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Deep meaningful intellectual movie, makes you think on another level??

  • 10-03-2012 12:36am
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 35 ahwelltryagain


    This is probably very broad but can anyone suggest films that have an intellectual theme, something to really make you think about life etc. Something to broaden the mind or encourage you to see life from different perspectives. They are usually layered, with hidden meanings e.g eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, man on the moon, pursuit of happiness, a beautiful mind.. I want something for the oul noggin< think i've turned it to mulch with slap stick comedies lately :)


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Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 829 ✭✭✭OldeCinemaSoz


    one flew over the cookoo's nest


  • Registered Users Posts: 34,788 ✭✭✭✭krudler


    The Tree Of Life, you'll either love it or hate it though.

    The Fountain, well worth a watch, the music is incredible too.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,425 ✭✭✭guitarzero


    Its pretty pop culture but definitely one of the best films I've ever seen - Vanilla Sky. When I watched this I was totally floored. Simply fantastic, very emotional and quite a mind altering film in a few ways. It kinda crosses romance and surrealism in a pretty accessible way, this is your homework for the weekend.:)


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,030 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate


    The entire Ingmar Bergman filmography should keep you busy for several months.

    Prepare to emerge feeling rather despondent, seeing Spider Gods everywhere and wanting to move to the Faro Islands.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,551 ✭✭✭Goldstein


    Tarkovskiy's Solyaris. Soderbergh's adaptation was admirable too but the 1972 film is an immense piece of art.

    Whenever I watch any Michael Haneke film I always get the feeling that he's looking back at you. Every single aspect of each shot is so calculated and considered, he really is a master. Caché is my favourite of his.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 6,101 ✭✭✭Technocentral


    Dude Where's My Car 2.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,667 CMod ✭✭✭✭Sad Professor


    Another vote for Bergman. He pretty much single-handly introduced metaphysics to cinema. God, death, love, identity - he dealt with it all, and without ever seeming pretentious. This combined with his remarkable understanding of human emotions and relationships made him a truly unique yet totally accessible cinematic voice. Nobody ever imitates Bergman because they don't want to fail and look stupid. There's plenty of films about existential angst, but nobody does all-out existential crisis like Bergman did. This might make him sound depressing, but his films are actually incredibly cathartic and life-affirming. I remember seeing The Seventh Seal and Winter Light when I was about 19 or 20 and they had a profound effect on me, both emotionally and philosophically.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 659 ✭✭✭ToadVine


    Melancholia


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,748 ✭✭✭Dermighty


    krudler wrote: »
    The Tree Of Life, you'll either love it or hate it though.

    Very genuinely the worst heap of **** I've ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes on.

    Until I saw Tree Of Life the worst movie I'd ever (ever!) seen was Be Cool.

    I hated Tree of Life so much that every time it's mentioned I get angry that I supported it by paying for a cinema ticket instead of illegally downloading it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,059 ✭✭✭Sindri


    Another vote for Bergman. He pretty much single-handly introduced metaphysics to cinema. God, death, love, identity - he dealt with it all, and without ever seeming pretentious. This combined with his remarkable understanding of human emotions and relationships made him a truly unique yet totally accessible cinematic voice. Nobody ever imitates Bergman because they don't want to fail and look stupid. There's plenty of films about existential angst, but nobody does all-out existential crisis like Bergman did. This might make him sound depressing, but his films are actually incredibly cathartic and life-affirming. I remember seeing The Seventh Seal and Winter Light when I was about 19 or 20 and they had a profound effect on me, both emotionally and philosophically.

    This ^. I couldn't have put it better myself, exactly what I was going to write. :)

    Ingmar Bergman's films are great art.

    Very little of the latter half of the 20th century qualifies as great art. All that comes to my mind now is (free form) jazz, Beckett and Ingmar Bergman.

    He was simply an artist, a poet and a philosopher. He is the only director to have contributed on par with the great literary and artistic figures to the collective discipline of art. The greatest and most profound questions are explored in his films.

    His films take Mortality, Love, the Human Psyche, the Female Psyche, Human Relationships, Meaning/Purpose and Existence and all the Professor referred to and he presents these concepts, difficult as it is, through the medium of cinema. He explores them so intimately you cannot help feel something profound. The slow zoom into a characters face, silence, stillness, colour saturation or a bleak sterile monochromatic representation of life that feels simultaneously numb and invigorating. Each shot is like a painting. The consistent intensity his films have have not been reproduced by any other director dealing with such concepts consistently.

    You will also notice how his female characters are usually his most complete and most rounded which is very rare and something that would have been only possible in Sweden at the time. It is a luxury we are well afforded as he is the only director that comes to mind that dealt recurringly with the female psyche and female characters which is refreshing.

    As an existentialist he is on par with Sartre and Dostoevsky.

    He was one of the few directors to master the camera, though of course he was helped by his cinematographer Sven Nykvist.

    If you're looking for some of his more profound work I'd try:
    1. The Seventh Seal
    2. Wild Strawberries
    3. Persona
    4. Cries and Whispers
    5. Winter Light
    6. Scenes From A Marriage

    Here is his filmography.


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  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,030 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate


    Id also recommend watching Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence and Persona in that order. The former three are a loosely thematic trilogy, but IMO Persona is the fourth part and what really brings them together. He made great films before and after, but that four punch combo is the one id use to justify him as my favourite director. Electrifying cinema.

    Speaking of trilogies, the Three Colours trilogy hits grand themes of French identity while still being intensely psychologically engaging.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,059 ✭✭✭Sindri


    From the Life of the Marionettes is very good as well.

    It's one of his underrated works in my opinion.


  • Registered Users Posts: 307 ✭✭kellso81


    dogtooth

    Certainly get you thinking!


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,439 ✭✭✭Skinfull


    Primer

    Love this movie, multiple viewings required. Test of friends and time and life.


  • Registered Users Posts: 776 ✭✭✭Tomk1


    Infinity
    www.imdb.com/title/tt0116635/
    The early life of Richard Feynman, played by Mattew Broderick, only saw it once and just wow.


  • Registered Users Posts: 7,426 ✭✭✭Roar


    Last Action Hero. At one point there's a movie within a movie within a movie. Far out.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 247 ✭✭CricketDude


    The man from Earth


  • Registered Users Posts: 942 ✭✭✭Bodhidharma


    krudler wrote: »
    The Tree Of Life, you'll either love it or hate it though.

    The Fountain, well worth a watch, the music is incredible too.

    We park our car in the same garage, these are the first two that came to mind. Though I would add The Thin Red Line, I Heart Huckabees and 2001: A Space Odyssey to that list.


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,176 ✭✭✭nyarlothothep


    Roar wrote: »
    Last Action Hero. At one point there's a movie within a movie within a movie. Far out.

    It really makes you question the reality you live in. It was The Matrix before the Matrix. Same for Total Recall. I'll add Conan the Barbarian (1982) to the list. Its a very deep film beneath the fantasy action with sword weilding musle man exterior. And it has the biggest fck off epic score of any film ever made.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,925 ✭✭✭Otis Driftwood


    Pi FTW.Awesome,mind bending stuff.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 12,948 ✭✭✭✭bnt


    Two films that made me think about life, death, questions of motivation (why do we ever do anything?), and more, but go about it in very different ways:
    - The Accidental Tourist starts with the death of a child, and shows the lives of those affected by the tragedy afterwards, and how they manage to put things back together, eventually.
    - The Ice Storm, on the other hand, is about life before the death of a child; the various little failures, moral and practical, that set a tragic chain of events in motion.

    It only just occurred to me that both films involve the death of a child, but aren't really about that. Instead, I think it's about how such a tragedy makes the characters rethink their lives - and that rubbed off on me, a little.

    From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch’.

    — Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 Astronaut



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,854 ✭✭✭Sinfonia


    eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

    On top of others mentioned, try some more Charlie Kaufman!

    Being John Malkovich
    Adaptation.
    Synecdoche, New York

    I'd recommend watching them in that order too: BJM to get you used to his mind, Adaptation.to get you used to his meta-ness (is that a word?); by then the ultra-mega-meta SNY should be less confusing :P

    (I haven't yet watched Human Nature or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, so can't comment on them, maybe someone else can...)


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,089 ✭✭✭henryporter


    Plenty of movies out there to stimulate the mind:
    Short cuts by Robert Altman,
    Paris Texas by Wim Wenders,
    Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog
    Melancholia by Lars von Trier
    Moon by Duncan Jones
    Russian Ark by Alexandr Sukotov
    My Architect by Nathaniel Kahn


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,798 ✭✭✭goose2005


    For a real mind-bender, see "Meshes of the Afternoon" - it's only 15 mins. and well worth it.


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,799 ✭✭✭✭DrumSteve


    Dead mans shoes by shane meadows... I cant explain why it did. It just did.

    Same with the fountain. brilliant film.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,730 ✭✭✭sxt


    Michael Haneke as already mentioned .I read this blog about the film "Cache" recently , where I never saw so many hundreds of different interpretations to the films many questions! Trying to find this blog now!

    David Lynch is a Master of this art as well ! ..


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,255 ✭✭✭James T Kirk


    Thirteen Conversations About One Thing

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Conversations_About_One_Thing

    Similar to films such as Magnolia.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnolia_(film)

    Deep, but not 'Bergman' deep.

    Alan Arkin (as always) is fantastic in it.


  • Registered Users Posts: 35 ahwelltryagain


    Sweeeet! Thanks for all those great suggestions! That's exactly the mindset I was going for! I kid you not, I will endevour to make my way through at least half of these in the coming months *takes notes* mucho's appreciatos! =)


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,462 ✭✭✭✭WoollyRedHat


    bnt wrote: »
    Two films that made me think about life, death, questions of motivation (why do we ever do anything?), and more, but go about it in very different ways:
    - The Accidental Tourist starts with the death of a child, and shows the lives of those affected by the tragedy afterwards, and how they manage to put things back together, eventually.
    - The Ice Storm, on the other hand, is about life before the death of a child; the various little failures, moral and practical, that set a tragic chain of events in motion.

    It only just occurred to me that both films involve the death of a child, but aren't really about that. Instead, I think it's about how such a tragedy makes the characters rethink their lives - and that rubbed off on me, a little.

    The Ice Storm is a beautiful, magnificent film, that very little bad can be said about it.


    I'll throw in Lost in Translation to boot, made me really think , and was more than just entertainment but a social commentary in a simple but beautiful level.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 3,545 ✭✭✭tunguska


    Bladerunner
    The tree of life
    The thin red line
    V for vendetta
    No country for old men
    Days of heaven
    The conversation
    Michael clayton
    Lost in translation
    Mc cabe and ms miller


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