Perspectives from a Professor
Why did I resist so long?
An Irish colleague living in Copenhagen with his Danish wife told me that this is a series they enjoy watching together, and I decided to give it a go.
Outlander has a lot of what I love: moss, bold hand-knitwear, a protofeminist character, and romantic passion.
In the interest of full disclosure, I always meant to see Martin McDonaugh’s other films (especially In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths) but never seemed to get around to it.
Not so with Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri; when I saw it several months ago, I relished every frame.
Over a month ago, I read Wesley Morris’s diatribe against the film in The New York Times and have bristled at it ever since whenever the movie comes to mind because I pass a cinema marquee advertising it or read another headline about it.
Basically, Morris argues that the film doesn’t say anything of value because it is not an authentic representation of America. In a parenthetical, he snipes, “Ebbing is as real a place as Narnia.”
The problem, according to Morris, is that the film purports to be something it isn’t.
“It’s one of those movies that really do think they’re saying something profound about human nature and injustice. It’s set in the country’s geographical middle, which should trigger a metaphor alert.”
In the first place, I’m not sure movies think. Wait, I’m sure that they do not. It is up to viewers to read the film and, in the act of viewing, to bring context and meaning based on their own lived experience and intertextual connections.
For me, my appreciation of the film is immeasurably enhanced by a critical clue the filmmaker posits near the beginning: one of the key supporting players is sitting as his desk reading a copy of Flannery O’Connor’s collection of short stories A Good Man is Hard to Find.
That visual reference tells me everything I need to know about the tone of the film: a dark story filled with oddity, the grotesque, black humor, and people I never want to meet in real life.
What is “real” America anyway?
This is a brutal revenge picture. A mother (Frances McDormand) challenges law enforcement officers (Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell) to find the person who murdered her daughter.
Surely, if sadly, violence and racism and despair are parts of the American landscape.
This film works for me.
I saw The Shape of Water several months ago and have been wondering since about the duality of my response to it; aesthetically it dazzles me, but emotionally I maintain a certain distance.
It was almost like being in a pool of water beneath the surface and watching a dream populated with actors I adore playing out a scenario that inspires my sense of social justice inside a setting that takes my breath away…all the while…I can’t let go and swim over to them to become part of the make believe.
Because I think Guillermo del Toro is talented and his film Pan’s Labyrinth is remarkable in every way, I decided to see The Shape of Water again and try to puzzle through the reasons for my detachment from this story.
Sometimes the cultural significance of a film outshines the movie itself, even one as entertaining as Black Panther.
I’ve never been a big fan of superhero films as a genre because, except for a few exceptions, they tend to run together for me, especially the franchise movies that feature a collection of such heroes joining together to fight a villain or several of them in CGI-heavy sequences that seem to go on forever.
The bigger the special effects are, the lower the emotional stakes seem from the perspective of my seat in the cinema.
While in Denmark, I’ve been watching some Danish TV online. I owe you some commentary on Rita, Dicte, and The Bridge.
Not sure that I’ve ever written about my favorite Danish series, Borgen, but I plan to watch it again over the summer when I am back home (and probably missing Copenhagen).
After I ran through the Danish shows that are streaming on the services I get (unfortunately, it didn’t take too long–want more access!), I decided to give Grace and Frankie another look when the new season popped up on my Netflix page.
I like to mark many if not most special occasions with movie watching. Why should Valentine’s Day be any different?
Of course, this year was unusual.
First of all, the movie I saw was geared toward kids of all ages: Coco. An animated feature on February 14th may have been a first for me, but it turned out to be appropriate choice because this is a love story on several levels.
Or, we could call this The Great Beauty Redux.
Two very smart men—one I’ve known all of his life and the other only for a few weeks—suggested I reconsider The Great Beauty.
Both of them have watched it multiple times and found it deeply moving. So, I ordered the 2014 Oscar-winner online tonight and watched it just now by candlelight to evoke the right mood.
I’ve been thinking about this for over a week. “What am I going to say about Call Me By Your Name, a film that matters a great deal to several people who mean a lot to me in order to convey that I admire it while explaining my caveat?”
While dreaming last night–I kid you not–it came to me.
While living in Copenhagen a few months, I hear a lot anecdotally about the competition between the Danes and the Swedes, but that tends to fall away when celebrating a Scandinavian success.
After all, The Square won the Palme d’Or at Cannes before earning its nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. My Danish colleagues directed me to the only screening in town with English subtitles, and I was glad of the recommendation.
My only quibble with the film is about the pacing. It’s a little long (a common complaint of mine), and there are a few sequences that challenge viewers’ patience (I say this realizing that circumstance is likely intentional, especially during the sequence pictured on the movie poster above).
What The Square is about seems less important than how the story is told. The film functions effectively as a critique of cultural elites who have been insulated from the everyday experiences and challenges of people outside of their rarefied world.
Playing upon that context–art museums, art work, art promotion, art curation, art criticism–but presented in direct contrast to it, the film is minimally stylized.
I’m teaching an introduction to media aesthetics course this semester, and this film fits the definitions students are learning of realism as a style.
The story unfolds episodically. Director Ruben Östlund uses the camera to record events without revealing his intention intrusively or even obviously. He trusts the viewer to take notice, to decide which details are important, and to fill in the gaps.
It’s not unlike his approach in his 2014 film Force Majeure, a film I thought was close to flawless except for an extended sequence that unnecessarily derailed the narrative (or, at least, served as an unnecessary detour).
The stakes are smaller in The Square than in Force Majeure–a museum curator has his phone and wallet snatched in the former and a man reveals something important about his character when his family is threatened by an avalanche in the latter–but the feeling for viewers of experiencing something real unfold in front of you is common to both.
I would like to see The Square again, which–from me–is high praise.
