The Substance of Style, Part III

The next installment of Matt Zoller Seitz’s video essay at the Museum of the Moving Image has been posted. This one focuses on director Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, Being There). Seitz concludes:

There’s nothing inherently wrong with Anderson’s selective adoration. But when you look at the totality of what Ashby accomplished—the social and political dimensions that all his films explored, the blunt honesty of their expression—Anderson’s work can’t help but come up short, just as the work of Anderson’s imitators is overshadowed by the genuine article.

Our pal Gerry Caravan responds:

Tell Matt Seitz he just made my list of things to do today. In all seriousness, I guess I can see Seitz’s point, but you can only conclude “Anderson’s work can’t help but come up short” when you demand of Anderson’s work the things it is quite pointedly refusing to do.

Part II.
Part I, “Introduction.”

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