Cinema, music, and theater, compared to the visual arts and literature, have the disadvantage of being contaminated by operators who consider themselves artists, but are not. This gives rise to a series of consequences that can only frustrate he who gave birth to the creation. It must be distressing for a composer to realize that it is possible to make a career as a virtuoso performing the works of others, and to be confronted with the scenario stripped of the facilities that the first option offers, if he chooses to concentrate on his own compositions. Even more distressing must be witnessing the recognition of music workers as artists. At least, from this anguish will come the certainty that his art can only be done alone, and for free. From now on, he will never confuse true with false motivation.
Tag: cinema
Eight Shots in Ten Seconds!
I have just watched, by chance, ten seconds of a film released this past year. I count an impressive eight shots in this meager interval and immediately think of Andrei Tarkovsky. According to this great artist, the substance of cinema is time, and the filmmaker’s job is to print time on the screen. According to this prudent vision of the seventh art, a work that madly superimposes eight shots in ten seconds is anything but art. It seems to me that cinema, like music, is on its knees before an audience incapable of concentration. The work—and perhaps work is no longer the appropriate word—needs to stimulate, all the time, the adrenaline, needs to deliver instant emotion and generate expectation for a new emotion in the next second, otherwise attention simply disperses, and the audience starts to yawn. No doubt this is a generational trait, and it seems increasingly difficult to shake off this terrible modern reality that resembles this unbearable bombardment of shots.a
A Movie Script Worths Its Structure
In an untimely manner, I set out again to write film scripts. The work of the moment, which was beginning to crawl, is interrupted. And I do not know what to feel. Perspectives, I have few, whatever I am creating. But the ease of spitting out pages of screenplay jumps out when compared to the agony of literary creation. The screenwriter sees his work progress, every day, and finds manifest satisfaction. A screenplay, in fact, worths its structure, its effectiveness in distributing scenes within a predefined format, and its strength in exposing a dramatic arc. The screenwriter works on the structural demarcation of the text: he defines the conflict, its progression through the plot, and its ending; then he distributes it into scenes, with positioning and length following the dramatic arc and the format of the work. Then it is just a matter of formalizing, or rather, transforming the diagram into text. With well-defined characters, the dialogues spring up with amazing ease, in infinite variations. Of course, they are to a great extent adaptable, replaceable: the script, which is nothing but the outline of a work, worths its outline itself. And I, from being an artist, return to the role of a diagrammer.
The Sopranos, by David Chase
I lost, some time ago, the habit of the series. But I know that if for some reason I feel the nostalgia of the hours spent in front of the screen, even submerged in a sea of recent and acclaimed options, I will choose to review — again… — The Sopranos, by David Chase. And why is that? Because this series, among all, exhibits the most complex and thought-provoking psychological constructions I have ever had the opportunity to watch. Intelligent, ambiguous characters, agitated by strongly internal conflicts and represented in fantastic performances. Nothing better is up to me to expect from a series…
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