As some will know, we won a huge court case today, pretty much the biggest in London. So I’m very tired, having been up since 4 am, and very intoxicated, having gone through the cocktail list in a bar like it’s a phone book.
I’m thinking back to the Hereditary discussion last weekend, partly owing to the other side’s surreal behaviour during the course of the trial (no legal thriller, whether by Fincher or Lynch or Kubrick, could come close to what the other side’s main witness, who is also a lawyer, did and how he fell apart and went berserk on the witness stand when he was caught ‘red handed’ with incriminating texts and whatnot). Think Primal Fear and worse. Honestly, Lisbeth Salander is more believable than this guy.
Specifically, it got me thinking about the point made towards the end of that discussion that life being infinitely complex and self-contradictory should not be an excuse for bad plotting/insufficient emotional grounding of motivations in a work of art. It’s a point I agree with.
However, I can’t help but think that, in my experience at least, the most shocking, perplexing and exciting narratives in film and literature (but I’ll restrict myself to film) often turn out to be true stories. And I don’t mean ‘true’ in the ‘inspired by’ sense.
Even if we accept that real-life events are nearly always exaggerated to be made more dramatic, I do think the ‘craziest’ narratives usually stem from true events. Stuck (2007) absolutely gets the biscuit in that sense, but there are also Argo, 127 Hours, and, frankly, even more mind-blowing real-life cases, such as the woman who froze to death and was warmed up and came back to life (Jean Hillard, this was in 1980), which, to my knowledge, have not been made into films yet.
I feel like there’s a certain gap/deficiency in the film medium when it comes to depicting truly inexplicable, extreme events and emotional responses to them, or simply reactions that are ‘unorthodox’. Because we then argue, as was discussed in relation to Hereditary, that oh, well, life is irrational, but fiction needs to make sense, fiction needs to be consistent. Which, again, I agree with, but isn’t ‘make sense’ a bit of a narrow way of looking at things? I suppose fiction should, indeed, have a structure of sorts, but haven’t humans evolved enough as a species to disregard that sometimes? Would that make for a worse story? I’m no fan of extreme postmodern films like Naked Lunch, but I do think a woman can randomly, for no reason, throw her baby out of a window, and that deserves cinematic treatment as much as your next love story.
Would it not benefit cinema if we gave ourselves leave to depict the ‘craziest’, most irrational and inexplicable human emotions? Unity Mitford sat on Hitler’s lap as a 16-year-old and thought she was in love with him. Armin Meiwen found a volunteer on the internet who wanted to be killed and have his penis eaten.
Yet for some reason, we think the emotional fluctuations in Hereditary are so extreme as not to be ‘believable’.
Now, I’m also thinking that taking on those kinds of subjects requires incredible levels of skill which most directors don’t have (and those that do won’t touch these themes with a ten foot pole). No wonder ‘extreme’ films usually fail commercially and critically; narratives like WAZ, for example, are pretty original and aim to explore the ‘unlikely’ and the bizarre, so I guess they don’t resonate with many people and that, in turn, leads one to conclude that they don’t reflect enough of the human experience.
But is that reason enough not to try to portray the truly bizarre? Does it really benefit us as the audience and allow us to get the most out of the film medium if we decide we ‘shouldn’t accept’ irrationality/inconsistency in characters?
I’m thinking back to the Hereditary discussion last weekend, partly owing to the other side’s surreal behaviour during the course of the trial (no legal thriller, whether by Fincher or Lynch or Kubrick, could come close to what the other side’s main witness, who is also a lawyer, did and how he fell apart and went berserk on the witness stand when he was caught ‘red handed’ with incriminating texts and whatnot). Think Primal Fear and worse. Honestly, Lisbeth Salander is more believable than this guy.
Specifically, it got me thinking about the point made towards the end of that discussion that life being infinitely complex and self-contradictory should not be an excuse for bad plotting/insufficient emotional grounding of motivations in a work of art. It’s a point I agree with.
However, I can’t help but think that, in my experience at least, the most shocking, perplexing and exciting narratives in film and literature (but I’ll restrict myself to film) often turn out to be true stories. And I don’t mean ‘true’ in the ‘inspired by’ sense.
Even if we accept that real-life events are nearly always exaggerated to be made more dramatic, I do think the ‘craziest’ narratives usually stem from true events. Stuck (2007) absolutely gets the biscuit in that sense, but there are also Argo, 127 Hours, and, frankly, even more mind-blowing real-life cases, such as the woman who froze to death and was warmed up and came back to life (Jean Hillard, this was in 1980), which, to my knowledge, have not been made into films yet.
I feel like there’s a certain gap/deficiency in the film medium when it comes to depicting truly inexplicable, extreme events and emotional responses to them, or simply reactions that are ‘unorthodox’. Because we then argue, as was discussed in relation to Hereditary, that oh, well, life is irrational, but fiction needs to make sense, fiction needs to be consistent. Which, again, I agree with, but isn’t ‘make sense’ a bit of a narrow way of looking at things? I suppose fiction should, indeed, have a structure of sorts, but haven’t humans evolved enough as a species to disregard that sometimes? Would that make for a worse story? I’m no fan of extreme postmodern films like Naked Lunch, but I do think a woman can randomly, for no reason, throw her baby out of a window, and that deserves cinematic treatment as much as your next love story.
Would it not benefit cinema if we gave ourselves leave to depict the ‘craziest’, most irrational and inexplicable human emotions? Unity Mitford sat on Hitler’s lap as a 16-year-old and thought she was in love with him. Armin Meiwen found a volunteer on the internet who wanted to be killed and have his penis eaten.
Yet for some reason, we think the emotional fluctuations in Hereditary are so extreme as not to be ‘believable’.
Now, I’m also thinking that taking on those kinds of subjects requires incredible levels of skill which most directors don’t have (and those that do won’t touch these themes with a ten foot pole). No wonder ‘extreme’ films usually fail commercially and critically; narratives like WAZ, for example, are pretty original and aim to explore the ‘unlikely’ and the bizarre, so I guess they don’t resonate with many people and that, in turn, leads one to conclude that they don’t reflect enough of the human experience.
But is that reason enough not to try to portray the truly bizarre? Does it really benefit us as the audience and allow us to get the most out of the film medium if we decide we ‘shouldn’t accept’ irrationality/inconsistency in characters?
Last edited by AgrippinaX; 07-09-21 at 04:35 AM.