Toro!
I saw Raging Bull for the first time last night and it got me thinking about what I like about movies and why. So this is a post about movies, and has spoiler content for that movie, Lawrence of Arabia, Braveheart, Barry Lyndon, Boogie Nights, and Ghost World.
My last post was about ways in which I’m a “regular guy,” absent extreme personality quirks, and how I think most people really are, too. (I guess that would have to be the case in order to achieve regularity.) I really like movies whose characters are regular in somewhat the same way.
My favorite protagonists (and antagonists, for that matter) are characters you could call complex because they do good and bad things. I just call them regular. I found Lawrence of Arabia way more intriguing than Braveheart (and this is not out of old-guy stubbornness; I saw Braveheart first). William Wallace killed the guy who slit his wife’s throat because the guy didn’t get a chance to prima noctis her, then Wallace got drawn and quartered for defending his homeland. Very heroic. Lawrence cruelly slaughtered a bunch of outmanned Turks in a war of nebulous cause, then spent a while thinking about it and riding his motorcycle too fast. Not heroic, but it makes for thought-provoking cinema.
As I said in my last post, basically nobody I know can be summed up in a word. (And if any can, it certainly wouldn’t be hero.) I like people like that – they have things they do well, and things they don’t; they are totally clutch at times, and they fall short at times. I’m like that. I want more movies about that kind of dude. If I were forced, at gunpoint, to pick a favorite movie of all time, or get my brains blown out my ear, it would be Barry Lyndon. It’s the only story of a jealous, immature, philandering, deserting social climber whom the audience really grows to love; and his stepson, who shoots him in the leg, whom the audience can’t really despise.
So it is with that mindset that I popped my girlfriend’s copy of Raging Bull into the VCR (that quaint old device – we actually had to rewind it first). It is a biographical story of the boxer Jake La Motta, who is beautifully played by Robert De Niro. Acting-wise, De Niro is outdone only by Joe Pesci, who plays Jake’s brother, Joey. These parts went a long way in making these two men famous. All the supporting cast is solid. The editing is miraculous – I think the best moment in the movie is late, when the estranged/divorced (I forget) Jake begs his ex-/wife, Vickie, to let him in the house so he can get his championship belt and (stupidly) hammer out the gemstones and pawn them. She finally assents, and as Jake hammers the belt against the counter some plates fall off a nearby shelf. Jake begins yelling at Vickie, but the scene cuts in the middle of his first sentence.
The reason I think this scene is so great is that it is an admittance to the audience that the movie has featured enough spousal abuse already, and that since virtually every filmed interaction between Jake and Vickie to that point has involved direct or indirect wife domination, the editors can finally let the audience fill in the blank. So my problem with Raging Bull is that Jake La Motta is portrayed as such an awful human being that I can’t sympathize with him. The tiny exception is the scene in the cell when he yells WHY? and beats his head and fists against the wall, but it’s the kind of sympathy you have for anybody crying out in pain and frustration. Within screen minutes, he’s out on the streets being a complete waste again. The end of the movie is a shot of him rehearsing for a little presentation in some club (maybe his own, called Jake La Motta’s, illustrating his unparalleled ego-centrism, but maybe somewhere else; I’d need to watch it again) in front of a dressing room mirror. Boogie Nights ended the same way; it’s an obvious homage. I loved Boogie Nights, because it made me adore an unintelligent, drug addicted porn star. I felt no such adoration for Jake. I don’t really think Scorsese intended for me to adore him. But I don’t really like to get into movie makers’ intentions while reviewing – I like to examine the results. And the result of Raging Bull is a movie that is hard to watch, to the point where I’d have a hard time recommending it, because I simply can’t sympathize with Jake. Good, in that it inspired me to write about it, I guess, but not good to watch.
I do really like a movie called Ghost World. I found it quirky and atmospheric. But I recommended it to a friend of mine who didn’t like it much because he felt Thora Birch’s character was childish and hurtful to Steve Buscemi’s. At the time I criticized his criticism – I didn’t like the movie because of what a wonderful person the protagonist was; I liked the picture as a whole. And although we still differ on our opinions of Ghost World, I can now see his point of view a little better, in that I have seen a movie that was virtually ruined solely by my dislike of the protagonist.
My last post was about ways in which I’m a “regular guy,” absent extreme personality quirks, and how I think most people really are, too. (I guess that would have to be the case in order to achieve regularity.) I really like movies whose characters are regular in somewhat the same way.
My favorite protagonists (and antagonists, for that matter) are characters you could call complex because they do good and bad things. I just call them regular. I found Lawrence of Arabia way more intriguing than Braveheart (and this is not out of old-guy stubbornness; I saw Braveheart first). William Wallace killed the guy who slit his wife’s throat because the guy didn’t get a chance to prima noctis her, then Wallace got drawn and quartered for defending his homeland. Very heroic. Lawrence cruelly slaughtered a bunch of outmanned Turks in a war of nebulous cause, then spent a while thinking about it and riding his motorcycle too fast. Not heroic, but it makes for thought-provoking cinema.
As I said in my last post, basically nobody I know can be summed up in a word. (And if any can, it certainly wouldn’t be hero.) I like people like that – they have things they do well, and things they don’t; they are totally clutch at times, and they fall short at times. I’m like that. I want more movies about that kind of dude. If I were forced, at gunpoint, to pick a favorite movie of all time, or get my brains blown out my ear, it would be Barry Lyndon. It’s the only story of a jealous, immature, philandering, deserting social climber whom the audience really grows to love; and his stepson, who shoots him in the leg, whom the audience can’t really despise.
So it is with that mindset that I popped my girlfriend’s copy of Raging Bull into the VCR (that quaint old device – we actually had to rewind it first). It is a biographical story of the boxer Jake La Motta, who is beautifully played by Robert De Niro. Acting-wise, De Niro is outdone only by Joe Pesci, who plays Jake’s brother, Joey. These parts went a long way in making these two men famous. All the supporting cast is solid. The editing is miraculous – I think the best moment in the movie is late, when the estranged/divorced (I forget) Jake begs his ex-/wife, Vickie, to let him in the house so he can get his championship belt and (stupidly) hammer out the gemstones and pawn them. She finally assents, and as Jake hammers the belt against the counter some plates fall off a nearby shelf. Jake begins yelling at Vickie, but the scene cuts in the middle of his first sentence.
The reason I think this scene is so great is that it is an admittance to the audience that the movie has featured enough spousal abuse already, and that since virtually every filmed interaction between Jake and Vickie to that point has involved direct or indirect wife domination, the editors can finally let the audience fill in the blank. So my problem with Raging Bull is that Jake La Motta is portrayed as such an awful human being that I can’t sympathize with him. The tiny exception is the scene in the cell when he yells WHY? and beats his head and fists against the wall, but it’s the kind of sympathy you have for anybody crying out in pain and frustration. Within screen minutes, he’s out on the streets being a complete waste again. The end of the movie is a shot of him rehearsing for a little presentation in some club (maybe his own, called Jake La Motta’s, illustrating his unparalleled ego-centrism, but maybe somewhere else; I’d need to watch it again) in front of a dressing room mirror. Boogie Nights ended the same way; it’s an obvious homage. I loved Boogie Nights, because it made me adore an unintelligent, drug addicted porn star. I felt no such adoration for Jake. I don’t really think Scorsese intended for me to adore him. But I don’t really like to get into movie makers’ intentions while reviewing – I like to examine the results. And the result of Raging Bull is a movie that is hard to watch, to the point where I’d have a hard time recommending it, because I simply can’t sympathize with Jake. Good, in that it inspired me to write about it, I guess, but not good to watch.
I do really like a movie called Ghost World. I found it quirky and atmospheric. But I recommended it to a friend of mine who didn’t like it much because he felt Thora Birch’s character was childish and hurtful to Steve Buscemi’s. At the time I criticized his criticism – I didn’t like the movie because of what a wonderful person the protagonist was; I liked the picture as a whole. And although we still differ on our opinions of Ghost World, I can now see his point of view a little better, in that I have seen a movie that was virtually ruined solely by my dislike of the protagonist.
posted by john at
2:29 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home