The gist of it is: It's OK to love Avengers. I personally hate it for more than one reason. But even if you love it, you cannot possibly say it's a great work of art. It lacks everything a great work of art should have. For one, just like @crumbsroom noticed, it doesn't have that unique auteurial style. It doesn't even not have a style. It lacks style. There's a difference between classicism and lack of style.
Every great film auteur has a style. Some auteurs' style is that they do not have a style. An auteur tackling a genre film or even making a blockbuster often retains their style. This makes those works worthwhile. But an auteurless blockbuster made by a company is soulless, artless, and eventually worthless. Pasolini said that conventional culture always corrupts. And it's true to some extent. Get it, even Nolan, Tarantino, or Jing Wong are closer to being auteurs than whoever directed Avengers. I don't even know who that was. That should be enough.
Straub has divided artists into three categories. The first is those "who try to see the world and become a mirror that is as clean as possible (Cocteau said, 'The mirrors would do well to reflect better')." The second category are those "who presume—sometimes with inspiration, sometimes with arrogance—to reshape the world." The third group, the biggest one, is "the paratroopers." "Those are people who simply fall from the sky somewhere and boom, the camera is running already. They film something they have never even seen. They've never taken time to look at it. And to show something, one must have seen something. And to see something, one must have looked at it for years at a time." That's why Pedro Costa spends months or years with his subjects when making a movie. A commercial director looks. An auteur sees.
And we didn't even get to the point where we talk about cinema as a separate medium and works that attempt to destroy (and rebuild) cinema so that it becomes its own art, free from theatre, photography, painting, and music.
Every great film auteur has a style. Some auteurs' style is that they do not have a style. An auteur tackling a genre film or even making a blockbuster often retains their style. This makes those works worthwhile. But an auteurless blockbuster made by a company is soulless, artless, and eventually worthless. Pasolini said that conventional culture always corrupts. And it's true to some extent. Get it, even Nolan, Tarantino, or Jing Wong are closer to being auteurs than whoever directed Avengers. I don't even know who that was. That should be enough.
Straub has divided artists into three categories. The first is those "who try to see the world and become a mirror that is as clean as possible (Cocteau said, 'The mirrors would do well to reflect better')." The second category are those "who presume—sometimes with inspiration, sometimes with arrogance—to reshape the world." The third group, the biggest one, is "the paratroopers." "Those are people who simply fall from the sky somewhere and boom, the camera is running already. They film something they have never even seen. They've never taken time to look at it. And to show something, one must have seen something. And to see something, one must have looked at it for years at a time." That's why Pedro Costa spends months or years with his subjects when making a movie. A commercial director looks. An auteur sees.
And we didn't even get to the point where we talk about cinema as a separate medium and works that attempt to destroy (and rebuild) cinema so that it becomes its own art, free from theatre, photography, painting, and music.
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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.
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.