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Nov. 1st, 2015 08:41 amWe saw The Babadook. Thorough spoilers of it and some spoiling of other things, esp. Take Shelter and It Follows, follow. Maybe I should get back to tagging as a way to cross index what I spoil?
It makes you think it will be in the King in Yellow/Heart of Darkness/Zahir/Ringu/It Follows genre but a tiny, almost muttered clue (she used to write some sort of stuff for kids) marks that it will instead be going the Take Shelter route, but within the horror rather than nuclear panic genre, blending aspects of Nightmare on Elm Street, Repulsion and (what seems like the most pervasive influence on the recent spate of retro-minded horror stuff) The Shining. The conclusion is a sort of ad for mindfulness, and not at all a bad one (and also another homage to that of also still-kicking Blue Velvet). It's a very effective film all through, in fact. A few flourishes didn't work so well, but they only stood out because everything else that was happening was so successful at immersing you. Execution-wise it's a touch more perfect than It Follows, even, though a bit less inspired and just half as ambitious. Nothing in the supernatural terror content hit my buttons, but the plausible stuff sure did. We delayed watching because it would clearly be an especially hard movie for parents; one can see it being nearly as hard, though, on anyone who was once a child. My habit of explaining to myself why what's happening is happening has its protective side, but I wonder if everyone was being forced in that direction. One of my theories about effective fiction in general is that it shakes you awake till you'll hear what you wouldn't if simply told, and I guess this may be a variant of that it: making subtext the only way out. (Definitely fits recent Walking Dead developments. How do non-subtexters even handle those?)
It's not the children's book version of the King in Yellow because it's just about her - whereas with these traps that either wander or are wandered into the implication is that they'll get everyone eventually. The woman's terrible luck stands in for terrible luck in general, though it gets anchored to causality and plausibility where Shannon's luck in Take Shelter does not. They're equally effective decisions, though maybe consigning each to acute relevance to a different section of the DSM-V. Personality disorders, here. Maybe a fundamental split in these horror/thriller/whatever sorts of films is whether knowledge or departures from knowledge are the problem? I mean, you could say that the knowledge that knowledge can be departed from makes the first a subgenre of the second, but I think pure knowledge-horror is made distinct (and, ironically, gnostic) by its implication of the whole tenor of the world. That the irrational can invade at any time does bring up the possibility that nothing seeming rational can be trusted - hence that maybe the universe isn't coherent - but that's not the same as rationality itself turning out to be an invasion. I guess there must be stories where these meet, but The Babdook isn't one: the boy's caresses and Mrs. Roach's appearance mark a boundary, and finding out there even is one is enough to confine the irrational to certain parts of certains heads, without of course eliminating it. Whereas the worry in the other sort is that there will be no irrationality left to hide in, unless one paltry loop of denial hardly preferable to what it's shutting out.
I tried writing about It Follows but there was too much to say - seriously, my fingers got tired - and I left most of it private. Based on my last entry stopping didn't stop me, though. It's the Synecdoche NY of horror movies, one of those occasional attempt to overcome influence by direct confrontation with all sources at once. Some sources get forgotten, when that happens, but it's srill very interesting. For me It Follows is more successful because more alive, but I think there's still some of the coldness, maybe deadness, of the overly thought-through - what people sometimes accuse of maiming Stevens and (in the narrative category) Borges. Having everything spontaneous seem immediately strangely familiar helps It Follows where it hurts Synecdoche, though, because it fits the situation of the characters, who'd had endless hints about all of this all along but couldn't yet assemble them. Whereas with PHS we're supposed to understand he's in denial, so the hints are about how his efforts of escape must have always failed. In It Follows what's known and unknown come together as a zipper: can I do THIS? no, because of this fact you already knew about! but what about THIS? no, because of that other one (etc.). There's an innocence to not knowing that you already know. Creating new worlds in order to hide in them is a bit different, mostly because it's very difficult to present creative acts as happening rather than having happened. I guess one could imagine a movie combining the two approaches, a version of Kaufman's conception nonetheless able to stay so-fresh feeling, where an artist tries THIS? no, that can't work because X! oh, then THAT? no (etc.). Tries them all in the moment, in a way where we're right there with them in those hope-decisions. Maybe there's been one? The Circular Ruins of film, that would be.
(Could that be what makes influence so killing, that it tempts us to present too much as having already happened, as granted - perhaps because, unlike our influencers, we didn't think out for ourselves why it happened (to the extent THEY weren't influence-fragmented)? Interesting how independent this is of the present tense vs past tense decision, if so - there's a "present" and "past" version of each, no? The present present is no better than the present past, or the past oresent worse than the past past. Though I wonder if it was always true? Maybe it makes sense that Shakespeare, viewed as Bloom views him, was able to do what he did in the most prsent-bound genre. That genre was part of this seems truly plausible to me because of his development, as more or less anyone could have written Henry 6-1, twiddling with available models, and you can see him wade right before your eyes from doing that to doing Falstaff, just by reading the history plays in written order.)
Probably to its credit, given the immense difficulties that that Circular Ruins route presents for film and for non-Borgeses, It Follows doesn't address writing/filmmaking, aside from some Shrike-like swipes in the attic apartment and the indoor pool scenes - not much past naming those doors that also, by the way, don't lead anywhere. There's inevitably a lot of implied, or anyway eminently importable, youth-artist equation, of course. The Trial and The Castle are models for this sort of conflation; magical realism of the dry sort is usually about conflating the details of disparate situations to get at the truth of all, which can't look quite like the truth of any until some tailoring is done on the world itself. But not all that much is needed - the trick with this sort of thing is to stress the "home" in unhomely. I half suspect the use of sex in the two Kafka novels is the direct template for the It Follows conceit, in fact - esp. the Frieda arc in The Castle. It's just one of the things the two Ks try, of course, and doesn't work for one of them (it perhaps sort of does for The Castle's). At the very least Kafka's not at last on a different track - just look at the last page of The Metamorphosis. Perhaps with track-bundling we shouldn't be surprised if the same locations are reached, regardless of techniques or twine employed.
Seriously, I run out of time and my fingertips hurt.
It makes you think it will be in the King in Yellow/Heart of Darkness/Zahir/Ringu/It Follows genre but a tiny, almost muttered clue (she used to write some sort of stuff for kids) marks that it will instead be going the Take Shelter route, but within the horror rather than nuclear panic genre, blending aspects of Nightmare on Elm Street, Repulsion and (what seems like the most pervasive influence on the recent spate of retro-minded horror stuff) The Shining. The conclusion is a sort of ad for mindfulness, and not at all a bad one (and also another homage to that of also still-kicking Blue Velvet). It's a very effective film all through, in fact. A few flourishes didn't work so well, but they only stood out because everything else that was happening was so successful at immersing you. Execution-wise it's a touch more perfect than It Follows, even, though a bit less inspired and just half as ambitious. Nothing in the supernatural terror content hit my buttons, but the plausible stuff sure did. We delayed watching because it would clearly be an especially hard movie for parents; one can see it being nearly as hard, though, on anyone who was once a child. My habit of explaining to myself why what's happening is happening has its protective side, but I wonder if everyone was being forced in that direction. One of my theories about effective fiction in general is that it shakes you awake till you'll hear what you wouldn't if simply told, and I guess this may be a variant of that it: making subtext the only way out. (Definitely fits recent Walking Dead developments. How do non-subtexters even handle those?)
It's not the children's book version of the King in Yellow because it's just about her - whereas with these traps that either wander or are wandered into the implication is that they'll get everyone eventually. The woman's terrible luck stands in for terrible luck in general, though it gets anchored to causality and plausibility where Shannon's luck in Take Shelter does not. They're equally effective decisions, though maybe consigning each to acute relevance to a different section of the DSM-V. Personality disorders, here. Maybe a fundamental split in these horror/thriller/whatever sorts of films is whether knowledge or departures from knowledge are the problem? I mean, you could say that the knowledge that knowledge can be departed from makes the first a subgenre of the second, but I think pure knowledge-horror is made distinct (and, ironically, gnostic) by its implication of the whole tenor of the world. That the irrational can invade at any time does bring up the possibility that nothing seeming rational can be trusted - hence that maybe the universe isn't coherent - but that's not the same as rationality itself turning out to be an invasion. I guess there must be stories where these meet, but The Babdook isn't one: the boy's caresses and Mrs. Roach's appearance mark a boundary, and finding out there even is one is enough to confine the irrational to certain parts of certains heads, without of course eliminating it. Whereas the worry in the other sort is that there will be no irrationality left to hide in, unless one paltry loop of denial hardly preferable to what it's shutting out.
I tried writing about It Follows but there was too much to say - seriously, my fingers got tired - and I left most of it private. Based on my last entry stopping didn't stop me, though. It's the Synecdoche NY of horror movies, one of those occasional attempt to overcome influence by direct confrontation with all sources at once. Some sources get forgotten, when that happens, but it's srill very interesting. For me It Follows is more successful because more alive, but I think there's still some of the coldness, maybe deadness, of the overly thought-through - what people sometimes accuse of maiming Stevens and (in the narrative category) Borges. Having everything spontaneous seem immediately strangely familiar helps It Follows where it hurts Synecdoche, though, because it fits the situation of the characters, who'd had endless hints about all of this all along but couldn't yet assemble them. Whereas with PHS we're supposed to understand he's in denial, so the hints are about how his efforts of escape must have always failed. In It Follows what's known and unknown come together as a zipper: can I do THIS? no, because of this fact you already knew about! but what about THIS? no, because of that other one (etc.). There's an innocence to not knowing that you already know. Creating new worlds in order to hide in them is a bit different, mostly because it's very difficult to present creative acts as happening rather than having happened. I guess one could imagine a movie combining the two approaches, a version of Kaufman's conception nonetheless able to stay so-fresh feeling, where an artist tries THIS? no, that can't work because X! oh, then THAT? no (etc.). Tries them all in the moment, in a way where we're right there with them in those hope-decisions. Maybe there's been one? The Circular Ruins of film, that would be.
(Could that be what makes influence so killing, that it tempts us to present too much as having already happened, as granted - perhaps because, unlike our influencers, we didn't think out for ourselves why it happened (to the extent THEY weren't influence-fragmented)? Interesting how independent this is of the present tense vs past tense decision, if so - there's a "present" and "past" version of each, no? The present present is no better than the present past, or the past oresent worse than the past past. Though I wonder if it was always true? Maybe it makes sense that Shakespeare, viewed as Bloom views him, was able to do what he did in the most prsent-bound genre. That genre was part of this seems truly plausible to me because of his development, as more or less anyone could have written Henry 6-1, twiddling with available models, and you can see him wade right before your eyes from doing that to doing Falstaff, just by reading the history plays in written order.)
Probably to its credit, given the immense difficulties that that Circular Ruins route presents for film and for non-Borgeses, It Follows doesn't address writing/filmmaking, aside from some Shrike-like swipes in the attic apartment and the indoor pool scenes - not much past naming those doors that also, by the way, don't lead anywhere. There's inevitably a lot of implied, or anyway eminently importable, youth-artist equation, of course. The Trial and The Castle are models for this sort of conflation; magical realism of the dry sort is usually about conflating the details of disparate situations to get at the truth of all, which can't look quite like the truth of any until some tailoring is done on the world itself. But not all that much is needed - the trick with this sort of thing is to stress the "home" in unhomely. I half suspect the use of sex in the two Kafka novels is the direct template for the It Follows conceit, in fact - esp. the Frieda arc in The Castle. It's just one of the things the two Ks try, of course, and doesn't work for one of them (it perhaps sort of does for The Castle's). At the very least Kafka's not at last on a different track - just look at the last page of The Metamorphosis. Perhaps with track-bundling we shouldn't be surprised if the same locations are reached, regardless of techniques or twine employed.
Seriously, I run out of time and my fingertips hurt.
