You may have noticed I've skipped a few weeks, that is because I was out of the country and did not view any films during that time. This week, my first week back, I only watched one film, but it's a brilliant one. In this review of a prophetic 1979 film, the in's and out's of reality programming is discussed.
I also want to point you guys to a great video essay that takes on the phenomenon many of you are probably aware of, either consciously or subconsciously. It's the recent trend of creating action scenes in movie that are constructed using split second shots that aim to create a visceral experience rather than a linear and understandable experience. In the essay the author calls it Chaos Cinema, but it's also been called Intensified Continuity by David Bordwell. There has been a decrease in narrative coherence in recent action and adventure movies for the sake of trying to recreate an experience and get the audience excited. One of the leading examples are the "Bourne" movies, where they use a handheld camera and intercut footage from all different angles that last less than a second at a time to apparently try to create a more physical and visceral experience. The video essay does a good job of showing you the examples of the issue, and also how similar scenes were made in the past. I highly recommend it.
Real Life (Albert Brooks, 1979): It seems that when this film came out in 1979 it was too smart for its own good. Its ridicule and satire of reality television would be considered brilliant today now that all of us have experienced many reality shows, but back in 1979 people only had the opportunity to experience one reality show, the PBS miniseries "An American Family." It's doubtful that many critics and audience members who watched "Real Life" were in the mindset to deconstruct the reality television genre when it had not even become a genre yet. If this film had came out in the early 2000's when reality television was at its peak, this film would have been hailed by some as a comic masterpiece. In 1979 it may have been perceived as a bit too detached from what people were thinking about. If released today it would surely be recognized as great by many, but some would definitely not see it as a brilliant revelation, compared to if it had come out in the early 2000's.
The film takes the reality genre and completely deconstructs it. It shows how silly it is to attempt to show reality on camera and not taking into account the changes the actual filming has on the people being filmed. The film shows how the filming of this reality movie changes everything about this family, almost ruins their lives. The film also gets into the paradoxes of why reality programming is so fun. We want to see real people with real consequences, but at the same time if we saw the actual real people with real consequences it would be too mundane. We want to see spectacle, but in real life. In a time when the husband of a "Real Housewives" castmember commits suicide in real life, it's a film that is eerily prophetic. If you viewed a double feature of "Real Life" followed by David Cronenberg's "Videodrome" back in the 80's, you would get a great sense of what television would be like in the 2000's. This is my first Albert Brook's film (that he has made), and just having seen this one I feel that he's a vastly underrated filmmaker. It might be because he's not as prolific as someone like Woody Allen, but his genius is certainly evident in "Real Life."
Grade: A-
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