Sin City is critic-proof. I guess that is the point. Any level on which you take it is uncool. Take it seriously and you've missed the cool joke. Treat it simply as a clever joke and you have missed the post-modern, movie-referential, ironic noir parody. Part of its uber-cool humour is of course to wind up anyone trying to make sense of it. It is an aesthetic ultimatum: buy it or you don't get it. Schmuck.

This is essentially an adolescent movie. Not in any patronising sense but in that the critical feature of adolescent culture; music, TV, language, is that only other adolescents can understand it properly. There is nothing sadder than to see older people trying to sound what used to be called hip or cool, by trying to buy into this culture ignoring the essential 'Private - Keep Out' sign. And there's the rub for film-it-in-my-garage Directors Miller, Rodriguez and guest director chum Quentin Tarantino. They've been near middle-aged for a while now (48, 37, 42). Hey guys: you've mastered all the skills; time to come out of the garage, get a girl-friend, spend a bit of time on the beach, and make a film about the real world rather than other movies and graphic novels, or as we used to call them, comics.

And we do need to see this movie as reflecting the emotional reductio ad absurdum of adolescence where any conceivable idea, feeling, behaviour, however extreme, is run to get some sense of trying to find out where one wants to set the boundaries of one's personal values. Without this justification, not really open to Rodriguez and Miller and Tarantino, this is a hateful, vicious, repulsively gleeful exploration of violence for its own sake. Worse: if it is the work of genuinely grown up men, then it blends profound misogyny with sexism in a context where sexual fantasy and erotic charge, is unashamably and repeatedly tied, with extraordinary graphical (sic) skill, to brutality and dominating sexual violence. A bit like trying to beat the censor by selling porn to children through video games. See how I didn't get that you mustn't take this seriously? Cool people, movie-in-my-garage people, will get the post modern sense of fun. Especially the ostensibly 70+ year-old Bruce Willis character getting it on with the 19 year-old girl he rescued from violent sexual abuse 8 years before. Psychoanalysis? We won't go there; there are some pretty dark, fucked-up male fantasies swilling around in this.

It is a cruel irony that the breathtaking talent and visual flair that went into Sin City finds nothing better to express than ironic cruelty. Logically, irony depends upon a deliciously surprising contrast with normal expectations. Destroy any sense of normal expectations and you destroy the sense of irony. Like trying to plant seeds in concrete. Each new, technically brilliant, Tarantino film becomes a parody of the last with an implacable law of diminishing return becoming apparent. Miller and Rodriguez have made a visually stunning, inventive, extraordinary, evocative film. Its use of stark black and white and yes, one has to admit it, witty within-the-scene, striking monochromatic colour is, content aside, simply brilliant. That special sense of pace in action and imagery, unique to comic strip narratives, is wonderfully re-created on film. For these reasons alone, aesthetically the film is a must see. There is real talent on display.

Sin City is, in terms of content, a totally amoral nihilisitic film. The narrative it tells and the events it depicts are without feeling, sensitivity, meaning or purpose. If it does have any values - they are what one might call sentimental-fascist. (How cool is that?).It is not the content of the film that is immoral: it is the fact of it that is. Which is a serious debate for another time.

"See - this guy just doesn't get it. Hey man - it's just a comic!"
"Not with a multi-million $ budget; massive publicity hype, and global distribution it ain't. It's a very savvy, deeply cynical commercial enterprise to make big bucks out of a gullible market for whom the ultimate sin is to appear uncool. Some talent. Some waste. Some comic. And bet your last $, £ or Euro - some franchise.


Zettel June 2005

It provides the cover picture for the June Issue of 'Sight nad Sound'. From the review, I'd say it's more of a man's film than anything else.

Sheila

Sheila

In terms of content you are absolutely right as I tried to indicate in the review. In terms of its visual invention and graphical style it is stunning however dubious the content. Someone, like a Richard Linklater with an aspiration to actually do something worthwhile with the techniques would be good to see.

I guess Tarantino's stuff is pretty much the same. I hate the idea of movie gender apartheid. I always felt defensive about liking what used to be called women's movies i.e. anything with emotional depth.

Regards

Zettel

I haven't seen the film yet, but I loved the comics. Yes, it is all those things you said and in my opinion, that's just wonderful. In these sterile times of PC-ness and wittering right wing mannerisms, it's good to see something out there that pulls no punches and represents the dark side of art.

JB

Gone over to the dark side eh James?

Regards

Z

Dark side of art may be one way of putting it, but what I meant was noisy graphic violence is more of a man thing. Shoot me if I'm wrong. I thought apartheid was when people were not allowed in designated spaces. I didn't suggest women won't watch this film, just that it might appeal more to men, going by what I've read of the content.

Sheila

Sheila

It is disturbing enough that men want to watch this in terms type of content - sorry James but I think it is true - if women wanted to watch themselves being abused, that would be even more disturbing.

As I tried to say in the review - one has to so to speak treat this as a kind of adolescent fantasy in order to tolerate the content. All of its merits are in its form, and the talent displayed there. Although one does leave oneself open to taking such things too seriously - there are serious issues involved I think.

Thanks for the comment Sheila - believe me no one is going to shoot you. Or want to.

Regards

Zettel

Haven't seen this one, Z, and it doesn't appeal to me. However, it did see Mr & Mrs Smith (good premise, pretty people, lame script) and was shocked at how fantastically violent it was, particularly since most of the audience were school children. What's wrong with Tinseltown these days? Can't they tell when enough is enough? Are they all on drugs?

Adele.

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PS It had a 15 certificate.

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Agreee about Mr and Mrs: they ran out of ideas and imagination so filled in with hardware and some sub-Bond gimmicks. Given the premise it could have been so much wittier and sharp. Both Brad and Angelina would have been up to something better. Maybe they were up to something else instead.

PS - those lips msut be collagen dont'ya think?

(And Angelina's are pretty full too)

Regards

Z

Angie's gob is pretty extreme, but then her dad has quite a pout:
http://www.cinequest.org/98/catalog/midnight.html

Now, if Mr & Mrs Smith had kids, they'd have to be in the top 0.000000001% of the world's best looking people...

A

Just back from seeing Batman. The mix as before- very violent, action packed. You can tell the hero because he doesn't need a gun, he just breaks up people's bones and has a lot of money to buy gadgets. His sidekick is black and his butler is British. Where was Robin? Excellent explosions and SFX. I was a bit annoyed when the bad behaviour of some supermodels in a restaurant - they were naked in the water feature - was put down to their being 'Europeans'.

Sheila

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Oh, and he had to go to some mountain-top Buddhist temple for tutelage in ruthless-killerdom begore tackling the villains. Well, he would never have learned by just hanging out in America, would he?

before

A lot of violence goes on in life. Are we suggesting we create films that don't reflect this in a realistic way? That anything we deem too shocking, too bloody, too adolescent we simply shove under the carpet or look away?

You seem to be taking yourself, like the censors, far too seriously. Kids love this stuff. It doesn't turn them into maniacs. Boys have loved running around playing at 'war' since dawn began. It is part of human nature.

Evil and violence are represented here in the Sin City series as a way of life, of the way things in a certain place in time could be, or once was. It seems gratuitous, sure, but there is much gratuitous violence in life. I don't think i'm declaring myself as being on the dark side, merely by suggesting that the onus one puts on the issue makes it more of a big deal than it really is.

Good review though.

JB

Hey James

This is 'hiding-to-nothing' stuff but we gotta at least try to make some distinctions and discriminations. Not sure if I buy into the 'human nature' (essentially male) argument, but I would have to agree it is simply empirically true that boys have always run around playing at war. George Bush is still doing it - with real guns.

But millenia ago when I was in my teens e.g:

Manliness neant holding your drink and not making a pissed arsehole of yourself and then whinging about it being the booze's or someone else's fault afterwards.

Guys were supposed to stand up for themselves not maraud about in tooled up gangs picking on anyone they can beat whether or not they have a beef.

I just don't believe even the shittiest little creep in my teens would have conceived of the idea of gang raping an 11 year-old girl, videoing it on a mobile and then sending the pictures around the school.

Movies don't make people what they are but culture has a big part to play, and part of who I am comes from the kind of excitement those early comic book heroes created. We live in a culture of no heroes and a desperate shortage of good male role models. We'd be pretty daft not at least recognize it.

It isn't the existence and reality of violence I have a problem with, 'twas ever thus. It is the relish and discriminating exhultation in and of it that does my head in.

If you like it is the difference between Batman Begins and Sin City. And however stongly I feel, censorship would not be a weapon I'd use.

Scraping sound of soapbox being put away.

Thanks for the comments on my review. Reciprocated with Batman. These are issues worth discussing.

Regards

Zette.

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"Angie's gob" ah dear girl, you do have such a way with words.

Z