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DIEHARD
March 20, 2009
I heard some commentary recently
by some young film majors. This was on a show on
They were speaking in defense of the old Pirate Cat Radio.
popular entertainment movies, with
one fellow praising the movie "Die
Hard" as the ultimate example.
But they didn't call these films by
an obvious term like "action films"
instead they liked to refer to the
genre as "the spectacle film".
ARISTOTLE_POETICS
Making reference to Guy DeBord may be
adviseable if you're a film major, but Or perhaps the idea was Aristotle?
it strikes me that this is not really But then, "The Poetics" lists six
an accurate classification of "Die parts (for the "Tragedy"): Plot,
Hard". There are elements of the film Character, Diction, Thought,
that might be classified as Spectacle, Song. Reducing "Die
"spectacle", but relatively few. Hard" to Spectacle ignores the
first three elements.
The things that are most
striking about the film are
not really visually striking: I often argue that the things that make
movies work tend to be cheap things
o A conflict of national (writing, acting) -- but Hollywood instead
characters, denoted obsesses about things that are expensive.
accents, one high-brow
European the other a MY_NAME_IS_MODESTY
low-brow American.
Aristotle again: "The Spectacle
o "Yippie-kie-aie, has, indeed, an emotional
motherfucker" attraction of its own, but, of
all the parts, it is the least
o The hero and villain have artistic, and connected least
multiple scenes of direct with the art of poetry."
confrontation -- they get to
speak to each other via
phone and face-to-face (and
on one occasion, via a Actually: modern violent
scrawled message)... and confrontations go by very fast,
these opportunities for often at a distance, with very
communication don't seem little in the way of verbal
forced. exchanges.
SATANS_PLACE
There is a very strong sense of
place: the office building
setting is familiar enough that
we feel like we know where the
characters are at every moment.
And that's a prerequisite for a
sense of tactics-- for the action
to be engaging you have to feel
like you understand what the
characters are doing, and why,
and that's impossible if you
don't know the playing field.
This always seems like a
critical issue to me,
because it's in the nature
of film that it destroys
this sense of place.
If the camera excitedly cuts
from view to view and scene to A problem with photographing San
scene, you tend to lose the Francisco: if you point the
physical orientation of one camera down a steep alley,
view with respect to another looking at the photo later
you've often lost that sense of
Many films abuse this orientation-- the image conveys
for their own purposes: nothing to your inner ear, and
you turn a corner in the absence of very strong
and end up on a different visual cues, looking down a 45
street, on the presumption degree slope may feel the same
that the viewer won't as looking horizontally. The
know or care. charm of the scene gets lost.
The ur-Car Chase Scene
from the movie "Bullitt"
is famously incoherent to
people who actually know
San Francisco. ("But they
were just over by
Chinatown a moment ago,
how did they get to the
Golden Gate bridge?")
[link]
Movies shot in and around Los
Angeles often have no sense of
place at all... there's this
sunny, airy atmosphere that seems
oddly vapid and bland-- because the
place itself actually has very The closing sequence of the film
little character and largely looks "I Love You Alice B. Toklas" is
really ugly. one of the few to show the real
Los Angeles.
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