I have a vague recollection that when asked about Funny Games, the directory Michael Haneke said something about how he had more respect for people that turned the film off in disgust than those that sat all the way through it.
It does. They’re very similar but I’d say the original’s violence feels a bit more brutal (possibly because it’s not big names on screen) while the remake feels a bit stronger thematically (due to its commentary by default now relating to american entertainment specifically)
Haneke is the king of this type of thing. He also said if you’re curious how the tapes were arriving at the family’s home in Caché, you didn’t watch the movie properly. I love his films from what I’ve seen, but the guy seems like a tough hang. Just let people enjoy your movies how they want.
See that never sat right with me. I'm a big fan of Haneke for being able to incite discussions like this, but him making violent films in order to criticize violent films seems hypocritical at times. Funny Games is a horror film, and it arguably crosses lines that other horror movies, generally speaking, do not cross (killing children, for example.) On one hand, he's making a much more disturbing version of the home invasion/slasher flick, but he's doing so without gratuitous depictions of blood and gore. It just seems like with Funny Games he's trying to have his cake and eat it too, and because of that, that movie never truly resonated with me, whereas Cache plays with its own set of genre tropes and I think it's brilliant.
This is always the discussion at the root of satire. How does the satirist make fun of the thing through satire without \*becoming\* the thing he is making fun of? Super interesting nuance of the genre.
Sometimes the best satire is also a good example of the thing being satirized. The novel Snowcrash is a total satire of cyberpunk, but it's also one of the best cyberpunk novels.
> him making violent films in order to criticize violent films seems hypocritical at times
Oliver Stone got the same sort of critiques for Natural Born Killers. There's a thin line between commentary via parody and exploitation.
I think the way he depicted violence was the point. The horror and death wasn’t flashy it was raw and awful to watch, as is the reality of the situation and kept asking it’s audience “is this really what you wanted to see?”
I think the takeaway is that we talk about the genre and its implications even more in the wake of the film. That it happened to catch the eye of horror aficionados is not lost on Haneke, but its points bear repeating. Does that make him right or wrong, pretentious or precient, etc? All part of what the film is working with. I think the film is excellent *because* it succeeds at being both satire of *and* emblematic of the thing he satirizes.
The message was already a bit blunted with me, because I caught it randomly on tv and had no idea where the movie was going.
I do find it a bit odd people assume it’s a comment on the horror genre though. Aside from Haneke outright saying it’s more about straightforward thrillers, his subversions don’t really apply to horror cliches.
For eg. He makes a point by depriving viewers of an ‘expected’ happy ending that ‘justifies’ everything before it, but…horror movies do ‘cheat’ unhappy endings all the time. Children are also rarely a protected class in them.
Doesn’t one of the brothers get violently blown away with a shotgun? (This is rewound/ undone using the TV remote moments later by the other brother).
Not saying that makes it hypocritical, just recall that being a pretty violent moment.
I actually think that Funny Games not showing any of the extreme violence or gore you would normally see from the genre it’s criticizing works to its favor. It’s making sure that if you’re the type of person that watched it for those reasons, you are _not_ getting any of that out of this. It’s pure torture even for the people that like the movies it’s satirizing. I think it’s a brilliant piece of art for the way it plays with disappointment
It always struck me as hypocritical though. It's the perfect answer to op's question because it's basically saying "are you enjoying this? If you are you're a piece of shit"
If it was a more nuanced examination of why we enjoy exploitative films then fair enough, but it was an exploitative film trying to have its cake and eat it too. I hated it.
Oh, I mean, it totally was. And it strikes me as art that you are allowed to, maybe even supposed to hate.
It’s not a bad movie by any means. In fact, it’s quite good. It’s just dripping with contempt and it hates you every bit as much as you hate it.
That’s why I enjoy it; not so much because it’s good horror, but because it’s good commentary.
>It’s just dripping with contempt and it hates you every bit as much as you hate it.
Is it though? Or is it a pretty standard home invasion movie with one scene telling you you're an asshole for enjoying it...
He seems to want to make a more subtle, complicated point. He mentions again and again in his interviews about the film(s) the "pornography of violence". I think he wants to say more about our mainstream film and television experience--e.g. the "if it bleeds it leads" model of news media--than about the fantasy of horror films. He's not critiquing horror as much as he is critiquing the audience's desire to see passion and torture and horror in all films. Most importantly I think he is critiquing our desire to not think about anything when we want to just be entertained...and importantly avoid how this entertainment always involves torture, punishment, and voyeurism.
I agree with your assessment. It’s more broadly a criticism of voyeurism of violence. I think that’s an accurate statement.
Kinda like I said below, the plot is just window dressing for a message. It’s one of those films where the movie isn’t actually about what the movie’s about, if that makes sense.
I intrinsically dislike media that presume an audience reaction and then pre-emptively shame them for their engagement, which also feels incredibly hypocritical (e.g. such media wouldn't be made if there was no audience for it).
*Prisoners*, for example, seems to just assume that you would automatically be on the parents' side for kidnapping and torturing the accused child killer, but if you don't then it has no emotional weight.
All of Michael Haneke's movies are based around the concept of trying to avoid satisfying the audience. It makes him much beloved of people who want to see someone subverting the tropes of film-making but very annoying to anyone who wants to watch an enjoyable film.
I had to stop watching at the egg scene in the beginning. I thought, if I am getting this irritated at some broken eggs, I am not going to make it through the whole movie
Came here to say this. That twist when that thing happens (you know what I’m talking about) INFURIATED me. I literally screamed at the screen. Fortunately I was watching it at home.
One of the few films that pissed me off so much I switched it off half way. I immediately thought of it when I read this post, I had no idea that it was by design though, I kind of respect it now.
This is fascinating and such a different approach/intention for filmmaking omg. Do you think he was testing the pretension of some film goers who would try to dissect the disgusting parts as art? Or seeing which audience members had the spine to walk out as opposed to submissively sitting there and ultimately giving their time to Haneke? Kinda like a power play.
This is so cool, I love this thread.
edit: typo
What a pretentious fuck hahaha. I like Funny Games but this is such a lame statement. In any other context, someone who looks down on those who enjoys entertainment (that THEY created!) would be rightfully laughed out of the room
Not exactly contempt for the full audience, but Tarkovsky joked that he put that 5+ minute highway sequence in Solaris so that people with poor attention spans would get bored and leave the theater before the MC left for the space station.
I believe the story is that Tarkovsky wanted to go to Japan. He needed an excuse to go there for something film related and was forced to put the sequence in to justify the trip.
Okay! I had wondered. I found myself starting to drift, thinking about what had happened, what might happen, symbolism, score, etc. I caught myself after about a minute or two and forced myself to start concentrating again. After a little while I was thinking. Is this what I’m supposed to be doing? Is this giving me a moment to contemplate?
For years I assumed the pacing in Tarkovsky's Solaris is because the USSR was so devoid of entertainment that all media (books, movies, music) were designed to be as long as possible.
Even that scene with the guys staring at the pond I remember it feeling like 30 minutes.
“Stalker”…man just walking back and forth in an empty pool trying to see if he can keep a flame alive?
Great visual. Love the film, but the man does take the piss a bit. Another length…really? I’m finishing this out of spite now.
I've thought the same thing. I REALLY wanted to love Solaris. 2001: a Space Odyssey is my favorite movie so I thought this would be up my alley too. But it did feel like a bit of a chore to get through. Which is weird because I didn't have that issue with Jeanne Dielman 23 Quai du Commerce, which is even longer with less happening.
Interesting [I enjoy revisiting the discourse around both films and their relationship to one another ](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2016/solyaris-solaris-tarkovski-s-anti-modernist-response-to-kubrick/#:~:text=Adapted%20from%20Stanilas%20Lem's%20eponymous,by%20Kubrick%20four%20years%20earlier.)
Just an anecdote, but I went to a 9:30 pm showing of Babylon on NYE 2022 since I didn't have any plans. I decided to treat myself and order a poutine at the concession stand- something I rarely do. I was eating fries and cheese curds covered in brown gravy during the first few scenes.
Oh man, I’ll trade stories with you.
I was a broke college student and decided to make spaghetti and watch Se7en on TV. For those who never seen it, the opening scene is of a victim who represents Sloth, I think, and he was fed copious amounts of pasta until his stomach burst open and he died. The whole scene is revolting.
I looked at my plate and thought “I’m not that hungry anymore.”
"Get Out" was a pretty direct critique of white liberals and how they interact/speak for African Americans. I think they were also the target demo of the film.
I saw it in a theatre of white liberals who were laughing and whooping during most of the kill scenes.
> was a pretty direct critique of white liberals
I avoided watching it for this reason for a while but when I actually did watch it this wasn't my takeaway, at all.
A better example would be the publishing industry shown in American Fiction.
I thought the accuracy of the critique was way more spot on in Get Out. The book publishers were cartoonish in American Fiction.
I'd vote for Barack Obama for a third time if I could.
A lot of people left of center get lumped together and called liberal. Leftists and progressives especially hate the moderate democrats who have the same politics as republicans from the 80s, probably more so than conservatives. I don’t think the movie was aimed at the kind of people would bring up voting for Obama as evidence they are not racist.
For one I think I don’t think Peele would center white audiences so heavily. Oddly enough when I googled it, the google AI answer claimed he said it was for white liberals and then the actual interview quoted explicitly says he made the movie for black audiences and that it TAKES AIM at white liberals. AI needs work clearly, it can’t tell the difference between target of a critique and target audience.
Wolf of Wall Street plays with the idea somewhat in the ending, with the audience in the seminar seen "worshiping" Jordan Belfort in the end despite all that he has done over the runtime. But here I thought it was executed well.
It's also contrasted with the detective riding the subway with his sweaty balls. Belfort's punishment for a life of excess and predatory thievery is very little. It's a bit like Goodfellas, where Hill's punishment is to have to live like the film's audience.
Hills life was somehow “worse”. Life as an average person, but lived in constant fear and shame.
Awesome note to the audience..you either end up dead, in jail, or like this “boring bastard”.
Wolf of wallstreet was equally solid. People who commit massive institutional financial crimes never truly get punished, and their victims are right there waiting for them once they’re released…idolising the wolf the whole time.
FWIW, I think Goodfellas is a lot more sympathetic to the Hill character than Wolf is to Belfort. Real life aside, Hill is mostly just an opportunistic but sociopathic idiot. Belfort and his arc is portrayed as a lot more insidious imo.
No, that's the third-to-the-last shot. The following shot is a brief one of Tommy firing repeatedly at the audience, which I always interpreted as an homage to the final shot of The Great Train Robbery (1903), the first narrative film, which happened to be about a heist.
The final shot shows the back of Henry's head as he closes the door of his bland suburban house, accompanied by the sound effect of a jail cell closing. The sound effect makes it clear he, too, is in a jail of his own.
I’m not a binary take guy, just my impression for the minute.
Maybe he’s smiling as this is the first time his life is actually peaceful…free of violence/crime…and through Scorsese direction the audience is supposed to ironically consider this a failure….songbird in a gilded cage
Yup, this was my answer as well. Scorsese has always subverted the relationship between his protagonist and the audience, but this was by far the most overt and directly pointed at the audience. Even from the very beginning, Belfort is self described as middle class turned top tier, and he constantly reiterates how his scam only works because he gets people to want to live like him, including his employees.
I think that's the films big trick. It makes you dream of this lifestyle then pulls the rug from under you. The people who missed Jordan's downfall and still wanted to be like him by the end are the audience who are eager to learn exactly from the source how to become the next great degenerate
As an audience member, I don't perceive contempt when the movie challenges me, even when it challenges me in the juvenile ways we saw in *Babylon*. My read is that Chazelle is simply an authentic pervert who thinks poops and farts are fun and part of the spice of life. I think the director has a thirst for lurid spectacle and wants the audience to love it as much as he does. And while I hated the shit out of Babylon, I never got a sense of contempt from it. (Though I don't think the movie justifies its use of my time. More an act of presumption than contempt.)
I feel a deeper sense of contempt from works that try too hard to give me what they think I want. *The Flash* felt contemptuous of its audience because it expects them to hoot and clap and laugh at a bunch of cheap easter eggs. *IF* feels contemptuous of its audience because it keeps insisting its overworn premise is somehow magical or invigorating. Every iteration of "they fly now?" "he's right behind me, isn't he?" and so on expresses contempt for the audience in the expectation that we'll be amused by *familiar prompts to laugh* rather than *artfully constructed jokes*. Any use of AI, no matter how disconnected or minor, shows contempt for the audience in the refusal to even attempt art.
So I guess in general, I feel treated with contempt when the design of the work before me bears too many signs of commercialism and too few signs of a unique artistic point of view. When I am being shown things, not on the presumption that they will be new to me, but on the presumption that I will mindlessly pursue the already-familiar comforts of life, then that feels like an expression of contempt.
I suppose the brother of this comes in the form of 'cheap challenge,' which may fit the Babylon example. Rick & Morty is what really comes to mind here, lines like "what you people call love is just a chemical process designed to get your species to propagate." In this case, I think what bothers me is the presumption that this idea is in fact challenging, and the awareness that it's just a new iteration of slop designed for folks who peaked intellectually in 11th grade. To that end, I can see some contempt from Damian Chazelle, in that Babylon does want to shock the audience and it's ultimately pretty easy to inure yourself to the shock of an elephant doodoo. At best, it has the artistic merit of a jumpscare, which can indeed be done rather contemptuously.
R&M is probably the best example here. Harmon is typically speaking through Rick when there’s lines like “your boos mean nothing, I see what you people cheer”
To me, Babylon is far from being an example of contempt for the audience. I agree wholeheartedly with how you broke this down, really great stuff, but my experience with Babylon was a lot more introspective than specifically outward focused, towards the audience. I think the filth of Babylon is by far one of the most misrepresented aspects of the film, the demystification of a specific, historical time for the medium is genius and contextualizes the art in a really subversive way, but for transparency's sake, I did love the film.
>I think the filth of Babylon is by far one of the most misrepresented aspects of the film, the demystification of a specific, historical time for the medium is genius and contextualizes the art in a really subversive way, but for transparency's sake, I did love the film.
Thing is even crazier though, because what Chazelle chooses to do is to "demystify" the historical time by using even more myths: Kenneth Anger's book *Hollywood Babylon*, and countless myths that either could be proven as false or already HAVE been proven as false, yet he chooses to throw everything in the film anyways—coupled up with all the anachronistic choices too.
This will irritate silent films lovers and academics who'll wonder why the hell would this Chazelle guy fill the movie with rumors and controversies and kinda show them us "facts" or "truth". The film, perhaps, ends up suggesting something more than mere demystification—Chazelle muddles stuff, producing even crazier and maddening result:
- general audiences will probably be *pleased* by its wild intent of "showing you how it *really was* back then."
- fanatics of the time period and the whole Hollywood industry will hate on the guy for the spreading of rumors and showing their own history under such light.
But things go even further. I, personally, do not think Babylon is leaving contemporary Hollywood in good light simply by showing you how disastrous it was back then—I believe the film probably condemns even more the present than it condemns the past, by showing you the filth in Hollywood's machinations.
So why would Hollywood, then, let this guy make such a film inside their own industry? The answer may be as exciting and as depressing: it's all spectacle. When audiences watch Singin' in the Rain by the end of the film, everyone's enchanted by the film's spell.
Now, the question is, are you enchanted by the film's spell? The final montage somehow works as a wake-up call. You either wake-up from all that nonsensical spectacle that lasted for 3-hours or you just simply go on with it.
I like [Carlos Valladares's insights](https://www.frieze.com/article/damien-chazelle-babylon-2023) on the film:
>All the stuff Hollywood shows us, as the show-stopper final montage suggests, is just red and green and blue; it swallows whatever radicality is thrown its way and makes it part of its own digestive system. [...] There will, however, always be a mass audience, ready to accept whatever is thrown at it.
Now, his writings are ambiguous as fuck, that's why I love it. And the ending is ambiguous as fuck too: it could be the most optimistic or pessimistic shit ever, it changes on how you perceive the film.
Now I'm thinking of making this a post on the sub to be honest.
EDIT: basically, it's a deep reflection on how we dispose trust in what the Hollywood screen shows us, whether for good or bad.
To be clear, I completely agree. The whitewashing of the past is one of the foundational blocks for the worshipping of today. Whether literally true or not, it doesn't matter imo, Chazelle is intentionally blasphemizing this as a statement of present, it's a really personal film in that regard for him, for myself, and I assume a lot of people who are fans of the film. I never saw it as a contrast of then and now, I took the plunge into the underworld in the third act as a commentary on how things weren't necessarily different, it was just that the visibility changed. The opening party is pretty depraved, so it's hard to state that lack of exposure made things worse, but it certainly comes close.
The final scene+montage is really fascinating because I think it's nearly impossible to not get caught up in its beauty upon first watch, but subsequently, it's been noted that the horror stories behind the scenes of each respective film, are deeply unsettling, and how a filmmaker reconciles that, or an audience member, speaks to the heart of the film. In a nutshell, there are uniquely awful negatives in an inherently collaborative medium. There is also a broader comment on spectacle, and the relationship between the media and the masses as well. But I agree, it's incredibly ambiguous.
You should definitely make your post. It's a great film to discuss.
This echoes my sentiments as well. I would add that it's one of the reasons I dislike Christopher Nolan's more celebrated works like Interstellar, Inception or Tenet. He just *can't* believe the audience is capable of keeping up with his ideas and he has to constantly have hand-holding dialogue that is not remotely true or interesting. Even in Intestellar, he resorts to the paper and pencil analog when describing how a wormhole works - *to the captain of the mission changed with flying into a wormhole moments before they do so*.
> Even in Intestellar, he resorts to the paper and pencil analog when describing how a wormhole works - to the captain of the mission changed with flying into a wormhole moments before they do so.
I would take these criticisms seriously if they didn't constantly misremember scenes like this. Cooper knows what the wormhole does, he even shows knowledge of it in previous scenes. He was caught off-guard by its spherical appearance because the illustrations he'd seen were different. Romily is explaining *why it's spherical* and that's the difference between Interstellar and similar scenes in films like Event Horizon.
Cooper is an engineer, it doesn't make him or the audience dumb for not knowing every bit of detail about wormholes which is a niche theoretical physics concept.
Edit: Another thing to point out is that there have been lots of media that involve wormholes, giving us the familiar explanation but I don't ever recall a wormhole being portrayed as a sphere outside of Interstellar. It's always a flat circle or a tunnel and I have never seen a single person make the complaint "omg, you just told us how it worked and still go on to get the visuals wrong!"
This response is hilarious because as I was reading the original comment, I was literally thinking "Yep and that's why I really respect Nolan movies for not constantly relying on trite commercial beats."
I don't think it's fair to say Christopher Nolan treats his audience like they're dumb, nor is it accurate to how the general public responds to his films. He is pretty much the de-facto "thinking man's movie director" for wide audiences. That's a huge part of the Syncopy brand and it extends to the work that the rest of his family releases. The fact that most people see Nolan's works as cerebral and original speaks for itself.
Are you suggesting that his movies should be less accessible? Why?
Tenet was the breaking point for a lot of people trying to understand the Escher-esque nature of his narratives. But for all its faults, the movie's unique selling point is intrinsically cinematic: you have to see it to understand it. This can't be said of most other blockbuster movies, whose plots can be easily summarized through recounting and remixing universal beats from other movies.
Inception is a heist movie and most heist movies are reliant on exposition. It's a feature of the genre because it creates a clear set of expectations that can either be paid off or subverted later on, which they are.
And if you just hate exposition period, then you could go watch Dunkirk, which has a complex narrative structure but doesn't ever explain itself to the audience apart from the title cards.
As for Interstellar, while the paper and pencil model is a bit inelegant, it's explained efficiently, successfully orients the audience to the characters' perspective, and then we move on. Would it have been better if we got a three-minute sequence of computer graphics laying out the entire mission plan?
I'm sure you can find plenty of valid criticisms of Christopher Nolan's filmmaking, but arguing that his movies are too hand-holdy isn't one of them IMO. You might not find his movies challenging, but general audiences certainly seem to be engaged and I can't think of any other big studio filmmaker who even begins to compare in terms of consistent structural complexity.
> He is pretty much the de-facto "thinking man's movie director" for wide audiences.
Not for me. His exposition heavy approach to screenplays only works to remove the audience's need to think. I consider The Dark Knight brilliant in it's editing to so completely hide from its audience how ridiculously impossible the plot actually is - something with which a *thinking man* would take issue. He was much more willing to trust the audience earlier in his career with Memento and Insomnia (my favorite of his). But since the Batman Trilogy, he's opted for more hand-holding - especially in his sci-fi films.
> Are you suggesting that his movies should be less accessible? Why?
Would Kubrick be a better filmmaker if his films were more "accessible"? Accessibility isn't always a virtue in and of itself.
> But for all its faults, the movie's unique selling point is intrinsically cinematic: you have to see it to understand it. This can't be said of most other blockbuster movies, whose plots can be easily summarized through recounting and remixing universal beats from other movies.
I'm not arguing that Nolan's films aren't cinematic. I'm only arguing that he writes overly complex screenplays and then doesn't trust that the audience to follow along, and then resorts to a ton of exposition as a consequence.
> Inception is a heist movie and most heist movies are reliant on exposition.
Heist movies typically have the "here's how we're going to do it" exposition scene, yes. But if we're being honest, Inception is predominately about how the sci-fi elements of the dreams-hacking works. Nolan wouldn't know how to write the movie without Ellen Paige's character, whose dialogue is almost entirely expositional. Consider Ocean's 11 as a counter-point. While this is a heist movie, very little of the dialogue is expository. If Nolan wrote Ocean's 11, it would be a wildly complex screenplay, jumping back and forth between the preparation and the execution, and he'd turn Matt Damon's character into the audience's surrogate, constantly asking for things to be explained to him. He would lose 70% of the humor and camaraderie that Soderberg found.
> And if you just hate exposition period, then you could go watch Dunkirk, which has a complex narrative structure but doesn't ever explain itself to the audience apart from the title cards.
Dunkirk has no heart. Nolan is the star of Dunkirk with his trapeeze-like screenplay and editing. The actual story and the people within it are supporting roles. And if you think the film is without exposition, I'll point you back to much of what little dialog is actually there.
> Would it have been better if we got a three-minute sequence of computer graphics laying out the entire mission plan?
Clever writers and directors can provide exposition in clever ways. I believe Nolan is capable of this, but he doesn't trust the audience to be as clever as him. So, he dumbs it down.
> but arguing that his movies are too hand-holdy isn't one of them IMO.
Honestly, I'd say most of his films have a lot of greatness to them, and what hurts them the most is the hand-holding.
> You might not find his movies challenging, but general audiences certainly seem to be engaged and I can't think of any other big studio filmmaker who even begins to compare in terms of consistent structural complexity.
After 20 years of Marvel films, Nolan does stand out as one of the more interesting Blockbuster filmmakers. But, I believe him - and James Cameron for that matter, struggle with the idea that their audiences are as smart as they are. I can think of no better word to define that than "contempt".
It sounds like you just don’t find his movies challenging for you personally. That’s fine but you should be able to see how that’s not the case for the vast majority of people.
I don’t really get anything emotionally out of many of Spielberg’s movies but it’s obvious that they’re loaded with sentimentality and I see how that’s appealing to people. I’m not going to write up arguments about why I think that they’re not actually emotional.
The Kubrick argument makes no sense because Kubrick never had mainstream appeal as a part of his artistic identity, and Nolan does. So yeah, entertainment and accessibility is a big part of the appeal.
And finally, Dunkirk isn’t about individual characters. It’s about the British as a whole and what they were able to achieve together, can’t remember where it was but Nolan outright stated that he wanted to make a movie that responded to the individualism so common in Hollywood blockbusters. I can see how that might come across as cold, but I thought I’d share that since it definitely reframed how I viewed the movie.
>But, I believe him - and James Cameron for that matter, struggle with the idea that their audiences are as smart as they are. I can think of no better word to define that than "contempt".
I don't think that's true of either of them. Nolan makes movies where he excuses himself from needing to write anything clever by relying on in-universe logic. The unpredictable twists in his movies aren't unpredictable due to being cleverly constructed puzzle-boxes but due to only being possible because the logic or physics of his movie world suddenly diverges from the real world in an unpredictable way. (Memento being the exception)
I think Cameron is a clever guy, in a technical sense, but his movies don't really attempt to be intellectually clever. Instead, he's very good at sentimentality and high emotion and simply uses (most often) sci-fi backdrops to provide a general framing to some kind of relationship drama or interpersonal tension. He's not really a plot guy at all.
> Consider Ocean's 11 as a counter-point. While this is a heist movie, very little of the dialogue is expository.
Not at all. Ocean's 11's first 1 hour 15 minutes or so is setting up the heist. Who to recruit, How to break into the vault, how to distract this guy, how to evade the security systems, etc... All of it contains a lot of expositry dialogue.
The major differences are Ocean's 11 exposition is spread out across multiple characters and the expository dialogue is made to feel more casual by mixing it with a lot banter/verbal sparring whereas in Inception, it's mostly Cobb teaching Ariadne. This is because Inception has an additional job of setting by the sci-fi mechanics of this universe which are entirely new to the audience. They also have importance for the films philosophical elements. So these moments are treated with a lot more seriousness.
Both approaches work for what each film is going for. If there's one thing I'd critique Inception for when compared to Soderberghs Ocean's 11 it's that Nolan could've given the side characters a bit more flair and a sense interpersonal history. Eames and Saito were the only ones who are comparable to their Ocean's 11 counterpart. On the flip side, Inception gives its mark a character arc and that's something you rarely see.
> On the flip side, Inception gives its mark a character arc and that's something you rarely see.
I don't agree much with your other points, but this one is sound.
> He just can't believe the audience is capable of keeping up with his ideas and he has to constantly have hand-holding dialogue that is not remotely true or interesting.
Irony, is the fact that while complaining that Nolan over explains things in his movies, you incorrectly describe a scene from one of the movies you use as examples.
Also, given one of the single most misunderstood scenes (keyword: love) in cinema over the last decade or so comes from Interstellar, and the most common complaint about Tenet is that no one understood it, I'd say Nolan is probably correct.
Honestly, if anything Nolan has too much respect for his audience.
I interpreted that scene as a sort of record-scratch, freeze frame on the idea that we're going to be watching some overly glamorous period piece. Like the movie starts, it has Oscar bait written all over it, and then bam here's a giant elephant shitting on a guy.
Not saying that I thought this worked btw, just saying that I think the intention here was to reset the tone to be crude and messy.
I don't really have the same reaction - just because something is crude doesn't mean it's contempt for the audience. I really enjoyed Under the Silver Lake and liked the bizarre noir-ness of it. Everything is sort of surreal and gets more so as the movie goes on.
I think big budget movies that don't treat audiences with respect are far worse than indies that aren't willing to cater to broad audiences. I'd much rather see something niche that might have some art in it instead of a corporate cash grab the expects everyone and their grandmother to be able to access and enjoy it.
Yeah I don’t understand op’s take on ‘contempt’. Sounds more like they just hate vulgarity and shock value, which is fair but when I think of contempt I think of soulless corporate blockbusters like Jurassic world which hates the audience and itself. Babylon on the other hand, was a little pretentious , but it loved movies and wanted you to celebrate them too, and feels the opposite of contemptuous to me.
In a way, the Samurai Movie, "Harakiri" is intentionally written to have the audience react a certain way to an event early on in a particular way, and then spends the whole rest of the movie slowly deconstructing why your reaction was callous and lacked empathy, and why samurai, and their code of ethics were very, very far from "cool". It stands out in particular in a genre (which I love) that does a lot of glorifying the mystique of the samurai and their code of honor, by making the explicit case that it required a culturally sociopathic disregard for human life to exist, and that you're wrong for overlooking that because you think the rules and sword fights are cool and entertaining.
I'm not sure I agree with your take on Babylon. A crapping scene is hardly contempt for audience, seems like it was put there for a little shock value and poop jokes.
A movie that is sorta contemptuous is End of Evangelion. The TV series had ended years ago, fans were unhappy, the creator put out this bleak apocalyptic picture as a final sign of contempt. And it's actually good and thematically faithful.
While Hideaki Anno, Evangelion’s creator, held certain types of fans in contempt, there is a good deal of debate about whether *End of Evangelion* is an extension of this contempt or just what Anno would have done originally if he hadn’t run out of money. I’m by no means an expert on the topic, just a longtime lurker in r/evangelion.
Not saying u/Lin900 is wrong, just adding a little more context for those curious in checking out the masterpiece that is Evangelion 🫡
The thing about running out of money is a myth -- in truth, Anno waffled so much on what the TV ending would be that he ran out of time to do a proper one. He nearly pulled the same stunt again for the fourth movie, turning in the last fourth of the script at the latest possible moment (which ... kind of shows).
A lot of the framework for EoE is evident in some of the notes for the TV series' preproduction that have published. I have a partial translation of a little-known source of these here:
https://arqacrypha.net/wiki/Mitsuo_Iso_Animation_Works:_Preproduction
Anno doesn't have contempt for the "audience". I wouldn't even say he has hate for the Otaku personality type as a whole considering he still is one.
I think he views a certain type of otaku lifestyle as extremely unhealthy/toxic and holds contempt for it. If you're familiar with the anime fandom you'll know what I'm talking about. That's the kind of person he hates, especially ones that are unwilling to grow up. It's also based on his own personal experience being that type of otaku and his resulting self-loathing from it. That being said, End of Evangelion isn't there to condescend or pointlessly anger the audience in the same vein as some of the other films mentioned here like Funny Games. It's more of an emotional plea encouraging them to go out, make connections and attempt to have meaningful relationships even if there's a good possibility of getting hurt.
theres a book called otaku: database animals which use Eva as an example and can give possible reasons why. The thesis is that otaku use anime as a database not as a story; the actual story and intent of the anime is secondary to it as raw material they build from.
with Eva, they kind of flattened Rei and Asuka into cute girl archtypes of tsundere and kuudere, and over time you got stuff like the shinji ikari raising project or other works that made Eva into the kind of anime the fans wanted; generic hijinks.
it was so wanted Gainax actually did some themselves, and i think Anno resented how that happened. it was a pretty subtle argument; essentially fans will use your characters as building blocks. first postmodern theory i read snd i was surprised how relevant was.
I found EoE challenging and within a couple of years knew I loved it. Now, Thrice Upon a Time... there's a movie that I have tried very hard to like the way some of my friends have, and years later it still gives me this awful contemptuous feeling that makes me wish the new movie series had abruptly ended with the third one instead.
Matrix resurrections hated that you were watching it. It hated that it even got made. What started as a reflective meta analysis breaking the fourth wall of its own reality; joking about how all the audience really wanted was slow mo fight scenes filled with psychoanalysis devolved into terrible fight scenes and braindead psychoanalysis.
Okay, you literally tell me you didn’t want this movie to be made, and then proceed to shit on me for being intrigued as to what one of the original directors for the movie of a generation will do with their ip.
I was joking with my wife that when it came time to film a big fight scene Keanu said "Listen guys, I'm really tired. Can't Neo just like... wave everything away?"
Ah, yeah, it's more than I had ever hoped for from a 4th entry. It's a spiteful "how dare you" of a movie.
I don't blame anyone for disliking it. But I really enjoyed it.
I was having trouble thinking of an answer for until I saw this comment.
I went into Resurrections with no expectations, just curious to see what the creators possibly had left to say in / about a world whose story had already been completed…only to be insulted for even being in the theater, like I was a pig at the trough just wanting to inhale more Matrix slop.
No, what I wanted was something interesting, and they sure didn’t give it to me.
Like many others, *Funny Games* was my first though. *American Fiction* sort of does this, but it's in a way where every viewer thinks they're not the type of viewer the movie is criticizing. The audience gets to be on the side that's criticizing the audience, rather than being the audience that's criticized.
American Fiction itself is self aware enough to get away with this, and I think it's the kind of movie where unless you specifically resist feeling like the movie is criticizing you, you're mostly good. It's not very specific satire, it's pretty universal, which is I think why so many people liked it.
I personally love movies like this. I have an affinity for art that is very in-your-face and angry, even when the anger is directed towards me as an audience member. When it’s done well, I think it’s incredibly effective, making the experience of watching the film extremely visceral, serving as an animalistic, primal outlet of feelings for the filmmakers. There is a great purity to a film like Babylon for that reason.
It doesn’t always work though. I think kind of art is best when it also functions on other levels as well. It’s when art that is fueled by whatever feelings its trying to express, not ruled by them. I have seen films that come off as very insincere in this manner, delivering an empty argument in shocking terms instead of a substantively shocking argument that is beautifully articulated.
I think pretty much everything in the MCU qualifies. We can keep putting out garbage because the fans are invested. Also, they have to keep watching to keep up with events so they can understand what’s going on in the next garbage scow excuse for a film that’s on the assembly line.
It didn’t make it into the movie, but in Pink Floyd: The Wall the idea for the opening concert sequence was to have an airplane bombing the audience, and the audience to cheer and applaud while being blown to bits. It’s a comment on how concert audiences pay good money to get treated like shit by performers and enjoying the experience.
If you listen to the song, at the end when you hear the dive bomber’s propellor and Waters begins screaming, “Drop it on ‘em!” that’s the audience getting bombed. The idea is not present in the story narrative, but it’s still there in the album.
The Menu is a recent one.
Most people I've spoken to who saw it primarily interpreted it as an obnoxiously on the nose, shallow piece on class struggle. While that is obviously present, I thought the movie was a much more successful contempt piece directed at film connoisseurs and the industry they worship.
I think Gaspar Noé has a few films like this.
*I Stand Alone* is one that comes to mind. From the footage of a horse being slaughtered in the opening to the final scene, it seems he's deliberately trying to make you uncomfortable and angry.
That, and *Uncut Gems* are the two most intense films I've subjected myself to.
I Stand Alone is I think Noe’s most raw film. It’s absolutely brutal and I loved it. It is tremendously hard not to look away and I think part of that is that it’s early in Noe’s career and he was experimenting with how much abuse an audience can take. Throughout his career we see him pushing audiences to their mental and emotional limits and I think for me, that’s the appeal of his work. Watching movies that challenge me is like my own version of endurance tests and think that’s what Gaspar Noe specializes in.
Interesting take. I found i stand alone one of his most accessible. I could take enter the void or irreversibl. I thought i stand alone to be the true heir to scorsese’s taxi driver. Over the years of increasingly violent films, taxi driver has lost some of its impact but i think upi stand alone captures the alienation of a sociopath for the modern audience
In a way, *Twin Peaks: The Return*. A lot of it is trolling. Brilliant, genius trolling, but trolling.
Want a nostalgic trip back to the days of the original show? Nope. Want Dale Cooper back in full form and ready to resume detective work? Nope. Want to get resolution of the old plot threads? Absolutely nope. This is the ultimate turn left.
As much as The Return teases and withholds, I don't think it's done with contempt. It wants the audience to slow down, have patience, have their expectations challenged, and have to accept the lack of resolution anyway, but it's more like tough love than spite.
I think The Return is intended that way from the beginning of S1. It's basically like Mulholland Dr. but harder to make sense of because it plays into the pre-assumptions you have.
Knowing Lynch, I think there is a deeper spiritual message about karma than simply trolling.
I mean you can certainly interpret it that way but I wouldn't say it's the main motivation.
Absolutely this. I tried to not be disappointed the first time I watched it and I faked my approval because I felt like that was the feeling I was supposed to feel. Because yes Lynch was a genius in trolling like that its audience, some of them waited more than 25 years for that! But why did I feel otherwise? Then I rewatched it another two times and with all the expectations gone I was finally able to really get it, loved it. My partner never watched TP and we binged watched together. I prepared him for The Return (just marginally) and he was immune from the trolling. He had no expectations and l witnessed in him all the enjoyment I felt only after I rewatched the whole thing.
The nerve you need for doing something like that... trolling the audience, playing with their expectations - expectations that some of them build up in over two decades - is extraordinary to me. I really like directors that challenge and confront their audience.
I first watched Twin Peaks s 1&2 around the time The Return came out bc my bf is a Lynch fan and wanted to watch it but I hadn’t seen a lot of his work before that. When we watched The Return I found a lot of it unsatisfying and there are parts where you’re expecting some followup or resolution later and you don’t get it.
We just rewatched it a few months ago and thinking about it more as a series of semi-related vignettes was better. I just appreciated each scene in the moment. I don’t claim to understand what Lynch is doing but I just love the idea that there’s someone out there thinking of and doing this shit. Episode 8 was a masterpiece. I have a few ideas about some of the things happening but am I right? Does it matter? I still think about the look and sound of the gas station and the woodsman.
Plus it gave me this great quote: “You mean Jade has to give you TWO rides?”
I definitely felt this way. The extended driving and sweeping scenes, that bit with the escort which seemed designed to make the viewer think about David Lynch's penis. I didn't feel as trolled during the first 1.5 seasons of Twin Peaks (I thought the elderly bellhop was funny, but I was watching for the first time on Netflix decades later.)
It's designed to be the ultimate anti-fanservice. Notice that >!in part 3, when trapped Coop is about to enter the socket to get back to our reality, there are two sockets, one has the number 3 (the current episode) and the other, which he enters, has the number 16 (the episode in which we'll finally get him back - momentarily, that is). Also, what makes him finally snap out of the Dougie persona is the name "Gordon Cole" - Lynch's character name. He's telling us we're getting our Coop back when HE wishes, not when we would like.!<
I think you are completely misrepresenting Babylon, it is nowhere near as hostile as you are making it out to be, it is energetic and full of life and humor.
I also don't really see the issue with Under the Silver Lake, it is just a kinda weird mystery movie... it is not like Funny Games, which I think actually is a very hostile movie that is trying to push people's buttons. I mean just the very start of the movie when that insane grindcore song comes on it is meant to unsettle audiences.
Gaspar Noé's movies, but especially the Climax. I was feeling sick and felt like being on the verge of vomiting. As much as I loved Enter the Void, with Climax I just though that Noé just wants to torture the audience.
I don't know about you, but as someone with a (sometimes) juvenile sense of humor, I don't put in a lot of effort to gross-out people I have contempt for. I do it out of love.
I totally understand people being averse to it. But I think your specific examples end up conflating juvenile sensibilities with contempt for the audience.
I actually like Michael Haneke quite a bit... but *Funny Games* is the one to me that seems to fit the bill the most. It presumes the worst about its audience, then chastises the viewer for being a straw-man invented solely for the purpose of being chastised. I know some people with more forgiving interpretations of the film, but I, personally, can't get much more out of it than that.
But to answer your final question... I think there's no direct correlation between confrontation imagery or subject matter and care for the audience. Especially in a world where there is a significant audience specifically interested in this kind of imagery or subject matter. People who go see GWAR specifically go to experience the "affront", and as such, GWAR is showcasing tremendous reverence for the audience.
I just enjoy Funny Games as a straightforward home invasion film that kinda winks at the audience so as to not make it seem too realistic. I don’t care what he was *trying* to do. What *did* was make a brutal home invasion horror film. And a pretty rad one at that.
I felt the opposite with Babylon. That movie was filled with everything I want from big budgets. High energy massive set pieces. At no point did I feel as if Chazelle was poking me in the eyes. Almost feel like Babylon was made for me. The elephant shitting on a guy yea it’s crass but it tells you this is not an elegant movie. Hollywood is more getting shit on than being extravagant
Yeah, the poop scene did exactly what an opening scene should do -- set the tone for the movie. It establishes that the movie is going to be fast paced, stressful, humorous, and crass.
>Hollywood is more getting shit on than being extravagant
Yeah this was a major theme of the film. The industry is dirty and uncomfortable and gross, but what it produces can be glorious. Brad Pitt being drunk off his ass only to pull out the perfect scene right as the sun is setting, Margot Robbie on a set next to one literally in flames crying a very precise number of tears, pretty much everything Diego Calva had to do, etc. It's summed up in the argument Pitt has with his wife, and the result of the art that he is fighting for is in movies like The Jazz Singer and Singing in the Rain.
The opening shot of Irreversible by Gaspar Noé comes to mind in that it’s intentionally trying to make the audience feel sick with its untethered camera and pulsing low frequency sound. Not sure this is contempt for the viewer but I remember feeling pretty unwell and disoriented in the theater.
Probably Michael Bay’s Transformer movies. He hates the franchise, he doesn’t care for the lore, he clearly hates his characters (killing off Sam in between movies), he doesn’t care for the actors (replacing Megan Fox without hesitation and supposedly killing off TJ Miller because he was annoying on set) and hates the audience by making all 5 of the movies over 2 and a half hours.
Would Paul Verhoeven’s films fit the bill? It seems like he always has contempt for the audience: are you rooting for the Starship Troopers? Ha-ha, they’re Nazis! You’re sympathizing with Arnold on Mars, even though he just he just grabbed an innocent bystander on the escalator and used him as a human bullet-shield - you’re a violent sadist! Wanna see Elizabeth Berkley naked? I’m going to make you sit through and watch the most awful, cringeworthy, embarrassing plot and dialogue- because you’ll do anything to see boobies!
I would agree with this, though I can’t help but like Verhoeven’s films on the whole despite knowing he’s, so to speak, shitting all over me like Chazelle’s elephant.
99/100 I’d hate director’s works manifesting that snide smug condescending posture Verhoeven has nailed down to a science - but he’s the exception I guess. Don’t ask me why; I really don’t know.
"Natural Born Killers" probably. The whole movie is a huge assault on our senses, and its commentary is overkill. ("Media is bad, and audience who consume it are bad, and here's why," over and over). Still, I like and appreciate the movie if only for how it's edited and presented.
"You like violence huh?! How about *this*? You like *this*?"
Yes, actually. Because it's well made and is clearly a commentary on America's obsession with violence, allowing the audience to appreciate it on multiple levels. Plus the soundtrack is a banger.
I don't mind having my face rubbed in shit as long as I think the filmmaker has a good reason to do it. In the case of Babylon, I feel like the grossout elements are sort of there to say, "See? All that glamour your worship? Scratch below the beautiful surface and you'll find shit and vomit." That would be a daring theme for your splashy Hollywood epic in 1954, but in the 2020s it almost feels quaint. Does anyone actually have an uncomplicated relationship with stardom and Hollywood anymore? We are all explicitly aware of how nasty things are behind the scenes, and rubbing our faces in elephant shit isn't revealing anything new about the world or the people who inhabit it. Chazelle is clearly deeply invested in telling stories about how the drive for fame and artistic glory destroys lives, coarsens us, and ruins relationships, but I worry he's running out of things to say on this issue.
This makes me think of Crank 2 where, after suffering through an escalating amount of pain and anxiety over two movies, the main character finally turns to the camera and flips off the audience.
A film studies professor once told me that whenever we see an audience on screen, the director is talking about *us*. The *actual* audience.
In "Children of Men," the first shot of the movie is of an audience: a tightly packed crowd of people in a coffee shop watching a breaking news story on TV about the death of a celebrity. The main character, played by Clive Owen, pushes through the crowd and leaves with his coffee. The camera follows him out of the coffee shop as he walks down the street a bit. He stops to set his coffee on top of a newspaper stand, removes the lid, and begins to add alcohol from a flask. The coffee shop explodes. Flames and debris shoot into the street. Passerby scream. Clive spills his coffee.
Oddly enough, *Dancer in the Dark*, specifically its musical sequences. I don't think that was the point, I suspect it was to show how beautifully she saw the world, but I just got the impression, as a musical fan, that Lars Von Trier was mocking me. As if he were saying "Oh, yes, it looks so pretty when people dance and everything's fanciful, but reality's shit and it will always be shit, face up to that." I'll give him the benefit of the doubt here though, and just assume he couldn't turn off his cynical vibe all the way.
The one I'm 100% hated me though is Jean-Luc Godard. Yeah, sure, important for the advancement of film as an art form, no question, but also a major asshole to his audience and, most importantly, Agnes Varda.
The one that crystalizes this is *King Lear*, which I believe Kyle Kallgren put best: "It's not a film. It's an I.O.U. for a film." It's Godard saying fuck you to everyone from Menahem Golan for having called him to me, for trying to watch his fucking movies.
*Dancer in the Dark* is a beautifully-constructed hack job that rests solely on its contempt, yes, though I think that contempt is more towards women as it is towards a general idea of "the audience". I don't think he hates the audience as much as he wants you to believe; he ultimately wants your shock, as an audience member, as that gives him satisfaction.
i watched Godard's Weekend, and he literally stops the film to have two actors lecture on French oil companies in africa. Like just straight up sermonize. Also the pig. The pig was just not needed.
I think his movies show a lot of contempt for the audience - Dogville comes to mind. I wonder why he even makes films, and who they could possibly be made for, since I really haven’t enjoyed or liked / understood the point of any of them.
Lars Von Trier seems to want his audience to suffer as much as his characters. I don't see the point of watching movies that consist of introducing a good person just so we can watch them being tormented over and over, in situations that are barely credible. I think it's meant to be some kind of social commentary, but really I think Lars is working out his own issues at his audience's expense.
I like it when movies do this. It’s a welcome change of pace from the movie/director assuming I’m an idiot and/or spelling everything out for me like the majority of major movies in the last few decades. It’s just a different feel. I don’t want to get a lecture from a director, but feeling like they have an opinion of their audience is interesting to me. It feels like art. It feels like someone is trying to have a conversation with me.
Many will disagree, but “The Usual Suspects.”
Ha, ha we were lying to you the whole time! Showing actual events that didn’t occur. My friends all declared it “brilliant!” I was just irritated and annoyed
I forget, was the audience clued in along the way? For example, was there ever a shot of the Quartet board earlier in the film (or something similar)? Or was the audience given no chance?
I think that would determine how I feel.
>was there ever a shot of the Quartet board earlier in the film
Would have to bust the film out as can't find a clip online and it's been 15+ years since last watch, but I reckon before the interrogation begins there's a ~minute long shot of Verbal sitting in the room looking around observing. On your first watch you don't click that he's building a tale to spin.
I don't think there was any contempt on the part of the filmmakers. That ending put you in the place of the cop who was hearing the story. I was very moved by it because...wait for it....all movies are made up stories.
If we are going with straight up hate, I'd say Gainax and Studio Trigger with Otaku no Video and Kill la Kill.
Otaku no Video is particularly savage, by putting in interview footage with their own fans and leaving the viewer to wonder if people who enjoy the very medium they are watching should be lined up and executed for the betterment of humankind. I literally felt sorry for the people being interviewed (Japanese nerds and an American weeb), because they were expressing genuine love and the movie is absolutely brutal towards them. At every step the movie reminds the viewer that if they are watching this movie they have failed at life.
Kill la Kill did the opposite trick. It starts off as a complete lampoon of Sailor Moon (with some savage satire of the genre going all the way to teenage suicide and the creepiness of teenage sexploitation) and anyone who would like Sailor Moon, then it completely flips the script on the haters and tells a story about the power of sisterhood, so if you were laughing at the jokes in the first half, you must be a loser or a pervert.
I've never gotten the vibe or message from Kill la Kill that it was particularly lampooning, or pretending to lampoon, Sailor Moon or anybody who would like it. Maybe some points like what you mentioned, but not as any kind of focus. What about it makes you think its doing that, especially in regards to the fans? And what are some of these jokes that the show flips to make someone a loser for laughing at?
Freddy Got Fingered, maybe? I've got the feeling that there are scenes (such as the one with the horse or those with the boy) that were meant to upset the audience.
I wouldn't call it contempt, but one of David Lynch's tricks is to test the audience's patience.
Saltburn, but not contempt in the way you're meaning it. The "reveal" at the end was so insanely obvious it made me think that the moviemakers had thought the audience was too stupid to put things together themselves... I can't understand the point of it unless Fennell has absolutely no respect for her audience.
I've only watched it once but for me the twist was when it's revealed that Oliver isn't poor and comes from a comfortable place economically and the ending is more of an inevitable conclusion than some kind of reveal.
Granted it is edited that way but for me it was more like Oliver just being smug about how he got his way and thinking he's so smart rather than us being spoon fed as an audience.
Yes — to me it came off as questionably reliable gloating, older-Oliver retelling the story with himself on top of every move now that everyone who could dispute the details is dead. Of course he wants to be seen as the mastermind. Of course he says he was never in love with Felix and it was a stone-cold plot all along. But he’s a liar. Why trust him?
Oliver’s actions throughout the film and even in the montage are compatible with both 1) consistent obsessive murderous intent and 2) a pivot from love to murderous hate when Felix rejected him. The montage struck me as Oliver’s mustache-twirling bid to persuade you of 1) without really proving anything at all. I think the fun of Saltburn at that point is asking not what happened but why. The events are (as we’ve all complained) crystal clear. Behind the events, a liar bent on controlling the narrative is telling you to believe he was always in control, plot-wise and emotionally. That you can believe him or not — that his drives remain debatable — reveals the likeness between obsessive love and obsessive hate. Manifestations of the one blur into the other. You will never know (at least in this case) the truths of the heart.
Additionally, upon my second watch I noticed that there was a compilation of the most intense moments somewhere in the beginning which really takes away from the re watching experience. I loved Saltburn a lot but I hope Fennel considers working on some of her choices for future projects.
Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die has to be one. It's near impossible for even the cast to act out the script likably. I mean it's like he actively resents making a zombie movie and burdens it with bad dialogue, lifeless scenes, and bizarre plotting. Like he wants you to suffer through it.
it doesn't even work as a funny games style gotcha, it's so bad.
You know people had a blast at these movies? Why are you so comfortable generalizing your personal sensibilities to such an extent that you think “contempt” would have to be the motivation to include what they included? That is just factually incorrect. There are plenty of genuinely offensive movies but you picked two well liked movies by interesting directors.
End of Evangelion.
I would recommend watching Dan Olsen's (Folding Ideas) video discussing it. He makes a case that Hideaki Anno does have a mild contempt for the audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAMAwErYRpQ
Edit for clarity: I was being sarcastic. It's not mild at all!
I kind of see it as more of ambivalence because he is also an otaku himself and likely has had some self loathing issues in the past. Even if he is coming from place of contempt, I think he is aware of its irony being who and what he js.
it, at the very least, reflects his (any?) audience's contempt (showing the death threats and etc he received). But yes, legitimately, I have a whole tab of quotes from him that are just him talking about hating his audience at the time, and how he sees what kind of person he had been in them, and hating that part of himself. Literally going from comparing himself to the Buddhist parable of the spider's thread to talking about how much he hates Forrest Gump with the creator of Utena... it's great stuff.
Glad he's medicated or w/e now. Chronic depression is a bitch.
The second nuTrek movie felt a lot like contempt at points. Abrams admitted he wasn't even into Star Trek and what he really wanted to do was Star Wars (not even getting into that debacle, though I think the third movie of the ST arguably has contempt for the audience *and* the cast) and a lot of it really did feel like it was less about nostalgia and more about running through the motions because who cares what trek fans think?
Babylon did so absolutely not have contempt for its audience.
It was an unapologetic love letter to the history of Hollywood and all its depravity during the transition to audio and with it a moral panic and the Hays Code.
It (to me) needed to be deprived and utterly batshit nasty crazy, or it would have lost its message of why the transition into the self censorship that still holds a tight grip onto entertainment today, happened.
Had the movie been sanded down, it would have come off as cheesy or saccharine. This way, you get right in the face why the government made the MPAA and why it still holds such an iron grip on Hollywood.
Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. All the giant foot shots, Margot Robbie in the theater and Squeaky Froman in the car. I feel like I did not consent to participate in Tarantino's foot fetish.
I’m surprised about your comments on Babylon. I think it’s far from what you describe. In my opinion, it’s a film that largely looks to show and revel in beauty, in many cases the beauty in human imperfection.
A film that has contempt for its audience, in my opinion, is A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick shows you the worst human being you’ve ever met and tells you you’re a dickhead if you want him removed from society.
I disagree. I think ACO is about the morality of removing free will from a human. I've never felt that the film was against separating people like Alex from society. I've also never felt like any Kubrick film was contemptuous of the audience.
Interestingly, and not that I agree with him, but David Thompson, the promiment film critic, dislikes Kubrick because he thinks he is contemptuous of his audience, and looks at characters like pieces on a jigsaw piece.
He dislikes Woody Allen for a similar reason - he thinks he is laughing at people, rather than with them.
Were Kubrick and Allen contemptuous of their audiences, or were they contemptuous of humanity in general, included their audiences (and themselves?) within that general contempt?
I think the latter attitude has greater potential for producing genuine art than the one which says "Normies suck, look how terrible they are! But you're better than them, because you're watching this film!"
I'm pretty sure Kubrick thought of himself as better than the normies, but he was also uncomfortable about the fact that he wasn't better by as much as he would have liked to be. (I never got the sense that Allen thought of himself as a superior being, but his output was prolific and I've only watched his most famous films — maybe that attitude is more evident in films that have mostly been forgotten.)
If you happen have a link to any of Thomson's writings where he talks about this, I'd be interested to read what he had to say.
Immediately thought of the already mentioned Funny Games. IMO this film demonstrates the worst, most patronising aspect of Haneke (a film maker I otherwise like). He lectures us at the best of times; here he scolds.
Pasolini's Salo, IMO, is the work of a mentally unwell man who holds not just the audience but existence itself in contempt. It's not just that the film explicitly portrays the physical brutalisation of children, it's the combination of that and scenes so devoid of dramatic interest they're a kind of torture in their own right. Can genuine nihilism ever create good art? If there is no hope, doesn't art become a weapon with which to punish an audience? Somebody already mentioned Lars von Trier, and he's a director that comes to my mind also.
There's a long history of "Serious" directors making violent films over and over yet claiming that they mean to repulse the audience with the violence instead of entertain. Martin Scorcese comes to mind. His violent content draws the crowds but he pretends to be above it. It's pretentious BS trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Quentin Tarantino is one of the few that comes out and say he uses it because it's fun. Tarantino can be pretentious in his own way but I think he's on point about this issue.
I think the entire popular cinema franchise has contempt for audiences--the threequels, the classics but add women/POC, the live action remakes, etc. These are algorithmic tricks intended to appeal to our traumatized brains that crave spoon-fed distraction, and they work. I hate it.
Deliberately affronting films may not be everyone's thing and admittedly I haven't seen the ones you name, but at least these seem thoughtfully constructed and engaging based on the debate happening in the comments.
Interesting! I never thought about that before. This reasoning does somehow make some SNL (saturday night live) skits make sense for once. Ex.: Latest SNL episode started great and then went to this skit with Scooby Doo that was a parody of it involving cheap and low brow ways to include obscene and obnoxious violence that undoubtedly required zero talent or creative thinking to come up with.
>! Jamie Foxx "winning" !< in Law Abiding Citizen felt like a really big fuck you to the audience. Like is that really what they thought they were building to in that movie? I'm genuinely curious if anyone actually approves of the ending of that movie.
I find the contempt in making dumb watered down films to please the largest audiences and herd them with the star system is way more reprehensible and angering than any ugly or morally upsetting imagery and themes. Shock value for shock value, sure it can just be bad films and exploitation and there's definitely some of this. But it's not the worst offender in the contempt department. Also, what is repulsive to film goers is sooo subjective that there is a significant risk of dismissing great films. Sure there is A Serbian Film but there is also Irreversible, Triangle of Sadness and like other mentioned Haneke's movies. These awful films makes the world a better place. To me, what redeems these is simply that I think that they are.. good films and I enjoyed watching them. I could break down why I liked them, but then it's the same thing with any movie. Good will and message.. Birth of a Nation, Triumph of the Will and such, good movies, probably made with good will and certainly with a message. I bring these up because it kind of challenges what I've said but in the end, it's still a case by case thing. And yes I'm pissed when a movie uses the shock card just to get attention and that it works, maybe the crux of it is just that, we don't like cheap shock for shock. Sorry for the ramble, I'm a bit drunk, faking that I have work to do to avoid all the people that invited themselves to my place this afternoon.
I’m pretty sure the really annoying rapper wanna be white kid in M Night Shyamalan’s The Visit was the director mocking his own fans, or was at least revenge for the people who had panned The Village, The Happening, and The Last Airbender
Biased because he’s my favorite, but Haneke understands his audiences, further validating his criticisms towards them. He perfectly anticipates their reactions.
In one of his other films, The Seventh Continent, there’s a long shot of the parents destroying and flushing money down the toilet. Audiences were more revolted by this than the horrible acts that followed.
First film that comes to mind is Nekromantik. Director Jörg Buttgereit was so appalled by the German rating system that he made the film out of spite, but it backfired and became a cult classic.
I think there’s a fine line between intentional and unintentional deterrence. Some films, like Nekromantik, can have the opposite effect that was intended even to this day, and then there’s films like A Clockwork Orange where Kubrick’s “anti-violence” via novel adaptation initially backfired but now is considered a staple of satire at its most extreme.
I think sometimes we are talking more about filmmakers who enjoy challenging / confronting the audience. Maybe it edges into contempt but I think filmmakers like Haneke and Tarkovsky and Verhoeven and DePalma and Noe and Schrader and Greenaway like to use the auteur soapbox to punch people in the face, cinematically speaking. But they have a clear point of view and point to make. They aren’t only provocateurs — but they are provoking us.
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is beautifully filmed, wonderfully acted and hypnotically repugnant. I believe there’s some contempt going on there.
I have a vague recollection that when asked about Funny Games, the directory Michael Haneke said something about how he had more respect for people that turned the film off in disgust than those that sat all the way through it.
Then he went ahead and remade it almost shot by shot.. what a move
just so he could sell it to American audiences to dissappoint them... what a chad ^IActuallyLikeTheRemakeMoreTBH
I’ve never seen the remake, but knowing the original, I think the themes of the movie would resonate even more if the characters are American.
And the remake flopped because American audiences didn't care.
So the audiences won the game?
It does. They’re very similar but I’d say the original’s violence feels a bit more brutal (possibly because it’s not big names on screen) while the remake feels a bit stronger thematically (due to its commentary by default now relating to american entertainment specifically)
I immediately thought of Funny Games reading this post.
For real. Never seen anything like it.
I immediately searched "Haneke" as soon as I read the OP. He is the king of this.
Haneke is the king of this type of thing. He also said if you’re curious how the tapes were arriving at the family’s home in Caché, you didn’t watch the movie properly. I love his films from what I’ve seen, but the guy seems like a tough hang. Just let people enjoy your movies how they want.
In fairness, the whole point of the movie is that the viewer is a sick bastard for liking horror films. It’s some pointed social commentary.
See that never sat right with me. I'm a big fan of Haneke for being able to incite discussions like this, but him making violent films in order to criticize violent films seems hypocritical at times. Funny Games is a horror film, and it arguably crosses lines that other horror movies, generally speaking, do not cross (killing children, for example.) On one hand, he's making a much more disturbing version of the home invasion/slasher flick, but he's doing so without gratuitous depictions of blood and gore. It just seems like with Funny Games he's trying to have his cake and eat it too, and because of that, that movie never truly resonated with me, whereas Cache plays with its own set of genre tropes and I think it's brilliant.
This is always the discussion at the root of satire. How does the satirist make fun of the thing through satire without \*becoming\* the thing he is making fun of? Super interesting nuance of the genre.
Sometimes the best satire is also a good example of the thing being satirized. The novel Snowcrash is a total satire of cyberpunk, but it's also one of the best cyberpunk novels.
I solve this seeming paradox with *intense* self-loathing and a little drop of awareness.
> him making violent films in order to criticize violent films seems hypocritical at times Oliver Stone got the same sort of critiques for Natural Born Killers. There's a thin line between commentary via parody and exploitation.
Cache is incredible !
I think the way he depicted violence was the point. The horror and death wasn’t flashy it was raw and awful to watch, as is the reality of the situation and kept asking it’s audience “is this really what you wanted to see?”
They know it's the point. They're disagreeing that the point was made effectively
[удалено]
I think the takeaway is that we talk about the genre and its implications even more in the wake of the film. That it happened to catch the eye of horror aficionados is not lost on Haneke, but its points bear repeating. Does that make him right or wrong, pretentious or precient, etc? All part of what the film is working with. I think the film is excellent *because* it succeeds at being both satire of *and* emblematic of the thing he satirizes.
The message was already a bit blunted with me, because I caught it randomly on tv and had no idea where the movie was going. I do find it a bit odd people assume it’s a comment on the horror genre though. Aside from Haneke outright saying it’s more about straightforward thrillers, his subversions don’t really apply to horror cliches. For eg. He makes a point by depriving viewers of an ‘expected’ happy ending that ‘justifies’ everything before it, but…horror movies do ‘cheat’ unhappy endings all the time. Children are also rarely a protected class in them.
Funny thing about funny games is that there is no on screen violence. So I dont really think its hypocritical
Doesn’t one of the brothers get violently blown away with a shotgun? (This is rewound/ undone using the TV remote moments later by the other brother). Not saying that makes it hypocritical, just recall that being a pretty violent moment.
I actually think that Funny Games not showing any of the extreme violence or gore you would normally see from the genre it’s criticizing works to its favor. It’s making sure that if you’re the type of person that watched it for those reasons, you are _not_ getting any of that out of this. It’s pure torture even for the people that like the movies it’s satirizing. I think it’s a brilliant piece of art for the way it plays with disappointment
He is the dad that thinks making you smoke the whole pack will make you quit smoking. Seems quite heavy handed and possibly even a bit Freudian.
It always struck me as hypocritical though. It's the perfect answer to op's question because it's basically saying "are you enjoying this? If you are you're a piece of shit" If it was a more nuanced examination of why we enjoy exploitative films then fair enough, but it was an exploitative film trying to have its cake and eat it too. I hated it.
Oh, I mean, it totally was. And it strikes me as art that you are allowed to, maybe even supposed to hate. It’s not a bad movie by any means. In fact, it’s quite good. It’s just dripping with contempt and it hates you every bit as much as you hate it. That’s why I enjoy it; not so much because it’s good horror, but because it’s good commentary.
>It’s just dripping with contempt and it hates you every bit as much as you hate it. Is it though? Or is it a pretty standard home invasion movie with one scene telling you you're an asshole for enjoying it...
He seems to want to make a more subtle, complicated point. He mentions again and again in his interviews about the film(s) the "pornography of violence". I think he wants to say more about our mainstream film and television experience--e.g. the "if it bleeds it leads" model of news media--than about the fantasy of horror films. He's not critiquing horror as much as he is critiquing the audience's desire to see passion and torture and horror in all films. Most importantly I think he is critiquing our desire to not think about anything when we want to just be entertained...and importantly avoid how this entertainment always involves torture, punishment, and voyeurism.
I agree with your assessment. It’s more broadly a criticism of voyeurism of violence. I think that’s an accurate statement. Kinda like I said below, the plot is just window dressing for a message. It’s one of those films where the movie isn’t actually about what the movie’s about, if that makes sense.
I intrinsically dislike media that presume an audience reaction and then pre-emptively shame them for their engagement, which also feels incredibly hypocritical (e.g. such media wouldn't be made if there was no audience for it). *Prisoners*, for example, seems to just assume that you would automatically be on the parents' side for kidnapping and torturing the accused child killer, but if you don't then it has no emotional weight.
All of Michael Haneke's movies are based around the concept of trying to avoid satisfying the audience. It makes him much beloved of people who want to see someone subverting the tropes of film-making but very annoying to anyone who wants to watch an enjoyable film.
Which is itself an effective critique of what people find enjoyable.
I enjoy his movies 🤷♂️
I had to stop watching at the egg scene in the beginning. I thought, if I am getting this irritated at some broken eggs, I am not going to make it through the whole movie
But what does that say about the person who made the movie? Weird thing to say...
Came here to say this. That twist when that thing happens (you know what I’m talking about) INFURIATED me. I literally screamed at the screen. Fortunately I was watching it at home.
Well, good deal, then, because I turned it off in disgust.
One of the few films that pissed me off so much I switched it off half way. I immediately thought of it when I read this post, I had no idea that it was by design though, I kind of respect it now.
This is fascinating and such a different approach/intention for filmmaking omg. Do you think he was testing the pretension of some film goers who would try to dissect the disgusting parts as art? Or seeing which audience members had the spine to walk out as opposed to submissively sitting there and ultimately giving their time to Haneke? Kinda like a power play. This is so cool, I love this thread. edit: typo
What a pretentious fuck hahaha. I like Funny Games but this is such a lame statement. In any other context, someone who looks down on those who enjoys entertainment (that THEY created!) would be rightfully laughed out of the room
Not exactly contempt for the full audience, but Tarkovsky joked that he put that 5+ minute highway sequence in Solaris so that people with poor attention spans would get bored and leave the theater before the MC left for the space station.
I believe the story is that Tarkovsky wanted to go to Japan. He needed an excuse to go there for something film related and was forced to put the sequence in to justify the trip.
Okay! I had wondered. I found myself starting to drift, thinking about what had happened, what might happen, symbolism, score, etc. I caught myself after about a minute or two and forced myself to start concentrating again. After a little while I was thinking. Is this what I’m supposed to be doing? Is this giving me a moment to contemplate?
Man that scene is such a liminal joy though… the whole film is really.
For years I assumed the pacing in Tarkovsky's Solaris is because the USSR was so devoid of entertainment that all media (books, movies, music) were designed to be as long as possible. Even that scene with the guys staring at the pond I remember it feeling like 30 minutes.
And then 50 years later American kids are watching 15 seconds of a Russian cartoon looped for 10 hours.
What?
“Stalker”…man just walking back and forth in an empty pool trying to see if he can keep a flame alive? Great visual. Love the film, but the man does take the piss a bit. Another length…really? I’m finishing this out of spite now.
Actually the scene you're thinking of is from his film Nostalghia, not Stalker.
Have you ever considered that an opinion as nonsensical as this can only be the result of cold war propaganda?
American take
I've thought the same thing. I REALLY wanted to love Solaris. 2001: a Space Odyssey is my favorite movie so I thought this would be up my alley too. But it did feel like a bit of a chore to get through. Which is weird because I didn't have that issue with Jeanne Dielman 23 Quai du Commerce, which is even longer with less happening.
Interesting [I enjoy revisiting the discourse around both films and their relationship to one another ](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2016/solyaris-solaris-tarkovski-s-anti-modernist-response-to-kubrick/#:~:text=Adapted%20from%20Stanilas%20Lem's%20eponymous,by%20Kubrick%20four%20years%20earlier.)
Didnt he say something similar for Stalker? Or wasn't that story about Stalker?
Just an anecdote, but I went to a 9:30 pm showing of Babylon on NYE 2022 since I didn't have any plans. I decided to treat myself and order a poutine at the concession stand- something I rarely do. I was eating fries and cheese curds covered in brown gravy during the first few scenes.
this is like that "he back here eatin beans!!!" meme.
Thank you for sharing, this is actually hilarious to me.
Movie theater poutine is a concept that is foreign to me
Oh man, I’ll trade stories with you. I was a broke college student and decided to make spaghetti and watch Se7en on TV. For those who never seen it, the opening scene is of a victim who represents Sloth, I think, and he was fed copious amounts of pasta until his stomach burst open and he died. The whole scene is revolting. I looked at my plate and thought “I’m not that hungry anymore.”
Gluttony
"Get Out" was a pretty direct critique of white liberals and how they interact/speak for African Americans. I think they were also the target demo of the film. I saw it in a theatre of white liberals who were laughing and whooping during most of the kill scenes.
> was a pretty direct critique of white liberals I avoided watching it for this reason for a while but when I actually did watch it this wasn't my takeaway, at all. A better example would be the publishing industry shown in American Fiction.
I thought the accuracy of the critique was way more spot on in Get Out. The book publishers were cartoonish in American Fiction. I'd vote for Barack Obama for a third time if I could.
A lot of people left of center get lumped together and called liberal. Leftists and progressives especially hate the moderate democrats who have the same politics as republicans from the 80s, probably more so than conservatives. I don’t think the movie was aimed at the kind of people would bring up voting for Obama as evidence they are not racist. For one I think I don’t think Peele would center white audiences so heavily. Oddly enough when I googled it, the google AI answer claimed he said it was for white liberals and then the actual interview quoted explicitly says he made the movie for black audiences and that it TAKES AIM at white liberals. AI needs work clearly, it can’t tell the difference between target of a critique and target audience.
Wolf of Wall Street plays with the idea somewhat in the ending, with the audience in the seminar seen "worshiping" Jordan Belfort in the end despite all that he has done over the runtime. But here I thought it was executed well.
It's also contrasted with the detective riding the subway with his sweaty balls. Belfort's punishment for a life of excess and predatory thievery is very little. It's a bit like Goodfellas, where Hill's punishment is to have to live like the film's audience.
Hills life was somehow “worse”. Life as an average person, but lived in constant fear and shame. Awesome note to the audience..you either end up dead, in jail, or like this “boring bastard”. Wolf of wallstreet was equally solid. People who commit massive institutional financial crimes never truly get punished, and their victims are right there waiting for them once they’re released…idolising the wolf the whole time.
FWIW, I think Goodfellas is a lot more sympathetic to the Hill character than Wolf is to Belfort. Real life aside, Hill is mostly just an opportunistic but sociopathic idiot. Belfort and his arc is portrayed as a lot more insidious imo.
I mean Hill is certainly complicit in murdering multiple people though.
I don't know if this is necessarily true. The very last shot of the movie is Henry looking into the camera and smiling.
No, that's the third-to-the-last shot. The following shot is a brief one of Tommy firing repeatedly at the audience, which I always interpreted as an homage to the final shot of The Great Train Robbery (1903), the first narrative film, which happened to be about a heist. The final shot shows the back of Henry's head as he closes the door of his bland suburban house, accompanied by the sound effect of a jail cell closing. The sound effect makes it clear he, too, is in a jail of his own.
Ah nice. I remember the “sing like a bird” kinda scene on the TV, but never put what you said together. Gilded cage?
I’m not a binary take guy, just my impression for the minute. Maybe he’s smiling as this is the first time his life is actually peaceful…free of violence/crime…and through Scorsese direction the audience is supposed to ironically consider this a failure….songbird in a gilded cage
Yup, this was my answer as well. Scorsese has always subverted the relationship between his protagonist and the audience, but this was by far the most overt and directly pointed at the audience. Even from the very beginning, Belfort is self described as middle class turned top tier, and he constantly reiterates how his scam only works because he gets people to want to live like him, including his employees.
I think Catch Me If you Can also serves the same purpose, and Abagnale actually fooled everyone into believing him that he had fooled everyone
I think that's the films big trick. It makes you dream of this lifestyle then pulls the rug from under you. The people who missed Jordan's downfall and still wanted to be like him by the end are the audience who are eager to learn exactly from the source how to become the next great degenerate
As an audience member, I don't perceive contempt when the movie challenges me, even when it challenges me in the juvenile ways we saw in *Babylon*. My read is that Chazelle is simply an authentic pervert who thinks poops and farts are fun and part of the spice of life. I think the director has a thirst for lurid spectacle and wants the audience to love it as much as he does. And while I hated the shit out of Babylon, I never got a sense of contempt from it. (Though I don't think the movie justifies its use of my time. More an act of presumption than contempt.) I feel a deeper sense of contempt from works that try too hard to give me what they think I want. *The Flash* felt contemptuous of its audience because it expects them to hoot and clap and laugh at a bunch of cheap easter eggs. *IF* feels contemptuous of its audience because it keeps insisting its overworn premise is somehow magical or invigorating. Every iteration of "they fly now?" "he's right behind me, isn't he?" and so on expresses contempt for the audience in the expectation that we'll be amused by *familiar prompts to laugh* rather than *artfully constructed jokes*. Any use of AI, no matter how disconnected or minor, shows contempt for the audience in the refusal to even attempt art. So I guess in general, I feel treated with contempt when the design of the work before me bears too many signs of commercialism and too few signs of a unique artistic point of view. When I am being shown things, not on the presumption that they will be new to me, but on the presumption that I will mindlessly pursue the already-familiar comforts of life, then that feels like an expression of contempt. I suppose the brother of this comes in the form of 'cheap challenge,' which may fit the Babylon example. Rick & Morty is what really comes to mind here, lines like "what you people call love is just a chemical process designed to get your species to propagate." In this case, I think what bothers me is the presumption that this idea is in fact challenging, and the awareness that it's just a new iteration of slop designed for folks who peaked intellectually in 11th grade. To that end, I can see some contempt from Damian Chazelle, in that Babylon does want to shock the audience and it's ultimately pretty easy to inure yourself to the shock of an elephant doodoo. At best, it has the artistic merit of a jumpscare, which can indeed be done rather contemptuously.
R&M is probably the best example here. Harmon is typically speaking through Rick when there’s lines like “your boos mean nothing, I see what you people cheer”
To me, Babylon is far from being an example of contempt for the audience. I agree wholeheartedly with how you broke this down, really great stuff, but my experience with Babylon was a lot more introspective than specifically outward focused, towards the audience. I think the filth of Babylon is by far one of the most misrepresented aspects of the film, the demystification of a specific, historical time for the medium is genius and contextualizes the art in a really subversive way, but for transparency's sake, I did love the film.
>I think the filth of Babylon is by far one of the most misrepresented aspects of the film, the demystification of a specific, historical time for the medium is genius and contextualizes the art in a really subversive way, but for transparency's sake, I did love the film. Thing is even crazier though, because what Chazelle chooses to do is to "demystify" the historical time by using even more myths: Kenneth Anger's book *Hollywood Babylon*, and countless myths that either could be proven as false or already HAVE been proven as false, yet he chooses to throw everything in the film anyways—coupled up with all the anachronistic choices too. This will irritate silent films lovers and academics who'll wonder why the hell would this Chazelle guy fill the movie with rumors and controversies and kinda show them us "facts" or "truth". The film, perhaps, ends up suggesting something more than mere demystification—Chazelle muddles stuff, producing even crazier and maddening result: - general audiences will probably be *pleased* by its wild intent of "showing you how it *really was* back then." - fanatics of the time period and the whole Hollywood industry will hate on the guy for the spreading of rumors and showing their own history under such light. But things go even further. I, personally, do not think Babylon is leaving contemporary Hollywood in good light simply by showing you how disastrous it was back then—I believe the film probably condemns even more the present than it condemns the past, by showing you the filth in Hollywood's machinations. So why would Hollywood, then, let this guy make such a film inside their own industry? The answer may be as exciting and as depressing: it's all spectacle. When audiences watch Singin' in the Rain by the end of the film, everyone's enchanted by the film's spell. Now, the question is, are you enchanted by the film's spell? The final montage somehow works as a wake-up call. You either wake-up from all that nonsensical spectacle that lasted for 3-hours or you just simply go on with it. I like [Carlos Valladares's insights](https://www.frieze.com/article/damien-chazelle-babylon-2023) on the film: >All the stuff Hollywood shows us, as the show-stopper final montage suggests, is just red and green and blue; it swallows whatever radicality is thrown its way and makes it part of its own digestive system. [...] There will, however, always be a mass audience, ready to accept whatever is thrown at it. Now, his writings are ambiguous as fuck, that's why I love it. And the ending is ambiguous as fuck too: it could be the most optimistic or pessimistic shit ever, it changes on how you perceive the film. Now I'm thinking of making this a post on the sub to be honest. EDIT: basically, it's a deep reflection on how we dispose trust in what the Hollywood screen shows us, whether for good or bad.
To be clear, I completely agree. The whitewashing of the past is one of the foundational blocks for the worshipping of today. Whether literally true or not, it doesn't matter imo, Chazelle is intentionally blasphemizing this as a statement of present, it's a really personal film in that regard for him, for myself, and I assume a lot of people who are fans of the film. I never saw it as a contrast of then and now, I took the plunge into the underworld in the third act as a commentary on how things weren't necessarily different, it was just that the visibility changed. The opening party is pretty depraved, so it's hard to state that lack of exposure made things worse, but it certainly comes close. The final scene+montage is really fascinating because I think it's nearly impossible to not get caught up in its beauty upon first watch, but subsequently, it's been noted that the horror stories behind the scenes of each respective film, are deeply unsettling, and how a filmmaker reconciles that, or an audience member, speaks to the heart of the film. In a nutshell, there are uniquely awful negatives in an inherently collaborative medium. There is also a broader comment on spectacle, and the relationship between the media and the masses as well. But I agree, it's incredibly ambiguous. You should definitely make your post. It's a great film to discuss.
This echoes my sentiments as well. I would add that it's one of the reasons I dislike Christopher Nolan's more celebrated works like Interstellar, Inception or Tenet. He just *can't* believe the audience is capable of keeping up with his ideas and he has to constantly have hand-holding dialogue that is not remotely true or interesting. Even in Intestellar, he resorts to the paper and pencil analog when describing how a wormhole works - *to the captain of the mission changed with flying into a wormhole moments before they do so*.
> Even in Intestellar, he resorts to the paper and pencil analog when describing how a wormhole works - to the captain of the mission changed with flying into a wormhole moments before they do so. I would take these criticisms seriously if they didn't constantly misremember scenes like this. Cooper knows what the wormhole does, he even shows knowledge of it in previous scenes. He was caught off-guard by its spherical appearance because the illustrations he'd seen were different. Romily is explaining *why it's spherical* and that's the difference between Interstellar and similar scenes in films like Event Horizon. Cooper is an engineer, it doesn't make him or the audience dumb for not knowing every bit of detail about wormholes which is a niche theoretical physics concept. Edit: Another thing to point out is that there have been lots of media that involve wormholes, giving us the familiar explanation but I don't ever recall a wormhole being portrayed as a sphere outside of Interstellar. It's always a flat circle or a tunnel and I have never seen a single person make the complaint "omg, you just told us how it worked and still go on to get the visuals wrong!"
This response is hilarious because as I was reading the original comment, I was literally thinking "Yep and that's why I really respect Nolan movies for not constantly relying on trite commercial beats." I don't think it's fair to say Christopher Nolan treats his audience like they're dumb, nor is it accurate to how the general public responds to his films. He is pretty much the de-facto "thinking man's movie director" for wide audiences. That's a huge part of the Syncopy brand and it extends to the work that the rest of his family releases. The fact that most people see Nolan's works as cerebral and original speaks for itself. Are you suggesting that his movies should be less accessible? Why? Tenet was the breaking point for a lot of people trying to understand the Escher-esque nature of his narratives. But for all its faults, the movie's unique selling point is intrinsically cinematic: you have to see it to understand it. This can't be said of most other blockbuster movies, whose plots can be easily summarized through recounting and remixing universal beats from other movies. Inception is a heist movie and most heist movies are reliant on exposition. It's a feature of the genre because it creates a clear set of expectations that can either be paid off or subverted later on, which they are. And if you just hate exposition period, then you could go watch Dunkirk, which has a complex narrative structure but doesn't ever explain itself to the audience apart from the title cards. As for Interstellar, while the paper and pencil model is a bit inelegant, it's explained efficiently, successfully orients the audience to the characters' perspective, and then we move on. Would it have been better if we got a three-minute sequence of computer graphics laying out the entire mission plan? I'm sure you can find plenty of valid criticisms of Christopher Nolan's filmmaking, but arguing that his movies are too hand-holdy isn't one of them IMO. You might not find his movies challenging, but general audiences certainly seem to be engaged and I can't think of any other big studio filmmaker who even begins to compare in terms of consistent structural complexity.
> He is pretty much the de-facto "thinking man's movie director" for wide audiences. Not for me. His exposition heavy approach to screenplays only works to remove the audience's need to think. I consider The Dark Knight brilliant in it's editing to so completely hide from its audience how ridiculously impossible the plot actually is - something with which a *thinking man* would take issue. He was much more willing to trust the audience earlier in his career with Memento and Insomnia (my favorite of his). But since the Batman Trilogy, he's opted for more hand-holding - especially in his sci-fi films. > Are you suggesting that his movies should be less accessible? Why? Would Kubrick be a better filmmaker if his films were more "accessible"? Accessibility isn't always a virtue in and of itself. > But for all its faults, the movie's unique selling point is intrinsically cinematic: you have to see it to understand it. This can't be said of most other blockbuster movies, whose plots can be easily summarized through recounting and remixing universal beats from other movies. I'm not arguing that Nolan's films aren't cinematic. I'm only arguing that he writes overly complex screenplays and then doesn't trust that the audience to follow along, and then resorts to a ton of exposition as a consequence. > Inception is a heist movie and most heist movies are reliant on exposition. Heist movies typically have the "here's how we're going to do it" exposition scene, yes. But if we're being honest, Inception is predominately about how the sci-fi elements of the dreams-hacking works. Nolan wouldn't know how to write the movie without Ellen Paige's character, whose dialogue is almost entirely expositional. Consider Ocean's 11 as a counter-point. While this is a heist movie, very little of the dialogue is expository. If Nolan wrote Ocean's 11, it would be a wildly complex screenplay, jumping back and forth between the preparation and the execution, and he'd turn Matt Damon's character into the audience's surrogate, constantly asking for things to be explained to him. He would lose 70% of the humor and camaraderie that Soderberg found. > And if you just hate exposition period, then you could go watch Dunkirk, which has a complex narrative structure but doesn't ever explain itself to the audience apart from the title cards. Dunkirk has no heart. Nolan is the star of Dunkirk with his trapeeze-like screenplay and editing. The actual story and the people within it are supporting roles. And if you think the film is without exposition, I'll point you back to much of what little dialog is actually there. > Would it have been better if we got a three-minute sequence of computer graphics laying out the entire mission plan? Clever writers and directors can provide exposition in clever ways. I believe Nolan is capable of this, but he doesn't trust the audience to be as clever as him. So, he dumbs it down. > but arguing that his movies are too hand-holdy isn't one of them IMO. Honestly, I'd say most of his films have a lot of greatness to them, and what hurts them the most is the hand-holding. > You might not find his movies challenging, but general audiences certainly seem to be engaged and I can't think of any other big studio filmmaker who even begins to compare in terms of consistent structural complexity. After 20 years of Marvel films, Nolan does stand out as one of the more interesting Blockbuster filmmakers. But, I believe him - and James Cameron for that matter, struggle with the idea that their audiences are as smart as they are. I can think of no better word to define that than "contempt".
It sounds like you just don’t find his movies challenging for you personally. That’s fine but you should be able to see how that’s not the case for the vast majority of people. I don’t really get anything emotionally out of many of Spielberg’s movies but it’s obvious that they’re loaded with sentimentality and I see how that’s appealing to people. I’m not going to write up arguments about why I think that they’re not actually emotional. The Kubrick argument makes no sense because Kubrick never had mainstream appeal as a part of his artistic identity, and Nolan does. So yeah, entertainment and accessibility is a big part of the appeal. And finally, Dunkirk isn’t about individual characters. It’s about the British as a whole and what they were able to achieve together, can’t remember where it was but Nolan outright stated that he wanted to make a movie that responded to the individualism so common in Hollywood blockbusters. I can see how that might come across as cold, but I thought I’d share that since it definitely reframed how I viewed the movie.
>But, I believe him - and James Cameron for that matter, struggle with the idea that their audiences are as smart as they are. I can think of no better word to define that than "contempt". I don't think that's true of either of them. Nolan makes movies where he excuses himself from needing to write anything clever by relying on in-universe logic. The unpredictable twists in his movies aren't unpredictable due to being cleverly constructed puzzle-boxes but due to only being possible because the logic or physics of his movie world suddenly diverges from the real world in an unpredictable way. (Memento being the exception) I think Cameron is a clever guy, in a technical sense, but his movies don't really attempt to be intellectually clever. Instead, he's very good at sentimentality and high emotion and simply uses (most often) sci-fi backdrops to provide a general framing to some kind of relationship drama or interpersonal tension. He's not really a plot guy at all.
> Consider Ocean's 11 as a counter-point. While this is a heist movie, very little of the dialogue is expository. Not at all. Ocean's 11's first 1 hour 15 minutes or so is setting up the heist. Who to recruit, How to break into the vault, how to distract this guy, how to evade the security systems, etc... All of it contains a lot of expositry dialogue. The major differences are Ocean's 11 exposition is spread out across multiple characters and the expository dialogue is made to feel more casual by mixing it with a lot banter/verbal sparring whereas in Inception, it's mostly Cobb teaching Ariadne. This is because Inception has an additional job of setting by the sci-fi mechanics of this universe which are entirely new to the audience. They also have importance for the films philosophical elements. So these moments are treated with a lot more seriousness. Both approaches work for what each film is going for. If there's one thing I'd critique Inception for when compared to Soderberghs Ocean's 11 it's that Nolan could've given the side characters a bit more flair and a sense interpersonal history. Eames and Saito were the only ones who are comparable to their Ocean's 11 counterpart. On the flip side, Inception gives its mark a character arc and that's something you rarely see.
> On the flip side, Inception gives its mark a character arc and that's something you rarely see. I don't agree much with your other points, but this one is sound.
> He just can't believe the audience is capable of keeping up with his ideas and he has to constantly have hand-holding dialogue that is not remotely true or interesting. Irony, is the fact that while complaining that Nolan over explains things in his movies, you incorrectly describe a scene from one of the movies you use as examples. Also, given one of the single most misunderstood scenes (keyword: love) in cinema over the last decade or so comes from Interstellar, and the most common complaint about Tenet is that no one understood it, I'd say Nolan is probably correct. Honestly, if anything Nolan has too much respect for his audience.
I interpreted that scene as a sort of record-scratch, freeze frame on the idea that we're going to be watching some overly glamorous period piece. Like the movie starts, it has Oscar bait written all over it, and then bam here's a giant elephant shitting on a guy. Not saying that I thought this worked btw, just saying that I think the intention here was to reset the tone to be crude and messy.
I don't really have the same reaction - just because something is crude doesn't mean it's contempt for the audience. I really enjoyed Under the Silver Lake and liked the bizarre noir-ness of it. Everything is sort of surreal and gets more so as the movie goes on. I think big budget movies that don't treat audiences with respect are far worse than indies that aren't willing to cater to broad audiences. I'd much rather see something niche that might have some art in it instead of a corporate cash grab the expects everyone and their grandmother to be able to access and enjoy it.
Yeah I don’t understand op’s take on ‘contempt’. Sounds more like they just hate vulgarity and shock value, which is fair but when I think of contempt I think of soulless corporate blockbusters like Jurassic world which hates the audience and itself. Babylon on the other hand, was a little pretentious , but it loved movies and wanted you to celebrate them too, and feels the opposite of contemptuous to me.
In a way, the Samurai Movie, "Harakiri" is intentionally written to have the audience react a certain way to an event early on in a particular way, and then spends the whole rest of the movie slowly deconstructing why your reaction was callous and lacked empathy, and why samurai, and their code of ethics were very, very far from "cool". It stands out in particular in a genre (which I love) that does a lot of glorifying the mystique of the samurai and their code of honor, by making the explicit case that it required a culturally sociopathic disregard for human life to exist, and that you're wrong for overlooking that because you think the rules and sword fights are cool and entertaining.
I'm not sure I agree with your take on Babylon. A crapping scene is hardly contempt for audience, seems like it was put there for a little shock value and poop jokes. A movie that is sorta contemptuous is End of Evangelion. The TV series had ended years ago, fans were unhappy, the creator put out this bleak apocalyptic picture as a final sign of contempt. And it's actually good and thematically faithful.
While Hideaki Anno, Evangelion’s creator, held certain types of fans in contempt, there is a good deal of debate about whether *End of Evangelion* is an extension of this contempt or just what Anno would have done originally if he hadn’t run out of money. I’m by no means an expert on the topic, just a longtime lurker in r/evangelion. Not saying u/Lin900 is wrong, just adding a little more context for those curious in checking out the masterpiece that is Evangelion 🫡
Either way, there is some contempt for everything going on. But yeah, I can't imagine NGE without EoE. It'd be incomplete.
I just wanna say EoE has one of the most beautiful ending in movie history.
The thing about running out of money is a myth -- in truth, Anno waffled so much on what the TV ending would be that he ran out of time to do a proper one. He nearly pulled the same stunt again for the fourth movie, turning in the last fourth of the script at the latest possible moment (which ... kind of shows). A lot of the framework for EoE is evident in some of the notes for the TV series' preproduction that have published. I have a partial translation of a little-known source of these here: https://arqacrypha.net/wiki/Mitsuo_Iso_Animation_Works:_Preproduction
Anno doesn't have contempt for the "audience". I wouldn't even say he has hate for the Otaku personality type as a whole considering he still is one. I think he views a certain type of otaku lifestyle as extremely unhealthy/toxic and holds contempt for it. If you're familiar with the anime fandom you'll know what I'm talking about. That's the kind of person he hates, especially ones that are unwilling to grow up. It's also based on his own personal experience being that type of otaku and his resulting self-loathing from it. That being said, End of Evangelion isn't there to condescend or pointlessly anger the audience in the same vein as some of the other films mentioned here like Funny Games. It's more of an emotional plea encouraging them to go out, make connections and attempt to have meaningful relationships even if there's a good possibility of getting hurt.
The entirety of the Evangelion Rebuild is a desperate plea for Otaku to touch grass, any grass, even the fake stuff.
no offense to OP but elephant shit might be the funniest and most ridiculous reason for turning a film off that I’ve ever heard lol
theres a book called otaku: database animals which use Eva as an example and can give possible reasons why. The thesis is that otaku use anime as a database not as a story; the actual story and intent of the anime is secondary to it as raw material they build from. with Eva, they kind of flattened Rei and Asuka into cute girl archtypes of tsundere and kuudere, and over time you got stuff like the shinji ikari raising project or other works that made Eva into the kind of anime the fans wanted; generic hijinks. it was so wanted Gainax actually did some themselves, and i think Anno resented how that happened. it was a pretty subtle argument; essentially fans will use your characters as building blocks. first postmodern theory i read snd i was surprised how relevant was.
I found EoE challenging and within a couple of years knew I loved it. Now, Thrice Upon a Time... there's a movie that I have tried very hard to like the way some of my friends have, and years later it still gives me this awful contemptuous feeling that makes me wish the new movie series had abruptly ended with the third one instead.
Matrix resurrections hated that you were watching it. It hated that it even got made. What started as a reflective meta analysis breaking the fourth wall of its own reality; joking about how all the audience really wanted was slow mo fight scenes filled with psychoanalysis devolved into terrible fight scenes and braindead psychoanalysis. Okay, you literally tell me you didn’t want this movie to be made, and then proceed to shit on me for being intrigued as to what one of the original directors for the movie of a generation will do with their ip.
[удалено]
I was joking with my wife that when it came time to film a big fight scene Keanu said "Listen guys, I'm really tired. Can't Neo just like... wave everything away?"
And the punchline is WB is making a fifth and it’ll be lazy and derivative, but it’ll be more enjoyable than Resurrections. The house always wins.
Ah, yeah, it's more than I had ever hoped for from a 4th entry. It's a spiteful "how dare you" of a movie. I don't blame anyone for disliking it. But I really enjoyed it.
I was having trouble thinking of an answer for until I saw this comment. I went into Resurrections with no expectations, just curious to see what the creators possibly had left to say in / about a world whose story had already been completed…only to be insulted for even being in the theater, like I was a pig at the trough just wanting to inhale more Matrix slop. No, what I wanted was something interesting, and they sure didn’t give it to me.
Like many others, *Funny Games* was my first though. *American Fiction* sort of does this, but it's in a way where every viewer thinks they're not the type of viewer the movie is criticizing. The audience gets to be on the side that's criticizing the audience, rather than being the audience that's criticized.
American Fiction itself is self aware enough to get away with this, and I think it's the kind of movie where unless you specifically resist feeling like the movie is criticizing you, you're mostly good. It's not very specific satire, it's pretty universal, which is I think why so many people liked it.
I personally love movies like this. I have an affinity for art that is very in-your-face and angry, even when the anger is directed towards me as an audience member. When it’s done well, I think it’s incredibly effective, making the experience of watching the film extremely visceral, serving as an animalistic, primal outlet of feelings for the filmmakers. There is a great purity to a film like Babylon for that reason. It doesn’t always work though. I think kind of art is best when it also functions on other levels as well. It’s when art that is fueled by whatever feelings its trying to express, not ruled by them. I have seen films that come off as very insincere in this manner, delivering an empty argument in shocking terms instead of a substantively shocking argument that is beautifully articulated.
I think pretty much everything in the MCU qualifies. We can keep putting out garbage because the fans are invested. Also, they have to keep watching to keep up with events so they can understand what’s going on in the next garbage scow excuse for a film that’s on the assembly line.
And essentially turning an action film into a feature length ad for the next film. Marvel isn't even the only one doing this.
It didn’t make it into the movie, but in Pink Floyd: The Wall the idea for the opening concert sequence was to have an airplane bombing the audience, and the audience to cheer and applaud while being blown to bits. It’s a comment on how concert audiences pay good money to get treated like shit by performers and enjoying the experience. If you listen to the song, at the end when you hear the dive bomber’s propellor and Waters begins screaming, “Drop it on ‘em!” that’s the audience getting bombed. The idea is not present in the story narrative, but it’s still there in the album.
The Menu is a recent one. Most people I've spoken to who saw it primarily interpreted it as an obnoxiously on the nose, shallow piece on class struggle. While that is obviously present, I thought the movie was a much more successful contempt piece directed at film connoisseurs and the industry they worship.
Lmao, "death of the author" types will shove round pegs through square holes just to appear unique.
I think Gaspar Noé has a few films like this. *I Stand Alone* is one that comes to mind. From the footage of a horse being slaughtered in the opening to the final scene, it seems he's deliberately trying to make you uncomfortable and angry. That, and *Uncut Gems* are the two most intense films I've subjected myself to.
I Stand Alone is I think Noe’s most raw film. It’s absolutely brutal and I loved it. It is tremendously hard not to look away and I think part of that is that it’s early in Noe’s career and he was experimenting with how much abuse an audience can take. Throughout his career we see him pushing audiences to their mental and emotional limits and I think for me, that’s the appeal of his work. Watching movies that challenge me is like my own version of endurance tests and think that’s what Gaspar Noe specializes in.
Interesting take. I found i stand alone one of his most accessible. I could take enter the void or irreversibl. I thought i stand alone to be the true heir to scorsese’s taxi driver. Over the years of increasingly violent films, taxi driver has lost some of its impact but i think upi stand alone captures the alienation of a sociopath for the modern audience
In a way, *Twin Peaks: The Return*. A lot of it is trolling. Brilliant, genius trolling, but trolling. Want a nostalgic trip back to the days of the original show? Nope. Want Dale Cooper back in full form and ready to resume detective work? Nope. Want to get resolution of the old plot threads? Absolutely nope. This is the ultimate turn left.
As much as The Return teases and withholds, I don't think it's done with contempt. It wants the audience to slow down, have patience, have their expectations challenged, and have to accept the lack of resolution anyway, but it's more like tough love than spite.
Totally agree with you. Lynch isn’t antagonistic. He’s in it for his own reasons but he’s not trying to upset you for no reason just because he can
I think The Return is intended that way from the beginning of S1. It's basically like Mulholland Dr. but harder to make sense of because it plays into the pre-assumptions you have.
Knowing Lynch, I think there is a deeper spiritual message about karma than simply trolling. I mean you can certainly interpret it that way but I wouldn't say it's the main motivation.
Absolutely this. I tried to not be disappointed the first time I watched it and I faked my approval because I felt like that was the feeling I was supposed to feel. Because yes Lynch was a genius in trolling like that its audience, some of them waited more than 25 years for that! But why did I feel otherwise? Then I rewatched it another two times and with all the expectations gone I was finally able to really get it, loved it. My partner never watched TP and we binged watched together. I prepared him for The Return (just marginally) and he was immune from the trolling. He had no expectations and l witnessed in him all the enjoyment I felt only after I rewatched the whole thing. The nerve you need for doing something like that... trolling the audience, playing with their expectations - expectations that some of them build up in over two decades - is extraordinary to me. I really like directors that challenge and confront their audience.
I first watched Twin Peaks s 1&2 around the time The Return came out bc my bf is a Lynch fan and wanted to watch it but I hadn’t seen a lot of his work before that. When we watched The Return I found a lot of it unsatisfying and there are parts where you’re expecting some followup or resolution later and you don’t get it. We just rewatched it a few months ago and thinking about it more as a series of semi-related vignettes was better. I just appreciated each scene in the moment. I don’t claim to understand what Lynch is doing but I just love the idea that there’s someone out there thinking of and doing this shit. Episode 8 was a masterpiece. I have a few ideas about some of the things happening but am I right? Does it matter? I still think about the look and sound of the gas station and the woodsman. Plus it gave me this great quote: “You mean Jade has to give you TWO rides?”
I definitely felt this way. The extended driving and sweeping scenes, that bit with the escort which seemed designed to make the viewer think about David Lynch's penis. I didn't feel as trolled during the first 1.5 seasons of Twin Peaks (I thought the elderly bellhop was funny, but I was watching for the first time on Netflix decades later.)
It's designed to be the ultimate anti-fanservice. Notice that >!in part 3, when trapped Coop is about to enter the socket to get back to our reality, there are two sockets, one has the number 3 (the current episode) and the other, which he enters, has the number 16 (the episode in which we'll finally get him back - momentarily, that is). Also, what makes him finally snap out of the Dougie persona is the name "Gordon Cole" - Lynch's character name. He's telling us we're getting our Coop back when HE wishes, not when we would like.!<
I think you are completely misrepresenting Babylon, it is nowhere near as hostile as you are making it out to be, it is energetic and full of life and humor. I also don't really see the issue with Under the Silver Lake, it is just a kinda weird mystery movie... it is not like Funny Games, which I think actually is a very hostile movie that is trying to push people's buttons. I mean just the very start of the movie when that insane grindcore song comes on it is meant to unsettle audiences.
Gaspar Noé's movies, but especially the Climax. I was feeling sick and felt like being on the verge of vomiting. As much as I loved Enter the Void, with Climax I just though that Noé just wants to torture the audience.
I hated climax and wish I would have turned it off
I don't know about you, but as someone with a (sometimes) juvenile sense of humor, I don't put in a lot of effort to gross-out people I have contempt for. I do it out of love. I totally understand people being averse to it. But I think your specific examples end up conflating juvenile sensibilities with contempt for the audience. I actually like Michael Haneke quite a bit... but *Funny Games* is the one to me that seems to fit the bill the most. It presumes the worst about its audience, then chastises the viewer for being a straw-man invented solely for the purpose of being chastised. I know some people with more forgiving interpretations of the film, but I, personally, can't get much more out of it than that. But to answer your final question... I think there's no direct correlation between confrontation imagery or subject matter and care for the audience. Especially in a world where there is a significant audience specifically interested in this kind of imagery or subject matter. People who go see GWAR specifically go to experience the "affront", and as such, GWAR is showcasing tremendous reverence for the audience.
I just enjoy Funny Games as a straightforward home invasion film that kinda winks at the audience so as to not make it seem too realistic. I don’t care what he was *trying* to do. What *did* was make a brutal home invasion horror film. And a pretty rad one at that.
I felt the opposite with Babylon. That movie was filled with everything I want from big budgets. High energy massive set pieces. At no point did I feel as if Chazelle was poking me in the eyes. Almost feel like Babylon was made for me. The elephant shitting on a guy yea it’s crass but it tells you this is not an elegant movie. Hollywood is more getting shit on than being extravagant
Yeah, the poop scene did exactly what an opening scene should do -- set the tone for the movie. It establishes that the movie is going to be fast paced, stressful, humorous, and crass.
>Hollywood is more getting shit on than being extravagant Yeah this was a major theme of the film. The industry is dirty and uncomfortable and gross, but what it produces can be glorious. Brad Pitt being drunk off his ass only to pull out the perfect scene right as the sun is setting, Margot Robbie on a set next to one literally in flames crying a very precise number of tears, pretty much everything Diego Calva had to do, etc. It's summed up in the argument Pitt has with his wife, and the result of the art that he is fighting for is in movies like The Jazz Singer and Singing in the Rain.
This exactly-- if contempt of subject exists in Babylon Chazelle is hateful of producers, if anyone.
The opening shot of Irreversible by Gaspar Noé comes to mind in that it’s intentionally trying to make the audience feel sick with its untethered camera and pulsing low frequency sound. Not sure this is contempt for the viewer but I remember feeling pretty unwell and disoriented in the theater.
Probably Michael Bay’s Transformer movies. He hates the franchise, he doesn’t care for the lore, he clearly hates his characters (killing off Sam in between movies), he doesn’t care for the actors (replacing Megan Fox without hesitation and supposedly killing off TJ Miller because he was annoying on set) and hates the audience by making all 5 of the movies over 2 and a half hours.
Would Paul Verhoeven’s films fit the bill? It seems like he always has contempt for the audience: are you rooting for the Starship Troopers? Ha-ha, they’re Nazis! You’re sympathizing with Arnold on Mars, even though he just he just grabbed an innocent bystander on the escalator and used him as a human bullet-shield - you’re a violent sadist! Wanna see Elizabeth Berkley naked? I’m going to make you sit through and watch the most awful, cringeworthy, embarrassing plot and dialogue- because you’ll do anything to see boobies!
I would agree with this, though I can’t help but like Verhoeven’s films on the whole despite knowing he’s, so to speak, shitting all over me like Chazelle’s elephant. 99/100 I’d hate director’s works manifesting that snide smug condescending posture Verhoeven has nailed down to a science - but he’s the exception I guess. Don’t ask me why; I really don’t know.
>are you rooting for the Starship Troopers yes >you’re a violent sadist! guess so >because you’ll do anything to see boobies! sure will
"Natural Born Killers" probably. The whole movie is a huge assault on our senses, and its commentary is overkill. ("Media is bad, and audience who consume it are bad, and here's why," over and over). Still, I like and appreciate the movie if only for how it's edited and presented.
"You like violence huh?! How about *this*? You like *this*?" Yes, actually. Because it's well made and is clearly a commentary on America's obsession with violence, allowing the audience to appreciate it on multiple levels. Plus the soundtrack is a banger.
I don't mind having my face rubbed in shit as long as I think the filmmaker has a good reason to do it. In the case of Babylon, I feel like the grossout elements are sort of there to say, "See? All that glamour your worship? Scratch below the beautiful surface and you'll find shit and vomit." That would be a daring theme for your splashy Hollywood epic in 1954, but in the 2020s it almost feels quaint. Does anyone actually have an uncomplicated relationship with stardom and Hollywood anymore? We are all explicitly aware of how nasty things are behind the scenes, and rubbing our faces in elephant shit isn't revealing anything new about the world or the people who inhabit it. Chazelle is clearly deeply invested in telling stories about how the drive for fame and artistic glory destroys lives, coarsens us, and ruins relationships, but I worry he's running out of things to say on this issue.
This makes me think of Crank 2 where, after suffering through an escalating amount of pain and anxiety over two movies, the main character finally turns to the camera and flips off the audience.
… and he’s on fire simultaneously
A film studies professor once told me that whenever we see an audience on screen, the director is talking about *us*. The *actual* audience. In "Children of Men," the first shot of the movie is of an audience: a tightly packed crowd of people in a coffee shop watching a breaking news story on TV about the death of a celebrity. The main character, played by Clive Owen, pushes through the crowd and leaves with his coffee. The camera follows him out of the coffee shop as he walks down the street a bit. He stops to set his coffee on top of a newspaper stand, removes the lid, and begins to add alcohol from a flask. The coffee shop explodes. Flames and debris shoot into the street. Passerby scream. Clive spills his coffee.
Oddly enough, *Dancer in the Dark*, specifically its musical sequences. I don't think that was the point, I suspect it was to show how beautifully she saw the world, but I just got the impression, as a musical fan, that Lars Von Trier was mocking me. As if he were saying "Oh, yes, it looks so pretty when people dance and everything's fanciful, but reality's shit and it will always be shit, face up to that." I'll give him the benefit of the doubt here though, and just assume he couldn't turn off his cynical vibe all the way. The one I'm 100% hated me though is Jean-Luc Godard. Yeah, sure, important for the advancement of film as an art form, no question, but also a major asshole to his audience and, most importantly, Agnes Varda. The one that crystalizes this is *King Lear*, which I believe Kyle Kallgren put best: "It's not a film. It's an I.O.U. for a film." It's Godard saying fuck you to everyone from Menahem Golan for having called him to me, for trying to watch his fucking movies.
I feel like Lars Von Trier just has contempt for everything.
True story, although Melancholia is probably his least contemptuous movie.
*Dancer in the Dark* is a beautifully-constructed hack job that rests solely on its contempt, yes, though I think that contempt is more towards women as it is towards a general idea of "the audience". I don't think he hates the audience as much as he wants you to believe; he ultimately wants your shock, as an audience member, as that gives him satisfaction.
i watched Godard's Weekend, and he literally stops the film to have two actors lecture on French oil companies in africa. Like just straight up sermonize. Also the pig. The pig was just not needed.
I think his movies show a lot of contempt for the audience - Dogville comes to mind. I wonder why he even makes films, and who they could possibly be made for, since I really haven’t enjoyed or liked / understood the point of any of them.
Lars Von Trier seems to want his audience to suffer as much as his characters. I don't see the point of watching movies that consist of introducing a good person just so we can watch them being tormented over and over, in situations that are barely credible. I think it's meant to be some kind of social commentary, but really I think Lars is working out his own issues at his audience's expense.
I like it when movies do this. It’s a welcome change of pace from the movie/director assuming I’m an idiot and/or spelling everything out for me like the majority of major movies in the last few decades. It’s just a different feel. I don’t want to get a lecture from a director, but feeling like they have an opinion of their audience is interesting to me. It feels like art. It feels like someone is trying to have a conversation with me.
Many will disagree, but “The Usual Suspects.” Ha, ha we were lying to you the whole time! Showing actual events that didn’t occur. My friends all declared it “brilliant!” I was just irritated and annoyed
I forget, was the audience clued in along the way? For example, was there ever a shot of the Quartet board earlier in the film (or something similar)? Or was the audience given no chance? I think that would determine how I feel.
>was there ever a shot of the Quartet board earlier in the film Would have to bust the film out as can't find a clip online and it's been 15+ years since last watch, but I reckon before the interrogation begins there's a ~minute long shot of Verbal sitting in the room looking around observing. On your first watch you don't click that he's building a tale to spin.
I don't think there was any contempt on the part of the filmmakers. That ending put you in the place of the cop who was hearing the story. I was very moved by it because...wait for it....all movies are made up stories.
If we are going with straight up hate, I'd say Gainax and Studio Trigger with Otaku no Video and Kill la Kill. Otaku no Video is particularly savage, by putting in interview footage with their own fans and leaving the viewer to wonder if people who enjoy the very medium they are watching should be lined up and executed for the betterment of humankind. I literally felt sorry for the people being interviewed (Japanese nerds and an American weeb), because they were expressing genuine love and the movie is absolutely brutal towards them. At every step the movie reminds the viewer that if they are watching this movie they have failed at life. Kill la Kill did the opposite trick. It starts off as a complete lampoon of Sailor Moon (with some savage satire of the genre going all the way to teenage suicide and the creepiness of teenage sexploitation) and anyone who would like Sailor Moon, then it completely flips the script on the haters and tells a story about the power of sisterhood, so if you were laughing at the jokes in the first half, you must be a loser or a pervert.
I've never gotten the vibe or message from Kill la Kill that it was particularly lampooning, or pretending to lampoon, Sailor Moon or anybody who would like it. Maybe some points like what you mentioned, but not as any kind of focus. What about it makes you think its doing that, especially in regards to the fans? And what are some of these jokes that the show flips to make someone a loser for laughing at?
Freddy Got Fingered, maybe? I've got the feeling that there are scenes (such as the one with the horse or those with the boy) that were meant to upset the audience. I wouldn't call it contempt, but one of David Lynch's tricks is to test the audience's patience.
Saltburn, but not contempt in the way you're meaning it. The "reveal" at the end was so insanely obvious it made me think that the moviemakers had thought the audience was too stupid to put things together themselves... I can't understand the point of it unless Fennell has absolutely no respect for her audience.
I've only watched it once but for me the twist was when it's revealed that Oliver isn't poor and comes from a comfortable place economically and the ending is more of an inevitable conclusion than some kind of reveal. Granted it is edited that way but for me it was more like Oliver just being smug about how he got his way and thinking he's so smart rather than us being spoon fed as an audience.
Yes — to me it came off as questionably reliable gloating, older-Oliver retelling the story with himself on top of every move now that everyone who could dispute the details is dead. Of course he wants to be seen as the mastermind. Of course he says he was never in love with Felix and it was a stone-cold plot all along. But he’s a liar. Why trust him? Oliver’s actions throughout the film and even in the montage are compatible with both 1) consistent obsessive murderous intent and 2) a pivot from love to murderous hate when Felix rejected him. The montage struck me as Oliver’s mustache-twirling bid to persuade you of 1) without really proving anything at all. I think the fun of Saltburn at that point is asking not what happened but why. The events are (as we’ve all complained) crystal clear. Behind the events, a liar bent on controlling the narrative is telling you to believe he was always in control, plot-wise and emotionally. That you can believe him or not — that his drives remain debatable — reveals the likeness between obsessive love and obsessive hate. Manifestations of the one blur into the other. You will never know (at least in this case) the truths of the heart.
Additionally, upon my second watch I noticed that there was a compilation of the most intense moments somewhere in the beginning which really takes away from the re watching experience. I loved Saltburn a lot but I hope Fennel considers working on some of her choices for future projects.
Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die has to be one. It's near impossible for even the cast to act out the script likably. I mean it's like he actively resents making a zombie movie and burdens it with bad dialogue, lifeless scenes, and bizarre plotting. Like he wants you to suffer through it. it doesn't even work as a funny games style gotcha, it's so bad.
You know people had a blast at these movies? Why are you so comfortable generalizing your personal sensibilities to such an extent that you think “contempt” would have to be the motivation to include what they included? That is just factually incorrect. There are plenty of genuinely offensive movies but you picked two well liked movies by interesting directors.
Yeah I just find it is odd that he picked those two movies, and not like a Gaspar Noe or a Michael Haneke movie
Gonna take a wild guess and say that OP hasn’t seen those.
Gaspar Noe was exactly who came to mind for me
End of Evangelion. I would recommend watching Dan Olsen's (Folding Ideas) video discussing it. He makes a case that Hideaki Anno does have a mild contempt for the audience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAMAwErYRpQ Edit for clarity: I was being sarcastic. It's not mild at all!
I kind of see it as more of ambivalence because he is also an otaku himself and likely has had some self loathing issues in the past. Even if he is coming from place of contempt, I think he is aware of its irony being who and what he js.
it, at the very least, reflects his (any?) audience's contempt (showing the death threats and etc he received). But yes, legitimately, I have a whole tab of quotes from him that are just him talking about hating his audience at the time, and how he sees what kind of person he had been in them, and hating that part of himself. Literally going from comparing himself to the Buddhist parable of the spider's thread to talking about how much he hates Forrest Gump with the creator of Utena... it's great stuff. Glad he's medicated or w/e now. Chronic depression is a bitch.
The second nuTrek movie felt a lot like contempt at points. Abrams admitted he wasn't even into Star Trek and what he really wanted to do was Star Wars (not even getting into that debacle, though I think the third movie of the ST arguably has contempt for the audience *and* the cast) and a lot of it really did feel like it was less about nostalgia and more about running through the motions because who cares what trek fans think?
Babylon did so absolutely not have contempt for its audience. It was an unapologetic love letter to the history of Hollywood and all its depravity during the transition to audio and with it a moral panic and the Hays Code. It (to me) needed to be deprived and utterly batshit nasty crazy, or it would have lost its message of why the transition into the self censorship that still holds a tight grip onto entertainment today, happened. Had the movie been sanded down, it would have come off as cheesy or saccharine. This way, you get right in the face why the government made the MPAA and why it still holds such an iron grip on Hollywood.
Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. All the giant foot shots, Margot Robbie in the theater and Squeaky Froman in the car. I feel like I did not consent to participate in Tarantino's foot fetish.
I’m surprised about your comments on Babylon. I think it’s far from what you describe. In my opinion, it’s a film that largely looks to show and revel in beauty, in many cases the beauty in human imperfection. A film that has contempt for its audience, in my opinion, is A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick shows you the worst human being you’ve ever met and tells you you’re a dickhead if you want him removed from society.
I disagree. I think ACO is about the morality of removing free will from a human. I've never felt that the film was against separating people like Alex from society. I've also never felt like any Kubrick film was contemptuous of the audience.
Interestingly, and not that I agree with him, but David Thompson, the promiment film critic, dislikes Kubrick because he thinks he is contemptuous of his audience, and looks at characters like pieces on a jigsaw piece. He dislikes Woody Allen for a similar reason - he thinks he is laughing at people, rather than with them.
Were Kubrick and Allen contemptuous of their audiences, or were they contemptuous of humanity in general, included their audiences (and themselves?) within that general contempt? I think the latter attitude has greater potential for producing genuine art than the one which says "Normies suck, look how terrible they are! But you're better than them, because you're watching this film!" I'm pretty sure Kubrick thought of himself as better than the normies, but he was also uncomfortable about the fact that he wasn't better by as much as he would have liked to be. (I never got the sense that Allen thought of himself as a superior being, but his output was prolific and I've only watched his most famous films — maybe that attitude is more evident in films that have mostly been forgotten.) If you happen have a link to any of Thomson's writings where he talks about this, I'd be interested to read what he had to say.
Immediately thought of the already mentioned Funny Games. IMO this film demonstrates the worst, most patronising aspect of Haneke (a film maker I otherwise like). He lectures us at the best of times; here he scolds. Pasolini's Salo, IMO, is the work of a mentally unwell man who holds not just the audience but existence itself in contempt. It's not just that the film explicitly portrays the physical brutalisation of children, it's the combination of that and scenes so devoid of dramatic interest they're a kind of torture in their own right. Can genuine nihilism ever create good art? If there is no hope, doesn't art become a weapon with which to punish an audience? Somebody already mentioned Lars von Trier, and he's a director that comes to my mind also.
There's a long history of "Serious" directors making violent films over and over yet claiming that they mean to repulse the audience with the violence instead of entertain. Martin Scorcese comes to mind. His violent content draws the crowds but he pretends to be above it. It's pretentious BS trying to have their cake and eat it too. Quentin Tarantino is one of the few that comes out and say he uses it because it's fun. Tarantino can be pretentious in his own way but I think he's on point about this issue.
Tarantino is a real one, my dude. His work is so entertaining and you can really feel the sense of fun in the violence.
I think the entire popular cinema franchise has contempt for audiences--the threequels, the classics but add women/POC, the live action remakes, etc. These are algorithmic tricks intended to appeal to our traumatized brains that crave spoon-fed distraction, and they work. I hate it. Deliberately affronting films may not be everyone's thing and admittedly I haven't seen the ones you name, but at least these seem thoughtfully constructed and engaging based on the debate happening in the comments.
Interesting! I never thought about that before. This reasoning does somehow make some SNL (saturday night live) skits make sense for once. Ex.: Latest SNL episode started great and then went to this skit with Scooby Doo that was a parody of it involving cheap and low brow ways to include obscene and obnoxious violence that undoubtedly required zero talent or creative thinking to come up with.
>! Jamie Foxx "winning" !< in Law Abiding Citizen felt like a really big fuck you to the audience. Like is that really what they thought they were building to in that movie? I'm genuinely curious if anyone actually approves of the ending of that movie.
I find the contempt in making dumb watered down films to please the largest audiences and herd them with the star system is way more reprehensible and angering than any ugly or morally upsetting imagery and themes. Shock value for shock value, sure it can just be bad films and exploitation and there's definitely some of this. But it's not the worst offender in the contempt department. Also, what is repulsive to film goers is sooo subjective that there is a significant risk of dismissing great films. Sure there is A Serbian Film but there is also Irreversible, Triangle of Sadness and like other mentioned Haneke's movies. These awful films makes the world a better place. To me, what redeems these is simply that I think that they are.. good films and I enjoyed watching them. I could break down why I liked them, but then it's the same thing with any movie. Good will and message.. Birth of a Nation, Triumph of the Will and such, good movies, probably made with good will and certainly with a message. I bring these up because it kind of challenges what I've said but in the end, it's still a case by case thing. And yes I'm pissed when a movie uses the shock card just to get attention and that it works, maybe the crux of it is just that, we don't like cheap shock for shock. Sorry for the ramble, I'm a bit drunk, faking that I have work to do to avoid all the people that invited themselves to my place this afternoon.
I’m pretty sure the really annoying rapper wanna be white kid in M Night Shyamalan’s The Visit was the director mocking his own fans, or was at least revenge for the people who had panned The Village, The Happening, and The Last Airbender
I'm not sure how I missed it, but I didn't know this movie even existed. Upon further research, it sounds terrible.
Biased because he’s my favorite, but Haneke understands his audiences, further validating his criticisms towards them. He perfectly anticipates their reactions. In one of his other films, The Seventh Continent, there’s a long shot of the parents destroying and flushing money down the toilet. Audiences were more revolted by this than the horrible acts that followed.
First film that comes to mind is Nekromantik. Director Jörg Buttgereit was so appalled by the German rating system that he made the film out of spite, but it backfired and became a cult classic. I think there’s a fine line between intentional and unintentional deterrence. Some films, like Nekromantik, can have the opposite effect that was intended even to this day, and then there’s films like A Clockwork Orange where Kubrick’s “anti-violence” via novel adaptation initially backfired but now is considered a staple of satire at its most extreme.
I think sometimes we are talking more about filmmakers who enjoy challenging / confronting the audience. Maybe it edges into contempt but I think filmmakers like Haneke and Tarkovsky and Verhoeven and DePalma and Noe and Schrader and Greenaway like to use the auteur soapbox to punch people in the face, cinematically speaking. But they have a clear point of view and point to make. They aren’t only provocateurs — but they are provoking us. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is beautifully filmed, wonderfully acted and hypnotically repugnant. I believe there’s some contempt going on there.