I know I said I need to maintain rational distance when screening a film, but I also hate any picture that for a single moment allows me to lose a sense of complete immersion. I do not see how these are in any way oppositional desires; I simply want to be ironically detached while simultaneously deeply engrossed. This is not a tall order.
Any time I notice a movie’s musical score, or pop music soundtrack, it’s the movie’s fault. Everyone knows that music is there so that we specifically do not notice it. The same goes for the images; if you notice that you’re looking at something visually, if you get distracted by how much you’re looking at things, you’ll miss the entire point of experiencing the movie, although I’m not entirely sure what that is.
If my attention happens to fall on any aspect of a film, particularly the music, it’s because it’s calling attention to itself. This is both sinister and inept: it’s a movie that’s so deliberately assembled that it directs my attention precisely where it wants it to be, but it’s so clueless as to how to make good cinema that it apparently directs me to the wrong focal points. I could stop and consider its reasons for making these decisions but it’s far less work for me to just identify them as flawed tropes.
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