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Originally Posted by SKMDC
Station Agent is fantastic. Peter Dinklage is the man. The thing that drew me to that film, (originally I saw it on a plane!) is the sense of something sinister impending. I watched initially for something bad to happen, and when it didn't the characters were so great I didn't notice. Does that make sense?
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Hmm.
Your comment is interesting, SKMDC. I seem to recall various times during films when I have been led to expect something bad happening. The tension kept building up in me, and when finally nothing bad *did* happen, the effect was strangely deflating and disappointing. I felt I had been fraudulently misled by cues in the movie to feel an uncomfortable dread at impending doom... and then all my emotion proved to be falsely inspired.
I think that is unfortunate filmmaking - to mislead hapless viewers with ambiguous cues. If the filmmaker has done this UNintentionally, then I think he should have had trusted colleagues preview his film before release to help eliminate misleading effects.
If he has misled viewers *intentionally*, I think that's rather fraudulent and I would lose respect for him as a filmmaker.
Awhile back, I bought a foreign film with four or five stars on the box and notes of acclaim from various European film festivals. As I viewed it, I dutifully responded to an assortment of tension-building cues. But when the film ended and 'nothing' climactic at ALL had *happened*, I was SO annoyed. I felt like throwing the movie across the room.
"Do these people have *any* concept of plot structure?" I asked myself. Apparently they don't. Either that, or my sensibilities have been blunted in some way by constant exposure to, and expectation of, a meaningful sequence of events in films and literature.
Oh well.
*sigh*