Constraint and community are such interestingly ambiguous influences on the artistic merit of a work. Sometimes the restrictions of a medium, or an industry, are exactly what give rise to creative brilliance. Sometimes it’s precisely the attempt to reach a specific audience that allows insight to emerge.
If the best that the film industry can produce, right now, is self-indulgent lack of restriction, then this is damning indeed. It suggests that the restrictions and community involvement that are available have managed to become so bankrupt that the creative tension between auteur and industry has lost its generative power entirely.
A good editor will restrict a writer; a good producer will restrict a director. If editors and producers lose their fidelity to anything other than the market, books and films will suffer for it, and creative freedom won’t fix it.
I like Alan Jacobs, and that article makes some very good points. Sam Kriss has a more recent piece, right here on Substack, making a similar point, though at greater length and more narrowly. Perhaps he'd say that it, self-referentially, needs an editor! Indeed, he remarks that:
"Sometimes, when people are trying to insult me and my efforts at prose, they’ll airily declare that I badly need an editor. I’ve always found this very weird. Do they think I don’t know? I’m looking at the same mess of words you are. I’m aware! I need an editor! There are some writers who claim to never think about their audience and write only for themselves, and I think that’s magnificent, but I’m not one of them. I’m trying to produce a finished object in the world, and I would quite like it to be good, and for that I need an editor."
I really enjoyed reading that. Well written, personal opinion all the way through. I haven’t seen the film yet, but now I really intend to. It sounds as if the genius of Coppola extends to creating epic failures too.,
Phenomenal piece. "The uselessness of art is what makes it a kind of prayer. We wager that what we do is worth doing."
I too, forced myself over to a theater to watch this mess of a movie. I was drawn in by the promise of something more than entertainment. And entertaining it was NOT. I'm torn between regret and reflection. What on earth was Coppola thinking or saying?
Quite a lot it turns out. Much of it sincerely awful. But also, in a way it was the perfect mirror for our social decline. I couldn't help but see flashes of NYTimes headlines with their trashy sex articles mixed in. God bless Coppolla for pulling back the curtain on our disgusting society... er, New Roman Society I mean. Fortunately, Cesar's redemptive project is overshadowed by that critique. His understated triumph is only a reminder that there is something worth saving in humanity, God help us.
This movie captures so much of how we are doing anything but progressing... morally, culturally, socially. It's all in decline.
Constraint and community are such interestingly ambiguous influences on the artistic merit of a work. Sometimes the restrictions of a medium, or an industry, are exactly what give rise to creative brilliance. Sometimes it’s precisely the attempt to reach a specific audience that allows insight to emerge.
If the best that the film industry can produce, right now, is self-indulgent lack of restriction, then this is damning indeed. It suggests that the restrictions and community involvement that are available have managed to become so bankrupt that the creative tension between auteur and industry has lost its generative power entirely.
A good editor will restrict a writer; a good producer will restrict a director. If editors and producers lose their fidelity to anything other than the market, books and films will suffer for it, and creative freedom won’t fix it.
Interesting point about restriction. Alan Jacobs makes a similar point, distinguishing "resistance" and "blockage": https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/resistance-in-the-arts
Curiously, the subtitle of that essay is, "Substack won't save us"
I like Alan Jacobs, and that article makes some very good points. Sam Kriss has a more recent piece, right here on Substack, making a similar point, though at greater length and more narrowly. Perhaps he'd say that it, self-referentially, needs an editor! Indeed, he remarks that:
"Sometimes, when people are trying to insult me and my efforts at prose, they’ll airily declare that I badly need an editor. I’ve always found this very weird. Do they think I don’t know? I’m looking at the same mess of words you are. I’m aware! I need an editor! There are some writers who claim to never think about their audience and write only for themselves, and I think that’s magnificent, but I’m not one of them. I’m trying to produce a finished object in the world, and I would quite like it to be good, and for that I need an editor."
It's a fun piece: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/two-years-of-blindness-arrogance
“In this, Megalopolis is the anti-Barbie.” Just perfect
I really enjoyed reading that. Well written, personal opinion all the way through. I haven’t seen the film yet, but now I really intend to. It sounds as if the genius of Coppola extends to creating epic failures too.,
Phenomenal piece. "The uselessness of art is what makes it a kind of prayer. We wager that what we do is worth doing."
I too, forced myself over to a theater to watch this mess of a movie. I was drawn in by the promise of something more than entertainment. And entertaining it was NOT. I'm torn between regret and reflection. What on earth was Coppola thinking or saying?
Quite a lot it turns out. Much of it sincerely awful. But also, in a way it was the perfect mirror for our social decline. I couldn't help but see flashes of NYTimes headlines with their trashy sex articles mixed in. God bless Coppolla for pulling back the curtain on our disgusting society... er, New Roman Society I mean. Fortunately, Cesar's redemptive project is overshadowed by that critique. His understated triumph is only a reminder that there is something worth saving in humanity, God help us.
This movie captures so much of how we are doing anything but progressing... morally, culturally, socially. It's all in decline.
I quite loved the movie for its audacity and its actors
https://marlowe1.substack.com/p/happy-sukkot-and-shemini-atzeres