566 Insignificance

[Jeff]

Insignificance



Four unnamed people who look and sound a lot like Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and Joseph McCarthy converge in one New York City hotel room for this compelling, visually inventive adaptation of Terry Johnson’s play, from director Nicolas Roeg. With a combination of whimsy and dread, Roeg creates a fun-house-mirror picture of cold war America that questions the nature of celebrity and plays on a society’s simmering nuclear fears. Insignificance is a delirious, intelligent drama, featuring magnetic performances by Michael Emil as “the professor,” Theresa Russell as “the actress,” Gary Busey as “the ballplayer,” and Tony Curtis as “the senator.”

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

- Newly restored digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Nicolas Roeg and producer Jeremy Thomas (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- New video interviews with Roeg, Thomas, and editor Tony Lawson
- Making “Insignificance,” a short documentary shot on the set of the film
- Original theatrical trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Chuck Stephens and a reprinted exchange between Roeg and screenwriter Terry Johnson

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[mfunk9786]

Gary Busey enters the collection!

[arsonfilms]

Gary Busey enters the collection!

He was in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Busey is a Criterion VETERAN.

[Tribe]

I think this will be only the second time there is some sort of half way "significant" baseball reference in a Criterion release.

[Tom Hagen]

Stray Dog? Kind of amazing that the two baseball referential films would come from Japanese and English filmmakers.

[Tribe]

Stray Dog? Kind of amazing that the two baseball referential films would come from Japanese and English filmmakers.

Yep, that's the one. Perhaps baseball is still iconic to many non-American directors who aren't aware the sport has lost some of its attraction to those enamored of the physically active sports.

[Tom Hagen]

Speaking of which, does anyone know if the film had any acknowledged influence on DeLillo's "Pafko at the Wall" or Underworld?

[zedz]

I think this will be only the second time there is some sort of half way "significant" baseball reference in a Criterion release.

How about the delightful fakeout in An Autumn Afternoon?

Moral of the story: Taipei Story is way overdue for the Criterion treatment.

[knives]

Moral of the story: Taipei Story is way overdue for the Criterion treatment.

You are a cruel man to tell a group of starving people that there is a resort over the mountain when you know it's further away.

[colinr0380]

Perhaps baseball is still iconic to many non-American directors who aren't aware the sport has lost some of its attraction to those enamored of the physically active sports.

But then hasn't baseball become a huge sport in Japan on its own merits, with little reference to the way it is being received in its country of origin? (Similar to the way that cricket took off in India perhaps)

It has certainly been the subject of gory spoofs such as Battlefield Baseball and various manga and anime series (although they haven't had the Criterion imprimatur yet!)

[Tribe]

But then hasn't baseball become a huge sport in Japan on its own merits, with little reference to the way it is being received in its country of origin? (Similar to the way that cricket took off in India perhaps)

I should have been much more careful that paint that idea with the broad brush I did, because you are correct. In fact, I'd daresay that nowadays baseball is likely to have a greater hold on the typical Japanese sports fan than American ones.

I think this will be only the second time there is some sort of half way "significant" baseball reference in a Criterion release.

How about the delightful fakeout in An Autumn Afternoon?

I totally don't remember that at all...I'm gonna have to revisit An Autumn Afternoon.

[colinr0380]

Gary Busey enters the collection!

He was in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Busey is a Criterion VETERAN.

And don't forget that we now have two Tony Curtis films joining his appearance in Spartacus to become part of the collection this year!

[PillowRock]

Kind of amazing that the two baseball referential films would come from Japanese and English filmmakers.

I don't think so.

The best of the American made baseball movies tend to have the kind of mainstream footprint in the US market that the studios will want to keep for themselves, rather than licensing out to companies like Criterion.

[MoonlitKnight]

Dear Criteron, Please don't sit on a just-purchased title for this long ever again. Thank you. :-"

[Alan Smithee]

This is the most exciting release of the year for me. I've wanted a good transfer of it for so long. I love the film and it's such an obscure Roeg film. I'm really proud of criterion for their commitment to his work. He's been beaten down a lot as the interview someone recently posted shows. I mean he claims to be making work anonymously now just to avoid the critical drubbing he routinely endures. Anytime Criterion can use their name to legitimize divisive work I get excited. (Antichrist would be another film I feel like they did this for) That said I think Insignificance is his easiest to digest work from the strong period so many people will be turned on to it.

[colinr0380]

I agree with the above comment. Insignificance is an absolutely amazing work (and Roeg creates some of the most stunning images and editing juxtapositions of his career, very Antonioni-styled in a certain sequence, although he outdoes Antonioni for impact) - the resonances between artifice for a goal of understanding a reality that lets nothing slip (does playacting reveal a deeper truth?); an enclosed environment full of individuals and the impact that these isolated groups have on the wider world, or on the perception of the world beyond when filtered through their particular perspective; tormented celebrity archetypes as stand-ins for various vested interest groups, while having to shoulder all the moral responsibilties of a society; and the way that fantasy and memory (or fantasy memories) have a way of overwhelming and revealing inner fears.

I guess the meta-performance aspect throws the audience off at first but that conflict between the impersonation and the persona is the main subject (In particular the scene between Tony Curtis and Russell as a certain blonde bombshell actress creates all kinds of resonances back to Some Like It Hot). The superficial, almost brutal, stripping bare of the mechanics of celebrity, politics, science, relationships, throwing harsh unforgiving light on the important aspects of each, is at the heart of the film. The actress is at the centre of all of this, embodying different roles as required of her, or projected onto her, getting the starring roles and burning brighter than anyone, but also being used up much faster.

[otis]

Beaver

[Professor Wagstaff]

I think this will be only the second time there is some sort of half way "significant" baseball reference in a Criterion release.

Are we not taking into account that Bang the Drum Slowly in The Golden Age of Television is all about baseball players?

[Rupert Pupkin]

got my copy yesterday before yesterday...

I will keep my DVD with the open matte version (if I ever watch this DVD again)

the blu-ray Criterion transfer is great, altough I'm a little surprised by the color... (I was expecting something more "vivid", and in the end it's closer to my DVD copy)

just a short note to tell that there are several clips of "Bad Timing" in the" editor Tony Lawson" interview and it's 1080p/24 and it looks like an HD transfer is already in the can !!!! color are vivid and magnificient (the close-up on Theresa Russell in the Keith Jarrett's famous sequence is .... wow rhâ lovely ) ... I really hope that a blu-ray Criterion upgrade will come out very soon...

[Lemmy Caution]

Interesting film.
I'd never heard of it before.

As for baseball, there are trading cards, a dumb slugger, and some talk, but the one clip we see of actual baseball is oddly wrong. An announcer talks about someone stealing home, but what we see on the TV is a player sliding safely into what is clearly third base (extended foul line to either side, third base coach right there, fielder not with any catcher gear, etc.)
Pretty obvious, even if the clip is very brief.
I've been trying to make up excuses why they did that, but it was probably just a slip up.
Sorry baseball fans, you'll have to wait for The Ron LeFlore Story to enter the collection in order to get accurate hardball realism.

[colinr0380]

On watching the film again I was struck by the aptness of the title Insignificance and the way that the film (and I assume the play it was based on) illustrates the way that in order for a person to consider something 'insignificant' or worthless, it first has to be something that other people have placed a value on. It is a dismissive value judgement. I suppose it could also have been called Relativity, since the film is showing that one person's life experiences, wants or needs from life is kind of incompatible with anyone elses, something which makes the rare moments of connection all the more bittersweet, though that title might have been too on the nose!

I like the way that the film is considering notions of value that come from within (i.e. self directed motivations) compared to that imposed from without (such as celebrity worship or the value of a particular big name to appear at the Senator's hearing).

This gets methodically applied to different areas such as sex (as in the intellectual beauty of a potential liaison versus the physically sweaty sordidness of an actually consummated casual sex act) and work. In work terms I got to thinking of the transient nature of the Actresses fame set against the Professor unravelling the secrets of the cosmos - but can short-term titillation be equated with theoretical physics in that both miss the 'middle ground' and appeal only to the basest or the most lofty instincts, removing a potential audience from the conversation and leaving them only to make either catcalls or gaze in overawed worship, and not to actually think about what they are reacting to? Similarly there is attention paid to the value of a career - can you be successful in every possible way in your career and still feel unfulfilled, or feel a need to tell people of your achievements as a kind of self justification? What if your career is based around a persona that has been created outside of yourself and that you can no longer live up to physically (something that could apply to the Actress or the Ballplayer, one having passed their peak; the other at the height of their fame with nowhere to go but down, or to be immortalised by a tragic early death). What if your career is based around the destruction of others, either in career terms or in purely physical ones?

Is work an end in itself, and fulfilling as such, or is it just a necessary thing to do to create a name for yourself? Is the need for someone to value you and tell you that you are doing something worthy or important a goal to aim for above all others, even if it produces a horrible outcome for yourself and those around you? Or leaves a shattered relationship or a horrific legacy behind?

I really liked the fragmentary flashbacks to 'explanatory' previous events in the four character's lives - the maybe-flawed half-remembered cliche-moments (are they really felt or glossy cultural products of what those archetypal characters 'should be' thinking?) that are driving their thought processes in the present and guiding their reactions. The swing of the Ballplayer in his prime, the Actress making come-hither looks during an audition, the escape from the Nazis who are wrecking a place that was once safe and tranquil, the overly friendly Irish-accented priest - they all feel like imposed poses, yet all still hold a kind of force that feels as if it can still motivate the character's actions despite their cliches. Or maybe these cliche scenes have over the years taken on a kind of a life of their own, beyond any individual's experiences, making the person within them interchangeable, or redundant, to the symbolic power they hold.

Most importantly the idea of 'insignificance' gets applied to the relationships between people - the Actresses role as a 'figment of some guys imagination' (making her similar to the Professor's unprovable or disprovable equations) suggesting her unimportance outside of her physical attributes set against her fragile hope for continuing a relationship with the Ballplayer. The baby she hopes will somehow save their relationship gets brutally taken from her in an act of violence - not a cruel act of violence but one that treats her as nothing and which follows a conversation in which even her actress persona is ridiculed as the Senator treats her as a lookalike prostitute. Does he know she is the real deal, rather than a fake? And does it matter whether he does or not - it certainly doesn't mitigate his actions but would fame have acted as a protective buffer from an assault? Or would the Senator have done it anyway, to show how unimportant she is to him? Does the Actress by in some ways accepting the role of the prostitute that the Senator imposes on her stand for all those he has trampled over?

The film feels about people internalising their insignificance rightly or wrongly, or projecting it out onto others as a kind of coping strategy. But I like the way that the characters, more or less serenely, have to learn to accept their relatively unimportant place in the cosmos. They may have control over little things and none over the huge questions but there are still enough choices given to prove themselves in small ways.

This idea of a woman tormented by a lack of children, which problematically is seen to be the one aspect that can either bind a relationship together more strongly or destroy it totally, gets moved to centre stage in Track 29 (although that is about a forced adoption rather than miscarriages), while here the personalised loss experienced by the Actress gets expanded into the final devastating sequence where the Professor's torment over his culpability for giving the potential to destroy all life to those who have proved themselves previously capable and willing to wield such weapons, is given full reign. In the face of potential total annihilation isn't all human life and interaction rendered pointless? In the face of that potential, paralysing horror of total loss, what else can be done but put on a brave face and carry on until the final wave goodbye?

[John Cope]

Rosenbaum's rejected Criterion essay. Actually just rewatched this last night (for the first time in years) and found it held up remarkably well despite the fact that I do have some issues with it. My concerns, however, just seem so small and dare-I-say insignificant compared to Roeg's characteristically awesome in ambition accomplishment. Nitpicking this one (which is what it would be for me) seems an unwarranted exercise.

[Tom Hagen]

"Sorry, Jonathan, but we can't put in an extra two pages for your essay. Thanks anyway, bro." - Criterion

Although in fairness to Criterion, he does cite Wikipedia in this essay.

[tarpilot]

Every high schooler knows that you cite the article's source and then copy the Amazon info for your bibliography

[knives]

I think people even younger than the highschoolers know that.