Gravity's Audio

[Mark Kohut]

Don't be misled by the Hubbard marketing " sale" .  That's like finding out that there is a lot more to Hearst than in Citizen Kane.

Hoffman's character was full ( of truth) just about 24 frames per second. The major truth was that he had nothing substantive, surely seen by all, some of whom might not yet have seen other  themes. That is the point, from self-made American preachers thru Hubbard and beyond Anderson shows how their sway prevents self-actualization ( forgive that word please but not the concept) The authoritarianism, the lies, the wife who accepts and covers; the " empire" he builds on it----that long shot of him in his office when Phoenix visits--surely a Citizen Kane allusion. 

Doesn't quite gel? Well, since I too have acknowledged the episodic, cryptic structure, I guess we agree somewhere. I can remember those who felt the newest  Godard film didn't cohere; that Antonioni's studies of bourgeois stasis---or even better Bunuel's kind of episodic surrealism made little sense.

As the editor told me re my piece on Pynchon in The Master, it doesn't quite gel but I liked it. 

So, we ultimately differ as I wrote in the first post as so many even on this list did not like The Master. I would rather watch it again, plumb its ambitiousness, ---it has such a sweeping vision, too compacted perhaps--see its themes associatively than watch most movies. 

The Master is mostly truth at about 32 frames per second. 




Sent from my iPad

> On Nov 26, 2014, at 3:43 AM, Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> When you build a film around a titular subject, there has to be some coherence around that subject, at some stage.
> We were sold a film about a Hubbard-like 'Master', but the vision is blurry and no matter how impressive the performance, it cannot make up for the
> emptiness of the role.
> 
> We keep getting hints and flashes of 'The Master', but despite the indulgent length of the narrative (if you can call it that), we never get any 
> real sense of what Anderson has to say about him. And we cannot escape the suspicion that this is because there is nothing to say. The character is 
> insufficiently imagined.
> 
> 
> 
>  >And Anderson sees in America in The Master that 'postwar charisma'
>  >that Pynchon put into GR (in a loopback way; in 72) and he, Anderson,
>  >clearly links Hoffman to the whole
>  >history of "religious' leaders---texts buried in the desert---absolute
>  >intellectual obedience, etc.
>  >
> 
> The film is a scraggly, meandering mess, and not in a good way. If you filmed Gravity's Rainbow exactly as written, it would be a mess too. 
> They are different mediums. A film needs to gel, at some stage, to some extent at least.
> 
> 
>  >Anderson 'reduced' go-nowhereness --like a  reduction in cooking--to
>  >that essential scene where the wounded boy-man struggles only to
>  >please..
>  >
> 
> If you reduce go-nowhereness, you end up with nothing at all.
> 
> 
> 
>  >Great Hoffman performance, very good Phoenix performance; Amy Adams
>  >just as great: terrif photography; a vision, even if foreshortened by
>  >filmic "demands" and
>  >yet..................almost worthless?........
> 
> I don't think I could possibly agree that any of the performances are 'great'. Hoffman was very good, Phoenix I strongly dislike, always, Adams is good too. 
> But you need more than just good performances, there needs to be something to perform.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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