I suppose you're right, although I thought the Kieslowski French movies had a big following here with the art house crowd. The Trois Couleurs keep turning up on TV!

But what do you blame the commercialization of Oz indie cinemas on? Palace and Village Roadshow? I really don't know. Is it part of a universal trend of diminishing specialist screening houses everywhere except France? In that enlightened country cinemas like Action Ecole, Accatone, Medicis etc are state subsidised. Could you imagine this happening in Australia under the fascists who govern us currently.

Way off topic here, but with the way ACMI is run down here, at least the fascists know where to stick it.

At least, ACMI screened the Matthew Barney films there and are screening this weekend, Kelly Reichardt's wonderful film, Old Joy.



The cinemas are party to blame but, then again, they need to make money and will not screen any films that don't make money. It's business, pure and simple. With box office declining in recent years, it has affected all films but those great little indie films don't make enough money any more for cinemas to screen them. Also, I believe audiences that used to go to mainstream cinemas in the 80s and 90s have now infiltrated arthouse cinemas looking for more intelligent films other than comic book adaptations. Those who used to attend arthouse cinemas in the 80s and 90s have now turned to DVD rather than going to see The Devil Wears Prada at their arthouse cinema. Also, the term "arthouse cinema" or whatever you want to call it has lost its meaning in today's cinema. Thank God for DVD and for a few daring, independent local DVD distributors.

i'm stymied to wade through complaints that kieslowski's films are too ponderous, and are in affect hollow or cold, too dependent on pretense. i view kieslowski's films and experience a reverential, soulful warmth that pervades every part of my body. veronique, in my mind the apotheosis of his style and concerns (especially with fortuity and coincidence), can enrapture my interest whatever my prevailing mood may be. it has a wonderfully transfixing, hypnotic quality to it that very much reminds me of tarkovsky.

i remember a rather arduous and contentious debate regarding kieslowski that ruptured on a message board i formerly frequented, wherein the majority of people opined that kieslowski's films were too considered with style and conjuring emotions solely from a visual point. it's telling of how anathematized intellectualism has become, where anyone possessed of strong precocity or intellectual vigor is lambasted as a pretentious cad simply because it happens to frighten someone - the mere thought someone out there is smarter than you. i've heard that dreadful word inaccurately pinned to kieslowski for so long the syllables have been sapped of whatever meaning they may have had.

kieslowski's films feel deeply personal to me, and though they may not be directly related to him (character-wise), i cannot help but think and feel that it is the expression of a supreme artist. to me, scorsese's films (forgive the spelling, if it is incorrect) are cold and hollow, impersonal and without any qualities i would asign to great works of cinema, because to me they are merely adequate. they aren't bad, but i cannot with any degree of sincerity say his name could be said in confidence and company with names like tarkovsky, kieslowski or bergman - or anyone really on the criterion roster. i think kieslowski could have easily made goodfellas or casina, it would probably be like playing checkers to him, but scorsese could never have made something like veronique or the decalogue. (it reminds me of what dylan said to keith richards, "i could have written 'satisfaction,' but you could never write 'mr. tambourine man.'"). kieslowski's work is so singular and disparate, that he seems an inimitable director, at least to me.

the 3 colors trilogy, though limping slightly with blanc (and i do think that has its moments of greatness, but in company with bleu and rouge it's simply a lesser work), is tremendous to me. rouge might be the film i champion most out of all of them, but that's probably only due to the presence of irene jacob.

apologies for the tangent and seemingly unexpected scorsese tangent, but i've been laboring for some time over argument after argument about him, to such an extent, that my frustrations must have simply crept in.

anyhow, i recently found one of his early works on dvd and look forward to viewing it. i have yet to see blind chance, however.

Now KK doing Goodfellas, that'd be interesting (if not incredibly ridiculous):
VO: "Ever since I was a kid"
rapid cut to milk bottle falling in slow motion, crashing, screen turns white.
Cut to: Deep CU of mothers eyes. Camera pulls back to view her trudging off dejectedly.
Cut to: Deep CU of Italian eyes, deepset, wrinkles around the edges. Camera pulls back...slowly...to reveal a golden Sicilian smile.
VO continues: "to be a wise guy".
Next five minutes includes 23 shots from ever whirling points of view W/O dialogue or narration.
KK is great, but he can't do Scor-cease and more than Marty can do Kiss-lovsky.

i suppose given the nature of my comments, i should've explained myself in a less puerile manner. i don't mean to imply scorsese lacks technical aptitude, i believe i alluded to the fact that his films were well-made, however they never seem anything more than adequate to me. every aspect of his filmmaking keeps me at arm's length, the foul body odour of his male characters, the way things look, etc. frankly, i'm not impressed that he moved a fucking camera through a dishwashing station. i remember von trier was talking about the meaninglessness of praise for things like that, how he was disgusted by the hosannas given to the first few minutes of touch of evil solely because of the camera movement. while i don't agree with nor emphasize this point with as much severity, that camera scudding through the ass-end of a restraunt will not alter the irrevocable fact that the characters in goodfellas are like lifetime movie characters - nor will his numerous edits and cuts and montages set to baby-boomer music make his films any more appealing to me.

perhaps part of my disdain for his work comes from the palpable lack of personality to me. yes, i know he likes violence - i don't sync that with character. it's difficult to articulate to someone who admires his work, i suppose, but his films never feel anything but average to me, and are in some instances - i apologize in advance for the use of so listless a word - silly. that's really the word that epitomizes it. perhaps it's also that i feel his films are symptomatic of what could be called "movie buff" syndrom. i don't mean cineaste or anything like that, i mean the guy that stops you at the water cooler during your brief little lunch break and harangues you about the weekend grosses. that kind of desultory, unsavory thing - blockbuster cards, troughs of popcorn, random quoting of scarface and ceaseless talk of studios and oscars (these people always know every single candidate and recipient of those dreadful things).

another part of my dislike and even derision of his films comes from the populist aspect; he's simply too popular. that's a bit of a joke, albeit a bad one, but it has some truth to it. i tend to like things that appeal to a smaller audience, and i notice that those particular films or books or bands, all tend to espouse a feeling that is distinct to them, something which requires the absolute acquiescence and patience, the sinews and network of veins and all anyone could ever surrender of themselves and give...that these things demand something from their audience. a thing can have broad appeal if it has a less than distinct mood, but when something is broad, proportionally, the personal and impassioned aspect of it is questioned.

additionally, and as a simple reiteration of what i said earlier, his name fails to carry the kind of weight he would like it to. he is a good director, but to me, there is something absent which prevents his ascension to the ranks and pantheon of our most sublime and transcendant directors. i believe this to be as a result of his inability to make a personal film, a smaller film with a more particular atmosphere. taxi driver is incontestably close, but i wager that's more because of schrader than anything else.

it's analogous to the case of someone like coppola (francis), who - as pauline kael quite rightly (for once) suggested, is incapable of making a smaller film - that he is better suited to direct a larger film in the manner of the godfather or apocalypse now. something like the conversation feels awkward for a coppola film, as it seems an american (and therefore more crass) restatement of what was done with blow-up (which i don't think to be one of antonioni's better films anyway). his talents are more suited towards the broader end of things. i think marty is similar in some sense.

after i see a scorsese film, i feel only that i have completed viewing a film. the film ends, the disc is ejected or the channel purged and changed; yet when i view a film (as i just recently did) like stalker, or last year at marienbad, i am incapable of expressing anything but momentary awe, a suspension of syllables due to the fact that all of my emotions and feelings and intellectual ditherings are hastily crowding to the forefront of my brain, imperiously shoving and caterwauling, trying to cope with something that they all ubiquitously deem beautiful, ineffable. when i viewed last year at marienbad the film lived inside of my head for days - immediately after the film ended my limbs were lame, motionless and immobile, beset upon my sides with a faint, vaguely numb feeling. i could barely bear to blink or move my jowls, despite the dryness that had swelled inside my mouth - unable to swallow, to move or think without conjuring some endless corridor, queue of angular trees, decorous hall bedecked with languorous, slack-eyed dinner guests, or some other image from the film.

this is, as clear as i can put it, what differs for scorsese and my reaction to his films. they are incapable of making me feel anything in this manner, they cannot astound or destroy my senses as resnais and countless others have - they are simply films to me, films that do not move nor flit beyond what they are merely capable of doing - entertaining. as should be stressed, nothing is wrong with this, but comparatively i favor one highly above the other. if i watch eraserhead, i breathe with it, if i watch veronique, it courses like ichor through my veins - these films and films like them open up the possiblity of beauty to me, and it is something simply to which scorsese is not predisposed.

I'm not quite sure why Scorsese and Coppola have been dragged into this, since they have no relation I can see to Kieslowski, but I do have to respond to this. I fail to see why it's a problem that, as you say, Coppola and Scorsese are best suited to "large" films. I think that's incontestably true, and I wouldn't characterize either director as "intimate" or "personal" (although both infuse their epics with personal themes and concerns), but that's more a matter of individual style than it is an aesthetic judgment. That is, why would a small "personal" film be automatically more valid somehow than a larger Scorsese-style epic? I wouldn't count Scorsese among my favorites, but I do enjoy his films and I hardly think his best works could be characterized as empty technical exercises. Taxi Driver, quite contrary to your dismissal of its merits as all belonging to Schrader, is actually of a piece with much of Scorsese's other work. He's interested in using the violence and stylistic flourishes of a "genre" picture in order to portray a particular kind of urban milieu, complete with attendant concerns about religion, morality, friendship, honor, and ethnicity. Films like Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, Goodfellas, and (in a much lighter vein) After Hours perfectly capture a certain kind of urban setting and the kinds of people who inhabit it. It's often a weird mix of gritty realism and extreme stylization, with much of the realism residing in the characters' speech and relationships.

It seems like you're not particularly interested in the subjects that Scorsese chooses to explore, but that in itself does not invalidate his filmmaking. Comparing him to Kieslowski is fruitless, not only because they each inhabit very different worlds and have very different approaches, but because their entire styles are practically diametrically opposed. What they share is pretty much just an interest in spirituality, and the stylization of their films (although it's of course a very different form of stylization, too).

Most hilarious post I've read in a long while. It made me almost picture my old relatives. Thanks for the laugh, skuhn.

well marty's presence arose principally in the defense of kieslowski, really. i've slogged through so many complaints regarding kieslowski's perceived coldness, that it tires me and seems entirely errant. i instead attributed those comments, coldness etcetera, to someone whom i thought was removed from his films, scorsese. it wasn't initially meant to light a fire under anyone's ass, but it was brought up rather to immunize the argument against kieslowski. the logic was this, i suppose: kieslowski's films feel entirely personal to me, and the sensations they bring are nothing close to cold. i would instead reserve that word for a film or filmmaker who's in some sense apart from his films, someone like scorsese - it was more of a device of argument or persuasion than anything else, not explicitly meant to impugn him. i felt i should qualify my statement, elucidate it and explain my reasoning for finding his films shallow. the supposition that small films are qualifiably better than large films, is - not without reason - inferred from my tastes, but that's in some sense what i meant. they are necessarily more broad and when having this tendency of size they tend to sacrifice the real soul of the film (of course exceptions exist, but the dominant trend implies this). that's what was intended by specifying the feelings which arise within me after viewing something more engaging, challenging or arresting (in any sense) than scorsese. perhaps that's too large of an argument to qualify in any real, meaningful way, but it was only meant to trump the thought that kieslowki's films were cold - as, to my logic, something much more broad and less atmospherically distinct would deserve such a word.

i lack brevity, and just tend to want to be as thorough of a bastard as i can possibly be. i know the majority of it didn't directly relate to kieslowski, but it was a long, circuitous means of defending an artist i couldn't imagine being called frigid.

Fair enough. I can't imagine "frigid" being applicable to Kieslowski either, and some of the anti-KK posts in this thread have definitely ranged very far from my own reactions to his work, so I agree with you there. I'd also rank him quite a bit higher than Scorsese in my personal pantheon, for whatever that's worth. But then, I don't really think that Scorsese is "cold" or "apart from his films" either. Quite to the contrary, even his most violent, abrasive works betray a real affection and emotion towards the characters and the locations being depicted. I don't really agree that a "larger" film must have less "soul" than a smaller one -- that's a matter of individual taste of course, but film history is full of directors who specialize in broad, large-scale epics and nevertheless communicate tremendous emotion and nuance through their work. Altman, Fellini, Cimino, Bertolucci, Visconti, and yes, Scorsese. Actually, glancing over that list I realized that there's a definite tradition in Italian (and Italian-influenced) cinema of exactly that kind of large-scale auterism that you see in Scorsese. Grand gestures and epic narratives, but not necessarily sacrificing emotion and soul. Again, it's very different from Kieslowski's quieter filmmaking, but I don't think it's an intrinsically inferior approach as you keep implying.

perhaps i didn't quite specify; i didn't necessarily mean "large" in terms of who the participants were, the amount of people in thef film (in something like altman's films) nor the sweep of the film, i mean more directly the feeling the film evinces. despite the "larger" quality of films like mccabe & mrs. miller, the conformist or fellini's work, these films have a rather narrow feeling, more particular. bertolucci is rather adept at maintaining a mood despite the scope of the film (emphasis placed on the conformist, a film i bought at wal-mart and was carded for - apparently there is an abundance of bearded teenage malcontents out there, for whom this film should be prohibited). i was referring more to the atmosphere of the film, if the feeling it has is more broad or more narrow. aside from that, bertolucci and fellini's films are pervaded by their personalities, which have in-themselves, a very specific feeling. it's more an intuitive sense of larger and smaller than a literal one. i guess an example would be andrei rublev - its vision is spectacularly large, however the feeling one pulls from it is more distinct, its mood much more personal - there's less ambiguity of feeling. i simply meant that scorsese's films were too broad in that they lacked the personality of other filmmakers, in what they can make you feel, the sensations they can spur. the conformist absolutely astounded me on every level, it was both an intellectual and visceral experience, something which conveyed a distinct emotional/intellectual feeling. what i meant is that scorsese's films do nothing of the sort for me, and have never inspired nor enraptured me in the way that other filmmakers have. they are, despite his atavistic obsessions with violence and hammy acting, unengaging to me precisely because of this - the feeling i get from his films is precisely the feeling i get from michael bay films. i say to myself, "what of it?" it affects me in no way whatever, and i think the imperative for any great work of art is that it be invigorating, exceptional and other high-spirited, well-meaning adjectives. what i have before me is too broad to extract anything that could be personally affecting. it's a matter of reciprocity, really, and i just don't get that from his films. i do get that from filmmakers who maintain and sustain a certain kind of mood or feeling, one which permits its viewers to be challenged, but one that also communicates with them. it's an entirely subjective approach, obviously, but that shouldn't diminish it or what i view as the highest achievement of art; which is to involve, personally, an audience, or more exactly a particular part of that audience, it should sing perhaps only for certain people.

there isn't anything remotely personally affecting about his films to me, and of all the people i've encountered in film circles who admire him, certainly nothing wrong with that, none of them have ever expressed any intensity of amour, in the truest sense and firmest manner that one can feel for and with a piece of art. there should be transcendence of some sort, i think, an empathy and expression that feels utterly distinct. i just feel his films lack a point of egress or something murky and arcane which would send them lithely spinning across the boundaries of entertainment and art. they don't have that unnameable, ineffable thing which exists beyond my articulation.

i don't know, i'm beginning to think it's self-defeating to even try and clarify my use of those words.

Good posts, your defences of KK hit the mark with me to be sure. I am not entirely happy with the thread being "Red" as I think the whole (of the trilogy) is definitely greater than the sum of its parts and I think all of the films benefit from that context. (Irene's legs in "Red" are peerless however).

Catch "Blind Chance". It was the first of his I saw, on UK TV way back in 89, and I had no idea what to expect from it at all, but the idea and execution were both stunning and it floored me. (The idea nabbed for Sliding Doors of course, and something else that doesn't spring to mind right now. I also like the idea of No End as the other side of the coin from Ghost and Truly Madly Deeply, and loved its dark music, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique meets The Stooges We Will Fall...) The music for Blind Chance is by Wojciech Kilar, not Priesner but is every bit as good as all but Priesner's very best.

I think what you're trying to talk about is "engagement" with the filmmaker's vision.

Scorsese won't work for someone who can't feel engagement with one of the performers. Where Scorsese becomes problematic for some people - in his best work - is focussing that engagement or even identification through an unsympathetic character. Like de Niro in Taxi Driver or Raging Bull (or even harder New York New York) but Scorsese at his peak is far more radical a director than KK because he negotiates his leads through interaction with other performers and characters and asks you to see them in three dimensions. A personal favorite is King of Comedy in which the central concept of Jerry Lewis' own Nutty Professor Split personality is invested into the real Jerry Lewis and de Niro's Pupkin alter ego. The dynamics are simply dazzling. And Scoreses's teritory (at least until the last few films) is dark and confilctual. The more I think about him the wildly more adventurous a director he seems to me than KK.

i think you're correct in stating it's greater than the sum of its parts, it's almost like an album that's been impeccably arranged and the absence or removal of one minute inch would do irreperable harm. i eagerly devoured the films when i bought them on a mere whim, but was crestfallen given the disparate tone of blanc. initially it seemed far too comical to fit itself comfortably in with the other parts of the trilogy, and it definitely lacked the strong visual sense that was rampant in the other films (at least comparatively, it still has its own little gorgeous moments). however, i rewatched it recently and found myself far more approving of its inclusion, and i even like the shift in character focus from female to male for the middle in the series of films (i'm also, unabashedly intrigued by vindictive females, and there was something so unhesitatingly malicious about julie's smile in the film).

on a somewhat different note, am i the only one to find the woman they continually interview about kieslowski to be abusively obnoxious? i believe she authored the films of kieslowski book, and her knowledge is extensive and well-researched, however there is something about her that absolutely terrifies me - and i think it's her ears.

no end was recently procured, and i believe i need to spend some well-earned time with it.

Not even Raging Bull?


What about the French New Wave?


What about da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Mozart or Beethoven? Or great leaders like Gandhi or Martin Luther King? I think the reason they all have broad appeal and influence is becase they absolutely merit it. Their lives and works have shifted their medium and/or the lives around them. I think the same could be said of the best of Scorsese. He has certainly left his mark on the medium, and his influence will be felt long after he is gone, just like the masters before him. I think you cheapen his style when you narrow it down to just cuts and baby boomer music. Was Gandhi just a bald guy in a towl who didn't care to eat? Was King just a outspoken preacher at the right place at the right time? It's just an opinion of course, and you're entitled to it...


Why stop there? Wasn't it the diary of would-be George Wallace assassin Arthur Bremer that started the whole damn thing? Come on. I don't buy that shit that Scrader was merely depressed and it king of popped out, but that's just me.


I can deal with that...

actually, it's not really the unsympathetic nature of his characters that divdes me. nor is it my concern of his radical nature, which i must frankly disagree with, if only because his manner of conduct is just pedestrian, meat-and-potatoes to me (and marty isn't exactly jodorowski, or heaven forbid, crispin glover). i actually enjoy unsympathetic characters, thus my unabated love of vincent gallo's billy brown in buffalo '66 and the disgusting characters of gummo (this not being an endorsement, by any means, of harmony korine). king of comedy was interesting to me, but my nascent interest quietly died once the film ended, as there was something - as there inevitably is with all his films - that leaves me absolutely ambivalent and unaffected. i have strained this entire thread to abstain from using the word "boring" and i will continue to do so, but this is pushing me somewhat more persistently. his territory may be dark and conflictual, but frankly that is the domain occupied solely by david lynch, and in a much more imagistic, lively fashion. what may perhaps be the case is that scorsese's films feel very american to me, and i am, with few exceptions, uninterested or unengaged by american film. cassavetes, gallo, lynch, kubrick, wilder (only sunset boulevard, really), and woody allen are about the extent of my interest. i'm much more prone to eastern europe or distinctly european cinema. kieslowski and his kind are more endorsed by me primarily because of my own native origins, and that i feel entirely an alien in this country. i understand his films are somewhat endemic and particular to america and its cinema, so this is probably closer to my failure to find in it anything which surpasses mere entertainment, because frankly he is the thomas kincaid and van halen of cinema to me (i apologize for the crude, boorish nature of this comment, but i think it is not without humor). merely because he inverts the perception of jerry lewis and his most-known character and turns de niro into a yarbling monyooka, is not reason enough - for me - to like the film. we're wading dangerously through the strident nature of personal taste here, but scorsese still seems infinitely more cold to me than kieslowski ever could.

It's ironic for me because the other night I finally watched the great conformist film everyone is talking about, mostly for it's cinematography, and I was left cold and uninterested. There was that one shot with the leaves that Coppola borrow for Godfather II, but that was it. Whereas with Goodfellas, I was completely enraptured; by the end of the first scene, I knew I was in for a ride. Time and time again, the movie never fails to pull me in.

Incidentally, I remember we had various screenings of films, mostly new, open to students at the campus center at my college, and despite being an older flick on the schedule of films, it had the most attendance of all the titles being shown, save for maybe The Matrix. I'm not saying that's the grand indicator, but I remember how enthralled the audience was for that film. I never had the chance to see Goodfellas in the theaters, so I guess that was the closest I came to it. Again, to each their own I guess...

1) i didn't mean character associating with violence in terms of an actual character, i meant the character of a film - the style, the mood, etc. simply a confusion of usage or your understanding of what i meant

2) "movie buff" syndrome precludes things like the new wave either french or czech, it instead indicates a strong proclivity for al pacino movies and blockbuster patronage. it's more like my ex-girlfriend's brother, who owned nearly 200 films, all of which were mediocre - he thought foreign films were weird. once again, i think you misread what i meant. a cineaste is a somewhat classier form of movie buff, like a wino to a meth addict.

3) it seems my poor attempt at humor was entirely lost upon you. the part about his popularity was a joke. however, you cannot qualify the validity of art by its popularity or mass acceptance. you are indoctrinated and inculcated in schools to believe shakespeare is great, schools make no attempt to articulate why it's good - it's simply become part of a canon which is to exist beyond reproach. personally, i dig hamlet. if you're going to cite his popularity as defence then you have successfully scraped the absolute bottom of the barrell. that is by no means any indication of anything, but instead validates what i said, that things which have a broader and less particular mood appeal to more people. virtually everyone knows who brittany spears is, and comparatively her popularity eliminates the mere thought of the velvet underground having any relevance on these grounds. why? because brittany's music or michael jackson's music or whomever else's music is desalinated and more palatable to mainstream tastes than something like the velvet underground. people read john grisham and not marcel proust, am i to believe one's talents trump the other solely because of numbers? there is no accounting for taste in a tasteless majority. the fact you invoke fucking gandhi and martin luther king jr is indefensibly asinine, i'm sorry. take everything pejorative and insinuating you want from the tone of this particularly numbered reply, and know deeply that your reasoning is embarassing. i don't think scorsese's style is as striking as some of his contemporaries, nor do i think it's intellectually honest to equate him with civil rights leaders. there is a basic moral barometer which lends to the creedence and popularity of these figures, the same does not apply to art and the differing preferences for it. why do more people like terminator 2 than like persona? why do more people like martin luther king than david duke? the empirical or ethically perceived truth only emerges from the latter, the former exists independent of this reasoning and therefore cheapens your argument.

4) regarding taxi driver, you have convinced me you are a man of hollow argument. what in the hell are you driving at? i implied taxi driver was more personal because it arose from schrader's depression - the film worked and had more of an atmosphere and personal degree because of the script and the writer's empathy for the character, his ability to in some sense understand travis. my reasoning stands that the only films i've been able to enjoy of scorsese's were raging bull and taxi driver (latter infinitely more than the former), and incidentally they're both authored by paul schrader. therfore, i give the benefit to paul schrader as i've seen nearly everything else by scorsese and none of it yielded these same effects. to me, it's quite obvious that schrader is the cause. i don't see what there is "not to buy."

5) well, there's no need for argument for the last quote, i suppose, and i'm glad i could present some satisfactory view of my sentiments.

in regards to your perception of the conformist, i should specify that the intellectual content and the main idea of the film accelerated my interest a great deal, as i'm desparately affectionate towards things which deal with emotional fascism. i would've given anything to see its wonderful colors and compositions on a large screen

Posted this in the Double Life.. thread:

The last time I watched this was during the theatrical release in 1991, and I was blown away. I've just watched it a second time on DVD and am now shocked by how banal the whole thing is.

Kieslowski's mise-en-scene seems completely rudderless to me. I can't ground it in any kind of reality or aesthetic or ideological tradition, and so it borders on irrelevance. When critics, fans, and Kieslowski himself warn against trying to hold the film accountable to anything, I start to get suspicious. I can't even take the "let your emotions run" route, because I found the marionettes much more human and heartfelt than any of the actors.

I now understand Godard's dismissal of Kieslowski's "designer mysticism." He should have stayed in Poland where he had something to grasp on to.

So, the only thing you liked about "The Conformist" was a shot that was used as the inspiration for a shot in another film?

I'm really not trying to be a dick, you know. I just mentioned that shot because to me it was the standout in the whole film, though I know everyone goes crazy for the striped dress scene with the window blinds. I know there's a whole story to the film, and it was alright, just didn't pull me in as hard I guess. Besides, I really only ever heard about it based on its cinematography, so that's what drove me to it. I don't know what to say. It's not a shit film, not an absolute waste of film, just not ...for me, I guess, you know Dylan? I didn't mean to shit on it in this thread. Lord knows there's been enough of that going around. Poor Marty...

exte,

I don't mind you giving your opinion, I was just curious if you meant what I thought your post indicated.

By the way, I'm not even sure what this thread is about anymore...there's about ten different discussions going on.

You know, this reminded me of when I was in film school, and I overheard another student's conversation with some African Americans, and he had just seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for the first time. I know, this is a KK thread, but bear with me. Anyway, for a white guy, he was very much into rap and this and that, and all he could say about the film was that it was 'interesting' how the hospital staff was cast with black actors, and there seemed to be that whole racial thing. Now, when I saw One Flew for the first time in high school, it blew me back in my chair. I was nearly in tears at the end and had to put my head down so no one, god forbid, could see me as the lights were being turned on and classmates were walking out. It was just amazing, a total discovery for me, and all this guy had to say was that black people were playing villainous characters once again... And I kind of came out of nowhere and asked him, "that's all you got from that film?" And he just kind of looked at me without saying anything, and everyone just kind of stared. It was an awkward moment, of course. Obviously it wasn't my conversation, and clearly I wasn't going to be sympathetic to his argument... anyway, it just reminded me. So, no, The Conformist didn't hit me like a ton of bricks like One Flew, et cetera, etc...

Guys, stop using the word "selling out", I very carefully prefaced my last post by saying this is not about KK selling out.

Hey I have an idea: Rather than saying


or "You people who say XYZ about Kieslowski really annoy me and I wish I wouldn't hafta hear that kinda sound," setting off bullshit arguments.

How about saying:

"I love KK because his _____________________ is really really really really great because of the way he ________________"?

Folks not liking your favorite director shouldn't enrage you nor threaten the sublime experience you have with your discs & your tv.

And skuhn, you were doing so well, dude! We had a little POSTO/Olmi discussion going on, we were rolling here healing all the scabby ointmenty wounds from the skull-punting and the broken liquor-bottle scratching from last week.... and now ya went ahead and ya did it. DAMN! have you forgotten? Antabuse is not just a creative attempt at securing a snack in a Hungary backyard! You're just addicted to being conked around the schoolyard... gives you a reason to uncork I guess.

EDIT (still reading):


That was actually a kickass reply to an obviously sincere but rather overwrought post. And Bunny-- didn't you take the hint a few weeks ago? The combination of your densepacked verbiage and the lack of caps almost make your posts at least a strain and at most, unreadable..

Well, Dylan and a couple other posters have done a fine spank up job describing why they like KK, so instead of just doing a big post quote followed by 'ditto' and whatever emoticon...me and some of da boyz choose to go after you and some of your boyz (this be the hood an' all what with criterioncom gettin' too ghetto). But seriously, someone comes up with what might be considered a weak argument for kicking a director to the curb and no one is allowed to rebut? If I wasn't the lazy bastard that I am I'd go digging around your posts finding the many many examples where you do just that in your Pynchonite manner.

An' quit prescribing medication for me! I've got a small army of trained specialists taking care of that, and I don't want to sic them on your ass.