Self Conscious 'quirkiness'

[Keith Kawaii]

I read an interview with, I think, Wes Anderson where he said the word 'quirkiness' is thrown around too much these days. He was responding to critics who claim that his brand of self conscious 'quirk' is a very popular modern trend, and potentially a dangerous reflection of culture?

Now I wasn't sure if I bought into any general labeling of 'quirkiness', but the more I thought about it, the more recent movies I realized contained this painful self aware, smug oddness. Off the top of my head...

Rocket Science
Eagle vs. Shark
the Squid and the Whale
Me You and Everyone We Know
Thumbsucker
Little Miss Sunshine
Juno (probably...)

Know what I'm talking about? The thing is, I generally find myself thoroughly entertained by these movies, but at the same time uncomfortably annoyed and irritated by the hyper SELF AWARENESS of them. Do you think its a legit trend, or what? I kind of want to see more of this brand of movie...

edit: oh yeah, this may be in the wrong forum, but I haven't posted here, so don't be mean to me.

[Polybius]

It's not dangerous, it's just annoying.

Anderson drowned in it some time ago. Russell's I ♥ Huckabees is another prime example. Maybe these are preferable to the shelfworn clichés of the endless parade of post-Zucker "parody" films that have made Will Ferrell and his ilk filthy rich (bad) and ubiquitous (far worse), but it's a close call.

[Antoine Doinel]

I think critiquing a film for being "quirky" is often a lazy assessment. Yes, there are some films that perhaps try too hard to be clever, but is Godard's self-awareness quirky? Fellini? Tarantino? When it is ok to be quirky and self-aware and when isn't it? I often find that people who roll their eyes at something quirky are usually just trying to distance themselves from something potentially - *gasp* - popular.

[Belmondo]

It is indeed a lazy assessment. We could describe Woody Allen's entire screen persona and any number of his movies as "quirky", but, how is that helpful? Watch more than a couple of them and you get an entire philosophy of life and a complete world view that transcends the quirks of the upper class New Yorkers who are articulating these views and with whom most of us do not identify.

I enjoyed sitting through "Little Miss Sunshine" and some of the other movies mentioned, but they did not really resonate or stay in my mind once they were over. They were merely movies with quirky characters.

The real issue is whether we are dealing with a filmmaker with enough talent to universalize the actions and dialogue of his self aware characters and say something worth saying. In other words ... back to Woody.

[Lemmy Caution]

I definitely prefer quirky films to the cookie cutter ones. Sometimes it's just a filmmaker trying to do something different or breath life into a familiar genre.

I'd add Running with Scissors (despite being highly autobiographical apparently). Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton have made careers from quirk ... or are they "offbeat?" I think the emergence of quirky films is tied to the mainstreamization of independent films.

I think it just matters how intelligently and imaginatively the quirk is presented.
For the record I loved Huckabees, liked You Me Everyone, but disliked Science of Sleep.

[domino harvey]

I don't think the Squid and the Whale belongs on that list, and I'm pretty sure Miranda July is actually like that (no affectated tone needed), so I would probably take Me and You and Everyone We Know off as well.

[Musashi219]

I think critiquing a film for being "quirky" is often a lazy assessment. Yes, there are some films that perhaps try too hard to be clever, but is Godard's self-awareness quirky? Fellini? Tarantino? When it is ok to be quirky and self-aware and when isn't it? I often find that people who roll their eyes at something quirky are usually just trying to distance themselves from something potentially - *gasp* - popular.

It is a lazy assessment. The funny thing about that list of films above is they are all touted as "indies" - which leads to numerous people whining and complaining about how they aren't "true indies" and then start off on some John Cassavetes tangent. Times change and more importantly budgets change. Most of those films use the same marketing angle when the trailers are cut: show lots of odd yet amusing scenes and layer on the indie rock music. Then you watch the films and some of them aren't even really like that. I think Lars and the Real Girl was advertised as such and it ended up being a completely different film from what the trailer lead me to believe - and I thought it was an excellent film.

And I agree with you Antoine that a lot of the time people are putting themself at a distance due to the possibility of a film being "popular." Hell, go look at the Juno thread on this forum and see how many people are already writing it off as "another quirky movie." The point is don't knock something til you've seen it and, most importantly, if it becomes popular why should you be opposed to it? I've said this before on other threads here but people need to start forming their own opinions and diversifying what they watch. Over the past weekend at the theatre my viewing consisted of: No Country for Old Men, I'm Not There, Margot at the Wedding, The Mist, Hitman, and The Red Balloon/White Mane. I see what I want to see and appreciate all areas of film. That's not to say other people on here aren't the same way, but I notice closeminded folks rather often. Sorry if this seemed to go a bit off-topic to some, but I think these issues correlate.

[redbill]

And I agree with you Antoine that a lot of the time people are putting themself at a distance due to the possibility of a film being "popular." Hell, go look at the Juno thread on this forum and see how many people are already writing it off as "another quirky movie." The point is don't knock something til you've seen it and, most importantly, if it becomes popular why should you be opposed to it? I've said this before on other threads here but people need to start forming their own opinions and diversifying what they watch. Over the past weekend at the theatre my viewing consisted of: No Country for Old Men, I'm Not There, Margot at the Wedding, The Mist, Hitman, and The Red Balloon/White Mane. I see what I want to see and appreciate all areas of film. Sorry if this seemed to go a bit off-topic to some, but I think these issues correlate.

This is what bugs me more than anything. A new movie is announced or comes out, that becomes popular, or people think it will be popular, and people on this forum or others nitpicks it or trashes it w/o seeing it. The only reason I can see for doing this is that they're trying to make clear that they're not "mainstream". Juno, Southland Tales, Darjeeling, etc... all those threads had pages of criticism by people who haven't seen it. And then after they come out (Darjeeling), they're nitpicked to death. Sure, Anderson isn't Bresson, but he sure is better than a lot of crap that is out there. It just seems that people are way too concerned about what other people think of what they think of movies.

[Musashi219]

This is what bugs me more than anything. A new movie is announced or comes out, that becomes popular, or people think it will be popular, and people on this forum or others nitpicks it or trashes it w/o seeing it. The only reason I can see for doing this is that they're trying to make clear that they're not "mainstream". Juno, Southland Tales, Darjeeling, etc... all those threads had pages of criticism by people who haven't seen it. And then after they come out (Darjeeling), they're nitpicked to death. Sure, Anderson isn't Bresson, but he sure is better than a lot of crap that is out there. It just seems that people are way too concerned about what other people think of what they think of movies.

It's because some people think that once a film becomes "popular" that it has become tarnished and no longer unique to them. I had a friend who showed me Oldboy a few years back. I loved it and he considered it one of the best films to come out of South Korea. Some time later Tartan released it here on DVD with the "Quentin Tarantino seal of approval" and automatically he despised it for now it was being given an opportunity to be seen by the masses. It was no longer a special film to him because now plenty of folks would know about it, thus apparently killing any worth the film had.

The same can be said for mentioning Wes Anderson and Robert Bresson. Is there really any point in putting those two directors in the same sentence let alone thought process? I knew a guy at my university who LOVED Lars von Trier and, essentially, wrote off every film that came out because those films had nothing on von Trier. I even joked to myself when I saw him at a screening of Superbad and figured he was thinking, "Well this certainly isn't as good as The Element of Crime or Zentropa!" I never bothered to ask him if he liked Superbad because really it probably wouldn't have accomplished anything.

[montgomery]

Critiquing a film for being "quirky" may be a lazy assessment, but it's also a lazy assessment to assume that people who don't like these films are just bitter about their popularity.
And while calling these films "quirky" (a horrible word for anything) may be lazy, I think it's a little disingenuous to claim ignorance of this trend, even if the trend deserves more insight than merely being shrugged off as quirky. Certainly, after Pulp Fiction, independent film was cluttered with Tarantino-esque films, of varying quality. Wes Anderson does seem to be the new template for independent films. You can spot Anderson's direct influence in, I think, all the films mentioned. That may not be a bad thing, but it is a noticeable trend that's certainly fair game to be commented upon.
And while it may not make sense to compare Bresson and Anderson, it's true that American independent film isn't making Bressonian films (which maybe is no surprise; Bresson being not only completely unique, but french, and only moderately popular at best in his lifetime; and tastes having changed since then). There is a defining aesthetic in modern American independent films--at least the "popular" ones, the ones your friends who aren't film fanatics go out and see--and they're almost all comedies about twenty-somethings (or younger), with deadpan humor, often a dose of sentimentality, often indie-rock or 60s rock on the soundtrack, etc. etc. This is a legitimate trend--after all, the many french new wave directors shared, to varying extents, a similar aesthetic. But I do think it would be nice if there was an american director making films as intense as Bresson; and, contrary to what some of you may believe, I think it would be nice if films like that became POPULAR.

[domino harvey]

This thread makes my head hurt. There is an obvious twee quality about many of these films-- but just because the films contain "twee-ness" doesn't necessarily diminish the films, but to deny it's there is ridiculous.

[Musashi219]

Critiquing a film for being "quirky" may be a lazy assessment, but it's also a lazy assessment to assume that people who don't like these films are just bitter about their popularity.
And while calling these films "quirky" (a horrible word for anything) may be lazy, I think it's a little disingenuous to claim ignorance of this trend, even if the trend deserves more insight than merely being shrugged off as quirky. Certainly, after Pulp Fiction, independent film was cluttered with Tarantino-esque films, of varying quality. Wes Anderson does seem to be the new template for independent films. You can spot Anderson's direct influence in, I think, all the films mentioned. That may not be a bad thing, but it is a noticeable trend that's certainly fair game to be commented upon.
And while it may not make sense to compare Bresson and Anderson, it's true that American independent film isn't making Bressonian films (which maybe is no surprise; Bresson being not only completely unique, but french, and only moderately popular at best in his lifetime; and tastes having changed since then). There is a defining aesthetic in modern American independent films--at least the "popular" ones, the ones your friends who aren't film fanatics go out and see--and they're almost all comedies about twenty-somethings (or younger), with deadpan humor, often a dose of sentimentality, often indie-rock or 60s rock on the soundtrack, etc. etc. This is a legitimate trend--after all, the many french new wave directors shared, to varying extents, a similar aesthetic. But I do think it would be nice if there was an american director making films as intense as Bresson; and, contrary to what some of you may believe, I think it would be nice if films like that became POPULAR.

I certainly won't claim ignorance of the trend, and your comment that I highlighted in bold above is a clear-cut definition of what many of these films are doing to classify them as a trend or cinema movement or whatever you care to name it. Yet, it is those "quirky" characteristics so prominently displayed in films' respective trailers that leads to them being written off by a fair share of people. Of the films that Keith Kawaii listed above, I have seen all but Juno and Rocket Science, and they all have had elements that make them different from the rest. Dysfunctional families would be an obvious one, but the family in The Squid and The Whale is different from the one in Little Miss Sunshine is different from the one in Thumbsucker.

And I would love to see an American director working on the same level as Bresson and to see his/her work become POPULAR. At least in the hope that it would lead to people no longer refering to those who enjoy different cinemas as being "pretentious" or an "artfag." Well that and to show what's popular isn't always Eddie Murphy in another fatsuit or Tim Allen and a bunch of other guys riding around on motorcycles while hijinks ensue.

[GringoTex]

Hal Hartley was quirky when quirky wasn't cool.

[jbeall]

It seems that first of all, we're talking specifically about American indie comedies (or at least have that indie vibe, even if they have studio backing), and if that's the case, then perhaps it's not quirkiness per se that we're dealing with, but rather a "quirky" style (not sense) of humor.

And here I would agree with Anderson that the word "quirky" is thrown around too quickly. There are genuinely quirky films, and then there are films that indulge in formulaic mimicry of "quirky" humor, and those are the films I can't stand.

The thing is, for every talented indie director, there are a dozen lazy untalented one who rip off whatever's supposedly the 'indie' aesthetic, and in comedies this includes this type of humor. And there's nothing inherently funny about "quirky" humor; the material is either funny or not based on its comedic merits, not its rating on the quirky scale. The hack writers and directors make their film appropriately quirky, but the problem is that it's just not funny; thus it's not that the film is self-conscious (a la Godard), but that it's formulaic and uninspired.

[godardslave]

I think any "self-awareness" or "self conscious" is simply a slightly exaggerated strand of post-modernism.

Is it in some recent films? Yes.
Does it matter in itself? Not really, its simply another tool or mode for artistic expression.

[Mr Sausage]

I think any "self-awareness" or "self conscious" is simply a slightly exaggerated strand of post-modernism.

What do you mean slightly exaggerated? Isn't post-modernism aggressively upfront about its self-consciousness, is indeed defined by its self-consciousness?

The type of "quirkiness" I'm not big on is the type that does not genuinely come out of the personality of whoever's controlling the production, but is instead a style affected because it's the new trend. Which is to say, I hate "cookie-cutter" quirkiness.

[terabin]

Have you folks seen this article yet? It's from a couple years ago, but I think MacDowell makes a pretty convincing argument for a "Quirky New Wave." I'm sure it's been done elsewhere too.

[GringoTex]

Have you folks seen this article yet? It's from a couple years ago, but I think MacDowell makes a pretty convincing argument for a "Quirky New Wave." I'm sure it's been done elsewhere too.

As a former curator for an indie film festival, I saw the transition from the "Tarantino New Wave" to the "Quirky Comedy New Wave." For every lackluster quirky comedy indie that died at the art house or on straight-to-video, there are ten awful ones that never even made it that far. There were a lot of people working very hard and spending a lot of money making very bad quirky films.

[Antoine Doinel]

The "1-good-film-for-every-bad-10-films" ratio can really be applied to cinema across the board.

[portnoy]

Look, not all these films are cut from the same aesthetic cloth (and including The Squid in the Whale, a daringly unmannered and blisteringly real drama, with the rest of these films, seems wrong) - but there are absolutely connections which lie between these films, and the word 'twee' - also overused - is an important part of it.

To me, all of these films betray some quality of intentional childlike naivete. As a means of addressing the alienation of the figures in the films, the filmmakers adopt a style which formally engages with various naive-art/outsider-art hallmarks. Note the flamboyant, boldly enunciated color schemes of Napoleon Dynamite, Little Miss Sunshine (that bus!), the Anderson films, and Me and You and Everyone We Know. Dig the way that Anderson and July and Hess and Taika Cohen and Dayton/Faris use comic-strip style planimetric staging (cf. Takeshi Kitano - especially Sonatine). Look at the way the filmmakers inject childlike art into their works - Anderson's use of his brother's drawings, Napoleon's art, July's self-conscious performance art, the opening title sequence of Juno. Observe the mannered acting styles and emphasis on the awkward comic silence of Anderson's films, Napoleon Dynamite, Thumbsucker, Me and You and Everyone We Know, the first half of Juno, Eagle vs. Shark.

I'm not saying all these films are aesthetically the same, or even that they're all similar. The art direction of Juno places it firmly within the real world (the dialogue, on the other hand...), where Anderson and Hess are more clearly interested in constructing self-contained fantasy worlds. Many of these films are very obviously about the breakdown or change in communication in today's society (Me and You, Rocket Science), but some of them aren't interested in that at all (Juno, The Life Aquatic). Anderson, I'd argue, is perhaps the most distinct of the bunch, despite being the clear inspiration for many of the later filmmakers - his work is so slick that it's lost whatever veneer of naivete it once had and more closely resembles some sort of manufactured product (*koff*).

But to deny that there are clear connections between these films is silly.

[Keith Kawaii]

Shit! I shouldn't have used the word 'quirk' at all. Maybe it was just a lazy way to encapsulate the little movement trying to be pinpointed, or analyzed?

I guess what bothers me most with the movies I mentioned (I forgot I Heart Huckabees, which is probably closer to Thumbsucker and Rocket Science type than Squid the Whale or Micheal Gondry movies are... but WHATEVER)
Yeah... but what gets to me most is, like I said, the self aware smirk you can almost see on the director or writers face after certain moments in the film. But maybe that is just a reaction to the times, in general.

In a sense, you become acutely aware of the minds MAKING the movie, and their intentions. I read some other post on this forum talking about how in Blow-Up, the shot where the camera closes in on the lead characters 'coin trick' is annoying and distracting. These kind of things make the creators intention too obvious, in an almost pandering way. "Look at this little thing, this little cinematic nugget, this little parcel of offbeat humor." In a lot of films, the gained awareness is less literal than the Blow Up example, rather trying to convey a smug, or offbeat outlook on life, and the contained circumstances in general. So that is the basis of my argument.

I like (LOVE) Jean Luc Godard lots, so I'll use him as an example. I feel he had this same technique- of making his intentions as a filmmaker pretty out in the open, moreso in say... Weekend and Tout Va Bien, where characters seem to be talking to the audience directly, but I'm sure there was a sense of this in his earlier movies too. So whats the difference between then and now? Maybe people felt the same way about those movies at the time, but I certainly find a difference.
In short, I feel so much life and movement in many Godard, and early New Wave movies. The 'antics' in Band of Outsiders are obviously self aware, but the characters are bursting with life, and existing in an almost equally surreal situation and environment.
To some extend, I feel that Wes Andersons movies share a similar space. I find Rushmore and Bottle Rocket especially bursting with life and excitement, the characters being very straight faced in this ridiculous setting. Where some of the other movies I mentioned stray from that idea, is by deadening their environments, and containing the... *ahem* 'quirk'... to isolated incidents or MOMENTS. The actual worlds being inhabited (Little Miss Sunshine) are set more firmly in reality, its just the characters that from time to time display their defining, offbeat 'charms' or actions, in contrast to a dully portrayed setting. In my view, this couldn't be further from Jean Luc Godard. But I would say it is a strong reaction to American culture.

[Cronenfly]

Hell, go look at the Juno thread on this forum and see how many people are already writing it off as "another quirky movie." The point is don't knock something til you've seen it and, most importantly, if it becomes popular why should you be opposed to it? I've said this before on other threads here but people need to start forming their own opinions and diversifying what they watch.

As one of the Juno snap-judgement bunch, I admit that it's unfair and lazy to judge without having seen a given movie. However, is everyone not guilty of judging/avoiding certain movies based on their (supposed) similarities to other films? I'm not saying it's right, but when you've been burned on multiple occassions, then it's hard to get up the same enthusiasm. As Lee B. Sims noted in the Juno thread, this may lean dangerously close to prejudice, but when there are so many other sorts of movies out there, why keep going back to a genre you know you don't like?

[Awesome Welles]

I think that a lot of filmmaker's realise the marketability of quirky indy movies and so we get a lot of movies that have overly quirky characters that come off as being annoying because they've stepped into the land of cliche - and cliche because these quirky characters' representation has intensified to a state in which they have ceased to be anywhere near (to use a very dangerous term) realistic. Whilst we may have known in the past that a quirky representation of a character such as Max Fischer (from Rushmore) was essentially realistic in terms of psychological development, he was never quirky for quirkiness' sake. With recent films such as Eagle vs Shark, which I found empty in terms of psychological character grounding are also not serving a representative purpose as a character such as Michel Poiccard (in Breathless) does, we understand when watching him that he is a representation of the standard gangster movie character, some people think that calling Breathless a pastiche is derogatory but I think that is part of its genius (and it has many other levels as well). The problem with modern filmmakers trying to do quirk is they don't know how to judge their hyperboles like someone like Wes Anderson does (though at the time of writing I have not seen Darjeeling Limited, so whether he's losing his touch I don't know).

Oh and anyone who dismisses a movie for being quirky or popular is a fool, sorry if that seems a bit harsh but that's the way I feel. No one can judge a film without having seen it. For all these bad 'quirky' movies there a great ones too, being popular or cult has nothing to do with it, someone's relationship with a film should not be affected by its status.

[jbeall]

I think any "self-awareness" or "self conscious" is simply a slightly exaggerated strand of post-modernism.

What do you mean slightly exaggerated? Isn't post-modernism aggressively upfront about its self-consciousness, is indeed defined by its self-consciousness?

The type of "quirkiness" I'm not big on is the type that does not genuinely come out of the personality of whoever's controlling the production, but is instead a style affected because it's the new trend. Which is to say, I hate "cookie-cutter" quirkiness.

To be fair, modernism was already pretty self-conscious. However, some have argued that PoMo marks the shift from a serious self-consciousness to a smirking game that so many find irritating. To be honest, I don't know that I agree with that, though...

To get to Mr. Sausage's point (which was what I was trying to say also, although he put it better), true quirkiness involves some kind of idiosyncratic technique/style/worldview/etc., while "cookie-cutter" quirkiness is anything but. To put it another way, we're using the word 'quirky' to describe a style of filmmaking that's deliberately imitative, which is in fact the opposite of what the word's definition actually is. Maybe we should use the term 'faux-quirky' or 'pseudo-quirky' instead?

I wrote in the Juno thread that I might rent it, but have no desire to see it in theaters, and that still holds true. I realize that trailers are usually not made by the director, so it could be some marketing dept. hack's idea of the type of faux-quirky trailer that will get people into the theater, but the trailer just looked formulaic (i.e. not quirky) to me.

[Cronenfly]

I think that a lot of filmmaker's realise the marketability of quirky indy movies and so we get a lot of movies that have overly quirky characters that come off as being annoying because they've stepped into the land of cliche - and cliche because these quirky characters' representation has intensified to a state in which they have ceased to be anywhere near (to use a very dangerous term) realistic. Whilst we may have known in the past that a quirky representation of a character such as Max Fischer (from Rushmore) was essentially realistic in terms of psychological development, he was never quirky for quirkiness' sake. With recent films such as Eagle vs Shark, which I found empty in terms of psychological character grounding are also not serving a representative purpose as a character such as Michel Poiccard (in Breathless) does, we understand when watching him that he is a representation of the standard gangster movie character, some people think that calling Breathless a pastiche is derogatory but I think that is part of its genius (and it has many other levels as well). The problem with modern filmmakers trying to do quirk is they don't know how to judge their hyperboles like someone like Wes Anderson does (though at the time of writing I have not seen Darjeeling Limited, so whether he's losing his touch I don't know).

Oh and anyone who dismisses a movie for being quirky or popular is a fool, sorry if that seems a bit harsh but that's the way I feel. No one can judge a film without having seen it. For all these bad 'quirky' movies there a great ones too, being popular or cult has nothing to do with it, someone's relationship with a film should not be affected by its status.

I agree with you on the sort of Rushmore/Eagle Vs. Shark type schism that exists now in quirky indie movies, and that there are certainly those good and bad in the movement. I liked Rushmore a lot (same with the rest of Anderson's work up until Zissou/Darjeeling), but have found most (but not all) of the quirky-type movies that have emerged in Anderson's wake (e.g. Garden State, Junebug [more sublimated quirk], Little Miss Sunshine, I Heart Huckabees, Thumbsucker, Napoleon Dynamite) to be lacking. I could experience an epiphany with the next one in this style, and won't actively try to avoid such movies (for instance, I didn't mind Me and You... at all), but I'm not going to go out of my way to see them. As I said before, there's just too much else out there. That may make me a fool, but so be it.