Movie Enthusiast Issue 23: Spontaneous Moviegoing, Scorsese's Silence, Sundance 2017 Lineup Revealed
Two months ago I saw Park Chan-Wook's new film, The Handmaiden, and subsequently wrote an essay on it, offline, and decided not to publish it (yet, if ever). A lot has happened in the intervening weeks, and I had largely put the film out of my memory.
Last week the LA Review of Books published a review of the film written by a Yale Comparative Literature professor. The piece opens with the reviewer relating her surprise in the middle of the film when the Korean period piece she thought she had gone to see turned out to be…well, uh, The Handmaiden.
I'll spare the details of the film (use your imagination) (or not), but I was BAFFLED that there exists anyone who would go see this movie without any foreknowledge of what it's about, or what reputation it brings with it. But then of course, I would be baffled by this. I devote so much time to reading up on what's what and who's who in the world of cinema—I have this newsletter to write, after all—that it would never occur to me to go see a new release without preparing myself with some semblance of what to expect when going in. Particularly in the case of The Handmaiden, I wanted to know just how gruesome, kinky, or kinkily gruesome Park's latest confection was going to be before deciding to dedicate two and a half hours of my life to it.
And I suppose, upon reflection, that this episode reveals a bit about my moviegoing mindset. I'm never not aware that I grew up hating the whole experience of going to movie theaters (they were too loud, they smelled too much of popcorn, and before I had turned 16 the closest ones to my house were all about an hour's drive away); I readily volunteer this information to people when I introduce myself as the resident Film Guy. How often do I stop and consider, though, just how little things may have changed? I don't like moviegoing in the traditional sense of those flâneurs of old, who would reportedly stumble into and out of movie theaters on weekday evening just to catch whatever picture was on, no foreknowledge of the theater's programming necessary. I go to the movies because I love film and I love starting and entering conversations about it. So how else am I going to get my film fix other than by…going to the movies?
Maybe I should resolve, in 2017, to learn just a little bit less about everything that's going to be showing up in theaters in the calendar year. It just might do me some good to put the spontaneity back into moviegoing, and it might even help make me a better judge of any given movie's flaws or merits. If this year is anything to go by, that's an idea that just might work: the two movies I've loved the most are ones that I knew almost nothing about beforehand.
(But please, do not watch The Handmaiden without knowing in advance what you're signing up for.)
Articles, News, and Interviews
The 2017 Sundance Film Festival is just around the corner! Get a first look at what to expect from this year's edition; we'll be digging into the festival in more detail in a later newsletter, once the final list of Premieres is announced.
You know what else is almost here? Martin Scorsese's decades-in-the-making passion project, Silence. Paul Elie (“The Life You Save May Be Your Own”) profiles the director and the Catholic underpinnings of his career.
“Junior knows best” in a great many of today's animated children's movies But…what if in reality it's parents who more often know best?
Just how did the makers of Arrival design their own alphabet?
Today in hot takes: Amy Adams is the new Leonardo DiCaprio.
Before he was a filmmaker, David Lynch got his start as a painter.
Painstakingly hand-painted backdrops (not painted by David Lynch) have always been a staple of Hollywood moviemaking, if you just know where to look for them.
Poster of the Day
Are these really the best movie posters of 2016? I'll let you be the judge.