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I think the opening shot's unanimous plaudits (which I wholeheartedly agree with) must be seen as a testament to the power of "beauty," which is still, for some bizarre reason, invoked in a pejorative sense in most contemporary art criticism. As if something being profoundly beautiful (and make no mistake: sunsets are profoundly beautiful) isn't enough. And to be fair to Reygadas, it's hardly a standard shot of a sunset, which we've seen done less impressively in thousands of other films.

To quote Susan Sontag: "When that notorious beauty-lover Oscar Wilde announced in The Decay of Lying, "nobody of any real culture talks about the beauty of a sunset. Sunsets are quite old-fashioned," sunsets reeled under the blow, then recovered...The subtraction of beauty as a standard for art hardly signals a decline of the authority of beauty. Rather, it testifies to a decline in the belief that there is something called art."

kupo wrote:To quote Susan Sontag: "When that notorious beauty-lover Oscar Wilde announced in The Decay of Lying, "nobody of any real culture talks about the beauty of a sunset. Sunsets are quite old-fashioned," sunsets reeled under the blow, then recovered...The subtraction of beauty as a standard for art hardly signals a decline of the authority of beauty. Rather, it testifies to a decline in the belief that there is something called art."

That's a great quote, but it elides over the real crux of the objection. There's nothing wrong with "beauty" (in fact, there's everything right with it), but prettiness should not be mistaken for beauty. And showy postcardism under the guise of "transcendence" ain't art, IMO.

gokinsmen wrote:That's a great quote, but it elides over the real crux of the objection. There's nothing wrong with "beauty" (in fact, there's everything right with it), but prettiness should not be mistaken for beauty. And showy postcardism under the guise of "transcendence" ain't art, IMO.

Isn't subjectively and pejoratively redefining 'beauty' as 'prettiness' (or 'showy postcardism')simply the same dismissal wearing rhetorical camouflage? Or kicking 'beauty' while it's down (not only is this 'beauty' worthless as art; it's not even beautiful)?

I think it would be much more useful to acknowledge the beauty of the opening / closing shots of the film and then to critique them rather than simply to say "oh, that doesn't count anyways" and dodge the issue, which I think is an interesting one. After all, we all know that great art doesn't need to be beautiful, so what is the relationship between the two?

I'm not redefining beauty as prettiness -- I'm saying there's a difference between the two. A supermodel is not inherently beautiful to me if he/she's boring or empty on the inside. I look at those opening and closing shots and they do nothing to me; there's nothing especially interesting about them other than their surface sheen. Note how reviewers' praise of them are just as superficial ("obviously those shots are beautiful..." or "Silent Light begins with the most stunning opening shot in recent blah blah...").

Other people have said this before, but when Keats wrote that "Truth is beauty, beauty truth," well...he was only half right.

gokinsmen wrote:I look at those opening and closing shots and they do nothing to me; there's nothing especially interesting about them other than their surface sheen.

Well, this is exactly what I mean: by saying that these shots don't count as 'beauty' (as you define it), you avoid having to explore the position of where 'beauty' sits in relation to 'art' - which is a potentially interesting position to explore. I'm not arguing with your opinion, or with the proposition that 'mere prettiness' does not equate with 'beauty', but I was hoping to open out your discussion rather than shutting it down. If those shots are not art and not even beautiful, what's to discuss?

I found the opening and closing shots, and much of the rest of the film, very beautiful and often impressive in other formal ways (and I'd much rather see young filmmakers ape Dreyer or Tarkovsky than Scorsese and Tarantino - at least there's the possibility of finding some untrammelled ground in that direction), but it didn't work for me as a whole, even with those attributes in the plus column.

zedz wrote:If those shots are not art and not even beautiful, what's to discuss? [...] I found the opening and closing shots, and much of the rest of the film, very beautiful and often impressive in other formal ways (and I'd much rather see young filmmakers ape Dreyer or Tarkovsky than Scorsese and Tarantino - at least there's the possibility of finding some untrammelled ground in that direction), but it didn't work for me as a whole, even with those attributes in the plus column.

To put it another way, it's not that a sunrise/sunset isn't beautiful. It's that simply showing me one on film doesn't do me any good -- I already know it's beautiful and I've seen the real thing and the real thing will always wallop a 2-D facsimile. Within the context of the story, it has no real value other than to make the film feel "epic" -- sunrise/sunset, life/death, nature/divinity...zzzzzzzzzz all the obvious things. The few things that did affect me were the nuanced, surprising touches. Such as the fact that it's snowing when Johan goes to visit his father; I also liked the way his father was shot in extreme CU at times.

A sunset scene that I adore and think is truly beautiful is the final shot of The Long Day Closes (one of my faves). It's not just juvenile, golden-hour gawkery. The setting sun is made strange, even a bit terrifying -- the dark ominous shadows, the flickering, horizontal movement of sun, the lack of pretty purples and oranges, the lack of common reference points like trees or city skylines. It looks like the end of the world (and in a way, it is). Most importantly, it's also transformed by the sound you're hearing -- it's not what you normally hear when you're watching a sunset. Sure, it's just a piece of music, but even the music is a sort of curveball as jazz and traditional folk songs dominate the rest of the film. The song feels like a hymn (esp. given the divine imagery we're seeing), but there's no overt reference to God or divinity in the lyrics -- in fact, it's just an Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert & Sullivan) tune. It's not quite sad, it's not quite happy, and then the sky/screen goes dark. Just like the film's approach to childhood and memory, there's a murky mix of joy, pain, fear, nostalgia, hope, and resignation.

In short, Davies creates something fresh, something new, and, yes, something beautiful. Silent Light creates nothing -- it just points and says "Golly! Pretty epic, am-i-right?"

Also, I'm sick of film reviewers/critics simply settling for rip-off artists with better taste ("borrowing" from Dreyer instead of Scorcese or whatever). The great ones didn't get to be great by merely tweaking the work of previous masters.

I saw it tonight in HD on the Roku and found it beautiful and moving, austere and stylized. For such a languorous, meditative film, there were stretches where the running time seemed to speed by, because I was wrapped up in the goings-on. So many of the shots were paintings, but not in any art-is-pretty way; I loved the repeated flares in the frame, as if to further stylize and distance the audience from the magical reality of the film (the shots through windows, etc., had the same effect).

It was my first Reygadas, and I haven't seen Ordet (shocking!) but I came away from it with a profound appreciation of what he was attempting. Thank the God of the Mennonites there are men like Carlos Reygadas who are making films like Silent Light.

The two times I saw it in the theater I was amazed every time there was a reel change, as it seemed like only 5 minutes had progressed. I felt that the pacing is pretty near perfect (like Tarkovsky) it's slow, which creates an amazing atmosphere, but it's not sluggish. The beautiful cinematography really allowed for it (as is nearly always the case).
I don't think it's a perfect film, nor do I think it's a rip-off (the aims and results are decidedly different from Dreyer's masterpiece). It certainly will stick around.

This was the only Reygadas-related thread I could find...hence, why I'm posting here. I don't imagine this post would be awfully out of place.

I just saw Japón, my first experience with Reygadas. As others have touched on in this thread, it's pretty clear Reygadas wears his influences on his sleeve (i.e., Dreyer, Bresson, Tarkovsky, Dumont). I don't mean that as a criticism since Japón works pretty well within films that share that frame of reference. And while Japón is far from a perfect movie, it works pretty well as some sort of poem of faith regained in a feral world. The animal cruelty issues piss me off to no end...and what amounts to exploitation of inebriated non-actors is sort of crap...but there's still enough of a good movie here.

Does anyone have any clue what relationship the title (Japón=Japan in Spanish) has to the movie?

Tribe wrote: Does anyone have any clue what relationship the title (Japón=Japan in Spanish) has to the movie?

It's kind of a non sequitur from the which we can infer that using it as a title is his way of remarking that the story could be placed anywhere, location doesn't matter, only the, ah, poetry we are privy to.

Tribe wrote:Does anyone have any clue what relationship the title (Japón=Japan in Spanish) has to the movie?

Reygadas actually explains that in the interview on the DVD. It's been so long since I've seen it, I don't remember exactly what the reason was, but obviously if you have the disc, take a look at the interview.

Ishmael's right.
"Go out into the street and ask people the first five words they relate to Japan. I am sure that 80% of them will choose words like ‘Harakiri,’ ‘respect,’ ‘samurai’ . . . . And Japan is also the land where the sun comes up first every day. It’s a place of renewal. And the film is about all those things.”

Anhedionisiac wrote: "Go out into the street and ask people the first five words they relate to Japan. I am sure that 80% of them will choose words like ‘Harakiri,’ ‘respect,’ ‘samurai’ . . . . And Japan is also the land where the sun comes up first every day. It’s a place of renewal. And the film is about all those things.”

Interesting. Towards the end of Japon I did think that if the title "meant" anything perhaps it had something to do with the sun and the mountains "looking" like a scene from Japan. I should go and listen to that interview on the Artificial Eye disc.