Tarantino is a somewhat erratic filmmaker. None of his films are actually bad (save his segment of Four Rooms, maybe) but some are fantastic and some waver around mediocre. It’s not chronological, either; he isn’t a filmmaker who has fallen off (yet, at least.)
There is one fairly common theme to his weaker moments, though, I think. It comes down to the fact that his grasp of men’s genre material is much stronger than his grasp of women’s genre material.
At least for me, all of Tarantino’s weakest filmmaking moments happen when he tries to do romance, or something like soap opera. The Butch/Fabiene romance in Pulp Fiction is treacly and deeply unconvincing; you end up hating both characters, not falling in love with them. Similarly, the soap opera aspects of Kill Bill are a mess. There’s never even a modicum of chemistry between Bill and the Bride; their endless heart to heart at the end of part 2 is tedious rather than heart-wrenching. The Bride’s transformative experience with motherhood is completely unconvincing, and also unquestioned. Django is supposedly built around a passionate romance, but it has no idea how to represent that, or really do anything with it beyond motivating Django to shoot lots of people.
Tarantino is generally very good at undermining, or tinkering with, or examining male genre conventions, whether he’s telling you how good it feels to watch someone cut off an ear, or thinking about what pacifism does to narrative (which is to me one of the most fascinating parts of Pulp Fiction.) But when he deals with traditionally women-oriented genre material, he’s just at sea. The best he can do is to lace his treacle with half-hearted irony. But he’s not passionate enough about the material to savage it or embrace it. He just sort of lets it sit there helplessly, until he can move onto something else. It’s telling, I think, that Tarantino’s great romances are ones that are not quite romances; Jackie Brown and Max, or Vince and Mia.
This isn’t to say that Tarantino is sexist. He sometimes is, I’d say, but he also has a lot of great female characters, who he treats with interest, compassion, and respect. And of course lots of women like his films, just like lots of women like “male” genre work. Compared to many male filmmakers, I’d say that Tarantino is even quite interested in representing a diversity of women on screen (though his casts overall still tip male.) But what he’s not interested in, or attuned to, is women’s genre work. A Quentin Tarantino romantic comedy, in short, would be a very bad idea.
Did you watch True Romance too? I don’t remember whether it was bad or good myself but the romantic plot there is, I think, more central than in any of his own films so I was looking to see if you’d mention it.
I watched True Romance years back and remember little about it except that, like all the films Tarantino wrote but didn’t direct, it’s not that good.
I wrote about it here. Sounds like it was another failed romance in Tarantino’s original script (the guy was supposed to die.)
Some guy called Woody Harrelson said:
“‘Natural Born Killers’ is really a misunderstood romantic comedy.”
Woody Harrelson is an idiot.
Just out of curiosity, what’s with all the Tarantino writing lately? Did you just recently rewatch a bunch?
I’m rewatching them all for a biggish project, which will be published…someday.
Noah Berlatsky: (August 21, 2015 at 9:24 am) Woody Harrelson is an idiot.
Might be! Your writing made me instantly think of Natural Born Killers, and then I googled it, and came by the said quote. (offtopic, but personally I need some really twisted foundation to be able to digist any romantic elements. My fave romantic movie is Tromeo & Juliet (1996))
Of course, you comment also inspired me to google ‘woody harrelson idiot’ and the first post was one where he compared Obama to Richard Nixon – so I guess Woody Harrelson is still an okay guy in my book, whoever he is.
But I agree Kill Bills heart-breaking climax is totally anti-climatic. It just didn’t work. This was something I hadn’t considered before. On the other hand, I feel you somehow waste your intellect by concluding that Tarantiono, a director who has gangsta-coolness as his trademark, is less successful at doing romantic comedy. Like any other Columbus egg, it just seem a bit obvious.
(drunk at time of writing so I hereby renounce any responsobility and whatever)
Not sure which heart-breaking climax you’re talking about…you mean the bit where Victor and Mia don’t get together? I really liked that…it was the romantic happy ending with Butch and Fabien that’s a mess (IMO).
I don’t mind stating the obvious though!
Is True Romance a Tarantino film? I thought he just wrote the script….
I’m generally not that keen on his work – other than Jackie Brown – but it does seem unfair to judge Tarantino’s filmmaking through a work he probably didn’t have much control over.
Uh-oh. Just noticed that second comment about TR above, so… please ignore my comment. Sorry about that.
He just wrote the script. In the script, the protagonist died, which is a better ending (IMO) and a more Tarantinoesque one. In the filmed version, there’s a stupid Hollywood happy ending (which isn’t Tarantino’s fault.)
No worries! It’s just a comment thread….
This is very interesting, and catalyzes some thoughts I’ve been having about the Coen brothers. The last paragraph of the above could maybe have been written about them too – except they already did make a romantic comedy (Intolerable Cruelty), which has its virtues, but is not generally regarded as one of their great successes.
“thinking about what pacifism does to narrative (which is to me one of the most fascinating parts of Pulp Fiction.)”
Havent seen it in a while but how is pacifism a theme in Pulp Fiction? And what are the consequences for the narrative? maybe you already wrote that essay but i couldnt find it :)
Jules gives up violence, and drops out of the story. (is the one sentence version.)
I’ve kind of given up on the Coen Brothers, I have to admit. I think some of the above does apply, but I think you could also argue they’ve fallen off in a more consistent way than Tarantino has (or at least, I’ve gotten less interested in their latter work.)
Is that a negative judgment on Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, and Inside Llewyn Davis?
I kind of bailed before that…O Brother Where Art Thou and The Man Who Wasn’t There were two in a row that I thought were kind of crappy, and I don’t think I’ve seen any since. Though maybe I saw True Grit, which I didn’t really like either?
Oh Brother Where Art Thou is… of mixed quality (come to think of it, maybe they’re just not very good at writing black people); The Man Who Wasn’t There did absolutely nothing for me when I first saw it some time in the early ’00s – now I think it’s very good but still kind of boring.
True Grit suggests that they shouldn’t adapt other people’s stories, even when the story is good (Cormac McCarthy on the other hand of course just sucks) – they’re unwilling or unable to either totally hijack the material or totally subordinate their own style to it, and the result is a weird clash of tones.
But A Serious Man and Inside Llewyn Davis are stunning (in my opinion, of course) (a fair number other people’s opinions too), and Burn After Reading is almost as good.
Well, maybe I’ll give those a shot.
I agree about Cormac McCarthy. Mediocre Hemingway masquerading as mediocre Faulkner; barf.
Apologies in advance if you hate them.
fwiw, David Lynch is a director who has some parallels with Tarantino who has a pretty different relationship to women’s genre work. Or at least, Twin Peaks uses soap opera in pretty interesting and effective ways I think.
I think Lynch and Cronenberg and to some extent the Coen Brothers are all different from Tarantino in that they are more influenced by/working in the tradition of art cinema. Tarantino’s always grounded in genre first and last, it seems like. Not that his work isn’t art, but art cinema just isn’t a genre he’s interested in playing with the way he’s devoted to exploitation and genre work. (or at least that’s my sense of things.)
hm yeah actually i always felt Jules decision to “walk the earth like Caine from Kung-Fu” could have been the starting point for a sequel, but i don’t know if Tarantino ever had that intention …
Also, since no one mentioned it i’m going to make the totally obvious recommendation to watch No Country for Old Men … especially in the context of redefining genre conventions this is a must see? at least for me this is the unexpectedly relevant piece by the late Coens.
I indirectly mentioned it – and I don’t think their adaptation can be said to defy genre conventions. McCarthy’s genre has its own conventions, to which he’s quite faithful, and the Coens adapt him fairly faithfully (they do outright reverse him in a couple of important points near the end, but they’re not the kind of changes that make us radically rethink everything we’ve seen so far, so the film as a whole is still pretty close to the source material).
@ Noah
Good point re Tarantino – he knows his art cinema, of course (or at least he knows his French New Wave), but it does seem to be mostly (or pretty much entirely) in his handling of genre conventions that his originality manifests.
Right…it’s a little complicated because a lot of art film (like the New Wave) is fascinated by genre too. But Tarantino cares way, way more about Jack Hill and Sergio Leone and John Woo than he does about Godard or Tarkovsky.
Thanks for your reply Graham! I have a feeling we kind of disagree on what a good Coen Brothers film is though … I didnt really like the kind of humour applied in A Serious Man and Burn After Reading. Maybe we can agree on Barton Fink and Fargo as classics?
Anyway, im sure No Country for Old Men looks different if you read the book before (i never heard of McCarthy), but in the context of Hollywood films i still think it subverted its genre. I think it could even be read as a reply to or update of Pulp Fiction’s postmodern/ironic nihilism … and the nihilism of 2007’s No Country isnt so ironic and funny anymore? dont know, i should watch it again.
I don’t think PF is nihilistic; quite the contrary. It’s way more morally serious about violence than the pulp/action films it’s referencing. Violence in Tarantino is in general diminishing rather than validating (not so much the case in the Butch sequence, but pretty much so for the rest of the film.)
“I don’t think PF is nihilistic; quite the contrary. It’s way more morally serious about violence than the pulp/action films it’s referencing. Violence in Tarantino is in general diminishing rather than validating (not so much the case in the Butch sequence, but pretty much so for the rest of the film.)”
Yes! I recall a colleague of mine objecting to the film as immoral, way back when it came out, because of its violence. I was baffled by that reading.
Certainly we can agree about Barton Fink and Fargo.
I saw the Coens’ film before I read Cormac McCarthy’s book – which I find to be essentially a weaker version of his alleged masterpiece Blood Meridian (that and a bit of The Road are the only other things by him that I’ve read), plus an infusion of puerile misogyny (which the Coens somewhat subvert). Considering that Blood Meridian was published in 1985, I don’t think either version of No Country for Old Men can be considered an answer to Pulp Fiction – I don’t think Tarantino and McCarthy much in common anyway; McCarthy thinks he’s better than the popular genres he draws upon, Tarantino doesn’t – but of course you might find more difference than I do between the earlier and later book (No Country for Old Men was published in 2005), or between the book and the Coens’ film.
yeah its an interesting question what the ethics of PF are … maybe Nihilism isnt accurate … i just think what makes Tarantino often feel so empty (even when he seems to address issues of morality) is the frame of postmodern irony. No character in PF is supposed to be a real person, theyre just cliches. I dont think Tarantino really tried to question violence like say, his european opponent Haneke … But i would be interested in reading a defence of Tarantinos (im-)morality!
Graham – cool, at least we share some common ground there :) as you can guess i cant say much about the books you mentioned … and i admit i would have to watch No Country again to see how much it actually relates to Pulp Fiction, intentionally or not.
I think Tarantino’s a satirist (at least sometimes), and satire is generally moral (imo).
Like, it’s not nihilism to present thuggish gangsters as incompetent (albeit still dangerous) schnooks, I don’t think.
@ Noah and Dominick
Agreed. I don’t think Tarantino is ever a nihilist. I would say he walks a line between a rather stern moralism and sentimentalism – sometimes conservative sentimentalism, as in his intermittent homophobia – sometimes both at the same time, as in his obvious eagerness to kill the aging southern belle both for the right reasons and the wrong reasons in Django Unchained.
The Coens, on the other hand, started out looking a lot like nihilists, of the serious kind, similar to their obvious ancestor Kafka (or maybe it would be more precise to say “Gnostics,” as Harold Bloom applies the term to modern literature, in a highly pessimistic vein: there is a God, but he’s something between indifferent and actively hostile). But they’re quietly holding out hope for redemption as early as the end of Barton Fink – with the subsequent utter bleakness of Fargo being maybe an attempt to stem that tendency in their work. If so, it didn’t work, because A Serious Man and Inside Llewyn Davis – and parts of True Grit and toward the end of No Country for Old Men – nearly explode with a (highly personal, of course) kind of religious yearning (interestingly partly based, in the two original movies, in the ’60s counterculture).
‘Violence in Tarantino is in general diminishing rather than validating (not so much the case in the Butch sequence, but pretty much so for the rest of the film.)’ – Good point. Maybe that’s why the Butch sequence is easily the worst of the three.
The Butch sequence sucks for so many reasons. Really a blight on an otherwise great movie.
@ Tim
I would say that Tarantino questions – that is, really questions; he doesn’t have the answer – violence, while Haneke actually questions non-violence. Explicitly, Haneke’s position is straightforward: He’s against it. But he’s also invariably impressed with the perpetrators of violence (even impressed with the uncouth qualities he gives them in Funny Games, with the classic Eurotrash predilection for self-befoulment) and contemptuous of their victims. Tarantino, on the other hand, cheerfully cops to enjoying violence, but also wants something more.
* That is, explicitly, Haneke is against violence, but he also finds violence impressive and non-violence somewhere between uninteresting and contemptible.
Right; the perpetrators of violence in funny games are privileged with self-awareness; they are the directo of the film. It’s difficult to criticize omniscience. It’s not implicating the viewer so much as taunting the viewer for wanting justice.
Whereas in Death Proof, Tarantino starts off by giving the sadist a privileged relationship to film (Stuntman Mike is an old film hand, which is how he kills people.) But then he takes on people who are more knowledgeable about film than he is, and they take him apart. It’s not a rejection of violence, since the revenge is violent, and even sadistic, but it does question whether the sadistic director is really in control/omniscient/cool (as Mike dissolves into puling assholery.)
Also the actual directors mentioned in the film are both to varying degrees jerks, who get mocked/told off by the women they’re trying to fool/romance.
I cant quite follow you guys on Haneke either, but Im really curious what you mean with “the classic Eurotrash predilection for self-befoulment”? is that a thing?
Back to Pulp Fiction, Im not sure its satire. I would say its actually the opposite, its revisionist. The trick is the irony, so you can have the cake and eat it too. Also i guess the reason PF always felt kind of nihilist to me is, there’s not a single likable character in there, everyone’s an asshole in that world. Personally I just don’t like that in a film, its depressing.
???? I think most of the characters in pulp fiction are very likable; they’re charming, funny, goofy. They’re certainly not moral paragons, but…I mean Jules’ wallet says “Bad Motherfucker” on it. That means he went out and bought a wallet that said that. That’s pretty ridiculous/endearing. And that speech at the end where he talks about trying to be the shepherd…like, that’s somehow less likable than James Bond, or whatever perfect boring self-righteous standard action hero?
Having the cake and eating it too suggests Tarantino provides the genre pleasures you’re looking for. He usually doesn’t. The big shoot out at the end of Pulp Fiction doesn’t happen. Victor doesn’t go out in a blaze of glory; he gets shot coming off the toilet. Victor shoots that guy by accident, then the film devolves into sitcom pastiche.
Verhoeven really is about fulfilling genre conventions and then pretending to critique them. Tarantino sometimes does that, but a lot of times he really undermines them, or doesn’t give you the rush you’re expecting.
I don’t know…I mean, I guess the question often is, amoral in comparison to what? Tarantino films are often substantially less violent than standard body count spy or action films, in terms of death tolls. In Pulp Fiction, it’s only 5-7 people or so who get killed, I think. That’s one scene in a James Bond film. But Tarantino’s the one who people say is especially violent or disturbing. I think that’s because Tarantino treats violence as disturbing; the deaths in his films tend to matter, so you’re forced to think about them. Whereas standard action movies just treat tens of deaths as a goof, so people don’t think about the moral implications.
Funny you mention Verhoeven. I prefer his more subtle strategy, you have to look closer to discover the critique and cleverness. Tarantinos obviously ironic revision or deconstruction on the other hand makes the audience feel like theyre above genre, but of course they still get all their kicks (maybe not in the place they expected, but isnt that even more exciting).
I can feel Robocops struggle, i identify my own alienation with this cyborg. His employers literally own him, they dont let him do his job properly, he’s missing his loved ones. Then, Tarantino: his characters are just pop culture references raving on about pop culture references. It would never occur to me Jules bought that wallet, because it clearly was his clever director who put it there.
Pulp Fiction is meant to be more cartoony…but Jackie Brown, Death Proof use much more naturalistic characters.
I just don’t feel Tarantino is at all presenting himself as superior to his pulp sources. I just get a lot of love from his movies — for his characters, for filmmaking, for his actors. John Travolta and Mia Wallace’s romance/not romance is totally sweet and goofy and yes also kind of gross. But much, much less cynical than something like Pretty Woman where the genre default gets fulfilled no matter how awful that would actually be for the characters involved.
Jules has an honest to god moral transformation in Pulp Fiction. It’s kind of ridiculous, and what it means exactly is hard to parse, but it happens, and it’s meaningful, even central, ot the story. I don’t get why that’s supposed to be cynical and above pulp conventions, while somehow Robocop cheerfully killing his way through dozens of people and triumphing in the end is sincere. (And I like Verhoeven and Robocop…but come on.)
I’ll echo some of the sentiments re: the Coens. Post-Lebowski, their work has been inconsistent, but, IMO (and, I think, lots of other people’s…for whatever that’s worth) No Country for Old Men is their masterpiece. True Grit is really good, too, as is Inside Llewyn Davis — that one has a depiction of artistic pursuits that you just never see elsewhere, plus one of their best narrative red herring bits.
@ Tim
Yeah, it’s a thing: imgur.com/r/thesimpsons/kOVuyu0
Though the Simpsons‘ parodies are actually relatively self respecting examples.
Here are some more advanced specimens (not safe for work): https://www.google.com/search?q=regietheater&hl=en&biw=1024&bih=672&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAsQ_AUoBGoVChMI-Ne0hbbAxwIVAT4-Ch1lFQ68
In fairness, America is not immune, even in our most popular entertainment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I
@ Jones
I think No Country for Old Men was their attempt to meet the critics and general public halfway. And the critics certainly loved it and the general public liked it well enough (though it liked True Grit much better), but I think they sacrificed more of their art than they meant to (maybe more than they realized). I would say it’s easily their dumbest movie, and that includes The Ladykillers.
Well, YMMV, but No Country for Old Men has, by far, their best “pure cinema” suspense sequences, a clever score by Carter Burwell, and at-times phenomenally austere editing.
By “dumbest”, I assume you mean there’s problems with the script? I guess if you roll your eyes at McCarthy, you might dislike it. But there’s some lovely ellipses towards the end, I thought, and it was a welcome change for them to not have quotation marks around the whole thing. Personally, I wouldn’t want them to forgo their ironic contempt/contemptuous irony completely, but I enjoyed it as what is certainly their straightest film since Blood Simple.
Maybe it does have their best ‘”pure cinema” suspense sequences,’ but that’s not saying very much. If I want that, I can get it better elsewhere. I want the Coens to give me something I can’t get better from somebody else.
I mean script, staging, camera movement, everything, especially pertaining to
1. The glorified Batman villain, whom McCarthy worships, with the film remaining faithful to the novelist’s stance until the very end, when it’s too late to make much of a difference.
2. The Barry Corbin scene, from the beginning, carried over from McCarthy, which is merely boring (one of those parts where the author explicitly states his thesis just in case you didn’t get it yet), to the bizarrely awful “how Uncle Mac come to his reward” speech (an original Coen brothers addition that unambiguously contradicts McCarthy, but does it so badly that I’m left with the impression that his book really did hit a nerve for one or both of them – which makes me worry about them, because McCarthy’s book shouldn’t be able to hit anybody’s nerves).
“Quotation marks” – geeze. People think Tarantino is putting them on; people think the Coen brothers are putting them on… Guys, these are burningly sincere filmmakers. They aren’t trying to make you feel dumb. They’re just smart.
* Well, let’s be fair to McCarthy – the narration of the sheriff’s dream at the end is quite good (though the Coens improve on him by having Tommy Lee Jones relate it first person). Still, the Coens seem to me to have been inordinately bothered by something in McCarthy’s book.
Where can you get it better, out of curiosity? For mine, several of the suspense setpieces are on a par with anything I’ve seen in Clouzot or Hitchcock.
Anyhoo, I don’t think they’re trying to put me on. I do think that in all of their films, except NCFOM, there’s a lot of winking artificiality, particularly in the performances and dialogue, that dominates the overall tone of the movie. That’s the Coen Brothers feeling. There’s still a few flashes of it in NCFOM — e.g. Garrett Dillahunt’s dopey sheriff — but it barely registers when compared with, say, Fargo or Barton Fink. (Which I consider in their top 5 — I’m not saying I don’t like their general tone. But they’re allowed to make a different kind of picture now and then; not everyone has to be David Fincher or David Simon)
I don’t think the suspense set pieces in No Country for Old Men are even close to the same league as Hitchcock. (Though of course the Coens are better filmmakers than Hitchcock in some other ways.)
‘Anyhoo, I don’t think they’re trying to put me on. I do think that in all of their films, except NCFOM, there’s a lot of winking artificiality’
That’s the same thing.
“That’s the same thing.”
Not in my dialect, at any rate. I don’t think they’re trying to make me feel dumb or trying to hoodwink the viewer, but I do think their films always — but for NCFOM — have a lot of material that’s overtly, affectedly stylised and non-naturalistic. That’s all I’m saying
Okay, it’s not the same thing in your dialect. They’re not winking or affected either.
(Your equating stylization and non-naturalism with those things is maybe telling.)
Tarantino does winking quotations on occasion (the whole Sonny Chiba section in Kill Bill for example, or the mysterious suitcase.) You could say the whole film of IB is in quotes, in some sense; it’s about movies of WW II rather than about WW II directly. I don’t think that makes it unsincere though.
Tarantino and the Coens ‘wink’ affectionately at things they like – in the Coens’ case, say, the Narrator in The Big Lebowski – but I don’t think that’s what Jones meant.
When the Coens dislike something – Barton Fink’s lack of interest in the people he allegedly wants to write about; conversely, the Hollywood executive’s pretentious populism (“There’s plenty of poetry inside that ring, Fink”); William H. Macy’s inability to admit failure in Fargo; France’s McDormand’s need to put a better face on things than they deserve (“and it’s a beautiful day”) – they’re deadly serious about it.
Huh…I need to think about that. I think in IB the quotations and the winking are often ambivalent. Like, shooting Hitler; that’s fun and funny on the one hand, but it’s also shooting someone, which puts you in the position of Hitler to some degree. Or more broadly, there’s satisfaction in seeing World War II as a movie, but also maybe some downsides.
I think IB is maybe as much a movie about the audience of World War II films – maybe particularly the American audience – as about the films themselves. Thesis: “You can feel good about watching the Allies kill Nazis because the Nazis were the worst killers ever – but you sure do seem to enjoy watching the Allies kill Nazis. Let’s see if I can give that to you in a way that makes you think about it a bit.” (I remember one review beginning “On the one hand, who doesn’t want to see Jews killing Nazis,” then continuing with some equivocating about whether it was okay for Tarantino to show so much gleeful sadism, graphic violence, etc.)
Anyway, I think Tarantino is essentially serious about that part.
Examples of ‘winking’ that I would say show neither affection nor underlying serious though or feeling:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=653aIxR4ZwA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNihymK_XJA
That was sort of my take on IB here.
Hadn’t seen that before (or the Dead Poets Society piece, which I’m sure I’ll love). Thank you!
Noah – well i guess if you’re able identify with Tarantino’s characters its a different experience. But im glad you like Verhoeven too … Anyway I’m curious to read your Tarantino essay and the consequent debate on here soon.
Graham – ok i still dont get this ‘Eurotrash self-befoulment’ thing and what it has to do with Haneke, but I guess that side blow maybe wasnt meant to be taken too seriously.
“They aren’t trying to make you feel dumb.”
I think no one was worried about that. I actually think the irony and the clever references work the other way around: the audience gets to feel smart, they’re in on the joke, wink wink. The problem might be the contempt (for the characters) that comes with it, as Jones pointed out. Thats exaclty this ‘nihilism’ Im always a little uncomfortable with when it comes to some QT and CB films.
Noah + Graham – Just curious, is your Haneke verdict based on Funny Games alone, or did you also check stuff like Benny’s Video or The 7th Continent? I dont want to get into defending him, just wondering because at the time I was much more impressed with these …
I’ve only seen Funny Games (both versions) which I actually quite like, albeit with some reservations.
@ Tim
I actually meant the Eurotrash remark quite seriously. I apologize for writing allusively, but I’m here in my usual dilemma when it comes to things I really hate: first, negative criticism always has to be written very carefully or you end up revealing more about yourself than you intended to (probably always inevitable to some extent), and I’d rather not spend the time; second, I don’t what to inflict things I detest on myself to the extent that’s necessary in order to treat them comprehensively.
The only Haneke film I’ve seen besides Funny Games is The Piano Teacher. I hate both like cancer, which is what I find them to be the artistic equivalent of.
@ Tim (continued)
‘I actually think the irony and the clever references work the other way around: the audience gets to feel smart, they’re in on the joke, wink wink.’
Case in point on the dangers of negative criticism: The above sentence is trying to look like dispassionate analysis, but the underlying dyspepsia is betrayed by the gratuitous “clever” (oh, they think they’re so smart), the breathless repetition of essentially the same charge three times at the end, separated by commas, and especially the sarcastic assumption of the Coens’ own voice (or rather what you’re imaging their voice to be) in “wink wink.”
My guess is that you think they’re putting down something you identify with, and inviting the audience to look down it it (hence down on you) with them.
I think positive criticism can be as embarrassingly revealing as negative…even moreso sometimes.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the Coens…but Tarantino always seems to be interrogating himself, pretty much. Whenever he plays a character, he’s consistently repulsive. I don’t think that’s an accident….
Graham – ok, i also think theres not much point of us getting into an argument about Regietheater or whatever. The term Eurotrash is a bit weird to me in this context, as it seems quite prejudiced … i just looked it up and this is probably the definition you refer to: “Post-modern, degenerate, trendy, or out-of-style European cultural phenomena masquerading as avant-garde High Art.” I wasnt aware of this meaning Eurotrash seems to have over in the US, but yeah lets not go there …
Also pretty harsh comment on Haneke, actually i dont think you need to bother watching any of his other films unless you want to get really angry.
Graham (cont.) – haha ok thanks for the analysis, I will contemplate my subconscious issues with Tarantino until our next session.
@ Noah
Certainly positively criticism is dangerous too, but if feels better to embarrass yourself for the sake of love than for the sake of hate, even righteous hate.
@ Tim
I absolutely don’t mean to imply that Europe (whatever exactly that is) is worse than America. We all have our own malign tendencies.
Love can make you more subject to mockery though…I guess it just depends on the particular situation/revelation.
At the risk of being labelled dyspeptic, Babbittrilicious, or whatever pompous, high-handed, bullying, patronising, arbitrary, Ignatius Reillish bit of jackassery* will come next, I too despise Funny Games (and Shrek, for that matter) but like some of Haneke’s other films. Cache (you’ll have to imagine there’s an acute accent on the e there) and Hour of the Wolf are good
* [note to self: take breath here]
PS: Noah, fun fact I just learned from imdb — the liftboy in Hudsucker Proxy was played by Jim True-Frost aka Prez from The Wire (aka further sign of the mental degeneracy of today’s ill-educated so-called intelligentsia or whatevs)
Pro tip: If you don’t want me to know that “Babbittry” hit a nerve, don’t repeat it. (I’d completely forgotten that was you!)
Do you all hate I Spit On Your Grave? I think that’s (a lot) better than Funny Games, but maybe might inspire similar loathing…
haven’t seen it, Noah
Me neither.
Is that an endorsement of the 1978 version or the 2010 remake? (I’m guessing the former, but it would be foolish to assume.)
Still banned in Germany, now i want to see it
The remake sucks; accept no substitutes for the original!
Jones – yeah Cache was a nice idea, appropriating the premise of Lost Highway and taking it in a completely different direction … I mostly forgot what happened in Hour of the Wolf, except for a shocking scene in the beginning. I really wonder what you guys would think about early Haneke, which i think is his purest, most intense material. Try Benny’s Video … it’s like the Eurotrash version of American Psycho.
Now that’s how it’s done! – repeating my invective, but with such cheerful equanimity that now I’m the one who looks like he took it too seriously, so I lose.
Okay, as my indemnity for this lost battle, I will set aside four hours: two in which to watch Benny’s Video, two subsequently which will most likely be spent throwing rocks into the most immediately convenient body of water while listening through earbuds to the 1963 recording of Beethoven’s 9th symphony as performed by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan, that being the least fashionable piece of music and recording thereof that I can think of at the moment.
Actually, Graham, I was repeating it as evidence of your pompous, high-handed, bullying, patronising, arbitrary, Ignatius Reillish jackassery. And in hindsight, I realise that accusing someone of jackassery is not the same as actually calling them a jackass.
So, to rectify that oversight: Graham, you’re a jackass.
Amateur tip: in the immortal words of David Milch, go fuck yourself
(Yes, I like Deadwood, which I suppose makes me worse than cancer. I also prefer caramel to chocolate, which, worse still, makes me worse than, oh let’s say, Gaspar Noe. Good luck with your manifesto about The Moral Decline of post-Weimar Western Civilisation, As Demonstrated by the Continued and Baffling Critical Preference for A la Recherche du Temps Perdu over The Day the Clown Cried. Don’t forget to wipe the Cheetos off your underwear — don’t want to attract vermin to your mom’s basement.
(Say, this kind of grotesquely bad faith interpretation and cod-psycholoanalytic profiling is fun; I can see the appeal after all))
PS: Noah, feel free to delete this here intemperate and bilious bit of indecorum, no need to close the thread on my account. I just wanted to get that off my chest, and will henceforth avoid this troll like the fucking plague. I apologise to you for the hassle.
See, and that’s how not to do it.
By the way, the decline of Western civilization can’t be demonstrated by the continued anything. Western civilization has already finished declining. It doesn’t exist any more.
Okay, I’m actually watching Benny’s Video now. I read the synopsis on Wikipedia and felt silly with regard to my earlier comment, because it didn’t even sound like something worth hating.
I was going to save posting here again until I finished it, but unless Haneke experienced a sudden and abrupt change of personality in the middle of the filmmaking process, I think I can guess my final verdict from the deploring overhead shot of the McDonald’s counter about 7 1/2 minutes in. This one is just unintentionally funny.
Will comment further if subsequent developments change my mind.
Okay, everything else about the movie is beneath contempt, but honesty demands that I admit the parents ring true.
Has anybody articulated a theory by which mere verisimilitude is the lowest form of art? If not, maybe it’s time.
So I suppose between this and Funny Games, that’s a pattern: Haneke knows something about the Austrian bourgeoisie and really, really hates them; he doesn’t actually know anything about mass culture, but thinks it’s inherently American, dirty, without feeling or pretense to feeling, and violent, and masochistically loves it for all those reasons.
(To say what in The Piano Teacher is his and what is Elfriede Jelinek’s, I’d have to read at least a substantial portion of her book, and I think I’ve suffered enough.)
I should mention i have as much doubts about Haneke as about Tarantino, both of them are way too interesting to be ignored and im glad to hear both sides of their ‘dialogue’ about the representation of violence (or something).
I totally agree with some of Grahams observations – the McDonalds montage is kind of funny, it has crossed my mind Haneke’s view on mass culture is biased, while his depiction of the bourgeoisie is depressingly accurate. I went to school with kids like Benny and i can even see myself in there, which is the scary part …
Anyway, next on my list is I Spit On Your Grave … just always avoided this genre, even though Ferrara’s Ms.45 wasnt bad either?
Ms. 45 is okay, if I remember right.
Two more thoughts, then I promise I’ll shut up:
1. Haneke selectively gets the Austrian upper middle class and doesn’t get mass entertainment – but at the same time his borrowings from and commentary on mass entertainment are an essential part of Funny Games (and Benny’s Video). Take them away and nobody cares about what’s left. In this respect, Haneke is an example of a quite typical phenomenon as of the 1960s: high (or high-ish) art that depends on mass entertainment while evincing no more than a superficial interest in it. (Exactly the opposite, in this respect, of Tarantino, who lives and breathes genre, and of Godard.)
2. Without blaming Haneke in particular for much of anything (it’s of course almost always wrong to blame particular works of art for much of anything), I would say that his hatred of pleasure, dignified as anti-consumerism, has its political correllary in the austerity that’s now suffocating the Eurozone.
I have no idea why I spelled corollary that way.
1. OK so how is the North American bourgeoisie different from the European one (dont know why you insist on Austrian)? It would have been interesting if Haneke had changed the story for his US remake of Funny Games, but what exactly would have been the difference to the plot? You think Bennys Video could not take place in the US either?
2. This is a real funny idea, Haneke causing the financial crisis! If you really want to construct a connection between Haneke and austerity policy maybe you could say they are both born out of the Protestant spirit, but i can assure you the people who push austerity over here hate Haneke too.
– I specify Austrian because Michael Haneke is Austrian (as is Elfriede Jelinek), and because the characters in the three films I’m specifically talking about here (the three I’ve now seen) are textually Austrian.
– I don’t think Benny’s Video could take place in Austria, America, or anywhere else.
– More relevant than differences between the European and American middle classes here is the difference between today’s European and American prestige art. America at this moment tends more toward a slick impression of whimsy, which is maybe just as loathsome as Haneke in its own way, but implies a thoughtless indifference to the struggles of the masses rather than an active hatred of their pleasures.
– ‘If you really want to construct a connection between Haneke and austerity policy maybe you could say they are both born out of the Protestant spirit’ I would say rather out of the authoritarian spirit manifest both in Lutheranism and in late 19th and 20th century European Catholicism (at which point the more anarchic traditionally Catholic regions, such as Paris and the surrounding countryside, had become largely secular, leaving Catholicism as practiced in such regions as inland southern France and the Alps as the dominant influence). (Emmanuel Todd – anybody who’s read him will already have noticed that I was stealing from him in the last sentence – has interestingly diagnosed austerity as a symptom of “zombie Catholicism,” as well as predicting that if the traditionally Protestant regions of Germany were entirely in control, it would be even worse.)
– Haneke’s sure been getting a whole lot of awards for a very long time for somebody allegedly hated by the establishment. The people who push austerity hate Michel Houellebecq.
I’m not really knowledgeable about Germanic or northern European politics, but perhaps the parties in the majority in those areas and their backers are not the ones handing out Europe’s film prizes.
Meaning what – you’re guessing that everybody on the Cannes board of directors votes for the Parti socialiste, with the premise that that’s not part of the establishment?
Not that it matters; for all we know, Bill Gates secretly votes communist. He’s still the establishment.