by Timothy Morrise_> I feel like with “The Neon Demon,” there’s a prevalent urge to default to “style over substance” as a means of accounting the film’s value. And that’s not just because of Refn’s unbashed love of halogens or throbbing electronica, it’s really because that’s the most memorable part. How can you ignore the prevelance of style over substance when “The Neon Demon’s” dialogue is so vapid and unsubstantive? Style screams while any pretense of substance recedes into the background _> I feel like with “The Neon Demon,” there’s a prevalent urge to default to “style over substance” as a means of accounting the film’s value. And that’s not just because of Refn’s unabashed love of halogens or throbbing electronica, it’s really because that’s the most memorable part. How can you ignore the prevalence of style over substance when “The Neon Demon’s” dialogue is so vapid and unsubstantive? Style screams while any pretense of substance recedes into the background.
_> But there’s a point where I as a reader have to call a spade a spade, no matter how flashy that spade looks in strobing neon. Consider this: _> Style, in a <cinematic/> sense, requires both design *and* execution. The latter is what’s lacking for TND. _> Sure TND is awash in color and texture. But having a picturesque frame or confident art design doesn’t style in film language make. I value film as moving image. TND’s frames are often too flat, too planar, too static. People stand and talk, and rarely move in frame to do so. Foreground and background are often ignored to the point of abdicating any use of depth of frame. The result is a magazine spread more than a film. _>Admittedly it’s better in the last third of TND when the movie goes bonkers. After an hour of nil as prelude the gleeful exploitation comes out to play, finally airing its blood-stained drawers. All that pontificating about Beauty has given way to a show of the way the self as an artistic commodity bows to metaphorical/literal cannibalism. But i’m not gonna listen to a film telling me “do as I do not as I say” when 2/3rds of the movie have wasted frames. _>To me, there’s such a disconnect between the themes of the Act III crazypalooza in presentation and all the prior fixating on Jesse in dialogue everything said until Jesse stands on a diving board might as well have been the lyrics to “Hey Macarena!” on cycle. And as the old axiom of screenwriting goes “show don’t tell.” There’s a limit to how much the male gaze sputtering in self-loathing while grasping at the platonic ideal of beauty can get you. The movie doesn’t show us Jesse is beautiful so often as it tells us she is. _>Style, isn’t just visually striking imagery. It’s a means of forgoing the literal text for the subtext. Movies like The Fifth Element or The Fall are knee-deep in style, but those pieces have themes, like universality of a mystic human love, or the way we use invention to cope with tragedy. _>BTW I don’t know who TND is for. If you really want to revel in exploitation we have Showgirls. If you are so down for the aesthetic, we have Beyond the Black Rainbow. And if you want to see aesthetic and exploitation meet, Spring Breakers does that better. TND I don’t see serving a function. Timothy Morrise is a half cyborg/half simian working as an editor for Cashiers of Cinema. In his past life he was an Economics Major from Southern Utah University, but now he mostly has too much to say about Star Wars, in between going to church as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (MOrmon) working at The Salt Lake Film Society and practicing as a filmmaker. His number one goal in life is to teach a robot to love. He will settle for an alien or a libertarian.
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ContributorsThe contributors for Cashiers of Cinema are a menagerie of creators devoted to Radical Aesthetics. Meetings are held at the dumpster behind Winkie's. Archives
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