Cinematical

He's genius. Period.

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One pretentious blogger writes: "That's one trailer I won't be posting. I'm not big on shock for the sake of shock."

Perhaps "What Is It?" might give this meathead blogger some insight into his own psychology. After all, the film is chock full of retarded people.

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i like the trailer. did this film not play last
night? no one saw it?

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Really is this the 1st in a trilogy>?

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2 reviews from the festival:

http://www.iofilm.co.uk/festivals/sundance/2005/day_7.php

http://www.filmthreat.com/noah/reviews_display?Id=6855

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I was there. I saw the World Premier. What Is It? I'm still not sure.

If I had to use one word to describe this film, it would have to be "unintelligible". Fifty other adjectives spring instantly to mind, none of which impart sufficient emotion to describe how truly awful this movie is. Maybe I'm just a square who isn't hip enough to "get" it. If that's true, I was sitting in an auditorium full of squares, just like me, whose blank stares of bewilderment as the theater lights came up proved that they didn't "get" it either.

The 40 minute apres-film Q&A session was mostly Mr. Glover trying to make sense of it for the audience. Nobody was buying it. While I appreciate his intention, this attempt to Rage Against the Hollywood Machine is a lesson in film-making for all to heed: Just because you CAN make a film, doesn't necessarily mean you SHOULD.

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Predictable responses here to a categorically different kind of film. Glover isn't interested in the front part of his audience's brain. Literal thinking and film making by committee wherein audience response is narrowly controlled are exactly what Glover is frustrated by. I find his aesthetic fascinating because it speaks to a time when confusion and expressionist aesthetic were taken as raw materials for differentiated audience response. What's depressing is that comments posted about his film are so predictably about expectations for narrative film logic not being met. There is a whole backend to your brain, where unformed or visceral response matters more than your literal linear thought processes. After all, there is much in our experience that we fail to make sense of and refuse to focus on. Impressions, associations and nausea are uniquely human. Computer scientists have no idea how to simulate genuine subjectivity.

Confining ourselves to "What does it mean?" "How do I get it right?" are not the only question humans are capable of asking. Glover's fascination in The Big Slide Show with artifacts that reveal 19th c predilections for the inscrutable, grotesque, and boundless worlds of imagination are aesthetically consistent with his film "What Is It?" Crispin Glover has a clear, consistent, and integral artistic voice at work here. Why a contemporary art darling like Mathew Barney is fawned over (pardon the pun) while Glover gets ignored is a very interesting topic for discussion.

In a society less trained by marketing messages and culture-by-committee, this board would be sharing ideas about how the film's credits describe an inner and outer sanctum, how the interior world of hardness, hatred, purity, and control serve as foil to the outer sanctum's world of soft boundaries, confused love, melting flesh, and preformed thought. We'd be comparing Shirely Temple's pure burning whiteness in the inner sanctum to the Salt burning snail flesh against soft human cheeks. We'd connect the lusty lovers sailing between outer and inner sanctum on cottony clouds with the naked man born from the scalloped shell who eventually topples hatred from its throne.

There's is something there, "what is it?" just doesn't decide it for you. It's not comfortable, or responsible, or ok art, it's scarey and disturbing and fascinating like grotesque and beautiful ideas have always been.

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James Decker, good words!!

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I think I'll have nightmares for a week now. "What is it?" More like, "Dear LORD what the HELL IS IT?!?" What is Glover taking? I guess he'll have a press conference or something after showing this, so someone has to fill us in on what he says, because that man needs help.

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That's one trailer I won't be posting. I'm not big on shock for the sake of shock.

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I am reasonably certain you couldn't get me to see this without a HUGE bag of money.

The trailer might be the thing nightmares are made of. I need to go figure out how to clean my brain....

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