It’s hard to logically argue an almost completely visceral and emotional reaction to a film. Then again, aren’t emotional appeals the main point of making art? Sure, many creative endeavors seek to educate or to enlighten on a particular subject, or make an academic statement using intellectual appeals. But I would argue that the overwhelming majority of artists seek to hit the audience in the collective gut, wishing to elicit the strongest possible emotional response to their work.
That’s exactly what happened to me as I watched Wild.
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“Of course if you’re a flag-waving fan of writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson…you will be required to recognize it as a work of genius…” - Tom Long, The Detroit News
I’m a flag-waving fan of Mr. Anderson, and not only is Inherent Vice not a work of genius, it is the low point of his career thus far, and a near total disappointment.
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I’ve often struggled with how to describe what works in a movie and what doesn’t. Breaking through the standard “it was good”/“it was bad” dichotomy can be difficult, especially because my personal philosophy on what makes a movie “good” or “bad” tends toward the ineffable. But reaching an emotional connection to what’s happening onscreen is, unquestionably, a big part of it. Unfortunately, the biggest problem with Angelina Jolie’s biggest budget directorial effort to date is that the emotional connection never comes.
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I’ve had trouble writing about director Ridley Scott’s latest attempt at epic period film-making, Exodus: Gods and Kings, since first seeing it. I think I finally know why. After finding huge critical and popular success with his Oscar-winning swords-and-sandals epic Gladiator in 2001, Scott has returned to the period piece action-adventure well several times with limited success – as seen in both Kingdom of Heaven and the recent Robin Hood. The big problem with Exodus, a retelling of the biblical story of Moses freeing the Jews from Egyptian slavery, is that it doesn’t feel like a story Ridley Scott needed to tell.
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The possibility for disaster was high when Richard Linklater embarked on his experiment of filming Boyhood in 2002. The film was shot over the course of twelve years using the same actor to tell the story of Mason, who we see progress from age six to eighteen, and the people who come in and out of his life during that time period.
My respect and admiration for Linklater’s commitment to a project of such enormous scope is hard to overstate. When he chose child actor Ellar Coltrane to carry what would become a three hour study of a child coming of age in America, he had no idea what he would get as the years passed, and Coltrane’s talents could either grow or stagnate. This risk was compounded when Linklater cast his own young daughter in the pivotal role of Mason’s older sister, Samantha.
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The most common critique of Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey is that it is cold, detached. Clinical. Kubrick had no emotional investment in his characters in that movie, and they only served as catalysts for the plot. Interstellar is director Christopher Nolan’s epic, sweeping counterpoint to Kubrick’s coldness. It seems clear to me that Nolan was not only inspired by, but was possibly obsessed with Kubrick’s film while he crafted his own.
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True Stories is a quiet film. Despite all the great music and the zaniness of the characters, the natural tide it creates is meant to sweep the audience gently along with it. While watching it, I couldn’t help but sit with a bemused grin on my face from start to finish.
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