thread for Sean Baker since he allegedly doesn't belong in "ten greatest living American filmmakers" thread

Lol, the ending is great!

would you have said so pre-lobotomy, tho

I kept thinking how Haneke, in Hidden, simply packed a young Majid off. Doesn't flinch.

There isn't any point pretending the girl's life is going to be any better.

That's not at all what the film does, though

That's like saying the final reunion between the girl and her father in Pans Labyrinth seemed phony

Of course the other arg is to say we all know it's going to be awful for her so why not pretend. The film never solved the story in any satisfying way.

Xp Fred it had some good things in it. the ending didn't work.

"Of course the other arg is to say we all know it's going to be awful for her so why not pretend."

Well, bingo. Sorry for the snark earlier, then :)

Pan's Labyrinth was in a much more fantastical vein. Only saw it when it came out and I can't say I liked it.

I still haven'tavrnt recovered from what this film has done to my already tenuous liking of children.

Even ppl who are better disposed to this film than some of the ILX film snob krew (ie myself) think the ending is a major mis-step (and doesn't really make sense in the context of the proceeding narrative, where even the children are only really interested in Disneyland as a omnipresent source of income and opportunity).

People being wrong about a film trying something different. Shocking!

I mean, come on! 'Doesn't really make sense'? It comes out of knowhere, the camera changes to an iphone, there's a string cover of Celebrate. It's supposed to be incongruous.

an alt interp of the ending i've seen -- from Victor Morton, above -- is IT'S DISNEY/SOCIETY'S FAULT

"it's a supposed to be incongrous" is cover for how Baker didn't know how to end it.

xpost

Yeah, can't really get behind a review which ends with the author wanting to physically assault the main female character.

Fred you're being a dick, but just for argument's sake - what purpose does the incongruity of the ending serve? What does it add to the film?

People being wrong about a film trying something different. Shocking!

I have yet to see anyone who has issues with this one’s ending frame it in an argument defending doing things the same old way.

When people talk about the ending here do they mean the whole section from social services coming to take her away, or just the bit in Disneyland?

I love this film and I think the ending is """audacious""" and completely unsuccessful. Don't really give a fuck tho, it's 15 seconds of the film

People being wrong about a film trying something different. Shocking!

I have yet to see anyone who has issues with this one’s ending frame it in an argument defending doing things the same old way.

― Fred Klinkenberg (Eric H.), 7. december 2017 14:13 (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, because every reactionary film critic always writes 'This should be done the same old way.'

Fred you're being a dick, but just for argument's sake - what purpose does the incongruity of the ending serve? What does it add to the film?

― Akdov Telmig (Ward Fowler), 7. december 2017 14:03 (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That it's jarring is the point. You have to make an active choice whether or not you believe in it, instead of being carried along. And that's a real tightrope to walk, because it's so easy to succumb to sub-Brechtian bullshit. But it walks the line perfectly!

it's at least 45-60 seconds btw

The movie undeniably feeds into at least a portion of the audience's desire to see something/anything change the girl's living situation. And then it denies us of that closure by first making the arrival of protective services a sad little bureaucratic clown show, and then jettisoning the denouement into a wildly speculative fantasy. I'm not saying that it's not audacious. If anything, it's the moment the movie morphs into its both middle fingers up mother-daughter team.

The Bird Flipping Project

Or, if I'm being particularly charitable, it's the movie arguing there actually is no solution.

(I'd rather enter a debate on this movie any day over Three Billboards.)

There is no children!

The alternative of fantasy to the 'same old way' wasn't new either. It was a poor choice.

Alba - it's the Disneyland bit.

I don't see it as a middle finger to the mother-daughter team at all. Social services allowed the daughter to escape..

Perhaps if protective services arrived and exited via helicopter?

Now that would be audacious!

Maybe if Donald Trump had nuked Kissimmee?

I'm going to see this later. I bet I will love it.

My ending was a man a few rows away shouting "what utter rubbish" as the credits started rolling.

good. i should've broken into "Kids!" Paul Lynde-style

Hated most of Tangerine. This was better, but you get the point in the first, what, three minutes, and after that, it just didn't have the strangeness that made American Honey so memorable to me. There were lines people laughed at that I couldn't quite hear.

I loved the ending, though. At first I thought "I've never seen anything quite like this," then quickly realized it's very much in the tradition of The 400 Blows and The Squid and the Whale.

Belatedly caught up with this today. Loved it.

i liked it quite a lot, was unexpectedly deeply affected at the final scene (but not the final minute). started out not at all enchanted by the kids and clearly something changed in two hours where i was weeping. caught myself remembering some aspects of my childhood i haven't thought about in years and years, like a particular blue plastic pitcher that my mom used to rinse my hair in the bathtub. i liked how the things-getting-worse progression was folded into the movie in a way that didn't require "we've arrived at the development that signals Act III" dramatization; the rhythm of the kids' lives is, initially, seemingly unaffected, and then in hindsight you realize that most of the other kids have sort of fallen out of the picture because mooney is out with halley running the perfume hustle, etc. would make a fascinating double feature with paper moon. dafoe was incredible.

my one big gripe was that either halley's script or vinaite's performance is failing to give her much interiority. she only talks to other adults when she's pissed off or conning them, so we mostly see stuff that plays into the "bad mom" stereotyping that the movie is otherwise trying to see around. it's not egregiously awful a lot of the time, but it was kind of weird in that the film seems to want to keep us focused on the humanity of these people in a very precarious situation not often seen on film.

good point about the mother & the pacing

also i was probably just dense but it was only in hindsight on the way home that i remembered the photo shoot with the mom striking sexy poses (and taking down the pictures of the kid) and it was obviously the photo shoot for her sex-work profile, but at the time it just felt like another bonding (but maybe also not-such-great-parenting) scene. thought that was neat.

clearly at some level the movie is suggesting that given the economic constraints on the characters' spatial lives, a conventional interior life is impossible for halley. she cannot have, as it were, a room of one's own. the closest she has is sharing the pool with ashley near the beginning and when that bond is cut her world shrinks down to just her and moonee versus everyone else. whereas bobby (whose room we don't see, but clearly his situation's not that much better off since he also lives here and has this exhausting thankless job) at least has his crappy little back office as some kind of sanctum. i dunno this is kind of an architecty take on the movie but given how much time we spend in this hotel and running along its access galleries and up and down its stairs, and then going up and down this crappy strip of nearby retail, i do think space is important here.

yeah i didn't put two and two together about any of the sex worker stuff until it all came to a head, and only after reading thoughts on here did i realize how much stuff (like the photo shoot) i missed. otm about the motel... idk though this movie just didn't stick with me

continuing the spatial thing, i think one reason the final sixty seconds don't work is that they jerk us around spatially. if what we're seeing is real, it breaks the geography of the movie, where the magic kingdom is emphatically NOT a jogging distance away (previously one had to hitchhike to get within good viewing distance for fireworks; the hotel community can walk only far enough to watch house fires.). if it's fantasy, it's weird: access to this space, for the kids, has not been thematized for the preceding two hours. they don't seem to want to go there - they barely seem aware that it exists actually. they seem satisfied with cows as the climax of a "safari," they don't even play with disney toys (or off-brand knockoffs) and the only children's entertainment mentioned is spongebob....

Yeah, but it's all done so ineptly. This thing was a fucking chore to sit through.

Nah

The ending did turn what was an ok enough film into something that I wouldn't want to revisit.

I think "not a jogging distance away" was fine, as was the them not caring about Disney and simply going there as an escape from the badness that you'd think Disneyland protects you from. You it won't.

The problem was actually doing realism throughout, not playing with any fantasy and all of a sudden pulling that up on you. I am very much for seeing the process through when you started already (which casino is otm around not feeling like one). Although, having said that, I was re-watching De Sica's Umberto D. the other night and I wonder if the ending was a similar fantasy that I took for granted (my housemate had issues with it) whereas for Umberto the late late re-discovery of his desire to carry on living, the knowledge that he had his dog and that could be enough till the bitter end...somehow that got through to me whereas what Baker is pulling here shuts the door. So its a problem, but for now I think the scripting of the ending of Umberto D. is by turns inspired and nasty whereas Baker wasn't, and whatever it was happened to be badly executed.

clearly at some level the movie is suggesting that given the economic constraints on the characters' spatial lives, a conventional interior life is impossible for halley. she cannot have, as it were, a room of one's own. the closest she has is sharing the pool with ashley near the beginning and when that bond is cut her world shrinks down to just her and moonee versus everyone else. whereas bobby (whose room we don't see, but clearly his situation's not that much better off since he also lives here and has this exhausting thankless job) at least has his crappy little back office as some kind of sanctum. i dunno this is kind of an architecty take on the movie but given how much time we spend in this hotel and running along its access galleries and up and down its stairs, and then going up and down this crappy strip of nearby retail, i do think space is important here.

This is true, but the exteriors  – the interstate, the other hotels, the restaurant – are shot so anonymously. If this was indeed shot in Kissimmee, the movie doesn't pinpoint the odd randomness of stuff on I-4: a Ponderosa steakhouse next to a five-star Hilton, for instance. Some of this anonymity, I suppose, we can excuse because the film in part is told from the POV of the children. Geography fascinates me most in film, and TFP's failure to reckon with it was one of its disappointments. American Honey comes up a lot because it covers much the same ground (hardscrabble lives in fleabag hotels), but every one of its locations is precisely observed, even from the woozy POV of the drugged-out kids.

As someone who's never been to Orlando, i thought the 'travelogue' elements were OK. It's not his responsibility to scrupulously convey real-world geography in his film.

If the primary mode is (neo)realism, it's a very mannered sort, starting with watchful-angel hotel manager.

It's not his responsibility to scrupulously convey real-world geography in his film.

for the hundredth time, I'm not looking for a director to document reality: it's to get the texture, the weirdness, of reality, most of which this film misses. And, yes, Dafoe is out of De Sica.

The idea that the exteriors are shot anonymously is the stupidest thing you've said about the film so far, Alfred, and that's saying a lot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsbeXz4Chag

Anonymously? Those buildings are such a big part of the film, the phantasmagory, the way everything is a fake fairy tale, especially the shops. Yeah, the geography is off, probably in reality you don't go from the wizard to the ice cream cone and past the rocket ship (which is also shown a lot), but the film isn't a realistic depiction of the geography in of I-4.

It's not his responsibility to convey the texture and weirdness of reality as well, btw, that's just as dumb. Baker creates his own texture, and that you can't get past that it's not the I-4 you know is you're own problem.

Yes, Sean Baker, super-genius creating and inhabiting his own world.

The idea that the exteriors are shot anonymously is the stupidest thing you've said about the film so far, Alfred, and that's saying a lot:

The thread hadn't gotten personal yet, Frederik, and here you are.

fred! this is shaping up to be a reasonable and grownup thread where people work ideas out with each other. maybe you intend your tone to be that of a friendly joshing over a beer, but even if that's the case such joshing usually derails rather than enhances the conversation ime. and if you're just calling names to call names, grow up.

Man, Red Rocket is one of <the> Texas movies. So grimy and gross and perfectly of its place.

Fun Fact: that donut shop isn't in Texas City, but actually about 100 miles west in a refinery city called Groves that's a little south of Beaumont/Port Arthur. It looked kinda familiar to me, so I dug a little deeper and it's just two blocks down from this old Cajun Dancehall & Seafood joint my Dad liked to day trip to see Swamp Pop bands.

This was a good fucking thread

100 miles west East

tracer hand with by far the best posts itt. the film nails the sickly quality of living poor on the outskirts of other people's dream vacation, stuck where other people go to escape. it would be unbearably corny if the characters talked about disney, outside of using it to run a scam. it also captures the ambivalence of knowing and living with people whose troubles are both unfairly thrust upon them and self-inflicted. just because you sympathize with poor people doesn't mean they can't be completely obnoxious, i should know i've been one. absolutely wild to me that anyone could come to the conclusion that the movie would be less condescending if the mom were less shrill, less grating, if she didn't lash out. imagine how fucking treacly TFP would have been if she were an angel beaten down by a hard life, if the irritants of her circumstances hadn't seeped into her. or if the kids with nothing to do and no supervision weren't innane little delinquents pouring stream of consciousness nonsense--and spit, and ice cream--from their mouths. so many little details rang true.. even the look of the pervert was perfect (i live a few miles from a waffle house that's across the street from an RV park imfamous for its sex pests.) but its not a perfect movie, dafoe's character was enjoyable but too soft. the ending was good tho, totally believable depiction of the desire for social mobility in the minds of children who don't know what class is but know that something is wrong

my only issue with tracer's take is that little kids absolutely do spit like that, hawking loogies is an acquired skill

yeah I actually watched TFP recently for the first time and thought it was pretty good

thank you karl...arlk. sadly i never learned how to hock a loogie but i'm a soft middle-class kid, i feel like these kids would know. but point taken

Watched this a week after Happy End and thought Haneke would get the mom to go on a killing spree at the nicer hotel -