It’s
a short screening log this week, but I’m excited to see Dan Sallitt’s The Unspeakable Act tonight at BAMcinemaFest (as long as my train back to NYC is on time). I briefly met
Sallitt a month ago and I’ve considered him one of the most intelligent critics
whenever I read it work. Here’s a piece he wrote on Julia Leigh’s The Sleeping Beauty, which is much more eloquent than mine. And here’s a nice Wall Street Journal profile on Sallitt, which also quotes my Personal
Recommendation MachineTM Bilge Ebiri.
-Blowup, 1966.
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. DVD.
-Duck, You Sucker!,
1971. Directed by Sergio Leone. 35mm projection at Film Forum.
-The Ruthless Four,
1968. Directed by Giorgio Capitani. 35mm projection at Film Forum.
-Horrible Bosses,
2010. Directed by Seth Gordon. HBO.
One of my favorite articles from
the last week (besides the complete outpouring of amazing stuff about Andrew
Sarris) was a piece on Matt Singer’s Criticwire blog entitled “Why Do We Hate Spoilers AND Surprises?” The piece was in response to HuffPo critic Mike Ryan’s piece on Brave, which some have noted
has an essential plot point the marketing never even hinted at. Singer writes,
“Though I don't necessary agree with Ryan, I understand
what he's saying. He's arguing that the marketing for "Brave" sold
him (and anyone who goes to see it) a bill of goods. He expected a brave young
woman on an adventure and he got... well, he got something that was not quite
that.”
But
what if Ryan knew nothing about Brave (which I liked) before seeing it, except maybe
that it was made by Pixar? When I see most of the films I see in repertory houses,
I usually have something similar to that experience. I usually know a few
necessary details (director, actor, maybe a logline), but nothing else. When I
saw Sergio Leone’s Duck, You Sucker! this
week, all I knew was that it was directed by Leone. I didn’t even know Rod Steiger
starred in the film, much less he was playing a Mexican bandit (it took me at
least 30 minutes to recognize him).
The
film starts out as a series of reveals. We don’t immediately know Steiger’s
character, Juan, is going to be the protagonist. Or that he’s actually someone
of power planning a robbery. The film eventually settles into a cat and mouse game
between Juan and John, an Irish explosives expert who was a former IRA fighter.
At about the 45 minute mark, I settled in for what I was sure was going to be a
jolly good heist film.
And
then the film cleverly shifts to a different subject, as John mixes Juan into
what turns out to be the Mexican Revolution. In one of the film’s most
devilishly clever sequences, Juan thinks he is about to steal millions in gold
from a bank, but instead accidentally becomes a hero of the revolution. It’s
such a nihilistically tricky sequence, one ripe with satire about the way
revolutions are organized by people who trick others into fighting for them.
Like
I said, I had no idea that Duck You
Sucker! was going to be about the Mexican Revolution, much less a very hard
hitting political satire (Leone has claimed in interviews that he never set out
to make a commentary at all). As a spectator, I felt like Juan must have when
he realized he had gotten involved in a revolution he had no part in. The film’s
reveal of this twist delighted me, and I’m not sure I would have enjoyed the
film as much had I been expecting the film to head in this direction.
This
brings me back to Ryan and Singer, as well as a great piece by Noel Murray on why he enjoys watching trailers (something I have debated him via the
Twittersphere). It’s tough to not know anything about new films these days. But
when I watch films for these screenings logs, chances are I know very little
about them till I see them. While many of my favorite films are films I only
fell in love with on a second or third watch, the idea of letting a narrative
reveal itself is a pleasure that can only be experienced once. I’m in the firm
option that those reveals can be delightful if experienced virginally, and
seeing the twists and turns of Duck, You
Sucker! without any idea of where it was going cemented my opinion on this.
This
might seem in contradiction to my argument against spoilerphobia—knowing the
twists of Psycho or The Sixth Sense have never ruined the
movie. A great movie is a great movie, and nothing should ruin it. But I think
the issue is less with the film and what we know about it, than the
expectations we create. Knowing that Leone directed Duck, You Sucker!, I could say I had certain expectations; I
expected epic landscapes and
intense close-ups, along with a
catchy and memorable score, and a morally ambiguous center. The film delivered
on all those points, but it also had so many elements I didn’t expect, and
those gave me pleasure.
The
issue is not the fault of movie studios—we always seem to complain that either
they show us too much, or now they don’t properly “prepare” us for a movie.
It’s us. For some people like Ryan, it’s somewhat by necessity that he has to
report on the going-ons in the movie world, so when Disney puts out trailers
for Brave, he has to watch him. But I
don’t, and a lot of readers here probably watch them because they have to.
I’m not sure there’s a “right” way
to watch a movie. I’ve done both ways, and I’m curious how Beasts of the Southern Wild, which receives raves at Sundance when
the film was completely unknown, will play now that everyone expects it
to be a great movie. But I would hope some of you might try and watch a movie
knowing nothing about it. Don’t read the plot. Don’t look at who directed it.
Stay away from any trailer. Let’s just try the pleasure of narrative reveal.
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