'inner meaning' behind films

[Neon]

Sorta like how Pulp Fiction is really about redemption.

In that way, what the hell is Donnie Darko really about? Ashamed to admit I can't make heads or tails of it.

I saw Boondock Saints recently as well. While it wasn't knock-me-on-my-ass excellent it seemed to be one of these. And it was pretty good. The smart gay cop reminded me of sethsez

[PaCrappa]

Donnie Darko is about a piece of shit movie with bad writing and acting as well as needless yet obvious convolution. It's also about people not getting it and calling awesome.

Stupidest movie ever. I'm glad you asked.

Pa

[Neon]

Donnie Darko is about a piece of shit movie with bad writing and acting as well as needless yet obvious convolution. It's also about people not getting it and calling awesome.

Stupidest movie ever. I'm glad you asked.

Pa

I didn't call it awesome, fekker!

Though I wouldn't mind owning the creepy rabbit suit.

[howmuchkeefe]

Donnie Darko appears to be a commercial for fatalism, or maybe the infinite/bounded theory of space-time.

I love to analyze Barton Fink. I think it's a some sort of allegory.

[Rob]

Donnie Darko is about placing too many obvious signifiers that it does in fact take place in the 80s. And for that reason alone: classic.

Big Trouble in Little China is about Asian stereotypes.

[PaCrappa]

No no no! I didn't say you called it awesome. But there's a billion people online and in real life that will tell you that it is wicked awesome. And they didn't get it. In the same breath.

I just watched it about two weeks ago and I almost made a thread too. As far as I can tell I understood every friggin second of every hackneyed angsty timetravel angle they could convolutedly shove into this D- eighth grade drama class project of a script and I wanted to know what the fuck the hype was all about. But really it was pretty insignificant and I forgot before I could even make it to my computer.

Pa

[howmuchkeefe]

Boondock Saints... hm. I enjoyed the movie, but I'm not sure just how moral it is: Take its treatment of Funnyman, for instance. Funnyman is even more morally dubious than the vigilantes are, and yet he gets a pass- though he's a tempermental, murderous, misogynistic criminal- simply because the vigilantes (apparently) have been his lifelong friends.

I suspect that the movie is a shallow exercise in wish-fulfillment, a la Death Wish/John Q- perhaps made by a person who believes that drug dealing is a greater offense than sexual assault- but I haven't completely eliminated the possibility that it's deeper than I think.

[dok_industrial]

Sorta like how Pulp Fiction is really about redemption.

In that way, what the hell is Donnie Darko really about? Ashamed to admit I can't make heads or tails of it.

don't be. i really enjoyed donnie darko, but after multiple critical viewings*, i came to the conclusion that it's clear the director, Richard Kelly, had some serious (and no doubt highly important) thematic point he wanted to make. Unfortunately, in his earnest desire to bring that point to the viewer in a subtle, indirect, yet indelible cinematic fashion, he forgot to actually include it in the film.

as a result, you get a movie that (while engaging and undeniably well-acted) loses its own train of thought, only to eventually collapse under the weight of its own intellectual aspirations.

(* = ...of the original version with the original set of deleted scenes; i've not yet gotten around to seeing the 2005 "director's cut", which apparently has about 20 minutes of added material)

[Davey]

Say what you will about Boondock Saints, but the line "You're such a fag!" was fantastic.

I'll admit I like movies I don't fully understand. I'd rather watch a pretentious indie film that's over my head than watch tits and explosions for an hour and a half, but I'm an idiot like that.

[professor ganson]

Cronenburg's History of Violence is really about all the violence that is needed to sustain domestic life (and so takes up a theme prominent in the last part of Homer's Odyssey, which is really about the clash between the values of the battlefield and domestic values).

Cronenberg's Crash (NOT that crap film with the same name that came out last year) is really about sex and car crashes.

[it290]

I enjoy most Cronenberg movies quite a bit, but I didn't feel like Crash was a particularly good movie. I finally got around to reading the book recently, and although I didn't get real into it, it was better than the film. The main thing about the book is that it kind of lulls you into somewhat of a trance with its extremely repetitive usage of sexual and violent phrases and imagery, which was at least a successful literary device. It's pretty hard to translate that into a movie, and just like Naked Lunch, I felt like Cronenberg didn't even really try, and instead just made it into his own thing.

Videodrome is great, though, and Dead Ringers is really great.

[Zweihander]

Donnie Darko = excellent film.
Butterfly Effect = Donnie Darko Lite.
nuff said on Darko.

[NTSC-J]

Donnie Darko is about a piece of shit movie with bad writing and acting as well as needless yet obvious convolution. It's also about people not getting it and calling awesome.

Stupidest movie ever. I'm glad you asked.

Pa

lol. Sounds like we both had the same reaction to it. Too many people like it and once they make it thru adolescence they'll watch it again and see how stupid it really is. Some movies just try too hard to be worth something, and it usually doesn't work. If you find a diehard fan of this movie, you can pretty much guess what other favorites they have listed on their livejournal (napoleon dynamite for ex.)

Re: Boondock Saints. I thought it was trash, I'm starting to hate movies like this. Fucking Pulp Fiction has been imitated a million times since it came out and nearly all are shit. It's a genre now, action movies that try to be clever and edgy but don't mean a damn thing.

As for movies that really do mean something....

Deliverance is intense. A man's journey into the depths of inhumanity, much like Apocalypse Now (or Heart of Darkness I guess).

Tetsuo Iron Man is a pretty obvious metaphor for industrialization robbing us of our humanity. It's also pretty cracked out, so thumbs up.

Mishima is brilliant and does a great job of layering his life and work.

Dawn of the Dead was a statement on the growing consumerism of the 80s. Reaganomics = zombies.

The Matrix was an allegory for racism and whiteness, but did a terrible job getting that across.

Aliens, however, does an exemplary job with male and female power dynamics and sends a strong message not heard in action/sci fi (or any other genre really). Plus it's Aliens before it started to suck, thumbs up.

Commando is about how aryan supermen will conquer all of the brown peoples of the world in order to secure their power and white women's vaginas. Reagan-era movies are awesome!

There's a million more of course, but I'm done for now.

[neorichieb1971]

Oldboy... Now there is a modern classic with a inner message

[GaijinPunch]

The Apocolypse Now/Heart of Darkness theme seems to be recurring in just about everyting. Lord of the Flies, perhaps only subtly, but in just about every prison movie/TV show, and is even popping up in the Lost TV series in very subtle ways. Basically, that w/o society, man is savage.

Trainspotting: In a very strange way, it is about living. So many parts of this are easy to hit home to the average joe blow. A brilliant film.

Hedgwig and the Angry Inch: While the overall "soul mate" theme is there, to me, it was more about being yourself, regardless of the odds.

Shawshank Redemption: Spirit of Life / Will to live

Lord of the Rings: Classic good versus evil, but w/ that "evil nature in man" sub-theme.

Am I the only person that though History of Violence was an absolute hunk of shit?

[CMoon]

Isn't trying to 'dig deeper' into big hollywood films just a waste of time? Not to reveal my film snobbishness, but while many of the films mentioned above have 'apparent' depth, I feel like most of this is smoke and mirrors.

There is one clear exception though...

Commando is about how aryan supermen will conquer all of the brown peoples of the world in order to secure their power and white women's vaginas. Reagan-era movies are awesome!

Um, so yeah...I think there are always going to be giggles when people talk about the deeper meaning of a hollywood film. Most of the time, the deeper meaning is $$$.

[Marc]

Zweihander Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 5:31 am Post subject:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Donnie Darko = excellent film.
Butterfly Effect = Donnie Darko Lite.
nuff said on Darko.

Or alternatively...

Donnie Darko = excellent, yet confusing and ultimately unsatisfying

Butterfly Effect = excellent Darko-inspired movie with followable plot

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

There's really not an inner meaning to movies. Just the story. Stuff like David Lynch movies or psychological thrillers spring to mind as movies that are supposed to have a inner meaning. But it's really probably just a bunch of crap that was thrown together without any thought.

[Minzoku]

ARGH, Donnie Darko killed my brain

Out of fairness, though, I had seen it only from halfway through, and I ended up thinking, "Okay, this movie is about a guy who's so evil he has to go back in time and kill himself...?" *head a splode*

I later was subjected to an explanation of the whole movie, especially the 'vital' part I missed about the wormhole that saved his life for thirty days, and now I understand it's about someone who's scared of dying alone who's come to realize that, if some Higher Being went through the trouble to show him these alternate thirty days of life, it means he's not alone after all, which is what he's laughing about at the end.

...*head a splode*

One of my coworkers told me that Napoleon Dynamite was a movie about nothing [like Seinfeld], but that I would love it. Mind you, this is a guy who's seen all of two movies in his life, the other being Elf.

[D]

The Abyss, tt has some really hard war-footage in it. the message is that those aliens attacked us and they said we shouln't attack each other and the environment and we should stop being so childish. Great flick. The tension is balanced right throughout the movie.

[professor ganson]

I enjoy most Cronenberg movies quite a bit, but I didn't feel like Crash was a particularly good movie. I finally got around to reading the book recently, and although I didn't get real into it, it was better than the film. The main thing about the book is that it kind of lulls you into somewhat of a trance with its extremely repetitive usage of sexual and violent phrases and imagery, which was at least a successful literary device. It's pretty hard to translate that into a movie, and just like Naked Lunch, I felt like Cronenberg didn't even really try, and instead just made it into his own thing.

Videodrome is great, though, and Dead Ringers is really great.

I'm not sure what I think of Crash, exactly. The mechanical repetition of sexual acts and the general melding of the mechanical and the organic-- it's pretty haunting, esp. because of an amazing performance by James Spader, who plays the part perfectly. GREAT music. Still, it felt a little empty. At the same time it was supposed to, right?

EDIT: What happened to the great Canadian film scene of the 90s? Egoyan, where are you?

@CMoon: What films/directors do you like?

@Mosquito Fighter: You're right not to look too deeply for meaning in Lynch films. Though sometimes there are things that need to be figured out: like in Mulholland Dr. you need to figure out that one half of the film is really a dream (involving wish-fulfillment in accord with Freud's old theory), the other half reality. But even if they are not especially deep, they are pretty damn cool.

[theevilfunkster]

Oldboy... Now there is a modern classic with a inner message

Yay, another Oldboy fan, that film is a masterpiece.

[professor ganson]

Speaking of Donnie Darko:

I happen to have a PAL version, region 2, I believe. If you can play this and want it, it's yours free of charge. Just PM me.

DVD goes to Ghegs.

[captain ahar]

wild zero - its a movie about rocking out and killing dead shit simultaneously.

[it290]

it's pretty haunting, esp. because of an amazing performance by James Spader, who plays the part perfectly

Yeah, James Spader is always good in the role of a weirdo (see: Secretary).

[NTSC-J]

Isn't trying to 'dig deeper' into big hollywood films just a waste of time? Not to reveal my film snobbishness, but while many of the films mentioned above have 'apparent' depth, I feel like most of this is smoke and mirrors.

There is one clear exception though...

Commando is about how aryan supermen will conquer all of the brown peoples of the world in order to secure their power and white women's vaginas. Reagan-era movies are awesome!

Um, so yeah...I think there are always going to be giggles when people talk about the deeper meaning of a hollywood film. Most of the time, the deeper meaning is $$$.

Most of the films I mentioned intentionally had those themes. Matrix for instance has a cameo by one of the leading voices in black/white relations, Cornell West.

As for Commando, no my short synopsis was not on the screenplay, but subconsciously it was ingrained in the creators of the movie. Of course it was all about mindless action, but the message it sends, along with the hundreds of other movies like it, is the same.

Just because a certain meaning wasn't intentional doesn't mean it isn't there.

Oh, and Lord of the Rings is the most overrated garbage yet. "Good vs. Evil", yea never seen that one before. How boring and unchallenging can you get. Way to send the message that everything is in black and white, unlike the real world. I guess it makes bombing brown children a little easier.

[freddiebamboo]

Oldboy... Now there is a modern classic with a inner message

Yeah, thats got some Oedipus issues there with the whole one man as his judge, jury and executioner.

Starship troopers is also a good satire on facism. Gotta love those crazy dutch directors

[Jon]

Donnie Darko is about a piece of shit movie with bad writing and acting as well as needless yet obvious convolution. It's also about people not getting it and calling awesome.

Stupidest movie ever. I'm glad you asked.

Pa

Thank you Pa, that pretty much somes up my feelings on that rediculous movie. Glad to see I am not the only one who didn't have the wool pulled over their eyes.

I recently bought Oldboy on DVD and enjoyed it. Great movie with a very disturbing ending.

[Acid King]

I enjoy most Cronenberg movies quite a bit, but I didn't feel like Crash was a particularly good movie. I finally got around to reading the book recently, and although I didn't get real into it, it was better than the film. The main thing about the book is that it kind of lulls you into somewhat of a trance with its extremely repetitive usage of sexual and violent phrases and imagery, which was at least a successful literary device. It's pretty hard to translate that into a movie, and just like Naked Lunch, I felt like Cronenberg didn't even really try, and instead just made it into his own thing.

I seriously doubt Cronenberg would have been able to do a straight adaptation of Naked Lunch for film. It has no linear narrative structure and so much of the content is, to say the least, unfilmable if you're going to actually try and get a theatre release.

[LoneSage]

2001 -- man is not as different in terms of instinct compared to his primate ancestors, robots can try to achieve humanity by emulating them, and a few others.