The Law of Diminishing Inspiration

I watched Once Upon a Time in America yesterday. I was off sick, and at 3 hours, 40 mins it's an excellent sickday movie.

I've seen it before. I remember watching it on Christmas Eve one year. It started quite late, and we were all travelling to Devon early on Christmas morning. It was a foolish idea, and not very seasonal.

It's a pretty spectacular movie: sprawling and sweeping and disturbing. A real epic. The best thing about it is the sheer unabashed ambition of the whole thing. You can just tell that Leone never worried that it might be ponderous or indulgent or pretentious. It was just a story to be told. That kind of grand storytelling is a beautiful thing. There's an almost childlike naivety about that kind of film-making: a complete lack of fear.

There are elements that you can imagine other directors disapproving of. The sheer scale of it; the potentially cheesy music (like the instrumental version of Yesterday); the violence and rape scenes; the almost arrogant structural flourishes.

But it works. And, despite knowing very little about the director himself, I reckon it's down to the uncompromising purity of his vision. That sounds like a stupid film-ponce cliché, but I don't mean it that way. It's not a perfect film, by any means. But it is entirely lacking in cynicism.

The notion of cynicism is dealt with through the characters, but the film-making itself is totally earnest. It's quite refreshing.

I think that kind of earnestness comes from the fact that Leone was Italian, and dealing in a foreign language and culture. That's a pretty impressive feat. You don't need to second-guess yourself in that situation, because you've already done something difficult and worthy.

It made me think about why I don't go and see that many films nowadays. Perhaps, in the back of my mind, I feel that all modern cinema is cynical. I know that can't be the case, and I get really annoyed by people who dismiss all modern culture, but I hardly ever feel motivated to see a film.

There are so many movies that my friends recommend, but I just have no interest. I don't care about well-acted, tightly-scripted, moving films. I don't even care about "fun" blockbusters. I suppose I just want to be surprised.

Which leads to the inevitable conclusion that it's not cinema that has become cynical: it's me.

I'm a cynical, unimpressed man. The Human Shrug.

(I always thought The Human Shrug should have been included in the 70s Fantastic Four cartoon, instead of H.E.R.B.I.E the Robot)

I'll go and see a film if I have some prior connection to it (a comicbook movie or an Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg project, for example). But I can rarely feel motivated to go to the pictures.

The only exceptions I can think of are Coen Brothers movies and Charlie Kaufman movies. I suppose it's because they seem surprising. Burn After Reading was really fun, mainly because it felt like anything could happen (and anyone could get killed) at any moment. And I'm really looking forward to Synecdoche, New York eventually being released.

I hope I haven't become too cynical. I'm sure there are many new films that would inspire and surprise me, it's just that I'm out of the habit of going to the cinema.

I have watched, and enjoyed, all four Die Hard films over the last couple of weeks, so I can't be that cynical!

Also, I still get excited by ducks. If I see a duck, it can't help but lift my spirits. I think it's the way they walk. The day I become so cynical that I'm not provoked into a state of priapic excitement when looking at water-fowl, is the day I gouge out my eyes with a spork.