The futility that a lot of young people feel about encroaching evils today, especially climate change?
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When I was a teenager I was scared of nuclear war. I read about the movie “Nights of the Living Dead” and had a lot of nightmares remixing these two terrifying ideias. I dreamt of people facing the Apocalypse, running, trying to survive…
Will It happen again?
Bad compression algorithm.
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I was apprehensive about the film version of “Passing” because I love the book so much, but I thought it was really well done. 
I found this feature on writer-director Rebecca Hall more informative than any review I could find.
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Was going to watch it because Ruth Negga anyway!
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She does an awesome job (of course!), and so does Tessa Thompson.
I’m really glad Hall went with a more interiorized drama. The movie captures a lot of the psychological and emotional dimensions that Larsen grappled with in the book.
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(Full text below)
I saw a the world premiere of Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley at the Castro Theatre last night and I remain baffled by the passion of male directors for making epic films about cruel and unpleasant men who are also opaque as in not demonstrating any interesting tension, psychology, motive, conflict or other signs of inner life worth paying attention to. Other works of art, from Macbeth to Citizen Kane are not on this list: they are about men whose inner lives drive their outer actions, so there’s something to think about, but Groundhog Day was one movie I re-watched recently where I wondered why we were supposed to pay close attention to such an asshole, as we were with The Phantom Stitch and just too many other movies to list, probably including most things with Jack Nicholson and a lot of gangster and mafia movies and maybe The Searchers.
Are they excited by the power to do harm in ways I’m not? Nightmare Alley is about the world’s most boring-looking man, Bradley Cooper, strolling away from his father’s death to join a carnival sideshow and go on to do more harm, and there’s no tension or psychological insight or anything, just a lot of his plodding along his path of self-interest and selfishness, and in the end crime doesn’t pay but neither does preoccupation with someone who doesn’t have any inner life or interesting things to say.
I don’t need characters to be virtuous or heroic, but if we’re going to watch someone be damaging, at least shed some insight on why. Sometimes with these films I look at other characters and think “oh if only this film was about you!”
ps. Above is a poster for the 1947 film.
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Meanwhile in an adjacent universe.
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A lot of films and genres are mentioned in a short space, so she can’t go into depth, but it seems like she’s really objecting to movies where assholes can be viewed as the heroes of movies. Which is fine with me, but I wonder if these assholes are all as shallow as characters as she states.
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Can you name one that’s contrary to her claim?
Her post reminded my of DD Lewis in There Will Be Blood. I get that it’s an allegory for excessive American male ambition and abuse and so on, but for reasons Solnit spells out well, I found it dead boring, mostly because the central character was unhumanly simple.
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Eh, if I gave an example would it contradict her? She allows exceptions like Citizen Kane and Macbeth. If I name another film about another sufficiently interesting asshole, I’ve just found another exception.
But since you asked, Al Pacino in the first Godfather seemed to have some depth to him.
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I wonder if they will have Bradley Cooper biting off the heads of chickens like Tyrone Powell did?
Phantom thread. He’s an arsehole but it turns out he’s not only not the hero, he’s not the protagonist. Or one of the protagonists.
He’s a silly little boy. And not well.
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I think that’s what she misnamed as Phantom Stitch. And as you too describe it, that character doesn’t counter her general complaint, no? I think he confirms it. If he turns out not to have been the protagonist, that doesn’t mean that viewers aren’t supposed to pay attention to him throughout basically the entire story.
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I think you’re meant to notice that you haven’t been paying enough attention to his sister through cinematic misdirection.
That and that the seamstresses are also the clothes geniuses. And he… well let’s just say he rhapsodises about this incredible fabric which looks like someone shot and skinned a mid century chintzy pub sofa.
And he needs to be poisoned to within an inch of his life every few months to take him down from being such an insufferable arsehole.
But you know, my take may not be for everyone.
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Too little too late?
Your interpretation does elevate the film a bit for me though, so thanks for that.
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