Style over substance, the movie?

Beyond the Black Rainbow is one of my most favorite movies, ever.

>Style is substance, Film is a visual medium.

There's some serious truth to this. Movies aren't obligated to have a traditional plot structure or have a story that moves at a quick pace. There's nothing wrong with a movie that is primarily focused on presenting stylistic imagery first, and story second. It may not be your cup of tea, but that doesn't mean other people don't like it.

There's no scenes that don't serve a purpose

style over substance isn't a real criticism
this movie's problem is the opposite, when it abandons style at the very end to throw on some B-movie resolution plot

>Style over substance
that's meaningless

this

neon demon is still shit tho

If you couldn't exctract any substance from it, that's your problems, pleb.

>non-descript ambient track going on
The soundtrack is pretty great user. Sinoia caves is based.

>some B-movie resolution plot
What b-movie resolves the antagonist like BtBR?

Its almost on par with the ending of holy mountain. And that final shot of tv static through the living room window as dawn breaks over the suburbs is fantastic.

I like the idea of the movie being a regan era fever dream.

How is TND shit?

I dont think so. The whole first part of the movie dragged. Perhaps its only me that it didnt work for, but compared to Stalker or 2001, slow movies where every shot builds on the mood, this just felt like masturbation.

how is it good? it's a souless cliched "homage" to giallo, not to say a Suspiria ripoff, that doesn't do anything new or interesting to compensate the lack of originality. Visuals, music and atmosphere can only get so far, Refn isn't good enough to carry a whole movie like that

Style IS substance. If you disagree with this, you sat at the loser table in high school lunch and should've killed yourself by now.

I think there is a discussion to be had on that statement.

>that doesn't do anything new or interesting to compensate the lack of originality

Weird sentence, if it did something new it would be original. Also, you're being a bit presumptuous with your assessment about this being an "homage". I've watched a dozen interviews and listened to the commentary track, nowhere does Refn mention giallo or Suspiria. You can say it's a copy all you want but you have to produce more evidence to make that claim.

>Visuals, music and atmosphere can only get so far, Refn isn't good enough to carry a whole movie like that

What the hell else does a film need

more movies like BtBR and only god forgives with meme cinematography?

>Weird sentence, if it did something new it would be original.
why is it weird? that's exactly what i'm saying.

>You can say it's a copy all you want but you have to produce more evidence to make that claim.
It's obviously not a copy, but it takes a lot from those movies without adding anything new so it just feels like an uninspired ripoff

>What the hell else does a film need
If i film myself taking a shit for 120 minutes with perfectly framed, aesthetic, atmospheric shots and put a great soundtrack over it it wouldn't be a good film, it'd still be shit. I'm not gonna give specific points because that's not objective and it varies from film to film, all i can say is that Refn doesn't do enough

enter the void
valhalla rising
fear and loathing in las vegas

Mario Bava films

I still have no fucking clue what that movie was about. Was the main baddie a cuck?

Style = substance. Plot/dialogue focused movies with no care for visuals are not even worth making.

Noe
Argento
Bava
Korine

That would be Eraserhead.

Beyond the Black Rainbow has more style than substance but has substance nonetheless.
Plot is decent. Soundtrack is amazing. Visuals are amazing.

>why is it weird? that's exactly what i'm saying.

When you use the verb 'compensate' it's like you're saying it could have both a lack of originality and be doing something new at the same time

>It's obviously not a copy, but it takes a lot from those movies without adding anything new so it just feels like an uninspired ripoff

There is nothing new under the sun. If you think there's anything new to be said about the human experience you're just ignorant

>If i film myself taking a shit for 120 minutes with perfectly framed, aesthetic, atmospheric shots and put a great soundtrack over it it wouldn't be a good film, it'd still be shit. I'm not gonna give specific points because that's not objective and it varies from film to film, all i can say is that Refn doesn't do enough

You taking a shit can't be made that aesthetically pleasing though. Nor would it have any themes. This film on the other hand can very easily be made aesthetically pleasing, as it is literally about aesthetics.

There's a really pretty shot in Kings of the Road where Rüdiger Vogler takes a shit. I think you could make a great film out of that.

>When you use the verb 'compensate'
i elabotared on this here "It's obviously not a copy, but it takes a lot from those movies without adding anything new so it just feels like an uninspired ripoff"

>There is nothing new under the sun. If you think there's anything new to be said about the human experience you're just ignorant
There's always new ways to look at things, not new things

>You taking a shit can't be made that aesthetically pleasing though.
not for you maybe

>Nor would it have any themes. This film on the other hand can very easily be made aesthetically pleasing, as it is literally about aesthetics.
So now you are saying that a movie needs themes? from "what the heel else does a film need"?
I agree btw, and the themes presented here are aren't new themselves nor are they done in a new or interesting and unique way

No, that title belongs to 2001 or Blade Runner.

*Inland Empire

>So now you are saying that a movie needs themes? from "what the heel else does a film need"?

Well if it has anything to do with the human experience it automatically has themes. I'm not saying a film needs to specifically be about them

>I agree btw, and the themes presented here are aren't new themselves nor are they done in a new or interesting and unique way

Beauty is such a base concept though. Our reactions to beauty occur at the most primal level. There is no need to look at it from a unique or complex angle, the more basic it is the more identifiable it is.

>>Well if it has anything to do with the human experience it automatically has themes
so my shitting automatically has themes

>I'm not saying a film needs to specifically be about them
neither am i

>Beauty is such a base concept though. Our reactions to beauty occur at the most primal level. There is no need to look at it from a unique or complex angle, the more basic it is the more identifiable it is.
It needed more beauty then for me. Can we just agree that some people find meaning and depth in certain works where others find shallow and there's nothing wrong with that?

>Can we just agree that some people find meaning and depth in certain works where others find shallow and there's nothing wrong with that?

We can agree on that. But I'd like to add that is not the reason for me liking TND, I would not claim the film has some great 'depth', it's just a brilliantly made meditation on beauty in my opinion.

If anything it should have had even MORE style since any attempt at plot, character development or acting in this movie was laughable
the visuals also lost its appeal about 40 minutes into the movie. it looked more like a demo for a digital design software or something they would screen as background to a 70s themed fashion show

>something they would screen as background to a 70s themed fashion show
kek

>types like a nigger
Why do you people pretend anyone values your opinions when you can't even be bothered to communicate above the level of a 4th grader? That's a rhetorical question. Look it up.

It's style over substance in the sense that it's clear the filmmakers thought a lot about shots and set design and things that would look cool, but really they don't really have a place being all together in a film. They would make a really cool music video, which is basically what the whole movie feels like. I think when a film has such a strong sense of style the danger is it will consume any characters, plot, etc. and the problem is this movie doesn't try to have any of that in the first place. So it feels like a bunch of loose scenes strung together by the same visual style and music.

If you look at other films with a similarly strong visual style, the ones that work usually try to have a plot or theme going on. Good examples for me are Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears of the recent stuff, and also a bunch of giallos like Suspiria and Inferno. They don't all completely work but they make sense as a 'movie' in that they follow some kind of thread with a beginning and ending.

lol, nice ad hom

Answer the question, Jamal.

>ad hom
>he thinks this is reddit or high school debate club
How precious.

>answer the loaded rhetorical question
why are polcuckos so retarded?

Why are you squirming so much? Because you know you're done.

this is the internet
you sound butthurt af

this. suspiria is an excelent example. any greenaway movie, too

Are you implying Eraserhead has no substance?

i am done, clever kid. Here's my last (you)

That's what I thought.

Well, you won the shiposting war with him. Feel better user?

It looks like cutscenes of a shitty videogame or a music video.

Why would I feel better about something which was always going to happen finally coming to pass?

I think it's my favorite film in the last 10 years.

nice taste lmao

>bobby brown continues being butthurt

Kek.

sure kid
now take your cinematic sensibilities back to Cred Forums

>some kind of thread with a beginning and ending
why is this necessary though? there's plenty of art outside of cinema that doesn't in any way attempt to have a narrative thread. sure, cenima is good at telling a story and is usually used that way but there's other things the medium can do and, imo, BtBR does a good job at what it tries to do. I get that this isn't something that you personally prefer but you've couched this argument in "objective" terms when it's really much more of a subjective issue.

also I would argue that even though BtBR's plot is minimal and deemphasized compared to the aesthetics and atmosphere it's still driven fairly strongly by the plot. there's not nearly as many disconnected or purely atmosphere building scenes as you find in movies like enter the void or hard to be a god.

having a plot is not a necessity, I agree, but as you pointed out, BtBR does have a plot, and it's pretty fucking shitty and totally subdued by the overwhelming imagery. i think this movie would work way better if it dropped any aspirations towards normal narrative and character development and went all-in with the aesthetics with a singular thematic thread connecting everything.
i'm not the user you're replying to btw

>i think
Not likely.

why are you so mad?

It's pretty clear that no u.

Substance has its own definition you can look up. If your entire argument revolves around word games when you, and anyone else, knows full well what the intention behind the post was, its a stupid argument not worth having.

are you the guy that sperged out about "typing like a nigger" earlier? kek

No, but he was right.

That doesn't make it bad, you're right. But just like a non stop action scene that goes on for two hours, without anything else to draw interest it becomes boring. Thats why people say there should be more. Obviously it was enough for you but thats not how a lot of people feel about it.

It's about deleuzian rhizomes and the corruption of 70's drug spirituality movement
the girl transfers her drug dependance for a media dependence when she walks towards the tv light at the end

wow, rude
I kinda agree, although almost all of my problems with the plot come at the very end where as said it attempts to become a B horror movie. if they had just ended the movie as ambiguously and trippy as the rest of it what little plot was there would've not gotten in the way.

>stop tryin' to make be think, brah!

t. autist

But the exact reason why "style over substance" is a retarded phrase is because "substance" doesn't really have a clear definition. It's a vague word people use in order to avoid having to explain their thoughts clearly.

>its a stupid argument not worth having

If we don't have this argument then "style over substance" does not mean ANYTHING.

>t.
Cancerous trash person detected.

>It's about deleuzian rhizomes and the corruption of 70's drug spirituality movement
how so? I've read Capitalism and Schizophrenia a few years ago but I can't see how BtBR has anything to do with rhizomes

tfw Panos Cosmatos will never make another movie

I know that feel

Still need to watch Amer, Strange Color has a great title, poster and visual aesthetic, it was a great experience

...

>expresses himself via memes
>thinks he's in a position to judge
Funny joke, little kid.

are there really people who watched this without falling asleep?

The joke is actually that they're the same thing.

You can see the production crew in the right hand panel. Or were viewers meant to see them?

they're both pretty bad movies

>watching an old man shoot milk out of his hairy nipples
>high art

gotta hand it to Jodo he was one of the big precursors to modern art, we wouldnt have fine art students abandoning illustration and deciding to paint on canvas with their puke and period blood if it weren't for this brave man

he managed to express much less in his films than andy warhol and thats really saying something. i mean truly, what a genius

I'm back now. For me, the reason films should have a beginning and an ending is simply because time is an essential part of film as a medium. Watching a movie takes a certain amount of time, so something I'm always thinking about is whether the length of a film is necessary for what it's trying to do. A plot is a way for a film to naturally develop over time, for example. Same goes for a character arc and other 'traditional' ways to make a film, they exist for a reason at the end of the day.

So when a film has no plot or the plot is not the central element (as is the case with BtBR), I feel like the film has to do something else to 'explain' to the audience why they are there for 90 minutes. And I think BtBR fails to do that in the sense that you could cut out plenty of scenes and have the same essential experience. You understand what it's doing in the first half hour, so 90 minutes just isn't warranted beyond the filmmakers wanting it to be a feature film, it doesn't have enough depth to sustain a feature (I think this is also a problem with something like Under the Skin for example).

Something like Stalker, for example, uses most of its (rather long) running time to develop the plot, the themes, the characters and their interactions, so the ending feels satisfying. BtBR doesn't really, so for me, the movie just kind of ends.

Even Enter the Void which you mention sets out a clear path at the start with the drugs and the before-death-experience and goes on to explore those ideas through various scenes. I think that movie is too long as well but it's considerably more coherent.

bump

>Beyond the Black Rainbow was made 6 years ago
>Panos Cosmatos still doesn't have a single project lined up
SOMEBODY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GIVE HIM SOME FUCKING MONEY!

Does he really deserve that money though? I'm saying this as a person who kind of likes the idea of BtBR if not the actual finished product, but if I was a producer or investor i wouldn't give him money just because BtBR is kind of masturbatory filmmaking (as in, it's a movie that's like other movies he likes), it doesn't have that much artistic merit at the end of the day.

holy mountain would be perfect if not for the 4th wall break.

BtBR 8/10
Holy Mountain 7/10

fite me

you fucked her

This movie had great characters
Barry was a GOAT character for example
Anyone who says this film doesn't have substance is braindead

Try reading some analyses of the plot, and see if you can find the video explaining all of the weird symbology and imagery. It's a surprisingly philosophical film.

I'll try to explain it a bit myself.

Basically, Barry (the antagonist) was Dr. Borea's protege, experimenting in exploring other dimensions or perceptions with experimental isolation tanks and psychoactive drugs.

Well, Barry takes a huge helping of this psychically charged drug and drops into the isolation tank, where he proceeds to make contact with something inconprehensible which peels him apart and then puts him back together. But it's not a perfect reconstruction, and Barry goes psychotic in the process, taking a bite out of Borea's wife's neck. Barry is now an imperfect psychic.

Borea dunks his child into the tank almost immediately after, and she too makes contact. But the entity has learned how to reassemble people as intentioned and she emerges as a perfect psychic, who is constantly disabled by the throbbing pyramid structure.

Barry is jealous that he emerged an incomplete, impure monster and spends his days obsessively tormenting the main character out of lust, envy and the hope that gaining some understanding of her might allow him to understand what he is.

That's the literal narrative, but tons of the aforementioned symbolism and philosophical imagery clears everything else up.

flashback scene fucked me up bois

that run program sentinauts scene is the highest tier kinographie`