[Rob Instigator]

Metaphor is words used to stand for something else, and I just am very specific and literal minded when it comes to words/language. (why I hate magical realism, blech). symbols are visual. They are open-ended, and change depending on the viewer.

I love The Old Man & The Sea for the gripping tale it is, for the spare language, for the insight intgo the motivations of an old fisherman fighting one last great fight, but I could give a flying fuck about the metaphors that every literary review tries to imply are evident in the tale...



The movie was very good looking, and skillfully directed, but I found the "story" to be light, basic, and unnecessarily padded/long.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

Metaphor is words used to stand for something else, and I just am very specific and literal minded when it comes to words/language. (why I hate magical realism, blech). symbols are visual. They are open-ended, and change depending on the viewer.

I love The Old Man & The Sea for the gripping tale it is, for the spare language, for the insight intgo the motivations of an old fisherman fighting one last great fight, but I could give a flying fuck about the metaphors that every literary review tries to imply are evident in the tale...



The movie was very good looking, and skillfully directed, but I found the "story" to be light, basic, and unnecessarily padded/long.

right, old man and the sea is very straightforward and has mainly one character-- with the boy being a sort of accessory to the plot. and a single "idea" behind it, the struggle-to-the-death. kill in order to live sort of thing. very straightforward.

mud has lots of characters and layers and it's really two main themes. one is the epic scale of changing river life making its mark upon individuals (hence, not navel gazer, cuz epic is the opposite). the other is the inadequate teenage notion of romantic love (in this case, potential navel-gazing, but the boy wakes up).

if you like literature then mark twain is one of the purported sources here. tom/huck/the river/the fugitive/etc

btw if you liked old man and the sea it looks to me that you might really like "all is lost". i haven't seen it yet but was recommended to me by a friend and it looks right up your alley. one of the main features as i recall described to me is no words spoken in it. so maybe check it out.

[!@#$%!]

peckinpah's "the wild bunch". original director's cut. on blu-ray.

right now i think there is no better movie ever made. from the opening credits to the very last sequence.

maybe tomorrow that impression will fade, but not today.

the full cut is simply FANTASTIC. makes for an even better film-- really complete this way. great dialogue. everything. EVERYTHING.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

peckinpah's "the wild bunch". original director's cut. on blu-ray.

right now i think there is no better movie ever made. from the opening credits to the very last sequence.

maybe tomorrow that impression will fade, but not today.

the full cut is simply FANTASTIC. makes for an even better film-- really complete this way. great dialogue. everything. EVERYTHING.

Yeah. Brilliant film. The last Western, and all that. I often wonder who made the better Westerns: Ford or Peckinpah. Ford probably made the better films but purely in terms of Westerns I increasingly think it has to be Peckinpah.

Meanwhile, finally watched Woman in Black last night. Excellent movie, and unusually scary for a Hammer film. I've always loved Hammer but they never actually scared me. This one really got to me. Let's hope Hammer v2.0 can keep this up.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Yeah. Brilliant film. The last Western, and all that. I often wonder who made the better Westerns: Ford or Peckinpah. Ford probably made the better films but purely in terms of Westerns I increasingly think it has to be Peckinpah.

Meanwhile, finally watched Woman in Black last night. Excellent movie, and unusually scary for a Hammer film. I've always loved Hammer but they never actually scared me. This one really got to me. Let's hope Hammer v2.0 can keep this up.

ideologically i like ford very little. visually/technically he made incredible stuff. but he's more of a different century-- he's naive, he seems to believe in rah rah america and manifest destiny. he's great but i see his movies as a dated cultural artifact. even searchers where he supposedly criticizes western stereotypes... i kind of don't think so. i read it as "these are the ugly men we have in the frontier SO THAT we can have our nice homes." bit like jack nicholson's dialogue in "a few good men."

wild bunch is more of a.... am i going to say this?... an existentialist movie. he deals in death and absurdity-- not just absurd situations but in the absurdity of human cruelty... those children, damn. (and i've seen the same children outside of a movie).

this comes through much more clearly in the director's cut than in the versions i saw before. the ones before look like a bit of squib porn-- i mean, magnificent vilence, but mostly violence. this one is... wow... philosophical. i have no other word for that. i don't know if i just saw it in the right moment or it's after seeing it so many times but yesterday it was like every line of dialogue, every shot, every character, every plot point opened up completely.

when i see a ford movie i'm amazed in part but i also say "oh, corny old times." THIS cut of wild bunch is... doesn't need translation/interpretation/transposition/hermeneutics. it's just. wow.

the other cuts of this movie should be burned out of existence so that nobody is ever misled again into thinking that it was a glorification of violence. it isn't. this is not "pulp fiction." damn damn damn. this movie is something else. after a few days maybe my mind will settle and i'll see it more clinically, but today... wow.

...

i think i haven't seen woman in black... will have to look that up

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

ideologically i like ford very little. visually/technically he made incredible stuff. but he's more of a different century-- he's naive, he seems to believe in rah rah america and manifest destiny. he's great but i see his movies as a dated cultural artifact. even searchers where he supposedly criticizes western stereotypes... i kind of don't think so. i read it as "these are the ugly men we have in the frontier SO THAT we can have our nice homes." bit like jack nicholson's dialogue in "a few good men."

I don't disagree, I just have less of a problem with it, perhaps because I'm not an American so don't have to deal with the reality of Ford's ideological crap on a day-to-day basis.

wild bunch is more of a.... am i going to say this?... an existentialist movie. he deals in death and absurdity-- not just absurd situations but in the absurdity of human cruelty... those children, damn. (and i've seen the same children outside of a movie).

I wouldn't say it's any more existential than The Searchers and in many ways, in spite of Ford's and Peckinpah's political differences, even their ultimate message is similar - albeit coming from quite different perspectives.

i think i haven't seen woman in black... will have to look that up

It's very good. On the surface it feels like the older Hammer stuff but definitely not a pastiche. And far darker than anything from the Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing era.

[confusion is next]

 

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by confusion is next

 

what's that? and is it any good?

Originally Posted by demonrail666

I wouldn't say it's any more existential than The Searchers and in many ways, in spite of Ford's and Peckinpah's political differences, even their ultimate message is similar - albeit coming from quite different perspectives.

this i don't see. could you please elaborate a bit? i mean about the ultimate message.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

this i don't see. could you please elaborate a bit? i mean about the ultimate message.

Just the idea that the cowboy/outlaw had become outdated. But where Ford, as you say, saw them as having a fundamental role in founding a civilisation, Peckinpah seems to have seen them as only standing in its way, and only made obsolete by another kind of violence. Or something like that.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Just the idea that the cowboy/outlaw had become outdated. But where Ford, as you say, saw them as having a fundamental role in founding a civilisation, Peckinpah seems to have seen them as only standing in its way, and only made obsolete by another kind of violence. Or something like that.

yeah. yes.

that i see as more of a premise than a conclusion though.

i think for me the key in wild bunch is when dutch gets mad at thornton for giving his world to a railroad. and repeats furiously that what's important it's not your word-- "it's who you give it to! it's who you give it to!"

i got that with my spine

and it's about the freedom to choose your loyalties. which in the case of the gorches has to be forced upon them but in the end they get it.

see where i see both directors at different ends is how the trope of the outdated cowboy in ford serves as a call to serve whatever institution for the greater glory of some sort of legal fiction with claims of immortality beyond the individual. whereas in wild bunch where pike declares "we don't share a lot of views with our government" it serves more as a call to the individual to choose their own path in an absurd and chaotic hell in which everything is doomed to die brutally and get eaten by buzzards and/or machines and machine people. and in the end thornton watches the buzzards and he even smiles and sort of accepts this is where he is.

funny thing imdb says wild bunch is "bitter," but whoever wrote that does not get how in the closing sequence everyone is recalled by their laughter. and it's not a bitter laugh but a life-affirming human thing of being able to laugh in the face of the abyss which we but not the animals can see. and i find that to be an absolutely lovely thing and much more essential than any cause that has a flag. what people have been missing about wild bunch is the part that rises above the violence and brutality and is really beautiful.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

see where i see both directors at different ends is how the trope of the outdated cowboy in ford serves as a call to serve whatever institution for the greater glory of some sort of legal fiction with claims of immortality beyond the individual.

Ford definitely sees the cowboy as serving a greater good (civilisation: law; government; church; family; towns) then disappearing once that greater good is in place. It runs through all his westerns. So while there's lots of blurring of boundaries, it seems that Peckinpah represents a modern vision (emphasising social alienation) while Ford represents a classical one (emphasising social harmony). For me, Ford's treatment of his subject is more profound than Peckinpah's, even though I'm probably more aligned with Peckinpah's politics. Although not entirely.

[!@#$%!]

right, peckinpah is very modern, very current, which is why no translation necessary. with ford is like "oh, nice-- did people really use to believe those things?"

i don't know what you meant by profound. but wild bunch gets right up there in the face of death. not just the death of the individual but the death of god. it tries to answer the question: how to face the abyss in the absence of god. hence the existential label. to me that's as good as art gets.

wild bunch is a kind of bhagavad gita for atheists. that's where it blows everything else out of the water for me.

[demonrail666]

To say that I find Ford more profound isn't to say that I find Peckinpah lacking in that area. Both filmmakers dealt with epic subjects in epic ways. Although your saying that Ford is like "oh, nice-- did people really used to believe those things?", you could argue that your political establishment still fights elections on the very same ideology that Ford reflected in his westerns. The drive to democratise the middle east and depose dictators is perfectly in line with the logic of a film like Liberty Valence. What Peckinpah tapped into is a more countercultural set of ideas which Ford obviously didn't, but outside of its liberal hotbeds, and from the outside looking in, I'd say massive sections of the US are still pretty Fordian. As you say, the Wild Bunch is 'a kind of bhagavad gita for modern atheists'. Maybe, but there are a helluva lot of Americans who aren't. I suspect you've got a lot more who, as Ford did, see the church as a progressive, unifying institution.

[!@#$%!]

yeah a megaton of americans live by such fordian values for sure. i'd say still the majority outside of big cities. they'd love john wayne as president (but they only got reagan).

i edited out "modern" from atheists because the honor and loyalty of pike's bunch is very much an anachronism in our narcissistic times-- hell, it's even portrayed as an anachronism of its times. but the atheist part remains, which is why it's still, well, modern, and valid ha ha ha.

but im still asking (in earnest, not to shoot it down) what you meant by profound. i don't know what you mean in this context. going by googable dictionary it's either intense or insightful. you mean ford had a greater insight into the questions his films asked? or into his characters? or do you mean it has more intense emotions?

[confusion is next]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

what's that? and is it any good?

yeah i liked...a nice french comedy to put you in a good mood...here the synopsis :

Michel, passionate about jazz, has just discovered a rare album that he dreams to listen quietly in his living room. But the world seems to have conspired against him, his wife just chose that moment to make her untimely revelation, his son shows up unexpectedly, one of his friends is knocking on the door, while his mother keeps calling him on his mobile. Not to mention the fact that it's today the famous Neighbours' Day. Manipulator, liar, Michel is desperate to have peace. Is it still possible today to have an hour of peace?

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by confusion is next

yeah i liked...a nice french comedy to put you in a good mood...here the synopsis :

Michel, passionate about jazz, has just discovered a rare album that he dreams to listen quietly in his living room. But the world seems to have conspired against him, his wife just chose that moment to make her untimely revelation, his son shows up unexpectedly, one of his friends is knocking on the door, while his mother keeps calling him on his mobile. Not to mention the fact that it's today the famous Neighbours' Day. Manipulator, liar, Michel is desperate to have peace. Is it still possible today to have an hour of peace?

ah ha ha ha. i wanna see that. thanks!

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

but im still asking (in earnest, not to shoot it down) what you meant by profound. i don't know what you mean in this context. going by googable dictionary it's either intense or insightful. you mean ford had a greater insight into the questions his films asked? or into his characters? or do you mean it has more intense emotions?

Well I'd say it offers profound insight into the character of a man faced with having to decide between doing what he feels is right, for him, and what he believes is right, for society. It's unusual for a Western in that its notion of heroism is tied to one of personal compromise, although it's a theme that to a greater or lesser degree runs through all of Ford's Westerns. Peckinpah seems more clear-cut and dare I say conventional in comparison.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Well I'd say it offers profound insight into the character of a man faced with having to decide between doing what he feels is right, for him, and what he believes is right, for society. It's unusual for a Western in that its notion of heroism is tied to one of personal compromise, although it's a theme that to a greater or lesser degree runs through all of Ford's Westerns. Peckinpah seems more clear-cut and dare I say conventional in comparison.

aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh...

that makes a lot of sense

thanks!

and yes, in the sense that ford's characters are better constructed-- he's more "theatrical", but in a good sense, that theatre is about characters and so are his movies.

in peckinpah-- well at least in the wild bunch-- the characters are more like-- cipers at the service of a great idea. "here's this horrible world, here are the people in it" they're more like, devices to advance a world view. the drama is outside, not so much at a personal level. it's more like, force a collides with force b is detoured on force c, etc. impersonal in a way.

yes.

whereas ford's characters are more, well, "human."

it's a bit of the old kubrick discussion we've been having, isn't it? i mean, similar...

i'll have to mull it over a bit longer... but i think i see what you're saying and you're right about that. ford's characters have more depth in themselves. it's more drama. whereas peckinpah is more old epic-- a bit like the illiad.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

in peckinpah-- well at least in the wild bunch-- the characters are more like-- cipers at the service of a great idea. "here's this horrible world, here are the people in it" they're more like, devices to advance a world view. the drama is outside, not so much at a personal level. it's more like, force a collides with force b is detoured on force c, etc. impersonal in a way.

Exactly, Peckinpah's characters seem more like chess pieces, which I don't necessarily see as a fault, especially when you bring Kubrick into the debate.
Peckinpah, while in many ways similar to Kubrick, didn't make the mistake that I think Kubrick often did, of choosing films that actually demanded a more human, psychologically complex approach (Eyes Wide Shut, The Shining). Peckinpah chose or adapted projects that worked to his strengths. He evidently wasn't that interested in psychology, whereas Kubrick evidently was. He just wasn't very good at handling it.

Although I'll always say that Slim Pickens' death in Pat Garrett is one of the most quietly moving, human moments in any Western.

And yet Ford could hint at an entire subplot with just a look and a sip of coffee. Just watch Ward Bond's face when Wayne takes the coat. That's what I mean by profound! It probably better defines Ford's genius than any gunfight. We can (rightly) praise Bond as a great actor but it takes a special director to see it, stay on it, and let a simple look tell its own story. And without the overkill of a close up.

[!@#$%!]

yes. ford does that. he's more about human relationships. searchers is really all about that.

peckinpah is more about death. what to do in the face of it. that's where he gets me-- it's one of my major preoccupations in life. is peckinpah a more skilled director of actors than ford? of course not. but his view of the world is just exactly where it matters to me.

i was jsut reading about him adn i saw that he got involved in zen while he was with the marines in china. and i can totally see that in the wild bunch-- not just the way the wild bunch operates like a military platoon. but the buddhist idea that the world is made of suffering, which can't be avoidd, and we're hurling inexorably towards old age, illness, and death. and i can relate to that in a very essential way. that speaks to me completely.

i was thinking of that watching thornton when he contemplates the bounty hunters pillage the corpses and take away his friends. he's okay with the world-- he sees things as they are and he smiles. it's all okay. he accepts it all. he doesn't get outraged by the desecration of a corpse-- it's just a corpse, and he lets them go. he doesn't get worked up over representations or symbolism. he has quit working for the railroad and he lets the "egg-sucking gutter trash" leave undisturbed-- he's not an angry old testament god about to punish the wicked for their wickedness.

also when dutch makes fun of wanting to have a funeral for their dead comrades, at the beginning-- "i want church service, and then i want a nice dinner with the choir..." his noblest characters see things as they are, without getting lost in representations, and operate from necessity.

ford is a christian-- not sure if a paracticing one, but his outlook clearly reflects that. that's where i can say, wow, what amazing craft, butin the end it doesn't punch me in the gut.

i know it's reductionist to peg peckinpah's work as "buddhist". i wouldn't say that defines his art. but i can totally see his "metaphysics"--a lot more than just politics-- much along those lines.

the more i think about it, the more i believe peckinpah wasn't about "ultraviolence"-- it was more about having his eyes wide open to life's basic realities and not wanting to look away from them. MOST works of art will flee to ideas, to mythologies, to ideals, but this fucker did not flinch one bit. not one bit. he kept staring.

--

ps please don't let my terrible typing distract. been writing upside down with my thumbs all day so i've been involutnarily spelling like a moron.