Movie Notes: Love (2015)

Rufus F.

Rufus is a likeable curmudgeon. He has a PhD in History, sang for a decade in a punk band, and recently moved to NYC after nearly two decades in Canada. He wrote the book "The Paris Bureau" from Dio Press (2021).

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29 Responses

  1. Glyph says:

    Enter the Void is overlong and repetitive, but worth seeing for the cinematography/technical aspects alone.

    Also, that header image is beautiful, but all I can think about is how much her shoulder hurts there.Report

  2. LeeEsq says:

    My favorite review of Nymphomaniac was that it was a movie using sex to show the superiority of Jewish to Christian theology. The titular Nymphomaniac is seeking a transcendent experience and getting burned, the Christian version of salvation through Grace, while the Jewish man she is relating her story to is handling things slowly and coming out in tact.Report

  3. Christopher Carr says:

    “This leads to a major question about art: should artists depict characters who are vapid, selfish, and self-absorbed? Aren’t many real people this way?”

    I was thinking the same thing myself as I read through your review, and then the words themselves popped up. (Disclaimer: I haven’t seen the film.)

    In any case, I tend to find works about hedonism both boring and depressing. That’s all I have to say, really. People need to get beyond the idea that being validated sexually or socially is all there is to life. I’ve found Girls childish and boring for much the same reason, and I kept thinking of that terrible show throughout your review. The critics tend to love this type of thing, for sure, but I think it’s all just a giant fugue of people looking for external validation.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Christopher Carr says:

      The monotheistic world has been subjected to anti-hedonistic arguments ever since Constantine decided to make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. All of the monotheistic faiths, along with many of the Dharmic faiths, have a variety of arguments against different forms of hedonism. Until very recently any expression of sexuality outside some strictly controlled forms would result in a lot of problems even in the most liberal countries let alone authoritarian ones. If you had the personality that tended towards hedonism than you were actively persecuted even more so than just venturing on the wild side. A lot of the works of art that focus very heavily on presenting hedonism or to use a less loaded word sensuality as a good thing are just natural reactions to thousands of years of anti-sensuality.

      Since I’m good little middle-class Jew and somewhat excluded from the party, I do not find the pro-sensuality argument to be entirely convincing but I can see where they are coming from. There are people who just have some really strong sex or sensation drives and constantly need to engage their senses. There are also people who are just bad at living anything remotely considered a conventional life. These aren’t immoral or evil people but people who have a Bohemian streak and would find the get up, go to school/work, and raise a family or contribute to the community in some way as really chaffing.Report

  4. Rufus F. says:

    I remember Christopher Hitchens’s comment about Ayn Rand that he didn’t think most people needed a philosophical justification for greed because it does fine without any. It’s sort of the same with hedonism- people will keep having sex even if nobody advocates for it.Report