How good are you with challenging content?

[girasol]

I don't really know why I'd want to watch that stuff - my mum can't bear it.....

LOL I think you've answered your question there...

I 'enjoy' (probably not the right word) films where really terrible things happen - they remind me how fragile happiness really is. I'll never watch Wolf Creek though. The films that have more realistic themes, they are the ones that scare me the most and they're the ones I'm drawn to.

Has anyone ever seen 'Safe' by Todd Haynes? That was one that caught me completely by surprise, I had no idea what to expect, and thought it was quite disturbing.

 

[DotCommunist]

I'm drawn to ultraviolence - I find it compelling

what would you consider ultraviolence? as bad as Devils Rejects or Hostel?

I've heard the term applied to Clockwork Orange, which is fairly tame in the violence department. Ditto for Natural Born Killers

 

[Orang Utan]

what would you consider ultraviolence? as bad as Devils Rejects or Hostel?

I mean horror violence as opposed to action violence - I find fights/kung fu shit boring as a rule

 

[Idaho]

I won't word this well but... do they not make films and write books like this to explore that side of humanity? To tell stories about different human experiences?

If it wasn't fiction would it make it ok?

I didn't articulate it well. I don't have a problem with darker stories and grim things in films. It is the line between dramatic portrayal and gratuity. Nil by Mouth was never gratuitious, although very grim. Requiem for a Dream was conceptually a bit gratuitious, but not what happened on the screen.

Pan's Labyrinth was a good example of what you can show without showing it. It seems like a brutal and gory film, but there isn't actually that much shown. Resevoir dogs is the other end of the spectrum. Not much content, but lots of stylised violence.

 

[Idaho]

I mean horror violence as opposed to action violence - I find fights/kung fu shit boring as a rule

You dog! You insult my ancestors *chop*
[/bad synch]

 

[Pieface]

I 'enjoy' (probably not the right word) films where really terrible things happen - they remind me how fragile happiness really is.

that's what I was trying to get at with this post:

Maybe it's because you need the dark to have the light ifyswim? Concentrating on the bleak and not ignoring it makes the good shine even brighter?

Is that appalling bollocks?

Like the image of the crucifixion that's everywhere in christian iconography - Jesus's love is thrown into greater relief because of the horror of his death? Dark and light....good and bad.....

I think we need this sort of art.

 

[kyser_soze]

Come And See was the last film I got that 'merrr' feeling about being a voyeur, that level of involvement...stuff like Irreversible is too obviously attempting to make the audience the voyeur and, as has been noted, say 'Look! Look at what I can do'...

As for watching again...there aren't any I'd never watch again, but there are more than a few I have to be in the right frame of mind to watch - Straw Dogs, Deliverance, Nil By Mouth...but then I also find Kes a really hard film to watch as well...a lot of the stuff on that list is more 'Can't be arsed to watch it again' rather than 'too painful'...

HAving said that, thinking about When the Wind Blows has given me a lump in my throat...

 

[Orang Utan]

Re: Violence - there's violence people enjoy cos it's 'deserved', there's violence people experience on a dramatic level cos you 'feel' what they're going through, there's violence which is experienced as a cathartic thing, and there's gratuitous violence that is 'enjoyed' purely as a novelty. Are there any films out there in which an 'evil' perpetrator is tortured or experiences horrible suffering, yet the experience is horrific for us too? I found the ending of a recent film rather shocking cos the evil protagonist gets brutally murdered despite no longer being a threat, and yet we're expected to 'enjoy' his death. That made me uncomfortable. I would like a film-maker to be brave enough to suggest that violence, no matter who perpetrates it, psycho or vigilante or victim, diminishes us all. Is that too much too ask? I guess Funny Games and Irreversible almost get there

 

[kyser_soze]

TBH most movie violence I can blank out as being cartoon - but when the violence in a movie feels real (i.e. it's not a device of an action sequence)...I dunno, I think some peeps might get what I'm on about...

 

[moomoo]

I can't watch anything that has domestic violence, child cruelty, sad endings, death, cruelty to animals or general nastiness in it.......

I started watching Stuart, a Life Backwards when it was on but had to turn it over, far too distressing and if I watch anything like that it affects me for days afterwards.

I'm far too much of a sensitive soul.

 

[trashpony]

I am absolutely rubbish. I have never seen any of the films in that list because I'm such a total wimp.

But I've seen Natural Born Killers, Deliverance, The Elephant Man and didn't find them difficult to watch at all. I suspect because in the first two, they did have that cartoonish quality. And in the latter because it was a different era (and shot in b&w possibly as well?) I found it easier to disassociate myself from it.

I struggle most with stuff I identify with - rape scenes or any domestic violence I find hard to watch. Similarly alcoholism/drug dependency stuff.