The first episode in the Benson/Moorhead back-to-back is here with this review of Resolution, though as we’re wont to do, there’s a fair bit of banter before the episode begins, this time on beer and breweries and pouring one out – figuratively – for the bankrupt Alamo Drafthouse (jump ahead to around 10:19 to skip over it – you’ll know the discussion is about to begin when James says “let’s talk about meth”).
Jumping from abuse of one substance to another gets us into the discussion on Benson & Moorhead’s directorial debut, the (extremely) low-budget feature that has basically everything you’ve come to love about a Lovecraft story – a character who recognizes and accepts his unchangeable fate, another who doesn’t and suffers for it, and a seemingly cyclopean entity that cannot be described or depicted – despite the fact that the filmmakers had no idea who Howard Phillips Lovecraft was. Another thing of which the filmmakers had no idea? Good taste in humor! Does it distract from the effectiveness of the film? Not greatly, but it also shouldn’t make anyone eager to check out the film’s cringeworthy special features.
Click here to read the interview with Benson & Moorhead from Medium.com that was quoted in this episode.
I don’t think “Resolution” is all that Lovecraftian, even unintentionally. It’s too humanist. Lovecraft’s deities don’t care about storytelling, and nobody gets a redo. They’re just a personification of an uncaring universe in which humans are insignificant. Lovecraft also didn’t typically have characters who were aware of how things really were and accepted it (instead they go mad with the revelation).
Jim seems to believe in what Steven Attewell calls “thin places” (at least within the world of Resolution). I’ve always been skeptical of Attewell applying that concept to A Song of Ice and Fire.
I don’t think “Resolution” is all that Lovecraftian, even unintentionally. It’s too humanist. Lovecraft’s deities don’t care about storytelling, and nobody gets a redo. They’re just a personification of an uncaring universe in which humans are insignificant. Lovecraft also didn’t typically have characters who were aware of how things really were and accepted it (instead they go mad with the revelation).
Jim seems to believe in what Steven Attewell calls “thin places” (at least within the world of Resolution). I’ve always been skeptical of Attewell applying that concept to A Song of Ice and Fire.