Joker

“Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture. There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore…I’ll tell you why, because all the f**king funny guys are like, ‘F**k this s**t, because I don’t want to offend you.’ It’s hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter. You just can’t do it, right? So you just go, ‘I’m out.'” – Todd Phillips, director of Old School, The Hangover and Joker

Todd Phillips probably should’ve stuck with comedy.

People are saying things like ‘Joker is a bold and dangerous film’, and that it’s redefined the comic book movie genre, which is probably an accident because clearly no one involved understands the definition of a comic book movie as there are almost zero elements from the comics here. We do get a number of characters who people will recognise because we’re given their names, but other than that they bear no resemblance to their comic counterparts. Thomas Wayne has been turned into a big rich bastard, Alfred has turned violent, Bruce Wayne is like 10-years-old while Joker is at least 35 (which would make Bruce’s job much easier when he has to beat up an out-of-shape OAP), and lastly Joker is a thundering dumbass.

Any comic book fan will know that the Joker has an ambiguous backstory, or has changing backstories, so I’m not against them creating a mostly new one here. What I am against is giving him a backstory that makes no sense. There are a number of things they’ve put in place here that are clearly included just to drive the plot forward or to create a certain vibe for that scene without thinking about the logic behind it. * [THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPGH CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS] * One major turning point for Joker, or Arthur Fleck (A. Fleck – best joke in the film), is when he kills three stereotypical stockbrokers on a subway after they taunt him by singing while he’s dressed as a clown. Just think, if those three men had better music taste and didn’t know all the lyrics to Send in the Clowns then Arthur may have never become a murdering psychopath.

I started writing this as a spoiler review because there’s a lot to pick apart scene by scene in this film, but I scrapped that idea and instead I’ve come up with an analogy to sum up my thoughts…

If you have five carrots and you eat one – ‘mmm lovely carrot, what a treat’ – then you proceed with the second carrot – ‘oh go on then, why not’ – carrot number three and the excitement’s wearing off a bit but a carrot’s a carrot right? You start on carrot number four and you know this is ridiculous but you continue anyway, hoping for something different this time, alas it’s still a carrot. You hold the final carrot, carrot number five, in your hand and sigh, starting to resent everything that even merely resembles a carrot, then in a panic, in a snap decision to get something different out of your carrot this time…something new and exciting, you shove the thing up your arse. You realise immediately that this was not the right decision as all you’ve done now is taken what you used to enjoy and shat on it. Either get a new vegetable, or just stop eating fucking carrots. This is what they’ve done with Joker: they haven’t come up with something new or exciting as people are saying, instead they’ve taken what we know already, what other people have put effort in to create, and in an attempt to make something original have come out with a culmination of other people’s work, namely The King of Comedy, Taxi Driver, a certain creation that will remain nameless due to spoilers, and somehow barely any of Batman or the Joker.

Todd Phillips is clearly aware of the similarities to the Robert De Niro films (The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver) and Joaquin Phoenix’s film You Were Never Really Here, or he wouldn’t have cast them. This only highlights the fact that he’s ripped those films off and tried to pass it off as a new kind of comic book film by stamping the name Joker on the poster. Take the Joker aspect out, however, and what you’re left with is a bunch of other films mashed together into an incoherent, predictable narrative, and as what I imagine is an attempt to gain artistic credibility has tried to make a points about mental health and mob mentality. I’ll let you decide whether he’s achieved that or not.

When “controversial” films or stories like this come out and people like me rebuke them, a lot of fans come out with the argument that ‘it got you talking, didn’t it?’, but people will talk about absolutely anything, as you’ll know if you’ve ever been to a pub full of students or listened to mums talking to each other. Plus I’m specifically talking about how it’s bad so they haven’t won me over. Going by the reception of this film, the box office numbers, and the fact that this is my first review in nearly four years, they have indeed won, so I guess I’m the real loser here…I just…why does he have to dance so fucking much?!

Time-Travel in Films

Time-travel’s a bitch. We’ve all spent some time trying to comprehend how it would pan out if people smarter than us ever did figure out a way to travel through time without travelling through space. To be fair, some of us might have achieved time-travel. How would we know? This is not a blog about conspiracies though, that would be a waste of…what’s the word…lime? Let’s move on.

If you’re anything like me, which I hope for your own sake you aren’t, most of your thoughts about time-travel have been kicked off by watching films, or at least you will have seen more films on the subject than anything else – you know, like books. There are a plenty of a hell of a lot of films that use time-travel in one way or another (usually just one way) – from less serious ventures like Bill and Ted or Back to the Future to films like The Terminator or 12 Monkeys (or La Jetée if you’re a big old nerd). Most of the more serious ventures will have time-travel as pretty much the hook of the film, meaning they probably wouldn’t be in any way interesting without it. This is a mistake. (Scroll down slightly to find out why.)

Looper is a film. I hope we can all agree on that. A film made by “Rian Johnson”, which I can only imagine is a misspelling of ‘Ryan’ or ‘Ian’. Looper is a great example of a film that’s about time-travel, rather than one that just uses time-travel (Prisoner of Azkaban, for example). If you don’t know the plot of Looper, go watch it, it’s a good film. If you don’t want to watch it then I shall not force you, but I will ruin the plot for you.

As is explained in the opening scene of Looper, in the future, when people need to get murdered, they are sent back in time and shot horrifically by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who then disposes of the bodies so no one finds the dead people in the time where they came from. Fool-proof idea, what could possibly go wrong? WELL. One day, Joseph Gordon-Bennett is waiting for his target to appear before him but waddya you know it’s only himself! Of course he doesn’t know that because who would imagine that they’d grow up to look like Bruce Willis?* So obviously Bruce Willis recognises his younger self and makes a run for it. The rest of the film is mostly a cat-and-mouse chase, as you probably guessed.

Simple enough plot, and easy enough to follow, but let’s see what happens when you break it down. What a lot of films on time-travel do is ask you to assume that this is the first instance that the character has made this journey through time, which is impossible because as we all know, time is not linear. If I travel back in time and visit my younger self, that means at some point in my past I was visited by an older version of myself. If I decide, after being visited by myself, not to travel back in time and visit myself, then I never travelled back in time in the first place and none of this ever happened…right?

Let’s humour the film and go along with the idea that there can be a first instance in which Bruce Willis travels back. If we don’t do this the film makes no sense because Bruce Willis would’ve already been visited by himself in his past, which according to the film is not the case. So for sake of argument, let’s say that Bruce Willis has a perfect memory (which we know is not true, or he wouldn’t be doing a 6th Die Hard film). He will have all the memories that Joseph Gordon-Levitt has, and to make it more complicated, he will have all the memories that Joseph has during the period that they spend in the same time-frame. This is because he’s rewriting his own history. To extend that idea further though, Bruce should be gaining Joey’s experiences as and when they’re happening, all the while trying to escape and get other things done, trying to catch up with errands. The whole time Brucey stays in the past he should be receiving all these new memories like a horrible TV show in his head. And just to add to the nightmare, the moments that he spends with his younger self, he’ll be seeing everything from both sides at once, like some amped-up version of having more than one personality. If it doesn’t send him insane, he’d still be left curled up in a ball screaming in an attempt to focus his mind on one stream of thought. To Rian Johnson’s credit though, that would’ve made for horrible viewing.

So that’s my issue with Looper.

I think the more you try to focus on time-travel in film while trying keeping a cohesive narrative, the more holes you make. You can find holes in basically every time-travel film so my tip would be not to make one, or if you’re not a filmmaker, don’t spend so much time picking apart the plots of films, you waster.

If you do have to make a time-travel film for whatever reason, keep it simple. The less you explore the more sense it makes, which is why I mentioned Prisoner of Azkaban earlier; it’s technically a better time-travel film than Looper. Another great example is Game of Thrones with Hodor. Be like a politician and keep it vague. The vaguer you are, the less likely it is people will point out problems. Or just be a genius like Shane Carruth and make Primer…Primer’s so damn good.

 

*Bruce Willis probably, or his kids…do not let me know if Bruce Willis has kids, I do not care.

Argo Fuck the Oscars

“Nothing would disgust me more, morally, than receiving an Oscar.” – Luis Buñuel

It’s that time of year again. That time of year where white men give each other little gold objects. White men be like ‘you put things on a screen proper good’ or ‘dude, I enjoyed you pretending to be that other dude’, then they hand them an award, kiss them on the forehead and send them on their way. Aaaah show business.

I hate the Oscars. You’d think I’d spend more time focusing my hatred on better things – poverty, governmental corruption, hipsters – but no. I would but I think if I actively hated those things then I’d be a uni stereotype…shit, I’m a hipster.

The Oscars, or awards in general, seem harmless. It’s just a group of people saying which film/performance (or whatever) they thought was best. But how harmless is that really? Putting aside the Academy’s supposed problem with diversity which most people are complaining about, there are problems with just the idea of awarding people for their films.

People care about awards. If a film wins ‘best picture’, people are going to watch it. Even people who have no interest in awards will recognise the huge Oscar or Golden Globe on the DVD cover. So what about the rest of the films? The ones that didn’t even get nominated will automatically be recognised less, especially with the power the Academy has gained over the years. We get told that, for example, Argo is the best film of 2012 when there are better films that were nominated the same year, never mind the ones would never have a chance at the Oscars. Which brings to me another point. Argo won because it’s made by and stars acclaimed people, and most importantly because it’s a “true story”.

My point is, the Oscars and awards encourage this idea of film being a competition. They make it easier for the big films, and harder for the small films. I don’t think you can tell someone that their art is better than someone else’s art, especially when most of the films the Oscars pick are not art; they are the films that people want to see and the films that people will see. Art is not supposed to be ranked, it is to be watched, enjoyed and learned from. I’ve said about half of what I wanted to say here, but next time you get all excited about the Oscars, don’t. Do something more depressing with your life like write a blog.

The Fog of War

Rating – 4/5

Hoping to make this pretty short, but we’ll see what happens. Also, this might just end up being a repeat of my El Topo review, and end up saying nothing really. Anyway, let’s have fun.

First off, this film is hard to follow; it’s mostly in-depth political talk, but if you can make politics interesting then you’re probably a god, so that’s something we have to expect from a political documentary. However, the director, Errol Morris, is able to create a documentary way more interesting than most. This is mainly down to accessing information directly from the people involved, or responsible. It’s surprising how much information he gets out of his subjects, which in this case is former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who talks mostly about the Cold War and the Vietnam War, but I’m not going to go into those, mainly because I don’t know enough.

Documentaries are a weird thing. There are documentaries that are flat-out the opinions of the people who made them, but there are other ones: the ones that try to give an account and just raise awareness. Then again, can you make a whole film without your opinion affecting the outcome? I don’t know. You have to question the legitimacy behind “an account” (which The Fog of War never claims to be) when all the questions being asked to the subject are written by people with opinions. Not only that, but even the way in which the questions are asked, and in this case, how much and what can Morris ask McNamara without making him leave?

What’s strange is that this documentary does an incredibly good job of giving the audience information (even if it is just from McNamara’s point of view), but I start to ask more and more questions the more I learn. ‘The fog of war’ relates to the idea that war is so complex, mainly on a moral level, that there’s no black-and-white, especially as to what’s good and what’s bad. Without realising, we are experiencing the fog of war while watching the film. Morris applies the fog to the people involved – are the decisions these people made good or bad? It offers no answer, but let’s you think for yourself possibly more than any documentary I’ve seen, other than other Errol Morris films. Errol Morris may be the most important documentary filmmaker around.

My 31 Favourite Films

This list is always changing and is in no order. I do have the one favourite film though. Also, these are not the films I think are the best films ever made; they’re my favourite films for whatever reason.

Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppola) – The best ever. I have a review on it but even that doesn’t cover it.

The Big Lebowski (1998, Joel Coen) – My first Coen brothers film, and consistently one of the most entertaining cult films ever. Amazing actors and filmmakers having fun.

Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, Stanley Kubrick) – I think my first Kubrick film. Horrifying satire has never been so funny. Also, Peter Sellers three times.

La Haine (1995, Mathieu Kassovitz) – A social and political masterpiece that is never boring. Better every time.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976, John Cassavetes) – Only seen this once and was not that impressed until the end. It’s not a twist ending or anything, but that’s when the whole film clicked for me, and it’s stuck with me since. Also, Cassavetes is the king of independent filmmaking.

The Long Goodbye (1973, Robert Altman) – Ridiculously cool.

Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014, Alejandro G. Iñárritu) – Cannot remember agreeing with a film more. Not only with it’s messages, but with nearly every choice they made.

Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman) – It’s hard to keep my attention, especially if your film is pretentious and slow, but I was hooked for the whole thing.

Pink Floyd the Wall (1982, Alan Parker) – Imagination and originality in film is big for me, and this film not only had those but had a strong emotional effect on me.

Samsara (2011, Ron Fricke) – 4 years collecting images from all over the world makes for Fricke’s best work yet. This is pure cinema done right.

Slacker (1991, Richard Linklater) – An original film that really does transport you. Linklater knew from the beginning how to create conversation.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper) – There’s a reason they’re still making prequels and sequels and stuff. With parts that are even shocking today, this is a crazy horror film that doesn’t give a shit.

This Is Spinal Tap (1984, Rob Reiner) – Don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much, and that was the 10th time I watched it.

Withnail & I (1987, Bruce Robinson) – Hilarious again, with performances that should’ve made them famous. This film is still way too unrecognised.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick) – Still ahead of our time. Even with the plot explained, this film is still perplexing, and astonishing for so many reasons.

A Serious Man (2009, Joel and Ethan Coen) – Maybe the Coens’ strangest film, but weirdly hilarious. I enjoy it more each time, and find new things.

Being John Malkovich (1999, Spike Jonze) – Another film where I find new things every time. Maybe not Charlie Kaufman’s best, but definitely the most fun.

Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972, Werner Herzog) – A big inspiration on Apocalypse Now. This film is horrible and beautiful at the exact same time. Also, Werner Herzog is my favourite filmmaker.

It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012, Don Hertzfeldt) – Both original and intentionally unoriginal. A film that’s funny, amazing and truly sad in places.

Mulholland Dr. (2001, David Lynch) – While probably not Lynch’s most imaginative film, this is the one that affects me most. Undoubtedly fantastic.

Babo 73 (1964, Robert Downey Sr.) – Downey Sr.’s funniest film, forgotten for its weirdness, but this is satire like no other.

Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese) – It’s weird when you watch a film a realised you haven’t blinked and your mouth’s wide open.

Best in Show (2000, Christopher Guest) – Hilarious film that isn’t known enough.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986, John Carpenter) – This could be the most entertaining film ever made.

Dark Star (1974, John Carpenter) – As much Dan O’Bannon’s as it is Carpenter’s. A strange little comedy/sci-fi that actually makes me smile.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999, Jim Jarmusch) – Not Jarmusch’s best, but it’s the one I always think of. Forest Whitaker and a RZA soundtrack make for one of the coolest films.

House/Hausu (1977, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi) – A crazy film. Forget film before you watch it.

Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott) – Mad beautiful. I do have a post on this.

Ichi the Killer (2001, Takashi Miike) – The most imaginatively sadistic film I’ve seen.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988, Stephen Chiodo) – There are no questions with this film. You watch it and you have fun. It’s just bloody awesome.

Repo Man (1984, Alex Cox) – Alex Cox’s first feature film is definitely my favourite. A cult film with imagination, and something to say…I think. Harry Dean Stanton’s best role.

Young and Naïve: A Rant About Age Ratings

A lot of people remember their first 18, by which I mean a film rated 18. It’s so exciting. It’s more violent, has more swearing and may even have SEX, but what is it that gives it a higher rating? Why have the rating boards decided that only people of a certain age can watch it?

I’m gonna talk about America’s rating board because it’s way more interesting, but there are strong similarities with theirs and the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification).

In the 1920s, a man named Will Hays became the first president of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), then known as the MPPDA, and got paid what would now be over $2,000,000 to make sure that films were “clean and moral”. The association developed rules, known as the Hays Code or Production Code, that films had to abide by. Skip to 1966 to the release of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ By this point, Jack Valenti, the new head of the MPAA, had abolished the Hays Code. However, rumours of the film’s content forced him to add a warning to the film, and more importantly, ban anyone under the age of 18 from watching it without supervision. This film and Antonioni’s ‘Blow-Up’ lead to the Valenti’s introduction of the MPAA film rating system in 1968.

The film rating system is what’s responsible for films having age ratings on them. The reason certain films are not allowed to be seen by people of certain ages, less so recently with the increase in downloads, but back then it was more effective. So what’s so bad about these films? Well, sex mainly. While most of the reasons for censorship have become more liberal over the years, sex has always remained the strongest reason. Kimberly Peirce has talked about her conversation with the MPAA about their censorship of her film ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ (a true story of a woman who lives as a man). In the film, the main character is the victim of extreme violence yet the reason they stated for giving the film a higher rating was to do with a sex scene between two girls, while never specifying exactly why; it was just “offensive”. This pissed off Kimberly Peirce, but what does it really matter that her film gets a high age rating? Audience.

The higher the age rating on a film, the fewer the number of people who see it. The rating system prevents the film from earning money, and the filmmakers from earning the living they might deserve. I could talk about the corruption of the MPAA, but I’d rather question the idea of rating a film at all. Why is it that a standard group of people can decide whether millions of people get to see a film or not? Banning people from seeing it because they’re younger, never mind banning a film altogether. Anyone under the under of 15 is not likely to have seen a sex scene (despite the majority having seen it all they like on the internet), or any realistic representation of violence all because the board have said that they cannot watch it, they cannot watch a film like ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ – a film that teaches so much about sexuality, society and common personal issues, the stuff they teach very little of in school. They can however see the exact same images on the news as they would in, say, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, but can watch a ‘Mission Impossible’ film which shows violence without gore. The only difference between those two is the realism, the stuff they should see. A side note, a person of any age can go into a shop and buy a ’50 Shades’ novel.

My point is that not only do age ratings affect the financial state of the artists behind them, but they also prevent people from seeing what is necessary, learning what is real. And people may say that seeing a film at such a young age can have bad influences, but how many murderers do you know? The guy who attempted to shoot Reagan, supposedly because of ‘Taxi Driver’, was 26, not a child. I’m gonna stop here because I keep thinking of new things to write, but if any of this interests you, even if it doesn’t, I suggest you check out the documentary ‘This Film Is Not Yet Rated’.

Creep

Rating – 4/5

Disclaimer: This review thingy is about Patrick Brice’s 2015 film, not Christopher Smith’s 2005 film of the same name, which is actually a very good motion picture what is also a horror.

There is a sort-of sub-genre of films called ‘mumblecore’ which has come about recently that means something like a low-budget, independent film that’s based more on realistic dialogue and features amateur actors, I dunno, but the genre includes some great stuff. Netflixable ones include: Frances Ha, Drinking Buddies and Tiny Furniture. From this genre came ‘mumblegore’ which speaks for itself really and also includes some great films (check out filmmaker Ti West and others). This film, Creep, has also just popped up on Netflix. It stars and is co-written by Mark Duplass of the Duplass brothers (Jeff, Who Lives at Home) as it seems everyone involved in the sub-genre knows each other and appears in each others’ films. Anyway, that’s that out the way, just to give you a sense of what kind of film it is.

This is a very good film. It’s a found-footage film about a fella who is hired to do a day’s filming for another fella, but of course it is not that simple. The second fella is a bloody weirdo, a creep even. Mark Duplass, who plays said creep, is responsible for a lot of this film’s brilliance – his performance is amazing. He manages to find a perfect balance between those people whom you meet who are a bit odd and lonely and try to avoid, and a movie villain you believe would probably kill you. Kudos to Duplass. It is also an impressive film because it’s believable. How often can you watch a horror film and not only think that it makes perfect sense and could potentially happen, but that it very well might happen shit I’m gonna lock my door and eat my key KAREN WHERE ARE THE KIDS?! ‘We don’t have any kids’ WHAT?! THE KIDS ARE DEAD! ‘For the 50th time, Bill, we never had any k-‘ I’m gonna stop…sorry. I’m keeping that in the review.

I have but two criticisms of this film. The first is not so important but it seemed to annoy me more than it should have. At one point, Duplass cuts off a bit of the protagonist’s hair while he sleeps (who is played by the director, b.t.dubbs). It’s not a big thing but it annoyed me because up until this point I was so Creeped out because the tone was perfect that the cliché put me off. Number two criticism is the ending. Not the very end because it’s kinda awesome (it’s supposed to become a trilogy) but the bit just before but I will say nothing, I just didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it though so I’ll stop being so negative.

All in all, in conclusion, in summation (that’s a reference to the film, I’m lol-ing so hard right now), it’s a brilliant horror film. It’s refreshing, it’s funny, it’s truly scary…for once, and it’s exciting to know that there are more to come. Again, it’s on all Netflixes so please check it out, or do something better with your life that isn’t obsessing over films. Peace.

A Reflection on Blade Runner

Blade Runner is beautiful, like ridiculously. One of those films where you can look at one image, hear a small part of the soundtrack and come close to tears without really knowing why. A film that’s so masterfully put together and so complete in every aspect that we feel like we know the world it has created as much as our own, but how well do we know our own world?

To me, one of the biggest themes Blade Runner explores is identity. Why are we here? What makes us what we are? All that kind of reflective stuff writers and filmmakers go on about. The film is, however, quite subtle in its themes so could really be about anything you think it’s about, but maybe that’s the point. As well as asking these questions, it becomes about reflection.

In the film, “replicants” are robots which not only look like humans, but are so advanced that long tests are required to tell the difference between the two. It becomes apparent that the lady who works for the creator of the replicants, and is now forming a relationship with Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), is also a replicant, but because they have implanted memories of a whole life and she was kept in the dark, she herself didn’t know. Before finding out her “true” identity, she was a human in effect (in a sort of Schrodinger’s cat way). She had memories, she thought like a human, she acted like a human, so why isn’t she one?

There is also the theory, that Ridley Scott has confirmed, that Rick Deckard is also a replicant; something that Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer oppose. But if that were to be a twist, why would they keep it quiet in the film? Because it doesn’t matter. Another subtle fact about the film’s world is that animals are almost completely extinct (a stronger aspect in the novel), but is only shown in the film when he knows the owl is a fake, as well as the first replicant’s snake. “Do you think I’d be working in a place like this if I could afford a real snake?” she asks, because you have to be rich to own such an endangered species. Again though, why is this not shown more in the film? Because it doesn’t matter. We spend a lot of time thinking about our purpose and our identities when really it doesn’t matter. The extinction of animals is paralleled by replicants being used instead of humans, replacing humans. Furthermore, Tyrell, the creator, is only shown in a glorious, golden building; a big contrast to the bleak, constantly raining world everyone else lives in – humans already don’t matter. Bleak.

The ultimate message I got from the film was that we spend so much time reflecting on our own existence that we forget to enjoy it before we stop existing, before all those moments are lost…”like tears in rain”. Maybe it isn’t so bleak.

I’ve stopped there because this could’ve become way too long, but if anyone has any other views on the film, please let me know.

Emporte-moi, Idi i smotri and the Rest of This Title is in English

This post might end up a little deep again, and it sort relates to that one from a while back…not much, but a bit and I needed something to say at the beginning of this post. This post is becoming more self-aware than Scream. I’d like people to know that I don’t read back over these which is why I don’t know how they’ll end. And now for the second paragraph!

Hulu is an American movie website in the vain of Netflix. However, they have a selection of free films and every week they put new ones up and take some down so you don’t get long to watch them if you don’t like paying for things. Because there’s so much on their website, I only ever look at the Criterion section, like if I wanna watch a douchey art film. This lead me, last week, to watching a film named Emporte-moi (Set Me Free) which I then found out is not available on DVD or anything but is still on Hulu for money. It’s a little French-Canadian 90s film set in the 60s about a girl who suffers abuse from her dad, bullying at school and other cliché things a troubled child experiences. As a result of this, she retreats into the world of film, namely Jean Luc-Godard’s brilliant Vivre Sa Vie (a film showing part of a prostitute’s life), and reenacts parts. I’ll stop there because I’m not analysing films in this.

Another film I watched recently is Russian war-drama Come and See (Idi i smotri). I know I said I’m not analysing films right now but I have to say that film is amazing, and truly one of the most powerful I’ve ever seen. Based on a true story, the film is about a young boy’s experience of WWII in the Soviet Army. This is the film that first gave me the idea for this post because I pretty much didn’t analyse it at all. I couldn’t. I was too distracted by what the film was doing so well; affecting me. I’ve almost never felt more disgusted or shocked by what I was watching without trying to look deeper into the film. I didn’t need to look deeper because the film had already blown me away.

I’ll try come to my point now. There are films that are shocking and affect people emotionally after they’ve thought about it, and there are films that straight-up just make you feel something. I am no way criticising the former films, but in my opinion, if you’ve made a film that can affect people straight away, you’ve got something very special and clearly know how to write a script or how to direct to do that. Come and See, for me, is one of the best films for that. Emporte-moi, however, is one of the only films to find a happy medium – it works so well as an emotional drama, and as a film to closer at.

Lastly, it’s not just about shocking or disgusting people, but any emotion that is felt by an audience because of your film is a good sign, even if they hate the film.