the proposition
just a quick jot while it's still fresh in the old noggin.
we saw Nick Cave's The Proposition last night.
i think it can be highly likened to Murder Ballads - it's gorgeous, extremely finely-crafted, well produced, well performed, replete with internal integrity, etc, but at the end of the day it's still a bunch of romantic songs about people killing people, and i just don't enjoy listening to it any more.
about two thirds of the way into The Proposition, i woke to the fact that just because it's gorgeous and finely-crafted, i still don't need to watch it or confuse "gorgeous" for "should be watched" or "should have been made". but i hung in there. until i realized that a rape scene was imminent, at which point i fled the theater. actually i pushed and shoved my way out of the theater and i apologize to my friends for that.
it's a pity because the australian frontier racial & other cultural stuff was pretty darned fascinating and well-done, and the movie in general was incredibly powerful. i believe that Cave can generate that same emotional power & beauty without the vehicle of penultimate violence, and i hope he does so in future films.
also,
one final nit with the hip violent movie industry in general,
specifically Cave the immensely popular Tarantino:
guys, can we dispense with the whole rather tired image of The Deeply Evil And Violent Man Cum Mystical Sage, please ? thanks.
posted by good old o at
1:36 PM
1 Comments:
Hear hear!
Trust me when I say that I cut my teeth to the sound of Mr. Cave. The jauntiness of "Nick the Stripper" saved me from my maudlin 4AD world and I am forever grateful for that. But, I don't subscribe to the cult that continues to lap up everything he puts out.
I've found him to be a soft recycled and watered down version of his earlier self (and this could be just because he's of the junk...) and it's I find him to be an artist who's made his reputation and continues to use base shock value as his artistic milieu. I, for one, have grown tired of "shock value".
Good for you for leaving too. There way too much to do and experience than to waste even a second on pointless, messageless shlock.
I was so hot for Nick when "...and the Ass saw the Angel" came out and I found it to be an interesting tale BUT I had also read up on my Southern Gothic literature so I saw it for what it was - taking a medium and running with it, perhaps a bit too far. I'll take Carson McCullers or Flannery O'Connor or even the fey li'l Truman Capote anyday over the writing of Mr. Cave. I hope he forsakes his influences and finds his OWN path. I still carry a bit of a torch for him...
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