so yeah, please, take your time. maybe even skip Bait.
What!? Why!? It's one of the better films we've seen recently!
You seeing this
@Bullitt68? This dirty scalawag is purposefully trying to lure you away from the good films the SMC is seeing!<45>
Of course saw it opening week when it was first released in the cinema. I can paste my Letterboxd review - will have a look through the thread later.
That's a really comprehensive review.
As well as this the techniques the film are, as I said very experimental and add a lot to the strangeness of the film. Originally it was shot silently with voice over and sound added later. Visually it does seem like an old silent film at points. This gives the film a strange, surreal quality. Many elements seem to be lifted from film history. A perfect match of style and substance."
I thought this style combined with the brief, distant interactions between people give this a very bleak mood which works really well with the plot.
Yeah this movie really was quite a little marvel when it comes to style.
The only thing I'm unsure about would be the more... "poetic scenes". Like when the nephew dies. And I'm not saying that these are bad. More that they left me in a state of befuddlement. It was like my cortex didn't know quite what emotions to fire as this occured. A bafflement of style, I suppose you cold say.
I would say Bait and Blue almost felt like Masculine/Feminine takes on the same(generally rather ignored in "liberal" cinema these days IMHO)
You know...
I was wondering why the "class"-angle of this movie hit me so hard while in
Blue is the Warmest Colour that stuff barely registered. Putting aside investment in the characters (Martin is just more interesting than Adèle). I kind of get the impression that.... the
heart of
Blue isn't it's class-angle, it is it's "youth-angle". The focus of the film seemed to be more about those strong and sudden passions you experience as an adolescent, when you become absolutely infatuated with someone's physical form. That blind rush of love you feel, when politics or context don't seem to matter, as well as longing for it whence it passed. In comparison, when the subject of class was introduced in Blue (like, say, in the two dinner scenes with the families), I frankly found its apparent... perfunctory. Though impressions of being perfunctory is how I'd explain a lot of that film.
Contrasted with
Bait... man, Bait is just so much more hard-hitting when it comes to its handling of class. It really has a sense for the small humiliations that occur when you're culturally colonized. Martin is a proudful man. He
knows what he wants to do. He
knows how he wants to live. Being a
fisherman is his dream and that dream stares at him every day. The sea is presented as a reverent and lovable thing, made an icon without being sentimentalized, provider of fish and calming vistas.
But society has changed. And "progression" has flushed away people like him and his ilk. He's fighting against the inexorable advance of history to preserve his rustic way of life, and as always, such things are doomed to slow extinctions.
There is that saying about
The Sea being a Cruel Mistress. Well... not in this film it isn't.
You could argue as well the films also a bit of a reflection not just on the plight of the locals but also of the middle class characters, especially the men. The women come across as much more grounded and sure of themselves but Tim and Hugo are emasculated pretty ruthlessly by Martin and generally come across as very petty
That's an acute observation.
i don’t think he’s a prick at all. he’s a fisherman w/ no boat (a nice bit of absurd humor) who saves up his money for a boat in a cookie tin like a child who saves his allowance for the candy store, but is constantly dipping into that tin to help others, despite his charity constantly setting him back on his goal. he’s a little rough around the edges, to be sure, but he has a good heart.
* The main character is a prick. But his financial and ethical struggle too keep his convictions is really interesting. Aside the can/box with the few bucks he can hardly save and his limited interactions with his brother about the orientation of their business (which he "wins" at the end) there is not much development into that.
I think Martin is a very well-sketched character. You can see it in how he relate to other people. His spite towards his "traitor" brother, his "big brother"-attitude towards his nephew, his resentment towards the tourists, his friendliness towards his niece despite her being such a fuck-up, him donating daily fish to the local elders, his pride in his vanishing way of life. The nuance of lived-experience overhangs all these interactions. He's not a person of a set-pair of characteristics but someone who acts based on prior history and experiences. That's the hallmark of being good written.
This coming from a guy that's situated slap bang in the middle of the UK with no water around for at least 100 miles.
