#pompo

The girl from pompo fortnite dancing out of fear is so important to me

I should have expected this anime-movie-about-movies to bow down before the dangerous claims of Auteur Theory (the idea that a singular person can infuse a creative work with enough zest that they deserve godlike reverence). This type of thinking is pervasive in Hollywood so you'd be hard pressed to find a “movie-about-movies” that doesn’t fall into this trap. 

What surprised me more is Pompo’s glorification of suffering for your art. While this is present in many similar movies, most portray it as an obstacle the character must overcome, the source of the tension in the movie. Few outright state that you need to work yourself to death to be an artist, because well, most people would say that’s a very obviously bad take. 

Spoilers Below!

The movie very clearly wants us to see the parallels between Gene and the titular Maestro in the movie he’s making (they practically beat you over the head with it). Gene’s movie even subverts the standard cliche character arc of the disgruntled old artist learning to love again by having said artist stay isolated at the end of the movie but just make good art this time. A more standard arc would involve the Maestro reconciling with his past mistakes (like abandoning his wife and kids) and becoming a better person. This feeds into why I think Pompo the Cinephile is not just a movie I disagree with, but a badly written movie: Gene and the Maestro have no character arc. They do not change over the course of the movie. Both of them start the movie sacrificing everything to become Auteurs, and they end the movie just being better Auteurs. In The Maestros case its because he had a little camping trip but in Gene’s case there isn’t an impetus to this change he was just always awesome and he was finally able to obtain enough power to show everyone how awesome he is. 

I would have much rather the movie dive deeper into several other interesting themes that it entertained for a single scene and then threw out: 

The need to “kill your darlings” shown when Gene cuts both his favorite scene and the scene that he ad-libbed from the final movie. The reason for this is never expanded on besides its ties to “suffering for your art”. Because of course the reason you need to “kill your darlings” is just because being an artists is all about feeling bad!

The spontaneity of film making when Gene and co adapted to the rain and the goat situation. Again there was no dissection of why this is a good thing just an expectation that we all know this is a cool good thing that directors do and thus evidence that Gene is a cool good director.

The lack of differences between B-Movies and True Kino (as said by Pompo herself). In a similar vain, the meaning behind the phrase “Its easy to make a tear-jerker movie but its difficult to make a silly movie”. Again this is just kind of thrown out there without any explanation.

Most of all I wish the movie dove deeper into its claim that shorter movies are better because good directors can convey their messages concisely. I think this is a really cool perspective that I have complicated feeling on. On one hand, a concise vision does seem good but on the other hand there are several great longform TV shows. I really want to engage more with this discussion so I’m sad that its almost totally unexplored in the movie! 

Your Daily Smile #2220

First theater experience since the pandemic and it was really great!

The "make the movie or die" scene was one of the most relatable things I've seen in a while.