Watching Movies Alone with crumbsroom

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So, Jennifer Kent's Nightingale is an even more horrific experience than her Babadook. Like, it will rip your head off if you're not careful.
And it may even be better than her first film, which I loved very much.


Some complain the film goes too far. And for some tastes it will definitely go too far. It's a gruelling watch. But I think, considering my film watching background, it was a fascinating meeting between a beautifully made but violent historical thriller which seeks to expose the colonialist history of Australia without any excuses, and almost pure Grindhouse revenge nightmare. A mix that is likely what makes so many people uncomfortable.


By any measure, it's a great movie though
This is correct. Not enough art lovers can handle exploitation level violence and not enough exploitation lovers have the patience for the ruminative nature of the film.

But boy does it hit a sweet spot of beautiful cruelty for me.



So, Jennifer Kent's Nightingale is an even more horrific experience than her Babadook. Like, it will rip your head off if you're not careful.
And it may even be better than her first film, which I loved very much.
I found it very powerful. It's violent and upsetting, but all with purpose and relevance to the characters. In many ways I found it less "extreme" than other films that have technically less gore/violence because nothing felt like it was placed just for shock.



Victim of The Night
So, Jennifer Kent's Nightingale is an even more horrific experience than her Babadook. Like, it will rip your head off if you're not careful.
And it may even be better than her first film, which I loved very much.


Some complain the film goes too far. And for some tastes it will definitely go too far. It's a gruelling watch. But I think, considering my film watching background, it was a fascinating meeting between a beautifully made but violent historical thriller which seeks to expose the colonialist history of Australia without any excuses, and almost pure Grindhouse revenge nightmare. A mix that is likely what makes so many people uncomfortable.


By any measure, it's a great movie though
Well, you have my attention.



I found it very powerful. It's violent and upsetting, but all with purpose and relevance to the characters. In many ways I found it less "extreme" than other films that have technically less gore/violence because nothing felt like it was placed just for shock.

That's part of its greatness. It's gratuitous violence isn't in fact gratuitous, even though its very easy to dismiss it as such. It is all used to build the films message. Cutting away to something softer would actually be a disservice to the experience of these characters.



It always gets back to the complaints in the 1980's which took such issue with the violence of a Martin Scorsese movie, which clearly was using violence to make the viewers uncomfortable, to make them reject violence, and the completely unrealistic (but still very violent) violence that was filling multiplexes and getting its audiences off.



Now I'm obviously no huge moralist on this issue. I've indulged in violence as entertainment before. I don't think it is a ruiner of civilizations. But one of these things is clearly so much worse than the other. And Kent's film is certainly on the side of violence to make a valid point. To soften it would be to soften what the racism and the misogyny and just pure hatred the films is full of actually means. What it leads to. It's instructive violence, even while it is playing as being gratuitous.



That's part of its greatness. It's gratuitous violence isn't in fact gratuitous, even though its very easy to dismiss it as such. It is all used to build the films message. Cutting away to something softer would actually be a disservice to the experience of these characters.
There's some line that I'm sure I can't define where the point is to understand that the gratuitousness is on the part of the villains, not as the focus of what the film wants to show, if that makes sense.



So Skinamarink....


I'm going to have a lot to say about this eventually I think. But I just feel some need to say something in the immediate aftermath of watching it. This is one of the greatest horror movies I've ever seen.


Film for me in most ways is an extremely communal experience. Even though I make it clear that I prefer to watch them alone, they make me feel connected with a world that I usually don't feel terribly connected with. For a couple of hours they make me feel tethered to the same ground as everyone else.


Never has a film made me feel so alone. Never have I ever felt abandoned while watching a movie. But this is the effect of Skimamarink. Many will claim this is a movie where nothing happens. But they are wrong. It is simply that this is a movie that dares never look towards what is happening. I know I saw something absolutely terrible, but I don't yet have the language to describe what that was.



I talk a lot about my personal history with film. I've mentioned many times how one of my earliest memories is watching the Exorcist with my mother when I was about four, and begging her to turn it off, and her refusing and feeling like I had nowhere to run to in our tiny apartment. It was possibly a ruiner of my life.



I've also often mentioned how this was my greatest ever experience with a film. The high water mark. Proof that a movie can be powerful enough to tear down your entire world. How it can leave you completely vulnerable.


I'm 47 now. I'm no longer in a place where a movie will ever do to me what The Exorcist did forty odd years ago. But tonight was the first time since that night where I felt I was similarly in the presence of something evil. Something unknowable. Something that could do harm. Now, I don't know if the emotions I experienced during this film would necessarily be called fear, but can report back that whatever happened, I feel very weird now. I feel uneasy. I don't know what I just watched.


Or....maybe I should just admit that I think this movie just scared the shit out of me.



A more fleshed out version of what I wrote above....this thread might now just become a place to write and rewrite various reviews on Skinamarink. Why is anyone even talking about anything else?




Even though I make it very clear I prefer to watch them alone, film for me is an extremely communal experience. Somehow, they make me feel connected with a world I usually don't feel terribly connected to. For a couple of hours they make me feel tethered to the same ground as everyone else. Whether for good or bad, film makes me believe in a world outside of my door.


Until now. Never before has a film made me feel so alone. Never have I ever felt completely abandoned while watching a movie. But this is the effect of Skinamarink. There is no one here to connect with. To acknowledge that we even exist. It is only an empty space haunted by sadness and fear. And two wandering children we never have a chance to properly see, due to all the shadows. Due to them always seeming to be moving away from us. Or standing in a place we aren't looking.


The film gives us no sense of space, even as it documents every corner and forgotten toy of one very dark home. We only see fragments. One bit at a time. Disembodied pieces of this place people supposedly live. How shadows curl up in its corners. How things are on the floor we can't recognize. And after awhile, it begins to feel confusing how we even got here, even though we should know this is only a movie. We're never certain if we too have simply become lost in the same house as these two children. If we are just constantly walking past one another, not even seeing each other. Just as parentless. Moving quietly. Always whispering.


Many will claim this is a movie where nothing happens. But they are wrong. It is simply that this is a movie that dares never look towards what is truly happening. Like some repressed trauma. Something has happened in one of these impossible to see rooms. Or maybe is happening right now. I know I saw something absolutely terrible, but I don't yet have the language to describe what that was.


I talk a lot about my personal history with film. I've mentioned many times how one of my earliest memories is watching the Exorcist with my mother when I was about four, and begging her to turn it off, and her refusing and feeling like I had nowhere to run to in our tiny apartment. Just had to sit there under the blankets and endure it. It was possibly a ruiner of my life.


I've also often mentioned how this was my greatest ever experience with a film. The high water mark I've been chasing ever since. That movies truly do matter. Proof that these flickering images can in fact be powerful enough to tear down your entire world. Leave you completely vulnerable.


I'm 47 now. I'm no longer in a place where a movie will ever do to me what The Exorcist did forty odd years ago. But tonight was the first time since that night where I felt just the simple act of watching a film was placing me in the company of something possibly evil. Some kind of spell cast by witches. Something unknowable but familiar. Something that could do me harm, even though I was completely alone. With it.


Now, I don't know if the emotions I experienced during this film would necessarily be called fear. It was something large and unpleasant and impossible to shake. It's been a long time since I honestly thought something was under my bed, and I didn't check, but maybe I should have. So maybe not exactly fear. But I can certainly report back that whatever happened, I feel very weird now. I feel uneasy. I don't know what I just watched.


I just don't know.


Or....maybe I should just admit that I think this movie just scared the shit out of me.



A system of cells interlinked
The Long and Winding Road needs more respect.
It got respect in that bad rom com Yesterday. A guy falls off his bike and hits his head, and when he wakes up, The Beatles never existed, and he is the only person on the planet that recalls their music. At some point, he ends up in a songwriting contest squaring off against Ed Sheeran. On the spot, with a crowd watching, he composes A Long and Winding Road. Obviously he wins the contest.

That was the only good part of the film, so I have saved you the excruciating task of actually seeing it!
__________________
“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell



It got respect in that bad rom com Yesterday. A guy falls off his bike and hits his head, and when he wakes up, The Beatles never existed, and he is the only person on the planet that recalls their music. At some point, he ends up in a songwriting contest squaring off against Ed Sheeran. On the spot, with a crowd watching, he composes A Long and Winding Road. Obviously he wins the contest.

That was the only good part of the film, so I have saved you the excruciating task of actually seeing it!

I've seen it. I've seen it. Don't remind me. I've seen it.


There is one moment in that film where I honestly thought it was going to pull this dumb concept off. When he starts playing (I think) Let it Be for (I think) his family. And, without it being a song that is now familiar to them, now that it is just something being played by their friend/family member, they squeak out a few 'that's kind of a nice song you wrote there'. They think it's okay. They don't descend into immediate Beatlemania mode. Because all the additional trappings have been removed from how we experience any song by the Beatles now, and when we boil it down, most people probably wouldn't think Let It Be (or any) Beatles song was some revelation if they first heard it in such a pedestrian and familiar context.


But then....everyone goes crazy for him, and the entire film seems to make it clear it does not understand at all what made that music important. Neither its musical OR its cultural elements. And I sat there pulling my fingers off one by one in agitation until it ended.


I mentioned to MKS recently that, if I was being honest, Babydriver is not the worst movie I've ever seen. It's this. But because everybody already hates this ****ing horrid movie, it isn't as much fun as constantly shitting on Babydriver (which is immense fun so....thank you Babydriver)



Talking Skinamarink and Baby Driver. It’s like you’re begging me to come back to chat.



*Raises fists*


Ya, and what of it??
Heh. Well, you’re review was what I was hoping it would be about Skinamarink. I found it evoked much of what you praised Blair Witch Project for, only I could sense greater intentionality behind it.

I initially gave it 3 stars on letterboxd but have moved it up to 4 as I’ve quite enjoyed thinking about it and am pleased by its mere existence. I find myself wanting to argue against those who dismiss it more than agreeing with them, despite having struggled to stay awake or engaged through parts of it.

Here was my review, if you missed it:

https://boxd.it/3JwG6D



I found it evoked much of what you praised Blair Witch Project for, only I could sense greater intentionality behind it.
Well, that's likely because Skinamarink has a pretty rigorous formalism about its look and structure. Many people might talk about how the things that happen in this movie are random, but it is methodically shot and lit and considered from one shot to the next. Yes, lots of repetition, but that is also by design. After all, how long are we in this house living this endless night with these children. There world is both incredibly small, but also as limitless as a nightmare. Nothing happens by accident in Skinamarink.


Whereas Blair Witch is dictated much more by its concept and is way more loose in how its images unspool. Also not random, but it embraces some accidents and happenstance and as a result is messy in a way that is completely alien to the methodology of Skinamarink.


But as completely different as these two approaches are, they can still get much of the same results in the end. They both ask us to stare into the abyss to try and figure out what we see there.



I do think Skinamarink is the superior of the two though, in just about every way.



Well, that's likely because Skinamarink has a pretty rigorous formalism about its look and structure. Many people might talk about how the things that happen in this movie are random, but it is methodically shot and lit and considered from one shot to the next. Yes, lots of repetition, but that is also by design. After all, how long are we in this house living this endless night with these children. There world is both incredibly small, but also as limitless as a nightmare. Nothing happens by accident in Skinamarink.


Whereas Blair Witch is dictated much more by its concept and is way more loose in how its images unspool. Also not random, but it embraces some accidents and happenstance and as a result is messy in a way that is completely alien to the methodology of Skinamarink.


But as completely different as these two approaches are, they can still get much of the same results in the end. They both ask us to stare into the abyss to try and figure out what we see there.



I do think Skinamarink is the superior of the two though, in just about every way.
That formalism is a big reason why Skinamarink was able to pull me along, despite my resistance and utter sleepiness at times. To be fair to myself and the movie, it was a 7pm showing and I’d been up since 5:30am and worked all day.

It’s also what made it a particularly difficult film to criticize (as reflected in my review). Everything felt controlled and intentionally used to create a greater effect and any alteration I could think of, while would certainly make it more mainstream appealing (shortening it, reducing repetition, etc) seemed to diminish the essence of what it accomplishes.

The nighttime fears it evokes are often as much shrouded in banality as shadows. Wanting them to cut it down almost strikes me as saying to Ackerman that we don’t need to see Jeanne Dielmann do so many chores.

Plus, the nature of modern camera equipment allows me to fully invest in that the aesthetic here was a genuine choice for this effect, rather than something of a happy accident due to b&w 8mm film stock being the cheapest for Blair Witch (not saying it’s definitely the case but as you know, it nags at me).

I have thought of one minor quibble on that front though. It feels as though the film is evoking the artifice of a captured image (tons of grain and noise) as well as the nature of a voyeur, giving us an almost ‘90s security cam quality, but then infrequently becomes the POV of seemingly human eyes, yet it remains the same. It makes me wonder what exactly we’re watching and how the filmmakers made that choice. Are we supposed to feel like we’re watching a VHS copy of a lost movie? Is it ALL POV? Nothing deal breaking but it creates an itch I can’t quite scratch.