"Get elected, and suddenly, they know police work..."
Thursday 8 September 2011
Friday 19 August 2011
The Wire s01e01: The Target
"I gotta ask ya... If every time, Snot Boogie would grab the money and run away... Why'd you even let him in the game?"
Thursday 18 August 2011
Wednesday 17 August 2011
Monday 28 February 2011
Faulkner lives on in Dogtooth
The Oscar-nominated Dogtooth is a perplexing beast, but a brilliant one.
In Faulkners magnum opus As I Lay Dying he spends a chapter attempting to get across a very complex, beautiful notion. While he writes seemlessly and engagingly, he still requires vast amounts of exposition and explanation to get this idea across - Dogtooth, however, manageds to convey this message perfectly in cinematic form. This message is one regarding the subjectivity of language.
I'm reminded of the Mad Men episode "The colour Blue". Don is told the story of a teacher whose pupil asks her "How do I know if the blue I see is the same as the blue everyone else see's?" Apply this to language, and you have Dogtooth. It asks us to really thnik about the words we use, and the weight they hold. what do words really mean? How do I know when I use a word, it means the same thing to me as to you? Addie Bundren puts forwar that the word "mother" doesn't mean the same thing to someone who has never born a child. Dogtooth, As I Lay Dying and "the Colour blue" are concerned with meaning.
It's amazing, then, that Dogtooth works as a cinematic experience. To an outside observer - someone who were to walk into the film halfway through, unaware of this theme, the film would make no sense whatsoever. That is where the mastery of the film lies. That is the ground it breaks. It tells a story, and provides us with a narration, without actually making any sense. This is an accomplishment on the part of the screenwriter, who establishes his own language, and the director, who carefully constructs and delicate house of cards. On a larger scale, the film addresses ideas of God - of the garden of Eden, of authority and of place.
and it does so using words like "Dogtooth".
In Faulkners magnum opus As I Lay Dying he spends a chapter attempting to get across a very complex, beautiful notion. While he writes seemlessly and engagingly, he still requires vast amounts of exposition and explanation to get this idea across - Dogtooth, however, manageds to convey this message perfectly in cinematic form. This message is one regarding the subjectivity of language.
I'm reminded of the Mad Men episode "The colour Blue". Don is told the story of a teacher whose pupil asks her "How do I know if the blue I see is the same as the blue everyone else see's?" Apply this to language, and you have Dogtooth. It asks us to really thnik about the words we use, and the weight they hold. what do words really mean? How do I know when I use a word, it means the same thing to me as to you? Addie Bundren puts forwar that the word "mother" doesn't mean the same thing to someone who has never born a child. Dogtooth, As I Lay Dying and "the Colour blue" are concerned with meaning.
It's amazing, then, that Dogtooth works as a cinematic experience. To an outside observer - someone who were to walk into the film halfway through, unaware of this theme, the film would make no sense whatsoever. That is where the mastery of the film lies. That is the ground it breaks. It tells a story, and provides us with a narration, without actually making any sense. This is an accomplishment on the part of the screenwriter, who establishes his own language, and the director, who carefully constructs and delicate house of cards. On a larger scale, the film addresses ideas of God - of the garden of Eden, of authority and of place.
and it does so using words like "Dogtooth".
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