I'm responding to the discussion about The Avengers that followed from it, to discuss what kinds of things actually go into evaluating a film.
If you actually believe I'm confusing marketing for my own opinions about things, then I lack the basic human agency that would be required for us to carry on a conversation in the first place. But I don't think I'm confused about that, and I don't think you really think it either.
Avengers is a film for an average Joe and so it fulfills the basic needs of an average Joe. Something like Vitalina Varela is not a film for your average Joe. It doesn't mean that your average Joe cannot love it. But chances are, Joe, won't get it. And Vitalina Varela hasn't had even an ounce of the marketing Avengers had.
We've had this discussion before, and it always goes the same way: you say it's bad, I say you're judging it along the wrong metrics and that breadth is just as important as depth, and then the conversation ends and repeats itself some months later.
The distinctions here are so obvious I'm very (very!) slightly annoyed you're making me expound on them, but okay:
I also find it plainly inconsistent: we're supposed to be moved by the joy of fictional people on screen, but not by the joy of actual people right next to us?
We're not floating consciousness viewing things in isolation and we never will be. You bring your history and biases to everything, and that doesn't taint your reaction to art: it's what makes your reaction potentially meaningful.
For your reference, an excerpt from Pedro Costa's seminar:
I believe that today, in the cinema, when we open a door, it's always quite false, because it says to the spectator: ‘Enter this film and you're going to be fine, you're going to have a good time’, and finally what you see in this genre of film is nothing other than yourself, a projection of yourself. You don't see the film, you see yourself. Fiction in the cinema is exactly that: when you see yourself on the screen. You don't see anything else, you don't see the film on the screen, you don't see a work, you don't see the people who make things, you see yourself, and all of Hollywood is based on this. It's very rare today that a spectator sees a good film, he always sees himself, sees what he wants to see. When he begins, rarely, to see a film, it's when the film doesn't let him enter, when there's a door that says to him: ‘Don't come in.’ That's when he can enter. The spectator can see a film if something on the screen resists him. If he can recognise everything, he's going to project himself on the screen, he's not going to see things. If he sees a love story, he's going to see his love story. I'm not the only one to say that it's very difficult to see a film, but when I say ‘see’ it's really seeing. It's not a joke, because you think that you see films, but you don't see films, you see yourself. It's very strange but I assure you, this is what happens. To see a film, that means not crying with the character who cries. If we don't understand that, then we don't understand anything. This is why I spoke of doors which close themselves. There are certain films, for me, which are like doors, even if there are no doors in them. They resemble doors that don't let you enter as the protagonist of the film. You are outside. You see a film, you are something else, and there are two distinct entities. There are certain films, for me, which make this separation, for example the films of Ozu, Mizoguchi or Naruse, or many others, but here I will cite the Japanese. This door is absolutely necessary. It's not a piece of private property, that is to say, it's not closed in an authoritarian manner. We can open it, we can close it, it's your choice. It's always your choice in the cinema, it's always the choice of the spectator. If you decide to go see The Last Samurai (2003), you're going to see The Last Samurai, you know that it's going to be painful, you're Japanese, but you go and see it, I'm sure that you go and see it. It's like junk food, like cake, it makes you want it, and you go for it, and you know it's bad for you, but you go for it. This is what I call the open door films. Commerce is like that. The door to McDonalds is always open. So, a film like Late Spring (1949) or An Autumn Afternoon (1962) is not completely open. In a similar way, Ossos is a film that slightly closes the door. It hides certain things, it tells you that you can feel pain, but not everything, and so that suggests a bit of trouble.
[...]
It's absolutely necessary that you must be outside, not on the screen. Never cry or suffer with the character who suffers on the screen, never. When we do that, it's exactly what we do when we go to McDonalds.
[...]
It's absolutely necessary that you must be outside, not on the screen. Never cry or suffer with the character who suffers on the screen, never. When we do that, it's exactly what we do when we go to McDonalds.
Here's a thought experiment: imagine an art installation with a beautiful picture on the wall. But you don't get to see it: you're on the other side of a two-way mirror, and all you get to see are other people walking up to the picture, and how they react to it. You see them puzzle over it, smile at it, maybe look sadly or longingly at it. The entire work of art, from your side of the mirror, is based in the reactions of others to it. But it's still art, and still contains the same possibility for profundity, and the same capacity to inspire, as the picture those people are reacting to.
Michelangelo was paid an absurd amount of money to paint the Sistine ceiling.
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San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.
San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.