It's one of those "I know it when I see it" things. Problem is, it's also highly subjective, so the person next to you - or the person who reads your review - may have no idea what you mean when you say, or write, that a film is "sentimental," or "manipulative." They don't see it that way. So you've got to try and give some detail to what you meant.

So what do we mean when we say those things? They are two different things, I think, but they often go together: films that I would label sentimental often seem manipulative as well: they are trying to manipulate me into feeling something, rather than simply allowing my response to come naturally. But again, highly subjective, this perception. Or is it?

This comes out of a brief internet chat with another stalward A&Fer, who liked AUGUST RUSH more than I did (which wouldn't be hard). But as soon as I said that I thought the film was sentimental, manipulative, contrived, I realized that he clearly didn't see it that way or he wouldn't like the film. (Or is that necessarily so? I guess sometimes there are reasons why we perceive a film as being sent/man/cont and still like it, in spite of those faults. Indeed, there are people who probably like films entirely because they are s/m/c, though they'd never use those words.) As I tried to think quickly how to express specifics in the artistry of the film which I found to be examples of those sins, I realized this is an intriguing challenge.

Over to y'all. Time for church.

I forget the exact quote but I remember a Kurosawa documentary where Donald Richie was talking about Ikiru. He said something along the lines of "Sentimentality is unearned emotion.", his argument being that Kurosawa was not sentimental since he earns the emotion. I'm not sure I agree with that since I can think of films like It's a Wonderful Life that are absolutely "sentimental" (ie. they bring up warm wholesome feelings) but they earn those emotions.

To me films like Crash are manipulative and contrived. Not to rehash the debates about that film, but I thought Haggis looked at his characters like human yin-yang symbols. Completely one way (racist, hateful) one moment and completely the opposite (loving, heroic, self sacrificing) the other. I know some people considered Magnolia to be manipulative and contrived but PT Anderson seems to love his characters (or is it just the actors?) enough to shade them in with all the gray areas. Haggis treated the characters in Crash like pawns in the Racism board game. The scene when the locksmith thinks his daughter has been shot was what I consider to be classic example of being manipulative.

Very good thoughts. By which I suppose I mean (I'm embarassed to admit) that I agree with everything you said! Including your assessments of each of the films you cited. Sheesh. How often does that happen?

So to keep digging at this. How does IKIRU earn its emotion? And what is it about MAGNOLIA that makes both of us believe that Anderson cares about his characters, and is actually tracking their stories as they unfold rather than moving them like pieces in a board game? It seems an unproveable assertion to say that Anderson loves his characters and Haggis doesn't, but both of us intuit this to be true. What about the screenplays and/or direction creates this impression?

Certainly some of this is purely subjective. Jeffrey O sees ELECTION or ABOUT SCHMIDT and is utterly convinced that Payne has contempt for his characters; I see the same films and perceive affection, respect, love.

Back to CRASH. Part of what ruined the film for me was how schematic the characters seemed to be. I began to sense that if a character started out "bad," they would surprise us by turning "good," and vice versa. The more times this actually occurred, the more I would hear screenwriting maxims run through my head. The story structure came to seem programmatic. Overdetermined by the writer.

As a writer of fiction, I have had many occasions when characters in a scene (as it's being written) begin to take on life, and do or say something I didn't at all have in mind for them. At those moments I can choose to shut them up, force them to conform to what I wanted them to do or say. Or I can choose to let them deviate from my plan and see where they take things. Which is riskier. Might wreck my whole plan. But it seems to me that when I choose the latter, I end up with characters who don't seem like cardboard constructs; they seem like human beings. Probably because my plot design came significantly from my planning brain, and the character's deviation from my intuition.

Certainly I know as an actor that I simply cannot go into rehearsal with a plan mapped out, decisions made ahead of time about how to play certain moments, lines, etc. I need to work without that kind of net, and abandon myself to whatever happens in the rehearsal hall, in response to the other actors, the text, everything.

So I wonder if what we sense in Haggis' script is an over-determined quality. That the character design was mapped out ahead of time, and each character if simply filling a thematic requirement, without room to veer off in a surprising direction. Like human beings do.

Where in IKIRU, I sense that Mr Watanabe is thoroughly real. He seems to have grown out of a deep understanding of human nature, out of close observation of how people really function. I don't find him possible to predict, because he's human, not a plot function.

Now, that hasn't really dug into AUGUST RUSH, though. Specifically why did it seem so false? What elements of the story rang false, and caused me to label it sentimental and manipulative.

One last jotting. When I think "manipulative," I think of either the first or second CROCODILE DUNDEE movie. I was watching the thing, thought bits were funny, but was growing to really dislike it - or at least the romance element. Quite detached from the film by this point. Then there's an appallingly improbable scene where the two lovers run together in a subway station. Just stupid. But the music swelled, and I literally had tears appear in my eyes. My head was going, "how incredibly stupid." Even my emotions weren't engaged. But the composer found the "on" switch for the tear ducts. Now THAT was manipulative.

I was in my teens when I saw Crocodile Dundee but I still remember that scene. An older friend of mine later told me that the subway scene was a sly Aussie referrence. Dundee gets up on the passengers' shoulders the way an Australian sheepdog will stand on the sheep so the others can see him. Ok, enough of that digression. You bring up a good point though. Is it only "manipulative" when we are aware the film makers are flipping an on switch? In all fairness PT Anderson had to be aware that he would be flipping the on switch when Tom Cruise visits his dying father and breaks down at his bedside. Why is it then that I don't resent him for doing so?

If you don't mind my joining in the discussion, I think it depends on why PT Anderson has Cruise visit his father. Is he doing it because this will really get the audience crying? Or because it needs to happen as part of the story of these men's lives? One of Magnolia's themes is redemption and to that end, these fellas find it.
To me, the why is everything. Movies that feel manipulative to me make me think the director wants me to feel this, that that is his only goal in planning the scene, and everything that happened in the scene -- including the over-the-top score -- is toward that end. YUK! Honestly, I rarely make it through the whole movie when it's so contrived. By the way, it's why I was SO DISAPPOINTED with Forrest Gump. So contrived.

I'm sure there's an apt Hitchcock quote about cinema being manipulation, but I can't find it at the moment.

Matt

I'll add to the questioning...

Why is it that some films which moved us when we were younger or perhaps on a first viewing as an adult, no longer move us when we look back, and we see their devices/narrative/music/whatever as agents of manipulation? I loved Forrest Gump and found it moving when I was 17. But now, I see what Annelise and others have pointed out about the film. I could list a buffet of films that brought me with them once, but now leave me cold and feel contrived.

Does this mean the films were aimed at the immature thinker/cinaste/feeler/human? Is it a fault that they connect with people with a certain range of experiences but not others? Is my initial experience less valid now that I've grown to see those films as contirved?

No answers. Just more fuel for the fire.

It just means critics are more cold hearted and cynical.

As I was readiing through this thread, I thought the very same thing. Some of my favorite films from my youth still stand up, yet others have not worn well. Two movies that I've probably seen an equal number of times came to mind. I'm still amazed and moved by The Wizard of Oz, but I can no longer make it through E.T., which I saw over and over in a theatre. But I can't pinpoint when E.T.'s emotional impact no longer worked for me. Perhaps it may have to do with the fact that a couple of Spielberg's later films (Always and Hook spring to mind) seemed to employ many of the same devices that E.T. used, but to a much lesser effect, almost to the point of laziness on the part of the director. These films then seemed to have a kind of backlash on the couple of occassions when I've tried to watch E.T. What didn't seem heavyhanded at the time of it's release, seems very heavyhanded now, due in part to how the heavyhanded approach didn't work for me in his later films.


*Found that link to E.T. and Sentimentalism in Film

Yeah, I am wondering about the difference between what appear to be three different types of "manipulating" or contrived cinema (manipulating seems slightly less pejorative than manipulative for some reason). Hitchcock, Von Trier, and Haneke, for example, produce cinema that by craft and design intend to trick or manipulate the viewer with the result that they are disoriented, even de-sentimentalized. Others, such as Away From Her, The Barbarian Invasions, The Sweet Hereafter, or Whale Rider moved me emotionally or sentimentally because of the sheer scope of their humanity and artistic excellence. And then there is the Crocodile Dundee moment that also gave me sentimental-like emotions (like an insurance commercial) because of finding some basic movie equation that makes people feel sentimental. I would toss Crash in this category as well, as it is demonstrably formulaic in its manipulations.

If we are trying to put our finger on the difference between the last two kinds of film, it seems to be one that involves the quality of the sentimentality involved. I don't mind reverse engineering my feelings about a film, and if I do this with Crocodile Dundee and Away From Her, it is easy to see which film has produced a more sustained, reflective emotional response. Same thing with Magnolia and Crash. There are a lot of structural similarities between the two, but Magnolia succeeds in producing an authentic response, whereas the feelings evoked by Crash are illusory, and therefore petty. So rather than trying to explain while Crocodile Dundee is not as "good" as Away From Her, I would rather talk with someone about the sustainability of sentimental responses to each, and ascribe value to each film based on this judgment.

So maybe all those films that struck us as sentimental while younger really did produce legitimate sentimental feelings, but these feelings were very diluted versions of feelings we would have about much more reflective and thoughtful films seen later in life. Akin to the analogy of being in Thomas' thought, there is an analogy of sentimentality in movies?

ed: Wow Baal, great thread link. Apparently, I just repeated JO here.

Very interesting.

It is clear that the words 'manipulative' and 'sentimental' are used (almost) exclusively in a perjorative way, but that's not entirely fair. Artists of all sorts want to elicit emotional responses from their audience. Even recognising the complexity and diversity of emotional response, an artist still, I think, would like the audience to respond in certain ways. A comedian wants us to laugh, not be overwhelmed by melancholy. Purcell didn't want people to be feeling joyous and uplifted while listening to Dido's lament. We then need to reflect on how these responses are triggered. Comedians have certain techniques (classical rhetorical techniques, often) which are used to create a gag, in particular an unexpected contrast. Is a comedian manipulating us? Yes. Does that matter? Not if the joke's a good one. Similarly, musicians have certain techniques to create a particular feel and mood and texture. Need something sad? Switch to a minor key and slow down. Is a musician manipulating us by choosing to do these things? Yes. Does that matter? Not if he does it well. These are easy examples, but I think they help us recognise that artists can be legitimately manipulating our emotions at some level. And I think the same kind of thing applies to film-making

Perhaps we then need to ask whether an artist can produce a work without any expectation of what emotional response it will elicit. I'm doubtful. I suspect at the very least, an artist's work is a reflection of his or her emotional state at the time, and that they would like us to feel the same.

So, I then find myself asking, do I dismiss something as 'manipulative' because I don't feel what the film-maker wants me to feel, but I can see where he/she would like me to be going? Or is it because the filmmakers have failed to bring me sufficiently into the world of the film, so that I see the techniques more clearly than I feel the emotion? Or is it because the techniques have been rolled out in a mechanical way without sufficient creativity or subtlety?

I think 'manipulative' is sometimes a word designed to close down discussion, because it subtly puts pressure on those of us who enjoyed the work not to seem unsophisticated, so that we have been taken in by these crude techniques designed to make us feel certain things. In which case, it's a manipulative word to use. On the other hand, to say that I was not drawn in sufficiently so that I was still too aware of technique, rather than being caught up in the story, is to admit that the problem may be with me as well as with the filmmaker.

Similarly with 'sentimental'. Sentiment is legitimate until it is exaggerated and becomes sentimental. But whether or not I perceive something as sentimental is also to do with me emotional state as I come to the film. An extreme example: I can't bear Wizard of Oz, I'm afraid, so I perceive it as sentimental because I'm hostile to it from the outset.

Sorry, I'm rambling on here, not saying anything substantially different to what has already been said. I'm just enjoying being back for an hour!

tony

And its good to have you back. I wish I could ramble that eloquently (heck I wish I could write that eloquently)

Matt