'The type of movies that become classics'

I always think Oscar winners though are pretty much resigned to the "not being classics" dumper. (Ha ha Marty).

This brings up the problem with the idea of "perfect art" anyway. If its all there, if it leaves the spectator little to do, if it is too well done then what is there left to pick over. The art is in the thoughts and the discussions afterwards.

(The commentary is often negative too, detectable in what gets left out - writers trying for the Great American Novel don't generally put spaceships and aliens in; attempts on the Great [whatever] Album tend to eschew drum machines, and so on)

Things are worse in books, I think, in regard to prejudices against certain types of work - it is far harder for an SF novel to get accepted into the higher reaches of literary greatness than for an SF film. Maybe newer, younger media are inevitably more in tune with newer modes of thought regarding genre? Whatever, there is still a widespread assumption (probably not here, but for most people) that anything published with the look of literary fiction is automatically of higher artistic value than anything with a spaceship or smoking gun on the cover. Comedy is particularly slighted in this kind of thinking. You don't have to read a lot of these various streams to spot that this is misguided.

Incidentally, I do think we're in a bit of a mess in regard to the canon for recent cinema. Not just because of the S&S poll being so backward-looking, though that highlighted the problem (and I know they're doing a last-25-years follow-up poll). We seem to be awaiting some sort of coalescing into a new canon, maybe some kind of new paradigm. I'm hoping for some real sparks.

i told them a. they hadn't seen it in the cinema and b. give me the dvd then, so it needn't poollute yr front room any more

This maybe isn't the point of the thread, but are the Oscars in any way connected to the idea of 'classics' or posterity? I mean, in the last 15-20 years.

I don't really follow the competition, but it seems to me that they're essentially US cinema awards which miss what US cinema does best. That is, either terrific innovative action stuff (Die Hard series, the Matrix), or, like a lot of other countries, terrific indie-ish stuff (Harmony Korine etc).

Instead the most important awards go to the in-between junk like American Beauty and Erin Brockovich.

I'm assuming here. If big awards didn't go to the likes of AB and EB, I take this shit back.

But still, do the Oscars count? It's like, is the best film ever 'Citizen Kane' or is it 'Star Wars'? Obviously, it's neither. But they're both films that have to be dealt with, and neither would win an Oscar (CK would if it was remade, I admit, but I'd say it wouldn't if it were released NOW as it is).

The difference I think being that they were heralded as classics because they so set out and succeeded at doing something NEW which the directors/authors knew they were intending as they set out along this.

Now perhaps the problem is attempts to do old things with more polish?

Right, just discussed this with my workmate, and the best illustration we could think of was the film Amadeus (not the film itself so much as the story within). On one hand, Salieri, striving, trying his hardest to make great music, to be gifted by God with great msuic that is important and will send his name down in history. On the other hand, Mozart, this sniffing little swearing shagging madman who has no eye on history and no desire to be gifted by God but who is making the music Salieri so wants to make. Aye?

ie; The Idea that Scorcese, Frantzen, Flips et al have one eye on history and posterity when they're making their 'art', which makes it too self-conscious (or summat) to actually be the kind of thing they want to make.

Hunter Thompson got sent to LV to write about the bike race or whatever, he went a bit spazzo on drugs, wrote some craziness, and by accident almost to be the kind of Great American Novel, BECAUSE it wasn't made by someone who is trying to become a professional history maker, people just picked up on it and THAT amde it history.

Does this make sense?

The Oscars is all about highlighting an idea of an American art film. Because by its very nature it is always trying to award stuff that under the previous Hollywood situation (two three years back) would be considered ground breaking or great it is nearly always out of step. Also it can be used to valorise a picture which has not done all that well commercially, Hollywood has as its number one award the takings after all.

COmpletely agree with what MArtin said above, especially about comedy. And what you say Nick makes complete sense to me, the idea of suceeding when you are not trying is possibly the most frustrating aspect of this. Which begs the question can you actually suceed if you are trying (to which the answer is probably yes, but lord knows how).

What I liked about Magnolia by the way is that it has all the trappings of an important movie with a message, which it contradicts and in the end is a bit of a laugh about it raining frogs. (Content undermines form).

dialectiXoR of innocence vs experience: lyra can read the althiometer thought grace not learning => grows up and has sexy thhoughts abt will = can no longer read the althiometer => but now has the option of spending her life re-learning how to read it, via scholarship not grace => outcome = she will one day be able to read it better

the young prefer the art of pure intuition, bcz it allows them in also
the old begin to favour the art of intention and planning, bcz half their young buddies are now dead, of lousy intuition

Problem with innocence versus experience dialectic is no-one starts innocent? Yes?

Mind you the final point - the will allow her to read it better part, while I generally agree with it, disagreement with it is the basis of many anti-intellectual arguments.

Escape from freedom! (I think ILx could write a better version).

Chapter 11 The Doctor's Plan

Chapter 12 Escape From Freedom

as in,surely it can't be that *right now*,its finally happened,we've reached the point in history when all great art has been made,and from now on people should just abandon the idea of trying to make an ambitious album/film/etc,and instead of trying to write the great british novel,the next dickens should scale it down a bit and aim for the mildly entertaining stoke-on-trent short story?
i mean,i'm sure there were people after shakespeare,mozart,homer,writing saying right,that's it,this art form has achieved all it can,all this new fangled bollocks is just a fad,etc (in fact,i vaguely remember reading an essay from elizabethan times suggesting that drama was dead as an art form,and had been since sophocles)

*referring to my above post,but there have been several since...

this is interesting
but it kind of creates a catch 22 situation-if we are stuck in a rut where a "classic" anything is impossible because everyone is trying to write one using the standard criteria,then the answer would appear to be that we need something to come along and change all this,point the way foreward
but then this would have to be exactly the sort of classic/important/event work of art we're so cynical about in the first place?
do we just have to sit around and hope that someone will accidentally write the great american novel?

I think you're better off writing for money than art.

(BTW - in Doctor Who, if the freindly local was you become a companion they would not have Cahpter 9: Betrayal, instead it would be replaced by Chapter 9: A Brief Respite - when they introduced them to the wonders of the Tardis).

pete,i'm not really referring to people sitting down saying,right,i'm going to write the greatest book in the history of literature
i mean more if someone is writing an ambitious novel with a large scope,are they doomed to failure
or
are we doomed to have it pass us by because nowadays,if someone does write a 600 page novel dealing with major issues,it will be presented to us as "the first great american novel of the 21st century","the greatest book since the bible"etc by the publishers,papers,etc and thus we will be cynical about it
i mean i know franzen announced that he was going to write the great american novel,but say something like gangs of new york,i dunno whether it is any good or not,and i seriously doubt it will be a truly amazing film,but even if it was because of its scope and ambition it will be so hyped its bound to be underwhelming...

heh. both of us discussed this earlier in the week when martin let me borrow a couple of PKD novels and a Jim thompson one. and i thought abt that discussion when i saw the thread yesterday.

I think when we discussed SF movies we both agreed thta most of those weren't THAT good (though you praised the movie based on 'solaris'). Hollywood tends to take a couple of chapters and go off at a more 'entertaining' tangent.

As far as books go there is a lot of snobbery towards the SF/crime end of things. The 'classics' are definetetly preferred (hey they are longer, 600+ pages and more 'challenging'...yeah, right).

not in regard to being accepted into the "canon",just in terms of writing a great book* that deals with big themes and has a large scope,a book that *could* (or should) be regarded as "important/a classic",regardless of whether it is seen as such (ie accepted into the canon)

*or recording a great album,or whatever

Have we had that entertainment vs art question yet?

and then when i read it it turned out that it was basically a second rate sci-fi story interjected with middle aged men getting joyless blowjobs and having meandering,name/concept dropping philosophical discussions...
but because it was presented as a literary novel dealing with the big questions,it was accepted as such

also helps if they've got big cartoon robots punching big cartoon monsters in the face

xp to aimless, i think that's half-true. truly great films transcend genre definitions because above all they succeed in being unmistakably, very much themselves. there is another kind of classic though, which is seen as a window onto a specific cultural moment, and is appreciated mostly in terms of how well it speaks to a zeitgeist that has now passed. the graduate is this kind of movie. apocalypse now. the matrix will probably be remembered in this way, as a symptom of anxieties about the digital age at the turn of the century. the reason i think spring breakers is a classic, or will be a classic, is that in addition to being great it feels very timely -- like someday people will say that it is emblematic of something.

basically, i think that movies that can fit into people's facile narratives about cultural trends tend to make their way into the canon.

Yes they do. Uncle Boonmee, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Mysteries of Lisbon, Closed Curtains. Tons of classics this decade.

La Vie d'Adèle's timing alone makes it a classic.

Inception, prometheus, the dark knight overthinks it

Leviathan, Turin Horse, Holy Motors, My Joy, Harmony Lessons, Melancholia, Post Tenebras Lux. This has been a really good decade so far.

Melancholia totally. And Antichrist too.

It was on the last S&S poll, a year after release. Along with Tree of Life and Turin Horse.

Frederik B, a good portions of those films you are listing are closer to the concept of 'masterpiece' than 'classic'. I agree for Leviathan, Melancholia, Holy Motors and Turin Horse but not for a film like Anatolia, which is one my favorite films these past years don't get me wrong.

I am interested to see how much the Matrix's classic rep is going to be damamged by the sequels.

Hee hee

basically, i think that movies that can fit into people's facile narratives about cultural trends tend to make their way into the canon.

What's disorienting though is that one generation's facile narrative about their cultural trends can be completely upended by the next generation's facile etc.

oh yeah, absolutely. that's why i think spring breakers is interesting... there was a whole new inquiry pdf issue about it, and it definitely seems like the kind of thing writers feel compelled to write about, but the discourse about this movie has nevertheless been eclectic and mixed, and critics haven't really settled on their pet reductionist explanation for what it is supposed to *mean* yet. idk. "the graduate" is interesting in this way because it is a very different movie today than in 1967 owing to the fact that the "youth" movement it apparently was seen to champion no longer exists, and that generation today is seen to have a conflicted, rather than purely emancipatory legacy.

i think a serious man is a classic

Superbad is a total classic.