It is really hard not to overrate this movie now that it is in Criterion, because looking it at it in the frame of an important film, its satire, its time capsule, its vignettes, and the general intelligence of it, reflects really well with the label. It was always a cult classic, but seeing it as avant-garde, it reaffirms that art and comedy form a productive trade. "This is a fancy restaurant!!" He really detests elitism, giving him targets in every direction. Any of his ire becomes productive for the audience because he is such a good stand-in for our consciousness. Which is the whole point of a clown. Yet there is a specificity to his targets that are so personal to him that it makes it an auteur work. He just made himself the butt of the joke which is a long tradition and why it endures, but also why it endures as an avant-garde kind of experience, is that moment in history is so far removed from today... but what he is remarking on is, the insanity of the western capitalist materialism, the entertainment conglomerate. How the system systematically turns us against our community, our family, through dehumanization, and robotification. These are things we thought the movie was probably about, but in current day it is so glaringly obviously about. Some comments say it is a parody of gross-out films, but I think it is more him showing them how it's done.
There are important films like that, hard exposes of societies in a state of madness and collapse, like the Fireman's Ball, Sweet Movie, or Daisies, of course those are avant-garde European films. But you know there weren't western film artists doing that at that moment in time, just careerists and opportunists, because of the film brats casting a shadow on the generations that followed, that the west had main character syndrome-- look at all the hero savior tropes. Our artists were all too busy participating in the beast attempting to be its champions.
So you almost have no choice but to look to the clowns to understand its time. Like clowns, it's celebrative. It was always fun, but this time it felt substantive
For instance. The scene where Green gets the million dollars, and says, hmm, I wonder what I am going to do with this million dollars; as if it is the most natural thing in the world to blow the money. In film, money is one of the most powerful shorthands for a viewer. The Joker, the Beach Bum are other movies money is lit on fire and it has an effect on our consciousness. Tom Green blows the million just like he is blowing it on the movie itself. It frees us from the material, which is a cosmic ability that only art can do. There are so many tangents in this movie that you can get lost in.
There are important films like that, hard exposes of societies in a state of madness and collapse, like the Fireman's Ball, Sweet Movie, or Daisies, of course those are avant-garde European films. But you know there weren't western film artists doing that at that moment in time, just careerists and opportunists, because of the film brats casting a shadow on the generations that followed, that the west had main character syndrome-- look at all the hero savior tropes. Our artists were all too busy participating in the beast attempting to be its champions.
So you almost have no choice but to look to the clowns to understand its time. Like clowns, it's celebrative. It was always fun, but this time it felt substantive
For instance. The scene where Green gets the million dollars, and says, hmm, I wonder what I am going to do with this million dollars; as if it is the most natural thing in the world to blow the money. In film, money is one of the most powerful shorthands for a viewer. The Joker, the Beach Bum are other movies money is lit on fire and it has an effect on our consciousness. Tom Green blows the million just like he is blowing it on the movie itself. It frees us from the material, which is a cosmic ability that only art can do. There are so many tangents in this movie that you can get lost in.