Printer friendly format [Normal view]

Maybe it is time for a newly developed genre to get some historical perspective. Smokin’ Aces does not announce a major achievement in the over-stylized action film, but it does announce that it is here to stay, and does suggest that a stylistic trend has now turned into a genre. These movies are spunky, hip, fast and over-edited; they are also becoming a consistent sight, and more filmmakers are showing an openness to make them. Not only are these movies very popular, but they are motivating a change in the basic identity of popular filmmaking. Smokin’ Aces (and others) shows a disregard for storytelling, and relies far more on the intricacies of editing. You could not describe the film by focusing on the structure of its screenplay. It is also likely that the screenplay is not even structured to show the continual changes of tone, structure and camera point of view that characterize the film. The preparation for how to tell the story came from elsewhere.

This all holds to dissatisfy critics who were brought up to respect the artistry of scripts. Even though some people have always discredited the merits of an original screenplay because many screenplays are born during shooting, the screenplay has still held up as the cradle to a successful film. The change now is that more movies are beginning to take shape in the editing room because of the nature of their dense shooting pattern. Cinematographers and editors are becoming the true storytellers of film. It makes for a situation in which many movies today are impossible to map out in a script.

The transition came with what was identified as ‘cinematic’. There were many definitions, but the slim version focused mainly on the effects film could create that distinguishes it from other art forms. Many critics and theorists believed in this potential. They identified it as a way for film to develop into the visual art that it was meant to be. The assumption was that film had little relationship to any other art form, but if it did, it was actually mostly to painting. Hitchcock embodied this philosophy by making movies that developed purely visual methods of storytelling. In a 1937 article for Sight and Sound, Hitchcock said that, by filming a murder scene from the point of the view of the weapon instead of the character, you were able bring the audience more fully into the scene. His proposal was to film a scene that went beyond merely recording the actions of actors from a distance.

This effect, and many others, came to define a cinematic language. When the 1960s came, so did the first major movement of art cinema. One of their major preoccupations was to play with the hallmarks of every genre and mix them in order to break established rules. But by breaking the Hollywood structure they also created new norms of filmmaking techniques. Films like Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970) and Godard’s Weekend (1967) came to personify this concept of genre-breaking. During the late 60s and 70s, Hollywood was similarly focused on breaking codes, but it was moral codes of sex and violence. Bonnie and Clyde (1968) and The Wild Bunch (1968) became the groundbreaking works of their period. Whatever their merits, they were both ambitious films. When it became clear that sex and violence sold, a turning point was reached that meant that the graphic content could be exploited. Newly created genre films were being turned out in the 70s comfortably under the new ‘R’ rating, which prohibited children from seeing the films.

When the 90s hit, so too did the second major revolution of American independent filmmaking, producing films by a generation brought up on these style-filled and violent genre films. They were young, hip and filled with energy, and Hollywood was willing to give them the keys if they were going to make movies that sold - this meant mainly stylized and violent films. Smokin’ Aces is a clear descendent of Tarantino, who made his Pulp Fiction (1994) out of a ‘realistic’ vision of the gangster movie, then stylized it by adding filmic references, creating a light, amoral version of Godard’s filmmaking.

Tarantino’s method of playing with style - and that of the many directors who aped him - was naturally able to be incorporated by the action film, and eventually evolve, as it now has done, into a type of action film that encompasses virtually every other feasible style and tone. If this was done fifty years ago by a different group of filmmakers, it could have been an attempt at art; in Smokin’ Aces, the results are much different. The film has no artistic ambition, but is successful at referencing numerous styles and forms of filmmaking. The music and soundtrack change suddenly in each scene, and the film is altered to the mood that is appropriate. It is chaotic in the placement of each scene, and in how it displays emotions, but the purpose of the film is purely the creation of action, and to visually entertain.

Years ago, the Italian novelist Umberto Eco tackled the popular art films of the 60s by writing a piece that explained how to make your own Michelangelo Antonioni or Jean-Luc Godard film. He listed the details and components of each of their films and held that anyone could construct one just by picking and choosing from different styles and details they used in the directors’ past films. The point of the piece was that these filmmakers were not interested in story, but in critical realignment of different filmic norms. Eco was, in jest, trying to make light of their critical approach. His jest didn’t finally fit with the films in question because he refused to take into account the levels of human interest and societal criticism that was also always in place in an Antonioni or Godard film.