Lists and Lot’s Wife

by Austin Flones

Hey folks, its been almost a year since you’ve had to endure one of my long stream of conscience diatribes so here’s one that is two fold:

LISTS

People love lists. It’s something that’s struck my curiosity for some time and still makes me wonder: why? I love lists. Other writer’s on this site love lists. Zillions of other media critics, food critics, non-critics all love lists. Lists, in my estimation, allow us to take the chaotic strands of information that make up our world  (strands that constantly bombard our senses, each battling persistently to take the forefront of our attention) and give us the He-Man like power to organize and then assess each chaotic strand of information in order to clean our proverbial closet – admiring, loving and keeping those things that suit us and flushing, discarding and spewing bitter malice towards those that don’t. Lists also make us feel better about our choices and help to facilitate our oh so precious time. Take a grocery list for example- if you plan ahead and make the list in advance the amount of time wasted at the grocery store (when you could be poning nubes on your XBOX, or rereading Dostoyevsky) is significantly reduced and it feels great when all list items are checked off upon reaching the checkout stand. When it comes to movies lists the idea is the same, but in a more backtrack justification sort of way. Any hardcore movie addict will consider or at least profess to consider that watching a piss poor movie is never a waste of time. We’ll say, “oh, it’s good every once in a while to watch crap cause it makes you appreciate good movies even more”, or “You can always take away something from any movie, even if it’s what NOT to do when making a movie”, or the always popular, “this movie is so bad it’s funny- join me friends in laughter and mockery.” And while that all may be true and/or fun on some level, reality stills waits outside the door, tirelessly knocking while yelling “Hey! Yeah you, I know you’re in there damn it. You’ve been spending a lot of away from me off on those little movie escapades. and let me tell you- it better worth both of our whiles cause I ain’t got all day and neither do you.” Like Ben Stiller‘s directorial debut so candidly informs reality does in fact bite.

So, with the real world ever on our asses making sure we know that we don’t have that much time on this earth and that we better damn well be putting it to good use, we take an assessment of every movie we’ve been spending our precious moments (natch) viewing and start putting each film through the winnower to separate the grain from the chaff. At the end of this process, with our heads and spirits lifted high we emerge justified. Justified, because we have in our possession something of incalculable worth.  An Excalibur with which we can battle our own inner demons of time management so as to not feel like we’ve wasted countless hours on endeavors that are anything less than of an aesthetically, emotionally and entertainingly purposeful criterion (natch). Yes ladies and gentlemen, we have a LIST. With this list you’ve accomplished something. You’ve scoured through dirt and rock to find those few nuggets of gold. With a list you’ve braved new frontiers and now have a map to guide others (with not as much time on their hands for, in this case, cinematic exploits) towards the valleys of green and away from the pits of cocoon always lurking about (with their nasty added CGI tentacles and beaks). Ah, yes. A person with a list – and not just any list but a well-rounded, I’ve watched enough stuff to make an intelligent assessment, sort of list- is a fulfilled person indeed.

In simpler terms, a list is a nice, organized way to reward, categorize and make sense of all that we’ve experienced and subjected ourselves to within a certain frame of time. In this case the movies we’ve all watched and admired this last year. Enough with the over analysis, bring on the Best Of lists for 2011!

LOT’S WIFE or a brief reflection on nostalgia and the films that have dealt with it in 2011.

I’ve spent the last moth playing catch up on all the best, hottest and yes, slapped in the face by the Oscars, movies of this past year and a common theme,  2011′s zeitgeist it would appear, seems to be nostalgia. Here’s a quick list (and I’m sure I’m missing some): Midnight in Paris, My Week with Marilyn, The Artist, Hugo, Super 8, Take Me Home Tonight, The Muppets, The Tree of Life. I haven’t compared the list to past year’s crops of films, but each of  these movies in at least some capacity is either thematically driven by nostalgia or nostalgia was used as the hook to get people to see it. I think this whole concept stood out to me because quite a few of the front-runners of the Oscar noms deal heavily with nostalgia.

Now, I loathe the idea of movies about Hollywood or the filmmaking process because quite frankly there is a whole, wide, huge, awesome, colorful, creative and bizarre world outside the walls of LA County. But, because you should “write watcha know,” Hollywood screenwriters inevitably churn out  a slew of movies about movies every year. I say I loathe the idea because in reality I tend to end up liking quite a few of these movies regardless of my convictions about them because let’s face it, I love everything about movies.  This year’s crop of movies about movies actually turned out to be something special. Hugo, The Artist and My Week With Marilyn come to mind all being quite moving, nostalgic portraits of a the bygone eras of cinema when everything seemed rosier then the present. Interestingly enough, although steeped in the world of nostalgia, they all also deal with the turmoil of the future, of change which is always looming over the good times of the past.

Scorsese's Hugo takes a nostalgic look at the films of dream-maker Georges Méliès

Woody Allen takes the issue of nostalgia head on in Midnight in Paris and actually calls it out on its shit which I really dug. I liked the idea kicking nostalgia’s ass a little bit only because it’s something that I absolutely love and it absorbs a great deal of my time thoughts and energy away from the present and the possibilities of the future. A quote I’ve come to appreciate from Melville is as follows:

“The Past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the Future is, in all things, our friend. In the Past is no hope; the Future is both hope and fruition. The Past is the text-book of tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot’s wife, crystallized in the act of looking backwards, and forever incapable of looking before.” 

Yay Midnight in Paris.

Woody Allen works out his own proclivities towards and cautions of nostalgia in Midnight in Paris

So, we’ve had self-indulgent movies of cinematic nostalgia, we’ve had a movie that simultaneously delights in and scolds nostalgia and then there’s Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Some call it a prayer-like, some call poem-like, some call it egotistical, some call it a masterpiece and some people just call it boring. Whatever your reaction to the masterpiece (oops) may be, two thing are abundantly clear. It’s completely personal and totally nostalgic- like creation of the universe nostalgic (talk about yearning for the past, geez Malick). But the thing that makes The Tree of Life different is that, while it offers nostalgic scenes from the past, it really puts them all in the perspective of time: past, present and future. It offers a natural and generational look at the past and how it affects future generations as well as our natural world around us. Malick’s backwards lenses may have been rosy on the edges, but their hindsight is certainly 20/20. The Tree of Life doesn’t revel in its nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. Rather it is a tool masterfully placed within the larger context of Malick’s overall vision for his  prayer-like, poem-like, masterpiece of a film.

Terrence Malick's Tree of Life contextualizes nostalgia by weaving his own personal memories into the timeline of the universe

What more is there to say, I guess 2011 may be the year of nostalgia for American cinema. It’s certainly been fun to take a look back with some of these movies but here’s hoping next year turns our attention away from the glamours of the past and towards the vitality of the present and the hope of the future.

1. http://www.milehighcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/hugo-paramount-pictures04.jpg

2. http://buquad.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/211.jpg

3.http://pykorry.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Tree-of-Life.jpg