Serenity in the German media.
Nov. 26th, 2005 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sister_luckRemember that post from way back about entertainment as opposed to serious cultural offerings? That it might make Serenity a hard sell?
Well, it looks like the reviewers don't quite know how to classify this strange beast.
Serenity opened in Germany last Thursday. In my town they are currently only showing it in German. Their loss. I won't sit through it again in the dubbed version. There are trailers on television, but you have to be 16 to be able to see the film - I guess Mr Universe is responsible for that.
Yesterday afternoon I had a look at the first reviews.
Dietmar Dath in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung loved it. I knew he would, because he had written a big article about Firefly ages ago. The FAZ is a very high-brow newspaper, conservative in its outlook on politics and the economy, but more open-minded in its cultural section. Of course, this review is full of big words, clever writing and complex sentence structures mentioning Shakespeare, fairy tales and Ice Pirates. Here is someone who sees the E behind the U, that Serenity is not just fluffy popcorn entertainment, but has more to say for the viewer who listens between the lines, who sees what might be behind the special effects and fancy camerawork.
Rough translation of the last paragraph - I assume the closing sentence is the author's attempt at quoting Shakespeare.
"Serenity" is at the same time a new fixed star (in the galaxy) of genre cinema and also a rare firefly for the textbook of futuristic entomology: swift, warm, sparkling, full of dance, funny, politically aware. This brave, new world is huge; everything is there, and all there is, shines, talks and sings.
André Wesche is less ecstatic about the film in his review for the Nordkurier: "not a boring film, but not really good either". He actually gloats that it is "kind of comforting" when a multi-talented writer/director like Joss Whedon screws up. Characters are "roughly hewn" and "Frequently make strange comments". I assume he refers to the slightly odd dubbing or he just doesn't get the sense of humour. Or he was puzzled by the albatros speech. Or possibly all three.
He goes on to say that the plot is not exactly new, which I agree with, and adds that despite the flaws you can spend a very entertaining evening with Serenity. And according to Wesche, it's better than the last three Stars Wars films. At the bottom of the review you find how the film is rated for several categories, presumably out of five: sex appeal 1, humour 1, suspense 3, action 4 and Anspruch 0.
There it is, that one word that separates entertainment from proper culturally correct cinema: Anspruch - difficult to translate, something like high(-brow) standard, serious cultural value. I guess Joss Whedon would be rather disappointed in Serenity's classification - especially in the second and last category. As far as the first goes - not everyone has got a foot fetish.
So, here is someone who gets it (and maybe assigns the film too much cultural value) and someone who doesn't see any cultural value whatsoever. I wonder whether it was the genre that put Mr Wesche off.
So, that is the high- and low-brow approach to the film.
Apart from that there was the usual bad research - where someone put Nathan Fillion in I, Robot and the stuff that was directly taken from the press releases as well as several interesting interviews with Joss Whedon.
Well, it looks like the reviewers don't quite know how to classify this strange beast.
Serenity opened in Germany last Thursday. In my town they are currently only showing it in German. Their loss. I won't sit through it again in the dubbed version. There are trailers on television, but you have to be 16 to be able to see the film - I guess Mr Universe is responsible for that.
Yesterday afternoon I had a look at the first reviews.
Dietmar Dath in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung loved it. I knew he would, because he had written a big article about Firefly ages ago. The FAZ is a very high-brow newspaper, conservative in its outlook on politics and the economy, but more open-minded in its cultural section. Of course, this review is full of big words, clever writing and complex sentence structures mentioning Shakespeare, fairy tales and Ice Pirates. Here is someone who sees the E behind the U, that Serenity is not just fluffy popcorn entertainment, but has more to say for the viewer who listens between the lines, who sees what might be behind the special effects and fancy camerawork.
Rough translation of the last paragraph - I assume the closing sentence is the author's attempt at quoting Shakespeare.
"Serenity" is at the same time a new fixed star (in the galaxy) of genre cinema and also a rare firefly for the textbook of futuristic entomology: swift, warm, sparkling, full of dance, funny, politically aware. This brave, new world is huge; everything is there, and all there is, shines, talks and sings.
André Wesche is less ecstatic about the film in his review for the Nordkurier: "not a boring film, but not really good either". He actually gloats that it is "kind of comforting" when a multi-talented writer/director like Joss Whedon screws up. Characters are "roughly hewn" and "Frequently make strange comments". I assume he refers to the slightly odd dubbing or he just doesn't get the sense of humour. Or he was puzzled by the albatros speech. Or possibly all three.
He goes on to say that the plot is not exactly new, which I agree with, and adds that despite the flaws you can spend a very entertaining evening with Serenity. And according to Wesche, it's better than the last three Stars Wars films. At the bottom of the review you find how the film is rated for several categories, presumably out of five: sex appeal 1, humour 1, suspense 3, action 4 and Anspruch 0.
There it is, that one word that separates entertainment from proper culturally correct cinema: Anspruch - difficult to translate, something like high(-brow) standard, serious cultural value. I guess Joss Whedon would be rather disappointed in Serenity's classification - especially in the second and last category. As far as the first goes - not everyone has got a foot fetish.
So, here is someone who gets it (and maybe assigns the film too much cultural value) and someone who doesn't see any cultural value whatsoever. I wonder whether it was the genre that put Mr Wesche off.
So, that is the high- and low-brow approach to the film.
Apart from that there was the usual bad research - where someone put Nathan Fillion in I, Robot and the stuff that was directly taken from the press releases as well as several interesting interviews with Joss Whedon.
