#moovelous

COWABUNGA!

There's some theories that Robert used to be in the army or serving in another section, it could be related

Yeah. At the bbq, Robert tells that whole story about the camping trip, and he mentions the guy he went with was “an army buddy” (or something to that effect), but it’s a little unclear if he retracted the army buddy thing when he retracted the entire story or not. In my experience, it’s also common that people Robert’s age served at least one tour—and in my grad school alone, most of the male students between the ages of 34 and 46 have served in some capacity for a variety of reasons. Which, well, I won’t get into. Social and economic factors, most commonly. As is with most who serve these days. (I note male students here because I don’t know the general service status of the women in my grad school.) So, it’s likely that Robert has, just, like, by general type.

I know I wrote a whole post about World War II, but like, I’m going to argue against myself here for a while. It might not have to do with Robert at all and more with the cultural considerations of World War II. The war just factors a lot into the specific aspects of cinema he mentioned purely because World War II was a massive event, and film really first game to its potential a little before, during, and after that era. European filmmaking had no choice but to be affected by World War II, and the postwar period factors in greatly with much of the big Western movements, Italian neorealism, French New Wave, British New Wave, arguably Film Noir. The war created a massive cultural shift across all media. Also, well, it takes temporal distance to recognize something as truly masterpiece, and World War II is distance enough in the past that anything that’s still talked about it a masterpiece. Michael Powell is considered one of the greatest British filmmakers, Italian neorealism is considered premiere among filmmaking techniques and is one of the most important and influential movements in Western cinema, Samuel Fuller is considered a master American director.

And, maybe, it’s less that World War II is the point Robert is drawn to. All of the things he named are also often talked about in terms of their relationship to the realism-artifice dynamic, formalist concerns about the art of filmmaking itself. Maybe Robert is just really into formalism. Powell and Fuller were known for being a little out of step of mainstream taste, and the two of them were very much genre filmmakers, and if I recall right, Italian neorealism was a reaction against the mainstream style in Italy at the time. (Genre filmmaking is generally considered to be the lesser filmmaking, by the way. I don’t know why. But it is.) Maybe he just likes things that buck the mainstream trend. All three are often talked about in terms of incisive, often pessimistic and cynical social commentary and bleak outlook on modern society. Maybe he likes that.

Or, it might just be coming up as the needs arise. Robert might like Powell for the director’s sheer commitment to fraught emotionality, so much that it is sometimes considered an excess of emotion and that Powell cares for nothing but emotion—which is an apt director to bring up when Robert and Ernest are having disagreement over whether the romcom is worthy of emotional reaction. He probably thinks that if he had to pick one genre, Italian neorealism for him is most masterclass of technical skill, style, and subject matter. (It’s a better answer than French New Wave and Film Noir, imo. My experience with people who call those their favorite genre is that they’re, usually men, who like to thin themselves film buffs but actually know very little about film.) Fuller has an accessible style and approach to filmmaking, and he’s very stylish; Westerns and neo-noir also go over very well with people generally. Maybe Robert thought he was a good director to start someone on.

Sounds like one hell of a rollerghoster

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