|
|
|
Newest Reviews: New Movies - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Old Movies - Touki Bouki: The Journey of the Hyena The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry Archives - Recap: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 , 2005, 2006, 2007 , 2008 , 2009 , 2010 , 2011 , 2012
|
The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (Sophie Fiennes, 2006)
56 Jeremy Heilman 08.22.06
*For the record, the list of films covered is: Alice in Wonderland (1951) Alien Alien Resurrection The Birds Blue Velvet City Lights The Conversation Dead of Night Dr. Strangelove Dogville Duck Soup Dune The Exorcist Eyes Wide Shut Fight Club Frankenstein The Great Dictator Ivan the Terrible: Part 2 Kubanskie Kazaki Lost Highway The Matrix Monkey Business (1931) Mulholland Dr. North By Northwest Persona The Piano Teacher Pluto’s Judgment Day Possessed (1931) Psycho Rear Window The Red Shoes Saboteur Solaris (1972) Stalker Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith The Ten Commandments (1956) The Testament of Dr. Mabuse Three Colors: Blue To Catch a Thief Vertigo Wild at Heart The Wizard of Oz (1939) |
Sophie
Fiennes’ The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema features the entertaining
pontifications of pop philosopher Slavoj Zizek as applied to a slew of film
favorites. Less overtly sexual and decidedly more thoughtful than its salacious
title might imply, Fiennes’ film takes a decidedly psychoanalytical approach
to understanding cinema. Zizek’s Slovenian accent seems perfect for delivering
his Freudian interpretations, and he’s thankfully not just presented as a
talking head. Rather, he’s shot in poses that almost integrate him into the
films that he’s discussing, seemingly theorizing from within the films
themselves. Those theories are hardly radical, but they are well organized, and
more often than not intriguing. Zizek discusses cinema as a form of conditional
belief. He tries to understand why we will ourselves to believe and be affected
by the flickering images on the movie screen. Repression and transgression are
the key themes of the films that he studies. In talking about this personal
canon, Zizek astutely discusses the complicity on the part of the audience, the
filmmakers who encode things to express what cannot be otherwise spoken about,
and the fictionalized characters, who are almost inevitably cross over into a
nether region of the subconscious. Fiennes uses a Rorschach blotch for some of
her scene transitions, and Zizek tries to turn every scene that he examines into
an opportunity to examine our collective subconscious.
Guide’s
biggest failing, though, is that practically every film included in its line-up
could be considered a favorite. I couldn’t help but wish there were a few
obscure films being discussed. Zizek sticks mostly to films that have already
had volumes written about them. Hitchcock or Lynch’s films provide subject
matter for examining this subject matter, but they’re also perfectly obvious
choices. By focusing specifically on great films he’s able to more concretely
make his points, but it’s difficult to imagine many cinephiles who don’t
already understand that Lynch is largely concerned with overbearing parental
figures and that Hitchcock is obsessed with sexual repression. Zizek moves
beyond those obvious classifications, to be sure, but I was rather shocked that
out of the long list of films surveyed
Guide clocks
in at about 2 1/2 hours, which is certainly not an insignificant amount of time,
but it’s possible that it will leave you wishing for more when it’s done.
Even if it might not be art on its own terms, this type of cinematic essay is an
ideal form of film criticism, since it can actually show film grammar instead of
merely describing it. Similar to Thom Anderson’s Los Angeles Plays Itself or
Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema (the best I've seen in the genre), it is
likely to broaden your understanding of the films it covers, or at least stir
some fond memories of your favorites. Taken as a whole, Zizek’s work here
justifies itself. Even though some of his analysis is so textbook as to feel
like common knowledge, his choice in film clips to back up his assertions is
impeccable. When he’s firing on all cylinders, such as when he examines a
series of voyeuristic characters peering through cracks or when he turns his
analytical powers on Psycho, he brings new life to the films he
discusses.