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Mar. 17th, 2013 04:01 amPeople were easy. Nobody knew anything about them. If it sounded good they took your word for it. They took Joyce’s word for it.
From "On Writing," an outtake from one of the "Big Two-Hearted River" drafts.
Came into my head while trying to figure out enthusiasm for Anderson's trademark cringe-inducingly longheld false notes in The Master. These pretty much are his style, so I find esteem for him even harder to understand than Homeland love (apparently everyone's upset because season 2 was "terrible" (!)).
I think it boils down to this false syllogism: People are awkward and random, The Master is awkward and random, The Master is people. So an update on Hemingway: if it sounds sufficiently awful they take your word for it.
How you even make a boring movie about Scientology is beyond me though. It's also always instructive how little it matters that a movie is beautifully, ingeniously shot. Or acted: Phoenix, who has never impressed me before, salvages a lot of the first hour.
Holy Motors is at many points extremely awkward too but a) seems to know it, and b) takes pains to amount to something. And maybe most importantly c) is awkward within normal earthly bounds of awkwardness. Maybe that explains appreciation of Anderson, that he's so audaciously off-the-charts awkward that you (not you, not me) become afraid this might be some new sort of genius. But that I've written about before, that kind of arrogant artistic terrorism: Bergman is sure of himself and says things I don't understand, Anderson is sure of himself etc., Anderson is Bergman.
From "On Writing," an outtake from one of the "Big Two-Hearted River" drafts.
Came into my head while trying to figure out enthusiasm for Anderson's trademark cringe-inducingly longheld false notes in The Master. These pretty much are his style, so I find esteem for him even harder to understand than Homeland love (apparently everyone's upset because season 2 was "terrible" (!)).
I think it boils down to this false syllogism: People are awkward and random, The Master is awkward and random, The Master is people. So an update on Hemingway: if it sounds sufficiently awful they take your word for it.
How you even make a boring movie about Scientology is beyond me though. It's also always instructive how little it matters that a movie is beautifully, ingeniously shot. Or acted: Phoenix, who has never impressed me before, salvages a lot of the first hour.
Holy Motors is at many points extremely awkward too but a) seems to know it, and b) takes pains to amount to something. And maybe most importantly c) is awkward within normal earthly bounds of awkwardness. Maybe that explains appreciation of Anderson, that he's so audaciously off-the-charts awkward that you (not you, not me) become afraid this might be some new sort of genius. But that I've written about before, that kind of arrogant artistic terrorism: Bergman is sure of himself and says things I don't understand, Anderson is sure of himself etc., Anderson is Bergman.
