Was I Wrong About The Irishman?

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#ThomasFlight #VideoEssay

Chapters:
0:00 It's Complicated
4:42 Against Objectivism
11:17 Against Relativism

[ThomasFlight]

As a patron you get access to a monthly podcast where I give an overview of everything I watch each month, and what I'm working on in the future.

[serjack]

"I once asked Akira Kurosawa why he had chosen to frame a shot in Ran in a particular way. His answer was that if he’d panned the camera one inch to the left, the Sony factory would be sitting there exposed, and if he’d panned an inch to the right, we would see the airport—neither of which belonged in a period movie. Only the person who’s made the movie knows what goes into the decisions that result in any piece of work. They can be anything from budget requirements to divine inspiration."
sidney lumet, making movies

[ColinJAY]

Thomas is so good at film analysis, that he's moved on to analyzing his film analysis. He's really out here playing chess.

[LucasPreti]

Mark Kermode has a great line: “what does he know? He only _made_ the movie, I _watched_ it.”

[MrJamesC]

Stanley Kubrick: “I think the best thing is when an audience looks at the film and wonders whether something that they see is an accident or whether the director or writer meant them to know it."

[VaatiVidya]

This video reminds me of the concept of "Death of the Author", which legitimises the reader's interpretation even over that of the author, as the author's content is created to be read, not written. Thus, the reader's interpretation is paramount. Great video!

[PiffPeterson]

my dads fav movie is Top Gun but when i say to him my interpretation is that it is a gay romance movie he calls me a commie

[AndyGalligan]

Someone once suggested to me that 'Death of the Author' is a satirical essay and I got trapped in a paradox trying to figure out what Roland Barthes intent was

[Beatmeup]

I’m surprised you didn’t mention PTA in this. I love his reactions to people asking him deep questions about their personal analysis of his films. He just smiles with a pause to think about it and says “Yeah, I like that”

[Design.Theory]

9:13 is a great encapsulation of why many interpretations of a piece of art can still be valid. A director can say that a shot's implicit meaning does (or does not) mean something, sure...but every life experience the director has had informs their decisions around framing shots, etc. Great video. Keep up the good work.

[claytonromero]

As a creative, I struggle so much with where the line is between when my creative works stop being “mine” and you’ve done an awesome job articulating that!!

[swolleneyes]

I often wondered this in english class when we had to interpret a poet or author's intent. The practice often felt like one's own projection/assumption and thought it was absurd to be graded poorly if your own interpretation wasn't aligned with the "accepted" interpretation. Thank you for the thoughtful take.

[wangjimbo]

This reminds me of the time my cinematography teacher who worked on a very famous film shared his experiences on set with this renowned cinematographer. People like to decipher his decisions on making the shots look wobbly and stylistic in this one scene with handheld low shutter speed movements when in reality he just drank too much the day before the shoot and is hungover and sleepy. Best story I’ve heard in film school.

[franciscoc]

My brother is a song writer and one of his songs made me think about climate change. I told him about it and he told me it was about an accident but that he liked my interpretation.
Art is not always understood in the same way and there is the beauty. It's like a conversation, sometimes the words have several meanings. Excellent work

[shamptown]

Thomas gets meta. I love it. Great analysis. I watch video essays not to get a definitive interpretation of a work of art but to learn how others derive meaning from art. I am often moved by a film or a novel or a painting but can't articulate why I had the reaction I did. Video essays open a gateway to develop my own analysis by illuminating details I missed or providing context I was unaware of. That's why I value them regardless of the artist's actual intent. I also like to think that part of what makes a work of art successful are the "happy accidents" that seem to find their way into so many works of true genius. An artist may not attribute meaning to a decision, or their intended meaning may be completely lost on an audience, but that decision can still have a tremendous impact on an audience's ability to resonate with a work of art.

[The_Reviewist]

Fascinating.
I find this sort of discussion endlessly interesting, both as a critic and someone who works in narrative and film.
It reminds me of a story I once heard of a poet who was told that a poem they wrote was being taught at a local community college and used as part of an exam.
For fun, they asked if they could submit an exam paper anonymously, and when this was arranged, they failed the exam.

The "correct" interpretation of the poem, as according to the examiners was that the piece (about a rose), represented the crucifixion, with the rose representing Christ.
The poet was amazed as apparently it literally was just a poem about a rose.

[antoinepetrov]

If I could ask Kubrick two questions, they would be: "Do you read people's interpretations of your films?" and if so, "Is any or most of it intentional?" If most of us are right, and if he answered honestly, I think he'd say all of it was intentional.

[batman]

Honestly, I think fan analysis can provide intriguing perspectives that enhance the consumption of art, even if such perspectives don’t align with authorial intent. In fact, such analysis can make the creator seem much cleverer than they really are, which can be very flattering. For example, I’m a writer. On one occasion, a reader thought a storm in one of my books was a metaphor for the inner turmoil in the minds of the characters. In truth, I just thought the storm provided atmosphere, but such a perspective was very enlightening.

[jumahn]

"I never said she stole it."

This sentence can have six different interpretations based on which word you emphasize in your head while reading it. And each is valid, but the author only meant it one way - so I'd say the onus is on the author to provide that additional context which makes it clear how they wanted it read.

[TheDankCat]

My least favorite book I had to read in grade school was “The Old Man and the Sea” by Hemingway. The silliest thing about it is our teachers made us write all these essays breaking down the symbolisms of the story, when Ernest Hemingway himself said “There’s no symbolism I just wrote a book about an old man going fishing lmao.”