Judges 5:27

Then the LORD raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them.

This is practically self-crucifixion, what I’m about to write about. But then again, I wasn’t initially expecting the movie we watched last nite to cause such a stir.
Because I thought it was the worst Morris film we’ve had the chance to see, & I’ll tell you why.

Starting with the general, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control felt like a neverending trailer for a film that never actually presented itself. It’s like sitting in a theater watching an ad that hints at central themes, characters, & actions, hints that are meant to catch you as a viewer so that you want to go & see that film because “I want to see what it’s all about!” The problem is, this trailer is 80 minutes long, & all those themes & characters that are alluded to? They never fully come out of the woodwork. I was a big fan of Morris’ idea of filming his subjects in natural environments (their homes, a park bench, on a boat), so watching this movie seemed like a huge step backward for the filmmaker. The settings are vague & staged, & the four men thus just don’t feel real, & I can’t concentrate on their stories if I don’t care who they are.
& the music. I thought it was a brilliant soundtrack, but it was just too much. It’s the trailer that plays music all the way through, serving as a backdrop to push the quick action along, not the film. Continuous soundtracks are not necessary for film, & when the music is playing the whole time there’s no room to breathe & think about what’s being said. This is what made Morris’ earlier films so much more brilliant: the idea of letting the people speak for themselves, without distractions or cheap camera tricks.
Cos there were too many of those, too, those cheap little skewed camera angles & slow-mo edits. I felt cheated, having to watch an Errol Morris film that didn’t feel fully there. It felt too edited, perhaps is what it was, whereas Vernon, Florida‘s intrinsic beauty as a film was all in its seemingly shoddy editing (not the case, of course, but still it was wonderful because it seemed more pure).
Do you see what I’m saying? These men were robbed of their interesting nature because it felt to me like Errol Morris tried too hard to make them interesting for the sake of fleshing out some larger themes. Show me something that isn’t trying to impress me & I’m far more likely to be impressed. The style was too big for the movie, the characters too small for the style, & the whole thing way too Hollywood.

And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day

Errol Morris seems to possess this uncanny ability to investigate truth & reality as two separate entities in his films, with the former usually eclipsing the latter in the end, but not without some metaphysical struggle for the human psyche involved. What I mean to say is that the idea of “real life” having some part in cinema is vainly hinted at by some filmmakers, but I’ve yet to see life manipulated so fully as Morris is able to do, creating malfunctioning messes of quirky characters & situations thru hours of tape. Editing editing editing, editing is the key word here, with each scene placed purposefully & without any resolution, cut right down to the exact moment Morris wanted it to be, nothing done without an intent. I don’t believe there are many films that aren’t edited this way, & yet it doesn’t seem more real than when Morris does his work. It’s a wonder the guy isn’t a Spielberg, but that’s Hollywood for you. Or is it? Can it be possible Morris is Hollywood? Is that comprehensible?
You gotta make money somehow, huh.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

On the subject of documentaries, they are best when they educate, & it’s as simple as that. They are good nearly always, but perhaps I’m a bit biased since I love the genre so much (maybe I’m bending the term genre a bit, but excuse me). Documentaries like Spellbound or Word Wars are great for their cute human-interest insights, & I love them for that, but you get a good concept going & the buried message can give you chills.

I think Michael Moore does this well, but a lot of people are going to disagree with me, & I disagree with myself whenever I see him on screen [on Moore: his documentaries suffer from a lack of detachment between film & director; he shoves his own ideas down yr throat instead of letting atrocities speak for themselves, & for that he’s made himself into a celebrity. If Bowling for Columbine was more subtle & more humble, it might be the best film ever made]. But enough of that, cos the best documentary I can recommend to you all is what is perhaps the most terrifyingly unbiased film I’ve ever seen, & just watching it instilled a hatred in me that I haven’t felt from anything else. The power of this film is undeniable, almost inexcusable, & for that reason I have yet seen a documentary that can top Hell House.

The film is a sad, shocking, & chilling portrayal of Evangelical Christian “haunted houses” that involve children & teen volunteers from the congregation acting out scenes of sinful acts, all resulting in gruesome deaths & their subsequent delivery into Hell by cloaked, masked demons. Visitors to Hell Houses are led by a guide through rooms showing such things as botched abortions, suicide, “cults” (one of the only funny scenes in the movie involves the discussion of Harry Potter leading to the “dark side”), & a gay man’s death by AIDS. Hell House tours run for the week or two around Halloween each year & cost seven dollars, ending in a room where someone dressed in plain clothes gives two options: leave now thinking you will go to Heaven, or enter the door on yr left for prayer & conversion. He gives you six seconds, counts down, & the pressure is on to join the church or go to Hell.

The reason this documentary works so well is pretty clear to me: there is no obvious bias, & thus when it’s over you don’t know what the intention of the director has been. Was it meant to convert you, or piss you off? Does the director (George Ratliff) believe these Hell Houses (now growing in popularity nationwide each year; this film cites over 500 by 2003) are beneficial or harmful to society? There is very little background, no narration, & the actions of the church speak for themselves, whether it’s speaking in tongues or celebrating over being selected as this year’s “Abortion Girl” (the most popular role for the girls). With such muddled purpose, Hell House excels far beyond most other documentaries, relying on basic human instinct as its own scare tactic as opposed to the violent guilt trip of the church itself. I swear it is the scariest movie I have ever seen, if only for the way it makes me despise humanity, & for a non-fiction film to do that is about the most you could ask for in real-life cinema, I believe. This may be the most important sociological film made in the past 10 years, truly essential viewing.

But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God

At home over Break, we rented Babel, the big Brad Pitt hit of the year that wasn’t really about Brad Pitt & actually wasn’t much of a hit (Oscars, what?). I thought it was all right, but that the entire deaf/mute/horny Japanese teenager plotline was one of the stupidest stories I had seen in a film in a long, long time. That isn’t the point. The point is that reading the back of the DVD case (as most of us are apt to do, I’m certain of it) brought to my attention a quote from a review by acclaimed Rolling Stone film reviewer, Peter Travers. The quote chosen to represent Babel was thus:

A towering achievement…

…a towering achievement. The point-blank Biblical reference made me smile, not because I thought Travers was a wordsmith (searching Google for “towering achievement + Babel” even shows that this was probably the most used phrase in original reviews of the movie), but because the audacity to use such an overblown, meaningless statement just to make a pun work was laughable. Originality in movie reviews can only go so far – especially when a movie itself lacks originality (which this one only partially did) – but to imagine yer testing the intelligence of a reader comes across as really only testing his patience…& by his I mean mine. I know we only briefly mentioned film reviews last class, but I haven’t been able to get that quote out of my head; its idiocy is a bit haunting. …A towering achievement? What does it mean? Can it mean anything other than empty word play? For a film to achieve “towering” status what does it have to do? Perhaps if the dialogue is especially great then it towers here & there, or maybe the lighting & sound men build up the tower…

The idea of a film review as an outlet for smug nonsense is enough to even bring Brad Pitt to tears.