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Eve Tushnet
Saturday, November 07, 2009
YOU WILL GO DOWN IN DARKNESS BEFORE YOU DIE: Wow, I loved The Descent. It is one of the scariest modern movies I can name. So here are comments. Spoilers.
First, caving is one of the very, very few sports about which I have positive memories. As a dyke, I make a very good fag! But no... I've canoed Class Four [ETA: or maybe three?] rapids, and also spelunked (in the John Brown caves, if memory serves), so the whole setup of this movie really worked for me. I was amazed at how perfectly this movie captured dialogue between women friends. The tensions, ambiguities, spikes--this is how girls talk.
Similarly, the caves I've been in are all in Dixie. This movie was so startling because it highlighted the Southern angle, and even brought a few Southern-horror cliches into play, without ever feeling fake. The Scottish cast made Appalachia foreign without the usual creepy class-based superiority.
The jump scares are perfect. I've seen the initial jump scare four times now, and I still cringe and cover my mouth.
I'm... conflicted about the basic idea of the movie, which we find out something like an hour into the flick. On the one hand, it makes the idea of being trapped in the caves vastly more frightening than it would be if the only danger were death. On the other hand, it's filmed as sf-horror, where the cavedwellers are the Other. And that isn't vastly interesting to me.
ETA: No, thinking it over the next day, actually I think the cavedwellers work really well. The shift from horror primarily about being trapped in the cave to horror primarily about being trapped in the cave with these things is seamless. (And a nice parallel to the Sarah vs. Juno horror of being trapped in a cave with a woman you deeply mistrust, or one whom you've betrayed, attempted to make amends to [I think Sarah's very harsh assessment of Juno's motives isn't accurate], and managed to betray yet again.) Not sure why I was vaguely negative about this aspect of the movie when I went to write it up last night.
In a related note, the women are all incredible. They're real and distinctive. Why not push even harder on the possibility that, as the cavedwellers evolved to meet the cave conditions, these women might be forced to become the next generation of cavewomen?
But yeah... this movie is so beautifully-paced, so full of rich characterization, so loving of its girls... and so relentless in their destruction. I remember wriggling through wormhole caves in total darkness, being able to do that without too much terror. I remember saying, "Hey no, I won't actually go on a zipline over a huge freaking chasm, I may be 13 but I know by now that my palms won't stay dry for the whole time needed to keep me from actually dying here, in the dark, in a cave." I sat beside a camp counselor for the next few hours and told her stories. I never forgot that feeling of self-protection and failure. The Descent is about the girls who would never have feared the way I feared. You could argue that it's about a kind of person I admire, yet could never be.
The Descent is about the total destruction of that brave personality. Nothing helps; nothing wins.
First, caving is one of the very, very few sports about which I have positive memories. As a dyke, I make a very good fag! But no... I've canoed Class Four [ETA: or maybe three?] rapids, and also spelunked (in the John Brown caves, if memory serves), so the whole setup of this movie really worked for me. I was amazed at how perfectly this movie captured dialogue between women friends. The tensions, ambiguities, spikes--this is how girls talk.
Similarly, the caves I've been in are all in Dixie. This movie was so startling because it highlighted the Southern angle, and even brought a few Southern-horror cliches into play, without ever feeling fake. The Scottish cast made Appalachia foreign without the usual creepy class-based superiority.
The jump scares are perfect. I've seen the initial jump scare four times now, and I still cringe and cover my mouth.
I'm... conflicted about the basic idea of the movie, which we find out something like an hour into the flick. On the one hand, it makes the idea of being trapped in the caves vastly more frightening than it would be if the only danger were death. On the other hand, it's filmed as sf-horror, where the cavedwellers are the Other. And that isn't vastly interesting to me.
ETA: No, thinking it over the next day, actually I think the cavedwellers work really well. The shift from horror primarily about being trapped in the cave to horror primarily about being trapped in the cave with these things is seamless. (And a nice parallel to the Sarah vs. Juno horror of being trapped in a cave with a woman you deeply mistrust, or one whom you've betrayed, attempted to make amends to [I think Sarah's very harsh assessment of Juno's motives isn't accurate], and managed to betray yet again.) Not sure why I was vaguely negative about this aspect of the movie when I went to write it up last night.
In a related note, the women are all incredible. They're real and distinctive. Why not push even harder on the possibility that, as the cavedwellers evolved to meet the cave conditions, these women might be forced to become the next generation of cavewomen?
But yeah... this movie is so beautifully-paced, so full of rich characterization, so loving of its girls... and so relentless in their destruction. I remember wriggling through wormhole caves in total darkness, being able to do that without too much terror. I remember saying, "Hey no, I won't actually go on a zipline over a huge freaking chasm, I may be 13 but I know by now that my palms won't stay dry for the whole time needed to keep me from actually dying here, in the dark, in a cave." I sat beside a camp counselor for the next few hours and told her stories. I never forgot that feeling of self-protection and failure. The Descent is about the girls who would never have feared the way I feared. You could argue that it's about a kind of person I admire, yet could never be.
The Descent is about the total destruction of that brave personality. Nothing helps; nothing wins.
Monday, October 19, 2009
JUST A SLOWER WALK WITH THEE: I watched Night of the Living Dead in high school and really got nothing from it. In retrospect I used it to confirm my self-image as someone who likes old-school, Haitian-themed zombie flicks, rather than the modern kind.
Watched it again. Now I understand why it revived (...) and reshaped a genre.
Thoughts, in roughly chronological order: #1: I assume everyone but me already gets that the intro to the movie of The Shining is based on this movie.
#2: Part of the shivery fun of Shaun of the Dead was the fact that we all get why he didn't understand his predicament immediately. Contemporary urban life is dissociated enough that we could all be walking among zombies for a while before we realize it!
And NOTLD does the same thing; except that the very first zombie is camouflaged not in deracinated-modernity, but in grief. He is shambling through a cemetery, as I'd think almost all of us have shambled through our shocking griefs.
In fact--this is imported from later in the movie--Barbara's traumatized reaction makes her as devastated as the first zombie at first appears to be. His murderous intent hides within his trauma.
And--now looking at the movie overall--in fact it seems like what makes the new-style zombies here especially frightening, the reason they can't be replaced by other monsters even though they're not the villains, is that they exaggerate the guilt which often comes with grief. The guilt and shame of the ones who died "on our watch," whether or not we really could have prevented it (cf. Nietzsche on witches), gets impacted and infected and creates a special kind of miserable horror. And for all my bubbitzing about the superiority of old-school Haitian-zombie flicks, when I actually came to write about zombies myself, I too used them as expressions of the guilt which comes with grief.
This is maybe why the two zombies we actually know by name are family members of the living characters. The daughter is an especially acute victim/killer, since children are so inevitably the source of parents' guilt and grief.
#3: Barbara isn't allowed to look as lovely as Candace Hilligoss in Carnival of Souls, but she gets the same Heideggerian "thrownness," the same absolutely-elsewhere look. She's the workhorse version of Hilligoss's displaced and wondering deer. She gets feral.
I also note that although this movie does pass the "Bechdel Test" (do two women talk about something other than their relationship with a man?), just barely, it also points out one major inadequacy in that test: Dialogue is not the only way of talking. Helen and Barbara, in their first scene together--when Helen lights her cigarette, and then snuffs her match to relieve Barbara's distress--communicate far more before Helen speaks than after. They connect in looks and actions, not in words.
#4: The wrongness of the zombies' walk = everything I didn't get from Paranormal Activity. They are flamboyantly other. The only moments in which PA achieved the same effect, for me, were the moments when Katie stood enraptured by the bed, jerking in the speed-motion camera.
I'm wondering if movement doesn't make this kind of unearthly horror work, more than sound. We talk as if sound is what breaks in from the other world, and I think that might be backed up by the Scriptural metaphors of hearing; but in horror movies, from Regan's spiderwalk through Samara's crawl through the zombie shamble, it's physical movement which brings horror home.
#5: Really liking the interaction between Ben and Barbara--he's come through his horror to the survival side, and he knows she hasn't, and he's just trying to talk her over to his side of the Styx.
Actually Ben is pretty amazing in general... which is counterbalanced by the big flaw in the movie, aka Cooper. You just cannot have your villain (and Cooper is the only villain available--the zombies are no more villain than a flood would be, as the dialogue underlines) be the worst actor among the main cast.
#6: "They're coming to get you, Barbara." Twice, and worse the second time. Sometimes things are iconic for a reason.
#7: A presidential meeting "behind closed doors" is announced as we see Ben has boarded up every door and window--heartbreakingly ramshackle, heartbreakingly human, but no more so than in a host of inner-city neighborhood blocks in the decade after this movie was filmed. "An epidemic of murder." You don't say. "Ordinary-looking people."
#8: Why does this movie strike a chord? Old-school zombie flicks rest on the otherness of the conquered world--and the otherness of God, or the gods. Haiti is religion, and God's unintelligible power; Haiti is rapture; and yet Haiti is woman, left helpless against her terrifying exploitation. Metaphors interlace and shake like gauze curtains in a hurricane.
In this movie we begin with religion--or at least church-on-Sunday normalcy--but the otherness is basically non-religious. Why do the dead want to kill us? Not for any religious reason; solely because they are the monsters. They are the Them.
I... can't help but think that the Them are less scary than the You; the need for survival is less frightening than the need for meaning. In this movie our worst enemies are our unintelligible, yet inevitably survivalist, selves.
On the other hand, see above re: guilt-impacted grief. This movie, like Stephen King's best novel (Pet Sematary), taps into deep-rooted miseries. On the third hand, or tentacle, viewing our beholden dead as mindlessly, pointlessly alien seems to detract from our responsibility toward them. The metaphor doesn't quite go through. We participate somehow in Johnny's death, in Helen's child's death, in the way that we participate somehow in Adam's sin (and his happiness, cf. Augustine); but there's still a kind of absolution in our knowledge that Barbara would never want Johnny to die, or Helen her child. We're actually let off the hook a bit here in the narrative, though not in the symbolic alphabet of the movie.
Intriguingly, those who can kill zombies without emotional trauma are suspect here (cf. the coda, which was unexpected and yet inevitable, like the opposite of Hitchcock's definition of suspense), but those who can't kill ex-beloved zombies at all are also suspect. In a way, that seems to be the tension which animates post-Romero zombie flicks.
#10: Oh, the tree-lined flamey confrontation toward the end suggests the Southern Gothic moonlight-and-magnolias subgenre. Given the movie's racial politics, it's a really nice touch: The black man wields the torch.
And then.
Watched it again. Now I understand why it revived (...) and reshaped a genre.
Thoughts, in roughly chronological order: #1: I assume everyone but me already gets that the intro to the movie of The Shining is based on this movie.
#2: Part of the shivery fun of Shaun of the Dead was the fact that we all get why he didn't understand his predicament immediately. Contemporary urban life is dissociated enough that we could all be walking among zombies for a while before we realize it!
And NOTLD does the same thing; except that the very first zombie is camouflaged not in deracinated-modernity, but in grief. He is shambling through a cemetery, as I'd think almost all of us have shambled through our shocking griefs.
In fact--this is imported from later in the movie--Barbara's traumatized reaction makes her as devastated as the first zombie at first appears to be. His murderous intent hides within his trauma.
And--now looking at the movie overall--in fact it seems like what makes the new-style zombies here especially frightening, the reason they can't be replaced by other monsters even though they're not the villains, is that they exaggerate the guilt which often comes with grief. The guilt and shame of the ones who died "on our watch," whether or not we really could have prevented it (cf. Nietzsche on witches), gets impacted and infected and creates a special kind of miserable horror. And for all my bubbitzing about the superiority of old-school Haitian-zombie flicks, when I actually came to write about zombies myself, I too used them as expressions of the guilt which comes with grief.
This is maybe why the two zombies we actually know by name are family members of the living characters. The daughter is an especially acute victim/killer, since children are so inevitably the source of parents' guilt and grief.
#3: Barbara isn't allowed to look as lovely as Candace Hilligoss in Carnival of Souls, but she gets the same Heideggerian "thrownness," the same absolutely-elsewhere look. She's the workhorse version of Hilligoss's displaced and wondering deer. She gets feral.
I also note that although this movie does pass the "Bechdel Test" (do two women talk about something other than their relationship with a man?), just barely, it also points out one major inadequacy in that test: Dialogue is not the only way of talking. Helen and Barbara, in their first scene together--when Helen lights her cigarette, and then snuffs her match to relieve Barbara's distress--communicate far more before Helen speaks than after. They connect in looks and actions, not in words.
#4: The wrongness of the zombies' walk = everything I didn't get from Paranormal Activity. They are flamboyantly other. The only moments in which PA achieved the same effect, for me, were the moments when Katie stood enraptured by the bed, jerking in the speed-motion camera.
I'm wondering if movement doesn't make this kind of unearthly horror work, more than sound. We talk as if sound is what breaks in from the other world, and I think that might be backed up by the Scriptural metaphors of hearing; but in horror movies, from Regan's spiderwalk through Samara's crawl through the zombie shamble, it's physical movement which brings horror home.
#5: Really liking the interaction between Ben and Barbara--he's come through his horror to the survival side, and he knows she hasn't, and he's just trying to talk her over to his side of the Styx.
Actually Ben is pretty amazing in general... which is counterbalanced by the big flaw in the movie, aka Cooper. You just cannot have your villain (and Cooper is the only villain available--the zombies are no more villain than a flood would be, as the dialogue underlines) be the worst actor among the main cast.
#6: "They're coming to get you, Barbara." Twice, and worse the second time. Sometimes things are iconic for a reason.
#7: A presidential meeting "behind closed doors" is announced as we see Ben has boarded up every door and window--heartbreakingly ramshackle, heartbreakingly human, but no more so than in a host of inner-city neighborhood blocks in the decade after this movie was filmed. "An epidemic of murder." You don't say. "Ordinary-looking people."
#8: Why does this movie strike a chord? Old-school zombie flicks rest on the otherness of the conquered world--and the otherness of God, or the gods. Haiti is religion, and God's unintelligible power; Haiti is rapture; and yet Haiti is woman, left helpless against her terrifying exploitation. Metaphors interlace and shake like gauze curtains in a hurricane.
In this movie we begin with religion--or at least church-on-Sunday normalcy--but the otherness is basically non-religious. Why do the dead want to kill us? Not for any religious reason; solely because they are the monsters. They are the Them.
I... can't help but think that the Them are less scary than the You; the need for survival is less frightening than the need for meaning. In this movie our worst enemies are our unintelligible, yet inevitably survivalist, selves.
On the other hand, see above re: guilt-impacted grief. This movie, like Stephen King's best novel (Pet Sematary), taps into deep-rooted miseries. On the third hand, or tentacle, viewing our beholden dead as mindlessly, pointlessly alien seems to detract from our responsibility toward them. The metaphor doesn't quite go through. We participate somehow in Johnny's death, in Helen's child's death, in the way that we participate somehow in Adam's sin (and his happiness, cf. Augustine); but there's still a kind of absolution in our knowledge that Barbara would never want Johnny to die, or Helen her child. We're actually let off the hook a bit here in the narrative, though not in the symbolic alphabet of the movie.
Intriguingly, those who can kill zombies without emotional trauma are suspect here (cf. the coda, which was unexpected and yet inevitable, like the opposite of Hitchcock's definition of suspense), but those who can't kill ex-beloved zombies at all are also suspect. In a way, that seems to be the tension which animates post-Romero zombie flicks.
#10: Oh, the tree-lined flamey confrontation toward the end suggests the Southern Gothic moonlight-and-magnolias subgenre. Given the movie's racial politics, it's a really nice touch: The black man wields the torch.
And then.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
WHY AREN'T YOU IN THE HOUSE ALONE?: A series of points about Paranormal Activity, in no order I can quite discern.
1) I really liked the dynamic between the lead actors--they reflected two different kinds of awful interaction I've seen in real couples, so their arguments felt totally relatable. First there's the hysteria narrative, where the woman has actual concerns but they're dismissed by the man because he assumes she's hormonal. I was initially shocked, but on reflection not even surprised, by the degree to which Katie has to beg for her boyfriend to take her seriously. (The "take a pill" line got a perfect reaction from the actress, humiliatingly understated and raw... and also a strong reaction from the ladies in the audience when I saw the film.) And it's pretty clear that this hetero-dynamic is driving the film, from Katie's careful nonreaction to the boyfriend's line about how they're "engaged to be engaged" all the way to the end.
Then there's the philosophical/theological issue: What most people consider to be "rational" is defined by their culture. So how on earth can you formulate a culturally-rational response to a culturally-irrational experience?
2) I liked that the film let these two dynamics interact without conflating them: Mika, the boyfriend, isn't positioned as either the rational male or the patriarch oppressing women's deeper knowledge... but rather as a regular guy, in a frequently misogynist culture, who's placed in a position where his territorial, rationalist, and sexist instincts conflict with his genuine love of and tenderness for his girl. The film wouldn't work at all if Mika didn't seem to look up to Katie in some ways, even as he simultaneously looks down on her in others.
He has a very familiar heterosexual reverence for her physical beauty, for example. This is well-exploited by the director by having her get more haggard as he basically stays quite good-looking--he comes across as the kind of guy who will pet your sweat-soaked hair while you're shaking and stinking with fever and still think you're beautiful. (I may be influenced by the fact that I thought Mika's actor was more attractive than Katie's actress from the get-go, but they're both shot in ways which make them look pretty but not stunning.) But the movie also completely captures how unsatisfying this physical protectiveness is for actual women, who want to be listened to and loved as individuals rather than (or at least, in addition to!) icons. The astonished gratitude straight men bring to their relationships is real, and I liked how this movie conveyed it without ever glossing over the gross parts where a) he thinks his worldview is normative and hers is suspect, and relatedly b) He tries to prove himself as a champion of She even against her wishes and her greater understanding of the world.
3) Now to what didn't work for me. I think this is where you should definitely stop reading if you're avoiding spoilers. This movie did not scare me. I mean... it almost didn't scare me at all.
I will note that approximately 90% of the audience seemed much more scared than I was. They'd gasp, they'd exclaim, and I'd be completely all, "...Is that it?"
I honestly don't know why. The audience seemed truly freaked out. And I was... is the horror equivalent of "left cold," "left warm"? I was left lukewarm.
I totally agree with Kindertrauma's comments about really wanting to get scared by this movie. (And his later comments, in the... boxes for the commenting of the comments.) In terms of personal psychoanalysis, I agree with some of his points and not others: I startle like crazy at small noises. I jump and gasp when a car horn honks. I've woken up the Rattus in the middle of the night due to my shock at, like, a venetian-blind cord thwacking against a window or some such, and never even remembered it in the morning.
But I'm really hard to scare at the movies, if you distinguish "frighten" from "chill." I'm chilled by all kinds of flicks, left traumatized and pondering them for a long time. But the only two movies I can remember which specifically kept me up at night or gave me nightmares are Misery (I know--I think it was Sean Collins who pinpointed the way Kathy Bates's character is completely dehumanized here, and though I can't find the link now I agree with the criticism--but it's scary!) and Ringu.
And with Ringu, the specific thing which kept me up was, I think, the soundtrack. I watched the movie, and went to bed... and every time a moth batted against the window, or a car rushed by on 16th Street, I'd gasp and shudder and turn on the light.
So you can guess that I was hugely intrigued to read that the big draw for Paranormal was its soundtrack. But... what? What is so scary about what happens here?
OKAY NO REALLY STOP READING HERE IF YOU'RE AVOIDING SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING.
4) I think part of my problem is that it's all one storyline. There are exactly zero subplots. So it's really boy meets girl... girl has ghoul... boy wants to taunt ghoul... girl says no... boy taunts anyway... they die.
There's some suspense in that. When Mika promises not to "buy" the Ouija board, I knew he'd borrow one... but that act was so deeply embedded in his character, as he'd been portrayed up to that point, that I totally bought it and just wanted to see how this action of girlfriend-betrayal would ultimately lead to their doom. The movie does keep to Hitchcock's distinction between shock and suspense, where suspense is when you know more than the characters know, you know what will and must happen, and so you're even more thoroughly on tenterhooks waiting to see if it will really happen or be headed off at the pass, and how the characters will respond.
The weird thing is that this movie is suspense without any shocks! It tells you what it will do, and then does it. Which... I honestly think maybe I could be terrified by, in a movie more firmly embedded in naturalistic horror. Seven might be an example of that?--although even there, of course there are final twists. But I'm pretty sure that I can be horrified by "I'm going to kill you--I'm killing you--I've killed you."
But in a supernatural horror movie, even though I in fact believe that demons exist, I think I need more complexity.
Partly, maybe this is because I think that God moves in more mysterious ways than this movie does, so why shouldn't the Adversary?? I'm not sure. For whatever reason, this felt overly straightforward. Maybe, in fact, because I've heard people discuss what they perceive to be encounters with the demonic, and it sounds a lot scarier than thumping floorboards--and, even, a lot scarier than murder! Maybe part of my problem here is that I didn't think Paranormal Activity made... paranormal activity... any more frightening or "other" or even flatly inhuman than gang violence. I was vastly more scared by the penultimate episode of s2 of The Wire, which I watched the same night, is what I'm saying. There was (for me) no sense of the eldritch or the uncanny, the out-of-time.
5) And that impression might be reinforced by the fact that the past really plays no role in this movie. There is no real detective element--that's a red herring. The burnt photograph is a ploy at best. I had no sense that old actions are alive, still wreaking vengeance. I had only the sense that some critter was still out and about and doing harm.
6) I'll also note, although this isn't a criticism, that the religious elements of this movie are... sketched but never committed to. This film is engaged to be engaged to Christ. Its metaphysics never reach the incoherence of (for example) Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but that's basically because Christianity is merely alluded to and then swiftly shied away from.
I was totally okay with that, actually, since I think horror movies should get to more or less make their own rules. But after the movie I was walking behind a couple where the woman, at least, seemed to think that Katie and Mika's reluctance to just try exorcism was the supernatural-horror equivalent of the slasher-flick "Let's split up and look for the killer ourselves!"--a level of stupidity which makes it hard for the audience to identify with the characters. I hope my first couple points make it clear that I don't share her perspective... but I did find it interesting.
7) All that said... I should reiterate that while I saw this movie with a very small audience, almost everyone else seemed more scared by it than I was. And I certainly didn't regret seeing it... though I guess I wish I'd been able to pay matinee prices. B-, you know?
1) I really liked the dynamic between the lead actors--they reflected two different kinds of awful interaction I've seen in real couples, so their arguments felt totally relatable. First there's the hysteria narrative, where the woman has actual concerns but they're dismissed by the man because he assumes she's hormonal. I was initially shocked, but on reflection not even surprised, by the degree to which Katie has to beg for her boyfriend to take her seriously. (The "take a pill" line got a perfect reaction from the actress, humiliatingly understated and raw... and also a strong reaction from the ladies in the audience when I saw the film.) And it's pretty clear that this hetero-dynamic is driving the film, from Katie's careful nonreaction to the boyfriend's line about how they're "engaged to be engaged" all the way to the end.
Then there's the philosophical/theological issue: What most people consider to be "rational" is defined by their culture. So how on earth can you formulate a culturally-rational response to a culturally-irrational experience?
2) I liked that the film let these two dynamics interact without conflating them: Mika, the boyfriend, isn't positioned as either the rational male or the patriarch oppressing women's deeper knowledge... but rather as a regular guy, in a frequently misogynist culture, who's placed in a position where his territorial, rationalist, and sexist instincts conflict with his genuine love of and tenderness for his girl. The film wouldn't work at all if Mika didn't seem to look up to Katie in some ways, even as he simultaneously looks down on her in others.
He has a very familiar heterosexual reverence for her physical beauty, for example. This is well-exploited by the director by having her get more haggard as he basically stays quite good-looking--he comes across as the kind of guy who will pet your sweat-soaked hair while you're shaking and stinking with fever and still think you're beautiful. (I may be influenced by the fact that I thought Mika's actor was more attractive than Katie's actress from the get-go, but they're both shot in ways which make them look pretty but not stunning.) But the movie also completely captures how unsatisfying this physical protectiveness is for actual women, who want to be listened to and loved as individuals rather than (or at least, in addition to!) icons. The astonished gratitude straight men bring to their relationships is real, and I liked how this movie conveyed it without ever glossing over the gross parts where a) he thinks his worldview is normative and hers is suspect, and relatedly b) He tries to prove himself as a champion of She even against her wishes and her greater understanding of the world.
3) Now to what didn't work for me. I think this is where you should definitely stop reading if you're avoiding spoilers. This movie did not scare me. I mean... it almost didn't scare me at all.
I will note that approximately 90% of the audience seemed much more scared than I was. They'd gasp, they'd exclaim, and I'd be completely all, "...Is that it?"
I honestly don't know why. The audience seemed truly freaked out. And I was... is the horror equivalent of "left cold," "left warm"? I was left lukewarm.
I totally agree with Kindertrauma's comments about really wanting to get scared by this movie. (And his later comments, in the... boxes for the commenting of the comments.) In terms of personal psychoanalysis, I agree with some of his points and not others: I startle like crazy at small noises. I jump and gasp when a car horn honks. I've woken up the Rattus in the middle of the night due to my shock at, like, a venetian-blind cord thwacking against a window or some such, and never even remembered it in the morning.
But I'm really hard to scare at the movies, if you distinguish "frighten" from "chill." I'm chilled by all kinds of flicks, left traumatized and pondering them for a long time. But the only two movies I can remember which specifically kept me up at night or gave me nightmares are Misery (I know--I think it was Sean Collins who pinpointed the way Kathy Bates's character is completely dehumanized here, and though I can't find the link now I agree with the criticism--but it's scary!) and Ringu.
And with Ringu, the specific thing which kept me up was, I think, the soundtrack. I watched the movie, and went to bed... and every time a moth batted against the window, or a car rushed by on 16th Street, I'd gasp and shudder and turn on the light.
So you can guess that I was hugely intrigued to read that the big draw for Paranormal was its soundtrack. But... what? What is so scary about what happens here?
OKAY NO REALLY STOP READING HERE IF YOU'RE AVOIDING SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING.
4) I think part of my problem is that it's all one storyline. There are exactly zero subplots. So it's really boy meets girl... girl has ghoul... boy wants to taunt ghoul... girl says no... boy taunts anyway... they die.
There's some suspense in that. When Mika promises not to "buy" the Ouija board, I knew he'd borrow one... but that act was so deeply embedded in his character, as he'd been portrayed up to that point, that I totally bought it and just wanted to see how this action of girlfriend-betrayal would ultimately lead to their doom. The movie does keep to Hitchcock's distinction between shock and suspense, where suspense is when you know more than the characters know, you know what will and must happen, and so you're even more thoroughly on tenterhooks waiting to see if it will really happen or be headed off at the pass, and how the characters will respond.
The weird thing is that this movie is suspense without any shocks! It tells you what it will do, and then does it. Which... I honestly think maybe I could be terrified by, in a movie more firmly embedded in naturalistic horror. Seven might be an example of that?--although even there, of course there are final twists. But I'm pretty sure that I can be horrified by "I'm going to kill you--I'm killing you--I've killed you."
But in a supernatural horror movie, even though I in fact believe that demons exist, I think I need more complexity.
Partly, maybe this is because I think that God moves in more mysterious ways than this movie does, so why shouldn't the Adversary?? I'm not sure. For whatever reason, this felt overly straightforward. Maybe, in fact, because I've heard people discuss what they perceive to be encounters with the demonic, and it sounds a lot scarier than thumping floorboards--and, even, a lot scarier than murder! Maybe part of my problem here is that I didn't think Paranormal Activity made... paranormal activity... any more frightening or "other" or even flatly inhuman than gang violence. I was vastly more scared by the penultimate episode of s2 of The Wire, which I watched the same night, is what I'm saying. There was (for me) no sense of the eldritch or the uncanny, the out-of-time.
5) And that impression might be reinforced by the fact that the past really plays no role in this movie. There is no real detective element--that's a red herring. The burnt photograph is a ploy at best. I had no sense that old actions are alive, still wreaking vengeance. I had only the sense that some critter was still out and about and doing harm.
6) I'll also note, although this isn't a criticism, that the religious elements of this movie are... sketched but never committed to. This film is engaged to be engaged to Christ. Its metaphysics never reach the incoherence of (for example) Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but that's basically because Christianity is merely alluded to and then swiftly shied away from.
I was totally okay with that, actually, since I think horror movies should get to more or less make their own rules. But after the movie I was walking behind a couple where the woman, at least, seemed to think that Katie and Mika's reluctance to just try exorcism was the supernatural-horror equivalent of the slasher-flick "Let's split up and look for the killer ourselves!"--a level of stupidity which makes it hard for the audience to identify with the characters. I hope my first couple points make it clear that I don't share her perspective... but I did find it interesting.
7) All that said... I should reiterate that while I saw this movie with a very small audience, almost everyone else seemed more scared by it than I was. And I certainly didn't regret seeing it... though I guess I wish I'd been able to pay matinee prices. B-, you know?
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
HALFLIFE (now, with links!): When I walked out of Watchmen the first time I saw it--“First We Take Manhattan” still ringing in my ears, and thank you, movie!--I was on a high. They did it, I was thinking. They filmed “Watchmen.”
On the way home, I started questioning. My most immediate problem--the lack of existentialist detective-story--is addressed in the NRO review, so I won’t rehash. But when I got home, I started reading reviews of the movie, via Sean Collins’s incredibly helpful round-ups. EDITED TO ADD LINKS: here and here.
And my emotional trajectory became clear. Every review defending the movie rang a bit hollow to me, even when I agreed with individual points (Sean is totally right about that My Chemical Romance cover! And yes, I’m saying that out loud!). But almost every criticism of the movie seemed accurate to me. You’ll notice that my review borrowed heavily from those criticisms, EDITED: e.g. the stuff about depiction of violence in the movie vs. the comic here and here.
So I know my NRO review is ultimately pretty negative. But keep in mind that the initial reaction is also real. The review is about the elements I thought it was most important to highlight; but there are important things the movie got right, too.
On the way home, I started questioning. My most immediate problem--the lack of existentialist detective-story--is addressed in the NRO review, so I won’t rehash. But when I got home, I started reading reviews of the movie, via Sean Collins’s incredibly helpful round-ups. EDITED TO ADD LINKS: here and here.
And my emotional trajectory became clear. Every review defending the movie rang a bit hollow to me, even when I agreed with individual points (Sean is totally right about that My Chemical Romance cover! And yes, I’m saying that out loud!). But almost every criticism of the movie seemed accurate to me. You’ll notice that my review borrowed heavily from those criticisms, EDITED: e.g. the stuff about depiction of violence in the movie vs. the comic here and here.
So I know my NRO review is ultimately pretty negative. But keep in mind that the initial reaction is also real. The review is about the elements I thought it was most important to highlight; but there are important things the movie got right, too.
SILENT RUNNING: If you complain about everything left out of an almost three-hour movie, as I did, I think it’s obvious to ask what on earth you would have cut! So here are my candidates--which include some scenes I really liked.
#1. Cheesecore. So Dan and Laurie have costumed softcore music-video sex--and yes, the “music video” aspect is at least as dumb to me as the “softcore” aspect. I’ve read a few defenses of this scene which argue that it’s intentionally cheesy.
What I want to know is, Why is that a defense? I already know, because of every single other scene between Dan and Laurie already, that they can only connect with one another and be intimate and vulnerable within the disclaimers of their costumes. What does this scene actually add to the movie, besides fifteen minutes (ok, it only felt that long) and Malin Akerman’s nipple? The humor is cheap (Owlship ejaculating fire) and this movie is already very long.
(I’ll also say, while we’re here, that I’m unimpressed by any film-crit arguments which rely on calling one’s interlocutors sex-hating Puritans. This is a charge which neither can be refuted [because it is really about the internal mental states you perceive in/project onto me] nor should be--I shouldn’t have to trot out all the cinematic sex scenes I did appreciate in order for you to give me a hearing about this one.)
There’s an equally music-video, and equally stupid, shot toward the very end, where Dan and Laurie look toward the camera in synch before heading out into the Antarctic wastes. It’s hilarious in a bad way, and makes me wonder what Mozart ever did to superhero directors, that they so persistently abuse his Requiem Mass.
...Actually I think you can differentiate three types of “obvious” shots in this movie. There are the genuinely dumb obvious shots, which make the movie stupider. I’d also add the “Last Supper” shot from the opening credits, literally the only moment of those credits I found anything other than perfect--what is the parallel here? How is Sally Jupiter’s retirement anything like the Last Supper? What is added to the movie by doing this, other than a cheap recognition-of-image gag?
There’s the Apocalypse Now quickie parody scene with Doctor Manhattan and Richard Wagner. I think this is the only “in-between” scene for me, where I get what they were doing with the pop-culture parallel but still found it cheap for reasons I find hard to articulate. ...Possibly the use of the staticky radio playing “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” when Adrian confronts the execs would also fall into this category--I really got a kick out of that, but I accept that it might be a misstep.
And then there’s the awesome, Alan-Moore-ish on-the-nose stuff, like “99 Luftballons” and “All Along the Watchtower” and Silhouette kissing the nurse. Those elements not only fit completely with the comic’s aesthetic--they also added a depth of atmosphere, a pop-realism of place and time, a cultural sensibility. Plus they were fun.
#2. The alley fight. Making Dan and Laurie just as bats crazy as Rorschach is a valid directorial choice. It's a pretty obvious take on the comic’s interrogation of vigilantism. So my real problems with the alley fight are a) if you do the alley fight this way, the prison riot has to be a lot more bloody than it is in the movie; b) I don’t think you can do the alley fight this way and keep the fun dialogue about how Rorschach dropped the masochist pseudo-villain down an elevator shaft, since that joke requires you to believe that he is ultra-bats and they are less-bats; and c) I think if you want to make the “even sweet little Laurie is driven into cruelty because that’s what violent response to crime does to people” you can do it by intensifying the prison riot, so this scene isn’t really necessary if we have to cut things.
#3. The Comedian’s funeral. I liked this scene. But all it actually needs is Moloch and Kovacs--it’s important for Moloch’s character and for the plot, but those moments take up about 1/15 of the actual screentime of this scene. And “Sounds of Silence” isn’t an insightful enough score choice to justify the time it takes.
...That’s all I can think of. After that, I can only suggest, helplessly, perhaps an intermission?
#1. Cheesecore. So Dan and Laurie have costumed softcore music-video sex--and yes, the “music video” aspect is at least as dumb to me as the “softcore” aspect. I’ve read a few defenses of this scene which argue that it’s intentionally cheesy.
What I want to know is, Why is that a defense? I already know, because of every single other scene between Dan and Laurie already, that they can only connect with one another and be intimate and vulnerable within the disclaimers of their costumes. What does this scene actually add to the movie, besides fifteen minutes (ok, it only felt that long) and Malin Akerman’s nipple? The humor is cheap (Owlship ejaculating fire) and this movie is already very long.
(I’ll also say, while we’re here, that I’m unimpressed by any film-crit arguments which rely on calling one’s interlocutors sex-hating Puritans. This is a charge which neither can be refuted [because it is really about the internal mental states you perceive in/project onto me] nor should be--I shouldn’t have to trot out all the cinematic sex scenes I did appreciate in order for you to give me a hearing about this one.)
There’s an equally music-video, and equally stupid, shot toward the very end, where Dan and Laurie look toward the camera in synch before heading out into the Antarctic wastes. It’s hilarious in a bad way, and makes me wonder what Mozart ever did to superhero directors, that they so persistently abuse his Requiem Mass.
...Actually I think you can differentiate three types of “obvious” shots in this movie. There are the genuinely dumb obvious shots, which make the movie stupider. I’d also add the “Last Supper” shot from the opening credits, literally the only moment of those credits I found anything other than perfect--what is the parallel here? How is Sally Jupiter’s retirement anything like the Last Supper? What is added to the movie by doing this, other than a cheap recognition-of-image gag?
There’s the Apocalypse Now quickie parody scene with Doctor Manhattan and Richard Wagner. I think this is the only “in-between” scene for me, where I get what they were doing with the pop-culture parallel but still found it cheap for reasons I find hard to articulate. ...Possibly the use of the staticky radio playing “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” when Adrian confronts the execs would also fall into this category--I really got a kick out of that, but I accept that it might be a misstep.
And then there’s the awesome, Alan-Moore-ish on-the-nose stuff, like “99 Luftballons” and “All Along the Watchtower” and Silhouette kissing the nurse. Those elements not only fit completely with the comic’s aesthetic--they also added a depth of atmosphere, a pop-realism of place and time, a cultural sensibility. Plus they were fun.
#2. The alley fight. Making Dan and Laurie just as bats crazy as Rorschach is a valid directorial choice. It's a pretty obvious take on the comic’s interrogation of vigilantism. So my real problems with the alley fight are a) if you do the alley fight this way, the prison riot has to be a lot more bloody than it is in the movie; b) I don’t think you can do the alley fight this way and keep the fun dialogue about how Rorschach dropped the masochist pseudo-villain down an elevator shaft, since that joke requires you to believe that he is ultra-bats and they are less-bats; and c) I think if you want to make the “even sweet little Laurie is driven into cruelty because that’s what violent response to crime does to people” you can do it by intensifying the prison riot, so this scene isn’t really necessary if we have to cut things.
#3. The Comedian’s funeral. I liked this scene. But all it actually needs is Moloch and Kovacs--it’s important for Moloch’s character and for the plot, but those moments take up about 1/15 of the actual screentime of this scene. And “Sounds of Silence” isn’t an insightful enough score choice to justify the time it takes.
...That’s all I can think of. After that, I can only suggest, helplessly, perhaps an intermission?
AN ANGEL WITH A FLAMING SWORD--AND AN INKBLOT MASK: Barbara Nicolosi at Church of the Masses really hated this movie, and walked out. In her comments box, she explained that the scene where she decided she couldn’t take it anymore and shouldn’t have to was the moment when Rorschach discovers the child-killer’s dogs tugging at a little girl’s shattered leg.
Let me try to explain why this isn’t my reaction to that scene--and why I think the Watchmen story, in comics or on film, really needs that moment.
First, I am not arguing that Barbara’s reaction is wrong. If you can't film Watchmen without that scene, maybe it's just unfilmable. I am pretty well convinced that Barbara is aware of the scope of human evil, you know? I see her point that the scene could be viewed as what she’s sometimes called “assaultive” of the audience--rubbing our noses in it, a kind of sadomasochist experience in which wallowing in gore is confused with real repentance, real existential questioning and horror, or some other lasting shift in the audience’s soul.
Also, for me, the most horrifying moment in that scene is Rorschach’s discovery of the girl’s bloodied underwear. The specificity of that moment--the bunching of the elastic waistband--that’s basically unbearable. I’m not sure I can explain why that moment hits me so much harder than the gore, but even now, I can picture the scene with the dogs and view it clinically in the mind’s eye, whereas the underwear still makes my throat clench. I don’t argue that this response is “better,” and I get why it might make you more skeptical of my defense of the dog scene--maybe I just don’t get why this scene is assaultive because I respond more strongly to other kinds of horror.
But here’s why I think the dogs are important. The dogs show that the killer has corrupted every element of his world. He has not solely destroyed the life of an innocent child; that would be more than bad enough. But he’s also taken (presumably) “innocent,” amoral animals--the natural world--and turned them into horrific weapons. He has broken the natural world.
This makes his corruption more thorough. His ability to distort and destroy now extends not just to his immediate victim but to every element of our world. (Cf. my Inside Catholic piece on torture.)
I hope you guys see how this horrific transformation of the natural world a) resonates with my take on Watchmen the comic, and b) resonates with me as a Catholic, a person who believes that human sin is what turned our world against us. When we fell we pulled the whole world down on top of us; and this perspective engages directly with the comic’s anguished question of whether the world’s chaos hides some real pattern, some real meaning, or whether all apparent patterns are simply the projections of the devastatingly violent human will.
Let me try to explain why this isn’t my reaction to that scene--and why I think the Watchmen story, in comics or on film, really needs that moment.
First, I am not arguing that Barbara’s reaction is wrong. If you can't film Watchmen without that scene, maybe it's just unfilmable. I am pretty well convinced that Barbara is aware of the scope of human evil, you know? I see her point that the scene could be viewed as what she’s sometimes called “assaultive” of the audience--rubbing our noses in it, a kind of sadomasochist experience in which wallowing in gore is confused with real repentance, real existential questioning and horror, or some other lasting shift in the audience’s soul.
Also, for me, the most horrifying moment in that scene is Rorschach’s discovery of the girl’s bloodied underwear. The specificity of that moment--the bunching of the elastic waistband--that’s basically unbearable. I’m not sure I can explain why that moment hits me so much harder than the gore, but even now, I can picture the scene with the dogs and view it clinically in the mind’s eye, whereas the underwear still makes my throat clench. I don’t argue that this response is “better,” and I get why it might make you more skeptical of my defense of the dog scene--maybe I just don’t get why this scene is assaultive because I respond more strongly to other kinds of horror.
But here’s why I think the dogs are important. The dogs show that the killer has corrupted every element of his world. He has not solely destroyed the life of an innocent child; that would be more than bad enough. But he’s also taken (presumably) “innocent,” amoral animals--the natural world--and turned them into horrific weapons. He has broken the natural world.
This makes his corruption more thorough. His ability to distort and destroy now extends not just to his immediate victim but to every element of our world. (Cf. my Inside Catholic piece on torture.)
I hope you guys see how this horrific transformation of the natural world a) resonates with my take on Watchmen the comic, and b) resonates with me as a Catholic, a person who believes that human sin is what turned our world against us. When we fell we pulled the whole world down on top of us; and this perspective engages directly with the comic’s anguished question of whether the world’s chaos hides some real pattern, some real meaning, or whether all apparent patterns are simply the projections of the devastatingly violent human will.
SO LONG MOM, I’M OFF TO DROP THE BOMB: Completely random notes.
• Actually, Laurie is “Laurie Juspeczyk” for approximately .23 seconds in the movie: That’s the name shown when she looks at her own hand through Nite Owl II’s goggles.
• Although the acting and dialogue are both subpar, every moment Laurie and Doctor Manhattan were on Mars I found myself thinking, “This is the kind of movie I thought people would watch in the future.” Like, when you see Soylent Green, or Logan’s Run--aren’t those colors and shapes and humanity-as-alien images what you thought the characters would watch at the movies?
• Related: I thought about opening my NRO review with the line, “Zack Snyder has made the very best movie of 1986.” I decided that was unnecessarily snarky; but the point does remain that the sensibility of this movie is intensely ‘80s. It’s a movie from the decade that brought you Liquid Sky and “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables,” Jim Bakker and “Land of Confusion” and Gran Fury.
• Does that make Watchmen irrelevant now? Its justice-vs.-peace, or law vs. necessity, plots might be Toons for Our Torturing Times; but the Cold War context is so heavy that even those elements feel really remote from contemporary discourse. (This isn’t helped by the Nixon caricature. In the comic, I seem to recall Nixon being oddly restrained--am I misremembering? You could possibly push that even further to get a Nixon-as-Obama, someone who accepts the horrific context into which he has been elected while still trying to extend peaceful gestures and avoid nuclear war. The movie chose the opposite path, and failed even to make it funny--any Nixon-related humor exists solely in the Strangelove references--so I found all those scenes painfully dated, even though I’d been absolutely thrilled when I heard we’d get lots of Nixon in this. I want the politics, you guys. I just don’t want the politics to be dumb.)
• Anyway, I think Watchmen’s existential and theological themes make it the kind of thing that never goes out of style--who now recalls the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, when reading Dante? But yeah, Snyder didn’t exactly make the argument for Watchmen’s relevance.
• Actually, Laurie is “Laurie Juspeczyk” for approximately .23 seconds in the movie: That’s the name shown when she looks at her own hand through Nite Owl II’s goggles.
• Although the acting and dialogue are both subpar, every moment Laurie and Doctor Manhattan were on Mars I found myself thinking, “This is the kind of movie I thought people would watch in the future.” Like, when you see Soylent Green, or Logan’s Run--aren’t those colors and shapes and humanity-as-alien images what you thought the characters would watch at the movies?
• Related: I thought about opening my NRO review with the line, “Zack Snyder has made the very best movie of 1986.” I decided that was unnecessarily snarky; but the point does remain that the sensibility of this movie is intensely ‘80s. It’s a movie from the decade that brought you Liquid Sky and “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables,” Jim Bakker and “Land of Confusion” and Gran Fury.
• Does that make Watchmen irrelevant now? Its justice-vs.-peace, or law vs. necessity, plots might be Toons for Our Torturing Times; but the Cold War context is so heavy that even those elements feel really remote from contemporary discourse. (This isn’t helped by the Nixon caricature. In the comic, I seem to recall Nixon being oddly restrained--am I misremembering? You could possibly push that even further to get a Nixon-as-Obama, someone who accepts the horrific context into which he has been elected while still trying to extend peaceful gestures and avoid nuclear war. The movie chose the opposite path, and failed even to make it funny--any Nixon-related humor exists solely in the Strangelove references--so I found all those scenes painfully dated, even though I’d been absolutely thrilled when I heard we’d get lots of Nixon in this. I want the politics, you guys. I just don’t want the politics to be dumb.)
• Anyway, I think Watchmen’s existential and theological themes make it the kind of thing that never goes out of style--who now recalls the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, when reading Dante? But yeah, Snyder didn’t exactly make the argument for Watchmen’s relevance.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
THE INNER LIFE OF VERUCA SALT: This is a post about the Harry Potter series and genre. It isn't especially spoilery for the final book, but yeah, I've read it and that'll show in this post. So if you're avoiding specific spoilers, you should be able to read this post, though not the intensely spoilerific one below. If you're avoiding even very general spoilers, oh for pity's sake close the window now!
One of the most confusing things for me about the Harry Potter series has been the way it doesn't cross genres--it just switches. A genre-cross is easy to identify. Take the Veronica Mars tv series. It's noir crossed with teen drama. So okay, once you buy the basic premise that a teenager would ever be an effective p.i., the world (...mostly) works. The world can be judged on consistent standards based on how well the noir and teen-scene elements combine.
The Harry Potter world can't be judged that way--at least not in books two through five. Book one is a classic genre cross: quest fantasy plus school story. It ends with the bad guys defeated and a big feast!
After that, things start getting weird. I mean, imagine if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were written as if you were supposed to feel genuine pity for Violet Beauregarde, who didn't know what she was doing and had never been taught better, but Augustus Gloop was still a hilarious cartoon character! It would be disorienting, I think, that moral switchback. (I should note that I have absolutely nothing against cartoon-fantasy, and think it can be awesome--I picked Roald Dahl for its exemplar because I love his stuff--but if you try to import or half-import its assumptions into realist-fantasy you end up with something really creepy.)
That's how the middle Potter books feel to me. Dudley Dursley's pig tail isn't so funny once Muggle-baiting is introduced as a real problem; it starts to be harder to discern which people's pain we need to take seriously as readers. It starts seeming like good people's pain is important but bad people's is not.
And that's... a little too realistic, you know? Because we always have such an easy time, anyway, only believing in the pain of people we already like, and dismissing or excusing the pain of people we don't.
I was initially convinced that book seven had finally become an entirely realist-fantasy book, rather than a cartoon-fantasy one: a book in which everyone's pain matters. After finishing it, I'm no longer convinced of that, though I do think it was trying to be that, and the series was trying to move from cartoony to realist-fantasy.
One of the most confusing things for me about the Harry Potter series has been the way it doesn't cross genres--it just switches. A genre-cross is easy to identify. Take the Veronica Mars tv series. It's noir crossed with teen drama. So okay, once you buy the basic premise that a teenager would ever be an effective p.i., the world (...mostly) works. The world can be judged on consistent standards based on how well the noir and teen-scene elements combine.
The Harry Potter world can't be judged that way--at least not in books two through five. Book one is a classic genre cross: quest fantasy plus school story. It ends with the bad guys defeated and a big feast!
After that, things start getting weird. I mean, imagine if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were written as if you were supposed to feel genuine pity for Violet Beauregarde, who didn't know what she was doing and had never been taught better, but Augustus Gloop was still a hilarious cartoon character! It would be disorienting, I think, that moral switchback. (I should note that I have absolutely nothing against cartoon-fantasy, and think it can be awesome--I picked Roald Dahl for its exemplar because I love his stuff--but if you try to import or half-import its assumptions into realist-fantasy you end up with something really creepy.)
That's how the middle Potter books feel to me. Dudley Dursley's pig tail isn't so funny once Muggle-baiting is introduced as a real problem; it starts to be harder to discern which people's pain we need to take seriously as readers. It starts seeming like good people's pain is important but bad people's is not.
And that's... a little too realistic, you know? Because we always have such an easy time, anyway, only believing in the pain of people we already like, and dismissing or excusing the pain of people we don't.
I was initially convinced that book seven had finally become an entirely realist-fantasy book, rather than a cartoon-fantasy one: a book in which everyone's pain matters. After finishing it, I'm no longer convinced of that, though I do think it was trying to be that, and the series was trying to move from cartoony to realist-fantasy.
HALO MADE OF SNAKE: This is the really spoilery Deathly Hallows post. If you don't want that, close this window, because this post is more spoilt than year-old milk.
I've had a couple hours now to think about the thing, and trawl about the vast Intertubes looking at others' thoughts. And I'm still about as ambivalent as I was when I finished the thing. The parts of this post where I talk about what I didn't like are longer because I think they need more explaining, not because they took up the bulk of the book. So this will be two excellent things, one awful thing, and one medium-sized irritation. There were other great moments (the Ravenclaw pass-question!) and other more minor problems, but these are the ones that leaped out at me.
ZOMG so awesome: The friendships. This is the first book since Harry Potter and the Stop Condescending to Americans Stone where I really liked watching Harry, Ron, and Hermione interact. Even when they were fighting, I got the reasons and was willing to watch the fallout. I think the two moments where my hands made embarrassing involuntary-pompoms were the conversation between Harry and Ron after the silver doe/sword episode, and... heh, I can't even remember, but I know it was one of the later moments with these three, e.g. "Are you a wizard or what?" Oh, or maybe Hermione killing the cup!
And although I have a medium-sized problem with the Snape/Lily thing--see below--I loved, loved, loved that they were best friends, and that their friendship felt real. It wasn't solely romance for him; it was some unfortunate combination of eros, projection, philia, and need (as much his need to love as to be loved, I think), and... yeah.
I'll also say that the image that gave this post its title is amazing. Like the Gryffindor hourglass spilling its rubies, it's an image I'll remember.
Sitting in her U-bend, thinking about death: I'm pretty sure I love the deathiness, and the emphasis on acceptance of death. This was Rowling's main theme, and I love her for making this her theme, seriously. I don't agree with all of her ethics, but the big non-negotiables here are that death must be faced, death is real, death is not the very last thing, and death is not the worst thing that can happen. All of that is three thousand percent true, and I'm so, so glad a popular author is saying it, no joke.
Yeah, but I really can't get past: Who would Jesus torture?
Yeah. I really, absolutely can't get past the fact that our possible Jesus-figure and, if nothing else, hero uses all but one of the Unforgivable Curses. And... rargh. Let me try to untangle my problems with this storyline.
Thing One: "Unforgivable." I don't think a Christian can throw this word around lightly. You put this word out there and you're already setting off all my theological Sneakoscopes.
But having thrown in this word, if you later show Unforgivable Curses being tossed around in a way that's glamorized ("That was very gallant of you," or whatever McGonagall's creepy line is), made to seem both righteous and cool, I think it has to be because you've decided to delve more deeply into what is really unforgivable, why these curses are called that, etc. Instead, it just seems like the curses are unforgivable when they're used for bad reasons--the acts of mind-control, torture, and killing are neutral in themselves.
Thing Two: The rise and fall and rise of the Dark Arts. I never bought that destroying someone's memories was somehow more forgivable than controlling their actions, or even torturing them. I would at least hope that I would go through a lot of physical pain to keep my memories of those who are important to me. I don't get the hierarchy here at all, and it creeped the flesh offa me that Hermione stole her own parents' memories, did an end run around their free will, and... got absolutely no textual or subtextual hints that this was wrong to do.
Thing Three: So, Harry Potter can cast the mind-control curse and the torture curse, and still gets told by Dumbledore (and everyone else, Lord how I tired of this!) what a wonderful and selfless person he is?
This isn't the complex morality of wartime. This is easy "it's okay when our side does it."
I feel for you, you little horror: Also, I find it weird and unsatisfying that Rowling is clearly drawn to the conversion narrative--in this book alone, we get more on Regulus, Snape, and Dumbledore himself--but has such a hard time conveying the actual reasons behind or process of conversion.
Am I wrong about this? Am I missing stuff? This is the place where I most worry that my overidentification with characters is getting in the way of my lit-crit.
But for me... I find it bizarre that we get no hint of what made Regulus switch sides. Did he find that he lacked the stomach for it, like Draco? Did he decide it was wrong (which is a different thing), and if so, why? Did he decide Voldemort's success would ultimately damage the pureblood world he loved?? We just don't know. (And I loved Kreacher's tale a lot, but the disadvantage of getting the story that way is that Regulus remains opaque.) I think we got a bit more on Dumbledore--he woke up to the fact that he was neglecting his responsibilities, and I think we can assume that his family tragedy moved him from "for the greater good" to that Koestler line about two and two not adding up to four when the numerals are human lives. It's still a bit odd that his change of heart is so offscreen, but okay.
And then, of course, Snape. We see his friendship with Lily, his love shading into romance, and her disagreement with his friends' political allegiances. In other words, we see the "no duh, huh?" stuff.
What we don't see is why he chose those friends, nor to what extent he adopted their views. We don't see anything, other than raw romantic love, that pushed him into Dumbledore's service--not even a moment of realizing that if it wasn't Lily's child it might have been someone else's, and feeling empathy.
And this is pretty much the only interesting question, to me: Why does someone reject his family, his friends, his community, to take on new commitments and a new belief system?
If the answer is "romantic love and nothing else," that's unrealistic. I know that my own views have changed or shifted on a lot of things due in part to romance. (Not, mostly, my religion--despite the way I tend to talk about it!) But the process was always more like, romance--> taking the beloved's views seriously for once--> thinking about them --> either adopting them or (most often) becoming more sympathetic to them while still holding some variant of the views I held before. I know we're all supposed to think that no one ever thinks in this country anymore, that we all just emote at one another, but I'm fairly sure that if you get three intelligent people who undergo major shifts in philosophy, one of them should have something interesting to say about it.
And, maybe more important than the preceding paragraph of rampant overidentification, there's this: If romantic love is what propels political/ethical conversion, we are well and truly screwed. It's hopeless. Don't try persuading them. This is the After Virtue argument gone feral: We lack shared premises, so reason is doomed, and all we can do is shove beautiful potential victims in potential victimizers' faces until they realize just how wrong they are.
(That's worked so well for women, amirite?)
So... it isn't that I needed Snape to discourse on the imago Dei. It isn't that I needed Regulus to delineate the foundations of human rights. It's that I needed somebody to say something about how you come to know that what you're doing--what you're deeply enmeshed in--is wrong, and how you change.
And while we're here: Blah blah blah did the magical mechanics make no sense or is it just me? and also Narcissa saved his life! -cakes.
I've had a couple hours now to think about the thing, and trawl about the vast Intertubes looking at others' thoughts. And I'm still about as ambivalent as I was when I finished the thing. The parts of this post where I talk about what I didn't like are longer because I think they need more explaining, not because they took up the bulk of the book. So this will be two excellent things, one awful thing, and one medium-sized irritation. There were other great moments (the Ravenclaw pass-question!) and other more minor problems, but these are the ones that leaped out at me.
ZOMG so awesome: The friendships. This is the first book since Harry Potter and the Stop Condescending to Americans Stone where I really liked watching Harry, Ron, and Hermione interact. Even when they were fighting, I got the reasons and was willing to watch the fallout. I think the two moments where my hands made embarrassing involuntary-pompoms were the conversation between Harry and Ron after the silver doe/sword episode, and... heh, I can't even remember, but I know it was one of the later moments with these three, e.g. "Are you a wizard or what?" Oh, or maybe Hermione killing the cup!
And although I have a medium-sized problem with the Snape/Lily thing--see below--I loved, loved, loved that they were best friends, and that their friendship felt real. It wasn't solely romance for him; it was some unfortunate combination of eros, projection, philia, and need (as much his need to love as to be loved, I think), and... yeah.
I'll also say that the image that gave this post its title is amazing. Like the Gryffindor hourglass spilling its rubies, it's an image I'll remember.
Sitting in her U-bend, thinking about death: I'm pretty sure I love the deathiness, and the emphasis on acceptance of death. This was Rowling's main theme, and I love her for making this her theme, seriously. I don't agree with all of her ethics, but the big non-negotiables here are that death must be faced, death is real, death is not the very last thing, and death is not the worst thing that can happen. All of that is three thousand percent true, and I'm so, so glad a popular author is saying it, no joke.
Yeah, but I really can't get past: Who would Jesus torture?
Yeah. I really, absolutely can't get past the fact that our possible Jesus-figure and, if nothing else, hero uses all but one of the Unforgivable Curses. And... rargh. Let me try to untangle my problems with this storyline.
Thing One: "Unforgivable." I don't think a Christian can throw this word around lightly. You put this word out there and you're already setting off all my theological Sneakoscopes.
But having thrown in this word, if you later show Unforgivable Curses being tossed around in a way that's glamorized ("That was very gallant of you," or whatever McGonagall's creepy line is), made to seem both righteous and cool, I think it has to be because you've decided to delve more deeply into what is really unforgivable, why these curses are called that, etc. Instead, it just seems like the curses are unforgivable when they're used for bad reasons--the acts of mind-control, torture, and killing are neutral in themselves.
Thing Two: The rise and fall and rise of the Dark Arts. I never bought that destroying someone's memories was somehow more forgivable than controlling their actions, or even torturing them. I would at least hope that I would go through a lot of physical pain to keep my memories of those who are important to me. I don't get the hierarchy here at all, and it creeped the flesh offa me that Hermione stole her own parents' memories, did an end run around their free will, and... got absolutely no textual or subtextual hints that this was wrong to do.
Thing Three: So, Harry Potter can cast the mind-control curse and the torture curse, and still gets told by Dumbledore (and everyone else, Lord how I tired of this!) what a wonderful and selfless person he is?
This isn't the complex morality of wartime. This is easy "it's okay when our side does it."
I feel for you, you little horror: Also, I find it weird and unsatisfying that Rowling is clearly drawn to the conversion narrative--in this book alone, we get more on Regulus, Snape, and Dumbledore himself--but has such a hard time conveying the actual reasons behind or process of conversion.
Am I wrong about this? Am I missing stuff? This is the place where I most worry that my overidentification with characters is getting in the way of my lit-crit.
But for me... I find it bizarre that we get no hint of what made Regulus switch sides. Did he find that he lacked the stomach for it, like Draco? Did he decide it was wrong (which is a different thing), and if so, why? Did he decide Voldemort's success would ultimately damage the pureblood world he loved?? We just don't know. (And I loved Kreacher's tale a lot, but the disadvantage of getting the story that way is that Regulus remains opaque.) I think we got a bit more on Dumbledore--he woke up to the fact that he was neglecting his responsibilities, and I think we can assume that his family tragedy moved him from "for the greater good" to that Koestler line about two and two not adding up to four when the numerals are human lives. It's still a bit odd that his change of heart is so offscreen, but okay.
And then, of course, Snape. We see his friendship with Lily, his love shading into romance, and her disagreement with his friends' political allegiances. In other words, we see the "no duh, huh?" stuff.
What we don't see is why he chose those friends, nor to what extent he adopted their views. We don't see anything, other than raw romantic love, that pushed him into Dumbledore's service--not even a moment of realizing that if it wasn't Lily's child it might have been someone else's, and feeling empathy.
And this is pretty much the only interesting question, to me: Why does someone reject his family, his friends, his community, to take on new commitments and a new belief system?
If the answer is "romantic love and nothing else," that's unrealistic. I know that my own views have changed or shifted on a lot of things due in part to romance. (Not, mostly, my religion--despite the way I tend to talk about it!) But the process was always more like, romance--> taking the beloved's views seriously for once--> thinking about them --> either adopting them or (most often) becoming more sympathetic to them while still holding some variant of the views I held before. I know we're all supposed to think that no one ever thinks in this country anymore, that we all just emote at one another, but I'm fairly sure that if you get three intelligent people who undergo major shifts in philosophy, one of them should have something interesting to say about it.
And, maybe more important than the preceding paragraph of rampant overidentification, there's this: If romantic love is what propels political/ethical conversion, we are well and truly screwed. It's hopeless. Don't try persuading them. This is the After Virtue argument gone feral: We lack shared premises, so reason is doomed, and all we can do is shove beautiful potential victims in potential victimizers' faces until they realize just how wrong they are.
(That's worked so well for women, amirite?)
So... it isn't that I needed Snape to discourse on the imago Dei. It isn't that I needed Regulus to delineate the foundations of human rights. It's that I needed somebody to say something about how you come to know that what you're doing--what you're deeply enmeshed in--is wrong, and how you change.
And while we're here: Blah blah blah did the magical mechanics make no sense or is it just me? and also Narcissa saved his life! -cakes.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
SUPERIORITY COMPLEX: For me, the most powerful image or concept in X-Men 3: The Last Stand was something the movie could not possibly be expected to flesh out. So I don't blame the movie for avoiding it. It probably would have been a worse movie if it had delved into the thing I found most fascinating. Because what got to me was: the line of mutants outside Worthington Labs.
A line of mutants, seeking a "cure" for their mutation, faced by a screaming mob saying basically, "There's nothing wrong with you, you idiot evil self-hating morons!"
Which... might be expected to provoke some cognitive dissonance.
Let me get this out of the way right quick: A bunch of critics have suggested that the "cure for mutation" is a metaphor for "ex-gay" ministries. And I seriously disagree. Yes--the "cure" plot has very strong cultural markers for "ex-gay" ideology (man, I cringed at that first scene with Angel, I tell you what). But really, "mutation" as such doesn't work very well as a metaphor for anything. Particular, specific mutations can serve beautifully as metaphors for particular situations; but what, symbolically, do Scott Summers, Rogue/Marie, Charles Xavier, Jamie Madrox (yay!!!), Storm, and John/Pyro actually have in common? If you say "difference," then you're just avoiding all the interesting questions about what difference "difference" should make.
(This, by the way, is one of the many many things I love about FA MacNeil's X-Men fanfiction: Both Joel's and [less flamboyantly] Paul's mutations are brilliant metaphors for specific features of their characters. Go! read!)
But there is a real parallel between the line outside Worthington Labs and the (botched, but don't get me started) Dark Phoenix plotline. In both cases, mutants voluntarily submit to vulnerability. For some reason, they choose weakness over what the series' rhetoric constantly describes as "power."
Oh my gosh, I want to know about those reasons so badly.
I can't write fanfiction. If I could, I think I would already have started writing about the line:
* a gay man who came of age in the 1960s, terrified that he's yet again missing out on liberation;
* someone who's never wanted to "fit in," furious and ashamed that the protesting mutants think that's what she wants;
* someone who wants to give up his "powers" as an egalitarian political act and/or spiritual witness;
* someone whose mutation appears somehow linked to a deep-rooted emotional problem or mental illness, who hopes that if the mutation goes away the emotional or psychological problem will dissipate too;
* someone whose powers seem only useful for destruction, who can't see how those powers might be turned toward creation instead.
Yeargh. So many stories--so many ordinary, everyday variants on the issues of power and responsibility that (IMO) ultimately push the Dark Phoenix plot. I really do think linking the "cure"/DP plots was a brilliant decision; I just wish the DP plot had been better executed.
[eta: I just can't stop coming up with these!!! A telepath who believes using her powers is just wrong; a telepath whose powers have made him hate and fear everyone around him; a misanthropic empath; a criminal who doesn't trust himself to use his powers responsibly (or who is giving them up as a penance); a crime victim who doesn't want to turn into the people who hurt him.
[Imagine the conversations between some of these people--the halting, aggressive/ashamed conversations, the attempts to find community in the line. The anguished justifications and self-protective silences. Oh man.
[And I'd also love to see a depowered mutant living at the Mansion (which seems very much in accordance with Xavier's dream), dealing with the consequences of that decision, maybe as part of the X-Men. (I seem to recall that a non-mutant cop was part of the bedraggled team that went up against Magneto in New X-Men, so there's even comics precedent....)]
A line of mutants, seeking a "cure" for their mutation, faced by a screaming mob saying basically, "There's nothing wrong with you, you idiot evil self-hating morons!"
Which... might be expected to provoke some cognitive dissonance.
Let me get this out of the way right quick: A bunch of critics have suggested that the "cure for mutation" is a metaphor for "ex-gay" ministries. And I seriously disagree. Yes--the "cure" plot has very strong cultural markers for "ex-gay" ideology (man, I cringed at that first scene with Angel, I tell you what). But really, "mutation" as such doesn't work very well as a metaphor for anything. Particular, specific mutations can serve beautifully as metaphors for particular situations; but what, symbolically, do Scott Summers, Rogue/Marie, Charles Xavier, Jamie Madrox (yay!!!), Storm, and John/Pyro actually have in common? If you say "difference," then you're just avoiding all the interesting questions about what difference "difference" should make.
(This, by the way, is one of the many many things I love about FA MacNeil's X-Men fanfiction: Both Joel's and [less flamboyantly] Paul's mutations are brilliant metaphors for specific features of their characters. Go! read!)
But there is a real parallel between the line outside Worthington Labs and the (botched, but don't get me started) Dark Phoenix plotline. In both cases, mutants voluntarily submit to vulnerability. For some reason, they choose weakness over what the series' rhetoric constantly describes as "power."
Oh my gosh, I want to know about those reasons so badly.
I can't write fanfiction. If I could, I think I would already have started writing about the line:
* a gay man who came of age in the 1960s, terrified that he's yet again missing out on liberation;
* someone who's never wanted to "fit in," furious and ashamed that the protesting mutants think that's what she wants;
* someone who wants to give up his "powers" as an egalitarian political act and/or spiritual witness;
* someone whose mutation appears somehow linked to a deep-rooted emotional problem or mental illness, who hopes that if the mutation goes away the emotional or psychological problem will dissipate too;
* someone whose powers seem only useful for destruction, who can't see how those powers might be turned toward creation instead.
Yeargh. So many stories--so many ordinary, everyday variants on the issues of power and responsibility that (IMO) ultimately push the Dark Phoenix plot. I really do think linking the "cure"/DP plots was a brilliant decision; I just wish the DP plot had been better executed.
[eta: I just can't stop coming up with these!!! A telepath who believes using her powers is just wrong; a telepath whose powers have made him hate and fear everyone around him; a misanthropic empath; a criminal who doesn't trust himself to use his powers responsibly (or who is giving them up as a penance); a crime victim who doesn't want to turn into the people who hurt him.
[Imagine the conversations between some of these people--the halting, aggressive/ashamed conversations, the attempts to find community in the line. The anguished justifications and self-protective silences. Oh man.
[And I'd also love to see a depowered mutant living at the Mansion (which seems very much in accordance with Xavier's dream), dealing with the consequences of that decision, maybe as part of the X-Men. (I seem to recall that a non-mutant cop was part of the bedraggled team that went up against Magneto in New X-Men, so there's even comics precedent....)]
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
GOBLET OF FIRE: So yeah, I saw it. Quick verdict: worst of the four. (My list, for the movies, is POA, SS, COS, GOF. For the books, HBP, POA, tie between PS/SS and COS, OOTP, GOF.) Longer verdict:
I. What I loved:
The opening. Scary and spooky and wonderful. And we get Barty Crouch Jr. in the very beginning, so the later revelation isn't quite so "...and that came from where?!"
The Dark Mark. Utterly perfect.
Neville. Adorable in every scene. So much love!
In the books, by the way, I cordially loathe Neville. In his scenes with Snape, I have to remind myself in Very Firm Tones that my religion says even morons don't deserve humiliation. (A maxim from which I have frequently benefited.) But in the movies, and most especially GOF, I love him and I see what his fans are talking about.
Rita's Quill: I'm only "heh" about Rita herself--fun, but not quite fun enough--but her salacious quill is hilarious. (Oh, and yes, I picked up on her cheek-stroking with Fleur. Rita, you scamp!)
Lucius vs. Voldemort: Fun!
II. Eh, I guess:
Chaos at the Quidditch World Cup: Well done, and very "life in wartime." But we lost the entire political angle of Muggle-baiting, the ethical questions of Levicorpus by Death Eaters vs. Obliviate by Ministry goons, the fact that the Dark Mark scared the faux-Eaters away, and pretty much everything else that made this scene psychologically interesting in the book.
The Hungarian Horntail: Yes, it was awesome. But 1) not necessary. Seriously. I'll get to this later, but we wasted a lot of time here, and this segment really contributed to the feeling that the movie was one set-piece after another, rather than a coherent story.
2) That's a lot of damage to the school. Is Harry's performance, as shown in the movie, really admirable? The other champions managed not to destroy half the towers and roofs around them.
The Horntail sequence was suspenseful and fun while it lasted. But almost immediately afterwards it began to feel like too much cotton candy: cloying and disorienting and pointless.
The Mystery was too obvious for those who had read the books. I don't entirely blame the filmmakers for this, but I did feel a little bit like, "OK, Polyjuice, I get it! Move on!" Still, much better than the POA movie's utter lack of explaining anything.
III. Strong dislike:
Beauxbatons: What'n Ah say What'n was up with their idiotic swoony entrance?
And while we're on the subject: It makes no sense for BB to be a girls' school while DS is a boys' school. I don't know what the function of BB is in the text, but DS is quite clearly the Dark Arts school. It has a real narrative function that isn't (as Bellatrix will tell you!) confined to the male of the species.
Cute Krum. In the book, he's described as sallow-skinned, hook-nosed, and generally Snapeish. I really hope this description foreshadows an interesting Krum character arc. Regardless, I would have loved another Snapey heartthrob.
More importantly, we get no sense of why Hermione gives him the time of day. In the book, he was bookish (I think? at least he spent lots of time in the library, though I can't remember if that was merely a ploy to woo Hermione--even so, good on him for recognizing this aspect of her character) and seemed somewhat distant from a Durmstrang that came across as manipulative and unpleasant. In the movie, it's all very He Saw Her Across A Crowded Room; which... ick.
Shrill Hermione: So I love Hermione in PS/SS, and even in COS and the book of POA. She's believably awful ("You've got dirt, on your nose. Just there. Did you know?") and believably adorable. In the movie of POA she started getting kinda generic action-heroine, which is just not who Hermione is. And in GOF she plays almost the entire movie in Fishwife mode. I didn't sense her love of the boys (especially Ron) and I really missed the text's understanding of her ruthlessness (captive Rita).
Moaning Myrtle: I love Myrtle. She's hilarious and fun, and serves as an effectively spooky guide to the characters' maturation. But in this movie she basically assaults a 14-year-old, and it was just gross. Like, she gives Harry Potter an unwanted lap dance. Seriously icky.
Daniel Radcliffe Can't Cry. Sorry. Loved the setup of that scene--everyone cheering the victory until they realize what's happened--but loathed the execution.
The ending: Anticlimax defined.
IV. Lacunae: It was obvious from the start that a lot would have to be left out in the translation from book to screen. But this is where I thought GOF truly failed. I am pretty sure I speak here as a reader and writer, not solely as a fan.
Thank goodness they left out: SPEW.
I wish I'd seen this, but I can live without it: Percy wading into the Lake, distraught to think Ron might be in danger. I... I don't love Percy (I think he'd hate me!), but I respect him, because he does work hard and seems genuinely hard-hit by the way all of his family members except Molly seem to loathe him. I feel for Percy.
Bellatrix "Crazy Like an AK'd Fox!" Lestrange. So much love!
Plot-crucial scenes we didn't see: "The Egg and the Eye" a.k.a. Snape's confrontation with fake-Moody.
The infirmary scene with Snape's revelation of his Dark Mark.
Snape and Sirius shake hands; "if you are prepared...."
And okay: I started reading the books because I read people talking about Snape. In fact, I may have read the books specifically because of discussions of Snape's role in Goblet of Fire. Watching the movies also made me a thoroughgoing Alan Rickman fangirl. So I understand that I'm biased.
But still--if you've read the series, ask yourself: Are these three scenes crucial to the next three books? Are they incidental, or do they strike at major themes of the series? I just can't see how it makes any sense at all to cut these scenes in favor of, e.g., fifteen minutes of Horntail.
So yeah: overall, not a fan. And yes, Voldemort's plan doesn't get any less stupid in the movie. Sigh.
A random note of interest: The movie keeps the scene where faux-Moody hammers home a connection between Weasleys and the Imperius Curse. Innnnteresting, no? Foreshadowing, or just "backshadowing" of the Ginny/diary plot from Book Two?
I. What I loved:
The opening. Scary and spooky and wonderful. And we get Barty Crouch Jr. in the very beginning, so the later revelation isn't quite so "...and that came from where?!"
The Dark Mark. Utterly perfect.
Neville. Adorable in every scene. So much love!
In the books, by the way, I cordially loathe Neville. In his scenes with Snape, I have to remind myself in Very Firm Tones that my religion says even morons don't deserve humiliation. (A maxim from which I have frequently benefited.) But in the movies, and most especially GOF, I love him and I see what his fans are talking about.
Rita's Quill: I'm only "heh" about Rita herself--fun, but not quite fun enough--but her salacious quill is hilarious. (Oh, and yes, I picked up on her cheek-stroking with Fleur. Rita, you scamp!)
Lucius vs. Voldemort: Fun!
II. Eh, I guess:
Chaos at the Quidditch World Cup: Well done, and very "life in wartime." But we lost the entire political angle of Muggle-baiting, the ethical questions of Levicorpus by Death Eaters vs. Obliviate by Ministry goons, the fact that the Dark Mark scared the faux-Eaters away, and pretty much everything else that made this scene psychologically interesting in the book.
The Hungarian Horntail: Yes, it was awesome. But 1) not necessary. Seriously. I'll get to this later, but we wasted a lot of time here, and this segment really contributed to the feeling that the movie was one set-piece after another, rather than a coherent story.
2) That's a lot of damage to the school. Is Harry's performance, as shown in the movie, really admirable? The other champions managed not to destroy half the towers and roofs around them.
The Horntail sequence was suspenseful and fun while it lasted. But almost immediately afterwards it began to feel like too much cotton candy: cloying and disorienting and pointless.
The Mystery was too obvious for those who had read the books. I don't entirely blame the filmmakers for this, but I did feel a little bit like, "OK, Polyjuice, I get it! Move on!" Still, much better than the POA movie's utter lack of explaining anything.
III. Strong dislike:
Beauxbatons: What'n Ah say What'n was up with their idiotic swoony entrance?
And while we're on the subject: It makes no sense for BB to be a girls' school while DS is a boys' school. I don't know what the function of BB is in the text, but DS is quite clearly the Dark Arts school. It has a real narrative function that isn't (as Bellatrix will tell you!) confined to the male of the species.
Cute Krum. In the book, he's described as sallow-skinned, hook-nosed, and generally Snapeish. I really hope this description foreshadows an interesting Krum character arc. Regardless, I would have loved another Snapey heartthrob.
More importantly, we get no sense of why Hermione gives him the time of day. In the book, he was bookish (I think? at least he spent lots of time in the library, though I can't remember if that was merely a ploy to woo Hermione--even so, good on him for recognizing this aspect of her character) and seemed somewhat distant from a Durmstrang that came across as manipulative and unpleasant. In the movie, it's all very He Saw Her Across A Crowded Room; which... ick.
Shrill Hermione: So I love Hermione in PS/SS, and even in COS and the book of POA. She's believably awful ("You've got dirt, on your nose. Just there. Did you know?") and believably adorable. In the movie of POA she started getting kinda generic action-heroine, which is just not who Hermione is. And in GOF she plays almost the entire movie in Fishwife mode. I didn't sense her love of the boys (especially Ron) and I really missed the text's understanding of her ruthlessness (captive Rita).
Moaning Myrtle: I love Myrtle. She's hilarious and fun, and serves as an effectively spooky guide to the characters' maturation. But in this movie she basically assaults a 14-year-old, and it was just gross. Like, she gives Harry Potter an unwanted lap dance. Seriously icky.
Daniel Radcliffe Can't Cry. Sorry. Loved the setup of that scene--everyone cheering the victory until they realize what's happened--but loathed the execution.
The ending: Anticlimax defined.
IV. Lacunae: It was obvious from the start that a lot would have to be left out in the translation from book to screen. But this is where I thought GOF truly failed. I am pretty sure I speak here as a reader and writer, not solely as a fan.
Thank goodness they left out: SPEW.
I wish I'd seen this, but I can live without it: Percy wading into the Lake, distraught to think Ron might be in danger. I... I don't love Percy (I think he'd hate me!), but I respect him, because he does work hard and seems genuinely hard-hit by the way all of his family members except Molly seem to loathe him. I feel for Percy.
Bellatrix "Crazy Like an AK'd Fox!" Lestrange. So much love!
Plot-crucial scenes we didn't see: "The Egg and the Eye" a.k.a. Snape's confrontation with fake-Moody.
The infirmary scene with Snape's revelation of his Dark Mark.
Snape and Sirius shake hands; "if you are prepared...."
And okay: I started reading the books because I read people talking about Snape. In fact, I may have read the books specifically because of discussions of Snape's role in Goblet of Fire. Watching the movies also made me a thoroughgoing Alan Rickman fangirl. So I understand that I'm biased.
But still--if you've read the series, ask yourself: Are these three scenes crucial to the next three books? Are they incidental, or do they strike at major themes of the series? I just can't see how it makes any sense at all to cut these scenes in favor of, e.g., fifteen minutes of Horntail.
So yeah: overall, not a fan. And yes, Voldemort's plan doesn't get any less stupid in the movie. Sigh.
A random note of interest: The movie keeps the scene where faux-Moody hammers home a connection between Weasleys and the Imperius Curse. Innnnteresting, no? Foreshadowing, or just "backshadowing" of the Ginny/diary plot from Book Two?
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