Blood Simple: the manliness lesson
"To really get a movie like this, I think you have turn around and watch the audience watching it. See yourself in the dark watching and figure out why this stuff resonates."
My thesis—which is a highfallutin way of saying the thing I keep coming back to—is that neo noir films have something to say about the challenges of being a man since 1980. And Blood Simple seems to me to be a great movie for that. Not for anything it says on purpose but for the things that just slip in.
After the narrated bit I discussed in the previous post, we get a dialogue between two people in a car. There has been a lot of commentary about the men in this movie and what their behaviour indicates. But pay attention to the woman here. Men often complain that women send mixed messages about sex but, I have often contended, a woman who sends mixed messages about sex is normal. The woman in this scene does something else. Something that is all too common today but rarely gets much criticism. As a man, you want to be able to recognize this behaviour pattern so you can get the hell out when you see it.
As I say, things go deeply wrong in this movie and lots of people have commented about the ways the male characters contribute to that going wrong. But this woman is trouble, real serious trouble. Our sense of charity tends to lead us to thing that she is just troubled but you don't want any part of her life.
"To really get a movie like this, I think you have turn around and watch the audience watching it. See yourself in the dark watching and figure out why this stuff resonates."
My thesis—which is a highfallutin way of saying the thing I keep coming back to—is that neo noir films have something to say about the challenges of being a man since 1980. And Blood Simple seems to me to be a great movie for that. Not for anything it says on purpose but for the things that just slip in.
After the narrated bit I discussed in the previous post, we get a dialogue between two people in a car. There has been a lot of commentary about the men in this movie and what their behaviour indicates. But pay attention to the woman here. Men often complain that women send mixed messages about sex but, I have often contended, a woman who sends mixed messages about sex is normal. The woman in this scene does something else. Something that is all too common today but rarely gets much criticism. As a man, you want to be able to recognize this behaviour pattern so you can get the hell out when you see it.
As I say, things go deeply wrong in this movie and lots of people have commented about the ways the male characters contribute to that going wrong. But this woman is trouble, real serious trouble. Our sense of charity tends to lead us to thing that she is just troubled but you don't want any part of her life.
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