Day: June 3, 2006

i just saw spider, my second cronenberg exposure, and i need to ask: does cronenberg only do boring films?

this film made me think a little bit about the discussion people have been having about action images vs time images vs protracted, boring images (themselves a kind of time images, in their defiance of normative parameters of cinematic time and cinematic orientation). and the primary thought that gelled in my mind is the following: you can’t have it both ways. if you give us textual clues straining towards a resolution and you then delay the resolution by using loooong descriptive shots (in this case descriptive of mental decay through physical decay), you mess with the audience in an uncool, unproductive, uncreative way. if, furthermore, after all this watching and enduring, you give us a lame resolution, then you are a bad filmmaker and i’ll never watch your films again.