Chaos Cinema Part 1
6 months ago
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1. Chaos Cinema Part 1
6 months ago
The video essay Chaos Cinema, administered by Indiewire's journalistic blog PRESS PLAY, examines the extreme aesthetic principles of 21st century action films. These films operate on techniques that, while derived from classical cinema, threaten to shatter the established continuity formula. Chaos reigns in image and sound. Part 1 contrasts traditional action films with chaotic ones and takes a close look at the "sound" track, especially its use in car chases.
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After World War 1, magicians started to complain that people's tastes had been affected, that it was no longer possible for magic to be dignified. You really had to get the public's attention to fill the theater.
Not only did this affect the kind of magic but also its presentation. For example, rather than merely pointing at a box when a transformation would take place, some magicians took to using a starter's pistol to announce a magical event, and they would do this repeatedly throughout the show such that it lost its effect.
In that case, the war was the inciting incident. We had become so used to violence that anything less than its entertainment equivalent wasn't seen as satisfying.
Your videos include many fantastic insights about the changes that have taken place in cinematic action, but I don't recall any suggestion on your part about a possible reason.
Most of the films you include take place after the September 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent media coverage of the aftermath in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Is it possible that this sustained level of violence is affecting action movies by needing to simulate the brief action we get via the television news? Otherwise, movies wouldn't seem real. Television news gives us snippets of violence and so contemporary movies just stretch that out for their duration to create the chaos you describe.
Others might blame the Internet affecting our attention spans and that we are too easily distracted today to be able to follow a more deliberately paced action scene.
Although its impossible to know exactly how or why we got to this point, a third video discussing possible reasons might make a nice conclusion.
cinemetrics.lv/salt_on_cutting.php (first image)
Stylistic intents aside, I'd be willing to attribute technological advances as a major contributing factor. What technology allows for, we tend to adopt, if simply for the sake that we can.
@ 2:30 - youtube.com/watch?v=Ngy17MrSrMo
Saving Private Ryan and Braveheart also use this to good effect. So yes, you touch on the idea that "chaos" can be used well (Hurt Locker) or badly (Bad Boys) ... but isnt this the case with any aesthetic choice? Have you never seen examples of poor "classical filmmaking"? Of course you have.
Also, the assumption that spacial awareness is somehow the primary funtion of good editing is a poor one. It is a standard one, yes, but not essential. It seems to me a film like Moulin Rouge was deliberately flouting the idea of spacial awareness in favor of rhythm and texture (or as Orson Welles calls it, "punch-counterpunch" editing) ... post-modern, yes, but equally valid.
Lastly, I cannot for the life of me figure out what your objection is to the editing in Inception and the Bourne films. Both seemed to fit all the criteria you laud as "classical". They had fine momentum, clear direction, and in my opinion, great spacial orientation. What was confusing about them? (AND i should add, what is so special about the Wild Bunch... i always find Peckinpah's action sequences to be full of ugly, arbitrary shots... not too far from Michael Bay).
Great comment on sound design, but I find your main argument a little wanting. It seems to boil down to: There sure are a lot of bad movies out there using this technique badly ... which, of course, is true for every decade. Masters perfect a technique, and hacks drive it into the ground.
This may not be as applicable to the car chase sequences but all I'm trying to say is that you seem you're throwing the technique whole sale and not even considering it's applications to certain settings.
Personally, I enjoy both styles. All that really matters is that you're selling the lie to the audience and most of the movies you reference achieved that.
Although they are hard to find today, there is a couple of "classical and intelligible" action movies. I'm thinking of Shoot Them Up, or Knight & Day lately, movies with great spacial awarness, geographical lisibility and montage clearly inspired by 80-90's action movies and Hong Kong cinema (Woo, Tsui Hark).
Unfortunately, it seems those kind of movies are not usely understood both by critics and public (they both made poor box office scores and were not liked by the critics (the US ones at least)).
Are intelligible action movies a thing of the past ? I hope not.
I give you that "understand" might be a strong word. But that is a kind of action movie that audiences are not used to see anymore (or, maybe, never really cared to see) :
- an hitchcockian storyline, led by a McGuffin that is just an excuse for action
- a way to make fun of action movie clichés and to play with them
- a movie that do not care about "plausible", and have a certain ironic detachment to its subject
All that in the purpose to build a purely visual story, credible in the action scenes (and incoherent in its scenario that we are not there to care about).
But satiric action movies that focus primarely on building actions and making fun of movie clichés were rarely well-received in the US : Last Action Hero, Demolition Man, the Tsui Hark US movies (Double Team and Knock Off)...
Quantum of solace was one of the films i guess where I realized, that the cutting just just too fast to follow.
But currently it seems as that the stereoscopic experience will force the directors to slow down a bit, just because it can get very confusing to follow and focus at a fast cutted sequence in 3d.
Also, will disagree on Bad Boys II. That's an action filmmaking masterpiece, precisely because it runs on adrenaline. I can't say the same for his Transformer films but that aesthetic worked great in that film.
I agree that confusing films are films that the audience cannot/won't engage in. Confusion is boring in part because, emotionally, you can't engage once the focus is off the characters. While I rarely care for the car in a car wreck, I am very concerned for the passengers inside.
I suspect that your assertions are part of what is being mocked in Chris Weitz's film-within-a-film in "New Moon," where we, the movie audience, is sitting in a theater watching the principle actors on screen watching their own movie (using the silver screen as mirror); they are watching "Face Punch," an (entirely off-screen) action film with inane dialogue and incredibly good sound effects. Whether Bella will hold hands with Mike or Jacob is far more emotionally engaging than the noise raging through the theater. Because they are just like us. Exploding cars, not so much.
Fascinating insights, Mr. Stork. Apparently, judging from the comments here and at The Week and elsewhere, you are not alone.
To go back to the line I quoted above, there is just as much "art" in the stellar, intense, large-scale Michael Bay action car chase as there is in the infamous Bullitt sequence. Whether you can appreciate that form of art or not is entirely subjective.
From the book "Moviemakers' Master Class", quoting the great director John Boorman:
"It's the MTV kind of editing, where the main idea is that the more disorienting it is, the more exciting. I think it's made by people who don't really have a grasp of cinema's history. And you see it creeping into mainstream cinema more and more. It's like a way to artificially generate excitement, or conceal flaws, and it doesn't really have any basis to it"