How had I never seen...“Enter the Dragon”?
Monday, October 14, 2019 at 1:00PM by Cláudio Alves
I often find myself bristling at the idea that cinema is, essentially, a form of storytelling. Many a great filmmaker has said those words and many passionate cinephiles have done so too. Far from me to begrudge anyone that thus defines the seventh art. To each his own, but it’s difficult not to think that storytelling is simultaneously too broad and too narrow a description. After all, what of experimental cinema or aesthetic marvels that have little to no story?
Narrative isn’t the only type of cinema there is and even if we account for the narrative value of documentaries, many fact-based projects circumvent that too. Not to sound facetious, but, to me, cinema is moving image and time, it’s editing and it’s audiovisual stimuli. Such words may smell like pretention and taste like academic nonsense, but through them, one can understand the appeal of certain films in a way that’s impossible when thinking of them as storytelling.
Enter the Dragon is garbage as storytelling. As a spectacle of color and rhythm, however, it’s pure delight…
