The Freaky Trigger Not-A-Poll Films Of 2014: 15-12

Glad you felt as non-plussed by Mood Indigo as I did. I sat through it, hating it and thinking of friends who also hate twee nonsense to whom I could slag it off then felt like a horrible person and decided I must have been wrong but if two people think the same thing then it must be right. That is science.

Also bricked it at The Babadook and was suitably unsettled by Ryan Gosling in Nightcrawler: ‘like if Patrick Bateman was poor so you start out rooting for him’ was how I described it to friends.

I’m so glad I didn’t see Mood Indigo. I was tempted, because I have enjoyed several Gondry films – including the very twee Science Of Sleep – but I was also not tempted because I’m still nowhere near forgiving him for The We And The I, which is one of the worst films of the decade* and also nicked one of my never-to-be made film ideas (lurking somewhere in my files as the ‘Richard Linklater bus movie’).

*I think there was some worthy project aspect to the whole thing, but so what: it’s worthless as a film.

#2: I only just clocked that: Jake Gyllenhall not Ryan Gosling! Oh well, same guy, basically… I rooted for him a bit at the start because he was such an outsider and an underdog, a man with absolutely nothing, not even an agreeable personality, a cross between Scarface-type street hustler and Mr Bean misfit: actually JG in Nightcrawler is more like Mr Bean than Amilie is: a textbook sociopath with no morals or social graces whatsoever but obviously, a great deal more avarice than the child-like Mr Bean. I suppose the crux of the whole movie is that we realise that this isn’t a man who doesn’t get the world but rather someone who just doesn’t give a shit about anyone else in it whatsoever. Like I said, unsettling and furthermore, rather brilliant.

Winter Sleep is brilliant. As you say, a great, great film about horrible people. “Remember – that time, after the earthquake….”

@Mark M., 4. So what was wrong with the last 1/4 hour of OUATIAnat? My experience was that after being bored and confused (and kind of angry about all that) for the first two hours the movie then proceeded to get better and better, and to provide you with more and more retrospective context that provided you with the ability to understand what had really being going on in the first half of the movie, so that by the end I’d been completely turned around and was ready to hail OUATIAnat as one of the movies of the year (and potentially of the decade). Presumably you had a problem with the doctor’s principal action and/or the place of what he saw out the window in motivating that action. But what?

BTW, another hate-vote against Mood Indigo. Yikes, Gondry got around to making the film that proved all his detractors right. The whole thing felt way too pleased with itself and just fell completely flat. (Of course, there were *lots* of complete falling-flat disasters this year: Sin City 2, Million Ways To Die In The West, just to name two. I’d probably take Mood Indigo over them at least.)

(link not working mark: is it to yr tumblr?)

@Mark M. Well, I haven’t seen the film in a while and so am not in a position to defend its ultimate machinations in detail, but you seem to me to go out of your way to be uncharitable. The doctor was always going to have the final say in the case, and he’s our avatar in the film, always listening to everyone else and acting as a representative of modernity/objectivity/impartiality. It therefore isn;t nearly as arbitrary as you make it seem that his POV should become more important at the end of the film and indeed that, after hearing about everyone else’s crises and compromises, he should face a crisis and be badly compromised by the end of the film. The forward momentum the film develops almost as soon as daylight hits did need to be carried forward in some way or other to be satisfying, but then be humbled to be even more satisfying (restoring a kind of parity with the night and traditional existence). The pleasure of the film for me was seeing this large architectonic emerge, and ending the film where you suggest would lose all that (except possibly for hyper-acute viewers such as yourself?).

When I got hold of a file-copy of OUATIAnat I made my own edit of it which chopped out about 30 minutes from the first section of the film (thereby allowing us to hit daylight at about the 50 minute mark), and I kept almost all the rest. How intriguing that your own cut would be almost exactly the reverse!

Re13: For what it’s worth*, despite my little scenario above, I think your take is closer to one Ceylan was going for, mine is the Steve Buscemi edit.

‘Rien!’ cries the ghost of Roland Barthes.