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Cynical Foreign films...

  • 01-10-2004 12:18pm
    #1
    carpocrates
    Closed Accounts Posts: 118 ✭✭


    I just saw 'The road home' in the IFI this week and although I actually liked the film, especially the actress who gave an absoltely breathtaking performance, I couldn't help but feel as if I'd been taken for a little bit of a ride.
    There seems to be hatfuls of these types of foreign films washing up here in the philistine west these days. The one about the two brother tigers, or about the weeping camel or countless other examples. What I'm talking about is a particular formula to enchant western audiences. Using staple techniques like strong vibrant colours, especially red, a haunting, tear jerking soundtrack, vast lingering panoramic shots to show the amazing landscape, detailed attention to the preparation of food, a certain innocence in the characters. Of course non of these elements are bad in themselves, it's just that it seems to me to smack of a kind of cynicism to simply run through them all once again. What it does is pigeonhole film like 'the road home' as acceptable alternative to the trash from America, which means it almost has a kind of moral highground from the off. nOt to say these are bad films but there seems relatively little innovation, freshness or real film making creativity about them . maybe I'm just being a bastard and grouping completely different films together that don't deserve it, but I'm beginning to feel kinda ticked off about it.


Comments

  • #2
    Loretta.
    Closed Accounts Posts: 70 ✭✭Loretta.


    I couldnt agree with you more!
    I definately feel the irish r bein made look like fools just cause we have decided we wanna be all artsy fartsy and unfortunately the IFI are the main offenders..
    dont get me wrong,i have seen some amazing movies there but lately i feel they r throwin alot of crap at us.
    just cuz a movie has a nice foreign-film label on it then we all wouldnt dare criticise it:


    namely.........the weeping camel!!

    utterly pointless movie.

    If i had of taken a camera to the fields and recorded mammy and baby cow not gettin along and thrown in a few country kids lost in the big city, and sent it to Mongolia, something makes me think they wont think its a great movie...

    *all comments to the contrary accepted ;) *


  • #3
    Raoul Duke
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 989 ✭✭✭Raoul Duke


    carpocrates wrote:
    There seems to be hatfuls of these types of foreign films washing up here in the philistine west these days. The one about the two brother tigers, or about the weeping camel or countless other examples.


    You'll probably want to give a few more examples. Those 2 are ridiculous. The Story of the Weeping Camel is German and Two Brothers is French. Are they not part of the west?

    And to defend in part some of these films, of which I've seen a few, I'm not really sure who you are attacking. Is it the (I presume you meant asian) film makers themselves? This is obviously a silly attack as only a tiny percentage of films made in asia travel this far. They make them for their own market and have to live or die by that market.

    I presume then your attack should be aimed at the people in the IFI who select what films to show there. If so, then I'd imagine they'd be very open to receiving any advice about better movies that they should be showing.


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