Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Thursday, August 26, 2004 The Pitch: It's like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge Meets Punch-Drunk Love Meets Ghost World! Yes, the above pitch is my reason for missing yesterday's blog entry--movies a go-go squared. I finally watched the art-fag version of The Waterboy (also known as Punch-Drunk Love)then, desperate for a Bollywood fix; threw in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (also known as "The Braveheart Takes The Bride") which was so long Edi and I actually paused it at the intermission, went out to dinner, came home, relaxed a bit and then watched the remaining hour and a half; and finally ended with Ghost World which we had rented at Four Star Video while at dinner. By the time we went to bed, it was after midnight and my eyeballs were twitching, skittish things. Perhaps as a side-effect to watching so much Bollywood, Edi tossed and turned relentlessly in her sleep for the first few hours--she swears she wasn't dreaming of performing in endless musical numbers, but I'm not sure I believe her--that I went out to the couch (where I had spent almost all of my previous day anyway) to sleep. Part of me is trying to turn this into Jeff Fest 2004 and catch a few movies--by which I mean as many movies as I can--and turn this into a powerful triumph of cinematic gluttony--and part of me wants to stay out of the theater, enjoy the day, get some work done. We'll see which side wins: it could go either way.As for the movies so far--I was pretty nonplussed by Punch-Drunk Love, surprising because of my high regard for Paul Thomas Anderson's earlier movies, not so much so when considering the reactions of people I respect who had already seen the film and not thought much of it. I had watched maybe ten or fifteen minutes of the movies on the day I set the PS2 DVD player up and had liked them--so was kind of surprised to find the movie went down and sideways from there. Sandler is perfectly fine as a more vulnerable, flawed version of his typical enraged boy-man and Watson is lovely as his love interest about whom we know nearly nothing but in whose reactions, thanks to Watson's acting, we believe everything. And when they're together, the movie seems to work, just as it seems to work in its odd, lonely opening. But, amazingly, Punch-Drunk Love is a movie by a deeply observant person who doesn't really know how anything works--like someone who can fix a car radio but believes the music comes from tiny invisible people inside. With the pudding cups and phone sex subplots, half the movie totters on the lip of urban legend (even when the events, like the pudding cups, are based on real life) and, when the psychological underpinnings of the characters don't add up, flips in the abyss of unlikely tall tale. That Adam Sandler's character is a nearly psychotic ball of repressed rage because he was the only boy in a family of seven sisters is an interesting hypothesis, but it doesn't seem to add up (I can see how he'd end up with the childishness, maybe, but not the rage). That his character is fiscally cautious and yet willing to give his social security number to a phone sex operator, after showing an awareness of the existence and potential of therapy, makes no sense. At every point, Anderson leaps forward with a scene insistently showing why these things should make sense, but because they don't you grow more distant from the film itself. And Anderson's tendency for bombast--a jittery nightmarish scene where Emily Watson and Sandler's sister show up at his warehouse just as every other piece of his life starts to go to hell is filmed like a long-take version of the control sequences in Armageddon--further strains credulity. Punch-Drunk Love tries to occupy a space between romantic comedy and psychological portrait and shows, I think, exactly why movies rarely try for that space: it's not conducive for a satisfying movie. I walked away from the movie with my faith in Anderson shaken. Contrarily, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge had almost entirely the opposite effect on me. Although this is perhaps a godo time for a lengthy digression about my attachment to foreign movies and Bollywood films in particular. It wouldn't surprise me if Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge was a worse movie--significantly worse--than Punch-Drunk Love and I am utterly incapable of seeing it. What I've come to realize about my movie watching habits is I'm drawn to foreign films precisely because they paralyze many of my critical faculties. Things that don't make sense to me are quickly attributed to cultural differences; if my attention starts to wander, it starts trying to associate spoken words with subtitles rather than pick apart the intention of the scene and wondering where it might go wrong; and as a result, I enjoy the movie more directly. It's common for me to walk out of a Bollywood movie with nothing more to say than "I liked it," and a shrug when pressed further. So. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. I liked it. If all of Shahrukh Khan's future movies were just formula embellishments on this one, I wouldn't be at all surprised. Made back in 1995 and known as the longest running film of Indian cinema (in the theaters, not the running length), all of the tropes of a Khan movie--particuarly the need to deceive entire families and capsize the existing social structure, all in the name of love, commitment and the greater good--are here, to be emebellished to such great fiscal success in later movies. If I ever get a handle on the topic, I should tackle the fascinating role Shahrukh Khan plays in Indian cinema: he is portrayed as a loveable rogue (a "wastrel" is the term frequently used in the subtitles of DDLJ) who in the end is committed to the greater Indian virtues and so is able to appeal simultaneously to young and old. The hamminess plays into it somehow, too. I should have just left it at: I liked it. Shrug. Finally, Ghost World. This is probably the third time I've seen the movie, and the first since its year of release, and I was surprised it didn't hold up better for me. Maybe I was just fatigued by all the movie watching by that point, but I was surprised by how there wasn't anything new to discover in the movie. Its charms are obvious (to those who know my preference for bitchy bespectacled brunettes) and its anti-consumerist message as timely as ever. But after you watch it the first time, Ghost World seems so obviously crafted, with each scene carefully delineating the reason for the next scene, and each bit of direction embellishing the point of the scene, that the movie, on repeated viewings, feels like a try-out card for the director Terry Zwigoff and the screenwriter Dan Clowes to enter the world of feature films. Steve Buscemi's portrayal of a resigned outsider is still the most enjoyable thing about the movie, both to its strength and its detriment (as an adaptation of the source material, anyway). And it's funny how, back in 2000, everyone was talking about Thora Birch as the breakout star of the movie and yet it's Scarlett Johansson in 2004, the star of Lost In Translation, that seems to have arrived. So that was yesterday. It's almost noon now, and hot and possibly humid out. Sooner or later I'll figure out what I'm doing with my day. I guess I'll go make some minor attempt at it now. posted by Jeff Lester | 11:45 AM | |
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