David Gordon Green's "Undertow"

[abuck1220]

caught this on dvd and was disappointed. instead of just ripping off malick's visual style, now he's ripping off malick's AND altman's. i have no problem w/ meshing a b-movie story with poetic visuals and music, but the whole thing just felt over-directed.

one thing that i was glad to see him cut back on (from all the real girls) was the use of eloquent, shakespearian dialogue being used by uneducated, backwood hicks.

[w/o horse]

caught this on dvd and was disappointed. instead of just ripping off malick's visual style, now he's ripping off malick's AND altman's. i have no problem w/ meshing a b-movie story with poetic visuals and music, but the whole thing just felt over-directed.

one thing that i was glad to see him cut back on (from all the real girls) was the use of eloquent, shakespearian dialogue being used by uneducated, backwood hicks.

Yeah so clearly the movie was not for you.  It's funny how one man's gold is another man's pyrite.

The last part is especially disagreeable to me.  It should be common knowledge by now that the people in Shakespeare's time did not speak like that either, he was a writer, and his distinct voices for the characters is one of the reasons he lives on.  I fucking love it when writers push for creative voices, and I think it's unfortunate that the people who do so are often frowned upon.  In All the Real Girls I felt the dialogue to be entirely appropriate, it did well to accompany the tone and flow of the film.

As for the overdone copycat directing, I think that's another unfair statement.  It would be the comparison of saying that Woody Allen stole from Bergman, that Scorsese stole from Powell, or that PTA stole from Demme Scorsese and Bergman.  It should be okay for a director to want to work inside of style, especially if they are pushing that style further, which I feel DGG does.

Also, to be topical, I think it's funny that Batman Begins is praised for taking an uber fiction story and making it realistic, while Undertow is panned for taking a realistic story and making it cinematic.

[deathnotronic]

Also, to be topical, I think it's funny that Batman Begins is praised for taking an uber fiction story and making it realistic, while Undertow is panned for taking a realistic story and making it cinematic.

The reality line is usually the thinnest and the finest. That's the usually the first and only thing people will jump on when they're leaving a theatre. I know I find myself doing it.

"The ball in Spacejam bounced too high on the second bounce after it hit the rim! (I almost typed rum.) WHAT A SHITTY MOVIE."

Bad example I know, but I can't help but namedrop sweet movies like this.

[abuck1220]

caught this on dvd and was disappointed. instead of just ripping off malick's visual style, now he's ripping off malick's AND altman's. i have no problem w/ meshing a b-movie story with poetic visuals and music, but the whole thing just felt over-directed.

one thing that i was glad to see him cut back on (from all the real girls) was the use of eloquent, shakespearian dialogue being used by uneducated, backwood hicks.

Yeah so clearly the movie was not for you.  It's funny how one man's gold is another man's pyrite.

agreed. his stuff just doesn't do it for me. it just happens sometimes...depalma's the same way...just can't get into his stuff.

The last part is especially disagreeable to me.  It should be common knowledge by now that the people in Shakespeare's time did not speak like that either, he was a writer, and his distinct voices for the characters is one of the reasons he lives on.  I fucking love it when writers push for creative voices, and I think it's unfortunate that the people who do so are often frowned upon.  In All the Real Girls I felt the dialogue to be entirely appropriate, it did well to accompany the tone and flow of the film.

well, i don't know enough about shakespearian times, so it doesn't really bother me that much in his stuff. however, i do know that uneducated hicks circa 2001 don't talk like poets or university philosophy professors.

As for the overdone copycat directing, I think that's another unfair statement.  It would be the comparison of saying that Woody Allen stole from Bergman, that Scorsese stole from Powell, or that PTA stole from Demme Scorsese and Bergman.  It should be okay for a director to want to work inside of style, especially if they are pushing that style further, which I feel DGG does.

yeah, but all those other guys also have their own voices that make their work distinct. even though those guys you mentioned may have obvious influences, you can watch five minutes of woody allen and know that it's woody allen. other than a couple of film school 101 camera tricks, i don't feel like gordon has that voice. to me, he feels like a film student doing a malick impression...much like in the mid-90's a lot of films felt like a film student doing a tarantino impression.

i'm not saying his stuff sucks, because obviously a lot of smart people love it. it just doesn't do it for me. if everybody liked the same stuff, we wouldn't have anything fun to talk about!

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

Spoilers, maybe.



I liked Undertow, but was very underwhelmed.

It was really hyped up for me, and I loved all the characters, and it was shot really well... but the story seemed very lacking.  At the end, I wondered if that was it.  It seemed to move a little fast, but otherwise, I liked it.

[Alethia]

watch it again, it gets better and it bears repeating anyway

[ono]

Spoilers.

Finally saw this after much procrastination.

Overrated.

The movie started okay, slowed to a drag until the death scene, and pretty much disgusted me and lost me in ambivalence.  This is your basic genre flick with an artistic sensibility that doesn't quite get there.

The best part of the flick?  Three things come to mind: black couple, milking the cow/dancing in the rain (smacks of Buffalo '66 sensibilities), and Shiri Appleby.  She said all of twenty words, I'm betting, and her mere presence added something so nice and intangible, just to bookend this film, juxtapose it with the girl from the getgo.  This is the kind of thing DGG is good at, the kind of thing he should stick to: the subtle sensuality, the insights into human nature, rather than the shallow stupidity of violence and greed that is boring and has been done before.  I felt like I was watching a made-for-TV movie at times, and not a flick from the same guy who made a masterpiece like George Washington.  Where the setting and characters in that was fresh, here it was just monotonous.

There were so many good things about this flick that for it to be lost in the throes of genre is a mistake.  Especially the final confrontation in the river, the "come-get-me" vibe, throwing the coins in, and the hospital bed scene where the young boy pops the balloon.  It's all there.  It just didn't tie together.  The problem is, with all these elements that don't tie together, I get the feeling the tone, at least, of this movie will stick with me for a while and it just doesn't deserve it.

[matt35mm]

I'm curious as to how you'll feel if you watch it again a few months from now.

For me, the parts that you didn't like fade away pretty easliy, in terms of importance... it becomes just a framework for the things you did like.  I think it is intentionally a less ambitious movie than George Washington or All The Real Girls was, in that it did just want to get down and have a good time, old-school style, narratively.

The stylistic approach is simply Green's style, and not an attempt to "gussy up" a boring story.  The movie becomes something like a buddy of yours telling you this tall tale he heard about two kids running away from their crazy, murderous uncle.

I've learned to have a good time with this movie, and I like it a lot more now than I did when I first saw it.

I'm not saying the same will necessarily happen to you, but don't you find that after you already know what happens, you don't care at ALL about the plot elements anymore (after a second viewing and beyond of any movie)?  When I re-watch movies, it's to become absorbed by its style and tone and what it can give me in that way.  If in a few months you tried watching it again... well I don't know how you'd feel, but like I said, I'm just curious.

[ono]

See, that's just the thing.  Plot is a four-letter word.  It just doesn't matter to me.  Plot is a restriction, a constriction, which ties you down, makes a movie ever so predictable.  Because there's only so many ways a story can go.  It's all been done.  Character is where it's at, and these characters are paper thin.    The best films, I believe, aren't so much concerned with plot, but with character, and how they arrive at different points along the way.  Plot, if it exists, should only be a clothesline to hang different moments in the story.  Film should be about those moments.  Before I digress too much, I'll just stop there, and say to look at the squid vs truth thread.

What specifically bothered me was the treatment of the murder scene.  I felt alienated.  Neon, I remember, said it brought him in.  It pushed me away.  Good scenes, I guess, do polarize audiences.  And it WAS a good scene.  But it distanced me from the movie, detached me from it.  And then for the rest of the time, it became weak genre.  Predictable.  Stand By Me lite.  And nothing was done with the great settings they came across, or the great characters (well, -- character -- Shiri's character -- which was the only one other than the black couple that I had any interest in).  So much potential missed for a real Odyssey-type story.

[Pubrick]

See, that's just the thing.  Plot is a four-letter word.

so's Love dude, so's LOVE. yeah, think about that..

[analogzombie]

So much potential missed for a real Odyssey-type story.

Considering That Green has said he was attempting to make a kind of Dukes of Hazzard Episode filmed by Malick crossed with Night of the Hunter all wrapped up in a young boys' wish fulfillment, I think he succeeded. I mean, it also has the potential to be a dialogue driven family drama, or a gritty, poor children ont he streets of Savannah movie ala City of God. Many films have the potential to be many things, you can't go into it expecting to see a road movie. Come to it fresh, otherwise you're just criticizing it for not living up to whatever expectations of story you placed on it. And it sounds like you have something against narrative film anyway, what with your anti-plot rant.

[matt35mm]

See, that's just the thing.  Plot is a four-letter word.  It just doesn't matter to me.  Plot is a restriction, a constriction, which ties you down, makes a movie ever so predictable.  Because there's only so many ways a story can go.  It's all been done.  Character is where it's at, and these characters are paper thin.    The best films, I believe, aren't so much concerned with plot, but with character, and how they arrive at different points along the way.  Plot, if it exists, should only be a clothesline to hang different moments in the story.  Film should be about those moments.  Before I digress too much, I'll just stop there, and say to look at the squid vs truth thread.

I basically agree with you, except to say that it is not ONLY character that could be the focus.  You can have "those moments" with thin characters, and I, in my previous post, was going to say something about how I felt that the characters were intentionally thin for this movie.  Like I said, tall tale as told by a buddy type vibe, not a character-piece.

For example, speaking of the Odyssey, Odyssius was a boring-ass character (at least that's how I remember it).  Strong characters are more effective than plot for making a good movie, but they're not the only thing.  There are a lot of great movies with thin characters.  We can disagree there, though.

What I would say, though, is that the paper-thin characters thing was not a mistake, but rather a conscious decision on the filmmakers' parts.  This is how I saw it.

[pete]

I just saw the DVD just now.  man, that second deleted scene was amazing, I guess I can kinda see some studio honchos asking Green to take it out, but I'd love to watch the movie in its entirety with that second deleted scene there in the end.