STEVE JABLONSKY

The discussion is heating up. I'm not participating just following it.
Tom

heat it up again Thor

It's good to admit your reasons for liking Bay have an absence of construction, but don't be too hard on yourself.

But not good enough to bait me in.

Well, I'll join in and hope to really hear the arguments.

All the directors you mentioned, except David Lynch, who makes purely experience-based movies, do have a sense of more traditional storytelling in terms of shot A actually does lead to shot B. In case of Ridley, I feel that his non-story visual elements are actually a layer that is put over the more traditional story element (case in point for me: Black Rain - and don't mind me not adding spoiler warning to a now-25 year old film: when Charlie dies and Masa has the whole "gift ceremony" with Nick, there is an overhead shot, a slow, if I may say so, "rummaging" over Osaka with Hans' theme in a somber arrangement, basically a flyover, it has two meanings - first it is the traditional narrative "insert" that shows that the day changed and it is also representative of the character's emotions, a very indirect subjective "statement" so to speak; same for Alien which delivers story information while all the Freudian elements are intact, and so on).

I get it that directors can be more than story, that they have, once in a while, purely cinematic elements that don't add up in terms of the narrative, but create a mood, visually present a philosophical point, or as is the case of Terrence Malick, present a narrative in a non-linear and stream-of-consciousness way, where his much-lambasted voice-overs (with the idea being that the most simple words ask the questions that not necessarily have to be answered, but have to be asked) and music (classical or score, as is the case of The Thin Red Line and Days of Heaven to an extent). In fact, Michael Mann is a director strangely missing from your list.

I get that even strong storytellers make movies that aren't necessarily strong plots, in fact some quite popular and praised action films have an almost non-existent plot, but the script somehow manages to come forward.

My biggest problem with Bay is not just the atrocious acting (the aforementioned Pearl Harbor is an example of getting some HUGE and amazing actors who suddenly can't act, wasting Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johannsson, yes, she can act, in The Island is also a "work of art") or weak scripts. The biggest problem with Bay is that while his shots are all very handsome (though, I guess you'd disagree with me, but I think that Bay is not very good at hand-held, whenever he goes there he makes things more confusing that gritty or immersive), his films are basically not just, for me, a cinematic project that goes beyond traditional storytelling. His films are narrative non-sequiturs with the editing seemingly very random, just to combine a nice shot with another very nice shot. You can try to add art into a mainstream film, even Tony Scott did better (Man of Fire!) and worse (Domino!) with that. But comparing a radically subjective piece of filmmaking like Man on Fire with something like Transformers would be very unfair to the late Tony.

Bay has moments of brilliance, I'll give him that. Two things I really always LOVED about his style - the circular shot around a confused/stressed/lost character (or two in Bad Boys) is a great subjective idea. I also loved his floor-level tracking shots in The Rock and Bad Boys, I think it crops up in Armageddon too. But since then, or at least since Pearl Harbor, those went strangely missing from his work. Transformers 1 was something I surprisingly liked. The Island was quite great (though could have been better) in the first half until it went bananas and incoherent when they actually left the place.

But I am boycotting new Bay films (and yes, that includes Pain and Gain) since the second Transformers and I still would like Bay to return my money for that.

Well, thanks for actual arguments, Pawel. That's a level on which I'm ready to discuss.

I've always felt there's a direct link between more art-oriented directors (whether it's Tarkovsky or Antonioni or Lynch) and those directors inside Hollywood that subscribe to 'form is content' and an audiovisual way of communicating. The only difference is that the former don't use story as a priority at all, while the latter use the story as a tool for what you correctly labeled experience-related cinema.

Michael Bay is not about storytelling. Like Michel Gondry or Zack Snyder, he's transcribing his background as a visual artist in ads and music videos to the feature film format. He's an auteur in the truest sense, infusing each film with his own themes and audiovisual trademarks (the low-angle shot, the slo mow, the tinted colours, the aesthetics of the spectacular and so on). He's in many ways the natural extension of what Tom Gunning called "the cinema of attractions" in early cinema.

PAIN & GAIN was severely misunderstood as mere surface, while in actuality it was quite a subversive film (intended or not), using the mise-en-scene as commentary. The same is true for the new TRANSFORMERS. It's a plethora of setpiece ideas, realized in spectacular ways.

Example: The early scene where Mark Wahlberg has a tete-a-tete with his daughter. The dialogue is silly, the acting is stale and the narrative significance is minimal. But he saturates the scene so beautifully -- sunset beaming across the fields, Jablonsky's ethereal voices, a slightly swirling camera -- that it becomes a commentary and value in itself. It's the ultimate postmodern film.

If one "gets" what Bay is doing, one is able to appreciate this philosophy. I'm not saying that everything he does is great (PEARL HARBOR was a miss, as previously noted), but it's a necessary first step. If one doesn't get it, or refuses to acknowledge it, I can certainly see why one's evaluation is negative.

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I think some of the worst stuff he did is actually attacking his critics. His approach is generally "fuck the haters, they'll see the movie anyway". Well, this one won't. And what will he do to me because of that? That I don't feel he's worth 3 hours of my time even if I didn't watch it legally?

The thing is the guy wouldn't explain himself. He'd simply laugh at my arguments and said it earns money. Probably he regards his own fanbase as a bunch of idiots as well.

Any number of things. Strong female characters presented through what only appears to be a misygynistic presentation. Class journeys (sometimes presented as a pathetic journey, as in PAIN & GAIN) and rise of the everyday man. Micro vs. macro.

But the 'auteur' debate as applied to Bay rages wildly on the interwebz. There are probably more against than pro, like myself. I like to think there's a separate sub-category called the 'action auteur' or the 'blockbuster auteur', into which he neatly fits (alongside Snyder, Paul W.S. Anderson and a few others).

Also, the thematic undercurrents are less important than the stylistic ones. It's mostly a "moment-based" philosophy (the "pregnant moment", as Roland Barthes said) that owes more to music video aesthetics. How can you envelop the spectator into a particular moment through audiovisuals? A moment that has a subtext, but that hammers it in explicitly through the tool of spectacle?

I read Thor's comments and in my mind all I hear is THIS!

-Erik-

To summarize, is any of this discussion about film music?

Well, then you would be WRONG, as this is a discussion I've had many times in various circles -- even inside our own staff at Montages. There are few directors who are more divisive than Bay these days; always grounds for discussion.

Oh, I'm definitely with on Tony Scott. Massively underrated as an artist, and he falls very much into the same category.

I don't think it's a particular fruitful approach to look for developped characters in Bay's movies. In many ways, it's the very shallowness of their beings that is the point. Neither is a particularly good or original script. Not that it wouldn't be interesting to see him deal with that, but in many ways it would betray his filmic project.

Bay is -- in my opinion -- about creating surface so brilliantly that it becomes art in itself. And you can quote me on that.

The closest Michael Bay came to this was with The Rock - a film that was aware of the characters' emotions, motivations and had at its core an interesting conflict. I'd love to see him tackle such a subject again.

A journalist once described Spielberg's Temple of Doom as "you shouldn't go to a roller coaster and complain it's not a cathedral". I feel this describes Bay's career perfectly.

(Actually, The Rock is included in the Criterion collection because of a rights issue - in their early days they had a tougher bargaining position towards Disney and they could only get a certain film if in a package deal with The Rock - but I wouldn't want to throw ash on your point because it's a fine film indeed ).