Grandeur

Thinking about movies, particularly American movies in relation to the rest of the world.  I was blown away by Mother and it made me feel a bit sad about the state of American independent film.  This new film, Blue Ruin, is getting decent press.  I was surprised by the smallness of the movie.  And I don't mean small in a good way.  I mean, the ambitions and thoughts put into the film were small.  The story was routine and not particularly well put together.  The acting was low-level.  There was no envelope being pushed.  There was no grand ambition.  My impression of a lot of American films is they are satisfied with merely existing.  They take poses rather than positions.  They say "I belong to this form of pop culture, I listen to this kind of music, I like these kind of other movies, and so forth."  In short, they are largely driven by ego.

Maybe Americans no longer believe in our mythos, particularly amongst the chattering classes.  Maybe we really do believe we are just like any other country and place in the world.  And if we believe that, we should just recede into the shadows and allow other places with bigger ambitions and self-belief dictate the way the world ought to be (Russia/China).

Where is the grandeur?  Where is the belief in something larger than ourselves?  Where are the ideas?  Where is the sacrifice? The tragedy? The joy?

I'll give it to James Gray, he strives for these things, if not always successfully.  And I want to be generous to first time filmmakers.  People need to learn and start small.  But remember, Badlands was a first film. As was Citizen Kane. As was Hard Eight.  Just saying.