I've received a fair amount of feedback from friends both corporeal and digital regarding my weak in the knees, swooning reaction to Zach Snyder's magnum opus Sucker Punch. Apparently, the general consensus is that the film is the epitome of style over substance and a clear indication of the lack of purpose or meaning in modern genre film making. I hear a lot of talk about plot holes and the lack of "stakes" for the characters. I see Sucker Punch, along with a handful of other recent films and oddball classics, as being indicative of a revolutionary approach toward film as an art form. I'm stressing the word art in that last proclamation. I'm specifically referring to the capacity of imagery coupled with sound design and music to elicit a subconscious reaction in the viewer.
Let me be clear when I say that I am sick to death of traditional narrative film. I find it predictable and one dimensional. I'm bored to tears by origin stories and historical dramas and romantic comedies and leaden thrillers. I love subtext and meaning in film, but I want to either discover it or create it on my own. I am at this point in my life vastly more interested in style, ambiance, atmosphere and feel than the dubious comforts the conventional approach affords. I walked out of Battle LA because I found the rote, documentary-style template draped across the painfully familiar trappings of its story to be the absolute height of tedium. I knew where it was going and how it would end roughly 5 minutes in, so why should I torture myself with its limited palette and pedestrian presentation? Take Tetsuo: The Iron Man for example. Here is a film with the flimsiest and most non-existent of plot lines, yet it is so majestically propulsive and bewildering as to overwhelm one completely with jagged angles, nightmare shadows and primal screaming. It's a 67 minute howl of crossbred genetics and apocalyptic transmutations making as little sense as that truncated synopsis suggests. Would this be greatly improved by a tertiary character presenting the hero with a necklace to be emblematic of something about their dull, strained relationship?
I have precious little interest left in the intricacies of human relationships. I get it, you know? I no longer need the fine print. For example, consider an execrable piece of garbage like Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy. A film about the problems that crop up in the relationship between two crushingly unlikable people playing out as an unlistenable loop of unrealistic dialog screeched by two wholly untalented actors. Now consider Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. Same basic premise: a meet cute followed by concerns of fidelity further muddied by the baggage of past relationships. Except in this instance, the struggle is vividly evoked by endlessly inventive visual metaphors. The relationship is made believable and the characters 3 dimensional through their literal ACTIONS in the dazzling fight sequences. I can think of no clearer example of how to properly utilize the narrative freedom of the visual and sonic medium of film. I've had enough awful arguments with exes to know for damn sure that I don't want to listen to that shallow invective turned up to 11 and played back writ large on the silver screen. Scott Pilgrim however, terraforms the same territory into terrain worth traversing again thanks to imagination and creativity, socially acceptable shot composition and blocking be damned!
I also love pastiche and consider it to be an invaluable and underused tool. Natural Born Killers is the finest example of what can be accomplished with this technique when used right. I want my films to be an explosion of images, sounds, words, varying film stock, computer graphics, cell animation, stop motion, hell, whatever you've got! I've seen thousands upon thousands of movies at this point in my life. I've tried to study as many eras and nationalities and genres as possible and while I've learned a great deal about them, I want to be wowed above all else at this point. I want to be dazzled, left with my jaw on the floor and a lump in my throat. If film makers can provide me with the stimulus I need constructed in a masterly fashion, I can provide the subtext and the personal relation to the material. I have had plenty of practice, believe me. I need films to be more like Rob Zombies Halloween 2 (yeah I said it goddammit!), Antichrist, Speed Racer, Irreversible, Vital, Apocalypse Now, Nosferatu, The Beyond, Naked Lunch, The Red Shoes and 2001 and less like Oscar winning headache The Hurt Locker.
Of course, I'm a sucker for anything starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and am super stoked for Fast Five, so what the fuck do I know?
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