TAKI

Ok, I’ll be very honest. As much as I like going to film school, there are some things that piss me off. Eventually, in life, you get to realize that no matter where you are, you’re gonna be surrounded by a bunch of idiots.

Here is no different.

For the most part, a traditional non-practical film class works like this: you have a lecture, then you watch a movie. Usually, that’s fun. You get to see how a large group of people reacts to very specific things: the moment when Orson Welles’s face is revealed in The Third Man; the closing lines of Some Like It Hot; Kim Novak’s transformation in Vertigo, etc.

Recently, in a screenwriting class, we watched Sidney Lumet’s Network.

That was never on the syllabus, however. We were instead going to see Jaws. The professor just mentioned that the movie had changed, but didn’t specify to what. He said it was gonna be a surprise and started to screen it after lecture.

(The one time he actively asked us to pick between two options, they were Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America and Thomas Vinterberg’s Dogme 95 classic The Celebration. Only 2 out of 140 people voted palatably, to which the professor added one of the most puke-inducing quotes I’ve ever heard anyone say at this most prestigious institution: “I wouldn’t make you guys sit through subtitles just before Thanksgiving, anyway”).

I’d seen Lumet’s 1976 film only once, on TV. I had forgotten how brilliant the movie was. But because this isn’t a blog devoted to film analysis, I won’t spend much time going through its absurdist critiques of our completely fucked up worshipping of dumb shit, and all of the layers of social and political commentary that the film offers.

As I find myself constantly doing, I’ll focus on the idiots instead.

The film ended. Barely anyone applauded (they usually do; when we saw Frozen it was a jam!). Then the professor climbed onstage again and on his cool-in-between-boomers-and-millennials-guy pose, asked what were our thoughts.

See, some time ago I started writing down dumb quotes as a way to deal with them instead of punching the morons who said them in the face. They’re on a folder in my computer notes called TAKI: To Avoid Killing Idiots.

I’ll list some of their comments:

1. “It’s not very memorable. There’s no actual plot to remember, just some scenes here and there.”
2. “The movie is against women in the working force.”
3. “It’s written like it tried to be a satire, but it just feels normal. […] If you ever wanted to remake it, you’d have to go beyond for it to be effective.”
4. “I just thought everything was long, including the camera movements.”
5. “Who even is the protagonist?/Who are we supposed to care about?/William Holden’s supposed to be the spine, the character that we follow, but there are moments when we don’t care for him at all. I don’t know, he had a different energy./Why is everyone so unlikeable? I don’t like this.”
6. “The ex-wife is the only likable character.”
7. “Maybe it could become a TV show. Then you could properly focus on every character and every subplot.”

Ok.

Don’t get me wrong, many people liked the film. And were pissed at those comments, too. But here are some things no one tried to mention:

1. The content: the actual meaning of the film as a piece of artistic expression.
2. An in-depth philosophical discussion based on the above-listed item.
3. The subversive language of the film and how it feeds every. single. theme. explored.

It’s like they don’t understand that film isn’t necessarily about plot, but about the abstract concepts and themes it lays out through light, movement and sound. That scenes can even randomly be put together to express, constructively, those ideas in a non-linear or non-consequential way.

That the fact that Faye Dunaway’s character is a complete bitch is not an attack on women in the work force, but rather the development of a multi-layered female character that happens to be flawed, just like Robert Duvall’s, William Holden’s, or Marlene Warfield’s. Especially in a film where gender roles are far from the central concern. (Oh, if they ever read Macbeth they’d have quite a surprise.)

That satire does not have to be Monty Python. That every piece of dialogue, every motivation of every character, every dwelling on iconography and the culture of institutions, every pompous theatrical staging and every piece of absurd dialogue such as:

“Hi. I’m Diana Christensen, a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.”

“I’m Laureen Hobbs, a badass commie n*gger.”

“Sounds like the basis of a firm friendship.”

…is greatly exaggerated, with a lot of meaning behind it all; it’s satire at its finest.

That film does not need to and should not be overly cut, and that letting a piece of moving image breathe and work on itself is good for a change.

That a film doesn’t need to have a single protagonist, and that not everything is about character. That the famous bearers of pretty faces on screen may actually just be playing tools that personify certain concepts and ideas, and their interactions and their meanings may have more to contribute to a work than the noblest of Shakespearean soliloquy-based intentions.

That you don’t have to like a character. That there are no goodies and baddies. That people like William Holden’s ex-wife, despite her Best Supporting Actress Oscar, are secondary to a much larger scheme that features much much more interesting personalities and types that are not necessarily in tune with the real world.

That not everything must be grounded in reality, and having a protagonist who’s “supposedly likable” (he isn’t) does not mean that everything that he makes is what the film defends. Network is not about husbands who mistreat their neglected wives.

That not everything must be told, re-told, made, re-made, revisited, spin-offed, adapted to our most modern times, and that a film such as this was meant to be seen exactly the way it was made originally. Because that’s what it is. Otherwise, it would be like trying to remake Van Gogh’s The Starry Night.

That the very idea of making it into a TV show in order to “better explore the characters and subplots” is in part what the film is criticizing. Because the individual personalities and subplots aren’t the reason why that film was made in the first place.

See, this is majestically annoying.

I’ll never accept that people get this far in “the best film school in the world” being so cinematically illiterate, and seemingly without ever seeing a film that didn’t come from “The ABC’s of Formulaic Cinema — The Dumbed Down Edition”.

If this is how they react to something like Network, which was a film with such a commercial appeal that it even got 4 Oscars back then, what would they think of the likes of Werner Herzog? Andrzej Wajda? Volker Schlöndorff? Glauber Rocha? Alain Resnais? Max Ophüls? Dziga Vertov? Michelangelo Antonioni? Federico Fellini? Jacques Tati? Elio Petri? John Cassavetes? Sam Fuller? Kenji Mizoguchi? Pier Paolo Pasolini? Luis Buñuel? Tomás Gutierrez Alea? Alejandro Jodorowski? Andrei Tarkovsky? Ingmar Bergman? Nicolas Roeg? Abbas Kiarostami? Not to mention the [purely] experimental folks.

Maybe that’s why their idea of what makes a great filmmaker is whatever the fuck Steven Spielberg is doing next. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll always enjoy watching Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s the work of a masterful filmmaker.

But film is more.

And I wish we could be pushed to consume and to discuss more of what it is.

It’s a good thing I’m graduating soon. I’d hate to have another teacher apologize for showing Pudovkin’s Earth, noting that she could have picked something “much worse” (!) instead. Or for making us “read subtitles just before Thanksgiving”.

Maybe my fellow students’ filmic illiteracy isn’t just for subtitles. Regardless, I doubt this will ever change.

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

No matter where you go, you’ll be followed by mediocrity. Even in the self-proclaimed best film school in the world.

Fight On.