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May 11, 2007

Summer Syndromes

It's been two weeks now since I saw Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes And A Century, and I'm still wandering about under it's spell. I'll be the first to admit that I didn't completely get it - but what joy there can be not getting a film like this, and then learning what's there to be got! I've been poring over reviews, filling in those ellipitical blanks, figuring out why exactly Weerasethekul calls it a science fiction picture. I can't wait to see it again, and when I do, I hope it's on the big screen - my first viewing was on DVD, but I think this is definitely one of those films that deserves to loom large.

And I'm glad it's being released right now; it's the perfect antidote to the radioactive spiderbite of summer cinema. That said, I miss the days when I actually looked forward to big summer movies. I used to really love not just the films but their proximity to each other, this glut of spectacle, each trying to top the last. I used to love looking forward to Michael Bay films! Am I getting older? Or just smarter? Regardless, I just finished reading David Mamet's fantastic new book Bambi Vs. Godzilla, and in it he offers a sensible prognosis for this phenomenon:

Big and bad films, summer films, blockbusters have similarly become the laugh track to our national experiment. As with the Defense Department, we are reassured by their presence rather than their content or operations. As examples of waste they appeal to our need - not for entertainment but for security.

Mamet, incidentally, would, I think, not care much for Syndromes And A Century. He breaks down over several chapters his airtight formula for the perfect film, and comes off a bit like Robert McKee with reverse psychology: he doesn't tell you how to write a great script, but he tells you exactly what your script will be like if it turns out great. He's so logical, so simply persuasive, that it's easy to forget that what he preaches isn't necessarily empirical; that movies needn't be limited to three causal acts. But if you're writing something that needs to tick like a Swiss watch, this treatise can serve as a helpful decongestant - it certainly helped me earlier this week, when I needed to knock out a rewrite in one afternoon. I did so, and then moved on to an evening of ruminating upon the more elusive, abstract expressions of the stories I really want to tell.

Posted by David Lowery at May 11, 2007 12:59 AM

Comments

Posted by: tully at May 12, 2007 01:45 AM

Posted by: Adam Donaghey at May 12, 2007 10:23 AM