309. Amelie

Song - I Have A Dream (ABBA)

Movie: Amelie - Le fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)

"Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?"

When The Fabelmans came out some fans dived into Spielberg's filmography, trying to find examples where Spielberg had followed (or not) John Ford's advice. It's a fun exercise that will probably teach you a lot about scene composition, as long as you don't miss the forest for the trees. The Fabelmans shows many of Sammy's home movies and the process of their creation, emphasising all the practical obstacles Spielberg had to overcome and think through to get his scenes filmed. The Fabelmans' final shot on the other hand would work equally well if the horizon is in the middle, going against Ford's words. Spielberg's camera adjustment to put the horizon on top is an aesthetic choice made blatantly obvious, highlighting why I am not entirely on board with Gene Siskel's popular aphorism quoted above. As singer/comedian Tim Minchin recently noted: "Even if AI came up with the same poem, it wouldn't be the same, because the reason you found it entertaining is because you knew that I made those choices. It's valuable not only because of its content, but because of it's intent."  

This is the third time I've started Amelie and the first time I've finished it. Hypothetically speaking, if you would mount an automated camera to roam around Montmartre, randomly filming its streets, its bars, and the steps of the Sacre-Coueur, you will probably end up with more colorful sights and sounds, more fascinating people and conversations, and a more appealingly romantic outlook of Paris than what Amelie has to offer. However, Amelie is art, while the automated camera images are not. There is a lot of noise these days from AI evangelists about how AI is supposedly democratising art. The argument here (both implicitly and explicitly) is that for something to be art it has to reach a certain (abstract) threshold of beauty, versimilitude, edificaction and/or wisdom most ordinary humans aren't able to reach without support from a superior technology. That's a far less populist notion than the simple idea that art is the end result of aesthetic choices reflecting personal preferences, regardless of whether these preferences align with other people's or some objectivist ideal. 

I certainly don't like how Jean-Pierre Jeunet films Paris, but getting a glimpse of how someone thinks about the world, and the actions they take to communicate that, is still an entertaining way to spend two hours. I hope some day to write more abot the similarities between watching sports and watching films, but I think much of the fun in both comes from seeing people struggle to put in an effort to achieve something. Someone in a really Marxist mood could take that idea much further arguing that sports gambling and the use of AI in art are two sides of the same coin, erasing human endeavour for the sake of profit that I think will ultimately not work. Even setting moral objections aside, in the end in both cases the business model depends on watching people take meaningful actions to put the ball in the basket, or evoke the magic of Paris. It's a matter of supply and demand too. If everyone can evoke the magic of Paris, doing so will lose its value. Jeunet's way is definitely singular, but it would have been more appealing if he didn't apply every color filter in much the same way, taking all texture and personality out of city life to make everything look drably similar. He tries to make up for it by inventing a whole bunch of quirky characters, but then proceeds to also take all personality from them, turning everyone into cardbord cutouts, never moving beyond their carefully molded types. All of this leads, especially in the second half, to a lot of endlessly repetitive scenes. 

I did appreciate the movie a bit more than on my previous viewings. Combining elements of collage and stop-motion animation and applying them to a narrative film does create a fascinating look and feel sometimes. Audrey Tautou essentially plays an introverted scale model come alive and even in that context, her charisma and her comic talent comes through. In fact, everyone in the film has a wry sense of humor, including Jeunet, but even that can be a source of frustration. The tragedy that will come to define Amelie's life is played for laughs, successfully. I guffawed, while being annoyed that it's completely at odds with the tone the film is going for. It's the kind of Looney Tunes death that works in an existentialist black comedy like In Bruges, but not in a sentimentalised morality tale about finding the purity of heart to see the good in everyone. The moment comes off douchey and glib, signalling that the film doesn't really care about any of its characters, as long as it can milk the right emotions and messages out of them.