politics in american cinema
Mar. 6th, 2006 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321I find it very interesting how American cinema has gone political recently. Especially Hollywood and Spielberg. I thought Munich was intensely suspenseful, Bana fantastic, the conversation with the beautiful Palestinian boy astoundingly nuanced, the way Spielberg employed beauty much more powerful than the way Ang Lee employed beauty in BBM, and a film that really makes you think.
Syriana made me think less but I found it nevertheless also really, really interesting. I found it more interesting than good; it is flawed but the flaws are in themselves so interesting that I didn't mind them. The main flaw is the impenetrable plot but I decided one must just forget about trying to understand it and think about what else the film is doing. I liked the interconnectedness of the stories a lot; I thought the filmicness was quite innovative, all those close-up, tight shots and the way it was true ensemble, no story was privileged above any other. I liked the way the martyrs were portrayed, without any of the psychologising backstory that so often gets provided by way of explanation in mainstream American cinema; the film paid much more attention to setting and circumstances than personal choice, which I liked. The settings, too (as in Munich) were fantastic, all those tatty hotel rooms and coffee shops, brilliant.
Although Syriana was the more technically adventurous of the two, the message ultimately is perhaps the same as your usual Hollywood CIA fare: the US is at the centre of the world and controls everything. Only this film thought that this was a lamentable fact and that the US is doing it all wrong which makes the political orientation different from the mainstream but the conviction that the US is central and controlling is the same. I find that interesting because so untrue.
So now that I'm on the interesting-political-things-happening-in-American-films trip, I want to see Good night and good lucknext (did I get that title right? Possibly not. You know, the black and white Clooney 1950s McCarthyism film.)
Syriana made me think less but I found it nevertheless also really, really interesting. I found it more interesting than good; it is flawed but the flaws are in themselves so interesting that I didn't mind them. The main flaw is the impenetrable plot but I decided one must just forget about trying to understand it and think about what else the film is doing. I liked the interconnectedness of the stories a lot; I thought the filmicness was quite innovative, all those close-up, tight shots and the way it was true ensemble, no story was privileged above any other. I liked the way the martyrs were portrayed, without any of the psychologising backstory that so often gets provided by way of explanation in mainstream American cinema; the film paid much more attention to setting and circumstances than personal choice, which I liked. The settings, too (as in Munich) were fantastic, all those tatty hotel rooms and coffee shops, brilliant.
Although Syriana was the more technically adventurous of the two, the message ultimately is perhaps the same as your usual Hollywood CIA fare: the US is at the centre of the world and controls everything. Only this film thought that this was a lamentable fact and that the US is doing it all wrong which makes the political orientation different from the mainstream but the conviction that the US is central and controlling is the same. I find that interesting because so untrue.
So now that I'm on the interesting-political-things-happening-in-American-films trip, I want to see Good night and good lucknext (did I get that title right? Possibly not. You know, the black and white Clooney 1950s McCarthyism film.)