An ongoing discussion between my husband and me--Is Life Art? In other words, can a movie or book that just describes life in an artful way be considered art. I say yes. I am happy to see the day-to-day lives of ordinary people-the small things--played out.
He says that there has to be an "event" or a larger "observation" to make it movie or book-worthy. I guess we are talking more about movies here than books.
French movies seem to excel at reportage of these little moments. American movies never look at them. What do you think? Can an ordinary life be art?
25 comments:
I agree with you, I think ordinary life can be art. Sometimes, the genius is seen in the quiet routine moments, and not in the dramatic events that reshape people.
Art is a process of interpratation of 'things' - wether from 'life' or the imaginanation. There is an 'art' to living- which some people to have more than others- but the 'recording' of this isn't always as artful as that life. What was that Nicholson Baker book where nothing happens?
PRECIOUS meanders through the lower circles of Hell with artistic moments sprinkled in. The most dramatic moment (for me) was when Mo'Nique drops her TV on Precious and her baby.
I also agree with you Pattie that it can be art - but really tedious and thus boring art.
I am perfectly willing to watch someone go through his/her day. I find it fascinating to watch how someone shaves, what they eat for breakfast, how they get to work, that kind of stuff.
Funny you mention Baker, Paul. My husband liked his new book THE ANTHOLOGIST. I will have to ask him about that.
I found following Precious through her day as both fascinating the grueling.
If it's tedious and boring, it doesn't work as art. But what is tedious to you might not be to me.
I agree with your example of French movies justifying the homely and inconsequential as art. Their movies generally rely on grace notes, fragments of character that by film's end give us real and true people; our movies rely on bombast of various kinds--big themes, big moments, big performances. They couldn't do Avatar and we couldn't do Chabrol's version of Madame Bovary. There's room for both.
Good point, Ed. You would never find an Avatar coming out of French studios. Yet they flock to it too.
I think you're both right, sort of. You see this more in blogs and tweets. The blogs that are nothing more than details of the day to day life of the writer are awful and have no reason to exist. The best ones either have a very boring detail of life (breakfast food choice, etc.) told in an artful or fun way or use the minutia of life as a springboard to commentary on a larger or more complex issue.
It depends on how the ordinary events are depicted. Ordinary events can be made into art, but I doubt they "are" art, almost by definition. Art transcends the ordinary.
I would like to read a blog like that, Bryon. I think the ones that just recount the day fade out. On facebook you can hide them too.
I think the French are particularly good at making ordinary events into art. Or maybe it's just that such films get distributed and supported there. The new Jeff Bridges film almost didn't get distributed here.
"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."
Alfred Hitchcock
Hi Philip-A very short play it would be for most of us.
Art is the process of creating. Every moment of our lives we are creating our lives through our choices and responses. Life is the ultimate art.
So much stereotyping...look to the admittedly Belgian film IMMORTAL (2004)(originally IMMORTEL [AD VITAM]) for something that isn't terribly far from the approach and concerns of AVATAR. While there are plenty of American films these days made up of small moments...nearly everything in Richard Linklater's career, for only one obvious "Indie" example, although again one can cavil that his most successful work is 1/3rd French, BEFORE SUNRISE and BEFORE SUNSET. The French film industry is much more conentrated than that in the US (as is the British, and that in most countries--not in India, however, now featuring the primary rival to the US industry in worldwide popularity), so that works such as CRAZY HEART are that much more expensive to distribute to US theaters...but here it is.
As for the initial question, there's no way that one can encapsulate daily activities without the reporter or documentarian's craft, and any fictionalized or dramatized presentation that plays with those details will indeed, pace Hitchcock, be leaving something out...whether the dull stuff is in or out is up to each person taking in the work in question. The artists in question can't help but take some sort of perspective, make some sort of observation, even when it's simply, as with, say, the Warhol megafilms, why this should be filmed and why the experience is worth either documenting or sitting through.
I misread something...IMMORTEL (AD VITEM) is actually a French film, with Italian and US backing.
I agree with you Patti. In fact it's one of my pet peeves that Hollywood doesn't seem to think that those stories aren't film worthy.
Lots of stereotyping in AVATAR. When will we stop thinking of indigenous people as perfect human beings--it's actually racist to regard them as such. Still, it had its moments.
That's no surprise. Cameron almost makes Spielberg look subtle and hip by comparison.
It's not terribly sensible to demand that blockbuster factories make adult films about subtle matters...that's what their psuedo-indie divisions are about, even if Time Waner did shut down Warner Indepependent...leaving Fox Searchlight, et al., still in place, even if Fox Searchlight will also offer a few low-budget sleaze films as well. Likewise such others as the Weinstein Company, or the reversed situation of Screen Gems, Sony/Columbia's sleaze arm that infrequently releases a decent little film.
The small distributors are still very much in place, Sundance and IFC are among those who are still funding such films as well as distributing them and putting them on cable, and the better television programming is dealing with some of the same matters.
Yes, it's a great shame that more places around the country don't have cinemas willing to take more indies, but then, they never did. And most of the big-studio films about subtle matters never did very well, at least since the days of If You Have A Message, Try Western Union, and very much including the '70s. TWO LANE BLACKTOP not any challenge to BUTCH CASSIDY, UN UNMARRIED WOMAN (as self-indulgent as it was) not overshadowing CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE not exactly wracking up GODFATHER II numbers.
Or even racking! Wracking them out of the escapist audience?
There was a story in the first issue of Spinetingler called Jesse's Toothbrush. Such a simple thing gave birth to such a funny story.
Most of my favorite books and movies tend to have very little happening on the surface. You used the phrase "ordinary people" in your original post and the 1980 movie of the same title is a great example of that. Almost all the action takes place before the movie starts. One son drowns and the other attempts suicide. The movie spends two hours primarily with three people who are not good at all about expressing what they're feeling or even understanding their own thoughts and feelings. All the action is entirely quotidian but by the end, all three of their lives are completely transformed.
I just read STONER by John Williams (which I think you'd love if you haven't read it) and although it follows a character throughout his life, the beauty of the novel is in the main character's interior monologue.
I think there are two reasons the books and movies like this will rarely draw large audiences. One reason is that these types of stories appear to be simple, but they aren't when they're done well, so many of them aren't that great. The second reason is just that the majority of readers and movie goers will probably always be looking for entertainment and escapism, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm just grateful that there have always been publishers and production companies that will make this kind of work because they're passionate about it.
My understanding is that something is considered art - as opposed to crafts or other forms of creative work - if it opens up or helps us explore everyday and philosophical questions. The work provides a foil or a counterpoint for thinking about/reflecting on particular issues (whatever they might be - gender, race, war, the human condition, environment, etc). That's why a toilet in a bathroom is functional, but put it in an art gallery and it becomes a conversation piece prompting discussion on hygiene or health or just how crap life can be. So I guess the mundane and ordinary in fiction (as a creative work) is art the minute you start to use and discuss it to think about life.
Contrary to all traditional wishful thinking, Hollywood executives are NOT patrons of the arts. They're holding onto their jobs because their films make money. If anyone went to see these French films in any significant numbers, Hollywood would be turning them out. You can make book on it.
And just to squelch any notions that I'm a mouth-breathing savage, my favorite movie of all time is a small French movie, THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG. I think the last count was that 12 people have seen it since it came out in 1964.
Hey, Mike. I know a lot of people that love that film. Just no one under forty perhaps.
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