Sexuality, Suicide, Torturing: Are Arthouse Movies Genuinely So Sophisticated? | Catherine Shoard
Despite their image, many of todays highbrow movies are merely the cinematic equivalent of exploding fireworks
North Korea is not a regime whose selections one is generally eager to endorse. Yet my empathies were with that country at the start of the year, when its New Years Eve firework display was universally pooh-poohed. Whats with all the flash, cackled other nations. You call that a spectacle, scoffed Sydney, merrily lighting the fuse on 4m-worth of sparklers.
Fireworks can, obviously, be spectacular. Their culture origins in seventh-century China, where they were intended to scare off evil spirits, are to be respected. And yet an understated showing Pyongyang went for sporadic bangs with synth soundtrack is not something to reject. Rather, one goggles at the hubris elsewhere, where millions in public funds are sent up in smoke; this at a time of spiralling homelessness, massive spending cuts and instructions that we all mug up on first assistance lest we fall victim to rather more malevolent blasts.
Everyone already knows that fireworks are fantastically dangerous( this 31 December there was a fatality in Hawaii, there were mass casualties in Malaysia, and rocket assaults in Hamburg and Malm ); that they are enormously polluting( in Munich, revellers bathed in an atmosphere that had 26 times more sooty particulates than the EUs recommended safe limit ); and that they frighten animals, children, the frail and indeed anyone who isnt luck enough to be able to sit unblinking through an endless loading of explosions.
But fireworks are also, Id argue shock value aside quite boring. At least if they dont carry special spiritual importation for you, or if youre over the age of two, or after the first 10 seconds or so. Rather, they seem to be a throwback to a time when sunlights in the sky were a significant distraction. When a night of bonfire stories was the nearest you could get to bingeing on a box set. Before entertainment had, for better or worse, evolved. Thats why Ive never been especially desperate to consider a showing through to its climax. Theres only so many oohs you can manage before you start thinking about your shopping.
We live in an age uncertain about its level of primitivism. Liberals bemoan a resurfacing of basic intolerance. The world is going backwards, they fret. Kneejerk fears have quashed reasoned debate. Yet liberals are people too and, as such, just as susceptible to the primal pulls. They too embrace fireworks one thing going for them is their egalitarianism.
And when it comes to more contemporary different forms of entertainment, they too are animals at heart. The likes of The Girl on the Train and the novels of Katie Price are belittled as trash, but in fact this seasons most acclaimed arthouse movies also rely on some fairly tabloid drives.
Take Jackie, Pablo Larrans biopic of the first lady in the aftermath of JFKs assassination. It is a brilliant, moving examination of sorrow and national fairytales, with a central performance by Natalie Portman that will win her the Oscar. It is also a movie whose chief sell has a lot to do with watching someone wash famous brains off their frock.
Likewise, Sundance sensation Christine offers an intriguing look at the machinations of a regional news outfit in 1974, with an intensive central turning by Rebecca Hall as a woman combating mental illness. Its hooking, though likewise that of a documentary released on the same subject last year is that its about a real-life newsreader who committed suicide live on air.
Much of the publicity, as well as buzz, around Silence, Martin Scorseses latest movie, simmers down to the extreme weight loss of its stars and truly yucky forms of torture suffered by their characters. Even Moonlight, Barry Jenkins drama about a bullied gay man at three stages of his life which has been universally championed by right-thinking cineastes cant fully duck accusations of titillation. It is beautifully played and shot, highly sensitive, politically and emotionally incisive; but its success does also come down to the audiences investment in the sex activity, or lack thereof, enjoyed by its protagonist.
Brutality is as key food ingredients of high culture as low. More, even. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story might have been the biggest movie of last year, but not a drop of actual blood is considered, much less a snog. Being preoccupied by sex or death does not make art any lesser , nor the person or persons watching it any baser. What does degrade though are those claiming sophistication while still lapping up big bangs and soaps about the sexual hangups of a really rent fella with a rackety mum.
North Korea did not entirely opt out of dedicating the crowd some kneejerk thrills, of course. It just indulged this passion in a much more modest route and, in doing so, uncovered the ravening appetite across the rest of the world, as well as some strange double criteria about what constitutes entertainment or worthwhile employ of members of the public purse.
So, hooray for those low-key explosions a few nights back. Unless of course North Korea is just saving its big gun for subsequently in the year.
Read more: www.theguardian.com
Sexuality, Suicide, Torturing: Are Arthouse Movies Genuinely So Sophisticated? | Catherine Shoard
Sexuality, Suicide, Torturing: Are Arthouse Movies Genuinely So Sophisticated? | Catherine Shoard
Sexuality, Suicide, Torturing: Are Arthouse Movies Genuinely So Sophisticated? | Catherine Shoard
Sexuality, Suicide, Torturing: Are Arthouse Movies Genuinely So Sophisticated? | Catherine Shoard
Sexuality, Suicide, Torturing: Are Arthouse Movies Genuinely So Sophisticated? | Catherine Shoard