Movie Reviews: The Sad-Off
Jan. 8th, 2013 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
browngirlTitle taken from this delightfully profane competition between Samuel L. Jackson and Anne Hathaway. Both reviews will be incidentally spoilery.
First up,
When WD and I went to see Django Unchained I was the only Black person either of us noticed in the threater. I'm still thinking about that.
The movie left me with a lot to think about. If I had only one sentence to convey my thoughts, I would say, "I'm glad it was made but I wish someone else had made it." That second clause is for several reasons, including that the plot was in places more a White guy's idea of a Black ex-slave's revenge than a revenge I found believable (but then, I'm only one Black girl). Also, there's Quentin Tarantino's usual ridiculousness (no foot fetish scene that I recall, at least, and at least two places he could have stuck one in), but well, he's always himself.
I should be more organized, really. There are layers to this movie. There's QT's narrative and directorial choices: the movie had three distinct acts, of which one was a fun short movie, one was a suspenseful short movie, and one was a gratuitous half hour of cartoonishly over-the-top violence (which is not to say that all the gratuitous violence was in the last half hour, but one person's gratuitous is another's trenchantly necessary). There are the main subjects, slavery and revenge quest. There's the setting and its portrayal. There's the mentor-mentee relationship (one of my favorite aspects). And there's the interruption that took me from writing this for an hour -- where was I going?
I guess I'll sum up. There was a lot I enjoyed and/or agreed with, from the revenge quest to the portrayals of heroes and villains to the way the movie depicted slavery (including not confusing individual slaves who managed to do well under bondage with slavery being whatsoever beneficial or excusable). I know a lot of people would have liked The Love Interest to have been an asskicker, but I didn't mind her characterization -- it was nice to see a Black woman be the striven-for princess. There's at least one deeply horrifying scene which I don't find gratuitous at all. But it left a weird aftertaste, and I wonder what my viewing dollar will encourage QT to do next now that he has two successful revenge fantasies set during historical atrocities. I've seen some annoyingly congratulatory reviews (Mr. Tarantino hasn't solved racism any more than the makers of The Help did), so I want to be clear that I'm not going as far as they did, but in the end I enjoyed Django Unchained more than I didn't. Everything else aside, it was a gluttingly bloody revenge fantasy, and every so often I like one of those.
I may finally be able to talk about Les Miserables with some kind of coherence. Maybe.
When we all came back from winter break, many of my coworkers and several of the students, on hearing that I went to see it, asked my opinion because of the mixed reviews and the many negative ones. I have not conducted a formal survey, of course, but most of the negative reviews I've seen have been from people who say they don't like musicals, which is a bit like making a vegetarian review a steakhouse. So that's what I said.
As someone who loves musicals, and adores Les Miserables, I found it immense, immersive, and gorgeous. Not unimpeachable -- there are cinematic and blocking choices I might have made differently if I were the director, such as the presentation of "Bring Him Home". But it was gorgeously realistic and yet utterly surrealistic, a loving recreation of a 19th-century France where everyone sang all the time, which is just how I like my musicals. I thought the singing-during-the-takes worked beautifully, but then I enjoyed the slight roughness, the aim at presenting the musical as a series of lived-in moments rather than as a series of performances. I am, after all, a filker (or used to be) and, if I must choose, will choose emotion over polish.
I could babble on; I'm still pretty full of ALL THE FEELS when it comes to this musical. To attempt a summation, I feel that the conversion from stage musical to movie was largely successful, and the result was larger-than-life and true to human emotional life at the same time, and all the more beautiful for all the realistically ugly touches of verisimilitude.
... that's not very coherent. *laugh at myself*
First up,
When WD and I went to see Django Unchained I was the only Black person either of us noticed in the threater. I'm still thinking about that.
The movie left me with a lot to think about. If I had only one sentence to convey my thoughts, I would say, "I'm glad it was made but I wish someone else had made it." That second clause is for several reasons, including that the plot was in places more a White guy's idea of a Black ex-slave's revenge than a revenge I found believable (but then, I'm only one Black girl). Also, there's Quentin Tarantino's usual ridiculousness (no foot fetish scene that I recall, at least, and at least two places he could have stuck one in), but well, he's always himself.
I should be more organized, really. There are layers to this movie. There's QT's narrative and directorial choices: the movie had three distinct acts, of which one was a fun short movie, one was a suspenseful short movie, and one was a gratuitous half hour of cartoonishly over-the-top violence (which is not to say that all the gratuitous violence was in the last half hour, but one person's gratuitous is another's trenchantly necessary). There are the main subjects, slavery and revenge quest. There's the setting and its portrayal. There's the mentor-mentee relationship (one of my favorite aspects). And there's the interruption that took me from writing this for an hour -- where was I going?
I guess I'll sum up. There was a lot I enjoyed and/or agreed with, from the revenge quest to the portrayals of heroes and villains to the way the movie depicted slavery (including not confusing individual slaves who managed to do well under bondage with slavery being whatsoever beneficial or excusable). I know a lot of people would have liked The Love Interest to have been an asskicker, but I didn't mind her characterization -- it was nice to see a Black woman be the striven-for princess. There's at least one deeply horrifying scene which I don't find gratuitous at all. But it left a weird aftertaste, and I wonder what my viewing dollar will encourage QT to do next now that he has two successful revenge fantasies set during historical atrocities. I've seen some annoyingly congratulatory reviews (Mr. Tarantino hasn't solved racism any more than the makers of The Help did), so I want to be clear that I'm not going as far as they did, but in the end I enjoyed Django Unchained more than I didn't. Everything else aside, it was a gluttingly bloody revenge fantasy, and every so often I like one of those.
I may finally be able to talk about Les Miserables with some kind of coherence. Maybe.
When we all came back from winter break, many of my coworkers and several of the students, on hearing that I went to see it, asked my opinion because of the mixed reviews and the many negative ones. I have not conducted a formal survey, of course, but most of the negative reviews I've seen have been from people who say they don't like musicals, which is a bit like making a vegetarian review a steakhouse. So that's what I said.
As someone who loves musicals, and adores Les Miserables, I found it immense, immersive, and gorgeous. Not unimpeachable -- there are cinematic and blocking choices I might have made differently if I were the director, such as the presentation of "Bring Him Home". But it was gorgeously realistic and yet utterly surrealistic, a loving recreation of a 19th-century France where everyone sang all the time, which is just how I like my musicals. I thought the singing-during-the-takes worked beautifully, but then I enjoyed the slight roughness, the aim at presenting the musical as a series of lived-in moments rather than as a series of performances. I am, after all, a filker (or used to be) and, if I must choose, will choose emotion over polish.
I could babble on; I'm still pretty full of ALL THE FEELS when it comes to this musical. To attempt a summation, I feel that the conversion from stage musical to movie was largely successful, and the result was larger-than-life and true to human emotional life at the same time, and all the more beautiful for all the realistically ugly touches of verisimilitude.
... that's not very coherent. *laugh at myself*
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Date: 2013-01-12 03:34 am (UTC)Les Miserables is about tragedy, hope, and love, and I don't find it manipulative because I give myself over to it gladly, wallow in catharsis, and emerge with a renewed sense that "even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise". So that's some of why I love it, I guess. But that's me -- I can't make anyone else feel that way.