I thought ST was pretty funny and well paced, but hardly a great movie. It seemed to me to be about how people suck up fascist propaganda mindlessly.
Showgirls. Well, the first 20 minutes that I saw (before walking out) was very well done, I just hated, and I mean hated, the main character to the point of feeling sorry for her. But no way was I going to sit through another 90 minutes of her sociopathic whining.
I should also say, that in my opinion, Verhoeven, being the limited buttwipe that he is, probably also saw a HUGE amount of money being literally waved in his face and couldn’t help himself.
Dead so long, you can now find it in your local Safeway’s pet food section…
All due respect, Mr. Haven, but if it were dead it wouldn’t keep getting up and limping along for a few paces every once in a while.
I suspect this horse will remain undead for a long time to come. As Joyce said when he completed Finnegans Wake, [paraphrased from memory] “That ought to keep the critics busy for a while.”
Verhoeven’s films have as wide a gap between their surface and their subtext as the films of Hitchcock, Sirk, and Von Trier. There’s an awful lot of discussion that has taken place in that gap, and it ain’t gonna be filled in any time soon. They’ll stop talking about surface *versus *subtext in Verhoeven along about the time they stop talking about it in Hitchcock. Thankfully, that time is a “long, long, lonnnnnnng” way off.
Hitchcock will last longer. 
That said, I agree we’re actually starting to get into a good discussion here and I don’t understand why people insist we have to shut up.
I’m curious, lissener, if you can cite other examples of movies like “Starship Troopers” or “Minority Report” (the ending isn’t real; I know you hate Spielberg, but ya gotta deal with this) where the moviemakers deliberately present a deceptive or manipulative film for the purpose of playing off the audience’s expectations, by eliciting a forced response to what they think they are seeing, when in fact the subtle truth of the film is something else.
I think they’ll both last as long as anything else. Carve it in stone that within 20 years, Verhoeven will be as acknowledged a genius as Hitchcock. Track me down then, and see if I’m not right. (It took longer than that for Hitchcock to lose his “pulp hack” status.)
Not sure if I get what you’re asking. Films with a wide gap between what they seem to be about, versus what they’re really about?
Which is precisely why I haven’t been participating in the thread.
I re-read my old posts, as re-posted by lissener (who is, for the record, an off-board friend), and I have the following thoughts: I still believe all of this. I couldn’t really put it any better now than I did then. And it doesn’t matter to me whether people agree or not. So why bother piling up a bunch of different words to restate the same opinion for no real purpose?
It’s really very simple for me: I enjoy Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers and I find that careful consideration of the work has, for me, been illuminating in how I look at everything from Riefenstahl to CNN. I offer some words on how and why this has been valuable for me, because of the possibility that others may find similar value. If somebody chooses not to do the same analytical work, or if somebody does do the analysis and doesn’t arrive at the same result, it matters not at all to me, because I still have the value for myself.
I’ve spoken with enough people, both in cyber- and meat-space, about my take on Verhoeven’s material that I’m not surprised by any response ranging from revelation to ridicule. I appreciate the former, because I’ve enriched someone’s life, and I shrug at the latter, because I’ve had no effect at all.
And then I move on, because I have to gird for the really difficult battle: convincing people of the towering work of genius that is Krippendorf’s Tribe.
Now, I do not actually think Krippendorf’s Tribe is a work of genius. In point of fact, I consider it to have approximately the same artistic merit as a Kinkade canvas dipped in badger pee. But were I to believe in its greatness, and more importantly were I to come up with an interesting argument about it that provokes an interesting discussion about the film’s place in the filmic canon and beyond it the nature of film art in general, then haven’t I added to the cinematic landscape, in some small way?
As far as I’m concerned, the discussion, in and of itself, has merit. I have as much contempt for those who thoughtlessly dismiss the film as “crap from a hack” as I do the cheerleaders who dismiss the naysayers, of whatever stripe, as ignorant dolts. But note that lissener is not doing that. He is engaging the debate, and he’s bringing in very interesting works that provide a legitimate basis for comparison, like Twelve O’Clock High. All he’s trying to do is come at the question from different angles; he, and I, have had a positive, enlightening experience with the film, and he, and I, would like other people to derive the same enjoyment.
The only difference between us is that he’s still at it. I think the argument, as a back-and-forth exchange of views, is largely played out on these boards (though not at all elsewhere), so here I’m willing to let my previously expressed opinion speak for itself.
Obviously, similar things could be said about Spielberg’s A.I., or Adaptation by Kaufman and Jonze, or the Rodriguez/Miller noirfest Sin City, or any other work whose camps of defenders and detractors are firmly established, as is demonstrated by the pages-long threads each typically spawns. There will be no change in the positions of the two sides; all we can do is engage with the discussion for its own sake. If we get something out of it, then great. If not, then why take it personally?
Which isn’t to say that everybody here is. Clearly, only a few are, and that’s too bad, really. You don’t have to like or dislike the movie. You’re free to hate it or love it. All I think can fairly be asked is that you not spoil the discussion for everyone else by pretending that your subjective point of view — and that’s all it is; there are as many opinions about movies as there are movies — has the facade of concrete, platonic objectivity.
And for what it’s worth, I would absolutely be interested in a thoughtful argument on behalf of Krippendorf’s Tribe. I wouldn’t have to agree with the conclusion, and it’s unlikely that I would, but a compelling case would be interesting in and of itself whether or not it winds up being convincing. Even if I disagree, I might actually learn something. Or maybe I wouldn’t. It doesn’t matter. The point is that somebody has thought about it, really thought about it, and would like to walk me through the argument. Even if at the end of the day I choose not to buy into it, it does me no harm to see why someone thinks the way they do, and I might even enjoy the insight into them personally.
Isn’t that enough?
But with deliberate intent to deceive, using the audience’s expectations against them.
I don’t mean cinematic shocking tricks - making you look to the left when the purple people-eating monster is about to jump at the heroine from the right; I mean at the level of what the story of the movie, or its theme, actually is.
I am guessing, however, that “Krippendorf’s Tribe” ain’t one of them.
Yeah.
Damn. That was sposed to follow Cervaise’s post.
Anyway, I totally get why Cervaise is not interested in participating in this ongoing (not to say infinite) discussion. For the record, I’m not here to convince anyone of anything. I’m here because I enjoy having these discussions. I can talk about movies all day and all night; the less straightforward a movie, the more I like to keep on talking about it.
I certainly agree with Cervaise that this discussion has done been and gone over and over and over and over again. But the fact that it keeps coming up is interesting in itself, to me, and it’s just not in my nature to respond to such resurrections of the old horse by saying, “This discussion’s been had, search the board.” Where’s the fun in that? It’s way more fun to have the discussion again.
It’s not about final answers, for me; it’s about the discussion.
“Intent to deceive”? As opposed to, “intent to add layers of meaning”?
Not sure why “deception” is your criterion. In any case, I think that of the many directors who often work in a layered style, Verhoeven, Von Trier, and Miike are probably the most “mischievous” I can think of; the ones whose films come closest to being pranks perpetrated on the audience. Hitchcock and Sirk of course are well known to be directors whose films often have subtexts at odds with the surface text. James Whale’s The Old Dark House also comes to mind, as does Ken Russell’s self-parody The Lair of the White Worm. But those, like The Last Action Hero, only have the subtext “this genre of film is fun to make fun of,” and nothing more serious than that.
Is that an answer you’re looking for?
My big beef about Verhoeven’s film is that people that dislike the book wave it around like some sort of bloody banner. “Look, we’re right, see what the book becomes on film!”
People have accused Heinlein of being pro-military, as if it were a bad thing. I don’t think the book is necessarily about the military (though that is the vehicle he uses, as it’s something he’s familiar with, and it makes for a good story) but about society and our roles in it.
Verhoeven doesn’t seem to get that. I know part of that is politics, as it seems someone who is “left” is ordained from on high to not like the military, but still.
Does anyone know if there are any sort of plans to ever try to make the actual movie, rather than the film of the same name that uses Character names from the book and then throws the rest away?
also…
I don’t think I’ll ever be over Macho Grande.
I think lissener has misrepresented an interesting film by omitting some important elements that distinguish 12oH from other films of the period. Hardly a propaganda film (it was made 5 years after WWII ended), it’s actually a study in command structure, group discipline, and personal sacrifices wartime makes necessary (some of which he eludes to but gives short shrift to). One of the most important things lissener fails to mention is that, in becoming the martinet the squadron requires, Peck has a breakdown. He becomes very similar to the officer he replaced, and the stress of maintaining this rigid discipline while slowly becoming more invested in his crews takes an obvious psychological toll. Leadership is not simply about charisma but also about making difficult decisions that impact the men you lead. Films like Destination Tokyo, Sahara, A Walk in the Sun, and other films made during the war, while quite good at times, reinforce the diversity of our citizens (the motley assorment of soldiers) and the nobility of the goals. 12oH pays little lip service to either, since they’re generally incidental to what the squadrons need to achieve–raw percentages of targets hit and airmen surviving intact.
Critic Michael Gebert wrote: “Going against the grain of every morale-builder made during the war, the bomber-squadron movie TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH suggested that officers and men were fundamentally different creatures after all (by job if not by nature), that the individuality we were fighting to preserve was the one luxury we could not afford during wartime – and that the price of victory was a commanding officer’s soul.”
Though lissener’s faithful to the speeches in the film, he’s a bit glib about the context. It’s not nearly as gung-ho as he makes it out to be, and whatever celebration to heroism that exists is muted and bittersweet (unlike, say, 30 Seconds over Tokyo, another bomber movie made while the war was still on). To argue that Verhoeven modeled ST after 12oH is, IMHO, to fundamentally misinterpret what the latter film was trying to say, applying a reductive reading to its intentions. And if Verhoeven really was using 12oH as a model, then it just shows that the subtleties in character eluded him since he already had a predetermined idea of what to “expect” from American “propaganda”.
It’s probably the wrong word.
Well, no, it isn’t. Many works of art have multiple layers of meaning. In the case of “Starship Troopers,” however, there’s a clear intent to mask at least some of the meaning under a layer of deceipt. Verhoeven is clearly experimenting with the audience by leading them on to believe that they’re watching standard hollywood action fare and nothing more. As Cervaise points out, the audience’s reaction to what they (or some of them, anyway) think is just schlock is part of Verhoeven’s point.
Again, same with “Minority Report”; the ending is a dream, but is designed to make the audience think it is a neatly resolved (by Hollywood standards) happy ending, which deliberately parallels the “dreams as reality” technology that screws Cruise’s character (and all the suspects he rounds up) in the first place. It’s deliberately deceptive, even if it is pretty easy to notice it on a second viewing.
Sort of. You named mostly directors, though, not movies. But now I’m going to go rent some of Von Treir’s films; any specific recommendations?
As to the issue of “Starship Troopers” the movie versus the book, I honestly don’t understand why anyone gives a crap. Movies aren’t books and books aren’t movies. Sometimes the changes is for the better; “Jaws” the movie was a lot better than the book, as was “The Hunt for Red October” or “The Godfather.” Sometimes the movie is a lot worse than the book, as in “The Shining” or, well, any number of movies. They’re two different medias. Going into a new media, all bets are off.
Besides, Heinlein kicked the oxygen habit ten years before they made the movie.
This is probably the sentence that best illuminates where I diverge from your and Cervaise’s opinions. Verhoeven is not a hack. Starship Troopers and Showgirls are more complex than most naysayers give them credit for.
But while your comparison to Hitchcock, Sirk, and Von Trier is true, I find that all of them are far more skilled than Verhoeven (at least in those two movies) at creating both an enjoyable, interesting surface and a complicated subtext. The former three directors (although Von Trier may be quibbleable) create movies that are enjoyable if you never think about subtext; Verhoeven isn’t as good at that.
Of course, even Hitchcock has his Topaz . . .
That’s not quite it. Verhoeven’s perspective on war and military is strongly colored by his experience as a child living in Nazi-occupied Holland. This experience obviously had a great deal of influence on ST.
Sure. Although I believe his wife was still around when the movie came out.
But for fans, particularly rabid fans, it’s exceedingly disrespectful. It’s almost as if somone had taken Carl Sagan’s contact, and then made it an alien invasion movie, with bloodthirsty aliens feasting on nubile young women.
For me, the most intriguing idea in ST the book was the society created therein (franchise/citizenship only for those that volunteer for “civil service” upon turning 18). And then Verhoeven, for his own reasons, decides to make some quasi-Nazi state out of it. It just bugs me, I guess, on a personal/emotional level.
I didn’t mean to suggest there was a one-to-one parallel between the two films. I quoted the aspects of 12O’H that were very obviously present in Verhoeven’s imagery and vocabulary, but didn’t want to add to an already overlong post by discussing which parts of the older film were *not *synthesized by Verhoeven. “Verhoeven used X,Y, and Z,” seemed relevant to this discussion. Adding “but he didn’t happen to use A, G, K, L, F, R, Q, M, D, or V” seemed less relevant.
And again, “propaganda” has been used loosely in this thread, not least by me. 12oH was made afer the end of the war, but it was still very romantically nostalgic about it. It was not a “buy bonds” movie, but it was certainly framed as a justification after the fact. Unlike, say, The Best Years of Our Lives, which was a film made three years earlier–within one year of the end of the war–and examines, quite unjadedly, the very real emotional consequences that returning warriors would have to face when trying to reinsert themselves back into what was now a completely different world at home. TBYoOL greeted returning fighters with a message that could be oversimplified as “It’s going to be very hard for you to recover from your war experiences, but we, a grateful nation, are here to help you with the transition,” while 12O’H’s message might be bumperstickered as, “You guys are bruised up, by *man *you sure kicked some Nazi ass!” Not to denigrate 12O’H; I consider it a great film. But for all its complexity, it’s still a piece of apologia.
Further, AG, Verhoeven was not addressing 12O’H exclusively or even specifically, so where it differs thematically is not really relevant. He was addressing Hollywood’s vocabulary of war films, and despite their not being exactly the same movie, 12O’H was an obvious and important source for him.
Verhoeven cribbed from many movies. There’s a great deal he cribbed from 12O’H, and more he cribbed from the other films you mentioned, and from a great many more. He was not attemption to encapsulate, globally, the themes and issues of each of those individual movies.
I acknowledged in my original post the complexity of 12O’H. Some of the issues and themes it addresses are treated with a subtlety and maturity rarely seen in gungho Hollywood war films. As I said above, "Twelve O’Clock High is a fascinating and complex examination of the of the emotional sacrifices war demands from warriors. "
Yes, Peck’s character breaks down. We’re forced, along with him, to regain some sympathy for the man he replaced. But he recovers from his breakdown. He gets back on that horse. I also said above, "But it’s also a stirring anthem to the heroism of war. Like Saving Private Ryan, one of its primary themes is "War is hell, but man is it worth it!’ " The film ends on a note of heroism–heroism through sacrifice, but heroism nonetheless–and nostalgia.
I’m sorry if you found my treatment glib. It was not my intention to provide an exhaustive analysis of 12O’H (which is why I limited my discussion of the points you made to an acknowledgement of the film’s complexity and it’s theme of emotional sacrifice), but to identify the components of it that were relevant to the discussion at hand.
Dancer in the Dark is probably his most egregious bait and switch, but it’s pretty harrowing; you’ll need some recovery time afterward. It’s so h arrowing, in fact, that it’s pretty difficult to see through the surface, opaque as it is with intensely emotional situations, to the mischief that underlies it.
Much the same can be said of Breaking the Waves, but the “hidden” layers are more thematically “serious”; and the intent to “deceive” is not so much a part of his overall thematic approach.
Miike’s *Audition *is pretty much a bait and switch too, but it’s even more harrowing than Dancer in the Dark.
*Psycho *is probably the most mischievous of Hitchcock’s films. Hint: it’s really a bait-and-switch comedy.
Now that I mention it, I’d describe Lynch’s Blue Velvet in much the same way.
I’da said The Paradine Case.
But I’ll agree that V’s movies are more dependent on their metahood than those of the other directors. He’s a brilliant director, you ask me, but he’s no Douglas Sirk.