Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

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19 February 2004

Monster and the Golden Age

While most critics are falling in line to praise Charlize Theron's performance in Monster (Ebert: "one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema"), Armond White takes them to task for praising "a movie of unrivaled repugnance."

White is overly harsh, using Theron's TV appearances as "proof" that she "has no moral awareness," but I sympathize with his frustration. In my own capsule I guessed that the performance would spawn more discussions about acting than about killing, and since I wrote that I've been paying close attention to the first thing someone says about the movie when the topic arises. Invariably people comment on the acting. (In fact, the transformed actress is what piqued my interest in the movie in the first place.)

Would we read the movie differently if Wuornos were being played by a less beautiful actress who didn't have to stretch so far to achieve the right image? Does Theron's star power interfere with the movie, even though it's not on display in the movie itself?

For a lot of critics, I think so, which calls into question A.O. Scott's declaration that we're in a golden age of movie acting. Or maybe it just calls into question the age of criticism, which clearly isn't golden if the most praised movies feature acting that gets in the way of what the movies are saying, which in the case of Monster isn't a whole lot.

I like that Scott singled out Billy Crudup in Big Fish. ("You can watch Mr. Crudup in Big Fish or the nonstar starlets in Mona Lisa Smile and marvel at their partial escape from the dreary screenwriting clichés in which they are trapped, even as you wish they could escape altogether.") I do. But I don't wish that their histrionics would blot out the movie's themes entirely.

So I can't say whether or not we're in a golden age of acting (Karen at Cinecultist doesn't think so), and I don't much care who wins the Oscars, but I welcome an analysis of a movie that gives as much weight to what people are doing as to how they're doing it.

So once again, here's White, writing about Monster:

We?ve come so far from the psychological and sociological investigation of killers in Truman Capote?s In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer?s The Executioner?s Song that we have retraced the movements of pop?s social consciousness and now are behind Capote and Mailer?s discoveries — which were important because they were also discoveries of our own criminal potential, our community dread, our uncertain fates.

Posted by davis | Link

Reader Comments

February 19, 2004, 03:35 PM

Doug

I haven't seen Monster, and don't really have much of a desire to, especially since the film's advertising seems to be nothing more than extreme close-ups of Theron's scowling face and Ebert's quote. (Sorry, but a critic of Ebert's visibility must have known he was making ad copy when he wrote that line.) It's hard to imagine that the film has anything to say other than, "Charlize is butt ugly! Isn't that outrageous? Give us the Oscar!"

February 23, 2004, 12:36 AM

davis

Yeah, man. I've somehow not seen any ads for the movie (unless you count talk show appearances). Lucky, I guess.

You're pretty right about what the movie has to say, but there's more: "Serial killers are people, too, so let ye who is not a conservative housewife cast the first stone." And: "Aren't racists the real enemy, not killers, who are so misunderstood. Isn't that outrageous?"

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