MIFF Day 3
If mental illness was the theme yesterday, pretension was it for today.
OUTSIDE SATAN
I think this was the story of a fallen angel who left Hell and now roams the countryside being nice to people and punishing evil. Maybe. I dunno. It's one of those films that has long, slow takes of scenery with a person in the far distance walking along, very little dialogue and occasional moments of violence. In fact, it's pretty much what this year's MIFF trailer parodies. An hour in I was getting a bit sick of it. But by the time it finished, I actually quite liked it. There's no answers, just a sense that a potentially evil being has some good in him, and has a soft spot for victims. You'd never see this outside of a film festival, but I'm glad I got the chance. I doubt I'd have the patience for this if I was watching it on SBS, and it would've been my loss.
YOU ARE HERE
A sort of story about the nature of consciousness, it's a collection of thought experiments conceptualising identity, and I think also a parody of the idea that there's an order and meaning to life. Some of it is very good, especially an over-complicated approach to a Turing test that demonstrates that right response is not the same as conscious thought. It's very light in tone, with a lot of comedy and all kinds of weirdness going on. Another film you'd never see outside a festival, but another one you're glad you had the chance to experience.
THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS
On the other hand, there are films you'd never see outside a festival that you wonder if they should even be in the festival. I assume either the book is rubbish, or something was lost in translation, but this is a very well made trainwreck. It adds up to nothing, though it seems to think it had something to say, and sections of it a truly awful. The use of snap zooms like a bad soap opera are painful in the few sections they're used, and the jumping around in time doesn't really add a lot to the proceedings. It's meant to be the anti-love story of Mattias and Alice, two people who can't be apart but can't be together for some reason either. They're both damaged by childhood traumas, now she's bulimic and he cuts himself. But you don't really care. There's some beautifully staged sequences, and the music is by Mike Patton (which is why I chanced a film with such a wanky name) so it's not all bad. But it all ends up a bit mystifying, going nowhere. I suspect people who have read the novel would get more out of it.
PRESSPAUSEPLAY
The only doco for the day, and an interesting one. Computers and the Internet have given everyone a voice, so now everyone is an artist. Does that mean we're seeing an explosion of talent or are we about to down in an ocean of mediocrity? Interviewing a wide range of artists, critics and cultural theorists, the doco give a good overview to the good and the bad of the modern communication age. From things like the loss of craft, as people rely on digital tools to fix up their mistakes, to the possibilities of collaboration and cross-promotion, it shows how messy and full of potential and horror the modern age can be. While siding firmly on the side of those who think that the ease with which people can now create is going to be a positive, it does let those who think this is leading to a cult of the amateur have a voice. Personally, I'm disappointed it didn't cover off one fairly obvious point. If everyone is creating and publishing their work themselves, with the crap drowning out of the gems, surely the next major art movement will be found in the curators. Those people who wade through the garbage to get to the good, the lasting and the genuinely great. It would be interesting to imagine a world where that in itself became legitmised as a form of artistic expression. There's a brief discussion around hype and backlash, the next big thing that quickly becomes yesterday's old news, but a bit more of that would have been good. Definitely a good starting point for a lot of arguments between friends.
OUTSIDE SATAN
I think this was the story of a fallen angel who left Hell and now roams the countryside being nice to people and punishing evil. Maybe. I dunno. It's one of those films that has long, slow takes of scenery with a person in the far distance walking along, very little dialogue and occasional moments of violence. In fact, it's pretty much what this year's MIFF trailer parodies. An hour in I was getting a bit sick of it. But by the time it finished, I actually quite liked it. There's no answers, just a sense that a potentially evil being has some good in him, and has a soft spot for victims. You'd never see this outside of a film festival, but I'm glad I got the chance. I doubt I'd have the patience for this if I was watching it on SBS, and it would've been my loss.
YOU ARE HERE
A sort of story about the nature of consciousness, it's a collection of thought experiments conceptualising identity, and I think also a parody of the idea that there's an order and meaning to life. Some of it is very good, especially an over-complicated approach to a Turing test that demonstrates that right response is not the same as conscious thought. It's very light in tone, with a lot of comedy and all kinds of weirdness going on. Another film you'd never see outside a festival, but another one you're glad you had the chance to experience.
THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS
On the other hand, there are films you'd never see outside a festival that you wonder if they should even be in the festival. I assume either the book is rubbish, or something was lost in translation, but this is a very well made trainwreck. It adds up to nothing, though it seems to think it had something to say, and sections of it a truly awful. The use of snap zooms like a bad soap opera are painful in the few sections they're used, and the jumping around in time doesn't really add a lot to the proceedings. It's meant to be the anti-love story of Mattias and Alice, two people who can't be apart but can't be together for some reason either. They're both damaged by childhood traumas, now she's bulimic and he cuts himself. But you don't really care. There's some beautifully staged sequences, and the music is by Mike Patton (which is why I chanced a film with such a wanky name) so it's not all bad. But it all ends up a bit mystifying, going nowhere. I suspect people who have read the novel would get more out of it.
PRESSPAUSEPLAY
The only doco for the day, and an interesting one. Computers and the Internet have given everyone a voice, so now everyone is an artist. Does that mean we're seeing an explosion of talent or are we about to down in an ocean of mediocrity? Interviewing a wide range of artists, critics and cultural theorists, the doco give a good overview to the good and the bad of the modern communication age. From things like the loss of craft, as people rely on digital tools to fix up their mistakes, to the possibilities of collaboration and cross-promotion, it shows how messy and full of potential and horror the modern age can be. While siding firmly on the side of those who think that the ease with which people can now create is going to be a positive, it does let those who think this is leading to a cult of the amateur have a voice. Personally, I'm disappointed it didn't cover off one fairly obvious point. If everyone is creating and publishing their work themselves, with the crap drowning out of the gems, surely the next major art movement will be found in the curators. Those people who wade through the garbage to get to the good, the lasting and the genuinely great. It would be interesting to imagine a world where that in itself became legitmised as a form of artistic expression. There's a brief discussion around hype and backlash, the next big thing that quickly becomes yesterday's old news, but a bit more of that would have been good. Definitely a good starting point for a lot of arguments between friends.
posted by Andrew Lee at 11:37 PM
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