Gendo's 2017 list of movies

[Gendo]

69. Steve Jobs - Sorkin is so good at letting you get to know characters. That's what this movie is; just learning about the character Steve Jobs (dunno how similar that character is to the actual person Steve Jobs). Unlike Jobs (2013); this isn't about things that Steve Jobs did or things that happened to him or about the history of Apple or anything... it's just about Steve Jobs. Not all that exciting but still good.

70. War for the Planet of the Apes - Meh. I absolutely loved Rise. Thought Dawn was ok. This was meh. The problem is, what made Rise so good was the relationship between Will and Caesar, and especially Caesar's development as a character. Dawn still had some relationship and character development. War was just a pretty typical action / escaping prison movie. It didn't even matter that the characters were apes. Caesar did still have some good character arc, but it felt a bit forced.

[Raxivace]

I liked Steve Jobs though I tend to find Sorkin's scripts enjoyable in general. I've never been huge into Fassbender but 2015 having Steve Jobs, the very underrated Slow West, and to a lesser extent Macbeth really did make me like him a lot more.

The big arguments between Jobs and Jeff Daniels' John Sculley particularly stood out to me as good.

[Gendo]

71. Rear Window - Great mystery. Had no idea until almost the very end which way it was going to go.

72. Pixels - Not as bad as I was expecting. Still bad, but had some funny and interesting moments.

Well there you go. Only 72 new movies this year... hopefully I can do much better in 2018. Technically the last movie I saw in 2017 was The Force Awakens, but this list only counts movies I hadn't previously seen.

[Eva Yojimbo]

69. Steve Jobs - Sorkin is so good at letting you get to know characters. That's what this movie is; just learning about the character Steve Jobs (dunno how similar that character is to the actual person Steve Jobs). Unlike Jobs (2013); this isn't about things that Steve Jobs did or things that happened to him or about the history of Apple or anything... it's just about Steve Jobs. Not all that exciting but still good.

I liked-but-didn't-love that one:

Steve Jobs (Danny Boyle) - 6.5/10

Steve Jobs may be remembered as the film where Aaron Sorkin tried to out-Sorkin himself. It's so stuffed with the writer's trademark idiosyncrasies—the rapid-fire, almost stream-of-consciousness dialogue; the walk-and-talk; the accelerations and diminuendos of pace—that it's almost a self-parody. At his best, Sorkin has an uncanny sense of how to construct a drama on the linguistic level, but Steve Jobs reveals how that sense can easily morph into a set of distracting, artificial mannerisms.

Thankfully, these mannerisms are still accompanied by a great sense of character, and the film has assembled a terrific cast capable of making the most of it. Michael Fassbender is utterly engrossing in the title role, skillfully walking that fine line between character and caricature. The fact that he doesn't even resemble Jobs is never a distraction given the sheer magnetism of his perfromance. Winslet, Rogen, and Daniels are just as impressive in supporting roles, being convincing foils to a performance that could've chewed the scenery if not for their equally powerful presences.

Danny Boyle is an odd directorial fit for the job. His flamboyant visual style struggles for dominance against Sorkin's flamboyant literary style and more often than not they clash to an annoying dissonance. David Fincher was a much better pairing for Sorkin, where Fincher's laser-like directorial sharpness—which relied more on classically subdued conceptions of staging and editing—accompanied and cut in rhythmic time with Sorkin's katana-like literary sharpness.

Ultimate, Steve Jobs is something of an entertaining, frequently engrossing, always interesting mess of a film; odd in ways that most Oscar Bait films aren't. What it lacks in refinement it makes up for in a contagious and effervescent energy that comes partly from Sorkin's writing, partly from the performances, and partly by Boyle's futile attempt to wrangle them together while adding a sense of directorial personality.

[Raxivace]

I'm surprised you hadn't seen Rear Window before now Gendo. Typically that's one people seem to start Hitchcock with.

[Gendo]

I'm surprised you hadn't seen Rear Window before now Gendo. Typically that's one people seem to start Hitchcock with.

Yeah, I really just hadn't seen much Hitchcock at all... maybe only The Birds before this year? Will be finishing up his more mainstream movies in 2018.

[Gendo]

Went through the list and picked out my top 10:

Triangle (2009)
Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders
Chappie
In Bruges
El Mariachi
9
Prisoners
Get Out
The Belko Experiment
Don't Breath

[Gendo]

I realize that that list seems to imply that Return of the Caped Crusaders is a better movie than Rear Window or Spotlight... it's more a list of what I enjoyed the most, or what really stood out to me. Of course Rear Window was excellently made. But it didn't leave me with a particular impression of wanting to go out and tell people "oh, you need to see this!"

[Raxivace]

I haven't seen that Caped Crusaders thing but there are multiple Batman movies better than Spotlight lol. Most films made with a decent budget and a vaguely competent director and crew are better than Spotlight.

[Raxivace]

The Oscars ceremony where Spotlight won Best Picture was in fact better than Spotlight.

[Derived Absurdity]

Yeah, what the hell was that movie? Lol. I went about twenty five minutes and I couldn't take it anymore. The most boring movie I've seen since The Grudge.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Of course Rear Window was excellently made. But it didn't leave me with a particular impression of wanting to go out and tell people "oh, you need to see this!"

Then you must've watched it wrong! ;)

In all seriousness, RW has been one of my top 20 films ever since I first saw it, and upon my last rewatch it took up residence in my top 5. It's just a perfect film IMO that gets better with each viewing and seems to get deeper and richer the more you think about/analyze it. I remember Raxi and I having a pretty interesting discussion about it back on the old IMDb (he may remember which thread it was in, and if so we probably have it archived).

[Eva Yojimbo]

Yeah, what the hell was that movie? Lol. I went about twenty five minutes and I couldn't take it anymore. The most boring movie I've seen since The Grudge.

I pretty much stand by the summary I wrote about it: "The film is told with all the factual detail accruement of a great documentary, all the drama of bad fiction, and all the aesthetic style of a string mop. How the Academy went from awarding one of the most aesthetically daring mainstream film in recent memory like Birdman to awarding this is a mystery."

[Raxivace]

I remember Raxi and I having a pretty interesting discussion about it back on the old IMDb (he may remember which thread it was in, and if so we probably have it archived).

Oh god I remember that discussion, but it might be pre-General Chat. I'll look a little later.

[Raxivace]

I think this is the discussion you're talking about- turns out it was from the original General Chat. I've quoted the relevant bits here. We might have discussed it more in one of the lost threads, though well they're lost unfortunately.

We have to have a big Rear Window discussion in this thread at some point. In some ways that film might lend itself to different interpretations moreso than even Vertigo does;

I'd definitely be game, though it would probably do me good to see it again (it's been many years). Next to The Birds, Rear Window may be Hitch's most overtly allegorical/symbolic film. Just about every element seems rife for interpretation. I remember my first viewing being so struck by those images of Stewart flashing the camera towards, well, the camera, and those orange lights blinding us at the same moment it does the villain. For a film that's so concerned about voyeurism, about constructing the narrative as we're viewing it, it couldn't have been accident that Stewart turns the camera into a weapon and uses against the villain, represented by Hitch's camera, by our POV!

I'm not sure how you saw McCarthy fascism in it, though... please explain (even if you don't think that way now, I'm curious).

Uh for this to make any amount of sense you have to know that I never thought the arguments about Thorwald potentially murdering his wife put forward by the Jeff character ever made any amount of sense at any point in time whatsoever (Not even on Thursdays, a day of the week that has been scientifically proven by scientists to increase the validity of an argument by at least 19%. Look it up if you don't believe me). Jeff came off to me as incredibly paranoid and crazy (I still think he is this to some degree), and throughout the entire film I was expecting him to get his comeuppance. Rear Window was also only my second Hitchcock film, and I really didn't understand his style yet.

The idea I had was that Thorwald represented the subversive Communist/"Other" that was (Supposedly) hiding in plain sight in America at the time, cooking up some dastardly schemes, and Jeff himself was a sort of McCarthy-esque figure, boldly accusing a man of a crime with some pretty flimsy evidence. That Jeff ended up being completely right about Thorwald cutting up his wife seemed to me to be saying "Look America, this is what happens when you speak out against the people trying to protect you! Communists/murders will go free and continue to perform subversive acts! So don't you dare criticize our methods with your "arguments" and your "logic"!". The moral center of the film seemed really screwy to me at the time; all of the characters that were rightfully critical of Jeff's conclusions ended up being proven wrong and condemned as stupid, and then converted to Jeff's point of view just because he successfully but randomly guessed that his neighbor was a killer. Because Jeff was right, I thought Hitchcock was also saying that spying on others is not only okay but ethical in of itself, since that's what eventually lead to Thorwald's arrest and capture. And to criticize Jeff for spying and accusing was to be against wanting to stop murderers who are obviously camouflaged among the public.

Anyways, to sum up this rambling mess of non-sense: 1) I thought Jeff represented someone with paranoid, McCarthyish views (Lack of basis for murder accusations). 2) Spying on people and accusing them of murder = witch hunts, and 3) Jeff ending up being right means witch hunts are good in the eyes of the film/filmmaker because they can lead to the capture of actual wrongdoers.
In a way I think this reading makes Hitchcock's own later film The Wrong Man a response and antithesis to Rear Window; the paranoid delusions of people like Jeff suddenly aren't so fun and exciting when they irreparably ruin the life of an innocent family. Is there really any difference between Jeff's actions and that of the bank tellers of The Wrong Man?

Anyways I was a pretty dumb 17 year old when I came up with this reading (I'm not exactly sure how I made the jump to Thorwald = Communist/Subversive, but I did and that's how this ball got rolling), and as a marginally less dumb 22 year old now I kind of wince when I think back on that. I really didn't understand that the film may not necessarily endorse Jeff or his viewpoints and actions, much like those criticisms of Marnie you brought up, and instead merely be depicting someone that makes terrible arguments for a guy being a murderer and a peeping tom (I also now think the film's treatment of spying is more nuanced than I originally gave it credit for). That's what I think really causes my interpretation to fall apart; misunderstanding the content of the film because I thought what was being depicted was being endorsed completely. Now a days I tend to think of those aspects of Rear Window as just part of Hitch's nihilistic side; it really, truly is pretty scary to think that there are people out there committing crimes so perfectly that the only thing that can stop them is jumped-toconclusions of paranoid peeping toms (AKA guessing).

My old reading also leaves out so much else about the film that directly relate to voyeurism (cinema-as-voyeurism, all the relationship stuff etc.), and not talking about that at all is no fun.

Ah, well, thanks for the explanation. I can certainly understand how you thought that if you didn't think the film was criticizing Jeff as well. This is what throws a lot of people off about Hitch, that his endings often SEEM to endorse the perversions that he spent the majority of the film depicting: that spying on people for no good reason is OK (RW), that blackmailing a girl into marriage and then raping her when she's frigid is OK (Marnie), that kidnapping a girl and abusing her after she's deceived you is OK (Vertigo), etc. There's a similar thing in several of Shakespeare's most controversial plays, where there's this almost flippant "endorsement" of the immorality of the protagonists when they end up being "right" (Merchant of Venice, Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest). Yet I think it's because these films/plays do either argue for/sympathize with its villains, or present the dark perversions of its protagonists, that there's often a very real sense of irresolution at their end. We never really feel that protagonists have been vindicated; the ends seem to clash with everything else we've seen. It's probably a part of that "romantic irony" that I think both were fond of.

I do think the film could be fruitfully read under a McCarthyean context, but I think it would be disputable (as in so much of Hitch) how much (if at all) he's actually "promoting" that (or any) viewpoint.

I can tell you don't have the most confidence in that reading either. [haha]

This is what throws a lot of people off about Hitch, that his endings often SEEM to endorse the perversions that he spent the majority of the film depicting

That's probably the most astute way of putting it. I often say that we shouldn't need films to tell us that things that are obviously bad are obviously bad, but hell even I fall into that trap at times.

What really surprises me is when I see people that I think are otherwise good at critically watching films do that too. We briefly talked about The Wolf of Wall Street a few months ago, and it's the same thing there. Some cineastes are so concerned that "dumb" people will come away thinking that spying or raping or financial fraud are good things to do unless someone literally comes on screen and says "You know Jordan Belfort, despite having a harem of beautiful naked women as well as a cool boat you're kind of a *beep* person for stealing millions of dollars from innocent people. Only *beep* would want to emulate you, and maybe some particularly slimy Republicans".

People also often complain about (popular) films spelling out too much and not treating audiences as intelligent enough, but it seems they complain when it doesn't happen either. Holy *beep* people are unpleasable, *beep* all of them.

What really surprises me is when I see people that I think are otherwise good at critically watching films do that too...

I think there is a pervasive tendency amongst critics (especially theorists) to think that is impossible for films or filmmakers not to express ideological perspectives, to "depict" without "promoting/condemning." I think for the vast majority of artists this is likely true. To take an example, if you are a strong feminist who feels morally compelled to speak out against the horrors of rape and how such horrors have been minimized in a patriarchal, misogynistic society, then you can't very well write a play/script where the rapist is also the therapist that helps the female protagonist who was traumatized by her mother's rape. The notion that rapists can be good people in other ways would not occur to someone with the (correct, mind you) ideology about the horrors of rape and the attitudes towards it in a patriarchal society.

Similar thing in the Wolf of Wall Street: for those with the (correct, mind you) morality that it's bad to essentially steal from thousands of people, get rich, and live a life of debauchery are horrified to find a film that depicts the fact of why such a life is appealing in the first place! They seem to miss the point that morality itself is needed in large part to keep people from doing the things that natural selfpreservation and pleasure-principle instincts TELL us to do. If stealing and the rich lifestyle that accompanied it wasn't appealing, then nobody would want to do it: at best, all an artist can do is show how easy and quickly it all comes crashing down.

God this was only from August 2014 but it feels like ages ago now. We start going on about Wolf of Wall Street some more after this once DeRider jumps in and disagrees with what we were saying about Belfort's depiction and so on. It's a good discussion too but pretty far past Rear Window by then.

There's also these bits from my 2017 thread that we never really came to a conclusion on.

So someone on Reddit noticed something a little odd in Rear Window.

Here's a screengrab of the moment in particular.

I can't say I've ever noticed that room flashing up like that before. I think this whole theory of a second voyeur in the narrative is a bit of a stretch, though I dunno what to make of the flash.

Any ideas?

^I don't have any. Seeing that Hitch was so meticulous, I'm thinking that it's unlikely that it was entirely missed in the editing room... but then, it doesn't explain why it was left there. Maybe to provoke exactly these kind of 'second voyeur' theories, eh?

So someone on Reddit noticed something a little odd in Rear Window.

Here's a screengrab of the moment in particular.

I can't say I've ever noticed that room flashing up like that before. I think this whole theory of a second voyeur in the narrative is a bit of a stretch, though I dunno what to make of the flash.

Any ideas?

Strangely enough, the music and birds seem to synch up with the flash: music swells, flash happens, strings hit a crescendo and birds dive in front of camera. I don't know about the "second voyeur" theory, but I don't know if all that could be just mere coincidence.

^I don't have any. Seeing that Hitch was so meticulous, I'm thinking that it's unlikely that it was entirely missed in the editing room... but then, it doesn't explain why it was left there. Maybe to provoke exactly these kind of 'second voyeur' theories, eh?

Even Homer nods, and even Hitch fails to notice ice disappearing in beverage props: http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ ... 1.mov/view

[Eva Yojimbo]

^ Actually, I'd forgotten that one. The RW discussion I was thinking about was the one where we discussed the opening montage quite a bit, with me going on about how Hitch is showing us images of images Jeff took, about how that's inviting the audience to construct a narrative out of it, and about how we immediately forget about this the moment we're told what happened, and about what this says about the interpretative ambiguity of images VS the (often arbitrary) truths people make of them. I think this was spurred by something you quoted from Bordwell about the film.

[Raxivace]

Oh I do remember that one- afraid I can't remember the exact Bordwell quote, but I remember that I had thought it was oddly repetitive of Hitch. IIRC I mentioned how there was a minor character that had been deleted from the movie too.

It must have been in one of the threads that I didn't archive properly, I'm afraid. :(

[Eva Yojimbo]

It must have been in one of the threads that I didn't archive properly, I'm afraid. :(

Shame, because I think I got closest in that exchange to articulating what I think the core themes of the film are.

[Eva Yojimbo]

EDIT:

It must have been in one of the threads that I didn't archive properly, I'm afraid. :(

Nope, I found it in General Chat 3. It's really long, though, and the formatting is gonna look like shit:

So there's something I've never understood about Rear Window. I'm gonna quote Bordwell here:

"Then there's Rear Window, which has a fascinating double opening. The first uses imagery, music,
and sound effects to present the situation of Jeff laid up in his apartment over the courtyard. After
a tour of the neighbors' flats, seen from a distance, we're shown why Jeff is lying there in a sweat.
But during the next scene Jeff gets on the phone with his editor. Now much of the information we
got visually is reiterated in dialogue. Jeff's optical POV cuts during the phone conversation also
recapitulate the neighbors' routines that we've seen in the first sequence. By the end of this second
scene, image and sound have explained his situation wholly, thanks to a division of labor. The first,
wordless sequence is a kind of test for the viewer, and the second serves as the answer key."

Why does Hitch repeat all that information in dialogue? Even if we accept Bordwell's "answer key" argument, the
"answer" is still a bit wordier than it really needs to be. All that really would need to be done is have it stated
that Jeff was a photographer that got in an accident, and an introduction to the whole spying element.
Instead, Hitchcock has all this dialogue (Sorry the characters aren't listed. This was the first transcript I found,
as the final script seems pretty different (An entire scene exists before Jeff is fully introduced.):

- Jefferies. - Congratulations, Jeff.
- For what? - Getting rid of that cast.
Who said I was getting rid of it?
This is Wednesday.
Seven weeks from the day you broke your leg. Yes or no?
Gunnison, how did you get to be such a big editor
With such a small memory?
Thrift, industry and hard work...
And catching the publisher with his secretary.
- Did l get the wrong day? - No.
No, wrong week.
Next Wednesday I emerge from this... Plaster cocoon.
That's too bad, Jeff. Well, I guess I can't be lucky every day.
Forget l called.
yeah, l sure feel sorry for you, Gunnison.
Must be rough on you thinking of me wearing this cast for another week.
That one week is gonna cost me my best photographer,
And you a big assignment.
Where?
There's no point in even talking about it.
Oh, come on, come on. Where?
Kashmir. Got a code tip from the bureau chief this morning.
The place is about to go up in smoke.
What did I tell you? Didn't I tell you that's the next place to watch?
- You did. - When do l leave? Hour?
- With that cast on? You don't. - Stop sounding stuffy.
I can take pictures from a jeep or a water buffalo, if necessary.
You're too valuable to the magazine for us to play around with.
- I'll send Morgan or Lambert. - Morgan or Lambert.
That's fine.
I get myself half-killed for you,
And you reward me by stealing my assignments.
l didn't ask you to stand in the middle of an automobile racetrack.
You asked for something dramatically different.
- You got it. - So did you.
- Goodbye, Jeff. - Now, wait a minute, Gunnison.
You've got to get me out of here.
Six weeks sitting in a two-room apartment
With nothing to do but look out the window at the neighbours.
- Bye, Jeff. - No, Gunnison, I...
Lf you don't pull me out of this swamp of boredom,
L'm gonna do something drastic.
- Like what? - "Like what?" Get married.
Then l'll never be able to go anywhere.
lt's about time you got married,
Before you turn into a lonesome and bitter, old man.
yeah, can't you just see me?
Rushing home to a hot apartment
To listen to the automatic laundry and the electric dishwasher
And the garbage disposal and the nagging wife.
Jeff, wives don't nag any more, they discuss.
ls that so? Ls that so?
Maybe in the high-rent district they discuss.
Ln my neighbourhood, they still nag.
Well, you know best. I'll call you later.
yeah, have some good news the next time, huh?

What the hell is all this? Clearly Hitch had some issue with the opening before, as an entire scene before this
wasn't used in the final film where Gunnison talks with "Bryce" (????) about hiring Jeff for some job in "IndoChina" (The Kashmir thing, I guess?), but he can't take it because Jeff is in a cast, but then Gunnison talks
about how he thinks the cast is coming off today so he calls Jeff. Interestingly, the mysterious Bryce character
doesn't exist in the final film at all, and his sequence with Gunnison was inbetween the opening shot and the
scene of Jeff getting the phone call.
The opening was even more repetitive in the script (Though we do lose a decent leg dismemberment joke in it),
which is bizarre. Clearly Hitch thought the beginning needed some trimming down... But then why the hell does
that chunk of dialogue still exist as it is? Why does Hitch continue to beat audiences over the head with the
cast thing?
It's not like audiences in 1954 would have been looking at anything other than the theater screen. They didn't
have text messages to incessantly check or anything like that.
It's just an entirely odd sequence in a film that is otherwise a masterpiece. I'm not sure Bordwell's "test/key"
explanation necessarily works (Why have a "test" at all?), and that sequence could still be edited down quite a
bit while keeping the banter about relationships since it actually matters to the film.

Thoughts?

While I agree that it could've been trimmed down a bit, I think that bit of dialogue is doing more than
explaining just the cast. Let me try to enumerate some of its points:

1. It gives Jeff a reason to be extra cranky since he's going to miss out on a big assignment.
2. It establishes his mind-set of having nothing to do but look out the window; an audience might ask: "why
doesn't he go do something else, like fool around with Grace Kelly?"
3. It establishes the lengths Jeff is willing to go to, what he's willing to sacrifice, for his art/profession. The
guy goes out on a racetrack to get a great shot?
4. It establishes one of Hitch's favorite dueling motifs of the bachelor separated from reality by something (in
this case, his profession) that's thrust into chaos VS the potential marriage that will bring him back to reality
and re-establish harmony. (Remember the psychiatrist from Spellbound: "may you two have babies and not
phobias," change "phobias" to "professional obsession" here).

Just to elaborate a bit on 4., one of the most telling lines here is: "Maybe in the high-rent district they
discuss. In my neighbourhood, they still nag." This shows that Jeff is already starting to construct his
views/beliefs around his limited, voyeuristic perspective. Consider that this is pretty much what the opening
does: Hitch gives the audience this view, but doesn't explain everything; but then he explains everything,
but still isn't explaining everything (like what the significance behind what some of this is). So I think
Bordwell's "answer key" explanation is right to a certain extent, but it's more truthful to say that it's an
answer key to background narrative, while the real significance, namely how these things relate to the film's
themes, what these images and dialogue say about Jeff, is still being carefully, playfully concealed from us.
Hitch is saying "pay attention, try to decipher this, even though you're not getting the whole story," and
right after he says this (visually), we stop paying attention when he, ostensibly, "tells us the whole story."
So we go right back to accepting the superficial story/half-truth we're seeing and being told, which is
precisely what the film is trying to present as one of man's follies.

I'll grant you 1 and 2, but isn't 3 already established in the opening scene where we see the picture of the
crash?

4 is the most interesting point, and I'm curious to hear what your thoughts on Jeff and the general
themes are in greater detail. You used a few too many pronouns in that last paragraph for me to follow
completely :(.

I think it's debatable what that crash picture is telling us. I wouldn't be shocked in the least if the
majority of people that see that film don't immediately understand that Jeff must've took that picture
after jumping on the track.

Let me rewrite it and eliminate the potentially obscure pronouns and make some points clearer:

Just to elaborate a bit on 4., one of the most telling lines here is: "Maybe in the high-rent
district they discuss. In my neighbourhood, they still nag." This shows that Jeff is already
starting to construct his views/beliefs around his limited, voyeuristic perspective. Consider
that this is pretty much what the opening does: Hitch gives the audience this view, but
doesn't explain everything; but then Hitch seemingly explains everything, but still isn't
actually explaining everything (like what the significance behind what some of this is).
I think Bordwell's "answer key" explanation is right to a certain extent, but it's more truthful
to say that it's an answer key to background narrative, while the real significance, namely
how these things relate to the film's themes, what these images and dialogue say about
Jeff, is still being carefully, playfully concealed from us. Hitch is saying during the opening
montage: "pay attention, try to decipher this, even though you're not getting the whole
story," and right after this Hitch says this (visually), we stop paying attention when he,
ostensibly, "tells us the whole story." So we go right back to accepting the superficial
story/half-truth we're seeing and being told, which is precisely what the film is trying to
present as one of man's follies.

Essentially, I think the film is a kind of reflexive portrayal of two different dualities: art VS life and art
VS truth. The former is familiar from NGE and Shiki-Jitsu, in Anno using anime/otakuism to represent a
self-imposed exile from life and its hardships and potential pain, and how it becomes ironic to try and
depict this subject of "escaping from life through fantasy" via the medium that constructs the fantasy
(anime). RW is presenting the same thing, except with photography/profession replacing anime; Jeff
associates his profession with freedom, with not being tied down with a wife, while not realizing the
irony of him being obsessed with his neighbors that have that very same life, or the irony of his being
crippled by the very thing he thinks gave him freedom. So there he sits, crippled by his profession that
required him to observe life, while simultaneously distancing himself from it; still observing others living
life, while still simultaneously distancing himself from it (Kelly).

The latter (art VS truth) is more slippery, but there is an equation in the film between the notion that,
just like Jeff's photography, his view from the window is but one limited perspective, and however
much what he's viewing/photographing is real, this pure ontology doesn't mean much unless you put it
into a context in which it means something. So, eg, Jeff's limited perspective sees the women in these
relationships being nags, so he just assumes it's truth that most women are nags. He sees all this
suspicious activity, concludes the neighbor has murdered his wife; but, even in that case, it's the
reality he's ignoring, Kelly, that is willing to risk herself to get to the truth. So there's this really
complex interplay between the reality of the film and the method by which Jeff is constructing that
reality via his perspective; what is shown to him, what's concealed from him, how what's concealed is
revealed, etc.

Of course, pretty much everything you can say about the above you can equally say about audiences
watching a film; they are slaves to the limited perspective that's shown them by the director, and they
are busy all the while constructing their own truths based on that limited perspective. Hence what I
was talking about with that playful opening, of Hitch showing us this montage and challenging the
audience to construct the relevant narrative that fits these images and sound, and then that audience
blindly accepts as the whole truth what they're told in the dialogue.

[Raxivace]

That's weird, when I was CTRL+F'ing for "Rear Window" earlier I wasn't getting hits in that one, I wonder why that was.

Well it's cool that you found the posts at any rate.