>People tend to think that an effective mise en scene is simply one that expresses the idea, the point, of the scene and it’s subtext. (Eisenstein himself was a protagonist of this view). That is supposed to ensure that the scene will be given the depths that the meaning requires
>Such an attitude is simplistic. It has given rise to a good many irrelevant conventions which do violence to the living texture of the artistic image
>As we know, mise en scene is a design made up of the disposition of the actors in relation to each other and to the setting. In real life we can be struck by the way an episode takes on a ‘mise en scène’ which makes for the utmost expressiveness. On seeing it we might exclaim with delight, ‘you couldn’t think of that if you tried!’ What is it that we find so arresting? The incongruity of the ‘composition’ in relation to what is happening. It is in fact the absurdity of the mise en scene that catches our imagination; but this absurdity is only apparent. It covers something of great significance which gives the mise en scene that quality of absolute conviction which makes us believe in the event.
>The point is that it is no good by-passing the difficulties and bringing everything down to a simplistic level; therefore it is crucial that mise en scene, rather than illustrating some idea, should folllow life— the personalities of the characters and their psychological state. It’s purpose must not be reduced to elaborating in the meaning of a conversation or action. It’s function is to startle us with the authenticity of the actions and the beauty and depths of the artistic images— not by obtrusive illustration of their meaning. As is so often the case, undue emphasis on ideas can only restrict the spectators imagination, forming a kind of thought ceiling beyond which there yawns a vacuum. It doesn’t safeguard the frontiers of thought, it simply makes it harder to penetrate into its depths.
Is he right Yea Forums?
Tarkovsky on subtext
Other urls found in this thread:
Wat
Continued
>Examples are not hard to find. One only has to think of the endless fences, railings and lattices that separate lovers. Another heavy handed variation is the monumental clanging panorama of a huge building site, the mission of which is to bring some erring egoist back to his sense and imbue him with a love of labour and the working class. No mise en scene has the right to be repeated, just as no two personalities are the ever the same. As soon as a mise en scene turns into a sign, a cliche, a concept (however original it may be), then the whole thing— characters, situations, psychology—become schematic and false.
>Look at Dostoyevskys The Idiot. What overwhelming truth in the characters and circumstances! As Rogozhin and Myshkin, their knees touching, sit there on chairs in that enormous room, They astound us by the combination of an outwardly absurd and senseless mise en scene with the perfect veracity of their inner state. The refusal to weigh the scene down with obtrusive thoughts is what makes it as compelling as life itself. Yet how readily a mise en scene constructed without any obvious idea is regarded as formalistic.
>Often the director himself is so determined to be portentous that he loses all sense of measure and will ignore the true meaning of a human action, turning it into a vessel for the idea he wants to emphasize. But one has to observe life at first hand, not to make do with the banalities of a hollow counterfeit constructed for the sake of acting and of screen expressiveness. I think the truth of these remarks would be borne out if we were to ask our friends to tell us, for instance, of deaths which they themselves have witnessed: Im sure we should be amazed by the details of those scenes, by the individual reactions of the the people concerned, above all by the incongruity of it all— and, if I may use such an inappropriate term, by the expressiveness of those deaths
Excerpt from ‘Sculpting in Time’ pgs 24, 25 26
"If I can't make a long, boring movie I'll kill myself." -Andrei Tarkovsky
He's absolutely spot on.
why do people circlejerk about tarkovsky so much? nigga boring
Basically symbolism is for dumb mental midgets and portraying the human experience as mere trivial on-screen puzzles like putting a fence between two loved ones is a wrong juvenile way to approach art itself.
Kino BTS image
I'd like to know what else he had to say about some other specifics of the subject - what were his thoughts on subtext in dialogue? Subtext that relates to theme versus subtext that relates to the desires of the characters?
Lol wat
just read Sculpting in Time, you can find the PDF online
It's one way to make film but there's no reason people can't experiment with other uses of composition. Tarkovsky has a sophisticated process but he's saying 'everybody has to do it my way' which is just dumb
>he's saying 'everybody has to do it my way'
Not really. He's just saying how simplistic and definite that approach is, not that no one should do that.
There's the right way and the wrong way.
Tarkovsky is not against subtext (or symbolism, for that matter) he’s really just trying to give his own opinion on conventions, he wants a director to go beyond the conventional and really try to create something true to himself. He quotes Vyacheslav Ivanov in a later chapter when he writes
>A symbol is only a true symbol when it is inexhaustible and unlimited in its meaning, when it utters in its arcane (hieratic and magical) language of hint and intimation something that cannot be set forth, that does not correspond to words. It has many faces and many thoughts, and in its remotest depths it remains inscrutable . . . It is formed by organic process, like a crystal . . . Indeed it is a monad, and thus constitutionally different from complex and reducible allegories, parables and similes . . . Symbols cannot be stated or explained, and, confronted by their secret meaning in its totality, we are powerless.
Will try to post more great excerpts shortly
Okay, but subtext and symbolism are two different beasts. Symbolism is about what the artist wants to say, but subtext is more often about what the characters want to say. It's about feelings and desires - things that are only understood by the audience because of context rather than direct action. You can't really write an authentic character without most of their behaviour dictated by something they don't express plainly - subtext - because that's how people are. It's more engaging to watch, too. The whole "don't give them 4, give them 2 + 2" analogy.
>Strokes of paint will just distract you from the sublime blankness of the canvas
Okay Tarkovsky, it's hard to argue with that. Then again, to see real life and authentic existence, I just need to look out the window or walk in the park. Why would I consume second hand authentic existence in the theater? This is why your films are so boring. Now shoo, back to the grave, I'm late for my local screening of DCEU's Shazam tm
This might be useful as well
>Screen writers, howerever, fulfill an important function, and one which demands the true literary talent in terms of psychological insight. This is where literature does bring an influence to bear in cinema which is both useful and necessary, and which does not strangle or distort it. Nothing in cinema at the present time is more neglected or superficial than psychology. I’m talking about understanding and revealing the underlying truth of characters states of mind; this is largely ignored. And yet it is this that stops a man dead in his tracks in the most uncomfortable position, or makes him jump out of a fifth-floor window.
>For every single case cinema demands of both director and script writer enormous knowledge; the author of a a film has thus to have something in common with the psychologist-screenwriter, and also with the psychiatrist. For the plastic composition of a film depends largely, often critically, on the particular state of a character in particular circumstances. And the script writer can, indeed must, bring to bear on the director his own knowledge of the whole truth about that inner state, even to the point of telling him how to build up the mise en scène. One can simply write: “The characters stop by the wall”, and go on to give the dialogue. But what is special about the words that are being uttered, and do they correspond with standing by the wall? The meaning of the scene cannot be concentrated within the words spoken by the characters. ‘Words, words, words,’ — in real life these are mostly so much water, and only rarely and for a brief while can you observe the perfect accord between the word and gesture, word and deed, word and meaning. For usually a persons words, inner state and physical action develop on different planes. They may complement, or sometimes, up to a point, echo one another; more often they are in contradiction; occasionally, in sharp conflict, they unmask one another
continued
>And only by knowing exactly what is going on and why, simultaneously, on each of these planes, can we achieve that unique, truthful force of fact of which I have spoken. As for mise en scène, when it corresponds precisely with the spoken word, and when there is interaction, a meeting-point between them, then the image is born which I have called observation-image, absolute and specific. That is why the scenarist has to be the true writer.
I think he's describing the state of cinema, and probably litterature, 30 years after his death. Film makers, with a few exceptions (david lynch, tarantino, pta ..) collectively took the easy path, the one of simplicity, that is why most of the dialogue these days is cringy and predictable in what seems to be a simulation of real life situations which is not so bad in itself, its is just soo different from Tarkovsky's cinema which is, weirdly enough, the closest to reality, now while Stalker might not be a biography or even inspired by true event, the interactions between the characters and their constent self-reevaluation is more commun than let's say Tom's cruise's latest MI movie (god knows i love those movies)
sorry for my average english.
Tarkovsky, baby, you're being comically pretentious. Not only did you contradict yourself but you're also an idiot for thinking that there's anything "authentic" about the deliberate pretense that is film.
Well - a lot of people are retards. Tarkovsky imagines here an audience that might not exist: an imaginative audience willing to engage with all the ambiguities of life.
Sometimes, especially in art that might have a didactic dimension, you want symbols or references to be obvious.
Tarkovsky might reply that art shouldn't be instructive, or obvious. Why? Art in the sense of Tarkovsky cannot help but be informative or constructive. It will illuminate the human experience. Light teaches us what exists in darkness. Making that journey shorter isn't necessarily a failure.
All art tries to capture authentic existence in a fixed, observable state, in an effort to a) study and make sense of it and b) foster a connection to our fellow man. When we make art, we're saying - this is how I understand things to be; this is what I see; this is how it feels. And we're asking - do you see this too? Do you feel this too?
And if someone out there sees our work and says "Yes! That's how it feels!" suddenly we're a little less alone in the world, and we can be more certain that what we see and feel makes sense, that it has value.
>I just need to look out the window or walk in the park
Sure go look out the window and experience the absolute innocence of your childhood again..
Ah, he puts it far more eloquently than what I was trying to say here: I'll be reading this book soon, thanks for sharing OP.
Well okay, but if you're trying to express universal emotions/observations in a visual medium it's probably not very effective to strip away all the visual elements of your art and substitute them with some vague notion of authenticity than can not be easily extracted from the art since it's so counter-intuitive. Maybe it's as valid approach, but Tarkovsky is sounding needlessly contemptous there.
Fair enough.
>it's probably not very effective to strip away all the visual elements of your art and substitute them
Where does he say you should strip away visual elements? Have you seen a single Tarkovsky film?
You should use the visual elements to create that authentic narrative, not strip them away.
Tarkovsky on why people watch movies
>Why do people go to the cinema? What takes them into a darkened room where, for two hours, they watch the play of shadows on a sheet? The search for entertainment? The need for a kind of drug? All over the world there are, indeed, entertainment firms and organizations which exploit cinema and television and spectacles of many other kinds. Our starting-point, however, should not be there, but in the essential principles of cinema, which have to do with the human need to master and know the world. I think that what a person normally goes to the cinema for is time: for time lost or spent or not yet had. He goes there for living experience; for cinema, like no other art, widens, enhances and concentrates a persons experience — and not only enhances it but makes it longer, significantly longer. That is the power of cinema: ‘stars’, story-lines and entertainment have nothing to do with it.
I suppose he could be less absolute in his language when talking about his approach, but I don't think it's fair to say that he's advocating stripping away visual elements in his art. He is a still visual artist, and he is still using the grammar of film to create his narratives. He still uses visual shorthand - but it is focused on moments of recognisable humanity and behaviour than of cultural touchstones.
Beautiful.
I just went through the catalog and I think this is the only active thread on Yea Forums that isn't a meme or superhero-related.
Remember when we had letterboxd threads and (before that) the admittedly pretentious semi-general about obscure film where sometimes actual discussion would spark?
It's absolutely baffling but it seems there's not a single place on the entire internet to discuss film. Everything is either overcrowded with people who are absolute laymen and have nothing interesting to say (reddit) or has completely dissolved into shitposting (Yea Forums, imdb before it got deleted).
I get it, memes have always been at the center of Yea Forums but the shitposting : discussion ratio used to be something like 70:30 in the early 10s whereas now it's 95:5 at best. It's not a matter of opinion either, you can simply count the threads for each day, putting those with established meme phrases in one column and those without in the other. Then compare the ratio to archive results. Yea Forums has been overdosing on memes like a junky on heroin, it's sad and pathetic.
Is he right Yea Forums?
>Have you seen a single Tarkovsky film?
Yes, but I'm beginning to suspect I did not understand them. Maybe stripping away visuals is the wrong expression, 'intentionally subduing' perhaps, as he describes the people sitting next to each other in an empty room. That would certainly feel visually empty compared to what we are used in film as an art form.
I'm beginning to understand. I will try to find time and read the book.
I unironically wish Yea Forums was more like Yea Forums, or more precisely the Yea Forums that I remember from a few years back (haven't been there in a good while). A huge amount of pretentious dick-measuring of course but at least they would engage in actual discussion and analysis in 90% of the threads. Plus a lot of posters actually wanted to be writers - lots of OC and critique threads, and some of it was actually pretty damn good. I'm sure there are plenty of filmmakers browsing Yea Forums that never actually get to talk about the craft. Although posting your work to Yea Forums would be more of a misstep in this industry.
He isn't denouncing symbolism or subtext entirely (especially since Mirror, STALKER, and Solaris all employ lots of symbolism on almost every level) he is saying that creating or interperting a scene/movie/etc. as simply x means a creates a barrier upon how the viewer can interpret it/engage with it.
tldr
>especially since Mirror, STALKER, and Solaris all employ lots of symbolism on almost every level
Wouldn’t say so. Metaphors yes, not symbols.
He's pretty explicitly saying that if you stage your scenes around a symbolic element then it's not an honest reflection of life.
I agree. This is true for all of the medium and large boards, shitposting getting completely out of hand and actual board related discussion being relegated to a few semi-generals, if any. You can't really blame the mods either, if they began deleting off-topic stuff now, the catalog would be empty. There was some watershed moment in the last couple of years that discouraged people from creating on-topic threads so strongly that it just doesn't happen anymore. Nobody bothers making genuine threads anymore because the chances of getting replies is so low. Then, when new people arrive on the site they just assume this is the natural state of things. It's a viscious circle. And it's probably a phenomenon that is taking place on the scale of the entire internet.
In the Soviet Union you were in the position of Mendelssohn's dad confronted by Frederick the Great. You were not allowed to say "I dunno." You were not allowed to be an artist being an artist. Everything needed a highly intellectual explanation or smokescreen.
Symbolism in movies is the equivalent of a visual metaphor. If your definition is different please enlighten me so that we aren't discussing two different things and getting mad at each other over know.
Mirror definitely uses symbolism with how Trakovsky's actual ex-wife plays the younger version of his mom, and how his actual mom plays the older version of his mom, and it is practically dripping from that scene where his ex-wife/mom is floating in the air.
In STALKER the zone is meant to be symbolic/a metaphor for religion, since at the time it was outlawed by the Soviety Union.
Similarly, in Mirror, there is the scene where the the character that is suppoed to be the stand in for Tarkovksy's son, reads a passage from a book commenting on 19th century Russia and how it has bastardized religion. In my opinion, that piece of commentary is meant to be symbolic of Tarkovksy's own criticisms of his modern day Russia.
Sure, I agree with that. But he isn't saying there should be no symbolism at all--or even denouncing it as a device--just that the character's and their psychology should come first and foremost.
I'll just let this quote from Tarkovsky about symbolism speak for itself:
>"I am an enemy of symbols. Symbol is too narrow a concept for me in the sense that symbols exist in order to be deciphered. An artistic image on the other hand is not to be deciphered, it is an equivalent of the world around us. Rain in Solaris is not a symbol, it is only rain which at certain moment has particular significance to the hero. But it does not symbolise anything. It only expresses. This rain is an artistic image. People always try to find "hidden" meanings in my films. But wouldn't it be strange to make a film while striving to hide one's thoughts? An image cannot be a symbol in my opinion. Whenever an image is turned into a symbol, the thought becomes walled in so to speak, it can be fully deciphered. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning. An image — as opposed to a symbol — is indefinite in meaning. One cannot speak of the infinite world by applying tools that are definite and finite"
>If we round off it’s date of birth, cinema can be said to be contemporary with the twentieth century. That is no accident. It means that rather over eighty years ago the point was reached when a new muse had to emerge
>Cinema was the first art form to come into being as a result of technological invention, in answer to a vital need. It was the instrument which humanity had to have in order to increase its mastery over the real world. For the domain of any art form is limited to one aspect of our spiritual and emotional discovery of surrounding reality.
>As he buys his ticket, it’s as if the cinema-goer were seeking to make up for the gaps in his own experience, throwing himself into a search for ‘lost time’. In other words he seeks to fill that spiritual vacuum which has formed as a result of the specific condition of his modern existence: constant activity, curtailment of human contact, and the materialist bent of modern education.
And another quote on the difference between symbolic and metaphoric expression
>"We can express our feelings regarding the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means. I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents."
>>The point is that it is no good by-passing the difficulties and bringing everything down to a simplistic level; therefore it is crucial that mise en scene, rather than illustrating some idea, should folllow life— the personalities of the characters and their psychological state. It’s purpose must not be reduced to elaborating in the meaning of a conversation or action. It’s function is to startle us with the authenticity of the actions and the beauty and depths of the artistic images— not by obtrusive illustration of their meaning
pretty based. Just blew plot fags the fuck out 100% and forever.
>Everything needed a highly intellectual explanation or smokescreen.
This exact notion is the cancer that has been killing western art for the last 30+ years and has caused a huge divide between the art elite and the public. It is not endemic to the Soviet Union at all.
So really his definition of symbolism is just more literal than mine, the way he describes a metaphor is how I would define symbolism.
right. so correct your definitions because Tarkovsky is right and you are wrong.
The way he describes a true "symbol" here is how I define the word symbolism. There can be good symbolism and lazy/bad symbolism.
>A symbol is only a true symbol when it is inexhaustible and unlimited in its meaning, when it utters in its arcane (hieratic and magical) language of hint and intimation something that cannot be set forth, that does not correspond to words. It has many faces and many thoughts, and in its remotest depths it remains inscrutable . . . It is formed by organic process, like a crystal . . . Indeed it is a monad, and thus constitutionally different from complex and reducible allegories, parables and similes . . . Symbols cannot be stated or explained, and, confronted by their secret meaning in its totality, we are powerless.
see
Exactly. The only avenue of engagement with conceptual art is in making the viewer guess at the message the artist wants to convey. Once the message is known, the work itself is irrelevant, and in most cases not even worthy of aesthetic or technical appreciation.
>As is so often the case, undue emphasis on ideas can only restrict the spectators imagination, forming a kind of thought ceiling beyond which there yawns a vacuum
I wish I could express myself like this.
It's not it's spectacular writing or anything like that, it just perfectly illustrates the point he's trying to make.
I wish there were more films about the absurdity of this situation. Stories that sound like ridiculous urban legends but are actually real - stuff like the cleaning lady who destroyed a million dollar art piece because it was made of, well, actual garbage.
There's The Square, which was good, and then recently velvet buzzsaw, which was god-awful, but I can't think of much else. There's plenty of films that comment on similar tendencies emerging in Hollywood, such as Neon demon, Maps to the stars and Under the silver lake, but they're a separate category I'd say.
OP here I think you’re right on this. I don’t think Tarkovsky fervently hates symbolism as some think. I think here he’s just particularly annoyed by the concept. In fact, there is a part in the book where Tarkovsky mentions a movie that he quite likes that has very heavy symbolism (symbolism in the sense that it acts like a puzzle) but he uses the film as an example to prove how that type of filmmaking can never be true art. The difference between associations and metaphors and symbols can be sometimes muddled. Tarkovsky really just hates when a director “underpins his system of images with deliberate tendentiousness or ideology. I am against him allowing his methods to be discernible at all” he doesn’t like overstating the images, basically killing them, Tarkovsky again and again describes art as a living organism, he makes it clear that like any living organism, the truth of its existence is found in its contradictions.
just think about the point you are trying to convey. also read a lot so you have a wide vocabulary.
>how I define the word symbolism
but nobody gives a fucking shit how you arbitrarily decide what words mean. You're wrong. Use words correctly, retard
>The work of art lives and develops, like any other natural organism, through the conflict of opposing principles. Opposites reach over into each other within it, taking the idea out into infinity. The idea of the work, it’s determinant, is hidden in the balance of the opposing principles which compromise it— thus ‘triumph’ over a work of art (in other words a one-sided explanation of its thought and aim) becomes impossible. That was why Geothe remarked that ‘the less accessible a work is to the intellect, the greater it is.’
See here, when Tarkovsky is talking about a symbol, he’s not talking about “symbolism”. This is actually a quote from Vyacheslav Ivanov. When Ivanov is referring to a ‘symbol’ he’s referring to ‘the wholeness of the artistic image (which he calls ‘symbol’)’. Symbolism is always rigid and puzzle like, something that Tarkovsky dislikes, but like I said earlier, when you’re talking about actual examples in films, it can sometimes be hard to discern wether something was intended as a metaphor, an associative element, or a use of symbolism.
What he says doesnt matter. Nobody knows who he is.
Tarkovsky on color
>The perception of colour is a physiological and psychological phenomenon to which, as a rule, nobody pays particular attention. The picturesque character of a shot, due often enough simply to the quality of the film, is one more artificial element loaded onto the image, and something has to be done to counteract if you mind about being faithful to life. You have to try to neutralize colour, to modify its impact on the audience. If colour becomes the dominant dramatic element of the shot, it means the director and camera man are using a painter’s methods to affect the audience. That is why nowadays one very often finds the average expertly made film will have the same sort of appeal as the luxuriously illustrated glossy magazine; the colour photography will be warring against the expressiveness of the image.
I'm a brainlet but does this mean he's making a common cause with Imagists like TS Eliot and Ezra Pound? I've wondered the same thing about Herzog, because on his book he keeps saying the gripping image is the important thing and you'd be wasting your time putting meaning behind it. Herzog and Tarkovsky sound like Imagists to me but they also sound like they'd deny it.
He's basically the anti Kubrick and that makes him redpilled
I think he has a good point; it took him rather long to make it, much like his films which, incidentally, I do really like. But when an artist starts using words like “must” or “ must not” I typically chalk it up to having a limited vision of their respective art.
He’s fully committed to his art, which is far better than being fully committed to shekels or to some retarded political ideology. His hard work and dedication are evident in his films.
B-b-but i’m a genius ‘n’ sheeit— who be dis trakubskee what he know?
OK I watched Solaris last weekend and Stakler a couple weeks before that. I haven't seen any others. What Tarkovsky should I watch tonight?
Andrei Rublev
You could watch his first film that he made as a student ‘The Violin and The Steamroller’ its only 46 mins.
Fuck off. Don't lower the discourse.
why, don’t like my metaphor?
>nigga boring
only an actual n would say this
>but he's saying 'everybody has to do it my way' which is just dumb
Literally never said this.
imagine needing that much constant stimulation
I really wish people would actually read Freud and not just about Freud 3rd hand. He says much the same thing as Tarkovsky is saying, only in the context of therapy to relieve people brought to a state of madness by deep set conventional thinking.
?
>As he buys his ticket, it’s as if the cinema-goer were seeking to make up for the gaps in his own experience, throwing himself into a search for ‘lost time’. In other words he seeks to fill that spiritual vacuum which has formed as a result of the specific condition of his modern existence: constant activity, curtailment of human contact, and the materialist bent of modern education.
Manly tears bros
G. Iñárritu and Lubezki ripping off /ourguy/ Andrei:
youtube.com
where to start with Freud?
>muh celebrities
>muh instawhores
>muh youtube "stars"
kys
sexualizing infants and attempting break down the superiority of white culture by equating them repressed animals?
nigga
"The Wolfman and other Cases"
Comparing man to beasts is older than history. Christian theologians constantly stress this notion. It is a prescient theme in folklore everywhere. It is encoded in every day language through aphorisms and cliches. You're a fucking clown.
I meant which books to start with?
>"The Wolfman and other Cases"
thanks
>bro what if humans are just really smart and self-reflective animals
>thinks this is some kind of wildly subversive thought process
fuck off
His case studies are really great. I would say he was more of a literary man than a scientist so his more technical works are questionable (on the interpretation of dreams for instance); his work as a therapist is fascinating and he became famous because he was able to help people who were considered hopeless.
Tarkovsky and Herzog are similar to each other in many ways, but I don't know that you could compare them to Imagists just because of the nature of visual art (it has no need to evoke with language, it just is). I kind of follow your meaning though. I will say that they both understand the role the camera plays in its place between themselves, their subject, and their audience. They aren't striving for verité, despite their insistence on authenticity. They know that their work is a representation of the world, not an exact recreation. I suppose that's where the "poetry" comes in.
"Ecstatic realism"
>neutralize colour
>imagine thinking like this about an art able to make with colous what he didn't with his movies, creating life
Come to think of it, I think the closest comparison you could get to the guiding principles of Imagism in film is Direct Cinema, which Herzog has a pretty unfavourable opinion of. So there's that.
*dabs on his boring azs*
these are very compelling.
>Making that journey shorter isn't necessarily a failure.
Maybe not, but being void of original ideas and simply plugging in obvious elements to move your story to the next set-piece is a failure of artistic ambition. We can't let the lowest common denominator dictate the direction of our medium.
thanks OP, a genuinely good thread on Yea Forums for once
film and television is too passive a medium compared to literature. it attracts people who just want something on in the background. literature necessitates concentration and patience, which attracts a more enlightened crowd.
since we never got /film/ we have to fight with the hoards of people who just throw on whatever new film is being forced down their throats.
4chans culture has always been subvert subvert subvert. this is fine in small doses, and when people understand this, but when taken to the extreme it leads to endless ironic shitposting that lacks all substance.
>There was some watershed moment in the last couple of years that discouraged people from creating on-topic threads so strongly that it just doesn't happen anymore
could you elaborate on this?
Yea Forums is a current reflection of the cultural wasteland that is modern film and television. I hardly visit the theater because it's always slop. I'm done with super hero crap and anytime I check out a well regarded movie there's a good chance it's mediocre. I went out to watch Us and I can't believe it got so many good reviews. Seems like all the indie flicks are no different. Pretentious lame shit.
My dad was a semi-famous photographer and he was often asked about the meaning behind his photos. He would always tell critics stuff like he liked her dress, or the shadows bounced off the window and looked interesting. Any time he would go and intentionally take photos with a message, he hated the results. Yes, his personal view of the world informed his eyes and the way he captured it, but this was all subconscious.
Near his old age he confided in me that he wishes he had been more pretentious and boastful. Many people never took him seriously because he never took himself seriously. If it doesn't seem intentional or thoughtful, then audiences aren't impressed by it.
>Rain in Solaris is not a symbol, it is only rain which at certain moment has particular significance to the hero. But it does not symbolise anything. It only expresses. This rain is an artistic image
damn, this really speaks to me
I agree about Yea Forums. Take this thread for example, there would be far more shitposting if OP hadn't started this with an excerpt of text.
I have never read Freud before, but am about to start with Civ and its discontents. Is this a bad idea?
I want to know this too.
Um, just like every single movie director?
That's a great way to put it, user. Thanks.
It's funny how today I saw William Dafoe as Van Gogh express himself in almost the same way regarding the purpose of art in "At Eternity's Gate".
I've been thinking about this and how there's no place to do so in the internet and thought that Letterboxd instituting forums could be a solution.
>don't lower the discourse
>fuck off
nigger faggot retard vagina hotdog
This is one of the best Yea Forums threads in some time.
The 6th chapter In the book titled “the author in search of an audience” deals with this exact subject.
It's a great hypothesis that there are elements of art (images, for example) that people connect with and understand on a deeper level than they can describe or that they can repackage in a symbol. But I've never seen proof for this hypothesis. It seems to me that some artists feel diminished by a thesis statement. They dislike being comprehended, so they move away from that which is easily comprehended--not to a transcendent plane of creation, but to something which allows for all subjective interpretations, neither right nor wrong. Not increasing in profundity, but in fact decreasing. Not the Pietà but a Rorschach test.
Well, I'm no authority, so I'm open to examples if anyone can give me one. Something that is truly deeper than the "idea" (the word, the logos), rather than contradicting it or merely not having one. Or am I misunderstanding, and Tarkovsky's point is about effective expression of the idea to the viewer?
>death of the author: even more pseud edition
yawn
You bring up a really good point, but I don’t think Tarkovsky is writing about being incomprehensible just for the sake of it. More so that you get a better truth out of the clashing of contradicting principles. Tarkovsky writes on page 72
>The purity of cinema, it’s inherent strength, is revealed not in the symbolic aptness of images (however bold these may be) but in the capacity of those images to express a specific, unique, actual fact.
Tarkovsky writes a page later and sort of repeats himself here
>A further word about mise en scene. Film mise en scene, as we know, means the disposition and movement of selected objects in relation to the area of the frame. What purpose does it serve? Nine times out of ten you’ll be told that it serves to express the meaning of what is happening; and that is all. But to set that as the limit of mise en scène is to start along a path that leads only one way: towards abstraction. In the final scene of Give Anna Giacceia a Husban de Santis puts his hero and heroine on either side of a metal gate. The gate clearly states: now the couple are split up. They’ll never be happy, contact is impossible. And so a specific, individual, unique event is turned into something uttterly banal because it has been forced to take on a trivial form. The spectator immediately knocks his head against the ‘ceiling’ of the directors so called thought. The trouble is that lots of audiences enjoy such knocks, they make them feel safe: not only is it ‘exciting’ but the idea is clear and there’s no need to strain the brain or the eye, there’s no need to see anything specific in what is happening. And on that sort of diet the audience starts to degenerate. Yet similar gates, fences, hedges, have been repeated many a time in many a film and always mean the same thing.
His grandson made Samurai Jack
Upvoted
What a brainlette
Don't Freud is a hack