Tag: raging bull
Musical Snares, Part II: ‘Excalibur,’ Wagner and the Context of Melody
Anyone care to explain why music from Richard Wagner’s seminal opera Tristan und Isolde, which tells the story of the doomed love between Arthurian Knight of the Round Table Sir Tristan and the already married queen Iseult, is used to accent scenes featuring the fellow warrior Lancelot and his lord’s wife Guinevere in John Boorman’s…
Musical Snares: ‘Cavalleria,’ ‘Raging Bull,’ ‘The Godfather: Part III’ and Art’s Integrity
If a great piece of existing music is used to accentuate a brilliant sequence in one film and then, much later, employed as the background for another superb scene, is the music’s impact—as well as its context—diluted? This question has troubled me for a long time, as it concerns the nature and purpose of art…
Faith no more: Why Scorsese’s Silence is a haunting work of art
‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ The desolate words of Jesus Christ on the cross offer one way into Martin Scorsese’s new film, Silence. The film inhabits the character of a 17th Century Jesuit missionary to Japan who is forced to recant his faith. The ‘silence’ being referred to in the film’s…
Four Great Boxing Movies You Haven’t Seen
Sports movies present a challenge. Especially American sports movies. For even though we Yanks talk a lot about democracy and the people, we really, at heart, reserve our highest accolades for exhibitions of individualism. Our art reflects that. The Western is our greatest film creation and no other genre elevates the value of the individual…
Shattered Masculinities: Muscular pulp and feminine tears
There is something incredibly fascinating about images of shattered masculinity on the big screen. The notion of testosterone fuelled hyper-men imploding into impotent puddles of muscular pulp and feminine tears seems to have fuelled the popular imagination of filmgoers since the medium’s earliest beginnings – most especially in the United States. It seems that, even…