acoolsha

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Lions and Lambs 25 November 07

Section: article

Categories: Mention

We left this terrible film after about 30 minutes. As I wrote once before, I’ve thought about creating a section in acoolsha for the hundreds of films I don’t finish watching.

For me, one facet of Godard’s comment that “film is truth 24 times a second” is that it has its own truth, not just the truth of a subject or the images. And that the truth of a film — as clear and well-made entertainment or as great art, like Godard’s work or that of the Straubs — pervades every frame, every decision made in the film and how it manifests itself in the material (celluloid, sound waves, light, content, words). That is why 30 minutes is enough, sometimes even a few minutes, which has often been the time I need to stop watching a film.

I haven’t looked into what Redford was thinking of doing with this film, but I speculate that he was intending to pose cynical young people and warmongering politics against idealistic young people and… I don’t know what.

After the first few minutes, really less, when I realized how bad the film was, I kept telling myself I would stay until the end to see what Redford was trying to do. But the succession of badly written, badly acted, badly shot scenes, one after the other, overwhelmed me, culminating in the ridiculous scene where a chopper full of marines in the winter mountains of Afghanistan takes ground fire (through a thick snow storm… those terrorists have evil and mysterious methods), until one marine who hadn’t been shot steps from the airborne helicopter into the snowstorm above the mountains (a few minutes earlier during the embarrassing dialogues about their upcoming mission, he had said he would prefer being shot to falling to his death). Soon thereafter we see him in the snow on the mountainside, alive. After that we left.

I suppose that Redford derives some standing from his Sundance Film Festival (anything from or associated with it that I have seen has been bad or weak) in addition to the handful of nice films he has done. As the initiator of the festival I can imagine there is some pressure to produce worthy, semi-alternative films if he does anything at all; but in his case any films he makes would also have to be mainstream as well.

In this film he just ends up lecturing, in words and images, both lifeless. It was no coincidence that he plays (badly mimics a cliche of…) a professor, lecturing to a cynical, misguided young student, and lecturing to the audience with the film itself.

  • Title: Lions and Lambs
  • Directed by: Robert Redford
  • Starring: Robert Redford