Over at
Film Comment, critic Amy Taubin visits the mumblecore party and
finds that the keg has run dry. "Adieu, mumblecore, the indie movement that never was more than a flurry of festival hype and blogosphere branding," she opens (and summarizes) with in a piece that challenges the proposition that these largely no-budget, DIY films constitute a valid aesthetic movement.
Is that, however, a sufficient basis for a film movement? Obviously not in the grand sense of the French New Wave or the postwar American avant-garde. At most, one might think of mumblecore as an update of the “New Talkie,” the strand (not quite a genre) of no-budget indies that emerged in the early Nineties with such landmark films as Richard Linklater’s Slacker, Kevin Smith’s Clerks, and Rose Troche and Guinevere Turner’s Go Fish. Within a broader history, one might trace it back to Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls and his related Sixties talkies. So specific was the chatter in all these films that they could have served as illustrations in a course on anthropological linguistics.
For Taubin, m'core's offerings are not all flat -- she likes the films of Andrew Bujalski and Aaron Katz, and, in fact, as much of her piece is about listing their talents as it is criticizing the assumptions behind mumblecore itself. And she ends with a laudatory passage I am particularly happy about: her take on Ronald Bronstein's
Frownland, a film recently nominated by
Filmmaker and
MOMA for
Filmmaker's "Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You" Gotham Award.From the piece:
A latecomer to the party, Ronald Bronstein, whose Frownland (07) won a special jury award at SXSW, has made a film that is both an unnerving literalization and a clammy slap in the face of mumblecore, although Bronstein began production in 2002, three years before the word was uttered. The protagonist of this mesmerizing piece of New York miserabilism is a self-described “troll from under the bridge,” rendered so dysfunctional by his insecurities and self-hatred that his mouth spasms and drools every time he tries to speak. Ingeniously shot on Super-16 and featuring a performance by Dore Mann that is a tour de force of courage or perhaps masochism, Frownland bears comparison with Ken Jacobs and Bob Fleischner’s 1963 avant-garde classic Blonde Cobra or any of Jacobs’s early portraits of the outcast Jerry Sims. Bronstein has created a horror film nearly as creepy as Eraserhead and more unsparing because it offers no possibility of release.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 11/07/2007 11:10:00 AM
Comments (5)
There's been a retort to Taubin's piece over at GreenCine Daily where the usually tight-lipped David Hudson assesses her argument. There is also a rather lively debate continuing in the comments section below the post.
Go here for everything: http://daily.greencine.com/archives/004863.html
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posted by Nick Dawson @ 11/07/2007 12:02 PM
Debate? Holy smokes, why don't you guys just let it go and realize people are finally seeing behind the hype? Amy pretty much cut it to the quick with her merciless assessment of this blog created "movement". Filmmaker did a lot to fan the flame, linking to a number of inane sites, forums and blogs - creating a false sense of a new film scene happening. I hope you can regain at least a shred of dignity by letting mumblecore die in peace.
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posted by @ 11/07/2007 6:01 PM
I don't think they fanned the flame. More like: Who cut the cheese?...
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posted by @ 11/08/2007 11:18 AM
mumblesnore.
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posted by @ 11/09/2007 2:25 AM
I was particularly amused by Matt Dentler's referring to "Mumblecore" as a "genre" in a post a few days ago. I think that, at the best, these films constitute a small wave (nothing like the b-movie detective wave that arrived on French shores after world war two that was dubbed "Film Noir"), hardly a sub-genre and definitely _not_ a genre unto themselves. If we are to do that then shouldn't the work of Judd Apatow & co be considered a "genre" as "Superbad", "Knocked Up", "40 Year Old Virgin and "Walk Hard" are all featuring overlapping cast and crew in different combinations, thematically and stylistically similar et al...
I think mumblecore is a great marketing device that has gotten a number of films (that range in quality from ho-hum to quite good) a lot of publicity and good for them in that regard. It is most similar to Dogme 95, a similar publicity stunt based on an asthetic idea and similarly ranged from bad to good. Just like Dogme 95 never lived up to it's hype about changing film forever, so to will Mumblecore become an interesting touch-stone and reference point but little more. I think if the films truly spoke the words of a new generation of people then more of those people would have showed up to see them.
Oh well, I'm glad the air is out of this bag a little bit but kudos go to Matt Dentler and the mumblekids for getting so much press...
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posted by @ 11/09/2007 10:08 AM
