Slapstick of Another Kind
Well, I don't want to make it too much about the reception, but I can't help writing: It's o.k., when Richard Wagner does it, but when Jerry Lewis does it, it is not.
The film is a fine parable, based on Vonnegut's novel. It borrows Plato's idea of two halves making a whole, expressed in Aristophanes' speech in the Symposion, and portrays it in Wagnerian fashion, that is like in Rienzi and Die Walküre, in a couple of siblings, not without a heavy dose of self-irony.
But it makes a wider point, namely that people's interests are subjective and not objective. The way that the Chinese are characterised in this film alone makes it worth watching today. It lampoons either the emotional need for stereotypes or the intellectual inability to do without them by mismatching the position and the stereotype that naturally accompanies it - and that is very funny. Everybody lives in his own little world and other people don't really care. The film hints at a solution to achieve congeniality: Pick a notion and a number and consider the people who picked the same notion your cousins and those who also picked the same number your siblings. But of course, that wouldn't work. Supertramp-3. D'uh! Because Crime of the Century is their best album! But where would that get us? However... cue Jeopardy music... Choosing your city according to its constitution.
Non, non, non, c'est trop difficile, c'est trop! And that is of course the true slapstick here. Not to do it and to stumble from one mishap to the next.
It's a warm, good-hearted, touching and funny film. And if you want to laugh some more, see how the critics panned it.
The film is a fine parable, based on Vonnegut's novel. It borrows Plato's idea of two halves making a whole, expressed in Aristophanes' speech in the Symposion, and portrays it in Wagnerian fashion, that is like in Rienzi and Die Walküre, in a couple of siblings, not without a heavy dose of self-irony.
But it makes a wider point, namely that people's interests are subjective and not objective. The way that the Chinese are characterised in this film alone makes it worth watching today. It lampoons either the emotional need for stereotypes or the intellectual inability to do without them by mismatching the position and the stereotype that naturally accompanies it - and that is very funny. Everybody lives in his own little world and other people don't really care. The film hints at a solution to achieve congeniality: Pick a notion and a number and consider the people who picked the same notion your cousins and those who also picked the same number your siblings. But of course, that wouldn't work. Supertramp-3. D'uh! Because Crime of the Century is their best album! But where would that get us? However... cue Jeopardy music... Choosing your city according to its constitution.
Non, non, non, c'est trop difficile, c'est trop! And that is of course the true slapstick here. Not to do it and to stumble from one mishap to the next.
It's a warm, good-hearted, touching and funny film. And if you want to laugh some more, see how the critics panned it.
Labels: 37, filmkritik, formalisierung, gesellschaftsentwurf, gesellschaftskritik, institutionen, rezension, sehhilfen, wahrnehmungen, ἰδέα, φιλοσοφία
Eingetragen Am/um
18:37
