Films about Films

Scorsese's Hugo (2011) hogged the year's acclaim, raking in a total of 36 Awards - including two BAFTAs and five Oscars. With similiar aggressive bravado, The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011) sideled in, out of absolute cinematic liminality, and stole the show with 107 wins  - seven BAFTAs and five Oscars. I can't help feeling that their broad successes were undeserving, the reasons for which grounded on the proverbial kiss-assing of Hollywood, which is the main focus of both narratives.

In Hugo the charming story of an orphan's obsession with clockwork and fixing an automaton his late father left in tragic half-creation, I feel, was suffocated by the absurd fixation with old cinema, which lurches into the plot, as misplaced as Carly Rae Jepson at an awards ceremony for good songwriters.

Random picture from random Hugo

The Artist is a late echo of 1920s silent cinema. The film reportedly has no sound and is in black and white - someone might ask why on earth, in an age of Surround-Sound and High Definition, a film would want to return to such basics.

"just smile and wave, they won't notice the rip off"

Well, it's a Celebration of Film. Duh.

Postmodernism proclaims that everything has been done, and therefore we have to recycle the same ideas. This partially explains - but you can't excuse the inexcusable - Hasbro's desperate conversion of the game Battleship to the cinema screen in April. I didn't know if I was pleased or let down to hear that the film didn't consist of two people staring at either sides of their board, guessing a number-letter combination at random and hoping to devastate their opponent's miniature aircraft carrier.

More exciting than Rihanna?

Filmmakers also like to reference older films which have inspired them or they feel flesh-out and parallel their narrative. It is said that the Spaghetti Western and the Samurai film heavily influenced oneanother in the twentieth century. Then there's film enthusiasts who make films as cinematic as possible, ignoring realism for fantasist escapism.

Sucker Punch (Zach Snyder, 2011) is one such film I feel is really misunderstood. Much like Zach Snyder’s other masterpiece (strong words?) 300, it centres around all things cinematic. CGI, poetic shots, heavily choreographed action and drama create vivid entertainment here. For these reasons both films have been criticised for their lack of realism. That, to me, is like criticising a peacock for being too aesthetic. That is its function. Gaudy is what it was going for. I’m gonna compare this to Tarantino films – as with anything popular, there are masses of belligerent film critics putting in their two pennies worth. “Quentin just wants to celebrate cinema! How dare he!” Yes, because Inglourious Basterds (2009) was aiming to be a realistic historical documentary.

These films seem to accept a function of film as fantasy. I must admit, in Hugo we are bludgeoned with the idea that films manifest our dreams, and these films really do push that limit.

Anime Heaven: Sucker Punch

Rewriting History Win: The Bear Jew kills Hitler in Inglourious Basterds

 Such Film-celebrating films have raised deep questions:
Is Art imitating Life, or Life imitating Art?
but while the philosophers scratch their heads over this enigmatic question, I have one of my own.

Does this Film brownnosing make a film better, or worse?

It depends what format it takes. 300 - I've said it and I'll say it again - is a masterpiece; Tarantino is pretty much everyone's favourite director, and for good reason; and Snyder in general is a cinematic God. But, personally, and Art is nothing if not open to individual interpretation, Hugo and The Artist pushed their pretentious noses in a little too far.

Sorry, Scorsese, I really liked Gangs of New York.