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Post by lizap on Feb 19, 2009 16:20:34 GMT
I wonder if we could talk about dark movies. Movies we consider dark, if we liked them or didn't. Maybe talking about the subject will get me over some of my trepidation about 'Vinyan' and 'Downloading'.
I got through 'The Descent' with the help of FF. That is a movie I consider completely dark, though I can't remember now if it was the theatrical ending that was that way, or if it was the alternate one, which the director said he wanted to use but they wouldn't let him.
'Blow-Out' is another movie I hated because there was nothing to feel good about. That one put me off De Palma for years.
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Post by lizap on Feb 19, 2009 16:55:46 GMT
I'll hope you'll forgive me for taking liberties and replying to myself! I'm quoting rueful from the Vinyan DVD art thread in media: I don't like gory (which I'm assuming this might be, judging from the number of skulls in the photo), but most important, I don't like disturbing. And a completely bleak, completely hopeless ending is very very disturbing to me. That's why I don't usually like dark comedies or horror films. I think 'disturbing' is a great concept to talk about relative to dark movies. I like disturbing, in the sense of being jogged out of my perspective and made to think about difficult, even painful things. 'Carrington' is what I think of as disturbing in the good way. Even though confusing, sad things went on, there was love running through it. I need that thread (or river, as the case may be) of redemption running through a movie. A completely bleak, completely hopeless ending -- that's what I hate as well. And I know they're 'just movies', so I'm not sure why I react so strongly to them. |
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Post by tipou on Feb 19, 2009 16:57:37 GMT
i view horror movies as pure "entertainment", like the roller coaster, or heavy metal music, you have to prepare yourself and know that it's only a movie, i guess people watch those for the fear factor, the adrenaline surge.
i am not addicted to them, but i see why people are. i am willing to see one once in a while if there is hope of seeing something different and meaningful.
so i am not interested in seeing saw #65, but vinyan, yes, since the movie makers themselves made it clear that there was something more in it than "horror" per say, its an allegory of sorts, with messages about our way of living blah blah blah, which makes it more interesting to me.
also, depends who makes it, and who plays in it. if the director is a favorite of mine, i will have a look. this being said, the second indiana jones was much darker and horrible than i would ever had expected from spielberg, i was not "warned" so i did not like it so much, i expected an adventure movie, not to see eyes floating in soup. if they had told me "its an horror movie by spielberg", i would probably have responded better. i like being surprised but not by someone throwing snakes at me, if you know what i mean. if someone told me go and see this last scorcese movie, its the funniest movie ever, i would run to see it. horror is something else.
am i clear?
also if they say william hurt appears in this movie horror, i also run, because whatever he does, i want to see. if they tell me rufus sewell has chosen to play in this movie vinyan, i want to see it, because of the way he has chosen his roles lately, i want to tust his judgement and go for the ride, since there must be something in the screenplay that attracted him, certainly not only the prospect of gore.
also, this movie appears so very different from the usual hollywood fare - i love hollywood movies too, but there is so much of it. its refreshing seeing an european film that does not let you guess the whole story after 10 minutes.
no, i'm telling you, the real horror for me is emmanuelle béart. but i am willing to face my fears and watch vinyan anyway.
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Post by rueful on Feb 19, 2009 17:28:35 GMT
When I say "disturbing" I don't mean in the sense of "thought-provoking" or even "uncomfortable," which as you pointed out Lizap can be very good things. I love to analyze films and books (literature major here). As you said, Carrington was a good example, or In a Savage Land. (And disturbing as in hot in bothered, which would go for just about any Rufus movie, is more than ok with me.)
But if I can't get something dark out of my head for days, then it becomes unpleasant to me. There's just too much unpleasantness in the real world for me to want to add in fictional unpleasantness. For some people, viewing that kind of horror film allows a release of their tensions, but to me it adds tension. Ironically (although I obviously couldn't take the gore), the premise of a movie like Saw would probably be easier for me to forget, because although dark, it's stupidly dark. Just pointless violence. A well-made psychological horror film with dark concepts would be harder for me to take, because I'd be dwelling on the implications.
Anyone ever see Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, with Bette Davis? I don't want to give too much away, but it's a Southern Gothic film. The themes of betrayal by people you trust and of people with evil motives who put on a figurative mask of goodness were very upsetting to me. Much more so than Halloween 2 (which I was dragged to), which basically had the theme of a psycho with a knife in a literal mask.
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Post by tipou on Feb 19, 2009 18:11:45 GMT
"disturbing" will differ from one person to the other.
for me, "dog day afternoon", one of my favourite movies, was deeply disturbing. there is nothing good happening to this guy, who is basically good, and nothing good will ever happen fo him ever.
basically, though, i think i like it because it's a good example of why it is so dangerous to judge people on what they do. in most other movie, as in life, bank robber = bad guy, bad people, lost forever anyway, so you might as well shoot him. but right from the start, there is something about al pacino that makes you say... wait a minute, why does he do that... he is not a bad person. whatever happened in his life that brought him to this extent?
it basically shakes the notions of good and eveil as we know it, but it also made me think about a very troubling notion: bad things happen to good people. which is the most horrific thing ever, for me.
but there you go, it's true.
about vinyan, i think i will be affected more by the internal turmoil of the leads (what could be worse than losing a child?) than by "horror" per say. i see gore, and i think about how they came up with such great props. but losing a child?
i started watching charles II all over again yesterday, and the opening sequence was horrible to me: charles is watching his father getting beheaded!!! that was horrible... and then he gets faux-blood on his face. that killed the horror for me completely, because i was trying to find out if it was ketchup they used or some kind of waterpaint.
for me, the most horrible horror movie has no gore, no blood, you see no one getting chopped off, but in this movie you would constantly be in fear that it could happen any second, and/or things are just a bit off, a bit weird, enough so that characters question their sanity, and end up totally lost.
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Post by lizap on Feb 19, 2009 19:35:23 GMT
I've never seen Dog Day Afternoon. I can't remember now if I deliberately avoided it because it sounded too difficult. Some movies depict a kind of relentless misfortune that I find hard to take. 'Horror' is another concept that needs definition for discussion purposes. I avoid movies like the Saw series or Texas Chainsaw, since I don't enjoy that extent of gore and suffering even in pretense. I'm not thinking of Vinyan as being in that category. If a movie is a thoughtful, serious attempt to examine some aspect of life or human nature -- as 'Vinyan' almost certainly promises to be -- then some blood and violence will not put me off it. No, it's the bleakness/despair factor that is decisive to me. I've not seen either 'Lord of the Flies' or 'Apocalypse Now', the two films 'Vinyan' has been compared to. 'Lord of the Flies' I found too disturbing even as a book, to get through. Is 'Apocalypse Now' classed as a horror film? about vinyan, i think i will be affected more by the internal turmoil of the leads (what could be worse than losing a child?) than by "horror" per say. i see gore, and i think about how they came up with such great props. but losing a child? I have the impression there will be some kind of mystical or quasi-mystical element to 'Vinyan', based on that disturbing (aha) quote from the back of the DVD, which is what I assume is classing it as 'horror'? Now perhaps that isn't the case, and it will just be a study of the psycological torment of the parents. That I wouldn't label as 'horror' in genre terms (although certainly losing a child like that would be horrifying). I think it's the blood/gore factor, the supernatural/mystical element, the creature element or a combination of any or all that defines something as a horror film. Of the  comments I read regarding 'Downloading Nancy,' it seemed that it wasn't the dark subject matter that many objected to, but what the director did with it. They thought he failed to make the study of Nancy's state of mind meaningful. This will be new territory for all of us, because I think these will be the first truly dark films that Rufus has made. |
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Post by peach on Feb 21, 2009 2:09:54 GMT
Yes, "disturbing" it's meaning will differ from person to person. Vinyan fits into that category quite nicely. The subject matter especially, losing ones child and basing an entire film on that subject is not to be taken lightly. I would categorize Dog Day Afternoon as a tragedy. The lead character is what we NY'ers would call Joe Mitzflich, someone who's day never goes right, and no matter how much planning is done, something invariably goes wrong. Such is the case in this film, one that Pacino should have won the Oscar for, he was so good, as was Chris Sarandon. Psycho, by Hitch, is disturbing for obvious reasons, it's odd how men and women react to this movie, women to the shower scene, quite violent for the time, and the staircase scene with Martin Balsam, most men I know can't watch but have no problem with the shower scene. I'd put Hitch's "Frenzy" into this latter category as well, I saw it though twice, once when I was a teenager, the second as an adult. I can't sit though it, because of it's subject matter. I think both films epitomize what's disturbing to me.
"Vinyan" will not be an easy film to sit through, considering that the Tsunami happened very recently and the countless pictures we've all seen are truly horrifying, there will be protests for sure, some say that there's been talk already, that the producers and most especially the director want to make a profit on such a tragedy. The answer to that is, stay home and don't buy a ticket.
What's scarier to me is that DN is based on a true story, one I vaguley remember reading about, Not sure if I want to see this, I don't know if I want to subject myself to the gratuitous violence and cutting ritual of Maria Bellos' character. I'm kind of over the women in peril films and refuse to watch. What is it about women being mutilated that passes for entertainment? I remember going to the movies to see "Misery" (Kathy Bates was amazing) there is a particular scene, the hobble scene, if you've seen it or read the book you'll know which scene I mean, when that scene happend I was watching a young couple in front of me, the young man literally jumped from his seat because of the act of violence thrust upon poor James Caan, I chuckled a little inside because he finally understood what we woman have been going through with these awful slasher films. Turnabout is fair play in a twisted sort of way.
This will be an interesting thread to read, and one that I'm glad was started, if only to catch a glimpse of people's varrying difference of opinion.
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Post by tipou on Feb 21, 2009 5:00:04 GMT
Psycho, by Hitch, is disturbing for obvious reasons, it's odd how men and women react to this movie, women to the shower scene, quite violent for the time, and the staircase scene with Martin Balsam, most men I know can't watch but have no problem with the shower scene. I'd put Hitch's "Frenzy" into this latter category as well, I saw it though twice, once when I was a teenager, the second as an adult. I can't sit though it, because of it's subject matter. I think both films epitomize what's disturbing to me. I remember going to the movies to see "Misery" (Kathy Bates was amazing) there is a particular scene, the hobble scene, if you've seen it or read the book you'll know which scene I mean, when that scene happend I was watching a young couple in front of me, the young man literally jumped from his seat because of the act of violence thrust upon poor James Caan, I chuckled a little inside because he finally understood what we woman have been going through with these awful slasher films. Turnabout is fair play in a twisted sort of way. hmmm... good points all over, peach! about "psycho", it's so true!!! men WILL be more affected by the staircase scene. which is so intriguing to me. about "frenzy" - call me sick if you will, but i always viewed that one as very black humour. when the policeman's wife makes him suffer through her unbelievable haute cuisine horrors, you almost see the guy understand the killer. which is a very sick and twisted kind of comedy, but with the way hitch viewed women as a whole, not very surprising after all - feminity as source of evil that must be contained, tamed, or otherwise anihilated... and i think that he was very aware of how he hated women too (my impression). for some reason, seeing through this aspect of him always made me quite impervious to the horror in his movies - of which i am a big fan, btw. in many ways, stephen king understands this very male take on feminity, and works it through in his writing - he once wrote about "carrie" being a reaction to how, as a young man, he was afraid of women and of their power. i remember that i was very impressed with his candour about this, if more men were more aware of such feelings, they would in fact be better equipped to deal with them, and maybe less violence towards women would be a welcome consequence. therefore, really interesting that he also came up with the story being the movie "misery" - the ultimate "revenge" from women upon men's manipulation of them - after all, james caan, through his lame books, only participates to manipulation and exploitation of women, and kathy bates's character was only the proof of his success, a monster of his own making. another very twisted black "farce" if ever there was one. somehow, this all brings me to a new québécois film what started being shown last week, and that i still have to see: "polytechnique". it's about the horrible events that took place 10 years ago in montreal, when a very repressed and unhappy young man killed 14 women in a science faculty in which he thought they had no place to be. his gesture was the result of years of frustrations and failures in his life, which he all attributed to women and to femninism. the movie stars, and is produced by, a very young woman from my hometown, karine vanasse, who had been only a child when the real events happened but i think all women were affected by the nature of this tragedy, and i can only imagine what effect it could have had on the mind of a young woman growing up. by all accounts, its a powerful and very well made movie... i was discussing it with a young colleague - 24 years old, about the same age as karine - who went and saw the movie with her boyfriend. she said she hesitated a lot before going, wondering if such a movie should have been done at all, however cathartic and ultimately necessary it might be (as in "not talking about it wont make the horror go away, but its soooo horrible"). in the end, she went for two reasons. first, she had made it a point to go and see michael moore's "bowling for columbine" a few years back, as a way to better understand how such things could happen, so the least she could do was to react the same way to events so much closer to her. the second reason for her to go and see "polytechnique", was that her boyfriend - a very sweet guy - told her that he would be there for her if ever the movie upset her too much. i thought her latter reason, somehow, brought a sweet hopeful balm to the whole man/woman eternal conflicts... |
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Post by lizap on Feb 21, 2009 8:08:25 GMT
It certainly is interesting, the different ways we experience things. I'm sure Misery would be too disturbing for me to sit through, but to me 'Psycho' was too over-the-top to be truly disturbing. And 'Frenzy' -- I just loved that movie! I thought it was so funny, with that suffering detective and that awful food, and that poor hounded innocent man who is eventually cleared. I think I may have peeked through fingers during the violent parts, but somehow the violence didn't bother me in the context of the movie as a whole. "Vinyan" will not be an easy film to sit through, considering that the Tsunami happened very recently and the countless pictures we've all seen are truly horrifying, What I'm worried about with Vinyan is this hint of the mystical from that quote on the back of the DVD. The thought of a child being lost in the tsunami is bad enough, but the idea that the spirit of such a child would be suffering afterwards, or that the suffering parents would be drawn into some kind of spiritual hell with the child -- that's just to much for me, and is what I fear. I guess it reminded me of this other awful, really horrible movie I saw (also coincidentally with Mario Bello -- she seems to like to explore the dark side, doesn't she?), about death, unquiet spirits drawing the living into their eternal torment, and the like. Just speculating on the basis of the advance material, mind you, but it's an unfortunate association that my mind drew. |
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Post by GreenEyesToo on Feb 21, 2009 12:52:59 GMT
"Vinyan" will not be an easy film to sit through, considering that the Tsunami happened very recently and the countless pictures we've all seen are truly horrifying, there will be protests for sure, some say that there's been talk already, that the producers and most especially the director want to make a profit on such a tragedy. The answer to that is, stay home and don't buy a ticket. There were a few articles here in the UK about that, but Fabrice du Welz has been at pains to point out that this isn't a film about the tsunami - that it was only used (and only briefly at that, I understand, right at the start) as the means to explain Josh's disappearance and to locate the couple in a place where they would encounter the beliefs about vinyan spirits in their search. People are rightly sensitive when a tragedy like the tsunami is exploited, but this film isn't doing that. However, I feel the fear of the reaction generated by that misapprehension of what the film's about has stopped it being released theatrically here. Having said that, and although I like films/books with a psychological edge, this isn't the sort of film I'd want to watch at the cinema, with or without Rufus. It will be a tough film to get through - but that's what the FF button is for! |
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Post by peach on Feb 22, 2009 1:44:04 GMT
All very good points all around. Perhaps I should re-visit frenzy, and rethink my earlier opinion, if I can stomach it. Not sure if I'm in agreement with labeling this a comedy though, black or not.
A truly disturbing film for my and I'm sure everyone here was a film that came out in 2006 with Kate Winslett and Jackie Earle Haley called Little Children. Aside from the pseudo romance and other filler, the main story concerns Jackie Earle Haley's character. I won't go into detail but he was frightening. I don't think it deserved all of the accolades, save for Haley, but a truly disturbing film nonetheless.
I have read that there are protests in the works when and if this is shown. I never quite understood this mode of civil disobedience where film is concerned, the power is in the pocketbook, if you object to a film's content, the quickest way to get your point across is to simply stay home. At any rate out of curiosity and completely unfamiliar will du Welz work and my admiration for anything Sewell does, I would pay the price of admission to see this on a large screen. I'm bound to be depressed afterward but then I know that going in, that this is not a musical.
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Post by lizap on Feb 22, 2009 5:15:26 GMT
peach, I was not disturbed (in the sense) by 'Little Children', except for not understanding what had prompted the apparently individually experienced but simultaneous epiphanies of the lovers, not to go away together. As for the sexual deviant aspect of the film, I thought it was handled exceptionally well. Certainly the character was disturbing, and that one scene in the car on the date -- so well done as to be utterly horrifying -- but I guess there was that thread of redemption present that I mentioned in an above post (re the sort of reconciliation between the deviant and cop), that made the treatment of the character meaningful and a net positive for me. I think this is a good example of what keeps a film from being disturbing in that , bleak and despairing kind of way that I hate and try to avoid. |
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