Just Don't Think I'll Scream

There are moments when Beauvais appears to be getting at something grander -- the relationships between image and memory, consumption and creation, artifice and reality; existential boredom; art's place as escapism -- but he mostly just whines about tradition, religion, and not being able to see his equally bougie peers as much as he would like to. Oh, woe is you, Frank; the privilege is stifling. But I digress, it remains a fairly visually captivating experiment.

Politically & ethically Beauvais is a complete idiot, a confused and hypocritical product of his age. Urban, half-enlightened, a resentful intellectual against anything conservative or religious w/o having anything positive to replace them. Shallow humanism coupled with bourgeois sensibilities, all bullshit. Having said that this is a strong experiment with images and our imagination that binds words to images, no matter how loose their connection seems in the first instance. Worth thinking on.

it increasingly seems that obsessively watching films do make people similar - while this is a very personal essay film, it nonetheless achieves to create a very layered and emotional story through what movies do to us. it's almost as if one gravitates towards film because they're depressed but films don't let them go as the experience they provide ostensibly alleviates that dread (though it also creates new ones) --watched this at the right time but honestly wasn't expecting to be mesmerized.

Viewed December 13, 2021. Beauvais' description of his cinephilic low point, his self-destructive need to see everything and his implied fear to step out of his routine, is extremely accurate. The great irony of the film - which I think Beauvais is keenly aware of - is that any self-respecting cinephile who watches it will walk away wanting to watch many of the movies featured throughout and probably go down their own lonely rabbit hole marathoning East German genre cinema or Japanese pinku film

I really disliked the monotone, emotionally detached dirge that the director's narration comes across as. Even when talking about subjects that upset him, you can't *feel* it at all which makes the film pretty frustrating at times.

I want your Criticker or Letterboxd accounts.

April 19, 2019 / **Worth Seeing

almost something