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1/10/05 08:18![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyAmazingly funny:
Trailer for The Shining as romantic comedy
Trailer for West Side Story as horror.
The Parent Trap as lesbian love story (Click on Paul LaCalandra, then Ordinary Girls).
(Thanks to Making Light, as always).
...Dangit. I think I just had Serenity spoiled for me.
First of all I will say that it was gorgeous, and I really liked it.
I don't see why there's any reason to put bad music in a movie unless it's a musical and you need 5 songs and they can't all be good. But that's me. It's not that I have anything against movie musicals, I just found the songs dull.
The local indy paper's review said that it chickened out of its implications at the end. I don't entirely agree, and I certainly didn't think so while I was watching it. But I do see that they might have a point... and it's both a slight structural problem, such that it left me with a mild feeling of dissatisfaction at the ending, and a thematic problem that I think is not so slight.
I'm not one to read Freudian psychodynamics into everything (really!), but Tim Burton movies are always best read as metaphor. From the opening, especially, it seems pretty obvious to read this movie in such a way that it's about the choice between the two equally terrifying alternatives of sex and death. And Victor is an extremely passive character, with too much guilt and honor and fear to choose either one of them over the other.
And then he does, and it's the wrong choice, and it has to be Emily's choice that allows him to not choose death. This is in accordance with the Movie Rule that it's bad to break up with someone unless you're Heroically Letting Them Choose What They Really Want. Victor doesn't get to do anything much at all, which is also in accordance with the Movie Rule that good guys don't kill villains--villains wind up dead because of their villainy.
This is the structural problem--the Movie Rule that should supercede both of those is that your main character has to do something to get to the happy ending. He can't just luck into it. (I don't object to breaking the rule just because it's a rule; it's just one thing that explains my vague dissatisfaction with the ending). The ending seems to work by the logic of
"I will be noble and self-sacrificing at the appropriate plot point!"
"Oh! Then I, too, will be noble and self-sacrificing at the appropriate plot point."
Problem? The second half is about being noble and self-sacrificing, but the first half is about the fear of both sex and death. Which, as far as I can see, is not a problem that ever actually gets solved.
It does occur to me that my standards have gotten way too high, and that too many media analysis classes have had a stifling effect on me. So I'll just say, yes, it's a movie that does work at a number of levels. But, if it had just followed its own implications through, it could have been a very nearly perfect movie.
(I keep getting excited about Tim Burton movies, and for me they generally fall into that category--a couple of bad missteps away from being very nearly perfect).
Trailer for The Shining as romantic comedy
Trailer for West Side Story as horror.
The Parent Trap as lesbian love story (Click on Paul LaCalandra, then Ordinary Girls).
(Thanks to Making Light, as always).
...Dangit. I think I just had Serenity spoiled for me.
First of all I will say that it was gorgeous, and I really liked it.
I don't see why there's any reason to put bad music in a movie unless it's a musical and you need 5 songs and they can't all be good. But that's me. It's not that I have anything against movie musicals, I just found the songs dull.
The local indy paper's review said that it chickened out of its implications at the end. I don't entirely agree, and I certainly didn't think so while I was watching it. But I do see that they might have a point... and it's both a slight structural problem, such that it left me with a mild feeling of dissatisfaction at the ending, and a thematic problem that I think is not so slight.
I'm not one to read Freudian psychodynamics into everything (really!), but Tim Burton movies are always best read as metaphor. From the opening, especially, it seems pretty obvious to read this movie in such a way that it's about the choice between the two equally terrifying alternatives of sex and death. And Victor is an extremely passive character, with too much guilt and honor and fear to choose either one of them over the other.
And then he does, and it's the wrong choice, and it has to be Emily's choice that allows him to not choose death. This is in accordance with the Movie Rule that it's bad to break up with someone unless you're Heroically Letting Them Choose What They Really Want. Victor doesn't get to do anything much at all, which is also in accordance with the Movie Rule that good guys don't kill villains--villains wind up dead because of their villainy.
This is the structural problem--the Movie Rule that should supercede both of those is that your main character has to do something to get to the happy ending. He can't just luck into it. (I don't object to breaking the rule just because it's a rule; it's just one thing that explains my vague dissatisfaction with the ending). The ending seems to work by the logic of
"I will be noble and self-sacrificing at the appropriate plot point!"
"Oh! Then I, too, will be noble and self-sacrificing at the appropriate plot point."
Problem? The second half is about being noble and self-sacrificing, but the first half is about the fear of both sex and death. Which, as far as I can see, is not a problem that ever actually gets solved.
It does occur to me that my standards have gotten way too high, and that too many media analysis classes have had a stifling effect on me. So I'll just say, yes, it's a movie that does work at a number of levels. But, if it had just followed its own implications through, it could have been a very nearly perfect movie.
(I keep getting excited about Tim Burton movies, and for me they generally fall into that category--a couple of bad missteps away from being very nearly perfect).
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(no subject)
5/10/05 15:47 (UTC)I liked it, fell far from loving it. I was hoping for a lot, because it is Tim Burton stop-motion, and it looks amazing. Story-wise... Problems, problems, problems. Victor never does ANYTHING!! The entire movie, he does basically nothing. And what he does do is fairly unmotivated. Why does he instantly fall in love with Victoria? Uhh... Because... she's... like... pretty... and stuff.... Right? All we learn from their first conversation is that she isn't allowed to do anything and is pretty but boring. Woo. Why does Victoria love Victor? I guess he plays the piano well. Guess that's all that's required in this movie for instant love- (see Emily, later in the movie). Everyone is too good and too self-sacrificing, and then the villain goes and (yes, accidentally) kills himself. (talk about self-sacrifice!) Why does he even drink the wine? Do smart people drink things that are just lying around? I know I don't. I saw it coming- you knew he was going to drink it- but you never knew _why_. Unmotivated, passive, unsatisfying.
(no subject)
5/10/05 16:29 (UTC)The problem with this movie is that it really wants to be goth, and it doesn't know how it wants to be goth. It can't decide what being goth means. Usually being utterly unmotivated and unwilling to do anything, being swept up in tides of events without bothering to resist them, is a sign that you are deeply depressed. But depression is goth and cool, so Victor doesn't actually have to do anything about it?
I think that Burton is so eager to embrace the goth aesthetic that he's unwilling to undercut it by saying that Victor SHOULD choose life and love. And then the only alternative is to say that he SHOULDN'T, which, uh...I don't think an animated movie about how great suicide is would go over too well, right? So he does nothing at all.