Have you ever watched a movie and thought, "Wow, that was a mess, but I loved it"? I have, and I have a name for movies that make me feel that way. I call 'em "beautiful failures."
Beautiful failures are usually too long, too weird, too sloppy, or just plain stupid, but they're always strangely compelling and, well, beautiful. They are the movies you think you hate but you can't stop thinking about. You come back to them over and over and you can't figure out why. They can be very complex, pretentious, or even too simple or mass appealing. Other film buffs might tell you different, but there's really no formula to creating a beautiful failure.
Some of my favorite beautiful failures are Steven Soderbergh's Solaris, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and David Cronenberg's awkward 1996 thriller Crash. I love these films for different reasons, but I recognize that they're all a little ... dreadful.
Here are a few titles I've recently added to my list of beautiful failures. Please, share some of your favorite BFs in the comments.
The Science of Sleep
The problems start with the packaging and advertising for director Michael Gondry's follow-up to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The trailer and DVD box try to sell the film as a quirky romantic comedy full of whimsical dream sequences and cute one-liners. What you really get is a seemingly chaotic but densely structured character study of an unlikable, mentally ill manchild (Gael Garcia Bernal).
There's a lot of good here, though. Bernal's character has trouble disassociating fantasy from reality, and Gondry illustrates this with some charming and singular visual tricks. Also, the ending is somewhat of a stunner that brilliantly unites all the disparate ideas and elements that came before. Unfortunately, most viewers will be confused and sick of all the seeming randomness before the third act. Bernal and the rest of the cast are great, but most of the characters are unappealing or hard to relate to. Still, I'll go back to this movie again for its brave storytelling, strange comedic bits, and great visuals. View the trailer.
The Fountain
Article comments
1 - Ian Woolstencroft
Can’t agree about The Fountain, I thought it was a beautiful little fable and didn’t find it incoherent in the slightest. It’s as deep or as shallow as you want to make it.
As for Rachel Weisz’s performance being “sleepy”, well she was playing a terminally ill woman so it’s not surprising she wasn’t doing cartwheels. I was disappointed she didn’t get an Oscar nomination and the fact she didn’t just shows how worthless such awards are.
And re Ellen Burstyn, how does one give an irrelevant performance? Good, bad, even sleepy that I can understand but irrelevant? I can see how a character can be irrelevant but not a performance.
2 - Mike
Yr probably right about me calling the Burstyn performance irrelevant. It just seems like Aronofsky put her in there because she's in his camp now, since after "Requim." Thanks for the thoughts ... MM.