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Reasons to watch films
Jan. 19th, 2002 10:19 pmSometime earlier this year I watched Requiem for a Dream. It was, to put it mildly, a traumatic experience. However, it was also a fantastic film that I enthusiastically recommended to as many people as I could lay my hands on.
I was just chatting to Joe, who is planning on renting a movie tonight, and suggested he watch it. He said that he never wanted to and, when I asked him why, told me that he'd been told that it was horrible.
So I thought about this, and realised that it had just never occured to me that this might be a reason to not watch a film. A lot of my favourite films are horrible. Hellraiser has scenes of extreme violence, Bad Taste has one of the few scenes I've ever seen that made me feel ill, Naked doesn't have a single likable character, Brazil ends up with the main character tortured into madness having lost his one true love, The Wall is the story of the main character's psychotic break, Happiness has a paedophile as one of the central characters, Natural Born Killers centers around two 'psychotic fucks', Schindler's List spends 2 hours following the deliberate mistreatment and extermination of hundreds/thousands of Jews.
(I should point out that I do love nice films too. Chasing Amy, The Iron Giant, The Princess Bride, LA Story and The Lion King also feature in my top rated films).
To me, the main criteria for watching a film is that it's well made and drags me in. If it has believable characters, incredible direction and a point to make, that's even better. I want to be made to feel something, if that thing is horror at the world then I'd rather feel that than watch a mediocre film that compromised itself in order to not offend anyone.
To me, Requiem for a Dream is one of those films. It's brutal and uncompromising, and it unflinchingly shows the downward spiral that obsession can cause. I was talking to Gina the other day and compared it to Trainspotting, only that Trainspotting shows the main character getting out at the end, and leaves you with a fairy-tale ending where the main character survives heroin addiction without any permanent scars, still looking pretty and with a wallet full of cash. Requiem for a Dream doesn't pull any punches and doesn't flinch.
If you like that kind of brutal honesty in a film, and want to see an incredibly talented director take the techniques he piloted in Pi to the next level, then this is definitely worth watching. It also has an absolutely fantastic soundtrack by Clint Mansell and the Kronos Quarter. If anyone has seen my copy recently, I'd like to have it back :->
Getting back, however, to my original point (sorry to rant on about how fantastic the film is but, as you can tell, I love it to bits):
When I first started watching films outside the mainstream I tried to introduce other people I knew to them. With some of them (some of the people and some of the films) I was successful but, having the amount of empathy and common sense that I do, it took me quite some time to realise that other peoples tastes in movies just weren't the same as mine; that, no matter how much I loved a movie, other people might not find it to their taste. It just didn't make any sense that people could look at these fantastic creations and not be blown away by them in the same way I was. Of course, being older and wiser, I now realise that it's all a matter of taste. Some people like some experiences and don't like others. Some people have more of a tolerance for particular kinds of experience (and by tolerance I mean it in a chemical sense, so that those with a higher tolerance need a higher level just to feel anything) and some people just enjoy certain emotions more or less than others. Of course, when I feel so strongly about something I still feel this need to share it with others, so I have to catch myself and remember that just because I like putting myself through 2 hours of hell, other people might prefer a horror movie (a genre I'm finding myself enjoying even less than I used to, which was never very much).
It's all a matter of personal taste, and much though I wish more people had mine, it's definitely more interesting to have a wide range of them about than it would be if we all liked the same things.
I was just chatting to Joe, who is planning on renting a movie tonight, and suggested he watch it. He said that he never wanted to and, when I asked him why, told me that he'd been told that it was horrible.
So I thought about this, and realised that it had just never occured to me that this might be a reason to not watch a film. A lot of my favourite films are horrible. Hellraiser has scenes of extreme violence, Bad Taste has one of the few scenes I've ever seen that made me feel ill, Naked doesn't have a single likable character, Brazil ends up with the main character tortured into madness having lost his one true love, The Wall is the story of the main character's psychotic break, Happiness has a paedophile as one of the central characters, Natural Born Killers centers around two 'psychotic fucks', Schindler's List spends 2 hours following the deliberate mistreatment and extermination of hundreds/thousands of Jews.
(I should point out that I do love nice films too. Chasing Amy, The Iron Giant, The Princess Bride, LA Story and The Lion King also feature in my top rated films).
To me, the main criteria for watching a film is that it's well made and drags me in. If it has believable characters, incredible direction and a point to make, that's even better. I want to be made to feel something, if that thing is horror at the world then I'd rather feel that than watch a mediocre film that compromised itself in order to not offend anyone.
To me, Requiem for a Dream is one of those films. It's brutal and uncompromising, and it unflinchingly shows the downward spiral that obsession can cause. I was talking to Gina the other day and compared it to Trainspotting, only that Trainspotting shows the main character getting out at the end, and leaves you with a fairy-tale ending where the main character survives heroin addiction without any permanent scars, still looking pretty and with a wallet full of cash. Requiem for a Dream doesn't pull any punches and doesn't flinch.
If you like that kind of brutal honesty in a film, and want to see an incredibly talented director take the techniques he piloted in Pi to the next level, then this is definitely worth watching. It also has an absolutely fantastic soundtrack by Clint Mansell and the Kronos Quarter. If anyone has seen my copy recently, I'd like to have it back :->
Getting back, however, to my original point (sorry to rant on about how fantastic the film is but, as you can tell, I love it to bits):
When I first started watching films outside the mainstream I tried to introduce other people I knew to them. With some of them (some of the people and some of the films) I was successful but, having the amount of empathy and common sense that I do, it took me quite some time to realise that other peoples tastes in movies just weren't the same as mine; that, no matter how much I loved a movie, other people might not find it to their taste. It just didn't make any sense that people could look at these fantastic creations and not be blown away by them in the same way I was. Of course, being older and wiser, I now realise that it's all a matter of taste. Some people like some experiences and don't like others. Some people have more of a tolerance for particular kinds of experience (and by tolerance I mean it in a chemical sense, so that those with a higher tolerance need a higher level just to feel anything) and some people just enjoy certain emotions more or less than others. Of course, when I feel so strongly about something I still feel this need to share it with others, so I have to catch myself and remember that just because I like putting myself through 2 hours of hell, other people might prefer a horror movie (a genre I'm finding myself enjoying even less than I used to, which was never very much).
It's all a matter of personal taste, and much though I wish more people had mine, it's definitely more interesting to have a wide range of them about than it would be if we all liked the same things.
