Comments on: …In Which A Depressing Film Makes Me Depressed

By: chris_c

chris_c — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:16:03 +0000

I really enjoyed the film, as did my father who had no tolerance for slow. My brain damaged brain did not get the references you guys did, nor did I find it overly slow or depressing. After so many years of European cinema behind me this films seemed to zip along at a fair old pace. As for depressing, while I didn’t find it particularly jolly, compared to some classics of Czech, Hungarian, and Swedish cinema, it didn’t leave despairing about the human condition and human nature.
Love the blog – have heard some stuff from here that have spent years wondering what they are like, cheers!

By: Christopher

Christopher — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:24:29 +0000

Well, I’ve just gone and done did it: put up a link to your tremendous blog on my new, tentative foray into Internet publication, the music blog at http://toiletguppies.blogspot.com. One day I will post a rant about The Proposition on my own page. (Of course, not so many people would read it then!)

By: Melvillain

Melvillain — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:50:27 +0000

I agree with you on The Proposition. I could barely describe what it was about, I was so disturbed. I disagree with Christopher’s view, but to each his own. I love David Lynch, but some people think he’s untalented hack. Who knows? It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:15:06 +0000

I’ve got a link to your site on my blog. I’d be quite thrilled to have a link on Swan Fungus. Thanks!

By: Christopher

Christopher — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:24:26 +0000

Come on… The Proposition is not a good film. The dialogue is as contrived as the acting is overly theatrical (shame on you, John Hurt!). The symbolism is extremely clichÃ©d (even for Nick Cave), and the script has the thinnest of plots. (I often prefer films that aren’t plot-driven myself, but they always have something else to compensate for it.) There is nothing new to the film, nor any twists or turns, which would be fine if the film was actually emotionally engaging in any way. But Cave just slapped together some brothers — because that’s a time-honoured literary theme (Cain and Abel, anyone? Dostoevsky?) — and some of that interminable crucifixion imagery that even Scorsese would steer clear of (but not Cave’s fellow Antipodean Mel Gibson). Add some token Aborigines for good measure, and you’ve got an ‘Australian’ Western for that ‘World’ PR edge, in order to separate the film from other Westerns that would, by a simple act of comparison, reveal how little there is to this art-studenty shit flick.

It’s like everyone involved in the film was so awed by the fact that Nick Cave was writing and scoring it that they all just turned into yes-men, not even telling him that it needed at least three more re-writes and two more years of development before it went into production. Which is just as cruel as sending Mr. Cave out to promote the film sporting a handle bar ‘tache, saying stuff like, ‘There are no gays in my Western.’ (Which was funny, actually, although I believe he delivered that line in all seriousness — even with that Village People moustache.)

Thankfully, Cave has redeemed himself with more recent literate endeavours on Grinderman and Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

OK, rant over. Excuse me for using your blog as a vehicle for my disgust with Cave’s ‘film’.

Oh, and the soundtrack sucks, too.

By: Lope

Lope — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:00:42 +0000

Little Odessa also has that quality of making you feel depressed, even though it’s a great film and it’s cinematography is brilliant.