Introducing non-cinephiles to film

Like everything Hitchcock did, it's narrative driven, but Vertigo at least hints at that loose ethereal vibe I look for. Even with all of its cinematic formalism, its actual story is kind of buried inside the main character. The first time you watch it, you wonder about the mystery that Jimmy Stewart is investigating. But the more you watch it, the more the audience begins to wonder about the mystery inside of Jimmy Stewart.


Yes, it does have a very strong story, but the main character sleepwalks through it. And because in many ways we are expected to identify with him, at least on that first viewing, we sort of sleepwalk through it to.

I think in a lot of ways this is true. But it's also exactly what makes it such a compelling film.


And it should be noted, like a lot of movies a love a lot, I hated Vertigo the first time I watched it.

I'd agree in this instance. It can be done. But I'd also say that Lawrence of Arabia isn't so much narrative driven as it is character driven. The whole beauty of this movie is trying to figure out this man, who sort of can't be figured out. And we watch him exile himself to this barren landscape to wrestle with who he is, and what his purpose is, and if he is good or bad.



The fact that he's also doing all these extraordinary adventures as well are almost just window dressing.



And let me be clear. I love narrative based cinema. Me saying I also have this other slightly bigger love for more abstract and strange and dysfunctional cinema doesn't cancel that out. A story well told is still an elemental force. As long as they are well told (which, if we're being honest, most movies are at best decent at....there is an egregious amount of boiler plate shit out there in the name of narrative cinema)

Consider yourself and your opinion scoffed.

I wonder if, in this case, my reaction has to do with getting to see his entire filmography at once. When Vertigo was released he'd already made dozens of films, so there was probably some benefit to a zag after decades of zigging. Playing against his own tendency obviously lands different when watching his films in any old order later on, particularly if this is one of the first someone sees.

Good to know. I was pretty much already sold on a rewatch.

Not even Carrie?



That's still very DePalma, but doesn't really employ a lot of his more distancing affectations.

If it's someone I don't like I'd suggest they watch Gummo. If its someone I like I'd suggest The World According to Garp.

Not really, but I think I saw that pretty young, too. The problem is that fever dream quality that I associate with his films (Carrie in particular). I almost always find it dull. It's a very high-risk, high-reward thing. If someone nails it, it transports you completely, but if they don't it's like, well, it's like listening to someone else describing a weird dream to you: unbearably boring.

That's kind of what I was circling around earlier when I talked about the polarization of "vibes" directors. It feels like an all-or-nothing thing.

Gummo is a masterpiece, so I'd be fine with that.

I think I have an advantage on everyone in these matters because I love listening to people talk about their dreams.

Cool trolling, bro, but even if I wanted to continue playing your game, I'd have no idea how to respond.

Wait, you'd recommend the better movie to somebody you don't like?

It's so annoying when you love the atmosphere in a film / of a director and somebody else is absolutely oblivious to it. You can't really explain it. They just DON'T. GET. IT.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Oh in that case you're in luck! Okay so I was on this river, but the river was made of gravy, and there was a person there but I couldn't see them but somehow I knew it was my dad?

Yep. I think everyone has this in both directions: the vibes they don't get, and the vibes they completely get and wish they could sell other people on.

Occasionally someone will say something about a film's approach to me that casts it in a new light (IE: "it's about his descent into madness" or "it's about her guilt manifesting in reality"). And of course now and then I get to be the person to cast a film in a new light for someone else, which feels wonderful. But obviously those are the exceptions, and people who just react to films and never examine or revisit those reactions will be impervious to this sort of thing.

All that said, when I do vibe with one of those films, I usually double my enjoyment by trying to verbalize the unexplainable. Skinamarink was the most recent example of this. I actually went back and re-read a bunch of posts about it (both mine and others) because I found the exegesis and personal stories relating to it so gratifying.

I get a lot of vibes and when I don't get them I just think they don't exist.

I think just reacting to films is in a way the most sincere and "pure" way of experiencing cinema. Especially if you wish to read about a film a lot after watching it. You're then risking post-watch bias. As in, you didn't really like the film, but you read a lot of people praising it, maybe interpreting it differently, and then you grow to appreciate it more. Yeah, appreciate is the word. But you didn't like it initially by your gut feeling/instinct. I'm not saying you shouldn't analyze films or anything like that, but if I dislike the "vibes", I don't care about the meaning.

It's the exact opposite for me. If something's unexplainable, I prefer to leave it that way. On many occasions, I didn't understand the film very well and then either thought about it myself or talked about it with somebody else, which cleared up some things. This readily made the film less enigmatic and therefore worse. I like the mystery. I like to not understand.

Nice you mention this movie because I think Skinamarink could have been amazing but every time the director managed to build an interesting atmosphere, they had to resolve it in the most unsatisfying way by reaching for the boring toolset of generic horror.

But here again we have the strength of a compelling narrative. Stephen King is master storyteller. Most of DePalma feels empty to me.

That's pretty much what I do unless/until someone gives me a genuinely new prism to look at the film through. That's more likely to prompt a rewatch than just an insistence that it's actually good.

I get it. And I agree that those risks exist. And then you get into the thing where you can't tell whether you're deriving enjoyment from the thing itself or from your own ability to find meaning in things whether it's there or not...which then leads to wondering whether that's a meaningful distinction, or if all art deserves credit for creating that springboard for you. This is something that came up on the podcast with Slappy and I a lot.

All I had in mind when I said that, though, is the type of moviegoer who has a lot of immediate, visceral reactions to actors/genres/films, decides they just don't like them, and that's that. It's a very commoditized way of looking at movies that is technically within the letter of "just let yourself react" but not at all in the spirit of what you're describing.

See, this is interesting, because part of my desire to explain is to find the genuinely inexplicable. If I am constantly trying to analyze my reaction to things, you may feel that spoils the purity of those emotions. But another way to look at it is that I can only spoil the ones that were not pure to begin with. That, in doing this, I may "cost" myself some wonder in the short term, but what remains are the most transcendent and inexplicable reactions. It's kind of like trying to guess the ending to a mystery because it's more gratifying to be genuinely surprised while trying not to be.

Anyway, very much a "different strokes" kind of situation. I think all approaches will spoil some things. There are films I only love because of all the thinking I've done about them after the fact. I am essentially "trading" those loves for the ones I ruined through analysis. Obviously, my feeling is that this has been a net gain, but whether it is or not, I think this kind of thing is pretty intrinsic to people and can't easily be turned off or changed, anyway.

I kind of agree. If you're interested, there are a lot of really good posts about it in some of the horror threads which are among my favorite exchanges on the site over the last few years. I think you'll find them agreeable, too: even though most involved love the film, there was a fair bit of agreement about its flaws, too. It definitely has problems, even if I think they pale in comparison to its accomplishments.

As a fan of quite a bit of surreal/trippy films, I figured Skinamarink would be right up my alley, but man did I bounce off of that film hard. It did nothing to pull me in during the first act, it looked terrible, and I had my wife complaining after about 10 minutes to put something else on because she just hated it. I resisted as long as I could but she wasn't having it, and it was a rare night that we actually had time to watch a film together, so we bailed into something else.

I half-heartedly want to give it another shot, but I have a lot of other films to watch, so it probably won't be anytime soon.

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To which films did you have those?

I have to correct you here . Lawrence of Arabia is a character driven narrative. There is no character without narrative. Character is revealed through action even when that action is all in the mind of the character as in Pi.

Also the adventure is never just window dressing unless there is no character to reveal. Unless those characters are stock stereotypes. Now in Ocean's Eleven we have a movie that has no character development and is all adventure and yet it works. Because the audience knows the actors/personalities in the film so well, that they, the audience, are along for a ride that is fueled by so much assumed cultural knowledge about Vegas, about WWll, struggles of returning vets and the members of the Rat Pack themselves. Unfortunately, they tried to remake it and made a stylish but empty film.
As for DePalma, I am not a fan. Only Carrie resonates. And why? Because it is a character driven narrative written by a master storyteller, Stephen King.

Its start is exquisite. Atmospheric and contemplative. I just wanted to look at those upper echelons of the house. I didn't want the poltergeist stuff to start happening, and I didn't want the trite tropes about the monster under the bed and whatnot. They could definitely make these arches next to the ceiling more artistic like in a Yoshida film, or something, in which case I'd love to keep looking at them. Here's my write-up about the movie I wrote right after watching it, as is my wont: