In my film criticism, such as it is, I spend very little time talking about the technical aspects of the movies I'm reviewing. In part, this is because I don't have any formal training in the study of film, and the language of cinematic technique remains somewhat foreign to me. But in part its because it's just damnably hard to describe a particular shot or cut or composition without being able to have the reader actually see it.
This has always been a difficulty for critics of the visual arts, but I'm increasingly struck by how the internet - with its endless space for stills and even embedded video alongside the text of a review - offers at least a partial solution to the dilemma. A case in point is Jim Emerson's analysis of No Country For Old Men, which starts with the critical commonplace that the film is beautiful or technically "perfect," and then tries to tease out what those words actually mean in the context of specific scenes, images, and snatches of dialogue. At each point in his analysis, Emerson doesn't just tell you what he means; he shows you, with eighteen well-chosen shots from the movie. If you liked the film as much as I did (you can find my rave in the forthcoming NR), or if its technical proficiency left you cold, you should check out what he has to say - and show.
From my review in The American Conservative:
Developing video games is consuming more and more of today's creative talent, with little benefit to show for it in the broader culture. Traditional art forms such as poetry, music, and painting tended to inspire each other forward in a virtuous cycle, but video gaming, a mostly solitary vice, has been a cultural black hole. Game-inspired films, for instance, have largely failed, because watching a movie star frenetically shoot bad guys is missing the point of playing, which is to shoot them yourself.
Finally, Joel and Ethan Coen ("Fargo" and "The Big Lebowski"), the most gifted of the many brother-act frauteurs making films today, have figured out how to bring the pleasures of a problem-solving first person shooter game to the movie theatre. Strangely enough, they've done it in their first literary adaptation, a faithful rendition of "No Country for Old Men," the 2005 novel by Cormac McCarthy, an acclaimed master of American prose.
Despite the 74-year-old McCarthy's august reputation, his book is a surprisingly high-energy art-pulp Western. It's essentially a chase featuring two highly competent antagonists: a West Texas good old boy (who, while antelope hunting, finds $2 million among the bullet-riddled bodies of Mexican drug-runners) tracked by a relentless killer hired to retrieve the money. ...
The Coen Brothers have discovered that the paradoxical key to making a video game movie is to slow down the action, allowing the viewer to think along with the hero and villain. Not since the sniper scene that makes up the second half of Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam film "Full Metal Jacket" has a movie played fairer with the audience in detailing the physical puzzles confronting the characters. How, for example, could you best hide two cubic feet of $100 bills in your motel room? And how could your enemy find such well-concealed money?
I know I've seen a well-crafted film when I walk out of the theatre yet still feel like I'm living in the movie. Leaving the amnesia thriller "Memento," for example, I was convinced I'd never remember where I'd parked my car. With "No Country," this post-movie spell lasted longer than I can ever recall. Even the next night, every car that passed me on a quiet street seemed an eerie, sinister harbinger of sudden violence.
Posted by Steve Sailer | November 30, 2007 1:01 AM