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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

13 Conversations About One Thing

  
 
Abigail Blue
14:18 / 15.07.02
Just saw 13 Conversations About One Thing. Hated it, hated it, hated it. With a burning passion.

Felt that the whole point seemed to be that life is shit, and that it's best to give up and be quietly miserable. The icky pseudo-redemption of the characters in the end made me want to gouge the director's eyes out. And confiscate her filmmaking tools. Forever.

So what is it that prevents film (generally) from depicting well-adjusted people? Why are indie films so often bleak and ugly? Am I the only person who longs to see a film which isn't depressing as hell but yet isn't saccharine 'inspirational' Hollywood trash?
 
 
gridley
15:14 / 15.07.02
I guess well-adjusted people don't really end up in dramatic enough situations....

The worst offender, in my opinion, is Todd Solondz whose films' only point seems to be "Look at how horrible everybody but me is! People in suburbia are hideous. They're so grotesque and horrible! Poor me! I'm surrounded by all these ugly people!"
 
 
Jack Fear
15:17 / 15.07.02
So what is it that prevents film (generally) from depicting well-adjusted people?

Becauise we are dull.

Why are indie films so often bleak and ugly?

Because life is often bleak and ugly.

'Twas ever so. "All happy families are the same. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," as Dostoevsky almost said. Misery is, obviously, more inherently dramatic than contentment—and so artists have always been drawn to it.

Haven't seen 13 Conversations, so I can't judge its relative merits: bit I will say that I could never hate a film just for being crushingly depressing—if it is well-made and true to its own spirit. Far better a raging downer of a movie like, say, Aguirre: the Wrath of God than a film like A.I., which unflinchingly gave us bitter, emotionally frozen humans, obsession, jealousy, and tragically misplaced affection, before backing away from it all with an absurd deus ex machina ending.

So, given that you disagree vehemently with its worldview, how was 13 Conversations when considered as a film? How were the performances? Did it present its thesis (repugnant as you may have found it) coherently and compellingly?

As for that worldview: isn't there something admirable in just sucking it up and being "quietly miserable" in a bleak world? From Freud admitting that the best one could hope for in psychiatry is to move the patient from crippling, hysterical misery back to plain old everyday unhappiness to that certain stoic courage, so beloved of the existentialists—doing your best even though it's ultimately meaningless—that's the essence of modernity, right there.
 
 
Jack Fear
15:19 / 15.07.02
Gridley: must agree about Solondz. The problem I have with his films is the obvious contempt he has for his own characters. He doesn't care about them or take their plight seriously, so why should the audience?
 
 
Abigail Blue
16:22 / 15.07.02
Points taken, Jack, but I still think that it's easy to convince people that life is unfair and bleak: Many people already believe this, and we're all prone to adopting that worldview when things aren't going right. My point is, though, if you have an incredibly powerful tool with which to evoke feeling from a large number of people, why not use it for good? Why not help to show people the beauty of life? Why not encourage them to be better people, and not in some crappy Pay It Forward kind of way..?

Wow. How incredibly idealistic did that sound?

In terms of its merits as a film: The acting was good, especially Alan Arkin, who was a perfectly grouchy old bastard. Matthew McConnaghey (sp?) was a bit too melodramatic for my tastes, but gave a good performance, and the rest of the cast were also good.

The general aesthetic of the film fit the subject matter: The shots were all bleak and ugly, with three exceptions (The shirt, the trees, and the floating paper). I appreciated that coherence: I don't think that it would have been as crushing if it had been full of beautiful shots. Apart from that, it wasn't very compelling. I had a really hard time caring about the characters, with the exception of the girl (whose name I don't remember) who was so obviously there to give the audience someone to care about.

As for that worldview: isn't there something admirable in just sucking it up and being "quietly miserable" in a bleak world?

No, I don't think so. I think that it takes a lot of courage to strive for happiness. I saw a lot of beauty in being quietly miserable for many years, but I've found that being at peace with myself and the world (still working on it) is better.

From Freud admitting that the best one could hope for in psychiatry is to move the patient from crippling, hysterical misery back to plain old everyday unhappiness...

That's dreadful and horrifying. See Ganesh's thread on Anti-Psychiatry in the Head Shop...

...that's the essence of modernity, right there.

I'm afraid that you're right, which saddens me. Although I think that doing your best even though it's ultimately meaningless isn't the same as being quietly miserable...
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
17:41 / 15.07.02
I thought it was okay. Of course, then again, I tend to like any movie with Clea DuVal in it. I think it was rather depressing, but I liked it because of that. While I'm for movies that you go, "Yay! Life is fantastic!" when you leave the theaters, it's also kind of nice to see it go the other way for once. Of course, at points it was so quiet, I almost dozed off. Not out of boredom, but there was something very sleepy about it.
 
 
nighthawk
20:28 / 07.09.05
Just caught this at my local cinema. I'm suprised you had such a strong reaction to it Abigail, I wasn't sure what to make of it overall. The director kept touching on interesting ideas without really developing them clearly. I mean the overall picture was clear - people need structure to give their lives meaning but the world often undermines this - but within this she kept bringing up little things which she never properly took up (the stuff about personal space, or about routine and contentment). In a way I liked this though, it respected the audience and gave them space to think for themselves.

I don't think the film was trying to suggest that life is inevitably miserable and we should all just kill ourselves. Admittedly the tone was quite downbeat but that was as much a reflection of the characters attitudes as it was their actual lives. I guess it did also make it clear that chance can inexplicably affect the course of our lives for better or worse, but I thought what was important was how the characters dealt with this.

For me the most interesting thing was the way it explored the methods by which we bring meaning to our lives on a day to day basis. Each character was trying to do this. The lawyer talks about his job giving structure and meaning to society; the blonde lady describes the vision she had when she should have drowned and the sense of purpose it gave her; the professor talks about the laws of physics being absolute; Alan Arkin is sure that there must be something hidden beneath the smiley guy's happiness.

And beyond this each of them assigns meaning to some little detail: again the blonde girl and her vision, which is turned on its head after the accident, and later the smile from the guy across the road; the lawyer cultivates the cut on his head and won't let it heal, but gets rid of the car he was driving on the night of the accident; Alan Arkin is almost obssesed with Wade and his happiness, and traces his divorce back to the fact that he didn't give his wife some sign of affection before he left for a training course; and then there's that last wave on the train at the end.

I got the impression that we were supposed to see how people can ascribe whatever meaning they want to random events and to a degree its up to them whether its positive or negative. Think about the bit where the professors sitting alone in his room and the light shining through his glasses doesn't form a rainbow on the wall as it did before; he moves them slightly to the left, and although we don't actually see it on screen I think we're supposed to understand that the rainbow is now there again. There's this real tension between contigency and meaning all the way through and the film never really resolves it.

I'd like to watch it again really, it wasn't fantastic but I think it warrants a second viewing.
 
  
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