When the clue hits your eye like a big pizza pie

Some random notes and not well-thought out thoughts. I looked at the crazy room page quite a few times after I put it up, soaking in all of those dark dreary rooms. The rooms felt like people trying to be dramatic by wearing serious expressions, or like artists wearing black or like people using big words to be taken seriously. Those rooms are SO serious, you know they must be dramatic films about important topics!

I was watching Raiders of the Lost Ark the other week, another clue movie. There is so much underlining in that movie: figuratively and literally. The directing is stagey and artificial which I actually like. There's the typical hero walking from darkness into light stuff. Also, when Harrison Ford creeps up to the statue at the beginning of the film, I remember how the statue seemed to glow. This time, I noticed the bright light projecting out from the statue base. Vulgar, obvious cinematography, but it works just fine.

Harrison Ford literally points to and underlines things as he works on the light clue scene (where the light shines through the staff and shows where the ark is hidden). I remember that scene as if we could see the shaft of light move from left to right. Actually the light shaft is instantaneous. What happens is that its glow gets thicker and thicker. Then, when we see Harrison Ford, they slowly turn up the light on his face. The brightness change reads as time change.

Then I was watching the end of Titanic. The ending is a bit like ours, with all that panning over photos to provide exposition. It's a lot more poetically shot than I remember it with the shots of the sinking jewel and the dissolve to Rose sleeping. Also, I remember the photo scene being one long shot, but it was actually several moves dissolved together. When the old Rose gets on deck, there is the sound of a gust of wind when she takes her first step. More underlining. Both Raiders and Titanic are marvels of underlining, pointing things out, making sure you don't miss things.

As I mentioned, I sort of like the artifice of it all. I think that perhaps, this is the way that theatricality is truly translated into film. But I guess I do object to the way that the plots and meaning are so heavily underscored.

Saw David last week who has much artier tastes than I do. It got me wondering why I seek inspiration in the mundane rather than the artistic. Part of it probably comes from that B-movie sensibility of mine. But I think it goes beyond that. There's something about some films that makes them endearing.