Pretentious Art Films 101

Last year, The New York Times published an essay titled “Eating Your Cultural Vegetables.” The article, by film critic Dan Kois, is a sort of confessional. Kois admits that he seeks out films beloved by the intellectuals he most admires, even though he does not particularly enjoy them—a phenomenon he calls “aspirational viewing.”

He calls the “slow moving, meditative” films that aren’t his cup of tea “cultural vegetables.” Kois suggests that difficult films might be worth watching as an intellectual exercise and examines his own hipster guilt, recalling his days as a university student pretending to enjoy Andrei Tarkovsky.

Kois has a point: Sometimes, the emperor isn’t wearing clothes. “Eating Your Cultural Vegetables” seems to hint that Kois is the tip of an iceberg of film critics who won’t accurately review art films for fear of exposing themselves as cinematic simpletons. Devoted cinephiles might counter that Kois isn’t sophisticated enough for the films he pans in his article.

Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control reminded me of every argument I’ve ever had about modern art or art films. Not to make this review all about me, but since Dan Kois did it with Meek’s Cutoff and The Limits of Control is even more boring, I’m going to go out on a limb here and admit to being a total snob/hipster/art fag.

Last term, I told a classmate in an aesthetics class that if children and educated adults both have emotional responses to modern art, that her disdain for modern art probably comes from her perception that people who actually like it are just pretending to “get it” to seem sophisticated.

The Limits of Control might prove my skeptical classmate right. If this film is supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek satire of crappy art films, a la the Sokal hoax, it totally works—the few positive reviews it has on rottentomatoes.com are all completely formulaic and predictable. Unfortunately, at 155 minutes it takes substantially longer than Sokal’s deconstructionist parody.

The film starts out dull and descends immediately into stupidity. A secret agent (known only as the Lone Man) practices tai chi in an airport stall, then meets with two mysterious men who dispense the following sage advice: “Use your imagination and your skills. Everything is subjective. Don’t elaborate.”

His instructions are to “go to the tower, wait a couple of days, go to the café and wait for the violin.” Before he departs on his mission (which seemingly consists of drinking espresso and collecting a series of matchboxes), we’re given the following insight: “The universe has no center and no edges. Reality is arbitrary.”

More painful quotes from this movie: “For me, the reflection is sometimes far more present than the thing being reflected,” announces a disaffected cowboy who drives a truck adorned with the phrase “LIFE IS WORTH NOTHING.”

“Your sick minds have been polluted with crap. Fucking bohemians on hallucinogenic drugs. All that shit has poisoned you and it has nothing to do with the real world. And I suppose you believe that by eliminating me, you will eliminate control over some fucking artificial reality,” says a pudgy businessman confronted with death.

“Reality is arbitrary,” his assailant responds.

The Limits of Control is arbitrary, and I guess that’s the point.

The movie’s lameness is especially disappointing considering the number of cool things in it: an atmospheric soundtrack by Boris, neat visuals of contemporary Spain, stunning architectural shots, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Gael Garcia Bernal and some smoking nude scenes featuring Paz de la Huerta.

I thought Prometheus would be the most egregious instance of style over substance and surface level engagement with “big questions” showing in theaters this month. Here’s the short version: If you thought Prometheus was intriguing and thought-provoking, The Limits of Control will probably be right up your alley. It’s slick and full of half-baked clichés that will make dimwits feel like they’ve seen something clever. But if you actually like good movies, you will want 155 minutes of your life back. There are a few funny jokes, and the movie does look cool, but ultimately it’s cold and empty.

It’s like Jim Jarmusch took Mulholland Drive, neutered it, sucked out all the fun and replaced everything else cool with stock footage of Spain. However, 5th Avenue Cinema’s offerings are so consistently solid that I actually wondered whether this selection wasn’t chosen specifically to remind disappointed viewers that Prometheus could have been worse.

Now that I think about it, though, 5th Avenue also showed Antichrist last term, so I guess it’s possible that there’s at least one person with really questionable taste on the committee that chooses films for the theater. Perhaps the committee ought to take a hint from Dan Kois and consider screening films that aren’t painful to watch.