Why does Art Cinema hate the Actor?

[knives]

Emphasizing art direction in the mis-en-scene doesn't mean that the actor is being treated secondary and certainly doesn't mean that the director's hate the actors nor is this specific to art house directors. After all Ridley Scott and Tim Burton are as mainstream as one can get and they do just that. Likewise a more 'underground' director like PTA is the very definition of an actors' director. In that case too the reason has nothing to do with the mis-en-scene or anything you brought up, but instead how he shoots. He's been moving away from close ups, but is still highly respected by actors for allowing them to do long takes and fulfill a scene. This technical aspect you seem to be focusing on goes beyond what we see to how the film is shot. It's a silly distraction from a point that I thought was actually good that you brought up in regards to scripting and using the characters as tools versus making them helpful to the cinematic experience, but that isn't necessarily an art house thing either though it is more common to that sort of European cinema.

[Kirkinson]

I'm using "naturalistic" for lack of a better word, but I would say the current Hollywood fits the mold well enough. Hollywood, though, was certainly not always using the standards of Stanislavski. Also, I never said "naturalistic" was the ideal. The only time that word is used in the OP is in the following question:

"Is this merely creating an alternative to the naturalistic performances seen in Hollywood?"

Which is sort of what you're agreeing to when you say that the current mode in Hollywood of character development is "by-the-numbers."

I'm not agreeing to anything of the sort. When I mention character development I'm talking just as much about screenwriting as I am about acting, and when I use the term "by-the-numbers" I'm not referring to a by-the-numbers reproduction of reality but a by-the-numbers reproduction of a formula of filmmaking (including acting) that I don't think actually qualifies as "naturalistic."

Also, in the OP, I asked to dig a little deeper than "this is just another way to make films."

And I made an honest effort to do so while simultaneously acknowledging my problems with your premise.

You're technically correct, it doesn't need special categorization, but for the sake of discussing something, why do you feel Art Cinema has taken up this trope? Do you find it increasing lately, particularly in the programs of festivals? If so, why? What is this a reaction to?

I think the "trope" as you have attempted to define it is too broad to be a single movement and your responses to others have only made me more confused about what you actually want to discuss. I sincerely apologize (maybe I just don't get it) but by "digging deeper" I feel like you're asking me to build a house out of incomplete pieces of three different blueprints on an unstable foundation.

Thus, with apologies:
• I'm not convinced the "trope" exists as you have defined it, and if it does, it is not exclusive to Art Cinema, as knives has helpfully pointed out. Did anybody refer to the latest Transformers movie as a "Shia LeBeouf film"? Is anybody going to go see Battleship for the acting, and do the actors in these films have any real acting to do, or will their very presence be dwarfed by the special effects? Is there any reason that the Star Wars prequels -- with actors performing alone in front of green screens, different takes being shuffled around in post even with a single shot, and George Lucas being infamously hands-off with his actors even when they ask for more direction -- don't fit the bill as well as any Bela Tarr film?
• I don't particularly find it increasing lately, in festival programming or otherwise. I saw many, many films at PIFF last Feburary, and only Uncle Boonmee really strikes me as fitting into this discussion. Even Certified Copy from Abbas Kiarostami, who has made several films that probably fit very easily into your proposed trope, leaped well off in the other direction.
• I can't say that it's a reaction to anything because the issues thus far discussed seem too broad, and I suspect there are multiple origins and reactions happening. I don't see much connection between the cases of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Bela Tarr, and Terrence Malick, for example, or between them and Iosseliani.

[MichaelB]

Bela Tarr is an obvious example for me, but one fresher in my mind is The Match Factory Girl by Kaurismaki, which I saw for the first time very recently. I haven't seen Le Havre, but I think this film has the same bizarre stylization of performance, it certainly doesn't give us much of anything in the way of what might conventionally be considered character development, and it also greatly favors wide shots over closeups. But for all that I was immediately and increasingly emotionally involved in it. I cared for the main character very deeply almost from the outset, and was moved nearly to tears by the end. Now, I can't begin to explain how the film achieved this. The effect is very mysterious to me. But it certainly can't be described as distancing and it's hard to imagine I could have been any more engaged than I was.

This is an excellent example, and it's one that's duplicated by many other Kaurismäki films - particularly Shadows in Paradise, Drifting Clouds and The Man Without a Past. It's probably not entirely a coincidence that the female lead in all four is played by Kati Outinen, as she seems to have an instinctive rapport with the director that others might not be able to match, but it's a fascinating example of an approach to performance that is quite deliberately Bressonian in its calculated stripping-away of everything but the most minimal detail (Kaurismäki has always been completely open about his influences here), and which nonetheless is very powerfully affecting.

But then again, I've known people who've sat through Kaurismäki films with an expression as poker-faced as that of any of their characters (indeed, on these very forums someone claimed that he got "absolutely nothing" out of The Match Factory Girl), so it clearly doesn't work for everyone.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

I'm glad Michael and Kirkinson have focussed on Kaurismaki for this thread as I wanted to chime in with him as an example too.
For all his self-deprecation Kaurismaki is a very skilfull director who has managed to mine an Absurdist theatrical tradition of performance and situation and make it rhapsodic. His characters locked into repetitive tasks and marginalised existence cling to improbable hope which render them heroic and possibly points to the emotional link that Kirkinson mentions.
For me, that is crystallised in Drifting Clouds which was destined for his other actor of choice, Matti Pellonpää, who died tragically shortly before filming and to whom the film is dedicated. His death affected Kaurismaki deeply and there is a little photo that is glimpsed of a child that I think is Pellonpaa.
That little touch, hommage apart, also speaks volumes in opening up the possibilities of a dead/missing child in the relationship between the lead couple which in "lesser" hands could have been milked to a mawkish degree.

[matrixschmatrix]

In the couple of Kaurismaki films I've seen, it seemed very much that the characters absolutely did have a great deal of definition- but it was definition given by what they did and where they were, rather than through explicit exposition, or even any particular dialog. Macel Marx in Le Harve is a good example: we see his routine and the world in which he lives, and we feel we know him (at least as much as anyone in his life does) because his life seems defined by those things. Thus, what actually happens in the movie acts as a charming surprise, as it seems to break from what we know- though on reflection, it does not. If Kaurismaki outrightly told us about the man's life, the effect wouldn't work half so well.

To me, this means that Kaurismaki is depending enormously upon the particular talents of his actors, as they must be people who seem immediately familiar without having a lot of the things actors often ask for to get into character- and they must ingratiate themselves with an incredible minimum of business to do. Challenging the actor is extraordinarily far from hating the actor, to me.

I also notice that you didn't bring up one of my favorite movies of the year, Meek's Cutoff- an actor's showcase if ever I saw one.

[Zot!]

Others have echoed the same sentiment, but I don't think Art Cinema (outside of experimental filmmakers and Bresson) really has a universal preference one way or another. I can probably find more examples against your argument than for it. Kiarostami in particular strikes a fairly good balance between actors and environment. Your examples are terribly specific, and you might have more luck discussing this related to individual directors, like maybe Jarmusch and Kaurismaki (who perhaps are just bad at directing actors).

[MichaelB]

The performances that Kaurismäki extracts are far too controlled and consistent across the board (even from his very first feature) for a charge that he's "bad at directing actors" to stand up.

Having seen him at work myself (shooting I Hired a Contract Killer in London: sadly, my own performance as Man Sitting Behind Jean-Pierre Léaud ended up on the cutting-room floor), I get the impression that he gives terse but very precise instructions, and that the actors are expected to follow them with minimal embellishment - and the better they are at doing this, the more likely they are to work with him again.

[Michael Kerpan]

Kaurismaki -- bad at directing actors? I can't think of any Kaurismake film which didn't feature marvelous performances -- by leads and supporting characters. (setting aside, perhaps, the Leningrad Cowboys sequel).

And as an example of "hating actors" -- Kaurismaki in particular seems utterly and completely inapt. I felt anything but "distanced from" the characters in Le Havre. I would suggest that the OP has a very limited notion of "effective" (and affecting) performance in cinema.

[Zot!]

Sorry, I wasn't making that argument against Kaurismaki myself. I was just recommending the OP focused their argument at the very least, and Kaurismaki had been brought up and does have a rather particular approach to performers that could be considered antagonistic perhaps.

[Perkins Cobb]

One important correlative, I think, is the extent to which actors' directors like Lumet and Kazan have been ignored or disparaged over the years by auteurist (and formalist) critics. Some of my favorite contemporary directors, like Mike Leigh and Noah Baumbach, are very actor-oriented ... but they're not the names who come immediately to mind in a thread headed "art cinema."

[MichaelB]

Some of my favorite contemporary directors, like Mike Leigh and Noah Baumbach, are very actor-oriented ... but they're not the names who come immediately to mind in a thread headed "art cinema."

...even though the late Gilbert Adair once acclaimed Leigh as "the one currently employed British director of international class":

Yet, beneath that admittedly overwhelming surface mimicry, his kinship is rather with such austere mandarins as Bresson, Rossellini and Dreyer, i.e. he is a director of miracles. Those in Leigh’s films are all the more authentic for being almost intangible: the mutual commiseration offered by two frustrated women in Grown-Ups or the unforeseen delicacy with which a teenager caresses the raw, brand new baldness of his skinhead brother at the end of Meantime. And, in view of his abiding preoccupation with the family unit, he just conceivably might be considered, toutes proportions gardées, the British Ozu.

(source)

This was written in 1985, when Leigh had yet to make a second cinema feature, though he had a substantial body of television work.

It's also well worth noting that despite his reputation for extensive use of improvisation during the lengthy rehearsal period, the actual shooting of Leigh's films is as tightly scripted and controlled as any more conventional production. So while he's certainly actor-oriented, he's not exclusively so by any means.

[Hail_Cesar]

Cannes 1999:

Palme d'or: Rosetta
Grand Prix: L'humanité
Best actor: L'humanité
Best actress: L'humanité and Rosetta

[zedz]

I'd love to dive in here, but I'm afraid I don't find the parameters of this entire discussion all that coherent, since I see very little in common between the approach to actors and acting exemplified in the auteurist rogues gallery of the opening post.

Kaurismaki, as has been noted, has as a starting point a stylized, Bressonian approach to performance, but he adores his actors, and uses his approach to extract rather extravagant emotional effects. Look no further than Drifting Clouds - nobody who's seen that film could assert with a straight face that he doesn't care about his actors, their performances, or the audience's ability to connect with them.

Tarr, like Serra and a number of other modern minimalists, is preoccupied with the physicality of his actors. In a sense, they're almost obsessively performance-focussed for large stretches of their filmmaking. It's just a different approach to performance, that's all.

Tsai has a Sternberg-Dietrich thing going on with Hsiao-kang; Hou is one of the finest actor's directors alive. Lack of Hollywood backstory exposition and Oscar-montage-emoting-ops is hardly the equivalent of non-acting, or contempt for acting. A director like Claire Denis shuns exposition and loves to drop straight into her characters' lives without explanation, but she's inordinately attentive to naturalistic details of behaviour and human interaction, and she can extract idiosyncratic charisma from the oddest grab-bag of performers.

If you're coming from my perspective that most of the acting in the films by directors that have been highlighted is far, far superior to the diagrammatic performances you see in most American films (including Cassavetes - though he gets impressively raw, the performances in his films are hardly subtle, or even particularly naturalistic, they're just stylized in a different way), this is a Bizarro-world argument.

[AlexHansen]

Lack of Hollywood backstory exposition and Oscar-montage-emoting-ops is hardly the equivalent of non-acting, or contempt for acting. A director like Claire Denis shuns exposition and loves to drop straight into her characters' lives without explanation, but she's inordinately attentive to naturalistic details of behaviour and human interaction, and she can extract idiosyncratic charisma from the oddest grab-bag of performers.

This is the exact point I've been trying to figure out how to make and zedz, unsurprisingly, makes it far better than I would have.