Last time my question went something like this: why is my opinion of cinematic violence changed so much based on the movie? Why do I not bat an eye at action movies, can't watch parts of films like No Country For Old Men, and love Kill Bill? I think all these things are pretty easy questions to answer after a recent viewing of Kill Bill.
Why Can't I Watch Parts of No Country For Old Men?
This is simple: they're horribly violent, and I don't want to look at that shit. Easy. I can't take a whole lot even after being desensitized by modern society, so scenes where you can see the bone coming out of some dude's arm freak me out. This is not to say that I automatically don't like movies like No Country For Old Men; I love many of them. Case and point: No Country For Old Men, which I recently put on my Top 5 Adaptations From A Book list. A lot of Coen Brothers stuff falls into this category. This point also smoothly transitions us into our next question.
Why Do I Love Kill Bill?
Also simple: it's a great movie. The script is good, the acting is good, the cinematography is good, the directing is good, the music is mostly good, the special effects are good... It's smooth and polished. The story is your classic revenge story boiled down to such a pure form. There's exactly one twist, and it doesn't change the outcome of the story much. Everything from The Bride's yellow jumpsuit to the dusty Texas landscape is carefully placed with a specific purpose. Everything serves the story.
So why am I so much more okay with Kill Bill's violence than the Coen Brother's? Well, I'm not. As it turns out, I don't say "cool" to Kill Bill's violence for the most part. It's just as cringe worthy and horrific as No Country's or Fight Club's. The difference I was observing in my last post is something related to my third question.
Why Don't I Bat An Eye At Action Movie Violence?
This seems to be the underlying question. Here's what I said last time:
What sets Tarantino's films apart is their style. What draws me to Kill Bill is not the fact that The Bride just kicked the shit out of 88 ninjas, it's that the way she did it was so fucking cool. You can kill people, or you can stab them with a fucking bad-ass katana in slow motion with circling cameras on an elaborate set all set to a pumping soundtrack. Hell yeah.There is something more to Tarantino pieces: it's great writing and directing. He's a good story teller and a master of the cinematic media. That's what puts his movies above your common action flick. My comment about few other action sequences comparing to the Crazy 88 scene is just wrong. It stands up there with cool modern action sequences, but your average summer blockbuster car chase is going to come up about level with it. The difference I was remembering was all in the setup for that scene, where Tarantino beats the crap out of this month's blockbuster.
Even that's not enough, though. Tons of movies come out each year with bad-ass weapon wielding heroes and heroines kicking the shit out of henchmen in slow motion with circling cameras on an elaborate set all set to a pumping soundtrack, but few of them compare to the Crazy 88 scene. There's something more to Tarantino pieces.
What we actually have in modern movies is two kinds of violence. You've got Bourne (as in The Bourne Identity) violence and Coen Brothers violence. On the Bourne end of the spectrum, your violence is cool. It's streamlined, it's entertaining, it's fun to watch, and it's all played out in slow motion with circling cameras on an elaborate set all set to a pumping soundtrack.
On the Coen end, you have violence that is up close and personal. It's really, really disgusting. It's not fun to watch (unless you're a creeper), it's not streamlined. It's bloody, it's sickening, and it makes you want to look away from the screen. Most of the time when you see this kind of thing, the mood is ruined by at least one person you're watching it with covering their face and asking you to tell them when it's over.
It's pretty clear to me where Bourne violence came from. We as a culture love to watch shit blow up. Cool action movie violence is... cool. It's super cool. And cool things are profitable. Put a good action sequence in your movie and you'll sell tickets. This leads to lots of mediocre action movies that have put a lot of time into the coolness factor and pretty much nothing into their scripts. These are fun, especially when they star Will Smith. I like them, but I don't love them. There's something impersonal about them. It's hard to get too attached to the characters because we know they're invincible. If they weren't invincible then we'd be moving towards really personal violence, Coen style violence. Threats to actually human beings. And that stuff is not what you put into something people want to go enjoy with their friends on a Sunday afternoon.
Coen violence is trickier. There's an audience that will pay money just to see horrible violence, but I'd like to think this concept didn't come from a need to sell tickets to them. Certainly some movies are made to cater to these people. The horror genre has been gravitating more and more towards torture and mutilation and farther away from atmosphere. I don't watch movies like this much, but I hear the Saw series is just ridiculous at this point. Creeps aside, I think it's much easier to say something with Coen violence than with Bourne violence, mostly because it's so much more personal. If you want to tell a "good things happen to bad people" story that involves violence, you use this kind. Same goes for "showing what people are capable of doing to each other" stories, "people are greedy bastards" stories, and "commentary on modern society that isn't a parody" stories. This kind of violence provokes a very specific negative emotional response from the viewer, and if you want to relate that response to a subject or symbol, Coen violence is the way to do it.
Aside from all of this, comedies can use either kind of violence for their own purposes. Parodies can make fun of both Bourne and Coen violence, and you can also use horrific images just for shock value in stuff like Shaun of the Dead. Comedy has its fingers in everything.
I'm still not done with this subject. I've talked a lot about what I think of violence in cinema, and now I've gotten into a sort of general theory of violence. However I still want to get into specific examples of violence as symbolism. Expect some thoughts on Fight Club. Until next time...
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