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"The Man Who wasnt there"
 

offline flea from depths of your mind (New Zealand) on 2002-02-21 20:24 [#00096130]
Points: 9083 Status: Regular



so I went and caught this flick last night...I am a
somewhat avid fans i.e love his earlier works..Blood Simple,
Raising Arizona, Millers Crossing, Barton Fink..but beyond
that even though I have made a point of watching everything
religously the outcome has been mixed..Fargo was just so
plain and cold..Hudsucker Proxy was border line genius...The
Big Lebowski amiable enough with a few memorable moments
while O'Brother just blew:(
Didn't think that much of the new film either...I mean it
was an excellent film by an standards..the revisonist crash
course in Film Noir, had the look and the feel just about
right, ticking all the staples of the genre on the list
along the way....and yet I found it flat and unengaging..one
of the uncanny features of Film Noir has always been the
characters..no matter how despicable are so well rounded and
real that you care for them..the Coens themselves achieved
that in Miller's Crossing and Blood Simple...but in this new
film...I couldn't care less..the whole thing was so cold and
clinical that the barbes smock might as well have been a
morticians's...the cursory attempts at surrealism seemed
forced almost an after thought...and the strangely
conservative and moralistic endindgseemed like a jury (read
test audience) rigged add on...all in all the more they
master the craft of cinema and more polished their
output..the farther they are going from what made their
movies such a thrilling and memorable experience...so the
question is..have we lost another maverick talent (r.i.p Gus
Van Sant ;() to clutches of the mainstream oscar's driven
drama crowd?...am I the only one who feels this
disengagement from this film or have I totally lost it and
wont know a good movie if it hit on the head with a bucket
of popcorn?


 

offline Ubik from United States on 2002-02-21 20:41 [#00096138]
Points: 662 Status: Lurker



explain how they have gone mainstream? why is Raising
Arizona independent and O Brother mainstream? O Brother was
funnier than the average hollywood film, so it cant blow
that much. Hudsucker Proxy was borderline genius, but also
borderline failure at the same time, doesnt totally work.

of course, the character "the man who wasnt there" was
intentionally lifeless, and the one time he tries to break
out of his mold of being part of the surroundings,
everything goes absurdly wrong. how are you expected to guy
about the Billy bob character, if he hardly cares himself?
the oddest thing in the movie was his obssession with the
girl, sort of "what if his life...", but then he finds out
she is just another normal gal, the fantasy shatters, and
then she gives him a blow job and then the car crashes, the
girl is completely gone, and he is now accussed of murder.
symbolizism for the his "bubble" breaking? i can't decide
if it works... i flawed movie, true.


 

offline flea from depths of your mind (New Zealand) on 2002-02-21 21:03 [#00096158]
Points: 9083 Status: Regular



well Raising Arizona is independent, because..well it was
independently produced..O'Brother..big studio
production..wasn't just that but also they genre they chose
to riff on so to speak..a musical versus a kidnap caper a
well trodden domain from B to Z grade...Hudsucker Proxy as
well as Barton Fink are borderline failures that's what I
found so exciting about them..the chaos, the mess..yes the
main character so intentionally lifeless I figured that part
out all by myself (wheee) but so was was everybody else
around him..his wife..Big Dave...(drunken fits and, bravura
does not constitute well rounded characterisation to
me..sorry) and his wife and especially Birdie..The only
charcter that oozed any character was the pansy dry
cleaner.who looked alive (with a fluttering toupee) even in
death..the whole UFO metaphor was a total loss as well as
Ed's sudden attachment to this teenage girl...and if his
wife couldn't care less about his thoughts on anything or
one why all of the sudden commit suicide when she does find
out that he knows of her affair with Big Dave..sorry didn't
buy it for a sec..


 


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