Scattered Thoughts on Cheap, Fast, and Out of Control
So we just finished Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, and I have some thoughts about it that I just want to get down.
First off, I’m not sure that I personally enjoyed it as much as Vernon, Florida. Not to say that it wasn’t excellent (because it was), it’s just more of a personal preference between styles thing. That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it, I really did.
What really struck me about the movie was the childlike fascination that all the characters had with their chosen professions. You could almost see their eyes shining with excitement as they tried to get the words out which appropriately communicated their intense passion. The gardener stood out to me especially in this aspect…he was obviously getting up there in years, the woman for whom he cultivated the garden was gone, but yet he seemed to be driven by something innate, just like the other three.
Close to the end of the movie, the gardener was talking and we’re watching a scene from a Clyde Beatty movie; he and two women are escaping a burning city. The coalescing of the gardener sharing his love for the shrub animals and Beatty climbing above the flaming city struck me as being symbolic of the triumph of the human spirit. Just as Beatty is climbing above a ruined civilization, the human spirit driven by its passions, is always striving above.
I guess that sounds kind of cheesy, but that’s what I’ll take away as the “icon” of the film. It sort of goes along with Vernon, Florida. Even in seemingly dire times (and I’d argue that times are significantly more dire in 2007 than were in 1997) individuals and their passions are, in a way, still the driving force of society. No matter how much the world blows (terrorism, war, corruption, etc) there will still be people like the gardener, animal trainer, robot dude, and mole dude pushing society upwards. Like I alluded to earlier, the triumph of the individual human spirit.
I hope that made sense, like I said I just wanted to get some thoughts down.
March 30th, 2007 at 9:14 am
You’re doing fine so far.
April 27th, 2007 at 9:06 am
[...] Nathan points out an important fact in his blog post on Fast Cheap and Out Of Control. The importance of peoples’ particular passions in drives society, even in the most dire of times. Building on that, McNamara is passionate in one of the most dire points of the 20th century, and his passion, in a way, are why things are dire. It is when we are most passionate that we end up making mistakes, and when you are the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, your mistakes tend to result in the loss of lives. Passion probably works best when you’re the naked mole rat scientist rather than the president’s right hand man….there you probably need to think things more thoroughly. [...]
April 27th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
[...] Nathan discussed Mendonca, saying that the “icon” of the film is watching him cut out the animals while the lost city of Jobba is falling down. The movie is full of these iconic moments, images that stick out to me and will always be in my mind. The end is one, as the film closes on Mendonca clipping at his giraffe, shrouded in the steam rising from the lamps. The steam is what gets me in that shot: at the end, Morris subtly tips his hand in several places. The smoke is entirely a product of the film, of the filming process. Morris was going for a certain look with the animal lit and the cutting in the rain, just as Mendonca trims the giraffe’s reanimated head in a certain way. But we can go further and look at the steam in for its symbolic value- steam? Smoke conceals and confuses; perhaps Morris is commenting on the film as a distortion, a fog of meaning. Steam is the last thing you see in a fire, once the water has been sprayed on it. Steam traditionally powers trains- a train is one of the first images we see in the film. The presence of the smoke at the end of the movie completes a circuit, creates a continuity with the opening. At least, to me. The steam seems to me to be something that could have been accidental but perfect, like much of this movie. Morris may have set out to shoot the giraffe in the rain, but ended up noticing and exploiting the steam. It is his apt assimilation of the world that characterizes this movie to me. [...]
September 11th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
[...] Nathan discussed Mendonca, saying that the “icon” of the film is watching him cut out the animals while [...]