Saw two films with ambitions to reframe the satire of corporate mindsets, one of which fell apart (or maybe never really cohered at all), the other of which I loved.
Severance sends a group of corporate-office types out for some team-building in the backwoods of Hungary, then sics some rejects from Hostel at ’em. The film’s set-up–and its snarky title–gave me high hopes, as it promised to be a scary slasher flick and a caustic deconstruction of cutthroat capitalism. Alas, it was not to be. The humor is mild, rarely cutting; the cutting, too, is mild, and rarely interesting.
Meanwhile, Lars von Trier’s The Boss of it All seemed in reviews to be all trite concept (actor hired to impersonate a boss never seen by the office) and trite aestheticism (yet again, von Trier trots out some technical device meant to bang your head against the fourth wall–a camera that randomly shifts its framing of the shot, so that characters are seen from the bridge of their nose up, or four-fifths off to the left of our view). It was, however, a hoot–and smart, returning to old themes for this director (the purpose of art, the failures of sentiment, the hopeless inadequacy of realism) and this genre (the narcissism of corporate ambition, the false bonhomie of community, the acidity of greed) but working all kinds of lovely and–despite so much obviousness–many subtle, sly, often outstanding variations. It’s one of my favorite films of the year.
In particular, I relished the way you get to not have the cake (von Trier digging explicitly and constantly at our desire for plot and emotional identification) and eat it too (von Trier actually making a fairly conventional comedy/satire of art and commerce). The sitcommy set-up proved a delight as the lead actor, playing a leaden actor hired to be a boss and gulled into all kinds of office politics he was not informed about beforehand, has to constantly improvise against an ever-trickier set of unfolding revelations, even as he (“offstage,” to the guy that hired him) complains about how improvisation is the shallowest of art forms, all about pleasing the audience and failing to reach any kind of aesthetic form. You can take such commentary as meta- in many ways, von Trier yet again spoofing von Trier. Or meta-art, or meta-corporation. Or you can leave the meta- and simply relish the thing itself.
Unlike others, I tend to emphasize LvT’s loony sense of play (here in full antic bloom), and am generally not bothered by–or often don’t even recognize–what some diagnose as narcissistic pretension. Maybe because the first film of his I actually made it through was The Kingdom, I see his films as simultaneously prankish and acutely attuned to the very genre pleasures they seem to deride. (That film scared me and made me laugh; this film made me laugh and made me think.) This film, like his best stuff, strikes me as a wonderful game–and he invites us to play in any number of ways, rather than just one.
And, as my strange post title may indicate, he yet again has some weird insider fun mocking Danes and their rivalries with neighboring small countries. This time, Icelanders come in and scowl and quote the sagas even as they also astutely scorn the Danish propensities for blathering talk and mindless sentimentality. Good stuff.
I defy you to watch Dogville and not think “narcissistic pretension.”
Ah, you’ve got me there. I have avoided Dogville and Manderlay, and only watched an hour of Zentropa.
I have to say I enjoyed Zentropa’s noir showing off very enjoyable, though not much of the “substance” of the film stays with me (what a dualistic giveaway!)
i enjoy very enjoyable muchly, neither me too!
I watched about thirty minutes of The Boss last night, didn’t care, didn’t think twice about sealing up the Netflix envelope. Still, I can’t disagree with anything Mike says. I liked Dogville, particularly its final, table-turning 45 minutes or so.
mike, you’ve given dogville four stars in netflix.
i liked it myself very much.
Did I? I’m such a gasbag. It’s definitely worth four stars if you haven’t seen it. Seeing it, it may be worth more, or less. I just went and checked and apparently rated Zentropa 3 stars, I guess for the 45 minutes I saw. The Element of Crime got 2 stars, and that I recall disliking (it was very yellowish), and making it all the way through.
But no one should be taken in by that tired old truism of art theory that one must see to evaluate. If I learned nothing else from Arnab in grad school, and I am pretty sure I learned nothing else from Arnab in grad school, it is that one need not consume to produce.
I have this vision of Mike, in a great flourish of cinematic style, waking up at four in the morning, pouring himself a jug of coffee and crawling to the computer in order to rate every film, novel and work of non-fiction with a variety of stars, numbers and/or thumbs up or down. He’s rated over 3000 Netflix titles (a few, it appears he’s never actually finished) and I’m wary of mentioning GoodReads.com. I thought that might actually be a purposeful site for those of us who like to read as well as watch, but after the umpteen thousands of ratings pouring in from Gio, Simon and Mike I feel lost, overwhelmed, in awe, certainly dazed, mostly confused.
jeff, i’m very sad that you are not participating in goodreads! mike is mike, but me and simon, well, it’s different. really. i have always wanted to have a record of all the books i’ve read, so i went at it. those are it, ALL the books (well, novels; the three theory books i’ve read are not mentioned, because it’s too embarrassing to have read only three) i’ve read. ever. i’m sure you’ve read a lot more!!!!
please come back!!! discuss the books!
I rate Jeff’s comment above 2 stars. I haven’t read it, but I’m sure it’s no better than 2. Maybe 3.
i will remind mike that my comments on books i hadn’t read (only because i was a broke international student and couldn’t afford to buy them) were much sharper than those made by people who had.
The poorly kept secret of course is that Mike can’t read!
Hell, the sad thing is that I don’t even know what I’ve read (outside of professional responsibilities, I probably read one or two novels a month; and I read many more than that when I was single and not yet a father). Still, I don’t keep a list and my memory is obviously substandard. I actually asked the librarian if I could get a print out of every title I’ve checked out in the last five years so I could get a handle on what I have read as well as what was discarded (to keep up with my GoodRead peers), but, alas, they do not store such information (one less reason to be concerned about the FBI).
if they kept the information they couldn’t tell you. isn’t that how the patriot act works?
in any case, you could add the books you are reading, jeffy-boy! start keeping a record now, no?
Well, this is curious. If we weren’t on goodreads, would you still be going there–or would other strangers’ records be an inhibitor?
I guess what gets me is that these ratings mean little to me–they’re mostly my own little self-absorbed obsessiveness. I kept records on Netflix long before I had Netflix friends, for instance; ratings are always more public in goodreads, but even there the stars are more like small bits of shorthand as much for me as for others. I might glance at others’ star-ratings but I am mainly interested in expanding my own reach–and I take the stars about as seriously (even in Netflix) as I take blurbs at Amazon. And this applies to my own stars, too, as I think my extravagant or sloppy ratings indicate.
I *do* take seriously reviews; I write far fewer (here, at goodreads, and especially at Netflix) than texts consumed — reviews are public engagements, less self-absorbed and more (I hope) attempts to start the social pleasures of dialogue, debate. I enjoy seeing what you guys are up to on Netflix, but I *rely* on your comments and reactions here. Same with goodreads–it’s fun to see a quick notation, but… it’s the reviews that thrill and excite (and enrage) me.
I think maybe this conversation belongs on another thread–but, whether this more private clubby blog or the more public faux-clubby goodreads, the nature and investments of “community” in such situations is pretty damn interesting. I see star-ratings like bumper stickers or buttons, cute but relatively insignificant public shows of one’s sensibilities. Yet I’ve had a fairly interesting number of strangers who’ve become my ‘friends’ at goodreads because I wrote a comment on a review or they read one of mine.
And I don’t even know how to make sense of facebook, so I won’t start. (I can get a rough bead on why booklovers might gravitate toward goodreads, but I could probably take it or leave it, and do the latter whenever busy; I am, however, almost absurdly dependent on this blog’s group of fellow cinephiles. So I can find some parallel in my students’ investments in other virtual communities, I guess.)
OK. First, I was taking the piss a bit (and Reynolds has heard this complaint once before). Second, it’s not the strangers that interest me. Then again I didn’t post as much as I would have liked at Textualities and that was a small group of folks who I know and care about (however virtual our interactions). I didn’t intend to denegrate the site’s potential use value. Mostly, I found the rapid influx of so many ratings of so many books in such a short amount of time to be overwhelming (for me, personally). I just couldn’t keep up and I felt as if there wasn’t a lot of discussion taking place. I also have to admit that moving house and starting school have made for a stressful month or three and I’m not reading as much as I’d like to be (though Cate has been getting her nightly read and I can say nice things about HP7 as well as The Golden Compass. Indeed, GoodReads could be a valuable way to enter into a conversation about the merits or disappointments of a book with some obviously invested readers. I particularly remember Mike’s lovely tribute to his father and the good (and bad) reads they have shared in the past and which they will continue to share as Mike begins his fifth decade on the planet (happy birthday buddy). Finally, if We Like To Watch didn’t exist, I’d be a lesser man. Truly, this site means a lot to me.
i have no idea what this goodreads business is–though it sounds like a cult. i only recently discovered that some members of this blog also have a book blog (obviously, only for white people). but i do think it is a good thing if this discussion veers as far away from lars von trier as possible.
i do trust ratings on netflix, however, and i take seriously the ratings you lot assign there. the occasional discrepancy between netflix ratings and blog reviews may have something to do with what chris noted a long time ago: a tendency sometimes for us to talk movies down (and possibly up). i also personally tend to give 3 star ratings to films which i didn’t like very much but found interesting or ambitious in some way. for instance, i gave spike lee’s he got game three stars, even though if i reviewed it here i’d probably have more negative than positive things to say about it. yet, it doesn’t seem right to give it the same rating i gave the alamo or the shawshank redemption.
You’re not white? Next thing, you’ll be telling me that Chris is a guy.
And now back to von Trier.
I’m not sure I’ve grasped the appeal of Goodreads. does the migration there mean that “textualities” is defunct?
arnab, the book blog has been linked to here repeatedly since its inception. we also linked to WLTW from it, so the links appear in the WLTW dashboard. we do have a no-jew policy, but well-behaved ex-members of the british empire are welcome.
michael, goodreads seems to get quicker exchanges from mike and mark, at least, so i use it more often these days. i just posted a longish review on textualities, but i don’t think anyone read it. in any case, a book blog requires, i think, more people, as the books we read, unlike the movies we watch, seem to be very different, and we seem quite unwilling to let ourselves be influenced in our choice of reading material! (this includes me, though, i must say, i’ve been learning a lot from discussing books with you all. i’m reading very differently now from the way in which i read only one year ago, and i owe it all to mike, michael, and jeff).
i’ll be happy to discuss the yiddish policemen union if people are up for it. it’s not metaphysical-deep, but it’s got some interesting thingies to it, genre thingies, life thingies, etc.
i’d be a lesser man, too, without WLTW.
(everyone, the book blog is at http://www.miamibooks.wordpress.com.)
gio, what is the wltw dashboard? and i can’t tell you how hurt i am that i was never invited to join that blog. now that i’m no longer in grad school i’ve begun to read books. some i even finish. but i don’t need your pitying delayed invitations. i’m going to continue to discuss books on my own super-secret book blog. so there!
arnab, sweetness, and to think i was the first person you thought of when you started this blog! what a cow i am, what an irredeemable cow!
i didn’t need to be the first. i would have settled for fourth. but, oh, to be never invited at all!!! to think you’ve all been reading books behind my back. next i’ll learn that chris and john have a secret blog about gardening that they never told me about either.
Arnab, you’re welcome to register for our blog, but John does moderate posts (and has a particular hatred for climbing hydrangeas): http://www.gardeningblog.net
I’d participate in the reading blog but ‘Falling Man’ is the only novel I’ve read in the last six months and just reading Reynolds’ comments on it exhausted me. I try to teach my kids that movies exist so you don’t have to read, a philosophy that crumbled when my son had to read ‘The Outsiders’ for school and I watched the movie with him. How could Francis Ford Coppola make such a crappy movie? And whatever happened to Ralph Macchio? Have we done a thread on movies that improved on the book?
Chris–start that thread. I promise a post on Garp and maybe others, if I can think of ’em.
really? is that really your blog, chris? why do you have a noose hanging from a tree?
‘Cos it’s a White Oak, Gio. Don’t you know anything about the flora of Jena, LA?
so, Gio, where should I pose my pithy remarks concerning books–textualities (a new look?) or goodreads? of course, I have to read something first–truth is, I have read a number of horror potboilers in the last month but I’m not sure what to say about them. I’ll check out your Chabon post–I always read the posts there, even if I don’t comment on them.
as for Ralph Macchio, I have a related question. Who is the former child star who became a lesser regular on The Sopranos–I know I’ve seen the guy on some show, but I can’t place him. first, I thought he was Ralph Macchio but no match. He plays the low level mafioso whose girlfriend Artie lusts after…and when he tries to rip off the restaurant owner, Artie beats him….who is this guy? I think he played some kid’s tough talking New Yawk sidekick (and the laughs were plentiful!) Punky Brewster??
Perhaps Max Casella, who plays Benny Fazio? He was in some scheme with the Albanian waitress to rip off AmEx cards from Versuvio’s.
Chris–I love you. yes, that’s him….and the show I’m thinking of was Doogie Howser, M.D. (I don’t recall EVER watching that show, but I must have caught it somewhere). apparently he played “Vinnie Delpino” for 44 episodes between 1989-1993. no doubt he was hilarious.
I love you, too, Chris.
Antichrist had a few very, very wonderful setpieces, with GORGEOUS and horrifying images. Watch the first few minutes, their sharply-textured black and white images at a very slow speed, a lovely aria singing over the action — this is, even with the explicit penetration shot, a beautiful bit of horror. I had such high hopes, a film capturing that sublime intersection of the aesthetic and vicious which von Trier has ceaselessly mapped. And there are some amazing images later, particularly a therapy sequence for poor beleaguered Charlotte Gainsbourg. And that crazy cool fox who mutters “Chaos Reigns.”
And that’s it folks. There’s a lot more–more horrifying, muddled psychoanalytic stuff, a relentless engagement with the misogyny of much horror and Freudian psychoanalysis that may be itself relentlessly misogynyistic… but most of all, it’s got oodles of tedium. By the time someone had a hole drilled through their leg and a weight attached, I wasn’t even able to rouse myself from my stuporous daze. The clitorectomy couldn’t enrage, as it was too bound up in the tedium. Maybe that’s a comment on the genre, but whether reflexive or simply present, the movie is the longest 8 hours I’ve ever experienced.
i can’t wait not to watch it!
Yeah, I spent about fifteen minutes with this via Netflix’s video on demand option. Just couldn’t go there and don’t feel as if I missed much of anything. Clitorectomy, eh? Self-administered or under a doctor’s care? Wait . . . don’t answer. I REALLY don’t want to know.
*like* jeff’s comment!