tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10161060.post2388602144002097226..comments2023-11-05T04:31:48.615-05:00Comments on Elusive Lucidity: JottingsZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10161060.post-26909250671318641332008-01-08T21:39:00.000-05:002008-01-08T21:39:00.000-05:00Fascinating idea. I think you got it right when y...Fascinating idea. I think you got it right when you nailed the filmmakers and the era this trend exists in. Because, in my mind, from the 1980s on, ennui is signaled through the similarity of color films to black and white ones: clinical chiaroscuro, drabness, flatness, negative or empty space--Antionioni's influence starting to really be felt. I'm thinking of the works of postmodernism and globalization, works by Tsai and Yang most especially.Daniel Kasmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00090178978468389578noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10161060.post-40625960272985785532008-01-07T09:03:00.000-05:002008-01-07T09:03:00.000-05:00Would this be a contribution to the 2nd Contemplat...Would this be a contribution to the 2nd Contemplative blogathon? ;)<BR/><BR/>The filmstock color conservation would be a good reason indeed. <BR/>The typical color taste of this timeframe should be considered as well. Pretty much any film in the 70ies used psychedelic colors and kitsch coordination. Then the 80ies used heavy neon-colors (Verhoeven, De Palma, Scorsese, Jodorowsky, Lynch, Almodovar, Fassbinder and even Kieslowski) for the same ennui. <BR/>Just a random thought.HarryTuttlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10721542203087536185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10161060.post-75636626914458018802008-01-07T05:20:00.000-05:002008-01-07T05:20:00.000-05:00this is a lovely thing to contemplate Zach. Your e...this is a lovely thing to contemplate Zach. Your ennui/color examples are all from the seventies or filmmakers who "continue" the seventies (Scorsese, Ferrara) -- there would be filmstock changes, too, to consider and filmstocks in today's films are so thoroughly up for grabs that its hard to identify as a assertion in any sense -- but my only contemporary exception to your verifiable trait is Hong Sang Soo, who seems to define ennui, though in broad flat colors, no shadows, more clinical. Somewhat aside from the subject of ennui but close to your thought about womb signifiers, "frustrated kindness", and two-legged Dionysian/Christian monsters (but unclassifiable in terms of color) is the transformation scene in THE NUTTY PROFESSOR. In it Lewis is between Kelp (frustrated kindness, boredom) and Buddy Love (all is right and snappy with the world) -- he knocks over the chemicals in a blood-like umbilical shape and crawls on the floor like a return to childhood; the whole scene, which is not a crude dramatic fulfillment but a violent terror-filled inbetween state suggesting a catastrophe in the stuff of narrative (personal/psychological and dramatic), is the opposite of the soft golden ruins of the ennui films. And Lewis has the balls to follow that sequence with a long take in warm colors (of Buddy Love's pov in the street)!Andy Rectorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15870363285627741234noreply@blogger.com