29 Sep Wolfs (2024)
Sundance Sundown
One of the advantages of age is that I’ve seen older films when they were new. If you consider film viewing as at least a craft — as I do — then it matters that you are able to bring the personal anchoring of context. That’s because filmmaking is accretive. We are still evolving the form: in the cognitive structures, the visual/character vocabularies, and story attractions.
So I am at the point where I have experienced the source firsthand of a few recognisable conventions/narrative patterns that are common and still evolving today.
There’s a comic chase in the transition from Acts one to two. But this relies on two patterns, the (non-cop, two cool guys) buddy movie, and the conspiracy twist, derived from noir. We last saw this of course in the Ocean’s series, where the two literally finish each others’ thoughts, and we discover at the end some twists. Those twists are designed by them and not revealed to us until the end. So we are conned in some degree along with the mark.
This buddy dynamic is from ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’, which I think when it came out was novel, fresh, important. (Yes, the Sundance festival is named after this.) The only other film Newman and Redford did was the pattern for the Soderbergh Ocean series, ‘The Sting’. That was even bigger.
Now as it happens, I think Pitt is quite a bit better actor than Redford. Clooney likely holds a similar place as Newman did, even in real life. These guys do shine — or they have, and they inherit the Newman/Redford dual monarchy.
They squander it here.
The buddy part does develop in the first act but has too much cruft to matter. Then there’s some crime and conspiracy stuff and the film ends with a nearly direct quote from Butch/Sundance. The problem is that the conspiracy which seems clear to them is completely unclear. Even with post-film research it cannot make sense. This violates the first rule of con movies: the reinvention of what you know needs to be complete.
Posted in 2024
Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
No Comments