Yep,
I knew it was going to come to this.
I’ve been trying to distract you and anyone reading Film Fight for the past four days with semi-pornographic cartoon videos and off-topic rants in the hopes that you would forget that not all comic-book movies are super-hero movies. I didn’t want you to remember American Splendor or Ghost World or A History of Violence. I figured as long as I kept the discussion on men in tights, I’d be forcing you defend indefensible movies like The Punisher and Catwoman and Batman & Robin, and that maybe people would start to think you were crazy for doing so and decide not to take anything you say seriously. It was my only hope.
But I knew all along it was going to come to this: The end of the line. The last stop. Rosenblatt’s last stand.
But I wasn’t so eager to be buried just yet, so I figured I’d muddy the waters some more with a direct attack on Sin City, hoping that I could distract you for another day by maligning a movie you loved and would want to defend with every fiber of your being.
Ah, well.
You didn’t like it either, apparently, and the only thing you decided to call me on was an issue of semantics, and this after I’d already chided myself (quietly and in the relative comfort of my own brain) over my use of the words “indulgence” and “soulless.”
But despite my inexactitude (I may have had a drink or two last night), I stand by my point that the film’s story, which struck me as merely a collection of B-level film-noir clichés and empty acts of brutality for brutality’s sake (or perhaps for coolness’ sake, which is worse because “cool” is the cheapest and easiest substitute for substance, allowing anyone who’s tapped into the pleasure centers of young, movie-going men – who are always on the lookout for the loudest explosions, the coolest weapons, the neatest wire-fighting techniques, the newest leather pants, and the goriest guttings – to hold themselves up as the new geniuses of cinema, in touch with the zeitgeist … like Robert Penn and Sam Peckinpah before them. “Cool” – along with “shocking” – is the most transitory of adjectives, substance-free and ready at any moment to be replaced by the next new thing. It’s a truism that transcends disciplines but that never seems to discourage anyone from falling for the latest bit of high-style trend-mongering. How many bands shoot to the heights of hipster favor using little more than a pair of shiny pants, a floppy hair-do, and an insolent smirk as their ladder? And how many of those bands vanish just as quickly when 1) people realize their music is worthless and 2) some new band with shinier pants, floppier hair, and more insolent smirks come along? The answer, of course, is all of them. Coolness, in other words, is the enemy of greatness … and greatness should be the goal of anyone putting light on film or pen to paper or fingers to guitars. Like you and me, Kim: aiming for greatness.) was merely an excuse for the filmmakers to indulge in green-screen experimentation. And experimentation is all to the good, except when it’s passing itself off as movie-making.
I read somewhere that in the 18th century, opera was considered the highest of all possible art forms because it demanded its creators be masters of all of them: music, poetry, story-telling, painting, everything. Well, for better or worse, that’s where film stands today – an artform that encompasses all others. So it’s the somber responsibility of all filmmakers (of which I’m therefore glad I’m not one) to not only create something beautiful and new to look at (like Sin City) but also something with a rich story and with vividly drawn characters and with an excellent score and incisive dialogue, etc., etc., etc. Otherwise, they’re just marketing distraction.
So, though I understand why someone would want to go see Sin City in the hopes of witnessing the next revolution in visual creativity, I also hope they’d leave disappointed when they realized the rest of the film wasn’t worth the celluloid it was printed on. When one element of a work of art is great and all the others aren’t, that great element is no virtue at all, I think, but rather an admonishment … and a constant reminder of what might have been.
This article appears in July 4 • 2008.