Recently, I went on a rare visit to the cinema to see, Pride & Glory. I only wanted to see this because Edward Norton was in it. I admit I knew nothing about the film before I went into the hall.
The film was well produced but the storyline was nothing new. It showed no imagination to the story or the script. I also thought Edward Norton was a bit lost in this film. I think he is better with unusual storylines/environments/historical pieces. But that is besides the point of this post.
The film actually had a part where it was presented too realistically. One actor was supposed to be threatening to put a steaming hot iron on a baby's face, so burning its skin. The storyline didn't let it happen, but the camera did show the iron, steam and all, hovering just above the baby's head, and the baby was clearly crying. I am sure that a good director would have been able to indicate what was to happen without going this far if that had been desired but the urge to show realism overrode what should have been a shot relying on the viewer's imagination to fill in the missing pieces.
For some years I have realised that art has become very practical, but also lacked any originality that made people say, that is really good. Ordinary modern art is so unexciting that I find it impossible to look at, and the desire to put in computer graphics where it would be difficult to present the ideas, and require a lot of imaginative, innovative, thinking to encourage the viewer to put in the missing visual data, is being lost. Imagination, is disappearing from our lives!
I am sick of realism. I would like more fantasy, but not so called insulting, stupid humour, or violent action films, or sexuallly explicit visualisations. I am not interested in learning more about other people's way of life as so much of the world is beginning to look and act the same that when you have seen how one person lives in a country you have seen all that is required to understand life. Things are becoming too standardised, and to limited in their configuration, making life lacking in originality, eccentricy, imagination, and the magical awe inspiring quality that used to exist not so long ago.
If we are not encouraged to use our imagination in truly innovative ways that are successful in making people smile, laugh, enjoy the message, then we have failed as a society, and are losing the skill of developing imagination.
I came out of the that cinema let down, even though I know the film was well produced and acted. Something was lacking, and that is the thing that makes a piece of art stand out from the rest, the imaginative view that is both unusual and eccentric. It is a given that the piece of art should be technically excellent in its creation, but there are so many pieces of art that for something to be awe-inspiring it needs that extra something, that originality, that special quality that doesn't insult, doesn't ridicule, doesn't violate the beauty of life, which today does happen, all too frequently.
Imagination is in the mind of the beholder, and the artist, can we recapture it? I would like to think so.
Risk Society
Carol,
I don't think imagination is on the decline but rather the ability to make the results of your imagination hit the mainstream. Movies and books are mostly formulaic because the studios and publishing houses punish risk. By punishing risk they discourage innovation. Innovation is entirely driven by imagination.
In the company Intel, if you come up with an idea and get all the management sold on the concept, you get to run with it. If that idea turns out to be a dud, no hard shakes. You are not reprimanded in any way. In fact, if you take no risks and don't bring any opportunities to the table you are reprimanded. This stands in start contrast to the motion picture industry. In the movie business, a single failure can get you black-balled so that makes everyone dodge decisions and do their best to put decision making 'authority' on others. That way it isn't their fault if it goes sour.
Risk aversion is the root cause, IMHO, and a culture of risk aversion grows when the penalties for failure are out of balance with the consensus undertaking of the risk.
Peace,
ASM
root causes
Let me add that copying has become easier and cheaper with better technology.
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It is not how fast you go
it is when you get there.
Many topics
This discussion can include many topics, IMO.
Let me start with the first one in my mind: the use of graphic violence in mainstream cinema. Clearly our current society is so numbed by violence appearing in every aspect of our lives, that in films they often resort to the most graphic examples in order to still get a reaction from the audience.
There are exceptions, obviously. One of them is for example the 007 franchise. I haven't seen "Quantum" yet, but I think "Casino Royale" was very good, and it didn't resort to extreme use of blood or violence. The part that I liked the most was when Bond was being tortured by the movie's villain, who is hitting him in a very sensitive part of the male anatomy with a rather frightening rope; here the necessity of not showing the actor's genitalia helped make the scene even more convincing and artistic, I think.
Good directors thrive at the face of limitations. Whereas lousy directors and scripts won't ever benefit from any amount of expensive CG special effects (exhibit A: 'Sixth Sense' & 'Unbreakable' vs 'Pearl Harbor' & 'Transformers')
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
music
Visuals versus the mind, maybe that is a part of this. In the older days, when we read books and listened to music without video, we could make up the rest in our minds.
Now a female singer has to have an interesting body, not an interesting voice. This is bad, it robs us of dreams.
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It is not how fast you go
it is when you get there.
Participation
When you demand the audience to figure things for themselves, it makes a more interesting experience. That's why I enjoyed 'The DaVinci code' so much as a book (because it forced me to solve the riddles along with Robert Langdon); whereas the movie... ugh! :-(
I always try to read the book before going to see the movie. If the director's vision manages to surpass my own, then I give the film the thumb's up. I gave the LOTR trilogy two thumbs up, of course ;-)
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
It's alright ma, it's just me sighin'
as a first antedote to brainless american pop 'culture' (sic) I would direct your attention to CrunchyRoll and ask that you read no further here until you've browsed a few hours in that playground of rampant imagination. From Binchotan to Ashura (if you want to talk cerebrally sexy) but even when explicit, it is explicit in new ways, with depth and story and intent and something else: Very few of these are created expecting to make much money. Keep them in noodles perhaps.
In our 'culture' (sic) very little gets heard unless it has a clear business plan with sufficient payoffs to venture capitalists. VC is our culture. Over in Japan, Otomo talks of his working 8 years with one team, with everyone working at minimum wages to produce his last film, they are there because they love his vision, they want to be part of it, and they're largely not working anyway, and the resulting film is amazing, because it is a labour of love, a story that had to be told. That is very unlike Hollywood.
Coleman Hawkins said there were many reasons to play, and playing for money was just one of them, but, he said, "I can always tell the cat that's playin' for money."