Soon as it ends, you start it over again? 
I watched it in a college theatre class. I was told that the costumes weren’t really costumes, but actual antique clothing from the period, which made things more interesting. But it literally took us three days to get through the film, and it was woefully difficult to stay awake.
I remember reading an article somewhere about Kubrick and how many of his movies were driven by a particular piece of technology more than the actual story. It would probably help if I could remember more than two examples, but The Shining was all about the steadicam, and Barry Lyndon was all about the amazingly fast lenses that could drink up all of the light, so he could shoot by candlelight.
This is true, but more of a roundabout way of looking at his methods. His goal for Barry Lyndon was to use only natural light whenever possible, wanting to create the look of a moving painting. But since candlelight was the light source used during the period, he couldn’t figure out a way to shoot nighttime scenes after trying extreme push processing and film stocks. He ended up calling NASA, who provided him with Zeiss lenses used in the moon landings, made for extreme light conditions. Those scenes are just beautiful to watch.
As a story, Barry Lyndon is dull as dishwater. As a visual treat, it’s a confection.
This. Some of the set pieces are like looking at paintings of the period. I would so love to see it on a Cinerama sized screen.
The fact that I had to sit through it in a classroom, watching it on a 32" standard-def Trinitron in 1990 probably sucked all the benefit out of it.
Ohhhh ouch. Yeah that would ruin it completely. They couldn’t get a lecture hall? When I was still an engineering major I would get a pass to the art film series which basically was the film studies class except only the people taking the class had to worry about taking notes. It was in the evenings and in a lecture hall with a proper projector and screen. Wish I could remember some of what I saw now.
ETA okay one movie I just remembered Roman Polanski’s MacBeth
Heh. No, I didn’t attend a real college with fancy things like lecture halls and dorms, nor even sports teams and frats and sizable research libraries, to say nothing of any internet whatsoever as late as 1994. It was a community college, with a halfway-decent theater that was built the year after I left.
I am not spectacularly well-educated.
I took a film studies course in college because I’d seen so few good movies that I was embarrassed to talk about film with anyone. For the most part it was as revelatory as I’d hoped it would be. I remember:
Birth of a Nation
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Battleship Potemkin
Citizen Kane
Hiroshima, Mon Amour (memorable as it was my least favorite of the course)
The Seventh Seal
Das Boot
Do we talk about TV shows here? I just finished watching One Punch Man on Netflix, and it was a huge treat, though I think the good parts would be mostly lost on anyone who wasn’t at least passingly familiar with superhero and especially anime superhero tropes.
TV Shows:
Watched Snowden last night. As the reviews suggested, wasn’t really worth it if you’d seen Citizenfour (or read No Place to Hide).
It was okay. Weird casting though, Nic Cage and Rhys Ifans? (neither of whom were given anything like enough scenery to chew). And I’d really rather JGL just concentrated on acting instead of trying to do impressions. I lt was annoying in Looper, it’s annoying here.
How was the second episode?
I think I am having one of my episodes right now!
I have to agree with you. For many years I avoided watching it because of how derided it was, but when I finally sat down to watch it, I found it was… actually not bad at all.
(I call this the Godfather III effect.)
Hold up?
OK, so I just watched La Dolce Vita last night for the first time. I’m still not sure exactly wtf I just watched.
I liked it, but I’m struggling with it a bit. As my commentary here affirms, I’m a huge proponent of mis-en-scene, so obviously Fellini delivers. Naturally, the camera and photography was off the chain, too. I liked the meandering quality of the story, I’m a fan of several movies like that. I guess my problems boil down to two things: interpreting the symbolism, and also Marcello himself as a main character.
The symbolism (the statue of jesus on the helicopter at the beginning, the sea monster at the end, for instance. Or the recurring mob of the papparazzi) seemed really hit-you-over-the-head in terms of “I’M SHOWING YOU THE SYMBOL NOW” but then, I’m not totally sure I get what was meant, either. But that sort of fits with the rest of the narrative, as it seems like the "point, " or rather lack of it, was that Marcello was just drifting around and things happened to him or around him. Which, again, I liked. So, either the narrative and symbols were there for the viewer to contemplate and come up with their own interpretation, or else there was meaning to all of it and I’m too dumb to get what it is (in fairness to myself, a lot of the cultural stuff could not be assumed by me, as I am not Italian, nor catholic, and born 14 years after the film’s release.) The ambiguity of what is required–or if anything is required–of me as a viewer, or if it’s unambiguous and I just don’t get it, nags at me.
Also, Marcello is sort of an asshole? He’s super cool, obviously everything about his character is tailored to be the cool guy. But at best he is smart but superficial, and at worst he is a reckless, nihilistic womanizer and drunken pedant. But that’s actually more like me, you, and everyone, in reality. Most movies force a “type” on each role, and I’m conditioned to want that? So Fellini is making me question that? Or he just wanted to make a movie about a morally ambiguous social butterfly? It’s hard to like a movie when you can’t empathize with the protagonist. Or the protagonist is intentionally unlikable and then you enjoy the movie that way. Marcello seems to be intentionally lacking in empathy and also not even a “real” protagonist in that the “pro” part doesn’t apply–nothing he does drives the plot. There is no plot. But in a movie like Slacker, it’s structured so that the absence of plot is the point, whereas in LDV, you’ve got a main character, he’s got a girlfriend, a normal sort of career: all the trappings of setting up a traditional narrative. And then he just doesn’t. But why? Why the ambiguity?
If it was all completely off the rails like Lost Highway or something, I could just not worry about it and take in the imagery and scenarios as their own created world, but LDV seems solidly set in reality: social mores, the city, family, the career, that stuff is all normal and banal reality.
Can anyone help me out here?
Also, mid-film bonus: fucking Nico out of nowhere!
Welcome to “drama”! It can be done well, but I think its conventions are drastically overrated.
“Honey, it’s all real - now, hands off the merchandise.”
