Hollywood shouldn’t make movies about people. It should stick to subjects it knows about. (If you want movies about people, there are a lot of good Russian ones from the last couple of Soviet decades and beyond.)
Errol Morris has never, as far as I’ve seen, written or filmed a word or moment that was “ham-fisted”. His sensibility is rich in subtle nuance and the complexities of human choices, both hopeful and disturbing.
I was a classmate of Ethan Coen’s throughout our childhoods, and though he and his brother enjoy using hometown names of people and places in their many films (even those films not set in the Midwest), I’d say most of us didn’t take ‘Fargo’ personally; we recognize the power of their storytelling and the humanity beneath their sometimes dark, open-eyed exploration of human nature — even if their exaggerations sometimes reveal cultural traits and constricted views that are worthy of caricature.
I have never been to Holland, Michigan, but a good friend spent most of his childhood there after emmigrating with his family from The Netherlands as a boy. From his many stories I can anticipate a perceptive artist like Morris will find, as in all human communities, mud amongst the tulips.
Please forgive my typo. You betcha?
Any film that claims to be an “exploration” isn’t, at least not in any normal sense of the term. The term used in this way is misleading, maybe intentionally so.
Hollywood shouldn’t make movies about people. It should stick to subjects it knows about. (If you want movies about people, there are a lot of good Russian ones from the last couple of Soviet decades and beyond.)
Errol Morris has never, as far as I’ve seen, written or filmed a word or moment that was “ham-fisted”. His sensibility is rich in subtle nuance and the complexities of human choices, both hopeful and disturbing.
I was a classmate of Ethan Coen’s throughout our childhoods, and though he and his brother enjoy using hometown names of people and places in their many films (even those films not set in the Midwest), I’d say most of us didn’t take ‘Fargo’ personally; we recognize the power of their storytelling and the humanity beneath their sometimes dark, open-eyed exploration of human nature — even if their exaggerations sometimes reveal cultural traits and constricted views that are worthy of caricature.
I have never been to Holland, Michigan, but a good friend spent most of his childhood there after emmigrating with his family from The Netherlands as a boy. From his many stories I can anticipate a perceptive artist like Morris will find, as in all human communities, mud amongst the tulips.
Please forgive my typo. You betcha?
Any film that claims to be an “exploration” isn’t, at least not in any normal sense of the term. The term used in this way is misleading, maybe intentionally so.
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