This movie is FABULOUS.

I jest not, my friend. Many people say the films I enjoy are "pretentious" and I fail to understand why, at least objectively.

For example, many people come in IMDb and say Ingmar Bergman's films are pretentious, and I can't even start to understand why. To be pretentious, something or someone needs to pretend it is something it really is not. Now, how can an Ingmar Bergman film, made with a low budget, a film full of interesting and meaningful ideas, great work by all people involved, be "pretentious"? What I'm asking is, how can something that succeeds in doing what it tries to do, be "pretentious"?

As people start explaining their reasons for the film being pretentious, I give up even answering, since their ignorance on what the medium of film is is simply overwhelming.

As for this film, which I haven't seen yet, I was really asking. I will post my thoughts on this film after watching it.

However, some people compare this to Wong Kar Wai. Another good example. Just like old Godard, Wong Kar Wai is the least pretentious filmmaker there is - his films try to be no more than that which they are.

This type of claims ("it's a pretentious film") are often so subjective and lacking information and knowledge that they can't even be taken into account, they often turn into displays of ignorance. Just because you didn't like it or understand it, it doesn't mean it's pretentious. It means you didn't like it or understand it.

The thing is, most great artists who go down in History start out as "pretentious". Would you say Mozart was pretentious? Would you say Picasso was pretentious? Or Salvador Dalí? I wouldn't either, but many did say they were back in their time.

The only pretentious films I ever watched are all Hollywood blockbusters. Why? Because you have this amazing advertising campaign in which they spend more money then on the actual film, and then you go watch it and it's meaningless and lacking any creativity. It's there for you to pay the ticket and chew pop corn at. There's a promise of something awesome, and then it's another one and a half hours of clichés. Now that's pretentious. And I have nothing against Hollywood or blockbusters, I'm actually a consumer, but there are some that leave me cold and wondering where the hell did good old classic Hollywood go (kudos for Scorsese for trying...)

And finally, I would say that often times the most pretentious thing is to say a film is pretentious when you clearly did not understand what it tried to convey. It's ok not to like it, but you can't really say it's pretentious just because you didn't like or understand it.

I don't enjoy or understand Quantum physics, but I'm not saying it's pretentious.

"Quantum physics tries to explain the behavior of even smaller particles. These particles are things like electrons, protons, and neutrons. Quantum physics even describes the particles which make these particles! That's right; the model of an atom that you were taught in high-school is wrong. The electrons don't orbit like planets; they form blurred clouds of probabilities around the nucleus. Protons and neutrons? They're each made of three quarks, each with its own 'flavor' and one of three 'colors'. Lets not forget the gluons, the even smaller particles that hold this mess together when they collect and form glueballs (not a very original name). Why weren't you told about this already? Were you fluent in calculus when you took general chemistry? The quantum model of the atom is much more complex than the traditional model, so most teachers save that stuff for college. (But this doesn't mean that you can't have a basic understanding and impress your friends!) The reason that quantum physics needs complex math to explain the behaviors and properties of small particles is that the world of these subatomic particles is a very bizarre one, filled with quantum probabilities and organized chaos."

Now, would you say that is pretentious?


Last film watched:
Blood Diamond by Edward Zwick - 7/10