Here’s an excerpt from a comment by Variety writer Peter Debruge, left on a SXSW dispatch by Aaron Hillis on Glenn Kenny’s blog:
Pretty soon, it all reduces to semantics, but the label benefits those it describes in that it connects films that, on an individual basis, would be too small to register on most people’s radar. Would Hannah Takes the Stairs or Quiet City or Mutual Appreciation have warranted a NY Times piece on their own? (Then again, is the NYT even the right forum to discuss such films, which seem to do just fine with the more selective audience of the blogosphere?)
Debruge is here giving us an object lesson in why most applications of The M Word are really, really frustrating: the genre label becomes a polite form of thinly masking the condescending assumption that none of these films can stand on their own without it. Mutual Appreciation is not a film that needs a movement as a prerequisite, especially one which mostly coalesced after its premiere. As resolutely analog as it is, it also hardly fits in with Debruge’s wider argument that “important thing is that digital cameras, home editing software and the internet have enabled a new wave of filmmakers, many of whom have become very close friends, sharing equipment, ideas, cast and crew.”
This statement is not totally false, but at the risk of sounding like a cranky Marxist, it seems like he’s really talking about the means/tools of production. Goliath and Hannah Takes The Stairs might share an actor and certain technical commonalities, but I can’t imagine two films being more different in their sensibilities. By Debruge’s rationale, The Ten Commandments and The Tingler were part of the same “movement,” because both were shot on film cameras, both were released in movie theaters, both were produced by gimmicky showmen, and both productions employed Vincent Price.
Actually, now that I think about it, The Ten Commandments and The Tingler are basically the same movie. Never mind!
8 Comments
Exactly.
Peter’s comment is a good read.
Bring back the bald guy with the beard…
I’m still trying to figure out what Debruge said that’s so bad. I haven’t seen a single Mumblecore movie myself so I can’t speak about what that particular movement’s about or if it even is one from personal experience.
However, “means of production” is a totally valid descriptor of a film “movement.” Not as a sole descriptor it doesn’t hold up, but as a part as Debruge uses it, yes.
Are “Scorpio Rising” and “Flaming Creatures” anything alike? Not hardly, but you can certainly lump Smith and Anger into the same New American Cinema movement of the ’60s and use the fact that both men used 16mm, worked with extremely low budgets and were celebrated and appreciated by the same audiences as uniting them.
I also don’t know if either Smith or Anger’s films were written about in the NYTimes in the ’60s, but instead of blogs today those films were mostly championed by Jonas Mekas in the Voice and in other “underground” media. It’s always the same that there are going to be film styles and “movements” ignored by the more mainstream media. If Mumblecore is covered by the mainstream, even in a slightly condescending way then that’s probably a step up for it.
If i were Bujalski i would be very upset to be lumped in with Swanberg and the rest. Not just for reasons of a technical nature, but primarily for content, execution and depth.
Has Peter Debruge forgotten that the NYTimes already wrote a feature about Andrew Bujalski over a year before anyone in the mainstream media was buzzing about any of this “mumblecore” business?
All this talk of a “movement” has really diluted discussion about the substantial talents some of these filmmakers possess; talents that many others lumped alongside them simply do not have, or in the very least, have yet to display. The filmmakers who have capitalized most off the notion of “mumblecore” are, to my mind, also the least deserving of the additional media coverage. It’s unfair that the backlash against some lame films from summer ‘07 has dragged the names of some good films from summer ‘06 into this mess.
Hey Peter: To my understanding Bujalski was one of the very first to speak out about ‘mumblecore,’ refuting both its existence and importance. So, on that, he’s been there, for months, in a very vocal way.
Wynns, I’m amazed you left a comment.
Karina, as always, you’re right, and for my part, the whole crew is in my estimation a generation and so very far from a movement that every time so one brings up ‘mumblecore’ in conversation I think of them as having antiquated views. As it stands, as you’ve said, these are amazing filmmakers who define not a movement so much as trends of the time through their own set of specifics. Ultimately a movement begs for a set of outlined principles, whether consciously or unconsciously made. There are few to no shared principals in any of these filmmakers works.
Enjoy it while it lasts, because one idea doesn’t negate the other along the path to selling out, err I mean, getting discovered. Was it a production sound mixer or a post sound editor or mixer that originally gave it the term? Indiscreet sound is their bane of existence.