Can someone please explain what Roger Ebert is talking about in his recent piece on Cache please? He wrote: "Now I call your attention to the shot I missed the first time through. You will find it on the DVD, centering around 20:39. You tell me what it means. It's the smoking gun, but did it shoot anybody?" Nobody seems to understand what he is talking about.
Friday, January 15, 2010
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I believe Monty Python did a similar scenario earlier and better, although I have been unable to find footage on the pilfernet. I do not remember a resolution or solution to that mystery, either, but I do remember besuited MP cast members running about and exclaiming in horror that "We're being filmed!"
I am not sure this comment responds to your request or indeed even adds anything to the discussion, but I just felt like sharing. Thanks for listening.
Presumably it's this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f-kfRREA8M
It's also a joke about how outdoor shots are done with film and indoor shots with videotape.
I GUESS HE NEEDS TO CLEAR HIS CACHE.
OH GOD I'M NOT WAKING UP.
I have no idea. Is this the still from 20:39? I mean, I always thought it was Majid's son, but, really, I always thought there wasn't a "real" answer, that it was an intentionally impenetrable mystery.
On a related note - did you see The White Ribbon? It just looks like a mix of Truffaut and Bergman to me, with the addition of Haneke's gleeful nihilism and joy in making the viewer feel truly terrible, in a way only an exceptionally gifted filmmaker like himself can. Honestly, it's hard not to think that he's "using his powers for evil," so to speak. Or maybe he'd only be doing that if he was like making American Express commercials. Which, come to think of it, he very well may be! Anyway, all of this, to me, means I don't really need to see it. Or do I?
I saw White Ribbon. I really liked it... but I would have liked it quite a bit more if I was watching it with a big pizza and some cigarettes and some root beer? Sitting in a terrible theater with the elderly is not the way to do it. So I say: DVD IT, when you need a pretty dark evening.
yeah, i was just at film forum the other night. It's weird to be in a competition with elderly strangers to loudly appreciate foreign films. "I FIND THAT SLIGHTLY KNOWING GLANCE HILARIOUS! I WILL SIGH AT THAT MILD SLIGHT, AND EVERYTHING ABOUT HUMAN NATURE IT IMPLIES!"
I would say it's worth seeing in a theater, if only because it is beautiful.
True, I would have liked a big screen! But honestly? My BluRay player at home, with a decent-sized TV, is better than the postage-stamp-sized screen I saw it on in the theater.
Ah yes, the chickens!
Of course .... that explains everything!
I thought that too, but then I noticed the car from the Future.
I thought it was an image of Jesus in the roof tiles.
I saw that, too! (God, this is so stupid.)
Isn't that a munchkin hanging himself?
No wait- maybe it's the ghost from Three Men and a Baby?
Is it something about the way the hedges are shaped like the car? This is starting to feel like one of those stupid fractal posters from early '90s where you were supposed to be able to see shapes if you "relaxed" your eyes or something and I never was able to see anything of the sort but my younger sister and all her friends would be like, "Can't you see it? The elephant, right there." Infuriating still.
Hedges? What hedges??? I don't see any hedges. Am I crazy, or are you?!?
Oh, now I see 'em.
20:39 is this: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=vq1k3n&s=6 and I am still none the wiser. HATE this movie.
Good get. Hmmmm...looks like a Frye's ad.
Image zoomed and enhanced. Mystery solved. http://www.box.net/shared/y4605yootr
Is the flyer advertising camera equipment??
OMG WHAT.
UGH MY MIND.
Yes, in that linked pic, the man his holding something that looks like a flyer. Tulip, if you're right that shows camera equipment, I think you're on to something.
And! What about Ebert's words: "It's the smoking gun, but did it shoot anybody?"
Does "shoot" have a double meaning here, as in shooting film perhaps?
YOU ARE LIKE SHERLOCK HOLMES!
Are we sure that 20:39 on the pirated version (the same avi file I have, it looks like) is the same as 20:39 on the proper DVD?
NO.
Is this the movie that rips off Lost Highway? Haven't bothered. Sat through both versions of Funny Games, and then The Piano Teacher. The latter had some cute bits, but I'm done with this guy, I think. Well no, I'll force myself to watch The White Ribbon someday.
No no no. This is a great film, particularly if you have any interest at all in the french bourgeoisie.
I liked seeing the French bourgeoisie get shot in Chabrol's La Cérémonie, if that counts as interest.
I just can't imagine that the guy who made either version of Funny Games is a great director, or even a good one. But I'll watch White Ribbon when it's on DVD, and yes there will be pizza and possibly root beer but cigarettes make your clothes stink.
That depends? How do they taste?
I'm with you on "Funny Games," but I think he actually became a good filmmaker by the time of "Code Unknown." And I liked the "Piano Teacher," too, although I suspect I shouldn't have. Isabelle Huppert does that to me.
The Time of the Wolf is also awesome.
Smoking gun? Or smoking chicken?
His review of Deuce Bigelow: European Gigelow is the best thing written in the English Language.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050811/REVIEWS/50725001
White Ribbon is totally worth your time. It's gorgeous, it has some great performances, and yes, it's DEEPLY disturbing, but the way it engages with history is where he takes it to the next level.
But if you're already determined to hate Haneke, it definitely has all the things that make you feel that way.
Remember when this shit didn't get nominated for best foreign film because of some technicality. Remember how upset I was? VERY UPSET.
H8 u, Lives of Others.
The ending of Lives of Others: "It's for me." [PROJECTILE VOMITS]
This comment is the smoking gun.
fucking ebert. I believe what we are seeing is similar to the moment in Funny Games (US version, I couldn't possibly stomach another version of that) when the boy looks directly into the camera, the "breaking of the fourth wall" so to speak. I'm can't say with utter certainty, but if you blow up the picture and look very closely into the rear view mirror, I think it's been haenke all along trying to disturb the shit out of everyone, the characters and us. He never believed anyone would actually stay in the theatre for the entirety of "Funny Games" and I wish I hadn't. It's almost a recreation of the final scene in 'Medium Cool' when the camera turns to Wexler running his camera and staring right back. A similar material without the contempt for his audience, his intention to show how sadistic we are. We are the ones being "shot".
Then again, maybe ebert is just having a senior moment.
whoops, I meant side mirror, and it possibly depict haenke with a video camera.
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Ebert responds!
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/01/a_riddle_wrapped_in_a_mystery.html
I think he's wrong though... i'm with bugaboo's suggestion that Haneke is the culprit, and the camera is hidden behind the fourth wall...
Just watched it again, with both of the Ebert essays in mind. His "smoking gun" doesn't amount to much--the POV shot looking down on the alley is repeated: its the view from Georges bedroom window. I do not think the first instance is Pierrot's POV. However, I would like to know what the flyer he pulls off the car is. As mentioned above, it does look a bit like a camera ad.
I think its all about the fourth wall and making the viewer implicit. BUT there's also something going about the act of directing, hinted at by the two car tapes, which differ from the stationary audience view/fourth wall perspective shots. The car tapes, which have camera pans, are almost like Haneke giving the characters direction.
If anybody is still reading this, there is LITERALLY what to this naive viewer appears to be a smoking gun (as in, a gun with a cigarette coming out the end of it), on the edge of the dinner table beginning at 20:29 or thereabouts.
I assume that's what Ebert was talking about, which is why he used the expression 'smoking gun' twice.
I think he's been having a laugh for a couple years now over this.
Is the 'gun' a gag or clue on the director's part?
I have no effing idea.
It is pointed at Georges, though, indicating that perhaps he is somehow responsible for the videos?