On cinema, blood, and guts
About six weeks after the birth of our first child, my husband and I had a night out. We went to dinner and a movie. For some reason I'm sure I wouldn't now be able to fathom even if I could remember it, I wanted to see Saving Private Ryan. Since I was the one who had given birth a mere six weeks before, and since I was the one going back to work so my husband could finish law school, Saving Private Ryan is, by God, what we saw.
It was probably a mistake. My gentle husband, who was once traumatized by a crucial scene in Sophie's Choice and who, more recently, actually got angry with me for watching a movie called 28 Days Later in his presence, was bound to be put off by the visceral impact of the movie's opening. Since Private Ryan is a movie that, in some respects, gets by on the reserves of good will it has built up in its opening sequence, and since in my husband's case, the opening sequence already put the movie in the red, it was never going to win him over. (But he liked A. I. Go figure.)
My reaction to the film was somewhat more complicated. I am not generally put off by violence per se in movies. For instance, I consider the "Danny Boy" sequence in Miller's Crossing to be one of the greatest ever committed to celluloid, and once, when someone asked me whether Gladiator was a violent film, I replied, "Not particularly." But the violence in Saving Private Ryan is not of the Miller's Crossing or Gladiator variety. It's not gratuitous, of course, but it's visceral and shocking in a way that the violence in those other movies is not. I understand the point of the violence in Private Ryan, and I'm ashamed to admit that that movie, more than anything else I'd read or seen (which gives you an idea how shamefully little I'd read on the subject), brought home to me the enormity of the sacrifice those men made for the sake of future generations (us and our iPods and big screens and lattes).
I've tried for a long time to figure out my "standard" for violence in movies. When is the violence gratuitous, when does it offend me, when does it not offend me? All I've been able to come away with is a series of impressions about movie violence. In an attempt to seem systematic about it, I've designated three categories of movie violence, the first two of which generally do not offend -- though they may disturb -- me, and the last of which generally does offend me.
1) Stylized violence. Miller's Crossing uses highly stylized violence. The "Danny Boy" scene that I mentioned above is a perfect example. The sequence is meticulously choreographed to the great Frank Patterson recording of "Danny Boy," and the most graphic portion of the sequence, while visually striking, is also quite unrealistic; that is, it doesn't look the way being riddled with bullets from a Tommy gun would really look (or so I imagine). The Coen brothers -- quite consciously, I think -- call attention to the violence as artifice and as a requirement of genre. Thus, in a subsequent scene, one of Albert Finney's henchmen describes Finney -- the hero of the "Danny Boy" sequence -- as "still an artist with a Thompson." The violence of the "Danny Boy" sequence is not particularly disturbing, because while it is virtuoso gangster movie violence, it's also -- obviously and self-consciously -- movie violence. The most disturbing scene in the film -- the "Miller's Crossing" scene -- contains no graphic violence at all.
2) Realistic and meaningful violence. This is the category in which I'd place Saving Private Ryan. "Meaningful" violence is perhaps a clumsy way of putting it, but I'm trying to suggest the kind of graphic violence that is both non-gratuitous and situated in a context which "offers a serious orientation to the problem of violence." This kind of violence tries not to look like "movie violence" (yes, no matter how it looks, it is always inevitably movie violence, but I don't want to jump off that postmodern precipice and into the endlessly recursive abyss of meta-stuff in this post). This kind of violence is meant to be shocking and disorienting, but it is also anchored to a work of art which rejects nihilism and thus doesn't risk being subsumed by the violent episodes it contains.
3) Realistic and meaningless violence. This is where I'd place, say, Reservoir Dogs. It's not so much that the violence in this movie is gratuitous and shocking -- though it is (there's a well-known scene in the film that makes me sick to my stomach) -- but that the movie itself is gratuitous. I'll admit to a prejudice against films and other works of art which are nihilistic. While I think it's possible for a great work to comment in a serious way on nihilism, it's a lot harder for a great work of art to be nihilistic. If a movie is premised on the idea of the meaninglessness of existence, it has a problem, right off the bat, justifying its own existence, and it is highly susceptible to being overshadowed or engulfed by its most violent episodes, such that the violence becomes the meaning.
Feel free to debate, disagree, or suggest your own categories.
It was probably a mistake. My gentle husband, who was once traumatized by a crucial scene in Sophie's Choice and who, more recently, actually got angry with me for watching a movie called 28 Days Later in his presence, was bound to be put off by the visceral impact of the movie's opening. Since Private Ryan is a movie that, in some respects, gets by on the reserves of good will it has built up in its opening sequence, and since in my husband's case, the opening sequence already put the movie in the red, it was never going to win him over. (But he liked A. I. Go figure.)
My reaction to the film was somewhat more complicated. I am not generally put off by violence per se in movies. For instance, I consider the "Danny Boy" sequence in Miller's Crossing to be one of the greatest ever committed to celluloid, and once, when someone asked me whether Gladiator was a violent film, I replied, "Not particularly." But the violence in Saving Private Ryan is not of the Miller's Crossing or Gladiator variety. It's not gratuitous, of course, but it's visceral and shocking in a way that the violence in those other movies is not. I understand the point of the violence in Private Ryan, and I'm ashamed to admit that that movie, more than anything else I'd read or seen (which gives you an idea how shamefully little I'd read on the subject), brought home to me the enormity of the sacrifice those men made for the sake of future generations (us and our iPods and big screens and lattes).
I've tried for a long time to figure out my "standard" for violence in movies. When is the violence gratuitous, when does it offend me, when does it not offend me? All I've been able to come away with is a series of impressions about movie violence. In an attempt to seem systematic about it, I've designated three categories of movie violence, the first two of which generally do not offend -- though they may disturb -- me, and the last of which generally does offend me.
1) Stylized violence. Miller's Crossing uses highly stylized violence. The "Danny Boy" scene that I mentioned above is a perfect example. The sequence is meticulously choreographed to the great Frank Patterson recording of "Danny Boy," and the most graphic portion of the sequence, while visually striking, is also quite unrealistic; that is, it doesn't look the way being riddled with bullets from a Tommy gun would really look (or so I imagine). The Coen brothers -- quite consciously, I think -- call attention to the violence as artifice and as a requirement of genre. Thus, in a subsequent scene, one of Albert Finney's henchmen describes Finney -- the hero of the "Danny Boy" sequence -- as "still an artist with a Thompson." The violence of the "Danny Boy" sequence is not particularly disturbing, because while it is virtuoso gangster movie violence, it's also -- obviously and self-consciously -- movie violence. The most disturbing scene in the film -- the "Miller's Crossing" scene -- contains no graphic violence at all.
2) Realistic and meaningful violence. This is the category in which I'd place Saving Private Ryan. "Meaningful" violence is perhaps a clumsy way of putting it, but I'm trying to suggest the kind of graphic violence that is both non-gratuitous and situated in a context which "offers a serious orientation to the problem of violence." This kind of violence tries not to look like "movie violence" (yes, no matter how it looks, it is always inevitably movie violence, but I don't want to jump off that postmodern precipice and into the endlessly recursive abyss of meta-stuff in this post). This kind of violence is meant to be shocking and disorienting, but it is also anchored to a work of art which rejects nihilism and thus doesn't risk being subsumed by the violent episodes it contains.
3) Realistic and meaningless violence. This is where I'd place, say, Reservoir Dogs. It's not so much that the violence in this movie is gratuitous and shocking -- though it is (there's a well-known scene in the film that makes me sick to my stomach) -- but that the movie itself is gratuitous. I'll admit to a prejudice against films and other works of art which are nihilistic. While I think it's possible for a great work to comment in a serious way on nihilism, it's a lot harder for a great work of art to be nihilistic. If a movie is premised on the idea of the meaninglessness of existence, it has a problem, right off the bat, justifying its own existence, and it is highly susceptible to being overshadowed or engulfed by its most violent episodes, such that the violence becomes the meaning.
Feel free to debate, disagree, or suggest your own categories.
posted by Kate Marie | 1:17 PM | Permalink
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12 comments
12 Comments:
Um. . Sadeeq liked A.I.?
Next time you come over here, let's just say that the kids are welcome.
I don't blame you, Stewdog. I had a hard time letting him in *our* house after that. :)
I'll admit that some parts of the movie were good.
Dear Kate Marie,
You must have suspected that if you hung out this particular bait I would bite. I don't have much to critique in your "categories of violence," but I wouldn't agree that "Reservoir Dogs" is a "nihilistic" film, or at least that it is any more "nihilistic" than "Miller's Crossing." Both movies are pruriently appealing tales about bad people doing bad things. "Miller's Crossing" is certainly more stylized, and the violence in "Reservoir Dogs" is more gratuitously shocking, but the latter film has no less "moral center" than the former. Both films are in fact quite comparable, in that they center on structurally similar male relationships (Albert Finney-Gabriel Byrne; Harvey Keitel-Tim Roth). Tim Roth's fate doesn't prove that life is meaningless, just that through long familiarity and under intense stress even murderous scum can come to seem "normal," sympathetic, and worthy of trust and affection. Roth's character is classically tragic- he is warned by his superior Holdaway never to forget that the people he is dealing with are killers, but through deep-seated insecurity and need turns Keitel into a daddy/big brother, to his own undoing.
Dear Madman,
I actually envisioned myself as Brad Pitt fly fishing in that scene at the end of A River Runs Through It. I cast out into the deepest part of the river, and let the tide carry me along until it was over my head, but I came up with the legendary Madfish of Chu. Now all I need is for someone to take a B&W snapshot immortalizing my achievement for the sake of posterity.
I must, in all honesty, confess that I don't remember the plot/characters of Reservoir Dogs very well. In fact, the only thing I remember clearly from Reservoir Dogs is that awful scene with Michael Madsen and the soundtrack playing "Stuck in the Middle with You." For what it's worth, I do think that RD is a more interesting, better made, less boring movie than Pulp Fiction.
But I still think it's nihilistic. I admire your ability to tease out a point to the film, and you obviously remember it much more clearly than I do, but is the relationship between the Roth and Keitel characters really developed enough to hang that interpretation on? I don't remember it that way, but maybe I was just traumatized by the Madsen scene. Refresh my memory -- is Roth the one who is bleeding to death throughout the entire movie?
Part of my problem with the movie has to do with one of our old, old debates. You claim that the movie portrays Roth as a character for whom, under intense stress, murderous scum can come to seem "normal, sympathetic," etc. My first problem with that is that I think Tarantino has a really hard time distinguishing between the characters' *seeming* sympathetic and their *being* sympathetic; I'm not sure, for instance, that we're not supposed to sympathize with Keitel. My second problem is that, whatever Tarantino's intentions, I *don't* sympathize with any of the characters (except that poor policeman in that awful scene).
Come to think of it, maybe that's one of the fatal flaws of the movie. In order to create sympathy for the characters in the gangster genre, the gangster world has to be hermetically sealed -- everyone must be complicit in one way or another. Tarantino's script let in a truly innocent victim and made him, in some respects, the centerpiece of the film (you have to admit that *that's* the scene that everyone remembers).
[Wait. Must interrupt my rambling to attend to child who should be in bed. I'll be back to ramble more later.]
To quote another great Coen Bros. film, "Vee ah nihilists! Vee believe in nossing! Yah!"
I always liked the line and never gave it much thought, but maybe those Coens were poking fun at gratuitous violence with those characters in that film. Think about it, what was the most horrific violence those "nihilists" performed? Dropping a marmot in the "Dude"'s bathtub. Eventually, they were shown to be comical whimps who are chased off by a pissed off, if not insane "Walter".
One of my favorite Walter lines regarding the "nihilists": "Say what you will about the tenets of national socialism but at least it's an ethos."
I'm with you, KM. Violence in movies must have meaning or at least be stylized and removed from reality for me to appreciate it. You also make a great point on the one film I've always liked a lot which has a great deal of gratuitous "meaningless" violence -- Goodfellas. But unlike "Reservoir Dogs", that violence remains "hermetically sealed" within the gangster world. Thanks for giving me that out.
Dear Madman,
Okay, I just had a cup of coffee, so watch out...
Regarding the Michael Madsen torture scene -- as I said, maybe that's where Tarantino went terribly wrong. In my opinion, everything that happens after that scene is overshadowed by it. Any "point" the film may have made is completely sapped of meaning by the inclusion of that scene. Compare it, for instance, to the "Miller's Crossing" scene I mentioned in the post. In the RD torture scene, any audience member with a shred of moral decency will feel for the policeman, but I can't for the life of me figure out which character *in the movie* feels for him. I suppose it's Tim Roth, but I think there's some weakness in Tarantino's characterization here (which is ironic, since the movie -- unlike Miller's Crossing -- is almost entirely character-driven). Maybe I'm just imagining it or maybe I'm just wrong, but *Madsen* feels like the center of that scene to me. [Here's an analogy: I'm not a huge fan of "The Silence of the Lambs," but I don't think it's nihilistic; if, however, we had been treated to an extended scene in which we *see* Hannibal Lecter cutting someone's face off to the accompaniment of The Goldberg Variations,I might have felt very differently.]
In the "Miller's Crossing" scene, what the audience (hopefully) feels for Bernie Birnbaum as he pleads for his life is the same thing that Tom Regan (Byrne) feels for Bernie Birnbaum. The movie is anchored by its protagonist's
sensibility in a way that RD is not. Reservoir Dogs seems to involve a kind of de-centering that entails nihilism.
I think that's quite enough incoherent rambling for one night. Thanks for indulging me, Madman!
I just noticed your comment, WD. I haven't seen The Big Lebowski in a good while. I'm due. I love the Walter line!
You have invoked Goodfellas. You little know the can of worms you have opened now, bro. I happen to know that Madman shares your love of Goodfellas.
We can all agree on The Godfather, right?
Dear Kate Marie,
Try watching RD again and skip through the torture scene, watch the relationship between Roth and Keitel. You are right that it is a character-driven film, and the main engine is the personal dynamic between Keitel and Roth. I've been thinking about the movie a bit more and I'm persuaded not only of the point I first made but that the dynamic between Keitel and Roth is even more complex than I allowed for initially. RD is marked by a number of very "literary" elements. The character of Holdaway (a blatantly significant name) serves as a kind of Greek chorus- he is the "moral voice" of the film to the extent that it has one. The "commode scene," the scene where Roth psychs himself up in the mirror before going out to meet his "buddies," and the stake-out conversation between Keitel and Roth in the car are all very pregnant with symbolism, foreshadowing, yada yada yada.
As for whether or not Keitel's character is "sympathetic," that question is complex in ways that speaks to the relative sophistication of the film. We are definitely led to sympathize with Keitel at points, but this is largely because we are placed in the perspective of Roth. Roth sympathizes with Keitel, or rather he sympathizes with some phantasm of Keitel that he has cooked up in his own mind, and that sympathy ultimately leads to Roth's destruction. The film brings us along for that ride and "cons" us into sympathizing with Keitel the way Roth does, but even so there are moments when the veil drops and Keitel's brutality is revealed (the "stake-out" conversation in the car being foremost).
You are right that the torture scene overwhelms the rest of the film, and it is probably why overall it is not taken more seriously. Tarentino was obviously shooting to create something that would surpass what audiences had seen before in terms of shock value, and he succeeded to the larger detriment of his work. In fairness, though, your question of which character in the movie feels for the policeman is a bit more complicated than it might appear at first. No one witnesses what Madsen does to the police officer- even Roth is presumably unconscious during the torture scene. By this point in the film we have been tipped off that most of the "gang" feel that Madsen's character is more crazy-cruel than even they can tolerate. The torture scene implies that even those murderous scum haven't really guessed at the depth of Madsen's pathology. The film makes Madsen the center of the scene because as audience we are witness to what no one within the film's universe sees, and in this respect the gratuitously shocking violence of the scene does (albeit in an overboard way, I'll grant) speak to one of the underlying themes of the movie- the difference between the persona we display to the world and what we are utlimately capable of when we no longer have to perform to others.
Dear Madman,
Because of the great respect I have for your intelligence and taste, I will give RD another try (sans torture scene).
I like your interpretation of the movie. I'm just not sure whether I agree with it. Your description of the dynamic between Roth and Keitel is very interesting. It actually makes me think of another movie that sounds some of the same themes, albeit one which I liked a lot more than RD when I first saw it -- Donnie Brasco. Have you seen it? I like the way you characterize Roth's sympathy/identification with a phantasm of Keitel. That's -- at least partly, I think -- what's going on in Donnie Brasco (Depp/Pacino). I might say that Donnie Brasco suggests that an "undercover" agent, to be successful, *has* to identify on some level with the murderous thugs whose society he has infiltrated, and that such identification always puts him in some degree of moral danger.
Regarding the torture scene, I'm not remembering clearly -- doesn't someone shoot the police officer ultimately? (Is it Roth?) Part of what's creepy about that scene, for me, is the way in which Madsen (who thinks he's alone, I guess) seems to be performing for *himself.* He's the one who turns on the radio and performs to that song, isn't he, thereby creating his own soundtrack? The extent to which his act seems like a performance may be meant to suggest the extent to which idenity *is* persona/mask.
That sounds very postmodern and I wince as I write it. But Tarantino really *is* a postmodernist kind of guy. I guess I don't like the postmodernist gangster film and you don't like the postmodernist musical (Moulin Rouge).
I'm suprised you didn't jump into the Goodfellas fray. I admire your restraint, O Madman.
Anyway, very interesting comments about RD. As I said, I'll watch again with your interpretation in mind. Maybe I can write an apology for Moulin Rouge and get you to give it another try?
Dear Kate Marie,
I wouldn't touch that "Goodfellas" quagmire with a ten foot pole, it's one of the life lessons I've learned through hard experience (like "don't try to lick metal objects in winter").
You're right that RD works through similar themes as "Donnie Brasco," much of the interaction between Roth and Holdaway (particularly the extended flashback involving the "commode story") deal with precisely the question of how "an 'undercover' agent, to be successful, *has* to identify on some level with the murderous thugs whose society he has infiltrated, and that such identification always puts him in some degree of moral danger."
I appreciate you're giving RD another go on my voucher. Just make sure Sadeeq is out of the room. Or exercise the more dangerous option of distracting him with some Gallo and a box of Junior Mints. I, in turn, will revisit "Moulin Rouge" pending your critique.
As for the torture scene, you're right, Roth shoots Madsen before he can commit murder, but it is unclear whether he was awake for any of what transpired previously, certainly Madsen assumes he is out (Just on a side note- there isn't much "graphic" violence in the torture scene. The camera pulls away for the one actual mutilation that Madsen performs, though we do see the bloody result. Still, there isn't any more gore in that scene than in comparable scenes in, say, "Silence of the Lambs." What makes the scene so upsetting is its overall "gestalt"- the helplessness of the police officer and the pitiless, gleeful sadism of Madsen's character).
I like your po-mo gloss of identity as performance/mask, especially as I didn't undergo the kind of "Ludovico treatment" that gave you a perpetual gag-response to postmodern analysis. I would only respond that even if Tarentino is positing identity as performance/mask, he is also asserting that its nature is audience-contingent. In other words, what we perform for others will never be quite the same as what we (imagine we) perform exclusively for ourselves.
Personally, I don't think Tarantino is capable of such deep thought. My interpretation of Tarantino is that he makes a film and developes a scence simply because he thinks it's "cool".
Wonderdog,
How can you doubt that the author of the "'Like a Virgin' is a metaphor for big d....." monologue is a deep thinker?
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