I Hear Voices...
Robert Eggers is the Randy Orton of Directors (and I know you have no idea what that means...)
This is professional wrestler Randy Orton, as seen above doing the Randy Orton pose (he’s been doing it longer than Megan Rapino).
Randy is a 3rd generation professional wrestler, legendary dickhead, and technocally speaking, one of the best to ever do it. He is smooth, he is fast, he understands pace and tension, he has the look and passes “the airport test”of if you saw him in an airport would you think he was a larger than life professional wrestler, and is responsible for some of the most singularly breathtaking feats of coordination ever seen in a professional wrestling match.
And the thing is, he’s kinda boring.
Randy Orton is methodical, and he is smooth. That means he effortlessly controls the pace of a match, and while it does build up to his finisher, and to the other exciting “high spots” in the match, instead of there being a steady crescendo that builds up to those big moments, you get methodical excellence, which is boring, then you get flashes of excitement.
The thing is, when you listen to other wrestlers talk about him (when they’re not talking about how much of a raging prick he was, just a legendarily ranging prick… I mean look at this pic of him, he looks like if date rape was a person… please note he doesn’t have any SA allegations against him), they talk about how good he is.
I was exchanging emails with my ex’s boyfriend a while ago, he’s a former small time pro wrestler, and he was talking about how Orton does everything right in the ring, how he is measured, and not flawless, but if you know what you’re looking for, is so smooth and does all the little things with so much finesse that he might as well be perfect.
The thing is, you have to know what to look for, and you have to understand how difficult the little things are to be impressed by him. Otherwise, unless he’s doing something incredibly thrilling, well…
He’s kinda boring.
How can a six foot five super athlete be kind of boring? Predictability, lack of escalating dynamism, and the kiss of death for excitement in a pro wrestling match, the rest hold.
Rest hold are when you grab your opponent in a hold, ostensibly a maneuver to wear them or make them submit, but one that has no real threat of ending the match, like a headlock.
Randy Orton uses a lot of rest holds, and it’s smart from a career longevity perspective, and while you would think that the longer he goes on not doing anything cool, the more the anticipation for the cool moments will build… But you can get too bored, especially when you know the eventuality of what’s coming.
But then, he also does this.
What you’re seeing is the long haired guy going for his finishing move, stomping on someone’s head, and in this case jumping higher than usual so Orton has the split second he needs to grab long haired guy by the head and drop him to the ground.
Anyone can appreciate how cool that it, but the rest of the time, that’s right…
He’s kind of boring.
But his theme song isn’t, his theme song’s great, rad, dumb screachy metal, and to explain the title of this article, the first line of the song is, “I heat voices in my head.”
You know, just like Mina Harker Ellen in Nosferatu, a movie that, like Randy Orton, absolutely looks the part, has moments of thrilling drama, and if you know what you’re looking for is methodically and technically perfect, but if you don’t, is…
That’s right, say the catch phrase with me like an audience of wrestling fans…
Kinda boring.
Robert Eggers is a true cinematic technician, a master of his craft who understands all of his tools and wields them to make compelling, interesting, technically flawless movies (okay, the color balance was a little off in Nosferatu…), at least if you know what you’re looking for.
He’s the kind of director that people that went to film school, or who know and care about “the craft of cinema”, love. They love him because they care about the things he does so well, and while sometimes caring about “the craft of cinema” is an exercise in self-importance, wielding that kind of perspective and/or education as an act of cultural elevation, movies being movies, it’s easier and more culturally valuable to know what good and artistic technical filmmaking is than, say, knowing what makes up technical excellence in professional wrestling.
But either way, and in any art, if you do not understand the technical accomplishments, and the technique doesn’t transcend itself into the story and action of the art itself, it becomes a burden to pace, and when art is deliberately methodical to batter the audience into submission, to make them desperate for anything to happen to relieve the tension…
Well, you move from heightening anticipation to…
Say it with me now…
You know the words…
Kinda Boring!
But if you are wowed by the presentation, either intellectually, emotionally, or both, then…
You’re a film snob, or a goth, or a gothy film snob, and that’s okay.
I’ve enjoyed every Eggers movie I’ve seen, kinda boring or not, and where Eggers diverts from Orton is that his movies aren’t predictable… well, unless you know Dracula or Hamlet… but even then…
No, anyhow, what I was saying is that his movies are surprising, and they’re not just building up to the big finish you’re anticipating, just like you, good reader, are expecting me to say that they can both be surprising, while also being kinda boring as a whole.
I mean, I wasn’t expecting full frontal Cockferatu or necrophilia, but where Eggers is like Orton is that his methodical and technical excellence and control might not be deliberately or intentionally working against the dramatic escalation and climaxes of his movies, but it’s harder to get excited about exciting things when you’re kinda bored.
Not because it’s bad or lacking, but because it’s just… you know…
Kinda boring.