Hi! I’m Morris! So here’s my personal film blog where I post about the films I’ve watched and what I think of them. It’s a very casual place – nothing esoteric, off-putting to the average reader. I’m an average film lover myself.
A little bit about me: I’m a junior college student from Singapore graduating real soon. I haven’t always loved films as much as I do now – in fact I only got hooked at the age of 16, when my teacher showed us Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express. That was a life-changing moment, because until then it had not occurred to me that a bunch of moving images put on screen could have so profound an impact on the human soul.
I try to watch all types of films – classics, blockbusters, horror flicks, shady pink films, even raunchy comedies. Of course, with the constraint of time it’s more of a goal than a reality. I also like to think about the films I’ve seen, what they try to express, how they express it, and so on. Sometimes I, against the comfort of lying back and gazing at the silver screen, jot down notes – not religiously, but regularly, recording anything that attracts my attention.
So – why the pompous blog title? I came across the word while reading up on the films of Jean-Luc Godard (or was it Andrei Tarkovsky; gosh, I can’t remember). According to a website, the word ‘suture’ signifies “the techniques used by film to make us forget the camera that is really doing the looking”. It’s a very apt word that captures the nature of film criticism. Criticism is opposed to mindlessly absorbing the spectacle before our eyes; it unpacks the spectacle, unwinds its mysterious threads, and uncovers its true agendas.
It’s a well-known fact that most film-goers today are in it for the entertainment more than anything else. The average patron relaxes with soda and a popcorn bag as CGI robots battle it out before him. This is not to lambast science fiction or the incredible technology that has caught up with the film industry and even sustains it. It does more to highlight the slow intellectual death of modern society, sometimes a cultural one too. When people take for granted the logic of images presented to them, the images become rife with the potential to instill, indoctrinate, and inculcate. They become tools of malice.
It is with this belief that many people have taken to writing about the things they see, film being one of them. Writing helps to distill and articulate thoughts; it refreshes ideas and reformulates dogmas. I’ve not had much experience writing regularly for the public eye, so, as a first-time effort, this blog will be incomplete and error-laden. I’m rather nervous because I don’t know how this would turn out, whether I’d be able to – amidst work and other commitments – sustain this process of sharing about the things I see. But I’ll try my best.
I’ve an account at Letterboxd (user: metamodernmarx) where I log the films I’ve watched and want to see. It’s a good place to see what others have to say too. My corresponding Instagram page @thesutures is a more concise rehash of the stuff I write here.
Thanks for reading! Please feel free to comment your thoughts anywhere; I’m really pumped for this. :)
-M