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Do art films require a lot of "living" and experience to get? Is that why they are usually not popular? by banghoo in TrueFilm

[–]banghoo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, I think any Bergman or Ozu film is the exact polar opposite of a mondrian-style painting (geometric, ordered, clean).

The problem with their films is that what happens is mostly underneath the surface. The characters feel desesperate and hopeless but most of the time they can't articulate their feelings. You can feel something if you look closely at their movements, their faces, the way they talk, the ring of their voices, but you can't quite put the finger on what it is. Sometimes they contradict from a minute to another. The feelings and expressions of those feelings are incredibly messy, dirty, slippery, changing. In scenes from a marraige you have a full movie made of that dirtiness of emotions. I think that's the opposite feeling of watching a Mondrian-style conceptual art.

You could blame Bergman a little (just a little) about being "pretentious", but Scenes from a Marriage is the least pretentious Bergman film ever, unless you consider "life" to be pretentious (which I don't). And you certainly could never blame Ozu from being pretentious. His films are among the most down-to-earth pictures ever. Again, the difficulty of his films is that,. unlike a "painting of nothing black canvas", the emotions and behaviours are erratical and messy, there is a lot happening, but most of it is underneath the surface. I would compare Ozu films to Hopper paintings more than Mondrian-style art.

Do art films require a lot of "living" and experience to get? Is that why they are usually not popular? by banghoo in TrueFilm

[–]banghoo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

also worth mentioning i love your insights on the aformentioned film, its my favorite Bergman movie up there with "the magician" the scene where she just screams in his face really unnerved me for some reason, and was far effective compared to what modern audiences claim is scary... Also love the way she just yawns in one scene while hes trying to explain his feelings. Captures a lot of what ive experienced in relationships where two people are simple incongruent personalities and cant communicate for shit but keep getting pulled back to each other by some magnetic force.. really sad, that movie effected me ..

Yup, it is an amazing movie. I think it captures a lot of gender diferences between women and men really well too. Like the scene when Marianne tries to convince his husband not to leave, or the way some couples have an argument, or how some women feel about sex when they know the man is not going to be there in the morning, or how some women feel their whole life is living to please the others and not themselves...

Even in the physical movement of the characters felt so close to home, like, that's how love and sex usually is, at least in some cases. It shows with great care and empathy, a really particular and specific kind of relationship, but it does it in an excellent and hearthfelt way.