Monday, January 14, 2008

History repeating.


"Repetition compulsion is a big item in art these days. It's as if the structural exploration of Warhol's films, Glass's Music in Twelve Parts or Reich's Come Out or Deleuze's Difference and Repetition had worked their way into popular culture and blossomed in the age of chemical personality adjustment. Barely perceptible change within a field of sameness: the perfect form for a depressed age, from Atom Egoyan to Tsai Ming-liang, from Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us to Oliveira's I'm Going Home, from Roth's American Pastoral to DeLilo's Underworld, from Seinfeld to Ghost World to In the Mood For Love to trip-hop. [Wes Anderson] has mastered the form to perfection, making warm movies about angry, disassociated people who never arrive at reconciliation but always stumble upon it on their quest to recover what they've lost."

--Kent Jones, "Family Romance," 2001.

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