Thanks for this thoughtful post. I don't think, however, that distrust of craft and elegance is anything new in film criticism: it's an understandable but naive attitude, a belief that style is a luxury which comes at the expense of depth. It's been with us for some time, and I doubt it will go away soon. Presumably the idea is that a director can't have it both ways: he can't devote his time and energy to issues of craft while also mining his themes for all they're worth. But that's a classic example of the sort of thinking you're led to by completely separating form from content. People who think like this can't grasp that a director (or a writer, painter, etc) might just be examining his themes through his style, that he gets at the themes formally.

An even more naive notion, which doesn't need arguing against, is the insistence on some obvious one-one correspondence between style and subject: for instance,an ugly topic--say spousal abuse--ought to be filmed in an "ugly" way, i.e., roughly, inelegantly.

Helluva an article Jim. I've been having this argument with people for years. I've been told that my love of Spielberg is misguided because "his movies look too good" "are too polished" and "he's always had a big budget". Whereas people tell me that Bourne 2 & 3 feel "real" because they don't look as good as other action movies (and because of the uber-annoying shakycam). I personally haven't seen "No Country for Old Men" (it's not playing in my town, so I'm driving the 30 minutes to Oklahoma City tomorrow to see it, can't wait I love the Coen's) so I can't say if it's any better than "Southland Tales", because I haven't seen it either though it sounds like a mess. One thing I do agree with Manohla Dargis about is that I respect someone for trying to make something great and not making it than someone who doesn't try. I've always felt this way about the movies of David Gordon Green, he's trying to create something great and even though I don't think he's made anything truly great yet, I respect him for trying (same with Aronofsky's "The Fountain"). And also, way to make a point using Herzog. Isn't it amazing how great he is and that he's almost always right about anything to do with movies?

Are you implying the Tarnation was unpolished? All I knew about it before I watched it was how cheaply it had been made, by someone I figured for an amateur filmmaker. I was surprised to find a pretty slickly put together film by a guy who, while maybe not a professional filmmaker, had been holding a movie camera most of his life. Yeah, some of the home video shots are raw, but I thought the final product was really well put together.

Jim, I very much agree that there's a bias FOR "indie" films. I guess people feel that it's more "real" if you don't have a 50 person crew between you and the actor. Though I will admit, I sometimes give the uber-indie films some slack. I would like to put every film on an even platform, but I find myself thinking, "Well, for an indie movie, it wasn't bad...."

Those who know me a little are probably sick of hearing me harp on about this, but I feel like a big reason people are praising Frownland is for the indie aesthetic. It's shot on 16mm, it's rough, grainy, unpolished (in many more ways than one), and it's uncomfortable. All of a sudden, it's a great film, and a film that appears to be "slicker" isn't as raw as this one. I don't ask for the same old cliches (story-wise and production-wise), but at the same time I'm not going to dismiss a film as art simply because it had a lot (or a little bit) of money.

Like Hawthorne said, easy reading is damned hard writing. There isn't just one kind of "polish", and being proficient in cinematic or storytelling techniques does not result in the same look or feel of the product. Rather, those who are technically mature use techniques to more effectively and persuasively put forth their ideas, and seamlessly so.

Is there a critical trend that favors crudeness? Or is it because some critics, whose job forces them to sit through all the Hollywood committe big-budget movies, are just feeling fed up?

The most "polished" and deceptively "old-fashioned" movie I have seen this year is Michael Clayton. It tells the story so beautifully without flash and self-consciousness that most viewers, including critics, seem to overlook how beautiful it is and how effective it conveys a specific mood.

The debate of style versus substance, a unique and personal voice versus effective storytelling, the need for self-expression versus the need for access the artist's expression is a permanent theme.

Being clumsy and crude in using the tools of the trade should not be confused with innovation and deliberate exploration with them with a thoughtful purpose and a unique point of view.

This is nothing new -- it keeps coming back and coming back. One of the digs at Pauline Kael was that she preferred the messy to the traditionally well-crafted. The same idea fuels much of the "cult film" experience -- "hey, man, this film rocks 'cause the boom mic's in the shot."

Of course, we need all kinds of films.

For me, the suspicion of well-crafted films can fall into two categories:

1) As we've discussed with NCFOM, I think people speak of craft negatively when they're left cold by the film itself. It's a form of frustration b/c when a filmmaker is in such firm command of the technical aspects of filmmaking, but cannot engage the audience emotionally, it leaves frustrated viewers/critics wondering about the unbridled masterpiece that could have been if that filmmaker were able to merge visual craft with a story/characters audiences could have true feelings for. Granted, a film that's all craft without emotional heft is still better than a lot of the hackwork that passes for filmmaking, but it ultimately proves more frustrating b/c people can see how gifted the filmmakers are and wish they could create characters they could connect with.

2) People who (wrongly) associate craft and polished filmmaking with Hollywood or the establishment. They want to be seen as the champion of something hip and new. Kind of like people who only like underground bands and then ditch them as soon as lots of people start buying their CD's.
And while some of these films may have genuine feeling behind them and succeed b/c they connect with viewers emotionally, you're right to say that just b/c something is raw and unpolished doesn't make it any more "real."

One last question: How do you view Intolerable Cruelty as uniquely Coen? I agree with your statement about how their films, even their bad ones (like Hudsucker Proxy for me) bear their personal stamp. But Intolerable Cruelty is their worst to me b/c I not only found it unfunny, but thought it was the kind of film any gun-for-hire could have directed. Interested to hear your defense on that.

Isn't this reaction against the "fastidiously polished" the reason why we were saddled with our current dunderhead president, over a guy (or guys, i.e. Gore or Kerry) who actually has read a book or two in his life.

Darn, when I read the start of this column, I thought this might be a topic on the state of aesthetics in contemporary documentary filmmaking, and the blinkered notion that it's more acceptable for a documentary to "look like crap" just because it's about soemthing important. I review a lot of docs, and have always tried to emphasize the importance of aesthetics in documentary film-making but I often wonder if I'm the only critic fighting that fight.

As to some of your other points, I think there IS some reason to evaluate low-budget vs. high-budget films differently (I use these terms instead of independent and studio): context does matter when evaluating a film. It is NOT solely about what winds up on the screen. I am more impressed when soemone like Caouette can make a good-looking film like Tarnation on a micro-budget because, well, it is an impressive feat. I'd appreciate the film's look even w/o knowing how cheaply he made it, but that knowledge, that context, enhances my admiration for the film.

You were probably joking about the French definition of cinema verite, but it translates as "truth cinema." I like Chris Marker's revision; he describes his films as "cine, ma verite" a slang for "movies, my truth." Not THE truth.

Herzog and Errol Morris and other documentarians have taken the cinema verite movement of the 50s-onward to task mostly for its out-sized truth claims, most of which were made by critics, not filmmakers. Even Frederick Wiseman referrred to his films as "reality fictions." At some point, the idea emerged that alleged "non-interference" was the only way for a filmmaker to produce the "truth" on screen, and that manipulation in non-fiction filmmaking was something to be minimized at all costs.

Plenty of filmmakers like Herzog and Marker were working counter to that idea for many years, but the counter-movement only entered the critical mainstream in the 80s when filmmakers like Ross McElwee popularized the "personal" documentary (which existed before McElwee, of course) and Herzog-disciple Errol Morris gained more fame and "controversy" for his manipulations in non-fiction filmmaking.

At the same time, let's not confuse cinema verite with a lack of craft. One of the things I like most about some cinema verite films is the look and feel, a "seamless" style that often proves to be more of a glittering, shiny surface than something with a subtantive core. The Maysles brothers and Wiseman and other cinema verite filmmakers made some gorgeous films, even if they didn't have any inherent claim on the truth (which they never claimed anyway...).

Liz: I know what you mean. I guess it depends on what somebody means by "polished" or "unpolished." When I saw it, I already knew that Jonathan Caouette had made the movie for virtually nothing on his boyfriend David's iMac. The look and feel of the film (the transitions, the use of type) were used in ways no "pro" would use them -- but because Jonathan didn't care about the rules (maybe didn't even know about them), they just became part of his film's vocabulary, distinctive expressions of his sensibility. But your point is well-taken: "Polished" or "unpolished" is in the eye of the beholder (and may depend on whether it's being used positively or disparagingly) -- and it has nothing to do with budget.

Thanks for some excellent points, Christopher. You're absolutely right that that cinema verite is every bit as much a style, a result of decisions and technique, as any other film. That's precisely what I always try to emphasize when somebody says a documentary isn't a "real movie." Again, I think a perfect illustration of this is the "Be Black, Baby" sequence in Brian DePalma's "Hi, Mom!" -- a movie-within-the-movie (literally: it's in a round-cornered, TV-shaped box in the middle of a black frame) that you experience differently from the rest of the film because it uses high-contrast b&w and handheld camerawork. We view it as "raw" and "real" -- but it's a fictional construction that's acted and photographed, same as the rest of the film only in a different style. (De Palma's "Redacted" is a similar exercise in "documentary" styles.)

I'll admit I'm one of those who prefers the Stones over the Beatles and when asked why tends to answer: "The Beatles have great songs but they're so slick and polished; the Stones are raw. I wouldn't say more "authentic". It's just a matter of taste. And it doesn't matter at all to me how hard the Stones work at the sloppy quality of their sound. It just matters how it sounds and I like it sloppy! I don't tend to have the same tastes in film--I don't think kitchen sink cinema tends to hold up as well as garage rock (maybe 3 minutes tends to be the limit for amateurish doodling)--but I can understand the protective feelings it engenders. I would never disparage the Beatles for their craftsmanship, though. Or say they should try to be more like somebody else.

Fritz: I admit I never finished watching "Intolerable Cruelty" -- what I saw did not hold me the way other Coen movies have. But there's still a tone (perhaps especially in the performances) that seems distinctly "Coen-esque." Your distinctions between two forms of skepticism about craft are very well-put -- exactly the kinds of attitudes worth distinguishing in any critic's writing, because each is coming from a different place.

dm494 -- Excellent point about being too literal/superficial about matching "style" and "content." It all depends on the movie. Ridley Scott's ultra-"polished" look for "Thelma and Louise" was so pictorially pretty (like a perfume commercial, or a postcard) that it sucked the juice out of the movie. But just because a film has a "gritty" story doesn't automatically mean it has to be shot with a grainy look or a hand-held camera, either! Herzog is a good example of someone who can make documentaries that look like fiction films and vice-versa....

I really enjoyed this post, for the most part. But I'm a little puzzled by your dismissal of those two sentences in the New York Times. Do you think that by priasing these striking, original, unpolished documentaries there is an automatic backhand swipe at more polished ones? The second word in that first sentence is "some," not "all." Some good documentaries are unpolished, some are not.

I have seen the (bad) argument that "well-crafted" is "phony" and "sloppy" is "real," which is why I think this is a necessary post. But I don't think that attitude is reflected in that particular NYT article.

Danny: I hope your reading is correct and I am mistaken -- that no such connection was being made consciously or unconsciously by the NYT writer or Gilmore. Maybe I'm just a little sensitive to the subject right now... because I've been revisiting it from different angles for the last week or so, re "NCFOM"!

It's important, I believe, to keep in mind that the reaction against "polished craft" comes not just from critics, but from filmmakers themselves. From the earliest days of cinema, filmmakers reacted in direct opposition to the ideal of the "well-crafted play" because they wanted to distinguish cinema from a specific literary/theatrical tradition. This coincided with the surrealists assault against the eye and their attack on temporality and "logic."

Skipping ahead 30+ years...

One of the reasons Godard's "Breathless" is considered so influential is because it was one of the films that helped liberate cinema from its own perfection, from its self-definition as a craft. It was one of the films that galvanized other filmmakers by reminding them (or revealing to them) that there was not, in fact, only one correct way to plan a tracking shot, or one proper way to hold a camera, or one proper way to edit a film, and so on. The shot did not HAVE to be made to look as beautiful as possible, but the "mistakes" made by doing it "wrong" and making it a little "ugly" could be every bit as potent. And doesn't "Breathless" look oh so beautiful today?

Later, filmmakers like Glauber Rocha made a virtue out of poverty. In fact the Third Cinema emerged (primarily) in Latin America as a direct response to the polish not only of Hollywood production but also of Hollywood distribution, and against the "artsiness" of the European art film as well. Simply calling the Thrid Cinema a cinema of poverty misses the whole point of it being a collective rather than auteur-based concept, but it's fair to say most of these films flaunted their low budgets and "crude" style, though often the "crude" style was quite sophisticated.

So I think it IS valid to celebrate so-called imperfection for its own sake; it's the rough irritation that creates a perfectly polished pearl.

That doesn't mean one has to ignore the polished craftsmanship of some Hollywood and European cinema, however. But I think it's fair, as a critic, to question a kind of default "perfection" that is produced by certain studio films. These are films that are re-written and re-touched digitally until everything is so perfectly smooth that there's not a damn thing left to grab hold of.

This has nothing to do with the more rough-hewn individualistic perfection of craft by a Kubrick or perhaps even the Coen Brothers, as has been argued here. That's a whole different trip.

Through a link at Culture Snob I just came upon this, from Matt Zoller Seitz's 2002 review of "The Road to Perdition" that perfectly expresses the way I feel about "NCFOM":

But in an age where the basic values of composition, lighting, pacing and tone have been degraded by megacorporate Hollywood -- which thinks Ridley and Tony Scott’s tv-commercial flashiness is artful -- "Road to Perdition" struck me as an old-school blast: technique plus feeling. It was clearly made by people who know what they’re doing, and their vigor gives what might have been merely an overblown genre piece a certain resonance.

Polish vs. grit, or however you want to phrase it, doesn't seem to be the real issue. It's how those things are used. If you use grit merely as a "lottery ticket", as Jim said earlier, then it's phony grit, not True Grit. If a movie is polished because that is part of what it is striving to deliver (The Last Emperor), then it should shine like a new piano.

"I've never understood why a so-called "independent film" (a term that usually refers to the source[s] of the production financing, if that) should be appreciated or evaluated any differently than a studio-bankrolled film (which may well be a negative pick-up distributed by a major or one of its "dependent" arms)."

Jim, just as I've seen many studio films fall prey to excessive tent pole ideals, I've also seen many indie films fall prey to the excessive idea of what an independent film should entail. Whether its the "Oh look how cute we are", or "Aren't we self reflexive", a lot of indies get lost in the indie feel and never try to be a good movie.

It's funny that Manohla Dargis picks out "Southland Tales", a film I find to be intriguing and filled to the brim with ideas, though not great (I've written about it and will be writing a follow up soon), it's funny because "Southland" for all it's indie flare and unfiltered storytelling the studios forced Kelly to cut it down and focus on the two bigger stars in the film before they would release it! How independent is that for you!

As for "Road to Perdition" and Sam Mendes, I find he has no visual stylings, but he leaves it to the cinematographer to do his work. I've heard tell that they had to scrap the first week of shooting from "American Beauty" because Mendes didn't know how to frame a shot for film - it all looked too theatrical. The brilliant and deceased Hall had to talk him into it. And for me it was Hall that made "Road to Perdition" as watchable as it was. As far as a movie goes, it was a bit too fairy tale like for me and not enough Greek Tragedy, which shows in the way the film is shot. It's too rich for a film that felt like it should have been dirty. Blech! So in the end, I would call it overblown. There's nothing simple about it. It's all portentous pondering and soulful gazing. Jude Law is the only one who seemed to understand what the film was actually about.

And I'm sorry but Ridley Scott is a genius when combining visual and sound elements to create tone and atmosphere. He's also wonderful at pacing a film. Tony perhaps has gotten the grungy, pulp feeling in his movies better than Mendes ever could - though I'm not particularly fond of everything Tony has done.

I just saw "The Savages" today and it combines elements of both crudity and a higher craftsmanship. Sometimes I feel it takes a greater craftsmanship to make crudity look and feel as crude as it does. It's the glossy Hollywood turds like, oh I hate to but I'll return to it as an exmaple because it's so easy, like "The Transformers", in which Bay doesn't seem to know when to use a close up or a wide shot for greater dramatic effect, which ends up feeling far more crude than any independent film every could. And "The Transformers" is just as unfiltered a project as "Southland Tales". No studio exec was leaning over Bay's shoulders telling him when to stop being an idiot.

As far as "NCFOM" is concerned whose to say that this isn't just the way the Coens see the world. To them perhaps, showing a harsh reality with beautiful images is far more real than seeing a dirty picture with dirty things happening. When we look at the world around us I see the most awful things happen in a very beautiful way. The fires in LA that rolled down the Hollywood Hills and into Griffith Park, was devastating, but beautiful to watch from a distance. When something shakes and moves around and is dirty it's usually not trying to recreate the look of reality but reality represented by television news footage or documentaries, which is as part of its definition a representative of reality - something that's been cut and tinkered with, falsified. This conflict of beauty and violence is a powerful tool. I remember seeing Mallick's "The Thin Red Line". Beautiful film that took place in actual locations, or Jeunet's "A Very Long Engagement", what beauty in the face of death. What craftsmanship in both of these films and elegance. Beauty and violence unfortunately, many times, go hand in hand.

I have neither seen "No Country for Old Man" (though I intend to as soon as I return to the U.S.) nor "Southland Tales," so I can't speak specifically about either of those films, but I feel the need to talk about the unpolished aesthetic because of my utter contempt for it. The argument for the unpolished, raw, whatever you want to call it seems to see itself as the heir Manny Farber's assaults on the prestige pictures of classical Hollywood in favor of the films of, say, Samuel Fuller and Howard Hawks. His argument was that the expensive costumes, overblown performances, and unnecessary narrative convolution of a film like "The Bad and the Beautiful" was utterly superficial, and preferred films who didn't draw attention to their styles, like those of the aforesaid filmmakers. (I think that Jim is making the same accusation against "Thelma and Louise"). But this is a far cry from saying that Fuller and Hawks lacked style--Fuller was a master of the eyeline match and the tracking shot, and Hawks used far more long takes and far fewer close-ups than his coeval Hollywood filmmakers, to use the broadest examples. But these filmmakers used their styles intuitively, and the reason that we don't feel that the films are stylized is not because they lack style, but because the style is so effectively in line with the content. That is not to say that great filmmakers can't draw attention to their stylistic eccentricities, many have, starting with Orson Welles, and including Godard and a rather endless list. However, their use of style has more depth than that of a film like "The Bad and the Beatiful" or "From Here to Eternity."

Where the argument goes wrong for the apologists of the unpolished aesthetic, however, is that the unpolishedness of say, the opening battle sequence of "Saving Private Ryan" or all of the Bourne movies, or countless independent films that I've seen recently, is just as superficial as the overblown costumes, performances, and Situations of the old prestige pictures against which Farber was railing. They seem to think that shaking a camera around at random makes a film unpolished and therefore real. As I said, I have yet to see "No Country for Old Men," but the Coen Brothers films that I have seen are a far cry from pretentious prestige pictures; their mastery of style and tone, and their ability to tune it into their content, as they did in say, "Fargo" or "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" makes them look much more like heirs to Fuller or Hawks than these practitioners of the unpolished aesthetic.

I forgot to add--there is no such thing as a film without style. It is utterly impossible to make a film without making stylistic choices, though it is entirely possible to make a film with uninformed (that is to say, without familiarity to the conventions of classical Hollywood filmmaking or its alternatives) or even simply bad stylistic choices. Personally, I think that frequently practitioners of the unpolished aesthetic quite simply make bad stylistic choices, which hardly makes the film seem any more real.

Will: Right you are. It's ALL style, craft, technique. As I've said many times before, every frame of every film is a stylistic choice.

Christopher: I think we're talking past each other a bit here. Godard's choices were quite conscious aesthetic ones. He wanted to shake things up (the Cahiers critics were rebelling against the tradition of the French "well-made" film), and jump-cuts, sound/score drop-outs, intertitles -- they weren't crude at all, but used precisely as Godard commanded.
As Andrew Sarris once wrote, a new Godard film would initially be greeted as radical, and by the time the next one came along, the previous one looked like the last flower of classicism. Godard, a film critic, was making extensive use of his knowledge of film -- he was deliberately choosing to break certain "rules." In other words, his movies did indeed seem fresh (and many still do), but they weren't the work of a stylistic primitive (to use the term often applied to Sam Fuller). But remember, a lens flare was once considered an unprofessional lapse. The conventional taste was to avoid them. Today, they're just another part of the vocabulary available to anybody who, say, wants to shoot into the sun. It's going to look different on a consumer video camera than it will with a Panavision, but it's the same idea. And it no longer has anything to do with creating a feeling of slickness or grittiness. It can be used to many different effects.

Serdar reiterates the point I was trying to make, that a "rough" technique is just another technique, no intrinsically more or less worthy than a "slick" technique (though I know what you're saying about films that are so "polished" they're practically featureless). A movie is the result of thousands and thousands of aesthetic decisions (including ones brought on by finances, weather, casting, equipment, accident). We all know about the smugness of certain indie filmmakers -- especially at self-congratulatory events like Sundance, which are just as bloated with ego and glitz and greed as the Oscars (but the down parka is the fashion accessory of choice). All these ideological camps and trends and movements -- they're just political fashions that we respond to, or react against, depending on which way we think the pendulum is swinging at the moment. In the long run, I don't think they matter much. I just don't like to see films criticized for doing something well, just because that something happens to be considered out of style at the moment.

Jim,

Just wanted to say thanks for this article. It sharply points out some things that I've been thinking about for quite some time... that is to say, you sum up my own frustrations better than I could have.

Anyway, it seems to me that superb craftsmanship is far too often intentionally shunned simply because it is something that is generally associated with major Hollywood films... though as you pointed out, that isn't actually the case. I'm certainly a big fan of originality and personal passion... but we could use more independent filmmakers like the Coens and Wes Anderson, people with deeply personal styles of filmmaking that also openly embrace "slick, professional" craftsmanship.

Back at ya later

Jim,

I think we're mostly agreeing here. Perhaps the only point (and I hope it isn't a moribund academic one) is that there _is_ such a thing as unpolished, and that it _is_ reasonable to celebrate it for its own sake. It doesn't mean that it isn't also a style; even JIm Jarmusch's alleged "no-style" is still style, and a very idiosyncratic, instantly identifiable one.

But let's think of a few examples of genuinely unpolished films, made by filmmakers who really didn't have the capacity to make them look any "better" then they did. I am no fan of "Clerks", but the films fans value it not just for the dialogue but also for its "I barely even know where to point the camera" look. And I doubt the film would have become a cult hit if it was more "polished."

I am a huge fan of "Pink Flamingos" as well as Waters' pre-Flamingos films, and I wouldn't brag about the cinematography or editing in any of those films. But thank goodness for that. How ridiculous would "Pink Flamingos" be if it was perfectly filmed with immaculately executed tracking shots, flawless editing, and glitzy special effects. A digital bowel movement in a box? I'll pass (pun intended.)

There really _is_ something more authentic about these films, or at least something about the unpolished style that makes them more approachable and, dare I say, more loveable? Yes, the ultra-polished 2001 is my favorite film of all time, but "Pink Flamingos" is more like a dear old eccentric friend.

One thing to point out is that a film that seems too slick and crafted today may seem less so ten years down the road, as other cinematic tricks with the camera, art direction, and soundtrack become more fashionable and associated with a polished Hollywood movie (and then the style gets carried over to commercials and TV shows until it becomes a self-parody). It may even seem restrained in time. Take Kauffmann's first review of 2001 where he complained that the opening shots of the landscape on the African veldt were too Hollywoodized (as compared to what he saw in Kubrick's earlier smaller films).

Jim, don't mean to get off topic, but for the last week or so you've orgasmed several times over No Country (which ain't as good as Fargo).

Meanwhile, the best horror film since Carpenter's Thing has been released, The Mist, and almost no one wants to admit that it's great. (And when I compare it to The Thing I speak of substance, not just quality) I know you're a big fan of The Thing, so I've been hoping we'd get your two cents on The Mist.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled Coengasm

Just as a brief aside, it might be worth noting that musical tastes among many younger (and critical) audiences also reflect this suspicion of craft. I have heard my friends lament over an "overproduced" new album by [insert indie rock band], when in fact the increased level of production often allowed for more sophisticated artistry and a tighter, more expressive sound. I guess my point being just that this is not unique to cinema, but seems to be somewhat pervasive in our culture.

As a filmmaker I've noticed time and again that when you shoot something seemingly from the hip - handheld, gritty, raw, imperfect, desaturated (!) - people tend to take the subject more seriously. So keen are they to pierce through "empty slickness" that they blindly accept a film as more authentic when it's rough around the edges.

Crudeness is one of the most effective modern cinematic tools out there, because the audience feels it is "discovering" a film's value and doesn't realize they're being manipulated just the same. Greengrass knows this. Von Trier knows this. De Palma knows this.

For anyone interested in the subject (and for those with a strong stomach), I'd recommend Bernard Rose's SNUFF MOVIE, a work of fiction that practically catalogues how "realism" as a cinematic style has evolved throughout the years to effectively frighten audiences in horror films. It's an uneven film, but then again: That's what makes it so deeply disturbing!

I'd also be interested in a discussion on The Mist, but...

David, with all due respect, people aren't admitting that The Mist is great because it most definitely is not in the same great or even in the same ballpark as The Thing.

But, I'll concede that it's a film worthy of discussion b/c while I don't like No Country for Old Men's final 30 minutes, I think it's defensible in terms of the spirit of the source material. I feel The Mist's ending is indefensible and completely violates the spirt of the source material (especially the ending of that source material).

As long as we're off-topic, I'll just say that I hope the elements aren't too bad around your neck of the woods Jim, for you and Dave McCoy. Hopefully better than last year.

Meet the new arguments: same as the old arguments.

This isn't meant to detract any from the conversation here (which is valuable), but as it is an film, so it has been in all the other arts. Dane Walker above mentioned the Beatles v. the Stones, but this notion of "authenticity" (as opposed to, say, "l'art pour l'art") has been around since long before film. I'm not a literary historian, but I'd pin it on 19th century Romanticism, which split off in a lot of different directions: some strains were heavily into the transcendent nature of art (which brings us above mere reality, and therefore needs no justification outside itself), and others became obsessed with nature, then the 'natural', then the natural as an expression of the authentically 'real'. What happened is actually a lot more complex than that, but you get the idea: these ideas were already brewing before cinema existed, and it's especially pronounced in literature.

This is why the sober critic typically steps back and refuses to take sides: there's no absolute ideal in art, and a good film can be exquisitely crafted (say, 'Fargo') or really rough around the edges ('Night of the Living Dead') without causing any crisis of aesthetic allegiance. I like to think those two films can sit comfortably next to each other on my DVD shelf. Which they do.

Thanks, Dan. I have just spent about 12 hours (from 5:45 am, when I was awakened by a call from my mom, until about half an hour ago) helping my mom bail out her rec room, with the help of three shop vacs (and some tarps and plastic pipe I used to keep more water away from the foundation of the house). Ugh. I'm running on about 3 hours of sleep...

Peet, Brad: Now that hand-held, desaturated camerawork is so ubiquitous (from TV to music videos to big-budget features), I wondered whether people still respond to it as strongly as they once did. Years ago, when I would show "Hi, Mom!" in campus film series, people would stream out during the b&w "Be Black, Baby" sequence (a National Intellectual Television documentary about a guerilla theater troupe that physically, psychologically and sexually abuses white bourgeois theater-goers, who are grateful for the experience of "finding out what it's like to be black in America"). I wonder if people would be so accepting of the faux-documentary "realism" now, or if they're so familiar with the technique that they'd recognize it as such -- just another technique.

Manhola Dargis, who is indeed one of the best critics in the land, may have reservations about No Country for Old Men, and those reservations may be based largely in that it does not, in her view, "reach beyond the obvious, push past... the audience’s comfort zones" the way a calculated mess like Southland Tales does. In her view, NCFOM serves merely as a platform for technically confident directors to showcase more well-shot murders. Well, aside from the fact that I think the Coens are digging into something that is well beyond the obvious, I think that some viewers may be, in part, accepting it for the very reasons she has trouble with it-- what to her is fastidiously polished craft (often a critical code word for empty style) is to others a respect for a certain classicism of form in which the themes of the movie reside and from which they are pleasurably extracted.

As someone who has seen Southland Tales and was unimpressed, I can definitely vouch for Dargis' claim that "Southland Tales has more ideas, visual and intellectual, in a single scene than most American independent films have in their entirety." The problem is, they're just ideas stuffed into a thin skin of a concept, and critics like Dargis are giving the movie points on ambition alone, ignoring whether the writer-director is capable of developing those ideas, through the way the film is made or through his way with patches of eloquent (or eloquently crass) dialogue. It's the director's overreaching desire to communicate ideas that is being lauded, not his success at communicating them, or whether or not the ideas were worth trying to communicate in the first place. Someone who places a high value on the scattershot, sketch-based irreverence of Southland Tales may indeed see the Coen Brothers as disengaged. But for a viewer like me, seeing the Coens, who even at their most "stylish" have never fallen victim to a fashionably A.D.D. aesthetic, embrace the relatively stately, organic, living-and-breathing, alive-to- experience visual framework of NCFOM is high cause for celebration, especially in the face of the half-baked, potheaded sci-fi of Southland Tales.

One of the things that I've come increasingly to appreciate about the Coens is their steadfast refusal to do DVD commentaries and even brush off detailed analysis of their work in interviews. Some have taken this to be a deliberately evasive tactic or, worse, indicative of their emptiness. But really, whether you like their films or not, the film is there in the viewing, and the Coens are basically saying, Why should we do your work as a viewer for you? Why would you want us to? What this tight-lipped strategy is indicative of is their confidence that they've achieved their aims within the film, and they're not going to spoil the fun for those who take pleasure in looking closely at what's there. Whereas someone like Richard Kelly talks about what the's done endlessly, I'm sure at least partially because, as indicated by the anything-goes nature of his film, he's entirely unsure of what people are going to take from his film, if anything, and by endlessly pontificating about it in interviews, possibly sympathetic viewers might be more inclined to see things his way, rather than be turned off altogether. (Have I strayed far enough off topic yet?)

tbeshear: "Hey, man, this film rocks 'cause the boom mic's in the shot."

I just had this exact experience looking at a Robert Downey-esque political satire by William Klein from 1969 entitled Mr. Freedom. It's a deliberately outrageous satire about a jingoistic, bigoted superhero who works for a corporation who shares those values and is dispatched to France to fight villains like Red China Man and other forces of oppression. It's a funny idea, but the execution is so ham-fisted, the prouduction so shoddy and lifeless, and the performances so overwrought (and fatally undercut by poor dubbing) that deeming it a nice try would be extremely generous. But a friend who saw it with me proclaimed it a masterpiece-- and largely because it was so ineptly done, which he claimed made its satire seem more sincere.

Jim: That scent of movie-for-hire kept me away from Intolerable Cruelty in theaters. But when I did eventually see it, I had to admit that even though it was a minor Coen Bros. effort, it was quite entertaining in its own right, largely because, as you put it, "there's still a tone (perhaps especially in the performances) that seems distinctly 'Coen-esque.'" It's definitely there in Clooney's skewering of his own slick image, but also in the character work from Billy Bob Thornton, Cedric the Entertainer, and most memorably, Richard Jenkins as Zeta-Jones' lawyer.

David Arroyo: I too am a huge fan of John Carpenter's The Thing, and though I wouldn't put it in the same category, I think The Mist is a superbly effective horror film-- and this is coming from someone who couldn't tolerate The Shawshank Redemption or The Green Mile, director Frank Darabont's previous gooey Stephen King adaptations. I am puzzled as to why more film critics aren't taking note of this picture (David Edelstein did late last week), but the ones who do seem to be eager to shelf it based on preconceptions about Darabont or Stephen King or Stephen King movies or all three. I would be very curious to hear Jim chime in on it too, and I intend to do so this week myself. I don't think it's entirely successful-- Darabont, especially in the early going, seems to be a bit hurried, fumbling around for a visual approach. He seems uncommitted to the faux-verite shaky-cam style and eventually stops leaning on it so much as he initially does. And there are patches of clunky writing that may or may not be King's fault. But the movie is extremely well-cast-- Thomas Jane, William Sadler, Andre Braugher, Jeffrey DeMunn, Toby Jones, Laurie Holden, Nathan Gamble, and most especially the great Marcia Gay Harden-- which is a big blessing, because the movie asks you to get to know these people for long stretches of time (long, that is, for a movie built on the biorhythms of the average horror film, where gruesome set pieces are expected at regular intervals).

And I have to disagree with Fritz, who said a few posts ago that "The Mist's ending is indefensible and completely violates the spirt of the source material (especially the ending of that source material)." Without saying too much (and it's already too late for those who might be interested in NOT anticipating a notable conclusion to the movie), my feeling is that whereas the novella of The Mist kind of peters out into ambiguity, Darabont as screenwriter has found a way to shock viewers out of their complacency with an ending that completely jibes with the movie's concerns, one of them primarily being the outcome of random decisions, even after those decisions have been logically plotted out to their apparently inescapable conclusion. What Darabont does for the panic and religious hysteria that characterizes the film's second half, he does also for man's inability to plot his own destiny when the rug has been pulled out from underneath him on such a grand scale. Time will tell if it's a classic of its genre or not, but right now The Mist has to count as one of the biggest surprises of the year for me, a viewer was expecting little more than nothing.

Jim, you said:

Now that hand-held, desaturated camerawork is so ubiquitous (from TV to music videos to big-budget features), I wondered whether people still respond to it as strongly as they once did (...) or if they're so familiar with the technique that they'd recognize it as such -- just another technique.

People still respond to it big time on a subconscious level. The very reason behind the positive reception of Greengrass' United 93 is its faux-documentary style, just like Jason Bourne's unbelievable stunts get more credibility because of the jerky way they are shot.

As a moviegoing I strongly disagree with Mr. Gelderblom's opinion that nontraditional visual style is responsible for most viewers' or critics' attention or high regards for a movie. I strongly disagree.

Style can work on its own separately from substance, but RARELY. Most of the time it is the substance of the material, including the authors' own point of view and themes and THE STORY, that capture or lose the audience. Never underestimate the innate human affinity to a fascinating story being told effectively. I think artists who look desperately for an identity (especially when all stories have been told and there is nothing new under the sun, it seems) tend to overlook this human need for stories and emotional bonding (with characters one cares about).

**This is why the sober critic typically steps back and refuses to take sides**

Only a truly awful critic doesn't take sides. A truly useless one too.

Dennis - you're right in that I should have warned people that I was going to discuss the nature of The Mist's ending - I figured since I wasn't divulging specific details and since many articles about the film had discussed the shocking twist ending, it was unnecessary, but...I still should have mentioned it. Apologies.

That being said, PLEASE READ NO FURTHER if you don't want to read spoilers on The Mist.

Re: the movie's concerns vs. the novella's concerns, I feel that while changes are inevitable when adapting a book to film, you should remain true to the spirit of the work, otherwise why adapt it in the first place? Why not just make a completely original piece of work that addresses the thematic concerns you say Darabont addresses?

And I'll agree that much of The Mist is an effective horror film up until the ending. But, my loyalty to the source material aside (as you've probably guessed, I love King's novella - it's the work that made me fall in love with reading as a kid), I still don't think the ending works. It felt cheap and jokey to me. When the big reveal occurs, I felt like I could hear Darabont doing a Nelson Muntz impersonation and going "HA, HA!" It was the first ending in a long time that made me want to flip off the movie screen.

And it's not like the novella's ambiguous-with-a-glimmer-of-hope ending can't work in films...The original Dawn of the Dead and The Birds have similar endings that work just fine.

While I wouldn't have liked the movie to end immediately after the final gunshots, either, it still would have been a better ending than the BIG SHOCKING TWIST.

Mr. Jun:

And how do you suppose the "author's point of view" is made clear in a movie? How is a "fascinating story" told "effectively"? Style hasn't got anything to do with that?

What we're arguing here is that style (nontraditional or not) SHOULD NOT work on its own or be seen as something seperate from substance. Style expresses substance. Together, they're the story.

MORE SPOILERS AHEAD FROM THE MIST- ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE

I'm a huge fan of the orignal novella; it's the only King story that ever scared me - I've enjoyed his novels immensely, but I don't find them 'horrifying' in the way others do. One of the reasons I like it so much is that I think The Mist is one of King's most Lovecraftian stories, especially seen in the giant indescribable behemoth late in the story. For a story about monsters attacking a supermarket, it's effective storytelling, with its biggest payoffs coming from what isn't seen: the fate of Steffy, the cause of the Mist, what those giant legs were attached to, and most importantly, what happened after they left the HoJos. I'm all for bleak endings (more on that in a second), and the novella's ending is most definitely that. However, King leaves the reader with the word Hope, and I found this to be most important to the narrative; even in the face of incalculable horror and death, the human spirit can always conjure a little bit of hope, no matter how pointless it may seem. The film makes a couple of mistakes in the final minutes that really compromised what came before. For one, the score, with its apocalyptic overtones, was way out of place. The film did a great job of creating horror in the most mundane places (a day at work in a supermarket ends with a sting from a hellish insect, a trip to the pharmacy ends with spiderish creatures using you as a breeding machine); suddenly, the theater filled with something akin to a 'B' score to Excalibur. It threw off the tone of the movie, much to its detriment. Secondly, the decision to show Steffy's final fate doesn't work for me. The book draws a great amount of pathos from the failure to make it back to the lakehouse; David breaks down weeping as a giant tree blocks their way, as he remembers their final goodbye. Instead of that, we get poor Steffy sucked dry by the spiders, and it again was a tonal mistake that really hurt the film. Lastly, the final scene is needlessly cruel. I have no problems with the gunplay in the car; King himself mentioned the gun in the story as a possible way to end it all. The cruel part is what happens outside of the car. Creating an ironic little twist ending showing the Army saving the day negated the point of the entire story for me (and please explain how the woman from the store managed to get home and then rescued). Darabont didn't need to end the story exactly the same way as the novella, and he didn't even have to let them live; however, he did have to show his characters respect, and the ending did nothing but showing them disrespect.

In summary, the difference between the source material and the film is that the novella The Mist is harsh, but the film The Mist is cruel; pointlessly so.

Tully: You must have loved King's novel Cujo! :) (The movie was much cheerier re the boy's chances of survival, if more utterly implausible.)

I really don't see the ending of the film of The Mist as an ironic twist; I see it more as a tragedy genuinely earned by the movie's narrative progression. For all we know, the murderous sheep left dumbfounded in the market after Mrs. Carmody is killed may have all survived simply by being too stupid to do anything but stay put and hold out for the few hours more that take place after Drayton and company drive off. That possibility is perhaps ironic. But the fate of Drayton's group, having fought to make their own choice regarding their possible demise and then worn down to a logical final act that proves the ultimate betrayal, is tragic in my eyes. And the movie certainly doesn't play it any other way. Of course their fate is cruel, but I don't denigrate the filmmakers for having prescribed it. It is one possible outcome based on ideas the movie has been kicking around about the lack of control that results from even the most well thought-out and logical responses to an illogical horror. When you decide to make a decision without knowing at all what is truly going on, then anything can happen.

I'm curious: Did you have the same response to Duane Jones' fate at the end of Night of the Living Dead?

I do not disagree that style is important in expressing the substance. The specific point that I disagree with in your original message is that critics or audience tend to be "manipulated" by crude style and take them more seriously than the movies deserve.

You wrote:

"As a filmmaker I've noticed time and again that when you shoot something seemingly from the hip - handheld, gritty, raw, imperfect, desaturated (!) - people tend to take the subject more seriously. So keen are they to pierce through "empty slickness" that they blindly accept a film as more authentic when it's rough around the edges." "Crudeness is one of the most effective modern cinematic tools out there, because the audience feels it is "discovering" a film's value and doesn't realize they're being manipulated just the same."

I disagree with that. I don't think The Bourne Ultimatum and United 93 were positively perceived BECAUSE OF the handheld, shakey visual style. I do not believe a viewer prefers more "unusual" visual styles and such crudeness is the primary reason behind many movies' success.

SPOILERS ON THE MIST BELOW:

Tully - you do an excellent job raising other reservations I had about the ending.

One additional thought - I felt that the shot showing the mother (the one who left the store early on) and her kids on the armored personnel carrier was a terrible decision. That also made me believe that the twist ending was a cheap stab at irony, a horror filmmaker feeling insecure about his film and trying too hard to be clever and shocking and failing miserably.

Dennis - I guess your enjoyment of The Mist, in the end, comes down to whether or not you buy the twist as a logical progression or cheap and phony (but this is the case with all movies with big twist endings, I suppose).

And I'm somewhat ashamed to admit this, as a film buff who's seen thousands of films and a horror fan, but I have never seen the original Night of the Living Dead (I know, I know...for whatever reason, I've just never gotten around to it - I think most film buffs have one or two canonical or sacred films that they've somehow missed). But I like the original Dawn of the Dead and thought Land of the Dead was a nifty, underrated little horror movie, so...I suppose this discussion can serve as incentive to finally get off my butt and rent the original Night so I can comment on that ending. :)

Christopher Long:

I think you may have misunderstood my comment there. A good critic doesn't take sides in the style/substance debate for the simple reason that it's so arbitrary and completely beside the point. Great films can be highly stylized or relatively artless - there's no innate connection between level of stylization and the quality of the product. What list of great films doesn't cover the spectrum from highly stylized to verite?

When a critic starts discussing (abstractly) style or supposed lack thereof as an absolute merit or demerit in filmmaking, I tune out. For one thing, it's an old and pointless argument. For another, it's usually sadly inaccurate, vague, or poorly argued.

As a general rule, yes, I agree with you that critics are more compelling when they take sides. But this isn't a real debate. It'd be like asking critics to take a side on whether improvisation is bad for film: Why would any critic worth his/her salt want to choose sides on a question that inane? Sometimes improvisation works, sometimes it doesn't - all depends on the film, right?

**What list of great films doesn't cover the spectrum from highly stylized to verite?**

The AFI Top 100? :)

**When a critic starts discussing (abstractly) style or supposed lack thereof as an absolute merit or demerit in filmmaking, I tune out.**

Sometime a critic can take such a stance as a corrective measure against the mainstream "taste-formation" of most critics. Noel Burch once argued, somewhat didactically, for a canon of films that favors "not-X" instead of "X" where "X" is the standard well-crafted film with seamless narrative, invisible editing, etc. His "not-X" canon emphasized reflexivity for its own sake simply to take a swipe at the standard-makers.

Jim has a different POV than most film-viewers (as do most of the readers of this board) because of his job, so I can understand why he feels that the reaction against "well-crafted" film is a prevailing attitude among critics today, but I'd argue that it is still very much a minority POV on the broader stage. The Dargises and Rosenbaums of the critical world are still vastly outnumbered by the Gene Shalits; I tried picking several different names there, and wanted to play nice (Gene seems like a swell guy); if you want to go older-school subtitue "the Bosley Crowthers" above. And because of that, I still think it's perfectly valid to champion "not-X" in the face of "X."

Not that I think either Dargis or Rosenbaum actually do that. Both of them have expressed admiration for films all across the spectrum. I suspect Dargis means something very specific by calling No Country a "fastidiously polished" films that goes beyond a mere mistrust of craftsmanship.

But how many "not-x" films can there be before "not-x" becomes "x"? Seamless narrative and invisible editing, etc. seem in short supply these days, in my opinion. Intentionally, of course. Sometimes it seems filmmakers keep fighting a war decades after it's been won. I happen to think the Coens' way of making films is beyond such algebra but if I wanted to be a "not-x" these days I would probably lean in the "x" direction.

Dane,

I agree with your point: there are times when an ideological position that once served as a vital corrective measure becomes outdated, perhaps even a victim of its own success as the formerly "avant-garde" becomes absorbed into the mainstream. But "not-X" then becomes something else, with the "new' perceived mainstream or hegemonic practice as its target.

I don't agree, however, that classical filmmaking (seamless narrative, invisible editing) are in short supply. They're still the standard. The first place to look for proof is the box office figures, but even ignoring that crass indicator, there's always still the ever-reliable Academy nominations.

You can argue that CGI-dominated films violate classical rules by calling so much attention to themselves and often standing apart from the narrative, but really this falls more into the realm of the "cinema of attractions" which has been around since the earliest days of film and has been part of both avant-garde film and mainstream commercial cinema.

I'll also grant that the once-innovative a-chronological narrative has now become an irritating standard. And that devices like the "shaky cam" have become almost traditional tool these days.

But classicists like Eastwood and Spielberg and Ron Howard and so on, still dominate, at least among the more powerful "taste arbiters" like the Academy.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Dennis,

Re: Cujo. I'm just not a fan of the book, because it suffered from King's 'bad ending syndrome'. I love his writing and consider him to be one of the greatest authors of 1st person narrative dialogue out there. He comes up with good ideas, but many of his books are plagued with listless or cheap endings. The movie Cujo was just an awful affair, like many of the early adaptations of his work. Most of the films made from his novels lose his best narrative traits and focus on his plots, which in my opinion are the weaker aspect of his stories. Cronenburg nailed 'The Dead Zone', though.

Au contraire - Night of the Living Dead is one of my favorite films, and I'm glad it has been granted the classic stature it deserves. I'm the last person who needs a happy ending, and the finale of NOTLD still punches me in the stomach after numerous viewings. The difference between Ben's death and the final scene in The Mist is that what happened to Ben made perfect sense within the framework and tone of that story. I've always thought of Ben as an obstinate jerk who only survived by following the advice of his nemesis (the cellar WAS the safest place). Perhaps Romero was going for an EC Comics ending, but I've always thought Ben's death was intended to convey the true hopelessness of the situation and to make the viewer realize that our species had come to the end of its cycle. Contrarily, the Darabont version of The Mist is in such a rush to get to the action in the beginning and then get to the cruel ending that the excellent action between them is seriously weakened. A perfect contrast is the ending of the original 'Dawn of the Dead', which to me is much closer in tone to the end of the King novella. Peter and Fran hop in the copter, note that they have very little gas left and then fly off into an exceptionally uncertain future. It's a perfect fade to black. Regardless, I would have been okay with Romero showing their fate, but I would have been very upset had he tacked on a coda immediately after their demise showing the government saving the world with a vaccine while a truck drives by with the old priest from the tenement. The ending of The Mist is illogical and flawed. The lady who left the store made it home?!? What an amazing twist, since the rest of them couldn't get more than a few hundred feet without being ripped to shreds by spiders and lobster monsters. When I heard that Darabont had tacked on an ending that was far from happy, I flashed to the book and figured Drayton's brief mention of a gun with three bullets would be utilized. I had no problem with the decision to use the gun, other than the hasty decision to commit suicide within moments of running out of gas (it reminded me of the South Park parody of 'Alive' where within minutes of being trapped by the storm, people are already deciding to eat each other). I just found the way Darabont chose to use the Army saving the day and showing the woman and her children, only moments after the group suicide, to be a cruel decision.

"The first place to look for proof is the box office figures,"

#1 for the year - Raimi's Spider-Man movie, done in pure Sam Raimi style.

#3 for the year - the inelegant hunk of Bay-turds

#6 for the year - the aforementioned Bourne "style" fest

#7 - 300, also quite uber-stylized (and that's the point)

"but really this falls more into the realm of the "cinema of attractions" which has been around since the earliest days of film "

This makes no sense. You're offering up box office as proof that style hasn't conquered substance, and then say, "But you have to ignore CGI movies which are all style no substance"... the top 10 movies of the year, 8 of them are pure CGI, one of them is 'Bourne' which we have established as dominated by style, so, basically, you're talking about "Wild Hogs".

And that just don't make sense.

Sean,

I don't understand what you're saying. I never mentioned anything about style conquering substance, or even anything remotely related to the subject.

I was discussing, in very simplified form, classical vs. reflexive filmmaking techniques. And I mentioned CGI as one major exception, where the FX themselves become the major attraction often for their own sake even independent of the story, though I think it's a stretch to call any of these films reflexive, or "not-X" in Burch's terms, anymore than you would a circus side show.

"Bourne" certainly qualifies, however, as a stand-out in terms of unusual editing even though the editing still serves a very "standard" narrative approach.

Is this a scanner blog ?? Great posts, but what is the relationship with scanners.