film: Lang: M (1931)

Though I probably haven’t seen enough thrillers to know, their general pattern seems to be lightheartedness through the beginning, and then a quick increase into whatever makes us anxious, a curveball at the end, finis. Except that this seems to be Hitchcock’s strategy, I’d say that Lang was working early in a genre–and so? I think the plot is marvelous–the police can’t find the murderer, so the criminals set out to do so. But what really illustrates that the film is more interested in character development, or, rather, social criticism as a result of that development, is that the film’s whole plot can be traced to a few moments in the middle of the film, when the criminals make their decision, and off they go, and their plan works without a hitch. So the criminal is captured, and the film hasn’t ended yet, and has a ways to go–and ultimately we’re stuck without a resolution to keep our minds off our own terrible indecision over the murderer’s guilt.

As soon as they mentioned the murderer’s being a sexual deviant, I thought “ah hah, I’ll bet this was used as antisemitic propaganda”–though the murderer does not look Jewish, and indeed, parts of the film were used later on as such propaganda, as the man playing the murderer is Jewish. Time to watch Mabuse again.

film: Kramer: Inherit the Wind (1960)

The difficulties I have in viewing films is the same I have in listening to music or poetry–I find it almost cruel to separate its parts; to dissect a work of art truly is dissection in its most violent sense, it is equal to the dehumanization present alongside any occupied surgical table. Yet, it must be done, so it seems. But I cannot do it very well, it is almost painful to me, and to do so minimizes the beauty. Though, would I say the same when it comes to understanding natural science, that with such knowledge the landscape may be that much grander? But poetry, I will listen to it, I will read it, and I will not hear a word, I will hear sounds. I often catch myself not paying attention to the meanings of words in everyday speech, because I am listening to the flow and rhythm of the speech instead. I should be combining all so many things to make sense. Inherit the Wind is a beautiful film–not only does it really stick it to the idiots, which I particularly enjoy watching, it humanizes all the characters, I wept for each of them, whether I detested or loved them, they seemed worth my tears. And then there is the camera-work, which I mostly take for granted, and just as the film neared its close, I remembered that I haven’t been paying attention to the cameras, and at what point am I watching a film for pleasure, not for intellectual stimulation? Am I gaining anything? The character Matthew Brady collapses, and the next shot views him from overhead, from above a ceiling fan, as a crowd swarms around him. And what do we see? A woman clasps her hands together, looks up towards the heavens, and cries “oh lord, grant us a miracle and save our holy prophet!” But–who does she send the plea to? Assuming that she cannot see the camera, which is intercepting the message, which finally goes out to the audience, she’s begging for help from the motorized, cyclic-motional ceiling fan. The Christian Heaven and God have been replaced, if not created by, the ingenuity of man: precisely what the film makes clear through its dialogue. In fact, the outcome of the trial is determined, if not to the jury, at least to the film’s producers, and, we assume, the slavish audience, by the usage of God’s book to prove the truth in Darwin. Sentient man, obedient god.

novel: Maugham: The Razor’s Edge (1944)

I claim to be a writer if I’m pressed for a real answer, something better than “drug dealer.” But the follow-up question is always brutal: what do you write? Well…I used to consider myself a short-story writer, and then I thought I was writing a novel that turned out to be poetry…and what now? Love letters. I write very little other else. Usually I send them to Nathalie. I sometimes wonder if I enjoy them more than I enjoy love itself, for I do admit thinking, while in the throes of love, of what words I’ll be choosing to translate this into, for in my love letters I can draw you shining, and leave to drown the ways you failed, I can make something perfect, and if you saw it you’d be so pleased to know just how beautiful you looked that night. I also know the fervent apocalypse of the shades drawn all day, drinking the air humid and acrid, eating your breath, smoking your fingers, swallowing your words instead of my pills. That’s the nature of the writer, I suppose, who makes many decisions based on what experience he’ll gain to write about, no matter how foolish, unnecessary, or unhappy those decisions will be. I’ve paid the price many times, and those who care about me have tried to put a stop to it, but honestly, what else can I do?
—I have to go to sleep, honest, I have work in the morning…
–Please, Stephen, don’t you see? I’m leaving soon, tomorrow is my last night, and then that’s it, that’s it for a very long time. Maybe we’ll see each other again, but look at us, look at how we live, can you tell me that we’ll be alive next week? Stay awake with me tonight. Stay awake, because this might be our last chance together.
–I will.
I’ve been claustrophobic between my sheets, alone, and I’ve had to crabwalk over bodies, dress silent, fly out to the streets to fill my lungs, and I’ve felt my whole suckled, curled up freely, cool, sweet breezes under ten blankets, she’s pretty but she’s ruined, pretty but her teeth are fucked up, she wants to drop out but she wants to have a baby, I’m not used to numbers this big, the blood hasn’t stained my hands yet, but it will, I’ve even felt like a bird when your legs were thundering on my ears, I know the sound of your blood, some kid is picking flowers out of his eyes and digging for food in the trash in Bosnia, I don’t need to be in your pants, but I need to be in your hands, I don’t want to get off, but I want to fuck you, I don’t want to love you, but I need to feel like I do.

And do I fall in love easily? This question has two answers. One, yes: Nathalie envies me for this, the way I can move on always juggling prospects and deeply enthralled day by day, how I fall in love with someone every time I ride the bus, and how I forget her face soon afterwards. Four, yes, I want to wear a housedress and bake pies and connect the freckles and end the series at the peak of its ratings. Three, yes, no, no, no, I’ve been in love, I have so, and because it was so wonderful, I can never do it again, and I have to die young. Two, no: I don’t fall in love at all. Recently I felt very mournful that I had no more love to give, that I had given all the love I possibly had within me, and that these girls that I was trying to get involved with, well, I had nothing left for them. It turned out to not be true, because I had Byronic depression for one, and Achillean rage for the other. And everyone gets a love letter, it’s like a party favor, and that doesn’t make it meaningless, because the truth is that my entire soul is poured into these letters, they’re my only art, and if I did not have them, I don’t think I could bear to live. I fill up with a terrible passion, anger, sentimentality, and it burns in me until I can write it down, writing destroys things from my mind, they go into the paper, and you’d have a difficult time forcing me to recall anything I’ve ever written about if I’ve written about them to conclusion. Does a love letter mean I love you? Eh, not necessarily, and it doesn’t mean that I could love you either. They’re called love letters because there’s a not another term for them, and my prosaic virtues others tend to find intense, overwhelming, debilitating, in short: lovely. Most of my friends have received them from me, and I’ve received many from them, and there’s nothing else that feels quite so wonderful.

When I met her, I quickly ran home and went through my tens of thousands of books packed away to find my collection of Maugham, whom she considered “the most underrated novelist in the English language,” and whom I considered very dull, whose character development was restrained to how far one’s belly protrudes and whether or not one’s shirttails are flapping. This belief was founded on my reading of The Painted Veil, being one of my least favorite novels of all time. I’d vowed to throw out everything I owned by Maugham, and I found his books deep in a stack of advanced physics and astronomy textbooks. Who am I kidding? I began reading The Razor’s Edge, to impress her, of course, and fell in love with it immediately, as he introduces the story as being a true story, and explains the outcome, and all the ways he will fall short as an author, being unable to duplicate the language of Americans naturally.

The Painted Veil is remarkable for its being the only book he wrote in which plot held preeminence over character development. The story goes: a woman cheats on her husband, he forces her to come with him to a plague-ridden town so that she’ll die. He dies. I think she goes on to cheat on him. Or maybe she dies too. The point being, his emphasis on plot fails to make even a good story. The plot of Razor’s Edge: there’s some people, they come and go, oh, and at the end somebody admits to having effected something we didn’t find particularly remarkable earlier in the book. And yet it’s a page-turner. Is it the language? The language is often difficult, as I learned the names of more fabrics, garments, viands, and brands than I could ever remember, though I’ve made a nice list of them just in case. In the end it’s a character study of many individuals, all of whose lives I could take up immediately if I so please. And in the center is the author-narrator, who lives a very moderate life, cares a bit for everyone, but needs nobody, and although everyone thinks very highly of him, they care little for him. Nearly all my close friends fall into the category of “Sophie”—drug addicts and alcoholics, using sex to make money or just to survive, who once wrote as poets and now live as poets, whose lives have become mechanized within some romantic framework, and whose deaths are imminent. And then there is Isabel, sharp, dawdles with the poets, but ultimately chooses an existence based on stability, leads a fairly uninteresting life, and whose immorality derives from passive attempts to reanimate their own dead youths. I’ve never met anyone like Larry. He’s who I strive to be…and yet, I enjoy the transitory pleasure far too much… He is not a “beat”—because he values knowledge, and experience finds its way into his life via his quest for knowledge. And in my life, as I’ve noted above, knowledge seems to find its way into my life via my quest for experience.

She and I stopped talking, abruptly, and I wrote her a 20,000 word letter. And then I had no more feelings, and then I could move on, afraid that I’d never feel anything again. I’d gotten a subscription to the New York Times so I could discuss its editorials with her. I canceled it. The book she recommended continued to be enjoyable. And as soon as I finished it, I looked up from the pages, and there beside me was a woman who was also looking up from her book, and I gave her my copy, and she taught me a few things, wrote me a very pretty note, and I’ll probably never see her again. I had my moments with each of them. Sophie has her throat slit and her body cast into the ocean, the socialite Elliot rots to death (I recognize that experience–finding that most of one’s friends are phonies when one is dying, you fucks), and everyone else seems doomed to live without love. Forget, forget everyone, forget love, close your eyes in these vast expanses of time, especially the middle years… That’s what Razor’s Edge teaches me to do, teaches me to allow life, and more specifically, people, to wash over me, and wash away as they will, to half expect them throughout life, but to expect, no matter how I live, no matter what I do, to die alone and anonymous. But what about those of us who write love letters? What are we to do?

film: Pastrone: Cabiria (1914)

“Two hour silent Italian film” sounds frightening. So I’ve been hesitant to watch it, despite knowing its importance in the film world. But tonight I watched it, and was surprised to enjoy it very well. It moved along quickly enough, though the plot seemed bogged down with excessive motivations and plots. I think I possess a better ability to see these films in context than my parents, for I didn’t seem to be amazed or laughing with them, I found the special effects excellent, I found the caricature expressiveness reminiscent of stage acting, and the epic nature rivals any great epic I’ve known, its great sets, trained elephants and tigers, and above all the temple of Moloch and the ceremony of child sacrifice. Knowing its influence will be clear when I begin watching Griffith’s films, I also know that I cannot recognize the extent of the influence without watching its predecessors–but how far back can one possibly begin? I watch this to understand Griffith, to understand everything after, and finally to understand Godard. So it goes.

13 April 2007

film: Olivier: Richard III (1955)

Olivier’s Richard III assumes great independence of the text, including, though I haven’t checked for sure, lines from Henry VI part 3 as the introduction (as I seem to recall the play ending on a generally optimistic note, York now holding the throne, and the audience privy to Richard’s ill intentions). But these are changes I can bear, and agree with, better than opening the play with Richard’s “now is the winter…” because we are shown the circumstances we are to deal with, not left with the implications of some text thrown carefully on screen, or with assumptions from our poor memories. The shots are generally lengthy, the characters, the expressions careful, slight, realistic. And Richard is not so ugly that we believe him a monster, so that we don’t take the text too literally, not too naturalistic–as I’ve been criticized for doing–but he is a man, and prone to poetic exaggeration.

Olivier divides the scene of wooing Lady Anne in two. When it begins, he comes on screen yelling, pulls his sword, not at all like McKellen’s Richard who enters suave, respectful of the dead, though smoothly cunning. This Richard enters offensively, and one thinks “well, he’ll never woo Anne in this fashion, it’s impossible he’ll interrupt the procession and then get her into bed two minutes after.” Well, he doesn’t. And that’s the brilliant bit. Now he says the “I’ll have her, but I won’t keep her long” and we wonder what’s he planning? He follows this by getting Clarence incarcerated, and only afterwards do we see Lady Anne alone and mourning, her husband’s body now interned within his tomb, so that the body is no longer something to poke at and remind us of Richard’s cruelties. Now that the scene is peaceful, Richard enters quietly, and you can see, it’s almost too much to bear, it’s so subtle, it’s so sexy, Anne falls for Richard. Now, never in my mind has this been the case, I always thought of Richard as sort of backing Anne quite in the corner, quietly working that she’ll either marry him or get used to not living much the courtly lifestyle anymore. I assumed. “To take is not to give” always settled my mind as to her opinions, that she has but one direction to face. No, she falls enraptured here, she speaks her angry words in sweet whispers, while Richard draws kisses out of her, but refuses to accept them, until finally she ends the scene with her own passionate advance, and then into the bedchamber, finis finis! Whether purists find this purely offensive, I do not know, and generally I find such changes in rather poor taste, but this, perhaps only in the medium of film, works very well for me.

What a great relief, to see Shakespeare being acted by people who understand subtlety, who recognize that the camera is focused on their smallest of features, that we are not watching ants through spyglasses. McKellen does a fine job, though a bit flamboyantly, but not over the top–though most of the rest of his cast acts like teenagers in a school performance.

20 April 07

novel: Lewis: Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

This is the third book of the Narnia series. It seems that it will be the last of which the original main characters take part, which leaves me a bit sad, because I took a great liking to Lucy instantly, despite her being the one with the most blind faith. Of course, all of the characters are idiots for not pointing out that Aslan bears a resemblance to Jesus. Maybe they’ve never been to church before. One of the arguments against Harry Potter, as I recall, was that it acknowledges supernatural powers aside from god, which don’t, of course exist, which makes it throughly heretical. The bible, on the other hand, doesn’t say such things don’t exist, but merely demands that they do not be used, I mean, that it’s wrong to raise spirits from the dead, and that it’s wrong to worship the other gods. Which is why I like the beliefs that include the other gods, so that the story goes that Jesus banished the Roman pantheon, and Venus went and hid in a mountain, etc. etc. Lewis, because the Christians know him to be one of their only supporters given credit by non-Christians thus should be able to do no wrong. He’s yet criticized for including mythical creatures in his work, including Bacchus. Any heavy-handedness is very brief, and his occasional asides and observations also very funny. The narrator makes clear which questions one should not worry about, that is, which questions he has no intention of answering, which keeps things moving along better than, say, Lord of the Rings, which has far more information and dead ends than anyone could make sense of (hence the endless tomes of further explanation). This is a classic “voyage” work, like the Odyssey or Gulliver’s Travels, in which the characters go from strange land to strange land and have many adventures. The difference between those works named above and Lewis’ is that Lewis allows his Aslan to keep the characters in line throughout the whole voyage. Inescapable terrors, dangers, tiffs, and slight moral questions are all set right by Aslan, which helps keep the plot from becoming too complicated, and also allows his ingenuity to be placed entirely in inventing magical delights and settings, and not having to bother figuring out how to save his characters. He even throws in Coleridge’s albatross for good measure, and though I was quite sure someone would shoot it, Lewis shows what would happen to a crew who let the albatross live. So they survive. This work was also more engaging than the previous, which was in turn more so than its previous.

My only question from the first book was this: if the children reach adulthood in Narnia, and then return back to our world as children, does that mean Lucy has to deal with menarche twice?

lecture: Spiro: Monkeys, Genesis and Jews (3/07)

“Monkeys, Genesis and Jews: The Darwinian Impact on Judaism” Presented by Jack D. Spiro: March 22, 2007:

[One year later: There’s this one key point that the public tends to get wrong when it comes to groundbreaking publications, being that the author did not begin working with a void, but is only the latest in a continuum. What if Einstein hadn’t published when he did? Somebody else would have. And the same goes for Darwin. What pop critics of Darwin tend to ignore is how humble Darwin appears in his works, hardly a page without his giving credit to the research and findings of somebody else. Secondly, Origin of Species comprises little more than a list of possible refutations, the same ones being used today, followed by illustrations of how his own theories are maintained. There’s a book I recommend, if only for the gorgeous examples of evolution; the one I will mention goes like this: there is an orchid that has an organ functioning as a water fountain, and when the cup of the orchid is filled with water, the flower tilts over and the water spills out and begins filling up again. Its pollen is only to be found near the bottom of the cup, so when humble-bees fly inside to fill their honeybags they end up being doused with water, unable to fly out of the cup. Their solution? Bite through the side of the cup to escape, and in so doing inadvertently get dusted by pollen, which they carry along to the next flower. Such elegance in whole!]

Spiro’s lecture essentially showed why Stokes-Monkey episodes have not, and will not, occur in Judaism, that Judaism has always been a religion of dialectics, “where there are two Jews there are three opinions.” What was most enjoyable was not the lecture, but the question-answer session afterwards. While the room was 90% Jewish, it seems, the questions were all asked by Christians, tending to use the “well, if you don’t believe in Jesus, what is the meaning of life?” tone of voice. One of the questions was asked by a young man who spoke very quickly, very self-assured, using jargon he’s picked up from anti-Darwin websites, explaining quickly that according to Darwin’s own definitions, there has never been any proof whatsoever, based on fossil records, that evolution has occurred, that evolution cannot be proven, but that there are things that can be proven, such as Intelligent Design, and is Judaism firmly set in its ancient belief of evolution so that it cannot see that evolution is not real? Something along those lines. Spiro spoke kindly, and yet made an ass of the boy, explaining that it’s not so much about “proven” as “suggested by evidence” and that in any case, there is no question as to whether or not evolution occurs. He’s cited a study done by a husband and wife team who for decades researched at the Galapagos and apparently observed evolution in those same sorts of birds that fascinated Darwin. Another question was asked by a girl who wanted to know “how can you say the bible evolved, I mean, I thought it was just written, and anyone can interpret it however they’d like, but, someone wrote it and everyone interprets it differently, though it doesn’t change.” He answered that the bible was not just written by a single person, but by many people, as shown through all sorts of evidence in the text, by what seems to be obvious motivations changing in section to section, by segments supposedly identical being entirely different (ie, the ten commandments, the creation myths, the invasion of Canaan), and the fact that the books were chosen by people, and that the Talmud contains records of that decision making process, including the books that nearly didn’t make it, and the reasons why they finally did make it. That another rabbi I spoke to told me he disagrees entirely with Spiro is evidence enough of Spiro’s point about the tradition of disagreement in Judaism.

poetry: Byron: Hours of Idleness (1807)

Four selections from a book of poems I find a somewhat tedious read of sporadic quality:

“Love’s Last Adieu”–I nearly didn’t make it through this, every line, I mean, was difficult to make sense of, even after spending the past hour working through Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. Granted, it can’t be easy to write something compelling when every stanza ends with “love’s last adieu,” but this is one of those pieces that perhaps should not have been written. It comes across as an exercise, and perhaps it was a helpful one because it forces one to find eleven words that rhyme with adieu…but it also helps explain why Hours of Idleness was often a flop. [ This last statement perpetuates a myth originated by Byron himself on the reception of Hours; of the publications that reviewed his work, the majority had either positive or neutral opinions of his work, and often identified the author by name. Byron, so far as we know, only focused on the opinion of the Edinburgh Review, at least publicly, which led to his English Bards and resulting fame. In hindsight, this was a good move, but at the time–what was he thinking? ]

“Damaetas”–This first reminded me, of course, of Byron himself, or, perhaps what he might have become–perhaps the sort of person Wordsworth became, if he ever lived any sort of sinful life. Second I thought of the character Pippin from the musical that share’s his name. Yet, while Byron’s character gives up sin in what seems to be repugnance, Pippin gives up sin out of boredom, if not depression. And then I thought of myself, and I grew very sad, because I thought of myself prancing about England unhappily, with my mistress sin, hating myself, though trying to “drain the dregs of pleasure’s bowl” at every turn, and oh, however much time I spent thus, ten times as much have I regretted it.

“To Marion” — “Still fickle, we are prone to rove” are the lines that I read over and over aloud, thinking how well it describes me, though how much more well it describes Byron, if we condense his endless loves into these few pages.

“To a Lady who presented to the author a lock of hair braided with his own, and appointed a night in December to meet him in the garden” — I think this to be the most important poem in Hours so far, because he doesn’t merely suggest a sense of humor, he lets it fall out, and now doubtless this is the Byron who will go on to compose Don Juan; all the elements of his craft are seedlings here, the humor, the great fickleness of love, the great loves, all the things made glorious in what may have been quite dull, really. When he writes, one tends to forget that an obese and lame boy is the writer. But it is the legend whom he goaded to live.

poetry: Shakespeare: Venus and Adonis (1593)

click for licensing I recall reading this in Northampton in the Haymarket, late one evening, at a small table, with my teapot, and a small dim light over my book, and I was waiting many hours for R—- to arrive, and nothing could keep my focus on this poem, though I tried with all my might to enjoy it. Yes, the language is very pretty, but does the story please me? At the time, I was very bored with it, pleased to finish it. Now, I am delighted in the language, yes, and the imagery, yes, and it makes me laugh and sigh for the struggles of love, the slight lewdness, the descriptions of two beauties tampering with something a pair of horses make perfect. And at the hint of coming tragedy, my heart begins to ache.

A girl once called me an Adonis. I hadn’t read that chapter of Ovid yet, though I was carrying the book around, so at the time I didn’t know what that meant, so I asked her. She said it meant I was “perfect.” Now, that was a long time ago, and I have a feeling now that she meant the rest of it too: that I wasn’t allowing myself to be fully given in love, that perhaps I had a nasty temperament, and perhaps that I’d meet my end foolishly, perhaps that she wanted me to meet my end very soon. I was sorry to see Adonis die, however, the descriptions, the wordplay, the imagery are some of the most clever I’ve ever seen. I’ve been disgusted with the long run of Shakespeare’s sonnets dealing with one matter: trying to convince a young man to reproduce. Now, I could see no reason to have written these, and I’m not quite sure why I assumed the subject was a young man anyway. The point is: it seems likely that the sonnets were exercises for this long poem, given that the majority of the poem is fuck-pleas, and Adonis argues that the reasoning “for increase” is not very convincing. Terms like tears that are solid until melted by cheeks, or perhaps tear-shaped until “melted” by the cheeks, and attempts to block those tears from the “sluttish ground” are those descriptions that makes poetry worthwhile for me. Does it teach me something? For certain. It helps to look at every thing in the world and maybe fall within its essence.

26 March 07

film: LaCava: My Man Godfrey (1936)

One of the very few films that, within moments of its beginning, I was hooked, and far before the end, was one of my favorites. Mostly due to William Powell’s acting–that is what hooked me, even before I could see his face in the darkness, his voice is not meant for Hollywood so much as it is meant for life, I mean I believed every word he said. And when I look at the dialogue, rather than listen to it, I recognize how artfully constructed every line is, say “It’s kind of sordid when you think of it, I mean when you think it over.” When Irene is tossed into the shower and bounces out shouting “Godfrey loves me!” and the wedding he falls into at the end, at the house of rich bimbos nervously giggling, at the slight moral of the story, useful to nobody, at the romanticized Depression. I fell in love. I want to own this.

Observation one year later: Harold Lloyd fell out of favor when the Depression struck, and I do wonder how Americans’ sense of humor changed with the circumstances. Did rags to riches comedies cause more anxiety than relief once it seemed the economy was down for the count? And how is it that the story of wealth vacationing in poverty before returning to wealth became a classic? One answer I have is that those who come out on top in this film do so without exerting any energy. Godfrey simply lets go and does what comes naturally, and everyone else allows fate to have its way with them. This opposes Lloyd, who works very hard to reach mediocre success. In a real world where fate has overwhelmed plebeian causality, the success of Lloyd is all too real, and although it’s pathetic, we can’t laugh at it when we see him in ourselves. But Godfrey? From the embers of realism America finally rises to celebrate that which the ashes of history have been dedicated: rich and powerful people! Come on, fight me!