Guinness Part 2: reappraisals etc.
Two things happened to me recently. I am now going to attempt to combine them in a single post. Brace yourselves…
A couple of weeks ago I was watching Se7en. I love that film and have probably seen it 20-30 times. It’s such a brilliant reworking of crime thriller clichés that you almost forget the context of its appearance in 1995 (yes – it’s nearly 20 years old). The mid-nineties was jam-packed with fucking awful films (probably more so than now, and that’s saying something), so I just thought I’d check if Se7en was nominated for any Oscars, and if not, what was voted in ahead of it.
Even if we consider that Best Picture might have been a stretch given the subject matter, I think it’s fair to say that the photography, screenplay, art direction and direction were all faultless. So let’s just see what won:
Best Picture was Braveheart, the kind of film (ageing actor directing an epic – see Dances with Wolves, Unforgiven etc.) the Academy loved back then. But Se7en wasn’t even among the nominees, one of which was Babe – yes, the film about the talking pig.
A similar list for Best Director: no nomination for Se7en‘s David Fincher, but good old racist Mel Gibson won and the Babe director was nominated.
Screenplay was actually quite a good category that year. The Usual Suspects won, but other nominees included Toy Story, Nixon and Mighty Aphrodite. No Se7en.
Art Direction: again nothing for Se7en, but another nod for Babe and one for a film called A Little Princess.
Cinematography? Surely, surely this would break Se7en‘s duck. Nope, and one of the nominees was Batman Forever – yes, the really shit one with Jim Carrey as The Riddler.
Se7en did manage an editing nomination but lost out to Apollo 13.
So what I’m trying to say is that certain brilliant things may not be appreciated as such when people first experience them. The context might be wrong, the shock of the new might be too great or it might have needed time to marinade, revealing its depths and secrets with each passing view. Babe might as well be a pork pie for all the resonance it achieved, whereas Se7en lives on, making Gluttony eat several of the Babe pies over a protracted period of insane torture.
Which brings me to the second thing.
After last week’s post about Surfer vs NoitulovE I thought about the other Guinness ads that were mentioned in the comments. Then I thought about them some more. But it wasn’t till a few days later that I remembered one that was never even mentioned, and it’s a belter:
So why did no one mentioned the much-lauded Snails? It’s really good, everyone loved it at the time and it won a load of awards. I can only think that there must be a flipside to the Se7en phenomenon of appreciation after the fact, and that is the complete disappearance of something of real quality. For me this can take many forms: Radiohead’s Hail To The Thief album fell off my radar for several years; The Lives Of Others is a masterpiece that floated away like smoke, and I sometimes forget all about liquorice catherine wheels for months.
The memory’s a funny old thing, but if it could be a bit more reliable I’d feel less like shoving a screwdriver into my ear.
I’ve got it in my head that ‘Snails’ was a happy accident – that the team travelled out to Costa Rica (or some such) to film an entirely different ad, only to be struck by tropical storms for days, losing money hand over fist with every hour that passed. They subsequently ended up shooting ‘Snails’ in a day, on the first sunny day they’d had in a fortnight, with the last of the Client’s money, after some kind of ‘if you’re not coming back with an ad, don’t bother coming back at all, you shits’ edict from the mothership. Have I COMPLETELY made that up?
though production is great for both spots, here’s what i think made surfer superior:
– you wouldn’t need/necessarily see it twice
– there’s only one reveal (fast snail) while surfer unraveled and built up at the same time throughout the spot
– the music from surfer immediately grabs you
– surfer never would’ve existed w/o the creatives’m minds. fast snails, snail races aren’t necessarily great.
This is very well made. But why do the snails run so fast? This isn’t in the same league as the other spots.
I never liked it.
Even though it’s a clever idea.
Saw it once. Never wanted to see it again.
I suppose I was just spoilt by surfer and swim black.
@ALS: Cuba, but otherwise near as dammit.
Still prefer Dream Club to all the other Guinness ads
Agree with Fraggle. The concept of snail racing is great, but they ruined it when the critters run fast.
Glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t get why they run fast. Seems to make no sense with the line, to me anyway.
I’m with you Scampy Simon. The amazing direction, editing, music and production design couldn’t disguise the fact that it was a crap joke. There was no wait for the people depicted in the ad, only for us, the audience. Or something that Ben will explain better than I can.
I watched the credits for Seven only yesterday. Yep, thieving again…
@ben: I’m SO good at advertising.
To go back to that pretentiously Kierkegaardian aesthetic method I mentioned in the last Guinness post – it is the idea that gives something its timelessness.
Se7en has an amazing idea. The execution cannot age it. The other films do not. So they come and go.
I don’t know if snail racing is even an idea. It’s a good chapter in the bigger story of ‘Good Things come to Those Who Wait.’ But there’s a reason I don’t go to the Snail Races on a Sunday – it’s boring. I think the bad joke was necessary to make the ad something other than a nice film of something boring that already exists. As Adam says, it’s just a bad joke. The idea is the bad joke. And now the beautiful Cuban styling is starting to look old too.
I think a good parallel could be music. Consider the song ‘Help!’ by the Beatles. The production values are ancient and have no relevance to us today. But the melody – the idea- is so pure that it stands the test of time. Anyone can pick up that song and execute it their own way and the idea stays exactly the same. You can reinterpret it, make it yours but, in essence, the idea is immutable.
The same cannot be said of a Dubstep song or a Leftfield track. Because the idea is not there. It’s all style and execution. And in 50 years Dubstep will sound as ancient as a harpsichord does today.
Ideas stick. Executions do not.
And time can often prove our contemporary artistic judgements to be wrong.
Will our kids listen to the Roni Size album that beat OK Computer to the Mercury Music Prize in 97, for example? I doubt it. They’ll have another bunch of rhythms to dance to. But OK Computer will be around for ages.
Fucking love Roni Size. Radiohead feels more dated to me!
I love him too. And Radiohead IS more dated. But it’s what they’ll say in 20 years that is intriguing.
Fuck off radiohead is dated. Ok computer is still fucking amazing and relevant 16 fuckng years later! Roni size was very of the time IMO.