Film Criticism

[Mr Sausage]

What a cop out.

[mfunk9786]

Mr. Sausage, it's the same question we've been arguing back and forth over the last page or so. Further go rounds would just bore everyone, I think.

Take care.

Methinks you've been boring everyone for a long time, schmuck.

[swo17]

Wethinks you've been boring everyone for a long time, schmuck.

Fixed.

[Brian C]

I, too, would like to pile on.

[karmajuice]

So I'm not exactly a huge fan of Kael, but even her worst work ("Raising Kane", for instance) is compelling and enriches the way I view the films she discusses. That said, I love when someone writes some piss-poor piece of criticism and makes an account on the forum just to contest our disparaging remarks.

[Tom Hagen]

So I noticed the copyright for the Kael essay on Blow Out, checked, and sure enough: she's getting anthologized by the Library of America later this year.

[Perkins Cobb]

Elvis Mitchell gets fired again. Even though Mitchell is a train wreck, this smells less like Vincent Canby redux than an underhanded way to cut some expensive talent out of the budget.

[matrixschmatrix]

So I noticed the copyright for the Kael essay on Blow Out, checked, and sure enough: she's getting anthologized by the Library of America later this year.

That's amazing- those anthologies are consistently well put together.

I just wish that damn 'selected' weren't in the title (although a complete Kael omnibus would a monster)

[Tom Hagen]

Absolutely, I imagine the "complete" Kael would be unweildy beyond belief.

LOA has already done Agee and Farber. I wouldn't be surprised if Sarris were next.

[Mr Sausage]

Kurt Vonnegut/Canonization discussion moved here.

[Tom Amolad]

Has anyone come across much discussion of Theodor Adorno or Walter Benjamin in film criticism that isn't strictly academic? I'd be particularly interested to hear if either was on the radar of any auteurist circles in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

[Alan Smithee]

This may be the laziest thing I've ever seen on Senses of Cinema. The writer just lobs a lot of accusations at Von Trier with very little support or insight. She goes as far as to claim Von Triers reputation for being good with women can't be true because if it was he would always work with the same actress who would want to come back for every film. Then she claims Gainsbourg's been in THREE Von Trier films. It's just a bone-headed and obvious piece.

[Duncan Hopper]

She must be correct though, she has a PhD in Cinema Studies, it says so above all her articles.

[Brian C]

Actually, women don’t seem to hang around von Trier for long, great parts or not. He doesn’t have a stable of regular actresses like Ingmar Bergman or Woody Allen.

Is it just me or is this a strange term to use in an article about the mistreatment of women? Hard to take her self-righteousness seriously when she's tossing off casually demeaning terms like this.

[Duncan Hopper]

Yeah, I mean, he's not got a stable of regular actresses like Alex deRenzy or Gerard Damiano had.

[Mr Sausage]

What an intellectually vacuous piece. As far as I can tell, Von Trier is a misogynist because: A. he joked about making a three-to-four hour unerotic porn film, B. he works with many different actresses, C. his parts for women aren't actually good parts because in three of them, the woman character suffers hardships or meets a bad end.

In the first instance, she's using the word porn to carry the whole weight of her argument for her. That is lazy and manipulative. It's also dull-witted, considering the point of Lars' joke was that he intended to torture his critics with the movie, not his starlets. The film also isn't intended to be erotic, so how can it be misogynist if it isn't exploiting women as sexual objects for male satisfaction? It plainly does not fit the criteria used by feminist critics of porn.

The second instance is near slander. What business does she have claiming to know the reason for this or that actress' not appearing in more than one Von Trier film? Has she gone and asked them? Has she done any research, collected any evidence, made even a cursory attempt to discover whether her hypothesis is true or not? No, not one bit. This is intellectually dishonest.

The third part is a non-sequitur. His portrayals of some women may or may not be misogynist in themselves, I don't know and the author certainly never said anything to convince me of it one way or the other. But the fact that a female character is treated badly at some point in the movie does not mean it isn't a high-quality role for an actress. That does not follow.

The fact that people can get away with calling other people misogynists on such flimsy evidence just makes it all the harder for legitimate complaints about misogyny to be taken seriously.

[colinr0380]

I'd love to see a 'stable lead actress' (or actor come to that) in a Lars von Trier film!

The issue of 'no actress wanting to work on a Lars von Trier film more than once' has come up before on the forum. I assume that the writer is thinking of the high profile Emily Watson or Nicole Kidman emotionally draining lead roles and extrapolating the infamous Björk experience from Dancer In The Dark onto them. But even without doing any research into the subject (Sorry Mr Sausage!) that seems a rather harsh judgement to make, especially when considering that star name actors might have something to gain themselves by lending their presence to a relatively uncommercial project. It could be a mutually beneficial relationship without ever evolving into a muse style actor-director partnership over multiple films.

However even giving the benefit of the doubt to this extent the writer's argument is still problematic when even just a casual scan of the cast list of the films reveals Lauren Bacall appeared in both Dogville and Manderlay, Siobhan Fallon took significant supporting roles in Dancer In The Dark and Dogville, and Kirsten Olesen appeared in the early Conformist-tinged short film Images of a Relief and then went on to take the title role of Medea six years later.

And I guess you could also count the majority of the cast of The Kingdom reconvening years later for The Kingdom II!

[MichaelB]

However even at this point the writer's argument is still problematic when even just a casual scan of the cast list of the films reveals Lauren Bacall appeared in both Dogville and Manderlay, Siobhan Fallon took significant supporting roles in Dancer In The Dark and Dogville, and Kirsten Olesen appeared in the early Conformist-tinged short film Images of a Relief and then went on to take the title role of Medea six years later.

...and Katrin Cartlidge, second female lead in Breaking the Waves, would have appeared in Dogville had it not been for her untimely death. (The film is dedicated to her, "in loving memory")

[zedz]

You forgot something!

. . . even just a casual scan of the cast list of the films reveals the famously-tolerant-of-bullshit Lauren Bacall appeared in both Dogville and Manderlay

This argument is almost comically inadequate (and I'm somebody who does think von Trier has problems - with women, with himself, with foxes and crows, whatever). You could just as easily argue that roles with lots of suffering and misery in them are great for actresses, or that von Trier making women the emotional and narrative centre of so many of his films is evidence against misogyny. You also have the awkward task of explaining why, if Lars is so anti-women, that so many leading international actresses go to him for their big acting opportunities and strategic grabs at Cannes' Big Brass Ring.

[Brian C]

I actually feel like one has to be a big giant sucker to make this argument in the first place. The porn comments referenced in the article are such obvious troll bait on LVT's part that Sullivan can hardly be expected to come out well after engaging them.

It reminds me of all the moral panic directed against Marilyn Manson by Christian groups when I was a teenager. Mutually beneficial publicity, I guess.

[AlexHansen]

(and I'm somebody who does think von Trier has problems - with women, with himself, with foxes and crows, whatever)

As does anyone who's seen The Humiliated I imagine.

[tavernier]

Frank Rich reviews the 2 new Kael books

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, Blow-Up has faded to obscurity? They literally showed that in Film 101, at least when I took it.

edit: Does anyone know how much the Library of America book overlaps with For Keeps? I love Kael, but I don't need two anthologies of the same stuff.

[Mr Sausage]

edit: Does anyone know how much the Library of America book overlaps with For Keeps? I love Kael, but I don't need to anthologies of the same stuff.

Here's the table of contents.

[Tom Hagen]

If nothing else, you'll want to keep For Keeps because it has "Raising Kane," and the LOA does not. There's enough substantial overlap that I will probably not pick up the LOA unless it is deeply discounted or I find a used copy eventually.