MC Inventory: "Cinematic" vs. Story-driven Texts

[dreamdead]

So I was thinking about my reactions to Cuaron's Gravity and Holofcener's Enough Said this morning. The former has, to be kind, a lackluster script but advances the mainstream cinematic grammar through its methodical use of drifting bodies, scope, and presentational style. The latter is termed an independent feature, but beyond focusing on life of people who are outside their 30s, is completely grounded in intelligent but otherwise mundane details of daily life, and is filmically utterly conventional (full of two-shots, reaction shots, and the like). The former has seen rhapsodic praise over the advances of the medium (while being questioned for its surface narrative), while the latter is roundly praised, but tempered by the conventionality of its presentation.

If the former is Hitchcock mainstream, full of fluid, roving cameras, the latter is Sturges, a comic study but never ever really experimenting formally. In this online community, do we privilege the cinematic over the story-driven text? Do you devote stronger praise to films that invoke their ""filmicness," or can quiet script-driven stories earn just as high of praise?

[Ezee E]

I'll take the "Cinematic" over the "texts" almost anytime. There's just that problem when a director isn't that talented and tries to be "cinematic" and fails completely.

[Irish]

I haven't seen Enough Said, but Holofcener comes from a TV background. That may explain a lot of her choices.

As for the original question: Story trumps all.

[Izzy Black]

This bleeds into a lot of discussions I've been having recently with different people. My initial tendency is to say, as a bit of a card-carrying formalist and auteurist, that I prefer the "cinematic" to the more literary styles of filmmaking, but I think there needs to be a clarification about what the contrast is. I don't necessarily devalue a film for a conventional visual. I think conventional cinematic forms are still powerful. A drama shot with long-takes and open staging at this point is the stuff of neorealism, but with proper execution and great content, it can make for a powerful film. My problem isn't with conventional forms, it's with the lack of formal rigor. I dislike films that don't really rely heavily on the visual/form to tell the story. (Otherwise, why make a film? Write a book).

I actually like Holofcener and I think she has a very functional classical technique (i.e. the wide framing and reaction shots of Dermot Mulroney's character critiquing the naked body of a full frontal Emily Mortimer in Lovely & Amazing). I haven't seen Enough Said, but I look forward to it. I've liked her films so far (except for Friends with Money).

Now, I obviously give points to a film for cinematic innovation (Gravity, for instance), but I don't necessarily knock a film for not being innovative. I knock it for visual/formal laziness. (And this isn't just some prejudice against dialogue heavy films. The Before trilogy contain non-stop dialogue but you'd be greatly mistaken if you were to think that those films aren't highly visual).

[baby doll]

Despite the ostentatious long takes and special effects, Gravity is actually pretty conventional in terms of how it presents story information to generate suspense (i.e., bits of debris in the background approaching the oblivious characters in the foreground). There's an obvious precedent for the film in Hitchcock's single-set films of the '40s (Lifeboat and Rope), but the Hollywood hype machine promoting the movie requires it to be a breakthrough when really all it does is use the latest technology to do the things narrative films have been doing since the 1910s.

That said, while the long takes in Jancsó's Red Psalm which elide or obscure crucial plot points and its decidedly non-realistic treatment of an historical event look pretty wild alongside Cuarón's film, I'm not sure they're any less conventional. It's just that Jancsó is drawing upon a different set of conventions.

[Izzy Black]

I don't think that Cuarón's mere use of long-takes is what people think is innovative about Gravity. (He's been using long-takes his whole career).

[Dead & Messed Up]

It's hard for me to separate the two. I get what you're saying, but I feel like most of my favorites are a pretty thick stew of the two, mostly with an impressive and unique visual presentation of an engaging story. And I agree with Izzy that some dialogue-heavy films can still be presented with distinctive filmcraftwerk.

[Pop Trash]

It's hard for me to separate the two. I get what you're saying, but I feel like most of my favorites are a pretty thick stew of the two, mostly with an impressive and unique visual presentation of an engaging story. And I agree with Izzy that some dialogue-heavy films can still be presented with distinctive filmcraftwerk.

Right I don't think it's an either/or proposition. Images convey meaning (which then adds up to BIG PICTURE storytelling even in experimental films). This is why something like There Will Be Blood's opening act conveys all sorts of meaning and storytelling despite the dearth of dialogue.

[dreamdead]

Right I don't think it's an either/or proposition. Images convey meaning (which then adds up to BIG PICTURE storytelling even in experimental films). This is why something like There Will Be Blood's opening act conveys all sorts of meaning and storytelling despite the dearth of dialogue.

My concern, and the reason I raised the question, though, is that I wonder whether we overly-valorize films that are "cinematic" at the detriment of films that are solidly constructed around a great story but lack superlative visuals.

To give one example: Shane Carruth's Primer and Upstream Color--I watched both this year. However, I was rhapsodic not around Primer, which is generally solid but not especially groundbreaking visually, but around Upstream Color. I wondered from that if I (as well as others) privilege films that may veer towards the abstract if not obtuse so long as they are thoroughly cinematic in their construction. I wonder about the response to Steve McQueen's newest since it's discussed largely in terms of its content and not its aesthetics (though there are critics who are highlighting its visual motifs), whereas his earlier works never sublimated their aesthetics for the story.

Do we as a practice reward films that engage the medium to their core even if there's little difference in quality in their scripts?