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Rule Breakers: Filmmakers who Can't Be Appreciated with Conventional Criteria

Prior to my discovery of the IMDb, my favorite website was probably Fool.com, which was and may still be the best online web community for individual investors. One of their most notable features has been their theory of ÒRule MakerÓ and ÒRule BreakerÓ companies. The former category describes large companies that simply dominate their respective industries, and set the standards by which their competitors must follow. Examples are Microsoft, Coca Cola and Intel. The ÒRule BreakersÓ describe companies that are not as well-established, but have broken new ground, typically in nascent industries, and have the potential for massive success, built on their own terms. Certain biotech companies are the designated Rule Breakers of today; but in recent years, Starbucks, AOL, and our gracious host Amazon.com have proven to be Rule Breakers par excellence.

What does any of this have to with movies? Well, at the risk of offending people by comparing filmmakers to companies, I propose that some filmmakers can be labeled ÒRule MakersÓ and others ÒRule Breakers.Ó The Rule Making directors, in my view, are those that follow the established, dominant conventions of filmmaking and film appreciation, and greatly excel at making their movies according to these rules, and whose influence is deeply felt among their successors. Griffith, Welles, Ford, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Scorsese and Spielberg: each left a lasting imprint on the way most films are seen and made; these directors wrote the Rule book of filmmaking (though ironically, I consider the first two to be Rule Breakers of their time). All of these filmmakers worked within certain expectations of what most people consider a great film to be and expanded upon those expectations. As a result, their films achieve masterpiece status with relative ease.

But what about filmmakers who donÕt play by the rules? Filmmakers whose movies, according to conventional wisdom, seem a bit ÒoffÓ, ÒunprofessionalÓ, or downright Òpiss-poorÓÉ but somehow they stay in the mind of others and wonÕt let go? These are the filmmakers I call ÒRule BreakersÓ. And while ÒRule MakersÓ may bend the rules a bit to give their films a distinctive edge, Rule Breakers, well, they just flat out break them.

Perhaps it would help if we established a sense of just what the ÒRulesÓ are. Here are my thoughts:

- Well-structured narrative ÒarcÓ (typically in three acts)

- Strongly delineated, charismatic characters for the audience to identify with

- Effective sense of pacing and rhythm

- A rhetoric-based cinema that grabs, persuades, pushes and seduces the viewer into its particular worldview.

There are other elements that may be involved, but I consider the first three items to be quintessential to ÒRule MakingÓ, while the fourth could be open to debate (and can be seen as either the result or the operating principle of the first three). But god, this list sounds like Syd Fields, doesnÕt it? Which is more or less the point. When Rule Making cinema gets to the point of the utter lameness of most crap coming out of Hollywood these daysÉ well, sometimes you just gotta break the rules.

There actually exists a scholarly precedent for this theory. Esteemed film historian Noel Burch has similarly delineated two modes of filmmaking: the Institutional Mode and the Primitive Mode. The Institutional Mode is what filmmakers have worked on over the many decades to create what is commonly understood as a Ògood movieÓ, with Hollywood being the central breeding ground for this aesthetic. By ÒPrimitive ModeÓ Burch refers to filmmakers that didnÕt rely on conventional standards of filmmaking to base their work, but rather, they figured out their own rules, like a caveman reinventing the wheel. Fortunately, at least in the humble opinion of this poster, the world of cinema can use more than one kind of wheel. ItÕs like what Jonathan Rosenbaum said of DreyerÕs PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC: Òlike all the greatest films, it reinvents the world from the ground upÓ Ð and going to different worlds is more or less the reason we go to see movies. This is why I believe that Rule Breaking cinema, as risky, difficult and downright preposterous as it may be, is absolutely vital to the world of movies.

Less easy to figure out is: just who are the Rule Breakers? We all have our pet filmmakers who we think have not received their due. The best I can come up with are three very broad guidelines for identifying a Rule Breaker:

- They have a style that simply cannot be appreciated by conventional criteria (as defined above, more or less).

- They have received as much criticism as praise by the general public (IMDb user comments being one possible reference point)

- Their work, it can be argued, has great relevance to the world of cinema, whether stylistically or thematically, not only now but for the future of movies.

Having said all this, I will mention a dozen directors I consider to be Rule Breakers both past and present, and then devote a post to one director whom I feel most inspired to defend as a Rule Breaking master. WhatÕs great about Rule Breakers is that they bring out the truest, deepest faith of the film buff, because they are the most susceptible to scorn; they are your babies in the burning building that you have no choice but to save, for they mean the world to you, especially when the world of Conventional Wisdom threatens to engulf them in flames of contempt. In a world of the Conventionally Wise, the Fools rule! Vive les Rule Breakers!!!

Robert Altman

Robert Bresson

Luis Bunuel

Carl Dreyer

Jean-Luc Godard (who, as I am expecting to hear, has turned out to be a Rule Maker for pretentious artsy filmmaking of the worst kind)

Hou Hsiao Hsien

Jim Jarmusch

Abbas Kiarostami

Jacques Rivette

Andrei Tarkovsky

Tsai Ming-Liang

Lars von Trier