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Sin City review
Hmmm. WD and I saw it Monday, and I'm still not entirely certain what I think of it.
I think the film's creators succeeded at what they meant to accomplish. And it was visually stunning, mostly well acted, and appropriately set in New Jersey.
What they *did* set out to do though, the stories they wanted to tell.... I'm not sure, in the end, that I should have let those stories into my head. I just...
...I dislike it when authors create characters as plot devices rather than people with their own agency. This movie very deliberately made women, all the women, into such characters. Not every character can be so fleshed out as to be clearly the latter than the former, but an entire *class* of characters? Hrmn.
I enjoyed it while I was watching it, because I do have a thing for urban seediness and because I can easily suspend disbelief, but I think it left a bad taste in my mouth.
For example (and this is Just One Example), let's take the ladies of Old Town. As we're told when we meet them, they're prostitutes without pimps and with guns. Sounds cool and liberated, right?
But one thing I've learned this past year of writing fanfic, is that one can't tell the audience one thing and show them another. The above's what the voiceover tells us, but when trouble actually arrives, the women immediately turn to and listen to the male protagonist of the piece. And while the prostitute who betrays the others is captured and the implication is that she wll be killed, the male cop who shoots his partner and was going to shoot a little girl ends up being forgiven/ok because he does something good for his partner later.
I dunno. I don't expect everything to have 'feminist sensibilities', or what I think people generally think of think of as feminist sensibilities'. But the universe of this movie all but defined women as not having agency, as being only acted upon, and that weirds me out from an *artistic* standpoint even before I get to reacting to it from a sociopolitical one.
That said, hey, many of the men and all the women are gorgeous, and the visual design is amazing, and Jessica Alba wiggles wonderfully, and Elijah Wood gets to kick ass and be really really creepily evil. So, hey.
I think the film's creators succeeded at what they meant to accomplish. And it was visually stunning, mostly well acted, and appropriately set in New Jersey.
What they *did* set out to do though, the stories they wanted to tell.... I'm not sure, in the end, that I should have let those stories into my head. I just...
...I dislike it when authors create characters as plot devices rather than people with their own agency. This movie very deliberately made women, all the women, into such characters. Not every character can be so fleshed out as to be clearly the latter than the former, but an entire *class* of characters? Hrmn.
I enjoyed it while I was watching it, because I do have a thing for urban seediness and because I can easily suspend disbelief, but I think it left a bad taste in my mouth.
For example (and this is Just One Example), let's take the ladies of Old Town. As we're told when we meet them, they're prostitutes without pimps and with guns. Sounds cool and liberated, right?
But one thing I've learned this past year of writing fanfic, is that one can't tell the audience one thing and show them another. The above's what the voiceover tells us, but when trouble actually arrives, the women immediately turn to and listen to the male protagonist of the piece. And while the prostitute who betrays the others is captured and the implication is that she wll be killed, the male cop who shoots his partner and was going to shoot a little girl ends up being forgiven/ok because he does something good for his partner later.
I dunno. I don't expect everything to have 'feminist sensibilities', or what I think people generally think of think of as feminist sensibilities'. But the universe of this movie all but defined women as not having agency, as being only acted upon, and that weirds me out from an *artistic* standpoint even before I get to reacting to it from a sociopolitical one.
That said, hey, many of the men and all the women are gorgeous, and the visual design is amazing, and Jessica Alba wiggles wonderfully, and Elijah Wood gets to kick ass and be really really creepily evil. So, hey.
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Note: I haven't yet seen the movie.
I think part of it is a constraint of genre. Miller's Sin City was, as near as I can figure it, an attempt at doing a modern hard-boiled noir series, and, even when updating it, you bring along with it certain tropes of the genre. This doesn't, of course, invalidate any of your objections to it...I imagine you'd feel the same way about the stories written by Marlowe and Hammitt. Just musing on where it probably comes from.
BTW, it's really good to see you posting more again. :)
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*goes off to drool in the corner*
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