So last night I saw Once (trailer), just a wonderful, beautiful film. In addition to its purely cinematic qualities (story, acting, photography, etc.), it's also a welcome new take on the musical genre. While standard musicals generally just have a story (itself often non-musical, like an Austrian ex-nun taking care of a military officer's children, or the criminal underworld in Victorian London) with songs interspersed, Once integrates its musical naturally by making its main characters musicians who actually have a logical reason to break into song. I also loved how the relationship between the guy and the girl (those are their names according to the credits and IMDB) skirts the edges of romance and platonic friendship, instead of going the standard route of just being the former. It made the depiction of that relationship much more natural, realistic, and honest than what we usually see, especially in musicals. On top of that, the music was great, too; I have a hankering now to go buy the soundtrack. Once is a well made, touching, and unconventional film, whose songs alone would make it worth seeing if the rest of it weren't great as well.
The night before, I saw Come and See (trailer, good New York Times article), by Soviet director Elem Klimov. Simply, if somewhat glibly, put, this is a war movie that makes every other war movie ever made look like Daddy Day Care. Taking place in 1943 in German-occupied Byelorussia (today's Belarus), it depicts an adolescent boy who joins the Soviet partisans with hopes of adventure, whose innocence, courage, and almost his humanity are beaten out of him by the horrors of war. By the end, the boy looks like a cross between a 70-year-old man and a beaten dog. In many respects, it seemed almost like a depiction of the Fall of Man, with its young couple thrown out of their forest "paradise" into a cruel, hard world. I found out about this film thanks to The Onion A.V. Club's list, "Not Again: 24 Great Films Too Painful to Watch Twice," and it certainly deserves its place on that list; seeing it once is a must, seeing it more than that is probably masochism. It's a stunning, unforgettable film, more terrifying and disgusting than any horror movie, and a powerful indictment of all war (even justifiable war, like the partisans' fight against the Nazis), but following it up with a film like Once was probably a good idea.
This doesn't really have to do with the film itself, so I didn't mention it in the post, but I figure I'll menion it here. The trailer for "Come and See" available on Youtube has no audio, because evidently that violates copyright restrictions. Can someone explain how Mozart's Requiem, a song written over two centuries ago, and recorded decades ago in the Soviet Union of all places, can be under copyright? Don't people post videos with music on Youtube every day? Do all of them really ask the copyright-holders for permission every time they do that? I know very little about how Youtube works (other than just watching videos), so does anyone have an explanation for this? I'm baffled.
ReplyDeleteOwen, what you really need to understand is that the Internet is not a dump truck, it's a series of tubes. I'm not exactly sure what the situation is but I would say there are two possibilities. The first is that Google would get videos without background music and so instead of pulling people's videos they gave the option to remove the audio. This because a bigger problem when a deal they had with Warner and Universal fell apart and they had to pull a bunch of content off. The other companies have agreements (revenue sharing) where they allow YouTube to host videos that have their music. For the two that pulled out, in many cases Google elected to silence videos instead of pull them completely. Under this scenario, there might be confusion (I think they figure it out from technical information in the file, not by listening to a bunch of individual files) that accidently stripped this audio. The second situation could be that Warner mistakingly flagged this as infringing and so Google had to comply because the way the copyright law (DMCA) works, if they make a claim to Google, it has to comply and then the person who posted it can appeal to have it put back up. There are a lot of infringing videos on YouTube because it operates as what is known as a "safe harbor" that does not screen what it hosts ahead of time so is not responsible for copyright infringement unless it refuses to take something down. There is a rather remote chance that Warner does actually own a copyright here as performances and not just compositions can be copyrighted and those rights can extend for decades if they are renewed. I find that pretty unlikely and it is probably that some sort of error flagged this as having infringing audio and it got stripped automatically.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Aren't you the law student?
P.P.S. I have been formulating an idea for a post in my mind and been meaning to right it (gotta watch one more movie first) and this gave me a perfect opening. Well played.
The YouTube video has a note saying: "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG. The audio has been disabled." So my impression was that YouTube themselves had done the disabling, presumably after Warner (or their lawyer) called them up and yelled at them. If that's the case, it doesn't sound like much of a "safe harbor" (except maybe for YouTube if it means they avoid liability). Anyway, I hadn't come across anything like that before, despite many an hour wasted watching videos on YouTube (some of them even with music! Oooo, watch out!), so I was nonplussed.
ReplyDeleteYes, I am a law student, thanks for noticing. But I haven't taken a copyright or intellectual property class yet (maybe next year).
And I just added an addendum to my "Observe and Report" post that I think is very worthwhile, so make sure you don't miss it.