AmityThings I Say on Twitter #1
As a too-cerebral writer I found relief in a medium — film — that curtailed my ability to express ideas. I aspire to thought-as-organism.
Antonioni is mistaken for cerebral because of his formal rigidity — but his treatment of themes is inconclusive, childlike, “discoverist.”
The perfect cinematician knows what he wants to talk about but not what he wants to say. Thematic clarity and tendentiousness are not the same.
Antonioni and Bresson, for instance, arranged people and staged events in order to look at them, in order to reflect and discover.
The barbaric certitude of a Bergman or Godard offends — in them I see only SIGNS of that testable, quantifiable commodity we call intelligence.
There are dangers, too, in characterizing intelligence as dynamism and adaptability, using words like “organic” and “vital” and “intuitive.”
We might be more intimidated than inspired by the dynamism of some of our heralded broncos — Welles, Cassavetes, Coppola, Carax.
I’m particularly concerned about the limitations — even dangers — which beset this strain of filmmaker. Enfant terrible? Genius? Just labels.
The apotheosis of Cassavetes at the hands of Ray Carney is largely fraudulent and has tended to produce cultish behavior in acolytes.
[Thursday, June 24, 2010, from Twitter]
