Why The Best Movies Are Not Right On
Apr 1st, 2008 by Donagh
As I’m acting as editor of Irish Left Review I have the right to use this minor blog to blatantly promote those articles and essays that I think deserve more attention than the fledgling magazine can muster by itself at the moment. I hate to see good stuff go under the radar, so I’m taking the opportunity to promote Seanachie’s article on watching bad left-wing movies, basically because it’s a very interesting and entertaining piece.
In his piece Seanachie argues that the most worthy Left-orientated films that appear at our local Cineplex, such as Loach’s Land and Freedom and The Wind That Shakes the Barley, or Oliver Stone’s Platoon often fall flat, while the more political dubious (from a Left perspective) soar with dramatic and satisfying intensity.
As Seanachie puts it:
“…sometimes films with a political slant that might be unpalatable to those of us on the left, such as The Searchers or The Deerhunter, are more illuminating of their subject matter than their more liberal counterparts (of which I’m thinking in the specific cases of those two films, Delmer Daves’s Broken Arrow and Oliver Stone’s Platoon). Both Ford and Cimino’s films’ strengths lie in assuming the perspectives and prejudices of its chief protagonists: distrust of Indians in the case of The Searchers and support for the Vietnam War among working-class Americans. Both films chip away gradually at those subjective certainties but they never feel the need to resort to chest beating to do so.
I think this is spot on.
The chief problem with Left-leaning films is that they have a polemical objective around which the drama is constructed. The film maker knows in advance what the outcome should be, and like the early Soviet director Aleksandr Dovzhenko, who for the movie Earth spliced scenes showing local peasants laughing at a clown (but cut the clown) to illustrate their ‘joy’ at work, will apply film-making techniques to realize that outcome.
But people often know the arguments before they sit down in the cinema seat, and just like you can see the punch line for an obvious joke coming a mile off, the audience inevitably groans when the politically-motivated punch finally, meekly, is aimed at their gut.
Drama that works through a situation, however, even when the outcome makes us feel uncomfortable, is much more satisfying because it feels more realistic. When you are not sure what the outcome is going to be, you are more likely to be captivated by the story. The realizing of the dramatic moment comes not from the singularity of the film-makers mind, but from the multitude of the Bakhtinian marketplace, the unexpected twists and turns, spinning suddenly between the stalls of apples and freshly baked bread, figuratively speaking. As Seanachie mentions, the often polemical Loach is able to do this too. In the wonderful It’s a Free World we initially identify with Angie, the admirably determined woman who recruits Eastern European immigrant workers for the black economy. However, as the film progresses we find that she is actually acting exploitatively and, despite our displeasure at this, gets away with it.
KevanB, commenting on the piece makes a very good point though.
1. Most, if not all, left wing films are totally lacking in humour. I believe that we go to the pictures to be entertained. We do not mind being depressed by something we see on the telly but at the pictures? I don’t think so.
2. Very few have any sort of uplifting or hopefully endings. This kind of ending is shared by all the movies that hit the biggest audiences. (If you can get a copy of Variety’s top 1000 movies of all time and play the game with your friends of “show which depressing ending made money” you’ll be hard put to think of an ending to any of them which didn’t entail any hope for the future.)
This reminded me of a very popular picture, which is often shown around Christmas time, and is unusual in that it seems to follow the polemical template, showing one man’s struggle for integrity against the machinations of the capitalist class, and could be considered dispiriting and depressing but which suddenly changes tempo towards the end and tacks on a happy upbeat ending. The film is filled with humour and pathos and is I understand, one of the most popular films of all time.
I’m speaking of course of It’s a Wonderful Life.
Now, IAWL is often derided as a sentimental film that willfully pulls at the heartstrings as it shows a man impossibly down on his luck and on the brink of suicide only to throw the audience a curveball with that ludicrously happy ending.
I think its a great movie, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that our favourite films, the ones that provide the best suspense, make us laugh and entertain us the most are just not right on.
But then, so what?
Slightly related:
Slightly related to this is the New York Times article today on the delay in releasing Lionsgate’s The Lucky Ones starring Tim Robbins, about three soldiers back from Iraq who then go on a road trip across the US and meet up with all sorts along the way.
Their problem is how to market a film that features the Iraq war, even if it does so marginally. Apparently, the recent slew of Iraq related movies have all bombed at the box office and Lionsgate understandably don’t want this to happen to the Lucky Ones.
Anyway, it’s interesting in that it’s mildly related to what I said above and about the points on humour.
Mr. Ortenberg also took issue with the idea that “all these movies are failing because the word ‘Iraq’ is mentioned in them.” It is not that simple, but it is not complicated, either, he said; war-related movies have struck consumers as lacking in entertainment value, and “nobody’s looking to go to movies that look like homework.”
The word “Iraq” isn’t uttered in “The Lucky Ones,” as Mr. Ortenberg and the filmmakers helpfully point out. And the one combat scene lasts 40 seconds. But the war hangs over every scene, and in the smallest of ways, as when random civilians keep making a show of thanking the three soldiers for their service. And that is enough to make even the film’s admirers sound like skeptics.
And later…
The film’s director Neil Burger
“ also said he was inspired by “The Last Detail,” the 1973 Hal Ashby film with Jack Nicholson and Otis Young as sailors escorting a petty thief to prison. “The Lucky Ones” shares its seriocomic mood, episodic structure and even a few plot points: an odd religious detour, an encounter with prostitutes, a brawl and much bonding.
Mr. Burger conceded that his movie was more political than Ashby’s, which didn’t even mention Vietnam, but only in that “The Lucky Ones” holds up a mirror to a society troubled by the war it is waging.
“To me the comedy is key to getting at this question,” Mr. Burger said. “The humor is like a Trojan horse: it catches the audience off guard, connects them to the heart of the characters and speaks to the essential absurdity-tragedy of their situation.”
With the outspokenly antiwar Mr. Robbins in a starring role, “The Lucky Ones” is likely to engender criticism from the political right. But the film takes no position on the war. In fact, it is the first war-related Hollywood movie that the Army has fully supported with personnel, matériel and technical help, a military adviser confirmed.”
Here’s one (presumably left-leaning film) might be a good laugh (by the way this might not be safe for work, unless you work in a porn shop):
http://www.publico.es/065231/premio/pelicula/guardia/civil/felacion/etarra
Apparently it shows images of a member of the (notoriously right-wing) Guardia Civil in Spain sucking off a member of ETA.
Then again, looking at the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JITHs5ESdas
It mightn’t exactly be There’s Something About Mary.
Actually, you might want to stick in a ‘not safe for work, unless you work in a porn shop’ warning on that one, Donagh.
Edited accordingly. I’ll check it out later, once I get back to my fur lined cubicle.
Erm, you’re not acting, you are the editor…
Your article is interesting and provocative. Stanley Kubrick’s satire on a rightwing general triggering a nuclear war, Dr. Strangelove: or how I learned to love the bomb (1964), must rank as one of the funniest political films. It starred Peter Sellers in three roles. Chairman Mao of China, a cultural philistine who denounced Beethoven’s music as ‘bourgeois’, nevertheless took the trouble to describe Charlie Chaplin as ‘a genius’. I’d agree that Modern Times, The Gold Rush and the slightly flawed Great Dictator had strong and funnily realised messages about industrial alienation, capitalist greed and power mania. His other ‘purely entertaining’ shorter movies portraying the tramp who represents the small guy outwitting the high and the mighty probably swung the verdict further for Mao. No wonder in the early 1950s Senator MacCarthy’s House Committee on Unamerican Activities cast an unsmiling suspecting glance towards Chaplin. He had to spend the rest of his life exiled in Switzerland.
Oh yea, I’d forgotten about Strangelove. But really, I should refer you back to Seanachie’s article for a fuller account.
No wonder in the early 1950s Senator MacCarthy’s House Committee on Unamerican Activities cast an unsmiling suspecting glance towards Chaplin.
While having a scout around for stuff on Chaplin’s politics I found out about his 1947 film Monsieur Verdoux, which was originally written by Orson Welles. I wouldn’t mind seeing that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCUsWaXVlS8
Your comments about It’s A Wonderful Life, echoes the point I was trying to make on the left review page. Capra had, for an American, left wing views and made his points in a series of films that picked up on people’s hopes for the future all through the thirties and forties. OK, so come the McCarthy era he got to join the long line of film technicians staring at the phone waiting for it to ring, as indeed did Chaplin as Chaleur points out. They got a non ringing phone because they publicly espoused views that didn’t fit in with their times. Their view of optimism for the future was not then fashionable. Or, as we would say today, not PC.
As for IAWL being sentimental, what is wrong with that? We all are. Not down the pub discussing the latest follies of Man U or Munster or even Wasps of course but when we alone with out heart of hearts we all are. And the movie made many people believe that there was hope, considering the time it was made. The Second World War had just ended. We baby boomers had just arrived on the scene and our Mums and Dads wanted to know that the kids would have a better future than the shit they had just been through.
The NYT article reads to me like a floater that an Indie producer comes out with when the distributor is about to Welch on his commitments. Part of the game. Not a funny game but part of the business. Very few films have guaranteed distribution, in terms of the number of prints, and this is a way to t jack up the numbers and hence the return and good luck to whoever is the producer.
Finally, Donagh, could you please resolve your actual status with WorldbyStorm and ensure that when a humble reader like myself spends a few moments writing a comment, after of course getting enraged, calming down, and finally typing it, that when I post it doesn’t come up as a fatal error. Well that’s what happened last night; and the time before when I tried to convince Michael Taft of the error of his ways.
Certain blogs of course do not have this problem, like Hugh Green’s. His allows me to attempt to point out where the bloke who made the cross came from with no problem. His problem is he mistakes anarchy for left wing views. (see the comment above) But then like myself, too much exposure to Rioja can easily do this unless you take up drinking Claret for a while. But maybe the study of Spain and the Spanish will do this to anybody.
Anyway assure Seanachie I was engaged by his article.
His problem is he mistakes anarchy for left wing views.
Hate it when that happens. I fear I must have been swayed by the comments accompanying the article on the film, in this case at least. Like this one here:
Which, roughly translated, sez:
‘This is what happens when you allow fucking reds to stay in power…we shouldn’t have left a single one…when they’re little you let them grow up and then all this happens…Paco Come Back Paco’
The Paco in question being one F. Franco.
On the ‘expression of left-wing views’ in film however: I would like to make one point. I agree with what Kevan writes about the jaw-shattering humorlessness of many films that openly display categorically left wing sympathies or views.
Might I observe, however, that part of this might be because most cinematic production, for the purposes of entertainment, reflects the values of the society in which it originates, and, on the occasions when it intends to supply a critique of that society, it tends to do so whilst still very much under the influence of those values, which include the sales and marketing constraints film-makers encounter. So those films that express explicitly ‘left-wing’ perspectives (see Loach) tend to do so in a sort of earnest, programmatic, we-must-hold-true-to-our-convictions fashion.
But -and this is where the sentimental part might come in, I think- there are lots of magnificent films about love and freedom and personal relationships which are not diminished in the slightest by the fact that they don’t bother attempting to lay bare the contradictions of the capitalist state or whatever, but rather help to create a visual space in which one can imagine what life might be like without it.
I can’t think of any at the minute because it’s late, but I’m sure you film buffs might come up with some.
Kevan says:
Finally, Donagh, could you please resolve your actual status with WorldbyStorm and ensure that when a humble reader like myself spends a few moments writing a comment, after of course getting enraged, calming down, and finally typing it, that when I post it doesn’t come up as a fatal error. Well that’s what happened last night; and the time before when I tried to convince Michael Taft of the error of his ways.
I said ‘acting’, because it seemed that word ‘editor’ applied without some sort of caveat would be just too high-falutin and pretentious. But we had to have someone controlling the flow of content, so I guess then I’m the editor.
I’ll certainly look into the comment thing. That’s very concerning and shouldn’t be happening. I just checked it and its happening alright. The comment goes through, but you get a fatal error first…anyway, I’ll get it fixed.
Hugh
But -and this is where the sentimental part might come in, I think- there are lots of magnificent films about love and freedom and personal relationships which are not diminished in the slightest by the fact that they don’t bother attempting to lay bare the contradictions of the capitalist state or whatever, but rather help to create a visual space in which one can imagine what life might be like without it.
While the film I thought of doesn’t exactly correspond to what you are saying it did remind me of a film with a political and personal theme, which used Spain as the setting, but which didn’t get caught up in ‘the earnest, programmatic, we-must-hold-true-to-our-convictions fashion’ that you mention.
Pan’s Labyrinth.
Donagh,
Many thanks for the comment engine or whatever one is suppose to call these things. As for the “acting”, don’t be shy. Take credit, if the others get upset they can only sack you.
I agree about Pan’s Labyrinth. Spanish language cinema has many examples of movies that take you outside where we might be at, into other worlds. It is either a tendency that comes naturally when you begin to think in the language or a lack of the kind of the heavy duty commercial pressure that is all a part of the English speaking world’s film production.
Here we either call the outside money, which means that you get asked “Who is in it” and sod all else, or you make something where the crew is paid tea money and the producer and director get nothing from a years work as in the case of ‘Adam and Paul’ for instance.
Donagh’s taken up ‘acting’ now ? …. careful of the burnout Donagh - even if the class is full of wistful wee things and you’re the only straight bloke under 70 in it… :->
Be careful too that you don’t turn into what used to be in one corner of Regan’s, Tara St. (on certain nights)
KevanB - that comment problem - happens to me on all sorts of blogs - one piece of advice from a Luddite techie - copy and paste the comment onto notepad before trying to add it - that way if the process of the comment being submitted goes skewways, you still have your comment text intact to try again..