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Once again it seems most of the world can’t tell a good movie from a bad one.
gemini://circadian.gemlog.org/2023-09-02-across-the-spider-verse.gmi
Circadian makes a number of great observations. I actually loved "Across the Spiderverse" myself, but would likely point out some of the same flaws if pressed. That said, I've felt for a long time that there is something wrong with our attention span in modern times, and it overflows into our expectations for entertainment. Thinking on this, and on one of his biggest complaints, got me thinking about pacing, and how different it used to be.
in a simple movie designed to entertain, an action movie or super hero movie, there is really no excuse for boring the audience.
So I decided to revisit an old classic, which was considered groundbreaking and quite edgy at the time, but which would quite likely bore the ever living shit out of modern audiences - Martin Scoresese's 1976 film Taxi Driver.
You could make a lot of assumptions about this film based on three facts taken together. The film is directed by Martin Scoresese, it stars Robert Deniro in it's lead role, and it features Harvey Keitel in a supporting role. Your assumptions would likely be quite far off the mark. This is not a gangster movie, although it is ripe with crime and a number of characters who would have fit right in had they appeared in Goodfellas. The best way to describe the film would be a slow burn examining a man's slide into madness. It's infinitely more complex than that, obviously.
What I loved about this movie when I was younger was that while there is plenty of foreshadowing and tension buildup along the way, it definitely doesn't prepare you in any way for the level of brutality that takes place during the film's climax. The slow pace of the story instead almost lulls you to sleep, which makes the payoff that much more intense when it arrives. Nobody would pace a big budget Hollywood movie like this today. Well, it's easy to think that but you would be wrong in that assumption as well....
The legacy of 'Taxi Driver' includes such monumentally cool bits of common culture as the infamous "You talkin' to me?" scene. It launched Jodie Foster into a different kind of stardom. Up until that time she was primarily a wholesome child star working for Disney, but in this film it's impossible not to see the impact she would make later on.
But what of my earlier comment that nobody would make a movie paced like this today? Well they have. The Joker contains so much obvious homage to Taxi Driver that if you watch them back to back it feels almost like the same story with a different interpretation. In point of fact, Deniro was brought in to play his particular role in Joker as a blatant call back to the earlier film. The formula worked. The movie was hailed by critics. Audiences by and large hadn't seen anything like Joker and a lot of people were in awe of how this approach made the movie that much more effective. I can surmise that most of those people never saw 'Taxi Driver', or they simply forgot.
That's not to say 'Joker' was bad, or unoriginal. I think it's the best film associated with DC pretty much ever made so far. Most of the others have been exactly what you expect a comic book film to be - way too much action and CGI mixed with zero character development.
'Taxi Driver' has a bizzar ending where Travis Bickel makes a full recovery and is hailed by the press as a hero. That in itself is a strange way to end after the brutality of the movie's climax, but there is subtlety at work here as well. There is of course commentary on how easy it is to proclaim someone a hero or villain, when the reality is so much more complex. Travis Bickel could very well have been hailed a villain had one earlier thread ended differently. The dream like, very unrealistic nature of the aftermath, his recovery and return to work has lead to speculation that what we're seeing is actually the fantasies that ran through his mind in his dying moments. And even if one believes that he survived and returned to work, he sees something in his rearview mirror that obviously disturbs him, which the audience is unable to make out. This begs the question, how will things go differently the next time he snaps?
Circadian mentioned Reservior Dogs as an example of greatness. I rather do like that film and it's director, but not for the reasons that the general public seem to. Quentin Tarantino is nothing if not a scholar of the entire history of filmmaking. You can see the love he holds for vastly differing genres in the weird mashup of Spaghetti Western, Kung Fu, Noir and Grindhouse of Kill Bill Vol 2. Each little vignette pays clear homage to a recognizable category. The film that made me a fan was Pulp Fiction, which came out when I was a senior in high school. I saw that film 3 times in the theater. I would argue that so much of it's greatness comes not from the gore and violence, but the little moments where nothing is happening and we just catch a glimpse of Vincent and Jules engaged in everyday conversation about subjects ranging from foot massage to whether a dog is a filthy animal. We see these very bad men as human beings because they are treated as human being throughout. The movie would be nothing without these little character driven segments. We simply wouldn't care what happens to these people. Any attempt to speed up Pulp Fiction would inevitably ruin the result.
A film that to me really shows what can be done when you take a slower approach is Alfred HItchcock's Rear Window. In my mind, this is a far superior film to his most well known trio of 'The Birds', 'Psycho' and 'Virtigo'. It also shows a much more fun side of Jimmy Stewart than most people think of if they've only seen his wholesome Christmas movies.
Give me character development any day over non-stop action. I'm not saying that action films can't be good, or that every movie should be a slow burn. But when character development doesn't happen in the right way you're left with something very lifeless that no amount of flash can redeem. The best villains are those with a touch of humanity, and the best heroes are the ones who overcome their failings. The best stories are the ones that don't take the easy way out, that don't paint every moral dilemma in black and white, and that give us time to fall in love (or hate) with the characters before the shooting starts. I think it would do modern Hollywood, and audiences, some good to slow down a bit.
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