Fan Reasoning

Today I heard the most brilliant thing on a sports talk show. It is so brilliant that, even though I have heard it a few times before, it finally ticked me off. They were talking about drugs in professional sports, up here it means NHL and CFL. The typically intelligent and thoughtful sport radio host kept asking Dick Pound and other, in increasingly stern voice “do the fans care?” This is the brilliant part, if he were a financial commentator and the situation were the false financial reports, he would be asking the prosecutor “do the shareholders who thinks they made money care?” It really does not matter if something is fair, just or legal so long as my constituents are happy with it. It is a clear line of logic, a simple ethical position, and a popular rallying point. What can be a better argument? And, couples that with high decibel, even the most boneheaded must crumble in front of its righteous force. Of course, fans as consumers do not really care from where, how, or by what means their consumptions come, so long as it fit their needs, mostly psychologically, and at a good price. Most of the diamonds are covered in blood and consumers did not care; and most of them still do not even after years of guilt tripping. Consumers consume, not to judge or even think. Steroid damages the player’s body and make the game unfair, so what, for years sports fans have been yelling at the players, or the television, to harm each other physical, kill each other, quite literally. Our great radio host is right, fans do not care, not a lick. Most German did not care Jews were being exterminated, good reasoning always applys.

Q&A

I like to stay for the Q&A after a film. This, however, does not mean that I like to have the “author” answer my questions and “enter into a dialogue.” In fact, I almost ask question and absolutely never as question about the intention or the film itself. It seems an insult to ask and “author” to explain his intention or his work; it is like saying, “you spent all this time, both yours and mine, and you still have not said what you wanted to say. Now, you have a second chance, make the best of it.” If a piece needs its creator to explain it, it failed. This is not to say the “author” does not usually try to explain. This explaining is usually about controlling the meaning, out of regret, failure, outside pressure, sex, whatever, not contributing to the work in question. Even out of the best of intentions, the “author” is almost always the worst person to do the interpretation. If the author has left things unsaid, well, he should have put it in. If he did not put it in, then it is not part of the work in question. Plus, the author only sees what he wanted to say consciously. What is said is always much more than this conscious effort. The unconscious part is precisely what makes it interesting, makes it art, makes it meaningful, elevate it above plenitude. What is interesting in the Q&A is therefore not anything about meaning and the work but psychology, the psychology of the director and the audience. A film, say, has a scene where water buffalos are stolen. Someone asks if buffalo stealing is common in the area the film is made. If it were a film about crime rate, this question may be somewhat relevant. But when the film is about the owner’s despair, the buffalos can any essential thing in the life of the character. In this case, unfortunately, it is the latter situation. Apparently the questioner is somehow fixated on a trivial matter in the film. The fun is to watch the director trying very hard to muster up all his self-control to answer the question. It is as dramatic as good short film: The Unbearable Lightness of the Scatter Brain Audience.

Catch A Fire

For 90 minutes, Catch A Fire is a good but unexceptional film. Sure, the direction is professional; the acting is understated and nuanced; the narrative is clear and strong; and the action is captivating without being overblown. But, there is still this feeling of over-familiarity and disinterest in me through out. It is like watch an extremely good TV movie on a super large screen TV. Everything, from the characters to the plot to the direction and acting, has been done many times before. I know how everything going to happen and who the people are. If it were a TV movie, it certain would win all the Grammy’s with just he first 90 minutes; but it would eventually be forgotten, not only by history but also by people who saw it. Catch A Fire is, however, not so easily forgettable. It is the last five minute that shakes the audiences out of this complacency. All of a sudden the narrator appears and he is not the actor but the actual person the story is about--Patrick Chamusso. He is on screen finish telling the story. The whole theatre collective inhaled deeply when Chamusso’s face appears on screen and we recognized this voice. It is not a TV movie, not your typical biopic; it is actually Chamusso’s own story. That is a shock since we have been trained so well to ‘suspend our disbelief’, i.e. to act as if what we know to be fiction is actually occurring in the present. This ‘as if’ provided a distance between us, the audience, and the events presented. It allows us to choose the way in which we want to be affected, and certainly disinterest and complacency from familiarity is one outcome. Phillip Noyce is one clever director. By leading us through a very conventional story and storytelling, he hits us when we most unexpected by breaking this “as if” and makes us realize, like it or not, that the word should really be “is.” At this point we have no choice but to face up to the facts as facts and not as a make belief. In accomplish this, Noyce makes this a exceptional film indeed.

예의없는 것들 (No Mercy for the Rude)

It is hard to find a good genre film. People usually think that genre film is about formulas and broad and typical characters. That certainly is true but it does not descript the whole truth. What makes a genre enduring is not those things but what is behind them. Take gangster film, for example. Sure, it is cool and stylish, a bit taboo even, but that is not a great gangster film. The gangster genre is essentially an outsider story, about outsiders turning the table on establishment. It is therefore a metaphor not a presentation; it is by nature allegoric not realist. So, all those speaks of realism in genre films, particularly in gangster films, missed the boat entirely. Park Chul-Hee’s No Mercy For The Rude knows what this means and wears it on its sleeves. Some people think this breaks the genre by introducing elements atypical to the formula. This may be so, but when it comes to the essence of the genre, the thing that gives the genre power is there in full realization. It is like High Noon “breaking the Western genre.” The full realization is such that those who are only familiar with inferior copies cannot recognize what they are seeing. Park is lyrical in his narrative and films without pretension of grandeur, and he does not to attract attention to his prowess as a director. In so doing, his narrative is clear and concise and his film personal and rich. This is all great credit to him as a director. Compare to this, John Woo’s (much less Tse Hark’s) formalized montage is just the pretentious fantasy of an early adolescence.

三峡好人 (Still Life)

The relationship between the director and his subject is an inherently unequal one. The director holds the control of the narrative and the subjects are at the mercy of this control. This is doubly so when the film is about the “voiceless” “the disenfranchised.” Simply by being able to make a film, the director is many levels above his subjects socially. It is therefore common to see such films become vehicles of patronization, condescension, tourism, exoticism and charity. This is very difficult to overcome, particularly when the director often starts from “oh, those poor people…” Still Life is not such a film. From the beautiful first shot, we are not above or beyond the characters of the film but there with them. We are in the boat, rather literally, with them. We are not descended on them but are there always. The film continues on stoically like the characters in it. We are always in close proximity, eye-level, with them, not so much watching but being with them. In the end, their stories are told and they do not make us feel superior, not even empathetic, but make us understand, like understanding a friend, ourselves. No wonder Wim Wender’s angels wanted to be human, how can they not. And Jia Zhangke made me his angel, what a privilege.

The Importance of Greatness

Watching a great film is like eating a great dish—it tells us, reminds us, how it can be, how it should be. Some may fear that it would make the infinite multitude of mindless tasteless mediocrity unbearable. To me it is the opposite. It gives me hope in the otherwise overwhelmingly unbearable world. It would be really hard if all there were but Justine Timberlake and Mel Gibson. To know that greatness and truthfulness are not only possible but that they do exist, however rare and fleeting they may be, that alone is enough to live on.

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)

As I was watching The Lives of Others, impressed by the stoic face and the internal performance of Ulrich Mühe, I could not help but think what would it be like if it were an American film. The film is about the struggle of a Stasi agent who is observing a prominent playwright who is the boy friend of the actress coveted by a powerful minister. On the outset it seems similar to Coppola’s The Conversation, wherein Gene Hackman plays a surveillance expert. While the reason and outcome of these two characters are different, much of both films deal with the process of surveillance. The Conversation focus quite a lot of its time on the technology and methods of surveillance, through these external materials the character of Harry Caul is constructed. While the same technique is used in The Lives of Others, it does not linger on the external materials. What it relies on instead are the subtle performance of Mühe and the subtext in the conversation between characters. Very little about Mühe’s character Wiesler or any of the Stasi agents are explained. By the way they acted around each other, their relationship and the structure of their world is implicitly communicated to us. Any deviation from this structure is therefore unmistakable since we “comes to understand” this structure through our observation. The same is true with Wiesler. We “come to” see what kind of upright loyal believer of the East German regime. When he hears “Sonata for a Good Man” and cried, it is nothing less than a shock. While the scene is almost entirely motionless, particularly comparing with the frantic style of The Conversation, the contrast between this Wiesler and the previous one is huge, like the distance between 0 and 1. From this point on, there is no melodrama, no explosion of emotion, just a good man making a good decision under impossible conditions. In an American film, there would be a lot of hand banging and probably the destruction of a few mirrors. This is not to say one is superior to the other, but a different in emphasis. Typically in American films, the interests are in the character with empathy the goal. It therefore not only allows but also requires as much audience access to the story and the emotions of the characters. The Lives of Others the interest is in the thinking rather then the emotional journal of the character. It is therefore not empathy that is required but that we understand the reasoning behind the actions. Interestingly, we require a lot less information to accomplish this understanding. It is as if the director believes that if we, the audience, would act as the ‘good man’ and come to the same conclusion as Wiesler if we can just watch the story unfold. Like “Sonata for a Good Man,” it is kind and calm, saying that a good man is not about drama and heroism but the moral decision and actions. We thus do not empathize with Wiesler but stand with him in the end. With that result, Donnersmarck’s film is successful and effective indeed.