needed to remember.


I do agree that Cuarón might have been better served with someone other than Clooney who might have been able to capture some self-deprecation to balance out the arrogance. When Clooney says he's devastatingly handsome, it's on the nose and he comes across like a bit of an ass. Whereas with someone like, I don't know, Bruce Willis, you'd understand that it's simply bravado.

Christy LeMire described it as "Danny Ocean in space," which I thought was pretty apt.

@Pop Trash: Like the metaphor. Although personally I'd go for a more generalized "rebirth" thing rather than "birth experience." Because goddamn is that corny on Cuaron's part (although, earlier, on the ISS, there's a really obvious "fetus" shot).

[Spinal]

- It undercuts the power of his character's sacrifice, gives the audience another feel-good moment where they can be charmed by Clooney (so, I guess, we don't dwell on the fact that Captain Squarejaw is, in reality, a human popsicle orbiting the earth forever).

- It also, I think, undercuts Bullock's character in a weird way. I bristled a bit that this "strong female character" (gag) needed a visit from the Spirit of Captain Squarejaw in order to remember what she needed to remember.


I don't know. For me, it had a different effect, I guess. I saw it as Ryan truly learning the lesson that she needed in order to go on. She accepted the fact that she was alone. She accepted the fact that she was not going to receive help from the ground. She finally allowed herself to let go and dedicate herself to at least trying to enjoy the ride. There may have been ways to get that across without Clooney reappearing, but I also don't think it does any harm. If anything, it allows us to examine our own hopes and wishes that somehow, someway he may have survived miraculously. I like the moment.


And in our desire for strong female characters, I don't think we need to expect Ryan to come across like Sigourney Weaver in Aliens. Strong doesn't mean that they are indistinguishable from men. It's perfectly plausible that the smaller Ryan would have a different skill set than Matt and would be out of her comfort zone. It's perfectly plausible that she would want his guidance in a moment of great need. It's perfectly plausible that her thoughts would revolve around being a mother and that she would struggle to find the ability to keep her emotions in check. Is Ryan one of the great female characters of cinematic history? No, but she's strong enough and deep enough for this film to work.

[Lazlo]

Bullock's delivery of, "I'm gonna die today" is just sublime.

[TGM]

I think it will translate badly to 2D and smaller screens (similar to Avatar).

I saw it in 2D and was perfectly fine with what I saw.

Though I'm tempted to give the 3D version a chance, after hearing so many good things about it.

[eternity]

It makes sense that it was either going to be George Clooney or Robert Downey Jr. in that role. They're the only two A-list actors I can think of that can sell an otherwise empty character on sheer charisma alone.

Adding on to ledfloyd's comment on wanting to see a silent version...that reminds me of another problem I had with this overall. While it's kind of admirable that they didn't resort to having sound effects in a space (heh) there wouldn't be, the score squanders this. Any time characters are not talking, the score kicks in and we never get to appreciate the silence. In place of the sound of explosions, we get a thumping, mechanical score that essentially creates the same effect. I might just be speaking for myself when I say that I would have been much more taken by the movie if we got to experience what was happening to Bullock's character the same way she was, in silence. That jarring juxtaposition with the chaos happening visually would have been so effective, but maybe there's a reason Alfonso Cuaron is an Academy Award nominated filmmaker and I'm not.

[Pop Trash]

@Pop Trash: Like the metaphor. Although personally I'd go for a more generalized "rebirth" thing rather than "birth experience." Because goddamn is that corny on Cuaron's part (although, earlier, on the ISS, there's a really obvious "fetus" shot).

You like the metaphor but think it is corny? OK? At any rate, I'm not sure if it's intentional by Cuaron but I find the birth experience as an actual representative of an infant being born less corny than "rebirth" in a broader figurative way since I seem to associate that with a religious "born again" experience which could also fit but seems too corny fitting in with what happened to her child...I dunno...something like that.

I was also thinking about Cuaron's other films and he does seem to be a BIG IDEA guy with Y tu Mama Tambien dealing explicitly with sex and death. Children of Men dealing with death and birth (with sex seemingly an afterthought since the act probably just depresses people). Gravity fits in with two deaths and then the experiential process of an adult being 'born' back into this world.

[Pop Trash]

Anyone else find the droplets of tears BOOM IN YER FACE 3D!!! rather beautiful?

[Spinal]

Any time characters are not talking, the score kicks in and we never get to appreciate the silence.

This is not true. There is silence.

[eternity]

This is not true. There is silence.
Well it certainly does not linger.

[Irish]

And in our desire for strong female characters, I don't think we need to expect Ryan to come across like Sigourney Weaver in Aliens. Strong doesn't mean that they are indistinguishable from men. It's perfectly plausible that the smaller Ryan would have a different skill set than Matt and would be out of her comfort zone. It's perfectly plausible that she would want his guidance in a moment of great need. It's perfectly plausible that her thoughts would revolve around being a mother and that she would struggle to find the ability to keep her emotions in check. Is Ryan one of the great female characters of cinematic history? No, but she's strong enough and deep enough for this film to work.

Plausible is fine, I guess. But think about that moment with the genders reversed. Hell, think about the whole movie with the genders reversed.



I saw it in 2D and was perfectly fine with what I saw.

This movie won't be nearly as effective on a TV or portable device like an iPad. And I think the effects will date badly (again, similar to Avatar).

On some level, I think that makes this a lesser film. A really good movie shouldn't feel obsolete by better technology.


You like the metaphor but think it is corny? OK? At any rate, I'm not sure if it's intentional by Cuaron but I find the birth experience as an actual representative of an infant being born less corny than "rebirth" in a broader figurative way since I seem to associate that with a religious "born again" experience which could also fit but seems too corny fitting in with what happened to her child...I dunno...something like that.

I was also thinking about Cuaron's other films and he does seem to be a BIG IDEA guy with Y tu Mama Tambien dealing explicitly with sex and death. Children of Men dealing with death and birth (with sex seemingly an afterthought since the act probably just depresses people) Gravity fits in with two deaths and then the experiential process of an adult being 'born' back into this world.

Good points on his other films. I meant I prefer thinking about it in terms of emotional "rebirth" rather than a more literal metaphor for an actual "birth."

Although, again, given the shot on the ISS of her in a fetal position with a little faux umbilical chord, your interpretation fits.

I just don't like it, if that's what Cuaron was going for (and it looks like it was). :P

[TGM]

This movie won't be nearly as effective on a TV or portable device like an iPad. And I think the effects will date badly (again, similar to Avatar).

What movie is as effective on an iPad, though? :P

[Ezee E]

What movie is as effective on an iPad, though? :P

Good point.

[ledfloyd]

Yeah, iPads have totally made Lawrence of Arabia obsolete.

[amberlita]

Well it certainly does not linger.

Trust me, it lingers long enough for the stupid cow sitting to my right to give vacuous commentary to her theater-mate.

Agree with the various folks saying the visuals were impressive but the "story" and characters pretty thinly drawn. And Bullock doesn't really turn the heat up on the acting until the final third of the movie.


Did not see The Blind Side. Did not want to.

Don't bother. It's not good. And her best performance is 28 Days.

[Ezee E]

Bullock doesn't really turn the heat up on the acting until the final third of the movie.


When it's her by herself essentially?

[wigwam]

:|

[Irish]

What movie is as effective on an iPad, though? :P

Really, anything made before ~1955. (Bear in mind, too, that the size and shape of movie screens in any one decade is an arbitrary distinction, effected by forces outside the theater).

Think of TV. Not everyone in the US (or the world) is sitting around with multiple 50" televisions (like Duke). Movies that rely heavily on CGI are not as effective on the small screen (eg: Avatar, T2: Judgement Day). I don't see why Gravity would be any different.

I saw one reviewer on twitter warning people not to watch this movie on their phone. But why wouldn't they? And why would anyone expect different behavior? Viewers are moving away from TVs and desktops and going mobile. I don't think it's unreasonable for a filmmaker to plan ahead a bit for that.

Warners and the studios, on the other hand, love stuff like Gravity. They're less concerned with how it'll play later because it "needs" to be seen on a huge screen, which means more revenue for them during this fiscal quarter.

@ledfloyd - Great point! Attenborough's CGI camels look terrible by today's standards. Maybe we can get Lucas in there to clean that shit up? (If you're hearing a giant whooshing noise, look up. You might be able to see my point, once again sailing over your head).

[Spinal]

Plausible is fine, I guess. But think about that moment with the genders reversed. Hell, think about the whole movie with the genders reversed.


Why?

[Irish]

Why?

Because I think it's interesting to think about what this movie might be saying (or reinforcing) about gender. One way to get a clearer picture of it is to think about the characters in different contexts.

[Spinal]

Because I think it's interesting to think about what this movie might be saying (or reinforcing) about gender. One way to get a clearer picture of it is to think about the characters in different contexts.

So my understanding of your objection is that you feel that Ryan's reliance on Matt's leadership and experience in a crisis situation reinforces gender stereotypes of the 'damsel in distress' variety?

[Irish]

So my understanding of your objection is that you feel that Ryan's reliance on Matt's leadership and experience in a crisis situation reinforces gender stereotypes of the 'damsel in distress' variety?

Sorta. I think "damsel in distress" might be overstating it. If you think about that scene (and others) and reverse the genders, would they still play? Or would you choke on them because they'd become culturally implausible?

Clooney's character is the typical mentor (and on his last mission, to boot). So you know something is going to happen to him. After is does, I don't think he has a compelling reason to return.

It just struck me wrong. This woman is smart and obviously capable (when she's not shitting her pants in fear). She's a doctor and a scientist. Those people are trained to, well, basically, "bug fix" all sorts of situations. To run down a list of possibilities, creatively think of new ones, and consider all options.

So why does she need Captain Squarejaw The Supercharmer to appear out of the blue and give her key information? Can you imagine a scene where that happens to a male character in the same way? I can't. At least one that would play the same way and not be ridiculous.

Big postscript:

Kareem-Abdul Jabbar (yes, really!) recently wrote an interesting article in Esquire about "strong women" in the media. I thought about it quite a bit after watching "Gravity":


When writers want to create a "strong" woman, they generally do so by giving her male characteristics. By that I mean she's a fanboy's one-dimensional comic-book fantasy: a physically imposing, shapely, hot woman in tight clothes (and heels) who can also kick ass, drink hard booze, brag that she doesn't cook, and is quick to ram a knee to the groin of anyone who challenges her. We see this stereotype in Kate Beckett in Castle, Carrie Wells in Unforgettable, Mary Shannon in In Plain Sight, Megan Hunt in Body of Proof, Michelle Maxwell in David Baldacci's novel series (now a TNT series), and many others.

Okay, nothing wrong with showing that women can be just as violent and swaggering as guys. It's even satisfying to watch a bullying misogynist have his scrotum pancaked. But each of these hard-boiled women also has a major psychological weakness. Beckett's mom was murdered; as a child, Maxwell murdered her mom's lover, which she's suppressed; Shannon's dad is a criminal and her mom is an alcoholic; Hunt must prove her father didn't commit suicide.

The lesson here is that women turn tough not out of choice, but because of family trauma, making it a symptom of a problem rather than a positive trait. It's as if this addition of trauma is to allow us to forgive her these trespasses into maleness. Notice how the men in these same TV series rarely have traumas that haunt them to this extent. Mostly, they act like boys, with the women then forced into acting as their responsible mothers. The kickass part is merely a magician's misdirection.

That's not to suggest that Bullock's character in "Gravity" is cartoonish; she isn't. But I thought it was interesting that she shared that too-typical tragic backstory with some of her teevee-dwelling peers.

Anyway, it's worth reading in its entirety:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/kareem-strong-woman

[Milky Joe]

This was a truly amazing amusement park ride, and I appreciate its ambition, but unfortunately it seems like they took a single solitary pass at the script, banging it out in about a week before deciding it was good enough and let's get to the storyboarding already. So as a film it falls way short of what it could have been. Really pretty though, and the opening shot is a doozy. Worth the $0 I paid to see it.

[ledfloyd]

@ledfloyd - Great point! Attenborough's CGI camels look terrible by today's standards. Maybe we can get Lucas in there to clean that shit up? (If you're hearing a giant whooshing noise, look up. You might be able to see my point, once again sailing over your head).
Relax, I was mostly joking, but if you're suggesting filmmakers should plan ahead because their films are going to be watched on iPhones, then there are a lot of films like Lawrence of Arabia and Playtime, which relies heavily on the amount of detail that can be seen in a 70mm frame, that don't adhere to those standards. The logical end to this train of thought is that people don't make movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Playtime anymore because they won't play on phones, which is ludicrous.

[Thirdmango]

Rarely do I ever read the whole thread of a movie before I go see it, in fact usually I try to keep as spoiler free as possible. I haven't seen this yet but I read most every post here and it mostly reaffirms that I will likely not see this movie, and if I do I'll likely hate it. I have not yet found a 3D movie that I have not felt utterly sick during. Each 3D movie I see does get better in it's use of 3D and still it makes me physically ill. Now add to that a movie about floating around in space and intensity and I can only imagine needing to throw up the whole movie.

[TGM]

Couldn't you just see it in 2D then? It's still a good movie even with the 3D removed. Unless that option's not available where you live...

[Thirdmango]

It is available but everyone here and everywhere else says watching 2D is missing like half the movie.

[Ezee E]

It is available but everyone here and everywhere else says watching 2D is missing like half the movie.

Probably true actually. Although Avatar was the same way. I never did watch Avatar in 2D.

I did see Life of Pi in 2D. That still works perfect. Hugo, not so much.

[Thirdmango]

Probably true actually. Although Avatar was the same way. I never did watch Avatar in 2D.

I did see Life of Pi in 2D. That still works perfect. Hugo, not so much.

Hmmm. Well I liked avatar and Hugo without 3D. I actually didn't see how Hugo would have been better with 3D. I did see avatar with 3D and liked it a billion times more in 2D.

[Pop Trash]

Hugo, not so much.

See, I liked Hugo even more when I watched it on DVD on the 2D small screen. I noticed all these details I missed initially.

[number8]

This is very strong...stronger when no one's talking, though.

Tell me about it. The characters are terrrrrrrible. The tension in the scenes where Bullock's just trying to do stuff are fantastic, and I love the visuals (especially in 3D), but man, that kid death backstory is just awful and boring.

After a while, I tuned it out and it just becomes a purely visceral exercise, which is cool and all, but left me kind of ambivalent about the whole thing. Yay, she made it back to Earth. Cool?

I, too, wish the score isn't so almost-diegetic. Didn't think it was really necessary for the big crescendo thump to be timed with the ISS exploding, that kind of stuff. Kind of distracting.

[Fezzik]

While I agree with some of the criticisms here, I appreciated the movie more in retrospect once it dawned on me that the whole last act is a metaphor for

the birth experience. Dropping into earth's atmosphere = the birth canal. Dropping all the space suit gear and swimming up to surface = taking our first breath. Walking on land = an infant's first steps (a few months later but it fits). It all worked for me since the visceral experience was very well done.


This is definitely the case. It's foreshadowed by that one shot of Bullock curled up like a fetus in the womb (complete with one of the filtration tubes doubling for the umbilical).

Count me amongst those that loved this. Some of the best (honestly, no hyperbole here, maybe THE best) technical film making I've ever seen.

This and Life of Pi prove 3D's value - it just has to be given to good directors.

I thought Bullock was great here. It makes her Oscar for The Blind Side seem even more laughable in retrospect.

I completely disagree with a previous poster that this was about her character being lucky and unlucky in succession. To me, it actually pretty strongly points out that sometimes, success is a grand combination of know how, determination and luck.

Honestly, for me, this was almost a horror movie. It contained near death experiences (in one case, actual death) in all three of the ways I'd hate most to die.

I can't wait to see this again, and it will be in IMAX 3D again. the surcharge is worth it.

[number8]

Thinking about it some more, I think the reason for my ambivalence is that this is a thriller where everything is telegraphed and all difficulties are neatly resolved.

We get ample warning about the debris shower all 3 times it shows up, so we expect it when it comes.

Clooney says let's go to the ISS and take the soyuz. They do exactly that. Clooney says take the soyuz to the Chinese station. She does exactly that. Clooney says the controls to the shenzou is the same as the soyuz so she'll be able to work it by guessing. That's exactly what happens.

Oxygen running out? Ah, you'll get there in time. Chute got tangled? Solution: get out and cut the chute, obviously. Fuel is empty? Don't worry, there's backup fuel for landing.

It's so pat. There's no... gravity to the situations.

There should be more of stuff like using the fire extinguisher to space walk, even if it is impossible to not think of Wall-E.

[number8]

Also, did anyone else found it hilarious when she finally got to earth and started drowning? When she got tangled in the seaweed my entire theater burst out laughing.

[Pop Trash]

Also, did anyone else found it hilarious when she finally got to earth and started drowning? When she got tangled in the seaweed my entire theater burst out laughing.

It's fairly meaningless to my view of the film but my theater burst out in applause at the end. Twice.

[Mysterious Dude]

This movie reminded me of The Impossible, which was unpopular on this forum but I found it quite compelling and watchable. Gravity seems like an old-fashioned disaster movie in space.

[Rowland]

Also, did anyone else found it hilarious when she finally got to earth and started drowning? When she got tangled in the seaweed my entire theater burst out laughing.Same reaction at my theater.

[ledfloyd]

Also, did anyone else found it hilarious when she finally got to earth and started drowning? When she got tangled in the seaweed my entire theater burst out laughing.
Yeah, that was a bit much.

[Boner M]

My visceral immersion into its atmosphere was just consistently shattered by dialogue
I liked it a bit more, and gave it a generous 4 stars because when it's good - the opening shot, the initial accident, and especially the casual introduction of the 2nd wave of debris - it's pretty phenomenal. But yeah, a lot of the dialogue - esp. the lame quips and interchangeable past tragedy as backstory - feel like the demands of an exec.

Still, I don't think its filmmaking is as distractingly showboat-y as some accuse it of, with the egregious exception of the bit where Bullock's tears start drifting toward the screen as a 3D spectacle. Emotional weight is well beyond Cuaron's grasp.

[dreamdead]

Still, I don't think its filmmaking is as distractingly showboat-y as some accuse it of, with the egregious exception of the bit where Bullock's tears start drifting toward the screen as a 3D spectacle. Emotional weight is well beyond Cuaron's grasp.

I'm of two minds with that one. On some level Cuaron doesn't over-extenuate that shot, but sorta leaves it there in the frame--and off to the side, if memory serves. And since other tears drop and float it doesn't ring like some self-aggrandizing visual. However, if I call bullshit on Gibson doing the God-tear in Passion of the Christ, and I do, then I can't turn around and praise this act, even if it feels more "in character."

I liked the film well enough, but found some of the symbolism overly drawn-out, such as Bullock's fetus curl and the overt baptism in the closing; the music was likewise largely overbearing. I'd held out hope that the film would legitimately use Arvo Part's "Spiegel im Spiegel," which would have been far more transcendent, as the trailer demonstrates. All the praise in the world to Lubezski and Cuaron for constructing the shots, though.

It's a joy to see technicality being embraced--Sarah is telling people who've never heard of it to think of it as something akin to Life of Pi, and there's something there...

[Irish]

Thinking about it some more, I think the reason for my ambivalence is that this is a thriller where everything is telegraphed and all difficulties are neatly resolved.

I'd hesitate before calling it a thriller, simply because the film bends over backwards to smack you in the face with her interior journey. Most thrillers don't bother with character details like that.


We get ample warning about the debris shower all 3 times it shows up, so we expect it when it comes.

That's ... foreshadowing. You're supposed to expect it. The anticipation creates tension.


Oxygen running out? Ah, you'll get there in time. Chute got tangled? Solution: get out and cut the chute, obviously. Fuel is empty? Don't worry, there's backup fuel for landing.

Were you expecting her to die? She's an A-lister starring in a studio film.


It's so pat. There's no... gravity to the situations.

I'd call it more "linear" rather than "pat." "Pat" suggests that the protagonist achieves their goals without much in the way of complication (e.g.: Captain America, the BB finale, etc).

In Gravity, though, nothing is easy. I think the highlights of the movie were when they went a bit over the top with the complications (the fire on the ISS, the shuttle being tangled, etc). She runs into so many problems and has such a hard time, I had trouble believing, in the end, that anyone would survive that experience. Even a movie star on a big screen.

The premise is simple and narrow. There aren't, admittedly, a lot of surprise twists and turns they can take with this story that would have seemed plausible.

It's half man against nature and half man against himself.

[number8]

That's ... foreshadowing. You're supposed to expect it. The anticipation creates tension.

Eh, "foreshadowing" is usually far less explicit than that. It's more of a ticking timebomb narrative, which is a totally great narrative device, but what's interesting about them are usually the complications. In Hitchcock's basic example, the tension comes from whether or not the protagonist will find out about the bomb under the table, or whether someone innocent would suddenly sit at the table, or how to clear the room without anyone finding out, etc etc, there are options. Here, Bullock's literally the only person affected by it, there's nothing she can do to stop it, and she knows from the get-go that it's coming. She even has an actual countdown clock she keeps checking. So it felt less tension building and more schedule keeping.


Were you expecting her to die? She's an A-lister starring in a studio film.

No, we all know she's going to survive, since she's literally the only character and the movie smacks you with the whole "get out of your dead kid funk and fight for your life" journey. I don't have a problem with any of the plot points in the movie. In fact, I loved that the obstacles are all logical and not contrived (Cuaron said that the studio tried to get him to add an external enemy, like a rogue country firing missiles at them and shit).

To me, what's fun about disaster movies like this are the twists and the makeshift ingenuity to get around them (ie the fire extinguisher), the lack of which makes it seem like solutions and wise guidance just drop on Bullock's lap her entire quest. The only legit source of suspense in the movie is basically "oh shit, will she be able to grab that thing?!" Admittedly, Cuaron does that kind of nail-biting visceral stuff really well and that's why it's a fun movie, but the lack of any other jolt is why it's ultimately underwhelming.

[Ezee E]

So I went to the remodeled Chinese Theater in Hollywood with a friend to see this.

First off, that theater is simply amazing. Grand entry, with the handprints of Hollywood Legends; ranging from John Wayne and Shirley Temple to Jack Nicholson to Robert Downey to R2D2 and Donald Duck, and some of the top costumes in museum cases when you walk in. George Clooney and Sandra Bullock's astronaut costumes joined this group. Inside, the architecture and art around the theater give everyone a museum-like experience as they appreciate everything around it. The sheer size of the screen makes every seat amazing.

Each screening is introduced by an MC with the moving curtains. And then the movie... What a presentation. Simply the best IMAX and sound quality I've ever had in a movie theater. To see Gravity under these conditions was remarkable. I loved the hell out of it the second time.

All California people must go to this theater for event films. Anyone visiting, must just go.

[Ivan Drago]

Just got back from it...



...wow.

[Pop Trash]

Studio Executives: giving directors shitty notes since 1890.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/alfonso-cuaron-says-studio-wanted-more-flashbacks-scenes-from-mission-control-in-gravity-20131009

[Ezee E]

Only had a decrease of 20% since opening weekend. This is doing killer business.

Like it or not, good to see two original movies at the top of the box office.

[Grouchy]

This was like a breath of fresh air for me. Glad to see the art of making great thrillers isn't lost. If audiences today were a little less jaded, this would become as big as Alien.

Not only that, but Cuarón has found the perfect subject to make proper use of 3D technology. With Cameron and Avatar, it was just eye candy and served no real purpose. Scorsese took it one step further by using it to create a fantasy world that was built on several levels - the people in the train station, and the unseen labyrinth of machinery where Hugo lives. Now Cuarón has used it to make an entire movie about depth of field. I'm not saying it can't be seen on 2D, but it's about the one example I can think of where the gimmick actually adds something worthwhile.

I understand people complaining about the generic backstory or the predictable plot points. I really do. But in my humble opinion, masterful direction overcomes those kind of obstacles everytime.

[Ezee E]

It's sitting at $126 million. It may become bigger then Alien.

[baby doll]

Poster, I served with Alien. I knew Alien. Alien was a friend of mine. This movie is no Alien.

[Irish]

It's sitting at $126 million. It may become bigger then Alien.

Okay, you got me: How so?

Alien spawned a franchise which has lasted for over thirty years. Gravity had two good weekends.

Alien was made for the equivalent of $30MM in today's dollars, and made a $270MM return on the domestic market. Gravity cost $100MM (sans marketing) and has made, so far, $122MM domestic.

In other words, Alien made 8-10 times its budget. For Gravity to match it, it'd have to make $800MM+ in the US alone. I don't think that will happen. Gravity isn't Titantic or My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Unless. You're making this comparison because both movies feature female protagonists and take place in space?

[Lucky]

I can't wait to see Hollywood's attempts at recreating the success of this movie. Should be interesting. Submarine next? Cavers?

[Izzy Black]

Gravity may not do Alien numbers or have Alien impact, but it's certainly the better movie.

[Grouchy]

Gravity may not do Alien numbers or have Alien impact, but it's certainly the better movie.
No.

I really didn't do that comparison thinking about the damn box office, though. I meant more in terms of cultural impact.

[Izzy Black]

Gravity won't achieve that.

I like Alien well enough, but I don't understand the love for that film.

[number8]

The answer is pretty simple. There's no merchandising possibility with Gravity. With Alien, you've got comics, video games, plush toys, lunchboxes, you name it. Nobody wants Sandra Bullock's upside-down face on an iPad case.

[baby doll]

I like Alien well enough, but I don't understand the love for that film.I don't know what's happened to him lately, but back in the day, Ridley Scott knew how to create and sustain a mood. Also, there's no dumb-ass backstory.

[amberlita]

Nobody wants Sandra Bullock's upside-down face on an iPad case.

Speak for yourself.

*cuddles Sandy Bullock body pillow*

[number8]

They should have made a Kinect game where you grab stuff to earn points.

[Izzy Black]

I don't know what's happened to him lately, but back in the day, Ridley Scott knew how to create and sustain a mood. Also, there's no dumb-ass backstory.

Yes, he could do that, but Alien doesn't have much else going for it, at least not for me. I didn't care much for its story. I think Blade Runner is his best film, but I agree he's lost his way these days.

And I like Gravity's storyline. Don't get the fuss.

[Izzy Black]

And for me, story is beside the point anyways. Rarely do I go watch Hollywood movies for their storyline.

[Grouchy]

The atmosphere and the design of the Xenomorph alone put it above most Sci-fi/Horror films ever made.

The space jockey and the chest-bursting scenes are incredible. Imagine watching it in 1979 when people took stuff like Moonraker seriously.

[Izzy Black]

I see what you're saying, but none of that presses me to elevate it to the status that it's earned. I need some depth behind my images.

[Irish]

I meant more in terms of cultural impact.

Then my argument is still pretty much the same:

"Alien" spawned a franchise that has last over 30 years. "Gravity" is a critical darling which had two good weekends.

I don't see the comparison at all.


I see what you're saying, but none of that presses me to elevate it to the status that it's earned. I need some depth behind my images.

This post works better for "Gravity" than it does for "Alien."

Unless you're making a joke about 3-D. :D

[Izzy Black]

Well, you've been responding a lot to hype. I think I was at the benefit of not knowing anything about the movie or not having read anything about it before I saw it. But in any case, I find Cuarón's images potent and meaningful. Maybe Scott's are too. I should probably revisit the film. My memory of it isn't doing it any favors, but I'll give it another go.

[Irish]

Well, you've been responding a lot to hype. I think I was at the benefit of not knowing anything about the movie or not having read anything about it before I saw it. But in any case, I find Cuarón's images potent and meaningful.

Hmmmm. Not really (and odd that you'd make this assumption).

Potent, sure. But more trite than meaningful.

[Izzy Black]

I only said that because of what you said in post #42: "Gravity was a let down for me, but only because the critics on twitter have been hyping the hell out of it as the best-movie-ever. "

If the hype didn't affect your impression of the film, then OK, no problem.

[Irish]

I only said that because of what you said in post #42: "Gravity was a let down for me, but only because the critics on twitter have been hyping the hell out of it as the best-movie-ever. "

If the hype didn't affect your impression of the film, then OK, no problem.

Oh! Okay, that's a fair point. I was thinking more of post-release hype, which became much louder (I saw the film opening weekend).

It effected me in that I expected a stronger narrative and not something shallow and manipulative. On that level, the film disappointed.

I thought it was good but not great. And I still think interest in it will crater once it hits home televisions and flat 2D, where the story issues will be more glaring.

[Izzy Black]

OK no problem. I disagree with you about the story bits, but that's fine.

[baby doll]

I see what you're saying, but none of that presses me to elevate it to the status that it's earned. I need some depth behind my images.Depth is overrated, as I think Gravity demonstrates. There are other effects that a movie can have on a viewer besides making them say, "Space equals the womb--whoa, that's like so deep!" I think the sequence in Alien when the dude goes inside the ventilator shaft is remarkable not because it's deep or anything but because of how the movie generates suspense while also involving the spectator's imagination (we know that the monster is closing is on him, even though we don't actually see it).

[Izzy Black]

Depth is overrated, as I think Gravity demonstrates. There are other effects that a movie can have on a viewer besides making them say, "Space equals the womb--whoa, that's like so deep!" I think the sequence in Alien when the dude goes inside the ventilator shaft is remarkable not because it's deep or anything but because of how the movie generates suspense while also involving the spectator's imagination (we know that the monster is closing is on him, even though we don't actually see it).

Yes, I like great suspense too, but I like it with depth better. And I don't mean cheap symbolism (womb metaphors). I like a comprehensive visual world that might have, for instance, interesting implications about space and time, or how characters relate to the environment, etc, as in an Antonioni film or Hou film. There are a lot of different and interesting ways a visual can be meaningful, whether it's the architecture of the production, the movements of the camera, the framing, etc

[Grouchy]

I don't mean to be an asshole here, but it's too much of a coincidence to pass - I saw Identification of a Woman the other day and it made me want to shoot my balls off. I was so glad when it was over. All those fucking rich snobs pissed me off, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't intentional.

With time, I realized that I'm a very story-based person. With some exceptions, of course (I love Fellini's more surreal work), but I watch films to be told good stories in a visual way. Something like Alien is pure entertainment and doesn't have meaningful things to say about our society, but by God it's better cinema in my book than any Antonioni.

[Izzy Black]

Hey, Antonioni's not for everyone. Identification of a Woman isn't exactly the entry-level Antonioni I'd recommend (although I think it's great), but I'm not pushing my standards on anyone here. Needless to say, I disagree. Story is usually one of the last things on my criteria, or at the very lest, the linear specifics of it.

[baby doll]

Yes, I like great suspense too, but I like it with depth better. And I don't mean cheap symbolism (womb metaphors). I like a comprehensive visual world that might have, for instance, interesting implications about space and time, or how characters relate to the environment, etc, as in an Antonioni film or Hou film. There are a lot of different and interesting ways a visual can be meaningful, whether it's the architecture of the production, the movements of the camera, the framing, etcI'm not sure what you're driving at here, but as far as your to not being interested in narrative, part of what I like about Hou's films particularly is his manner of telling stories (the unorthodox handling of exposition in The Puppet Master and the way he moves between different time frames in Good Men, Good Women being two notable examples).

[Ezee E]

I like some Antonioni, but I don't recall having any suspense in any of his movies, and that includes where a woman vanishes...

I definitely have to be in the mood to appreciate Antonioni. And that's usually only at a film festival setting.

[Izzy Black]

I never said Antonioni was suspenseful. My point was just that his images have substance.

[Ezee E]

I never said Antonioni was suspenseful. My point was just that his images have substance.

I didn't mean to put words into your mouth. I was extending Groucho's thoughts on story vs. imagery, and what I look for in cinema these days. I'm more into effective suspense/conflict of some sort, whether it be the fight for survival in Gravity, All is Lost, and 12 Years A Slave. However, I still can come across something like Blue is the Warmest Color and find it to be one of the best of the year. There's not "suspense" in the same pattern as the previous three movies, but there's some outstanding conflict there. Antonioni's work isn't there in that regard for me either, except in Blow Up, my favorite of his.

[Izzy Black]

I didn't mean to put words into your mouth. I was extending Groucho's thoughts on story vs. imagery, and what I look for in cinema these days. I'm more into effective suspense/conflict of some sort, whether it be the fight for survival in Gravity, All is Lost, and 12 Years A Slave. However, I still can come across something like Blue is the Warmest Color and find it to be one of the best of the year. There's not "suspense" in the same pattern as the previous three movies, but there's some outstanding conflict there. Antonioni's work isn't there in that regard for me either, except in Blow Up, my favorite of his.

Ah, I see. No problem. When did you see Blue is the Warmest Color? I'm dying to see it.

[Izzy Black]

I'm not sure what you're driving at here, but as far as your to not being interested in narrative, part of what I like about Hou's films particularly is his manner of telling stories (the unorthodox handling of exposition in The Puppet Master and the way he moves between different time frames in Good Men, Good Women being two notable examples).

Yes, I like the way Hou experiments with narrative as well, but at the same time, there's barely even a narrative to speak of in some of his later films like Flight of the Red Balloon or Millennium Mambo (and especially his recent short films such as The Electric Princess House and La Belle Epoque). And to the extent that there is, what happens isn't so important as to how things happens, and sustaining a certain mood, exploring possibilities of mise-en-scene, relating characters to the environment, and reflecting on particular thematic ideas and emotional states (time, history, memory, isolation etc). Plot details are much less significant in these films (and this is also true to some extent in his earlier films as well).

But in any case, I think a certain narrative context is important for many of Hou's films such as his historical trilogy (City of Sadness, The Puppetmaster, and Good Men, Good Women), and Antonioni's as well, but my only point was to say that I think that their images are substantive. The narrative or the story can be part of why that's the case. For instance, the long shot of Claudia with her hand resting on Sandro's head at the end of L'Avventura, with the frame symmetrically divided between a granite wall and a spacious view of a volcano, packs more power and layers of meaning than anything in Alien. At the end of the day, I'm always going to prefer cinema with the more meaningful shot, which is not to say suspense and what not doesn't have value.

[baby doll]

Yes, I like the way Hou experiments with narrative as well, but at the same time, there's barely even a narrative to speak of in some of his later films like Flight of the Red Balloon or Millennium Mambo (and especially his recent short films such as The Electric Princess House and La Belle Epoque). And to the extent that there is, what happens isn't so important as to how things happens, and sustaining a certain mood, exploring possibilities of mise-en-scene, relating characters to the environment, and reflecting on particular thematic ideas and emotional states (time, history, memory, isolation etc). Plot details are much less significant in these films (and this is also true to some extent in his earlier films as well).

But in any case, I think a certain narrative context is important for many of Hou's films such as his historical trilogy (City of Sadness, The Puppetmaster, and Good Men, Good Women), and Antonioni's as well, but my only point was to say that I think that their images are substantive. The narrative or the story can be part of why that's the case. For instance, the long shot of Claudia with her hand resting on Sandro's head at the end of L'Avventura, with the frame symmetrically divided between a granite wall and a spacious view of a volcano, packs more power and layers of meaning than anything in Alien. At the end of the day, I'm always going to prefer cinema with the more meaningful shot, which is not to say suspense and what not doesn't have value.Maybe this is just me, but I've never been very tempted to read the final image of L'avventura as signifying anything beyond the visible, even in a film loaded with obvious symbolism (the "lonely" islands being the most obvious example). For me, the power of this scene is in its inconclusiveness as narrative: it's impossible to say where the characters will go from here.

Incidentally, I don't think Hou's later films, or Antonioni's films of the '60s or '70s for that matter, are so plotless as y'all are making them out to be; it's just that these directors are working within a different filmmaking tradition than Scott, namely that of the art cinema. Accordingly, their films are much looser as storytelling than a Hollywood movie like Alien (La Voyage du ballon rouge reveals the characters mainly through their daily routines), but they still tell stories.

[Ezee E]

Ah, I see. No problem. When did you see Blue is the Warmest Color? I'm dying to see it.

Telluride. It's fantastic.

[Grouchy]

Hey, Antonioni's not for everyone. Identification of a Woman isn't exactly the entry-level Antonioni I'd recommend (although I think it's great), but I'm not pushing my standards on anyone here. Needless to say, I disagree. Story is usually one of the last things on my criteria, or at the very lest, the linear specifics of it.
Nah, I've seen four Antonioni films already. I guess the "best" would be Blow Up, but take that word with a grain of salt. At least it led to a good De Palma.

[Izzy Black]

Nah, I've seen four Antonioni films already. I guess the "best" would be Blow Up, but take that word with a grain of salt. At least it led to a good De Palma.

It's probably telling that both you prefer Blow Up and it's my least favorite Antonioni (and he's my favorite director).:D

[Izzy Black]

Telluride. It's fantastic.

Awesome. I'm super jealous.

[Izzy Black]

Maybe this is just me, but I've never been very tempted to read the final image of L'avventura as signifying anything beyond the visible, even in a film loaded with obvious symbolism (the "lonely" islands being the most obvious example). For me, the power of this scene is in its inconclusiveness as narrative: it's impossible to say where the characters will go from here.

That's precisely my point. Even within the context of the narrative, I think the final shot has more meaning than one from Scott's action thriller. And for the record, symbolism is not the thing I really find interesting about Antonioni's visual. A visual can communicate information that's both non-symbolic and not directly concerned with plot. For instance, the camera might emphasize a characters' isolation through, say, claustrophobic framing both literally and symbolically if it likes.


Incidentally, I don't think Hou's later films, or Antonioni's films of the '60s or '70s for that matter, are so plotless as y'all are making them out to be; it's just that these directors are working within a different filmmaking tradition than Scott, namely that of the art cinema. Accordingly, their films are much looser as storytelling than a Hollywood movie like Alien (La Voyage du ballon rouge reveals the characters mainly through their daily routines), but they still tell stories.

Well, I never said they didn't. I said that plot wasn't necessarily as important in these films as they are elsewhere (even within their own filmography), or that, often times the really interesting things come from how the stories are told, as in the experimental exploration of the narrative, not what's told, or from certain effects of the aesthetic (I think Tarr, Ruiz, Greenaway, and certain periods of Godard fit this mold). But I think if you're talking about the really indirect way the visual can flesh out a character beyond the confines of a straightforward narrative (i.e., The Flight of the Red Ballon), I'm not sure in what sense we're talking about "stories" anymore. It almost doesn't mean the same thing as saying Hollywood tells stories, especially when you get character information without any real emphasis on plot, dramatic conflict, or action. For all intents and purposes, that's a kind of plotless thematic exposition, which is the kind of thing Antonioni and Hou tend to emphasize (large stretches of Antonioni is people causally walking around in cities, these sequences have thematic information and character detail even if they provide no plot information in service to a larger pattern of events).

But anyways, I like stories, I just like a strong visual sense that commands it, and I like my stories, if I have them, to be a bit more meaningful than what you typically see in a Hollywood film.

[baby doll]

That's precisely my point. Even within the context of the narrative, I think the final shot has more meaning than one from Scott's action thriller. And for the record, symbolism is not the thing I really find interesting about Antonioni's visual. A visual can communicate information that's both non-symbolic and not directly concerned with plot. For instance, the camera might emphasize a characters' isolation through, say, claustrophobic framing both literally and symbolically if it likes.

Well, I never said they didn't. I said that plot wasn't necessarily as important in these films as they are elsewhere (even within their own filmography), or that, often times the really interesting things come from how the stories are told, as in the experimental exploration of the narrative, not what's told, or from certain effects of the aesthetic (I think Tarr, Ruiz, Greenaway, and certain periods of Godard fit this mold). But I think if you're talking about the really indirect way the visual can flesh out a character beyond the confines of a straightforward narrative (i.e., The Flight of the Red Ballon), I'm not sure in what sense we're talking about "stories" anymore. It almost doesn't mean the same thing as saying Hollywood tells stories, especially when you get character information without any real emphasis on plot, dramatic conflict, or action. For all intents and purposes, that's a kind of plotless thematic exposition, which is the kind of thing Antonioni and Hou tend to emphasize (large stretches of Antonioni is people causally walking around in cities, these sequences have thematic information and character detail even if they provide no plot information in service to a larger pattern of events).

But anyways, I like stories, I just like a strong visual sense that commands it, and I like my stories, if I have them, to be a bit more meaningful than what you typically see in a Hollywood film.We must have a different understanding of narrative, as it seems to me that what you're talking about is using the camera to underscore points already made by the narrative, particularly relating to the characters' states of mind (as in your example, underscoring a character's isolation through the framing). To be sure, Scott's framing and editing in Alien doesn't typically do this, but his direction purposeful in other ways: generating suspense and mystery, heightening surprise, etc.

I think in any film, whether it's a studio picture or an art movie, how the story is told is more important than what the film is about, and what's impressive about Alien is how much Scott is able to wring out of such a threadbare situation. Similarly, if we look at The Passenger (the Antonioni film I've seen most recently), the basic story could've furnished a Hollywood thriller, but what's distinctive about the film is the way that he dedramatizes the narrative by eliding key events and through his distant framing of scenes (Nicholson's despair when his car gets stuck in the desert is made to seem vaguely pathetic).

[Izzy Black]

We must have a different understanding of narrative, as it seems to me that what you're talking about is using the camera to underscore points already made by the narrative, particularly relating to the characters' states of mind (as in your example, underscoring a character's isolation through the framing). To be sure, Scott's framing and editing in Alien doesn't typically do this, but his direction purposeful in other ways: generating suspense and mystery, heightening surprise, etc.

I don't think these points need to already have been made by the narrative. Isolation, inner states of mind, and so on can be something you can only really get from certain types of cinematic devices and stylings (i.e. framing), where the mind of character would otherwise be unknown to us. And by narrative, I mean plot. You can do characterization that doesn't necessarily service the plot (for instance the classic sequence of the men ogling Monica Vitti as she walks across the piazza in L'avventura is mostly inconsequential to the plot but full of thematic meaning). Scott's technique is functional, but the effect is not particularly deep or substantive. In Blade Runner, however, it's substantive, which to me is a much finer film (one of my all-time favorites actually).


I think in any film, whether it's a studio picture or an art movie, how the story is told is more important than what the film is about, and what's impressive about Alien is how much Scott is able to wring out of such a threadbare situation. Similarly, if we look at The Passenger (the Antonioni film I've seen most recently), the basic story could've furnished a Hollywood thriller, but what's distinctive about the film is the way that he dedramatizes the narrative by eliding key events and through his distant framing of scenes (Nicholson's despair when his car gets stuck in the desert is made to seem vaguely pathetic).

Not sure if I agree. I think we could be talking about two things. There's what the story is about, and then there's what the film is about, or what it means. You can separate plot from theme, action from meaning. I agree with you that the specifics of plot aren't really that important and how it's told is more important, but how it's told renders certain meanings (i.e. the vaguely pathetic effect you sense in The Passenger that you only get from a certain technical approach to the narrative). And my point is that the meanings you get from the technique in, say, The Passenger are deeper and more interesting to me than what Scott does with Alien. But again, I need to give the film a rewatch.

[baby doll]

I don't think these points need to already have been made by the narrative. Isolation, inner states of mind, and so on can be something you can only really get from certain types of cinematic devices and stylings (i.e. framing), where the mind of character would otherwise be unknown to us. And by narrative, I mean plot. You can do characterization that doesn't necessarily service the plot (for instance the classic sequence of the men ogling Monica Vitti as she walks across the piazza in L'avventura is mostly inconsequential to the plot but full of thematic meaning). Scott's technique is functional, but the effect is not particularly deep or substantive. In Blade Runner, however, it's substantive, which to me is a much finer film (one of my all-time favorites actually).

Not sure if I agree. I think we could be talking about two things. There's what the story is about, and then there's what the film is about, or what it means. You can separate plot from theme, action from meaning. I agree with you that the specifics of plot aren't really that important and how it's told is more important, but how it's told renders certain meanings (i.e. the vaguely pathetic effect you sense in The Passenger that you only get from a certain technical approach to the narrative). And my point is that the meanings you get from the technique in, say, The Passenger are deeper and more interesting to me than what Scott does with Alien. But again, I need to give the film a rewatch.I guess I think of plot more generally as everything that happens in the film, whether or not it moves the action forwards. So while the scene with the ogling men in L'avventura doesn't bring the characters any closer to finding Anna (and indeed, takes us away from Sandro's interrogation of the witness, which occurs off screen), it's still part of the plot--even if there's a certain ambiguity as to whether or not it's really happening, or if Claudia just feels like everyone is staring at her. However, in a film like Alien where the characters' emotions are more clear-cut (they want to kill the big scary monster), this kind of subjective aside would not only be superfluous but would work against narrative momentum and suspense. I suppose you could argue that the film's implicit meanings are accordingly clear-cut (the Corporation equals capitalism), but there are lots of great movies whose themes are exceedingly simplistic; Ivan the Terrible is basically propaganda glorifying Stalin by proxy but it's still an awesome movie.

[D_Davis]

Cinematic auto-tune. In space, clocks can't hear themselves ticking. The only surprise was how the space suit made Sandy look fat butcept ohshit no she isnt! I would've titled this monotonous bore Gratingly. Fuck this movie.

Burn!

[Gizmo]

Saw this yesterday. Thought it was like a wonderful work of art, exciting and pretty to look at, but not much more depth than paint on a canvas. Eventually I just waited for it to finish so I could move on. The longer it went on the more silly it got, and the more I had to stretch my scope of believability as everything became more convenient.

[Izzy Black]

I guess I think of plot more generally as everything that happens in the film, whether or not it moves the action forwards. So while the scene with the ogling men in L'avventura doesn't bring the characters any closer to finding Anna (and indeed, takes us away from Sandro's interrogation of the witness, which occurs off screen), it's still part of the plot--even if there's a certain ambiguity as to whether or not it's really happening, or if Claudia just feels like everyone is staring at her. However, in a film like Alien where the characters' emotions are more clear-cut (they want to kill the big scary monster), this kind of subjective aside would not only be superfluous but would work against narrative momentum and suspense. I suppose you could argue that the film's implicit meanings are accordingly clear-cut (the Corporation equals capitalism), but there are lots of great movies whose themes are exceedingly simplistic; Ivan the Terrible is basically propaganda glorifying Stalin by proxy but it's still an awesome movie.
What's interesting about the scene of Claudia walking across the piazza has little to do with its narrative information and more to do with its associative thematic, conceptual, and political suggestions, what it says about Italian society at the time, the haunting image of a woman being ogled by men, how this informs the film's more global thematic concerns with post-War Italian attitudes, remnants of Fascist patriarchal sexism, and collective unrest (there are similar concerns in an analogous scene at a nightclub in Antonioni's The Story of a Love Affair). But there's also narrative information there too. It causes Claudia to experience feeling objectified and embarrassed, and leads her to go find Sandro, but establishing the general sense of her inner crisis isn't only interesting in how its forwards the plot, but what it says in just a snapshot of a broader social situation about identity, culture, and personal anxiety. These are more conceptual, emotional, and thematic ideas that are valuable regardless of what happens in the story (which is why, at some level, it isn't important what happens to Anna or whether the story has a resolution). There are a lot of great films that are more about these kinds of moments, films that are more about feelings, ideas, and sustaining moods like poetry or music than they are with plotting a story. In Antonioni, it's more of a matter of degree and emphasis, since I definitely still think Antonioni is a story teller, albeit a non-traditional one, but I think there are more extreme examples like Sharunas Bartas, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pedro Costa and avant-garde directors like Stan Brakhage and Michael Snow. In Bartas' film The House, for instance, there's a complete dissolution of plot. What we are presented with are a collection of wordless cinematic tableaux that could be fragments from a dream or a memory, containing images of dilapidated ruin and collective decay. We see a man casually walking between rooms observing its subjects in a kind of post-misery stasis and irrational activity, but it's not clear how each moment connects to the last, if what we're seeing are events from a day, or events at all. The important thing isn't a causal sequence of events, but the depiction of certain thematic situations and the corresponding meanings, feelings, and abstractions imparted in the construction, staging and rhythmic association of the images.

[Izzy Black]

I suppose you could argue that the film's implicit meanings are accordingly clear-cut (the Corporation equals capitalism), but there are lots of great movies whose themes are exceedingly simplistic; Ivan the Terrible is basically propaganda glorifying Stalin by proxy but it's still an awesome movie.

As for propaganda films, I think there a far more layers of meaning in Ivan the Terrible than you give it credit. Its complicated function as a Soviet film is part of one of those layers. I Am Cuba, for instance, is also a propaganda film, but it's technique is far more revolutionary than Scott's film (and so is Eisenstein's), and all of Kalatozov's films have a unique dialectic in their relationship to Soviet pressures, personal creativity, universal themes and emotions, and abstract ideas. Plus, the images themselves pack more of an emotional and intellectual punch to me than what you get in a straightforward suspense film.

As for Alien, I just re-watched the film on Blu Ray. And as I initially thought, the story is pretty uninteresting and contains mostly a number of predictable suspense devices (such as a cat popping out with danger music), but I will say that the film held up much better than it did in memory. In fact, Alien's a good example of why I don't necessarily privilege narrative as the hallmark of great cinema. It's precisely the kind of film that, in theory, my approach should accommodate. (I tend to be more forgiving of certain Hollywood films like Kosinski's film Oblivion than critics since I'm not a slave to Screenwriting 101 narrative mechanics). One of my biggest interests in art, especially visual art, is in creative worlds. If I were going to defend Alien, I'd talk about the film's rather remarkable production design, its architectural ideas, and the cinematic evocation of various moods and feelings rather than the specific events of the story. I'd probably emphasize its spatial and architectural vision of a techno-industrial future. For instance, one of the best sequences in Alien is its opening with the camera panning the empty industrial corridors of the towing ship. We see cavernous musty interiors, stained surfaces, pressure exhausting from haphazardly located valves, and clunky, cluttered spaced. The ship's space is almost entirely perfunctory, but the space is also inefficient (unlike the spatial symmetry of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey). In Ridleys' world, technology has been entirely corporatised (as also in Scott's immaculately designed Blade Runner). This contrasts with the almost collectivist utopian vision of 2001 with its clinical, streamlined NASA-inspired architectural space. I'd also talk about the design of the Xenomorph and extraterrestrial life, where Alien conceives of a world where the pulsating lungs and fleshy, gooey stuff of natural organisms is the fundamental basis of alien life, finding fear and tension in the pure menace and threat of disease of the corporeal rather than the threat of the abstract, chess-like higher order manipulation of rational thought we see in 2001's extremely elegant and sophisticated non-human lifeforms. And by taking earthly fears (like poisonous insects and reptiles) and combining them with futurist, otherworldly fears, Scott demonstrates a great understanding of what makes humans tic, which reflects back fascinating details about our deeper values and thoughts, and in an interesting way that departs from his predecessors. So far I haven't really said anything about plot, but that's because what I find most interesting about Scott's cinema lies elsewhere.

[Izzy Black]

And for what it's worth, I also just gave Cameron's Aliens a rewatch, and although I haven't finished it, I can say Scott's film poops right all over Cameron's campy script and bland and blocky design (clearly just a dated riff on typical 80s structural stylings). His images have no sense of art, no impressions or ideas.

[Ezee E]

And for what it's worth, I also just gave Cameron's Aliens a rewatch, and although I haven't finished it, I can say Scott's film poops right all over Cameron's campy script and bland and blocky design (clearly just a dated riff on typical 80s structural stylings). His images have no sense of art, no impressions or ideas.

I don't know. I think it's still pretty effective in that it takes so long for the aliens to finally appear, and when they do, they wipe out over half the Marines in a quick 3 minutes. It progressively gets more and more claustrophobic. I do wish they played more with Bishop in the vent. I will accept that his body being ripped in half is very cheesy though when we see him afterwards.

[Izzy Black]

I actually haven't finished the second half. I get back to you when I do.

[Ezee E]

I actually haven't finished the second half. I get back to you when I do.

Where did you stop at?

[Izzy Black]

Marines had just gotten there. Still haven't seen the Aliens yet. Cameron's movie is like 2:45 minutes, which is insanely long for an action flick. The dialogue up to that point was too cringe-worthy for me to make it all in one sitting.

[Ezee E]

Marines had just gotten there. Still haven't seen the Aliens yet. Cameron's movie is like 2:45 minutes, which is insanely long for an action flick. The dialogue up to that point was too cringe-worthy for me to make it all in one sitting.

Kind of think that was intentional though.

[Irish]

Marines had just gotten there. Still haven't seen the Aliens yet. Cameron's movie is like 2:45 minutes, which is insanely long for an action flick. The dialogue up to that point was too cringe-worthy for me to make it all in one sitting.

The theatrical release was 2:17. They cut backstory for pacing and the excised material all happens in the first act. In the original movie, there are some exchanges between Ripley and Burke and then she's with the Marines, planetside.

I'm not sure why you'd expect "art, impressions or ideas" from images in a mid-eighties action movie. Especially from Cameron, whose biggest movies before this were Terminator and ... Piranha Part Two: The Spawning.

Cameron tends to go for character based themes, not visual ones. Most of the thematic stuff in Aliens (both the theatrical release and the so-called "director's cut") revolves around motherhood.

I don't know how you'd do that visually without resorting to stuff like this:

http://i.imgur.com/EP7Bdwi.jpg

[Izzy Black]

The theatrical release was 2:17. They cut backstory for pacing and the excised material all happens in the first act. In the original movie, there are some exchanges between Ripley and Burke and then she's with the Marines, planetside.

That explains it. Still a bit long for me (I prefer 90 minute mark for action and thrillers).


I'm not sure why you'd expect "art, impressions or ideas" from images in a mid-eighties action movie. Especially from Cameron, whose biggest movies before this were Terminator and ... Piranha Part Two: The Spawning.

I don't necessarily expect it, but if you read up, my point was that its predecessor (Alien) is full of artistic images. I'm not saying I expect it from Cameron. To the contrary. I'm just saying that I think Scott's film is (so far) much superior to me.

[Izzy Black]

Cameron tends to go for character based themes, not visual ones. Most of the thematic stuff in Aliens (both the theatrical release and the so-called "director's cut") revolves around motherhood.

I don't know how you'd do that visually without resorting to stuff like this:

http://i.imgur.com/EP7Bdwi.jpg

There are a lot of ways to visually present character themes (as it happens, Antonioni is a great example). In Hollywood formats such as with the action genre, I'd say it's more difficult, but again, I think Ridley Scott manages to do it quite well in his early work (although not straightforward action films), and even to some extent with Gladiator.

In any case, Cameron's film has insufferable dialogue, and so far, weak characterization. So I'm not so convinced that he's more of a character man than an image man. He sure makes a lot of hay about technology and visual innovation, but it always seems so uninspired and amounts to so little. But again, to be fair to Cameron, I haven't finished the second half of the film yet (and I remember very little about it). There's still some hope he turns things up a notch.

Oh, and I love that shot from Gravity.

[Irish]

That explains it. Still a bit long for me (I prefer 90 minute mark for action and thrillers).

Agreed. It's still long, but if you think about the opening & shift everything up by half an hour, the movie makes more sense as an actioner. This is film where I think the "director's cut" actually harmed the overall effect.


I don't necessarily expect it, but if you read up, my point was that its predecessor (Alien) is full of artistic images. I'm not saying I expect it from Cameron. To the contrary. I'm just saying that I think Scott's film is (so far) much superior to me.

Eh. They are two different films with different needs and arguably different audiences. Scott made a horror film. Cameron made an action film.

I agree with you that the details in Alien are better than anything in Aliens, but at the same time: It's a helluva lot easier to be evocative in a horror movie than almost anywhere else. The audience is primed & expecting it.

For what it's worth, I did read up. You mentioned "art, impressions and ideas" in the context of Aliens, outside the first film.

[Izzy Black]

Agreed. It's still long, but if you think about the opening & shift everything up by half an hour, the movie makes more sense as an actioner. This is film where I think the "director's cut" actually harmed the overall effect.

Fair enough. Sadly, I don't think I'll be watching the theatrical release anytime soon.


Eh. They are two different films with different needs and arguably different audiences. Scott made a horror film. Cameron made an action film.

I agree with you that the details in Alien are better than anything in Aliens, but at the same time: It's a helluva lot easier to be evocative in a horror movie than almost anywhere else. The audience is primed & expecting it.

For what it's worth, I did read up. You mentioned "art, impressions and ideas" in the context of Aliens, outside the first film.

Oh, OK. Yes, I agree, Cameron decided to make a different film with different goals. I still don't think that means he has to sacrifice visual power at the expense of action. Seems like a false dichotomy to me, but I do agree the horror genre lends itself more to the kinds of ideas and themes Scott was able to bring out with his imagery. It's a shame the genre is filled with so much shit though because its prime for really interesting stuff like Scott's film. At this point, it's one of the only horror films that I've been that impressed with, which has more to do with the execution I've seen by directors of the genre than anything inherent about the genre itself. (For whatever reason, horror manages to attract low-level talent rather than high-caliber artists, talented directors, and/or auteurs).

[Irish]

There are a lot of ways to visually present character themes (as it happens, Antonioni is a great example). In Hollywood formats such as with the action genre, I'd say it's more difficult, but again, I think Ridley Scott manages to do it quite well in his early work (although not straightforward action films), and even to some extent with Gladiator.

Yeeeeeeeah. I'd like to see a Venn diagram of the audience size of people who want to watch both The Passenger and Aliens. ;)

More seriously, again: Different movies, different needs. These aren't 1:1 corollaries. You can't take something from Antonioni and think it will work across the board, in different contexts.


In any case, Cameron's film has insufferable dialogue, and so far, weak characterization. So I'm not so convinced that he's more of a character man than an image man. He sure makes a lot of hay about technology and visual innovation, but it always seems so uninspired and amounts to so little. But again, to be fair to Cameron, I haven't finished the second half of the film yet (and I remember very little about it). There's still some hope he turns things up a notch.

Well, I didn't say Cameron was any good at it. But that's the way he does it (see also: The awful "fatherhood" stuff in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. All of which is expressed from the characters, and not visually).

Cameron is an "image man" in the same way George Lucas is. These are guys who care more about the tech, not so much about mis en scene and depth of field.


Oh, and I love that shot from Gravity.

Figures. :D

[Irish]

Oh, OK. Yes, I agree, Cameron decided to make a different film with different goals. I still don't think that means he has to sacrifice visual power at the expense of action. Seems like a false dichotomy to me, but I do agree the horror genre lends itself more to the kinds of ideas and themes Scott was able to bring out with his imagery. It's a shame the genre is filled with so much shit though because its prime for really interesting stuff like Scott's film. At this point, it's one of the only horror films that I've been that impressed with, which has more to do with the execution I've seen by directors of the genre than anything inherent about the genre itself. (For whatever reason, horror manages to attract low-level talent rather than high-caliber artists, talented directors, and/or auteurs).

Couldn't agree more about Scott, horror, et al.

On actioners: I think it's a lot harder to do something that's visually evocative when your cast is running through the frame, and the set pieces may require faster cutting. Plus, there's the audience to consider. I want boobs and blood, not high art. Fuck high art. I want "Ho ho ho, Now I have a machine gun" and "Yippie kai yay, motherfucker" moments. Not pretty pictures.

The first time I saw Fincher's Alien 3, I got stuck on this stunning shot of blood circling a drain in the med bay. And I remember thinking "Who directed this?"

Those kind of moments & careful framing disappear after the first act, though, because the "action" takes over. Which is a shame, but understandable given the genres involved.

[Izzy Black]

Yeeeeeeeah. I'd like to see a Venn diagram of the audience size of people who want to watch both The Passenger and Aliens. ;)

More seriously, again: Different movies, different needs. These aren't 1:1 corollaries. You can't take something from Antonioni and think it will work across the board, in different contexts.

Lol, I was just giving you example because he was fresh in the discussion. But I think there are a lot of great visual stylists in Hollywood. Michael Mann and Ridley Scott are two excellent examples. And Gladiator is certainly a drama, but I also don't think its inaccurate to describe it as an action movie.


Well, I didn't say Cameron was any good at it. But that's the way he does it (see also: The awful "fatherhood" stuff in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. All of which is expressed from the characters, and not visually).

Cameron is an "image man" in the same way George Lucas is. These are guys who care more about the tech, not so much about mis en scene and depth of field.

Figures. :D

I see. Well, fine, but if they neglect the shot, I'd just say they're just tech guys, not image guys! (Although I think Lucas has actually produced some truly memorable images in his career, much more so than Cameron).

[Izzy Black]

Couldn't agree more about Scott, horror, et al.

On actioners: I think it's a lot harder to do something that's visually evocative when your cast is running through the frame, and the set pieces may require faster cutting. Plus, there's the audience to consider. I want boobs and blood, not high art. Fuck high art. I want "Ho ho ho, Now I have a machine gun" and "Yippie kai yay, motherfucker" moments. Not pretty pictures.

The first time I saw Fincher's Alien 3, I got stuck on this stunning shot of blood circling a drain in the med bay. And I remember thinking "Who directed this?"

Those kind of moments & careful framing disappear after the first act, though, because the "action" takes over. Which is a shame, but understandable given the genres involved.

I think with the expectations of the audience and the pressures on the directors from the studios, you're right, there's less inclination to go for art. But I don't think it has to do with anything intrinsic about the genre. For instance, I think Predator contains some pretty interesting set pieces and memorable images. Also, Michael Mann's Heat isn't an action film, but the film's very best sequence is an undeniable action sequence that's full of unnerving tension, command of space, moral/thematic complexity, and visual artistry. I think its possible to make artistic action films (also think the Kung Fu films of Tsiu and Yuen), they just aren't made often in Hollywood because of audience expectations.

[baby doll]

What's interesting about the scene of Claudia walking across the piazza has little to do with its narrative information and more to do with its associative thematic, conceptual, and political suggestions, what it says about Italian society at the time, the haunting image of a woman being ogled by men, how this informs the film's more global thematic concerns with post-War Italian attitudes, remnants of Fascist patriarchal sexism, and collective unrest (there are similar concerns in an analogous scene at a nightclub in Antonioni's The Story of a Love Affair). But there's also narrative information there too. It causes Claudia to experience feeling objectified and embarrassed, and leads her to go find Sandro, but establishing the general sense of her inner crisis isn't only interesting in how its forwards the plot, but what it says in just a snapshot of a broader social situation about identity, culture, and personal anxiety. These are more conceptual, emotional, and thematic ideas that are valuable regardless of what happens in the story (which is why, at some level, it isn't important what happens to Anna or whether the story has a resolution). There are a lot of great films that are more about these kinds of moments, films that are more about feelings, ideas, and sustaining moods like poetry or music than they are with plotting a story. In Antonioni, it's more of a matter of degree and emphasis, since I definitely still think Antonioni is a story teller, albeit a non-traditional one, but I think there are more extreme examples like Sharunas Bartas, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pedro Costa and avant-garde directors like Stan Brakhage and Michael Snow.With regards to the film's social meanings, I'm sure there are lots of bad movies which offer comparable insights into post-war Italian society. Incidentally, I think you'd have a hard time arguing persuasively that the men ogling Claudia are a remnant of Fascist patriarchal sexism (was there no patriarchal sexism in Italy before Fascism?) as there are very few, if any, salient allusions to the country's fascist history in the film. Patriarchal sexism, perhaps, but so far in this discussion it seems to me that you're taking one striking sequence, wrenching it out of its narrative contexts, and ascribing social meanings to it in a somewhat willy-nilly manner. (Men looking at a pretty woman in an aggressive manner? Call Laura Mulvey!) Frankly, the last thing I need is a lot of Žižek-style interpretative bullshitting.


In Bartas' film The House, for instance, there's a complete dissolution of plot. What we are presented with are a collection of wordless cinematic tableaux that could be fragments from a dream or a memory, containing images of dilapidated ruin and collective decay. We see a man casually walking between rooms observing its subjects in a kind of post-misery stasis and irrational activity, but it's not clear how each moment connects to the last, if what we're seeing are events from a day, or events at all. The important thing isn't a causal sequence of events, but the depiction of certain thematic situations and the corresponding meanings, feelings, and abstractions imparted in the construction, staging and rhythmic association of the images.I haven't seen it, but I'll be sure to check it out if I get a chance.

[baby doll]

As for propaganda films, I think there a far more layers of meaning in Ivan the Terrible than you give it credit. Its complicated function as a Soviet film is part of one of those layers. I Am Cuba, for instance, is also a propaganda film, but it's technique is far more revolutionary than Scott's film (and so is Eisenstein's), and all of Kalatozov's films have a unique dialectic in their relationship to Soviet pressures, personal creativity, universal themes and emotions, and abstract ideas. Plus, the images themselves pack more of an emotional and intellectual punch to me than what you get in a straightforward suspense film.Of course it's not a clear-cut glorification of Stalin, but I don't think the ambivalence about totalitarian authority expressed in the second part of Ivan the Terrible necessarily makes it superior to the first in which Ivan is portrayed in an unambiguously heroic light. (In her extremely thorough, 300-page analysis of the films, Kristin Thompson spends hardly any time on their social meanings.)

Regarding Eisenstein's revolutionary technique, I vastly prefer the non-revolutionary technique of Ivan the Terrible (which was made after he was forced to abandon intellectual montage under political pressure) to the revolutionary form and style of October, which has always left me cold.

[baby doll]

Also, in defense of James Cameron, The Terminator is a pretty terrific movie. The first half is particularly impressive for the way that it slowly doles out exposition while cutting between four different lines of action, creating suspense as well as drawing a parallel between the Terminator and the time traveler dude so it's not immediately clear what the latter is up to. That said, the sex scene feels as though it was spliced in from a bad softcore sex movie.

[Izzy Black]

With regards to the film's social meanings, I'm sure there are lots of bad movies which offer comparable insights into post-war Italian society. Incidentally, I think you'd have a hard time arguing persuasively that the men ogling Claudia are a remnant of Fascist patriarchal sexism (was there no patriarchal sexism in Italy before Fascism?) as there are very few, if any, salient allusions to the country's fascist history in the film. Patriarchal sexism, perhaps, but so far in this discussion it seems to me that you're taking one striking sequence, wrenching it out of its narrative contexts, and ascribing social meanings to it in a somewhat willy-nilly manner. (Men looking at a pretty woman in an aggressive manner? Call Laura Mulvey!) Frankly, the last thing I need is a lot of Žižek-style interpretative bullshitting.

I don't ignore the narrative context or even the overall context of his body of work (as you might recall, I mention a similar sequence in Story of a Love Affair), but my point was just to say that what makes the scene interesting or meaningful isn't necessarily its contribution to an overarching story line. You can take a piece of a narrative film and admire it for its art and beauty quite apart from assessing the ultimate end-effects of the final narrative. As for the sexism, my point certainty wasn't to say that patriarchal sexism was somehow a unique thing about Fascism. The intention was to point out what happens to be the specific context for this particular kind of culture we see in the sequence. I don't really see how you can fully appreciate Antonioni's cinema without acknowledging it as postwar cinema and deeply connected with the state of Italy at the time. (Which is not to say that it doesn't have other independent virtues to appreciate). If you notice, in all of Antonioni's films in the 50-60s, women are often made uncomfortable and objectified by men, and sometimes, like in L'Avventura, it's in seemingly random sequences that don't do much to push the narrative along (Paola is creeped out by some guy staring at her in a bar in Story of a Love Affair) or its integral to the overall aims of the narrative (the inability of Carla to be taken seriously as anything more than a sex symbol in The Lady Without Camelias). You could say part of what Antonioni implicates in his films is the conservative ideology that's been maintained by patriarchal structures, and that his films explore the conflict or convergence of old fashioned values of stable marriages that leave women subservient to the roles of trophy wives to their bread-winning husbands with the emergence of new attitudes about love, work, and relationships (hence the Antonioni indictment at the '60 Cannes premiere of L'Avventura that "Eros is sick.") Now, I guess you just call this interpretative bullshiting? Well, Antonioni's been my favorite director for well over a decade and I've spent a lot of time thinking about his films. I could certainty be wrong about him (along with the many critics that share my view), but if you want to that I'm just bullshitting here, then I'd just say you're being rather rude. And for the record, I disagree with you, but I don't think you're bullshitting me.

[Izzy Black]

Of course it's not a clear-cut glorification of Stalin, but I don't think the ambivalence about totalitarian authority expressed in the second part of Ivan the Terrible necessarily makes it superior to the first in which Ivan is portrayed in an unambiguously heroic light. (In her extremely thorough, 300-page analysis of the films, Kristin Thompson spends hardly any time on their social meanings.)

I wouldn't say that alone makes it superior, but it certainly makes Eisenstein's body of work more interesting. And I haven't read Kristen Thompson's book, but I do have a copy of Bordwell's book The Cinema of Eisenstein and he acknowledges that the dismissal of Stalinist cinema as simplistic has been overturned by critics to recognize that many of these films, particularly Eisenstein, warrant serious study, both on ideological and formal grounds. As a formalist, he focuses on Eisenstein's aesthetic, but he doesn't ignore the more interesting elements of the social meanings in Eisenstein's work. For instance, in his and Thompson's Film Art book, they point out how Eisenstein's crosscutting in October links the oppression of soldiers with the oppression of the proletariat, but also acknowledges how Eisenstein's technique serves non-narrative purposes and invites the audiences' intellectual participation in assembling the meanings. This active participation makes for a rather complicated viewing experience and explains why censors weren't happy with his overly formalist film. It's also pointed out how in Eisenstein's films, there aren't really individual protagonists like you see in most narrative films, but compares him to Antonioni in that events are caused by larger social dynamics and forces rather than individuals. I respect Eisenstein a lot, and although he isn't necessarily one of my favorite directors, I seriously doubt either Bordwell or Thompson would concede the point that Eisenstein's films are thin on the meaning side of things. I'd say his art is anything but lacking in sophistication and layers. And it should go without saying, social meanings aren't the only kind of meanings. I've discussed social meaning in the case of Antonioni because his films are very much concerned with the social and modernity, but notice that I didn't isolate social meaning in my regard for Scott's Alien. I think Scott and Eisenstein both have a lot of interesting conceptual and philosophical meanings in their films that aren't just social.


Regarding Eisenstein's revolutionary technique, I vastly prefer the non-revolutionary technique of Ivan the Terrible (which was made after he was forced to abandon intellectual montage under political pressure) to the revolutionary form and style of October, which has always left me cold.

That's fine. It's been a long time so I don't really remember much about Ivan the Terrible, so I'd have to see it again, but from what I recall, Bordwell doesn't exactly play down its sophistication and meanings either.

[Izzy Black]

Also, in defense of James Cameron, The Terminator is a pretty terrific movie. The first half is particularly impressive for the way that it slowly doles out exposition while cutting between four different lines of action, creating suspense as well as drawing a parallel between the Terminator and the time traveler dude so it's not immediately clear what the latter is up to. That said, the sex scene feels as though it was spliced in from a bad softcore sex movie.

This is another one of those films I haven't seen in probably 10 years, so I'll have to give it a rewatch. I can say that it does stand out in memory better than Avatar, Titanic, Terminator 2 (pure kitsch), and Aliens. Interestingly, the best Cameron film I've seen was a documentary called Aliens in the Deep, which proves Irish's point that Cameron is best as a tech guy than an image guy.

[Izzy Black]

And based on your rec, I've been skimming over Thompson's book and it looks like she's right there with Bordwell in dismissing the simplistic take on the meanings of Ivan and Eisenstein's cinema. Relevant passage:

"At the time of its release, Ivan the Terrible, Part I was not a propaganda success; it failed to fulfill its commission to present a usable historical pedigree or a socialist realist epic. But we must be careful not to conclude from this that the ambivalent reception in 1945 is proof of the opposite - proof that Ivan is a work exclusively critical of Stalinist rule. On the contrary, the discussions of 1945 make it clear that we need to discard the reigning dichotomies of Stalinist cultural studies: dissident/conformist, hero/coward, victim/criminal, lackey/martyr. Viewers in 1945 were bewildered by the film for the same reasons we continue to disagree about its meanings. It is a film in which fascination with absolute power has been read as both approval and condemnation of power. Ivan the Terrible is a great film precisely because Eisenstein knew its subject from within and without (...) [W]e find a work of art that challenges us to consider Russian history in the twentieth century from a perspective that offers no simple solutions. Just as he did not intend Ivan to whitewash the medieval tsar, but rather to explore his contradictory legacy and his significance for a contemporary audience, Eisenstein did not seek to exonerate either himself or "the leading figure of his time" but to explore the contradictions and the tragic history that brought them into being. In an era when both politics and culture were often one-dimensional, blandly consoling, and blindly simplistic, Eisenstein's film came as a bombshell. Ivan the Terrible is a difficult movie because it was butchered by censorship and self-censorship but it is a great movie because it makes a mockery of our expectations and challenges us to understand how the best and worst aspects of the human condition can coexist."

[baby doll]

I don't ignore the narrative context or even the overall context of his body of work (as you might recall, I mention a similar sequence in Story of a Love Affair), but my point was just to say that what makes the scene interesting or meaningful isn't necessarily its contribution to an overarching story line. You can take a piece of a narrative film and admire it for its art and beauty quite apart from assessing the ultimate end-effects of the final narrative. As for the sexism, my point certainty wasn't to say that patriarchal sexism was somehow a unique thing about Fascism. The intention was to point out what happens to be the specific context for this particular kind of culture we see in the sequence. I don't really see how you can fully appreciate Antonioni's cinema without acknowledging it as postwar cinema and deeply connected with the state of Italy at the time. (Which is not to say that it doesn't have other independent virtues to appreciate). If you notice, in all of Antonioni's films in the 50-60s, women are often made uncomfortable and objectified by men, and sometimes, like in L'Avventura, it's in seemingly random sequences that don't do much to push the narrative along (Paola is creeped out by some guy staring at her in a bar in Story of a Love Affair) or its integral to the overall aims of the narrative (the inability of Carla to be taken seriously as anything more than a sex symbol in The Lady Without Camelias). You could say part of what Antonioni implicates in his films is the conservative ideology that's been maintained by patriarchal structures, and that his films explore the conflict or convergence of old fashioned values of stable marriages that leave women subservient to the roles of trophy wives to their bread-winning husbands with the emergence of new attitudes about love, work, and relationships (hence the Antonioni indictment at the '60 Cannes premiere of L'Avventura that "Eros is sick.") Now, I guess you just call this interpretative bullshiting? Well, Antonioni's been my favorite director for well over a decade and I've spent a lot of time thinking about his films. I could certainty be wrong about him (along with the many critics that share my view), but if you want to that I'm just bullshitting here, then I'd just say you're being rather rude. And for the record, I disagree with you, but I don't think you're bullshitting me.For the record, I don't think you're bullshitting, but I don't find this particular interpretation very convincing as it seems to me that you're beginning with specific examples and then extrapolating a thesis from them. The general thrust of the film is that the characters are locked into roles that no longer have any meaning (Anna disappears and Claudia immediately slips into her role as Sandro's girlfriend as if nothing happened); a critique of patriarchy may be implied in that, but it seems to me that you're cherry-picking a couple random examples from Antonioni's oeuvre as a whole to make the films say what you want them to say.

[baby doll]

And based on your rec, I've been skimming over Thompson's book and it looks like she's right there with Bordwell in dismissing the simplistic take on the meanings of Ivan and Eisenstein's cinema. Relevant passage:

"At the time of its release, Ivan the Terrible, Part I was not a propaganda success; it failed to fulfill its commission to present a usable historical pedigree or a socialist realist epic. But we must be careful not to conclude from this that the ambivalent reception in 1945 is proof of the opposite - proof that Ivan is a work exclusively critical of Stalinist rule. On the contrary, the discussions of 1945 make it clear that we need to discard the reigning dichotomies of Stalinist cultural studies: dissident/conformist, hero/coward, victim/criminal, lackey/martyr. Viewers in 1945 were bewildered by the film for the same reasons we continue to disagree about its meanings. It is a film in which fascination with absolute power has been read as both approval and condemnation of power. Ivan the Terrible is a great film precisely because Eisenstein knew its subject from within and without (...) [W]e find a work of art that challenges us to consider Russian history in the twentieth century from a perspective that offers no simple solutions. Just as he did not intend Ivan to whitewash the medieval tsar, but rather to explore his contradictory legacy and his significance for a contemporary audience, Eisenstein did not seek to exonerate either himself or "the leading figure of his time" but to explore the contradictions and the tragic history that brought them into being. In an era when both politics and culture were often one-dimensional, blandly consoling, and blindly simplistic, Eisenstein's film came as a bombshell. Ivan the Terrible is a difficult movie because it was butchered by censorship and self-censorship but it is a great movie because it makes a mockery of our expectations and challenges us to understand how the best and worst aspects of the human condition can coexist."As I said, there is a certain amount of ambivalence in the film towards Ivan, so it's not a simplistic propaganda film, but I wouldn't base any claims for the film's greatness solely, or even primarily, on its ideological meanings.

I've read the passages in Film Art relating to October (though not Bordwell's book on Eisenstein), and while I understand why the film's form is radical, just because it's radical doesn't mean it's good any more than conservatism, formal or ideological, means that a particular film is bad.

[Izzy Black]

For the record, I don't think you're bullshitting, but I don't find this particular interpretation very convincing as it seems to me that you're beginning with specific examples and then extrapolating a thesis from them. The general thrust of the film is that the characters are locked into roles that no longer have any meaning (Anna disappears and Claudia immediately slips into her role as Sandro's girlfriend as if nothing happened); a critique of patriarchy may be implied in that, but it seems to me that you're cherry-picking a couple random examples from Antonioni's oeuvre as a whole to make the films say what you want them to say.

For one, I wasn't attempting to explain away all the meanings to Antonioni's early work. To the contrary, we were having a discussion about a particular sequence in Antonioni's cinema and I was explaining how it can have meaning and significance within his art without relation to it being directly instrumental in plot-development. Antonioni is full of different things and ideas, but the claim that his early work is concerned with a postwar conflict of conservative and progressive values is a fairly common observation about his cinema, and I don't think it's especially controversial to say that this shot is informed by these background conditions (fwiw, it's even Jarmusch's take on the scene). In fact, what you are saying here about roles no longer having meaning is perfectly compatible with my reading about values in the film. The difference is that you seem reluctant to acknowledge how these roles are also rooted (although not exclusively) in very old fashioned notions about the roles of men and women in society. You can find many scenes and dialogue from his films in the 50s and 60s that reference these shifting roles, as in the progressive, working women of Le amiche moving into the business world that was previously the domain of men and the way this entry creates obstacles in love and romance. Or, again, how Carla is unable to be taken more seriously as anything but a sex symbol in The Lady Without Camelias, or Irma's shaming by her community for her many affairs in Il grido. These aren't isolated scenes, but that's actually what the narrative of these films are about. There's obviously way more going on in Antonioni's cinema than just these types of gender conflicts, and since I wasn't concerning myself directly with the outcome of the narrative, I wasn't really offering an interpretation of L'avventura as a whole. It was precisely my intention to talk about specific ideas in the film that's at least in any case compatible with larger narrative and thematic concerns in Antonioni. Also, none of this is to say that his women protagonists are moral saints and his men are scoundrels. To the contrary, Antonioni isn't moralizing. He's observing tension, a clash of expectations, attitudes, and values fueled by complicated desires, motives, and changing socioeconomic conditions. Claudia is far from guiltless in her affair with Sandro, just as Irma is far from guiltless for her affairs in Il grido, but Antonioni still empathizes with both the men and women in his films, and acknowledges converging expectations and evolving social norms. Now, culminating with Zabriskie Point, Antonioni began to shift his concerns from the social to the more personal/philosophical after the 60s (in part, perhaps, and I'm only guessing, because the replacement of values in the 60s began to stabilize), and his early films have way more going on than just creating an interesting dialogue about gender roles, but that doesn't mean these elements aren't there, which is all that I was suggesting.

[Izzy Black]

As I said, there is a certain amount of ambivalence in the film towards Ivan, so it's not a simplistic propaganda film, but I wouldn't base any claims for the film's greatness solely, or even primarily, on its ideological meanings.

I wouldn't base claims of greatness on Eisenstein solely on these things either, but I'd side with both Bordwell and Thompson in saying it's certainly a significant part. If that's not what you like about the film, then fine, but what I like about Eisenstein isn't just merely technical wizardry, or merely exciting action, or unnerving tension, but that through it all he manages to stir powerful emotions, sometimes even complicated by the nature of his ideas.


I've read the passages in Film Art relating to October (though not Bordwell's book on Eisenstein), and while I understand why the film's form is radical, just because it's radical doesn't mean it's good any more than conservatism, formal or ideological, means that a particular film is bad.

What I like about his remarks about the form are how it evokes interesting meanings (it makes us an active participant in constructing the artistic experience through the juxtaposition of images of the soldier's oppression with the proletariat's oppression). It's true his technique is radical, and I'll give it points for novelty, but that's not what makes it great. Bordwell is saying that it's the specific function it serves that makes the film interesting, not merely that it's new or revolutionary.

[number8]

I do appreciate the sensation of the adventure like when the space station blow-up and we're right there in the action as if we're the passenger to Bullock's experience, but it's true that the images are more technically impressive, like that shot of her shenzhou's debris passing beyond the clouds. I wonder, though, if it was luck or if she actually made the shenzhou land safely in water instead of, I dunno, the middle of a red desert or something.

[Morris Schæffer]

Kind of think that was intentional though.

I think it was. It makes their ass-whupping moments later all the more potent since if a bunch of trash-talking marines with powerful hardware get reduced to whimpering wrecks later on, not to mention see their numbers significantly decimated, what chance does one woman have?!

but that's all I'm gonna say on that.

[Morris Schæffer]

Also, did anyone else found it hilarious when she finally got to earth and started drowning? When she got tangled in the seaweed my entire theater burst out laughing.

I liked the seaweed thing, but not coming after the water thing, because that made me think that when she got to dryland, there might be a rattlesnake thing.

Would have been perfect if the seaweed thing was the only hazard because I like how it was filmed, not as a huge struggle, which would have been hilarious, but as something annoying that needed to be shaken off. And this would have neatly echoed the randomness, and absurdity of her daughter's death. "She was playing hide and seek, fell on her head and that was it."

Other ramblings:

- it's one of the most immersive movies I've ever seen and my reaction is substantially positive
- Is this really any different from a Michael Bay vehicle? The FX rock, but whenever characters open their mouth, it's far less persuasive. Feels like a videogame with every station being a level (or platform!!!!) that needs to be jumped on.
- I've seen the name "Kubrick" thrown around left and right by critics saying "he would have loved this movie", but there's an elusiveness and mysticism to 2001: A Space Odyssey that allows that movie to operate on a much higher plane of existence than Gravity, which instead offers a rote and uninspired "getting from a to b" scenario and then from b to c and so on and so forth. It's really repetitive.
- I love Clooney as an actor and as a person, but crap does he feel off in this. Not really his fault I suppose, but I'm trying to understand why he was written as such a confident, carefree person whose own death doesn't faze him in the least. He literally jumps right to acceptance and keeps on smiling right as he's about to let go. And the calm, soothing voice keeps on coming moments after. so odd. Was he some kind of celestial being only there to guide Bullock through all the shit? lol.
- The hallucination sequence is baaaaaaad. For two reasons. I didn't feel that Stone would yet be at the point where she might be going bonkers. Yes, her ordeal is awful, but unless I missed some skipping forward in time stuff, usually hallucinations occur after prolonged moments of extreme hardship. At a mere 90 minutes, everything seemed to be happening too fast, the woof woof moment a particularly embarassing sign that she was crossing over into madness. It all makes me far less enamored of Bullock's performance sadly, because she's really doing some very good work here. Secondly, by having Kowalski be the one who kickstarts her resurrection, it robs Stone's survival story of true resourcefullness and willpower, that scene was filmed so matter of factly that I nearly thought Clooney was going to whip up a Nespresso.
- Cast Away is a better "marooned somewhere" film than this, Speed is a better action vehicle than this.
- I'm really sorta pissed off. Why couldn't this have delivered on all fronts?! Because of the studios obviously. Fuck'em.

[Stay Puft]

Well, I was sorta enjoying the film, up until the scene Irish and Spinal were arguing about earlier in the thread. I'm with Irish on that one (and Morris, who just posted the same criticisms above me). The "rebirth" stuff and backstory may be thinly drawn, but I thought Bullock did a damn fine job and sold me on the more flimsy elements of Cuarón's material. I was engaged, certainly. Moreso even than with the visual spectacle, which didn't always impress (visual effects, yes, quite good; but I'm no fan of Cuarón's long takes). But, wow, that scene killed it for me. Mad stupid.

I didn't get much out of the 3D either but then I suppose I never do. There were a handful of scenes that were neat (the scenes with the debris field, the fire on the station) but otherwise it was like most movies: I just never really noticed it.

I really did like Sandra Bullock in this, though.

[number8]

There were a handful of scenes that were neat (the scenes with the debris field, the fire on the station) but otherwise it was like most movies: I just never really noticed it.

This is the dilemma of 3D. I think the best use is when you don't notice it and it just adds to the background aesthetic, but asking people to pay $3 extra for that is rather ridiculous.

[Sven]

This movie.

[Morris Schæffer]

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/65173

Check out this 7 minute short directed by Jonas Cuaron, a companion piece to Gravity.

[Qrazy]

I thought this was quite poor. I was hoping/expecting for a thoughtful sci fi and what I got was a cliffhanger film set in space. There's set piece after set piece, each one straining plausibility as far as it can go. I was with it until the station caught fire and then it lost me completely.

[Qrazy]

I'm of two minds with that one. On some level Cuaron doesn't over-extenuate that shot, but sorta leaves it there in the frame--and off to the side, if memory serves. And since other tears drop and float it doesn't ring like some self-aggrandizing visual.

Nah, he racked focus onto the tear drop. It would have worked if he could have resisted the urge to jam his imagery down the audiences throat.

[Qrazy]

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/65173

Check out this 7 minute short directed by Jonas Cuaron, a companion piece to Gravity.

I thought this was absurd and the audio content in Gravity itself took me out of the scene. Bullock was doing a decent job there but why the hell is the guy singing a lullaby now and why isn't he responding to the tone of her voice? Who brings a baby out into the cold to have it sung to? And just because someone is speaking another language doesn't mean you don't react if you hear them crying. Emotions are universal, even if you can't understand someone you can tell if they're happy or sad.

[Ezee E]

I thought this was absurd and the audio content in Gravity itself took me out of the scene. Bullock was doing a decent job there but why the hell is the guy singing a lullaby now and why isn't he responding to the tone of her voice? Who brings a baby out into the cold to have it sung to? And just because someone is speaking another language doesn't mean you don't react if you hear them crying. Emotions are universal, even if you can't understand someone you can tell if they're happy or sad.

Disagree.

But if you really want to know, the short that illustrates that scene is indeed available.

[Pop Trash]

It sounded like a shitty audio connection. The amount of nitpicking for this film is astonishing.

[Spinal]

I was hoping/expecting for a thoughtful sci fi and what I got was a cliffhanger film set in space.

I'm confused why the latter would be considered an inferior experience to the former.

[Qrazy]

Disagree.

But if you really want to know, the short that illustrates that scene is indeed available.

I just watched and am responding to it (the short) and then commenting upon how I found the scene in Gravity also problematic given the motivations of the guy demonstrated in the short. By that I mean I questioned why there was a guy with howling dogs who then sings a lullaby shortly thereafter when I was watching Gravity. Watching the short then confirmed my belief that his character motivations make little sense.

[Qrazy]

It sounded like a shitty audio connection. The amount of nitpicking for this film is astonishing.

Did you watch the short? She came in loud and clear.

[Qrazy]

I'm confused why the latter would be considered an inferior experience to the former.

Well first off personally I value thoughtful films over less thoughtful ones. 2001, Stalker or Solaris will always be better films to me than Aliens or Escape from New York, although I enjoy all of them quite a bit.

Secondly, if I'm watching a cliffhanger film (which is escapist in nature) I'd like it to be entertaining. Indiana Jones works because it has humour and it's larger than life. Hitchcock films are also larger than life. This one on the other hand pretends towards some semblance of naturalism but is really just a ridiculous set piece film. One problem occurs, then other, then other, everything that can go wrong does and it begins to feel mechanical, strains credulity and eventually my suspension of disbelief dissipates. This film has the exact same problems as the Pirates of the Caribbean films or King Kong, The Hobbit or any number of other recent blockbusters. The action sequences are overly storyboarded. They feel inauthentically deterministic and ultimately just silly. If we're going to witness an absurd fiction where there's always only one way out and that way out is reached at the last possible second than at least give me a character I can give a shit about.

There's an older TV anime about space debris and it's hazards called Planetes. It's not perfect but it's a fair shake better than this.

[Pop Trash]

Did you watch the short? She came in loud and clear.

If by "loud and clear" you mean a McDonald's drive-thru intercom level of clarity heard by a seemingly buzzed non-English speaking Inuit in Greenland who, according to Qrazy, is supposed to not put his kid on the radio because he should know the woman on the other end is sad.

[Qrazy]

If by "loud and clear" you mean a McDonald's drive-thru intercom level of clarity heard by a seemingly buzzed non-English speaking Inuit in Greenland who, according to Qrazy, is supposed to not put his kid on the radio because he should know the woman on the other end is sad.

Um no, I question why someone would take their crying baby out in the freezing cold to sit next to each other and stare hollow eyed into the snow while someone cries on the other end of a radio and they don't have any reaction to that. He can understand her woofing and howl in response but just utterly ignores her desperation? I mean I'd say the authors want us to think the guy must be a sociopath but then they have him singing to his baby so I guess I'll just have to settle for it's bad writing instead.

Basically they forced a baby into the script there to give Bullock's character something to riff off of.

[Dead & Messed Up]

This film was so visceral and immediately engaging that I cheered in my empty apartment at the end of it all.

But there's something that's very, for lack of a better term, video-gamey about the whole thing. Clooney is the NPC who's giving Bullock/audience a series of mission objectives. All the sequences that go inside Bullock's helmet - those scenes of her struggling to grip onto things looks like Mirror's Edge. The different ships feel like different levels. Bullock collects the item "Fire Extinguisher." The final ship escape plays like one of those ubiquitous "self-destruct sequence" closers.

I don't know if any of this amounts to a useful criticism, especially since one could equally level the film's architecture at Joe Campbell (Clooney as the Obi-Wan mentor, etc.), and since video games borrow so heavily from pulp sci-fi tradition, but while the film is harrowing, it's also pretty thin. Children of Men was just as visceral, but its context carried more weight.

But again, I cheered. It's a tremendous experience.

[Qrazy]

When Bullock's character is verbally coaxing herself home all I could think about was this.

Topper: You'll have to talk me down. I've got damage.
Washout: Hold it, hold it!
Washout: OK, Topper. Ease her in.
Topper: Landing gear's frozen.
Washout: Lookin' good.
T: Lost my radar.
W: A little more power now.
T: I'm out of fuel.
W: Right for lineup.
T: Lost a wing.
W: Doin' fine.
T: There goes the other one.
W: OK, Topper. Call the ball.
T: Touchin' down.

[Ezee E]

Lots are calling out the "amusement park" criticism to which I wonder what amusement park rides have been thrilling for over 90 minutes.

[Spinal]

I described it to a friend as a film for people who like roller coasters. I meant that as a positive. But it sounds like that's not true of everyone.

[Skitch]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G14B8nmqPRs

[Thirdmango]

I will likely be the only person who will say I'm glad I didn't see it in IMAX 3D because I felt sick from all of the shakiness about 10 times during the film, if that were enhanced I would have thrown up.

I thought about how they made it a lot more then I thought about the movie while I was watching the movie. In my book this is not a good thing, the story is not at all engaging and if there were a making of of this movie it would be more enjoyable.

[Sven]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G14B8nmqPRs

This 30 seconds is better than the actual movie.

[Dukefrukem]

Yeh not much else to say when praising this movie. It's definitely the outlier of the year in terms of storytelling. Will probably make it into my top 10. I just want to point out that it's utterly ridiculous to think that NASA or any other space program would build a mechanism outside of a spacecraft where they would choose not to use captive screws. Another quick negative, WTF was Cuaron thinking with that FPS shot in the Chinese station? Ugh.

Oh yeh, and that ending song. Just beautiful. Lil help on identifying it?

[Grouchy]

Another quick negative, WTF was Cuaron thinking with that FPS shot in the Chinese station?
What are you talking about?

[Dukefrukem]

What are you talking about?

I'm talking about the FPS shot in the Chinese station...

[Grouchy]

I'm talking about the FPS shot in the Chinese station...
I don't remember the shot, just got curious about what it was.

I don't know what FPS stands for either. First-person shooting?

[Dukefrukem]

I don't remember the shot, just got curious about what it was.

I don't know what FPS stands for either. First-person shooting?

Yes. As Ryan is entering the station, you only see her vision as she makes her way through the corridors. She grabs her helmet and holds onto rails and it just looks out of place and reminds me of Doom.

[Scar]

Just finished watching it. Great experience. I've heard that it 'needs' to be seen in 3D. Well, I quite enjoyed it at home. My only 3D experience was with Pacific Rim. Loved the hell out of it, hated the lingering two day headache.

2D is fine for me.

[Morris Schæffer]

Saw it again a few days ago. I really like it lots, but the woof woof moment is one of the most embarassing moments of the year for me. Painfully phoney.

[DavidSeven]

I thought this was a masterpiece.

Glad I've been out of the loop on movie hype for the last six months. I went in with few expectations, and this just blew me away. Really glad I was able to see it in 3D. Cuaron is an elite filmmaker. Amazing vision. Great sense of humanity and when to infuse it.

[Skitch]

First viewing: 2D, at home.

Holy shit was this overrated. Don't get me wrong, good movie, amazing visuals, I'm sure the 3D is epic, and as soon as it hits the dollar theater I will see it in 3d. That being said...well, maybe I'm just still really pissed off that Moon didn't get a best pic nod, because this didn't feel deserving. I expected a lot more from Cuaron. Or maybe I just have no tolerance for suicidal quitter characters.

I've also read many reviews that said its a "90 minute nonstop thrill ride"...for a movie with basically three action scenes. :/

[Sycophant]

I only like suicidal quitter characters, so I guess maybe that accounts for part of my enthusiasm for the film.

[Derek]

I only like suicidal quitter characters, so I guess maybe that accounts for part of my enthusiasm for the film.

I dunno, she was all like "Waaah, my kid's dead and the guys who were supposed to guide me back to Earth are dead and my spacecraft is dead too" and I was all like "Guuurl, you lucky to space at all with that attitude" and "If that be me, I'd be all like fuck you space, I can hear myself scream and I'll learn Chinese and fly this new bitch back to earth on my own without GhostClooney's pep speech, thank you very much."

[Skitch]

I understand that, and it would be different if she were up there for weeks and facing starvation. It just felt like she got to that point awful quick.

"Holy shit I survived that! And that! And that! And I made it over here! Fuck it."

I think after that horrifying first act and facing certain death floating away...you'd have a little more resolve to get back.

[Dukefrukem]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzE6bKIKK3A