13 May The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021)

Meme Film School

I am a filmsfolding guy. That is where films understand they are films and engage the viewer on multiple levels. Devoted some of my life to thinking about them and appreciating the meta-art.

I should like this. It is essentially a story about a young filmmaker who goes on a road trip and imagines/experiences a mashup of movies, and makes a movie. Many elements are ordinary: we have the out of touch dad, the child that saves the world, and the single billionaire genius who creates advanced tech. We’ve got robot apocalypse, and sheepish people.

Novelties are that the filmmaker is queer and that the film tropes are not from long form films but from tiktock short form and chat annotations. There are lot of introverted references at a pace that these guys know works. The pacing of packets is their skill.

The reason I like introspective filmmaking is because it can greatly enhance the power of cinema. It can be used to bend and change souls in the right hands. Film for me can be sustaining, challenging. Not here. All the introspective and folded devices are paraded for their own sake. There’s nothing underneath. Nothing. That nothingness is deliberate. It is the point. This is equivalent to a Snowstorm of Trumpisms, and may be one of the reasons that works so effectively.

So set the main strategy of this aside. A bigger travesty is that many of the quoted films have heft. The story of Hal is one of struggle over who is the narrator. Bladerunner twisted that further in parallel being of character: manufactured? Natural? Many of what we see referenced have their soul removed so they can be stickers.

We are not transported into the eye of the filmmaker; we are shoved into the dog who can’t see straight, and whose folded identity destroys rather than builds.

Posted in 2022

Ted’s Evaluation — 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

IMDB