MovieChat Forums > Shijie (2005) Discussion > Liking this movie doesn't make you intel...

Liking this movie doesn't make you intelligent...

posted 16 years ago by Taybugboo
9 replies | jump to latest

This post is in response to everyone on this board who accuses people who dislike this movie of being unintelligent and poorly educated.

PLEASE! I watched this movie in my ENG 266 class, The History of the Motion Picture. Call it art, neorealism or whatever you want, it doesn't make it any better. It is acclaimed for portraying "Real Life". If I wanted that, I would go to a coffee shop and watch people. It would border around the same level of entertainment. The characters are hard to care about and there is no plot line, just some random events over a lot of people .

Don't automatically think I am a little child with no brain because I think this movie is terrible. Don't just like this movie simply because you think it makes you artistic and intelligent simply for doing so.

Alright, I am done ranting now.

[–] PunchB 16 years ago

I really liked it. I'm sure there are lots of intelligent people who didn't like it. I'm also pretty sure there are no unintelligent people who liked it. In other words, you don't have to be stupid to dislike this movie, but you do have to be intelligent to like it.

Comments like "It's really boring" reveal that one isn't that bright though. If you're intelligent, you have some more substantial reasons for not liking it. _Your_ criticism doesn't seem very smart either, I'm sorry to say. You should know that plot driven movies aren't the only good movies, in fact it's often the other way around. The clicheed and bad Hollywood movies are mostly plot driven. The great movies from people like Wong Kar-wai, David Lynch, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Truffaut, Rohmer... are often not.

"The characters are hard to care about". Yes, this movie is "hard" if you don't have the skill or sensitivity to pick up on everything that actually is going on. I probably wouldn't have liked it very much 15 years ago either. But I would recognize that it wasn't because the movie was bad, but because it was too subtle for me and my movie viewing brain (or art appreciation brain) hadn't matured enough yet.

[–] Taybugboo 16 years ago

I'm not bright because I said its boring? Okay so I didn't delve into the logistics about what made this movie boring to me. Maybe that's because I wrote my previous post when I had just gotten out of a three hour viewing sitting in a hard desk chair.

The point of what I wrote wasn't to do a film analysis (believe me I did enough of that in class), it was just to simply refute all of the people on these boards who accuse those people who didn't like the movie of not being intelligent enough to "get it".

My previous post does not reflect lack of intelligence, it just simply skims the surface of how I felt coming out of the viewing. I'm sorry if I didn't go into specifics.

[–] PunchB 16 years ago

You didn't say it was boring in your original post, that was an example I used (although of course it did seem like you thought it was boring).

Maybe you do have an intelligent reason for not liking the movie. But to me, not liking a movie because of lack of plot or trouble caring about the characters doesn't seem intelligent. But I won't rule out that with more explanation provided, I could be wrong.

I'd also like to say that the intelligence I'm talking about, has a lot to do with being well versed in the language of cinema, a kind of "movie intelligence," which I also hinted at in my first post.

[–] GameWithStones 16 years ago

You didn't really give a good reason for thinking the movie is terrible, though, so people have a right to question your intelligence. Its not as if you're just merely stating that the movie is dull. You're attacking the movie for your being bored; calling it a bad movie. You're over-simplifying the movie by saying you could go to a coffee shop and get the same level of "entertainment".

"The characters are hard to care about" doesn't really make sense; why are they hard to care about? "There is no plot line, just some random events over a lot of people" isn't much of a criticism, either. Why do films need traditional dramatic narratives to achieve something?

[–] Taybugboo 16 years ago

A film doesn't need traditional dramatic narratives, it needs something though. What is it about a movie that makes it good? Noncomformity does not equal a quality film. My post was simply to make that statement because it seems like thats what everybody likes about it. What about this film made it good?

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[–] A_Friend_of_Sarah_Connor 12 years ago

I can't say that this movie grabbed my attention in any way, no offense to anyone that liked it. It tried to do this weird mix of extremely formalist qualities (composition, plot progression, etc.) and more realistic elements (long takes, naturalistic acting and dialogue, etc.) and it just didn't work for me. It looked beautiful, but the thing was just FAR too long. It didn't gel and its message of globalization could have been expressed in half the time. Finally, the ending just straight up frustrated me:

I felt no attachment to these characters and then for them to be killed off in some contrived manner? That did not do the film any favors, at least for me.

"I'm gonna need a hacksaw"

[–] IEatWords 12 years ago

I always find it funny when movies such as The World try so hard at realism and in the end, the product turns out more stylized than many mainstream films.

You don't have to be intelligent to like this film, afterall the idea itself isn't too far off from an episode of Big Brother. It's all about the style. It's like saying if you like drone music then you're more intelligent than listeners of pop music.