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If this were a typical law enforcement investigation, they would not have grounds to arrest the cartel guy in connection to the murders at the house and the bombing. I mean, they know he's a cartel higher-up, so they can get him extradited on those grounds, but Kate clearly says in the first meeting with Brolin that even though they "know" the cartel guys are behind it, there's nothing that definitively links them to the house. Well, to all of that they say gently caress it lets create chaos and go snatch this guy. They know full well what that means and what the consequences will be.
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Jan 28, 2016 18:14
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Last Buffalo posted:I don't know if extraditing a guy who set up murdering 30 people, then bombing a SWAT team is a tactic of gang warfare. Notice how they didn't roll into Juarez and start shooting cartel henchmen. They drove to a prison/police station and picked up a guy with Texas Rangers and then brought him back. What do you mean by gang warfare? Shooting people? I would say going to get a guy for what is essentially revenge, so that you can torture him to get to another guy to kill him, also for revenge, is pretty gang-warfare-y. What I'm saying is there were no attempts to find an extradition solution that did not involve this expected violence. This violence was an acceptable cost doing the extradition this way, not a reason to find another way. Considering that the CIA is basically a drug cartel in and of itself, the plot of the movie is kind of: The CIA has a beef with a Mexican drug cartel, so they team up with a Colombian drug cartel via a guy who has a beef against the leader of the Mexican drug cartel and they kill and torture people until they get to him. The "twist" is that, on paper, all of this is legal. Down to Kate's involvement.
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Jan 28, 2016 18:28
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Excellent discussion itt, it's cool that the film operates on a level that can support varied interpretation without resorting to outright ambiguity. Good on Villanueve.
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Jan 29, 2016 04:41
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:Excellent discussion itt, it's cool that the film operates on a level that can support varied interpretation without resorting to outright ambiguity. It's a good rear end movie.
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Jan 29, 2016 20:52
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This is obviously very high praise, but I'd compare Sicario to Fury Road in the sense that it delivers so much plot information and character development without really ever slowing down to do it. I think that's why these kind of films are so re-watchable, aside from the visuals of course. There's always some little character bit to notice, or some new way of looking at a situation. You never feel like you've gotten to the bottom of what the movie has to offer.
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Jan 29, 2016 20:58
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And they're both orange.
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Jan 29, 2016 21:03
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i think it's high praise to compare Fury Road to Sicario.
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Jan 29, 2016 21:34
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:i think it's high praise to compare Fury Road to Sicario. I mean they are both really good movies, and they both accomplish a lot without a lot of exposition. I like Sicario more, but I don't know if it can be said to be objectively better. Fury Road is like, bad people are in control, but good people can come together and be stronger. Sicario is like, bad people came together and are stronger, and it's no place for good people. Since I think that optimism is basically synonymous with naivety, the latter appeals to me more. Sicario is also a little more specific in its messages and allegories, where Fury Road is more of a broad strokes thing.
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Jan 29, 2016 21:39
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Snak posted:Fury Road is like, bad people are in control, but good people can come together and be stronger. Are you sure? I didn't take that message away from Sicario at all; it's a brutal, cynical movie, but not a nihilistic one, in my view. Bad people are in control at all times , true, and do bad things for an ostensibly good cause (the stability of the region), but none of what they do is treated in a sympathetic or glamorous light; the entire language of the film invokes sexual abuse, as the one really good paper linked a while back pointed out, and put all sympathy with the ones being abused, ie. Officer Macer and her Mexican double, Silvio. And they both come to bad ends in this movie, but their mistake was not being good people in the "land of wolves", it was thinking that their respective goals (Mercer's* pursuit of Justice/revenge, Silvio's attempt to provide and protect his family) could be accomplished through playing along with awful people; the folks who are feeding and profiting off this conflict are not the friends of the little guy, no matter how much they seem to be, and just like the parable of the scorpion and the frog, they can't mix. All in all, as one person said in the thread, cant remember who, it seems Villanueve is hanging his ethical hat on the same peg that David Fincher did when he made Se7en: that there is good and decency in the world and it is absolutely worth upholding, but it must be held apart from evil because it can't survive contact with it. That's a bitter pill for some to swallow, because it's a very pointed shot across the bough to the entire idea of antiheroism, that we can use evil means for good ends; stuff like this movie shows how brutal and nasty some bad guys can be, and the idea that they can get away with this without somebody stopping them because it's "legal" is skin-crawling. So the counter-argument of using their methods to punish them is comforting for some, but fails to take into account the human ability to learn, to form habits; to do something for a good reason makes it easier for somebody to do it for a bad one, and once it becomes easy to be a monster, well... I like this viewpoint because provides a (slightly) more optimistic reading of the ending scene: when Mercer points her gun at Alejandro, it's an act of defiance, but it's a greater act of defiance when she doesn't shoot. It shows that she has rejected the acts which she has seen, and the idea that these acts and methods are "the future;" for all her lost innocence and misuse at the hands of the law she served, she's not going to fundamentally drat herself like they did. Does this mean she lives? Moves away? We don't know, but the fact that she makes that decision hints that she won't end up like Silvio, ground under the heels of an impartial legal creation; it may not mean that she is rewarded for it, but at least whatever comes is on her terms, and not her aggressors ("Earnest Hemingway once wrote: this world is a fine place, and worth fighting for. I believe in the second part.") *It'd be easier to call her Kate, but goddamn, nobody in the movie gave her the position the deference it deserved, calling her Kate Kate Kate all the time (a dark echo of the Taming of the Shrew), and I don't want to do that.
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Jan 29, 2016 23:44
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I think that what I enjoyed the most about Sicario was how elegantly it portrayed one aspect of the deep state as a function of American consumer demand. The depiction of the drug war as one market force attempting to crush another was really fluid without throwing away the emotional core of the film. It's really hard for films to capture power structures accurately and this one still floors me.
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Jan 30, 2016 01:55
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I mean yeah I was kind of boiling all the nuances of the film down to a single sentence in order to contrast it with the other movie. It's way more complicated than that.
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Jan 30, 2016 01:57
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resurgam40 posted:I like this viewpoint because provides a (slightly) more optimistic reading of the ending scene: when Mercer points her gun at Alejandro, it's an act of defiance, but it's a greater act of defiance when she doesn't shoot. Yes. This was when I knew the movie wasn't going to go full nihilist: she's been defeated in every sense except the deepest one, and she retains her soul. Signing the paper is an act compelled by violence, but she does not in turn use violence to compel.
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Jan 30, 2016 07:02
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Hello! If anyone is interested my business partner and I decided to take a stab analyzing the themes within Sicario, hopefully this is kosher. Sicario: The Mirage of the Moral World
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Feb 4, 2016 22:07
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You got me with the shot of the peanut package.
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Feb 4, 2016 22:17
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We thought it was important.
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Feb 4, 2016 22:37
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I agree! Surprisingly relevant.
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Feb 4, 2016 22:43
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Death By The Blues posted:Hello! Thank you for making and sharing this. One thing I'd want to contribute is something that's been brought up in this thread before, which is that despite the total collapse of institutional morality, at the end Kate still acts morally when she chooses to not shoot Alejandro. Sure he gets away, but nearly every Villeneuve movie is about how revenge is bad and what is truly good is breaking the cycle of violence.
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Feb 4, 2016 23:05
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The importance at that moment becomes the light or hope from within rather then the outside. If the opening shot reveals her and the institution of societal justice as positive with a white beam of light over powering the screen. She then over takes this notion of justice in the end and realize that she can be the only moral good. As the light from the sun now is completely clouded in the last scene . Her reliance on the law assuming that it is infallible is shattered and she must find strength within (the white shirt). Also, there is a repeated notion of looking down, which traditionally the person on the higher ground or showing is the individual in power. We are shown two key instances where she looks down at people, when Kate first meets Matt and finally in the end when she looks down from the balcony at Alejandro. There is an irony where she is presented on the higher ground but is at the weakest point in the story. Again, the film is showing us that this traditional paradigms are corrupted in a lawless and violent world, and they are essentially meaningless. But thank you so much for the kind words! Death By The Blues fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Feb 4, 2016 |
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Feb 4, 2016 23:14
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Death By The Blues posted:Hello! Really interesting dissection; the use of color and shadow throughout the film is something I noted, but not to this degree. Something I would like to argue, though, is the meaning of Macer's white at the end. You claim that it's indicative of nihilism, of a loss of faith in a moral world, but taken with the rest of the story, it doesn't seem to be indicative of a loss of faith in morality itself, but in the law as a moral instrument. White, after all, can be used to indicate innocence and purity, and it is telling that the colors used to indicate Kate do not run darker, as Graver and Alejandro's do, but lighter; it shows that Kate's belief in goodness and justice, while shaken, are extricated from the swirling vicissitudes of legal procedure (which, as has been noted, are never truly broken, at least where any American citizen is concerned) and made more clear and ironclad, making this paradoxically a story not of innocence lost, but regained, as simple morality- treat others as you want to be treated- is held above the purposefully convoluted construct of law. Kate began the movie as the ray of light an a dark world, and the light she remains. Why, otherwise, would she not shoot Alejandro at the end, or blow her own brains out, if nothing truly matters? Hell, why would it take an act of coercion to get her to sign the paper claiming it all was legal? Why not do it immediately, and possibly ask for some money off of it? e: Aaand beaten by one post. So slow after work...
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Feb 4, 2016 23:28
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Death By The Blues posted:Hello! This is off-topic but where do you post these besides here? Reddit?
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Feb 5, 2016 03:47
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We do submit to Reddit and send out submissions to film sites. Some people seem interested and we are getting positive responses which is truly humbling. We never thought so many people would see our videos.
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Feb 5, 2016 03:50
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Death By The Blues posted:We do submit to Reddit and send out submissions to film sites. Some people seem interested and we are getting positive responses which is truly humbling. We never thought so many people would see our videos. There's a serious dearth of thoughtful criticism type stuff in the popular YouTube format so I hope you guys are encouraged to do as many as you can.
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Feb 5, 2016 03:51
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Yes, please keep making and posting your videos. They are excellent.
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Feb 5, 2016 03:54
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Thank you. We were worried there where actually too many people doing it, so we had to really focus and commit to it. We would love to make a focused thread on CD, but I don't think we can self promote sadly.
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Feb 5, 2016 03:57
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Death By The Blues posted:Thank you. We were worried there where actually too many people doing it, so we had to really focus and commit to it. We would love to make a focused thread on CD, but I don't think we can self promote sadly.
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Feb 5, 2016 04:06
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Death By The Blues posted:Thank you. We were worried there where actually too many people doing it, so we had to really focus and commit to it. We would love to make a focused thread on CD, but I don't think we can self promote sadly. Please do, your video was great and I'd love more people to see them.
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Feb 5, 2016 04:10
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Wow......crazy......
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Feb 5, 2016 04:12
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Last Buffalo posted:The shock of the scene comes out the military precision, and how this mexican highway is suddenly a warzone like Baghdad circa 2005. It's not because the mean old inconsiderate Delta guys decided to overreact to the poor old 10 person strong kill squad. Kate isn't outraged at the killing, she's pissed because she's in a huge shooting and she has no idea what is even going on. The torture scene that follows is the first real illegal (and amoral) action they directly do. I'm responding late as usual, but thanks for this explanation, that scene had me wondering. Thinking about it, I probably would have gotten it easier if her line "what the gently caress" were replaced with something like "oh my god". Could just be me, but the former makes it sound like she's objecting to some specific decisions being made by the team, whereas I think the latter would more successfully convey her realization of how deep the rabbit hole goes, like "you guys are really prepared and nonchalant concerning the circumstances... this happens all the time, doesn't it?" (That might sound like pedantic complaining; I honestly just think it's interesting how a simple line tweak could alter my whole perception of a scene) resurgam40 posted:...Officer Macer and her Mexican double, Silvio. My God, I can't believe I didn't realize this. I liked the Silvio character but sort of found his scenes a bit tangential. It didn't even occur to me that he was a parallel to Kate.
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Feb 5, 2016 04:21
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GonSmithe posted:Please do, your video was great and I'd love more people to see them. Thank you again! We have posted the thread.
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Feb 5, 2016 04:27
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This is the thread that keeps on giving.
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Feb 5, 2016 05:05
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Death By The Blues posted:Hello! Holy poo poo, you are a goon among men! edit; also, your Serenity/genre vid is loving great BeanpolePeckerwood fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 05:10
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lizardman posted:I'm responding late as usual, but thanks for this explanation, that scene had me wondering. Thinking about it, I probably would have gotten it easier if her line "what the gently caress" were replaced with something like "oh my god". Could just be me, but the former makes it sound like she's objecting to some specific decisions being made by the team, whereas I think the latter would more successfully convey her realization of how deep the rabbit hole goes, like "you guys are really prepared and nonchalant concerning the circumstances... this happens all the time, doesn't it?" To be more pedantic, the line is actually "What the gently caress are we doing?" and not just "What the gently caress?"
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Feb 5, 2016 06:19
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Death By The Blues posted:Hello! This is good poo poo. Some of this this I picked up on myself, but not even close to all of it, and even for the parts I was aware of, this video is a more concise and accurate explanation than I could ever give. Please keep doing this.
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Feb 5, 2016 07:02
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