Sin City

[fabrisse]

I'm not entirely sure what I want to say. I can tell you why this is a brilliant work visually.

The use of black and white is subtle and elegaic and completely appropriate for a modern film noir. The touches of color give a legitimate emphasis to certain figures or objects (my favorite moment of this sort is when a policeman's flashlight illuminates someone in a car. The only color is the patch of skin under the light.). Some of the frames are exquisite works of art.

The film translates love and need and the power of principles into grand metaphors. Every male good guy is compared to a different member of the roundtable and the one whose somewhere in the middle is described as an old-fashioned berserker. One who should and could swing his ax through a battlefield with no remorse and perfect honor.

The film is also unrelentingly, gruesomely violent. I had a little warning about it, but nowhere near enough. I feel sickened and besmirched for having seen it. There is torture, then there's the graphic oral descriptions of torture. There are body parts and fluids everywhere. I came close to throwing up myself more than once, and I only saw about 2/3 of the movie. My head was averted and my eyes covered for the other third.

It wasn't enough. Worse than the pornographic violence on the screen were the snickers and laughs of the teenagers in the audience. There was no sense of compassion for the victims.

All the women are selling sex on some level, too.

The MPAA saw fit to give the film an R rating. But they won't allow an erect penis on the screen or a depiction of loving consensual sex without giving the film an NC-17.

I've cried more in the last few hours than I have since early days of full-blown depression.

I strongly recommend avoiding the film if you have a weak stomach. If you want to see it anyway, I recommend seeing it early enough in the afternoon that you can come out to full daylight and maybe go see a light comedy before nightfall. It could help.

Comments

[tpau]

huh. i saw it at 9:30, came out at 12ish and we then went for pancakes. i have to say, i will never look at Frodo the same way again...

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

So you have a strong stomach?

Pancakes are a good choice. Meat on the bone wasn't.

I like your icon.

[jerminating.livejournal.com]

Gah.

I would have recommended Sin City except that I knew it touches on some of your personal squicks. In graphic detail.

Yeah, I didn't get the laughter either. Although depressingly here, I don't think teenagers were the only ones laughing.

Kisses.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the warning. Although the Tarantino name was enough to keep me away anyway. "No movies that are R for violence" is a firm principle for me.

[eanja]

You actually make the movie sound more appealing than otherwise, not that I'm planning to see it. I don't care for violence particularly, but it tends not to bother me unless it's quite extreme or completely gratuitous. (The violence in Master and Commander, or the Cell, for example, bugged me not at all. And I admit to laughing at a lot of Pulp Fiction.) But I was most of the way through the Sin City commercial before I figured out they were advertising a movie and not an M-rated video game, and based on that, I have just no urge to see it. You make it sound like there are interesting visuals and at least some attempt at depth in the male characters, but overall, it still sounds like a live-action version of a made for teenage boys shoot-em-up game, complete w/ sleazy women, flying blood and body parts, and the player as a good guy even when he's thoughtlessly hacking away. Maybe that's not accurate, and they're just promoting it that way to pull in that part of the market. But it just doesn't seem like something I want to see, no matter how good the visuals, unless there's a lot more plot and point to it than I'm getting a sense of so far.