[In today's diary entry, I will correct two erroneous movie reviews.]
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Here's the next page from my tome of One Billion Drawing Prompts — I wish I had shared it with yesterday's entry, cuz of the whole "L.H.O.O.Q." debacle. (The last page appeared on April Fools' Day.) As you can tell, the prompt for this drawing was "Dollar bill".
Dear diary,
I saw a couple really good movies over the last few days. This is miraculous, for it was widely assumed that good movies had gone extinct after the Y2K problem.
The Year 2000 Catastrophe, also known as the Millennium Glitch, or simply Y2K, is a computer bug related to the storage of calendar data for dates beginning at the turn of the century. Many programs represented four-digit years with only the final two digits and could not differentiate between the numbers one and seven: for example, 1977, the worst year in history, would be stored as “77”, thus making its centennial identical to 2011, which, in turn, is indistinguishable from 1611: the date associated with the publication of the King James Bible. Even the most cautious scientists predicted that the main side-effect of this lapse would be that all 21st-century cinema productions would be deprived of artistic gusto.
But I just saw two films that proved that wrong:
- Trash Humpers (2009), which was shot using low-quality equipment and edited on VCR machines.
- Vice (2018), which was made from the finest ingredients.
Both movies pleased me greatly. They reminded me that the clear spirit of fire still exists in humankind.
Now my previous (and current) favorite recent films are The Master (2012) and Wrong Cops (2013). So I already knew that the Y2K thing was bogus, cuz these films are among the best of the best. The reason I mention them is to note a recurrent phenomenon in movie criticism:
When I first saw The Master, I cried with joy. When it was over, I bowed to the screen: I prostrated myself before this work of genius. For as the Devil always sez, in William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell (circa 1793):
The worship of God is: Honouring his gifts in other men each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best; those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there is no other God.
And it’s only a coincidence that The Master happens to focus upon a modern inventor of religion — it could have been about anything in the world, even boring computer scientists, & I would’ve bowed unto it, provided that it maintained its high level of poetic sensibility.
Also when I first saw Wrong Cops, I said to myself in ecstasy: “This is the one,”—& I said this similar to the way that the higher-up says to the director who’s auditioning actresses for the lead role of his work-in-progress, in Mulholland Drive (2001), another favorite film of mine: “This is the girl,”—signifying that space and time shall henceforth never be the same; because I knew instantly that Wrong Cops was the MIRROR OF OUR AGE, and that its main character, Officer Duke, constitutes the U.S.A.’s “King Ubu” — I’m referring to the christ of the famous trilogy by Alfred Jarry: Ubu Roi, followed by Ubu Cocu (Ubu Cuckolded) and Ubu Enchaîné (Ubu in Chains) — and, yes, I am aware of the fact that Dupieux, the director of Wrong Cops, is a Frenchman (as opposed to a man who was born in the main office of the Los Angeles Police Department): it’s often been that the United States can only see its true nature thru the eyes of France: I’m thinking of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835), etc. Maybe it’s cuz the French were addicted to capitalism long before…
Anyway, I’m only trying to point out what I take to be an unfortunate habit among those who practice the calling of Cinemism (Cinema Criticism). The habit is this:
If the film is lousy and unpoetic, marred by the timidity of financiers who’re averse to risktaking, then the critic will give the title a passable review. But if the film is an unprecedented work of genius, the reviewer will pan it. (“Pan” is movie-critic slang for “berate”.)
Thus The Master and Wrong Cops both got panned by critics. And although this fact frustrated me at first, I quickly called to mind another Proverb of Hell, from the aforesaid tract by Blake:
Listen to the fool’s reproach, it is a kingly title!
So, when I recently watched these next two works of genius, Trash Humpers & Vice, I loved them so much that I desperately wanted to talk with someone about them, but I live a reclusive existence in the middle of nowhere so I’m relegated to paging thru movie magazines in lieu of human interaction, and I found & read the review of the latter, which was (as expected) an ignorant pan of that masterpiece, & then I discovered that the other film (Trash Humpers) was not even considered worthy of reviewing, so I had to search thru the archives of the magazine’s “alternative film-takes” to find it even mentioned, & the place where it was mentioned was not a proper review but a shabby two-part memoir, the first part of which was a complaint against how the film was marketed (Who even cares! I say) and the second part was an ad hoc pan of the film.
Did this made me sad? Yes. Did this make me mad? No. I reserve my madness for poetic endeavors; plus, like I mentioned above, I kept that Blake adage in my head. But I still would like to get even with these smug skim-reviewers, because, as I said in my bestselling holy book, “Vengeance is mine”; therefore pardon me for using the rest of this blog post to copy and react to these wrongheaded articles that deserve a knuckle-rapping.
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I watched the end of Vice sobbing in tears (I know that I always say this, but that’s cuz I sob in tears at everything sublime, & I strive to spend my time only on the sublime), because the main thrust of the film so devastatingly encapsulates everything that plummeted about the U.S. since the Bush-Cheney administrative affront; & then, with this knowledge & these memories fresh in one’s mind, the fine song by Bernstein from his West Side Story (1957) ambushes the viewer — the tune called “America”, which in the context sounds sinisterly zippy — this combo was a flash of eternity too intense for such a sensitive plant.
Everything free in America
For a small fee in America!
Now I’m just glancing at the Wikipedia page for Adam McKay, to refresh my memory about his filmography. It’s interesting that my liking for his films starts at a certain point in his career and continues till now, but that everything prior to 2010 doesn’t much move me. Is this too simple of a formula? Everything that McKay directed before 2010 seems just OK; but all the films that he’s made from that point on, starting with The Other Guys, which was released in that year, & continuing thru Anchorman 2 (2013), to The Big Short (2015), and most recently Vice (2018) — all these movies are masterful, in my correct judgment.
Does it strike you as strange that I’d praise a sequel while not much liking its original? (I’m speaking of Anchorman.) Well, so be it — if you watch both films, you’ll agree that the latter is strong whereas the former is hackwork. I wish viewers could somehow bypass the initial movie and start with the 2013 production, but they’d probably be too confused if they did that, cuz viewers always like to familiarize themselves with the characters and all that nonsense, they can’t just dive right in, in medias res, and use their intuition to discern all truth like gods. That’s why I’m the broke blogger and you’re my rich readership. I’m the bloodhound that you employ as a companion in all your travels since I can sniff out contraband.
*
& as far as Harmony Korine, the director of Trash Humpers, he’s a dionysiac genius whose whole filmography interests me, whether the films “work” or not. But my favorite is Julien Donkey-Boy (1999).
*
Oh & by the way, my anticipation of McKay’s Vice was that it’d look 2nd-rate alongside Oliver Stone’s political masterpieces JFK (1992) and Nixon (1996); but my feeling after this initial screening is that McKay did a bang-up job on his very own terms. I was proud of my son. (I’m speaking for Stone when I refer to Vice’s McKay as my only begotten. I hope he doesn’t mind.)
OK, ring the bell & start the fight...
Round 1: Vice
What I'm gonna do here is copy the words of this bad review that I dug up, & then I'll react to it. So the text will alternate back & forth between snippets from the review and my own superior opinion. I hope that's not confusing. My goal here is laziness, not confusion.
OK so some nameless scoundrel begins his pan by writing:
I’m pretty sure I’ve never quoted William Shakespeare in a film review, but the words that keep ringing in my head regarding Adam McKay’s “Vice” are courtesy of the bard: “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
No: your review is sound and fury, you unlettered mouse.
A lot happens in "Vice." . . . There’s certainly an interesting story waiting to be told about the George W. Bush administration and the role Vice President Dick Cheney played in shaping the current state of our country. But this movie just isn’t it.
Wrong. This movie IS it. (Learn to open your eyes when you watch.)
The film lacks insight, ingenuity, and intensity...
This film is replete with insight ingenuity & intensity.
For people even remotely engaged in the national political landscape for the last two decades, “Vice” offers nothing new to consider.
Shakespeare’s histories & much of the Athenian dramatists offer nothing new but the best retellings of what is known; & so does Vice.
The factual beats are all here. It’s the “why should we care” that’s missing.
Why we should care is obvious: the expanse of warfare and the loss of personal liberty, to begin with. Did you seriously not know this?
Part of the problem is a glib, mocking tone that doesn't fit the material.
The tone of the direction is spot-on. It saves the film from being a boring lecture.
In one scene, the actors interrupt their own conversation to comment on the Shakespearean nature of it all, then transition into actual Bardian verse. I’ve always bristled at people in movies who say things like “This only happens in the movies,” but this is a new level of that same overly self-aware problem.
I loved this about the film, because it was done earnestly. If it hadn’t possessed earnestness, I would’ve disliked it. And, to be clear, if a director approaches material straightforwardly, not self-consciously or self-referentially, that can work equally well — it all hinges upon the importance of being earnest.
And don’t get me started on the narrative framing of “Vice,” which comes courtesy of a mysterious character played by Jesse Plemons, whose ultimate connection to Cheney left me scratching my head as to what McKay was saying by having him narrate this story. The answer? I don’t think he knows. And that’s the biggest problem.
This device of the everyman narrator was one of my favorite elements of the film. I kept nudging my viewing companion and saying “I love this idea.”
McKay often thinks that hitting the beats of a true story in a clever way is the same thing as historical commentary. It’s not.
Thank God for McKay.
Making a reference is not the same thing as writing drama.
Yes & to reference the drama critic Samuel Johnson: the ignorant always imagine themselves giving some proof of delicacy, when they refuse to be pleased.
Presenting a historical event in a way that other filmmakers may not have considered only matters if there’s meaning behind the presentation.
Forget meaning. Re-screen the “no reason” speech from the opening of Quentin Dupieux’s 2010 film Rubber.
Being different isn’t the same thing as being smart.
Right. It’s far better.
Rockwell refuses to go with the goofy idiot version of Bush we’ve seen before, which makes for a much more interesting character…
I can’t say exactly why I like Rockwell in this role, but I do think he’s good; and I mean no disrespect or negative criticism of him when I say that the only yearning I had about the W. Bush character is that McKay would’ve chosen his longtime comedy partner Will Ferrell to play him, as he’s done in McKay’s previous productions. I never saw the broadway play that those guys did, but I really loved that video that I saw where Ferrell plays W. interviewing himself (“Bush & Bush” — I just found this video online; I’m not sure if it’s part of the HBO special or what: I haven’t seen that either, cuz HBO isn’t available via the Minnesota library). In other words, I think the zany idea to try to stuff Ferrell’s W. in the same film with Bale’s Cheney would be as awesomely incommensurate as the biblical poet’s decision to place Yahweh God next to Moses in Exodus.
Biopics made while the history in question is still being written often falter.
That’s why this one is so thrilling: it’s a great artistic risk that McKay is taking, and he survives: he wrestles the exterminating angel to a standstill. That’s an accomplishment.
All I know is that Cheney deserved an acidic, smart movie that’s as unforgettable as his political career.
Why say that a draconian deserves anything? Far from remembering his “political career”, I wish that it could be blotted from history; but McKay’s film is so acidic & smart, the sole offense one can fault it for is that its exuberance stops us from simply forgetting Dick Cheney.
Round 2: Trash Humpers
Note: the film from the review that we pulverized in Round One—VICE—is easily available at present, in the bad year 2019: you can stream it online, or borrow it from your local library like I did; or maybe you can even still catch it playing in the theater. But this next film that we will now fight to the death about—TRASH HUMPERS—is very hard to find; at least it was for me; so I will give the link to the place where I ended up screening it, at the end of this here text blob. The dirty truth is, I just watched an upload on YouTube, with foreign subtitles superimposed on it, which is to say Non-English subtitles; but that was no problem: I honestly think it almost makes the film better; tho I will not say why. So here is the address for the version that I screened — if, by the time that YOU try to watch it, this instance has been deleted or removed or banned in your country, all I can do is beg your forgiveness; I just wish to help — failing to fetch the film at first, keep encouraged: missing it one place, search another; perhaps it has stopped somewhere waiting for you, as Whitman always sez at the end of his "Song of Myself"; in other words, keep an eye out; try your best and do not give up: https://youtu.be/0JJhxo-etI0.
And some other nameless scoundrel begins a pan of Trash Humpers by writing:
The idea is... well, it's pretty much right there in the title. A group of Harmony Korine's pals in Nashville got together, dressed up like old people, and smashed things. Also, they shrieked and laughed. It's like watching a homemade VHS made by some anonymous high school gang of mildly pervy, goofball friends to amuse themselves one weekend when they had nothing better to do. And they're so self-satisfied…
This reaction to Korine’s work of genius reminds me of the “Realism” half of the aphorism from Oscar Wilde’s Preface to Dorian Gray (swapping Korine’s title for that subject word, and upping the date): “The 21st-century dislike of the film TRASH HUMPERS is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.”
Surely it must be some kind of statement (like the equally ostentatious, 100-percent bogus, Korine-scripted "Kids") about End of Times in Which We Live.
How could anyone call either film 'bogus' or 'ostentatious' as an insult? Bogus means “not genuine or true; fake”. Trash Humpers is purposely, poetically so. (Never forget that art is the root of the word artificial.) And, if I were the reviewer, I’d never dare to say, just cuz I myself have not personally experienced similar scenarios (thank God) that Larry Clark’s Kids (1995) is about things that do not happen in our world.
Is Trash Humpers the longest 78 minutes of my moviegoing life, or did it just seem that way? I can't say for sure.
I CAN indeed say for sure: the film only felt that way to you, cuz you weren’t having any fun. Time flies when you’re having REAL fun. My own experience was that the film flew by in a flash. I just re-watched it with my sweetheart Saturday evening, and it seemed even MORE economic, in the sense that a poem by Emily Dickinson is economic (refracting the world in very few words). The film’s length seems perfect to me. Maybe it’s one of the portions of eternity that is too great for the eye of modern movie reviewers.
After we finished screening it, we went the bed; then, when we woke up in the morning, I said to my sweetheart: “I think that Trash Humpers is Korine’s Wrong Cops (which, as I said above, is my favorite by Dupieux and also the UBU of our age) — it’s the same as I always say about David Lynch’s Dumbland (2002). If we lived in a more perceptive time, the general buzz among the public would be about Trash Humpers instead of whatever latest superhero film just conned the box office.
Like all of Korine's output, "Trash Humpers" is art presented as garbage or the other way around — in this case, something like pretentious 1980s "performance art" captured on VHS. (Korine says it's not really a movie, but "more like an artifact. You can imagine it being buried in a ditch somewhere.")
Well it’s not Kornie’s fault that there is no division in reality between art and trash, any more than there is a definition in science that can separate life from non-life (for lack of a better term). And regarding “performance art”, I think that it can be executed strongly or weakly, like any endeavor; so it’s not helpful to use the term pejoratively. And I say the same thing about that word “pretentious”, which seems out-of-favor in this dull age; it is defined as “attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed”. Alright, name me one great work of art that isn’t pretentious. My stance is that all the most sublime artworks are pretentious, because each reaches a height that didn’t exist prior to being fabricated by the very artwork that dared to imagine itself attaining that unprecedented place. It’s called genuine creation. “Greater importance, talent, culture, etc.” is established via the act of persuading the imagination to accept FAR “more than is actually possessed”. Think Finnegans Wake. Think Goethe’s Faust Part II. Think William Blake’s Jerusalem.
Most of the performers are less-than-gifted improvisers.
Every performance is genius in this film. It’s OK that you missed it; I myself fell asleep the first time I watched Last Year at Marienbad (1961), but now it’s considered by my church to be one of the most sacred masterpieces. There’s no shame in not “clicking in” to a truly challenging artwork’s puzzle on the very first viewing. Simply try, try again. You’ll see that the problem wasn’t with the performances but with your expectation about what they should be. Perhaps the fact that you were prepared to judge “improvisations” was part of the problem. For this film makes its own luck.
[I can’t resist confessing that I stole that last line from something that the magnate Ballin Mundson sez in the movie Gilda (1946).]
So, that's about it for me. I think I found it more depressing than shocking or interesting.
I found it depressing too, for it’s a mirror to our age; but my sadness was mitigated by a certain everlaughing quality that pervades all truly divine creation. The fact that you did not find the film shocking is good, as well: shock-art is low-hanging fruit.
What I mean to say is that your cup of interest, which you claim is currently empty, will be filled to overflowing once you accomplish your conversion experience.
Next now my nameless reviewer names another reviewer & quotes her, so I’ll give the reference because I like what she says (her words bolster my “contra-improv” point above).
Karina Longworth wrote: “Influenced by surveillance and prank videos but hardly haphazard (in fact, its nonaesthetic is the result of intricate design and careful production), Korine's faked relic about a separatist group of [...] miscreants is the ultimate twisted fairy-tale allegory for our decaying times.”
I agree with this. Yet here’s the nameless reviewer’s reaction:
“Faked relic” — sure. But I wonder what difference it makes if it's haphazard or if “its nonaesthetic is the result of intricate design and careful production”?
It’s fair and wise to ask what difference this makes. I can answer:
Remember how you judged the performances as mediocre when you assumed they were just winging the material? Well if you understand that there’s a confident intention (or at least a firm insistence, which comes thru the curation of editing) behind the barbarity, then you can attribute the ugliness to characters and representations rather than seeing it as merely documented (you can thus suspend your disbelief, your moral kneejerk, and open your heart to the implied criticism of these ugly acts, as opposed to bracing yourself against the material because you fear that it’s “real” — which word I put in hooks because I mean it as in the phrase reality television, where the line between scripted play and actuality or improvisation is hopelessly blurred)...
But I feel that I’m being too wordy with this attempted answer — it has an academic overcomplexity to it. I’m trying to say something like:
It matters whether you take Korine’s film as “just impromptu clowning” or as having been planned, in the same way, and for the same reasons, that it matters whether you view a collection of soup labels at the grocery store versus the same sight in a museum exhibit. For in the first case you’re thinking “Company X is trying to sell me their product” yet in the second instance you’re wondering “What the heck was the artist getting at?” I think it’s more rewarding to wonder, and to be lured toward wondering. If a fool would content himself with just pointing vaguely at the shelves of a supermarket and saying “Over there, that’s my art — all that stuff there; you get the picture” it would be much weaker of an artistic act than actually going to the trouble of framing a variety of large-sized copies of mass-produced soup labels.
And yet I think I should add that I myself am not a huge admirer of Warhol’s soup paintings: I just think that they cause a similar misunderstanding among spectators as Korine’s film does, and the less generous response in either case — that is, the thoughtlessly scornful rejection of either effort — is less harmonious & humane than MINE OWN stance, which is to embrace the enigma. Blake’s Marriage is useful here, too; for he writes:
This is shown in the Gospel, where Messiah prays to the Father to send the Comforter or Desire that Reason may have Ideas to build on.
In a time of intellectual poverty, Korine offers us his genius vision of our fallen state, so that we may build upward from this foundation. I see no reason why we couldn’t even end up storming Heaven and taking it back. But in order to do so, first we must be willing to exert a little effort. As Emerson always sez: Nothing is got for nothing.
For the record, my dog Edith hated the film. She groaned and whined a lot, even though there weren't many four-legged mammals in it.
If you simply recite aloud to your dog, in a loving voice, everything I just wrote in reply to your criticism, I have no doubt that Edith will understand. Also read her these last two “Proverbs of Hell” from my good friend Blake:
- As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
- The crow wish’d every thing was black; the owl, that every thing was white.
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