/film/ - Film★

Start with the Greeks

>>448 (OP)
Cerebral/intellectual is a niche classification, but I get what you mean. The films you have listed either have an intrincate plot or an allegorical/symbolic magnitude —the latter are almost always the hardest to understand, provided they don't work as a clockwork mechanism, but on an evocative level.

Anyway, I'll namedrop the first movies that come to my mind, in aleatory orden:

Zerkalo
Mullholland Drive
Paprika
Tysnaden (aka The Silence)
Primer / Upstream Colour
Dreams that Money Can Buy

The Tree of Life is a definite one. I watched it for the first time last night. I love the way the film uses an impressionistic mindset, the vast majority of the film is shown as a memory and therefore is almost intangible in it's quality and coherence.
It reminds me of something like the novella To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf in the way that it rotates seamlessly between several character's perspectives and presents their thoughts.

Also the visual effects were handled by Douglass Trumbull, the man who handled the visual effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey and they are absolutely gorgeous.

>>468
If you enjoyed The Tree of Life for said reasons, I can't recommend you The New World enough. It's a gorgeous film from beginning to end.

>>448 (OP)
ayy The Thin Red Line

I don't really know if I get what you mean by cerebral but I'm going to make my suggestions, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong:

The exterminating angel
Vargtimmen
Mindgame
Coherence

The tree of life is the most pseudointellectual movie ever made. Its sheer pretentiousness makes all the effort that went into scenography worthless.

This is coming from someone who loves tarkovsky, cronenberg, haneke, lynch, von trier, etc.

>>720
Define 'pretentious', in this concrete case. It usually strikes me as a meaningless buzzword folks use to shit-talk the films they don't like. I would like to understand your statement better.

>>720
I don't see how a film can be pretentious. The film is pretending to be anything, it is the film. It sincerely commits itself to be an unorthodox construction. It isn't a collection of beautiful photography with no real meaning like Samsara. It tells a story that is at once deeply personal and universal in it's scope.

The fundamental message of the film isn't complex or deep. It's about living your life in a positive way and being good to others, but that doesn't take a way from the brilliant way that it is presented that allows for a lot more meaning to be conveyed. If the point of a film (or artwork in general) was to clearly and concisely portray an opinion or point of view then all of the great creations in history would be rendered pretentious.

I'm still glad this board managed to get 719 posts before someone used the word pretentious though.

>>724
It's as ambitious as The Holy Mountain (read: it was intended as a rite of passage for the art of filmmaking as a whole), without the self-irony of jodorowsky thrown in.

Loaded with symbolism, which is always either spoonfed to the viewer (dualistic nature of existence), or half-assed lynchian distant associations (>makes u think :)), but never used appropriately in a subtle way symbolism should be used in film (as is the case with most directors I listed above).

Also it's high production costs and CGI make it come off insincere as hell (it has a fucking dinosaur scene).

Malick overall made the movie with the arrogance you'd expect from a grad film student, but on a hollywood budget, which is something I find detestable.

Was it an indie student project and had a pinch of european sophistication, I could've even liked it, but this way its just garbage for people who had never seen an arthouse flick and discovered drugs yesterday.

also this board is great

i'd be interested to know what is especially "cerebral"/"intellectual" about Eyes Wide Shut (which i like). i hope your friend isn't buying into the dubious "coded message" interpretations of Kubrick films that are circulated online.

>>983
Not OP.

I'm not going to say that EWS is a coded message about the illuminati being real that he was privy to. But it is a good film, I wouldn't consider it particularly cerebral but there is a lot to think about and it obviously alludes to a secret, perverted group of individuals that control society.

In all honesty I think the mythos that surrounds Kubrick is fantastic, 2001: A Space Odyssey has the fake moonlanding myths, Dr. Strangelove has Kubrick's bizarre demands like a specifically green table despite the film being black and white, getting his actors to overact as 'rehearsals' and then using the footage, The Shining is… well it's The Shining.
I don't buy into them, but it's fascinating that a director has such a devoted fanclub into deciphering hidden, occult meanings in his work. He's like the James Joyce of filmmaking.

>>986
yeah, it's impressive when artists can inspire that kind of cultish obsession, and the conspiracy theories are amusing. but that whole approach reduces his films to the level of a cipher made transparent.

art is about form and style, not technique or intention.

>>1022
i think Kubrick's symbolism, allusions, etc. are the least interesting thing about him. i like his stately composition and intense cold misanthropy and weird shit like Sydney Pollack's performance in Eyes Wide Shut.

there are really a lot of weird things about Eyes Wide Shut. i recommend Michel Chion's brief book about it for the BFI Modern Classics series, even though his interpretation turns out to be really wacky and he spends too much time talking about the novel it's adapted from.

>>1305
the book is available on KG, by the way.