* I’ll never forget the well-earned farewell moment when Murray whispers into Johansson’s ears.
Perfect encapsulation of wistful.
Everyone has that moment twice in a lifetime.
She is dawn, he is twilight.
She’s uncertain as she’s just beginning to live, he’s certain that he’s lived and it’s over.
Their paths cross, their lives are at the opposite sides of the horizon, and they ‘get’ each other.
Last Tango is a darker twist on this theme.
LIT mostly seems episodic and accidental, but when all that had happened crystallize in that penultimate scene, it’s one of the most quietly stirring moments in cinema.
Chance turns into fate, fleeting though it may be.
“When John is waiting on the next business trip, you go up to that man, and you tell him the truth. Okay?”
* “Lost in Translation” captures very well the feelings of a world traveler or an expat: the sense of wonder, the lure of the strange and the exotic, the sense of alienation, and the longing for and kinship with someone from home. And the ever present fatigue.
* Lost in Translation is one of those blurry films that come into focus in a single magic moment.
In mystery stories, there is the moment that ties everything together logically.
The final piece of the puzzle clarifies what really happened and puts it altogether.
But there are stories where the tie-in is emotional than logical. LIT doesn’t have to solve or explain anything. In fact, much of the movie seems rather ordinary and pointless. Two expats just passing time in Japan. And even without that special scene at the end, it would still be a nice movie but then nothing more.
That single moment changes all else, which take on a different hue and angle.
It’s like going on a meandering hike where you go through interesting places but it just looks like more of the same — trees, bushes, weeds — but then you come upon a spot where you get an overview of the entire area through which you’d hiked. It’d be just a small part of the hike but it changes your view of the whole experience.
The ring scene in SIXTH SENSE had the same effect on me. I didn’t much care as I watching it movie but that moment just pulled everything together and made me reevaluate all that had gone before.
It’s funny how a single keystone or linchpin scene can change everything. It’s like the right note in a song.
* Women in all walks of life seem to have problems understanding the following points:
1.) You don’t demand power, you take it; and
2.) You don’t demand respect, you earn it.
Go to the female financiers, (Larry Ellison’s daughter is sitting on a nice pile all dedicated to financing films) and get them to buy scripts from women and then hire women to direct.
Put the film into the marketplace and earn that respect that you think you deserve and all you need to do to earn that respect is to make good films which earn investors good returns. That’s how men do it.
* Milius is an interesting case. A decent enough film-maker but hardly great. I think he had more interesting ideas and possibly higher intellect than Lucas or Spielberg, but he was simply not a natural film-maker.
His most special and personal film is no doubt THE BIG WEDNESDAY. I think he should have let someone else direct. His direction is shapeless and clumsy, all over the place. The movie does have its moment, and people hoped it would be another AMERICAN GRAFFITI. Handled properly, it could have been a more: a West Coast MEAN STREETS. But Milius just didn’t have movie magic in his fingers. (I still love the ending. And the three fellas look fabulous.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MBZ1jl94Cc
His DILLINGER is pretty entertaining but lacks the dash of Penn’s BONNIE AND CLYDE and the kick of Peckinpah.
Kael was sort of right about Milius. He’s too self-satisfied. He’s too much at home with his myth of manhood. Now, if others were to handle the material, they could add some irony and tension. But when Milius directs his own material, it’s too much a macho-smug manual on what it-means-to-be-a-man. It’s like comic book Hemingway. It’s teddy bear than real bear. He’s too cuddly with himself. His material has to be treated by others with some distance.
Milius was so much into himself that when he was asked about Kael(who regularly bashed him), he would say that she really loves him.
Another interesting figure who was more interesting as writer than director was Paul Schrader. Rosenbaum called Schrader a ‘right-winger’. But then, according to Rosenbaum, everyone right of Trotsky is a ‘right-winger’.
But I see what he meant. Even though Schrader became more liberalish as he rebelled against his strict religious upbringing, his hangups and obsessions have SEARCHERS-like rightwing, conservative, and ‘racist’ roots. He did write TAXI DRIVER and direct MISHIMA.
(Rosenbaum’s interview with Mekas in FILM THE FRONTLINE is pretty over the top. Rosen goes on and on about Schrader’s ‘rightwingerism’ until even a lib like Mekas says he’s not interested in that stuff)
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3697045?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
But Schrader, like Milius, just didn’t have the movie magic.
People just have different talents, and they know their limitations. Scorsese is a great director but probably not much of a writer.
The negative impact of ‘auteur theory’ was encouraging directors to take fuller charge when it would have been better to work well with others.
And some artists should just stick to what they are naturally good at. Norman Mailer, a great writer, has no film sense. His films are awful. Dylan, great composer, should leave other arts alone. His RENALDO AND CLARA is not film-making. He did become decent at painting though. McCartney’s MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR is a total embarrassment.
Milius and Schrader were good directors but nothing more. But then, film is the sort of artform where one doesn’t have to be really good. If the material is good, and if the directing is proficient enough, it can be a good movie. Eastwood made his name that way. He never was the magician like Spielberg or the master like Scorsese, but he worked hard at it and became very good. Very honest.
Of course, the French like him for that reason. Their praise of Eastwood is really a kind of putdown of Americans. It’s as if to say, ‘you Americans make good honest hardy movies but leave the real Art Films to us.’ It’s like a French chef over-praising hamburger and Apple Pie as authentic American cooking. As for real artful cooking, leave it up to the French.
It’s interesting that a bunch of key directors had ‘right-wing’-ish tendencies even if they weren’t politically rightist, and their films cast a long shadow.
Peckinpah’s STRAW DOGS was called ‘fascist’. Bergman, though no ‘rightist’, made the left ‘queasy’ with some of his films. Boorman’s DELIVERANCE and ZARDOZ are quasi-fascist. So, is EXCALIBUR. Kubrick’s films may not be conservative, but they certainly aren’t leftist either. Scorsese usually says the proper things veiled somewhat PC-like, but his films tend to be very un-PC. Then, there was Schrader and Milius. Walter Hill made some movies that made Libs happy, but he also made LONG RIDERS and others that might make Libs wince. Though I heard the studio made GERONIMO–Hill’s adaptation of Milius script–more PC, I still think it’s a powerful piece of work.
Lucas talks like a PC-tard but he was inspired by crypto-fascist Joseph Campbell, and he is obsessed with fascist aesthetics. Stone’s mind is leftist, his gut instincts are rightist. Mann is sort of like the same way. Friedkin’s movies are mostly unapologetic celebration of machismo. THE EXORCIST is possibly the most ‘conservative’ movie of the 70s, a porny moral tale against the porny devil. Lynch is a sort of deviant conservative who plays at being Lib. According to BLADE RUNNER FUTURE NOIR, Scott was a ‘conservative’ when he made the film. Probably just a mainstream Brit con, but the Wagnerianism of BLADE RUNNER has some dark subtexts about racial matters.
Perhaps, the reason why directors with right-wing tendencies(even if not politically rightist) strike a deeper chord is because they touch on the darker themes of human nature. They are more empathetic with what lies beneath.
The liberal view is there is the Good, and we should be goody-goody, and then, there is the bad, and the bad is bad. Too simple. John Sayles is a good director but his films are morally so simple and lifeless. His one special movie is BABY IT’S YOU and largely because it’s not about politics.
Robert Redford is another good director, but most of his films are forgettable… but THE CONSPIRATOR was really good cuz it eschewed the easy moralism of his earlier films.
