Lacking In Emotional Content The state of ralph emerson mcginnis
This online journal and blog is for anything that pops into my head while I'm not working on more important things. I'm a visual artist and writer. Read more about me here.
I'm really surprised at the bad reviews Sin City is getting (I hate the good reviews too, which amount to, "It was SO cool!" But that’s another story.) The response is very similar to the negative readings of Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine. People cannot wrap their minds around an aesthetic exercise in style, where the story, plot and acting perfectly mirror the look. It’s ridiculous that critics would comment on the lack of depth to its characterization and two-dimensional dialogue, but say it looks beautiful. What makes Frank Miller’s comic so brilliant is the way he pushes away all grays, eliminating the unnecessary (the genius of comics, and abstraction) to create a mannerist vision of his pulp influences. In comics, there is not the art and also the story - they are not separate elements – the best comic artists realize this. Sin City is black and white, with flourishes of depthless primary colors to drive the point home. In this world, full of harsh light, there is no room for overly illustrative renderings of stitching on clothing – details like that would detract from the directness of the story. Every frame and dialogue must be simplified to their purest form. Critics asked that the characters be “more fleshed out,” which of course would negate all artistry. Basically, comic book artists are filmmakers who don’t have to deal with the convoluted mechanizations of the movie business, and are therefore able to execute their full vision to its utmost conclusion. An auteur like Miller does not have to satisfy the separate critical eyes of the visual and the literary. Film, like comics, is not simply art or literature, it is something else – or should be. Robert Rodriguez recognizes this in Sin City, and has made a movie as pure and direct as the comic. Yes it is adolescent, violent and misogynistic – like so many comic books, but Frank Miller, and this film create an aesthetic, brutal and elegant abstraction. Sin City is a thoughtful, original use of cliché; everything we’ve seen before, but something entirely personal and unique. These are not simply men and women, or a city we see on the page or screen – they ARE brushstrokes, light and shadow. They ARE what they are framed by: the shot, the angle, and the facial expression. Sin City is a real movie.
