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MichaelJPollock's Replies
Yeah, I wish more film directors these day studied how Fincher's films are shots and edited, and take more stock....
Yes, I know what you mean. The direction is undoubtedly masterful -as always with Fincher- but the film itself is underwhelming and I think quite voluntarily so.
Here we have a protagonist who is a sociopath with no character arc, who learns nothing (I read here and there that he opens himself to the idea of empathy throughout the film : I absolutely do not see or agree with that), who isn't particularly courageous and very difficult to identify with, evolving in an "Apple store" world that is all shiny surfaces and glitter and gourmet food and slick technology but absolutely devoid of a sense of history, human warmth or meaningful connections.
Allen Baron's 1961 'Blast of Silence' also comes to mind. It's very similar to 'The Killer', in that the protagonist is also quite clearly a non-romanticised sociopath and we are privy to his inner thoughts as he methodically follows his target and prepares for the hit.
Yeah, just joking and pointing out the interesting (or maybe trivial) similarities between Pitt's character both films...
12 Monkeys 1996, Fight Club 1999.
Actually, Schwarzenegger won a Golden Globe Award for "Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture" for his turn in Bob Rafelson's 'Stay Hungry' (1977) starring Jeff Bridges and Sally Field.
"It sounds gay." Plenty of that in that film.
Yes, and it wasn't really necessary to show it. I wish the documentary had been less voyeuristic in several occasions, and had left Rob his dignity in death. Quite crass.
Also, in a documentary filled with criminals and drug addicts, Jon (the director / "interviewer") seemed to be the least sympathetic and most sociopathic of all. Sometimes appearing to be staging human misery and taking a problematic non-intervention stance (while sometimes lecturing his subjects).
When a guy threatens and terrorises his pregnant girlfriend (which we learn he once hit with a baseball bat...) at the beginning Jon doesn't intervene (or try to get someone to intervene) at all and instead, minutes later, hovers above the poor girl crying in bed, her face into the pillow, to ask her questions. But Jon has no problems lecturing Freddie about courage and how he should turn himself in when he skips parole near the end of the documentary.
Make up you mind Jon: either you decide to be an unobtrusive documenter, or you decide to participate in the story of the people whose lives you're documenting, in which case your actions (or lack thereof) and words reflect on your moral character as a human being.
"What I've done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed... forever."
What transformation though?
1. I think it's unintentional and to show he's rattled enough to lose his legendary 60 bpm heartbeat cool. If really intentional though, I guess it'd be the kind of detail he'd think helps him blend in the crowd as an everyday man ("guy's so clumsy and unsteady, he's hard to picture as an ice cold sharp shooter").
2. I took it to possibly mean one of four things:
1) She's afraid they'll come back and finish the job in an even more gruesome manner, and so needs assurance that the killer will take care of the problem...
2) She was afraid she might have told her aggressors about the whereabouts of the killer...
3) A hint that she wasn't raped. If I recall correctly, in the comics, an associate of the killer asks him if she was, and he more or less replies "Don't want to know. Didn't ask."...
4) It's a very astute psychological observation of what happens when you enter in a relationship with a soul-obliterating psychopath like the killer, as described in Fincher's fantastic series 'Mindhunter': "When we empathise with a psychopath, we actually negate the self. We deny our own beliefs about decency and humanity, and that can be very dangerous." When the girl speaks next to the killer, even though she's been the victim of a brutal assault, she totally downplays her own traumatic experience (and his responsibility in setting it in motion and letting it happen) and is instead anxious to earn his approval ("you'd have been proud of me". "It could have been worse").
Now we who missed it are curious....
"...to ultimately filling his void of a cup with human connection by the end of the film."
Did you feel the film showed us that at the end though ?
I found it hard to believe, considering how "far gone" the killer was on the road to complete sociopathy, that he would care for that girl (or anyone) at all.
It's one of my gripes with how the film is written: in the comics, the killer has numerous sexual encounters (one night stands mostly, even with a woman he and an "associate" decide to execute later on...) and although all his relationships are highly transactional ("what's in it for me?") it gives you a hint as to why he'd be with that girl (they screw, she doesn't ask question. period.) and would want to avenge her assault.
In the film, it seems very out of character for him to care about anyone at all to the point of almost being emotional (hospital scene).
But that being said, I liked that the killer doesn't go through the classic epiphanic character arc of most anti-heroes, and doesn't change one bit throughout the film. He's the exact same scumbag at the end he is at the beginning.
I could almost hear Fincher standing being me going: "I DARE you to identify with that protagonist!". He's both Sommerset AND John Doe from Se7en. The irredeemable sociopath who decides to give up on humanity and "say f*ck it and go live in the woods (the jungle in this particular case....)".
I hear you. Put off watching his films for more that 20 years (had only seen a handful) and finally treated myself to a complete Woody Allen retrospective during Covid, and man, what a fantastic discovery it was ! Really loved his 70's output, as well as his 80's "Bergman period".
Maybe, but once the first wave of grifters has been exposed, it's difficult to pull the same scam again. And I'm not sure they're that inventive. "BLM are currently unavailable for comments, as they are busy hating on the Jews right now."
Well no, by then BLM representatives all had their luxury houses so there was no reason anymore for anyone of them to instrumentalize people's suffering for their own personal pecuniary benefit.
"Your" God inspired thousands of his servants on earth to rape children.
just a reminder.
Yeah, but with slavery you get to exert control over them and dispose of them as you please. In 'Get Out', you become what you perceive to be the "intolerable other". There is indeed something of a paradox there.
"Just ask this scientician: he'll tell you that...."
https://youtu.be/zR_4h5A5z_A?t=108
I was!
Hey... You!
Intense as well
https://youtu.be/XER4ajsMI7w?t=65