list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around The Rules of the Game on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/The_Rules_of_the_Game/29641/default.aspx Title: The Rules of the Game
Year: 1939
Director: Jean Renoir
Plot: Now often cited as one of the greatest films ever made, Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu/Rules of the Game was not warmly received on its original release in 1939: audiences at its opening engagements in Paris were openly hostile, responding to the film with shouts of derision, and distributors cut the movie from 113 minutes to a mere 80. It was banned as morally perilous during the German occupation and the original negative was destroyed during WWII. It wasn't until 1956 that Renoir was able to restore the film to its original length. In retrospect, this reaction seems both puzzling and understandable; at its heart, Rules of the Game is a very moral film about frequently amoral people. A comedy of manners whose wit only occasionally betrays its more serious intentions, it contrasts the romantic entanglements of rich and poor during a weekend at a country estate. André Jurieu (Roland Toutain), a French aviation hero, has fallen in love with Christine de la Chesnaye (Nora Gregor), who is married to wealthy aristocrat Marquis Robert de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio). Robert, however, has a mistress of his own, whom he invites to a weekend hunting party at his country home, along with André and his friend Octave (played by Jean Renoir himself). Meanwhile, the hired help have their own game of musical beds going on: a poacher is hired to work as a servant at the estate and immediately makes plans to seduce the gamekeeper's wife, while the gamekeeper recognizes him only as the man who's been trying to steal his rabbits. Among the upper classes, infidelity is not merely accepted but expected; codes are breached not by being unfaithful, but by lacking the courtesy to lie about it in public. The weekend ends in a tragedy that suggests that this way of life may soon be coming to an end. Renoir's witty, acidic screenplay makes none of the characters heroes or villains, and his graceful handling of his cast is well served by his visual style. He tells his story with long, uninterrupted takes using deep focus (cinematographer Jean Bachelet proves a worthy collaborator here), following the action with a subtle rhythm that never calls attention to itself. The sharply-cut hunting sequence makes clear that Renoir avoided more complex editing schemes by choice, believing that long takes created a more lifelike rhythm and reduced the manipulations of over-editing. Rules of the Game uses WWI as an allegory for WWII, and its representation of a vanishing way of life soon became all too true for Renoir himself, who, within a year of the film's release, was forced to leave Europe for the United States.. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 9
Number of Lists: 34
Number of blog posts: 6
Number of discussion threads: 10
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:44:12 GMTThe Rules of the Game1939Jean RenoirNow often cited as one of the greatest films ever made, <a href="/players/P___107981/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Jean Renoir</a>'s La Règle du jeu/<a href=/films/29641/default.aspx style='text-decoration:underline'>Rules of the Game</a> was not warmly received on its original release in 1939: audiences at its opening engagements in Paris were openly hostile, responding to the film with shouts of derision, and distributors cut the movie from 113 minutes to a mere 80. It was banned as morally perilous during the German occupation and the original negative was destroyed during WWII. It wasn't until 1956 that Renoir was able to restore the film to its original length. In retrospect, this reaction seems both puzzling and understandable; at its heart, <a href=/films/29641/default.aspx style='text-decoration:underline'>Rules of the Game</a> is a very moral film about frequently amoral people. A comedy of manners whose wit only occasionally betrays its more serious intentions, it contrasts the romantic entanglements of rich and poor during a weekend at a country estate. André Jurieu (Roland Toutain), a French aviation hero, has fallen in love with Christine de la Chesnaye (<a href="/players/P____28650/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Nora Gregor</a>), who is married to wealthy aristocrat Marquis Robert de la Chesnaye (<a href="/players/P____16657/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Marcel Dalio</a>). Robert, however, has a mistress of his own, whom he invites to a weekend hunting party at his country home, along with André and his friend Octave (played by <a href="/players/P___107981/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Jean Renoir</a> himself). Meanwhile, the hired help have their own game of musical beds going on: a poacher is hired to work as a servant at the estate and immediately makes plans to seduce the gamekeeper's wife, while the gamekeeper recognizes him only as the man who's been trying to steal his rabbits. Among the upper classes, infidelity is not merely accepted but expected; codes are breached not by being unfaithful, but by lacking the courtesy to lie about it in public. The weekend ends in a tragedy that suggests that this way of life may soon be coming to an end. Renoir's witty, acidic screenplay makes none of the characters heroes or villains, and his graceful handling of his cast is well served by his visual style. He tells his story with long, uninterrupted takes using deep focus (cinematographer <a href="/players/P___158189/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Jean Bachelet</a> proves a worthy collaborator here), following the action with a subtle rhythm that never calls attention to itself. The sharply-cut hunting sequence makes clear that Renoir avoided more complex editing schemes by choice, believing that long takes created a more lifelike rhythm and reduced the manipulations of over-editing. <a href=/films/29641/default.aspx style='text-decoration:underline'>Rules of the Game</a> uses WWI as an allegory for WWII, and its representation of a vanishing way of life soon became all too true for Renoir himself, who, within a year of the film's release, was forced to leave Europe for the United States.. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide9Taggedy Taggged (6-10)346103http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/t36810y6env.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/The_Rules_of_the_Game/29641/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/groups/Weekly_Theme/Re_Weekly_Theme_for_February_2_Scandalous/625/40446/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: csprague
Post To: Weekly Theme
Post Date: 2/13/2009 3:36:41 PM
Body: [quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="seely"] [quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="seely"] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...? [/quote] Did you watch the audio commentary or any of the special features or read any of the additional material in the Criterion Collection edition of The Rules of the Game? After going through all that I had a much better understanding and appreciation for why this movie has often been considered the greatest film of all time. [/quote] I admittedly did not. I have mixed feelings about director commentary/special features adding "value" to a film. One part of me feels like a film should be accessible without needing explanation as to why its a good film, or why it was filmed in a certain manner. [/quote] It's essiential if the film was made in a different country or era? How would a filmmaker know how to make a film accessible to a totally different culture and future era that he could not be familiar with or intending his film for?? Do you think a lot of your specifically American movies that you love would be understood as well in some other cultures around the world? Have you ever watched British comedy and only thought it was funny after you learned all of the slang or political or cultural issuees of the time? Also, you may find the Bible compelling on it's own in most translations, but if you've ever done a Bible study or heard a sermon that really explains the history and culture of the Jewish people or the context of any given book of the Bible, or the meanings of the original Hebrew or Greek words you will know that trying to understand the Bible in our modern day culture with just any single English translation is missing some really important things! This is going to be true for any book, so why not for movies as well??? [/quote] Come on Seely, no response to this? I was curious to hear what you thought. It's a topic that interests me! What does everyone else think. Should we judge a movie based on our initial reaction and impression even if we know little about the context it was originally made in, or should we make an effort to find out more? I'll say honestly that I often do rate movies based on their intial impression they gave me, but if a lot of people are talking the praises of a movie and it seems interesting but not as great as everyone says, I try to find out why, especially if the film is from another location or era. [/quote] I agree, I think we might miss some of the most interesting aspects of older or foreign films if we don't read up on it first or watch the directors commentary. It might have been accessible for people in that particular time and place, but if you know you are outside of that demographic, you might be missing out if you don't use supplementary information.
]]>Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:36:41 GMTcspragueWeekly Theme2/13/2009 3:36:41 PM[quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="seely"] [quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="seely"] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...? [/quote] Did you watch the audio commentary or any of the special features or read any of the additional material in the Criterion Collection edition of The Rules of the Game? After going through all that I had a much better understanding and appreciation for why this movie has often been considered the greatest film of all time. [/quote] I admittedly did not. I have mixed feelings about director commentary/special features adding "value" to a film. One part of me feels like a film should be accessible without needing explanation as to why its a good film, or why it was filmed in a certain manner. [/quote] It's essiential if the film was made in a different country or era? How would a filmmaker know how to make a film accessible to a totally different culture and future era that he could not be familiar with or intending his film for?? Do you think a lot of your specifically American movies that you love would be understood as well in some other cultures around the world? Have you ever watched British comedy and only thought it was funny after you learned all of the slang or political or cultural issuees of the time? Also, you may find the Bible compelling on it's own in most translations, but if you've ever done a Bible study or heard a sermon that really explains the history and culture of the Jewish people or the context of any given book of the Bible, or the meanings of the original Hebrew or Greek words you will know that trying to understand the Bible in our modern day culture with just any single English translation is missing some really important things! This is going to be true for any book, so why not for movies as well??? [/quote] Come on Seely, no response to this? I was curious to hear what you thought. It's a topic that interests me! What does everyone else think. Should we judge a movie based on our initial reaction and impression even if we know little about the context it was originally made in, or should we make an effort to find out more? I'll say honestly that I often do rate movies based on their intial impression they gave me, but if a lot of people are talking the praises of a movie and it seems interesting but not as great as everyone says, I try to find out why, especially if the film is from another location or era. [/quote] I agree, I think we might miss some of the most interesting aspects of older or foreign films if we don't read up on it first or watch the directors commentary. It might have been accessible for people in that particular time and place, but if you know you are outside of that demographic, you might be missing out if you don't use supplementary information. http://www.spout.com/groups/Weekly_Theme/Re_Weekly_Theme_for_February_2_Scandalous/625/40445/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: Risselada
Post To: Weekly Theme
Post Date: 2/13/2009 3:12:12 PM
Body: [quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="seely"] [quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="seely"] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...? [/quote] Did you watch the audio commentary or any of the special features or read any of the additional material in the Criterion Collection edition of The Rules of the Game? After going through all that I had a much better understanding and appreciation for why this movie has often been considered the greatest film of all time. [/quote] I admittedly did not. I have mixed feelings about director commentary/special features adding "value" to a film. One part of me feels like a film should be accessible without needing explanation as to why its a good film, or why it was filmed in a certain manner. [/quote] It's essiential if the film was made in a different country or era? How would a filmmaker know how to make a film accessible to a totally different culture and future era that he could not be familiar with or intending his film for?? Do you think a lot of your specifically American movies that you love would be understood as well in some other cultures around the world? Have you ever watched British comedy and only thought it was funny after you learned all of the slang or political or cultural issuees of the time? Also, you may find the Bible compelling on it's own in most translations, but if you've ever done a Bible study or heard a sermon that really explains the history and culture of the Jewish people or the context of any given book of the Bible, or the meanings of the original Hebrew or Greek words you will know that trying to understand the Bible in our modern day culture with just any single English translation is missing some really important things! This is going to be true for any book, so why not for movies as well??? [/quote] Come on Seely, no response to this? I was curious to hear what you thought. It's a topic that interests me! What does everyone else think. Should we judge a movie based on our initial reaction and impression even if we know little about the context it was originally made in, or should we make an effort to find out more? I'll say honestly that I often do rate movies based on their intial impression they gave me, but if a lot of people are talking the praises of a movie and it seems interesting but not as great as everyone says, I try to find out why, especially if the film is from another location or era.
]]>Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:12:12 GMTRisseladaWeekly Theme2/13/2009 3:12:12 PM[quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="seely"] [quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="seely"] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...? [/quote] Did you watch the audio commentary or any of the special features or read any of the additional material in the Criterion Collection edition of The Rules of the Game? After going through all that I had a much better understanding and appreciation for why this movie has often been considered the greatest film of all time. [/quote] I admittedly did not. I have mixed feelings about director commentary/special features adding "value" to a film. One part of me feels like a film should be accessible without needing explanation as to why its a good film, or why it was filmed in a certain manner. [/quote] It's essiential if the film was made in a different country or era? How would a filmmaker know how to make a film accessible to a totally different culture and future era that he could not be familiar with or intending his film for?? Do you think a lot of your specifically American movies that you love would be understood as well in some other cultures around the world? Have you ever watched British comedy and only thought it was funny after you learned all of the slang or political or cultural issuees of the time? Also, you may find the Bible compelling on it's own in most translations, but if you've ever done a Bible study or heard a sermon that really explains the history and culture of the Jewish people or the context of any given book of the Bible, or the meanings of the original Hebrew or Greek words you will know that trying to understand the Bible in our modern day culture with just any single English translation is missing some really important things! This is going to be true for any book, so why not for movies as well??? [/quote] Come on Seely, no response to this? I was curious to hear what you thought. It's a topic that interests me! What does everyone else think. Should we judge a movie based on our initial reaction and impression even if we know little about the context it was originally made in, or should we make an effort to find out more? I'll say honestly that I often do rate movies based on their intial impression they gave me, but if a lot of people are talking the praises of a movie and it seems interesting but not as great as everyone says, I try to find out why, especially if the film is from another location or era. http://www.spout.com/groups/Weekly_Theme/Re_Weekly_Theme_for_February_2_Scandalous/625/40357/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: Risselada
Post To: Weekly Theme
Post Date: 2/9/2009 4:10:18 PM
Body: [quote user="seely"] [quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="seely"] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...? [/quote] Did you watch the audio commentary or any of the special features or read any of the additional material in the Criterion Collection edition of The Rules of the Game? After going through all that I had a much better understanding and appreciation for why this movie has often been considered the greatest film of all time. [/quote] I admittedly did not. I have mixed feelings about director commentary/special features adding "value" to a film. One part of me feels like a film should be accessible without needing explanation as to why its a good film, or why it was filmed in a certain manner. [/quote] It's essiential if the film was made in a different country or era? How would a filmmaker know how to make a film accessible to a totally different culture and future era that he could not be familiar with or intending his film for?? Do you think a lot of your specifically American movies that you love would be understood as well in some other cultures around the world? Have you ever watched British comedy and only thought it was funny after you learned all of the slang or political or cultural issuees of the time? Also, you may find the Bible compelling on it's own in most translations, but if you've ever done a Bible study or heard a sermon that really explains the history and culture of the Jewish people or the context of any given book of the Bible, or the meanings of the original Hebrew or Greek words you will know that trying to understand the Bible in our modern day culture with just any single English translation is missing some really important things! This is going to be true for any book, so why not for movies as well???
]]>Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:10:18 GMTRisseladaWeekly Theme2/9/2009 4:10:18 PM[quote user="seely"] [quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="seely"] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...? [/quote] Did you watch the audio commentary or any of the special features or read any of the additional material in the Criterion Collection edition of The Rules of the Game? After going through all that I had a much better understanding and appreciation for why this movie has often been considered the greatest film of all time. [/quote] I admittedly did not. I have mixed feelings about director commentary/special features adding "value" to a film. One part of me feels like a film should be accessible without needing explanation as to why its a good film, or why it was filmed in a certain manner. [/quote] It's essiential if the film was made in a different country or era? How would a filmmaker know how to make a film accessible to a totally different culture and future era that he could not be familiar with or intending his film for?? Do you think a lot of your specifically American movies that you love would be understood as well in some other cultures around the world? Have you ever watched British comedy and only thought it was funny after you learned all of the slang or political or cultural issuees of the time? Also, you may find the Bible compelling on it's own in most translations, but if you've ever done a Bible study or heard a sermon that really explains the history and culture of the Jewish people or the context of any given book of the Bible, or the meanings of the original Hebrew or Greek words you will know that trying to understand the Bible in our modern day culture with just any single English translation is missing some really important things! This is going to be true for any book, so why not for movies as well??? http://www.spout.com/groups/Weekly_Theme/Re_Weekly_Theme_for_February_2_Scandalous/625/40311/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: seely
Post To: Weekly Theme
Post Date: 2/6/2009 2:12:35 PM
Body: [quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="seely"] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...? [/quote] Did you watch the audio commentary or any of the special features or read any of the additional material in the Criterion Collection edition of The Rules of the Game? After going through all that I had a much better understanding and appreciation for why this movie has often been considered the greatest film of all time. [/quote] I admittedly did not. I have mixed feelings about director commentary/special features adding "value" to a film. One part of me feels like a film should be accessible without needing explanation as to why its a good film, or why it was filmed in a certain manner.
]]>Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:12:35 GMTseelyWeekly Theme2/6/2009 2:12:35 PM[quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="seely"] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...? [/quote] Did you watch the audio commentary or any of the special features or read any of the additional material in the Criterion Collection edition of The Rules of the Game? After going through all that I had a much better understanding and appreciation for why this movie has often been considered the greatest film of all time. [/quote] I admittedly did not. I have mixed feelings about director commentary/special features adding "value" to a film. One part of me feels like a film should be accessible without needing explanation as to why its a good film, or why it was filmed in a certain manner. http://www.spout.com/groups/Weekly_Theme/Re_Weekly_Theme_for_February_2_Scandalous/625/40258/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: joem18b
Post To: Weekly Theme
Post Date: 2/4/2009 6:15:44 PM
Body: [quote user="seely"] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...? [/quote] As I wrote recently, I think that watching the movie second-half-first helps it too.
]]>Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:15:44 GMTjoem18bWeekly Theme2/4/2009 6:15:44 PM[quote user="seely"] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...? [/quote] As I wrote recently, I think that watching the movie second-half-first helps it too. http://www.spout.com/groups/Weekly_Theme/Re_Weekly_Theme_for_February_2_Scandalous/625/40253/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: Risselada
Post To: Weekly Theme
Post Date: 2/4/2009 5:28:54 PM
Body: [quote user="seely"] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...? [/quote] Did you watch the audio commentary or any of the special features or read any of the additional material in the Criterion Collection edition of The Rules of the Game? After going through all that I had a much better understanding and appreciation for why this movie has often been considered the greatest film of all time.
]]>Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:28:54 GMTRisseladaWeekly Theme2/4/2009 5:28:54 PM[quote user="seely"] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...? [/quote] Did you watch the audio commentary or any of the special features or read any of the additional material in the Criterion Collection edition of The Rules of the Game? After going through all that I had a much better understanding and appreciation for why this movie has often been considered the greatest film of all time. http://www.spout.com/groups/Weekly_Theme/Re_Weekly_Theme_for_February_2_Scandalous/625/40199/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: seely
Post To: Weekly Theme
Post Date: 2/3/2009 1:11:21 PM
Body: [quote user="mercurial"] Many younger people today find it hard to watch "old" black and white films because they feel that they cannot relate to the subject matter. They feel the mores and ideals called in to question are usually ridiculous and hard to imagine because nowadays the social norm has changed. The scandals of decades long since passed no longer have the same shock value of that which is thought of scandalous today. What films centering around a scandal and its coverup / revelation do you find convincing? Which are just awkward and not worth the film they're shot on? [/quote] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...?
]]>Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:11:21 GMTseelyWeekly Theme2/3/2009 1:11:21 PM[quote user="mercurial"] Many younger people today find it hard to watch "old" black and white films because they feel that they cannot relate to the subject matter. They feel the mores and ideals called in to question are usually ridiculous and hard to imagine because nowadays the social norm has changed. The scandals of decades long since passed no longer have the same shock value of that which is thought of scandalous today. What films centering around a scandal and its coverup / revelation do you find convincing? Which are just awkward and not worth the film they're shot on? [/quote] Right away, your first sentences brought to mind Rules of the Game which we recently watched here at Spout. I am someone who generally appreciates older films, but I found the plot and characters of this one very alienating and hard to relate to. The film was a bit difficult for me to follow as well, as apparently everyone in the late 1930's looked exactly alike. I don't know, maybe its just too hard for me to relate to early/mid century French aristocrats...? http://www.spout.com/groups/Community_Recommendations/Re_Movies_Spout_Needs_to_Watch/643/39535/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: Risselada
Post To: Community Recommendations
Post Date: 1/14/2009 3:11:06 PM
Body: [quote user="csprague"] [quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="csprague"] So, every week at Spout we watch a movie and discuss it. Sounds fun, no? Well, it is. However, selecting the movie every week is not without it's challenges and as the lucky person who fills up our queue, I feel a lot of pressure to meet several requirements that often seem conflicting. 1) The movie needs to be one which we would not normally watch. The point is to be stretched outside of our movie comfort zone. 2) If you pick a really tough movie that ends in a really uncomfortable way every week, people will stop coming to watch. 3) There is a wide spectrum of movie preferences/tolerances present at Spout. We aren't all the movie freaks that you would expect. Many of us consider ourselves to be fairly average in our movie knowledge and preferences. Often, watching something with subtitles can seem like a challenge. 4) It needs to be short. We can't spend more then 2 hours on a movie out of our work day. So yeah, we are looking for short/normal length movies that will stretch us, but won't make the average movie goer want to run and hide every week at movie time. I greatly anticipate your suggestions. the unpopular movie-picker, Christi [/quote] Do you have a list of everything you've watched so far? And even better, to go along with the list, which selections seemed to be the most successful? [/quote] Here's a list of all the movies we have watched so far: http://www.spout.com/films/1287614/ViewFilmList.aspx The popular stuff was either the fun documentaries like Just for Kicks or Wordplay, or classics like It's a Wonderful Life. The Unpopular stuff was I'm Not There, Being There, and The Rules of the Game. [/quote] Thanks. Here are the first two movies that popped into my head with those qualifications The Devil and Daniel Webster - a classic1) I doubt many people have seen it. I would consider it a "classic" but even many people who watch a lot of older movies or classics may not have seen it.2) There's nothing that will make people too uncomfortable. But it does certainly allow for a lot of reflection.3) No subtitles4) Runtime: 107 minutesLike It's a Wonderful Life it has supernatural elements and lessons learned. Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story - a fun documentary1) Not many people have even heard of this one2) There's a lot of fun quirky people in this. Nothing that will keep people from coming back.3) No subtitles, except for a few fun sing-a-longs4) Only 58 minutes long!I just watched this one recently. It's quite fun! I actually love The Rules of the Game, but I didn't as much the first time I watched it. I would recommend to anyone not sold on it to listen to the commentary and watch all of the special features on the Criterion Collection DVD set. You will get a better understanding why this is often called the greatest movie ever made. I also liked Being There, but it wasn't necessarily my absolute favorite. I think it takes a certain kind of appreciation. I'll give some more suggestions later if you'd like
]]>Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:11:06 GMTRisseladaCommunity Recommendations1/14/2009 3:11:06 PM[quote user="csprague"] [quote user="Risselada"] [quote user="csprague"] So, every week at Spout we watch a movie and discuss it. Sounds fun, no? Well, it is. However, selecting the movie every week is not without it's challenges and as the lucky person who fills up our queue, I feel a lot of pressure to meet several requirements that often seem conflicting. 1) The movie needs to be one which we would not normally watch. The point is to be stretched outside of our movie comfort zone. 2) If you pick a really tough movie that ends in a really uncomfortable way every week, people will stop coming to watch. 3) There is a wide spectrum of movie preferences/tolerances present at Spout. We aren't all the movie freaks that you would expect. Many of us consider ourselves to be fairly average in our movie knowledge and preferences. Often, watching something with subtitles can seem like a challenge. 4) It needs to be short. We can't spend more then 2 hours on a movie out of our work day. So yeah, we are looking for short/normal length movies that will stretch us, but won't make the average movie goer want to run and hide every week at movie time. I greatly anticipate your suggestions. the unpopular movie-picker, Christi [/quote] Do you have a list of everything you've watched so far? And even better, to go along with the list, which selections seemed to be the most successful? [/quote] Here's a list of all the movies we have watched so far: http://www.spout.com/films/1287614/ViewFilmList.aspx The popular stuff was either the fun documentaries like Just for Kicks or Wordplay, or classics like It's a Wonderful Life. The Unpopular stuff was I'm Not There, Being There, and The Rules of the Game. [/quote] Thanks. Here are the first two movies that popped into my head with those qualifications The Devil and Daniel Webster - a classic1) I doubt many people have seen it. I would consider it a "classic" but even many people who watch a lot of older movies or classics may not have seen it.2) There's nothing that will make people too uncomfortable. But it does certainly allow for a lot of reflection.3) No subtitles4) Runtime: 107 minutesLike It's a Wonderful Life it has supernatural elements and lessons learned. Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story - a fun documentary1) Not many people have even heard of this one2) There's a lot of fun quirky people in this. Nothing that will keep people from coming back.3) No subtitles, except for a few fun sing-a-longs4) Only 58 minutes long!I just watched this one recently. It's quite fun! I actually love The Rules of the Game, but I didn't as much the first time I watched it. I would recommend to anyone not sold on it to listen to the commentary and watch all of the special features on the Criterion Collection DVD set. You will get a better understanding why this is often called the greatest movie ever made. I also liked Being There, but it wasn't necessarily my absolute favorite. I think it takes a certain kind of appreciation. I'll give some more suggestions later if you'd like http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/11/19/37441.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 11/19/2008 1:01:04 PM
Body: Unemployment is about to get even worse now that Citigroup has announced it will cut 52,000 jobs early next year. And falsely reported news of a killing in Santa Clara, California (the shooter was fired, not laid off) only adds to the bleak atmosphere surrounding the already upsetting job market. But while desperate times may lead to desperate measures, it’s vital for us to remember what we learned from the films of the 1930s, when the Great Depression caused a nearly 25% rate of unemployment (we’re currently at 6.5%). Hopeful stories of upward mobility and implausible solutions were popular at the time, though many of them had downsides or inspired the desire for unlikely prospects. Still, there was some guidance to be found buried within the fantasies of Hollywood, and SpoutBlog has compiled this handy list to help you make the right choices during your current or imminent joblessness. Film: Little Caesar (1931) Tip: Dancing is ultimately more lucrative than crime. We learned over and over from films in the 1930s that crime doesn’t pay, and with Little Caesar we learned the additional tip that if you’re going to be a cocky, power-hungry little jerk with leadership goals, you better have the balls to back up your bite. However, the best advice acquired from Francis Edward Faragoh and Robert N. Lee’s Oscar-nominated screenplay is that life as a dancer is a much better career path than that of a gangster. Sure, there may be a few dangers if your gig is at a mob-run club or if your former best friend is your boss’ rival, a la the conflict between Joe (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and Rico (Edward G. Robinson) in Mervyn LeRoy’s film. But unlike your old buddy, who will literally die in a gutter, you might find wealth, stardom and love. Worst-case scenario, you don’t become rich and famous but you get a job teaching little kids at a dance studio in suburbia. Whereas there’s no such thing as a crime studio. Film: Trouble in Paradise (1932) Tip: Falling for your mark, and/or your boss, is fine as long as you get a bonus out of it and then return to your true love It’s clear from the start that fellow pickpockets Gaston (Herbert Marshall) and Lily (Miriam Hopkins) are made for each other. Yet when the duo acquire jobs working for the wealthy perfumer Madame Colet (Kay Francis) in a scheme to con her out of her money, Gaston goes and complicates things by developing feelings for his new employer/mark. Fortunately, after dipping his hands into both her purses (oh the innuendo!), he comes away with the jackpot and is able to fall back into place with his equal. Getting a job where you’re partially a gigolo can be rewarding in terms of special perks, both sexual and financial, but ultimately a relationship between employee and employer is difficult, especially if there’s a real class clash involved. So get in quick, get out on top and find a nice girl with whom you’ve got more in common. Film: King Kong (1933) Tip: If you’re cast in a film, make sure it’s a local production. Tons of unemployed people turn to showbiz as a solution to their situation, and a quick glance on Craigslist reveals plenty of calls for film and TV extras. But be wary, because if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And be suspicious of “directors” who approach you on the street offering you the role of a lifetime. It’s possible the guy’s a real Hollywood player like Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong), but it’s also possible that the gig will bring you to a remote island where you’ll attract the largest stalker ever imagined. In the end, you might actually become a big star, just like Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), but by then many will have paid for your social status with their lives, and you’ll have to live with the guilt. So when answering ads looking for actors, don’t get on any boats headed to far off places. Stick to locally shot films, on which you’re likely to experience fewer dangers and meet fewer giant apes. Film: Lady for a Day (1933) Tip: Don’t lie to your family about being underemployed, because you’ll just wind up more depressed. Apple Annie (May Robson) ends up getting away with her masquerade, in which she convinces her daughter that she’s a well-to-do socialite rather than a poor fruit peddler, but at what cost? Now she’s lied to her child and, worse, given herself a taste of the good life, a high from which she must come down. And with that perspective in mind she’s surely going to hate her true social place even more. So if you’re underemployed, don’t lie about it, not even to your parents. Best circumstance, they help you out a little with your finances. Worst circumstance, you feel even more depressed about your situation and you take your own life — whether literally or, like Annie, figuratively. Plus, if your parents do end up finding out the truth, they’ll be more disappointed with you than they would have been if told the truth all along. Film: Triumph of the Will (1935) Tip: Don’t work for a mad, genocidal dictator unless you want the association to follow you to your grave. Leni Riefenstahl may have denied having full allegiance to Hitler and the Nazis, but she’ll forever be known as the director who helped propagandize the party right up until the beginning of World War II. And to many that makes her one of the bad guys. Whether she’s truly guilty by association, her kind of situation is constantly a topic of ethical debate. Maybe working for later-exposed criminals will keep you from getting elected one day. Maybe working for evil emperors will get you blown up while doing contract work on a giant space station. Either way, it’s best to do as much of a background check on your potential bosses as they’re doing on you. Film: Modern Times (1936) Tip: Don’t be a slave to the machines, or one day they’ll enslave you. That sounds like advice to be gotten from The Matrix, but that film’s dystopia is precisely the kind of future Chaplin was warning about. So much of the imagery in this film consists of workers depending on machines, either to help do the job or feed them, and workers being trapped in machines, figuratively enslaved by them. If you end up getting a job on the internet, and that’s more and more likely to be your best shot at employment these days, you’ll understand Chaplin’s fears better than he could ever have imagined. Film: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) Tip: Breaking into a rich man’s home will likely get you a job. It’s thanks to a desperate little farmer that the newly rich Deeds (Gary Cooper) decides to divvy up his millions and donate plots of land to the poor. And the gun-wielding intruder doesn’t get thrown in jail; he becomes one of the many who are eligible for some of that free acreage. Hollywood pipe dream, sure, but the concept also seemed to work outside of American cinema. In Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, a man (Julien Carette) is caught trespassing on a wealthy estate and he’s offered a job. However, it may not be necessary to actually commit the crime of breaking and entering to get the attention of potential beneficiaries and employers. In Renoir’s Boudu Saved From Drowning the titular bum is merely witnessed attempting suicide in the Seine (though in Paul Mazursky’s ‘80s remake, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, the bum is also an intruder). And in My Man Godfrey the titular bum is plucked out of the trash and eventually brought home and employed as a butler. Which brings up the next tip. Film: My Man Godfrey (1936) Tip: If forced to become a servant, don’t steal the boss’ daughter’s necklace, pawn it and then gamble with the money made in order to further improve your situation, because only William Powell is good enough to get away with it. You are not as smooth as William Powell; it’s just not possible. So, while he (and his character, Godfrey) is able to come out of this film on top, in the same situation you would more than likely end up back on the garbage heap (without a nightclub built on the spot, that is). Firstly, he’s able to charm the socialite Irene (Carole Lombard) enough to escape homelessness, acquire a position as her family’s butler and eventually win her heart. Secondly, when Irene’s bitter sister, Cornelia (Gail Patrick), attempts to frame him as a necklace nabber, he beats her at her game and follows through to win out even more. What he does with the jewelry, though, would still get most people arrested, even if the ends do justify the means. Never do as Powell does, because nobody can pull off anything as well as he can. Film: You Can’t Take it With You (1938) Tip: Taking up seemingly utopian residence in a commune full of oddballs will likely get you thrown in jail. Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore) wasn’t claiming to be prophet nor did he (as far as we know) have a harem of young wives stored away somewhere in his house, but these days a freewheeling place like his might attract the attention of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms or some other government agency assigned to shutting down cults and terrorist organizations. Even then his home was suspected of being a den for treasonous plots, leading to an FBI raid and mass arrest. So, while it may seem like a dream come true to be wooed in by a jolly old man promising free living and the chance to be a toymaker, there’s actually no such thing as Santa Claus, and that man is probably doing something illegal to accommodate such a lifestyle. Film: The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Tip: Don’t settle for wages lower than is standard for the work. If you’re really hungry and desperate for work, you might think about taking only 25 cents an hour for a job you used to do for 30 cents. This happens often with competitive fields, whether it is migrant farming or blogging, but it only lowers your worth and it encourages your employers to keep decreasing the wages as long as someone is willing to settle. Eventually, either your fellow workers or the previous, underbid employees are going to be provoked by the situation and then there’s the chance of violence and further oppression. Plus, then you might be out of the job anyway. Potentially on the run, like Tom Joad (Henry Fonda), too. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:01:04 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com11/19/2008 1:01:04 PMUnemployment is about to get even worse now that Citigroup has announced it will cut 52,000 jobs early next year. And falsely reported news of a killing in Santa Clara, California (the shooter was fired, not laid off) only adds to the bleak atmosphere surrounding the already upsetting job market. But while desperate times may lead to desperate measures, it’s vital for us to remember what we learned from the films of the 1930s, when the Great Depression caused a nearly 25% rate of unemployment (we’re currently at 6.5%). Hopeful stories of upward mobility and implausible solutions were popular at the time, though many of them had downsides or inspired the desire for unlikely prospects. Still, there was some guidance to be found buried within the fantasies of Hollywood, and SpoutBlog has compiled this handy list to help you make the right choices during your current or imminent joblessness. Film: Little Caesar (1931) Tip: Dancing is ultimately more lucrative than crime. We learned over and over from films in the 1930s that crime doesn’t pay, and with Little Caesar we learned the additional tip that if you’re going to be a cocky, power-hungry little jerk with leadership goals, you better have the balls to back up your bite. However, the best advice acquired from Francis Edward Faragoh and Robert N. Lee’s Oscar-nominated screenplay is that life as a dancer is a much better career path than that of a gangster. Sure, there may be a few dangers if your gig is at a mob-run club or if your former best friend is your boss’ rival, a la the conflict between Joe (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and Rico (Edward G. Robinson) in Mervyn LeRoy’s film. But unlike your old buddy, who will literally die in a gutter, you might find wealth, stardom and love. Worst-case scenario, you don’t become rich and famous but you get a job teaching little kids at a dance studio in suburbia. Whereas there’s no such thing as a crime studio. Film: Trouble in Paradise (1932) Tip: Falling for your mark, and/or your boss, is fine as long as you get a bonus out of it and then return to your true love It’s clear from the start that fellow pickpockets Gaston (Herbert Marshall) and Lily (Miriam Hopkins) are made for each other. Yet when the duo acquire jobs working for the wealthy perfumer Madame Colet (Kay Francis) in a scheme to con her out of her money, Gaston goes and complicates things by developing feelings for his new employer/mark. Fortunately, after dipping his hands into both her purses (oh the innuendo!), he comes away with the jackpot and is able to fall back into place with his equal. Getting a job where you’re partially a gigolo can be rewarding in terms of special perks, both sexual and financial, but ultimately a relationship between employee and employer is difficult, especially if there’s a real class clash involved. So get in quick, get out on top and find a nice girl with whom you’ve got more in common. Film: King Kong (1933) Tip: If you’re cast in a film, make sure it’s a local production. Tons of unemployed people turn to showbiz as a solution to their situation, and a quick glance on Craigslist reveals plenty of calls for film and TV extras. But be wary, because if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And be suspicious of “directors” who approach you on the street offering you the role of a lifetime. It’s possible the guy’s a real Hollywood player like Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong), but it’s also possible that the gig will bring you to a remote island where you’ll attract the largest stalker ever imagined. In the end, you might actually become a big star, just like Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), but by then many will have paid for your social status with their lives, and you’ll have to live with the guilt. So when answering ads looking for actors, don’t get on any boats headed to far off places. Stick to locally shot films, on which you’re likely to experience fewer dangers and meet fewer giant apes. Film: Lady for a Day (1933) Tip: Don’t lie to your family about being underemployed, because you’ll just wind up more depressed. Apple Annie (May Robson) ends up getting away with her masquerade, in which she convinces her daughter that she’s a well-to-do socialite rather than a poor fruit peddler, but at what cost? Now she’s lied to her child and, worse, given herself a taste of the good life, a high from which she must come down. And with that perspective in mind she’s surely going to hate her true social place even more. So if you’re underemployed, don’t lie about it, not even to your parents. Best circumstance, they help you out a little with your finances. Worst circumstance, you feel even more depressed about your situation and you take your own life — whether literally or, like Annie, figuratively. Plus, if your parents do end up finding out the truth, they’ll be more disappointed with you than they would have been if told the truth all along. Film: Triumph of the Will (1935) Tip: Don’t work for a mad, genocidal dictator unless you want the association to follow you to your grave. Leni Riefenstahl may have denied having full allegiance to Hitler and the Nazis, but she’ll forever be known as the director who helped propagandize the party right up until the beginning of World War II. And to many that makes her one of the bad guys. Whether she’s truly guilty by association, her kind of situation is constantly a topic of ethical debate. Maybe working for later-exposed criminals will keep you from getting elected one day. Maybe working for evil emperors will get you blown up while doing contract work on a giant space station. Either way, it’s best to do as much of a background check on your potential bosses as they’re doing on you. Film: Modern Times (1936) Tip: Don’t be a slave to the machines, or one day they’ll enslave you. That sounds like advice to be gotten from The Matrix, but that film’s dystopia is precisely the kind of future Chaplin was warning about. So much of the imagery in this film consists of workers depending on machines, either to help do the job or feed them, and workers being trapped in machines, figuratively enslaved by them. If you end up getting a job on the internet, and that’s more and more likely to be your best shot at employment these days, you’ll understand Chaplin’s fears better than he could ever have imagined. Film: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) Tip: Breaking into a rich man’s home will likely get you a job. It’s thanks to a desperate little farmer that the newly rich Deeds (Gary Cooper) decides to divvy up his millions and donate plots of land to the poor. And the gun-wielding intruder doesn’t get thrown in jail; he becomes one of the many who are eligible for some of that free acreage. Hollywood pipe dream, sure, but the concept also seemed to work outside of American cinema. In Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, a man (Julien Carette) is caught trespassing on a wealthy estate and he’s offered a job. However, it may not be necessary to actually commit the crime of breaking and entering to get the attention of potential beneficiaries and employers. In Renoir’s Boudu Saved From Drowning the titular bum is merely witnessed attempting suicide in the Seine (though in Paul Mazursky’s ‘80s remake, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, the bum is also an intruder). And in My Man Godfrey the titular bum is plucked out of the trash and eventually brought home and employed as a butler. Which brings up the next tip. Film: My Man Godfrey (1936) Tip: If forced to become a servant, don’t steal the boss’ daughter’s necklace, pawn it and then gamble with the money made in order to further improve your situation, because only William Powell is good enough to get away with it. You are not as smooth as William Powell; it’s just not possible. So, while he (and his character, Godfrey) is able to come out of this film on top, in the same situation you would more than likely end up back on the garbage heap (without a nightclub built on the spot, that is). Firstly, he’s able to charm the socialite Irene (Carole Lombard) enough to escape homelessness, acquire a position as her family’s butler and eventually win her heart. Secondly, when Irene’s bitter sister, Cornelia (Gail Patrick), attempts to frame him as a necklace nabber, he beats her at her game and follows through to win out even more. What he does with the jewelry, though, would still get most people arrested, even if the ends do justify the means. Never do as Powell does, because nobody can pull off anything as well as he can. Film: You Can’t Take it With You (1938) Tip: Taking up seemingly utopian residence in a commune full of oddballs will likely get you thrown in jail. Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore) wasn’t claiming to be prophet nor did he (as far as we know) have a harem of young wives stored away somewhere in his house, but these days a freewheeling place like his might attract the attention of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms or some other government agency assigned to shutting down cults and terrorist organizations. Even then his home was suspected of being a den for treasonous plots, leading to an FBI raid and mass arrest. So, while it may seem like a dream come true to be wooed in by a jolly old man promising free living and the chance to be a toymaker, there’s actually no such thing as Santa Claus, and that man is probably doing something illegal to accommodate such a lifestyle. Film: The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Tip: Don’t settle for wages lower than is standard for the work. If you’re really hungry and desperate for work, you might think about taking only 25 cents an hour for a job you used to do for 30 cents. This happens often with competitive fields, whether it is migrant farming or blogging, but it only lowers your worth and it encourages your employers to keep decreasing the wages as long as someone is willing to settle. Eventually, either your fellow workers or the previous, underbid employees are going to be provoked by the situation and then there’s the chance of violence and further oppression. Plus, then you might be out of the job anyway. Potentially on the run, like Tom Joad (Henry Fonda), too. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/joem18b/archive/2008/11/19/37428.aspx Post By: joem18b
Post To: joem18b Blog
Post Date: 11/19/2008 1:54:00 AM
Body: First paragraph of a review that I posted last year:"If I'm in the mood for a Western, I want horses. If I'm in the mood for explosions, I go to a Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay movie. In either case, I don't want, say, Max Von Sydow playing chess with Death in some black-and-white hovel on the rocky shores of Sturnnveggloven. In the same way, if I'm in the mood to watch echo-boomer twenty-somethings filming their friends hanging out with each other in small apartments and on the urban stoop and in the homes and basements of their parents and grandparents, none of whom will ever appear onscreen, then for those of you who haven't seen one such film before, this would be mumblecore."My assigned movie, "Funny Ha Ha," would be perhaps the first film in the mumblecore genre. Did I read something somewhere about how frequently, for some mysterious reason, the first in a genre is also the best? Homer, Milton, and Cervantes were mentioned. Could this be true of FHH? Is it the purest, as well as the first, mumblecore expression of newly-adult American modern life on the hoof, before the mumblecore melodrama of Mutual Appreciation or the variations on a theme in "LOL" or the psychological depth of The Puffy Chair? A question to keep in mind as I watch.Haven't heard much from the mumblecore community lately. What's the buzz? What's the buzz around saying what's the buzz? Stephen Holden called Baghead a mumblecore movie - comedy/horror mumblecore? Are movies like In Search of a Midnight Kiss moving mumblecore into some new merged genre? Was Old Joy really mumblecore, as it's often listed; some genre morphing might have already taken place in that one. Andrew Bujalski, who wrote, directed, and starred in FHH, hasn't made a feature film in years; he's done some acting but not made any movies. Kate Dollenmayer, who plays Marnie, the lead in FHH, appeared in Bujalski's next film and then disappeared behind the camera. There's an album with her name on it; otherwise, she's light on the google.FHH caught me in one of my watching-the-last-half-of-the-movie-first phases. I've recently finished Rules of the Game and War, Inc. that way. Watching those two films backwards helped them, in my estimation. I'm guessing in advance that watching "Funny Ha Ha," starting at the 45-minute mark, will not harm my enjoyment of the film and may help it. But we'll see.Fooey! Now I've slipped up and taken a peek at the first few paragraphs of A.O. Scott's FHH review in the NYT, wherein he tells us that the film is about a young woman's fruitless search for a little love and meaning in her life. Why did I read that? So now why should I bother dropping into the middle of the movie, already knowing that? The adventure and mystery are ruined. Feh. But I'll do it anyway. So. There Marnie is, passed out in a car. Now she stays with a girlfriend and her girlfriend goes on a job interview. Oops, Marnie is the girlfriend, not the drunk in the car. Confusion. Good. That's how I like it to be. No harm done reading a little A.O. Scott. Meanwhile, the theme of the movie is made clear in minutes, middle start or not, once I've got Marnie in my sights. Perhaps my initial excitement was a little attenuated, but now I'm involved, so onward!Marnie is wearing a T-shirt from a Newton grammar school. Newton is an upscale community in the Boston suburbs. Always made me think of fig newtons, not Isaac. I seem to remember a mall there, back in the 60s, out on Commonwealth Avenue. Bujalski was born in Boston. A good place to locate a movie about the just-graduated and I speak as one who swam in that social sea after college for a couple of years. Youth, out of school at last. FHH is the pure unvarnished article. The essence of mumblecore. Absolute minimum script, or so it appears onscreen. The meta experience identical to the dramatic experience; that is, there are two layers working here, carrying the same message: (a) level one, the young woman moving along through her first adult life structure while (b) level two, the actors live their lives for us by acting onscreen, so that, for this viewer at least, the element in FHH most profoundly moving is the sight of these twentysomethings struggling with their craft, new adult members of society, now with the responsibility of paying rent and negotiating car insurance (no small task in Massachusetts!), with the need to discover meaning in the challenges that they face and in their responses to those challenges. Not the characters, you understand, but the actors themselves. A reviewer comments "The semi-improvised performances seem so natural that it is tempting to confuse the actors with their characters," but the point is that these performances highlight the actors not as the characters they portray but as individuals working - that is, acting. Or am I just being fooled into thinking that I'm seeing the actors, not the characters, because of Bujalski's style? But no. I know nothing about the actors; perhaps they have something in common with their characters, perhaps not. There is a signature cadence in untrained improvisation, with its small pauses not heard in everyday conversation, neither conversation between those who know each other nor that between strangers, tiny pauses born of the actor's interior monolog, pauses which replace the verbal overlaps and gaps found in everyday talk. So that as we watch, the actors think about their lines, or the direction just provided offscreen, or the act of acting, anything but the less conscious social drivers propelling the rest of us day-to-day in casual conversation. Each actor steps into the frame with an ineffable sense of innocence, usually with an embarrassed grin, and speaks, and we understand that here onscreen are living reminders of already-came-of-age, struggling with dialog as an instantiated metaphor for the whole all-of-it struggle involved in becoming an adult. I find this evocative in the extreme, a spiritual supermagnet pulling me back to that same time in my own life, with all the memories, nostalgia, speculations, and regrets attendant to it - a time in my own life when I'm more than ripe for that to happen. Could I, would I, do better a second time around? That question forms the emotional core of the movie for my demographic; the same thing happens when we watch our own children in their twenties. Where else can you get that in cinema? Not in The Incredible Hulk, that's for sure.The Boojer, by the way, saves the juiciest scenes in the movie for himself - an excruciating dinner and a later sort-of-extended-date with Marni. Cultural extra credit: compare and contrast the boy/girl dinners in FHH and I Think I Love My Wife.At the end of the second half, I return to reviewland and find:A.O. Scott: "What gives this film its quiet pathos is not so much the relative bleakness of Marnie's circumstances but the modesty of her expectations. At one point, she makes a to-do list, and its lack of ambition - spend more time outdoors, make friends with Jackie, learn to play chess - is both funny and sad."Carina Chocano: "Mainly, Marnie is staying afloat and trying to connect with others who are equally lost."Seems like I've seen a lot of this kind of hangdog vibe around the FHH reviews - negatives about mood and lifestyle - and I am not down with that (although I otherwise agree with the NYT and LA Times FHH review content). Perhaps having reached the top of the mountain makes it hard for Scott and Chocano to see those younger who are still way back down in the foothills. Marnie and her friends in FHH are newly-minted adults living life in that broad, spacious, undefined socioeconomicsphere found in first-world countries, a landscape where middle-class children find themselves free to roam, after emerging from college, if they happen to be situated in the middle of the startingout spectrum: neither at one end on the turf of the cinematically-ever-popular male slackers so often seen onscreen, nor the other end on that of the striving medical-school, law-school, and computer-geek proto-professionals; that is, Marnie and her friends are living the unfocused life that many of us lived in our twenties. I speak as one who stumbled off the college campus for the last time to find myself, at the age of 23, living alone in Boston, working at a job I wasn't interested in, and looking for love after refusing to commit to marriage and being dropped by my intended, who switched to her Plan B awfully quickly, it seemed to me. The quiet pathos for my demographic didn't happen then, it's happening to us now, in our dotage, on the viewer's side of the screen. Where is the pathos in Marnie's freshness and energy and in the potential of youth, for Marnie and her friends with an open and unknowable and limitless future stretching ahead of them, or in the knowledge that Kate Dollenmayer herself has moved on into that future, or in Bujalski's vision? Marnie's to-do list in no way lacks ambition; is in no way funny or sad. The act of making that list metaphorizes the ambition of the young; the contents of the list highlight the innocence of youth; it's a list drawn up by someone with all the time in the world and, interestingly, it is a list quite similar to such a one as made up by someone at the other end of life, without much time remaining.So I asked my daughter about this quiet-pathos thing, her being 23 and a recent graduate and living in Boston, all the same as Marnie; her reply: "As far as waitressing goes, I feel embarrassed about it at times, but I've actually made some valuable connections and now have places to stay and help finding employment if I want to go to South Carolina, Maui, Australia, or Columbia (have business cards/notes/emails from all of these people). Plus I make ok money, work with nice people, take home free food (ok, thats not completely kosher but its not like I get a salary or even hourly pay that amounts to anything after taxes). Plus, Im learning to speak Haitian Creole while simultaneously turning enemies into friends (the cooks didnt like me at first bc they assumed I was racist and told me so, but when I asked to learn their language they are suddenly happy to see me each day). So from my lowly job Im gaining: communication skills, agility training, extreme multi-tasking experience, networking opportunities, and employee benefits (that's the free food). Sounds almost ambitious when phrased correctly. This isnt to say I dont doubt what Im doing because I do, every day, multiple times a day. I get asked time and again by my bosses, co-workers and customers "why are you here if you have a degree from an Ivy League school??" One person even went so far as to say I was being selfish because letting my parents spend all that money to send me to a good school only to "disregard" my qualifications by working in a chain restaurant was just like throwing all that tuition money in the trash. Obviously obtaining "street smarts" and trying to experience different ways of life before choosing the "purpose-driven" one is something only misfits and failures do... So what am I trying to say here? Maybe im just trying to rationalize my own current existence when in reality it is just as ambitionless and lost as Marnie's. But maybe if the reviewers got off their NY Times and La Times high horses and really thought about what it means to EXPERIENCE and LIVE life, they might see things a wee bit differently. Or maybe not. Am I giggly all the time? as my friend Lynnea would say: "HELLS no!" But I dont think Ill look back on this period of my life and see it as a time of just "staying afloat" (my high school years on the other hand...)."One more take on the pathos meme, quickly, before getting on with the movie: Marnie celebrates her birthday quietly. Proactive note to lugubrious reviewers: this also is not pathos. What the heck did I do on my birthdays back in Boston? Who knows? I do remember being in a laundromat at North Station on Christmas Eve one year. It was snowing. Neither the Bruins nor the Celtics were in town, so The Garden was deserted except for me and an old woman. I went back to my room and drank. I still remember that, so I guess it means something to me, but I didn't feel pathetic at the time. I felt lonely but pretty good.Ginormous. I've had that word in my head. I'm thinking that if I write it down here, maybe it will go away.And so on to the first half of FHH.Oh my God. Bujalski saddles Marnie with an unrequited-love jones, up front. Booge, how could you? What were you thinking? This is something a novice twenty-something filmmaker would do. Oh, right. But this is why watching War, Inc. backwards helped the movie so much; the process cut out loads of unnecessary plot points till it was too late to matter. In the same way, I was able to watch the downslope of FHH without these moulting feathers of love annoying me. Hmm. Now Marnie liplocks some dude at the twenty-eight minute mark. I would never have predicted that. Oh, no, and then she osculates again three minutes later with her married-dude friend. I'm so glad I'm coming to this at the end and not at the beginning. Why? Because in the second half she's staring into the future without seeing beyond the walls of her room, locked in her head while her anger percolates unfelt somewhere down there lower in her body - after the drinking and smooching fail her - but I understood that, in the second half of the movie, without the presumptive romance-o-motivation of the first.No. I'm overreacting. Belay that last paragraph. I've been Hollywoodpavlovianized. This is not Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in the last minute of Sleepless in Seattle or You've Got Mail. This is random lowkey young adult semijoyless evolutionary smootching, pebbles in a pond that cause no ripples. Marnie pretends that it didn't happen, isn't happening, and I'll do the same. Romance is a big deal for these kids, perhaps the biggest deal. My twenties were mostly a history of bad dates. Easy to put off career issues to the next decade while getting the living part right. So Booge perforce makes use of that, but not so much that we can't shrug when the lips meet, and then move on. But still, this series of fraught encounters with men, I don't know; quit beating the drum, Booge. This does remind me, though, that I watched the original Forsythe Saga backward. As with Marnie and Alex in the second half of FHH, something heavy had obviously gone on between Irene and Soames, and Fleur's life was constantly perturbed by it, but it seemed more romantic to me to not know what that something was, not to know what had happened - seemed more romantic than watching the first half and seeing whatever it was that happened actually happen. Thesis: nostalgia coupled with imagination is always stronger than dramatic invention, probably because lived experience, including the actual act of imagination, is more visceral than skoptophilia and its milder brethren.New-Age side note: Coincidence #1: Earlier in this screed I wrote a sentence using the word "evolutionary" and then I started FHH up again and watched the last ten minutes of the movie, which I hadn't seen yet (minutes 35 to 45) and Marnie says to Alex or Alex says to Marnie, "You're the most evolved person I know." Coincidence #2: Later that day, I went to Blockbuster to return Get Smart (I'm rating it "j" on a scale of 1 to q) and while there I picked up The Last Request, which somebody somewhere liked a little bit, and while I was checking out, the clerk asked me how I liked Get Smart and I said, Anne Hathaway is no Barbara Feldon, and when I got home and started The Last Request, there Barbara was, in a starring role. The odds of plucking up a Barbara Feldon movie at random? Antiginormous. Coincidence #3: Marnie's shirt has the number 18 on its back. I'm 18b. My daughter, I learned THE SAME DAY, is living in apartment #18 in her building on Concord St. Consult your Jung! These coincidental whorls in the universal fabric happened ON THE SAME DAY as Obama's election and mean that FHH is connected to the core zeitgeist of the planet. You read it here first.Propositions: (1) The first half of a movie is usually better than the second half when the movie is watched in normal order. (2) Watching the second half of a movie first often improves the movie. Sometimes, watching the second half is sufficient in itself. (3) Thus, perhaps whichever half you watch first is the best.I had to ask Wilson, who assigned this movie to me, what the last two spoken lines of the last scene were. They seemed crucial in defining the mood of the movie, but mumblecore being named mumblecore for a reason, I couldn't make out what Alex and Marnie said to each other. Fortunately, Wilson could. And those two lines bear out my contention, or so I think, that Bujalski is a deeply optimistic guy and FHH is, in the end, a celebration, not a paean. In that final scene, Marnie shows some anger, a desire to move out into the world, and a rejection of the feckless Alex. Good for her and good for a society and economy (knock on wood) where youth is able to rattle around a little. I watched a mumblecore movie made by Joe Swanberg a while back, in which the protagonists grow stronger in the face of Swanberg's efforts to render them helpless; Bujalski throws down some marbles in Marnie's path, but his affection for her never lets her fall hard enough to break anything.This film that launched a genre reminds us that being young and being old are two entirely different things. (Bujalski turned 30 this year.)
]]>Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:54:00 GMTjoem18bjoem18b Blog11/19/2008 1:54:00 AMFirst paragraph of a review that I posted last year:"If I'm in the mood for a Western, I want horses. If I'm in the mood for explosions, I go to a Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay movie. In either case, I don't want, say, Max Von Sydow playing chess with Death in some black-and-white hovel on the rocky shores of Sturnnveggloven. In the same way, if I'm in the mood to watch echo-boomer twenty-somethings filming their friends hanging out with each other in small apartments and on the urban stoop and in the homes and basements of their parents and grandparents, none of whom will ever appear onscreen, then for those of you who haven't seen one such film before, this would be mumblecore."My assigned movie, "Funny Ha Ha," would be perhaps the first film in the mumblecore genre. Did I read something somewhere about how frequently, for some mysterious reason, the first in a genre is also the best? Homer, Milton, and Cervantes were mentioned. Could this be true of FHH? Is it the purest, as well as the first, mumblecore expression of newly-adult American modern life on the hoof, before the mumblecore melodrama of Mutual Appreciation or the variations on a theme in "LOL" or the psychological depth of The Puffy Chair? A question to keep in mind as I watch.Haven't heard much from the mumblecore community lately. What's the buzz? What's the buzz around saying what's the buzz? Stephen Holden called Baghead a mumblecore movie - comedy/horror mumblecore? Are movies like In Search of a Midnight Kiss moving mumblecore into some new merged genre? Was Old Joy really mumblecore, as it's often listed; some genre morphing might have already taken place in that one. Andrew Bujalski, who wrote, directed, and starred in FHH, hasn't made a feature film in years; he's done some acting but not made any movies. Kate Dollenmayer, who plays Marnie, the lead in FHH, appeared in Bujalski's next film and then disappeared behind the camera. There's an album with her name on it; otherwise, she's light on the google.FHH caught me in one of my watching-the-last-half-of-the-movie-first phases. I've recently finished Rules of the Game and War, Inc. that way. Watching those two films backwards helped them, in my estimation. I'm guessing in advance that watching "Funny Ha Ha," starting at the 45-minute mark, will not harm my enjoyment of the film and may help it. But we'll see.Fooey! Now I've slipped up and taken a peek at the first few paragraphs of A.O. Scott's FHH review in the NYT, wherein he tells us that the film is about a young woman's fruitless search for a little love and meaning in her life. Why did I read that? So now why should I bother dropping into the middle of the movie, already knowing that? The adventure and mystery are ruined. Feh. But I'll do it anyway. So. There Marnie is, passed out in a car. Now she stays with a girlfriend and her girlfriend goes on a job interview. Oops, Marnie is the girlfriend, not the drunk in the car. Confusion. Good. That's how I like it to be. No harm done reading a little A.O. Scott. Meanwhile, the theme of the movie is made clear in minutes, middle start or not, once I've got Marnie in my sights. Perhaps my initial excitement was a little attenuated, but now I'm involved, so onward!Marnie is wearing a T-shirt from a Newton grammar school. Newton is an upscale community in the Boston suburbs. Always made me think of fig newtons, not Isaac. I seem to remember a mall there, back in the 60s, out on Commonwealth Avenue. Bujalski was born in Boston. A good place to locate a movie about the just-graduated and I speak as one who swam in that social sea after college for a couple of years. Youth, out of school at last. FHH is the pure unvarnished article. The essence of mumblecore. Absolute minimum script, or so it appears onscreen. The meta experience identical to the dramatic experience; that is, there are two layers working here, carrying the same message: (a) level one, the young woman moving along through her first adult life structure while (b) level two, the actors live their lives for us by acting onscreen, so that, for this viewer at least, the element in FHH most profoundly moving is the sight of these twentysomethings struggling with their craft, new adult members of society, now with the responsibility of paying rent and negotiating car insurance (no small task in Massachusetts!), with the need to discover meaning in the challenges that they face and in their responses to those challenges. Not the characters, you understand, but the actors themselves. A reviewer comments "The semi-improvised performances seem so natural that it is tempting to confuse the actors with their characters," but the point is that these performances highlight the actors not as the characters they portray but as individuals working - that is, acting. Or am I just being fooled into thinking that I'm seeing the actors, not the characters, because of Bujalski's style? But no. I know nothing about the actors; perhaps they have something in common with their characters, perhaps not. There is a signature cadence in untrained improvisation, with its small pauses not heard in everyday conversation, neither conversation between those who know each other nor that between strangers, tiny pauses born of the actor's interior monolog, pauses which replace the verbal overlaps and gaps found in everyday talk. So that as we watch, the actors think about their lines, or the direction just provided offscreen, or the act of acting, anything but the less conscious social drivers propelling the rest of us day-to-day in casual conversation. Each actor steps into the frame with an ineffable sense of innocence, usually with an embarrassed grin, and speaks, and we understand that here onscreen are living reminders of already-came-of-age, struggling with dialog as an instantiated metaphor for the whole all-of-it struggle involved in becoming an adult. I find this evocative in the extreme, a spiritual supermagnet pulling me back to that same time in my own life, with all the memories, nostalgia, speculations, and regrets attendant to it - a time in my own life when I'm more than ripe for that to happen. Could I, would I, do better a second time around? That question forms the emotional core of the movie for my demographic; the same thing happens when we watch our own children in their twenties. Where else can you get that in cinema? Not in The Incredible Hulk, that's for sure.The Boojer, by the way, saves the juiciest scenes in the movie for himself - an excruciating dinner and a later sort-of-extended-date with Marni. Cultural extra credit: compare and contrast the boy/girl dinners in FHH and I Think I Love My Wife.At the end of the second half, I return to reviewland and find:A.O. Scott: "What gives this film its quiet pathos is not so much the relative bleakness of Marnie's circumstances but the modesty of her expectations. At one point, she makes a to-do list, and its lack of ambition - spend more time outdoors, make friends with Jackie, learn to play chess - is both funny and sad."Carina Chocano: "Mainly, Marnie is staying afloat and trying to connect with others who are equally lost."Seems like I've seen a lot of this kind of hangdog vibe around the FHH reviews - negatives about mood and lifestyle - and I am not down with that (although I otherwise agree with the NYT and LA Times FHH review content). Perhaps having reached the top of the mountain makes it hard for Scott and Chocano to see those younger who are still way back down in the foothills. Marnie and her friends in FHH are newly-minted adults living life in that broad, spacious, undefined socioeconomicsphere found in first-world countries, a landscape where middle-class children find themselves free to roam, after emerging from college, if they happen to be situated in the middle of the startingout spectrum: neither at one end on the turf of the cinematically-ever-popular male slackers so often seen onscreen, nor the other end on that of the striving medical-school, law-school, and computer-geek proto-professionals; that is, Marnie and her friends are living the unfocused life that many of us lived in our twenties. I speak as one who stumbled off the college campus for the last time to find myself, at the age of 23, living alone in Boston, working at a job I wasn't interested in, and looking for love after refusing to commit to marriage and being dropped by my intended, who switched to her Plan B awfully quickly, it seemed to me. The quiet pathos for my demographic didn't happen then, it's happening to us now, in our dotage, on the viewer's side of the screen. Where is the pathos in Marnie's freshness and energy and in the potential of youth, for Marnie and her friends with an open and unknowable and limitless future stretching ahead of them, or in the knowledge that Kate Dollenmayer herself has moved on into that future, or in Bujalski's vision? Marnie's to-do list in no way lacks ambition; is in no way funny or sad. The act of making that list metaphorizes the ambition of the young; the contents of the list highlight the innocence of youth; it's a list drawn up by someone with all the time in the world and, interestingly, it is a list quite similar to such a one as made up by someone at the other end of life, without much time remaining.So I asked my daughter about this quiet-pathos thing, her being 23 and a recent graduate and living in Boston, all the same as Marnie; her reply: "As far as waitressing goes, I feel embarrassed about it at times, but I've actually made some valuable connections and now have places to stay and help finding employment if I want to go to South Carolina, Maui, Australia, or Columbia (have business cards/notes/emails from all of these people). Plus I make ok money, work with nice people, take home free food (ok, thats not completely kosher but its not like I get a salary or even hourly pay that amounts to anything after taxes). Plus, Im learning to speak Haitian Creole while simultaneously turning enemies into friends (the cooks didnt like me at first bc they assumed I was racist and told me so, but when I asked to learn their language they are suddenly happy to see me each day). So from my lowly job Im gaining: communication skills, agility training, extreme multi-tasking experience, networking opportunities, and employee benefits (that's the free food). Sounds almost ambitious when phrased correctly. This isnt to say I dont doubt what Im doing because I do, every day, multiple times a day. I get asked time and again by my bosses, co-workers and customers "why are you here if you have a degree from an Ivy League school??" One person even went so far as to say I was being selfish because letting my parents spend all that money to send me to a good school only to "disregard" my qualifications by working in a chain restaurant was just like throwing all that tuition money in the trash. Obviously obtaining "street smarts" and trying to experience different ways of life before choosing the "purpose-driven" one is something only misfits and failures do... So what am I trying to say here? Maybe im just trying to rationalize my own current existence when in reality it is just as ambitionless and lost as Marnie's. But maybe if the reviewers got off their NY Times and La Times high horses and really thought about what it means to EXPERIENCE and LIVE life, they might see things a wee bit differently. Or maybe not. Am I giggly all the time? as my friend Lynnea would say: "HELLS no!" But I dont think Ill look back on this period of my life and see it as a time of just "staying afloat" (my high school years on the other hand...)."One more take on the pathos meme, quickly, before getting on with the movie: Marnie celebrates her birthday quietly. Proactive note to lugubrious reviewers: this also is not pathos. What the heck did I do on my birthdays back in Boston? Who knows? I do remember being in a laundromat at North Station on Christmas Eve one year. It was snowing. Neither the Bruins nor the Celtics were in town, so The Garden was deserted except for me and an old woman. I went back to my room and drank. I still remember that, so I guess it means something to me, but I didn't feel pathetic at the time. I felt lonely but pretty good.Ginormous. I've had that word in my head. I'm thinking that if I write it down here, maybe it will go away.And so on to the first half of FHH.Oh my God. Bujalski saddles Marnie with an unrequited-love jones, up front. Booge, how could you? What were you thinking? This is something a novice twenty-something filmmaker would do. Oh, right. But this is why watching War, Inc. backwards helped the movie so much; the process cut out loads of unnecessary plot points till it was too late to matter. In the same way, I was able to watch the downslope of FHH without these moulting feathers of love annoying me. Hmm. Now Marnie liplocks some dude at the twenty-eight minute mark. I would never have predicted that. Oh, no, and then she osculates again three minutes later with her married-dude friend. I'm so glad I'm coming to this at the end and not at the beginning. Why? Because in the second half she's staring into the future without seeing beyond the walls of her room, locked in her head while her anger percolates unfelt somewhere down there lower in her body - after the drinking and smooching fail her - but I understood that, in the second half of the movie, without the presumptive romance-o-motivation of the first.No. I'm overreacting. Belay that last paragraph. I've been Hollywoodpavlovianized. This is not Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in the last minute of Sleepless in Seattle or You've Got Mail. This is random lowkey young adult semijoyless evolutionary smootching, pebbles in a pond that cause no ripples. Marnie pretends that it didn't happen, isn't happening, and I'll do the same. Romance is a big deal for these kids, perhaps the biggest deal. My twenties were mostly a history of bad dates. Easy to put off career issues to the next decade while getting the living part right. So Booge perforce makes use of that, but not so much that we can't shrug when the lips meet, and then move on. But still, this series of fraught encounters with men, I don't know; quit beating the drum, Booge. This does remind me, though, that I watched the original Forsythe Saga backward. As with Marnie and Alex in the second half of FHH, something heavy had obviously gone on between Irene and Soames, and Fleur's life was constantly perturbed by it, but it seemed more romantic to me to not know what that something was, not to know what had happened - seemed more romantic than watching the first half and seeing whatever it was that happened actually happen. Thesis: nostalgia coupled with imagination is always stronger than dramatic invention, probably because lived experience, including the actual act of imagination, is more visceral than skoptophilia and its milder brethren.New-Age side note: Coincidence #1: Earlier in this screed I wrote a sentence using the word "evolutionary" and then I started FHH up again and watched the last ten minutes of the movie, which I hadn't seen yet (minutes 35 to 45) and Marnie says to Alex or Alex says to Marnie, "You're the most evolved person I know." Coincidence #2: Later that day, I went to Blockbuster to return Get Smart (I'm rating it "j" on a scale of 1 to q) and while there I picked up The Last Request, which somebody somewhere liked a little bit, and while I was checking out, the clerk asked me how I liked Get Smart and I said, Anne Hathaway is no Barbara Feldon, and when I got home and started The Last Request, there Barbara was, in a starring role. The odds of plucking up a Barbara Feldon movie at random? Antiginormous. Coincidence #3: Marnie's shirt has the number 18 on its back. I'm 18b. My daughter, I learned THE SAME DAY, is living in apartment #18 in her building on Concord St. Consult your Jung! These coincidental whorls in the universal fabric happened ON THE SAME DAY as Obama's election and mean that FHH is connected to the core zeitgeist of the planet. You read it here first.Propositions: (1) The first half of a movie is usually better than the second half when the movie is watched in normal order. (2) Watching the second half of a movie first often improves the movie. Sometimes, watching the second half is sufficient in itself. (3) Thus, perhaps whichever half you watch first is the best.I had to ask Wilson, who assigned this movie to me, what the last two spoken lines of the last scene were. They seemed crucial in defining the mood of the movie, but mumblecore being named mumblecore for a reason, I couldn't make out what Alex and Marnie said to each other. Fortunately, Wilson could. And those two lines bear out my contention, or so I think, that Bujalski is a deeply optimistic guy and FHH is, in the end, a celebration, not a paean. In that final scene, Marnie shows some anger, a desire to move out into the world, and a rejection of the feckless Alex. Good for her and good for a society and economy (knock on wood) where youth is able to rattle around a little. I watched a mumblecore movie made by Joe Swanberg a while back, in which the protagonists grow stronger in the face of Swanberg's efforts to render them helpless; Bujalski throws down some marbles in Marnie's path, but his affection for her never lets her fall hard enough to break anything.This film that launched a genre reminds us that being young and being old are two entirely different things. (Bujalski turned 30 this year.) http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/Classic/MemberTagFilms.aspxClassic
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