From G. Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form:

Let us consider, for a moment, the world as described by the physicist. It consists of a number of fundamental particles which, if shot through their own space, appear as waves, and are thus of the same laminated structure as pearls or onions, and other wave forms called electromagnetic which it is convenient, by Occam’s razor, to consider as traveling through space with a standard velocity. All these appear bound by certain natural laws which indicate the form of their relationship.

Now the physicist himself, who describes all this, is, in his own account, himself constructed of it. He is, in short, made of a conglomeration of the very particulars he describes, no more, no less, bound together by and obeying such general laws as he himself has managed to find and to record.

Thus we cannot escape the fact that the world we know is constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself.

This is indeed amazing.

Not so much in view of what it sees, although this may appear fantastic enough, but in respect of the fact that it can see at all.

But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which is seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever it sees is only partially itself. We may take it that the world undoubtedly is itself (i.e. is indistinct from itself), but, in any attempt to see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act so as to make itself distinct from, and therefore false to, itself. In this condition it will always partially elude itself.

It seems hard to find an acceptable answer to the question of how or why the world conceives a desire, and discovers an ability, to see itself, and appears to suffer the process. That it does so is sometimes called the original mystery. Perhaps, in view of the form in which we presently take ourselves to exist, the mystery arises from our insistence on framing a question where there is, in reality, nothing to question. However it may appear, if such desire, ability, and sufferance be granted, the state or condition that arises as an outcome is, according to the laws here formulated, absolutely unavoidable. In this respect, at least, there is no mystery. We, as universal representatives, can record universal law far enough to say

and so on, and so on you will eventually construct the universe, in every detail and potentiality, as you know it now; but then, again, what you will construct will not be all, for by the time you will have reached what now is, the universe will have expanded into a new order to contain what will then be.

In this sense, in respect of its own information, the universe must expand to escape the telescopes through which we, who are it, are trying to capture it, which is us. The snake eats itself, the dog chases its tail.

Damn I knew it!

Well, add A History of Violence to the list below, somewhere in the middle, probably after Munich. It's mostly just funny to me, not really worthy of the self-important seriousness many critics want to attach to it. It's a cartoon version of America and probably says a lot more about how we accept and use violent stories of innocence and corruption (see the two justly lauded sex scenes) rather than any sort of statement about violence and America itself. If you want that shit, just read Richard Slotkin....

1. The New World


This was the best film of 2005, and perhaps the best film of the decade so far. I saw two different versions, and while I preferred the dreamy abstraction of the longer cut, the shorter one has its virtues as well. Malick, more than any other working filmmaker, uses film language for amazingly expressive and intelligent ends which never sacrifice emotional weight. I guess some find his films distant and academic, but I've never been able to see that. For me, Malick's films are so emotionally wrought and felt that this is almost a flaw. What's the point of his films? Perhaps it's just the film itself, and I mean this in a sense that gets to the very basic wonder inherent in art. Our world is reflected back and made new to us, made strange or beautiful. A great film can pull us out of our world, out of ourselves, and hint at a greater whole. This is not a strictly happy or sentimental observation. Evil demonstrates it as much as good. But at the very basest level this film is a testament to the beauty of a life, and as such all life, all Being itself. It's all reaching skyward...

Life has no memory. That which proceeds in succession might be remembered, but that which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper cause, as yet far from being conscious, knows not its own tendency. So is it with us, now skeptical, or without unity, because immersed in forms and effects all seeming to be of equal yet hostile value, and now religious, whilst in the reception of spiritual law. Bear with these distractions, with this coetaneous growth of the parts: they will one day be members, and obey one will. On that one will, on that secret cause, they nail our attention and hope. Life is hereby melted into an expectation or a religion. Underneath the inharmonious and trivial particulars, is a musical perfection, the Ideal journeying always with us, the heaven without rent or seam.

--Emerson, Experience

Malick finds the filmic language to express Emerson's words. When John Smith and Pocahontas fall in love, we see the world itself beginning to swell and bloom, and when he betrays her we see that it has begun to rot. The point, however, is not that the world is reflecting the feelings of the lovers, but that the lovers are part of the world, that their love itself is a creation of the world. The moving final minutes of this film show us our transformation, our connection with the Universe and the Ideal and even Heaven, like the sun peaking through a crowded canopy of trees, light which graces us only momentarily before succumbing to darkness. "All things shining...." as the final words of The Thin Red Line remind us.

2. Brokeback Mountain

Another love story on a slightly different register from The New World. I have the suspicion that this film is admired and disliked for similarly bad reasons, namely political ones. Yet the film itself is apolitical, more concerned with human interaction on a personal level than the fundamental political structures which dictate those interactions. I guess that's my fancy way of saying that this movie is not really a Liberal movie, not to say Leftist. In fact you could make an argument that the very fact that the film concentrates so much on the personal at the expense of the political, it includes narratives of redemption and damnation, that it's closer to a conservative film than a liberal one. If those labels really mean anything.

With that out of the way I can say that this film is one of the best depictions of the sheer silence and loneliness of the American west of any film I've seen. Or to use more up to date terms, "fly-over country." It remains true to its characters in a way that refuses political utilty. Ennis is not gonna move to San Francisco with Jack. He does not consider it an option, it's just not done. He accepts his thwarted desire, stuffs it down and silences it, in a way that Jack can't. This film is more about the problem of masculinity than being "gay" as such (and it's clear to me anyway that Ennis is not really gay, though Jack is): the codes of silence and work that slowly erode a person's spirit to the point where they can't talk anymore, and the pain is, as it were, stuffed in the closet. When men take on the part of being "masculine" we give up a part of ourselves, force it to be silent and hidden. Because the work has to be done, it's not as if one can evade responsibilities, as we so often casually do these days. This film is the tragedy of being gendered as "male," and as such it's movie about something a lot more important and fundamental than being gay. Ennis' one moment of anguish is so very subtle but it carries enormous emotional force. If you can feel the isolation present in every frame of this movie from the opening shot on, the terrible distance and beauty of nature which infuses everything, then your human, and you can certainly empathize with these characters.

3. The Weather Man


As a friend told me, this movie hits pretty close to home sometimes. Essentially about growing up and becoming and adult, which simply means accepting that life is limited and imperfect, but you've got to focus anyway. It's darkly funny, and the running subtext about fast food is a pretty profound critique of the way most of us lead our lives in a sort of shallow distraction. The final scene between father and son is filled with much unsaid pathos, and Nicholas Cage plays it perfectly. The father's advice to his son, one curt sentence, is brutal but also emancipating.

4. Munich


Sort of sickeningly terrifying and yet compelling. The film charts the journey through the moral wasteland of the 20th Century as a endless search for Home. The ethical deadlock strikes me as despair rather than hope, but it's equally powerful nonetheless.

5. Grizzly Man


Funny and weird, and sad of course. It strikes me as being about how we often refuse to see what's in front of us, for the sake of continuing a fiction which we need to survive, even, ironically, to the point of dying for it.

6. The 40-Year-Old-Virgin


Nasty and funny, but it's also on here for the no-so-subtle suggestion that the title character is only one who can have a normal, healthy, happy relationship because he doesn't care about sex as an end in itself.

7. War of the Worlds


Spielberg's other tour of 20th Century horror, this time on the ground, away form the decision makers.

8. 2046

Hollow and fruitless where as the first one, In the Mood for Love, held out an expected promise. Desire is flawed here, too real, too accessible.

9. Wedding Crashers


This just cracked me up. Subtext is pretty clear though: they are too in love with each other to really commit to a woman. It's at least as gay as Brokeback!

10. Kung Fu Hustle


Hey, I needed 10 and this will do! Funny, inventive, a bit too cartoony for my taste, but I was never bored.

So here's my top ten, as promised. I've decide to just post the list now and add comments later, hopefully soon. As for relative quality, take number 1 as a "great" film and 2-3 as "very good" and the rest as just "good."

1. The New World
2. Brokeback Mountain
3. The Weather Man
4. Munich
5. Grizzly Man
6. The 40-Year-Old-Virgin
7. War of the Worlds
8. 2046
9. Wedding Crashers
10. Kung Fu Hustle

Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

— Franz Kafka

Well it's been a while, hasn't it? I'm gonna start this puppy up again, and hopefully keep at it more regularly. I'll probably being posting a movies and music round up of 2005 in the next few weeks as I catch up on what the year had to offer.

In the meantime, check out Matt Zoller Seitz's blog "The House Next Door" added on the sidebar. Seitz is one of my favorite critics and one of the few to notice just how great The New World is. (I guess I just gave away my best of 2005 there, oh well!)

See you soon.

FarSideDogCartoon, originally uploaded by rawhite.

Courtesy of Tim, from the Buddha:

"With birth as condition, aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair come to be. Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering."

I live a life of such ease that I only suffer when I desire; when I feel the anxiety of self that a knowledge of death brings. Was Nietzsche right that Buddhism is the religion of a decadent culture?

Emerson's Experience

People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so bad with them as they say. There are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here, at least, we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is. That, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never introduces me into the reality, for contact with which, we would even pay the costly price of sons and lovers. Was it Boscovich who found out that bodies never come in contact? Well, souls never touch their objects. An innavigable sea washes with silent waves between us and the things we aim at and converse with. Grief too will make us idealists. In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate, -- no more. I cannot get it nearer to me. If tomorrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me, -- neither better nor worse. So is it with this calamity: it does not touch me: some thing which I fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me, and leaves no scar. It was caducous. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature. The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us.

Do yourself a favor and read the rest here. This passage is probably my favorite (though the entire essay is a whirlwind really, one of the great achievements in American literature). Emerson's overwhelming grief at the loss of his son manifests itself here as a loss of grief. Even that, his great loss, falls away and compounds the injury, leaving not even a scar. The loss of his son takes the whole world away with him.

I'm of two minds. It's amazing to look at, most of the time, but perhaps there is less to the visual style than it seems at first. Why copy so slavishly the comic book when you can copy the actual film noir that the comic book is itself a near-parody of? The visual richness of those films cannot be denied I think. But what's at stake in this really? Something like depth? Something as shallow as depth? It would appear so. The visual flatness of the film, it's crude black and white stylings, coincide with the flatness of the content itself. They are not here attempting to depict the darker aspects of human nature or a world devoid of hope, they are skimming the surface, often gloriously so.

Read a poem! You won't regret it. Here's a favorite, Arnold's Dover Beach, a monumental poem:

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

I like this notion of love as a form of holding true in a world of suffering, confusion, and sadness. Love as solidarity when the beauty of the world hollows itself out, grows dark. But no illusions here, as the final word of the poem makes clear how it turns out.

E.M. Cioran on Nietzsche:

All his hatreds bear indirectly on himself. His weaknesses he proclaims and erects into an ideal; if he execrates himself, Christianity or socialism suffers for it. His diagnosis of nihilism is irrefutable: because he himself is a nihilist, and because he avows it. A pamphleteer in love with his adversaries, he could not have endured himself had he not done battle with himself, against himself--had he not placed his miseries elsewhere, in the others: on them he took revenge for what he was. Having practiced psychology as a hero, he proposed to the enthusiasts of the Inextricable a diversity of stalemates.

We measure his fecundity by the possibility he affords us of continually repudiating him without exhausting him. A nomad mind, he is good at varying his disequilibriums. In all matters, he has championed the pro and the con: this is the procedure of those who give themselves up to speculation for lack of being able to write tragedies--to disperse themselves in many desitinies. Nonetheless, by exhibiting his hysterias, Nietzsche has spared us the shame of ours; his miseries were salutary for us. He has opened the age of "complexes."

You know, things like this have almost convinced me that there are people in the world who will not be happy until they make everything suck.

One of my favorite passages from one of my favorite books, Walker Percy's The Moviegoer (it may help you to know that "merde" is french for "shit"):

Today is my thirtieth birthday and I sit on the ocean wave in the schoolyard and wait for Kate and think of nothing. Now in the thirty-first year of my dark pilgrimage on this earth and knowing less that I ever knew before, having learned only to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies--my only talent--smelling merde from every quarter, living in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle, and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall--on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire.

It's funny to read that again, and to leaf through my old copy, and see how much of that book in permanently imprinted in my memory. I wish I could re-attain that level of impressionability again, when every book changed my life just a little bit. Something's been lost in the meantime, it seems like nothing can touch me anymore. Is this maturity? If so, what good is it?

Just what I always suspected...

One can open Pascal's Pensees almost at random and find something wonderful. Here's a few that are particulary important for things I have been thinking about:

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life half-way, the most fragile thing in the world.

And:

Neither an abasement which makes us incapable of good nor a holiness free from evil.

Perhaps cynics like me would do well to remember the first part of that sentence, but we would all benefit from remembering the second part. Religion in my mind is an invitation to humility, not self-righteousness.

Schopenhauer:

There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity.

Yes. But what do we do when our loneliness begins to feel vulgar too?

A note on page 8 of the Cambridge edition of The Gay Science:

Plutarch reports that in a temple in the Egyptian city of Sais, there was a veiled statue of the goddess Isis with the inscription: "I am everything that is, that was, and that will be, and no mortal has ever rasied my veil." In his Critique of Judgement Kant says that this inscription is the "perhaps most sublime thing ever said."

To say the sublime is to attempt to say the unsayable, or, more properly perhaps, to indicate that the unsayable is unsayable. Wittgenstein:

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

!!!

Nietzsche in The Gay Science:

You have no idea what you are experiencing; you run through life as if you were drunk and once in a while fall down a staircase. But thanks to your drunkenness, you don't break your limbs in the process; your muscles are too slack and your head too dull for you to find the stones of these stairs as hard as the rest of us do! For us, life is a greater danger: we are made of glass - woe unto us if we bump against something! And everything is lost if we fall!

What pleases me most about this aphorism is the comic image of life as falling down stairs.

6ixtynin9

I much prefer the title as it appears in subtitled version I saw: A Funny Story about 6 and 9. This is sort of a Hitchcockian Thai film from the same director as Last Life in the Universe. It's interesting to note some similarities (dead bodies, bizarre conversations) but it's also a very different film, a dry witted observation of mounting panic rather than modern loneliness. Our heroine's problem isn't loneliness but the fact that no one will leave her alone. Her apartment because a sort of death trap for the hapless criminals and cops who come into her life, and (almost) none of it is her fault. I think there is something being said about the economic collapse of Asia in the late 90s but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it is. Still, it's a fun film and I can even say my mother wholeheartedly endorses it despite the very dark humor. The most charming aspect of the film are some very strange dialogues that do a nice job of pointing the absurd things people say all the time without hitting us over the head with comedic beats and dead-pan looks. It just shows people engaging in the kind of casual exaggeration that makes conversation interesting. When informed by her hostage taker that his mother died of an infection in her fingernails somehow picked up in a nail salon, the heroine pauses for a moment of sympathy but then, with only the slightest look of concern on her face immediately asks "which nail salon?" The funny and violent plot holds many such little pleasures.

Nietzsche:

Without music, life would be an error.

On page 41 of Niklas Luhmann's Social Systems you will find the following sentence:

We have not yet considered a further theme, which multiplies all problems: Time.

Now that's a forehead slapper if there ever was one!

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.