Monday, January 29, 2007
Art?
One of my reasons for choosing this film was that it is so different than the other films we’ve discussed. Can a film like The Incredibles even be compared with a “serious” film like Sunset Boulevard or The Last Picture Show? It’s a totally different type of art, if it can be called art, but I think it is just as good at what it does as those films are at what they do.
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16 comments:
The doubt would come because it is animated? Or because it is a children’s film? Neither of those is reason not to consider it art.
Decidedly my favorite animation of recent decades is the work of the Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. His movies are wonderful. By the way, if you are going to watch them, watch in Japanese with the subtitles. Strange as it might sound, dubbing messes up even an animated film.
I used to think that Americans were no longer up to good animation. But Pixar changed my mind. They have done a great job with all the ones I’ve seen. I’d agree with George in considering “Finding Nemo” to be my favorite. “The Incredibles” would be next.
Pixar might have stumbled though. When I saw a trailer for “Cars” I thought I wouldn’t like it. One of my favorite film bloggers just put up a post where he confirms exactly what I feared. He said they went for all flash and neglected character development.
Yeah, "Cars" was one that I would say was mainly for the kids. What character development there was, was nothing new and pretty predictable.
I don't know a clear definition of art, but my question isn't solely due to it being a children's film or because it's animated. For example, there's no question in my mind that Fantasia is a work of art. And I'm not saying that The Incredibles is not art, I'm just saying that I'm not sure. I could look at it either way, but I'm leaning toward thinking that it isn't art.
We had this discussion in an English class Erin and I took where we studied Dave Barry and Garrison Keillor books. The question was whether Garrison Keillor's novels are art. At the time, I thought they were, but now I'm sure that the answer is no, but I'm not sure why.
I've noticed that the question whether a film (or TV show) is artistic influences my ratings on Film Affinity. For example, I love the Monty Python movies, "South Park," and "The Simpsons," but I don't consider them artistic, so I find it hard to rate them as high as I would rate something like "The Sopranos" or Brokeback Mountain.
The question “What is Art?” has been argued for dozens of centuries. Since it is a rather abstract concept, we shouldn’t be surprised that not only can we not give a clear crisp answer to the question, we cannot even agree about its general boundaries. So I threw that question over years ago. There are much more productive questions that can be asked instead. Among film bloggers right now, there is a “blogathon” underway about what they are calling “contemplative cinema”. The term is neutral and nicely alliterative. But the blog post that launched the idea of doing the blogathon was about “boring art films” or BAFs. I like that name much better, but it seems some people didn’t care for the joke. But anyway, what these bloggers are doing is exploring the artistic elements (plural) of some generally quiet and generally non-narrative movies as distinct from the entertainment elements of most movies (particularly the popular ones).
Maybe the broad distinction could be that entertainment movies primarily try to divert your attention, while artistic movies try to engage it in the aesthetic features of image and sound or in an emotional, social, or political exploration of the characters. And of course, a well-crafted entertainment movie can have one or more significant artistic features which is good. However, Hollywood often fails when it flips that around which is bad. A far too typical Oscar winner is a “serious” film that has some silly art-lite components that are supposed to keep us from noticing that it is rather crappy entertainment. For an illustration, see “Crash”. (That was meant metaphorically, I would never suggest anybody waste 100 minutes of their life in front of it. I lost at least a 100 more ranting and cursing about it.)
With that long winded introduction, let’s get back to “The Incredibles”. Would you agree that it is a tightly built entertainment using top-notch craftsmanship but no intent to provoke an artistic engagement from the viewers?
I'm pretty sure it is intended to provoke an artistic engagement from the audience, but I'm not sure how successful it is.
I wish I knew more about animation, because even in an entertainment-driven feature like "The Incredibles," I stop to admire its aesthetics and wonder how it is made. Is the production more or less complex than traditiona film-making, or isn't that oranges and apples? What time does it take to sketch out and produce something animated, and how does it compare with traditional cinematography? On the other hand, animators have a controlled environment and aren't at the mercy of lighting or weather, and they can totally control the nuances of their characters' expression and movements.
George, any thoughts?
And Ben, you beat me to it. "Fantasia" is an incredible work of art.
I wonder how the classical music would match up now with a Pixar product. I love the animation of the era that goes with the movie.
It's true that with animation, you're not at the mercy of weather, but it also means you're limited by the lack of weather. Going back to "Finding Nemo," on the special features they talk a lot about how difficult it was to animate the water, and how revolutionary their animators were in rendering liquid, particularly the scene inside the whale's mouth. Same goes for one of my favorite Futurama episodes, which is a blend of single-cell animation and CG: so much time effort and research went into creating an effect that probably 90 percent of the audience hardly even noticed.
And animators control facial expressions and what not, but it's still done after the actors do the voice work -- it's up to post production to match the animation to the vocal performance. I actually think it would be a lot harder and certainly a lot more work than live action, because now you're not only depending on the voice talent to pull off the scene, but the animator as well. (Animators, actually -- an animator only does about 2 seconds at a time, and it's combined with the work of other animators to create a full scene. That's why a live-action film can be produced in a few months, but a computer-animated can take up to two years, with a large majority of it being all post-production.)
As far as art, I just consider it any form of expression. Why wouldn't "The Incredibles" be art. If someone who sees it finds meaning, what does it matter if they are 3 or 30 years old?
I'm not going to weigh in on the art question, except to agree with George that any human creation is art. I think the meaningful question isn't art-or-not-art? but good-art-or-bad-art?
And I think this is obviously good art. Amazing art.
I have a confession, though (don't hate me). I have never been a huge fan of animation, even though I appreciate the enormous effort and creativity that go into it. Even when I was a kid, I always preferred playing outside on a Saturday morning to watching cartoons (which my siblings did for hours on end). Like Ben, I really enjoyed the short cartoons (and the Peanuts and Seuss), but the feature-length animated films never did much for me. The kid movies I really loved were "Willy Wonka" and "Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang" and the like (films that involved magical cool things happening to real kids).
I liked "The Incredibles," though, and I liked it even more knowing about the voices behind the characters. For example, knowing that it was Holly Hunter and Samuel Jackson acting made the movie much more enjoyable for me.
I agree that "The Incredibles" is art, although I don't agree that just anything is art. But I think I know what Ben is getting at here. I have rated a bunch of animated films on filmaffinity.com, and I had trouble assigning ratings to some of them. I'm not sure why, but it is difficult for me to rate the animation alongside live-action movies.
And I must say, I did really like this take from Rick's earlier comment:
"Maybe the broad distinction could be that entertainment movies primarily try to divert your attention, while artistic movies try to engage it in the aesthetic features of image and sound or in an emotional, social, or political exploration of the characters."
Oh, I don't think just anything is art, but I think that anything that purports to be art is art, just as a matter of definition ... not that there can't be high art and low art and good art and bad art ...
I understood what Ben was getting at with the question, and I understand the difficulty of comparing the two kinds of movies ... Maybe one of the reasons I've never been a big animation fan is that, try as I might, I just can't be moved by it in the same way as by real people acting on the screen ... Maybe it doesn't touch the high-art nerve in me (which I think is maybe what Ben was saying). To me, Bambi losing Mom jerks a tear, but my deep emotional response to that kind of situation is really limited by the animation.
Why didn't you like Rick's comment? I paused on that comment too, so I'm curious. Was he trying to draw a distinction between mindless entertainment and something more worthwhile?
Oh, sorry, sorry. I thought you said you DIDN'T like his comment. You said the reverse!
I think your prefacing it with "I must say" made me expect something negative. Stop tricking me, Erin! You know my language skills are limited.
(It would be cool to see a Rick/Erin fight, though ... hehe)
Hehe, sorry.
That's interesting about the emotional response. I'm trying to decide whether that is true for me as well. And I'm thinking that possibly "Dumbo" is an exception to that for me.
But also I'm wondering if I had deep emotional responses to any kid movies. Did you have deep emotional responses to the live-action kid movies you liked?
Yeah, I did, particularly to certain characters, like Charlie in "Wonka" and Julie Andrews in "Mary Poppins" (hehe) and various other characters in the Sunday Disney movies. I was never one to watch a movie over and over, but I remember being very taken with certain characters and imagining them in real-life situations, like they existed beyond the boundaries of the movie.
Yeah, I suppose that couldn't happen with animated movies. I don't think I had that kind of reaction to any kid movies.
But you did to "Alive."
Oh wait, that's a cannibal movie, not a kid movie.
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