30 Days of Criterion: 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, SUCKER PUNCH, and the Narrative

Around these parts, I try to approach films like SPIDER-MAN 2 or OCTOPUSSY with the level of theoretical criticism we usually devote to the Fellinis and Truffauts of the film world. This is often good for a laugh or two, while simultaneously helping me make the sort-of central argument of this blog that films that function as pure entertainment (i.e. the ouevre of Tony Scott) have as much merit as their upper-brow cousins.

However, this leaves me in a bit of a bind when it comes to talking about art films. It's hard to elevate street dancing without feeling like you have to tear down the ballet, at least a little bit, in order to level the playing field. This approach would be totally insincere, though, for as much as I love the schlock of Hollywood, I have a tremendous affinity for the pretension of dark and mysterious foreign women, black-and-white photography, and the idea that subtitles are fun.

This leads me to the Criterion Collection. These magnificent bastards have been separating me from my money for years now, trading in on my obsessive-compulsive DVD habits and love of everything from M to Z to THE ROCK. Recently, Criterion had a 50% off sale on everything in their online store, and the next thing I was aware of was the incredible lightness of my wallet. The package arrived the other day, and it was most imposing:


I know what you're thinking, and yes, that is ARMAGEDDON, fourth from the left. It fills me with joy to think that over the next few days, I'll jump from Akira Kurosawa to Luis Bunuel to Michael Bay. So without further ado, let's dive in to 30 DAYS OF CRITERION, with Jean-Luc Godard's 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER.


Now, after professing all this love for foreign cinema, I have to admit that I find 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER a frustrating film. It's an essay film that veers into seemingly-unrelated tangents for long sections, and is full of extended rants at societal hypocrisy that sound like they were lifted from a second-year university paper. There are also moments where women stare pensively off camera and say things like, "Language is the house man lives in," and you're struck by the incredible French-ness of the film, something that time has brought closer to parody than anything approaching insight.

But for all of these moments, there are scenes of incredible innovation that still have an exciting sense of newness, like the coffee scene, where a close-up on a swirling cup of coffee comes to represent "the primordial ooze" of humanity's evolution (no CGI dinosaurs here, Malick, just a cup of coffee), or the scene where a young boy describes the origins of sexual violence before staring deep into the lens and shooting a toy gun right into the camera, or the scene where two prostitutes are paid to walk around with airline bags over their heads, simultaneously sexualized and dehumanized in an eerie portrayal of identity and choice.


My main frustration with the film comes from the vague narrative that frames 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, a device that, to me, seems to detract rather than support the essay. "Her" takes on many meanings in the film, and this distillation of the human element into a larger sociological argument slices two ways. I start the film wanting to know more about the character, Juliette, but am instead treated to an analysis of Paris as "her"; as soon as I start getting into that, we're back to Juliette, or Marina Vlady, the actress who plays her; or one of a dozen other women who play supporting "cubist" roles. The essay just moves too fast for me, and the narrative conceit makes me switch into different modes of watching the film.

Here's where we bring it all back to the intro - if you came here for a few words about Godard, you should probably just stop here, before I piss you off by comparing the master of the French New Wave with Zack Snyder and his most recent effort, SUCKER PUNCH.


Still with me? Don't say I didn't warn you. On the surface, these two films could not be less similar: Godard's analytic essay film may as well be an entire medium, if not worlds, away from Snyder's pretty-girls-blow-up-robots-real-good-while-Nine-Inch-Nails-pounds-in-the-background wet dream of an action film.

But both films are remarkably concerned with narrative, even while their ultimate goals are completely separate from that idea. SUCKER PUNCH aims to be nothing more than eye candy, a never-ending parade of "Holy shit, did you see that giant robot samurai?" "Yes I did, did you see the goddamned fire-breathing dragon?"-type moments that need only the barest of narrative concepts to be expressed. However, we still get the inciting incident, the introductions to characters and environment, and an attempt to explain where these visuals are coming from, all doled out in what feels like an obligatory manner from Snyder. Of course, he makes these moments as visual as possible, drenching everything he can in rain, sweat, and grime, but it's clear that it's the rain, sweat, grime, and steampunk Nazi zeppelins that he's really interested in. It leads to some beautiful images, and I don't even really have a problem with favouring the stylistic over substantive, if that's what you want to do, but why even bother with the narrative at that point? Why not just make the entire film the never-ending steampunk-Nazi-zombies/katana-wielding-robo-samurai visual porn Snyder wants it to be?

The truth is that in both of these films, the narratives are just a handhold, something for the audience to hang on to while Jean-Luc's playing in the conceptual sandbox, or Zack's making some pretty pictures. It serves as an anchor, assuring us that there is meaning to be had from all this.

I'm pretty sure they would hate each other.