Impressed?

Today, I want to talk about central question; what does it actually mean to be clever?

I'm not, absolutely not, going to talk about Irish politics this time. I could use it as a jumping-off point for offering my two cents about Fine Gael's recruitment of George Lee and supposed wooing of David McWilliams; by searching out popular, trusted economic commentators, they probably think they're being clever. Unfortunately I couldn't pick George Lee out of a lineup, and once I discovered that he's no relation to Christopher Lee I lost interest. A TD that vonts to sohk my blaad, I'd vote for that.

The thing is... most people who aren't intellectual snobs, and don't hold the general public in contempt, can quickly tell the difference between someone who thinks they're clever, and someone who's actually clever. The George Lee thing won't work, because people can instinctively see it for the cynical piece of champagne recruitment it so obviously. So there's not much to say, and instead I'm going to talk about Swedish Vampires.*

Let the Right One In is the latest slice of eurowank that has been féted as oh just maaarvelous darling. "Let the Right One In has invention and stamina, a rich arterial flow of fear," says Pete Bradshaw in the Guardian; "a stunning film rings the changes on the classic Dracula format", says Philip French in the Observer, before adding "I'm eighty-four, you know"; "At once a devastating, curiously uplifting inhuman drama and a superbly crafted genre exercise, Let The Right One In can stand toe-to-toe with Spirit Of The Beehive, Pan's Labyrinth or Orphee. See it," says Kim Newman in Empire, but of course Kim Newman is a Grade-A tosspot and no-one should ever listen to any dribbling banality that issues from his smug mouth.

OK, so here's the trailer if you want it**:-



So here's the thing about Let The Right One In; it's rubbish. It's actually surprisingly rubbish, badly-structured, unimaginative nonsense that has less to say than a so-so episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Storytelling 101; any supernatural story has to maintain an internal consistency, either by constructing a threat that's plausible in the real world, or constructing a world in which the threat can exist. So the first real vampire story, Dracula, sets itself in Transylvania, where all the rules are off and just about anything can happen; Buffy reworks the vampire legends to make them feasibly take place in a school, and shrugs off any plausibility issues with a tongue-in-cheek wit.

This is a story in which a vampire child lives in an apartment with paper stuck over the windows, being occasionally fed blood by her "father" who happens to be the world's most useless serial killer. Does this bloke go and kill homeless tramps who won't be missed? No, he hunts down adolescent teenagers, and performs an elaborate hanging-and-throat-slitting ritual... in plain sight. Ask yourself why he doesn't just rob a blood bank and the story's entire internal structure collapses completely. It's not as bad as 28 Weeks Later, which just piled ridiculousness on top of ridiculousness unti you can almost feel your brain cells melting, but it's so slow that you can't stop yourself counting the stupid plot points. An eyewitness sees his friend being attacked, finds blood on the ground... and doesn't bother contacting the police. 'Cos, y'know, it's a horror movie.

But here's the thing about Let The Right One In; it's an intelligent movie. You can tell, because it opens with a minute-long shot of a midnight shower of snow, and it's set in the 70s for no apparent reason, and it has real world issues like school bullies (characters who aren't so much "sketchily-drawn" as "finger-painted"), and there's big long scenes where no-one says anything. It's even got those fade-to-black scene transitions.

Oh, and in the most spectacularly crass moment of all, there's a scene in which the main kid (sort of halfway between Bjorn Borg and a member of Nerds Anonymous) is alone with his Dad, when some random character shows up and they start drinking. Everyone looks awkward. Meaningful glances are exchanged. What does this mean? Is this a reference to alcoholism? Child abuse? Paedophilia? Or just, maybe, something that they've plonked in the mix to be deliberately, yet pseudo-edgily, ambiguous? It's supposed to be "about" a sexual awakening, but is so busy trying to look like it's saying something important that it doesn't say anything at all.

In other words, it's surprisingly similar to this:-



(I know. I know. A little part of me died as well. And if you didn't guess the director's name before it appeared, you just weren't trying.)

These are films made with an audience in mind; films trying to conform with demographically-correct preconceptions; films that have been made to please other people, but at the same time holds those people in so little regard that they will never make anything of worth. The Clever-Clever one will never, ever be seen by most of the people on the planet, because it aims itself at snobby bunch of people who will give it good reviews. The Loud and Stupid One will be seen by lots of people, but in three months not one person will remember anything about it. They aren't stories the director had a burning desire to tell; they're products that the director thought certain other people might like.

And therein lies the link with George Lee, and why it won't work. The Blueshirts haven't hired him because they think he'll give them something useful; they've hired him because they think it will go down well with other people. This, of course, is exactly why it won't.

Anyway-


6 More Films That Think They're Clever, But Are Actually As Thick As Pigshit


1. Brokeback Mountain

Two people fuck each other up a hill, then complain about it for thirty years. One's taciturn, one's even more taciturn, and they're both duller than a weekend in Portlaoise. Click here to watch an amazing bit where Heath Ledger looks at a shirt.


2. Lost In Translation

Bill Murray and Scarlett Joe Hansen loaf around in hotel rooms feeling sorry for themselves, and occasionally taking time out to be baffled by those funny gooks and their silly accents. But not in a racialist way, obviously. Bill Murray gets angsty about going to Japan and doing self-parodying adverts, without seeing the obvious way out of the problem.


3. A History of Violence

Viggo Mortensen is a humble man working in a village populated exclusively by stereotypes, when he is suddenly revealed to be the world's most improbable mobster. William Hurt is a mobster who has spent the last 10 years growing the silliest beard in cinematic history. Lots of people get killed for no apparent reason, and at the end everybody strokes their chin and calls it a transcendent meditation on the role of violence in society. Saying "the plot relies on a chain of unconvincing coincidences and the editing is shite" results in excommunication from polite society.


4. My Winnipeg

Some bloke blabs on for ages about his mother's naughty bits and his need to escape from Winnipeg. Forever. People in the IFI look at you disapprovingly if you piss yourself laughing all the way through.


Seriously, the whole sodding film is like this.


5. The Squid and the Whale

Noah Baumbach tries to remake Rushmore, but substitutes "10 year-olds wanking" for characterisation and "whining self-involved adolescent Mary-Sueing as a means of inflicting your own self-involved therapy on the paying public" for insight. Laura Linney puts in a good performance in a fucking terrible film. Again.


This is why people put explosions in films. This very scene.


6. The Field

No, obviously I'm just messing about. Isn't it brilliant?


It's not Far And Away. It's much better than Far and Away. No, it definitely is, it's got Seán Bean in it and everything.

* If I'd been bothered, I really would have worked the two vampire references together. Just pretend I did.
** It actually makes the film look a whole lot more entertaining than it actually is, but I might as well play fair.