Woj writes:
> The end results is a slow-moving almost theatrical
narration (all action is indoors, a lot of dialog, little
action) that is totally free from cheap sentimentalism
and moralizing so characteristic of the Hollywood
products.
But there are good Hollywood films: The Manchurian Candidate and Spiderman-2 this year for instance. Both were wonderfully complex films, with TMC being especially fine in investigating race, gender and sex roles in today's America.
A good article from Senses of Cinema on Spiderman-2
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/04/33/spiderman2.html
> The end effect is directing viewer's attention at the
system rather than the operators.
Which can be rather enervating -- watching two hours of people acting as if they were clockwork oranges, no free will, just victims of the system. Not really into victim cinema, but if you are -- kewl.
> There would be probably a lot of personal drama and
villain characters, slamming doors, high emotions,
brutal cops etc. - sending a very different message: it is
in the people not in the system.
Sounds like grand opera to me. I personally like art that is about people empowered to make decisions and change their circumstances -- for examle Moolade the excellent Senegalese film of last year or Yesterday the South African nominated for this year's Foreign Language Academy Award.
Watcing Jean Gabin go stoically to a pre-ordained fate is not much of a thrill. Boring actually. And most European cinema seems to be of this dessicated, lifeless kind -- characters too bored and bourgeois to do anything but complain -- and chicly wallow in their ennui.
> Or take another example - the British-Italian-South African
co-production "Hotel Rwanda" based on a true story of a
Hutu hotel manager saving some 1200 people from genocide
in Rwanda.
Great example. A film showing an individual exercising his free will to save people. He defied the system and resisted. Nice balance between the individual and the system.
> Even in the scenes that do smack of too much drama
-- e.g. separating Africans and whites during evacuation -
the director shows remarkable restraint, he simply shows
the situation without jerking viewer's emotions.
Terrance and I were moved by the entire film, often in tears. Your lack of emotional response might have more to with your upbringing in the cold climate of Northern Europe than with what is on the screen or some imagined directoral restraint.
> European films, by contrast, tend to appeal to viewer's
intellectual and ethical faculties, and let the audience be a part
of the process of defining the meaning and message of the show.
Have you seen Amelie? A Very Long Engagement? Cinema Paradiso? Notre Musique? Life is Beautiful?
Very manipulative films that leave no doubt about what the directors want their audience to think.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister