Films that are about place more than people

[starku]

Dudes I bin watching films and especially with older films there seems to be a huge focus on the place or time or setting

Like French connection has all this shit about Brooklyn in the 70s that informs the movie
Blade runner isn't about robots it's about the world people live in and how it shapes them

Shit even demolition man is at least half about california politics of the 90s

Whereas y'know in a Michael bay movie egypt and Syria are the same place

Specifically in some of these films there are entire shots of nothing but place which bored me to tears as a kid
But now they're full of implicit meaning and context

So I want more movies that do that

TELL ME

[Oxymoron]

You want film or animation ?

Cuz' I have two animation example :

Les Triplettes de Belleville - (2003), Sylvain Chomet [film is available on Youtube]

=> There's almost no lines, everything is told visually. So there's no real need to seek an English "dub".

Metropolis - (2001), Ozamu Tezuka

=> It's at least as much about the City than about the characters IMHO


And if you can find a way to watch the totally restored edition they made a few years ago of the original Fritz Lang's Metropolis, I really recommend you watch it. It really is a masterpiece, and the vision it give of the city of the future, as imagined by a German less than a decade after the end of WWI, is really fascinating in its own ways.

[starku]

Shit mentioning abomination reminds me all the anime that is totes actually about changing Japan rather than robits

Like patlabor and ghost in the shell

Or even about communities in crazy sittings being familiar like cowboy bebo

I e never seen metropolis

[timmy]

Where is the threshold for this

Because you could say that The Full Monty is, at its core, about industrial decline in northern England

And I feel that painfully when I watch it

[starku]

But dude that IS what it's about

It speaks to industrial collapse and the long term unemployed and the impact on families and ideas of male roles

What do other people think its about

[thejester]

a significant part of Mongol is the landscape itself and its seasonal changes, and the way that reflects Genghis' story but also the rise of the Mongol Empire(s) more generally

I dunno dude pretty much any movie that is any good has this shit. Like yeah Chinatown is a noir thriller but it's also pretty clearly about the relationship between politics and money in the US and the way modern prosperity was bought at a significant cost to the existing way of life

[Veef]

But dude that IS what it's about

It speaks to industrial collapse and the long term unemployed and the impact on families and ideas of male roles

What do other people think its about

Dongs

Wangs

One eyed weasel

Big stiffies

Made from dil dough

[starku]

a significant part of Mongol is the landscape itself and its seasonal changes, and the way that reflects Genghis' story but also the rise of the Mongol Empire(s) more generally

I dunno dude pretty much any movie that is any good has this shit. Like yeah Chinatown is a noir thriller but it's also pretty clearly about the relationship between politics and money in the US and the way modern prosperity was bought at a significant cost to the existing way of life

List moar plz more sharing of ARTY VIEWS ITT

[timmy]

When I saw it in 1997 at the age of fifteen I thought it was about cheeky spirit in the face of adversity, which it is to an extent

But christ, it's depressing watching it now, even with an upbeat dance number and the implication that lives are about to be turned around

[thejester]

Trainspotting is the same, though I've never watched all the movie (book is pretty rad though). Highlight is when one of the characters (Spud?) ponders how boring life must be in Australia, based on the monochrome soaps that were on TV...it's pretty damning criticism coming from a petty thief/heroin addict living in the Edinburgh estates

[timmy]

Okay here's one to analyse within the context of the thread

The Castle

Go

[starku]

Never seem it

[timmy]

Sometimes I forget you're Kiwi bred

But you're aware enough to know the premise of the movie; Honest Hardworking Australian threatened with mandatory buyout of his property

And they're happy living where they are, though they would be struggling to get a house that size elsewhere in suburban Melbourne

But that last notion is ignored by the family at the centre of things, and instead lampshaded and framed by their neighbours

[F.J. Prefect, Esq]

url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293416/]Metropolis[/url] - (2001), Ozamu Tezuka

Tezuka Osamu wasn't actually involved in this, because he died ten years before. It is very loosely based on the manga of the same name, but it's basically Rintaro and Otomo's homage to Tezuka and his 'star system' by way of Lang's Metropolis. I really like it as a film - I think I'm the only person in my circle of friends who has watched - and it's a really 'scenery' heavy film. Like the imagery of Metropolis is really powerful and important, the way that it's tiered, how beautiful and opulent it is in contrast to the brutality of the Marduk Party and the burden on the workers on the workers etc.

[Bakustra]

who framed roger rabbit, being essentially a lighter-hearted chinatown, is largely about hollywood, the studio system, and the changing nature of american society as the immediately postwar era ended and the 50s loomed

admittedly, this is secondary to the hijinksy main plot, but it's still there

[thejester]

man the Dollars trilogy sits in an interesting space here

cause Leone's use of landscape is pretty key to the films and is what made them so important...look at the opening of For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, both use wide, long shots of the landscape to establish the feeling of desolation and hostility that sits at the core of the film and allows the growth of the antiheroes like Eastwood's character, Tuco etc. But OTOH it's a fictional landscape - it's Spain, not Mexico, just like it's a noticeably warped vision of the Civil War.

[Gands]

Deliverance. People go to the wilderness to get away from civilisation. The wilderness wins.

[Nietzslime]

la confidential is the most obvious example, being about the growth and culture of los angeles in the 50s

get carter is similarly about the industrial decline of north england but instead of being a comedy about stripping it's about a sociopath on a vengeance rampage

so like it's a little different

a good recent example is the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford

a lot of westerns have this quality, unsurprisingly, like the searchers, 3:10 to yuma, the proposition

stanley kubrick's movies have a lot of this, though their 'place' isn't usually a landscape, but the haunted hotel grounds from the shining or the ship and the void surrounding it in 2001 are very important parts of the film

[thejester]

man I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the world who didn't like The Proposition

maybe I should watch it again

[timmy]

This is going to be a very subjective one but years ago Russell Crowe did a film called Heaven's Burning that started in Sydney and wound up at a B&S ball near somewhere like Walgett or Condobolin. Maybe it's just that any film that contrasts urban Australia with rural Australia. Or just any film that contrasts city vs country without overtly commenting on it.

[Shroom Man 777]

gangs of new york was a lot like this too

these films create a very atmospheric setting that itself also interacts with characters in a profound kind of way, not just "place" in terms of location, but also in time, in situation, etc.

the watchmeng movie is also like this i think, i fancy it like how i fancy blade runner and it's not so much as just the characters but also the scenery and the strange different world they live in

it really depends on how the directorb composes the film so that it soaks up all the... oomph of the alien locale the film is happening in

leone totally does it

[Agent Bert Macklin]

I think Avatar is another one. It's all about the world of Pandora and how it connects to its inhabitants. Take this exchange:

Dr. Grace Augustine: I'm not talking about pagan voodoo here - I'm talking about something REAL and measurable in the biology of the forest.
Selfridge: Which is *what* exactly?
Dr. Grace Augustine: What we think we know - is that there's some kind of electrochemical communication between the roots of the trees. Like the synapses between neurons. Each tree has ten to the fourth connections to the trees around it, and there are ten to the twelfth trees on Pandora...
Selfridge: That's a lot, I'm guessing.
Dr. Grace Augustine: That's more connections than the human brain. You get it? It's a network - a global network. And the Na'vi can access it - they can upload and download data - memories - at sites like the one you just destroyed.

[Shroom Man 777]

part of it is how in his avatar body jake can walk and fly and do all sorts of things and so his environments in pandora that he experiences in his avatar body are far more real than that of his original cripple body