Okie last one I promise. Then we actually have to make decisions, and I have to stop reading about films and start making one.
Annie Hall (1977) — Woody Allen
I DO NOT SUPPORT WOODY ALLEN I DO NOT SUPPORT WOODY ALLEN I DO NOT SUPPORT WOODY ALLEN!!!!!!
ok anyways
Annie Hall is the gold standard. The film that basically said “what if we just didn’t have a fourth wall at all” and won four Oscars for it. The movie begins unconventionally, with Alvy breaking the fourth wall as he speaks directly to the audience about his childhood and adolescence, mixing jokes with bittersweet observations about life. From the very first frame, Allen establishes that there are no rules.
What’s brilliant is what the fourth wall break actually does structurally. The film’s strengths lie in its postmodern techniques, like the fourth wall breaks and fantasy inserts, which add layers without overwhelming the core romance. Allen uses the breaks not to be clever but to be honest. Alvy talks to us because he literally cannot stop processing his relationship out loud. The camera is his therapist.
It’s super important that if you’re going to break reality like this, you do so right away, so that the audience is prepared to suspend their disbelief. Annie Hall does that in its first scene as Woody Allen talks directly to the camera, telling jokes. This lets us know right away that this movie will get as meta as it wants. That’s the lesson for us. Establish the grammar of your world early. Once you’ve set the rules, you can break them as much as you want.
American Psycho (2000) — Mary Harron
Okay. Different kind of dark comedy. Much darker. Significantly more axe murders.
American Psycho is a 2000 American psychological black comedy film co-written and directed by Mary Harron, based on Bret Easton Ellis’s novel of the same name. It follows Patrick Bateman, a wealthy Wall Street investment banker who is also a serial killer, or possibly isn’t, and the film is genuinely committed to never fully answering that question. The film cleverly uses music as a narrative device, with Bateman often discussing his favorite albums in detail before committing acts of violence. This juxtaposition of pop culture and brutality serves as a critique of the era’s hedonistic lifestyle and reflects Bateman’s fractured psyche.
The fourth wall here isn’t a camera glance or a direct address, but rather an internal monologue that we’re constantly pulled inside. The thing that makes American Psycho so original is the amusing voiceover monologues of Christian Bale, which are, in fact, a reflection of his inner demons. We’re not watching Patrick Bateman from the outside. We’re trapped inside his head with him.
The entire society that surrounds him is as self-centered and vain as he is, and equally addicted to greed. That’s the real horror of this film, and a lot of the comedy derives from watching the excess. The business card scene (where grown men in expensive suits have what can only be described as a breakdown over whose card has the better font) is one of the funniest scenes in my personal cinema history and also a genuine horror movie scene.
No comments:
Post a Comment