[lbo-talk] The Illusionist (was Borat)

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Sat Nov 11 14:46:09 PST 2006


On 11/11/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Nov 11, 2006, at 2:01 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > The question is, is this movie worth paying what it costs to catch it
> > in a theater? To answer that question, you read reviews and watch
> > trailers.
>
> For sure; it make sense to try to figure out whether it's worth
> spending money on a movie instead of a case of beer. But you should
> see a movie before offering analyses of its cultural import, don't
> you think?

Nowadays, with reviews, trailers*, stars and directors' promotional appearances on talk shows, etc. offering everything from excerpts to outtakes to analyses of the movies' cultural import, as well as ever shorter intervals between first runs and DVD releases, the only movies you actually want to pay their full prices for are those whose quality can be only appreciated on a big screen.

* Nine times out of ten, a trailer shows all the best moments, and it's better than the feature film it advertises. When in doubt, wait until it comes to your local library.

Postscript:

Among the recent popular movies I actually watched in theater and found interesting are The Illusionist. It, too, is contradictory, like Borat: it is set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, whose corruption reminds one of Kakania of The Man without Qualities or perhaps the United States of America today; and it evokes a utopian desire for revolutionary transformation of the corrupt empire into a spiritual republic, which the king (in part motivated by his jealousy, for he loves the woman who loves the illusionist, and in part motivated by his faith in reason which leads him to long to unmask the secret of the illusionist's magic) accuses the title character of fomenting; and then it settles for the king's suicide and the illusionist's heterosexual romance. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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