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May. 19th, 2017 12:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionSo my noir definition boiled down to something like: the story of someone coming to realize how wrong everyone is. In lighter noir the discoverer can maybe then make things a bit better, in, er, dark noir they pretty much just learn all are screwed.
The Coens stick to a version of dark noir, but one generally comic, since the wrongness of everybody is not anything you could even imagine changing about them once you see them - everyone's pretty much a toddler (seriously, at least one huge man-baby pops up in nearly every movie of theirs). Nothing's to be done, so their truest hero is Lebowski, though his whole story consists of his forgetting to not be a more conventional hero (thus avoid having a story); the only thing saving him from being destroyed by this error, like the similarly self-betraying Daoist Thornton is, is that he's become so good at doing nothing that his attempts to act are mostly ridiculous, nonstarters. Don't seek justice, don't seek to persuade, don't pursue any goals at all, you'll only make things worse. Even Madge (?) in Fargo saves no one at all - the best even the police can do is sweep up without getting swept up. Gabriel Byrne in Miller's Crossing learns he can only keep the other toddlers in line by propping up a leviathan-like supertoddler and then leaving town, since his brains, while superior, are still yoked to a toddler's emotions, thus a force able to take down the very leviathan they've set up and that can't be trusted not to. Their protagonists are just smart enough to recognize, though often too late, how dumb they in fact are.
Herzog is pretty much on their page but is less concerned with greed than violence, premeditated or negligent (e.g. responsibility for one's own or another's death). His protagonists typically learn nothing, but we learn about them that they are essentially mad thus not to be blamed, and that dampening their violence dampens their very life force. He's both a dark-comic noirist and a romantic! The hard, gemlike flame we discover within us cuts people up and sets the landscape on fire.
Lynch is of course both also, but is about love. We are all susceptible to breakage, and the breaking will occur reliably enough - in others, in ourselves - that we often can only bear witness to the fact, and note that a cracked person is still a person, not a crack. Evil in Lynch is literally perversion - thwarted or stifled love is what leads to hatred and violence. But love will always be thwarted and stifled, and people cannot prevent themselves from falling in love. As in the Coens' Fargo, law enforcement and other do-gooding has a place, but here that's a somewhat expanded one: to the extent we accept and remind one another of what we are we can sometimes stay back from the ledge. And even when we can't the sympathy itself means something.
In the Coens we learn we're as dangerously silly as the rest so should strap ourselves down. In Herzog we learn we're as sillily dangerous as the rest, will not be restrained, but that there is beauty in our unrestraint. In Lynch we learn that we're all silly, all dangerous, but that both traits stem from our love, which is only restrainable inconsistently and costlily. Lynch's weirdos are hermits or monsters, respectively retreaters from desire and plungers into it when a love answering one's own proved unattainable. To see that lost, pure flame within the embers and within the forest fire is what his protagonists learn.
The Coens stick to a version of dark noir, but one generally comic, since the wrongness of everybody is not anything you could even imagine changing about them once you see them - everyone's pretty much a toddler (seriously, at least one huge man-baby pops up in nearly every movie of theirs). Nothing's to be done, so their truest hero is Lebowski, though his whole story consists of his forgetting to not be a more conventional hero (thus avoid having a story); the only thing saving him from being destroyed by this error, like the similarly self-betraying Daoist Thornton is, is that he's become so good at doing nothing that his attempts to act are mostly ridiculous, nonstarters. Don't seek justice, don't seek to persuade, don't pursue any goals at all, you'll only make things worse. Even Madge (?) in Fargo saves no one at all - the best even the police can do is sweep up without getting swept up. Gabriel Byrne in Miller's Crossing learns he can only keep the other toddlers in line by propping up a leviathan-like supertoddler and then leaving town, since his brains, while superior, are still yoked to a toddler's emotions, thus a force able to take down the very leviathan they've set up and that can't be trusted not to. Their protagonists are just smart enough to recognize, though often too late, how dumb they in fact are.
Herzog is pretty much on their page but is less concerned with greed than violence, premeditated or negligent (e.g. responsibility for one's own or another's death). His protagonists typically learn nothing, but we learn about them that they are essentially mad thus not to be blamed, and that dampening their violence dampens their very life force. He's both a dark-comic noirist and a romantic! The hard, gemlike flame we discover within us cuts people up and sets the landscape on fire.
Lynch is of course both also, but is about love. We are all susceptible to breakage, and the breaking will occur reliably enough - in others, in ourselves - that we often can only bear witness to the fact, and note that a cracked person is still a person, not a crack. Evil in Lynch is literally perversion - thwarted or stifled love is what leads to hatred and violence. But love will always be thwarted and stifled, and people cannot prevent themselves from falling in love. As in the Coens' Fargo, law enforcement and other do-gooding has a place, but here that's a somewhat expanded one: to the extent we accept and remind one another of what we are we can sometimes stay back from the ledge. And even when we can't the sympathy itself means something.
In the Coens we learn we're as dangerously silly as the rest so should strap ourselves down. In Herzog we learn we're as sillily dangerous as the rest, will not be restrained, but that there is beauty in our unrestraint. In Lynch we learn that we're all silly, all dangerous, but that both traits stem from our love, which is only restrainable inconsistently and costlily. Lynch's weirdos are hermits or monsters, respectively retreaters from desire and plungers into it when a love answering one's own proved unattainable. To see that lost, pure flame within the embers and within the forest fire is what his protagonists learn.
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Date: 2017-05-19 12:23 pm (UTC)This very good. Where does new season of Fargo fit? I'm not liking it much. Hawley maybe was exhausted or stretched thin by Legion. Something's just not very original or interesting about the new season.
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Date: 2017-05-19 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 09:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 09:18 pm (UTC)