In other words: a bad film. Or a cluttered film. A film that’s spread out all over the place.
Like a brain splattered.
I watched this film today which was hated by everyone because it was yet another bad remake, etcetera.
For many years now I have been trying to see every film with the idea that there is no such thing as a ‘’bad film.’’ For many years now, I sticked with this thought hoping I would arrive somewhere together with it. Hoping to not lose it along the way. I have to make clear that I’m not sure if every film is worth my time. Or anyone’s.
But anyway: as I was watching this film, it came to me that in a lot of what people like to call ‘’messy films’’ there are different dynamics at work. By describing a film as messy it is almost like something that’s neither living nor dead… But without implying it to be very interesting.
Just as a badly-made film has nothing to do with bad films. A film that is badly made can still propel one to thoughts unheard of. While with a really bad film, the voyage towards that unexplored part of the mind becomes… Just more difficult.
The next logical question would seem to pose: what then, makes a film… Not worth the precious time of a spectator? As of now, I think this is a dangerous question. Having recently conquered the feeling that I’m slowly, very, very slowly starting to understand cinematic mechanisms here and there, I think it is already a breakthrough that I am venturing through these films differently than ever before. So, yes. Once I will allow myself to call films such names…
Thus. It made me think: do these films tend to propose ideas, or possible ideas, at such a pace and with such excess that we fail to pick any of them?
That maybe we have to keep busy with following in its tracks (or the other way around) and with steering our thoughts into the most worthwhile corners of the film? To prevent our minds and senses from driving our experiences off the cliff?
To act upon these propositions, but also knowing when to ignore them? Or, when the negotiations with these propositions are not going smoothly: to take them for granted?
To accept whatever that is given and to go along with whatever the film is proposing to us.
Simultanously, the major advantage of most ‘’bad’’ or ‘’cluttered’’ films is that there is always, immediately, another proposition around the corner, waiting to be taken for granted.
Like in this videogame. And like in this film. Which at its turn recalled a memory of some pod race scene.
Yet another turn. Yet another proposition. Yet another (possibly) bad film. Or a great one.
“You can make a good film which is just that, a good film. But sometimes there are films which are not so good, but they are still worthwhile because they suggest new directions.”
– Abbas Kiarostami
