Response to Afghan Star

The very context which Afghan Star is filmed in makes the documentary and the idea of a singing contest poignant. The same features seen in the contest mostly remain the same with its Western counterparts – namely, the allure of prizes and fame, advertising, in-fighting between contestants and public participation through voting. However, for a country emerging from oppression, democracy even in the form of singing and voting becomes a great privilege. Essentially about a reality competition, Afghan Star is therefore intertwined with socio-political issues of the country where the brutal reality of life for those who seek to express themselves appear dismal and dangerous.

Since the Oscars are quickly arriving and there has been much debate about which film is going to win, here's something I wrote about watching films a few months ago. While the myriad of factors which John Street pointed out influence who emerges as the winner, at the heart of what makes a good film to be even considered for nomination, I feel, is the artistic craft behind the product. Thought that I could share this with you :)

A warm afternoon thinking about good films

Once in a while, I find myself craving for a really good film; the kind which leaves me completely in awe as the credits roll; the kind which I find myself so engaged both emotionally and intellectually by all aspects of its moviemaking; the kind which puts me in a daze for most of the day. Recently that was Inception for me, but that was one of many through the years.

I remember the first time I felt awed by a film – at 15 years of age sneaking into an NC-16 show, Gus Van Sant’s Elephant. The plot itself was intriguing enough, the acting nothing to boast about and the dialogue almost absent, but it was the way it was filmed that captured my attention. Bright lazy shots along corridors, sneaky snippets in the locker room, almost disparate scenes eventually culminating together in coherence and revelation at the end... who would have thought a film about a high school shooting would be presented this way?

So I was wondering, what makes a good film? In essence, all films convey a message (just like all art even though some schools insist they don’t – but being antithetical is a message too I believe, no?) Surely, a generic formula can be derived:

One. Cinematography. The scenes do not only have to look good, they have to look dynamic. Colours, patterns, visuals, rule-of-thirds, juxtapositions. Good films are effective in showing what needs to be shown, great films make them come alive. Like a scene of one climbing stairs made poignant (in Tony Takitani), or of driving down the street at night incandescent (in The Beat That My Heart Skipped). Creativity can be exercised here too, facilitating the pace etc. They’re not just lovely on their own, they flow beautifully into the movie entirely; a part of and yet one with it.

Two. Music. Inception’s score is simply awesome (this is incredible and do listen using headphones with the volume turned up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imamcajBEJs) and the same goes for many great films. A good score is one which when played post-viewing, transports you back into the essence of the scene, reliving what was felt or experienced almost vividly, no visuals necessary. It is exhilarating, almost, how it does that. Music plays such an important part of films in setting its ambience and uniting the visuals together. Mysterious Skin would not have been as haunting were it not for its vaporous strains, or Spirited Away been whimsical without its lilting piano pieces.

Three. Characters and acting. When cinematography is average and music not quite impressive, what makes a film memorable are the characters. The characters have growth, they have development, they have their trappings and complexities, and hopefully through the plot, find closure. They are intriguing, and to portray that, the actor needs to possess mastery in acting. Half Nelson is one film that comes to mind: average in style and score, but ultimately awesome as Ryan Gosling’s performance painted the movie with colour. Great acting isn’t just becoming the character but when the actor is astute and aware enough of his character’s subtle complexities to portray these nuances without over or under compensating for them. It makes the characters three-dimensional, with depth, human. And why do I say Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s a great actor, it’s precisely because he does that, and his finest (from what I’ve watched) being in Mysterious Skin. And so does Marion Cotillard – the woman is amazing, just by what she conveys with her eyes!

Four. Storytelling. A great film has development; it tells the story well, injects enough emotional excitement and interest, and pulls the audience into the film – by utilising script, cinematography, music and acting. It sucks to be unreasonably left hanging or emotionally stagnant (i.e. bored) throughout, and a movie that does makes me leave the cinema feeling rather cheated of my time. Nevertheless, some films are without narrative, and these usually belong in the realm of high art, and not for the mass cinema. Not everyone has the gifts that make an engaging storyteller, and likewise, there aren’t many gifted filmmakers who excel at storytelling out there – to play with just the right words and the right visuals, and mixing in a dose of dynamism and evoking the right senses. Good films are hard to come by.

Of course there are more aspects that could be discussed, such as costume design, but those four points above pretty much make the basic formula of some of the most awesome films I’ve watched. Those are the ones which when I revisit again and again, I’d still be left in wonder at the end of it. Personal taste would obviously play a role: I tend to like films that are set in the contemporary or focuses on complex characters or the hysteria of urban life. The manner in which we preview the film matters too. Some discount the cinematic experience, but I feel watching a movie in a cinema completes the experience of how a film should be watched – on the big screen, in the dark, projected. To me, that is much preferred as opposed to watching on a small, unnaturally bright laptop screen, with the option to pause or rewind the show at your convenience. The experience is different.

I end this little spontaneous sharing with a list of my favourite films of all time, the ones that prevent me from settling for anything less than amazing for movies:

Mysterious Skin, Lost in Translation, Elephant, Brick, Half Nelson, Millions, Little Miss Sunshine, Napola, Slumdog Millionaire, (500) Days of Summer, Up in The Air, Schindler’s List, Revolutionary Road, Gran Torino, Spirited Away, Jeux d'enfants, Big Fish, King and the Clown, Inception, Zodiac, Atonement

Enjoy your movie (:

Lensing question

How does Macdonald’s claim that the mass men are all identical reflected in the movie Hairspray?

In Dwight Macdonald’s essay “A Theory of Mass Culture”, he asserts that mass culture was the expression of the masses who, as individuals, were unrelated to each other except for being in favour of something abstract. Macdonald claims that the mass man is “a solitary atom” who was a uniform part of the crowd that merely echoes what the public wants to hear, therefore does not make up what he saw a true community should be.

Both of Macdonald’s claims could be seen in Hairspray. In the film, when Tracy got onto the Corny Collins show, many began to adopt her fashionable hairstyle that was once criticised by her high school teacher. Such a move could be seen as part of the new generation which Tracy embodied, and the hairdo was representative of adherence to that new culture. As such, the film implied that there was a group of people distinct from the older generation, as perhaps represented by Penny’s mother and Tracy’s teacher.

However, the audience never really got to see the ‘story’ of each individual in adopting the hairstyle. Instead, we see snippets of a diverse range of people taking on the hairdo with much excitement – white girls on the show, black girls, Tracy’s mother. Congruent with Macdonald’s claim, these people have had little to no relation with each other and yet in the film, were represented as a new group of fashionable women who were part of ‘60s culture, even coming together in song and dance. Mass culture and the mass man seen in Hairspray therefore also embodied the same qualities of the mass culture which Macdonald referred to – another undifferentiated person whose identity was being part of the same culture which the masses adopted, but of which he had no personal relationship with at all.

greetings!

Hello! Welcome to my blog which contains my thoughts and musings on WP2201J: Prizes and Popular Culture :) Here's a little bit about myself...

I'm Stefanie (or Stef, for short), a Year 3 History student from NUS. You might be thinking, hey, she's reading History AND is from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, surely critical reading and writing is not alien to her. So why am I taking this writing module? Undoubtedly, I have to read and write a fair bit for my major as books and journal articles are my main sources of information. However, being thrust with written material from the onset, one takes for granted the steps taken to careful analysis and clarity in writing - skills which are essential in reading History. Like all skills, these too require practice and refinement. This module is therefore most useful and not to mention a nice breather from the usual content-heavy modules I am used to in FASS.

Personally, I really enjoy studying History and it has been one of my two loves since junior college, the other being art. History interests me because it is so alive! Contrary to our secondary school experience, it is certainly not a mere regurgitation of facts but rather, an exploration of the how humans made sense of their existence and interacted with each other. History is also presented in narratives, which is a product of the historian's negotiation between the past and the present.

Anyway, enough about history! As someone who used to follow the 'awards season' for film and television in my youth, it is interesting to study how the phenomenon of prizes takes place in the larger context of mass culture. When I was younger, my friends and I would root for our favourite actors and movies, then eagerly watch the ceremonies, waiting to see if our choices were affirmed. Sometimes, our interest for certain films were only piqued when it was nominated for an award or two. In retrospect, so much of our interest was shaped by the narrative of prizes which mould our cultural sensibilities and our understanding of what makes a good film. I admit, to some extent prizes do codify how I perceive a work, perhaps not through passing judgement on whether it was good or bad, but in encouraging me to actually take a close look at it. Prizes do act as a filter in sieving out the better books or movies to watch for me, although sometimes I disagree with their choices (today's discussion on Crash versus Brokeback Mountain as the more deserving winner of Best Picture come to mind). It is therefore most exciting and fun to explore prizes further in this module :)

So this ends my short greeting. Till the next post!