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My Review in much warranted defense of Schrader (I think its one of my more poorly written pieces, I'm kind of ashamed of it, but I still think the film deserves defending from the gigantic heap of critical distaste thrown at it):
There’s a few films every year with predetermined critical and financial reception. There was no way that The Avengers was going to make less than a billion dollars. The current market had really demanded the film so much that it as basically guaranteed that even if the entire critical community had torn it limb from limb, the public fancies themselves critics when necessary to justify their habits. The past two Best Picture winners were guaranteed praise statewide. Hollywood lovers get love from Hollywood. While I never really understood the buzz about Argo, I didn’t find it to be a taut compelling thriller and think that classical Hollywood filmmaking is better found in South Korea with films such as the superb Mother. The Artist was guaranteed to earn at least a favorable share from mainstream American critics due to its “sheer audacity” in being a 2011 silent film (did they not see My Winnipeg? A much superior and interesting film that actually wants to be a silent film). On the other end of the spectrum we have films that critics seem determined to destroy much before they’re even released. Films like John Carter a squashed for being a generic play off of the success of Avatar while something like Man of Steel escapes similar critical tropes due to Nolan’s backing while this film seemed much more like accidental parody of the genre than the relatively harmless Carter. I tried to do my best to defend one of this year’s unfairly bashed films, Only God Forgives. It was much more difficult for critics to provide sound analysis and the game began to toss around, “offensive” and “pretentious” in the light of the inferior crafted Drive. While the film was far from being a pleasant experience, I tried to avoid the overused p-word and add sound analysis to explain why I thought the film ultimately failed.
Once again, I feel implored to show what small support this will be for a film by a veteran director and critic with a knowledge of the camera that exceeds modern mainstream directors. Upon the casting of modern pornography superstar James Deen, combined with a script by one of the only American provocateurs working within the film industry (though mostly in literature), the film seemed to have already filed reviews to tip the Rotten Tomatoes score towards the likes of an Adam Sandler comedy (which were always this bad, they haven’t gotten worse over the years like many ashamed fans claim). Critics seem to be much too blind to who’s in the director’s chair (a man with probably a greater knowledge than themselves) and more focused on the public disgraces the film seems to face. The Canyons is not an exploitative film, nor is it as anger inducing as some of Ellis’s other rants on modern society, but rather a grasp at the current moment, and analysis on our direction.
It’s become a critical truism that the opening montage of theaters means to deal with the all too prevalent death of cinema discussion. But the film is here, we’re watching it, and we’ve been made aware of it. The film is determined to exist, through social media, through its casting, through all of the cheap media it has gotten (mostly in part to its stars) The Canyons found its way to at least some audiences. If Schrader wants to talk about the death of cinema, why try so hard to get people to watch a movie? The opening montage and dead theater pillow shots obviously mean something more specific than what has been attributed to it. Schrader is admitting the death of theatrical cinema, and hopefully enough people who watched it in the comfort of their own home can realize and laugh at how clever Schrader is in illustrating this inside and outside the movie. I can’t get on board with the whole “death of cinema” nonsense, but the death of theatrical cinema, while extreme, is more a more accurate presumption. I have personally only one film in the past 4 years that I was happy and not annoyed at seeing in a theater (Ozu’s Late Autumn and its largely a crowd issue). As someone whose seen hundreds of films from private quarters, this feels like a natural, if heavy-handed, point.
Schrader opens his film in a simple cinematic description of communication. Schrader (who, as an Ozu fan, is plenty aware of the power of ditching the shot-reverse shot continuity) confuses us with a dinner conversation edited rather chaotically, with eye line matches rare and a general discomfort in spatial reasoning. This insensitive description of modern communication can instantly alienate viewers if the rather stale acting does not. And while perhaps a bit harsh, it plays to our insecurities well and makes us a fool in the face of our own communication. James Deen’s Christian is, predictably, an *******, looking up and revealing embarrassing pictures of his opposite at the table, Ryan (a mediocre actor, played by the mediocre Nolan Gerard Funk). While David Fincher’s The Social Network used the advent of Facebook to show the growing connection between people juxtaposed with the alienation it causes. While The Social Network hinted more superficially (appropriate with how superficial Facebook is) at the way that our communication is changing, The Canyons attempts to dive deeper and show a darker side of the new technology, the loss of privacy. While it’s made explicit through Christian’s casual acceptance of the new, it’s territory that has yet to see any worthwhile discussion in film, and has created some atrocious portrayals on T.V.
It should be mentioned that the acting in The Canyons is pretty consistently mediocre to bad. Schrader seems aware of this however, and it should be noticed that perhaps the casting has a greater effect than the acting (the casting was very public after all). Lohan’s Tara constantly has her private life stripped from her, which seems more compelling when viewed as Lohan as a whole than her obviously less fleshed out onscreen character. Tara struggles for her own relevance which mirrors Lohan’s constant exposure and criticism. Christian’s spying on her with her awareness feels very meta in the face of all of the mindless human interest stories. Christian, on the other hand, seems sure of his relevance and manages to be the only confident character in the film. That is until a wonderful subversion from Schrader has Christian be sexually humiliated by Tara in one of their orgies. Still, largely due to Deen’s awareness of his own relevance, his character is the most comfortable in his own skin and this makes up for his own shortcomings as an actor.
The characters perhaps will always feel flat because of the constant cliches they spout. It’s not unlikely for them to do so, but it nonetheless negatively affects performance. Some of these cliches are given stronger ground in the face of some of the less obvious indications of their character’s falseness. Everyone in the film seems to have been together for about a year, even when they haven’t actually been. Christian and Tara have been together for three, but “about a year” is the stock response. The film’s purposeful contradictions with respect to character’s relationships make possibly cringe worthy lines like the closing “She seems happy. Even if she’s like, totally faking it” hold at least a moderate legitimacy, increased by the shallowness of the characters who spew the ********.
The genre of erotic thriller seems much more appropriate for something like a James Patterson novel that Schrader’s film. This bestowed genre has more than a hint of criticism in its distribution, but seems unavoidable for The Canyons once Deen was cast. This could also have to do with the many sex scenes that occur, none of which are particularly erotic, nor the movie particularly thrilling. The film climaxes with more of a Match Point murder than something like a normal American thriller climax such as the infinite cross-cutting in Argo. While some of the events leading to the film’s conclusion are a little maddening, particularly one built off of someone’s cell phone going missing for over a day in a film that’s already established the obsessive culture based around these devices, its intentions are well founded and conceived. We’ve seen throughout how the film focuses on our culture’s increased transparency, and the film’s ending seems to emphasize the superficiality of this transparency while dodging the existential themes of Match Point and any topical comparisons with something like gun control. In the end, the film feels more like a flawed vision of modern life than it does any thriller. Schrader comes, of course with a many interesting ideas and techniques (and meta jokes, with the clever placement of Gus Van Sant), but also with a certain cynicism about modern culture that comes to most inherently with age. Thus the vision comes off less objective than it should to maintain power, but it reaches higher and I believe achieves more in its flawed vision than the more esteemed “movie of our time” The Social Network. The Canyons is not a great film, but it has a unique and authoritative vision, which seems to offend people more than thins like superficial and manipulative films about race like 42 and The Butler this year. I doubt I’ll watch Schrader’s film again, I have too many other films to watch, but given the opportunity to see some actual artistic ambition and intent with a knowledgeable visual strategy from an American auteur like Schrader is certainly more appealing than seeing anything else playing at my local theater this weekend.
There’s a few films every year with predetermined critical and financial reception. There was no way that The Avengers was going to make less than a billion dollars. The current market had really demanded the film so much that it as basically guaranteed that even if the entire critical community had torn it limb from limb, the public fancies themselves critics when necessary to justify their habits. The past two Best Picture winners were guaranteed praise statewide. Hollywood lovers get love from Hollywood. While I never really understood the buzz about Argo, I didn’t find it to be a taut compelling thriller and think that classical Hollywood filmmaking is better found in South Korea with films such as the superb Mother. The Artist was guaranteed to earn at least a favorable share from mainstream American critics due to its “sheer audacity” in being a 2011 silent film (did they not see My Winnipeg? A much superior and interesting film that actually wants to be a silent film). On the other end of the spectrum we have films that critics seem determined to destroy much before they’re even released. Films like John Carter a squashed for being a generic play off of the success of Avatar while something like Man of Steel escapes similar critical tropes due to Nolan’s backing while this film seemed much more like accidental parody of the genre than the relatively harmless Carter. I tried to do my best to defend one of this year’s unfairly bashed films, Only God Forgives. It was much more difficult for critics to provide sound analysis and the game began to toss around, “offensive” and “pretentious” in the light of the inferior crafted Drive. While the film was far from being a pleasant experience, I tried to avoid the overused p-word and add sound analysis to explain why I thought the film ultimately failed.
Once again, I feel implored to show what small support this will be for a film by a veteran director and critic with a knowledge of the camera that exceeds modern mainstream directors. Upon the casting of modern pornography superstar James Deen, combined with a script by one of the only American provocateurs working within the film industry (though mostly in literature), the film seemed to have already filed reviews to tip the Rotten Tomatoes score towards the likes of an Adam Sandler comedy (which were always this bad, they haven’t gotten worse over the years like many ashamed fans claim). Critics seem to be much too blind to who’s in the director’s chair (a man with probably a greater knowledge than themselves) and more focused on the public disgraces the film seems to face. The Canyons is not an exploitative film, nor is it as anger inducing as some of Ellis’s other rants on modern society, but rather a grasp at the current moment, and analysis on our direction.
It’s become a critical truism that the opening montage of theaters means to deal with the all too prevalent death of cinema discussion. But the film is here, we’re watching it, and we’ve been made aware of it. The film is determined to exist, through social media, through its casting, through all of the cheap media it has gotten (mostly in part to its stars) The Canyons found its way to at least some audiences. If Schrader wants to talk about the death of cinema, why try so hard to get people to watch a movie? The opening montage and dead theater pillow shots obviously mean something more specific than what has been attributed to it. Schrader is admitting the death of theatrical cinema, and hopefully enough people who watched it in the comfort of their own home can realize and laugh at how clever Schrader is in illustrating this inside and outside the movie. I can’t get on board with the whole “death of cinema” nonsense, but the death of theatrical cinema, while extreme, is more a more accurate presumption. I have personally only one film in the past 4 years that I was happy and not annoyed at seeing in a theater (Ozu’s Late Autumn and its largely a crowd issue). As someone whose seen hundreds of films from private quarters, this feels like a natural, if heavy-handed, point.
Schrader opens his film in a simple cinematic description of communication. Schrader (who, as an Ozu fan, is plenty aware of the power of ditching the shot-reverse shot continuity) confuses us with a dinner conversation edited rather chaotically, with eye line matches rare and a general discomfort in spatial reasoning. This insensitive description of modern communication can instantly alienate viewers if the rather stale acting does not. And while perhaps a bit harsh, it plays to our insecurities well and makes us a fool in the face of our own communication. James Deen’s Christian is, predictably, an *******, looking up and revealing embarrassing pictures of his opposite at the table, Ryan (a mediocre actor, played by the mediocre Nolan Gerard Funk). While David Fincher’s The Social Network used the advent of Facebook to show the growing connection between people juxtaposed with the alienation it causes. While The Social Network hinted more superficially (appropriate with how superficial Facebook is) at the way that our communication is changing, The Canyons attempts to dive deeper and show a darker side of the new technology, the loss of privacy. While it’s made explicit through Christian’s casual acceptance of the new, it’s territory that has yet to see any worthwhile discussion in film, and has created some atrocious portrayals on T.V.
It should be mentioned that the acting in The Canyons is pretty consistently mediocre to bad. Schrader seems aware of this however, and it should be noticed that perhaps the casting has a greater effect than the acting (the casting was very public after all). Lohan’s Tara constantly has her private life stripped from her, which seems more compelling when viewed as Lohan as a whole than her obviously less fleshed out onscreen character. Tara struggles for her own relevance which mirrors Lohan’s constant exposure and criticism. Christian’s spying on her with her awareness feels very meta in the face of all of the mindless human interest stories. Christian, on the other hand, seems sure of his relevance and manages to be the only confident character in the film. That is until a wonderful subversion from Schrader has Christian be sexually humiliated by Tara in one of their orgies. Still, largely due to Deen’s awareness of his own relevance, his character is the most comfortable in his own skin and this makes up for his own shortcomings as an actor.
The characters perhaps will always feel flat because of the constant cliches they spout. It’s not unlikely for them to do so, but it nonetheless negatively affects performance. Some of these cliches are given stronger ground in the face of some of the less obvious indications of their character’s falseness. Everyone in the film seems to have been together for about a year, even when they haven’t actually been. Christian and Tara have been together for three, but “about a year” is the stock response. The film’s purposeful contradictions with respect to character’s relationships make possibly cringe worthy lines like the closing “She seems happy. Even if she’s like, totally faking it” hold at least a moderate legitimacy, increased by the shallowness of the characters who spew the ********.
The genre of erotic thriller seems much more appropriate for something like a James Patterson novel that Schrader’s film. This bestowed genre has more than a hint of criticism in its distribution, but seems unavoidable for The Canyons once Deen was cast. This could also have to do with the many sex scenes that occur, none of which are particularly erotic, nor the movie particularly thrilling. The film climaxes with more of a Match Point murder than something like a normal American thriller climax such as the infinite cross-cutting in Argo. While some of the events leading to the film’s conclusion are a little maddening, particularly one built off of someone’s cell phone going missing for over a day in a film that’s already established the obsessive culture based around these devices, its intentions are well founded and conceived. We’ve seen throughout how the film focuses on our culture’s increased transparency, and the film’s ending seems to emphasize the superficiality of this transparency while dodging the existential themes of Match Point and any topical comparisons with something like gun control. In the end, the film feels more like a flawed vision of modern life than it does any thriller. Schrader comes, of course with a many interesting ideas and techniques (and meta jokes, with the clever placement of Gus Van Sant), but also with a certain cynicism about modern culture that comes to most inherently with age. Thus the vision comes off less objective than it should to maintain power, but it reaches higher and I believe achieves more in its flawed vision than the more esteemed “movie of our time” The Social Network. The Canyons is not a great film, but it has a unique and authoritative vision, which seems to offend people more than thins like superficial and manipulative films about race like 42 and The Butler this year. I doubt I’ll watch Schrader’s film again, I have too many other films to watch, but given the opportunity to see some actual artistic ambition and intent with a knowledgeable visual strategy from an American auteur like Schrader is certainly more appealing than seeing anything else playing at my local theater this weekend.
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