Thursday, 5 November 2015

Can modern-day film render suspense excessive?

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Re-watching The Wicker Man last might, among many of the things that struck me was that despite how shocking and unsettling that denouement, much of it is a rather languidly enjoyable watch. Edward Woodward's fantastic reactive performance of course gives it all the right amount of grounded depth and seriousness, but it doesn't shy away from some of the campier elements of the pagan concepts and small village stereotypes it employs. The film flourishes precisely because alongside the brooding suspense, it takes its less serious elements with the right amount of respect, rendering it all the more timeless: you can't call it kitschy or outdated precisely because the right balance of tone it strikes with the 'suspenseful' elements, and the elements you can have a bit of fun with.

Which led me to think: have we, as modern-day audiences, become so impatient and attuned to things that are to the point, that suspense in the thriller genre has become almost a necessary excess in each frame, with little to no respite in between. I'm thinking of something like Shutter Island which never once stops from hitting us over the head with all manner of SUSPENSE SUSPENSE SUSPENSE. Scorsese composes each scene with the same sort of rampant unsubtletly that it all becomes rather tiresome. Oh for the long gone days of a Saboteur or The Third Man. Films which not only thrilled you but had titbits of extra little humour, intellect, and knowingness to it all. Perhaps I'm just being nitpicky but it seems nowadays we thrill with thrillers and that's all there is to it: par excellence in genres seems to be a singly-orientated thing.

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