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noir noiry noir noir noir
Thursday, 26 January 2006 11:06 amFinally, I got around to seeing Sin City. This took, I have to admit, courage: I am notoriously likely to end up quivering on the lap of the person sitting next to me during scary or violent movies, and I'd heard a lot about the gore and brutality of this one. However, I'd also had one word thrown repeatedly around in the context of the film, that being "stylisation", and this turned out to be the defining feature of the film. I am so a sucker for stylisation. Put it down to years studying fairy tale.
Two major things emerged: (1) Sin City probably gave me fewer cower-away-from-the-screen moments in total than did, for example, Gremlins (and I will now die of embarassment, although admittedly I was much younger then); and (2), I may be in love. While the characters were stunned and blown away quite often, and with no lack of gore, I was too busy being stunned and blown away by the artistry of it all to really be disturbed. I spent a lot of the movie sitting bolt upright on the sofa, electrified by the visual feel of the film, the beautifully posed, composed shots, the lighting, the camera work, the laconic voice-overs, the long trenchcoats, the weird and wonderful use of colour. Take film noir. Reduce to essentials. Distil. Intensify. Stylise (which is pretty scary, it's a highly stylised genre anyway.) Reproduce with love, passion and a complete absence of mercy. Accept the adulation of all beholders.
The film was really about the look, but the script was good, too, and the plot interestingly constructed - I do like those interlocking, barely-connected multiple narratives. The symbolic poles of noir are also exaggerated: the film is all about aging, faded, flawed paladins and beautiful, dangerous women. It's not just comic-book exaggeration, it's also heroic exaggeration, although a particularly dark vision of heroism. I don't know the original comics, so I'm not sure how far the superhero feel is because half of those characters are actually superheroes, but they certainly take an unholy amount of damage for normal guys. But the film also lacked the Tarantino-esque quality that I so loathe, the sense that violence is cool and hip. Violence in the film was stylised and often surprisingly beautiful, but it was also rife with a sense of its own inhuman brutality. Oh, and I'd get all hot under the collar about the extremely dodgy notion of scantily-clad tarts in bondage gear with big guns, except that the film's sense of masculinity is just as reductionist. Women may be about their long legs and breasts, but men are clearly about the flap and silhouette of their coats. And if the horrible little yellow dude isn't the ultimate parody of disfunctional phallocentricity, I'd like to know what is.
I have to add: Elijah Wood? Ye gods and little fishes, he was creepy.
Two major things emerged: (1) Sin City probably gave me fewer cower-away-from-the-screen moments in total than did, for example, Gremlins (and I will now die of embarassment, although admittedly I was much younger then); and (2), I may be in love. While the characters were stunned and blown away quite often, and with no lack of gore, I was too busy being stunned and blown away by the artistry of it all to really be disturbed. I spent a lot of the movie sitting bolt upright on the sofa, electrified by the visual feel of the film, the beautifully posed, composed shots, the lighting, the camera work, the laconic voice-overs, the long trenchcoats, the weird and wonderful use of colour. Take film noir. Reduce to essentials. Distil. Intensify. Stylise (which is pretty scary, it's a highly stylised genre anyway.) Reproduce with love, passion and a complete absence of mercy. Accept the adulation of all beholders.
The film was really about the look, but the script was good, too, and the plot interestingly constructed - I do like those interlocking, barely-connected multiple narratives. The symbolic poles of noir are also exaggerated: the film is all about aging, faded, flawed paladins and beautiful, dangerous women. It's not just comic-book exaggeration, it's also heroic exaggeration, although a particularly dark vision of heroism. I don't know the original comics, so I'm not sure how far the superhero feel is because half of those characters are actually superheroes, but they certainly take an unholy amount of damage for normal guys. But the film also lacked the Tarantino-esque quality that I so loathe, the sense that violence is cool and hip. Violence in the film was stylised and often surprisingly beautiful, but it was also rife with a sense of its own inhuman brutality. Oh, and I'd get all hot under the collar about the extremely dodgy notion of scantily-clad tarts in bondage gear with big guns, except that the film's sense of masculinity is just as reductionist. Women may be about their long legs and breasts, but men are clearly about the flap and silhouette of their coats. And if the horrible little yellow dude isn't the ultimate parody of disfunctional phallocentricity, I'd like to know what is.
I have to add: Elijah Wood? Ye gods and little fishes, he was creepy.
