Films that cut a bit too close to the bone

[Z]

Earlier in the year I watched this film called Buzzard about a total slacker in a dead end temp job who had pretty much figured out how to game the system as much as he could to get by pretty well overall. Central to the whole thing was the character's inherent sense of superiority, thinking he's a genius for figuring out and relentlessly abusing all of these weak points.

Naturally, as the film progresses his life situation changes and whatnot, I'm not going to spoil it and overall it was kind of a weird indie thing that didn't totally hold together. However, it got this character down to a tee, and he felt uncomfortably like a parallel universe version of me that it's been routinely popping into my mind ever since.



Anyone else have any cases like this? Some character/event is just way too identifiable in all the wrong ways? Did it give you any enlightenment on your own situation or, as in my case, did it just feel like someone exposing you for what you are?

[mothman]

Maybe not quite what you're asking, but I remember going to see Jacob's Ladder at a very low point in my life (yes, another one) but coming out of it utterly reinvigorated having had some life-changing revelation during it. Which I then totally forgot.

[Gregory Torso]

After watching Kumiko The Treasure Hunter I felt utterly hollowed out, miserable and despondent for days. Although I am as far from a young Japanese woman as it is possible to be, there was something in her character and loneliness and sheer desperation to find something magic that never existed that really struck a chord in me, a chord that is still ringing. Just thinking about certain parts of the film makes me feel, sorry to be pretentious, but the Germans call it sehnsucht, an empty longing for something that I can't identify.

[Steven]

Buzzard's great. It's a dark Napoleon Dynamite done right. Not to mention the whole Nintendo Powerglove/Krueger fetish, a 5 minute scene of someone eating doritos, and an even longer scene in almost silence of him eating spaghetti in bed.

[bgmnts]

Travis Bickle is the obvious choice.

[zomgmouse]

Five Easy Pieces puts me in a right state. All that creativity and repression and stifling, suffocating energy.

[Swoz_MK]

Jarrod in Eagle vs Shark made me have a long hard look at myself and the way I treated others. Unfortunate that it took a breezy Kiwi comedy film for me to realise that but the similarities were so clear I felt like complete shit for weeks afterwards.

[EOLAN]

Weiner

[Dr Syntax Head]

Fucking Leaving Las Vegas (well 2008 Dr Syntax anyway, no longer trying to go out that way). These days it's Into The Wild. If I had any courage whatsoever I'd disappear but Mrs Syntax would hunt me down and drag me home like the selfish adult child that I am.

[Brundle-Fly]

Wasn't a massive fan of the film but it had its moments.  I was not a virgin and in a relationship, but these scenes certainly made me blush as my girlfriend slowly and silently turned her head towards me with 'that Dreamworks expression' on her face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnsGFBeYHSk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI1Rs3R-htg

[DukeDeMondo]

While We're Young, a mostly pretty agreeable effort from the not always very agreeable Noah Baumbach. I did some squirming. Ouch, I said, many times over.

Also the exceptionally good Blue Valentine and the alright, bit annoying Take This Waltz. Neither one a very good choice for a late in the day date night trip to the pictures.

[McFlymo]

Trainspotting 2 brought home what I loved in my life 20 years ago, when the first film came out, and what I definitely didn't have anymore and how shit everything had become since the mid-to-late 90s and how I hate so many, many aspects of this modern world and being who I am now.

I left the cinema in a daze and couldn't talk for about an hour. When I did finally talk, there were tears and genuine feelings of despair and suicide.

I have since realised that this was probably more to do with other shit going on in my life, but the first Trainspotting film was a big, big deal within my small circle of friends. The soundtrack, especially.

[Default to the negative]

[Smeraldina Rima]

The Fly and Spider maybe, but I've only given these serious answers to wipe out a regretted joke answer.

[Shit Good Nose]

The closest I ever got was Mitch in Dazed and Confused, but even then there was still a great divide between me and that character and our relative experiences.

I always feel little heart pangs whenever a protagonist is constantly kept in the friendship zone by someone they are desperately in love with, especially when a mutual friend of both ends up winning the day, but then I expect most of us do at one time or another, so I don't think that really counts.

[Noodle Lizard]

The Comedy, kind of.  Even though it centers around Brooklyn hipsters, and I don't think I'd ever find myself in such circles, the running theme of a guy basically being utterly incapable of engaging with the world around him with any sincerity and seeing the (realistic) results of such an outlook definitely resonated with me.  While I don't think I'm quite as actively an asshole as Swanson, some of his interactions with other people and the way he carries himself were a bit too familiar for my liking.  That really is a film which feels like it's calling me a cunt, and quite right it should.

Also, in a more abstract way, Rick Alverson's follow-up film Entertainment.  I feel like that film perfectly captures a headspace I'm never too far away from finding myself in, even if virtually none of the scenarios depicted are familiar to me.

[jobotic]

Flubber

[Small Man Big Horse]

I Love You, Daddy.

[Blinder Data]

It wasn't so uncomfortable but The Tree of Life brought back so many memories and I was so immersed in its dreamy style, it was like recreating parts of my childhood. But I guess that's because I could see strong parallels in my own family with the strict dad, endlessly benevolent mother and the relationship between the two brothers. Those little hints of scary adult stuff happening as a kid, like the spasming man on the ground in the background, evoked something in me like few other films. Genius stuff from old Tel. 

Would love to see it again but that first time was so special and emotional, it might taint it.

[Shit Good Nose]

It wasn't so uncomfortable but The Tree of Life brought back so many memories and I was so immersed in its dreamy style, it was like recreating parts of my childhood. But I guess that's because I could see strong parallels in my own family with the strict dad, endlessly benevolent mother and the relationship between the two brothers. Those little hints of scary adult stuff happening as a kid, like the spasming man on the ground in the background, evoked something in me like few other films. Genius stuff from old Tel. 

Would love to see it again but that first time was so special and emotional, it might taint it.

You can sort-of watch it for the first time again if the long proposed 6 hour cut gets a release...

[Z]

Would love to see it again but that first time was so special and emotional, it might taint it.

I've the same concern.
I do kind of expect Malick's more recent ones to seem less ridiculous if I watch them in my 70s; we're watching his memories of what being in your thirties is like more than anything in them and they just come across as ridiculous.






Inside Llewyn Davis
Llewyn's general dickishness covering up serious concerns of just how totally lost he is in the midst of grief whilst having the spectre of a half dead parent still hanging around as an omen of what's to come was all very heavy.
Did not get why so many writeups were devoid of empathy for the guy at all

[Cuntbeaks]

Buzzard was good, well worth watching, the final scene was pretty great.

[spamwangler]

The Comedy, kind of.  Even though it centers around Brooklyn hipsters, and I don't think I'd ever find myself in such circles, the running theme of a guy basically being utterly incapable of engaging with the world around him with any sincerity and seeing the (realistic) results of such an outlook definitely resonated with me.  While I don't think I'm quite as actively an asshole as Swanson, some of his interactions with other people and the way he carries himself were a bit too familiar for my liking.  That really is a film which feels like it's calling me a cunt, and quite right it should.

Also, in a more abstract way, Rick Alverson's follow-up film Entertainment.  I feel like that film perfectly captures a headspace I'm never too far away from finding myself in, even if virtually none of the scenarios depicted are familiar to me.

yea definitely feeling a bit of that

the comedy feels like a very direct attack on a certain attitude, the logical conclusion of a lot of ways of thinking that look really appealing as a teenager

but entertainment's portrait of someone quietly and defiantly chugging along with an artistic idea that barely stirs an interest from the few people who see it was simultaneously inspiring and mortifying, like how you might be inspired by that film about  the bloke whos arm gets stuck under a rock and he had to lop it off, it has a lot more of a wider appeal, a love letter to awkward, strange bastards everywhere

[Brundle-Fly]

Branagh's final monologue in Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998) resonated at the time with me but I'm buggered if I can remember why.

[garbed_attic]

'Finding Frances', the last feature-length episode of Nathan for You.

[Z]

'Finding Frances', the last feature-length episode of Nathan for You.

Why?

[Thomas]

These days it's Into The Wild. If I had any courage whatsoever I'd disappear but Mrs Syntax would hunt me down and drag me home like the selfish adult child that I am.

Jam - 'Living Outside'

[garbed_attic]

Why?

Unhealthy fixation on a decade-past relationship, mostly.

[phantom_power]

I am not sure this is fully on topic but I always found the suicide attempt in The Royal Tennenbaums incredibly affecting, despite never having had any suicidal thoughts

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Having lost my best friend in 2017, Muppets Christmas Carol was painful to watch. Specifically the scene with the Cratchits mourning Tiny Tim. I felt very much like Scrooge - stuck outside, unable to offer any help or comfort to the grieving family.