MovieChat Forums > (Untitled) (2011) Discussion > Brilliant, misunderstood movie.

Brilliant, misunderstood movie.

posted 13 years ago by bessarabia
3 replies | jump to latest

I've seen this 4 times - it's hilarious and brilliant. Unlike Boogie Woogie, it's not meant as a mean-spirited trashing of the art world. Instead, it invites us to choose our own threshold between art and *beep* The point it's making is that this threshold is subjective and best defined in retrospect. Critiquing art that teeters on the line between cutting-edge and *beep* through the eyes of a musician whose work does the same, is a great non-judgmental way of posing the question: what is art? The film makes no attempt to answer the question. Instead, it gives us witty vignettes of people trying to figure out the answer on their own.

This isn't fare for Cineplexes - it's an art house movie about art. I'm amazed, though, that so many of the critics trashed it. It clearly hit a nerve with some of them who teeter on the edge of *beep* themselves.

[–] GeoDude 13 years ago

Sometimes it's hard to tell if it's serious or parody. That makes it even funnier.

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My vote history: http://imdb.to/GeoDudeVotes

[–] HotRod_SC 13 years ago

I think it's not completely serious since it is a comedy, but for me is an overall tribute to the avant-garde approach and way of thinking. Crticis are full of crap, they suffer from the same Van Gogh syndrome this movie adresses: the fact they have already championed movies like Citizen Kane or The Godfather makes them think they have to preserve that same vision in artistic films, when in fact many of those azzoles championed 2001 and are turned off by David Lynch's Eraserhead. They are crazy inconsistent.

It's a bit like the main's character views on music: the fact he disregards Beethoven or Mozart as commercial "crap" in comparison with more original recent work makes him approach far nearer towards the crazy aspects of contemporary classical music rather than to the classic composers.

In other words, what I'm trying to say is that, just like you can like both Diehard as much as The Godfather or Sunset Boulevard, you can also like films like Million Dollar Baby as much as this film.

In fact, I do the same thing with music. I like as much classic composers like Mozart, Vivaldi and Ravel as much as I like jazz artists like John Coltrane or Chick Corea. And I like contemporary composers like Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic or Frank Zappa as much as I like rockers like Led Zepelin or... Frank Zappa.

Actually, if you found the concept of this movie interesting, especially when it comes to the music, I highly recommend you to listen to Frank Zappa, he could write mainstream classical music as brilliantly as he could compose jazz, avant-garde, noise-rock, or simple, goofy mainstream rock. Probably it's thanks to him that I could understand this movie in the first place.

now this is acting: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2458172160/tt1528718

[–] on3gin 10 years ago

Years ago I was connected with a local art association. We'd have an opening every two or three weeks. If you stood by the refreshments table you couldn't tell if the patrons were talking about the wine, the cheese or the stuff on the walls because the critical jargon is the same. This hilarious movie brought it all back.