ruggedhound192 said:I know enough to tell you there’s basically zero direction here. It’s just constant back-and-forth, plan after plan, counterplan after counterplan... what was that 15 minutes of nothingness followed by a half-baked finale. Honestly, you could find better directing in any soap opera, at least those people actually know the craft. And I don't see what being a local matters in this whole mess, it's the exact same story with Pleic🙄
When I hear someone reduce directing to mere framing, it’s obvious they don't grasp the essence of film artistry or the skill of directing. "Shot, reverse shot... fifteen minutes later and it's just half-total"... by that logic, the central scenes in many of Bergman's films were framed exactly that way. In contrast to his work, you see so many "virtuosic" shots in almost every other American B-movie, which remain largely worthless despite the technique. Directing isn't just about framing. Good—or mediocre—framing is simply one element that helps define whether direction is successful. Framing is a skill that only becomes an art form in the hands of a rare few, those who use it to establish a distinct directorial signature (think Polanski, Hitchcock, Spielberg, Altman, Lynch, Kubrick... or from our current circle, Bauer, Petrovic, Babaja, Ogresta, Tadic...)
The genius of Chaplin's films, particularly his features, relies heavily on relatively long medium shots. Following
ruggedhound192's logic, one might assume they are "badly directed." He doesn't seem interested in the content within those frames—what is present and what isn't—nor does he realize that what is left out of the frame is also part of the direction. Directing is a system of thought, a perspective, a worldview...