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 Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs?

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Largo's Shark
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PostSubject: Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs?   Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs? EmptySat Sep 07, 2013 1:32 pm

Apparently these are the most pretentious ten films, like, ever:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-blog/10283912/The-Top-10-Most-Pretentious-Films.html

Quote :
L'avventura (1960)
A woman mysteriously disappears during a trip to an island off Sicily. Her friend and fiancé join forces in a search, but don't worry about the plot, because Michelangelo Antonioni certainly didn't. Instead we get two hours of exquisitely filmed alienation. It's all very (there's no other word for it) Antonioniesque - but never underestimate the joys of watching Monica Vitti being effortlessly magnificent for a couple of hours.

Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Delphine Seyrig swans around a grand hotel, looking fabulous. This might possibly be a ghost story, or a tale of adultery, rape and murder enacted by a bunch of formally dressed swells uttering stilted dialogue. Or then again it might not. Elegant meditation on the nature of time and memory or, in Albert Steptoe's words, "a load of old boots"?

India Song (1975)
John Waters once wrote that Marguerite Duras "makes the kind of films that get you punched in the mouth for recommending them to even your closest friends." This is one of them: for two hours, Delphine Seyrig once again swans around looking gorgeous as wife of the French ambassador in Calcutta between the wars. There's no spoken dialogue, only voice-over. If you can sit through this without losing consciousness, I take my hat off to you.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
For three and half hours, Delphine Seyrig (clearly some sort of poster girl for hard-to-fathom arthouse films) does household chores, runs errands, turns the occasional trick. Then something happens. Chantal Akerman's film sounds boring, but in fact is surprisingly gripping.

The Quince Tree Sun (1992)
A Spanish artist sits in his backyard and paints a quince tree. Anyone nowadays can watch scenes of torture and mutilation without flinching, but it takes a Real Man to endure all 133 minutes of Victor Erice's film without passing out. Obviously not for anyone with ADD, but if you can slow your pulse rate down sufficiently, it's all rather wonderful.

Mother and Son (1997)
A son sits by the bedside of his dying mother. They talk about their nightmares. Then he picks her up, takes her out into the forest and leaves her lying motionless on a bench before going away for a while. A little later on, he comes back. Will the excitement never end? Even at 73 minutes, Aleksandr Sokurov's film is a long haul.

L'humanité (1999)
The murder of a girl in north-east France leads to a lot of introspection on the part of the cop on the case. Instead of interviewing suspects, he rubs his stubble all over their faces. Later, while digging his allotment, he levitates. Bruno Dumont's film was booed at the Cannes Film festival; I loved it, though I'm not sure it was supposed to make me laugh so much.

Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)
Inhabitants of a provincial town in Hungary are waiting to see the Biggest Whale in the World... and waiting... Béla Tarr's adaptation of Lászlo Krasznahorkai's The Melancholy of Resistance is composed of only 39 tracking shots. A shot of townsfolk tramping down the street went on for so long that I nodded off, had a little dream, and woke up - to find the townsfolk still tramping. I've never dared watch the same director's Sátántango, which weighs in at 432 minutes.

The Tree of Life (2011)
Terrence Malick's films inspire adoration and derision in equal measure. Sean Penn glumly remembers his parents and childhood in sunny Texas. There is classical music. Epic meditation on life, love and the cosmos, or glorified life insurance commercial? Either way, the bit with the dinosaurs is ace.

Holy Motors (2012)
Denis Lavant plays Monsieur Oscar, who is chauffeured in a limo to a number of rendez-vous around Paris. At each stop, he assumes a different persona. Léos Carax's arthouse hit is often funny, sometimes sad, and occasionally very moving, and I raved about it to my friends. Many of whom declared it a tedious load of old cobblers. It takes all types.

I can think of at least three people on here who probably love everyone of them...
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Largo's Shark
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PostSubject: Re: Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs?   Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs? EmptySat Sep 07, 2013 1:45 pm

I love L'AVVENTURA and LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, though I could take or leave the rest (I have no love for TREE OF LIFE). As usual the word pretentious is misused. It means something or someone that has very lofty goals but is all surface gloss with no content. Most of the films I'd accuse of that aren't on that list.
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PostSubject: Re: Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs?   Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs? EmptySat Sep 07, 2013 2:31 pm

Which are those three people, Santa?
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PostSubject: Re: Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs?   Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs? EmptySat Sep 07, 2013 2:36 pm

Yeah, you misanthropic cow, name names.
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PostSubject: Re: Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs?   Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs? EmptySat Sep 07, 2013 2:38 pm

Harmsway, Loomis and j7wild.

If I got one right I demand free blowjob.
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PostSubject: Re: Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs?   Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs? EmptySat Sep 07, 2013 2:46 pm

I like the same two you mentioned, Sharky. I either haven't seen the rest or don't care for them.

Anyway, you can throw this year's UPSTREAM COLOR on this list.
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PostSubject: Re: Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs?   Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs? EmptySat Sep 07, 2013 11:18 pm

Of the ten films listed here, I've sat down to just one (LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD) and before today had never even heard of five of them.

I think the last film I watched was A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD. Which I'd already seen at the cinema.
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PostSubject: Re: Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs?   Pretentious shite or too sophisticated for plebs? EmptyMon Sep 09, 2013 12:24 pm

L'avventura, Marienbad, and The Tree of Life are all masterpieces. I remember Werckmeister Harmonies being quite extraordinary, but I'd need to watch it again before I lay down any concrete judgements. LS is, of course, right about the misuse of the word pretentious. It's something I'd be more likely to apply to Inception, where an hour of exposition to prepare us for an exploration into the world of dreams ends up with gun-goes-bang-bang shoot-'em-up mindlessness. Ditto for Momento, where a narrative gimmick masquerades as meaningful depth. And critics were subsequently complicit by calling them thinking man's films.
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