If you have the patience, the results are well worth it. Sitting in the exact same spot from where I listened to him lecture last year following the premier of Astra Taylor's Zizek, on Sunday night, I spent two and a half hours watching the same Slovenian philosopher explain why movies matter.
A collaboration with filmmaker Sophie Fiennes, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema isn't as overtly transgressive as the title implies. What's radical (hence 'perverted') about it is how Pervert simplifies a decidedly complex, psychoanalytic approach to interpreting films for a non-academic audience.
Replete with footage of Zizek in San Francisco (on city streets, standing by the Golden Gate Bridge, etc.) Pervert is also a curious study in the intersection of his career with the Bay Area. A fan of the many Hitchcock and Coppola dramas shot here, most of Zizek's discussions of them ( The Birds, for example) were filmed in SF.
Worth noting is Pervert's sixties-style editing and visual detail. At times resembling an avant-garde documentary - imagine a vintage public television feature on Jean-Luc Godard hosted by Marshall McLuhan - Pervert is as stylistically rich as it is intellectually stimulating. Or, to put it simply, dope.
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