As time passes, the word ‘creative’ in relation to film has started to become a fallacy of representation: a description of intent rather than a badge of ability. Filmmakers try to push boundaries with the technologies they use, and, I must admit, often show ingenuity in their methodology – in Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner ‘always-?good-?for-?an-?expensive-?but-?sublime-?postmodern-?statement’ Herzog uses stereoscopic 3D as a medium for depicting the knowingly dynamic way in which the artists of the Chauvet caves painted their subjects, but surely you can see my point encapsulated within that description? At the dawn of time, early man painted figures on cave walls in such a way that the physical relief of the geology, adds to the perceived dynamism of paintings once considered nai?ve by conceited spreaders of gouache, and yet now, when we can make moving pictures for distribution to the full gamut of humanity, people tend to coo over the usage of optical illusion to enhance the reality of our entertainment. Herzog may be knowingly playing with this absurdity; he has voiced opposition to the rapid reliance on 3D in entertainment before, especially in relation to the mass appeal factor… Actually no, while he did utilise the process for a reason, it wasn’t as deliberate as all that; but I digress, look up some interviews when you get a minute.
Actually my problem, or ‘beef’ as it were, is with storytelling: I can’t remember the last time I watched a movie for the first time – by which I mean that, once you’ve reached the core of a story and gone right to the simplicities of characterisation as they are, you will not find a single story that can not be traced, at least loosely, to a previous concept but! Before you go into an internal reverie of that archetypal studio boss, refusing to commission a film because ‘no one wants to see a film where the boy and girl don’t get together’; I actually believe that the real reason is more along the lines that we have mined originality dry. Oh there’s minor creativity within irony: mixing aspects and tropes in a violent clashing-?pattern to jar the nerves and confuse those who believe in the laws of physics… Fools.
Now, I do like cinema, and will continue to love it as a medium, but that love is as one who loves a blanket that fades and stiffens every time you wash it, not one who expects their pillow to become a hippopotamus. But how much I long to see that unnamed wonder! It must be out there! Oh somebody please, minds squandered on deepening the fields of astrophysics could be broadening the field of entertainment -? had they not chosen a universally respected field of study instead. I don’t want a smaller computer; I want a larger library! God help me I want to be bored of something other than love and war… Maybe parrots, there must be something wonderful in those beady eyes – I’ll watch Rio with interest.
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Joe Smit is a 22 year-old trainee television producer best described as a polymath. When not fixing Oscilloscopes or pestering colour graders for apprenticeships, he tends to wander the bars of England getting strangers to change their ideologies for kicks.
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