swillsqueal Reviews

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

The flatness of modern commodification

[10/10 · 22 April 2014]

In "Only Lovers Left Alive" Jarmusch puts John Hurt in the role of Christopher Marlowe, nowadays a reclusive writer living in Tangier. Seems Chris was the real writer of HAMLET and other works attributed to William Shakespeare. The script goes differently, according to Jarmusch in his latest flick. Jim is both the script writer and director. As we learn inn "Only Lovers Left Alive", Marlowe faked his reported early bar room fight to the death to conceal his real being as vampire and, the literary genius feeding Shakespeare his plays. This is an old theory,not the vampire part, surrounding the true authorship of the great Shake's plays and poems. To be sure, there are other theories in with regard to the authorship of RICHARD III along with the others; but this is Jim playing with that notion.

According to Jim Jarmusch, it is now 500 or so years on and Marlowe is still alive in Tangier. He is still writing, still in a kind of self- imposed exile, much like Paul Bowles was in the Tangier of his time. And like Bowles, Marlowe the vamp has mentored a local Moroccan writer trying to make his way up into the world of recognised writers.

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non- existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."

MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 " ― Jim Jarmusch

And then we have the two main protagonists: the lovers left alive after centuries have rolled by. And, spending their time amongst the most imaginative, creative minds of whatever era they happened to have lived through. Of course, their names are Adam (played by Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton).

Oh yes, Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden due to their tasting of God's forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

No, not quite that pair, but what a pair! These two have been married since the mid 19th century. They are vampires and both know Marlowe. Eve lives in Tangier and regularly commiserates with Marlowe. Adam's digs are in Detroit. He lives the lone life of the brooding artist. When Adam gets suicidal enough to purchase a special hard wooden bullet he can shoot into his heart, Eve, who does not know about his bullet purchase, senses it after a video phone call. Eve is not only sensuous, she's a master sensor when it comes to almost anything, including inanimate objects. Just a touch of say a violin will bring out its history. After a super sonic re-reading of her personal library,she gathers enough books to fit into her two suitcases and takes the first night flight (mai oui) out of Tangier to Paris and from there by red-eye to Detroit.

The film is sprinkled with wise asides and humour; but at the centre of all the dialogue is the notion that something is awry on the planet. What's rotten in Denmark and across the globe is, to our dear vampires eyes, the utter lack of appreciation amongst the 'zombies' for their own creative geniuses in the arts and sciences. But this is an old problem, Eve observes as she tries to quiet the suicidal impulses of Adam. It's just that Adam sees and attempts to demonstrate to Eve, through the empty architecture of Detroit, a metaphor for where the human race is taking the planet now that it has industrialised nature. In a way, Adam senses the commodification, the cheapening emptiness of all that surrounds him as humankind takes itself down the road to environmental collapse. But Eve won't have it. She sees the decay, but points to nature's irrepressible life force. Detroit will come back, she says. It has water and where there's water life will reappear.

Adam and Eve are intellectuals. They observe and create as their very good friends amongst the human community have done: Newton, Galileo, Shelley, Wollstonescraft, Schubert, Byron (although he was a pompous ass, according to Adam). Their portraits adorn Adam's wall. According to Adam, imagination is dying in the modern age and he and Eve and one assumes Marlowe are surrounded by 'zombies', meaning most of humanity. But, in case you thought all vampires are creative, sensitive geniuses, Jarmusch throws in a visit by Eve's little sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska), a vamp from LA--zombie central, according to Adam.

Ava may be hundreds of years old; but she acts very much like a spoiled, contemporary teen consumer. As soon as she arrives in Detroit, she begins appropriating everything which she takes a fancy to: Adam's precious music collection; his stash of disease free O negative blood and even his supplier friend Ian (Anton Yelchin), the one who gets him musical instruments and as mentioned, his customised wooden bullet.

It might be worth having a toke before seeing "Only Lovers Left Alive". The music in this movie is fantastic and what the heck, Adam, Eve, Ava and Christopher are all indulging in O negative.

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

Radical liberalism with a left-populist twist

[5/10 · 19 August 2012]

Saw most of CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY tonight via SBS. Moore makes a case against capitalism and then tells his audience that if 'evil' is just removed, democracy and 50s working class standard of living in Flint, Michigan can be restored in America herself....with the help of local Catholic priests and bishops. A sometimes amusing flick, ultimately though another unsatisfying exercise in radical liberalism. The sentimental cosmopolitan republican Gore Vidal once said that Harry Truman was the President most responsible for setting up the 'National Security State'. Michael Moore seems to think it was Reagan. Anyway, the longed for democracy has apparently been achieved amongst WWII's losers: Japan, Germany and Italy....(sigh) more progressive nationalism than you can shake a stick at, Moore's CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY.

Capitalists and landlords made up the ruling classes of the USA from the get-go...along with the slave owners. There were no good old days of democracy--that story is 'mythistory'. In fact, democracy and capitalism are incompatible and only accepted as being necessarily connected by the majority because so many believe that the system can be run 'fairly' and with 'Justice', beliefs Michael Moore encourages.

The Legend of Rita (2000)

Silence follows the shot

[9/10 · 15 November 2010]

The Red Army Faction (RAF) was a self-described, communist, anti- imperialist urban guerrilla organisation based in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). The RAF had a theoretically superficial Marxist-Leninist set of politics similar to those of Weatherman in the USA and the Red Army Faction in Japan. These were young people, many of them college students, who felt both a guilt about and sympathy for Third World nationalist revolutions; revolutions they believed, were the vanguard of a world revolution which would eventually sweep the 'fascist imperialist' States away.

Che Guevara captured what Schlöndorff is attempting to portray in his film concerning the mental spirit of these German student, revolutionary romantics when he reflected on his own audacity and political commitment:

"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality... We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force."

Action and audacity were the Red Army Faction's (RAF) strong suit. "The Legend of Rita" (original German title "Die Stille nach dem Schuß" ) is set in the divided Germany of the 70s. Rita is a young fearless romantic in love with a left-wing revolutionary, one Andreas 'Andi' Klein, a guy who is more or less the leader of an RAF group which she is a part of. Their RAF group is armed, ruthless and robs banks to fund 'the revolution'. These revolutionaries naively explain their robberies in terms of 'anti- imperialist' politics : Yes, out loud, to customers as they clean out the capitalist bank vault and cash drawers, with weapons drawn.

Adrenal rush and surprise hit one in this film from start to finish. From jail breaks to motorcycle chases, to life behind the Iron Curtain, the film comes at you again and again with images you've been brainwashed to feel uncomfortable with. (Caution viewers: you may feel a violation of your Hollywoodised sensibilities.) You'll also feel the kind of careless courage these young people of the RAF had, as they consciously faced death, even as they reached out for a better life-- actually,a better life for others, mostly. As many, many of the New Left, Rita and her fellow RAF members are motivated to take violent political action in order to assuage a deeply felt guilt about being born in First World privilege. They are more moralists than materialists--romantic poets ready to use murder as a political weapon. In the midst of all this direct, violent action, some of them change, become more hard hearted, mechanically calculating. Rita's boyfriend is one of them and when this happens, love dies. Rita is a lover first and a revolutionary second. In her heart of hearts, she wants to settle down, have kids, a husband, the whole modern suburban dream, albeit in a more egalitarian, 'anti- imperialist' society. Rita wants mutual love more than anything else and as she learns more about the duplicitous mendacity of the coldly calculating political apparatus in both the East and West, she comes to the realisation that political States are always ready to opportunistically sacrifice their oft repeated, propagandised moral goals and callously toss human lives on the scrapheap for political gain. As a result, she grows closer to the only person who ever measured up to her romantic expectations, an East German woman named, Tatjana.

Volker Schlöndorff has directed a master portrait of a political situation, a time and a place which is quickly disappearing down the 'memory hole'. Not only are the West German RAF, with their Ton Stein Scherben albums and sneering hatred for bourgeois complacency critically and sympathetically examined; but the 'actually existing socialism' of the DDR of that era is laid bare as well. East Germany is portrayed realistically, down to the last idiosyncrasy, from the near empty roads, to the Radeberger Pilsner, to the workers' apartments in those large, multi- storied college dorm-like buildings in urban East Berlin. This portrait will disturb long held mainstream 'Time' magazine inspired conceptions of East Germany, some would say, 'with extreme prejudice'. Rest assured, the film's honesty extends across both sides of the East/West border. Far from revolutionary or socialist, most of the citizens of the DDR are portrayed as being quite conservative, endorsing whichever police are in charge of the political State. The point is hammered home at the end of the movie, when the fall of the Wall in 1989 is portrayed; a time when Rita and her audience are supposed to come to the realisation of just what die Stille nach dem Schuß entails.

Mandingo (1975)

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

[10/10 · 25 October 2009]

In this film, the masterful James Mason plays the plantation patriarch, a Big Daddy you wouldn't want to be owned by. This is undoubtedly THE BEST Film made about the era of slavery in the USA. It puts the sanitised, romantic "Gone With the Wind" to shame. "Mandingo" will make you uncomfortable even in your most comfortable seat. "Mandingo" is a mirror. See your reflection; it will scare the living bejeezub out of you.

This is a film about power. Racism is about power. When some people have absolute power over other people, they become sadistic and sometimes, the objects of their sadism become masochistic. Absolute power is always justified with ideological rationalisations become dogma, in this case the the dogma that black skin makes a person less than human. Power corrupts the individual's sense of morality. With power over others, one becomes more or less immoral, hardened to a subordinate's suffering. Self-esteem is generated by putting down the one perceived to be inferior and slaves were considered less than human, a notch or two down on the food chain. Slaves were treated as objects of power, like the organic results of animal husbandry, like the commodities you purchase and eat: cattle, pigs or sheep. Thus, having sex with a slave for a 'white' male owner was like breeding new animals for sale with a view to profit. 'White' females, of course, were not allowed to engage in this sort of animal husbandry with slaves. The patriarchal whisper one hears in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" becomes a murderous roar in "Mandingo".

In "Mandingo" we see realities of absolute power's affect on the social psychology of a society. Even after more than a century of time, American society, especially the South is still scarred by the psychological damage which simmers under the surface of smiles, whiskey fueled tears and freshly mown lawns.

"Mandingo" is a must see. It's better than "Glory", although "Glory" would be an appropriate second on a double feature bill with "Mandingo". "Mandingo" is even better than "Burn" and much better than "Roots". The acting is superb. The screenplay is magnificent. The cinematography is choice. Yes, this movie is violent; but slavery was a daily violence on the lives of those who suffered it. Face it. Yes, there is sex in this movie: squirm in your seat as you feel a touch of titillation. Yes, there is abuse on all levels from pedophilia to outright murder. But the abusers aren't comic book level bad guys; they aren't Jokers on the set of "Batman". They are the ruling class of the Old South. Sometimes their humanity shows through. Sometimes bad guys are ever so well ensconced in the the rituals of polite society that they come across as the upholders of civilised behaviour. That they are also enmeshed in a daily life organised around the exploitation of those who produce their wealth speaks volumes about the quality of their humanity and our own social relations of power today.

Get "Mandingo" however you can. Show it to your friends. Discuss it after you see it. Get ready for the movie experience of a lifetime. Forget about "Basterds"; forget the demented, ultra-violent comic fantasies of Quentin Tarintino. Forget about the sanitized films of the Antebellum Age. See "Mandingo". See the hard truth about chattel slavery and then do some reflection about how power over others functions to generate a generalised state of dominance and submission in the social relations of the here and now, wherever you live on this planet.

The Limits of Control (2009)

Bohemian conspiracy

[7/10 · 8 August 2009]

"Life has no value if four people are being killed every minute and in the final analysis, abuse wins the day." That is a rough translation from Spanish of a phrase very relevant to "The Limits of Control" which IMDb won't let me reproduce in the original because of 'spelling errors'. The great Mexican director,Pedro Infante filmed "La Vida No Vale Nada" in 1955. Might be worth checking out that film after watching "Limits of Control".

"Those who think they are important wind up in a cemetery – a handful of dust". Numerous characters repeat this sentence in Jarmusch's "Limits of Control". In fact, many sentences are repeated in "Limits...". "You don't speak Spanish." The answer is, "No." if you are on a secret mission and sitting at a café table with two cups of espresso. This is the intro you get in the assassin's game. Like Jarmusch's "Ghost Dog" our assassin is in to martial arts exercises. Like "Ghost Dog", he doesn't like mechanical, robotic like abusers.

Maybe abusers are CIA agents in Spain. More likely, Jarmusch's secretive base operatives symbolize worldwide power mongering abusers of life. Maybe, just maybe, there are people out there in the world, some maybe even who have taken psycho-active drugs like peyote, who want to demonstrate to these power mongering dominators that they aren't so powerful at that. 'Life is arbitrary" as the anonymous protagonist of the film played by Isaach de Bankolé says before he strangles the CIA Station Chief, played by Bill Murray, with an old guitar string.

Maybe, the limits of control are human beings! Oh, not human beings who use the various electronic trappings of identity of the modern world. Those human beings can be tracked and controlled. "No cell phones", says Jarmusch's protagonist. And what happens to those in the assassin's conspiratorial loop who use them? They are found dead or kidnapped by authorities who travel by black helicopter to secret bases in the Spanish bush. Yes, murder as a political weapon, human beings killed, even if they are beautiful and naked.

"How did you get in here?" Murray asks Isaach de Bankolé. "I used my imagination." And after all, as the French Situationists used to say, "Imagination is revolution." Imagination is also unpredictable, even arbitrary, so unlike machines or uniformed humans attempting to morph into androids in service to their rulers.

This movie is a secret operation. Think of it as an imagination-trip. Take it and be wary. Sometimes, it's not that you're paranoid, it's that they really are out to get you. Have a care. Don't let your guard down, even for one blissful second with a gorgeous woman. You're working now with Isaach de Bankolé. Let it happen. Let it wash over you. But remember the signs: two cups of espresso at the same time at the café table;matchboxes (the ones with the boxer on the cover) swallow the coded paper which you'll find inside said matchbox after you've memorized the instructions for the next stop on your way towards ending abuse.

The Reader (2008)

Why didn't you speak up?

[8/10 · 20 June 2009]

"Every single day -- 365 days a year -- an attack against children occurs that is 10 times greater than the death toll from the World Trade Center...We know how to prevent these deaths -- we have the biological knowledge and tools to stop this public health travesty, but we're not yet doing it." Jean-Pierre Habicht, professor of epidemiology and nutritional sciences at Cornell.

Eight million of the eleven million childhood deaths a year could easily be prevented. That's because almost 60 percent of deaths of children under 5 in the developing world are due to malnutrition and its interactive effects on preventable diseases. Is this not a holocaust?

An old Soviet piece of gossip had it that Comrade Khruschev was interrupted during his famous 'secret' speech before the Communist Party elite when he denounced Stalin's crimes in 1956, three years after Stalin's death. A voice from the audience shouted, "Why didn't you speak out against these crimes when Comrade Stalin was committing them?" Khruschev looked up from his speech and asked loudly, "Who said that?" A long silence ensued after which Khruschev observed, "That is why."

When you see "The Reader", ask yourself why you are doing nothing about the holocaust which is happening every year to the poorest children of the world. Is it because you are afraid to be seen as being 'silly' or too 'socialist' or 'soft hearted' or because the system demands that you pay attention to the important things of life like obeying your bosses and keeping order and besides, "What can a lowly person like myself do about the situation" and you're too busy speculating on what the real estate market will be doing in the coming months and finding a pair of jeans at Jeans West which will fit.....

Michael meets Hanna when he is fifteen. Unbeknownst to Michael, he is coming down with scarlet fever. He is throwing up in an alley on a very rainy day when Hanna, the tram conductor, stops to offer him a warm place to rest until he feels better. Hanna also cleans up his vomit from the pavement. Hanna believes in orderliness and cleanliness. This penchant for order is apparent from the beginning of their relationship and these traits lead her to offer Michael baths and to bathe herself as well and as the movie progresses the motherly Hanna and her son-like friend begin to explore the attractions which flow from such erotic circumstances.

Both Hanna and Michael are full of hidden passions. Michael could have been a Heydrich in Prague, had he been born 15 years earlier. He is clearly 'officer material'. Hanna, on the other hand, is a working class woman born 30 years earlier into a society which would tell women that their highest aspirations could be fulfilled by staying in the kitchen with the children when they weren't engaged in taking in a church service. with the family. Education was unnecessary. Both Hanna and Michael are intelligent and attractive. Both are turned on by the doors which are opened to them by great literature. Both are also social products of their own German culture, with its various and sundry facets of puritanical, psychological repression, including a kind of reserve which leads to the peculiarly German goodness of keeping one's mouth shut in public about things political, things which the authorities have well in hand. Hanna's fear of exposing her own illiteracy and Michael's fear of public condemnation as a young law student at speaking up for Hanna in a court of law are the stuff of tragedy.

Sound familiar?

Even after many steamy sexual encounters, Hanna is shocked by passages in D.H. Lawrence's LADY CHATTERLY'S LOVER, telling Michael that it is the equivalent of smut and that he should stop reading from it, almost as his mother would have. But clearly, Michael is not attracted to Hanna because she is a mother replica--Oedipus, no. One has only to compare and contrast Michael's screen mother with Kate Winslett's Hanna to know that.

However, it is 'klip und klar' that Hanna loves Michael and he loves her but, unbeknownst to them both when they are together, their love runs very, very deeply. They might believe that they will get over their summertime romance as time goes by, but the reality is that such love does not die, no matter what happens: there are no conditions for it.

There are elements of Fassbinder's "Ali, Fear Eats the Heart" and "Berlin Alexanderplatz" in "The Reader". "Sophie's Choice" also comes to mind. See this movie and be prepared to cry for humanity because as Thoreau observed, ""Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." Methnks this is especially so in cultures as deeply built on the authoritarian personality character structure as the German one is.

Pitfall (1962)

The premeditated murder of solidarity

[9/10 · 18 March 2009]

"Divide et impera" is an old game used by those with power against their subalterns. In "Pitfall", an employer who owns two mines has had to deal with one big union in the past. So, the employer conjures up a plan to divide his mine workers. He lays off some from one mine and doesn't layoff any at the other. The members of the one big union are supposed to come to each other's aid in solidarity when trouble with the employer erupts and this is one such occasion. However, when the miners of mine number one ask miners of mine number two for class solidarity in their strike to get lost jobs back, the miners of mine number two refuse and keep working as the employer has told them that they will not suffer layoffs. Bingo! The miners in one his mines have been pitted against the miners of his other mine, competing for what they think are a limited number of positions. The consequence is that the one big union splits into two competing unions. It's much easier for the boss to make deals with two small unions for they are weaker than one big union. Message to the employing class: divide and rule. Lesson for workers:unity.

What happens though when the employer wants to get rid of even those two unions, weakened by distrust, one for the other? The answer to this question is large part of what director Hiroshi Teshigahara's "Pitfall" is about. Teshigahara wasn't alone in creating this film. To be sure, "Pitfall" was also the work of author Kôbô Abe. In fact, "Pitfall" was originally a stage play by Abe. One must keep in mind when watching this film that both men were leftists, influenced by surrealism and it shows in the direction, screenplay, choice of music and cinematography. Both men saw how the social relations of capitalist class rule kept the producers weak, poor and in wage-slavery. Both also saw the existential theme of alienation between people which is part and parcel of the the system of wage-labor. But neither of them was about to produce a piece of nihilist fiction, which is what many reviewers of this film seem to think "Pitfall" is about. Teshigahara and Abe are depicting life under the rule of Capital and showing how it works to keep workers at each others' throats.

As the film opens, a father and his young boy wander a stark landscape in Kyushu, industrially pockmarked by mines and the scattered, wild remnants of a supremely indifferent Nature. This is an environment like our own, one which has suffered from the neglect of civilization's modern rulers. The father is a rootless proletarian in search of an employer and on the run because he has 'deserted'. The film's audience is never told what he has deserted from; but whatever it was, there are other workers who have deserted from it too. We know this because the father is being accompanied through part of the film by a fellow mine worker who is also on the run, a self-proclaimed 'deserter'. We also know because in one scene from a mine work-site a man is fallen upon by two other men, authorities who take him away after a scuffle. The miners who view this in a stunned, atomized silence agree: the man must have been a 'deserter'. The father's young son has been brought up as witness to the fact that authority can never be trusted. He has seen too many ordinary working people hurt in some way by people who wear the clothes and uniforms of officialdom. When he spies a man in a pristine white suit riding through the mining town on a motor scooter, the only motor vehicle around which isn't a truck, he hides.

The father, his son and their companion, the other mine worker, leave one job secretly in the night and go on the road to look for another. They fear discovery as 'deserters' as their employer seems like he might be catching on. No chances can be taken. Both land a job at another mine site some distance away and it looks to be a good job too. The father has always dreamed of working for a union mine and of the better, more comfortable and secure life this would mean. This one's not bad; but one of his supervisors tells him that a new boss awaits him at another mine with an even better job and so he and his son take off on foot with a simply sketched map in hand.

However, the new mine doesn't seem to exist. Instead, the father is led by the written map given to him by his former supervisor to an abandoned mining town where only one person lives, a woman who owns a candy/trinket store. The woman is as isolated and lonely as the father. She too is waiting for something, a letter from her ex-lover, a summons to a better place. In the course of their conversation, we find out that the ghost town has been abandoned because of all the mining accidents which have happened. Unsafe working conditions have their consequences. Still, the father wonders what went wrong with the directions he got from his old supervisor. He's sure that he's in the right place, the one given to him on a piece of paper by foreman of the mine he just left. The candy store owning woman suggests that he might be looking for another mine, just over the hill.

Be prepared for ghosts, doubles and dastardly planned murders most foul. Be prepared to see and even hear (in a jangling musical score) a movie which will intrigue and surprise and may cause you thereafter to continually question the motives of your rulers: divide et impera.

Human Nature (2001)

Ape Fest

[8/10 · 14 February 2009]

The evolution of a species has much to do with its ability to live in harmony with the Earth. Those plants and animals which don't or can't live in harmony with their environment don't survive.

Humans make history. That's one of their adaptive characteristics. Reason evolves out of environments totally dominated by Nature into ones which are symbiotically entwined with Nature. Instinct needs to be tamed a bit by reason in order for humanity to gradually civilize itself--a psychologically repressive venture to be sure, one that spawns many neuroses. But then, as Freud told us in CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS, repression of instinct, freedom and the id is necessary to keep civilization together.

But is the civilization we've got, the best of all possible worlds? Imagine sitting in an office all day, pushing paper at some ultimately, meaningless desk job when you'd really rather be having sex with the secretarial staff. Repress those thoughts and carry-on... or not, as Puff's father did one day when he decided that he'd had enough of this civilization stuff. That was the day, Puff's father decided to jump up onto his desk, screech his way out of work and become an ape--literally to go back to Nature. "Prison break!"

"Human Nature" is funny. On the one hand you have a mild mannered scientist named Dr. Nathan Bronfman who is trying to introduce civilized table manners to white mice within a lab setting and on the other you have a father who has kidnapped his young son from the civilized lap of his mother in order to raise him "Wild Child" style, as an ape in the forests of an overly industrialized America. "Human Nature" is funny because of juxtapositions like these. You see, within this industrialized America there is no room for a dwarf with an IQ of 170, who has a Phd to get any work outside of selling his labour time as a side-show freak, 'flying' an airplane costume in a circus ring, complete with a hairy woman who plays King Kong on the Empire State building (that famous last scene where, it wasn't the airplane who killed Kong, 'it was beauty killed the beast'). Hairy, sexy Lila can't earn a living in any other way than by playing King Kong to a side-show dwarf in airplane costume. Looks can be deceiving and the language of deceit is a large part of what civilized behaviour demands.

People can't accept Lila as she is and she knows it. Much as the mythical Tarzan and King Kong, Lila's being violates the decorum of civilization itself. So, she decides to drop out of her side-show wage-slavery, much like Puff's dad and so the ape fest goes until ape meets ape-ess; ape meets civilization; ape-ess meets man and jungle; man meets Lila in hairless disguise and dwarf meets Lila's friend, the beautician with the wickedly snappy electrolysis wand.

"Human Nature" is not only great comedy, it's a semi-profound speculative discourse on just what human nature is and how some of that nature is changed and some not changed through the history which humans make, write and remember. Thus, "Human Nature" has more to say to us than films with a similar plot outline e.g., "The Mystery of Kasper Hauser". It's also much funnier than your standard sexual farce.

Give "Human Nature" a chance. See it and maybe, uncover some of your own basic instincts. Experience the refreshing wisdom of laughing at yourselves. And, hint, it wouldn't hurt to find a copy of the Kinks'sardonic "Apeman" to listen to before you start the movie.

Revolutionary Road (2008)

The Big Bourgeois Trap

[9/10 · 31 January 2009]

Wage-slaves tend to reproduce the lives which their parents lived, with minor changes of location and personages. It's also true that some young adults swear that they'll live life differently. There's an urge to avoid a meaningless existence. There is that youthful Kerouac-like urge to escape the Big Bourgeois Trap and instead, to jump in the car, put the peddle to the metal and be free.

Willy Loman was trapped. Arthur Miller wrote his play "Death of a Salesman", revealing the life of a tired, forgotten wage-slave near the end of life's road; loyal to his bosses, disloyal to his wife, while lying to his kids and at the same time supporting them financially through his tireless journeys for love and money. It's more than ironic that Elia Kazan directed 742 performances of "Death of a Salesman" in which Lee J. Cobb played the empty, hopelessness characterized in Willy. Ironic why? Because, among other things, Kazan's granddaughter has a significant role, playing Milly in "Revolutionary Road". Ah, but that's another story. See the film.

Willy Loman's world is just one aspect of this 1955-centered movie which can be mined by the mindful. There are so many others, including references to the movie version of Edward Albee's George and Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?". Ah yes, the 'bickerings' you say. Ah yes, the secrets, lies and use of sex as a weapon in the struggle between males and females in marriage. Ah, but there's even more to "Revolutionary Road" than this.

"Revolutionary Road" is about the desire for freedom, nay, the instinct for freedom which is constantly being stomped down within the Big Bourgeois Trap from the time you are a terrible two until you've finally grown up and realized that you must be an adult and conform. Either that or die or become a hobo or be thrown in an insane asylum as the mathematics Ph.d. John Givings has been in "Revolutinary Road". John (played excellently by Michael Shannon) is that kind of Francis Farmer non-conformist who has not grown out of his child-like bluntness, ergo, he must be shocked to keep from shocking others. (Was he thrown in the asylum by his ever loving mother, played by Kathy Bates?) He blurts out truths, even within proper, safe social settings. He blurts them out like the machine gun fire one might face as a soldier during WWII. Frank Wheeler (Di Caprio) has seen this kind of truth before. At first, he and April recognize it and embrace it. Frank was a soldier, facing death in the WWII, which in 1955 had only ended ten years before. It was at that moment of life or death truth, he confesses to his wife April (Kate Winslet), that he felt the most alive, even though he was frightened. And April, whose love for her husband has been challenged by the hum-drum life of housewifery in the safe, leafy suburbs of NYC, confesses that she felt the same, existential awakening when she first experienced love making with Frank, back when they were young and on their own revolutionary road away from the ordinary lives which their parents had lived. The moment of this mutual recognition leads to a very steamy sex scene in the kitchen. Surely, you are interested now, dear readers.

The thing is that Frank is now a salesman for the same company which employed his father and he sees the death trap of a Willy Loman lifestyle descending over him, much as Willy's children saw it destroy their father. April sees it too. But hell, they've now decided to chuck it all, the relative security of life in the burbs of the 50s to take a chance on April in Paris. Yes, to move the two kids and their married lives ('the whole catastrophe', to quote Zorba) to Europe where existentialist juices are imagined to be flowing as freely as the espresso at the Cafe des Deux Maggots. The prospect of finally 'finding themselves' blooms somewhere, just over the rainbow shrouded Atlantic Ocean. Yes, the chimes of freedom are flashing again after some years of marriage with its triumphs and disappointments. Their instincts have been re-awakened from the doldrums of everyday life in the 50s with the father kissing the wife a la Dagwood and taking off to bring home the bacon from the office which Mr. Dithers runs and the kids, of course, running around in the yard shouting, "Mommy" and "Daddy".

In the beginning of their relationship, both April and Frank really want this freedom from the Big Bourgeois Trap and they believe that this urge places them in another league from their peers. This urge sets them on fire with love for each other. Others see the spirit in them too, the ones who have already grown-up, conforming to the lies required of fear-filled wage-slaves in everyday life. They want to touch it; but are ultimately cowed by their social conditioning, rationalized as,"familial responsibilities". When Frank is offered a big promotion in sales (he will be an ad-man for the then, cutting edge exotic machines called computers), he is tempted to accept and give up on pulling up stakes in burbs and moving to Paris with April.

April is not of the same mind. She is still star struck with the idea of getting out, perhaps escaping to the sheltering skies of Tangiers with Paul Bowles, instead of ending up as yet another archetypal Lucy Jordan, wife to that ultimate tragic archetype of capitalism, Willy Loman. Thus, lovers become haters and the road to revolution in their lives turns into its opposite: death on the installment plan in middlebrow suburbia, complete with those occasional visits to a reputable psychiatrist, just so one can remain safely shrink-wrapped in the Big Bourgeois Trap.

Come and See (1985)

What happened in the Soviet Union during WWII...

[1 December 2008]

This is the greatest war movie ever. The best way to describe it, I reckon, is to pass on a newspaper article written by Ilya Ehrenburg during World War II when all the things which happen in "Come and See" were happening:

NIKOLAI VLADIMIROVICH -- ONE YEAR OLD Red Star, November 30 1943

How much the Germans have taken from us! They have taken from us not only loved ones, homes, and possessions. Life was complicated. There were dreams, joys, people, many books, many countries. But now everything in me is unchangeably focused on one thing: on the German. I see him -- blue-eyed and inhuman. He walks and kills, he sings and kills, he laughs and kills.

Among the papers of the town head of the village of Vyazovaya, recently liberated from the Germans, was found the following document:

"List of executed residents of the village of Vyazovaya, Uzninskaya region:

1) Muzalevskaya Natalia Ivanovna. 43 years old. 2) Muzalevskaya Natalia Nikolaevna. 18 years old. 3) Muzalevskaya Diana Nikolaevna. 16 years old. 4) Muzalevsky Lev Nikolaevich. 13 years old. 5) Muzalevskaya Valentina Nikolaevna. 9 years old. 6) Muzalevskaya Tamara Nikolaevna. 5 years old. 7) Muzalevskaya Rima Nikolaevna. 3 years old. 8) Davydov Vladimir Ilych. 35 years old. 9) Davydov Anatoli Vladimirovich. 8 years old. 10) Davydov Victor Vladimirovich. 5 years old. 11) Davydov Nikolai Vladimirovich. 1 year old. 12) Pryadochkina Maria Petrovna. 60 years old.

19 September 1942. Town head Muzalev."

Can this be forgotten? Is it possible to live knowing that people are walking the earth who shot Davydov Nikolai Vladimirovich to death, one year old, an infant, the baby Kolya, shot him and ordered his name entered into a list? It is hard to talk about it, but impossible to forget. We still have a long way to go. But we will get there. We will find them. We will find them under their beds, in their vegetarian cafeterias, at the ends of the Earth. We will remember the one-year-old Kolya Davydov. We will remember much. **********

The director, Klimov, concentrates on faces. From the faces you can see what they saw. Come. Come and see what this war was about in the Soviet Union. This was a war to the death; the Soviets knew and the Germans knew it. The Germans knew it because their leaders declared it so and 23 million Soviets paid with their lives. Ten million Germans also paid the price of that sale. The seller pays the price of the sale.

The Devils (1971)

Domination, submission, authority and freedom

[9/10 · 4 October 2008]

Grandier is the chief priest in the town of Loudun, a town which has been surrounded by wrenching religious wars between French Catholics and Protesants. It is the first half of the 1600s and not only have the atrocities associated with a civil war in the feudal era been visited on a region but, there is also the 'black death', the Plague to be dealt with. Bodies lie in the streets, to be carted away to mass graves, while other bodies, the bodies of Hugenotts hang from wagon wheels propped up by poles in the countryside. The stench of death's victory is everywhere.

The religious war has left Loudun remarkably unscathed. It's mayor has saved it from civil strife and maintained a kind of modern, bourgeois religious tolerance behind its tall, thick walls. But, change is inevitable and when the mayor is struck by the invisible microbes of the black death, the town's political fortunes fall into the hands of its chief priest, Grandier.

Grandier is a critical thinking Jesuit, well educated, handsome, tolerant and lustful to a fault, who is also a freedom loving democrat in a time when unquestioning obedience to the Sun King and his Cardinal are demanded on pain of arbitrary and capricious forms of execution. The city of Loudun is seen by the rulers of France as a threat to the new order which is to be imposed on the nation from the centralised power of the theocratic power-monger, Richlieu and his foppish, sadistic King, Louis the 13th, now that they have literally murdered the Reformation in its cradle.

Like many in 1627, Grandier is looking for God. He believes that he might find what he's looking for through love, specifically, though the love of a woman. Some of Loudun's women see in Grandier a way to get to love and perhaps even a kind of mystical redemption through Jesus.

It's a strange time, or at least, it appears so to us because we are so historically, far away from that mentality, a mentality which will accept the existence of devils as body invading spirits who need to be purged through painful tortures, while turning a blind eye to the sadistic powers which they allow to rule them.

****************

Baron De Laubardemont: There are 6,000 Christian souls waiting for you in the marketplace. Tell me, do you love the Church?

Grandier: Not today.

Baron De Laubardemont: Do you want to see it grow more powerful, more benevolent, until it embraces every human soul on this earth? Then help us to achieve this great purpose. Go to the marketplace a penitent man. Confess, and by confessing, proclaim to those thousands that you have returned to the Church's arms. By going to the stake unrepentant, you do God a disservice, you give hope to unbelievers. Such an act can mine the very foundations of the Church. You are no longer important. Think: are you any longer important?

Grandier: I was never important.

Baron De Laubardemont: Then make a last supreme gesture to the Catholic faith.

********

See this film for what it is, the true story of a man whose existence challenged dictatorship of the mind, body and spirit.

Winter Light (1963)

Can you see or hear love?

[10/10 · 25 August 2008]

It's rural Sweden in 1962. Outside, in the grey, icy winds of winter's light, the radio brings news of the newest addition to world madness: the Chinese State news has announced that they now have THE BOMB and will use it if anyone tries to attack them. This news has become the final straw for a man in Vicar Tomas Ericsson's flock. As the good Pastor speaks to his flock before offering the communion of Christ's body and blood, Jonas Persson and his wife Karin come up to take their wafer and wine.

Jonas has become deeply depressed by what is happening in the world. It seems to Jonas that God doesn't care about the very possible annihilation of the human race by their own hand. Perhaps Jonas has discovered that when he prays, he is talking to himself. Perhaps Jonas has a chemical imbalance in his brain which makes him more sensitive to the plight of humanity than others. In any event, Jonas has been acting strangely and he needs to speak with someone who might comfort him with the love of Christ or so thinks Karin, his wife. After the church service is over, Karin asks Pastor Ericsson to speak with Jonas.

Tomas is very unsure of his place in the world. Like Jonas, Tomas has been in the process of losing his faith. He looks at the tortured, bloody Christ on the wall of his church and shudders at the absurdity this bizarre image now implies to him. Tomas is wondering why God has never spoken to him.

Märta speaks with Tomas, sometimes even more than Tomas wants her to. She loves Tomas; but Märta is not a believer. Nevertheless, Märta wants Tomas to love her, not just make love to her. She sees in him a man of caring integrity. Tomas cannot return her love. Like his religion, for him true love only comes around once. Thus, he cannot betray his wife, even though his wife has been dead for years. He can sleep with Märta and has done for years; but he cannot love her.

"Winter Light" follows "Through a Glass Darkly" as the second in Bergman's introspective, existentialist examination of meaning in life. It is a film about love and how love relates to God and how that if God is silent, this may be an indication that God is dead.

But dead to whom?

Märta obviously is capable of love. So is Karin. The question is, "Why can't Jonas and Tomas see what's before their eyes?" Why do these men of high integrity and moral sensitivity turn away from love and life? Is it a question of being so concentrated on the distant perfection of the forest for so long that they cannot see the trees in front of their face anymore?

Toward the end of the film, a simple church member who has been crippled rather severely for years comes to the good pastor and asks him a theological question, a question of faith, a question about Jesus:

Algot Frövik, Sexton: The passion of Christ, his suffering... Wouldn't you say the focus on his suffering is all wrong?

Tomas Ericsson, Pastor: What do you mean?

Algot Frövik, Sexton: This emphasis on physical pain. It couldn't have been all that bad. It may sound presumptuous of me - but in my humble way, I've suffered as much physical pain as Jesus. And his torments were rather brief. Lasting some four hours, I gather? I feel that he was tormented far worse on an other level. Maybe I've got it all wrong. But just think of Gethsemane, Vicar. Christ's disciples fell asleep. They hadn't understood the meaning of the last supper, or anything. And when the servants of the law appeared, they ran away. And Peter denied him. Christ had known his disciples for three years. They'd lived together day in and day out - but they never grasped what he meant. They abandoned him, to the last man. And he was left alone. That must have been painful. Realizing that no one understands. To be abandoned when you need someone to rely on - that must be excruciatingly painful. But the worse was yet to come. When Jesus was nailed to the cross - and hung there in torment - he cried out - "God, my God!" "Why hast thou forsaken me?" He cried out as loud as he could. He thought that his heavenly father had abandoned him. He believed everything he'd ever preached was a lie. The moments before he died, Christ was seized by doubt. Surely that must have been his greatest hardship? God's silence.

Tomas Ericsson, Pastor: Yes...

"I think I have made just one picture that I really like, and that is Winter Light…Everything is exactly as I wanted to have it, in every second of this picture." – Ingmar Bergman

See this film. Buy it, if you have to; but see it.

Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

Love from family angles

[10/10 · 21 August 2008]

Here's a film which will tweak your sensibilities. The family...yes the family, center of all great and good. An early sixties Swedish family has gathered in an isolated summer vacation spot on the sea to examine itself and its ties. The two male adults are intellectuals of sorts and the female is both the daughter of one and the wife of the other. She is also the sister of her writer/father's adolescent son. Love is at the center of familial relationships and this film makes no bones about it. Yes, love is the tie. It is also the tie between Man and God, or so it would seem to have been told, especially to those in the West and specifically in Sweden: those who have fallen for a Christian message.

We see in "Through a Glass Darkly" a family in strife. A daughter and wife who is just back from an insane asylum; a teenage son who is unsure of himself, most grievously because of the lack of fatherly love; a husband who is part of this family and yet remains apart from the family and a father who has been running away from familial love since the death of his wife, the mother of the son and daughter. He has been running away from loving responsibility under cover of his "art".

What can be made of this strange brew is made well by Bergman, a man who questions the authority of God, the Family and Patriarcy; but who still comes up on the side of love?

Bergman was a complicated man who made complicated movies. He shocked a lot of critics and audiences in the early 60s. Essentially, his cinematic art was a window through which one could vicariously watch Bergman question his faith and the meaning of life and by extension, his audience could participate in this philosophical exercise. Bergman said once:

"My fear of death was to a great degree linked to my religious concepts. Later on, I underwent minor surgery. By mistake I was given too much anesthesia. I felt as if I had disappeared out of reality. Where did the hours go? They flashed in a microsecond.

"Suddenly I realized, that is how it is. That one could be transformed from being to not-being -- it was hard to grasp. But for a person with a constant anxiety about death, now liberating. Yet at the same time it seems a bit sad. You say to yourself that it would have been fun to encounter new experiences once your soul had had a little rest and grown accustomed to being separated from your body. But I don't think that is what happens to you. First you are, then you are not. This I find deeply satisfying. That which had been formerly been so enigmatic and frightening, namely, what might exist beyond this world, does not exist. Everything is of this world. Everything exists and happens inside us, and we flow into and out of one another. It's perfectly fine like that."

What does love mean to those who are obviously imperfect? How can one pursue love when the way is blocked by either madness or fear or lust or all of these forces to one degree or another?

These are questions which Bergman examines in "Through a Glass Darkly". See it.

Splendor in the Grass (1961)

Sex in the country...

[9/10 · 2 August 2008]

And introducing Warren Beatty....Okay, so "Splendor in the Grass" is a vintage film. But does it ever stand the test of time....YES. Here's a keeper for you.

It's America. It's in the late 20s. Prosperity is in the here and now of a stock bubble, soon to be the current economic slump of Black Tuesday, 1929. Even the country folk are getting into the act. Bud doesn't much care about that. Neither does Wilma. They're star struck, star-crossed lovers, trying to make their own ends meet in a time before THE PILL.

Made in the early sixties, "Splendor .." addresses the coming storms of that decade with the tip of the iceberg of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. Natalie Wood plays a pretty, sexy Wilma caught in a web of puritanical culture and the desire to make her American Dream of a man come true. Beatty is Bud, the local high school football hero, testosterone oozing, frustrated lover. Put the couple in a car and the free highway and wait for things to happen when it comes time to park.

Inner bombs, ticking, waiting, only to end in inner explosions. Wilma just says, "No" and Bud's despondent response move the couple on to mutually assured destruction of their relationship.

Parents, only looking after the welfare of their children, grown to adulthood under their watch, gasp as their son and daughter implode and explode before their eyes.

William Inge captured the mood of a time gone by and modernised it in a new time gone by, 1961. Kazan directed yet another masterpiece. In all, a top American movie. See it.

Rashomon (1950)

The Bandit, the Traveller and his Wife

[9/10 · 25 July 2008]

"Rashoman" begins grey on grey with rain coming down in buckets. Three men are sitting the storm out under cover of the ruins of a temple. One is a priest, one is a thieving marauder and the other is an ordinary working bloke, a peasant/woodsman. One of the men, the woodsman is quite distraught. He complains mysteriously about how "it" can't be true. The others ask him what "it" is. And so the story begins.

A murder trial has occurred. An infamous bandit has been caught and charged with the murder of a traveller and the rape of the traveller's wife. The bandit is being interrogated by the authorities. One can never see these authorities; only the person giving testimony faces the camera, thus, giving the audience the authority of a jury. What transpires at this trial are a series of testimonies about what happened at the scene of the crime, each from a different perspective, each with a differing take, nuance and emphases on the matter of the murder and rape. The bandit has his turn and then comes the wife and finally, using the wife as a medium, the ghost of the husband has his say. But, there's more. There was a witness there that fateful day, an observer who was in the very same forest, an ordinary man who will tell his version of events only to those gathered beneath the ruins at Rashoman.

"Rashoman" is a study in perspective and a reflection on meaning. By the time the film has run half its length, the audience has been told many truths about what happened on the fateful day when the husband met his untimely demise, not the least of which answers the question of who was responsible for a murder. As a part of the audience, you become a member of the jury.

Who are you to believe: the bandit, the wife, the husband's ghost or the woods man, who has not testified at the trial? Further, what if none of them can be believed, which parts of their conflicting stories are true and which false?

Do people really compulsively embellish the truth about themselves and their motives?

Can the truth be known?

A baby cries in the ruins. Someone must take responsibility for life. Will it be the priest, the marauder or the woodsman? The Sun has come out.

Sayonara (1957)

Hello love; good-bye racist cultural prejudice.

[7/10 · 5 July 2008]

Brando plays the ace jet pilot, just back from shooting MiGs down in the Korean War. On leave, he discovers his Madame Butterfly, falls in love. The lovers both see the folly of racism and the cruelty which conservative cultural norms can bring to human relations.

This film is an excellent romance with a nice twist which rejects the racist, conservative standards, dominant at the time it was made in 1957. "Sayonara" will make you laugh and cry. Beware though, sometimes the musical background will make you wish it was not there, although, Irving Berlin's title song will entice your memory for a very long time after your theatre lights come on again.

Shine a Light (2008)

Pass me the champagne and reefer...

[10/10 · 7 June 2008]

Haw! Bill Clinton handshaking the Stones. Hillary is there too. Cut to Bill and Hillary holding hands as they walk across the stage. It's a back shot, low, beagle high angle.

Scorsese doing the Stones! Wow. He did the blues. He did Dylan and now the Stones. The man knows his music; I mean, on top of being the best film director alive. And this time, it's a concert at a relatively small venue of the Beacon Theatre, as the boys play in New Yawk City for a Clinton charity.

The band starts with "Jumpin' Jack Flash' and baby, it's a gas, gas, gas. Mick moves like he's half his age. Probably has something to do with running six miles a day. Keith is a bit slow and wiry, cracking a sly smile. Old Charlie's good, as usual and Ronnie slides on his guitar like a coke bottle down a ten mile incline.

The band looks like it has weathered many a 'crossfire hurricane'--you can see it in their now craggy faces, especially when Scorsese directs a cut to clips of those smooth, innocent, devil may care faces of the past.

"Shattered" is next. Mick sings to New York, "To live in this town, you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough. Rats on the West Side, bedbugs uptown...." And the crowd is loving it, although with the exception of some of the band's back up, one from Brooklyn (a lusty lady), the other, a guy from from Queens and the third, a fellow from South Africa, they've probably never had an existential taste of Big Apple tough. It's all part of the Stones' conscious irony, singing laughing, smiling as the charity crowd rock 'n roars its approval.

"She was hot" comes up next. And the swaying women in the front rows, nearest the stage, all hot, look up.....mmmm, delicious...and this is followed by a rip, snorting "All Down the Line". Then another from one that classic albumn, "Exile on Mainstreet". Hey, this albumn was blaring over the loudspeakers last, at the Fremantle Blues and Roots Festival. It's a duet this time with Jack White III. Sir Mick and Jack White III sing "Loving Cup", a veiled bluesy kind of reference to a certain part of the female anatomy. Well done, Jack the Third.

Ah then, Marianne Faithful. Wish she'd been there. Mick makes a reference to how this was one of the first songs which the Stones wrote and then gave away to Ms. Faithful. "As Tears Go By", with a very pretty guitar, played by Keith, Mick on vocals.

Okay, so you get the picture. No, you oughta go see the picture. One thing more though, "Champagne & Reefer". YES! Now, here's a piece which Mick says he first heard Muddy Waters do. Geez oh peez-o. What a great song! And who's on stage with the band this time? Buddy, mo-fo, Guy! Duets with Keith and Ronnie's guitar playing and Mick on the Mississippi saxophone. Sweet. And the lyrics will tear you up.

The Brave (1997)

White male creepy

[5/10 · 17 March 2008]

This is an altogether creepy replication of the inner states of mind that perpetuate themselves in class society. The notion that one should submit to all sorts of violent and humiliating forms of inner degradation which rob you of your life in order to support your family is experienced, in conventional society, as "the reality principle". The vulgar, self-indulgent and pointless, political, power-trip sadism of the bosses -- who are significantly, in this movie, decadent and repulsive, old, rich white men -- is reproduced with force. But then, it's a familiar scene to anyone familiar with certain religious doctrines: the father gives the son the power to do a miracle or two during his last days; but demands the ultimate sacrifice to pay for the "sins" of humanity, this time, not on a cross; but a medieval appearing torture chair, looking very much like a tool from some forgotten Inquisition. Indeed, the seller must pay the price of the sale, even it that seller is a miserable wage-slave trying to create a little temporary happiness in a garbage strewn world, gone to the dogs.

The problem with this movie is that it makes you feel more than a bit ill inside and out. You know, at some level, that a parent's sacrificial lamb-like suicide for their child will not help to give their kids a life but will emotionally destroy the next generation and on ad infinitum, by leaving most of humanity with internal psychological scar and legacy which is masochism.

Depp plays a Native American in the movie, a brave so to speak. And, he does have courage. He faces death at the hands of his employer. But, in this reviewer's opinion, this brave should have seen a better ending--with the death of the employer, not the implied death of the wage-slave; for in taking that path, a brave only ensures that the poor will always be with us.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004)

Talking' 'bout my alienation...

[7/10 · 15 January 2008]

What makes Sammy run? Sam Bicke is caught up in that most pernicious of all dreams of the industrial era--the petit-bourgeois dream of being your own boss by owning your own business and then living an honourable life with your wife kids and dog in the "middle class" suburbs of "your" nation. Like MacDonald's hamburgers, this dream has sold billions. But the seller must pay the price of the sale and the death of this salesman has a lot to do with his populist Idealism, based on common schoolboy sense of the times: honest hard work will be rewarded; right thinking (in the sense of learning your ideologically based morals from TV and Hollywood and from those influenced by same) will be rewarded and that a strong, individual cowpoke can, with enough courage and determination, blow into town and clean up corruption.

Ah and there's the rub: corruption. What is it that makes Sammy's Ideals run into his material aspirations? The actually existing society Sam lives within has a President who is corrupt, who lies when he says, "I am not a crook." Sam sees this and the corruption all around him. The perfection of the "American Dream" is being undermined by the racism, lying, cheating, dishonest crum bums who seem to be running everything and getting all the good things in life. A good guy, like Sam is shunned by his boss, his friends, his relatives and even by his wife.

Sam's solution is to the purge the world of corruption, or at least to make a very good start at sparking same. His will be done, through a "propaganda of the deed". Sam won't roll over and even try to play "Mr. Nice Guy" anymore. He's been there and done that. He's not been successful at wearing that mask. His wife has. His friends have. His brother has. But not Sam. He will not tolerate the corruption of his Ideals anymore. He will act.

"The Assassination of Richard Nixon" is the modern tragedy, for in the end nobody's right, if everybody's wrong.

Into the Wild (2007)

"He's leaving home, bye, bye".....the quest for IT....

[7/10 · 8 January 2008]

ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac was published 50 years before this film came out. And then there was Voltaire's CANDIDE. Can the Enlightenment be so very far away? A lot of people get irritated with Holden Caufield when they read CATCHER IN THE RYE. A lot of people react the same way when they encounter Christopher McCandless and they WILL encounter his persona on screen for years to come, thanks to Sean Penn. Why this irritation? It's like asking why the squares got irritated with the gatherings of gentle people at Monterey Pop during that "Summer of Love" in 1967 Frisco : in essence, people like Christopher McCandless remind them of their own "lives of quiet desperation" of what 60s freaks called, "the death culture".

Christopher McCandless is a well read guy. He pulls out his Jack London and Leo Tolstoy in order to be closer, to relax with his friends. He's had it with what Holden Caufield called,"phonies" and these include his lying parents. Generation gap redux, mai oui.

Christopher McCandless wants to discover Truth. And to do this, he ventures out "on the road" as Dean Moriarity and Sal Paradise did in 1947, hitching and driving and being driven all over America and even down to Mexico, just as Sal and Dean did. And just as Dean and Sal were, Christopher McCandless is searching for IT.

But what is IT?

Christopher McCandless only knows that IT isn't the narrow materialistic individualism of his parents or of people like them. He fervently believes in a "spiritual" path which might lead one to IT, but first he must divest himself of crass materialism-- most worldly goods . For, unlike the rich man/camel who cannot pass through the eye of a needle, Christopher McCandless will make it into his heaven because he refuses excess material. He believes in his vow of poverty. So did the Buddah and a thousand Beats and Hippies. He believes that he must make contact with the "spiritual" truth by living simply, living like a character out of one of Jack London's adventurous Alaskan adventures. It is a call of the wild which draws him, north, ever north to the Alaska outback. There, he reads Tolstoy's words on how to achieve happiness through simple living and he takes that advice on, living in his own "Magic Bus"...oh shades of Kesey may your spirit live on.

Is it true? Can one find "spiritual" fulfillment this way? Perhaps. Especially, if one is inclined to try to find it standing on its head, as the priest in "The Black Robe" did in his 17th Century Canadian wilderness trek amongst the native heathen. Religious quests are almost always filled with suffering. Is this not why we were placed on this Earth, like so many chess pieces for the amusement of our Lard.

But, in material reality what hath Penn wrought? This is a lad with all the right instincts for freedom, still tied in knots with philosophical Idealism. He's trying to kick out the jams; but he doesn't realize that heading down the path of material deprivation will not get him home--free. As a result of his "true believer" mentality, poor Christopher McCandless doesn't recognize his real happiness when it stares him, lovingly in his face. Ah sweet Tracy... He sees the poverty of a future of dead time in the suburbs and he rejects it. Good move, Chris. This rejection makes a lot of the one-dimensional individuals hate him, especially when his disdain is magnified on the silver screen. He sees the wisdom of NOT "taking more than you can use" from the Earth, a fact that is brought home hard for him when he shoots a moose, he cannot possibly consume. Hooray for Christopher McCandless there!

Christopher McCandless made some discoveries. Like Candide, Sal Paradise, Holden Caufield and the people of his own parents' generation, especially ones who can be seen on in docos like "Monterey Pop", he did glimpse IT here and there, only to lose it in the end. For it is in the social relations of friendship and love, all of which he leaves behind in order to live on his own, in a vain attempt to depend only his own, narrow individualism to find "the truth". The ghost of Dean Moriarity, walking down those railroad tracks in Mexico...yes, Dean More-E-air-IT-tee.

Beowulf (2007)

"What's new Beowulf"....or LORD OF THE GEATS

[7/10 · 24 December 2007]

It was the early 8th Century A.D. when BEOWULF was penned. It was a time of massive change for the Anglo-Saxons, Danes and Anglo-Celts of Britain and the various Viking tribal kingdoms, East and West in the surrounding sea swept Danish kingdoms. The times of pagan ritual and heroes were morphing into the Medieval Christian era. It was also a time of upheaval, with the old ideological authoritarian structures crumbling, leaving room for literary creativity. Compared with what was to follow, it was a mini-renaissance. Then, dead time ruled up until at least the 14th Century when Chaucer came on the scene, along with the new times which were brewing underneath the slow but sure decay of the Christian Dark Ages.

So, BEOWULF the literary work, reflects a newly forming 8th Century A.D. Christian message which is also wrapped up with a lot of Viking era, pagan lore, including the existence of monsters like Grendel, who according the the epic poem, was a descendant of Cain, the brother of Abel, sons of Adam and Eve.

In "Beowulf" the movie, matters are different; but still very exciting, pregnant with change. These are our times, on the edge of climatic upheaval and political turmoil which certainly rivals and probably surpasses that of the 8th Century era. But now, epic must change in both form and its content. No longer an epic poem, "Beowulf" has become the 3D movie. Grendel is still a monster; but not descended from Cain. No, unbeknownst to all, Grendel, the monster is descended from Hrothgar, King of the Danish tribe known as the Scyldings.

This twist in the tale gives rise to a variety of opportunities to turn the original ideological intent of BEOWULF's author on its head, for Grendel's mother is none other than the ever enticing Angelina Jolie...I mean, when she wants to be, she's an irresistible Circe.

In the original BEOWULF, our hero of the Geats (a West Danish tribe), does race Breca through the ocean for five days straight and he does encounter difficulties with sea monsters; but in the movie, Beowulf is also seduced by a monster turned a kind of beauteous mermaid.

Such is life in a sea of change and when our filmic Beowulf lays eyes on ultra-attractive women, he is slain and eventually lain. And from his loins spring.....well, in the original epic poem, Grendel is outfoxed and beaten by Beowulf who confronts Angelina Jolie's child, naked, without armour in that great mead hall, Heorot! True to the spirit of the Viking Danes (both East and West--Geats were West Danes) and of BEOWULF the original, Herot is the place where lustful heroes and wenches frolic and feast and drink, not only the honey-based mead, but also those tankards and tankards of ale. Grendel is spoiling the fun by coming to Herot to slaughter and feed--on warriors and maidens. Shame. So, it's Beowulf to the rescue, all naked and shiny and strong like a bull. When Grendel feels the power of Beowulf's grip, he knows that he's met his match.

In the poem, Beowulf slays both Grendel and his mother, an appropriate entry into the staid, stagnant world Medieval monkery. In the film however, the slaying of one becomes the laying of the other and very importantly: lies, betrayals and in their wake, the slow death for ancient heroism a la Odysseus prevail, as Christianity rises and the once meek, weak, double-dealing, fratricidal Unferth becomes the personification of a sadistic Christianity in the power saddle, slouching towards the Dark Ages.

But wait...lustful loins, heroism and dragons will have their day! And the father will eventually be re-united with his son and the spirit of Grendel's mother will live on as she faces noble Wiglaf, Beowulf's comrade in arms, breast deep from the waves at the end of the flick.

See this movie in the 3D version. And don't quibble too much about the cgi effects. Just enjoy your time in the ale hall. Long may Heorot stand!

La dialectique peut-elle casser des briques? (1973)

Without dead time...

[9/10 · 16 December 2007]

Yes, dialectics can break bricks, if they are integral to a radical subjectivity. Otherwise, no...that is, if dialectics remains in the realm of abstraction, then NO, dialectics cannot break bricks.

BTW, I have a DVD copy of this film which is translated correctly. And indeed, the boy child, revolutionary martial artist does reject the girl who is following him because she is still enamoured of Castroism.

There are many enemies of radical subjectivity: capitalists, landlords, bureaucrats, priests, in short, ruling class elements and their ideologies. Reified thinking/reversal of the subject-object relationship is something to be shunned. Thus, the rejection of the girl who is still hopelessly tied to yet another bureaucratic ideology.

In "Can Dialectics Break Bricks" we have two fundamentally opposed forces at work: the people who serve the bosses and vamp on the proles and the proles themselves who stand up to the bosses and their hired serviles. The radical subjectivity of the proles doesn't need the dead hand of an ideology to motivate them to action. No, these proles are acting for themselves; they are acting as a class for itself; they've said good-bye to dead time. And they won't be happy until the last bureaucrat (even ones claiming to be 'communists') is hung by the guts of the last capitalist. There's no room for manipulators of and apologists for wage-labour when being confronted by class conscious workers who want EVERYTHING. Nope, no way. There will be no peace between these two classes until classes themselves are abolished. As hard as the bureaucrats in this film try to co:opt these class conscious martial artists with promises of crumbs and hierarchical power, the proles refuse. When offered the job of foreman, one of the radical proles spits saying, "I don't want to be a petty boss."

This film is an example of "detournment", a form of Situationist intervention in the society of the spectacle which involves taking film, advertising or really any piece of standard ruling class media and turning it into its opposite, a work of liberation against usual ideological domination. What's used here is a standard martial arts movie with all its gratuitous, relatively content-less violence. And it works! What is originally meant to be taken seriously becomes a satire, a filmic bullet in the heart of the sadistic domination of the ruling ideas of the era, including those spouted by "official" left-wing critics e.g. Foucault as ideology gets a slap in the face, along with the landlords, capitalists and Marxist-Leninist bureaucrats and dominators in general.

Get your kicks: see "Can Dialectics Break Bricks"!

Age of Consent (1969)

The woman who could launch a thousand ships...

[7/10 · 8 December 2007]

As always, Helen Mirren is delightful to see. And James Mason finally gets to be with his Lolita. And oh, I did find Mason's mate more aggravating than an Australian fly. For those who haven't experienced them, Australian flies will just never leave you alone. They're aggressive little insects who are attracted to any body with water. Don't sweat, and yet, how can one help but sweat when Helen Mirren is around. She's a gorgeous woman, always has been and will be. A great actress too. This romp does her justice as a start in film. Don't forget to her her cameo appearance in "Oh Lucky Man", made around this same time.

Sicko (2007)

Denial

[10/10 · 26 September 2007]

Whew!! Made my blood boil, and, personally, considering my vulnerability as an aging, far-from-wealthy, soon-to-be retiree, scared the bleep out me. This is not the country one would logically choose to grow old in. I left the theater with smoke coming out my ears …like I'm not angry enough already? Imagine being the guy in some (I've forgotten which) U.S. Midwest city who cut off two fingers and couldn't afford to have them both reattached, so had to choose the ring finger at $12,000 over the middle finger at $60,000. (An added irony is this guy is a guitar player and the injury was to his left, fretting, hand.) Meanwhile, a guy in Windsor who cut off all his fingers had them all reattached, followed by a program of extensive rigorous physical therapy, without one Canadian cent of personal expense. Imagine being a retired aging Midwest couple who have raised a family, paid off their mortgage, and suddenly lose everything when the husband has back-to-back heart attacks, and the insurance company cancels their policy. Imagine being a surgeon who is forced to deny care to a terminally ill patient because his insurance company won't cover a procedure that would save his life. Imagine being the wife of that patient with a small child who must watch her 30 year-old husband die as a result. Imagine being a claims adjuster for a multi-billion dollar health-insurance company whose primary mission is to save the company money by denying coverage and claims, and who winds up needing her own expensive medication and treatment when she finally collapses from years of guilt and stress associated with making those decisions. Imagine being a renowned physician who sells her soul to a large HMO, climbs the corporate ladder with a high six digit annual income by helping set claims policies that result in an unknown, but probably large, number of deaths, then, inconsolable and heavy with guilt and grief, breaks down and bares her soul to a Congressional committee on national television. Imagine being a young G.P. in Paris who makes more than $200,000 a year, and works in a system that rewards him with bonuses when some of his patients quit smoking, lose weight, come up with lower cholesterol or blood pressure, a young G.P. who frankly tells Michael Moore, "I could not be a doctor in the U.S. I could not deny people care for any reason, certainly not because they can't pay for it." All of these scenes, and many more, come to life in this really powerful, not to mention entertaining, movie. What Michael Moore has put up there on the screen is not fantasy, it is not fiction. If you define "criminal" behavior as making decisions that knowingly lead to illness and death, bankruptcy and despair, for thousands of people, then the insurance-run health care industry in this country fits the bill. Watching this film brought tears to my eyes more than once. The Havana scenes were very powerful, the meeting between NYC and Havana fire-fighters nicely capturing the potential for a real marriage of justice and brotherhood. And the gratitude and relief displayed by the New York Hispanic woman whose throat got chemically fried doing rescue work at Nine Eleven's Ground Zero is unforgettable when she finally receives the care she so desperately needs in Havana and couldn't get in NYC, where, instead, she lost her job, had to sell her house and move into a shitty little apartment to survive, and had to pay $125.00 for each breath-giving atomizer that cost her exactly 3 pesos in Havana. (She presumably brought a large boxful back from Cuba.) What's different, and perhaps better, about "Sicko" is that, unlike his other movies in which Moore goes for the collective throats of the capitalist creeps ruining people's lives (not that I mind that), here he indicts the American health-care industry by simply contrasting it to the health-care industries of Canada, Britain and France (and Cuba). Footage of villains like Dubya and his pack of greedy crooks is notably absent. That's a good thing inasmuch as it helps mollify reactionary workers who don't like to see their political heroes savaged, and lends the film a calmer, less fanatical, more even-handed atmosphere. It's a bad thing inasmuch as I personally love seeing footage of Dufus Dubya with his foot in his brain-dead mouth because I love to hate the bastard so much (and there are a couple very funny clips of the moron at work ...watch for his comments on obstetricians, for example). But this particular documentary strategy works well because it presents a scathing critique by simply contrasting two radically different approaches to national health care. I'd say the difference between the U.S. system and those of other industrialized western countries is obvious and dramatic. Here the system is not geared toward saving money (or lives) through ongoing preventive and preemptive care. There it is. Here the system, which is more expensive, leads to more illness, untimely death and despair for millions. There it provides universal, cheaper (and better) care and the peace of mind that comes from knowing you'll get treatment without selling the farm to get it. The statistics and testimony of millions of satisfied people prove the case. I mentioned how much this movie scared me, and, really, sparked a jealousy of the British, French, Canadians, actually the folks in every other western industrialized country, who don't have to face my fears.

Noi the Albino (2003)

"You will be surrounded by death"

[7/10 · 7 August 2007]

Noi is an intelligent 17-year old, living today's Icelandic rural life. Noi is a very white lad, looking much like a lead singer in some band called "Midnight Oil". Completing the white-death symbolism which permeates this film, Noi is an albino surrounded by icy, white, snowy landscapes.

Noi can solve the Rubric Cube in a matter of a couple of minutes and defeat a skilled opponent at "Mastermind" within seconds. However, most people who know Noi don't appreciate his innate intelligence nor his very well hidden libido. That's because they've pretty much accepted their tamped-down rural lives. Most people around Noi are dead-like, passionless and joyless, but don't know it. Noi knows. He knows a lot of things; but he's not ready to let anyone else in on his secrets. Besides, it's hard communicating with the living-dead. He's keeping his libidinous urges to himself, hiding away, waiting for the right moment.

Living in a semi-morgue can be cold and cold you are, watching "Noi The Albino". Noi's grandmother moves with a sense of deliberate Spockian purpose, expressionless and ever so slowly. His teacher teaches with a dispassion, resembling a 12th Century Gregorian chant, droned within a drafty, stone church. And his father is like a zombified Jim Backus, resigned to remembering the sparks of lives past, with his own karaoke recordings of Elvis songs populating his taxi's glovebox--graveyards of a ghetto-life gone by.

Noi is 'California dreaming',like kids his age did back in the 60s. He wants out of this winter of constant discontent, this daily life of quiet, hallroom tick-tocks, passing time over things, like jigsaw puzzles, waiting, waiting for snowy, stone cold death. Noi dreams escape to the warmth of an Hawaiian life. In the meantime, he'll drop out--rebel style, without a cause, so to speak--except for himself. Noi's alone, an isolated individual rebel or so he thinks, until he meets the new girl in town, Iris. Iris is from the city. Noi tests her with a dare or two and stirs an ember of adventure. You can see it in her face. They stimulate each other's imagination within the snowy, white within the deathly, cold Icelandic winter. The cold drives them to find each other most appropriately, in the local museum, a house of dead things. But,daydreaming is as far as Iris will go with Noi and when Noi steals a car urging Iris to become his partner in crime, to make the small town prison break of their lives, Iris remains behind with cold feet and like the others surrounding Noi, she stares her farewell with cold, cold eyes of resignation. Noi's emotional, romantic rebellion ends in its usual impotent rage.

Noi's job as a gravedigger and his special hideout, a hole below the floors of his grandma's house, all point to one direction for this lad. As he is told by the town tea leaf reader, "You will be surrounded by death."