Ridley Scott: Our Anglo-Saxon Maximus
unherd.com
unherd.com
I see that “flaw” as evidence of a willingness to take risk, something shared by other greats of the “big canvas” films (Kurosawa and Kubrick): an unrepentantly uneven oeuvre. You also see it in another master, Hitchcock: his framing was typically smaller, his work mixed, but when good, very good. Compare that to, say, Spielberg: excellent workmanship but never quite the risk taker. As a result you get results that are quite good but never sublime. In that sense more Greene than Scott is, despite the author’s assertion.
I think this is true of all the greats: we only have seven of Sophocles’ 100+ plays, but I console myself that they are surely seven of the best. And IMHO Shakespeare had his clunkers.
I feel Scotts work is way more all over the place and the great films in there feel more like the outliers. It’s all very subjective though and I have not seen everything these people have made.
It was a self-indulgent film.
When people speak of Kurosawa's weaker films, they generally mean Dodeskaden and Scandal, and then perhaps lesser-known efforts like The Quiet Duel and Derzu Uzala.
Great article, but IMO it's missing the aspect of Ridley Scott apparently being increasingly less interested in story than in visual presentation, which I believe explains especially the varying quality of his more-recent movies.
As someone who was really looking forward to Prometheus and the continuation of the Alien franchise, the final product was quite a disappointment. Not visually but in terms of the overall storyline. Later seeing the making-of [1] of Prometheus clearly illustrates the problem: Ridley Scott, certainly a master of visual storytelling, shaped the story based on the images he wanted to see. Scriptwriters then ghastly had to make these images happen in the story.
The same can also be said to some extend about his later views on Blade Runner, where he destroyed the storyelement of ambiguity whether Deckard is himself a Replicant by blatantly answering it.
--
However, it might as well be that some stories actually don't captivate him as much, so he ends up "making the spectacle happen" instead of crafting story and presentation into one coherent piece of film.
The only conclusion I can come to is that he's an expert visual storyteller (none better) with amazing craft, but can't recognize the difference between a great story and a mediocre one.
Maybe he doesn't care, he's just happy to put the next film in the can?
But it seems to me that he doesn't entirely care about telling a great story, just about telling a story extremely well.
I like Ridley Scott movies. I think of Scott like Dickens. A straight-ahead, topical but not actually edgy (in subject) cinematic allegorist, and a great master of the business of telling stories.
As a moviegoer, I am entertained by his movies, in the moment. As a filmmaker, he is sufficiently deep in his treatments to give me something to return to from time to time to consider and relate to real experience.
I still make every niece, and nephew watch The Martian when they are in middle-school and Bladerunner in high school. Some of Scott's work is, in a manner, canonical.
Scott has made some bad films, and he abuses some stories in service to the business of movies. Let's see Napoleon and talk again.