Sin City

[These comments refer chiefly to the Steve Seitz/Johann exchanges.]

I'm confused by some of these posts. If comic book fans are sweaty immature misfits, but anyone who fails to appreciate Sin City as a masterpiece is a total moron, where do the rest of us -- who wash, are reasonably intelligent, but are underwhelmed by the movie -- where do we fit in? Johann brooks no criticism, and Mr. Seitz starts off by saying the result of Miller's and Rodriguez's collaboration is a "piece of junk."

A little more moderation on both the pro and con sides would have made this Sin City discussion a bit more accessible for those who haven't yet seen the movie or don't have such a violent opinion about it. A thread that descends into invective is out of control and benefits nobody.

I saw the movie in NYC Tuesday. I agree with a lot of the things said in praise of it. The visuals, anybody will agree, are powerful and stylistically unified, and Rodriguez has done a remarkable job of tranferrring Miller's imagery into a movie using real human actors. This may be Rodriguez's best work to date. That means less when I say it than it may when some others do, though, because I have not been a big fan of his up to now. But in a lot of ways this is an accomplished piece of work.

But unfortunately there is a lack of nuance in Sin City that seems related to the fact that, though Rodriguez was blending together three Miller comic book stories, he was pretty slavish in following individual page-by page sequences and dialogue. The violence of a film with three-dimensional imagery and live actors has a different effect in a film from things that were originally conceived as lines on a page. One has the feeling of being bludgeoned over and over, and the story line, which again works well in a comic book, tends to seem exceptionally simple on film. Consequently overall it seems to be a somewhat misguided effort.

Movies and comics are two separate mediums, each valid in its own right, each having qualities the other lacks. Above all the experience of reading a comic book and watching a movie are different, mentally and physically. I think there are in fact certain key elements in Miller's drawings that Rodriguez has failed to capture. He has used too many closeups and not enough of those distant, sharply angular images so typical of the comic book vision.

I should add that although I rarely read "adult" comic books today, as a child I read comics so intensely at times I got sick. I learned a lot about evil from comics, and also a lot about the classics. And I have perused the Sin City comic books and read through individual sequences to compare them with the movie.

O.K. I'll buy the moderation viewpoint.

I have already conceded to Tabuno that I felt the film would have been, in my estimation, a better film if it had a better cast. I think that would have been a sort of "cure-all".

Great actors can find creative ways of delivering lines that can seem out of place when delivered by average actors.

Please also note that I wrote most of my review out prior to posting so I had not read any reviews (positive or negative) of the film.

My intention was not to be contradictory or confrontational. I spoke from the heart about a film that I had actually looked forward to seeing.

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Originally posted by stevetseitz

My intention was not to be contradictory or confrontational. I spoke from the heart about a film that I had actually looked forward to seeing.

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That's funny, so did I.

And as I said before I have no problem being elite on this one.

This is one film where I will not be swayed in any way.
Any and all complaints are referred to the rotating file because as a person who appreciates and is crystal clear on what Rodriguez, QT and Miller have pulled off I simply cannot entertain any claims that they failed.

Whoever says they failed have not come to the film on it's own terms.
That's the bottom line.

It's genius. A cornicopia of genius.

If you did not "like" the film, if it did not fit into your mindset of what is good cinema or good comic book cinema, fine.

But to criticize the filmmakers, who've made something cooler than the Matrix imo, is just dumb.

I can buy not liking the movie, I can buy "it's not my style, not my thing". I can buy "overwhelming".

What I won't buy is "lame", "poor writing and poor acting" or "unoriginal". Anyone who says that has got severe perception deficits.

Sorry, but you gotta come to the film on it's own terms.
Only then can you criticize justifiably.

"Think of what a work of art demands of it's audience"
-Peter Greenaway

It would never be my intention, of course, to say that Sin City is "lame". Also "poor acting and poor directing" and "unoriginal" are simplistic, pointless criticisms. We can't have a discussion if we hurl epithets or are derogatory. I'm glad Mr. Seitz has 'bought the moderation viewpoint,' because he's my ally in this debate.

Johann writes, though: This is one film where I will not be swayed in any way.

That means there is no discussion. But you are the prime defender/advocate/eulogist of the movie, so it would be a shame if you could not bend enough to influence others. It's not effective, or interesting in a discussion, to keep repeating the same assertion over and over. As you know, a primary debating technique is to concede points to members of the opposition; that's how you win their confidence. I don't see how "cornucopia of genius" influences anybody. It's just an assertion; an effusion. Examples, specifics, are what we need. Let's get into the details. I know you know the details better than anybody else here, because you love this film and are ready to see it multiple times. I'm here to learn. If you pursuade me to love Sin City and teach me how to appreciate it more, then I'd count myself lucky and consider this thread a boon to me.

I am not out to demolish Sin City. The first words of my journal entry right after viewing it are: "This movie is beautiful, stylish, and ingenious..."

I wouldn't say "poor writing and poor acting" , so I don't agree that the casting is wrong and that different casting would have made the movie much better. First of all it's an impressive cast, and second, directing is obviously an equally essential element.

It is always my aim to come to a film on its own terms.

I'll write a review of the movie shortly and post it on this thread. I don't know if that will add anything to the debate, but it will put together my ideas and impressions, also "from the heart."

>>But to criticize the filmmakers, who've made something cooler than the Matrix imo, is just dumb.<<

What exactly does that mean, "cooler"? "The Matrix" was groundbreaking in many ways and set a new standard for the sci-fiction that was to come after it. Like "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Star Wars" and "Blade Runner". Audiences simply wouldn't accept inferior products anymore. "Sin City" does nothing of this magnitude and is appeals mainly to a fringe group. I wouldn't be surprised if the next Spider Man sequel is better (and does more at the box office)



>>I can buy not liking the movie, I can buy "it's not my style, not my thing". I can buy "overwhelming".<<

No, not overwhelming. UNDERwhelming. Like I said before good visuals, but that is only one element in the overall experience of a motion picture. A weak cast, cheesy dialogue and adolescent attempts at humor.

>>What I won't buy is "lame", "poor writing and poor acting" or "unoriginal". Anyone who says that has got severe perception deficits.<<

You seem to be convinced that your opinion is the only "right" one and, frankly, that is a very immature way to go through life. Subjective interpretation is something you'll have to deal with.

>>Sorry, but you gotta come to the film on it's own terms.
Only then can you criticize justifiably.<<

I'll criticize bad film-making any time I see it. If I expect more from a director, a writer, or the actors I'll always be vocal in my disapproval. Oh, and it's always "justified".

I would not evaluate the maturity level of anybody on this site. I was trying to make that suggestion earlier: let's avoid personal attacks in defending our positions pro or con, or in between, on this movie, please.

I understood "overwhelming." I did find it "overwhelming," not in a positive sense. In fact I can't quite see "underwhelming." Sin City packs a wallop.

I guess when you have to define a term like "cool," then it loses any purpose. I can see that the Matrix is heavier-handed than Sin City, and in that sense less cool. But I still have problems with the movie which I am going to air more thoroughly when I get a good enough stretch of free time to write a review.

As far as Sin City packing a "wallop". It didn't do anything for me.

When it started I was really excited by the visuals and thought the intro was excellent. I was ready for a fantastic film. By the end, I was yawning and looking at my watch. There is only so many similar action scenes I can watch and characters I had no emotional connection with. The shock attempts weren't shocking and the acting, particularly by Clive Owen, was just plain bad. Talk about wooden. The gritting your teeth look only goes so far.

At least I got to see the Star Wars Episode III trailer.

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ, FRANK MILLER:
SIN CITY

A REVIEW

Nasty violence, with a 'cool' look

By Chris Knipp

Robert Rodriguez's Sin City (for which he gives graphic novelist Frank Miller co-director credit) is a beautiful, stylish, and ingenious adaptation, but even for a filmed comic book it's violent to the point of being brain-dead. One thinks longingly of the pleasing teenage romantic darkness of that brooding revenge fantasy, The Crow, both Alex Proyas' version and Tim Pope's sequel. There's revenge in both, but Sin City's revenge is so heavily laced with confused morality that it gives no satisfaction. If you want ingenious ultra-violence, try Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, where the violence is saved up and released so that it has a shocking elegance and a punch. If you want teenage adventure with the same look (at a time when such techniques seemed fresh and new) -- stylized black and white with touches of color -- try Coppola's Rumble Fish. Despite its nice look and its heavy overproduction using all the latest technical tricks, Sin City pales in comparison with all these.

In fact the only movies Sin City stands up well against, ultimately, are Rodriguez's other ones. This is his most complex and probably his best effort: here, he has bolstered his usually thin content by slavishly following Miller's cartoon books and linking up three of them so we've got a little cluster of characters and stories, although whether the stories are really interwoven or just stuck together is sometimes hard to say. Little is discernably added to the stories by Rodriguez; at times he follows dialogue and image as if the books were his storyboards. The effect is of a waxworks rather than a new permutation.

A comic book/graphic novel is one thing and a movie is another. This distinction seems to be more and more lost. But on the one hand, you can have an effect like the Superman, Batman, or Spiderman movies, where the cartoon images are fleshed out with (at best) good, live actors and special effects. But since the first Superman movie computer generated digital imaging has become so hypertrophied that the value of using human actors sometimes increasingly becomes questionable. Look at a movie like Polar Express in which humans are deliberately made over to look like mummified dolls. What's the point?

On the other hand, you have a movie that becomes a comic strip, like Richard Linklater's marvelous, twittering, Waking Life. Any imaginative animation may have this quality, though digital animation, with its glossy roundness, loses the pleasing flatness of real cartoons, which are hollow and two dimensional, and either made out of black lines or filled in with flat Ben Day dot color. (Waking Life has the quality of hand drawing in every frame, because Bob Sabiston designed all the images that way.)

Sin City exists in neither world but rather in some Neverland where the actors are made to seem unreal with prosthetics and costumes and CGI but the drawn quality also has been lost. The stress (as in The Crow) is on atmosphere and scene; but there isn't the deep brooding depressed longing, the angst-ridden adolescent resentful mood that distinguishes the Crow movies and makes their moodiness really involving and unified.

Part of the "fun" of the rather joyless horror fest that Sin City becomes when fleshed out as a movie, as opposed to the stylized and stylish black and white images of Miller's books, with their dry, artificial quality (in the books, there's plenty of white; in the movie, the prevailing color is a gloppy gray, characteristic of a very different kind of comic book drawing), is spotting the various well known actors. Typically, Bruce Willis (Hartigan) looks just like Bruce Willis (has he ever donned any disguise other than a small hairpiece?). Clive Owen as Dwight looks like Clive Owen too, only more handsome, and also sadly more ordinary without his English accent. It may take you a while to recognize Benicio del Toro in the very evil Jackie Boy, and he hardly has the lazy, teasing speech mannerisms of del Toro: but is that an improvement? Are these actors making comic book characters larger than life, or are they just disappearing into them? Unlike these is the Yellow Bastard, the final evil manifestation of the evil politician's depraved son (played by Nick Stahl, who always looks sallow and nasty), because he looks like the Golem--an animatron with a yellow head. Perhaps the only actor who really rises to the occasion is Mickey Rourke, who's no stranger to deep cover as an actor and whose pugilistically battered face has been completely made over.

But what are all these people doing? I'd really rather not say, if you don't mind. Probably when I was twelve I would have loved this movie. One of my favorite things to watch in movies back then was torture, smashed thumbs, eyes gouged out, bodies broken on the rack: I loved all that, because it meant nothing to me; it wasn't real. Now I know that this kind of stuff really happens all the time, and I don't want to see it. But this is a movie for boys, because here, again, as for me at twelve, none of it means anything; none of it is real. There's some pain over a little girl who is threatened with nastiness, but for the rest whether a guy has a hammer in his back or a knife sticking out of his brow matters not at all.

The girls are the best part, for sure. They're as tough and macho as the guys, and a lot better looking. But whether a whore in skimpy leather packing heat is an example of woman's liberation is not something worth debating. Cool? Yes, very cool, if you're fifteen, or forty-five going on twelve.

As has been pointed out, Rodriguez's literal reconstitution of these graphic novels is hardly as original as the graphic novels themselves, despite the technical innovations, and those novels themselves had less originality than the film noir they grew out of. The images of Sin City remain striking and often beautiful, but I think there are in fact certain key elements in Miller's drawings that Rodriguez has failed to capture. He has used too many closeups and not enough of those wonderful distant, sharply angular images so typical of comic book vision. Did those themselves grow out of the work of people like Greg Toland, Orson Welles' cameraman for Citizen Kane? Probably.

When I think of violence on the movie screen, Sin City doesn't come to mind immediately. Instead, one of the more talked about prolonged scenes that comes to mind is the 30 or 45 minutes of the first part of Saving Private Ryan. What seemed to make this scene so compelling, so much an item of discussion was the apparent in your face killing, the body parts, the ocean turning red, the sound of bullets seeming to come out of the theater speakers. The plot and meaning of this scene? There wasn't any. This scene was based on the experience not the verbal language of the soldiers.

What comes to mind with Sin City was the transformation of a graphic, comic book novel into a virtual reality, coming to life with flesh and blood human being actors. The plot? Some critics have placed Alien as among the best movies of its science fiction genre. The plot? Very simple. The execution well done. So too with Sin City, the plot very simple. The execution competently if not well done (the various storylines were not well edited together). In the case of Alien, the dialogue, script, and acting was directed towards realism. In the case of Sin City, the dialogue, script, and was directed towards fantastic, imaginary world of 50s, gangster comics.

>> one of the more talked about prolonged scenes that comes to mind is the 30 or 45 minutes of the first part of Saving Private Ryan. What seemed to make this scene so compelling, so much an item of discussion was the apparent in your face killing, the body parts, the ocean turning red, the sound of bullets seeming to come out of the theater speakers. The plot and meaning of this scene? There wasn't any.<<

Anyone who has faced the business end of a german machine gun might disagree that there was "no meaning" to the taking of the beach during the Normandy invasion. It shouldn't take a WWII vet or a historian to know what the plot was. It was the liberation of France and it was the starting point for an invasion of the of the European continent to defeat the forces of evil that had taken over there.

Spielberg's genius in filming the scene "combat photographer style" complete with unbelievable directional sound effects and gut-wrenching visuals tapped into a primal fear any man has when faced with combat.

Just as powerful as "Saving Private Ryan", and a better overall film in my book, is "The Longest Day". I also recommend taking in the DVD version of "Band of Brothers" as a whole. It's a non-fiction companion piece that's every bit as powerful as either "Saving Private Ryan" or "The Longest Day".



That scene had me so tense in the theater that I had to be told to let go of the armrests.

Another similar scene (copied countless times since it first came out) was the first Strirling battle scene in "Braveheart". Again, those who viewed this scene were mesmerized and stunned. The violence felt real. The pain genuine. The sacrifices costly. Admittedly these scenes have the advantage of being based on true historical battles.

But let's take another violent scene. The final shootout in "Unforgiven", Clint Eastwood's western masterpiece. It is fictional and quite violent but it had authenticity because it's characters had been established and a sense of realism pervaded each scene preceding it.

How does one experience graphic novel violence? Would it be really an adaptation of the genre if it were to be replete with the deeper, subtle context of behavioral, psychological turmoil? Would the realism of the scene be improved if somehow comic book characters became alive? What would they think? How would they act? Graphic novels by their very nature probe into more risky, darker, seamier sides of the human psyche where the lines of good and evil are sometimes drawn in vivid black and white, good and evil.

Sometimes, the meaning of war is fought in terms of liberty and oppression, sometimes it appears meaningless. I've talked to a number of women who shake their heads at man's violence and the apparent senselessness of it. The feminine nurturing instinct seems to have been permanently mangled and the growth of humanity seems to have never really gotten out of the chemcial brew of anger and fighting.

Instead for me Sin City transforms the issue of principle, sacrifice into basic fundamental emotional ethics between indescriminate killing and killing and sacrificing one's self for innocence, goodness, a noble characteristics that even for me sometimes war movies seem to overlook.

There is one animated scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1 [spoiler] that perhaps depicts the more horrid experiences of criminal gangster violence and what it can do to an innocent child, a child who however turns bad and dies in the end (a somewhat ambiguous moral lesson).

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(Posted by tabuno:)
How would they act? Graphic novels by their very nature probe into more risky, darker, seamier sides of the human psyche where the lines of good and evil are sometimes drawn in vivid black and white, good and evil.

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That is all very nice, and I very much appreciate your willingness to think through what's involved, but what you say here is still a rather vague generalization drawn up to justify Sin City. Graphic novels do lots of things. It seems to me that Miller and Rodriguez have transformed Miller's rather elegant drawings into murky but glistening grunge. What works in the more schematic and abstract world of a drawn book becomes a confused mess in this new celluloid transformation.

Mr Seitz makes a good point: The Longest Day is far better treatment of the subject than Saving Private Ryan, though the opening sequence of the latter is impressive, to say the least.

Needless to say, while battles in real wars may be "meaningless" in some larger philosophical sense, they are highly meaningful in historical and human terms, especially the Normandy landing. To compare the shennanigans in Sin City with the that phase of WWII is frivolous. I have not seen Band of Brothers. It sounded too rah-rah nationalistic for my taste, but it may be a good treatment of the war.

Anthony Lane in The New Yorker writes in his review of Sin City,

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(April 11, 2005:)
"We have, it is clear, reached the lively dead end of a process that was initiated by a fretful Martin Scorsese and inflamed, with less embarrassed glee, by Tarantino: the process of knowing everything about violence and nothing about suffering."

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Because of realism and a sense of context, great war movies do convey that sense of suffering. The white wounds and splattered powdery blood in Sin City are sickening without seeming real. Like a video game, the film disgusts (while it may not move or excite) a sensitive person because it is without real affect yet what it represents reference acts that in real life are horrible. It is not necessary to have the simplification of a graphic novel to have a sense of clearcut good and evil. Quite the contrary: a true moral awareness is always informed by richness of context rather than simplification.

As illustration as I have done sometimes before I would like to mention the German 1960 movie Die Brücke, The Bridge, which depicts sequences of horrible violence and the suffering of German youths (one sees a few of them in The Downfall) -- drawn into service as the Nazi cause became desperate toward the end of WWII -- within a well-established human context--because each of the young soldiers has been intruduced with his family and his milieu early in the film. The reality of Die Brücke is complex -- the young people have various motives, some of them are idealistic and all of them are desperate; the aims for which they are fighting are dubious but they do not know that -- as in all war; the truth that emerges most strongly is that war is cruel and wrong. This is a very simple moral lesson, but it is presented within a real and disturbingly rich human context.

Sorry to go back so far, but I was gone for a while.

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Originally posted by stevetseitz
>>Compare the complexity of Watchmen to the painting, and then you've got a more fair competition.<<

O.K. but even the most respectful comic lover must admit adults who like comics are a small, fringe group. Movies are experienced by a far larger audience. Cinema is an art form that can combine all other art forms: Music, Dance, visual composition, literature, etc.

The graphic novel by comparison is much smaller in scope. It's not as if you can turn one into another and not have to fill in some blanks.

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Ok, now I can agree with you. However, I don't think that because cinema has a larger scope means that it's a more "sophisticated" medium. I may like movies better than comics (not to say that they're far behind in preference), but this fanboy's got to stick with his instincts. You kind of have to understand where I'm coming from: just a 16-year-old film buff with an occasional affinity for his "whiffs!!" and "bams!".

Chris Knipp: "The white wounds and splattered powdery blood in Sin City are sickening without seeming real."

I can't imagine that any graphic novel adapted to the big screen would be very successfully transformed if it became "real." World War II was real. Sin City is imaginary. The blood on the comic strip page or book is imaginary. The whole I idea is to allow the fantastic images to be unreal so that the graphic violence can become more emotionally tolerable. I would hate to think if such graphic violence were to be portrayed as realism - it would be ghastly. Sin City actually cut away many times, leaving the outcome to violence to the audience's imagination. Sin City focuses on characters not the massive onslaught of war. The audience is allowed to concentrate on individuals and their fight for good and die trying. Simple but pure.

I seem to be the only champion of this film here.
It's difficult to enunciate exactly how I feel about Sin City.
I have failed, not the filmmakers.


It's hard to exclaim "genius" without someone coming out of the woodwork slamming you for loving senseless, shocking violence
with no consideration for suffering, like Mr. Lane.

Well last time I checked this was entertainment, and people seem to have missed that.

Coming to the film as I do, with a life of comics reading and about 15 years of solid cinema knowledge/appreciation, I see the passion and craftsmanship in digital moviemaking and I am incredibly impressed.

I can't fathom how anyone- whether they like the film or not- cannot see/feel the kinetic triple-joint concentrated effort that was put into making it. No seems to acknowledge the accomplishment and the sheer thrill this movie provides.

I haven't even talked about the plots, which I'll do when I've seen the film a few more times (as Chris predicted).

I'm trying to make clear that for a fan of comic books and a fan of the movies, this film is welcomed with open extended arms, and I'm sure the filmmakers knew they were creating something special.

I do not advocate senseless pointless violence and this film is replete with it. I expected it- I saw Desperado & Kill Bill. I do not advocate turning women into soulless objects for man's whims. I expected it from this film.
It's called Sin City. What did you think you were gonna see?
I expected something more violent actually, and I would have still loved it.

It's a vacation to slimeville kids. It's escapist entertainment at it's finest.

It's not a Jane Austen novel nor is it Coronation Street.
It's Sin City, a masterpiece that doesn't need me to emphasize it.

It stands alone- for now and forever.