Movies that change the way you see life

If you can say a movie has changed how you see life, you obviously haven't lived at all in the first place and have no right to say that a movie has changed anything.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

For those more dense - "Cinema never saved anyone's life, it is not a medicine that will save anyone's life. It is only an aspirin." - Luc Besson

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by goldsac

That quote's not saying anything different than your first post. It's not that I didn't understand what you're trying to say - just questioning its validity.

Oh blah blah blah. Question my validity all you want - but questioning a director/screenwriter on it is paramount to you being stupid. "I disagree with what you just said despite the fact that your opinion is in complete agreement with someone who's made many blockbuster films and is a respected person in the field of cinema! What do either of you people know?!"

The director who goes out to change the world is going to end up disappointed in his career. I can count the number of people on one hand who have changed the world through cinema and it takes two hands to count the films made. What does that mean? That the overwhelming majority of films made are not as good or intelligent or mind-blowing or (stupid slang term for "amazing" here). This is very easy to defend - since very few movies affect large populations of people on a permanent basis. Star Wars would be one. Can we name many other movies that have the longevity or popularity as that? Hell no.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Denicalis

But to say that Luc Besson is the final word on cinema theory because he made some cash with his films? Come on. That's lazy logic and you know it.

Like I'm going to start waving around Georges Bataille everytime some jackass on the internet thinks he knows something? God knows if I did that, I'd've rubbed my dick off years ago from all the constant jacking off.

While I don't think Besson is the greatest director ever... or living... (or even just plain French...), the point is that Besson is an acredited director whos worked in the field for years. His statement is testament toward what I said before. God knows Anthony Hopkins would agree with me, but I'm not going to go through all those IMDB updates saying how much he hates his career.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by goldsac

It's a philosophical issue.

No one in this thread is remotely acredited to make a philosophical debate, least of all you.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Denicalis

Yeah, but it'd be really erudite intellectual masturbation. Gotta give it that much. Some weird mix of Bataille and Besson? Like a commentary on the concept of experience between the spiritual and the physical, only it has Bruce Willis in it?

Thats not an individual error. The weakness of Besson's analysis is exactly that he is content with a single aspect - the inclination of rejection of transcendental form. This is what reduces it to negative observations which have only to be situated in time or history for us to get a positive view. The collective relationship between production (the film) and expenditure (the result of the film - critque, income, etc) is in history - Baudelaire's experience is in history, after all. Postitively, it has that perceise sense which history confers upon it.

Film may be assenting to life even in death but those are unquantifiable abstracts in which none can weigh their costs upon.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

The contradiction of modern film, especially of industry film, consists of the fact that it is the negation of art from the standpoint of art or the negation of art which itself is again deconstruction art; this contradiction especially characterises the Terrence Malick philosophy.

For modern film, and hence also for Malick, the non-material being or being as a pure object of the intellect, as a pure being of the intellect, is the only true and Absolute Art, that is, Film and not movie. Even matter, which some turn into an attribute of the divine substance, is a metaphysical thing, a pure being of the intellect, for the essential determination of matter as distinguished from the intellect and the activity of thinking – that it is a passive being – is taken away from it. But Malick differs from Besson's earlier philosophy by the fact that he determines the relationship of the material sensuous being to the non-material being differently. The earlier filmmakers and producers of the 1970s held the true divine being to be detached and liberated from nature; that is, from sensuousness or matter. They situated the toil of abstraction and self-liberation from the sensuous in themselves in order to arrive at that which in itself is free from the sensuous. To this condition of being free, they ascribed the blissfulness of the divine, and to this self-liberation, the virtue of the human essence through film. Malick, on the other hand, turned this subjective activity into the self-activity of the Absolute Art. All film, then, must subject himself to this toil, and must, like pagan heroes, win his divinity through virtue.

Only in this way does the freedom of the Absolute from matter, which is, besides, only a precondition and a conception, become reality and truth. This self-liberation from matter, however, can be posited in Film only if matter, too, is posited in him. But how can it be posited in him? Only in this way that he himself posits it. But in Film there is only Film. Hence, the only way to do this is that he posits himself as matter, as non-Film; that is, as his otherness. In this way, matter is not an antithesis of the ego and the spirit, preceding them, as it were, in an incomprehensible way; it is the self-alienation of the Art Form. Thus, matter itself acquires spirit and intellect; it is taken over into the absolute essence as a moment in its life, formation, and development. But then, matter is again posited as an untrue being resembling nothingness in so far as only the being that restores itself out of this alienation, that is, that sheds matter and sensuousness off from itself, is pronounced to be the perfect being in its true form. The natural, material, and sensuous – and indeed, the sensuous, not in the vulgar and moral, but in the metaphysical sense – are therefore even here something to be negated, like nature which in theology has been poisoned by the original sin. The sensuous is incorporated into reason, the ego, and the spirit, but it is something irrational, a note of discord within reason; it is the non-ego in the ego, that is, that which negates it. For example in Besson's nature of Film it is the non-divine in Film; it is in Film and yet outside him; the same is true of the body in the philosophy of Kubrick which, although connected with me, that is, with the spirit, is nevertheless external, and does not belong to me, that is, to my essence; it is of no consequence, therefore, whether it is or is not connected with me or you or anyone. Matter will remain in contradiction to what is presupposed by philosophy as the true meaning inside film.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Denicalis

In short, do you respect the reverential dreamer or scorn him for a lack of logic and true-sight.

Any man who poses such a question is worthy to dine at my table. Any man who answers such a question is a fool.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Denicalis

I almost feel I should just blurt out "The Big Lebowski" to make it seem more legitimate.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Goldfish from Hell

I would say "The Butterfly Effect". Think it makes you appreciate what you have and the decisions you make in the present more. I saw it once and I remember nearly every scene in the thing...Which is very rare for any movie I see nowadays.

This post really proves my point.

How ya doing, buddy?