Building an aesthetic through thirty odd years of movie watching.
It was brought to my attention last week that I haven’t expressed my personal film aesthetic. While I am aware that many factors go into building a personal film aesthetic, I thought I would retrace my film-going history as a source of aesthetic building. I also want to mention at this point that these are skimming the top of all that I would like to make mention of but hopefully you get the idea. What draws me to a movie? When I was an undergrad studying television production over a decade ago, two friends and I asked ourselves this same question. Funnily enough our three answers varied, auteur, cast and narrative. While my friends were more into who directed or acted, I was for the journey of the story.
My first remembered movie experience was a double feature at the drive–in. The Forestville drive-in was my favourite place on earth. First up was On Golden Pond and the second was The Man from Snowy River, I don’t remember much only that I preferred the former and the wild horse’s eye shot in the later kind of freaked me out. However, I was only around 7. What I do remember very vividly around the same time was that The World According to Garp was also playing, I never saw it til decades later but whenever we drove past I was just mesmerised by its title.
A few years later I remember going with friends to see Ghostbusters. I can’t say that I think that highly of the film now but I was so excited by my experience that when I got home I told my mum absolutely everything that happened, down to every cinematic detail. It’s also a stage of life where your able to watch the one film a gazillion times til you know it inside out and in reverse.
Singing along with the Gilbert & Sullivan (a staple thanks to Dad) spoof The Pirate Movie (I was so in love with Christopher Atkins 
, developing major crushes on Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club and Andrew McCarthy in St Elmo’s Fire (Am I showing my age?) beating the characters to their one-liners in Police Academy and Ferris Buller’s Day Off(You don’t know how excited I was to meet Alan Ruck at The Astor last month), and hiding behind your fingers at House and Demons to name but a w. At this point I hate to omit countless more but you get the idea.
Over the next several years though the majority were of the b-gradestraight to video type. Countless dodgy narratives, bad sfx and even worse acting, but I was glued to every second. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend dreary winters in rural NSW. I spent little time at the the cinema taking only a few like Dirty Dancing and The Big Steal, yet I was developing a strong interest in the making of film and television. I spent time on the set of various Australian television drama and in the post production department at ABC on shows eventually enrolling in a degree in Television and Sound production.
This is where I directed my first short film, an over exposed, grainy black comedy about a girl whose effort to escape a town she dreads is foiled by the insane driver that picks her up on the road out of town. Unfortunately the original left me a long time ago but a remake is in pre-production. Completing my undergrad I couldn’t tell you the number of film that I saw, particularly that last year when me and my flatmate would watch dozens of videos a week.
Some that have remained with me, Citizen Cain (No-one makes a trailer like he did.), the melancholy of Bagdad Cafe, Europa, Icicle Thief, powering through the length of Altman’s Nashville, and loving the narrative twists and turns of In The Mouth of Madness. What followed was an average of 50 films a year for the last, taking in everything that I could from the Hollywood blockbuster’s like Contact (I cannot explain the effect the hope in its narrative had on me) to quite independents such as The Station Agent while gaining my own experience in costume and production design, and editor on various short films as I accidentally built a career as a sport TV director.
I don’t like sport that much so I jumped out, and found myself following the European film festival circuit a couple of years ago. I was deeply disappointed to find only one Australian dish on the menu Sarah Watt’s Look Both Ways, a film I’m not really that interested in although its ponderous interpersonal relationship aesthetic I am drawn to. So off I headed back to uni to gain a better understanding of how the rest of the world view films.
In my time as a post grad I have learnt more about the human condition that I would have ever thought. I have learnt that Ghost In the Shell is an apt metaphor for the extinction of humans as an organic race. Cried for Laura and Alec’s doomed relationship in Brief Encounter (Which has been added to my favourite films). Faced my long lived fear of Texas Chainsaw Massacre to find it a disappointingly average example of the genre. What I have also learnt is that I am no critic, as a filmmaker I have trouble putting down the director’s intention in order to place psychoanalytic, cultural or political meanings in its context.
My personal aesthetic? Its kind of like studying the evolution of genre, an ever changing ideal I place on film which alters as I age and gain insight into the world. While I can say that I prefer truth hidden in myth, hope in humanity and innovation in filmmaking techniques, a film just needs to teach or amaze me as both a filmmaker and ardent spectator searching for an enlightening journey. With that said, five of my never ending list of all time favourite films which I think define my aesthetic, Wings of Desire, Requiem for a Dream, Things to do in Denver When Your Dead, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and This Is Spinal Tap.
