So, some of you may have noticed my lack of a Blindspot post this month. While I have procrastinated a bit this month on the matter I can honestly say that this hasn’t become my lastest problem due to a lack of trying. Last night serves as my third attempt to watch Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God. I even have a half written review where I did up this somewhat humorous, which I assume nobody would find funny, post with me reviewing my guess as to what Aguirre is all about and how he’s basically suffering throughout the whole thing. (I don’t know how right I am).
This brings an important question to mind. “Is it okay to give up on a film?” I’m not sure. I’ve many a time said that you can’t judge a film without having truly experienced it fully, this includes having your wits about you for that experience as opposed to passively consuming it. It’s easy to look at the film and claim, “I tried and didn’t get it” but somehow when your unable to get into the movie at all and the only effect that the movie inspires in you is becoming unconscious as soon as physically possible, more than likely before the film has even ended, then I’m not sure what to do with that.
At this point can you look at the movie in the eye and say, “You’re bad because you put me to sleep“? Is it allowed? Can I admit defeat? Can I just say that I’m not going to go down this road again? Unless of course maybe I end up with a strict case of insomnia and find myself desperate.
The weirdest part of it all is that I only come into this conundrum because of blogging. I find it amazingly helpful a lot of the time to put these self-set deadlines on myself. I try to post new reviews on Sunday/Monday, podcasts on Tuesday and so on so forth. It helps push myself to produce. Sometimes it even helps to get me through movies and TV shows I wouldn’t normally watch and in the long run finds me discovering more and more avenues of film culture that I will hopefully enjoy and bring something new and wonderful into my life. So why do I feel so guilty?
I think it depends on the film. Recently, I saw the short version of "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" which I thought was pretty good. I had the long version of that film on my hard drive but I didn't have the urge to see it as I'm kind of burned out a bit. I have my review already written but I'm going to shelve until I decide to get the Cassavetes Criterion box set where I can watch the film on the TV instead of my laptop.
Ye. But that sounds a lot more like waiting for a different mode of viewing than actually submitting to the film's demeanor itself and failing. Or maybe that's just me. PS. Chinese Bookie is pretty good.
I've had it happen a few times. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie that Steven mentions is one. I've liked a couple of other Cassavetes films, but I couldn't keep my attention on that one. There are others – Ozu's Tokyo Story is a big one that I've tried to watch two or three times and haven't made it yet. Generally I just stop trying to watch it right then and come back to it later. Now, if I'm doing it for a blog marathon or something and have committed to watching it, I'll try to get back to it soon, but otherwise, I'll often wait years. Sometimes the distance and changes in myself make it much easier to watch when I come back to it. Others I haven't gotten back to yet.
Generally instead of feeling guilty about it, I try to just take it in stride and acknowledge that I'm not ready for what that film has to offer yet. Or I acknowledge that I'm not going to like everything, whether it's acclaimed or not. I usually plan to come back to it after a few years and give it another chance.
For what it's worth, I didn't much care for Aguirre, either. I made it through the whole thing, but likely only because I was in a theatre. If I'd been at home, I don't know if I would've kept going. I haven't done the rewatch yet, but at some point in the future, I hope to.
Being in the theatre helps a lot I'd assume. Having dozed off in a theatre maybe twice ever, once while at TIFF last year while running on a 20 hour day of writing/movies/etc/madness it has to be an extreme case for me to not be able to finish a movie at a theatre. But ye.
I adored Tokyo Story. I hope you give a second shot one day. And I hope sometime soon to give Agguire a proper chance myself.