Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 13, 2011 20:16:47 GMT -5
I thought of calling this thread "The Big Sleep," but that would have made it look like a Bogart thread.
Death, as Franklin said, is as sure as taxes, even if not as frequent. It's not something we like to dwell on. Many would say that it's better to focus on life, but in doing so one has to, even if only implicitly, consider just what life is. That implies defining its boundary, beyond which lies death.
Now, I could as well have put this in the books thread, but as I consider movies the modern literature (for better or worse) I chose this one instead. What I'm curious about are movies with death as a topic and your thoughts on them.
Let me start off by saying what I don't mean by that. I don't mean action or splatter movies in which scads bite the dust, but only to raise a score. Thus zombie movies with chorus lines of stiffs would not count (except perhaps as a metaphor, I'm open to such an idea). I'm not sure the likes of Faces of Death would count either, though again I'm open to suggestion.
What I have in mind are movies that explore death as a central concept, often as an experience. Now, right there is a problem. That immediately steps onto religious toes, something that movie makers tend to avoid for fear of offending potential ticket-buyers. Perhaps it's no accident that a lot of such movies are tongue-in-cheek comedies like Heaven Can Wait (which most definitely is within the pale of what I'm trying to set up here). Indeed, in these secular times the probable requirement of a dead yet functional character presents such visions of walking on ontological eggshells that I suspect studio execs instinctively shy away.
There do seem to have been a spate of '90s movies follwing the success of Ghost that explored the idea. I remember one reviewer (Ebert?) observing something to the effect of their presenting death as a disability that one somehow learned to compensate for. While I see them as distinctly fat-free, I'd consider those within the realm of what I'm on about.
The best of that clade was, in my view, Jacob's Ladder. It has some problems, and I'd love to see a definitive Director's Cut one day, but in American cinema that is most directly what I'm talking about.
But the movie I just rewatched and which inspired this thread is Vital. This recap spoils a reveal, but so did all the publicity, and few people who would seek the movie out would be unaware of it. I'll try to avoid gratuitous further ones.
A man wakes up in a hospital with no memories. His parents (utter strangers) explain that he survived a serious car accident. He turns out to have been a medical student, and--discovering that he does understand his medical books--returns to university and his first human dissection. The cadaver turns out to have been his girlfriend, who died in the same crash.
The student gradually has to rebuild his relationship with his own and the girl's parents, as well as with his fellow students. But he also finds himself meeting the dead girl on a beach and reconnecting with her, which relationship is the thrust of the film. One thing I very much like is that the film does not present a "right" interpretation. Dr. Kashiwabara, the instructor, takes the perfectly rationalist stance. "Believe what your eyes tell you," he says to the class, and interprets the "meeting" as chance and the girl's presence as recovered memories. Takagi, the student, is as convinced that they are real, but speculates on skiffy sort of time-travel explanations, while the parents begin to consider more ghostly interpretations, and a fellow student wonders how any living woman can compete with the idealized memory of a dead one. Perhaps the squishy Japanese toward religion makes all this easier to present. It's also interesting how, like Jacob's Ladder (or Ghost, to be fair) it intermingles love and death (which is actually a Woody Allen title, though I don't think it counts).
As a quick aside, the director is Tsukamoto Shinya of Tetsuo (in)fame. Now, if you're thinking, "That guy made a movie about human dissection? Eeeewwwww!" I could hardly blame you. Trust me though, I think the very fact that he had already proven he could do something that wild somehow gave him a free hand to treat this material with the proper light touch. At this moment in time, it's probably my No. 1 favorite film. The Japan Times reviewer I thought summed it up well: "Tsukamoto has always been about excess, and this time he has made a film excessively beautiful."
Anyhoo . . . any thoughts on these, or other candidates?
Death, as Franklin said, is as sure as taxes, even if not as frequent. It's not something we like to dwell on. Many would say that it's better to focus on life, but in doing so one has to, even if only implicitly, consider just what life is. That implies defining its boundary, beyond which lies death.
Now, I could as well have put this in the books thread, but as I consider movies the modern literature (for better or worse) I chose this one instead. What I'm curious about are movies with death as a topic and your thoughts on them.
Let me start off by saying what I don't mean by that. I don't mean action or splatter movies in which scads bite the dust, but only to raise a score. Thus zombie movies with chorus lines of stiffs would not count (except perhaps as a metaphor, I'm open to such an idea). I'm not sure the likes of Faces of Death would count either, though again I'm open to suggestion.
What I have in mind are movies that explore death as a central concept, often as an experience. Now, right there is a problem. That immediately steps onto religious toes, something that movie makers tend to avoid for fear of offending potential ticket-buyers. Perhaps it's no accident that a lot of such movies are tongue-in-cheek comedies like Heaven Can Wait (which most definitely is within the pale of what I'm trying to set up here). Indeed, in these secular times the probable requirement of a dead yet functional character presents such visions of walking on ontological eggshells that I suspect studio execs instinctively shy away.
There do seem to have been a spate of '90s movies follwing the success of Ghost that explored the idea. I remember one reviewer (Ebert?) observing something to the effect of their presenting death as a disability that one somehow learned to compensate for. While I see them as distinctly fat-free, I'd consider those within the realm of what I'm on about.
The best of that clade was, in my view, Jacob's Ladder. It has some problems, and I'd love to see a definitive Director's Cut one day, but in American cinema that is most directly what I'm talking about.
But the movie I just rewatched and which inspired this thread is Vital. This recap spoils a reveal, but so did all the publicity, and few people who would seek the movie out would be unaware of it. I'll try to avoid gratuitous further ones.
A man wakes up in a hospital with no memories. His parents (utter strangers) explain that he survived a serious car accident. He turns out to have been a medical student, and--discovering that he does understand his medical books--returns to university and his first human dissection. The cadaver turns out to have been his girlfriend, who died in the same crash.
The student gradually has to rebuild his relationship with his own and the girl's parents, as well as with his fellow students. But he also finds himself meeting the dead girl on a beach and reconnecting with her, which relationship is the thrust of the film. One thing I very much like is that the film does not present a "right" interpretation. Dr. Kashiwabara, the instructor, takes the perfectly rationalist stance. "Believe what your eyes tell you," he says to the class, and interprets the "meeting" as chance and the girl's presence as recovered memories. Takagi, the student, is as convinced that they are real, but speculates on skiffy sort of time-travel explanations, while the parents begin to consider more ghostly interpretations, and a fellow student wonders how any living woman can compete with the idealized memory of a dead one. Perhaps the squishy Japanese toward religion makes all this easier to present. It's also interesting how, like Jacob's Ladder (or Ghost, to be fair) it intermingles love and death (which is actually a Woody Allen title, though I don't think it counts).
As a quick aside, the director is Tsukamoto Shinya of Tetsuo (in)fame. Now, if you're thinking, "That guy made a movie about human dissection? Eeeewwwww!" I could hardly blame you. Trust me though, I think the very fact that he had already proven he could do something that wild somehow gave him a free hand to treat this material with the proper light touch. At this moment in time, it's probably my No. 1 favorite film. The Japan Times reviewer I thought summed it up well: "Tsukamoto has always been about excess, and this time he has made a film excessively beautiful."
Anyhoo . . . any thoughts on these, or other candidates?
