My Year in Movies 2004

Alternate title: Ryan's year of Asian film. Not really, since it's been clear for quite some time now that the best movies in the world are coming out of Asia, and not just Japan and Hong Kong. Add Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan as big art-house players. This list gets increasingly arbitrary towards the end, but then 10 is a fairly arbitrary number for ranking films. Just consider the top 5 my "favorites" and the rest as really strong films that I enjoyed a lot. I recognize that lists like these are pretty pointless, but it helps me keep my sanity after the Oscars and mostly idiotic mainstream critics have their say.

1. House of Flying Daggers

I'll try to do my best here to avoid superlatives. I'll also try to avoid ranting about critics and viewers unable to see past the spectacle (or, even worse, those who call it merely spectacle) to the rather complex subtleties of the film. On the other hand, it's a melodrama, and if you're too hip for that well I'm sorry for you. Let's just focus on the stunning visual rhymes which also have thematic weight. Consider for instance what seems like the rather pointless shot of falling leaves, which then becomes connected to an image of soldiers falling from the tops of trees, and then recognize this is visual demonstration of how the government views these disposable men, and exactly the fate that each protagonist is trying to escape. The numerous reversals of the plot are not merely "gotcha" storytelling but also investigations into the difficulty of being able to tell when someone is being genuine or not. People pretending to be in love will fall in love, and is their allegiance to the game or something else, something higher, more authoritative perhaps? The final scene in particular hinges on a moment of extreme mendacity, and almost superfluous cruelty, that extends but does not solve the problem of shifting appearances. The perpetrator, the third wheel of this particular love triangle, is a representative of the conflicting systems of power in control of both protagonists, and so shows that his power (and so the system's) is based on mere appearance. His final act proves that he is just playing a game with their lives. The problem is that in this film the games go all the way up and all the way down, and their attempt to escape these systems (of death, really) cannot but fail at a moment of yet another false appearance.

2. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring

I have already written about this one here. I mostly agree with what I wrote there. The scene of extreme spiritual striving at the end of the film is still one of the most moving passages I have ever seen in a film, and while the rest of the film is very good, it's merely leading up to that moment.

3. Last Life in the Universe

A thoroughly bizarre film. Your standard modern ennui with your not standard at all Yakuza sub-plot (which basically disrupts all your previously held notions about the main character by the end of the film). I loved about this movie though, which literally had me smiling throughout most of it, despite how sad (and my god the ending is sad!) it is. English is apparently the lingua franca of the Asian world, and so this movie about a Japanese man in Thailand is mostly in English. This little conceit though works wonders for the movie. Since the characters can only talk in very simple sentences, and since communication is so hard, it serves to highlight the desire to simply talk to someone that drives so much of the film (the title reflects the protagonist's feelings of loneliness). Often language tapes are playing in the background and we are forced to listen to inane small talk in Japanese. Or someone begins to list all the words they know in Thai like "thank you" and "good luck." It's these little gestures of connection that make the film so powerful and so moving that I can forgive the cruel ending. Now, does any of that mean I have any idea why the Yakuzas show up, who our protagonist really is, and why, oh why, is the lead girl played by two different actresses? No, of course not.

4. Hero

Yet another great film from Zhang Yimou (see #1). This one was originally a much lesser film for me, but after a second viewing I turned around. The political meaning is debatable, and I go back and forth myself. But nevertheless, I love that the film depicts the fundamentally contradictory desires of doing the best for All and doing the best for Some. All of this leads us to make complex (and, crucially, morally culpable) decisions. It's probably the discomfort of being ethically challenged in this way that caused much of the political criticism of this movie. God forbid someone suggest we can't have our cake and eat it too. Besides, any movie starring both Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung is automatically great.

5. Friday Night Lights
The best American film of the year. There's one image in particular that stands out for me from early on: a football stadium brilliantly lit up surrounded by the oppressive darkness of West Texas. I don't think that poignant image is an accident since the film continually underscores that point: football is only shot at redemption and heroism these boys have. To merely look down on that desire would be disgusting, and to merely idealize it (and the inevitable suffering it causes) would be irresponsible. This movie miraculously avoids both. What we get is a tremendously empathetic portrayal of poor white Southerners, one that will perhaps go unheralded for quite some time from people for whom this way of life is too distant and alien and threatening after the Election. Racism, power, and poverty are placed before us as facts but not dwelled on. What we get is a mood piece, not investigative journalism. But this is not a grid-iron Hoosiers. That film was about achieved redemption. This movie is about failure and how one accepts it. That these boys are able to accept their ordinary non-heroic lives, or least that they have to accept that challenge, makes them heroes of a different sort. The final play of the final game would seem a bit over the top if it didn't perfectly underscore visually the thematic point it was making.

6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Already overrated by lonely sadsack hipsters (hey that's me!) but it's still wonderful. Others have written on the Nietzschean parallels, so I won't bother.

7. Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Another small masterpiece from Ming-liang Tsai, who made What Time is it There? which is one of my favorite movies ever. Very funny, very perplexing and sad too. There's almost no dialogue in this movie, and the camera hardly moves. One shot in particular shows an empty movie theater for like 2 minutes. Ah, the rigors and pleasures of art house movie going! Only for the really hardcore cineastes I guess, but it is full of rapturous melancholy about our dreams, the movies, loneliness, and the vanishing communal aspect of movie going.

8. Before Sunset
Already written on this one here. I think I overrated it at first. Still great though.

9. The Return
A fascinating parable about something. I had an elaborate theory about this movie when I saw it a few months ago but now I have forgotten it. I think it had something to do with our desire for the Father conflicting with out desire for Freedom. What sticks in my mind is the Oedipal power struggle, as well as failures of trust that prove so fatal. "I could love you if you weren't so cruel" says the younger boy to his father. Or is he talking to God?

10. Collateral
Action existentialism. Hero confronts nihilism and overcomes it. Ok, I eat that stuff up but you may be yawning. Fair enough. See it for the simply gorgeous vision of a rundown nighttime LA. A dreamscape that turns into a nightmare.

Also good:
Kill Bill, vol. 2
Anchorman
Dogville
Sideways
The Aviator
Million Dollar Baby
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle

Is there something in the water in Lebanon? Seriously.

Those who are unhappy to find themselves without faith show us that God does not enlighten them: but the others show us that there is a God who is blinding them.

--Pascal

This interview with Simon Critchley is worth your time. If you're busy, here's a good excerpt:

Nietzsche's response to nihilism is the doctrine of eternal return. You could read that in a cosmological way, as a belief that the universe is cyclical and is going to recur. Or, as you hinted, Vico's notion of cycles of history could be seen as signalled. I think that's all window dressing, though; I don't think that's what Nietzsche means. For him, eternal return is much more of a moral doctrine.
There's a story told by the poet Heine about Kant walking on the heath with his servant just after writing the first Critique, the Critique of Pure Reason, in which he takes God away. He looks at his servant and suddenly feels so sorry for him because he's taken God away from him that he writes a second Critique, just to give God back. The essential thesis of the Critique of Pure Reason is that traditional metaphysics, God, freedom and immortality, is cognitively meaningless. We cannot know whether God exists, whether the soul is immortal and so on. That's the First Critique. Then in the Second Kant says: But we can still maintain the idea of God, or immortality of the soul as a postulate, a postulate of practical reason. So although I cannot know whether God exists, I can still act as if he did, and that can orientate my ethical activity.
Nietzsche ups the ante and takes it a stage further. He says: Well, this is ridiculous. What would it be to fully affirm the fact that God doesn't exist? To fully affirm the complete meaninglessness of the universe? And to be able to do that again and again and again. If you're capable of that thought, of affirming that this universe is not for us, that we're just here by sheer chance, and you can do that again and again, then you're equal to the force of eternal return. It's a sort of moral test.

This part is also interesting:

If I could go back to what I was saying about Nietzsche: what people get excited about in his work is this notion of affirmation: an affirmation in relation to death. I can affirm the meaninglessness of the universe and the ultimate meaninglessness of my own life, and heroically assume that. There's something almost disgusting about that thought after the holocaust, it seems to me. Adorno puts his finger on this quite well in the final part of Negative Dialectic. He's concerned with after Auschwitz. He says that a new categorical imperative has imposed itself on humankind: not to let Auschwitz repeat itself, and not to hand Hitler posthumous victories. He goes on to say that the situation of the death camps is best described not by descriptions of them, but by, for example, the work of Beckett. Why? Because it doesn't say anything about them; it doesn't attempt to represent what took place.

Now here is another interview with Critchley on humor, from a later date i think.

I begin from the assumption that modernity is defined by the impossibility of any metaphysical belief in a deity. That's where I begin from and that is axiomatic for me. It means that if I had a religious experience I would stop doing philosophy: philosophy for me is essentially atheistic.

Now, it's important to keep the metaphysical "death of God" separate the question of whether God exists or not, but even so I found this to be a pretty interesting statement because I've always thought religious experiences to be a key motivator of philosophy in the first place. Wouldn't the felt presence of God necessarily act just like the nothingness of existentialism, or the anxiety of Heidegger. God, whether he exists or not, seems to represent a radical Otherness from this world that threatens and calls it into question.

Michael Tanner on Nietzsche's last year of sanity and Twilight of the Idols:

And this is Nietzsche bravely talking about the joys of heaven from a position in hell--for this last year he says No as never before. One might even say that his affirmations are only, and this is his tragedy, the negations of negations. His faith--and it is remarkable to find him talking of faith at all in a positive way--is that it is possible to be someone who does not need to negate first. But he could never be that person, and the more dialectical cartwheels he turns, with wonderful and entrancing dexterity, the further he is removed from that ideal. The only Dionysus we can identify him with is the one torn into innumerable agonized fragments.

I think this passage does a pretty good job summing up my own misgivings about Nietzsche, while still maintaining the respectful awe I feel towards the writings he left us. And if we accept Tanner's idea that Nietzsche wanted to be someone who didn't need to negate in the first place then we have to think that perhaps Nietzsche's philosophy becomes a relentless and agonizing self-criticism (of the pessimist inside, perhaps) that simply enacts, over and over (the tragic irony!), the problem it seeks to solve. If only philosophy had the power to do away with itself...if only it would perish forever in an instant of joy, of pure Yes-saying, that abolishes all the little no's we say in self-defense against the universe.

"That I could clamber to the frozen moon and draw the ladder after me." -- Arthur Schopenhauer

The Metaphysics of Donald Rumsfeld.

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

This is a very old article, but I thought it would be fun to link to it again. The "poem" above is really quite brilliant, and even metaphysically profound!

There is another fantastic (and profound) saying of his not listed. To paraphrase from memory (actually the memory of a friend): "You are starting wiyh an illogical assumption and proceeding logically to an illogical conclusion." Saying this will win you every argument ever!

Yet more proof that we live in the best of all possible worlds. (Brace yourself. I'm not kidding.)

See more of God's aborted creations here.

Conor Cunningham on Plotinus and the non-being of the One in Genealogy of Nihilism:

The One cannot be alone. The One cannot be alone because that which proceeds from its plenitude does no necessarily. Furthermore, the One many well require that which emanantes so that it can itself be the One....If there were no emanations there would be the nihilism of pure undifferentiated "being" which may threaten the possibility of the One. As Plotinus says, "something besides unity (the One) there must be or all would be indiscernibly buried, shapeless within that unbroken whole." If there was only the One it might be unable to be the One, for we know for certain it must produce. But if the One requires company, that which accompanies it must be nothing because of this necessity, if simplicity is to be protected. In being nothing the One and the many are equivalent; this many is but the one that comes from the One. In this way the one that is produced is nothing. The One needs this one which is nothing. But in needing nothing it needs nothing but itself (for the One is non-being).

Fascinating stuff! Interesting to compare this mirrored nihilism with Schopenhauer, where will and representation essentially dissolve into nothing at the conclusion of The World as Will and Representation (the implied unity of the title would seem to necessitate this). I don't know much about Cunningham, or "Radical Orthodoxy" for that matter, but just a few pages in this book seems pretty remarkable. Also interesting to compare it with systems theory: the necessary distinction between system and environment which requires excluding the nothing (environment) in the service of coherence (system), but nevertheless requires including it because the distinction is itself the founding self-reference that makes meaning. (Yeah, it's difficult stuff!)

Tokyo Jihen - Kyoiku

(I couldn't find a picture of the whole band, so here's my favorite picture of Shiina Ringo, who is basically the mastermind behind the band anyway.)

This one takes a while to grow on you, but boy does it grow. Shiina Ringo's sense of melody is, as always, outstanding, and she must be one of the few truly original songwriters I know of. The album is often frenzied, as even the quieter moments feel dense somehow. One track in particular revs up to a manic hyperactive momentum only to completely surprise you when some beautiful jazz-like melodies on a piano break through the chaos. The album as a whole sticks to a rock template but manages to expand that same template to include elements of pop, jazz (which may be Ringo's true vocation), quiet instrumental interludes, and even, if I'm not mistaken, a touch of cabaret.

The City of Lost Souls


This was my first Takashi Miike film excepting a few chunks of Audition caught on cable that I was too chicken to finish watching, and I'm not sure how to respond. It's kind of a typical yakuza gangster film where everything basically goes batshit crazy from time to time. For example, in this film you will see:
1) chickens using matrix-style martial arts in a cock fight
2) a ping pong match to the death
3) a daring helicopter attack on a deportation bus in the Japanese DESERT
4) brazilian martial arts presented in the most hilariously bewildering way possible
5) a very strange soccer motif
6) a man set on fire with vodka (and some chickens too)
Now I imagine there is some deeper meaning here about expatriate communities in Japan, specifically Brazilians, but I can't imagine what it is at the moment. Nevertheless, it's never boring, and often fascinating in its near surreal non sequiturs.

Music Video: Utada Hikaru, Hikari


This is an immensely charming video. The camera never moves or cuts from the shot you see above; the entire video is done in one take. Utada, who gives a very sweet performance here, washes the dishes and sometimes sings and sometimes doesn't (even at one point taking a drink of water while we still hear her singing). It's as if she is singing along to the radio or TV. The effect is pretty wonderful, a simple and proudly prosaic depiction of the joy of music.

Million Dollar Baby


Emerson on Fate:

...And not less work the laws of repression, the penalties of violated functions. Famine, typhus, frost, war, suicide and effete races must be reckoned calculable parts of the system of the world.

These are the pebbles from the mountain, hints of the terms by which our life is walled up, and which show a kind of mechanical exactness, as of a loom or mill in what we call casual or fortuitous events.

The force of which we resist these torrents of tendency looks so ridiculously inadequate that it amounts to little more than a criticism or protest made by a minority of one, under compulsion of millions. I seemed in the height of a tempest to see men overboard struggling in the waves, and driven about here and there. They glanced intelligently at each other, but 't was little they could do for one another; 't was much if each could keep afloat alone. Well, they had a right to their eye-beams, and all the rest was Fate.

I don't have much to add about this movie that hasn't been said elsewhere. I will say how casually despairing it is, and how because of this the tiny moments of tenderness are all the more affecting. I especially like the implied nature of the love between the two protagonists, how very often it seems as if only not for time and age they could be happy. The moments of hope and connection, taking place in a world bereft of religious or familial comforts, amount to no more than Emerson's eye-beams. But that's something, isn't it?

It's startling to see a film so forcefully depict the ethical limits of religion. "She's not asking for God's help, she's asking for mine." The relationship between the two characters is thus given a significance that trancends even our obligations to God. Yes, he is lost at the end of the film, but that comes as the price for setting her free. And what is God to him without her?

Fallen Angels


What a strange film! Wong Kar Wai made this one (starring, among others, the very striking Michelle Reis--former miss Hong Kong apparently--pictured above) right after making the masterpiece Chungking Express, and it seems to be related to that film in the same way 2046 is related to Days of Being Wild. That is, a lyrical riff on similar themes, almost an echo of events in the previous film.

Narrative is casually ignored in favor of surreal/comic episodes of longing--surely Wong's "great theme" along with the inexorable march of time--but for me the results are strangely hollow, especially considering how strongly Wong's films usually affect me. Nevertheless, this portrait of urban wanderers pursuing quixotic quests for connection and desire has real power in several long shots that are spread throughout the film. My favorite shows two of the protagonists simply sitting in a restaurant, being together, emphasizing that the fight against loneliness can only be won temporalily. Another pair of long shots daringly makes explicit the sexual undercurrent to the longing on display. Happiness is continually linked to fleeting moments of grace that pass as quickly as the images on a flickering tv screen.

Nietzsche hits awfully close to home sometimes, too close for comfort:

The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions. And while he aims for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive man, standing in the midst of a culture, already reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and redemption—in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune. To be sure, he suffers more intensely, when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch. He is then just as irrational in sorrow as he is in happiness: he cries aloud and will not be consoled. How differently the stoical man who learns from experience and governs himself by concepts is affected by the same misfortunes! This man, who at other times seeks nothing but sincerity, truth, freedom from deception, and protection against ensnaring surprise attacks, now executes a masterpiece of deception: he executes his masterpiece of deception in misfortune, as the other type of man executes his in times of happiness. He wears no quivering and changeable human face, but, as it were, a mask with dignified, symmetrical features. He does not cry; he does not even alter his voice. When a real storm cloud thunders above him, he wraps himself in his cloak, and with slow steps he walks from beneath it.

Take Care of My Cat


Yet another example of the strength of Korean cinema, this film about the weakening bonds of friendship among a group of classmates making the transition to adulthood has a slowness and looseness that perfectly serves its story depicting the onset of general adult ennui. Time empties old friendships and obligations of their meaning, leaving them hollow and oppressive, and the motif of electronic communication somehow serves to emphasize the lonely melancholy of adult urban life as well as the miracles of connection that can still happen. Adult friendship is redefined as reciprocal generosity (see the title) and giving witness to one another; that is, simply put, being there, waiting for and responding to the call of friendship, even if it contradicts the the explicit desires of the friend in question, and eventually offering the chance at, if not redemption, then a kind of freedom that allows starting over. The girl who turns her back on the friendship, who lets her best friend walk out the door without a word, is eventually left alone and trapped in a dead end corporate job, while her friends are last seen examining the departures board at the airport.

Coming soon: my write up of 2004 movies. Here's a hint to what number 1 will be:

Music 2004

Since it's a new year finally I figured it was time to clear off the sidebars. I'll leave the films up for a little while longer, at least until I see a few more movies; mainly Million Dollar Baby, House of Flying Daggers, and Time of the Wolf, and probably a few others. (I have a deep suspicion that Goodbye Dragon Inn will eventually be my favorite movie of the year, but I haven't seen it yet and probably won't for some time.)

But I can at least write a little about my music choices. I am a complete amateur with music so expect some malapropism, errors in judgment, and just plain ignorance.

I ventured pretty deeply into psychedelic music this year (as I did last year), finding much satisfaction in impossibly dense soundscapes, blistering electric guitar solos, and long form meditative mantras. So it seems pretty obvious that The Neck's Drive-by and Houston natives Charalambides' Joy Shapes both deserve to be album of the year for me.

Describing Drive-by is easily beyond my musical vocabulary, but I'll try. Much like previous albums by this jazz group, it's one long piece, about 63 minutes (and also like their other albums the last ten minutes are a bit of a snore--they seem to feel the same need to wind down as they do to wind up). An absolutely gorgeous series of chords from a piano pop up every now and then, but the real attraction here is the drums and bass, which combine to create what is a truly trance inducing effect, a rhythm that never ceases to be seductively beautiful and addictive. Best part occurs late in the game, where everything drops out but the drums, casting the listener into a primal relationship with the reverberations, movement, space, and even a physical sense of pleasure. Give it time and space.

Joy Shapes, is fittingly 180 degrees away from Drive-by. There is no rhythm to speak of, just airy (and often spooky) guitar jangling that melts and melds dissonance into some beautiful forms of harmony. The singing will put you off at first, but learn to treat it as an intstrument and it fits perfectly. Seemingly celestial, it offers a great counterpart to the earthy sensuality of The Necks.

Boredoms, Seadrum/House of Sun: my favorite band returns with what is hopefully just a teaster. The second track (out of two) is a very pretty siter vs. guitar showdown, but the first track is pretty unique. Yoshimi keens beautifully for a few minutes before a percussion rises up like the tide all around her (hence the name of the song I guess). Eventually piano keys rain down on your head so fast it's like sensory overload. Absolutely stunning and beautiful, if exhausting.

Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet's Tail's Out is probably not a major album for free jazz aficionados, but this dilettante loved it. Yoshihide brings a real rock (almost metal!) sensibility to the louder pieces. Check out the drums at the end of the second track and the hilariously obnoxious rendering of Strawberry Fields Forever that never fails to make me laugh. The final two tracks, a beautiful rendering of a jazz classic complete with ear splitting sine-waves that morphs into a form of music the Japanese call onkyo, which as far as I can tell tries to create shifting sound sensations and colors rather than situating itself around a firm rhythm or melody--it goes for pure sound and it's absolutely hold-your-breath-or-it-will-fly-away gorgeous.

Camera Obscura, Underachievers Please Try Harder: just plain and pretty pop music in the mould of Belle and Sebastian, but a lot better for my money. The singer can be a little to fey and coy, but she often reaches for beautiful intimacy and gets it.

Finaly, Comets on Fire make it for basically creating one of the greatest rock songs of all time on Blue Cathedral--an old school hard rock meets pysch album that isn't nearly long enough for me. Great fun.

Puffy AmyYumi, Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi Show Soundtrack: Basically a greatest hits compilation. Flawless and exhilarating power pop. I just got their album Nice from last year and it's perfect as well. Don't deny yourself something this great! (The cartoon ain't bad either!)

Best of the rest:

The Streets, A Grand Don't Come for Free: Great for it's determined commitment to the mundane.
Bjork, Medulla: a minor work, for sure. Some gorgeous bits though, and deceivingly complex.
Espers, Espers: 60s style haunted folk-psych.
Mara Carlyle, The Lovely: kind of a lovely chamber piece. Fantastic singer.
OOIOO, Kila Kila Kila: wildly underrated. Probably seems a bit sparse and even empty to some, but for lovers of Yoshimi & Yuka's Flower with no Color, it's the next logical step. Yoshimi's penchant for interesting sounds over songcraft may annoy some (and she may never top her masterpiece Green & Gold) but if you have the patience there are a lot of rewards to be found here.
Annie, Anniemal: fantastic europop. If you don't like this you are dead inside.

Lot's of other great stuff out there, of course. (I just remembered Yuka Honda's great new album, for instance.) Not a great year for music overall, however. I spent much of the year in the 70s myself (Popol Vuh, anyone?). Looking forward to a new Kate Bush album next year, as well as The Avalanches and Daft Punk.

2046


I have only seen an unofficial copy of this so far, and I can tell the usual Wong Kar-wai style vibrant colors are washed out a bit. I can picture how it is supposed to look at times, such as when Faye Wong (who, it must be said, looks insanely gorgeous in this movie) stands in a green dress in front of green bottles I imagine the sensuousness of the color is overwhelming. But on my copy at the moment it's just a bit faded. Thus watching the movie is a bit of a strain rather than the swoon I imagine it is supposed to be. So I will only say a few words for now.

Time and love are again the themes, just as in In the Mood for Love. This one is more about memory, time lost rather than time slipping away. The final scenes of In the Mood for Love represent a form of monument building, secrets kept eternally. 2046, then, continues to explore the reverberations of that act which solidifies the past into a personal monument, draining the present of all meaning and satisfaction. The ironic meaning of the science fiction elements show that the pursuit of the future is a displaced longing for the past. 2046 is the place where "nothing ever changes." Key line: "Why can't it be like it was before?" Where In the Mood for Love was romantic, sumptuous, perfect, 2046 wanders in a melancholy haze, imperfect, incomplete, the failure of consummation portrayed at the end of the first film is given its full weight here. Longing turns to hollow pleasures. Time moves on. Quietly devastating.

"But it was not a star, it was falling, a bright angel of death"
--Gravity's Rainbow

I think this line does a nice job of summing up the terrifying reversal (indeed, the arc of gravity's rainbow itself) that the novel seems to be about. What if our greatest hopes, dreams, and desires are merely the masks of a death wish? Is there a way out? Hopefully I'll be able to post more on this later...(finals week)

Surely, you can't doubt for one minute the fact that we live in the best of all possible worlds?

Schopenhauer, 1823:

If at times I have felt unhappy, then this has been largely due to a mistaken identity: on those occasions I regarded myself as someone other than who I am, and lamented that person's misfortune: e.g. a Privatdozent who is not made a professor and has no audience, or one of whom a philistine here speaks ill or a gossip there talks scandal, or the defendent in that bodily injury suit, or the lover whom the girl he particularly wants rejects, or the patient housebound by his illness...I was not any of these, all this is alien material from which, at best, the coat was made which I wore for a while and then took off in favour of another. But who am I really? He who wrote the World as Will and Representation...That is who I am, and what could challenge that man in the years he still draws breath?

Try to look past, if you can, the burst of ego at the end of this quote, and see through to the necessity of it represented in the catalog of misfortunes that he recalls so easily and declares to be so illusory. This is not me, this isn't happening. This suffering, this illness, this need to be recognized is not me, for I am something else, something I can be proud of.

Here is a interesting interview with Philip Roth. It's of limited interest overall, but the series of comments Roth makes toward the end are most important:

JEFFREY BROWN: Some years ago, I know you were involved with Eastern European writers at a time when they were a kind of moral voice against a totalitarian society. What do you see as your role, or as the role of a writer in our society?

PHILIP ROTH: Your role is to write as well as you can. You're not advancing social causes as far as I'm concerned. You're not addressing social problems.

What you're advancing is... there's only one cause you're advancing; that's the cause of literature, which is one of the great lost human causes. So you do your bit, you do your bit for fiction, for the novel.

JEFFREY BROWN: Why do you think it's become one of the great lost causes of our time?

PHILIP ROTH: My goodness. Um, oh, I don't think in twenty or twenty-five years people will read these things at all.

JEFFREY BROWN: Not at all?

PHILIP ROTH: Not at all. I think it's inevitable. I think the... there are other things for people to do, other ways for them to be occupied, other ways for them to be imaginatively engaged, that are I think probably far more compelling than the novel. So I think the novel's day has come and gone, really.

JEFFREY BROWN: I would imagine you would think this is a great loss for society.

PHILIP ROTH: Yes, I do. There's a lot of brilliance locked up in all those books in the library. There's a lot of human understanding. There's a lot of language. There's a lot of imaginative genius. So, yes, it's a great shame.

JEFFREY BROWN: And what happens for you?

PHILIP ROTH: Me?

JEFFREY BROWN: You.

PHILIP ROTH: (Laughs) I'm going to keep doing it. I'll keep doing it, stubbornly.

Passing, mortality, finitude. All a shame. And it's precisely this notion of it being a shame, something to be regretted but not avoided that, inevitably links mortality to pessimism in my mind. I keep coming back in my own mind to Socrates' comment that philosophy is the art of learning how to die. I can think of no more pressing concern. And if metaphysics, an act of forgetting in the Heideggerian sense, is also the forgetting of the knowledge of how to die, the we can only come back to Being only through our mortality. But the question that haunts me still: how do I accept my death while not accepting it so much that I cannot get out of bed? How do I, as it were, navigate between the Will to Power and the Denial of the Will? In some ways I think philosophy has no more important business than this question, one which must be continually re-negotiated.

The great Simon Critchley says everything I ever wanted to say about The Thin Red Line. Even though he makes a very easy and common mistake: the vast majority of the voiceovers in the film are from a character we actually see very little of, and not Witt, as most critics think. I think this doesn't really matter so much, because the voiceovers are meant, I believe, to run together in this way like a chorus in Greek tragedy. I especially like Critchley's emphasis on the unresolved metaphysical debate at the heart of the film--which seems to bypass most people completely, who seem to think the movie is endorsing some sort of pantheism.

Anaximander and the Ontological Difference

Perhaps the earliest surving fragment in the history of philosophy is Anaximander's sentence:

Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
As is the order of things;
For they execute the sentence upon one another
- The condemnation for the crime -
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.

More here, if you are interested.

I came across this while reading Vattimo on Heidegger. It is of particular importance for Heidegger's notion of overcoming metaphysics, which is also strongly tied towards being-towards-death and finitude as they are first expressed in Being and Time. It is an extraordinary fragment, extraordinary poetry really, and it is extremely difficult to make out the meaning of it. What is the crime? It would seem it is the "event" of my being, my singularity which only arises from the consideration of my death, that which Derrida notes in The Gift of Death is mine alone, the very thing which makes me "irreplaceable." My finitude is the condition for individuation (here I must say that Schopenhauer noted this in his way) and we might say that for Heidegger, and Vattimo, the "forgetting of Being" that takes place in metaphysics, the conflation of the ideal and the real, the ignoring of the ontological difference (the difference between Being and beings), is precisely tied to this notion of a crime: my Being in place of something else; the tying together of my being with Being, and therefore the origin of the idea of immortality.

As Derrida notes, to accept one's death, to give it and to be given it by God (Being), that which is not me, is to take on responsibility for the crime of being.

Note: This post hopefully explains to some extent my undoubtedly bizarre affection for Schopehauer. I see him as a thinker who went some way towards a rigorous distinction between Being and beings, someone who strenously observed the ontological difference. The problem is, if the distinction is rigorous it completely devalues beings (value is a function of Being). To completely devalue beings seems to me to be possiblly another metaphysical error, though a very odd one. This is, however, the opportunity I see in Schopenhauer.

For us ordinary mortals, Schopenhauer included, if not Jesus and Buddha (and Zarathustra?), this clear distinction is impossible. As Cioran said, "God is, even if he isn't." We have to live in the "interval," as Vattimo puts it, between Being and beings. We have to try, as Nietzsche wrote, to know that I dream and that I must dream. The gift of death, as Derrida sees it, seems to enable this.

It should also, finally, be noted that the terms Being and Nothing are interchangeable. It is beings that must vacillate between themselves and Being, their negation. To be or not to be. So in that spirit I will close this out with Hamlet's extraordinary meditation on his own death. Where else to end but Shakespeare?

If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be.

Question: Are the Dinobots the pinnacle of Western Culture?

Anticipating...

and also anticipating some more.


(Hmm, watch much Vertigo Mr. Wong?)

Even more.

Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Should I admire Rabbit Angstrom? I must admit that I do, whether I should or not. He has known grace, and will not settle for anything less. We all must settle into the despair of everyday life, yet Rabbit foolishly and selfishly keeps running; running across a field of death in the cemetery, pursued by moral obligation in the form of a minister. Rabbit gets away, and for this I admire him, though I probably should not. I know he will keep running and never find what he wants, but I still admire him for whatever it is that makes him run and hurt those that love him and need him, even though I most definitely should not. I hope he keeps running.

Destiny runs throughout the novel: a man on television tells us, “Know Thyself.” Everyone is made for something, and fulfillment lies in discovering this quality and becoming what one already is. “Learn to understand your talents, and then work to develop them. That’s the way to be happy.” Rabbit, as Eccles rightfully points out, “has been spoiled by his athletic success,” and cannot reconcile the beautiful harmony of basketball with mundane messiness of a drunken wife and a shit job. It’s not right. It’s missing something. In a wonderful scene only a golf lover could write Eccles taunts Harry with the indefinable nature of the object of his quest: “What is it? What is it? Is it hard or soft? Harry. Is it blue? Is it red? Does it have polka dots?” Rabbit backs down for a moment but later hits an improbably beautiful golf shot, and says triumphantly, “That’s it!” And so it is. Updike lets him have the final word.

Invariably, Rabbit’s quest for it causes immense suffering, and Updike piles such guilt upon Rabbit that his ability to free himself from it at the end of the novel makes for an ambiguously moving moment. What a horrible and ugly and selfish thing Rabbit does, when he turns to his wife and blames her while absolving himself, but what a beautiful determination to escape the trap that has been set for him! I feel that the ugly/ beautiful moment of Rabbit’s escape perhaps acts out one of the main concerns of Updike’s novel. Rabbit uses people, he’s “bad news” as Ruth tells him, he is childish and selfish, stuck in former athletic glory days, irresponsible, and even a bit of a prick. Rabbit himself admits, “If you have the guts to be yourself, other people’ll pay the price.” But in order to condemn Rabbit’s behavior I have to condemn that from which it springs: the “excess of feeling” that Eccles diagnoses, the instinct that doesn’t let him give up, as Ruth notes. The question is of the nature of Rabbit’s essential character, and it would take someone sterner than I to mark it as an evil one.

Instead, I find Rabbit’s nature to be beautiful, despite the suffering it causes. I believe Rabbit is the tragic hero of this novel because of his refusal, perhaps even his inability, to stay in the trap that moral obligation sets for him, the same moral obligations that protect the rest of us. When back with Janice and Nelson, Rabbit “feels the truth: the thing that has left his life has left irrevocably; no search would recover it.” The rejection of this truth, Rabbit’s mad dash away from the inescapable, is as heroic as it is morally despicable. Perhaps Updike’s insight is that the heroic and the moral are not compatible in a world of suffering.

I rather doubt Rabbit finds happiness in his life, and I suspect his will is eventually run down. No one can run forever. We all get old and tired. The tragedy of the novel is not just Rabbit’s decision to run out on his family and the suffering it causes, but the fact of the inescapable despair that he runs from. Life is too painful and I am too disillusioned to think running out on my obligations will accomplish anything. We must stay resigned. Let Rabbit run.

"Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see."

Henry James, letter to Grace Norton, July 28, 1883

The Leopard


It's difficult for me to really express why I admired this film so much. There is of course the amazing cast: Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale (appearing here the same year as her memorable performance in 8 1/2, talk about a good year!), and even real Sicilian royalty in the breathtaking 45 minute final scene. There is the graceful and beautiful imagery. Visconti nevers cuts for the sake of cutting, and often he lingers over a shot that only reveals its beauty and meaning over time. He gives us time to think, and to explore the image for ourselves.

So the film is formally a masterpiece, but what makes it even more special is the restrained and melancholy story it tells, one conveyed through small gestures and unspoken thoughts. A scene near the end of the film shows a few couples dancing away the final hours of a Ball as the sun rises. Trash covers the floor and the other Ball-goers doze on couches. There is a dying, fading glow to the Ball's dawn conclusion, acknowledging that the arrival of a new age entails the sad and slow death of another one. Lancaster, the titular "Leopard", the representative of a now defunct nobility, is spared the indignity of a death scene. He walks out of history under his own power.

And history goes on without him. This film remembers.

Dread

In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift imagines a race of beings who are immortal. Gulliver is astonished to hear this news, and imagines that they must have the utmost happiness and prosperity since they have overcome that most basic human problem: death.

Swift reverses this formula however: the life of the immortals is one of continual agony, pettiness, and boredom. To cut to the chase, Swift's essential insight is that death is not the problem, life is. (This is why, in a recent examination, I attempted to argue that, along with 1984, Gulliver's Travels is a fundamental anti-utopian text. That is to say that these texts are not dystopias warning of some nightmare version of the future, but instead they represent a reproach to the very idea of utopia. Swift's indictment of existence is but one aspect of his attack on those who would propose utopian solutions, but it is the bedrock that supports all the rest.)

A common thread to many of the thinkers I regard highly (Cioran, Schopenhauer, Hamlet) is this belief that existence is the true source of dread, and not a fear of death (as thinkers such as Heidegger maintain*). Suicide is, as Cioran said, too late. It is best to not be born at all:

Life is pain. And life persists, obscure,/but life for all that, even in the tomb...Suicide is unavailing. The form/is changed, the indestructable being endures...There is no death. In vain you clamour for death,/souls destitute of hope.

*It occurs to me as I write this to consider the bold final movement of The Thin Red Line, a film that has been described as cinematic Heidegger. I have argued in the past that the final moments of the film's main character represent a victory over death through personal sacrifice, and despite my differences with Heidegger I think this is still probably the best description of what happens. Considering what I wrote above, it is perhaps possible to see it as victory over fear, a victory that the character himself wishes for at the beginning of the film (he asks for a sense of "calm"). In this sense he conquers the dread of existence through a passive acceptance of death. A moment worth thinking more about...

Before Sunset


If the first film (Before Sunrise) was about the fantasy of Romantic love, something so intoxicating that it compells the characters to foolishly give themselves and their happiness over to chance in keeping with the spirit of the moment, then this film is about an attempt at a recapturing of that moment.

It's been written that one of the dissapointments of life is the inability to capture a moment as it is happening, to preserve it, and so even the greatest moments of joy or love that we experience are immediately tinged with loss and regret.

Pain and frustration are the keynotes for much of this film, but in a wonderful final act the Moment presents itself, and as it does so the film fades out, taking away even as it gives us so much.

Indisputable and conclusive proof that we live in the best of all possible worlds.

Elephant

A slow and studied observation of the life of a high school occupies most of the movie, and it is at times very beautiful. Van Sant shoots the corridors of the school like The Shining, and the overlapping narrative, whereby we experience the same moment in time through different perspectives, creates a strange feeling, almost as if these characters are ghosts doomed to repeat themselves. The film is essentially structured as a build up and release, but catharsis eludes us.

Pointless But Fun

Original list here. I've eliminated questions I know nothing about.

1. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly?
Gotta go with Kelly--I prefer his athleticism. (Note: this marks me as having poor taste I know, but I'm gonna try to be honest here.)
2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises?
Gatsby, obviously. Tragic and beautiful.
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington?
Ellington. Though really Miles Davis! Swing can go to hell!
4. Cats or dogs?
Dogs, narrowly.
5. Matisse or Picasso?
Matisse, Picasso is overrated!
6. Yeats or Eliot?
Yeats. Nothing tops the Byzantium poems or Meru.
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin?
Keaton makes me laugh, Chaplin doesn't.
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca?
I can't remember if I have seen the first one or not, but I'm sure I would like it better than Casablanca!
10. Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning?
A quick google image seach reveals that de Kooning is infinitely more interesting than Pollock.
11. The Who or the Stones?
The Who by a thousand miles.
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald?
Holiday.
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy?
Well. This is tough. Dostoevky is just about as genius as it gets. Tolstoy is sublime. Dostoevky by a nose.
16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair?
The Moviegoer!!!!!!
18. Hot dogs or hamburgers?
Cheeseburgers. Failing that, hot dogs.
19. Letterman or Leno?
Letterman certainly.
20. Wilco or Cat Power?
Cat Power is the clear choice here, come on.
21. Verdi or Wagner?
Wagner.
22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe?
Geez this is almost as tough as Tolstoy vs. Dostoevsky! I think Monroe had arguably more screen presence. Kelly was transfixing, however. Kelly.
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash?
Cash, because I dont know Monroe. I'm no fan of Cash though.
24. Kingsley or Martin Amis?
Kingsley even though I haven't read him!
25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon Brando?
Mitchum Mitchum Mitchum. One of the best ever.
27. Vermeer or Rembrandt?
Geez, both are gorgeous. Vermeer.
28. Tchaikovsky or Chopin?
Chopin. Tchaikovsky can be overwrought in the wrong moods.
29. Red wine or white?
Red
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity?
High Fidelity
32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev?
Prokofiev for Alexander Nevsky alone!
35. The Searchers or Rio Bravo?
Searchers obviously. Rio Bravo is pretty great though.
36. Comedy or tragedy?
Tragedy. (Tragedy can be funny, but I'm not sure comedy can be tragic!)
37. Fall or spring?
South: Fall. North: Spring.
38. Manet or Monet?
Manet.
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons?
Simpsons. Sopranos is as overrated as the Godfather! Besides I don't accept any Simpsons as real Simpsons past 1998.
41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James?
Conrad.
42. Sunset or sunrise?
Sunset.
44. Mac or PC?
PC, Macs are useless.
45. New York or Los Angeles?
New York
47. Stax or Motown?
Motown for Stevie Wonder.
48. Van Gogh or Gauguin?
Van Gogh
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello?
Dan
50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine?
Depends on the blogger.
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier?
Gielgud's voice alone wins this contest!
53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde?
It's Chinatown.
54. Ghost World or Election?
Election. Ghost World is crap.
55. Minimalism or conceptual art?
Minimalism.
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny?
Daffy. Bugs is a horse's ass
57. Modernism or postmodernism?
Modernism
58. Batman or Spider-Man?
Spider-Man
59. Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams?
Emmylou for being on a Bob Dylan album.
64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity?
Out of the Past!!!
66. Blue or green?
Green. No wait, Blue.
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It?
Dream, it's so weird.
68. Ballet or opera?
Ballet
69. Film or live theater?
Film
70. Acoustic or electric?
Electric!!
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo?
Vertigo. Please.
74. The Music Man or Oklahoma?
ugh, neither.
75. Sushi, yes or no?
YES
81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones?
Jones at least puts me to sleep. Krall is tedium
82. Watercolor or pastel?
Pastel. this is close tho.
83. Bus or subway?
Subway
84. Stravinsky or Schoenberg?
Stavinsky.
85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter?
smooth.
87. Schubert or Mozart?
i actually really like schubert. Mozart is mozart, but in the end i'd rather listen to schubert.
88. The Fifties or the Twenties?
50s!
89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick?
tough. moby dick because it is just as funny and ultimately has more to offer.
92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman?
I really like both to be honest. Whitman ultimately for Leaves of Grass
93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill?
I find this one a bit mystifying. I think Lincoln had the harder task in the end.
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann?
Liz Phair definetly.
95. Italian or French cooking?
Italian.
96. Bach on piano or harpsichord?
harpsicord damnit!
97. Anchovies, yes or no?
no
98. Short novels or long ones?
short, please god
99. Swing or bebop?
bebop
100. "The Last Judgment" or "The Last Supper"?
The last judgement is really a stunner, so it wins just based on the wow factor.

"Philosophy has been sought in vain because man has sought it by the path of science rather than the path of art."

-- Schopenhauer

"Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live. What is required for that is to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus of appearance. Those Greeks were superficial--out of profundity. And is not this precisely what we are again coming back to, we daredevils of the spirit who have climbed the highest and most dangerous peak of present thought and looked down from there? Are we not, precisely in this respect, Greeks? Adorers of forms, of tones, of words? And therefore--artists?"

--Nietzsche

Tokyo Story


"Life is disappointing."

A line like that at the end of any other film would be intolerably self-pitying. But coming where it does, near the end of this supremely humane and compassionate film, it is devastating.

Towards the climax of the film, the most callous and seemingly shallow character in the film erupts into a powerful and heart-breaking show of grief. That Ozu can make us feel so much for a character we have previously only felt reproach towards shows the unique quality of the movie. She has hidden depths, and her neglect of her parents is not a cause for our self-righteousness, for she obviously loves them deeply, but an occasion for reflection on the general grief of life. Everything passes. Yet this fundamental and ultimate loss of dignity does not mean we cannot achieve it in the moment. A towering masterpiece.

"Man has this choice and this alone: nothing or God. Choosing nothing he makes himself God; that means he makes God an apparition, for it is impossible, if there is no God, for man and all that is around him to be more than an apparition. I repeat: God is and is outside of me, a living essence that subsists for itself, or I am God. There is no third possibility."

-- Friedrich Jacobi

An interesting thought: I just learned that the Japanese character for "sound" is a combination of the characters for "sun" and "stand." This is particularly interesting given the cover of my favorite album ever:


It seems to be a literal depiction of the character for sound!

I think this might just be my favorite New York Times article ever.

Shena Ringo is a 24 year old classically trained musician and ballerina turned popstar from Japan. Her music is just as weird and wonderful as that sentence implies!

Her latest album, Karuki Zamen Kuri no hana (roughly translates as "Chlorine, Semen, Chestnut Flower"--and no I have no idea). It is a masterpiece in the glorious baroque pop tradition of Pet Sounds and Sergeant Pepper's. This is not to say that Ringo doesn't have an highly original sense of melody and composition, because she certainly does, this music is very modern and owes very little to American pop music of the 60s, but instead it means that Ringo has created the kind of pop album full of strange sounds, noise, and sheer exuberance that betrays a rare amount of inspiration and keeps the music sounding weird and beautiful no matter how many times you hear it (think "Good Vibrations" for a common example).

One song in particular, track 5 (I can't read the Japanese!), is a good example of Ringo's approach: it starts off with what sounds like 5 o'clock news theme playing on the tv in the other room before morphing that theme into full bodied orchestration with a darting string section bouncing along to Ringo's vocals. The song finally bounces into an extended coda of a duet between a piano and harpsicord (I think)) that is strangely beautiful.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring

This Korean film is movie of the year so far, and I have some doubt it will be replaced. Its deceptively simplistic structure and "cycle of life" style themes coincide with an impressively dark philosophy of human existence; it suggests that the only escape from the moral darkness in our hearts (as certain as the seasons) is a form of self-annihilation. Yet the movie also contains a scene of extraordinary beauty that depicts a trancendence of evil through extreme physical endurance--this is to suggest that our moral failings are linked to our physical embodiment. There is hope, but it is only a simplistic reading of the film that sees the final scenes as a depiction of rebirth when their real meaning is that nothing ever changes.

I strongly recommend reading this beautiful letter from a soldier in the Civil War, it's a good way to honor Memorial Day and be reminded of the power of eloquent words at the same time.

Now this is more like it.

Read on a message board concerning the upcoming Canadian election:

The Marxist-Leninist Party's victory is historically inevitable, fools!

So the idea with the picture and quote above is to have a rotating (it will probably be changed every few weeks) image and quote at the top of the blog. Normally it will just be a picture I find interesting or striking, and the same goes for the quote.

Want to see some funny pictures? Click here, here, here, here, here, and then here.

Thought I'd post some pictures for those of you who don't frequent the wilder parts of the web.(Warning: black sense of humor required.)

Incontrovertible proof that we live in the best of all possible worlds.

Great article on movie gods by David Thomson.

How do you distinguish between compassion and pity? Is it connected to a perceived difference between noble suffering and ignoble suffering?

(In a Utopian novel I once read, the author claimed that all suffering is ignoble and debases human dignity. That strikes me as an immensely foolish thing to say. Draw the proper conclusions from those premises and you might find the hidden despair of the progressive reformer.)

David Edelstein on the original Japanese version of my beloved Godzilla, Gojira:

The long section of Gojira—nearly 15 minutes—in which the monster destroys much of Tokyo is like nothing in any science-fiction film before or since. In the American cut, there are frequent inserts of Burr, yakking away on his mike as he narrates the creature's comings and goings. The original, though, is nearly wordless. There is a Japanese TV announcer: He watches the devastation from a high tower; wonders, "Has the world been sent back two million years?"; and has time to report on his own death as Gojira moves toward his tower, closing with an earnest, "Sayonara." Elsewhere, a mother leans against a wall and whispers to her little daughter, "We'll be joining your daddy soon. Just a little longer." It's the last minute or two that is the most harrowing. The music stops, and in the silence Gojira walks between the broken buildings, the cityscape behind him aglow, seeming to contemplate his handiwork.

Edelstein, as always, does a nice job of capturing the essence of the film. The later Godzilla movies, such as the battles with Mothra and King Kong, are a bit silly but great fun, they exult in the pleasure of destruction. I always found the original, even the butchered American version, a bit too dark and slow for the 10 year old me. Looking back on it, I think I couldn't relate to the film's pathos.

Exciting article on Asian cinema at Cannes by A.O. Scott in the New York Times. Also contains the first review of 2046!

What Time is it There?


Sergei Eisenstein theorized that the meaning of cinema as an art form lay in the use of montage. The juxtaposition of image A with image B to create a separate, and singular, effect. Films are built around the idea that the images they contain relate to one another to create new meanings. If a character looks in a certain direction, and the movie cuts to a different image, the audience assumes that the new image is what the character is looking at. Classical Hollywood editing works in this way; the story or the characters dictate the nature and timing of the cuts. With the exception of the dramatic close-up, very rarely will you see a typical dialogue scene in a classic Hollywood film cut into more shots than is absolutely necessary.

Modern filmmaking is often identified with a break from this type of editing. Watch Godard's Breathless, for example, and you will notice that the camera seems to have a mind of its own. The editing follows its own rules and calls attention to itself as editing (Godard always wants to put himself into the viewers mind). The use of the "jump cut" (where the film cuts ahead in time on the same image so that the actors seem to jump ahead), for example, is an obvious intentional break with classical editing rules. Due mainly to Godard and his French cohorts, this theory of cinema, the idea that in montage lays the meaning of the art form, represents the dominant strain of filmmaking today (just watch a standard action film). Hitchcock's Psycho, and that film's murder scenes, perhaps places this style of editing into mainstream entertainment for the first time.

There is, however, another way of editing that I identify with the film critic and theorist Andre Bazin. Bazin called Citizen Kane the greatest film ever made due Orson Welles' use of deep focus photography, a method that allows the audience to find meaning within the image because both the foreground and background are in focus. Kane's long takes and deep focus, then, open up a cinematic world that is more concerned with a kind of phenomenological take on reality, a belief that the camera can capture a kind of existential truth. Rather that create meaning, the artist of the long take seeks to record it.

One of the greatest proponents of this style, which I like to call anti-montage or long-take style, is Andrei Tarkovsky. A Tarkovksy shot can last so long you go past boredom into something else--in a way you have to learn to watch his movies in a new way. As a style it seems to have been most at home in the Asian cinema of Mizoguchi and Ozu, while in the west Tarkovsky, Bresson, and a few others, always in the minority, carried on the style. For recent examples check out Gus Van Sant's Gerry, or the films of Bela Tarr (good luck finding them!)

There is a shot in Tarr's film, Satantango, that pretty much sums up the power of the long take: a early morning shot of a window from inside a house. After a few minutes of staring at a seemingly static image, I grew restless, but soon I noticed the curtains were swaying from a draft in the house, and eventually I was startled to realize the sun was coming up! This kind of moment, almost a magnification of ordinary experience and a force for changing the way we see the world, is the magic moment that the long take strives for.

What Time is it There? is a gorgeous film in the anti-montage tradition. The shots usually last anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes (one shot even includes, as a joke I suspect, a clock in the background). It's an almost oppressively sad film, but there is a gentleness too, a slight and weary comical take on existence, that makes it a worthwhile film, maybe even a transcendent one.

2046


I just had to put up this picture from Wong Kar-Wai's new film 2046, soon to premiere at Cannes. It's probably one of the most anticipated films ever, and no one knows if it will be a masterpiece or a disaster. It will certainly be beautiful though. (That's Chinese pop-star Faye Wong in the picture--she is also in Wong's Chungking Express. I just bought one of her albums so I will let you know if it's good! I have an mp3 and she has a great voice. Mandarin Chinese is a beautiful language to hear, unlike Japanese, which can sound a bit rough.)

It's also worth noting that 2046 is a sequel of sorts to the great great In the Mood for Love, probably one of my top 5 films ever.

OOIOO - "Mountain Book" from the album Green & Gold


Someone once said of Can that it was the sound of the sons of Nazis trying, and failing, to play rock and roll. Their attempt to appropriate American music, however, produced something new and unique, and something distinctly German. Much like the Germans, the Japanese have appropriated Western pop music for their own ends, and in the process have created a hybrid something that, to these Western ears, is endlessly fascinating. The sound of Western pop music put through an interpretive process perhaps not unlike that of English to Japanese back to English, creates a similar kind of wacky poetry.

This particular example comes from OOIOO, a side project of Yoshimi P-We of the Boredoms. OOIOO are basically a more glossy, neon-glow version of the Boredoms, with Yoshimi's unique sense of melody and rhythm always up front. The song consists of a simple but profoundly beautiful melody sung by at least two (probably more) women over and over. At first behind the melody, but eventually up front, and finally drowning out the melody altogether, is the rhythm section, a seemingly chaotic but sweetly textured melange of sounds that only slowly and after several listens gives way to any sense of order in the ear of the listener.

The structure and design of the song is similar to Miles Davis' Nefertiti. That piece begins with Davis' trumpet and Wayne Shorter's sax playing a similarly beautiful melody. If I knew more about music I could probably describe how the melodies work in almost the exact same way--but the most important thing is that they are both circular (there's no logical stopping point, it just goes on and on). On Nefertiti the melody is offset with the clattering and yet somehow muscular drumming of Tony Williams. Since Williams would never be content to fade to the background of a song anyway, one can imagine Miles having this idea while listening to him splatter his drums all over his other performances. Both songs make the rhythm the changing and evolving section of the music, while the melody, so to speak, keeps the rhythm.

The effect of switching the melody and the rhthym section is, ironically, a new kind of emphasis on the melody. It is constantly alienated from the listener, and, in both pieces, at times obscured all together to eventually achieve a kind of repetitive sublime.

Kill Bill

As one film, Kill Bill becomes something much more than vol. 1 on its own, and something a bit less than the frightening formalist masterpiece I was expecting it to be. In many ways the arc of the film is a movement away from formalism into strangely pure emotion for a Tarantino film.

The almost ridiculous amount of formal pleasure present in the work is stunning. Sound, color, editing, and framing all contribute to create a hypnotic state in the viewer. That this pleasure was achieved through extreme cartoon violence in the first film caused (and still causes) a bit of consternation for me, but I can't deny my fascination for it. Watch for the graceful camera moves and sound in the House of Blue Leaves sequence especially. (The sound throughout is awesome.)

But is there a point somewhere in all this? Yes, probably. Something like becoming the person we need to be to raise our children, and about ending those relationships that are no good for us. That the violence becomes enclosed in smaller and smaller spaces until it is psychological in nature is no accident, the Bride's ultimate quest is to find the strength to kill someone close to her. Bill essentially dies of a broken heart.

There is a scene near the end of the film that is quite remarkable, considering the director. I kept expecting something silly to happen, but it didn't. Eventually I realized what I was seeing: Tarantino was transcending his own irony.

Dogville


Close to a masterpiece. I'm not gonna tell you that Dogville isn't anti-American, because in a lot of important ways it is, especially in the sense that being anti-American is to doubt the essentially goodness of people or capitalism or democracy. I suppose I can understand critics who are repelled by such an negative view of humanity, but I was never one for art that patted me on the back simply for being what I am. If I ever write that book on anti-humanist art, the director of this film, Lars Von Trier, will certainly warrant a chapter.

There is a sort of Augustinian pathos to this film, a despair over the human condition that is palpably religious (all the more so in the final scenes). Yet despite all the hue and cry over the film as "deterministic" I'm not so sure it is as meticulously thought-out as that suggests. The final credit sequence, in particular, creates such a chaotic mix of feelings that I'm not sure WHAT I'm supposed to think about it. But there is, undeniably, a mechanical and methodical structure in the film that charts moral decay with stark precision. Almost like clockwork are the residents of Dogville reduced to animals. I think the film works less well as a politcal allegory than a religious one, but the political aspect can be summed up pretty easily: people are essentially bad and must be kept in check through institutions (socialism).

The religious aspect, on the other hand, can't be summed up so succintly. Words like hubris, arrogance, and forgiveness are exchanged in a theological dialogue worthy of Dostoevsky, but eventually it is decided that revenge is a crucial aspect of what makes us human, and what gives us dignity. If we cannot be held accountable for our actions, are we any more than dogs? Can we be human without mercy and forgiveness? That these questions are left unanswered and hopelessly ambiguous at the end of the film only makes it that much more crucial that we answer them.

"Dostoevksy is not only a philosopher, he is also a philosophical problem."

-- George Florovsky

A picture in honor of the new DVD of one of the greatest movies ever made: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Buy it!

I've been listening to a lot of Japanese music lately, mostly on the "psychedelic" end. Bands with names like Fushitsusha, Nagisa Ni Te, Les Rallizes Denudes, Boredoms, OoioO, Acid Mothers Temple, well you get the idea. While part of the fascination is due to my even deeper fascination with Krautrock, that German music popular in the 1970s, full of steady motorik rythyms and spacious arrangements, a style which the Japanese proudly carry on, it's also due to what I feel is an rather idiosyncratic take on psychedelic music. Psychedelic music as popularly perceived is closely tied to the hippie culture of the 60s, feel good, good time, take some acid and tune out music. It's also tied to a rather vacuous religious sensibility, as music that is in touch with the divine. In the 90s the Japanese rescued this sensibility, connecting psychedelic tropes to what I feel is a more mature religious sense, one of striving and reaching for God, rather than the lazy comfort of drugs. The Boredoms released my favorite cd ever during this period, Vision Creation Newsun, which also happens to be, in my opinion, one of the most religious records ever made without a single lyric.

But, while I'm far from an expert on this subject (though I'm fast becoming one), I think at the same time another trend emerged within Japanese psychedelic music, a trend stared in the 70s by the mind blowingly brilliant Les Rallizes Denudes and carried on by the also phenomenal Fushitsusha, led by the incomparable Keiji Haino, pictured above. While the first style of psychedelic music represents self-transcendence in search of the divine, this side is a plunge into the abyss. Haino's ear-splitting harangues of guitar feedback seemingly eating itself in an infinite circle recall nothing so much as self-annihiliation. While the first style search for that good feeling to be found in what Freud called the "oceanic sense" we sometimes have, Haino's guitar represents a striving for self-destruction. This is the music of nihilism, and it's as terrifying and beautiful as it should be.

House of Sand and Fog


Most critics seem to find the first hour of the film superior to the second, which has been called histrionic or melodramatic. I suppose it is those things, but it is also immensely powerful, carrying the dramatic weight of true tragedy. The movie goes out of control at the same moment that the characters do, and their descent into disaster is reflected in the heightened and hyper-dramatic style of the film.

The screenplay is perfectly calibrated. No one, not even the cop, is truly evil, and everyone does what they have to do for their survival. This is why we can feel so bad when Jennifer Connelley's character is abandonded by her brother, or when the Colonel endures his own tragedies. We can feel for both of them, partaking in what Nietzsche felt was the lifeblood of human experience, that power that threatens to overwhelm us, but can also sustain us. (Sorry, just read The Birth of Tragedy.) Anyway, this film hits so hard because it shows an distinctly American tragedy, a search for "home" thwarted on all fronts, and it shows that while this country is a place where people go to fulfill their dreams, it is also a place where people go to watch those dreams evaporate. On second viewing, it's the moments where the connection between the characters is palpable, where it seems they have so much to give one another, that hit the hardest. All those missed chances for forgiveness and redemption are lost in the fog.

Pulp Fiction

Still electric cinema, but the dialogue sometimes seems a little forced and flat. A problem that is probably the fault of Tarantino's many imitators and the ensuing backlash against 90s irony more than the dialogue itself. (Notably this was a problem in Kill Bill as well, suggesting it's a problem Quentin may not outgrow.)

But the little moments still have an impact, still suggest that Tarantino either has an artist's sensibility or is expert at pretending to have one. Travolta's wistful blowing of a kiss to Uma Thurman's retreating back is probably the highlight of the whole film.

Dirty Harry


Watch this movie and see Harry, a personification not of Good but of Justice, a figure routinely linked in the visuals to God not to justify Harry's acts but to place them in perspective, torture a suspect to discover crucial information: the whereabouts of a missing girl buried alive. Time is of the essence, and Harry does what is necessary to obtain the information. See the camera pull up into the heavens, and ask yourself whether Harry's act needs to be justified at all. What kind of corrupt immoral universe places the rights of a monster over the life of an innocent young girl? The recurring religous motifs become mocking, sadistic even. No one is watching but us in that long shot. In the absence of God, Harry's actions are increasingly alienated from the corrupt and profoundly human "justice" system. Harry himself is cast out, a relic of moral certainty. See him cast away his badge in an act of nihilistic despair of uncommon emotional power.

Watch again and realize Harry believed the girl was already dead.

The Passion of the Christ

The Jesus myth (and I don't mean to imply anything with regard to historical fact with that term, I never liked the idea that myths aren't true, as if that matters) is a remarkable depiction of one of the essential human conflicts: that between body and soul; our mortal, frail bodies and our knowledge of that mortality. To go to one's death willingly is a victory of the spirit over death.

The idea that Christ was fully man as well as fully god is surely in some ways a reflection of our need to face mortality, and our desperate desire to overcome it. Gibson's film is as intense a depiction of that conflict as I have ever seen, not due to any particular artistry on Gibson's part, but more as a testament to the unmatched empathetic power of cinema. His Christ is of this world as well as in it, and I think this reflects a pretty mature Catholic understanding of the scriptures on Gibson's part. All in all, the film seems to me a meditation on the body and blood of Christ, a filmic depiction of the eucharist.

Jesus was, for me, almost a non-presence in the iflm. As I noted above, it's more his physical presence than his personality, or even his love for mankind that sticks in the mind. The jewish actress that plays Mary, on the other hand, gives one of the greatest depictions of feminine and motherly love since, well...ever. I was strongly moved emotionally by the film, but for the most part only when Gibson focuses his camera with unique intensity, and with what seemed to me passionate adoration, on Mary's beautiful face full of motherly compassion. It's that image that all suffering looks to for comfort, and for the longing embrace of the pieta.

Anti-semitism? I don't know. Isn't the story inherently anti-semitic? I didn't feel that this movie went beyond that, but I also don't know what to look for. Considering that movie is similar in tone to medieval passion plays I think perhaps the anti-semitism was remarkably subdued!!

I feel many, many non-believers will be shocked by this movie. It is uncomfortable to confront that kind of intensity when you don't feel it yourself. I've always been fascinated by and respectful of that sort of thing. One thing I fear is that many people get off on the sadism, they will hear a mantra, "all for me, all for me" rather than, what I think is just as appropriate, "all caused by me, all caused by me." That paradox is also perhaps at the heart of the matter, but then I am starting to get a bit beyond just the movie.

Is it great art? No, I don't think so. Gibson lacks that special inspiration, and I feel that perhaps his intensity of devotion to his faith can find no other expression than this bludgeoning, punishing film. There was no moment of transcendence. (Maybe they should screen Bresson's A Man Escaped right after for a depiction of humanity transcending mortal bounds.) Nevertheless, it's a remarkable document.

Underworld

Rather obvious Freudian plot: daughter must kill father in order to embrace new lover. The film actually rounds this out with some interesting details. The vampire side of things, to which our heroine belongs, is portrayed as rather weak and ineffectual (with the notable exception of papa vampire) with shades of incestual corruption, "the bloodline must be kept pure!" Werewolves not really the good guys though, as the new couple is forced to create in themselves something new, a uniting of the bloodlines. All rather portentous, but reasonably enjoyable. Beckinsdale is gorgeous, and her leather catsuit (possibly a homage to the silent classic Les Vampires?) is probably the most memorable thing about the movie.

I noticed while looking for pictures for The Return of the King that the scene in the book where Eowyn slays the Witch King has inspired some rather good and iconic art. This picture in particular is interesting because it self-consciously mimics an old style of representation. I think the key contrast in to emphasize when depicting this scene is the brightness of Eowyn's hair versus the darkness of the Witch King. This picture does a wonderful job of that, with Ewoyn the subject of celestial light while the Witch King almost recedes into the darkness of the clouds.

The Believer

There is probably a tendency to dismiss the fascist and racist rantings of the film as complete madness. And of course they are, but I think what the film does so well is address the roots of that madness, the "nothingness without end" as the film puts it. As a true story of a jewish man compelled to become a nazi the movie does not try to explain the unexplainable, but instead it presents how the pain and confusion of a senseless world can drive people to extraordinary amounts of self-denial.

Down With Love

What a wonderful movie! After the middling reviews and box office (I can't even remember why I rented it), I was completely taken by surprise by this gorgeous, funny, and sublimely entertaining film. Too much to disentangle here (and part of me thinks teasing out the political and feminist point of view of the film is a waste of time--much of the meaning and pleasure derives from the simultaneously meeting and flouting of expectations, often at the same time, with regard to gender and genre. Get it?) I haven't really seen enough of the Doris Day--Rock Hudson films it is dealing with, but I am familiar with that general aesthetic. The foregrounding (and then some) of the sexual subtext of those films provides most of the humor, but it cuts both ways: when the two leads flirt over the phone a split screen effect puts them in various sexual positions, yet that joke reveals the deeper joke that the phone conversation, and implicity the conversational repartee so ever-present in older films, is a form of sparring not unlike sex itself, with concomitant pleasures. Enough of that. Simply put, this movie makes postmodernism fun again.

Finally, what's up with the absolutely brilliant art in the background all the time? Is it the real thing or set design? I want it! (And really finally, this experience has made me promise myself to never do a top ten again. This film would have easily made the top 3, if not higher.)

City of God

Odd that the best picture I could find was perhaps the only lighthearted moment of the entire film. Nevertheless, I disagree with the charge that the film is amoral or actively immoral, if only because the revenge that is set up at the beginning of the film never materializes. One of the more curious moments of the film shows the protagonist noticing and then abandoning a chance to avenge his brother. The point is obviously that he only escapes the slum through transcending slum values, and his photography (or witnessing--a parallel act to making a film about it) suggests that he is the one who pays attention, who sees the pointless cycle of violence and revenge for what it is. (But is there any convincing reason presented for his "goodness?") It's appropriate then that near the end he captures on film the true roots of the problem. Having Lil'Ze avoid the apocalyptic fate we desire for him is an effective way of making just that moral point. We aren't given the satisfaction. (Knockout Ned's story is in some ways the bizarro version of the protagonist's--once he goes for revenge, and getting our hopes up for a comeuppance, he falls into a near-equivalence with Lil'Ze. His corruption is already absolute the moment he decides on revenge.)

The style is the real point here though--but for all it's wizardry and high energy storytelling some of it felt a bit tired. Just some though. For the most part I though it was wonderful, and I wonder whether a more traditional style would make this already dark film too depressing. The final shot explores the real roots of gangster violence and nihilism better than any Scorcese film I can think of.

Morvern Callar

I find it a bit odd that this movie is so praised for it's soundtrack when almost every song (with the notable exception of the last scene) is cut off right before it gets going. Maybe this has something to do with the music as "his music"--that is, Morvern's boyfriend who is dead by suicide. As such it seems like a message from beyond the grave, more substantial than the rather pedestrian suicide note she discovers. Key early scene (as shown above) shows Morvern literally lying with the dead, and I suspect in some ways the film charts her journey from life to death, isolated and mundane experience to triumphant self-abandonment.

The slow, almost terminal, style of the film is often hypnotic (as intended) and almost as often plain boring (not intended). Morvern is absolutely unreadable (intended, I think). She has crossed over, and in particular the shot of her turning away from us and walking towards a graveyard seems to suggest that whatever knowledge she has is impossible to translate into words. Near the end, there is a long shot of Morvern in a phonebooth, and the effect is curiously like she is in an upright coffin. I kind of wished for some Grand Statement about death or mortality, but then what's there to say?

The Road Warrior

The problem with modern action movies is not a lack of character development, emotion, or seriousness; it's a lack of imagination. This becomes abundantly clear in The Road Warrior when you notice that the bad guys drive around with helpless dead and near dead victims strapped to the hoods of their cars. I'm not sure why, but does it matter? The sheer "motiveless malignance" brings a smile to my face, as does the determination of this film to stay as basic as possible. The fact that the boy is named "boy" and the dog is named "dog" gives a good idea of the content of the film, but, at just over 90 minutes, that threadbare content is seized with such zeal and imagination I can't help but add my voice to the masses in proclaiming it a masterpiece. The director George Miller obviously has some sort of fascination for the image of the open road speeding by, and luckily so do I. The relentless kineticism of the movie puts the bloated explosion-fests that it undoubtedly inspired to shame, and, most importantly, it contains perhaps the largest real on-screen explosion I have ever seen!

I could expound upon the little details of the film all day, but in particular I was pleasantly surprised to remember that here is the origin of that wonderful phrase "The Ayatollah of Rock-and-Rolla."

My top 9 list for 2003. I'll try to add comments and pictures and generally snazz it up but I can't seem to write at the moment. It was a good year for movies, generally, mainly because I am partial to tragedies and there was certainly a lot. Not coincidentally, I put the most devastating tragedy at the top of my list. If I were the type of critic to give four stars then probably only the top three here would get that--something about film demands a visceral reaction as much as an intellectual one, and the top three films here either made me cry or nearly did so. (And #5 provoked sheer joy so maybe I am underrating that one.)

1) House of Sand and Fog
2) In America
3) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

What's to say at this point? Combine some of the greatest battle scenes since The Iliad with a sense of pathos usually inimitable to popular cinema and you get this subdued defeat within victory. Not with a bang, but with the whimper of a lost cause does The Lord of the Rings end. Jackson slightly fumbles the final scenes by going for the emotional jugular too often, but Tolkien's melancholy still shines through. It's a legend for the passing of legends, and grand cinema for an age too jaded to truly appreciate it. There is no greater scene in the movies this year than the lighting of the beacons: a call for help that reaches for the heavens.
4) Lost in Translation
5) School of Rock
6) Master and Commander
7) Cold Mountain

The director Anthony Minghella claims that The Thin Red Line, specifically it's abstract treatment of World War 2 and the pervasive presence of nature throughout the film, served as a big influence on Cold Mountain. I'm not sure how much of that I really see. Nature doesn't seem to be a character, as it is in The Thin Red Line, so much as a beautiful canvas that holds the actors. There is nothing wrong with this, though, and when you got actors as talented and attractive as Nicole Kidman and Jude Law there's no reason the movie shouldn't be about them and their characters rather than the more general concerns of the Malick picture. It's essentially an old-fashioned Hollywood romance, with a bitter and mournful edge--the final scenes betray the earlier tone of the movie with their aura of happy conclusiveness. Truth is the war never ended, and the kind of southerners depicted in the film would continue to suffer for a very long time.

But before the betrayal of the ending, the picture is a surprisingly moving adaptation of the Odyssey (the Sirens, the Cyclops, Penelope's suitors, and other stuff I probably didn't recognize all make appearances in 19th century American guises) and that story's timeless theme of men trying to return home from war. There is a moment early in the film that I think gets at the heart of its concerns: A blind man claims that he wouldn't want to see if it was only for a short time, what's the point if it's not permanent? Law's character disagrees and affirms the worth of transient experiences. The film, in a way, becomes about the need to reach for those moments even while knowing that they will leave in the end. That the film doesn't quite have enough conviction to hold true to this theme (to deprive the characters of everything they hoped for at the end yet still affirm the worth of those fleeting moments) is perhaps a small tragedy, but as a whole it's one of the best films about civil war we are ever likely to see.

8) Mystic River
9) Swimming Pool

Honorable Mentions:

Kylie Minoque's video for Slow manages to amusingly pander to her gay fanbase as well as marry the robotic sexuality of the song to the writhing contortions of half naked swimmers. The wide shots of Ms. Minoque surrounded by dozens of men (and some women) moving in unison conveys something formally beautiful as well as inherently sexy.

Kill Bill still leaves me conflicted, but I have to admit I saw it twice. It is supremely morally bankrupt, or perhaps it isn't? I can't tell, to be honest. And Tarantino's implication that violence is the most pure form of cinema is either a dangerous, nearly fascist, view of art, or an opportunistic yet profound acknowledgement of the ultimate limitations of the art form of film, and perhaps art period. If you distill something down to its essense, and all you find is mindless violence and revenge, do you revel in that purity or reject it?