Carolina Matos
Any criticism of Kevin Smith’s (Born, New Jersey, USA, 1971) films must necessarily be in the past tense. Viewed by many critics as an ex-auteur and independent filmmaker, Smith is that type of director that entered Hollywood after making a few original loud-mouthed, witty, sexy and hilarious films, the so-called New Jersey trilogy. His main achievement was bringing the importance of dialogue back to the core of cinema, at the expense of the camera. A fan of Stars Wars and teenage comic books, Smith was not influenced by other auteurs, like “Eric Rohmer and Jean-Luc Godard”, as he himself puts it, but rather by the likes of Spike Lee and the new Richard Linklater (of Slacker).
Averse to film theory, Smith dropped out of Vancouver Film School claiming not to have learned anything about film. Clerks (1994) popped up and changed the picture. However, Smith is pointed out by critics to be much more of a writer than a film director. Critics have compared his witty dialogue with that of Quentin Tarantino’s. Clerks was the first film of the New Jersey trilogy and was automatically acclaimed internationally by critics. It won prices both in Cannes (the Young Director’s prize) and at the Sundance Film Festival (the Audience Award Trophy). Passionate about writing since high school, Smith combined a personal tale – since 19 he used to work as a clerk in a convenience store in New Jersey – with a lewd dialogue and youth humour that resulted in the cult Clerks. The ‘story’ of the making of the film has a sense of déjà vu: it was made on a low budget of US$ 27.575, with pals Scott Mosier (producer), David Klein (director of photography) and unprofessional actors, winning in the end the 24 year-old director two prizes and a cult status as an independent author.
Centered on the sexual ups and downs of two young clerks of diverse personalities, the film has strength in its humour and original dialogues, eccentricity of its costumer-characters and in the first screen appearance of the pair Jay and Silent Bob, the latter played by Smith himself. Brought to life by friend Jason Mewes and Smith, the characters first appeared in comics that Smith produced, Jay and Silent Bob and Clerks: The Comic. Feminine promiscuity, male relationships, sex talk and discussions about Star Wars are the main subject matters of Clerks, which also provides the viewer with hilarious moments. In Clerks, the lack of a more visual sensibility can be taken up as a challenge to the argument that cinema is all about image.
Although maintaining the sharpness of Clerk’s dialogues, the next “sequence” of the New Jersey trilogy was disappointing. Aimed at a teenage audience, the mainstream Mallrats (1995) was Smith’s first studio picture. It was financed by the former Universal/Polygram joint venture Gramercy. Mallrats also starred Beverly Hills 90210’s Shannon Doherty and the American skate-boarding champion, Jason Lee. The film marked the start of the friendship of Smith with one of the actors, Ben Affleck (also of Chasing Amy (1997), who would later write, with Matt Damon, the Oscar winning screenplay of Good Will Hunting.
The funny and “politically incorrect” Chasing Amy (1997) reclaimed Smith’s authorship among international film critics. Starring the three leads of Mallrats – Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams (as Alyssa Jones) and Jason Lee (as Banky) – Chasing Amy was both a cult hit and a mainstream success. Based on Smith’s personal experience, the story explores the difficulties of contemporary liberal relationship through Holden, a young romantic hero and comic-book writer of Bluntman and Chronic who falls head over heels in love with a lesbian, Alyssa, played by Smith’s then girl-friend Joey. Like much of Smith’s films, Chasing Amy depends on the formula of two guys talking bluntly about sex and making dick jokes, but it is his most serious work to date. Alyssa and Banky’s duet about injuries incurred during cunnilingus and the riffs on Star Wars mythology during the initial comic conference are some of the film’s high points. The characters Silent Bob and Jay are there again, with Bob (Smith) telling once more the ‘moral of the story’ and explaining the film’s title.
Chasing Amy opened definitely the doors for Smith to go to Hollywood, but for radical critics it seemed to signal to the end of his author career. Arguably, Smith has not been as successful yet as a director in Hollywood. As executive-producer of Good Will Hunting, he managed to win his friends Affleck and Damon an Oscar for the screenplay of the film, but his new piece Dogma (1999), seen as a clear departure from his relationship movies, has not been acclaimed either by the mainstream or cult critics and has actually been attacked for its senselessness and lack of consistency.
Caught between the bitter line of Hollywood big blockbusters and an alternative point-of-view of questioning religion, Dogma tries do to both and ends up doing neither. Starring the same group of “friend-actors” of Smith’s last films - Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Lee and the funny duo Jay and Silent Bob, the only ones who manage to add some laughs to a humorless piece -, Dogma stands heavens away from Godard’s Je vous salue, Marie, Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ in terms of intellectual and insightful criticism of religion. The appearances of Linda Fiorentino and even of the icon of 90’s rock music Alanis Morrissette as God do not save the film from an inevitable catastrophe.
This intended satirical religious tale that proposed to discuss the loss of faith of mankind ends up sounding more like a teenager’s joke with its confusing and apathetic story of two angels who attempt to re-enter Heaven and see in the creation of a new church in New Jersey their chance, although on their way they go around killing people in the name of morality and are finally stopped by a black apostle, a descendent of Jesus Christ and the dirty-mouthed Jay and Silent Bob. The film created more of a polemic with The Catholic League watchdog and with Disney distributors than it did with critics, who were more agitated for considering it a bit of a flop in comparison to Smith’s earlier cult work. It is not surprising then that Smith’s future as an independent filmmaker, or of a Hollywood director that has not defined consistent strategies of work, stands on edgy ground.
Filmography (as Director)
Clerks (1994)
Mallrats (1995)
Chasing Amy (1997)
Dogma (1999)
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário