In the 1979 film Manhattan, Woody Allen becomes visibly hostile as Diane Keaton reveals her “Academy of the Overrated,” a list of artists she feels garner too much praise for their work:
Gustav Mahler, Lenny Bruce, Vincent van Gogh, Ingmar Bergman…
This scene points to two simple truths:
1) Art can be very personal for us, with criticisms of our favorites affecting us in irrational ways.
2) We sometimes feel that artists get more credit than they deserve.
This column will be a place where I will explore acclaimed artists and works that I feel are not as great as many think. Once a movie has been declared “one of the greatest of all time,” we sometimes accept it as flawless and fail to develop our own opinions. Roger Ebert may find it useful to think about what makes Great Movies so good, but I find it equally useful to think about what makes “great” movies not so good.
Supposedly Snubbed
It’s that time of the year—the time when everyone in Hollywood shakes each other’s hands and pats themselves on the back for the few movies they’ve made that are worthy of awards in the dying art form known as cinema.
Yes, the Academy Awards are approaching in less than two weeks.
Film pundits and moviegoers alike have been chipping in as to who they think was overlooked for the nominations, and the masses seem to be lamenting the fact that Christopher Nolan was snubbed for his work as director of The Dark Knight, the latest Batman flick.
But how much does he, as a filmmaker, really deserve the award? The man attempted to show off his directorial skills by having the camera spin around characters during intense sequences of dialogue. For a film that was supposed to make Batman seem realistic, however, those conversations were often lofty and overtly philosophical. Nolan is certainly talented, but he is often so caught up in the little tricks of filmmaking that he forgets how people act in real life.
Nolan’s weaknesses as a director are even more apparent in his breakthrough 2000 film Memento. This trip of a movie is loved by film buffs and it’s a darling with the critics, but it is ultimately one giant gimmick, proof that complexity does not always spell greatness. Memento already has the status of an independent classic, but particularly in terms of character development, it is apparent that Nolan is a post-Tarantino filmmaker who has spent more time studying filmmaking than studying real life.
Backwards
This movie is famous for its unconventional narrative structure—the events are presented in reverse-chronological order. Leonard (Guy Pearce) has no short-term memory and is unable to remember anything since the rape and murder of his wife when he sustained damaging injuries trying to save her. His condition, however, does not stop him from pursuing the man who took away both the love of his life and his memory. In order to solve the mystery, he takes pictures of the people he meets and takes notes so he’ll never forget, ingraining the most crucial details on his body in the form of tattoos. However, one incorrect note could put him on the wrong path, and he can never fully trust anyone.
Unfortunately, the story reads much better on paper than it appears on screen. Memento is a fairly standard mystery turned on its head by its reverse-chronological gimmick. The intended effect is to give us a look into Leonard’s head in order for us to better understand his condition. However, there are times when Nolan seems more interested in reminding us that the film is going backwards than in using this device to tell us anything about the character.
For example, Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), a bartender and girlfriend of a drug dealer who is for some reason helping Leonard on his mission, does not believe Leonard’s condition at first. When he is at Natalie’s bar, Leonard takes a sip of a drink, but it is revealed in the subsequent scene that several people had spit in the drink, Natalie’s way of testing the condition. Nolan’s film has become wrapped up in the “novelty” and cuteness of its premise as if it’s screaming out, “I’m going backwards!”
This tiring structure would be worth it if we had a character worth investing in, but Leonard is such a hollow character, caught somewhere between detached investigator and lofty philosopher. This is someone who has lost his wife, and yet he takes the case as if he were still the insurance investigator he was before he lost his memory. The last thing he remembers is the rape and murder of his wife, for crying out loud. When Leonard’s not playing cop, he’s philosophizing about the nature of memory and commenting that “the world doesn’t just disappear when you close your eyes.” The different fragments sometimes come off as superficially philosophical vignettes about life. Nolan uses bullshit dialogue instead of actually making use of the narrative structure to make us think. Leonard is not a character — he’s a pawn in Nolan’s game.
In the end, Christopher Nolan comes off as a film student who is so excited about the possibilities of editing and unconventional storytelling that he forgets to take on perhaps the most important part of his job — to work with his actors to develop the different characters. We invest so much time in this movie, yet none of it pays off because none of the characters are worth it. Nolan is yet another in a generation of young filmmakers who, despite ample talent, has spent too much time thinking about the movies and too little time about the stories they want to tell. He really should just cut the artsy stuff and stick to Batman, because at least those movies are a hell of a good time.