Mia Goth: Euro Twit or Next Gen Talent?

We might give those given a legendary status the benefit of the doubt. Or more leeway for error. But they also, ultimately, receive more scrutiny from those looking for proof of this greatness. We might consider these competing elements make the whole effect of expectations a complete wash. They cancel eachother out.



In the long run, we might be convinced for a short amount of time that a performance was greater than it was simply because we were told it was great. But this doesn't stand for eternity. This effect eventually wears off.


Aside from this though...two factors.


First, people don't get labelled great and considered great for decades just because. It comes from somewhere. Even if that distinction may cloud how we honestly relate to their work, they've likely done something to get their talent noticed in the first place. And to remain in the discussion of who is great.


Second, even if these biases affect our interpretation more than I'm claiming, does this even matter? Maybe me analyzing Streeps performance for its greatness, and me finding moments that I otherwise wouldn't have picked up on without that second glance their legend afforded them, is a good thing. Even if it is an illusion. Not to flatten everything we think and feel to a kind of fiction, but everything we think and feel is being pushed and pulled by all sorts of factors outside of what we are considering. There is no reason to single out Meryl Streep's greatness as being more or less suspect than any other one of our likely compromised or fraudulent emotions.

She was a memorable new face in The Cure For Wellness. I'll have to gave X and Pearl a look some day.

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Right. And the question is if people like Mel are natural (shall we say?) at playing crazy in a way that distinguishes them from other actors.
True, but it also serves as a challenge. Where do we draw lines? Can we mark distinctions? What is the nature of the achievement in any given case?
True. Nevertheless, I detect something in some cases that speaks much more to essence than craft, to identity much more than imitation, much more to revealing than constructing.
Phoenix is kind of a nutter, so it makes sense that if it is in a role in which he can't channel it internally, that his behavioral chops might come up short. Your exception here may actually be an example of the rule; the internal/methody actor flails when asked to not be an amplified version of himself.

I'm not sure what the unspoken truths of Mr. Cash involve. This sounds a bit like metaphysics. I can say, however, that if it didn't sell you, something was missing in the simulation.
I agree. However, there is a big difference sometimes in terms of how the actor gets there (to the depiction). And the blind actor will, in effect, be getting it "for free" in much the same way that Mr. Gibson gets tortured/crazy "for free." It is an aspect. It is not the only aspect, but the roles Mia Goth has taken (at least on my radar) have been rather extreme, cartoony, and "cray cray." I don't really have a baseline for her, so I am not sure if she is just acting in the way that a blind person would act blind or that Mel Gibson would act like he is consumed with guilt and rage (i.e., the role fits the actor -- narrow bandwidth of talent) OR (!) or if the Goth has considerable range and so far we've only seen her featured in particular/exaggerated roles (i.e., the actor fits to the role through talents -- wide bandwidth of talent, but with narrow broadcasting, thus far).
The purpose of the example is merely to mark a distinction. Not to reduce acting entirely to one dimension.
You mean, I say something and then you strongly disagree?
Isn't my question about Goth a question about "what is under the hood"? If I were a strict behaviorist, I would only ask if what was captured on camera looks good and not worry about questions about what happened "on the inside." I would say, "I don't care how Kevin Spacey always so convincingly plays a coercive sleaze, I am just glad that he is able to get it on camera!" Acting would only be about the product and not the process. However, I am quite concerned with process here, even if I don't appear to venerate it sufficiently.
If anything, you sound like the objectivist here. That is, you don't care how the actor gets there (design or happy accident). Or rather, you seem to only care about what is under your hood (i.e., how it makes you feel). But this does not mean that I am not really asking about what is under the hood--I am asking about the process/genesis of the product (what is under the hood of the actor).
Right, you're looking under different hood.
But I don't particularly value idiosyncratic responses, especially of the individual or very small audiences, for the purposes of objective conversation, because this leads away from intersubjectivity.

It matters to me how a substantive portion of the audience responded to the artwork in terms of the that which is (more or less) objective but timely (e.g., cultural codes, pop culture references, current events, lingo, the grammar of filmmaking at time "t") and (more or less) objective and timeless (e.g., universal themes, universal narrative standards, common human needs/psychology). If a substantive portion of our audience reliable responds to artwork "X" by characterizing it as "Y," then we can be confident that there is a legitimate "there" there (in terms of timeless and/or timely qualities. The intersubjective response is proof of the ties that bind (i.e., the codes we read by and other common apparatuses we bring interpretation). This is the sort of excavation I am interested in. Thus, we will quibble when you feel that the response of the wider audience was insufficient.
Well, this more like therapy, psychology, or self-discovery. This is all good, but it's not really analysis of the artwork or the process of making the artwork per se.

That stated, anecdotes do matter, because it is only an aggregation of anecdotes that produces evidence by which we may make inferences (to there being a "there" there).

The question is where to draw the line.

An audience of one leaves us with an infinity of interpretations and casts us hopeless into subjectivity. Demanding that we only look at how the majority the of main/popular audience looked at it, relegates us to the lowest common denominator. That is, critics do occasionally see things that are in the artwork (the there that is there) that general audiences do not.
Well, you have to be more than just one of a dozen or a few dozen. The larger your audience is, the more likely it is that your audience is on to something. I'd say we want some thousands of people who saw the film the way you saw it to confidently say that your take isn't random, that your reading is "in the text" in the sense that "it is in the cultural coding regulating reading."

If we're talking about a smaller group (e.g., hundreds), if they're normed in terms of background (e.g., professional critics who publish in academic journals, and to a lesser extent popular critics), then we have additional assurance that the reading or "take" is grounded in something substantive and not accidental.

It's hard to give actual numbers to these things. What matters is not so much any standard number, but having good reason to believe that our audience is connected to the great dance of text-culture-audience in a coordinated fashion and not just a "hot take." As much as we can, we want to make sure that there is a "there" there and not just a great reaction to an inkblot (not that this is not interesting in some cases, but that it is not a question or answer specifically about the artwork).

My impression is, based on not just movies, but lots of live theater, is that there are lots of good actors. You can even see them in college productions. Most of them either leave the profession or get sidelined into bit parts. They are the guy walking down the street going the other way when the star passes or the woman that sells something in a store or whatever.

It all reminds me of that fountain of all you need to know in the world, The Wizard of Oz. As the Wizard says to the Scarecrow, what you need is a testimonial or a diploma. Whatever skills and abilities you have, without someone else to say you're great, it doesn't work. I don't claim that "greats" like Streep are without skill or talent, but I also don't think they're unique. I've seen way too many good actors to believe that.

Once an actor is labelled as great, then the powers-that-be make sure that label fits....they get the roles, the dramatic shots, the production values, the other actors playing to them, the promotion and the dramatic musical notes.

I won't disagree that I think there are a lot of talented people in the world. And that a lot of them go unnoticed. Or give up.


But I will disagree that, even though there are lots of talented men and women out there, probably more than people might think, the vast majority of us are still not very talented. Most people in films are not great actors. Most directors are not great directors. Most screenwriters are not great screenwriters. Most people are simply just okay or even bad at their jobs, no matter their profession. Most people are also just okay or bad at their hobbies. Most people just kinda skate by, even if there are thousands and thousands out there who have been touched with something special. The reality is the majority aren't worth paying much attention to when it comes to the world stage. Because talent still means something, and it means something because the majority of us lack it.



And in regards to Streep, she is by any definition I have, better than even most of the talented people. She is unique. She's a generational talent. And even if we don't agree on her in particular (which is fine, there should always be pushback against our sacred cows), the notion that we should have suspicion that maybe talent isn't that special, and that all people need is just to be mistaken as great and the world just suddenly opens up for them....nah, that doesn't really sound particularly right to me. Most people will still flounder and burn if a god-sized lane way opens up for their career.


Talent is not normal.

Anything which can't be pulled from his iconography. From interviews or famous performances. Gestures which built the man as a myth but don't actually tell us who he is. Like the famous picture of him giving the finger than ends up on t shirts that, because of their familiarity, become virtually meaningless.



An actor should be able to use their creativity and prep work to fill in the blanks between those things to tell us who this person is, beyond what we've already seen in stock images of them.


In fairness to Phoenix, who I have come to feel is a great actor, this is usually the problem with any film that celebrates a pop icon. They all fall into the trap of depicting the image of the person and not the person themselves. It's why music bio-pics (which do the same sort of reflexive gestures in their story structures) are almost always the worst kind of movie.



Now, if I had the film in front of me, I could point to specifics in his acting that I think are shallow cheats, just to ground this in something that's just not 'metaphysics', but I don't, so I won't. But I could. But I won't.



I think one of the problems I have what you're saying here is actually beyond the conversation of acting. You seem to have a bit of a misunderstanding about what mental illness is. That it just might be some kind of super power that, when needed for it to work in their favor, people can direct it towards some convenient goal (in this case, of giving a great performance).



But even if they could harness it towards something (maybe some do, I don't know), it's not some guarantee it should have anything to do with acting. Mental illness in real life does not look like mental illness on screen. Just like any kind of emotion is mutated when it is put in a film. Fear doesn't always necessarily look like real fear, sadness doesn't always look like real sadness. It is usually some kind of approximation of these things which translates to an audience watching in a theatre or at home. This is part of the talent (even if we assume the actor is getting their talent for 'free' by being mentally ill), that they know what to push to the forefront of their performance, what to keep hidden, and what to entirely invent as I way to highlight what is happening inside of them.






If you beg my pardon, I am struggling to see a distinction between you trying to make a distinction and you trying to reduce acting to some easily replicated behavioral stunt. I don't agree, and unless you have some kind of insight into the practice of acting, you probably aren't likely to convince me otherwise.



I'm lazy. I don't like to work too hard. This is always a quick way to get the plaque buildup of words out of my head and inflict them upon the world.


Once again, if you excuse me, I don't think you have much interest in what is under the hood. You've been consistently fairly glib towards even entertaining the process of acting as an artform. Where did art touch you, bro?

Well let's get some of that into the conversation then? Seems like the appropriate place for it to gain some kind of faith that you aren't just taking Statler and Waldorf potshots at anyone who dares get on a stage. Let's see what performances have moved that stony heart. Let's hear about the small details that have stuck after you've watched an actor do their thing. What do you see happening under the hood in these mysterious moments.



Not true. This is an example of you refusing to entertain the possibility that just because I talk about how one thing matters to me, I freeze out any other way to appreciate something. All I'm saying is I don't discard a performance (or any piece of art) simply on the premise that it isn't doing exactly what it is supposed to, or I don't have a sufficient explanation for why a moment works for me, or was by accident, or was even completely invented by my own emotional state. I'm talking about back up plans in case a film might not entirely be working through conventional methods.



Also not true. Me speaking at length about my own entirely subjective experience is not me stopping to consider what the actor is actually doing, the director is attempting to do with the performances, or even the personal interpretations others in the audience might get from what they are watching.



And even on elements where it is clear I am speaking exclusively from my own frame of reference, this is not some emotional isolationism where I am just looking to spout how I feel and drown out the rest of the world. I mention these things as a way to be honest about my emotional reaction, whether rational or irrational, since these feelings cannot be removed from the experience of watching a film. To confess to these things in an 'objective review' is also to allow anyone who cares to read, what a film actually meant to me beyond the flickering of images which, without their ultimate effect on the viewer, are essentially meaningless. I'm also trying to make my critique as human and vulnerable as possible, because I'm not interested in barricading myself behind walls of academic theorizing. Or at least not do that exclusively. I think its important to float these things out there and see if anyone else had similar response. If there can be a connection between audience members in these particularly ephemeral moments. And, even if no one has the same reaction as me, I'm still opening the floor for people to share their experience. Because I'm interested in that almost as much as my own. And, yes, I also like people to tell me their dreams.


I look under as many hoods as I can think to look under.


Pardon my french, but **** intersubjectivity. Dwelling over consensus, to the exclusion of these idiosyncratic responses, is to keep our movie going experiences in neutral. To have to keep putting out finger up to make sure what we feel is out their in the wind. Who cares? When I read a film review, I expect that experience to be just as personal and creative and artistic as what they are reviewing. I want to know who the person is who is writing the review, as much as I want them to be able to see the person who made the movie that they are reviewing.



Consensus obviously has a lot of good takes on classic films. So I'm not saying I neglect these. These can be the foundational building blocks of how we talk about a movie. But what I want to also see is how a film has introduced itself to a persons life. The impact it had on them. How it changed their day, or their attitudes towards art, or made them think differently about a topic they had never really thought about before. Even the weird random thoughts it brought out of them. I just want people to be as honest and revealing as possible when they talk about art. Because, regardless of how profound the consensus take on a movies meaning may be, unless we also understand what it means to those in the audience....who ****ing cares?


This sounds a lot like 'we get to be confident that we are correct in thinking something is good', and I don't need to see the critical stars to align en masse to feel confident that I responded exactly as I should have to the film.


Now can consensus lead us to different ways to appreciate the film, if our own personal experience caused us to veer well off the intended course. Definitely. They can add depth to what we take from the film. But as for the being correct part....pfffft.


Fair enough. I'm not expecting you to be interested in anything you aren't interested in. And I don't discount your way of interacting your way with art. Their are valid reason to do it that way. I'm just hear to explain how there are other ways to bring meaning to art. And they don't require hemming close to the way you predominantly find meaning in it.


Art has historically been therepeutic. To omit these elements from what I talk about when I talk about a film seems weird to me. And it also seems callous to assume no one else could possibly care. I care what other people get out of films. If they say it in a way that enlightens me or amuses me or moves me about their experience, how is that something we can't find worth in? Just because it wasn't our experience doesn't mean those who have it should hide it under their pillow and never tell a soul about it.


evidence. ugh.


Subjectivity is only hopeless if we demand a singular answer. And demanding a singular answer to art, or a singular experience we should all be experiencing, is to me the ****ing antithesis of art. Or, at the very least, muting what can be so astonishing about it. The many different ways one thing can cause so many different reactions.





On to what? You continually act like when we discover the true purpose of a film it wipes out the value of those who have contrary experiences? Sorry, your consensus will never get to me. I am comfortable enough with what I feel regarding a movie that the entire world can tell me I'm wrong and it doesn't remove that from me. I know what I feel, I know how to explain what I feel, and more often than not, I can still back up these fleeting emotions with enough of the type of critique towards craft or storytelling or thematic unity that you value to prove I have every right to feel what I feel and think what I think.




I think it's interesting to see what people see in inkblots. And I also wouldn't bother telling them they wasted there time looking at it if they see something I don't. If they make a compelling enough case to me, I might instead ask them exactly how they are seeing that. I might become curious about who they are and how they interpret things. You know, the kind of thing a movie can do to people, bring them together even if they have different interpretations.

I also think she does accents pretty well, given she's from London.

She’s British. She’s not a “Euro twit” whatever that means.


I’m a fan. I think she’s terrific. Even in Infinity Pool which was rather a waste of my time.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

I have years of experience working with performers quite closely, doing what I can to nudge the best performances from them. I have spent long hours in blocking, rehearsal, etc. I can say that some of performers do have mental health problems and that some channel that into their performance. When it works, when they're in the right moment, and they're carried away in the right way, it can work quite effective. On the other hand, I have found that it is a less consistent/reliable means of achieving performance. It's not a superpower, however, it is a resource.

If you cannot see that there are differences in method, approach, philosophy in acting, then I cannot help but suspect that you're being obtuse. I am splitting, but you're resisting by insisting on lumping (it's complex, we can't draw lines, examples are unfair). Some approaches are more objective, others are more subjective. There is a difference between the advice given by Kurt Russel (learn your lines and hit your marks) and the approach of Jared Leto (sending dead rats to other actors to get zoned in as The Joker). And as there is a difference between being blind and playing blind, there is a difference between performing mental imbalance and documenting mental imbalance. So, yes I think that when we watch Gibson put the gun into his mouth in Lethal Weapon we are seeing him "going all the way there," that he is not just hitting his marks and reading his lines, but rather unbottling. He isn't playing Hamlet. He is a Hamlet. A deeply conflicted man with guilt and rage so close to the surface that it is quite different than how Kurt Russel, for example, would do it.

I am only glib about the romanticized image of it. I believe that methody bullshit is dangerous, extravagant, Oscar-baity nonsense. If you can't do your job without harrassing coworkers or endangering your own health (I have to do all these drugs to really play a druggie), then you're doing it wrong. The best performers I have worked with can turn it on and off like a switch--no stations of the cross to get into character--just hard work, discipline, and balance.

You can only be vulnerable if your position is falsifiable, if it must answer to a criterion of correctness outside of yourself. When you deeply commit to subjectivism ("How I feel"), you are walled off entirely.

But we can only make ourselves vulnerable by answering terms that may be judged by others. You can't be wrong subjectively (you either feel it or you don't), but you can be wrong in terms of theory (e.g., the artwork does not have feature "X," your use of terms is inconsistent, the theory you use contradicts itself).

If so, why make convsersation? What are doing if not trying to share our subjectivies and find common ground on some points?

This is fine, but this is not a discussion of the film, per se.


Also, I don't think that consensus is simply constitutive, but is rather symptomatic. The response of the audience is evidence of some "there' being there (e.g., in terms of authorial intention, or cultural coding, or the timeless psychology/sociology of human experience). The relationship is not one of cause, but sign. As such, it can be questioned and we can have grounds to say that the audience (or some portion of it) got it "wrong." It is defeasible, not definitive. But it is evidence.



If we are looking for evidence of there being a "there" there, the response of the audience is one variety. If one person says you smell funny, that's anecdotal. If 80% of say you smell funny, they might be on to something. And this is why I want to get past the ink-blots and subjective responses, because want to know what is likely to be true of the work, what is actually happening, how it actually functions. It is a criterion of correctness that stands outside the self, so we can test our ideas through the perceptions of others.

Well,

For example, we might talk about Keir Starmer, or Greta Thunberg, but both are Europeans. As to whether they're twits, I can see why one might say that, but I couldn't possibly comment.



What is a Euro Twit? At the very least, a twit who happens to be from Europe. Not great mystery there.

I'm on the fence here. I need more of a baseline. Also, I need to see her in something other than a wacky psychedelic A24 flick.

You don’t tell us in your profile where you live (why not?) but, suddenly, you know all about Europe & its people.

I don't talk about where I live, because there are people on the internet who will try to find you for curious purposes. One minute you're talking about madness and artistic production and the next minute someone's up in your profile looking for clues.



I do NOT claim to know ALL about Europe or her twits. I can only say that there are a number of both, and that some them are Brits.

Why on earth would someone want to find you?

You know nothing about the British. Kindly keep your negative comments to yourself.

This thread is becoming unpleasant so this is my final post here.

I dunno, why were you up in my profile looking for proof of nationality?

Are we gatekeeping Britain now?

Nothing really negative here. Europeans exist. Twits exist. The two circles overlap. The thread title is lighthearted.

OK, then.

We are getting into **** Yarn territory at this point so I'm probably done here.


Maybe if you'd stop repeating what I keep correcting you about in regards to how I think or write about films, there would be some point in continuing.


You keep talking about how my approach is just 'how I feel' and that I'm just shooting exclusively from the hip without making attempts at critiquing more concrete areas of the creative process. I explicitly said I do this AS WELL as I speak towards my emotional reactions. I do both. Not a hard concept to grasp, especially when I wrote paragraphs specifically about this. But you just keep rebooting your ****ing responses like a misfiring AI.


I have a considerably longer resume on these boards of actually attempting to write critically about films. I don't just sit on the side lines tsk tsking anyone who makes those attempts. For someone so concerned about proper criticism, why don't you do some for a change.


I also gave you an opportunity to actually put some skin in the game by referencing performances and particular moments in those performances that moved you, anything to illustrate some kind of good faith that you aren't going to slide in the same ol' bullshit. As usual though, you side stepped doing this because you know as well as I do you don't really have much to say about any of this. That isn't what you're here for. You just want to chip away at anyone else's reasoning or approaches to criticism. You just contradict for the sake of trying to kick up another debate, I assume because you think this is a talent of yours.


You talk about the need for an audience for something to matter. Well, maybe you'd have one of those if you ever took the time to not treat every posters contributions like carrion for you to pick at and shit all over the desert. To actually make some attempt to not hide behind the wall you've made between yourself and virtually every poster on every board you frequent.


No one wants to debate for an eternity with someone who makes it clear time and time again they aren't actually taking in what anyone else says. For a second you fooled me again here, but I'm seeing clear again now.


As usual, you can take the victory here because I know that's what you're here for, and it is decidedly not what I care one tit about.


Have a good day.

I thought she was interesting but not especially impressive in X and Pearl. I was more impressed by her in Infinity Pool, but I also liked that movie a lot more. She has a unique way about her that makes her stand out, kind of hot without actually being hot, and that has an allure to it. Too early for me to make an opinion about her ability, but there's not many young stars I know the names of and I know hers.

I think we're making progress here.

OK, but you have to go slow and point out where the error lies. What specifically am I getting wrong?

If so, what is the nature of those concrete areas? Subjectivity I understand. Intersubjectivity I understand (i.e., shared subjectivity). Universal human needs/tendencies which press against formal features (e.g., the need for time limits to a single sitting of viewing) I understand. What is not quite in focus is other stuff. If we see that "X" is concretely a feature of the text, then it is objectively (verifiably) such a feature. Descriptively, objectivity works fine (e.g., there is either a patch of blue in the frame of the shot or this is not). Interpretively, this can work fairly well given our understanding of language (e.g., we take it that the scream of the mother in a scene where a child dies expresses "anguish" on the part of that character). On the other hand, interpretation is quite contested in some cases (e.g., is Turn of the Screw really a ghost story?). Evaluatively, things get tricky, very quickly. How do we refer to "concrete" features of a film which are "good" or "bad," "well-done," and "poorly done"?



What I know is that you don't like intersubjectivity. You said "F*** intersubjectivity," so that cannot be your guardrail for interpretation/evaluation, right? OK, but if so (and if, as you emphasize, you're not a pure subjectivist), what is?

This is tough for me, OK? I get subjectivity, but subjectivity is the wild-and-woolly domain of the infinitude of reader responses. Subjectivity (to the extent that you're being subjective) is a variable means of assessing that which is "in the film" (really there).



You are telling me that you pair your subjectivity with concrete areas, but I am not sure how the two mesh. What happens, for example, when a concrete area conflicts with your emotional response? Again, I don't know what you're counting as a concrete area (I only know that it is NOT intesubjectivity). Finally, I am not sure of the relevance of the purely emotional response. It almost seems like you're saying that you're combining relevant aspects (properties of the text) with irrelevant aspect (properties of your idiosyncratic response) in your criticism. My question is "Why mix in the irrelevant stuff into the bowl?"



I'm not trying to be a jerk here, I just don't understand what you're up to.



Whatever the difference is between us, it does appear that part of that difference is the role of the subjectivity of the receiver. If I have heard you right, you prefer variability in response as opposed the the flattening average (the lowest common denominator) of the herd. If I've heard you right, you see individuated responses as being more relevant than I am willing to admit (perhaps you see these as also being part of "the text").

Hmm, is that really fair? Last time I checked, I'm not spamming you in your "Watching Movies Alone with Crumbsroom" thread, for example, and I don't think I generally rain on your parade when you post in response to anyone else but me. It seems to me that the pattern is that I say something that rubs you the wrong way and then the argument starts. That's fine, but it doesn't seem that I've been interrupting you from the peanut gallery.

How does this put skin in the game? What is the game you think we're playing? The game I am playing here is interrogating the question of the relation of the private mental state of the actor in relation to the performance on film. I am arguing for "splitting" on this question (arguing that there are some substantively different approaches to performance which correspond to my talk about "working to simulate it" vs. "getting if for free/opening the spigot.")



The question you ask does not really appear fair. I have expressly stated that I want to be careful to be sure that what I talk about is actually a property of the film. My subjective response (i.e., what moved me) is a dubious species of evidence. It is a starting point for me (Why did I feel this way? Is what I felt a function of the text of film or just the mood I was in? If I am confident that there is a "there" there, how the heck did that get there? How does this work?). It is motivation which creates an itch, but the scratch must come somewhere else.



I honestly don't see how I am dodging you here. I don't see how it is relevant to the question and it is the sort of thing that I have expressly applied pressure to as a species of evidence. You asking me to do that which is irrelevant to the question and which I have sworn off, doesn't sound like an invitation to put skin in the game.

This just seems plumb mean to me.

No. I don't believe that the audience is directly constitutive/causal. Rather I believe the audience is needed as evidence to demonstrate that something is really there and that, therefore, it matters. The audience is symptomatic. The more people see "X" in the text, the more likely it is that "X' really is a property/function of the text (and not an accident which should be dismissed by the null hypothesis.

You're making a lot of inferences to motives and intentions and nefarious ones at that.

I am not trying to sucker you into some trap. I am trying to express my point of view and weigh yours. We may not see eye-to-eye, but that's not proof of bad faith.



If I've missed the subtleties of your position. I am genuinely sorry. If I have failed to pick up what you're laying down, I can only say that I am acting in good faith attempting to make sense of your position.


It might be a good idea to slow things down and work premise-by-premise and focus on specific areas of perceived disagreement.

There is an energy to her for sure. Also, there is something decidedly predatory about her femininity that I haven't seen since Lena Olin was dominating the screen in movies like Romeo is Bleeding.

We aren't baking a cake here. We aren't conducting a science experiment where were have to remove any wonky variable that might upset our results. We are talking about art, which is inherently messy by nature.

Talking about art is a process. It's about wrestling with our conceptions of what art is, what it can do, what it means to us. It is going to affect us both critically and emotionally and many many different ways. Ultimately, we talk to understand how each of us process these things that a work presents us. The actual movie is only a piece of the conversation. We, in many ways, talk about ourselves when we talk about a film we love or hate. And in doing so, we expose who we are when we discuss what made us love it or hate it.

You keep seeing some kind of need to prove something with art. That you first need an army of consensus before you trust your own feelings, or otherwise they aren't worth sharing. But I share my completely consensus divergent opinions all the time. I make it clear the movies I like have flaws. I explain why those flaws might add to the elements of the films that do work. Or that sometimes we have to isolate those flaws from the rest of the film and appreciate them on their own terms. Or that those flaws maybe should be discarded entirely, and are simply flaws....but the movie that surrounds them still holds up, as long as we don't get too hung up on what doesn't work.

Like minded people, those willing to explore films in similar ways as me, understand where I am coming from and as a result of my honesty in recounting my actual experience while watching it, both critical and emotional,now can gauge whether they might find something similarly of worth there. Or, simply, find my experience engaging and are curious to see what caused it. Maybe, in the end, allowing them to be led to an idiosyncratic film experience they might not have considered before.

The reality is, if you need proofs or numbers, is I have an insanely high track record of recommending movies to friends that they end up liking. Even if there is no critical consensus to back my ravings up, beyond my own ravings.

Now how could this be possible? Maybe because we have completely open discussions about what moves us in film, because we aren't waiting for the rest of the world to confirm it has value. And because of this I know who they are, and they know who I am, and so I know what they like and they know they can trust me.

I can recommend something to them that I know the 'consensus' will think is total shit, but that the 'consensus' will not interfere with their similar love of it. Maybe my lunatic ramblings have even provided a key into how to appreciate them from a different angle. To see beauty where others only see shit.





And in those instances where they don't like something I've led them towards, this is still no failure. We can now discuss why? Refine our philosophies of what a film is. Where we diverged. Where we still agreed. A whole giant discussion, where we find empathy towards eacothers understanding of who we are as audience members develops. This, just as much as the film itself, is the legacy of art. How it allows us to relate to eachother in ways that our every days lives does not allow.







There are dozens if not hundreds of different ways I can take what you are asking here, because every film made has an infinite number of strands we can pull at to find something to discuss. Something 'concrete' has a certain meaning in one film, as does an emotional response. It's all completely dependent on the film at hand. The scene at hand. The performance at hand. And how they interact with the rest of the film that surrounds it.


I hardly know where to look to find a proper example that can illustrate this to you off the top of my head. But basically my entire posting career has been me talking about this very thing.


Lucio Fulci is likely a bad example, but it's one I can dash off quickly, and that all I have time for.

Fulci is a director who clearly does things that are clearly bad, but the result of those bad decisions consistently manage to bolster what the actual concrete aim of his films are. His most famous films are horror. They are meant to frighten and unsettle. And one way to do this is to disorient the viewer. His plots frequently hit dead end after dead end. His characters behave nonsensically. In a film like City of the Living Dead, he actually appears to forget to inform his audience precisely what the threat is (beyond vague mentions of the end of the world) or what anyone is supposed to do to stop it. These are not deliberate decisions by the director necessarily. They are pretty clearly blind spots in his creative abilities. But there effect is to leave those watching completely stranded and confused, never able to predict where the menace is coming from or what it might do to them. And it doesn't give us an avenue to root for our characters to stop any of it from happening. We are helpless, which is a good thing for a horror film to instill in us.



In the final scene of City of the Living Dead (spoilers, even though literally nothing actually happens), we are treated to the scene of Christopher George, after surviving a horrible night, leaving a tomb he spent much of the film fighting for his life in. He is just beginning to walk through a cemetary in the day light. The menace appears to be behind him. Then, in the final seconds, we see a child running towards him. A child we have only briefly seen in one scene of the film. We know nothing about who he is or what has happened to him since his brief moment on camera. He was a seemingly completely insignificant character. Barely more than an extra. And Christopher George's response to seeing this child running towards him, a child he doesn't know, a child the audience barely knows, is for him to start screaming hysterically. Then the film stops. No explanation.


This, by any definition is a terrible scene. It's pretty clear Fulci should need to let us in on who this kid is for the scene to play out as he intended. Maybe he's supposed to be some kind of evil reincarnation, or an omen of something terrible to come. Who the **** knows. But the effect of just ending the film at this baffling moment, after watching a film where nothing else has made sense and the audience has finally got themselves a seemingly peaceful daylight scene to let their guard down a bit, we are thrown one last monumental bit of confusion. It's almost hysterical in its seemingly benign and unfrightening randomness, but as a result of this, somehow, it becomes all the more unsettling because we can't figure out what has just happened. I consistently think about what it means and there are no clear answers. Fulcis failure has left me forever hanging in nightmarish disorientation.


Now, would these kinds of audience **** you's be nearly as effective if Fulci also wasn't (concretely) an extraordinarily accomplished visual artist who knows how to generate images that linger? No. These displays of his obvious talent are what ground us in some kind of cinematically understood reality, while the actual horrid plotting of the movie is the x factor element that allows us to move into a sort of dreamy nightmarish place that exists between logic and total nonsense.

So in this case, I can talk about the obvious failure of giving his characters no proper motivations or his narrative of having no discernable arc, and how the effect of this feeds his hallucinatory imagery. His talents gain our trust, and his non talents make us scramble to piece these disconnected images together, while they are all just coming apart in our hands.


Now I have a few more examples as well, but I'm not going to get into them because I need to track if you have any idea of what I'm getting at here. Otherwise, I'm just putting words down on a page for absolutely no reason.

One of the best actresses of this new generation of actors. Her performance in X and Pearl were amazing. I can see her winning an Oscar one day. I look forward to seeing her in MaXXXine.

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“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balboa