Hmm, if Lars von Trier made that movie "in a fit of depression" then it's probably unwatchable. In some ways his movies remind me of Neil LaBute's (In the Company of Men and the like), though von Trier is a better artist and smarter. But in both cases it's wallowing in the sordid aspects of life. I'm well aware that things can awful and don't need my face rubbed in it. It also becomes very dull and with very little pay-off.
The other movie sounds terrible, too. "passive-aggressive winsomeness" certainly isn't a trait I want in someone I'll spend a few hours with. I think you'd do well to avoid both!
I hate Neil LaBute movies. I remember watching In the Company of Men back when it was released. Everyone was celebrating it for being so scathingly incisive and clever and satiric. I just hated it. I hated all of the characters, and I hated the entire premise. I didn't think it was that artistic to see real life asshole Jason Patrick portray a narcissistic asshole who screams abuses at a woman for having her period on his 350 count sheets. God, I hate that movie.This hate did stay with me all these years though, so if that was the point, kudos. But if that's the main effect/point of a film, then I don't see much payoff for me, nor anything to really celebrate artistically. Congrats! I hate your movie and years later, still hate it! I hate humanity, too! Faux rebel misanthrope anything really annoys the heck out of me. It's NOT shocking. It's NOT insightful. It's just unpleasant and annoying and unoriginal.
It's funny, Belle, but the first thing I thought of when reading your above comment was the Jezebel "tampon" article.
Requiem for a Dream was about the limit for me - but that film was really ABOUT something tangible - made more disturbing by the fact that none of it seemed unrealistic or gratuitous.
With regards to "Antichrist, however - the moment JRO "drills a hole through [my] shin to bolt [me] onto a grindstone"... well, we'll have to start seeing other people.
And the strangling thing, Bryan. And the strangling thing.
Funny, I remember liking Requiem for a Dream, In the Bedroom, Little Children, etc. They were emotionally accurate, but not exploitative. But bolting to a grindstone? As Liz Lemon would say,"dealbreaker!"
Books are easier to get away from. Movies in a theater especially are almost impossible -- it's both rude and wasteful to get up and leave if what's on screen overwhelms you.
"If you're not driving a hundred miles an hour, at a clip where you can't think of anything else but the danger, then you're playing some game or sitting in some room where you can't argue with the four-wall televisor. Why? The televisor is 'real.' It is immediate, it has dimension it tells you what to think and blasts it in, it must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'"
"Only the 'family' is 'people'"
"I beg your pardon?"
"My wife says books aren't 'real.'"
"Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, 'Hold on a moment.' You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlor? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason, but with all my knowledge and skepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra, full color, three dimensions, and being in and part of those incredible parlors."
There's something to be said for art that is challenging and difficult
Really? What?
All that stuff you heard if you were a humanities major about the examined life, exploring the human condition, etc. etc. etc.
I do remember all that (while not a humanities major, I did pick up a humanities degree as a hobby). But none of it requires the art to be "challenging" or "difficult".
Shakespeare is difficult because to really appreciate it you have to learn the English of the time. Warhol's work can be 'challenging' because (at its best) it can reflect some of the silliness in things you take for granted. But Warhol's paintings are easy to look at, and take no effort to enjoy. Shakespeare is so much fun to read (once you can) that you forget it's art at all. A movie that's hard to watch is just a bad movie.
I dunno, panthan. I feel a modest degree of guilt over never having read David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, and the like, although I really enjoy William Faulkner. Like, that Infinite Summer thing? Dude, I'm currently reading Neil Gaiman and Thomas Hardy when I'm not researching. Summer is about fun books to read at a picnic. I also got that Special Topics in Calamity Physics book, if you don't think Hardy is fun enough.
A movie that's hard to watch is just a bad movie.
I'd like to hear more about what you mean by "hard to watch" here. I can think of quite a few ways that this is obviously false, or at least would depend on the idea that movies must be amusing, unlike other artistic forms, if they are to be good. That's also clearly false. What do you mean by "hard to watch", and why would that property (or those properties) make a movie "just bad"?
There are more authors, even "good" authors, than you'll ever have time to read, so why feel guilty? I've only barely heard of Wallace, and feel no need to read him. I, too, enjoy Faulkner, and for that matter Pynchon. So why read the "challenging, difficult" guys? Read the ones who can actually put words together, in a way that you enjoy. I know there are people who feel that if you enjoy it, it can't be "good". The technical term for such people is "idiot".
I just read a review of "Special Topics...." It isn't going on my list. Why would it? Nothing about it sounds even vaguely interesting.
Really? I kind of like the idea of a murder mystery thing in Special Topics. The structure of the book may seem kind of twee, but I'm willing to give it a go.
I don't know what Panthan means "hard to watch"--a spliced narrative, a la Memento or an Innaritu film? For me, it's forcing myself to watch something that deeply disturbs me and that I don't enjoy, with not much reward in terms of artistic value or insight. Like, I don't want to see a gratuitous torture or rape scene. That would be really hard for me to watch, and unless it serves some better purpose (torture is hard to watch for a reason) and is _not_ merely gratuitous or exploitative, I will not watch such a movie. I don't need to see some person's masochistic fantasy, for example Lars von Trier's.
Keep in mind, I am not implying that difficult to watch movies are inherently "bad," that's panthan's characterization, however s/he defines "difficult to watch." There are probably lots of movies I don't enjoy watching that are "good," or "artistic" or "critically praised" or whatever.
I should also confess that while I prefer lighter fare for the summer, I actually do not ever hang out at the beach, and in general at picnics I read my New Yorker or whatever book for probably 15 minutes before I fall asleep and nap under the tree in a food coma. Man, I love summer. Especially in the shade. Who on earth wants to sunbathe at the beach?! It's much more fun to go hiking.
Who on earth wants to sunbathe at the beach?!
I like going to the beach quite a bit, but not so much for sunbathing. (Laying, and especially sleeping, in the sun usually makes me feel tired.) But I like to swim and play in the surf and to walk along the beach. I like walking along the beach even in winter.
Also, Panthan's suggestion that "difficult" or "challenging" means "poorly written" is very odd.
Oh I love walking at the beach. Especially in the winter, when no one's around. I hate crowded beaches. There's some great beach hikes you can do, too, if there's some cliffy parts to the beach. I also like to visit the tide pools at Crystal Cove when I visit my family down in Southern CA.
Laying in the sun seems to be a recipe for skin cancer as well as getting really hot (which I hate) and tiredness, despite diligent application of sunblock. I am really tan right now just from walking and running, and I wear tons of sunblock. I forgot sunblock or my hat two weeks ago and my skin was peeling. I forgot that even those with high melanin content don't take long to burn (I was exposed maybe half an hour). Gah! Sunburns suck! I haven't been burned since I was 9 years old and reckless about the sun, thinking melanin was enough. Didn't Bob Marley die of skin cancer? Hmmm.
Oh nevermind. Different kind of melanoma not linked to sun exposure.
Panthan's suggestion that "difficult" or "challenging" means "poorly written" is very odd
I didn't mean to suggest that, though I suppose you could infer that. There are (I believe) a goodly number of people who find Faulkner "difficult" and "challenging". Belle and I enjoy his stuff. I don't know what would be difficult or challenging about it, unless it's hard for the person so labeling it to read.
I understand that "challenging" is sometimes intended to mean "challenges your belief system/world view/whatever", which is nonsense. Any reasonably accurate history textbook will do that. Of course, a well-written one will also be enjoyable to read. But is it 'art'?
So what does "difficult and challenging" mean? I haven't heard the phrase actually used in conversation in ages, and then it meant, "if you were as hip/cool/smart/sensitive as I am, you'd think this was good, too."
There are (I believe) a goodly number of people who find Faulkner "difficult" and "challenging". Belle and I enjoy his stuff. I don't know what would be difficult or challenging about it, unless it's hard for the person so labeling it to read.
I don't know about you, but reading a narrative from the perspective of what Faulkner thought a retarded person would be like was "difficult and challenging" for me, in terms of being able to understand WTF was happening in the narrative. And I enjoy Faulkner, and Sound & Fury is one of my favorite books of his. Do the rest of y'all just find it really easy to follow a fictional retarded person's stream of consciousness when you have no idea outside his descriptions of the characters and events being described?
Also, I found the torture scene in "Three Kings" hard to watch, but I thought it was important and necessary to the plot, not gratuitous. Then again, if you like seeing Markie Mark suffer, it may have been the highlight of the movie.
I found it difficult, but I really enjoyed the book. Maybe it's being in grad school, but nowadays my eyes glaze over at convoluted writing with no paragraph breaks. I tried to get through a page of Gaddis and Foster Wallace's books. I put them down. Maybe I should try again, but at a stage when I want to invest myself more into the language of a book rather than the plot.
I think it is Marky Mark, PG. 
Heh.
No, I make a distinction between violence that is important to the plot and necessary to understand the message/theme, and merely gratuitous. I don't like it much still, but I don't hate it and feel angry at being exposed to it. I watched all five seasons of The Wire, and it was worth it. I did close my eyes at some parts of it, though.
Here's an example: I find the "dogma 95" films difficult to watch, not primarily because of their subject matter (though that can be unpleasant, too) but because of the way they differ from most movies and conventions of film-making. I can't really say that I've "enjoyed" the ones I've watched (only 4 of them, I think.) But I've found them all very interesting as works of art (even van Trier's "The Idiots", which I found unpleasant to watch) and worth having watched- I learned something about film from them and about how films represent life.
Or, I've found the films of Sergei Parajanov from "Color of Pomegranates" to be difficult and challenging but also extremely rewarding to watch for the way that they represent myth and memory via odd narrative structures, strange use of dialog, and so on.
If people don't want to watch these films it's certainly no skin off of my nose, nor to I think they have any implications for anyone's "coolness". But they do seem like examples of films that are rightly called difficult and/or challenging and worth watching.
I never have the time that these discussions require.
PG:
reading a narrative from the perspective of what Faulkner thought a retarded person would be like was "difficult and challenging" for me
Then why read it? I found the wordsmithing interesting, and by the end of the fourth sentence you know the narrator is watching golf, or something like it. You know a lot about the characters within a page or two. It is, in my opinion, hugely well-written. It isn't difficult to read, nor a challenge to keep doing so. If it was either of those things for you, why read it?
Matt:
find the "dogma 95" films difficult to watch.... learned something about film from them and about how films represent life.
This is well and good. Maybe these are good films from the point of view of learning about making movies. But most of us don't go to the theatre, or even use netflix, to learn how to make movies.
My remark that a movie that's hard to watch is just a bad movie was flip, but I meant it. This clown (the one that made the movie that Belle won't see) is supposed to be making money for the studio. If most of his potential audience is not going to want to see the movie, he fails. If his own intention (rather than that of the studio) is to teach or inform or whatever he thinks he's doing, then he first has to have an audience. If he doesn't, then he's failed at both the commercial and artistic endeavors, and it's a bad movie.
Most people would find a movie of thoracic surgery hard to watch, but if you want to learn about surgery, go watch it. It's a "good movie" if it serves that purpose, and was made for that purpose. A movie of unsuccessful thoracic surgery on a well-loved child would have it all -- life, death, struggle, love, and loss -- but for all that, it wouldn't be a "good movie" in the usual sense of the term, because only a small audience wants to see close-ups of internal organs.
Panthan,
By saying these films can teach you about film and how it works I didn't mean that it can teach you _how to make movies_ or anything like that. Rather, watching them helps you understand how film works, including others. You gain more insight into film and then can enjoy it at a deeper level. Now, if you're not interested that's fine. No one is making you watch them. But your notion of "good movie" is clearly overly narrow, at the very least.
I'm not much of a fan of Van Trier's movies, but he's made a lot of them and studios keep giving him money. I'm pretty sure that this is an indication that he's making money for the studio. But unless you think film can't be an art form, then surely this isn't the only thing to care about.
But your notion of "good movie" is clearly overly narrow, at the very least.
Probably; the last movie I actually saw was Casino Royale, which was fun but not especially enlightening. It's been a long time since I was a regular filmgoer, and I'm clearly no scholar of the form. And truthfully, if the only way to understand how film works is to watch dismal, difficult films, I'll pass. But I suspect it isn't. I suspect that there are some pretty enjoyable films out there that help you discover the same things.
The only way to really enjoy and understand Chaucer is to learn Middle English. That's a lot of work. I think it's worth it, but I doubt most people would. But it isn't necessary to learn Middle English to enjoy reading, and there's a hell of a lot written that will allow people to learn the same things about the "examined life" and "the human condition" that they might get from Troylus and Criseyde. I think it's a "good poem", but were it written today with the idea of attracting a mass audience, I'd say it wasn't.
Comes down to it, a movie is supposed to be worth it to watch. If the guy can't make a movie that people actually want to watch, then he's made a bad movie. Explaining that it's "difficult" is no excuse. Explaining that it helps with watching other movies, or appreciating other movies, just means that it's not worth it in and of itself. If his only intended audience is people who celebrate "difficult, challenging" art for its own sake, then I take it back. It's a wonderful movie, and may all five of the people who see it have fond memories forever.
I didn't see Casino Royale. I didn't intentionally not see it, I'm just not a huge James Bond fan and didn't get around to it. But if it was anything like the follow-up (a ridiculous hodge-podge of a plot and the substitution of fast camera work and cuts for any sort of directing or acting skill that's so common today) then we'd certainly never agree, and I'd insist you'd mistaken amusement for quality, in the same way someone might think a big mac is good food, but would therefore necessarily be wrong. But then, I've not seen that film, and maybe it's better than the follow-up. Some people have told me so.
Explaining that it helps with watching other movies, or appreciating other movies, just means that it's not worth it in and of itself.
I'd rather have a film maker try to further the medium and fail than to have 90% of a the crap that Hollywood puts out - even if "people" enjoy it.
The only way to really enjoy and understand Chaucer is to learn Middle English.
Talk about a weighted comparison.
You are comparing a contemporary director, who's historical importance has yet to be even remotely determined, to an author who's had 600+ years of literary and cultural vetting - as if somehow the two are comparable. I would argue that if, in fact, the "only way to understand Chaucer is to learn Middle English", then Chaucer has become entirely irrelevent outside of those academics who choose to study him, and folks outside academia are wasting their time unless, by some chance, they really enjoy such endeavors.
And yet, you have still yet to define what you mean by "hard to watch" or "difficult". You also imply that those terms are static and never changing - that what one fines "difficult" at one point in their lives will also be "difficult" later. Sorry, but I think that's just nonsense. Tastes change.
Then why read it? I found the wordsmithing interesting, and by the end of the fourth sentence you know the narrator is watching golf, or something like it. You know a lot about the characters within a page or two. It is, in my opinion, hugely well-written. It isn't difficult to read, nor a challenge to keep doing so. If it was either of those things for you, why read it?
Ah, well, thanks for explaining that Sound & Fury is not actually difficult nor challenging. I must indeed be wrong to have said it was, despite the fact that calling Benjy's section "difficult," due to the unannounced time shifts and the fact that there are two Maurys and two Quentins, is so common as to be a cliche (just try Googling faulkner sound fury difficult). Yours seems to be a minority opinion, that "difficult and challenging" is the opposite of "well-written." As in the case of Faulkner, "difficult and challenging" may also mean, say, "non-linear" and thus be "difficult and challenging" for those accustomed to linear narratives while also being "well-written" in a somewhat unusual and innovative fashion.
I don't walk away from what I think might be worthwhile because it is initially difficult and challenging. I'm sort of puzzled by the idea that one should only pursue that which is easy.
I am being thoroughly misunderstood, a symptom of trying to compress argument, I hope.
Matt: I did not say Casino Royale was good, or high quality. I said it was fun. Bad/good is not a binary choice. I did not mean to imply that it was good, by any standard other than "fun". If the goal was to make a movie that people enjoyed, then that was accomplished, and I would recommend it on that basis. All I really meant to say was that you are free to discount any of my opinions because I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to film.
Bryan: No, no, no. I do not state that the terms are static, or even that they can be universally defined. I asked for definitions of "difficult" and "challenging"; PG provided an example. I noted in response that her comments did not preclude the activity of reading to be itself enjoyable. Faulkner is not hard to read, though he does require a better vocabulary and attention span than some other books.
The reference to Chaucer was intended to illustrate that while I feel his work is "good", it is not legitimate to tell a non-specialist that it's good for his leisure reading. "Well, you'd like it if you only knew Middle English" is probably true, but irrelevant. And asking him to put in the work to learn it is also, I think, not reasonable. There are other works he can already read that are likely equally good (within an epsilon or so, anyway).
"Hard to watch" means in this instance that the visual depictions on screen are sufficiently nauseating that most people will wish to be somewhere else. Perhaps I should have said "physically hard to watch" or "makes you want to rush out of the theatre bent double with your hand cupped over your mouth". This is not "hard to watch" as in Mother India, which is hard to watch in that you know the peasants are going to be continually ground beneath the heel of the moneylender until something tragic happens.
You are likely part of the audience that whatsisname is seeking, and more power to you. I tried to say above that good means different things to different people. A studio film for broad release is supposed to appeal to a large number of people. If it doesn't, it has failed. And if it doesn't because the director gratuitously threw in several physically disturbing scenes, then he did a bad job of moviemaking and it might as well be called a bad movie.
And, there are likely films that are just as "good", in whatever sense you want to define it, that won't make Belle share her lunch with the seats ahead. So, within her stated desires for a movie, she should feel neither guilt nor hesitation in saying to herself, "This is probably a bad movie, and I'll go see something else."
Fini.
Ah, well, thanks for explaining that Sound & Fury is not actually difficult nor challenging.
I didn't. I said that it isn't painful to read. You don't seem to think it was, either. I accept your definition of difficult and challenging.
I'm sort of puzzled by the idea that one should only pursue that which is easy
Me, too. I just don't think you should feel guilty about skipping what is actively unpleasant, when there are likely to be equally "good" works on which to spend your leisure time.
panthan,
What I italicized in my prior comment was what you had said upthread. You said in reference to S&F, "It isn't difficult to read, nor a challenge to keep doing so." It's slightly bizarre to deny ("I didn't. I said that it isn't painful to read.") having said something that is not only in print but on the same page as the denial. Are there two panthans in this conversation? If so, I apologize for mis-attributing to one what actually was said by the other.
I agree that if something is "actively unpleasant" or "painful," one ought not feel guilty for not giving one's leisure time to it. But these are very different from what most people understand "difficult and challenging" to mean in reference to leisure activities. And when I say "most people," I mean that I can't find a dictionary that has "challenging" as a synonym for "painful" or "unpleasant." You're putting an unusual construction on the term "challenging" if what you think is meant by it is "bearable only through force of will" rather than "calling for full use of one's abilities or resources in a difficult but stimulating effort."
PG: There is only one of me, at least in this thread. I wrote what you quoted. I was trying to get to the fact that "difficult and challenging" does not have to mean difficult to read or challenging to stick with.
We started with Belle mentioning a movie that she felt was going to be nauseating to her. Well, then being "difficult and challenging" is not a reason to go see it -- especially if "difficult" in this case literally means "makes my gorge rise". Faulkner may be difficult and challenging (and I thank you for the example), but is that why you read it? Or do you read it because it's well-written and rewarding?
(Rhetorical question. Not seeking an actual answer.)
Fini.
I think I'm going to have to take another stab at the "Why I hate Faulkner" diatribe, since I fared so poorly the first time, mostly because my brain actively tried to scrub details from its memory and my blinding hatred disallows objective resolution of such.
I think I find stylized obfuscation in literature to be offensive, whether it be Clockwork Orange-style slang, reading the King James version of the Bible, or deciphering the world from a retard's view. In the deliberate sense done by Faulkner, I end up feeling that such a tool might have been amusing for a short skit, but dragged through an entire literary trawl, everything starts looking like a nail, to mix my metaphors. And the entire damn book is a collection of such devices, and it all begins to feel like variations on a theme that I loathe. I had completely forgotten about the whole same name problem as well in the novel, but THAT begins to wear on my by the end of a four-panel comic. Hell, if I want to get offensive about it, I deeply suspect half the appeal in deciphering such is akin to the rush in getting the literary reference/inside-joke that flew right over 90% of the audience's head.
And. I love language and wordsmithing, even if it gets annoying at times, and the whole artistic inversion into stream-of-consciousness is...it is clever. And I never, ever want to see it again because it is the deliberate antithesis of all I love about communication in the written form, an attempt to show in writing pre-literate -- no, wait -- pre-linguistic thought. I can perhaps summon the smallest bit of appreciation for that, but certainly I cannot enjoy it.
Nick,
Do you like Faulkner's more linear work (e.g. short stories like "The Bear"), or is this an overall antipathy?
I'm going to be honest and say I only read two novels before I decided to veer away entirely, although I suspect it's an overall antipathy, based on what I've read *about* his work.
If you're ever interested in giving Faulkner another try, I do recommend his short stories as fairly accessible. "A Rose for Emily" is my favorite -- such politely f*cked-up Southern Gothic.
A Rose For Emily gave me the shivers when I was a kid! It was my first intro to Faulkner. Love it.
I read that just now, in a mild fit of insomnia. It occurs to me that in the distant past, perhaps when I was thirteen or fourteen I read this, and I think I could see even then all the glimmerings of Faulkner that bother me to this day. As I began to read the story, I found myself idly enjoying the setup, but upon recognizing the familiar tread of Faulkner's Southern Gothic, as you put it, I lost active interest in the story as it is, and devoted the greater part to weighing the elements and considering various people who I know that would enjoy this sort of thing more than I.
I appreciate the sheer density of key sentences, as my English teachers always seemed to insist was characteristic of poetry, but still cannot enjoy when such phrases are lost in a jungle of inanity, in some twisted dance between economy and excess. Gods, more than anything, it makes me feel sympathetic towards the people I detest who hold drama up as some kind of sacred cow.
What can I say? Faulkner's...meta-storytelling just makes me vaguely dissatisfied. It is, I admit, more suitable for a short story than novel-length. If I had just read that short story with no prior experience, I probably could be convinced to read a novel of his, falling prey to the seductive grasp of novelty.
Good to see that critics are catching on to the odious Sam Mendes. American Beauty was horrible. I did sort of like Revolutionary Road, but as an odd fantasy about our contemporary memory of the 1950s American suburbs. In that sense it had a weirdly compelling quality.
The argument for difficult, complex, challenging art has always seemed beyond obvious to me. Life is complex and challenging, if you want the thrill that comes when art really illuminates life (as opposed to offering a momentary escape from it), then you're going to have to get into some challenging terrain.
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