Some movies just don't hold up.

[Batutta]

In a way that it doesn't go beyond the Freudian pleasure principle of fulfilling our most basic desires. Pretty much ALL mass culture films attempt to do that, that's why much of entertainments is catered to kids. They simply don't have defense mechanism against giving in to fundamental, animalistic desires. You have some mystical all knowing, all powerful figure of the Don; some up and comer trying to make his way through the ranks (of course against his wishes). All of this is "fun" to watch but also awfully empty after the fun is over.

If you think that's all there is to The Godfather you didn't watch it closely enough or think about it deeply enough. I have never thought the film was "fun". It's a tragic story. Michael doesn't "move" through the ranks like some young eager go-getter. He is sucked into it when he realizes he is the only one who has what it takes to protect his family, like a kid who had great dreams for himself but finds himself falling back into the family business. The film deals with themes of capitalism, the nature of criminality, the immigrant experience in America, political corruption. I see new layers in it everytime I watch the film.

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

According to YOU. And as I said, we're are just going to start arguing over personal taste. I think the film gets better with age. I think your statement that ALL mass culture entertainments do not hold up over time is just wrong. Yeah, the films that don't hold up, were at the time mostly popular because they had some culturally relevant cachet, and not because of any great craftsmanship. It's these kinds of films people have mostly mentioned. They were crappily made, but as kids at the time we didn't care because they hit some culturally relevant button for us. Looking back at them now, the ones that were poorly crafted don't hold up. The ones that were incidentally also well made, go on to become classics. But saying they ALL do not hold up, just by virtue of being mass culture entertainments, I don't agree with that.

I'm not sure where you are getting that mass entertainment is badly crafted. It's actually the opposite. It's extremely well crafted to hide its shallowness. It hits ALL the right kid-within-us buttons and that's why its name has "mass" in it - we all get moved by it automatically. THIS is the distinction between mass and Art (capital letter on purpose). Art isn't interested in pleasing us because Art's mission is to surpass those trivialities and reach for something that we might not even be aware we need. Art doesn't shove those discoveries down our throats (thus no interest in entertainment) because in a strange way Art is NOT about us - it exists on some beyond-human metaphysical level absolutely unconcerned about us, our feelings etc. It simply IS, thus in times of needs we can reach for its answers certain of their truth because those answers weren't concocted with some hidden agenda.

 

[combatentropy]

Maybe some time you can help me see some of these truths. I've seen Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, Weekend, and King Lear; Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up; Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire and The End of Violence; and Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blue. Out of all of them, I got nothing.

I've gone from thinking that I'm just too low to understand their high truths to thinking that they're just not very good, that they fall into one of three camps:

1. Lazy. With a beer in one hand and in a camera in the other, they poorly execute a fuzzy idea over a few weekends, then haphazardly throw it together in the editing room. This theory is reinforced by their own testimonials. For example, a certain tracking shot ran on for too long, so Godard just cut out the middle. Critics praised his revolutionary use of the jump cut.
   
   
2. Kooky. The artist is the kind of person who talks to themselves on the curb, making you cross over to the other side. Their thoughts are literally crazy, hence so their movies. Or maybe they have true thoughts but are not very good at articulating them (filmmaking is, after all, hard).
   
   
3. Dead inside. Antonioni is no better than Rian Johnson. Their meaning is that there is no meaning. Nihilists, their modus operandi is to mess with us and can think of no higher good than to dash hope. Godard was like this too. In one scene he puts in a certain piece of music because it doesn't go along with the picture. Groundbreaking.

But what I find most surreal of all is that their favorite director was Howard Hawks.

P. S. Sorry this is harsh. I would love some day to finally see something good and true behind these people's works. No one has really been able to help me, though.

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

Maybe some time you can help me see some of these truths. I've seen Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, Weekend, and King Lear; Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up; Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire and The End of Violence; and Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blue. Out of all of them, I got nothing.

I've gone from thinking that I'm just too low to understand their high truths to thinking that they're just not very good, that they fall into one of three camps:

1. Lazy. With a beer in one hand and in a camera in the other, they poorly execute a fuzzy idea over a few weekends, then haphazardly throw it together in the editing room. This theory is reinforced by their own testimonials. For example, a certain tracking shot ran on for too long, so Godard just cut out the middle. Critics praised his revolutionary use of the jump cut.
   
   
2. Kooky. The artist is the kind of person who talks to themselves on the curb, making you cross over to the other side. Their thoughts are literally crazy, hence so their movies. Or maybe they have true thoughts but are not very good at articulating them (filmmaking is, after all, hard).
   
   
3. Dead inside. Antonioni is no better than Rian Johnson. Their meaning is that there is no meaning. Nihilists, their modus operandi is to mess with us and can think of no higher good than to dash hope. Godard was like this too. In one scene he puts in a certain piece of music because it doesn't go along with the picture. Groundbreaking.

But what I find most surreal of all is that their favorite director was Howard Hawks.

P. S. Sorry this is harsh. I would love some day to finally see something good and true behind these people's works. No one has really been able to help me, though.

I like to think of our mind as that of helium balloon - the kind you give to a kid for birthday. We float to the ceiling of a room assuming to have reached apex of understanding but what if we are told that there is another room above the one we are in? Would we aim to find way to reach yet another ceiling or be content with our achievement? Or maybe we would become very angry with the one who points out that we have more to grow? What if one day we found out that beyond the room above there is yet another level and above that maybe even an open sky?

You named some of the masterpieces of cinema and got nothing out of them. I don't know what to tell you other than keep on trying as there are many floors above the one you've reached where your intellect can float. The level of un-complexity is revealed in how you clump up the badness in basically one area: that the maker wasn't honest. Maybe if you steered your thinking away from what effect those films had on YOU and rather reached out to ask broader questions: why did they make those films in the first place you would find their richness. For that, you really need to take YOU out of the equation as much as possible (even though it is YOU who will benefit the most when opening up to their Art) as Art was not meant for the proverbial YOU but for more existential reasons where the YOU don't matter anymore.

 

[combatentropy]

I find it disturbing that you won't talk specifics.

 

[groveChuck]

I find it disturbing that you won't talk specifics.

 

[agcohn]

As the years have past, I have increasingly lost interest in many so called art films (by which I mean a film that first and foremost strives to be artsy or symbolic, rather than focusing on character & story), and I have grown in appreciation of quality genre films finding their characters to be a better representation of real human stories.

There are many films that successfully bridge the gap between being great stories and great art (The Mission, Au revoir les enfants, The Godfather, Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia, Chinatown, etc).

But to me the story and characters are most important. If the film intentionally makes the story hard to follow or the characters hard to relate to for some "artistic" purpose, I quickly lose interest.

 

[rayortiz313]

Great cinema is great cinema.

The Cahiers Du Cinema guys championed American noirs and melodramas and adored Hitchcock. Its quite common for commercial filmmakers to confess to a love of art films and vice versa. It's not surprising at all that Herzog enjoys westerns. Persona is a masterpiece, but so is Die Hard. Theres masterpieces and duds in ever style/genre and every spot on the commercial/personal film spectrum.

When you guys go to the museum, do you only look at the abstract paintings and not the realistic ones or vice versa?

Here's film historian and "Film Art" author David Bordwell breaking down Jackie Chan:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2010/09/15/bond-vs-chan-jackie-shows-how-its-done/

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

There is a world of difference between Art and pop (mass). And it all comes down to intentions. No artists intentionally tries to make a work that's hard to follow. Period. Rather he/she creates something with hope that the viewer understands possible difficulty of comprehension. NOT because the maker wants to be obtuse but rather because complexity of the subject demands that. Not to be the know-it-all a**hole but you guys have to ask why some works ARE more difficult to follow. Not everything in life is meant to be understood by a 7 year old.

If you give me a story, with some characters, some drama, some resolution - I automatically tune out. I'm just not interested in your efforts to "entertain" me because i have better things to do and more life to live then listen to your BS. On the other hand if you make a work with some characters, that possibly do something interesting and possibly their actions turn into a story of some kind that like it or not has some resolution BUT you use all those elements to tell me something bigger about life, universe, our relations to time & space... and so on - then you have my ears. Yet the moment i catch you trying to entertain by introducing some superficial drama, story, characters etc - you loose me because i can see through your hypocrisy. Your ambition, for me to pay attention, should strive to reach some more complex understanding of the world. If all you want is to entertain via some story with some characters - i can only wish you luck as i most certainly am not your ideal viewer.

 

[OldCorpse]

Meh, this is a silly argument. The line between art and entertainment is tenuous at best, and not easy to define. Consider this simple matter: Shakespeare plays. Shakespeare is considered by pretty much universal acclaim to be the greatest artist of the English language who has ever lived - and that critical consensus is not something that's a fleeting fashion of the times, but has lasted for centuries, far longer than cinema has existed. And it is also agreed that Shakespeare wrote plays to entertain people - any commercial artform has to appeal to the masses, has to do so to sell tickets, and to do so, it has to entertain. The masses didn't (and still don't) go to mass entertainment shows in order to be "educated", or "preached at" - it's not "cod liver oil" meant to be good for you that you swallow like bitter medicine that's "good for you" - no, masses go to be *entertained*. And theater had to appeal to the massess or it could not exist. Now, if you want to please an audience of one, you can commission a painter. Painting can certainly appeal to an audience of one, or can be commssioned to "educate" or "uplift" the massess - as the Popes did when they commissioned artists to paint chapels and murals. Painting doesn't need the massess to be created. Theater does. And if you try to use mass entertainment to "educate" or "uplift", f.ex. film or novels, then you end up with propaganda that often is of very poor quality, that the massess don't really want to consume (see: Soviet cinema). Cinema is a commercial artform and designed to work for the masses, unlike painting. That's how you can get the greatest art (Shakespeare) that entertains, and The Godfather, a great work of art that also entertains. It's pure snobbery and silliness and lack of understanding of what art is and completely ahistorical, to divide art and entertainment in any mass market artform. This has been true since the times of ancient Greeks and the first plays put out, and great literature like the Iliad were written: TO ENTERTAIN! People laughed, and people cried and people were entertained.

Only a fool would try to claim there is no art in some great entertainment, no matter the genre. To me "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is great art - a masterpiece. So is "Claire's Knee". So is "A Band of Outsiders" as is "Multiple Maniacs" and "Pink Flamingos" - all masterpieces. I put "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) next to "Breathless", both great. So is "The Thing" (1982), and so is "The Tenant", "Chinatown", "Rosemary's Baby", and "What". And so on. A great work of art does not need to apologize for entertaining. I am both moved and entertained by "What" and I'm both moved and entertained by "Psycho" and "Vertigo". And even the artist's intention does not matter - they may not even have aimed consciously at making "art", but done so nonetheless in the result - Hitchcock did not set out to make "art" in "Psycho", but pure entertainment, but he delivered a timeless masterpiece that still reverberates to day (and all those French "art" directors worshipped and appreciated Hitchcock FOR HIS ART in Psycho and so many other films). Art is what happens to your mind/soul. And it can happen with some films by Godard, just as much as by John Waters, Hitchcock, Bunuel, or Polanski, or Jodorowsky. The question is - does the film PUSH the artform forward? Great art is innovative, it opens new vistas and new ways of seeing - and "Breathless" did it as much as "Pink Flamingos" did. Great films push the artform forward. That can happen regardless of genre. Now, not all artwork will speak to you. Perhaps "Pink Flamingos" doesn't speak to you - but to someone else "Citizen Kane" doesn't speak to them either - neither of them are wrong. But both are artwork - both PUSHED THE ARTFORM FORWARD. "Citizen Kane" did something no other film did before it, and so too "Pink Flamigos". Art speaks to you, even if not all art. Some things speak more than others to each individual. And that's as it should be.

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

Duuuuuuuuude, you can't seriously talk about works made thousands (!) of years ago with surreal assumption that people back then thought just like we do now. In times when there was no ability to construct images, works perceived with eyes had VASTLY different significance than they do today.

Yes, Shakespeare's plays were ALSO funny and ALSO entertaining but they were mostly one of the few available means to understand reality back then!! For people who saw Shakespeare's plays 450 years ago, their laughter wasn't the same kind of laughter when watching some nonsensical comedy today. The same biological function of body contracting muscles to produce "haha" had SUPREMELY different significance then and now. Back then with that muscle contraction you automatically - like it or not - were exposed to the news of the day that shaped people's point of view and understanding of the world. Can you say the same about the Spiderman movies or even the Godfather?? Please stop trivializing history forcing it to fit your view of reality!!! Likewise, please stop belittling ambition of the man (Homer) who CHOSE to write 15 thousand long poem (!) TWICE. If his ambition was to only entertain in YOUR view of what that word means he wouldn't have gone through the effort. He could as easily write that story in the same style Herodotus described the Greco-Persian War and yet he didn't! You HAVE to ask why!!!!!!!!!!! Am i using enough exclamation marks to spell out how significant those choices are?

In hopes of not appearing too insulting, the analogy to helium balloon from one of the previous posts was made for people just like you - people who feel genuinely angry for finding out that there are other floors of understanding beyond their comprehension. I mean, yes, some of the claims you make are true but only if you don't look deep enough into the issue.

 

[Run&Gun]

We've all heard the old saying, "I may not know art, but I know what I like". If you like something, you like it. If you don't, you don't. It IS that simple.

 

[lambert]

The Apu trilogy, Mouchette, In a year of thirteen moons, Taste of cherry, Thru a glass darkly, Irreversible would probably elicit strong reactions to viewers who aren't inclined to watch art cinema. Not a big fan of Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, or early Godard( later work is incredible). Tarkovsky takes a while for many to appreciate his films. Many times seeing a great directors more accessible work first can open up the rest of his work (not always). Sometimes artists fall out of favor as audiences discover that not much is going on underneath ( the writer of picnic William inge ?in the fifties was considered brilliant, not so much today). I was told early on that because I had aspirations to write and make films professionally I should at least check out a couple of films from the great international directors. That way you had at least considered before their work dismissing it. Ive had more than a few long discussions about obscure artists with very well known directors. You can love it or hate but if I was involved in the creative side of filmmaking I'd want to know if I was missing out on something that might change my view of art.

 

[Curtis Mack]

Seems a little harsh. I happen to like some art films, but I had to reach a certain age before they made any sense. Seeing 8 1/2 when I was 20, it was incomprehensible. At 60, not so. But even art films you don't completely get the first time around, Blowup, for example, can be fascinating, even if you don't get them. 60's Mod London and the photographer's obsession were interesting in their own right. To your earlier point about being turned off by a story with resolution, I get that. But, if it's done well, the film transcends its entertainment beginnings and becomes art, for example, Touch of Evil.

 

[combatentropy]

I haven't yet fully worked out my theory, but I think art and entertainment aren't mutually exclusive.

if you [...] tell me something bigger about life, universe, our relations to time & space... and so on - then you have my ears

Then I would say you've been entertained --- which literally means nothing more than to hold one's attention, https://www.etymonline.com/word/entertain

Furthermore I would say that getting insight about life is why people go to the movies. We keep using entertainment to mean empty stimulation, like tickling. Or giving me something that I am used to, that doesn't challenge me in any way. But general audiences have a word for stuff like that: boring.

You keep talking about gaining insight from these art movies, yet haven't given one example. So I'll give one: 24. I find Jack Bauer inspiring (Go ahead, laugh it up, fuzzball). At first glance, Jack Bauer has nothing to do with me, and I must be watching it for sheer escapism. He shoots people, travels to distant lands, and hacks into computers, in order to thwart a nuclear attack or prevent a presidential assassination. Funny though, afterward I would think of Jack Bauer while at work, because like Jack Bauer I am trying to bring about some good for the customer (the general public) but I've got a boss that blocks me by insisting I do things by the book, and I've got coworkers that may or may not be trustworthy. I sometimes find myself in situations where two competing values are at odds with each other, and I must make a difficult choice.

Okay, now it's your turn. "I watched Blow-Up, and it really opened my eyes that ____________________ is _________________, and now I understand that __________________.)

I wager that in fact you and I are no different than Average Joe, who likes Spider-Man. Average Joe doesn't like Spider-Man just because he swings from buildings. A movie full of Spider-Man swinging from buildings would get old quickly, even for Average Joe. Movies of pure action from beginning to end usually flop. The character also has to get into sticky relational situations and work those things out. As he does, my theory is that we learn, or at least are encouraged, to apply that courage, fortitude, or ingenuity to our own parallel situations.

Duuuuuuuuude, you can't seriously talk about works made thousands (!) of years ago with surreal assumption that people back then thought just like we do now. In times when there was no ability to construct images, works perceived with eyes had VASTLY different significance than they do today.

Yes, Shakespeare's plays were ALSO funny and ALSO entertaining but they were mostly one of the few available means to understand reality back then!! For people who saw Shakespeare's plays 450 years ago, their laughter wasn't the same kind of laughter when watching some nonsensical comedy today. The same biological function of body contracting muscles to produce "haha" had SUPREMELY different significance then and now. Back then with that muscle contraction you automatically - like it or not - were exposed to the news of the day that shaped people's point of view and understanding of the world.

You can't just throw out wild statements like this. Where do you get your information? Thousands of years ago, "there was no ability to construct images"? That's not even true. Neither does it seem that Shakespeare was "one of the few available means to understand reality back then" or that people were laughing for different reasons. Among the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, you will find instances of humor based on slapstick, double entendre, and even flatulence. My point is that when you translate these famous works to modern English, what's surprising is how much they seem just like us. The Bible was written thousands of years ago, and as far as I can tell, the people back then were just like you and me.

So I'm sorry, but my most pressing need right now is a citation for all your information.

 

[Josh Bass]

There’s at least one guy who posits that “consciousness” as we experience it today may not have existed as little as 3000 years ago, so maybe those bible folks WEREN’T like you and me. Apparently modern psychologists don’t agree with this guy. Still fun discussion fodder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

Anyway if our mind is a balloon and our realms of understanding are a house with many floors, mine is stuck in a sub basement you need a special key for and have to take a mile-long elevator down to.

 

[OldCorpse]

Duuuuuuuuude, you can't seriously talk about works made thousands (!) of years ago with surreal assumption that people back then thought just like we do now. In times when there was no ability to construct images, works perceived with eyes had VASTLY different significance than they do today.

LOL. This is seriously babbling. Film has existed for about 120 years, photography for about another 50 in addition. Before about 1850, humanity has had exactly the same artforms all throughout from before Shakespear's time until the rise of photography - the same artforms, oral traditions, music, written poetry and texts, painting, sculpture, theater. Are you saying during all this time until the last 100 years or so people "didn't have the ability to construct images"? Only film and photography allowed people to "construct images"? Because that's the only difference in artforms between Shakespear's time and today. You're nuts. Go back to school.

Yes, Shakespeare's plays were ALSO funny and ALSO entertaining but they were mostly one of the few available means to understand reality back then!! For people who saw Shakespeare's plays 450 years ago, their laughter wasn't the same kind of laughter when watching some nonsensical comedy today. The same biological function of body contracting muscles to produce "haha" had SUPREMELY different significance then and now. Back then with that muscle contraction you automatically - like it or not - were exposed to the news of the day that shaped people's point of view and understanding of the world. Can you say the same about the Spiderman movies or even the Godfather??

Err, no, human beings had the same psychological reactions to art and entertainment as today. Human beings have not changed emotionally nor their sense of aesthetics. Newsflash - Shakespeare's plays are the most popular and frequent plays put on for the massess, INCLUDING TODAY during your supposed "construct images" time. By number of viewers - the exact "massess" whom you dismiss from the realm of art, and constrict only to supposedly lowly "entertainment". It's not only critics and high art afficionados who go to Shakespear's plays - you don't get vast popularity numbers that way. It's the massess. And massess don't go to something that is devoid of any element of entertainment. And if your criterion is "shaping people's point of view and understanding the world", then YES, I CAN say the same thing about The Godfather - it certainly shaped people's point of view and understanding of the world. It is art. Shakespeare is art. And it is art that ENTERTAINS, and is accessible to the MASSESS. There is no contradiction between entertainment and art.

Please stop trivializing history forcing it to fit your view of reality!!! Likewise, please stop belittling ambition of the man (Homer) who CHOSE to write 15 thousand long poem (!) TWICE. If his ambition was to only entertain in YOUR view of what that word means he wouldn't have gone through the effort. He could as easily write that story in the same style Herodotus described the Greco-Persian War and yet he didn't! You HAVE to ask why!!!!!!!!!!! Am i using enough exclamation marks to spell out how significant those choices are?

The number of exclamation points does not strengthen or clarify any argument, though it is often a marker of writing that is primitive and lacking in strength and eloquence. As to telling me about Homer and his aims, I direct you to any number of commentaries by the Greeks themselves through their greatest cultural representatives - Plato and Aristotle who both commented extensively on Homer and the role of the artist in society, views which have resonated in Western civilization ever since. As happens I studied both, since my degree is in philosophy - what, by the way is your degree in? If you want a summary of Plato's and Aristotle's writings on Homer and the role of the artist, you may refer to HJ Cannatella, in Paideusis Vol. 15. You will learn that since Homer aimed to convey cultural information for Greeks, and addressed himself to the massess, he recognized the essential element of entertainment, without which the massess would not engage, as the massess did not engage in precisely what you point to, writings of historians like Herodotus. Instead, massess wanted to be entertained by tales such as Homer spun - in other words, exactly the opposite of what you claim in an amazing argument you made against your own thesis. Herodotus does NOT in any part aim at entertainment and Homer DOES. The artist (Homer) entertains while conveying informatin - the historian (Herodotus) does not. Art uses entertainment to engage, historians don't have the same remit. Gee, looks like not only do you know nothing about history, but can't make an argument without it turning against you - you aim a gun, but only manage to shoot your own head. I find it very funny that you would try to tell me about Homer, LOL, and your general attitude as below:

In hopes of not appearing too insulting, the analogy to helium balloon from one of the previous posts was made for people just like you - people who feel genuinely angry for finding out that there are other floors of understanding beyond their comprehension. I mean, yes, some of the claims you make are true but only if you don't look deep enough into the issue.

You're a funny muppet - as if, having a degree in philosphy, I would tremble in anger at your supposed vast reach in understanding art as to be beyond my feeble intellectual abilities, and how I don't look "deep enough into the issue". But, then again, this is not an infrequent occurance, where I've noticed people who scream snobbishly about "art" as having nothing to do with lowly entertainment, in reality don't understand how art works at all. And while you get high on your own supply inhaling from a helium baloon to the point incoherence, I'll continue to enjoy, as before, the great works of art and entertainment in film, whether it's Fellini and Bergman or Hitchcock and Polanski.

Ciao, ragazzino, ars est celare artem.

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

[moving my office so the past few days i spend time with banality of wall paint, numbing stupidity of laminated floors and idiotic simplicity of Ikea furniture - not much time to talk about art, still...]

combatentropy, you ask me for evidence...

Let me turn this question around and ask you, when you read seemingly matter-of-fact description of a political prisoner's body ripped apart by horses as his punishment in one of Foucault's book on punishment, what were you thinking? Do you simply attribute description's violence to the savagery of the past or do you catch how the perception of body has changed in the past few hundred years and thus need to punish the body has evolved - today we don't feel like punishing the body but rather the spirit with incarceration. We kill, yes, but try to do it painlessly and quickly. WHY? Have we advanced or has our perception of something so fundamental as body changed?

Or when you read, to name another post-modernist, essays by Derrida on how our mind occupies a room - often the room that wasn't build by us but rather impressed onto us by the society, culture, history - what goes through your mind? Do you ask yourself if those kind of ideas could even be considered say 200 years ago?

Or if you visit a museum and looking closely at Vermeer or Rembrandt seeing a micro version of a Pollock painting in the way they handled paint. Do you speculate, what would happen if Rembrandt saw the future and instead of filling his paintings with figures, simply used the paint a la Pollock? Do you ask yourself why we had to wait 400 years for Pollock to be painter of importance? Why in 1650s one would be considered a madman to paint like that, while in 1950s one was considered a genius?

As times change the world accepts some ideas while rejecting others, it also reformulates ideas creating new meanings within old. This extends to seemingly concrete ideas like life-and-death too. For instance, our view of death is highly influenced by progress in medicine. Take childhood mortality. Just 100 years ago your newborn had 1/10 chance to die. Today it's 1/250. That means that just 100 years ago (meaning AFTER invention of many life savings drugs, devices, etc) we were WAY more likely to be surrounded by death than we are today. Add deaths you witness of your friend's children, death caused by sickness and lack of medicine (or understanding basic biology), due to seemingly trivial accidents and you get a picture that a typical man from back then was surrounded by death all the time. When you are exposed to something over and over - you get indifferent. So can we ever read works by the past writers about death and see it as "indifferently" as they saw it? In return can we be certain we appreciate life on the same profound level as they did if living meant winning so many battles?

The conversion shouldn't be "if" ideas change over time but rather "how much." Yes, our biology doesn't change - we cry, we laugh, we get scared, we make love... But context of those physiological actions changes so profoundly that we have to account for this while bringing out works from the distant past as proof of anything. When we think of their entertainment we have to understand that what they were entertained by was VASTLY different than what we pay attention to. Again, not that same statement made them laugh but doesn't make us laugh but rather that why this laughter happens and the implication of that laughter changes. That's why comments by some that "entertainment was entertainment through the ages" leave me disinterested to continue any dialogue as it reveals profound lack of insight into human psychology, changing world and history. (And to be honest turns me off as someone like that is so deep down the rabbit hole i'm not interested in pulling them out).

You ask me to be concrete spelling out what's so special about Antonioni...
But i'll answer that you can't face art expecting a blueprinting on how to build a bridge. Art never directly talks about the "It" because it understands that by concretely defining the "It" is falling into a trap. If i told you what the "It" is, you would simply shroud your arms - not because i was wrong but rather that MY definition of It would be meaningless to yours. I could tell you abut the otherness of his framing needed to introduce the possibility of meaning beyond what we are watching, i could tell you about oddity of the staging in search for something beyond what's in front of us, i could tell you that his films are not about the actions committed in the world but about being withing the space, i could tell you... and you would say "so what?". That's why art always dances around the "It" never fully defining it. It's a paradox of a sort where we need to believe that "It" is reachable knowing fully well that one can never grasp it thus in essence always being beyond the reach. (This, by the way, is NOT the same as saying that "beauty is eyes of beholder"). You might mistakenly assume that art seems to be more about the form than content but that would not be true. Although form is fundamental to give an insight into a possibility of meaning, ultimately the real meaning comes from the work channeling "something" through you. It's kind of like when you go through a mystical experience looking at a painting, listening to a piece of music or reading a book. Afterwards, you can identify what caused that experience but you can't turn that into a blueprint for others who would want to create a mystical experiences.

I know, you will tell me: "You are avoiding the question. I asked you for facts but you again go into ephemeral ideas." But i would answer - there is simply no other way!

 

[vcassel]

SLC Punk. This movie was everything to me when I was 18. Tried to show it to my gf recently and I apologized afterwards.

 

[robmneilson]

SLC Punk. This movie was everything to me when I was 18. Tried to show it to my gf recently and I apologized afterwards.

Don't tell me that! I want to cherish my memories of seeing that with a theater full of suburban NY punx.