o SHAKESPEARE o wrote:And let me just start off by countering Armand's point that this makes people of our time and place uncomfortable. First of all, a movie that uses Abscam as its jumping off point doesn't strike me as particularly topical. In direct contrast with Social Network, this movie reeks of nostalgia and period, so the idea that it's characters are too "uncomfortable" for a modern audience doesn't make much sense.
That's an awfully dogmatic view of how a film can say something.
The Dirty Dozen is set in World War II but it's about Vietnam. Arthur Miller wasn't making comment on Salem with
The Crucible, he was making comment on McCarthy. Same as
High Noon. Russell is making a film for a modern audience, he's not interested in emulating 70s filmmaking style or structure or even accurately documenting or doing reportage on a period of American history, he's using an arena where he can heighten the characters to illustrate what he's talking about.
o SHAKESPEARE o wrote:It also doesn't help that the film's script was basically chucked aside in favor of Russell and Co.'s improv initiative. Again, this is in direct contrast with The Social Network (the best example of the modern, uncomfortable film you speak of), wherein Aaron Sorkin was on set nearly every day, preserving his message, his character work, and his language.
But Russell took Singer's script and rewrote it. So... the writer was on set every day. He also happened to be directing it. Rosalyn doesn't even exist in Singer's script. This is a frequent phenomenon with directors who can write - they might take an existing work, like the trappings, but find that they're not interested in saying the same thing so they bend it to purpose. The director is the true author of a film after all.
o SHAKESPEARE o wrote:In fact, let's talk about the script. A script that thinks it's a good idea to show the middle of the movie first, jump back to the beginning, and then proceed through to the end. Even Russell and Co.'s improv can't "fix" amateurish writing structure. As such, even people who liked the movie will admit that the beginning is an unnecessary slog. Which is fine, of course; I love a good slow-burn, but only if the payoff makes it worth it. And, on that account, this script is far from the Shakespearian slow-burns I enjoy.
Yep, I'm not an avid fan of the first act, I think the freewheeling, loose narration could be polished, but the start-point is informed. The opening scene sets the tone and theme, and the succeeding scenes set up the players to be, and the key issues of genuine frauds, would-be frauds, and genuine people colliding within an elaborate government scheme.
But stating that you enjoy Shakespeare and Shakespearean slow-burn drama has got... nothing to do with
American Hustle, surely. This film is closer to being a screwball comedy than a Shakespearean drama - perhaps it has some similarity to a Shakespeare comedy where there's all sorts of cross-purposes, misunderstandings and deceptions, but if you rocked up ready for
Hamlet or
King Lear you've kinda got the wrong film. This is
His Girl Friday or
The Awful Truth by way of
California Split.
o SHAKESPEARE o wrote:Its payoff is a plot-turn (which seems odd for a movie supposedly committed to character
The pay-off isn't a plot turn, it's the two main characters being able to escape their own ruse and be together as two people in a genuine relationship.
o SHAKESPEARE o wrote: First of all, I've never even heard of a mostly-improv'd character study.
Get onto Mike Leigh.
o SHAKESPEARE o wrote:I wish I understood the nuance of these characters, whose goals are so one-dimensional you can predict how they'll all clash from the start (making the slow-burn even more of a slog). I think that sometimes people confuse good acting for good character work, and unfortunately, what you get here is the illusion of depth. Interestingly enough, the movie itself is at fault in dressing itself up to appear more interesting than it actually is. Making Christian Bale fat and having him conflicted between such cliche things as doing the right thing and being selfish is not new, it's not fresh, and certainly not great character work.
But it's not a choice between doing the right thing and being selfish, it's a choice about what are the genuine and real things in his life that he has discovered that he has to sacrifice in order to improve himself and have some degree of self-esteem. It's about how can he escape the construct that he's stuck in without losing the things that he cherishes about it, and how can he con his way out of the FBI's and the mob's clutches without losing the friendship of Carmine. Irving's problems aren't moral ones, they're emotional and personal ones that have to do with how he can take respite from his own act. Ultimately he wins, he ends up with Sydney, with whom he has a genuine personal connection, but he also lost Carmine. And that is always a fresh and exciting concept for a character, to have someone who is genuinely sick of himself and wants to escape the version of himself that he's fashioned to enjoy Jeep's Blues with someone else.
The same goes for Sydney, who is so scarred by what she had been that she continually reinvents herself to the point where she's forgotten what she is. The "sense memory" so to speak is the music that saved her life, the one thing that she has a genuine emotional connection to. And so naturally when she finds someone who has that mutual connection, she's going to fight to be with that person. Again, we're not talking about morality, we're talking about improvement through emotional validation, going back to what we know to be real about ourselves and escaping the fiction that we build around ourselves.
To wit, Irving's most demonstrative gestures and traits all but disappear around Sydney, he doesn't need to keep "in character" with her, and in due course the same goes for Carmine, but when dealing with Rosalyn or DiMaso he talks with his hands, he makes his apparent intent and character very clear. This is why Russell fixates on those things, it's why he burrows into anything constructed by the characters with his camera, because that's ultimately what he's talking about. The things that we consciously do to build a character that isn't our true self, and that's what the relevance is to today's world, where people collate and collect every single detail about their lives, fashioning some sort of non-existent narrative to be plastered all over the internet. It's why tattoos and piercings and whatnot are more and more in vogue, people need some sort of artificial and obvious way to individualise and create an image that is all about what they want others to think of them and nothing to do with what they honestly, genuinely are as a person. It's the hypocrisy of a society that is stuck between the toxic extremes of accepting who you are for what you are, or creating an entirely new, entirely fake version of yourself for public consumption. By going into the world of the con, Russell heightens that, turns it into a dramatic and comedic construct, champions those who want to improve themselves by tapping into something real and holding onto it, and similarly casting aside those who are vapid and witlessly enterprising, like DiMaso.
o SHAKESPEARE o wrote:I can just see it now: in the future people will be walking around sharing their favorite fictional characters with their friends, "Indiana Jones, Vito Corleone, The Joker, Hannibal Lecter, Irving Rosenfeld."
"Indiana Jones, Vito Corleone, The Joker, Hannibal Lecter, Juror #8." Equally as ridiculous.
o SHAKESPEARE o wrote:And, last but not least, Linus Sandgren's lensing made me want to vomit. And it's not entirely his fault, especially when you have a director who insists that you can't have traditional lighting set-ups because the camera must be able to move 360 degrees at any given time.
Howard Hawks didn't get Gregg Toland to do
His Girl Friday. It would be a pointless exercise, the film has other priorities.
o SHAKESPEARE o wrote:Put simply, every notable moment in this movie had me thinking of how another movie did that kind of moment better (Casino, anyone?). There's nothing glaringly "wrong" with it, but there's nothing memorable either. When we look over film history and iconic imagery flashes before our eyes, I challenge anyone to tell me what that image would be from American Hustle.
Casino has nothing to do with this film, it - like many other Scorsese films are interested in the business and hierarchy of their worlds and how the characters fit into and cope with it. It's not the trapping or the set dressing, it
is the film in those cases. As for the iconic images of
American Hustle, you can't tell me people will struggle to identify the film if you give them a frame from the shot used for the title card, with the card obviously removed.
o SHAKESPEARE o wrote:Then again, maybe I'm just bitter about Inside Llewyn Davis' exclusion.
You and me both, brother.
