Going in I was afraid this was going to be an apology of Scott's latest movie, but it doesn't discuss it at all. It discusses Ridley Scott, his aesthetics, his childhood, and as such it's informative and super interesting. Recommended.
It’s an interesting and thoughtful essay. I don’t agree with the author’s assertion that the uneven quality of Scott’s work demonstrates some kind of flaw (though TBF, this assertion serves as a great launching pad for an exploration of his background and career).
I see that “flaw” as evidence of a willingness to take risk, something shared by other greats of the “big canvas” films (Kurosawa and Kubrick): an unrepentantly uneven oeuvre. You also see it in another master, Hitchcock: his framing was typically smaller, his work mixed, but when good, very good. Compare that to, say, Spielberg: excellent workmanship but never quite the risk taker. As a result you get results that are quite good but never sublime. In that sense more Greene than Scott is, despite the author’s assertion.
I think this is true of all the greats: we only have seven of Sophocles’ 100+ plays, but I console myself that they are surely seven of the best. And IMHO Shakespeare had his clunkers.
I share your conclusion that great artists should strive for taking risks and leave uneven ouvre behind them. But are Kubrick and Kurosawa good examples of uneven directors? It’s hard to measure and maybe their legend status muddles the ratings but casually glancing even their bad films are quite highly rated and this matches my feeling of them.
I feel Scotts work is way more all over the place and the great films in there feel more like the outliers. It’s all very subjective though and I have not seen everything these people have made.
Barry Lyndon is amazing! The magical quality of the lighting, the music, lady Lyndon's expression at the end. Probably one of my all time favorite films.
Terrible choice of novel too. Long and boring in print — I suppose one could say the film was faithful to the source material in that regard. Thackeray would have been a far better choice to cover the same issue.
Ran is not only highly regarded in Kurosawa's output, it regularly pops up on lists of greatest films of all time.
When people speak of Kurosawa's weaker films, they generally mean Dodeskaden and Scandal, and then perhaps lesser-known efforts like The Quiet Duel and Derzu Uzala.
I'm pretty surprised to see Scott mixed in with these folks. I love me some Alien, but his other works have a noticeably looser quality and shallow worldviews. As a director or to a lesser extent as a producer I suppose I tepidly agree with his mastery, but he's more of a Michael Bay than he is a Kubrick as a filmmaker overall: he makes puerile but engaging blockbusters.
Glad to see a Unherd article featured here. One of the top five publications in the entire web, in my humble opinion. I wished there were more people like them. May Unherd live long and prosper.
I've seen multiple on the front page in the past few days. I also instantly bookmarked it and am going to make it daily reading, seems like a really good publication.
> We might say there are two Ridley Scotts, expressed in the colour palettes that have come to dominate his later films: a Ridley Scott of greys and blues, of toil and depression and the cold and hostile northern landscapes of Prometheus and Alien Covenant, (..)
Great article, but IMO it's missing the aspect of Ridley Scott apparently being increasingly less interested in story than in visual presentation, which I believe explains especially the varying quality of his more-recent movies.
As someone who was really looking forward to Prometheus and the continuation of the Alien franchise, the final product was quite a disappointment. Not visually but in terms of the overall storyline. Later seeing the making-of [1] of Prometheus clearly illustrates the problem: Ridley Scott, certainly a master of visual storytelling, shaped the story based on the images he wanted to see. Scriptwriters then ghastly had to make these images happen in the story.
The same can also be said to some extend about his later views on Blade Runner, where he destroyed the storyelement of ambiguity whether Deckard is himself a Replicant by blatantly answering it.
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However, it might as well be that some stories actually don't captivate him as much, so he ends up "making the spectacle happen" instead of crafting story and presentation into one coherent piece of film.
I am not a fan of the essay nor of its style, but I credit the author with good topic selection and nice details.
I like Ridley Scott movies. I think of Scott like Dickens.
A straight-ahead, topical but not actually edgy (in subject) cinematic allegorist, and a great master of the business of telling stories.
As a moviegoer, I am entertained by his movies, in the moment. As a filmmaker, he is sufficiently deep in his treatments to give me something to return to from time to time to consider and relate to real experience.
I still make every niece, and nephew watch The Martian when they are in middle-school and Bladerunner in high school. Some of Scott's work is, in a manner, canonical.
Scott has made some bad films, and he abuses some stories in service to the business of movies. Let's see Napoleon and talk again.
Ridley elevated Alien to ridiculous heights but then got absolutely everything wrong in Prometheus. Which bothers me to no end.
The only conclusion I can come to is that he's an expert visual storyteller (none better) with amazing craft, but can't recognize the difference between a great story and a mediocre one.
Maybe he doesn't care, he's just happy to put the next film in the can?
But it seems to me that he doesn't entirely care about telling a great story, just about telling a story extremely well.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 32.7 ms ] threadI see that “flaw” as evidence of a willingness to take risk, something shared by other greats of the “big canvas” films (Kurosawa and Kubrick): an unrepentantly uneven oeuvre. You also see it in another master, Hitchcock: his framing was typically smaller, his work mixed, but when good, very good. Compare that to, say, Spielberg: excellent workmanship but never quite the risk taker. As a result you get results that are quite good but never sublime. In that sense more Greene than Scott is, despite the author’s assertion.
I think this is true of all the greats: we only have seven of Sophocles’ 100+ plays, but I console myself that they are surely seven of the best. And IMHO Shakespeare had his clunkers.
I feel Scotts work is way more all over the place and the great films in there feel more like the outliers. It’s all very subjective though and I have not seen everything these people have made.
It was a self-indulgent film.
When people speak of Kurosawa's weaker films, they generally mean Dodeskaden and Scandal, and then perhaps lesser-known efforts like The Quiet Duel and Derzu Uzala.
Great article, but IMO it's missing the aspect of Ridley Scott apparently being increasingly less interested in story than in visual presentation, which I believe explains especially the varying quality of his more-recent movies.
As someone who was really looking forward to Prometheus and the continuation of the Alien franchise, the final product was quite a disappointment. Not visually but in terms of the overall storyline. Later seeing the making-of [1] of Prometheus clearly illustrates the problem: Ridley Scott, certainly a master of visual storytelling, shaped the story based on the images he wanted to see. Scriptwriters then ghastly had to make these images happen in the story.
The same can also be said to some extend about his later views on Blade Runner, where he destroyed the storyelement of ambiguity whether Deckard is himself a Replicant by blatantly answering it.
--
However, it might as well be that some stories actually don't captivate him as much, so he ends up "making the spectacle happen" instead of crafting story and presentation into one coherent piece of film.
[1] https://youtu.be/Emj_-Bx6Qdw
I like Ridley Scott movies. I think of Scott like Dickens. A straight-ahead, topical but not actually edgy (in subject) cinematic allegorist, and a great master of the business of telling stories.
As a moviegoer, I am entertained by his movies, in the moment. As a filmmaker, he is sufficiently deep in his treatments to give me something to return to from time to time to consider and relate to real experience.
I still make every niece, and nephew watch The Martian when they are in middle-school and Bladerunner in high school. Some of Scott's work is, in a manner, canonical.
Scott has made some bad films, and he abuses some stories in service to the business of movies. Let's see Napoleon and talk again.
The only conclusion I can come to is that he's an expert visual storyteller (none better) with amazing craft, but can't recognize the difference between a great story and a mediocre one.
Maybe he doesn't care, he's just happy to put the next film in the can?
But it seems to me that he doesn't entirely care about telling a great story, just about telling a story extremely well.