So, I promised a review of Be Kind Rewind if it was a good movie, and I’m sorry to report that I just don’t think it was. In fact, the more I think about the movie, the more it irritates me. And while the audience we were out to see it with were trying very hard to like it, there was a palpable disappointment hanging over everything at the end. People had a lot more fun watching the submissions for the filmmaking contest the Alamo Drafthouse had before the movie came out, where people were asked to make 5 minute versions of favorite old movies of theirs. We laughed the hardest at the one I’ve posted above, which had the sort of cheery nostalgia mixed with mockery of its chosen movie that we wanted to see the movie tackle.
Instead, we got a treacly retread of the worst elements of cliched 80s movies. I mean, given that the subject matter of the movie was basically nostalgia, there’s a place to invoke all these 80s cliches, but it was done in a way that made it clear that the director seemed to sincerely think that there was a place for overuse of montages and worse, not just one scene that invokes what might be the worst 80s cliche of all time, which was marvelously parodied in this video.
Yes, the clapping audience that suddenly gathers when your main characters do something brave and independent! True, it’s toned down some in this movie, but the device is employed without irony, which made me want to hide under my chair. Some of the hat tips to 80s cliches were great, like the random overuse of special effects to show something like someone getting struck by lightening (which is part of the “Back To The Future” skit above). But that was fun. The clapping crowd thing wants to make my gouge my eyes out.
Except for crowds that clap, though, the weird thing about this movie is that any individual scene was really good. The directing itself was well-done, though I would have liked less montage, more meat in showing them making the fake movies. The actors were wonderful, across the board, which is no small feat because the written characterization of them seemed light—you just didn’t know much about them or care much about them. But the actors managed to inject enough actorly detail that it let the audience members fill in the gaps enough that we cared about them. The dialogue itself was really good. I was impressed by how the characters talked more like real people in a lot of scenes than movie characters, with all the obtuse, unfocused, prattling that doesn’t advance the “plot” that we inconvenient human beings employ in real life.
So why didn’t I like the movie? Well, first of all, it tried to Say Something. Worse, it tried to Say Something on two themes that have an inherent clash, and instead of dealing with the tension between the two themes, the filmmakers just pretended there was no tension. It was the maddening elephant in the room. The theme that’s most obvious from the trailer is the one I wish they’d just stuck with: A gleeful celebration of the remix culture, where the line between audience and artist is increasingly blurred, as people feel free to move beyond passively absorbing products towards actively reinterpreting them and sharing their interpretations with the world. The other theme is a knee-jerk defense of nostalgia, which was the prime focus of the movie and was most definitely not a subtle thing—the characters are surrounded by record players that don’t even play LPs, but all 45s. Why? Because even though one of the lead actors is a famous rapper, the characters in this movie seem to prefer to spend all their time listening to jazz records and nothing made in the past few decades. (Ironically, the music in the soundtrack is not cluttered with the pops and hisses that would actually come from pre-hi-fi era jazz records—apparently, nostalgia has its limits.) A lot of the old cars and old clothes the characters wear are linked to their poverty, so it didn’t bother me, but because of the knee-jerk “older is better” mentality of the movie, there were times when it not only got uncomfortably close to romanticizing poverty, but it went way over the line.
Where the conflict lies should be obvious—the movie is so laden with nostalgia that it romanticizes the VHS tape as some sort of ideal technology from the past that allowed people to express themselves. What is completely ignored is that the explosion in amateur video art was the result of the invention of digital technologies, not analog. If you held a Rewind Kindly video contest in an era without video editing software, digital cameras, and YouTube (or similar sites) for distribution, you would have received like 4 or 5 entries. But look at the site—they seem to have gotten over 100. VHS sucks compared to DVD, and we all know it. The movie has one line in it about how the availability of VHS rental places is good for people who are too poor to afford DVD players, but all I could think was not about how that made VHS great, but how it implicates a society where large numbers of people can’t afford what’s become a rather cheap technology. Without any hat tip to the fact that poverty is the result of a social failure, it came across again as if Michael Gondry is willing to romanticize poverty to justify his out-of-control nostalgia problem.
It gets worse—the movie’s plot revolves around an evil gentrification scheme that threatens the video store and also threatens to send Danny Glover’s character to live in the projects. While there’s a substantive reason to oppose gentrification that displaces people in this way, this movie is not the one to address that theme, because it seems that the gentrification aspect was tacked on to excuse Gondry’s sentimentality. It’s also at direct odds with the celebration of the remix culture—gutting and remaking a building in a way that mixes the old with the new is more congruent with the hip-hop-borne remix mentality that straddles the line between remembering the past while pushing forward. A better writer could have probably worked these two themes that were in tension with each other better, but Gondry blows it. What happens instead is that the Gen-X audience comes to see a celebration of our culture of remixing, remaking, and satirizing, and we get clobbered with this incoherent defense of unadulterated nostalgia that embraces poverty for its ability to keep people from moving forward with the times. True, the ending tries to reconcile these themes with a anvilicious episode and some lines (delivered by Mia Farrow, who is too good for her role) about how nostalgia is as much about rewriting and reinventing the past as actually remembering it, but it’s all so shallow and kind of offensive that the audience doesn’t buy it for a minute. There’s also some bullshit about the FBI, tacked on to make it clear to the audience that everyone in the world is out to get our characters. There’s no way the FBI would actually waste its time bothering people who make VHS parodies of movies, so that scene pissed me off, even if Sigourney Weaver is great in it.
The worst part was that it was a bait-and-switch. Because the movie spends so much time on the plot, there’s very little time to spend on what the trailer promised, and what no doubt sold out the show—the promise of watching Jack Black and Mos Def acting out a bunch of old movies that we all remember as kids. There’s some of that, but it’s brief and a lot of it is dispensed with through montages. As we left the theater, Marc and I talked about how we would have written the movie, based on the premise. You have a couple guys remaking movies. People watch them. More of the neighborhood gets involved as the movies get more popular, which would give a savvy filmmaker an opportunity to incorporate some of the actors from these old movies (which is clearly something Gondry wanted to do) by casting them as neighborhood people who join in on the fun. Basically, dispense with the whole idea of a plot. A movie like this doesn’t really need one, and lord knows it would have been more fun without one.
Plus, if that had been the movie, you could have still have characters that live in a city neighborhood that’s been racked with poverty without condescending to them or romanticizing poverty—you know, you could have just made them human beings who are having some fun.
20 Responses to “Poverty: The Nostalgia-Maker!”
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I was on the fence about this movie, mostly because i can only take Jack Black in small doses, and even though i loved Eternal Sunshine, Gondry’s other films have been disappointing. Based on your review i’ll probably not see it, or at least wait to see it on DVD.
Would also like to take this moment to recommend Persepolis. I loved, loved, LOVED this movie. You really should see it on the big screen.
The movie has one line in it about how the availability of VHS rental places is good for people who are too poor to afford DVD players
…Huh.
Checking on wal-mart.com right now, I find that the cheapest DVD player they have listed is $24.88.
The cheapest VHS player they have listed is a DVD/VHS combo player and it is $64.88.
I guess maybe the idea is that VHS rental is good for people who have had a VHS player for 20 years and haven’t been able to afford a $25 one-time purchase in the last ten to get a new video player? I… guess I could imagine that, but could someone in that predicament afford to regularly rent movies?
I dunno. Although it’s arguably too bad DVDs aren’t quite so trivially writable or copyable without computer equipment and expertise, it seems DVD is an odd technology to single out for this treatment because it vaguely seems to me DVD has actually lead to massive reductions in the cost of video-related stuff. I might just not have been paying attention, but I don’t remember VCRs in 1994 being available so cheaply as DVD players are now. I don’t remember there being a bin of $4.99 videos, and a bin of $1 videos next to it, at the store back in the VHS era.
This is exactly the demographic that VHS is now serving, people who can’t afford the $25 upgrade from magnetic media. I don’t know if VHS rental places are being kept afloat by this demographic, but I can tell you that many libraries still keep a large stack of magnetic media on hand for patrons to check out. (Which is extremely frustrating, because often times the only copies of a movie that they have are on VHS.)
Mcc has a good point. Not to mention that a person who wants to edit digitally needs a computer, sure, but only one and he can probably borrow or steal most of the software, for a significant reduction in cost. A person who wants to edit using VHS (VH-fucking S, not even SVHS) has to cobble together an editing suite of multiple TVs and VCRs, a slightly taller order in the pre-walmart era than it is today, when flat-panel TVs, computer moniters and DVD players have made it easy to get your hands on limitless obsolete technology. Plus, you have to worry about how much tape you have and generations and all that crap.
This sounds like more pretentious nostalgia for when things were more of a pain in the ass then they need to be.
Mcc, exactly. There was a lot of stuff in the movie that screamed out about how Gondry didn’t have the first clue about even the most basic aspects of working class life. Which made his romanticization of poverty-ridden neighborhoods even more offensive. Blatant stuff like that.
There’s also a meta-lie about the relationship of technologies and creative explosions from working class cultures. I got the impression that Gondry was arguing that older technologies are critical to creative output from working class neighborhoods, but the history shows otherwise—I mean, I know music better than anything else, but big creative periods in working class communities tend to explode after a new technology is invented and rapidly embraced. Rock and roll got its momentum from the invention of the electric guitar. Hip hop DJs in the 70s were in a race with each other to have the biggest, loudest systems utilizing new technologies. Sure, they spun records, but that’s all there was then, really. The continued use of records has less to do with attachment to old forms than because there’s not been anything better to replace it for some kinds of DJ-ing, but the quality of the vinyl itself has improved, it seems.
The real problem is not that technology to make creative works has updated, but that poverty has grown to the point in our country where people can’t afford to buy the technologies.
i seem to have liked the film more than you. i don’t think it was trying to address issues of poverty at all. true, the people in it weren’t well off, but it simply wasn’t focusing on that, nor was it making any effort at all to examine poverty. it just wasn’t the point of the film.
the single theme (and i do think there was only one theme, not two clashing ones) was how things that are “new” are rooted in the past, but often the “past” is nothing more than an imagined and idealized version of the past rather than the actual past. that’s what the fats waller thing was about, and the gentrification, and even the sweded movies. i don’t think there was anything at odds there. just like fats waller’s story, ghost busters isn’t really that great of a film, but it’s something we’ve nostagia-ized. and so when the characters make a 20 minute cheap-ass version with only the bits we remember best, it becomes more popular than the actual film. in a sense, the entire film was about the concept of gentrification. taking an old neighborhood and making it shiney and fresh, or the story of a jazz hero, or a film we remember from when we were kids. it’s all the same thing. i enjoyed it a lot.
i seem to have liked the film more than you. i don’t think it was trying to address issues of poverty at all. true, the people in it weren’t well off, but it simply wasn’t focusing on that, nor was it making any effort at all to examine poverty. it just wasn’t the point of the film.
the single theme (and i do think there was only one theme, not two clashing ones) was how things that are “new” are rooted in the past, but often the “past” is nothing more than an imagined and idealized version of the past rather than the actual past. that’s what the fats waller thing was about, and the gentrification, and even the sweded movies. i don’t think there was anything at odds there. just like fats waller’s story, ghost busters isn’t really that great of a film, but it’s something we’ve nostagia-ized. and so when the characters make a 20 minute cheap-ass version with only the bits we remember best, it becomes more popular than the actual film. in a sense, the entire film was about the concept of gentrification. taking an old neighborhood and making it shiney and fresh, or the story of a jazz hero, or a film we remember from when we were kids. it’s all the same thing. i enjoyed it a lot.
In 1954, a Stratocaster cost $250, which is approximately $1,850 in modern day money. Add the amplification equipment, and the entrance price to be a rock musician in the 1950s was about the equivalent of the entrance price to be a laptop-based DJ now.
Not only that, but the creators of the technologies are creating with a eye towards how to make it easier for individuals to take control of media for themselves. While people might claim to be nostalgic for the creative possibilities of VHS, no one is nostalgic for the predecessor of VHS, a movie projector (some people had household-sized ones for themselves). VHS was an enabling tool for the creative, and every successor was conceived of as a similarly enabling creativity tool. Many of the technologies that made the digital revolution possible — like MPEG2, the compression format used in DVDs — were sold to people willing to fund the research on the premise that digital encoding of video would allow more people to be more creative. It was only when DVDs came to market that publishers demanded that some kind of encryption be retrofitted into the system.The thing is, uper, that the movie’s plot was all about the character’s oppression. Which is a great thing to make a movie about, of course, but then it turned the videos into resistance to oppression, and I wasn’t buying it. The Man is not taking the VHS away from anyone to prevent them from expressing themselves. How The Man is actually oppressing people is denying them the opportunity to move forward, by affording the new technologies. It was just a dishonest premise.
I thought Driving Miss Daisy –Sweded was worth the price of admission alone.
What happens instead is that the Gen-X audience comes to see a celebration of our culture of remixing, remaking, and satirizing, and we get clobbered with this incoherent defense of unadulterated nostalgia that embraces poverty for its ability to keep people from moving forward with the times.
I dunno. I hear alot about marquee urban DJs still spinning this ancient technology called “vinyl.” And usually they’re playing this music originally created by poor people out of older stuff because they didn’t have access to fancy equipment and music lessons. I believe the kidz call it rap and hip hop. Of course, it was a much better and more interesting art form before the studios got their mitts on it and before the artists watered it down to appeal to the “stuff white people like” audience.
Sorry, no. There was a lot more creative potential with film and an editing block than anything remotely possible with VHS.
Sorry, I was in a rush; let me explain a little better.
40 years ago, you could buy a surplus 16mm movie camera for $15, shoot on outdated film stock, and edit with a magnifying glass and a single-edged razor blade on a homemade block. The projector could be surplus, rented, or borrowed from school or church. I really don’t think a similar level of control was possible on such a relatively small budget before the recent advent of cheap camcorders and inexpensive software editing.
I suppose I did neglect to mention 8mm. But, really, I don’t buy it. Technology that you shoot and then have to wait a week to get developed before you start cutting and splicing? And can only be played on equipment that only a distinct group of people have (rather than on a television, which virtually everyone has) ? No. VHS was a much more accessible medium, in the same way that digital is a more accessible medium than VHS.Plus, you can’t easily and cheaply duplicate and distribute splice film. You can somewhat more easily duplicate and distribute VHS– at least for a few generations before quality falls. Then the ability to duplicate and distribute digital media is almost infinite, compared to VHS.
Roxanne, it’s off the mark to say that hip-hop DJs worked with cheap stuff, though. Afrika Bambaataa ruled the neighborhood in part because he was able to buy the most expensive, up-to-date, and LOUD stuff. His sister would throw house parties, charge at the door, and use the money to upgrade him.
Yes,people worked with vinyl, but name what the competing audio was. And people still work with vinyl because it still works the best, not because it’s the most affordable. Even the most simple set-up needs two turnables, a mixing board (which I suspect was not cheap in the 1970s), massive amplification (reading hip-hop histories, this was apparently the most expensive element, but it was also mandatory because battling was such a huge factor in getting an audience and if people couldn’t even hear you, you were screwed), and of course the massive vinyl collection. And since vinyl was the best quality media of its time, that was NOT cheap. Nowadays, you can probably get a lot of stuff cheap at thrift stores and record conventions, but still if you want something new on vinyl, you’re paying the $15-17 you would for a CD.
Wow. It’s interesting to read your critique, because I had a completely different take on it.
I saw this as a film about the power of art-making to unify and mobilize a community. For me, the crux of the movie wasn’t Mike and Jerry and Alma’s remakes of Hollywood films, but the community project of re-making and reclaiming their own history, reinventing the myth of their common origins. I agree that the film did sentimentalize poverty somewhat — in that no one was depicted as utterly abject or hopeless (or homeless). But come on; this was not a realist film. And I don’t think that the message here was that poverty automatically produces authenticity; it was more that poverty does not preclude community. For me, one of the central motifs of the film was the “rent party” — where you’d throw a party when rent was coming due, and people would come and dance and have fun and pitch in what they could to help out.
On the VHS vs. DVD thing: I think that this wasn’t so much a question of Gondry implying (or assuming) that poor people can’t afford DVD players, but that Mr. Fletcher couldn’t afford to (or didn’t realize the need to) update his entire obsolescent stock to accomodate new technology. Like, analogous to the new highway driving the motels on the old interstate roads out of business. The customers at his store (before Mike and Jerry swede the movies) aren’t depicted as urban poor so much as eccentric strange: Mia Farrow’s character, the older guy with the thick glasses, the biker dude and the indie rockish chick…
And, while I am pretty much in agreement with your argument about the liberating power of digital technology in the real world, I think the use of magnetic VHS tape in the movie serves some pretty fundamental narrative needs. [similarly, the FBI raid thing is also a deus ex machina — it forces them to make their own movie, tell their own story.] I mean, the whole premise of the film is that the VHS tapes get erased. But beyond that, the video camera that Mike uses forces him and others to get everything on one take and improvise effects. There’s no editing, no digital manipulation. Can you imagine how much less fun the movie would be if Gondry had to have scenes of Mike and Jerry working on laptops to make their effects more realistic?
Sure, it would have been less fun. But if you want to make a movie about some dudes making VHS tapes, why not just do that? Why elevate the old over the new, and imbue nostalgia (aided by poverty) as automatically morally superior? The problem wasn’t that they had fun—the problem was Gondry tried to make this into a Meaningful Story and it wasn’t.
The thing is, uper, that the movie’s plot was all about the character’s oppression.
was it? maybe that’s why we had such different interpretations of the film. as i said above, i thought it was about the notion of remaking the past into something new, whether it be gentrification of a neighborhood, a sweded film, or fats waller’s alleged life story.
i do think that gondry was trying to make a meaningful story and not just a mindless comedy. but i just think you’ve misread the meaning he was trying to get across.
(or maybe i got it wrong? who knows? who cares? in the end the film is about whatever we think it’s about)