There are two things I remember from english classes in highschool that I really enjoyed. John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men and an animated version of Macbeth which I never seen the whole of.
Part of the thing that makes them stick in my mind is that I seemed to be one of the few that actually enjoyed them both. I suspect they really did enjoy these things but did not want to admit it because these stories are "good for you",, but I can't really tell. After we watched the animation, everyone was saying "That was so crap", but I think they felt threatened,, not that they were scared, but people always hate something all the more if they think they were supposed to be scared and have to assure everyone that they were not scared.
Here is the Macbeth animation by Nikolai Serebryakov, with a voice by Brian Cox, some incredible faces, but the highlight is easily the shapeshifting withces. Serebryakov also did Othello. I bought Shakespear Animated Tales box set recently and it contains 12 of these animated stories...
Unfortunately, this guy hardly did much animation, but here is the best thing I could find,, not in English, but it is so good you wont even care, great music too...
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I've noticed in a lot of films I have enjoyed lately, they are restrained and dont like to give the audience obvious satisfactions. 13 Tzameti had a moment in it where it could have showed you something, but you didnt need to see it because you knew exactly what happened. The director is doing an american remake with a cast that suggests that the audience probably will want the obvious satisfaction, I'm curious to see what they will do with it. The situation in the story may not reappear, but I'm curious to know how it will be handled.
If you still dont know what I'm talking about, I mean those annoying parts in movies that seem to be in there only to empower the audience, my examples are Relic, Carpenter's The Thing and one of the Alien films. The moments where the hero says "You bitch" or "fuck you" before they kill the monster. I hate these audience empowering moments,, I'd rather the audience felt helpless and hopeless. Perhaps these are from the studio interfering, because it seems to be catering to the people who need to be assured that guns and explosives can overcome any obstacle.
I hope I havent written this before, because I've had it in my head for a year and I feel like I might have written it before.
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These are really interesting. Thanks Robert. I love the surreal transformations and gloomy atmosphere in Macbeth I also remember reading Macbeth in school, but we watched the Polanski version, which is good, too. Unlike myself, my teacher hadn't seen it before and was rather shocked by all the gore. I think at some points she was inclined to turn off the video recorder.
I enjoyed your thoughts about audience empowerment. I agree that art is usually better when somehow it doesn't give the audience what it wants, when it kind of says "shut up and watch! this is about art, not about you!"
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