Archive Guy, I agree. Which is why I had to change what I originally wrote to say “may be flawed,” and simply leave open the possibility.
There are a large number of perfectly good films that I know I’d never enjoy, or didn’t enjoy. And there is no flaw involved in that. Just, as you said, a matter of taste.
Resounding? There are only a couple of posts in this thread that say movies should be a one-time only affair. The rest seem open to the repeated viewing scenario.
It’s a dead horse around here.
Blockbuster: seen by millions of people once.
Cult movie: seen by hundreds of people thousands of times.
(or something like that)
I believe this is one of the balances of making a film. You have to make something that is enjoyable on the first viewing in order to lure the viewers into a second helping. There are some terrible movies for which I don’t care what subtlties the filmmakers had in store. I am sure all movies have something that repeated viewings would reveal, but the initial viewing should be intriguing enough to bring an audience back.
I am a huge fan of repeated viewings. There are some movies I have seen hundreds of times. Probably a couple of them have been viewed by me a thousand times. The movies that can do this generally have a sort of rhythmic pacing from scene to scene, for which, it seems, few up-and-coming directors have a sense.
Except that the reality is that most blockbusters make their money because people see them over and over again (and then buy the DVD) while small indie films are viewed once with no thought of watching them again. Cult movies are extremely rare.
And when I asked about viewing a film a second time, I was emphatically not thinking of pleasure films from the Marx Brothers to Star Wars, but the more challenging films that delve deeper into character, theme, and subtlety.
I didn’t want to make the thread about I’m Not There. It merely was a handy way of hanging the question onto a specific. But while I was deeply impressed by the film, my take on the Richard Gere sequence is similar to Dana Stevens’. It didn’t work and it dragged the conclusion of the movie down with it.
That’s a far different matter than whether I liked the film or not. Sure I liked the film. But I thought it was half-great at best. What I thought it was most successful with was in the way it set up scenes that seemed to illuminate the words of the Dylan song that followed. The Gere section didn’t accomplish that. Maybe if I kept viewing I would see things in that scene that I missed the first time through or see the missing connections. Or maybe it would poison the whole movie in my mind. I never said that watching a movie a second time would automatically mean that I thought it was better. Sometimes a second view points out failings that I hadn’t even noticed.
lissener, you may or may not be right in protesting against the interpretation of some who responded, but I was looking more for responses along the lines of OtakuLoki’s. I’m not likely to see films more than once. There are a thousand movies I want to see that I haven’t seen and I’m going to favor them over seeing I’m Not There a second time.
Joyce is pretentious. Deliberately so. He was creating the ultimate challenge for the reader. Very, very few other writers do that. I’d venture to say that hardly any modern writers structure a book so that it requires a glossary and a interpretive text as necessary adjuncts.
There may be a few filmmakers who approach film in that way, but they are so few they can be ignored for the purpose of this discussion. Watching a movie carefully and seriously is all that can be expected of most viewers. Those like **lissener ** who immerse themselves in movie culture are far out on the extreme tail of the bell curve. I like movies. I go to fun movies, but I am also among that minority who try to see the intelligent and interesting non-blockbuster movies that sometimes show up. I don’t *live * movies. I don’t study the oeuvres of directors or go to film festivals or keep up on Thai filmmaking. I know something about the history of film. This week I watched Skidoo and *Torchy Plays with Dynamite * and That’s Dancing, and not many can say that.
Which I guess turns my question into: if a supposedly intelligent movie fails me the one time I watch it, how fair it is to say that the movie is a failure?
And then any number of questions spark off that. How much of a movie has to fail before it turns into a failure? How much do I have to know about a director or writer or actor’s body of work to “get” what they’re doing? Is it fair to walk into a movie with no foreknowledge at all and expect to understand all that it is trying to do? Do filmmakers think about these issues and if so how do they answer?
I’m equating good movies with good literature here. I could ask these same questions about serious books. It’s just that I’ve been part of the discussions when it comes to literature but not about movies and I’d like to hear movie thoughts on the issue.
Oh…then “as many times as it takes”. 
I say, if I can’t grasp a movie in three sittings, it’s no good.
Maybe we should define terms. “Pretentious” implies dishonesty–it shares a root with “pretend”–not merely difficulty. Did you mean to suggest that the difficulty of Joyce’s work is a pretense, a sham, sound and fury signifying nothing? If so, you’re wrong. If not, perhaps there’s a better word than “pretentious.”
You’re looking for a universal law. That’s not going to be possible. Take a movie like Haynes’s Far from Heaven. Seen simply as an entertainment, it’s a visually beautiful, emotionally engaging story about the emotional journey of a woman in a different historical context from yours: suburban America in the 50s. So, if you enjoy it on that level, you can call it a success. But if you’ve seen the films of Douglas Sirk, the movie contains further layers of richness. Further still, if you’ve seen the films of Max Ophuls–none of which are available in this country in any form, for an even greater degree of esoterica–there are further layers still. Now how would you categorize Far from Heaven? Is it suddenly not a success because the person sitting next to you might have seen the films of Sirk and Ophuls, and thus responds to different clues than you, who hasn’t?
I hope I made that sound sufficiently silly. My point is, each of you is an audience of one. What you get out of a movie is roughly equal to what you put into it. “Success” or “failure” are nonsense words in this context.
Not at all. There are several other definitions of pretentious that are more apt that you are overlooking.
characterized by assumption of dignity or importance.
making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious.
Claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit, especially when unjustified.
intended to attract notice and impress others; “an ostentatious sable coat”
(of a display) tawdry or vulgar
And one set of synonyms puts it under ego.
Joyce I would put under the 1st and 2nd definitions and possibly under the 3rd, since some - certainly not all - think his claims of merit are unjustified. Hardly pretense or sham. Ego, OTOH, is a distinct contender.
All of those definitions imply, to a greater or lesser degree, dishonesty; disingenuousness. If you mean that Joyce’s works are more complicated than they need to be, that’s not the same thing as pretentious. Pretentious has the connotation that you are claiming more credit than you’ve earned, not simply that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.
**Can a movie be good if it takes three (or two or more) viewings to understand it sufficiently? **
Yes, of course.
**Does that mean that the movie is too wonderfully dense to take in all at once or that it is so poorly constructed that it can’t be taken in all at once? **
Wonderfully dense.
However, many times the difference comes from within the viewer. I get a lot more out of Godfather 2 now that I’m 40 than I did when I was 24, and that’s largely because of maturity and experience - I’m closer in age to the main characters and some of their motivations are familiar.
**Should a movie surprise you and be about that initial reveal or should a movie be familiar and fully absorbed before one looks seriously at it? **
To be honest, they’re not mutually exclusive. 
Movies are about both: the initial experience, and the depth to analyze them.
Do you learn to delve more deeply into the movie the third time through or do you just start to read things into it to justify the time spent.
Naw, I don’t think I’m reading things into a movie to justify the amount of time spent on it. I believe that some movies are good enough to justify multiple viewings and I’ll still see things on viewing 5 or 6 that I never saw earlier. Often it’s an attempt to recapture the original experience of seeing the film - this is usually the reason I would see a movie again while in its first run. For example, I saw Across the Universe twice in the theater.
Of course, many times when you see a movie again you’re watching it with somebody who hasn’t seen it. It can be enjoyable to watch their reactions to scenes - I remember a loud, girlish scream coming from a 250+ pound friend of mine when he saw The Exorcist the first time.
Does it make a difference if the three viewings are one right after the other or several years apart?
Many movies are worth seeing again 10+ years after the last time to see even if you approach the same movie the same way. My wife and I have been kind of re-watching a number of movies that we loved back in the 80’s (when we were teens) and reappraising them:
Grease: A blast to our 11 year-old eyes and ears, a horror as a parent when we realize the message of the movie is “you should turn into a slut in order to get the guy you want.” :eek:
Ferris Bueller: Not really identifying with ol’ Ferris anymore, not really. This kid is headed into a career as a con artist or aluminum siding salesman - and he deserves it. Later events also bring about creepier interpretations of Jeffery Jones’ role in this film.
I watched Ferris a lot when it was released to video then didn’t catch it again until a year or so ago when it was on AMC or E! or something. We had a complete 180 on this movie, in some ways.
And a large number of once “good” movies that you now find are utter crap: Risky Business, First Blood (first Rambo movie), Romancing the Stone, etc. It’s good to know that the madness of thinking First Blood as a “good” movie has finally lifted.
**How many movies do you view multiple times? Why? How many movies do you view just once? Why? **
The likelihood of a movie being re-watched is proportional to its chances of being shown on TV or my buying it on DVD. We rarely rent movies that we’ve seen already - BB and Netflix are used for new viewings, but we’ll rewatch movies if they’re on TCM, TNT, Sundance, etc.
I also have a 6 year-old, which incorporates a sense of re-watching that also bears mentioning: Her most re-viewed movies include The Incredibles, Beauty and the Beast… and, er, even less revered films such as Barbie: Fairytopia, in addition to big chunks of War of the Worlds and Jurassic Park. Last Friday we popped some popcorn, turned off all the lights in the house, and put on Twister for the first time: Sophie loved it.
What kinds of insights do you usually get after multiple viewing that you didn’t see at first?
A number of them are insights that maturity brings (Ferris Bueller, above), others are of the “I didn’t notice that” issue. Of course, the most common reason for re-watching a movie is because you enjoyed it the previous viewings so insights might not be coming.
Are you different if you watch movies over and over? Has DVDs and Netflix and cable tv changed that? Is is different for recent movies than for oft-repeated classics?
I re-watch movies most on Cable TV, with purchased DVD’s being re-watched ocassionally. I rarely rent movies that I’ve seen before.
We tend to re-watch movies that were made when we were alive: it’ll be highly doubtful that I’ll re-watch Born Yesterday (1943?) ever again but very likely that I’ll re-watch the LOTR films before I die.
It’s patently absurd to lay down by fiat that a work of art (of any kind) must start entertaining you at a certain point or else be considered a ‘failure’.
Sitting still and passively watching a screen for 90 minutes is such a boring experience that I find very few movies reward such effort. When they do, I definitely sit up and take notice. When I watch a movie more than once, and generally when I watch a movie period, I have a computer hooked up to the Net to keep my mind busy.
As you may have guessed, I watch very few movies more than once with my full attention. “The Usual Suspects” a couple of Miyazakis and the dinosaur/Kong battle sequence from Jackson’s King Kong would be about it.
Define “enjoyable.”
I personally enjoy the experience of being challenged by a movie. I like realizing, as I watch, that there’s more going on than may superficially appear, that I will need to work hard to tease out the layers of the film. I enjoy that.
Most people, I concede, do not. Most people want there to be a surface that can be consumed and discarded and depth that can be explored if they so choose. Depth alone is alienating.
For example, this last weekend, I finally got a chance for a second viewing of No Country for Old Men. That’s a movie that appears to have a surface, but that discards that surface and goes unapologetically full-tilt into its depth for the last twenty minutes or so. There is no comfortable roller-coaster car to ride into the credits; the floor disappears out from under your feet well before the movie ends, and you either swim or drown. The first two acts seduce you into the conventional thriller mentality, but then those conventions are entirely abandoned.
The typical audience member hates this movie. The woman next to me stood up as the credits began and said, “Well, that sucked.” When I grumbled, she said, “That was the suckiest movie I’ve ever seen in my life.”
She’s wrong.
The bottom line is this: The limitations of the audience do not represent a flaw in the film.
Complexity may limit the audience, but that is a choice of the filmmakers. It does not represent, objectively, a problem with the film. With the box office, perhaps. But not with the film itself.
And this is a subject that has been argued to death on the SDMB, so I’m not going to belabor it much further. Suffice it to say that most of the audience at No Country reacted as if personally offended by the movie. I think this response is best described as a perceived insult: People hear how great a movie is, they go to see it, they don’t get it, and they react as if the movie itself is calling them stupid, as if they’re being mocked somehow, and they choose to reject the movie rather than do the necessary work.
They may or may not be stupid, but that reaction absolutely is.
Man, I’m getting crotchety in my later years…
While agreeing in general, I’m curious…
Have you ever put a lot of time into a film that purports ( or is claimed by others ) to have great depth and then found out it really is garbage? Or at least not worth the effort put into it? One where the depth just didn’t save it?
Or is all complexity ultimately rewarding? To you, that is :).
Aye. And therein lies the rub.
OTOH, if that much of the audience comes out of the film hating the experience, they’re not going to go back to rewatch* it and find the depth. So, for that portion of the audience the film has failed as entertainment. I don’t think you could get the woman whose reaction you described to see that movie again by means short of extraordinary inducements.
Now, it’s quite valid to argue that not all films view the entire movie-going public as their potential audience. Just as one can say that Joyce isn’t for everyone. One can say that just because a film fails with one viewer (even if that one viewer is me) it’s not fair to say that the film is a failure. But it’s unreasonable to contend that any audience has an obligation to rewatch something that they didn’t enjoy before they can pass judgement on it.
So, it seems to me, that we’re stuck with restating what seems to me to be a very obvious caveat with regards to any artistic criticism: They tend to be very subjective. Different people will use different criteria, and look to different standards for what they judge enjoyability by.
As an example I just tried to watch the 1922 classic Nosferatu. And while I know why the presentation seemed to overacted to me, I just couldn’t stand watching it. For me the film did fail. I’m not trying to say it’s a bad film, nor that it isn’t influential. Just that my limits as an audience prevented me from enjoying the film - and since I’m not a film historian, nor a film student, I turned it off when I got through half an hour of cringing every time the main character tried to emote. (And don’t get me started on the rental agent he worked for…)
It all comes back to, for me, the first purpose of a movie is to entertain. If it fails that first acid test it doesn’t matter how wonderfully complex the layers might be.
If you object to the word “fail” would you accept the expression: “unable to capture [part of] the audience”? To me, when we’re talking about a movie, the two seem synonymous, but I think the latter might be more palatable to you.
You and me, both. 
*In case anyone is wondering I’ll confess that I do find my use of “rewatch” awkward, but review just doesn’t seem the proper word for this purpose.
Where you and I part ways is your grating choice of the word “purpose,” as if a film is a tool or device with some sort of intended application. Change your phraseology to “what I personally seek from a film above all else is entertainment” and most of the argument evaporates.
And yet: Just as I asked for a definition of “enjoyable,” I would similarly request a definition of “entertainment.” Because for me the two terms are largely interchangeable. For example, I am hugely, hugely, entertained by a movie like, say, Brick, that depends on deep familiarity with a particular cinematic genre, and with several significant touchstones within that genre, for its effect. The unenlightened viewer tries to watch that movie, and may be mildly engaged for a time by the mystery, but is enormously put off by the aggressive style and the (apparently) ridiculous dialogue and characterizations. (I know, I’ve talked to people who hated the movie and didn’t understand the hype.) I don’t know if you’ve seen Brick, but that film, I think, provides a good illustration of the disconnect between “superficial” entertainment, where you can mindlessly enjoy the story or the cinematography or whatever on their own terms without any comprehension of the film’s actual intentions, and “deep” entertainment, where you have to engage the film on its own level. These are both entertainment, to me at least.
What, you want a list?
Of course this happens. There are lots of movies that bear an aura of complexity and/or maturity and/or name your adjective, but that are revealed by artistic autopsy to be little more than hollow shells. In fact, movies like these are often the triggers for the most enlightening and rewarding film-fanatic discussions and arguments, over beers or in line at some festival or standing in front of the video rental shelves, even more than the acknowledged masterworks. The conversation usually goes like this: “Man, I loved that movie.” <wrinkly facial expression from the other person> “What, you don’t like it?” - “Well, I used to, but then I saw <other movie> (OR) but then I realized the implication of <plotline> (OR) but then I read an interview with the director that caused me to reconsider…”
I’ll give you one example: Donnie Darko. I saw the movie in its initial (pre-cult-status) limited run, and thought it was okay – interestingly ambitious, but a little muddled. I saw it a second time in its followup (post-cult) release, and my opinion held fast. I sort of got why all the Darko evangelists adored it so much, but then that usually happens when a particular audience is first exposed to a specific storytelling form: it feels definitive, and they fall in love with it beyond reason. Anyway, I liked it fine, though I personally didn’t join the cult. The film had, I thought, some swirling currents under the surface that made it worthy of at least some analytical attention.
Then, a couple of years later, I saw the director’s cut, which was – and please forgive the use of somewhat technical cinephile terminology – dogshit.
The director’s apparently preferred take on the film is pretty much a disaster. It over-explains unnecessary plot points, and lays itself bare in a way that makes clear that all the apparent ambiguities of the original cut, the hidden layers that invite cinematic spelunking, are actually illusions created by elliptical editing. All of my interest in the film dissipated like vapor; with the context of the director’s intentions now being understood, I went back and reconsidered the original, and not for the better.
(Didn’t stop me from seeing Southland Tales a couple of months ago, though.)
Is that helpful?