On mediocrity past and present

Rosenbaum highlights one new film in the same blog post, singing the praises of Ursula Meier's HOME, available in a solid Blu-ray version from Kino. And I second his motion. HOME is one of my favorite world cinema discoveries of the past few years and one of the best first features I've seen in a long time. Isabelle Huppert's participation alone signals something special, as she generally knows how to pick them, choosing projects based on good scripts and interesting directors rather than roles that would score her more money or win her acclaim.

A comment about the main picture, one echoed in the John K forums.

It rises below mediocrity to become a horrible vision.

Even during Pinnochio's nightmare sequence, the animators made sure it was pleasing to the eye.

The Internet reinforces this unhealthy emphasis on the new and the now -- in criticism and in distribution and exhibition -- as if anything that happened 48 hours ago is irrelevant.

Jim: I agree and identify with the overall theme of this post. But I do want to call out two things:

1) As "unhealthy" as it is from a critical perspective to focus so tightly on the week of a film's release, the healthy part of it is that it allows people with a passion for movies to unite in conversation around the same topic with a roughly similar experience (people haven't just seen the movie; they've seen it recently). That's a good thing. It's like a book club model, except instead of choosing our own topics the release schedule chooses them for us (for better or worse on that second part).

2) The Internet might reinforce the one-week-stand approach to movie appreciation, but is there any place that does a better job of uniting people around older movies? In Rosenbaum's case, if he writes about a film from the '30s, some reader is sure to have seen it and will engage in that conversation. If not, he might point a reader that direction. Numerous talented bloggers focus more on not-of-the-moment films than of-the-moment ones, and their followings (from Siren to Cozzalio to Ferrara to Howard, etc.) suggest there's an audience for all this stuff. Movie fans are just looking for the space to have those discussions, and that seems to happen on the Intranet.

I guess my point is that the Internet is certainly part of the problem, but is there a better solution out there, not only in theory but in practice?

I sometimes regret my decision when I first started blogging to focus on current movies instead of old ones. It was a strange choice because before that I pretty much exclusively watched older movies.

I guess in the end I felt like the body of critical opinion on old movies (good or bad) is pretty well laid out in many cases. It's difficult to add a fresh perspective to it. On the other hand, there's something exciting about seeing a movie few people have seen yet and it remains to be seen how it will be received.

Of course, since I write for myself, there's no need for me to wallow in mediocre movies. I have the luxury of picking and choosing what I'm interested in.

My views are closely alligned with this sensibility. A dated mediocrity has a greater sense of craft than a modern one, first and foremost. I find a lot of modern misfires suffer from bloating and bombast. After a while, you become numb to it. You are not immersed but assaulted and so you check out both intellectually and emotionally.

Consequently, the filmgoing experience is thereby reduced to bearing witness, a participant in the latest marketing blitz to stay culturally relevent. But, there is no lasting impact, no nutritional value in these offerings.

Ironically, I recently discovered the sublime 1937 Leo McCarey feature Make Way for
Tomorrow, And this film, a scant 73 years old, has more to say about the cultural and economic environment in which we live than anything produced in the here and now.

Great post, I always find food for thought in your writing.

This latest post on your blog brings to mind a kind of frivolous conversation I had with a co-worker, a young university student that was working where I work for part of the summer. We were discussing vampire novels, she was conveying to me her enthusiasm for Kelly Armstrong novels, which somehow got conveyed to movies. In the course of the conversation I mentioned I liked Blade 2 for what it is, an effective vampire action flick, which I told her I liked more on subsequent viewings. I don't know if it has anything to do with what she is studying at university (psychology), but she implied that I thought the film was better than it was because I had somehow how tricked my mind into liking it more by multiple viewings of the film. This is the part of the conversation that has stuck with me. I don't think I'm wrong in thinking that part of critical thinking sometimes involves multiple viewings. I definitely know this applies to viewing paintings by fine artists and the more commercially oriented graphic arts.

Man, I'm glad I graduated from college so I'm not forced to read painfully tedious essays about nothing anymore. Rosenbaum is a terrible writer; the only thing he's ever written about is how smart he is and thus none of his work is worth a damn.

It's all about where one looks on the Web. There are innumerable movie websites dedicated to the here and now, with very occasional forays into the past by way of lists and new DVD releases. On the other hand, Dave Kehr rarely comments on the absolutely contemporary, although I'm sure he'd be a valuable voice in that arena. Google brings up results for nearly any movie I've ever searched for, obscure or not. Some of my favorite film writers, like the aforementioned JRo and Glenn Kenny and Jeeem himself, strike a healthy, worthwhile balance between the past and present, usually treating both as avenues within which to discuss pressing and relevant issues involving the Way We Live Now and How They Lived Then.

I guess I've always felt that any cinephile worth his or her salt should be interested in film history, just as any art-lover should study the background and development of his or her chosen form. I keep in mind Faulkner's "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

I'd agree. I know watching an old mediocre film that even if the film stinks it will still have the time capsule quality of catching fashions and slang and speech cadences from a bygone era and preserving them forever. I like that and have spent much of my blogging focused on older films for that very reason.

For similar reasons, I gravitate towards foreign films. One also gets to see another country and culture.

We live in a time when younger moviegoers are afraid of black & white cinematography and they complain about those nasty black bars on the sides of the picture on their widescreen TV. They see old technology. The internet has played a major part in directing our attention to the new(est) movies, but we are also appealing to a generation that is growing up in an ever-shifting sea of technological innovation. A computer that was put out only five years ago is old to this generation. My wife bought a used 2003 Prius and had someone compliment her on her "vintage" Prius. Now, perhaps more than ever before in human history, the new becomes old before we even had a chance to get comfortable with it. In this world context, I find myself sympathizing a little with people who can't get up any excitement for that run-of-the-mill Raul Walsh movie.

On the other hand, I'd probably rather see that mediocre Raul Walsh movie than the latest Oscar bait biopic.

In ancient times, stories were told not just to entertain, and not just to inform, but to create a common thread of culture. The stories of a culture provided the vehicle through which they shared experiences and values across their society and from generation to generation.

Therefore, a certain amount of apathy toward older films is perfectly understandable among the younger generation. Modern society moves so fast, changes so fast that they have trouble relating to the material if it is not current.

That's not to say they shouldn't make the effort, but just for an example, most of the old films relating to issues of racism seem thoroughly quaint today. We haven't conquered racism, but the modern racist is so much more subtle and clever than his blustering 1950s counterpart that there is little resemblance.

I find myself re-watching films from my youth out of nostalgia only to discover that they were entirely mediocre. Still, the nostalgia that drove me there still holds some value so I disproportionately "Like" the mediocrity of the past as compared to the mediocrity of the present. When I see a new mediocre film, I'm left with the despair of knowing that I just wasted two hours that I could have used digging up a great film from the past that I've never seen (the last mediocre film I saw--was dragged into by an in-law--was It's Complicated; I've since returned to going to the theatre by myself, with my wife, or my kids). I'm only 34, but I already feel like I'll never have enough time to see all the great films that already exist so why waste time on mediocrity?

I tend to stay away from current releases on my blog as well. I just don't feel like I have a whole lot to say about a movie I've only seen once (because I mostly stay away from writing reviews and lean more towards writing criticism). Plus, there's so many good and accessible writers (pro and amateur) covering the current releases that there just doesn't seem to be any reason for me to get involved. I'd rather delve into specific elements of films that I love even if it means that I'm essentially writing for myself! Bordwell & Thompson have been great inspirations for their exploration of film form and I also find a lot of inspiration in Kim Morgan's writing about of classic films, actors, and directors that she admires.

One of the fun things about being a fan of a particular country's movies -- in my case, Japan -- is that you end up watching a lot of material, both "classic" and "mediocre" for the sake of contrast. I enjoy even a bad film from Japan because it gives me, in however filtered a form, some glimpse of something I never see in an American movie at all. Even if it's just a piece of set dressing, it's still something.

I wonder what it is, exactly, when we see an older movie and feel more of a sense of craft coming from it than we do when we see a movie from the present day. I suspect that's at least partly because it reminds us that much less of what the bad stuff is like right now -- it's that much more removed from the present moment's mediocrity in multiple ways.

Red Dawn was good.

I would always rather see a harmless mediocre movie, of any era, than an overwrought or pretentious bad film, whether the mediocre movie is WHEN LADIES MEET (1933) or I LOVE YOU MAN (2009). In the first part of the 30s to 70s era that Rosenbaum mentions, the studios were cranking out a lot harmless mediocre movies! And in the sixties and seventies, the independents were making a lot of cheap mediocre art and genre films. (Granted, this is a very American view.) I think harmless but interesting mediocre movies are simply rare now. Schmaltzy big budget or pretentious crap is much more likely to get made.

I think the medicore movies of the past were superior because they were at least made with great care even though the script and the production values weren't there and the acting was overdone. Whereas these days the medicore movies and even if they are well financed, are done pretty sloppily and I think hardly rewritten or rehearsed much at all. Plus today poor scripts, acting etc are pushed to the background by sound effects which distract the (young) movie goer from any substance even if it was there.

When I think of some of my favourite movies, I think of Tyrone Power's "The Black Swan" and "The Mark of Zorro", or Errol Flynn's "The Sea Hawk". These were undoubtedly the "True Lies" and "Die Hard" of their time (or perhaps more accurately the "Pirates of the Caribbean" without the supernatural elements), and yet somehow they are more enjoyable to me than many more recent action/adventure titles which have better technology and realism.