tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78191118938895909692024-02-18T18:00:41.995-08:00I Left My Heart in BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZArticulating the Language of Cinema; by Aaron ManninoAaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-82999124988431284302013-04-09T12:44:00.004-07:002013-04-11T12:29:19.522-07:00PIETA - The Brutal Humanism of Ki-duk Kim <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b>"I've come to see that beauty is a thing that is without grace." - Jesca Hoop</b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgae2veLHHN5CzSNg_I97nmOvIV5PUwz6sWH0-VklhG6UEjQoQVh4uLUPp8JtA9OG0OjjGB5JZgNoqVa5H-eKDwd9qEnKG3Qrsz9Qv58xBS4ghDKL1NUsgoKCE0ksfVsC1rie6JKxVAyWs/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgae2veLHHN5CzSNg_I97nmOvIV5PUwz6sWH0-VklhG6UEjQoQVh4uLUPp8JtA9OG0OjjGB5JZgNoqVa5H-eKDwd9qEnKG3Qrsz9Qv58xBS4ghDKL1NUsgoKCE0ksfVsC1rie6JKxVAyWs/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" /></a>To
someone who has been entranced by Ki-duk Kim from virtually the start, his
lauded victory in Venice was quite a long time coming. And for those waiting
with bated breath during his hiatus after 2008’s<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Dream </i>(Bi-Mong) and the non-release<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Arirang</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pieta</i> is like pure oxygen – which is
ironic to say because it is also like having the wind knocked right out of you.
Kim’s latest is a triumph of emotional and existential depth, with a ghost of
the revenge genre that Korea has adapted into a national treasure. Does that slight
nod to convention and polish make <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pieta</i>
commercial? Hardly. <i>Pieta</i> - like Michael
Haneke’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funny Games</i> - is as grizzly
in its implications, mood, texture, and psychology of violence as a grindhouse film is in
splatter effects. As any studied artist knows, the imagination is limitless
where an image is limited, just as Kim knows that silence is limitless where words are limited. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pieta</i>
balances the shock of the image with the task of imagining throughout, not only
with violence, but with emotional motivations and the variation between visual
and spoken language. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In
small ways <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pieta</i> marks a shift in
Kim’s cinema. Not a distinct leap, but certainly a lateral advance. For one
thing, the mostly handheld cinematography is a bit looser, and the editing is on
the whole a bit faster. There is also a newfound sense of darkness and shadow
that feels like a continuation of his nocturnal exercises in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dream</i> taken to more noir-like, if not
painterly heights. Kim’s lighting – or rather his darkening - enhances <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pieta’</i>s foul and grey environs. In all
the important ways though - the ways deeply rooted to his identity as a visual
storyteller fascinated by the physicality and brutality of human emotion - Kim
remains the same uncompromising artist invested in the marginalized. <i>Pieta</i> is both a return to form and refinement of form.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY7zyuxibXQmvUujHl-UOg5QdhEO6aJVczVaaY8Szdzw9JYtLI8UjvvuxSxMPnTLM-iYmL47dEUIQOcUFQNgGpxSqQ8LU2j9bmQpzo4n-wbFRsjYDXvaLF-v2O6YfDcLZL-acrUTmpPuE/s1600/pieta-lee-jung-jin-in-un-momento-del-dramma-di-kim-ki-duk-248125.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY7zyuxibXQmvUujHl-UOg5QdhEO6aJVczVaaY8Szdzw9JYtLI8UjvvuxSxMPnTLM-iYmL47dEUIQOcUFQNgGpxSqQ8LU2j9bmQpzo4n-wbFRsjYDXvaLF-v2O6YfDcLZL-acrUTmpPuE/s320/pieta-lee-jung-jin-in-un-momento-del-dramma-di-kim-ki-duk-248125.jpg" width="320" /></a>Kang-do
(Lee Jung-jin in a visceral embodied pefromance) is a singular and singularly
unsympathetic man, without family or scruples and a limited vocabulary. He
works as an enforcer for a loan shark. <span style="mso-fareast-language: JA;">His
employer has a staggering policy which demands 10x return on all loans. Poor
machinists and small-scale industrial workers take out loans to stay afloat in utter
desperation, but incur the wrath of Kang-do when they are unable to pay. To
recover the astronomical interests, the debtors would sign an insurance claim
in the case of a handicapping, which gives Kang-do his weapon. He cripples the
debtors so that they can file the claim and use that money to pay off their
debt, a truly vicious but effective system. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: JA;">Kang-do lives a primal existence, and is
likewise animalistic in his behavior. There is a touch of “a boy raised by
wolves” in his demeanor, and his unblinking savagery. Even the way he eats has
a primitive aspect – gutting a chicken on his bathroom floor and boiling the
whole bird in a pot. Kang-do lives in an impoverished industrial section of the
city, which is soon to be overtaken by skyscrapers as the city center expands.
In this Kim creates a vague subtext of socio-economic disparity. Alleyways are
littered with metal junk and scrap, dingy concrete, and greyness. Kim depicts
something highly specific and tactile in the world of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pieta</i> that at times feels like a black and white film in color. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1jtCibhlDcmlXt6xEzVetO9WNE4Tdlo8GQZMhrp657YK846Vor8sRwQvxnkDvbCRSQb05N3nkYHYxZ1J2da-kc4OUVK2jpa3-rFBMLi2_l9NHqIgUb9AcaGA1ZhQwuy2wTnYJGNX4qJg/s1600/venice_film_festival_Pieta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1jtCibhlDcmlXt6xEzVetO9WNE4Tdlo8GQZMhrp657YK846Vor8sRwQvxnkDvbCRSQb05N3nkYHYxZ1J2da-kc4OUVK2jpa3-rFBMLi2_l9NHqIgUb9AcaGA1ZhQwuy2wTnYJGNX4qJg/s200/venice_film_festival_Pieta.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: JA;">One day Kang-do is visited by a strange woman (Jo
Min-su) who claims to be his mother begging for forgiveness for abandoning him
at birth. The visitation of his this woman stirs up emotions in Kang-do that
had been fueling his cruelty all along, but now he is forced to confront them
and process new ideas about his identity as a man apart, without origin or
morality. He rejects her first attempts at reconciliation, but her persistence
pays off by degrees. Jo Min-su is affecting and unforgettable. Like a soul
stripped bare, her fragility and her strength are simultaneous, as is her
mystery. Her injection into Kang-do’s life however goes both ways, and she
finds herself confronting her own shadowed past. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: JA;">That all sounds fine and good, but in a Kim
film, nothing happens easily and nothing unfolds with particular grace. In
fact, Kim’s cinema is that of the gracelessness that is humanity. With newfound
love comes the fear of loss, the very insecurity of possession. In short, all
things contain their opposite, and hold within the seed of their negation. How
long can a second chance at childhood last? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmKSVN7DkFxbIbKAMjG34sulBxK4WW1s4NvkDBfhpUXtnWE66zWaNUsXhiAA5FPyNN9Azm-aYbPKl7_Bc1h45XaZCkLtBp6iSSbn_OP8R2TMd5bgTMeDTX810wxUvaeIiODXl3ZxWscPA/s1600/pieta+still+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmKSVN7DkFxbIbKAMjG34sulBxK4WW1s4NvkDBfhpUXtnWE66zWaNUsXhiAA5FPyNN9Azm-aYbPKl7_Bc1h45XaZCkLtBp6iSSbn_OP8R2TMd5bgTMeDTX810wxUvaeIiODXl3ZxWscPA/s200/pieta+still+2.jpg" width="200" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: JA;">Pieta</span></i><span style="mso-fareast-language: JA;"> has much in common with his 2006 film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Samaritan Girl</i> with its religious
references (not that they reference the same religion), its sense of irony tied
to those symbolisms, and in the depiction of a strained bond between a child
and their only parent, albeit inverse in the gender and in the flow of aggression. Even the vengeful father figure in <i>Samaritan Girl</i>,
mutated by his misapprehension of his daughter’s secretive illicit
actions has a flavor of Kang-do’s pure pitiless spirit. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pieta</i> also recalls Kim’s earlier works, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Address Unknown</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bad Guy</i>,
which are remarkably unsympathetic and focus on the lower classes, the
impoverished, criminals, prostitutes, etc. The one thing Kim never loses sight
of, no matter the social strata, is the human…. the aching, screaming, brutal, silent, desperate, passionate,
inconsistent human ever competing against the circumstance of existence.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="mso-fareast-language: JA;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-fareast-language: JA;"><i>* A version of this article is published in the Spring 2013 <a href="http://koreanquarterly.org/Home.html">Korean Quarterly</a> *</i></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-85187727429521348802012-11-30T18:21:00.001-08:002014-12-29T06:53:27.617-08:00Cinema: A Native Language<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMUC0dxfu2p6k0VyiBUjlQtADR0JjTossJK-P88r7AXpiZtna1DzREHxA5i0D3B-fxNLGk1kHoK-kt6muqZ3JC91M7-YeO_y8JeonqETw4zu5YKrDqFC0QKUaTcyAL2nIaYNaMQM-hwUE/s1600-h/22zxxd.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMUC0dxfu2p6k0VyiBUjlQtADR0JjTossJK-P88r7AXpiZtna1DzREHxA5i0D3B-fxNLGk1kHoK-kt6muqZ3JC91M7-YeO_y8JeonqETw4zu5YKrDqFC0QKUaTcyAL2nIaYNaMQM-hwUE/s320/22zxxd.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371140807147045890" style="cursor: move; float: left; height: 320px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 227px;" /></a><br />
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Whenever I hear the sentiment “imitation is the highest form of flattery,” spouted in response to some manner of emulation, I’ve always reverted immediately to the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “imitation is suicide.” Two seemingly polar observations, and yet neither strictly cancels the other out. Take for example Shakespeare's Romeo, who lavishes compliment upon Juliet’s brilliant slumberous corpse in the Capulet monument, even as he takes a deadly drum of poison to his lips in an effort to imitate her “unsubstantial death,” which is itself an imitation, for Juliet is but slayed of senses, not of life. Bertolucci’s THE DREAMERS is a playground for these varied sentiments, a blended but always uneasy mixture of fatalism and homage lacing every moment of tiered imitation. Emerson’s concise cautionary words are of a figurative urgency. They infer that sacrifice of principle, not flesh, is inherent in the adoption of guises, or that facilitating one’s identity through the medium of another’s constructed means, which subverts one’s own pre-existing model, is at the very expense of that model. The existential tailspin of the three principal characters in THE DREAMERS, toward its final minutes especially, is evidence enough of this truth, and further highlights that the refusal to grow, in the emotional case of the characters of Theo and Isa, is an analogous form to suicide; that of suicide by stagnation. Or put by another, “Not busy being born is busy dying” (Dylan).</div>
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Bertolucci’s triumph of unconventionally sexual cinema is a poetic and sensual exploration of the lives of three young adults; twins Theo and Isabelle, and their newly made friend Matthew, at the cusp of great personal and social upheaval in Paris. It is a film about simultaneous wars, and about refusals, both ideological and manifest, drawn with a mark of rare, and for some, a somewhat affronting intimacy. While the film speaks of social war and the unrest of the May ’68 demonstrations (a year that saw analogous uprisings the world over, such as the US’s strife against its own participation the Vietnam War), it is not a film about ’68, but rather one that takes place in that moment in history, and utilizes its intensity and its feverish embrace of the possibility of change, as an informing backdrop, if not catalyst. The film is, quite insularly, about the three main characters’ blossoming and shifting perceptions of “self” and the mechanisms of emotional identity, over the span of an exceptional month in self-imposed house arrest. Gilbert Adair, author of the novel and screenplay, explains that the actual telling of the story holds no intended or implicit irony. However, within its framework, particular and telling ironies which inform deeply on each character’s changing or unchanging personhood.</div>
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The “wars” in THE DREAMERS, as they may be termed, swell between action and inaction, between the public and the private, the political and emotional, between the teacher and the taught, between impressions and actuality, and between imitation and embodiment. Bertolucci acknowledges that each of these “combatants,” as it were, has a vested interest in its opposition in order to thrive, , and from this basis he symbolically threads the film together with a palate of red and green, termed “complementary colors” but opposites just the same. Bertolucci stems from that symbolic language of opposites, into the narrative’s physical course; for instance, The stagnation that occurs within the closed-off apartment during a month of seclusion requires the punctuation of social upheaval raging in the streets to inform its own qualities. The twins, Theo and Isabelle’s increasing isolationism teaches Matthew an ironic universality of boundless love, however Matthew’s reversion of this principle towards the twins, that is to say, his efforts to instill in the twins his own learned broadness, is refused almost outright. Timid but ponderous Matthew, brimming from the first shot with boyish enthusiasm and an overly apologetic naïvete, is so complexly and confrontingly engaged by the Twins during this pocket of isolation, and yet it is they who choose to stunt their own emotional growth. It is no mistake that this attitudinal war fought behind doors unfolds as a war of ideology and principle is fought “dans la rue,” and that these two fronts should meet in the end with so much breaking of glass.</div>
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The broiling but optimistic scene of social tensions of May ’68, between the powers-that-be and Parisian youths and intellectuals, is set immediately as our backdrop. At the tail end of the first shot, a descending close-up pan of the Eiffel Tower’s framework, into which the title sequence is integrated, we meet Matthew: the blonde, wide-eyed, un-spoiled American studying French in Paris. He is walking towards the Cinematheque Francaise, wearing a neutral palate of khaki, grey and white, revealing retrospective details about the time and place, and about himself, through voice-over-narration. Soon he is amidst one of the first organized public outcries against the deposing of Henri Langlois, the creator and curator of the Cinematheque Francais, for his reputedly slapdash handling of his resources (film, ephemera). To many Langlois is the father of cinema preservation and programming, if not the encouraging rebel uncle to the elite cinephiles who would become the famed New Wavers; Godard, Truffaut, Rivette, Chabrol, etc. Matthew’s self-enacted immersion into the film subculture becomes a vastly more affecting avenue of education than any of his institutional schooling. “Here is where I got my real education” he says. Though not French, Matthew is a member of the universal culture of cinema and has every right to embroil in the demonstration. This organized public uprising of principle and of personal objection taking place at the Palais Chaillot, which seemingly begins as something subcultural, is merely one aspect of what will expand into a near-formal city-wide movement. This tenuous moment fatefully brings together Matthew and the twins, Theo and Isa, though it is intimated by their smiling glances to one another that the twins had been discreetly pondering him at film screenings. “He’s American, just like I told you,” Isa says to Theo while introducing Matthew. The two young men bond over the name of Nicholas Ray.</div>
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This opening scene also sets the stage for THE DREAMERS’ most prevalent and outspoken visual motif; inter-splicing archival footage and film excerpts into sequences, virtually frame by frame reenacted, or content reflective. Immediately, by virtue of this meta-motif, we are confronted with a melange of concepts that are subliminally crucial to understanding the impending identity epoch that will unfold between our three protagonists. One might define the overlapping of archival and “modern” footage as a kind of surrealism, or even a symbolic temporal confusion, because separate realities deign to be of and within the same moment. Bertolucci says “In cinema you are allowed to conjugate only one tense, the present. Because when you shoot, you are contemporary to what you shoot and to whom you are shooting. This prevalence of the present is something we cannot forget or ignore. Even if you shoot a character in ancient Rome dressed up like Julius Cesar, the people in the theater are contemporary to Julius Cesar. This is really a privilege of cinema. The three kids who are acting the part of three kids from ’68, they, in their bodies and experiences carry the present.”</div>
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THE DREAMERS is a complex but elegant exercise of this temporal aspect of cinema. Actors of the present (Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel, Eva Green), are posing as fictional people (Matthew, Theo, Isabelle), in a fictional scenario placed within an actual past, who, to compound things further, imitate, almost as a second language, scenes from past films, which are themselves merely documented imitations of scenarios and feelings by other actors and filmmakers. Take for example the black and white newsreel images of French New Wave poster child, actor Jean-Pierre Leaude speaking out at the actual ’68 demonstration, juxtaposed with his own self-reenactment in the present, as it were, via the filming of THE DREAMERS in 2003, which is itself a restaging of ’68. Neither the archival Leaud nor the Leaud of today are in the proper time (the former pulled forward, the latter thrust back), yet they are both in the present, contemporary to each other, and to us as we view. On many occasions we are confronted with moments of the archival past and the immutable present-in-imitation of the past, compounded in singular moments. The twins constantly reenact film scenes as a game to test film knowledge and to subvert a grasping of “reality.” Their imitation games are a kind of manufactured twin-speech, a language that is both distilled in its specificity, but also diluted by several generations of removal. Even if one doesn’t dissect these ideas very intently, it still carries wind of the pervasive action of imitation that propels the story, that defines and ultimately destroys the trio, and in a way, highlights the inherent sensual tactile nature of the film’s world. The Dreamers makes no shallow predication of its relationship to the lineage of cinema, doesn't rest contentedly on the fact of simply being a film, or a film about cinephiles, but revels in its nature as a film in love with film, and creates a synthesis of itself into the family of cinema, and vice versa. Bertolucci borrows imagery from other films and weaves it into the lives of his characters (by their imitation of said imagery, and by the seeming nature that it is a phenomenon of their own conjuration), as well as into the literal fabric of the film itself, spliced into scenes regarding a material process. THE DREAMERS manifests this dynamic integration through abstraction and through a literal materiality yielding an inextricable poetic tangle.</div>
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These temporally enmeshed moments are but another, if not the initial dimension of THE DREAMERS’ pervading sexuality and sensuality, for they create a bifurcated penetration of films into films, creating amorous relationships between the imitator and the imitated, reflected again through Matthew’s invitation into the twin’s very specific gravity and the chaos he stirs in the displacement as he hopes to integrate. Sexuality in the explicit sense, is therefore a response rather than a motivator to this phenomenon.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Fhnwl6hnvvzxXjVTc2_eKyaFShfXk32UkzS6UbBuqdrx9DOCtlW49e4l45z_tY7mQxts1kllAaNks7ZZXT-NU2ZkOKeMO_WYFnz8NtZsalcBV69U9fT0Cvwt0NXPugbihRc_MYK9r2A/s1600/normal_the-dreamers_009.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Fhnwl6hnvvzxXjVTc2_eKyaFShfXk32UkzS6UbBuqdrx9DOCtlW49e4l45z_tY7mQxts1kllAaNks7ZZXT-NU2ZkOKeMO_WYFnz8NtZsalcBV69U9fT0Cvwt0NXPugbihRc_MYK9r2A/s320/normal_the-dreamers_009.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409818314099491170" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 206px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; width: 320px;" /></a>Sensuality is indeed a quality present from early on. Matthew describes himself in his Voice Over introduction as “one of the insatiables,” referring to his cinephilia. Small physical gestures build gradually in the opening act and throughout to create a sensual residue across the films length. Gestures like; Matthew spitting into his hand in order to masturbate while writing a letter to his mother about meeting Theo and Isa, Matthew urinating in his sink (instead of walking down the hall to go to the washroom), Isa’s hair draped gently upon her father’s neck as she leans over him to get his attention, as well as her father’s hand sliding slightly along her red-draped waist in a light embrace. And even when Matthew first meets Isa, it is a sensual experience. He removes a red cigarette stuck to her puckered lips, causing both parties to flinch at her moments’ discomfort. Indeed this flinching, at Matthew’s hand, is illustration enough of the “violence” that will result of his later efforts to help and break the twins out of their unified shell, though at this later epoch it will be violence sprung from his lips instead of his hands.</div>
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Through a consistently rich and self-reflexive visual language, Bertolucci is able to articulate the complicated nature of his characters and predict the impending arc of emotionality that will be seeded by their meeting, well beyond words (though he uses them to great effect). Bertolucci is able to simplify the apparent arc of the film (the story), and buoy it with a more subliminal and emotional current, through symbols and color. Some of this metaphoric complexity is merely aftermath, but most of it is well forethought, and these two regards converge on many points. Aftermath and happenstance are the lifeblood of cinema. As Godard said, and as Bertolucci regards in the documentary The Italian Traveller, “leave a door open on set” so that the world outside can waltz in and throw it’s self into the mix of staged and premeditated creation; a truly New Wave ideology that transplants to THE DREAMERS both in its making and its finished body.</div>
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From the very beginning we are made aware of Isa and Theo’s “deceptions” as it were, or penchant for imitation. It’s fair to say that, by virtue of brilliant economy and subtlety, we are subconsciously aware of almost every propensity and theme within the film from its very first sequence. Matthew approaches Isa at the sunken entrance of the Musee du Cinema surrounded by a crowd of students, chained to the gate in a stoic lean worthy of Vogue Magazine, wearing a tight, deep green, crushed-velvet one-piece and a bright red barret (introducing the pervading color scheme of the entire film)… but she is only pretending to be chained. “Why are you chained to the gate?” Matthew asks softly. “I’m not chained to the gate,” she remarks casually smiling as she unwinds the links from her wrists, hands thrown up as if to say “ta da!” Her convictions, one might infer, are <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP4_IKPMd2eNn3zUhw5HBFrYXqICcuBY8BAtoQO2Uh681SZ-HWf2zeRmJ6eXIzrqswWEOE7FKXFpJm4dYUyjouqU1EosPHt_7mifjsx5mlpUkE-h8EfTNBW6dMBSFUP-mTbgXzxWEX3l8/s1600/the-dreamers_017.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP4_IKPMd2eNn3zUhw5HBFrYXqICcuBY8BAtoQO2Uh681SZ-HWf2zeRmJ6eXIzrqswWEOE7FKXFpJm4dYUyjouqU1EosPHt_7mifjsx5mlpUkE-h8EfTNBW6dMBSFUP-mTbgXzxWEX3l8/s200/the-dreamers_017.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409821477298415826" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 112px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 200px;" /></a>f are façade, a game like so much of her life. Later, Matthew will intimate to her how “cool” he thought she and Theo looked when they were just strangers, and she will say, “We were acting.” The fact that at this moment of introduction Isa and Matthew are below the plane of social action, literally, at the bottom of a set of stairs, is but their first act of extraction from the world, to be followed by several more. Compounding this metaphor is the way in which the camera alternates its coverage from in front and from behind the gate, upon which Isa and Matthew are both playing the scene. It comes across as an ambiguous distinction; from which side do they appear as prisoners behind bars?</div>
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Theo arrives and the three of them narrowly escape the violent tide of the days’ demonstration, walking the city streets till late that night, talking and sharing sandwiches (Isa and Theo both giving Matthew 1/3 of their’s). Mathew adheres to the twins rather quickly, and them to him, despite his staggeringly apologetic nature. “…I was already in love with my new friends,” he says to himself. They have activated something within one another and they are each feeding off the potential of this coupling. You can feel their penchant emanating from the screen already. Anyone who has felt close to someone upon first meeting will be scintillated by the same infectious buzz.</div>
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Theo and Isa live and breathe Cinema. Their thoughts and behaviors are framed around their own filmic memory, and informed, as it turns, by the very nature of film as sequences of documented imitation and selective reality (though all cinema may be regarded theoretically as reality, in that it is the reality of what occurred before the camera). Isa says to Matthew “I entered this world on the Champs-Elysees, 1959. La trottoir du Champs Elysees. And do you know what my very first words were? …’New York Herald Tribune! New York Herald Tribune!’” ushering in the first non-newsreel inter-spliced film clip. Isa is of course referencing a scene from the beginning of Godard’s Breathless, considered the seminal New Wave Film. The twins equate their coming to life with the birth of Nouvelle Vague cinema, and not a moment before.</div>
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Matthew has dinner with them the next evening at their home in the company of the Twins’ ex-social renegade parents; a somewhat distracted father, apparently renown for his poetry, and a gentle but utterly strong-minded mother whose domesticity never appears like a submission. Theo calls Matthew quite early the morning after their meeting to place the invitation, waking him from a sound slumber. Subtle details begin to seep in, such as the red wall behind Matthew’s bed, and the dark green quilt he is sleeping under. A sensual, if not sexual, visual relationship is now irrevocably drawn between Matthew and Isa, for the dress she wore tight on her body while “restrained” against the Musee du Cinema gate the day before, is nearly the same color as the quilt that Matthew drapes over his own body as he sleeps, a state most vulnerable. From this connection stems what one could call a story written with color, and culls the strongest and yet most unspoken cinematic reference within THE DREAMERS, which is none other than Bertolucci’s own THE LAST EMPEROR (1987); a relationship that warrants its own dissertation. Notably though, where EMPEROR is a tale told in phases of color, in which individual palates are chosen to preside over specific chapters in the life of its protagonist Pu Yi, THE DREAMERS is a tale of relationships bound with two specific colors that can be traced throughout the entire film. In a sense, it is as Matthew later says of Theo’s aesthetic fascination with Maoism (another of the bold ligatures to EMPEROR), that the socio-political movement’s visualization as millions of people marching, carrying millions of little red books instead of guns, is merely the multiplicity of “one book, A book, just one book,” a singular in vast repetition. The relationship drawn by red and green, as will be discussed, though scattered across the films length, is but “one relationship” shared between himself and the entire universe if Theo and Isa, almost as if their meeting were fated. Again, it is the lessons of color learned by Bertolucci in EMPEROR that help create this dynamic in THE DREAMERS.</div>
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We skip the anticipation of the day and cut right to the trio entering the lobby of their flat. Instead of walking up the stairs togetherWe skip the anticipation of the day and cut right to the trio exuberantly entering the lobby of their flat. Instead of walking up the stairs together, Theo and Isa shut Matthew (and the viewer because this is a POV shot) into the elevator and race it to their floor, the camera peering through the mesh screen at the scrambling duo, establishing that they will continually set the condition of integration in their newly expanded circle. Doors recur often as devices of privacy and boundary for Matthew; closing the door while he changes in Theo’s room, hiding in the kitchen closet to avoid paying his forfeit (the penalty for loosing one of the twins’ spontaneous “name-that-scene” games), or peeping through Theo’s bedroom door the first night he stays over to see the him sleeping naked with Isa (a red light saturating the hallway). For Theo, doors equal a kind of control; shutting Matthew out on the street or in the elevator, leaving the door to his bedroom cracked open while sleeping with Isa, coaxing Matthew into his room to change out of wet clothes together and asking “why wouldn’t you open the door?” when he returns with drinks to find a flustered Matthew.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_a3pc9neekRb7hTwJyFfyYc4H5tw5VP_N-xsHJQSGEUPqITjXqIgEcOjftNb791Hw-8NWYokJipCqr6j3o5qq4bpNDgoUQtfNPeYHNrd60w7x40siAIbplncXhMYxao2ji81VcliB3zU/s1600/dreamers-cosmic-dinner-party.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_a3pc9neekRb7hTwJyFfyYc4H5tw5VP_N-xsHJQSGEUPqITjXqIgEcOjftNb791Hw-8NWYokJipCqr6j3o5qq4bpNDgoUQtfNPeYHNrd60w7x40siAIbplncXhMYxao2ji81VcliB3zU/s320/dreamers-cosmic-dinner-party.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409820091458913826" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 173px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 320px;" /></a>During the intimate meal with the twins’ family, in a kitchen brimming with green and red tones (just as the rest of the house), Matthew shares a rather implicating dialogue with the father… implicating in what it predicts about the nature of his own role in this menage-a-trois of sorts with the twins. While fidgeting with Isabelle’s lighter and not paying attention to the fathers monologue, he discovers that the lighter’s dimensions fit perfectly within the design of the tablecloth in nearly every configuration, and demonstrates, as an apology for his distraction, all the other places it fits as well to the family: between two plates, the length between the knuckles on Isa’s ring finger, etc.</div>
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“I was noticing that the more you look at everything; this table, the objects on it, the refrigerator, this room, your nose…the world, suddenly you realize that there’s some kind of cosmic harmony of shapes and sizes. I was just wondering why? I don’t know why that is… I know that it is.”</div>
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The father, genuinely engaged by Matthew’s aptitude, adds to the conversation. “We look around us and what do we see?...Complete chaos. But, when viewed from above, viewed as it were, by god, everything fits together. You have a very interesting friend here,” he declares to his children, “more interesting, I suspect, than you know.” The father goes on to say to Theo, on the topic of the street demonstrations and the Twins’ appeal of their viability, “before you can change the world you must realize that you yourself are a part of it. You can’t just be on the outside looking in.” Before Matthew ever pries into Theo and Isa’s own world, we realize that the twins’ parents have likely already recited some version of everything Matthew deigns to say in the second and third acts of the film, a relationship stated in the father’s wearing deep but muted shades of red and green, expanding the affiliation of color ever further. After dinner Theo and Isa invite Matthew to stay with them for the subsequent month of their parents’ absence, and he indeed assumes the role of observer, however not from above or outside, but from within. In these almost mythical weeks, Matthew slowly realizes his objectivity in the palpable claustrophobia of the twin’s winding flat, much like the rather claustrophobic dinner table, where all the details came together first.</div>
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During he and Matthew’s first debate, Theo comes quite close to understanding Matthew’s significance in his and Isa’s lives. Their debate is over the incomparability of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton (who actually star together in Chaplin’s 1952 film Limelight), Matthew siding with Keaton, Theo with Chaplin. Theo describes as his arguments’ evidence, the final shots of Chaplin’s CITY LIGHTS (1931). “If Chaplin wanted a great shot, he knew how to get it… better than anyone. …Remember that the blind woman is seeing him for the first time,” Theo says, “…and it’s as if we’ve never really seen him before. This is Charlie Chaplin, the most famous man in the world, and it’s as if we’re seeing him for the first time.” In that citation (which inter-splices the actual Chaplin scene), Theo touches on the very inclination that Matthew will adopt, both in looking at himself, but also in revealing to the twins a new self-perception… a vision of themselves as connected, but sovereign; two as two, rather than two as one. This theme is continuously compounded by the motif of mirrors throughout the apartment in virtually every scene.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPneulxi_Wp9nx4BqrGjoPRbnLJuZTjVtcZbKQHiGxWhrnJ3nmJoPRdeVFikK0fI9aHazl7lYfbrwTcowqw_XOA8CwZRj5JqoDXZ9m_g_-oakLLAN5jhd6_suF9ck4GDB2g5XweIGD8hQ/s1600/18366183.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPneulxi_Wp9nx4BqrGjoPRbnLJuZTjVtcZbKQHiGxWhrnJ3nmJoPRdeVFikK0fI9aHazl7lYfbrwTcowqw_XOA8CwZRj5JqoDXZ9m_g_-oakLLAN5jhd6_suF9ck4GDB2g5XweIGD8hQ/s320/18366183.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409819212127401522" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 214px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 320px;" /></a>““One of us! we accept him!, One of us!” Theo and Isa chant these words, a quotation from the film FREAKS, to Matthew after their triumphant reenactment of the race through the Louvre from Godard’s BANDE A PART (1964), beating the standing record by 17 seconds. “We’ve been meaning to do something for a long time, but we’ve been waiting for the right person to do it with,” Isa says suggestively to entice him to the challenge (this being just after he and Theo’s debate). Matthew concedes to the plot but not before expressing his innocent and exaggerated fear that if caught he anticipated deportation. The reenacted race is spliced with the original, crating some near-magical alignments, the sounds of THE DREAMERS sequence presiding over the clips. The ensuing post-race sequence, which follows them back to the apartment, is overflowing with compound metaphors and foreshadowing. From the shot of the ebullient trinity, skipping arm in arm alongside the Louvre in sunlight, we cut to Theo and Isa ducking into the glass-walled lobby of a street-side restaurant, leaving Matthew to walk on the sidewalk in-step with them in the rain, his once vibrant red REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE-esque jacket soaked to a deep burgundy. He shouts their names in the rain, and all the while, his reflection in the glass is superimposed on and beside them. This image speaks to both the transitory, or fractional inclusion Matthew will experience with the twins, as well as the fact that in observing them so fervently, he discovers a great deal about himself. After exiting the opposite end of the restaurant lobby onto the sidewalk again, Theo and Isa duck into the lobby of their apartment building and slam the grand entrance door on Matthew’s face. They open the door and let him in after a moment’s fun, chanting once again, “We accept him!” and swallowing him through the door. a microcosm of their relationship.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPGPxYzIUSMC-PiQUw2DjbEnryrpVIenJwFjdydSXYXz_TWFsLyRKMqIGlFys6Mbzif9s58ypjdZQJgA0r8H1E6ACWptA7uk3PCqVBgpi9bKzMB6FNTgdKva73PQQ73_UD6hoUUC4QaZk/s1600/Picture+2.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPGPxYzIUSMC-PiQUw2DjbEnryrpVIenJwFjdydSXYXz_TWFsLyRKMqIGlFys6Mbzif9s58ypjdZQJgA0r8H1E6ACWptA7uk3PCqVBgpi9bKzMB6FNTgdKva73PQQ73_UD6hoUUC4QaZk/s320/Picture+2.png" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409820844740358978" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 249px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 320px;" /></a>THE DREAMERS is a film that thrives by its sensual inclinations, but it is by no means slave to them. And in that vein, there are a number of moments that boast an elemental connection between the trinity and their looming fates. By ‘elemental’ I’m referring, of course, to the elements; fire and water, and as has been suggested already, color. Water is the first element to speak of foreboding, for it rains the very night that the three meet and plant their seeds of intrigue in one another with conversation. It also rains as Theo and Isa playfully lock Matthew out on the street after the race through the Louvre. Rain has a certain classical implication of foreboding, or heightening drama, so one can leave it well assumed. What creates the most striking prediction of the trinity’s future is, ironically, in a completely unscripted, but wholly critical moment. Isa, wishing goodnight to Theo and Matthew after the dinner with their parents, kisses each boy on the lips gently. But when she leans in to kiss Matthew, her hair catches fire for an instant on the candles she lit on the table. The flare is extinguished by her swift hand, which Matthew is now touching softly. The two of them barely move during the flare up, just their hands, and Isa leans in further to give him the intended kiss. “Are you ok” he asks. “I’m ok” she replies. It is important to note that Isa has lit these candles just after the heated existential discussion at dinner, and in a casually acted but directly indicative action, Isa is attempting to create an isolation in response to any light being shed on their condition. She turns the kitchen lights off and shrouds the three of them in darkness, offering only enough light to cast the visage of their bodies. She (Is and Theo being eqal and interchanagable) chooses the degree to which conditions are exposed. But the scene means even more than that. The flame evokes the impending flare of passion that will burst between them at he behest of Theo. It is also a kind of impressionistic foretelling of the film’s conclusion; combining the element of a kiss and a flame. In the final scene Matthew uses a kiss as his plea to the Twins, urging them to walk from the heated street riot to choose “love, not war.” But the twins refuse Matthew’s plea and resort to violence, tossing a malatov coctail (the flame) at the police in their frenzied and ignorant participation in the street riot. Lastly, the ‘hair catching fire’ scene is a surprising and unintended evocation of one such scene from JULES ET JIM (1962) by Truffaut. In that scene, Catherine (played by the inimitable Jeanne Moreau), catches fire to her dress while burning love letters in her apartment. Jim (Henri Serr), helps her to extinguish it. What the flame represents for Catherine and Jim is much the same as what it represents for the twins, for Catherine is the lover of Jim’s best friend Jules (Oskar Werner), and Theo may as well be Jules at this moment. These two scenes curiously carry the same heightened and concise kinetic energy, energy that extends the timing of an ostensibly brief moment, even though the one in JULES ET JIM is rather quickly edited with several cuts, and the one in THE DRERAMERS is only cut once.</div>
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From the candlelight mishap onward, we are steeped in the experience of these three orbiting characters, who, in their parents’ absence, nearly refuse to leave their bourgeois self-interested seclusion. Things commence calmly enough, but little by little, Matthew becomes privy to the peculiarity of Theo and Isa’s unconventional closeness. Sexuality concretes itself as a staple element in these ensuing scenes. What’s interesting about these rather vivid and unmitigated sexual moments, which seem to structure most of the vehement popular disapproval of the film, is that they are captured visually and emotionally from within, rather than from without, in which case our gaze becomes inclusive rather than voyeuristic, much like how Matthew is an invitee rather than an intruder. This is partly to do with how the camera, in these moments, behaves the same as it does in capturing all other details of the flat and characters. Cinematographer Fabio Ciancetti laces the entire film with a consistent kinetic fluidity and closeness that is informed, if not dictated, by the tight, tall, almost labyrinthian architecture of the flat itself. The same is to be said of the editing of these scenes, never rushed and never bashful. Scenes from without the house; such as the ravishing crane-to-steadicam shot of the university courtyard, are lent longer, more sweeping and waltzing movements, again utilizing opposites to inform one another.</div>
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Matthew, despite his own shattering of personal sexual boundaries, doesn’t graduate much beyond a conduit for Theo and Isa’s unrealized dimensions of affection. “You’re a nice boy and I like you a lot… but it wasn't always meant to be the three of us,” The says to Matthew late in the film. The twins’ tangential actions towards one another lay in admission to the fact that they have a rudimentary sense of the “wrongness” inherent their closeness, that is to say, in terms of the greater societal realm. They even liken themselves to freaks in their own cinematic imitations, by quoting from the film entitled FREAKS, “we accept him!” Theo and Isa’s sexuality towards one another has always been conditional, if not childish; sleeping naked together, bathing together, spying on intimate moments, etc. With the advent of a third body, in this case Matthew, their desires can be expressed more directly, with a tactile intermediary. For example, after Matthew’s failure to name the film from which Theo was reenacting a death scene (Scarface 1932), Theo makes a bold demand for his penalty. “I’m not a sadist. I just want to see that everyone is happy. So…I want you and Isa…to make love, in front of me.” Theo makes a bold demand for his penalty. “I’m not a sadist. I just want to see that everyone is happy. So…I want you [Matthew] and Isa…to make love, in front of me.” There is a deliberate craft to Theo’s gesture. He chooses to imitate a scene of murder in which the shadow of an “x” cast by a street sign onto the sidewalk marks the spot in which a man dies by drive-by gunfire. That Theo should make the forfeit of this round of name-that-scene an intercourse between Matthew and Isa, he is encapsulating the film’s prevailing ideas of homage, sexuality, fatalism, and imitation into a microcosmic amalgam.</div>
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Isa is won over by the idea after a moment, but timid Matthew flees the scene while she strips to a record of Beyond the Sea, only to be captured again in the kitchen by the architect of this encounter. Matthew and Isa, after a moments struggle and a lightening-quick fainting (by Matthew), make love on the kitchen floor, while Theo cooks eggs and peers out the window at activists running in the streets below evading a throng of police. This scene is a borderline change-over in Matthew’s character, and it becomes obvious by Isa’s moans, though contrary to what one might have inferred (including Matthew, which he admits later) by her constant sensuality, that she is in fact a virgin. After the climax, Theo walks over to them and touches between her legs and shows her the blood of her deflowering, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger in that usual manner. This couples immediately with Theo’s own forfeit in the previous scene. After failing to name-that-scene, Isa says to him “I want you to do, in front of us (her and Matthew), what I’ve watched you do in front of her (indicating to a pin-up girl poster).” Isa is demanding that Theo masturbate the way he did when he “thought no one was watching.” After his own climax, Isa dismisses the boys and proceeds to wipe Theo’s semen from the poster on the door. Between the two scenes is a kind of non-sequential sexual exchange of fluids.</div>
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“We’re Siamese twins, joined here (pointing to his mind).” Theo explains to a flustered Matthew in the bar, having just witnessed Theo’s public masturbation for the first time that “Isa would be me if she were a man.” Indeed Theo and Isa, if perhaps unconfirmed as being literal identical (though they bear uniform scars on opposite shoulders), events in their arcs are given a kind of symmetry. When Matthew sees them sleeping together on his first night in the house, Theo is naked and Isa is clothed. It is reversed when Theo takes a nap with a naked Isa later in the film. Both of them forfeit once during the film, they both wind up having sex with an outside party (though Theo’s transgression is strongly suggested rather than shown). But if you look at their relationship on their own terms, it doesn’t much matter which one performs a task per se, because it is as if the other had done it as well. Theo is Isa as Isa is Theo, or so they wish to think. They are “like two halves of the same person” as Matthew declares.</div>
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After the sexual tipping point of Matthew’s forfeit, he and Isa briefly slip into a kind of isolate relationship, regularly having sex, and probing deeper in discussions about the interweaving of familial and emotional bonds. Matthew becomes the intellectual aggressor, gradually, and peels more and more layers back to get to the core of this experience, all the while putting Theo more into the periphery, as he is shown peering at a distance through windows across the courtyard. The prevalence of nudity (male and female) within the film from this point on is not only a celebration of young sexually awakened bodies (which it unabashedly is, and which truly gains the viewer a sense of sexuality) but it is a pivotal accent to the ‘bearing of all truths’ and the hiding of nothing between what seems to be becoming an organism divided three ways. To be naked inherently carries degrees of vulnerability. Isa, who appears so powerful before, is somehow made more frail and flawed, ushering the critical power-shift that occurs within the trinity; Matthew rising above but a pawn.</div>
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As in the film world where there is a “before BREATHLESS” and an “after BREATHLESS,” in the universe of THE DREAMERS there is “before Isa and Matthew” and “after Isa and Matthew.” This latter third of the film is laden with Matthew’s and society’s efforts; metaphoric, metonymic, subliminal, and direct, to sever the umbilical link that the twins cling to. Matthew asks Isa as they lie naked in bed during their private exile within exile, “He’s never been inside you?” “He’s always inside me” she replies with a deep and soft conviction. Matthew’s efforts and criticisms of the twins collide head on with his desire to be a component of their unity (perhaps wanting to be closer to Isa than Theo), but they flow out of him nonetheless.</div>
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Matthew is quietly incessant in his probing, and uses many tactical degrees in order to seep into the minds of the twins, that he might change them, as he has been changed by them. Perhaps the most playful and perfectly illustrative demonstration Matthew makes for the twins, in this vain, takes place, once again at the dinner table. Several weeks have gone by since Matthew’s first night at their flat. The house is in disrepair to say the least, and there is not a scrap of food to be found, nor money to purchase any. All that can be summoned for dinner is a black-skinned banana from the refuse pile in their courtyard. Even in this moment, with the only morsel of food between them, Matthew finds an opportunity, though not consciously per se, to show Isa and Theo, that no matter how connected they are in heart or in mind, they are still fundamentally individuals, each sovereign unto themselves. To do this, Matthew takes the banana, peels the black skin away to reveal the white flesh of the banana (a gesture containg mild sexual implications), and with his finger working its way down the very center of it, splits the fruit into three equal vertical segments. They stay connected at the base for a kind of utopian second, and then fall apart. This is the nature of life and society that Theo and Isa are trying to avoid or deny. “Separation is life. Separation is healthy. If you separate, life goes ahead,” Bertolucci says in his commentary for the film. The pieces of banana falling to the table echoes the kind of violence inherent in such a formative realization, if not hinting at the fear the twins share of such potentiality. But the image is innocuous to them, a mere moments spectacle. They lightly chuckle as Isa utters “you never cease to surprise us Matthew.”</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCdvsw5QpxTZxyIrlhMl-TbUbuRlYW-3LAh3fqE5HmtUtlRh9YOYjm7xRTEh0YVq14DaVZupBkatYUKgQ11r6LBCeGom6R4eZVxhBG1t5uqDrxipbhJ9Lpj3R1qBrhI4LTCgkKZCG6TD4/s1600/protectedimage.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCdvsw5QpxTZxyIrlhMl-TbUbuRlYW-3LAh3fqE5HmtUtlRh9YOYjm7xRTEh0YVq14DaVZupBkatYUKgQ11r6LBCeGom6R4eZVxhBG1t5uqDrxipbhJ9Lpj3R1qBrhI4LTCgkKZCG6TD4/s320/protectedimage.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409818750075464210" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 174px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; width: 320px;" /></a>At a pivotal narrative threshold, the three of them laze the day away in the bathtub, talking about music, war, cinema, etc, like a calm before the storm. Mirrors go to work in this scene like they have in no other. A small tri-fold mirror is aptly placed to catch the reflection of each of their faces as they soak in the large tub, but what makes this more than an innocuous detail is the fact that the reflections of Theo and Matthew are switched via the angle of the peripheral panes, while Isa’s remains in the center mirror. Isa is implicated as the gravity of their emotional orbit, and illustrates Matthew’s deepest desire to be an equal and interchangeable element of the three-part equation they have constructed, or to have Isa as close to himself as she is with Theo. The mirrors are there, more classically, to accent the notion of ‘turning an eye on oneself’ as Matthew does explicitly in the latter part of this scene by an aggressive outburst at a childish gesture from the twins in response to his raw statement of love for them. Harsh honesty is enhanced and underscored by their mutual nudity, and the casualness with which they bear themselves now to each other. The three of them step out of the bathtub together…</div>
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Matthew: “You’re both fucking crazy! Do you ever think about it? Think. You sleep in the same bed together every night, you bathe together, you pee in the john together…you play these little games. I wish you could step out of yourselves and just look.”</div>
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Isa: “Why? Why are you so cruel?”</div>
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Matthew: “Because I love you. I really love you, both of you. And I admire you. And I listen to you, and I think…you are not going to grow. You won’t grow like this. You won’t. Not as long as you keep clinging to each other the way that you do.” (Theo tries to light a cigarette as Matthew makes this point, but as a punchline to the truth in Matthew’s indictment, the lighter fails).</div>
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Matthew: “Isabelle, have you ever been on a date before?”</div>
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Isa: “I’ve been out with Theo.”</div>
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Matthew: “That’s not what I asked. I mean a real date, with another boy?”</div>
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Isa: “You know I haven’t” (she replies sharply, looking like a scolded child). Why do you keep asking?”</div>
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Matthew: “Do you want to?”</div>
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Isa: “Is that an invitation?”</div>
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Matthew: “Yes, it’s an invitation. Would you like to go out on a date with me tonight, just the two of us?” Isa turns to Theo. “Don’t look at Theo. Isabelle, you don’t need his permission.”</div>
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Isa: “Alright, Matthew, I’ll go on a date with you.”</div>
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The date itself unfolds sweetly and archetypally enough; from sharing a soda at the ice cream shop, to making-out in the back row of the movie theater. But all the while, telling details accrue. Several external accents to Matthew’s overarching intentions for the date occur throughout its duration. One of the more direct but unassuming occurs in the film that they go to see (at a normal multiplex mind you. The cinematheque is still closed, Langlois still deposed). The movie is introduced by a man on an open stage, boasting that “The film you are about to see was made in the grandeur of cinemascope.” At the behest of his snapping finger, the peripheral edges of the picture frame expand with the sound of a heavy curtain being drawn. One can’t imagine a more unambiguous allusion to the idea of ‘expanding horizons,’ but it happens quietly enough. More ominous is the mountain of refuse, close to fifteen feet high, that is amassed in the streets, which Matthew and Isa pass whence returning to their bourgoise cocoon, just after seeing news coverage of the erupting Paris riots in a storefront newsreel. The riots and demonstrations of ’68 have prompted a cessation of trash collection in this sector of Paris, deemed ‘too dangerous.’ Ironically, the condition of Paris at this time and the vehement demonstrations that the trio are heretofore unaware of, are exactly what allows them to seal off so completely. Bertolucci describes the trash heap scene as an ‘Antonioni moment.’ As was consistent of Antonioni’s films (L’avventura, The Passenger), THE DREAMERS operates by a supersaturated visual language that constantly speaks its moods and attitudes on several levels. Antonioni reached his masterful height in BLOW UP (1966), a film not too dissimilar in its preoccupation with the concepts of identity façade, ideological hypocrisy, elective socio-emotional isolation, and attempting to investigate matters beyond surface. However, in BLOW UP, these ideas are distilled from three down to a single character’s near psychotic self-examination. The mountain of garbage in THE DREAMERS is exactly what it is…a mountain of garbage, figuratively and literally the repercussion of neglect…something happening within and without the trinity’s closed orbit.</div>
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When they return home from their date, Isa actually allows Matthew into her room, heretofore unseen by him or us. What we find is no less than an immaculate shrine to her innocence, and a preservation of her childhood self-perception. Her room is diametric to Theo’s, which is rustic and unkempt. However, Theo’s room is a shrine of its own, paying homage, with ornaments, to Mao Tse Tong and the cultural revolution of China. Both siblings use their rooms to embody an aesthetic interest, a self-image which fascinates them, but which they cannot uphold. This tactile revelation of Isa’s room draws us back almost to the beginning of the film. Isa awakens Matthew the morning after his first night staying in the twins’ flat, in the bizarre fashion of licking away the sleep from his eyes. “Theo lets me do his every morning” she says. “That’s a strange thing to want to do” he says. As she arises from the bed, Isa segues cleanly into a filmic imitation (again inter-spliced with the film it is referencing, Queen Christine 1933) of a woman (Greta Garbo) memorizing the contours and surfaces of the man’s (John Gilbert) room she has just spent the night in. She is enshrining a sensuous memory of objects in order to preserve the peaceful and adoring state of their now sentimental context. Isa feels and absorbs the surfaces of Matthew’s room in an almost identical manner. A more telling emulation of Isa’s self-image protection, and the continued aspect of her and Theo’s imitations being a tactile, penetrative, amorous experience could not have been chosen.</div>
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Unfortunately, any broadening of horizons achieved during this evening is dashed, when Theo, as a tactic of somewhat vengeful reciprocation, has a girl from school spend the night. The straw breaks when Theo plays “Beyond the Sea” to accompany their playful walled-off laughter. “Beyond the Sea” is the very song played while Isa strips in order to make love to Matthew for the first time, enshrining it almost as an anthem of their daring. What began as a saccharine evening comes abruptly to an end and Matthew recedes into the darkness of the hallway, defeated but not yet broken. It is not the last time we will see him perform this same action.</div>
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Neither words nor actions seem to get through to the twins, no matter how explicit his indictment. The bathroom scene has a fading effect. Matthew tries again, in a drunken candor, with Theo on what will be their second to last night together.</div>
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Theo: Matthew. You’re a big movie buff right?</div>
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Matthew: Oui (he says rather drunkenly)</div>
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Theo: Then why don’t you think of Mao as a great director, making a movie with a cast of millions. All those millions of red guards, marching together into the future. Books not guns, culture not violence. (a statement which contradicts the previous shot of Theo quoting from a book which says “A revolution is an uprising, a violent act by which one class overthrows another”). “Cant you see what a beautiful epic movie it would make?”</div>
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Matthew: “I guess. It’s easy to say ‘books not guns.’ It’s not true. It’s not books, its BOOK, A book, just one book.”</div>
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Theo: “Shut up. You sound just like my father.” (an apt statement, for Matthew is indeed trying to illustrate a point that his father laid out at the dinner they all shared but a month before. His father said, “Listen to me, Theo. Before you can change the world you must realize that you, yourself, are part of it. You can't stand outside looking in.” It is more appropriate, though to say that he has stayed on the inside-looking-out these past weeks.</div>
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Matthew: “No no. Listen to me. Those red guards that you admire…they all carry the same book, all sing the same songs, they all parrot the same slogans. So in this big epic movie…everyone is an extra. That’s scary to me. That gives me the creeps. I’m sorry to say it, but there is a distinct contradiction.”</div>
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Theo: “Why?”</div>
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Matthew: “Because, if you really believed what you say, you’d be out there.”</div>
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Theo: “Where?”</div>
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Matthew: “Out on the street”</div>
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Theo: “I don’t know what you mean.”</div>
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Matthew: “Yes you do. There’s something going on out there…something that feels like it could be important. Something that feels like things could change. Even I get that. But you’re not out there. You’re in here with me, sipping expensive wine, talking about film, talking about Maoism…Why?”</div>
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Theo: “That’s enough.”</div>
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Matthew: “Tell me why.”</div>
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Theo: “That’s enough.”</div>
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Matthew: “Ask yourself why. Because I don’t think you really believe it. I think you buy the lamp (clanking his glass against the Mao lamp), you put up the posters…</div>
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Theo: (Grabbing Matthew somewhat aggressively round the throat now that he is lying beside him) “You speak too much.”</div>
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Matthew: “Theo, just listen. I think that you prefer when the word together means, not a million…but two.” (Theo continues to half strangle Matthew. Their faces get closer and closer, and Theo presses his body against Matthew’s, to the point where a kiss almost seems imminent, and then Isa interrupts).</div>
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And so the looming precariousness, which has hung throughout the film feels that it is approaching an end. There are no more barriers for Matthew to break within himself, and the outside world is slowly and persistently encroaching on the hermetically sealed “quartier des enfants” as its termed in the novel. </div>
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After interrupting the drunken evening of conversation between Matthew and Theo, Isa invites them into the family room where she has erected a bastion of childhood nostalgia, and a clear effort to rekindle a sense of unity between her and her brother after their non-exclusive dabblings, as well as seeming like a remanifestation of the same gesture she made by lighting candles at the kitchen table on Matthew’s first night with them. The bastion is no less than a fort made of bed-sheets raised and lit by floor lamps. It is a warm and enchanting sight for Theo who eagerly lunges into the pillows strewn about its floor, exuberant and nostalgic. They bed down for the night in the swathe of pillows, not to awaken fully until the next night. During their deep slumber, in the middle of which Isa pleads with Theo to promise her that, “it’s forever, right? The two of us? I just want you to tell me it’s forever,” the twins’ parents return home, shocked, but not floored, by the devastation of the household. Much as they keep their shock on tiptoe, it is pushed to limits when they discover the young trio in a naked tangle beneath the bed-sheet fort (making some insinuation that they have engaged in a ménage-a-trois). Mother and Father quickly decide to leave, to return at a later time so as to avoid the embarrassment of the rather inclement situation. “Would you like to stay and have dinner with them?” the mother asks with laden sarcasm. The parents’ grave mistake was to sign a check and leave it under a bottle of wine on the coffee table for the children. Isa awakens to find the check in state of confounded disbelief. Once she understands the certainty implicit in the check’s appearance, Isa moves to enact the very plan she declared she would to Matthew from several scenes prior, were her parents ever to uncover the nature of the closeness between her and Theo.</div>
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Matthew: “What would you do if your parents found out?”</div>
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Isa: “They must never find out,”</div>
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Matthew:“I know, but what if they did?”</div>
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Isa: “That must never happen.”</div>
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Matthew: “I know, but for the sake of argument, lets just say that they did.”</div>
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Isa: “I’d kill myself,” she says deadpan. (Matthew chuckles, but realizes she is being utterly truthful)</div>
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Isa takes rubber tubing from the kitchen, attaches it to the gas line of the stove, and unfurls it into the living room where she beds herself with the two boys, clutching the tube, tears swelling in her eyes, no sound but the hiss of gas. While she does this, Bertolucci splices in clips from the suicide sequence at the end of Robert Bresson’s Mouchette. Mouchette, a young but utterly dismal and awkward girl, tries to roll herself down a small hill and into the steam in hopes to escape what she feels is a terminally degrading unrewarding existence. It takes two attempts, two almost casually apathetic attempts, before she falls into the stream, leaving the foundering of her body beneath the temperate current to our imagination; no climax, no swelling of strings and emotion, just a meager splash and nothing more. Fortunately for the two parties’ unawares, Matthew and Theo, “the street come in through the window.” A stone comes crashing through the living room window, waking them all in a startle. A riot is erupting out in the street. Isa quickly hides the evidence of her suicide plot, and the three of them, gripped by curiosity, investigate the melee.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGHooY0IX83xohndc_ORNerz5v6pg5Ib_hd2MVbENMZPfOfg3CH_14rDlVdCJe2KhxOdzegiqUd1RpiSpJ3wKhzt4WtID4vWXBiligVAfiatyWcQyfycERzqxY4PMDXs6xZMGl_b68nx4/s1600/images.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGHooY0IX83xohndc_ORNerz5v6pg5Ib_hd2MVbENMZPfOfg3CH_14rDlVdCJe2KhxOdzegiqUd1RpiSpJ3wKhzt4WtID4vWXBiligVAfiatyWcQyfycERzqxY4PMDXs6xZMGl_b68nx4/s320/images.jpeg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409819885450266354" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 86px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 127px;" /></a>Amidst the chanting, “Dans la rue, Dans la rue!” Theo thrusts himself into the milieu of the riot, which comes across as an exaggerated contrariness to Matthew’s observation of his falseness and shallow participation in his own ideology. Theo gets hold of a Molotov cocktail. Matthew vehemently objects. “This is violence” he says pointing at the bottle. Theo doesn’t seem to understand. “We don’t use violence. We do this (kisses Theo), we use this (kisses Isa).” “Arret (stop)!” Theo screams. He clasps Isa’s hand and they rush on to the front line of the riot, taking refuge behind an overturned car, mere yards from an ominous line of riot police, rearing to snap the surface tension. Meanwhile, Matthew, his face turning sour, eyes squinting back tears as his heart breaks inside his chest, turns around dejected in his moral assuredness, disappearing into the roaring crowd, as he had done likewise into the shadows of the hallway when leaving Isa’s room, knowing full well he can do no more.</div>
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Theo shatters the tension with a Molotov cocktail bursting in flame just feet from the police line, evoking the moment when Isa’s hair caught on fire as she kissed Matthew goodnight for the first time. If the gas from the stove was the first attempt at suicide, as described in the clip from Mouchette’s bleakly unsentimental finale, this engaging in open street war is the second, and perhaps the successful one, for Mouchette most certainly dies. The police lunge forward in a frenzy, and we can only imagine the consequences, where a war of imitations and unconventional love meets the brutality of a war of fists and principle. “Imitation is suicide,” is imitated indeed.</div>
Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-4832123764793349842012-05-09T14:38:00.002-07:002013-04-11T12:58:15.911-07:00East Meets East : An interview with Samuel Jamier, film curator of Japan Society NY.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">In March of 2012, the Japan Society of NY hosted a
groundbreaking film series titled <i>Love
Will Tear Us Apart</i>. Programmer Samuel Jamier selected films about twisted,
obsessive, and unconventional love from Korea and Japan to underscore the historically
tenuous relationship between those cultures, while highlighting this past
decades’ emergence of a collaborative artistic rapport. The fact that the Japan
Society, under Jamier -- himself
Korean-born, but raised in Brittany, France -- is responsible for an event of
this dynamism, complements the bi-cultural collaborative by both presenting it
and also embodying it. “Ultimately revealing a similar visual grammar and inclination towards the
emotional violence that flows beneath the quiet surface of societal restraints,”
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love Will Tear Us Apart</i> articulates a
bodily cinema, asking aloud, with visceral pronouncement… Why is it so
difficult to be happy? (japansociety.org) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9ExZAHyzVirDmjRgojZ-xey_ODmrsz_xhO8u30q86d7gVKQdzR6vZ5gdxUaSuWmJogmz5GdnRuaySAtTuUsSQ1XHXF854jkv7NZFvAIO_KoHoH6_nUvexWVuQEYpRV3CVn9H2koro0nY/s1600/tumblr_lp20lh1nv81qa6moso1_400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9ExZAHyzVirDmjRgojZ-xey_ODmrsz_xhO8u30q86d7gVKQdzR6vZ5gdxUaSuWmJogmz5GdnRuaySAtTuUsSQ1XHXF854jkv7NZFvAIO_KoHoH6_nUvexWVuQEYpRV3CVn9H2koro0nY/s320/tumblr_lp20lh1nv81qa6moso1_400.jpg" width="320" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Prior to his work at the Japan
Society, Jamier worked with the Korea Society (“I was running the corporate, policy, and cultural programs,
which at the time were called ‘contemporary issues’ -- interesting designation,
when you think about it.”) He also participated in the programming of the 2007 New York Korean Film Festival,
where he “placed a
few titles here and there. Retrospectively, I would say it's easy to guess
which ones!” (He considers his choices of gangster films a
"specialty"). But he does not feel that his transition from that
agnecy to the Japan Society informed his curation of <i>Love Will Tear Us Apart</i>. “If anything, it was a very personal
choice. I basically started off with a few Tsukamoto and Kim Ki-duk titles,
then everything took shape from there. The young Tokyo-based Korean actress
that I brought to introduce the series, Hyunri Lee, also influenced some of the
picks, and the general aspect of the series. Initially, I had this grand (and
retrospectively a tad pretentious) vision of a series covering East Asian
cinemas: Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, Korea. Japan of course. At some
point, I even thought of having a European cinema component. Overall, I got all
the films I wanted.” The resulting bi-cultural vision for <i>Love Will ear Us Apart</i> was concise, and for that reason, powerful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love Will Tear Us Apart</i> marks a unique moment in a rather homogenous
film-curatorial history (for the Japan Society in particular). When it comes to
curating film for a cultural institution - the freedoms and constraints –
Jamier says, “I do like to think what I curate and program has a unique,
non-institutional edge to it. Typically, the ‘societies’ or ‘institutes’ promote
one national culture. The logical consequence is that your focus necessarily excludes
everything else. In the case of Korea and Japan, I think the cross-cultural
link is almost blindingly visible, not just because of direct collaborations
between actors, directors and producers, but also visually, narratively.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">“Institutions specifically
dedicated to film have constraints of their own. The usual approach is to
organize a director-focused or actor-focused retrospective, or a national
cinema-based festival or series. In the past few years, I've tried to go for a
more multi-faceted, plural approach, combining elements of all three approaches
I've just mentioned, seamed together by one concept and one narrative. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJVV4GLH0XCAdfcSnCOmlnoWy4x_HZyQQB_y9MZZXq_WC6zhS-REPBcJApK-XzgV-IbXTZhJKbPgPcPu9kmYHLMAFjNgiL30d01_rqWkhFUxElQBxc4yPOScesh1XpJ7U0oDdaF-WRVkg/s1600/hotelblue_450.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJVV4GLH0XCAdfcSnCOmlnoWy4x_HZyQQB_y9MZZXq_WC6zhS-REPBcJApK-XzgV-IbXTZhJKbPgPcPu9kmYHLMAFjNgiL30d01_rqWkhFUxElQBxc4yPOScesh1XpJ7U0oDdaF-WRVkg/s320/hotelblue_450.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">“One of the things that I enjoy
the most at Japan Society is that I do benefit from a fairly wide margin for
maneuver. On the other hand, being the only film person in an institution of
this size can be a very lonely experience. Explaining what you have in mind can
be extremely challenging. When it comes to cinema, and Asian cinema in
particular, people have a lot of prejudices; they just assume they know a good
film when they see one.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">When it comes to future
programming, Jamier says, “My hope is that caution be thrown to the wind! I
think we're going through a time of conservative programming, overall.
Risk-taking has really fallen at the bottom of the agenda….Frankly, if cultural
institutions don't take it as their duty to show things that the audience
doesn't know, who will? In the age of quasi-absolute accessibility, people have
become lazy, and tend to stick to what they already know...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">“I don't consider myself an
example, far from it; as a matter of fact, maybe I could even be taken as a
counter-example in some circles. When I program, I try to think creatively, as
if I was actually making a film, in a way. These days, the kind of mentality in
cultural programming in New York is: money first, then the event takes place.
‘Oh, if we do this, we'll get corporate sponsors’... at the expense of a
genuine artistic vision. Perhaps it's a bit naive on my part, but to me, the
"vision" comes first. Then you make it happen -- and do you best
doing so.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioFYIqczXWM0gc20WeYBozyMNxsZ2FRGnXlynVqW3lwk0peE77hzeHS2vRSH1FbzjVgmEyRWYHjCCpIsk1OIm1kOuGqtqS2lR6YF80y78yeCcRshmYw2-ZmRknM_4NP8KCwVyHysq2MPE/s1600/Dream_347718_450.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioFYIqczXWM0gc20WeYBozyMNxsZ2FRGnXlynVqW3lwk0peE77hzeHS2vRSH1FbzjVgmEyRWYHjCCpIsk1OIm1kOuGqtqS2lR6YF80y78yeCcRshmYw2-ZmRknM_4NP8KCwVyHysq2MPE/s320/Dream_347718_450.jpg" width="320" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Introducing Ki-duk Kim’s <i>Dream, </i>Jamier referred to the film as
the festival’s “most emblematic”, in terms of the Japan/Korea collaboration. In
<i>Dream</i>, Japanese and Korean is spoken
by its protagonists respectively, yet mutually understood. <i>Dream</i> presents a cultural dichotomy and diffuses it in the same
stroke, which seems to be at the heart of <i>Love
Will Tear Us Apart</i>. <sup>*See
Korean Quarterly’s Fall 2011 issue for an article on Dream*</sup> And
Jamier is aware how significant his own cross-cultural personal status plays
into his identity here in America. “Obviously, it's important in this country!
People often refer to themselves, using hyphenated epithets and such….There’s
actually not a whole lot of Asian programmers that program Asian cinema. In
that sense, my ethnicity comes into play, to a degree. I'm also often told that
the programming I do is very French... well, if people say so, maybe they're
right.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLAtFD5zFANw1bVbYBbHjJHWHZjl-JDg-Ax5nmNArCQOmWljziKcYSv9VHD0Pi4hlNozXkUzbvsjCUQ3E0ZQqBMqGC28N3YGDFy_EPdpXvYoJicJPrkkOVyxxQu4fJV2wvRF94Bj1pQLk/s1600/Villain_1215-221_450.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLAtFD5zFANw1bVbYBbHjJHWHZjl-JDg-Ax5nmNArCQOmWljziKcYSv9VHD0Pi4hlNozXkUzbvsjCUQ3E0ZQqBMqGC28N3YGDFy_EPdpXvYoJicJPrkkOVyxxQu4fJV2wvRF94Bj1pQLk/s200/Villain_1215-221_450.jpg" width="200" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Discussing the festival’s
featured film <i>Villian</i>, made by
zainichi </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">(Korean-born Japanese) filmmaker Sang-Il Lee, Jamier muses: “What kind
of debt does the film owe to the origin of its creator? On a formal level, at a
surface level, one's tempted to answer: ‘not much’, but at the same time, the film
focuses on one outcast character, a loner full of resentment towards society,
filled with violence... It's the kind of narrative or character that easily
brings to mind some rather notorious Korean narratives... the Kim Ki-duk films,
in particular, who's himself a bit of maverick in the Korean film industry. On
the other hand, you have films like <i>Blood
and Bones</i> by Yoichi Sai, another Zainichi director whose work in Japan is
very well known. And well, that's clearly a film that owes a lot of its substance
to the director's ethnic background, to say the least. When it comes to
problems of identity, the answer is never a simple one.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">In an age where -- thanks
largely to the Internet, as well as increased travel and communication -- boundaries of information and
"experience" seem to be disappearing, Jamier says, “I think every
time you bring down some kind of barrier, you find yourself with some new form
of partition or partitioning. In the end, people themselves build these
barriers. Probably it's a defense mechanism; there's been such an all-out
assault on the viewer/spectator in the past few years. Technically, there are
so few things that are not available one way or another. One consequence
of that is that audiences become more a tad more local, and refocus on what
they're already familiar with. The positive side… is that it draws some
adventurous souls to territories and realms they'd probably have no idea about.
And cinema is an excellent gateway to that.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-34150001501517693872012-05-09T14:18:00.002-07:002012-05-09T14:18:23.035-07:00Picturing Humanity - Lee Sang-il’s VILLAIN is a new kind of Noir.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiwpajOP3QVV8gw2pNtA9GjPpXviKBLTxtExi8hDJl5DkeQB7pcCiEn8yzwXSYiYuGhuwd3iqL2SJaaOPNj9dV_xMfcHXVHaRvChYmKgZ6DrNGXOVeXtVTUh75DmN_ehhF9tZoyCBulxs/s1600/Akunin-580x435.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiwpajOP3QVV8gw2pNtA9GjPpXviKBLTxtExi8hDJl5DkeQB7pcCiEn8yzwXSYiYuGhuwd3iqL2SJaaOPNj9dV_xMfcHXVHaRvChYmKgZ6DrNGXOVeXtVTUh75DmN_ehhF9tZoyCBulxs/s320/Akunin-580x435.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Sang-il Lee’s film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Villain</i>
(2010) One of the benchmark selections of the Japan Society of NY’s
Korean/Japanese crossover film series <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love
Will Tear Us Apart. Villain</i> is an elegant and unsettling exercise in the
eroticism of loneliness, centered on the murder of a young woman and the small
constellation of people drawn into the turmoil. Director Sang-il Lee’s award
winning adaptation of Yoshida Shuichi’s likewise celebrated novel (of the same
name) is most alluring for its urgent score and clean visual aesthetic, which
transposes a contemporary horror-genre aesthetic to an emotive human drama. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Villain</i> traces its mood and its sense of
melodrama back to the days of American Film Noir, a genre of the 40’s and 50’s
dedicated to common people caught in exceptional orbits of loneliness, violence,
and desperation, driven to their worst. These associations aside, Lee’s film,
both classic and contemporary, is most affecting because of the palpably broken
hearts put forward by its cast, which Lee’s sense of framing and editing
ardently emphasizes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Though the subject of director Lee’s Zainichi
(Japanese-born Korean) ethnicity isn’t necessary to understand or even
appreciate this film, it seems hard to imagine that it did not inform his
depiction of protagonist Yuichi, at odds with the normal stream of society, who
hates with the passion with which he loves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI98fx6PrWt5t9gnrl7F4KkTQ5fuXqC4qt52ymBpQRtOqrBylAwwoew8VWxgJTypS_05eTqeevSPdE8MQV2GxClVbzr7tL0g-5vwG-atRxvlPwmyqEEGchx56gTimRVhare769bwIxPhU/s1600/34610_2011042919573710.thumb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI98fx6PrWt5t9gnrl7F4KkTQ5fuXqC4qt52ymBpQRtOqrBylAwwoew8VWxgJTypS_05eTqeevSPdE8MQV2GxClVbzr7tL0g-5vwG-atRxvlPwmyqEEGchx56gTimRVhare769bwIxPhU/s200/34610_2011042919573710.thumb.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Yuichi (Satoshi Tsumabuki) lives in a dreary Nagasaki
fishing village, daunted by the visage of a wide ocean. “If you face the sea
everyday, you feel like you've reached a dead-end.” He has no friends, and no
lover. He works construction jobs and looks after his aging grandparents. Short
on words and yet driven by fierce desire, Yuichi could nearly have stepped out
from a Ki-duk Kim film. The only thing Yuichi is beholden to his extravagant
car, which he uses to escape the imprisonment of an otherwise stagnant
existence. Mitsuyo (Eri Fukatsu) lives in an equivalent monotony in Saga, working
at a men’s clothing store along the same street that she was born and raised.
She shares an apartment with her sister, whose boyfriend is a reminder of
Mitsuyo’s single-ness. Yuichi and Mitsuyo discover each other on an online
dating site, and when they meet in person, they fall into an obscure and clumsy
love. Around this time, a woman’s body is found at Mitsue Pass, and Yuichi is
implicated as a murder suspect. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij4a2fW_wTkUtJgqV-_zg1noLEwSqciau4863KmbYUg4JcdtIECQa6nVbtIUUts9yLVY8PTI-ikMbTP_flFIfC3_iDrgC3iUMu_bDmtirReJ68srwE2Xl-agVQBnJjWxHqugNG6iJLwwI/s1600/villain-film-review-007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij4a2fW_wTkUtJgqV-_zg1noLEwSqciau4863KmbYUg4JcdtIECQa6nVbtIUUts9yLVY8PTI-ikMbTP_flFIfC3_iDrgC3iUMu_bDmtirReJ68srwE2Xl-agVQBnJjWxHqugNG6iJLwwI/s200/villain-film-review-007.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Yuichi and Mitsuyo try to evade the police, as the
murder, its participants, and its aftermath are gradually revealed in the
present and flashback. Through the victims, the murderer, and the families that
lie in the fallout of this tragedy, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Villain</i>
makes one wonder; should someone be judged upon their worst or best moments -
their most wholesome or most selfish impulse? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">One could easily imagine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Villain</i> translated to the 40’s, or any other decade of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century for that matter. What holds <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Villain</i>
to the present is primarily its objective time markers; phones, email,
online-dating. The existential urgency that encircles these embedded elements,
and the false autonomy that new technological forms have always engendered,
isn’t a new phenomenon. Yuichi follows the age-old paradigm of getting a car to
feel “adult” and “free.” Lee’s soft inclusion of these components – another
similarity between he and Ki-duk Kim - is a compliment to the story’s human
focus and is the crux of its timelessness. All things being equal, the
desolation of Yuichi’s traditional hometown is the desolation of Mitsuyo’s
modern hometown, is the desolation of empty nighttime roads, is the desolation
of a lighthouse, is the desolation of hearts so eager to be touched and
accepted, is the desolation of love diffused across emails and text messages,
is the desolation of secrets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Director Sang-il Lee’s chose Yoshida Shuichi, author
of the original source novel, to co-write the script. This is often (but not
always) a boon to the resulting film, not just as a matter of credibility, but
because a formative collaboration occurs between two very different modes of
storytelling that expand and contract a story when they come into contact. In
the realm of the written word, a reader’s imagination is the camera. The reader
births imagery from within, and makes the experience of an author’s specific words
entirely idiosyncratic to their mind’s eye. However, with cinema the
architecture of another world is imagined <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">for</i>
the viewer. Therefore the abstraction of interpreting written words, which is
the thrilling basis of reading, can be found cinematically in a filmmaker’s
ability to create spaces of ambiguity, subtlety, and silence. Inside these
spaces, a viewer asks questions, injects their imagination, and makes
connections. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSFzr8IT9lnj4_G33teIL6YLBcTMTm-2-wNyB_qqYPpA0aBh3spxEjQ7ZqfUtZxDjYN0rpF4kQPMWUmZFx6iAZ1YaHOezGTHUXFvETgjiDT2iiVrQwfTKUITimPmLG7yBOunBZG-SR0SM/s1600/akunin-trailer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSFzr8IT9lnj4_G33teIL6YLBcTMTm-2-wNyB_qqYPpA0aBh3spxEjQ7ZqfUtZxDjYN0rpF4kQPMWUmZFx6iAZ1YaHOezGTHUXFvETgjiDT2iiVrQwfTKUITimPmLG7yBOunBZG-SR0SM/s320/akunin-trailer.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Director Lee and author Yoshida balance the brooding
weight of what is shown in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Villain</i>
with what isn’t shown. As actress Eri Fukatsu speaks of Mitsuyo, “She isn’t a
character that can be understood in the mind. She is moved by a force rather
than a rational thought.” After connecting emotionally to the film, this systemic
and enigmatic “force,” is the space and silence that the viewer is charged to
interpret. Villain’s final frames create an expanse all their own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-53928492401661032572012-02-15T15:28:00.000-08:002012-02-16T06:04:22.809-08:00WITHOUT A SCREEN - Proof By Contradiction<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrr66Rrc0nNMTJtlb18Cjowb_KCQXGLxztOnJUiYb4-IPbC0zM5MxbJzcu0PghqZa4aFBzx-SJjcMipz87HayXqccuED2sOlkkWI1qK8A8d1J2ZSFHjxxB2IqT2csZ0uW_s9SdGhGw5SE/s1600/Perfect-Sense-poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrr66Rrc0nNMTJtlb18Cjowb_KCQXGLxztOnJUiYb4-IPbC0zM5MxbJzcu0PghqZa4aFBzx-SJjcMipz87HayXqccuED2sOlkkWI1qK8A8d1J2ZSFHjxxB2IqT2csZ0uW_s9SdGhGw5SE/s200/Perfect-Sense-poster.jpg" width="148" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">In response to the On-Demand release of David
Mackenzie’s </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Perfect Sense</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">, which
enjoyed screenings at the 2011 Philadelphia Film Festival, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Without A Screen</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"> curates a hypothetical series of sense-related cinema.
Films of the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Proof By Contradiction</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">
subset explore humanity through its negation, where various human biological
functions are crippled to produce platforms of existential inquiry. In the case
of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Perfect Sense</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"> it is the senses
themselves slain by a mysterious and indiscriminant epidemic, which sweeps the
globe in stages. The consequences and adaptations, which stem from that loss,
are expressed in intimate scale between a Chef named Michael (Ewan McGregor) and
a scientist named Susan (Eva Green). Their lives, together and apart, are
macrocosmic prisms for a global event. Our physical capacities (senses) are
inextricably entwined with our cognitive and emotional being (identity). </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Proof By Contradiction</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"> films posit this
mind-body contiguity by displacing it.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">The films selected for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Proof By Contradiction</i> affect as deeply and memorably as they do
because they are, point of fact, human, universal. They appeal to our most
corporeal and emotional selves, while challenging expectations and perceptions
of the body and of personhood. The things at stake in such narratives are those
most basic modes of our experience (the functions of the human body), and that
which we accrue through experience and reform into identity. Incidentally,
these functions (sensory perception, biological functions) are the things taken
most for granted because they are as buried in the programming as instinct.
Oppositely, society venerates those who gain mastery of the senses, and derides
any compromise of those faculties. The most telling truths however reside in
the revolutionary event of adaptation, wherein lies the proof of humanity. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Proof By Contradiction</i> collects films
that document this event, in response to revocation, or to the introduction of
new social paradigms concerning “the body.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVbG5_SiBWsnMnh-PIy3Wy7TdTZ7mdeqQJchgy6dQVYC8B9tfSaENUi0rPvVcCl62-uJPoX0_RmO2kxqw7vO1VFhLd-uiuB1LiPKekZtbNm2qknUNo-wdUwUCOlmoA4D0IbbsU4z8B0lM/s1600/MV5BNjc5OTA2NDUyNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMDk2NDg5._V1._SY314_CR2,0,211,314_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVbG5_SiBWsnMnh-PIy3Wy7TdTZ7mdeqQJchgy6dQVYC8B9tfSaENUi0rPvVcCl62-uJPoX0_RmO2kxqw7vO1VFhLd-uiuB1LiPKekZtbNm2qknUNo-wdUwUCOlmoA4D0IbbsU4z8B0lM/s200/MV5BNjc5OTA2NDUyNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMDk2NDg5._V1._SY314_CR2,0,211,314_.jpg" width="134" /></a></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Dancer In The
Dark</span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> (2000) – Selma (Bjork) works
herself to the bone, saving money to pay for her son</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"> Gene’s eye operation. She
keeps this fact secret from Gene, for fear of escalating his condition through
worry. In the doldrums of work and a marginal existence, her imagination sets
fly into elaborate musical numbers that incorporate the elements and sounds of
her environment; ie the industrial machines at the plant, the nearby trains.
Selma too is going blind, and is nearly so. Her ability to work, the joy she derives
from seeing the world, and her elation about participating in a local musical
production constantly decline. A tragic line of causality leads her into the
direst circumstances, where her hard-earned money and therefore her son’s
operation are in jeopardy. Lars Von Trier’s film is brilliantly manipulative on
an emotional front, yet its unvarnished expression and life-imbued performances
render <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dancer In The Dark</i> earnest and
authentic. The dramatic use of the “musical film” form is all the more rending
because of these qualities as well.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk772OIHE7AqTSYO7AED1u-hX5TpFXi_rhg0G3BEsUjxSTLSAQWhx0ePkd_985hZAZ34Tjt1Hj61-cH5ZLpC7w-WG9LC-V1HHpyuHXYNvF88CKg3TDuQO5HtG9D8Sw9wDwDx-yHf7-u5o/s1600/children_of_men_ver8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk772OIHE7AqTSYO7AED1u-hX5TpFXi_rhg0G3BEsUjxSTLSAQWhx0ePkd_985hZAZ34Tjt1Hj61-cH5ZLpC7w-WG9LC-V1HHpyuHXYNvF88CKg3TDuQO5HtG9D8Sw9wDwDx-yHf7-u5o/s200/children_of_men_ver8.jpg" width="134" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Children of
Men</span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> (2006) - Women have stopped
conceiving. A child hasn’t been born in almost 20 years, without any
explanation. Societies and values crumble in reaction to the seeming
inevitability of human extinction, raging against their powerlessness to stop
it. A band of rebels aim to get a woman of unique importance to the coast as
they encounter conditions reminiscent of the holocaust. Direcor Alfonso Cuaron
creates a desperate world of remarkable tactility, wherein the tactility is its
greatest sensationalism. Cuaron’s spectacle has gravity and he explores the
experience of a world rendered infertile on the scale of individuals. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSAa7EgTRiBqVO3fV_ePoqWpU1gsznYU7KcgNbdMMrndMMwqz7KK0PvlStk14e4cl28OZHOrnYCVwNGw_VrGVRmSePiwdJsMifk5CfXahk6rkObH4EgW2yjMYJNDR6qLmFYM3wuAJWusM/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSAa7EgTRiBqVO3fV_ePoqWpU1gsznYU7KcgNbdMMrndMMwqz7KK0PvlStk14e4cl28OZHOrnYCVwNGw_VrGVRmSePiwdJsMifk5CfXahk6rkObH4EgW2yjMYJNDR6qLmFYM3wuAJWusM/s200/images.jpeg" width="142" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Love and
Honor</span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> (Bushi no Ichibun, 2006) – Shinnojo
is a young samurai with</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"> dreams of opening a kendo school for young boys. He
lives peacefully with his wife in a modest but beautiful home. To his
disappointment he is assigned as a food taster for his feudal lord. During a
routine tasting, he is struck with fever and goes blind. Investigations reveal
that an out of season shell-fish was the cause. Relegated to his home, Shinnojo
undergoes an existential crisis, where his capacities as a samurai and a
caretaker are challenged. He rises to the occasion however, when his wife is
marred by a high-ranking samurai’s amorality. Yamada explores the drama as a
subject and blindness as an object. Within a society of such fastidiousness,
ritual, and formal precision, it is all the more compelling to observe someone
navigate an incapacity to participate in that behavior. His film has a small
scale, and is all the better for its lack of irony. With Love And Honor as
example, Yamada is a master of negotiating the line between sensitivity and
sentimentality.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_aIPEfowbK26YK655TJJ1Os8r72o01RWTWJvQxfC1-vu1QVdgVeHKCgaabSqqtYxEC7wRRapev53wnMlhRJQQZt5q3SjWc83SgK94YPAZcILumB4Veq8SpaaaLWy6YJtDHVwn2ipYQF4/s1600/11152781_det.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_aIPEfowbK26YK655TJJ1Os8r72o01RWTWJvQxfC1-vu1QVdgVeHKCgaabSqqtYxEC7wRRapev53wnMlhRJQQZt5q3SjWc83SgK94YPAZcILumB4Veq8SpaaaLWy6YJtDHVwn2ipYQF4/s200/11152781_det.jpg" width="126" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The Fly</span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> (1986) - A reclusive scientific genius named Seth
Brundle (Jeff Golblum at his absolute best) is</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"> troubleshooting a short-range
teleportation device. When a fly is trapped in the machine during a test, the
machine combines its DNA with Brundle’s, and he finds himself slowly mutating
into a human-fly hybrid. Verinica Quaife, the journalist documenting Brundle’s
experiments and falling in love in the process, is powerless to stop the degradation. Cronenberg’s
visionary work devastates as it dissolves a man’s humanity piece by piece, and
yet invigorates the human spirit as Brundle feverishly works to undo the
mistake and teach his machine the distinctness of forms.</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">28 Days Later</span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> (2003) – The Rage Virus, an infection of the blood
which limits the human emotional spectrum to unadulterated anger, spreads
across England and presumably the world. Danny Boyle drops us into the middle
of the melee, as confused and fearful as Jim (Cillian Murphy), who wakes from a
coma to a desolate and littered London. He joins a small band of survivors that
do whatever they can to stay alive. Along the way, Boyle expresses many
attitudes towards this new paradigm of living, and the seemingly hopeless
prospects for a future. The removal of emotions renders humans into a loosed
rabid animal, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">28 Days Later</i> wonders
to what degree our emotional agency determines our personhood. Boyle shows
rather than tells, with unrefined grit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgytUxs-IeR-w7xnzGRPC4IiC-oErVIMJrXfRXuUSbtOe6AWoaOKYYVV6cUbvl-qbIaqGoTCXzR3uTNIps8ALkeECsAv5MwbOdvMnlyUtqS35HW4WfVUH1rhiFIK-NjA83NniRgnYJU430/s1600/220px-Womb_film.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgytUxs-IeR-w7xnzGRPC4IiC-oErVIMJrXfRXuUSbtOe6AWoaOKYYVV6cUbvl-qbIaqGoTCXzR3uTNIps8ALkeECsAv5MwbOdvMnlyUtqS35HW4WfVUH1rhiFIK-NjA83NniRgnYJU430/s200/220px-Womb_film.jpg" width="142" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Womb</span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> (2010) – </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Rebecca (Eva Green) and Thomas (Matt
Smith) are childhood best friends, and also each other’s first love. They are
separated when she is relocated to Japan, but returns to the seaside town of
their youthful days after college. Thomas still lives there, and they begin to
reconnect, remembering the bond of their childhood. Tragedy separates them once
more, but they are “reunited” when Rebecca makes a controversial decision to
give Thomas a second chance at life. Womb is achingly beautiful, and cool to
the touch. Its mood is rarefied, and its time is unfixable.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Never Let Me
Go</span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> (2010) - </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">As children,
Ruth, Kathy and Tommy, attend an English boarding school, and director Mark
Romanek entreats us to the devastating social and emotional turmoil inherent in
such an environment. Now come of age, and placed in halfway houses associated
to the school, the trio find themselves coming to terms with complexities of
their reality and their shared histories. With time advancing on the guarded
purposes of their existence, they prepare themselves for a haunting prospect.
Like <i>Womb</i>, the future feels
distinctly like the present (if not timeless), which makes <i>Never Let Me Go</i> all the more effective on an emotional appeal. </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-35953990259483216602012-02-15T15:22:00.000-08:002012-02-15T15:25:20.159-08:00Without A Screen : Zaha Hadid’s Cinema of Form<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBqFwnu0oEQ5nTMNqHpjXejaCFE08SiZukYEvwjcJ0mX6y2pdSuy9v3qtRSJOorr5zmKlhHvwha1nYHFDeE-KpvD1HKuoLdTC-2C2BZILDH45CcBrlCtoPeeFrtvDGFDQwOh7ZQWTc9Ag/s1600/01-zaha-hadid-form-in-motion-exhibition-at-the-perelman-building-USA-%C2%A9-the-philadelphia-museum-of-art-795x528.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBqFwnu0oEQ5nTMNqHpjXejaCFE08SiZukYEvwjcJ0mX6y2pdSuy9v3qtRSJOorr5zmKlhHvwha1nYHFDeE-KpvD1HKuoLdTC-2C2BZILDH45CcBrlCtoPeeFrtvDGFDQwOh7ZQWTc9Ag/s320/01-zaha-hadid-form-in-motion-exhibition-at-the-perelman-building-USA-%C2%A9-the-philadelphia-museum-of-art-795x528.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Through March 25th the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Perlman
Building hosts <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Form in Motion;</i> a groundbreaking
exhibition of </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Iraqi-born
British </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">architect Zaha Hadid’s sculptural
design. </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Winner of
numerous awards for her daring and originality, Hadid is under commission for
the 2012 London Olympics. In fact, her creations are currently being built in
40 different countries. Her combination of protrusive organic formations,
linear embellishments, futuristic sensibilities, and grand scale might well
make her worlds first <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Naturo-Brutalist </i>for
all her forceful presence. For this unique site-specific exhibition – the first
solo exhibition of her product designs in the US – Hadid orchestrates a
“carefully controlled movement through space,” which suggests to the author, an
analogy to the action of filmmaking, and to the experience of cinema.
(Hiesinge)</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Where cinema creates form from
movement, Hadid creates movement from form. Her objects and her environment are
sinuous and continuous.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiCd6NiPCZ630qhEuLHguX9UJ5oUApkMQXK8ajpstsg7SX-barQJ6da-ToryR3TyIIV3pnwlKPJIrLJEz2a0cmYcwqy1LQf0MPrOwz_TyERDLOawV-L6UwxlvA4qxnYqRaTLpyrNFppBI/s1600/2d4200b1983616db9d5e55f4b0fc848d-orig.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiCd6NiPCZ630qhEuLHguX9UJ5oUApkMQXK8ajpstsg7SX-barQJ6da-ToryR3TyIIV3pnwlKPJIrLJEz2a0cmYcwqy1LQf0MPrOwz_TyERDLOawV-L6UwxlvA4qxnYqRaTLpyrNFppBI/s200/2d4200b1983616db9d5e55f4b0fc848d-orig.jpeg" width="200" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Without A
Screen</span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> responds to the experiential exhibition
and Hadid’s distinctly sensuous voice with a</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"> hypothetical film curatorial.
These<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>interpretive associations
between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Form In Motion</i> and particular
films are<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>fluid and subjective, and not
meant to insinuate deliberate references on the part of the artist. Some connections
are obvious and material, others are abstract and stream of consciousness, but
all are intuitive. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">More than</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> a mere selection of Hadid’s sculptural objects – not
all of which will be discussed - the gallery at the Perlman is rendered into an
“interior landscape,” where structure, terrain, space and light are augmented to
fuse a sense of inside and outside, design and nature. Though <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Form in Motion </i>imparts an overall sense
of sterility - due to its limited palate (black, white, grey/silver) and the
laser precision of its surfaces - Hadid elicits entropy and erosion in her
references. Whether remarking on her </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">sofas, tables, “lounge” chairs, shoes, twisting neon
chandeliers, or waveform architectural walls, </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Hadid’s formations are akin to those arrived at in nature by geologic processes
like erosion. Hadid distills and refines her futuristic forms through </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">the most advanced materials
and fabrication techniques; a juxtaposition of organic resemblances and
industrial processes.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcxWSpuZXiVUJjkMUf_S1JWuJ2OlM8_sSqK2SrPELTOl6SyZ2DO35hT-slm9Kj7k1BD34098_M1Sg23f5pNxcWQesGEYPCREPZt4Qvmgvmkl9nqCVmVxsAqgD5ANdPSKWUbV_weC0vmWE/s1600/Zaha-Hadid_Form-In-Motion-600x400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcxWSpuZXiVUJjkMUf_S1JWuJ2OlM8_sSqK2SrPELTOl6SyZ2DO35hT-slm9Kj7k1BD34098_M1Sg23f5pNxcWQesGEYPCREPZt4Qvmgvmkl9nqCVmVxsAqgD5ANdPSKWUbV_weC0vmWE/s200/Zaha-Hadid_Form-In-Motion-600x400.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;">One’s first encounter in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Form in Motion</i> is an open circular antechamber, the ceiling of
which is partially domed. For individuals beneath the circumference of the dome,
sounds made within that same space (ones own voice, footsteps, shuffling,
breathing) amplify and reverberate. Hadid’s dome creates a privatized sensory
event that envelopes the experiencer(s) with its cinematic fullness, as well as
its finitude. In effect, she washes away the recent history of each viewer, prepares
them for the exaggerated quality of her forms, and reminds the viewer of their
integral part in the equation of art. The white floor is marked here with broad
curling strokes of black, evocative of waves or even tribal iconography. The
marks, flowing from inside the gallery proper, have both a coaxing undercurrent
and an expulsive push. As if wading upstream in the ripples, one enters into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Form in Motion</i> where the artist presents
a visual timeframe that is both primordial and ultramodern, wherein the individual
provides the “present.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRqxi_8Mrcwa0Mq6857OkjTQAlLHvXnAZlKP8NV2klACxlQuTWgT0bQxdhAFz2iRGN97nV8RROP8g6lCzuQPg8PDy66q1pKPb3TOL_OE0LqvqYJd2UtA88edja5EsHWl4d9hP6t0q6xJE/s1600/33904f76449e4fc5a181c57e2e593834.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRqxi_8Mrcwa0Mq6857OkjTQAlLHvXnAZlKP8NV2klACxlQuTWgT0bQxdhAFz2iRGN97nV8RROP8g6lCzuQPg8PDy66q1pKPb3TOL_OE0LqvqYJd2UtA88edja5EsHWl4d9hP6t0q6xJE/s200/33904f76449e4fc5a181c57e2e593834.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Ye4ovo_GTmdjhsvZVHTPJj6B1CKbyrLkZGGYC6-eZDgzUvObTmZPrFz7v4muwryCAKpYiyCsVrWMEaSpysv4mTCxCcpLqmDM5qspIpTkJKBhW7GaFKqExY-Crq7n3yRYuUtLrh026d0/s1600/Zaha_Hadid_and_Patrik_Schumacher_VorteXX_Chandelier_5pu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Ye4ovo_GTmdjhsvZVHTPJj6B1CKbyrLkZGGYC6-eZDgzUvObTmZPrFz7v4muwryCAKpYiyCsVrWMEaSpysv4mTCxCcpLqmDM5qspIpTkJKBhW7GaFKqExY-Crq7n3yRYuUtLrh026d0/s200/Zaha_Hadid_and_Patrik_Schumacher_VorteXX_Chandelier_5pu.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Astride the futuristically chic
Zephyr sofa at the fore of the main gallery, are two curving neon <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vortexx Chandeliers</i> that funnel down from
the ceiling and bask a white stage in shifting colored light. They strongly evoke
the neon-embellished industrial designs of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tron
Legacy</i> (2011) as much as they do the warped architectural forms of Catalan
architect Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926). Hadid’s association to Gaudi, appropriate
to much of her work, can be fully appreciated in the visual documentary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antonio Gaudi </i>(1972); director Hiroshi
Teshigahara’s own poetic </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">“carefully controlled movement” through beguiling manipulations of space
and form. </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vortexx Chandeliers</i> appear to be simple free-form spirals, but closer
inspection reveals the elegance of Hadid’s tangles. Each Chandelier, varied on
the same warped spiral movement, eventually twists up through its own center
and back onto itself. The effect is Mobius-like. Filmmaker David Lynch comes to
mind, having performed a similar act of inversion, in narrative terms, with the
structure of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lost Highway</i> (1997). While
in prison for a terrible crime, a disturbed musician named Fred Madison (Bill
Pullman) undergoes an identity-fugue. By becoming a much younger man named Pete
Dayton (Balthazar Getty), he finds himself living a new almost diametric life.
Lynch convolutedly and terrifyingly leads Pete back around to his former
identity, not unlike what Hadid does with her Chandeliers, and also with the gallery;
returning the viewer to an experience of themself in the antechamber as they
exit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFlxX7lu5O4AY2MN33q9fd7iE0q6zMLixCMTASZ6Vqy4tOLeY6Jl1SVL7R4jzGKLy8KWZ1aznsMUG051U8-ZRFGq-MbKfcAJGMxqOmfroot_K54VdjcB0KR07dT1gi0xfLfZe-u-nWH5Y/s1600/20111118_hd1hadid_1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFlxX7lu5O4AY2MN33q9fd7iE0q6zMLixCMTASZ6Vqy4tOLeY6Jl1SVL7R4jzGKLy8KWZ1aznsMUG051U8-ZRFGq-MbKfcAJGMxqOmfroot_K54VdjcB0KR07dT1gi0xfLfZe-u-nWH5Y/s200/20111118_hd1hadid_1024.jpg" width="166" /></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Turning one’s attention from the Vortexx Chandeliers, Hadid’s
creative inclusion of the floor becomes evident. The black graphic striations,
continued from the antechamber, read like rippled reflections of the undulating
wall structure that runs along the entire left side of the gallery. Her graphic
references are to the ebb and flow of the nearby Schuylkill River, and its
understated significance to the formation of the area. The opening shots of Rian
Johnson’s High School set neo-noir <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brick</i>
(2005) surface in thought. Indelibly imprinted with their bluish tint and
tinkering incidental music, Johnson reveals a dead girl’s braceletted hand
lapped by the soft ripples of a creek. This image sets the dramatic entropy of
the film motion. South Korean filmmaker Chang-dong Lee’s film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetry</i> (2010) also begins and ends with
the ebb and flow of a river that buoys yet another dead girl’s body. The girl’s
cause of death bears great consequence for Mija (Jeong-hie Yun), an old
optimistic woman raising her snide grandson, consumed by a late-life interest
in writing poetry. Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Form in Motion,
Poetry </i>contains a liquid constancy throughout its deliberate anticlimaxes. Ruminations
on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brick</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetry</i> infuse Hadid’s “river” with an unintentionally somber
essence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVpq1srM_jTGN4Rh23LayUnLs6fetiSkf-vBkZMatT_ooAB-0NPB7y-VOGhQe-QJ8F7PLqTPvxBiaLUvIw340ScazjknlC6LISVUti76wU5lxuVQYuZeTc_WP84pj5abl_92CfcOuudk0/s1600/6222603125_2f623ca313_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVpq1srM_jTGN4Rh23LayUnLs6fetiSkf-vBkZMatT_ooAB-0NPB7y-VOGhQe-QJ8F7PLqTPvxBiaLUvIw340ScazjknlC6LISVUti76wU5lxuVQYuZeTc_WP84pj5abl_92CfcOuudk0/s200/6222603125_2f623ca313_z.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGX2unxKJDNif2umnab7npFdaUKWHdm5Q6j8fPjRs6cnTjDFi_3mVY04PUD4nm5ZIycDDsm8gptyzO30pGkV0HtnPr1QFR8iMMUdKIHpUjeHsHJMtNi64i3-VMIaoa_eXcBnhBf6J4Tes/s1600/vlcsnap-137975.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGX2unxKJDNif2umnab7npFdaUKWHdm5Q6j8fPjRs6cnTjDFi_3mVY04PUD4nm5ZIycDDsm8gptyzO30pGkV0HtnPr1QFR8iMMUdKIHpUjeHsHJMtNi64i3-VMIaoa_eXcBnhBf6J4Tes/s200/vlcsnap-137975.png" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The river, and the aforementioned “waveform wall
structure,” have a distinct relationship to one another. Built into the gallery
itself, the wall functions as an object, a stage for other objects, and barrier
to create a space-within-a-space; a concealed video lounge featuring computer
generated models of Hadid’s architectural projects. The wall’s stacked
topographical construction recalls sedimentary formations and the rivulets of dessert
sands. No film has ever extracted greater poetry out of sand than Hiroshi Teshigahara’s<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Woman in the Dunes</i> (1964), about a
nameless man on a quest to discover a new species of beetle in the dessert. He
finds himself forcibly sharing a house with a woman at the bottom of a giant sand
pit, and the film depicts his feverish stages of reaction to this situation.
Looking up at the wall, one feels as the film’s nameless protagonist might;
daunted by the imposing enormity. Teshigahara’s adaptation of author Kobo Abe’s
existential masterwork is a visually textural experience (sand, flesh, water,
sweat, wood), and for that fact, the smoothness and starkness of Hadid’s wall
feels all-the-more like a polished abstraction of natural formations. The river flows round the wall, responding to
it and shaping it. All the objects placed on the floor space are also shaped
roundly by the erosive flow of “water.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGrRizAMyjjDek5Y8ggruhDSChHcuFIl4fiKEmpICavkrGuZJkhzDF_ypUG6GqoKbEf40paTvqRAsKmx4YZLALj9KkGb_DGsluEXrhp4nP8qYOn5i6kIHaTlVyzUHzQOtraREj-8GAlLg/s1600/snapshot20071113090033.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGrRizAMyjjDek5Y8ggruhDSChHcuFIl4fiKEmpICavkrGuZJkhzDF_ypUG6GqoKbEf40paTvqRAsKmx4YZLALj9KkGb_DGsluEXrhp4nP8qYOn5i6kIHaTlVyzUHzQOtraREj-8GAlLg/s200/snapshot20071113090033.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfnY2iuljga8d7BcAUtNaaLF8RblC9MAX73ld3ZoqFzB4sYPdPQqeCm9yHegapSAYlC120I5q_cs23CEflapfbRRzmERUYniQ93-_bDfu0qMAhrzmC-Y4iVdAdivRrRthH-Nf_0CzWSro/s1600/28059e2564af7be4b5d04bc01637d1ae.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfnY2iuljga8d7BcAUtNaaLF8RblC9MAX73ld3ZoqFzB4sYPdPQqeCm9yHegapSAYlC120I5q_cs23CEflapfbRRzmERUYniQ93-_bDfu0qMAhrzmC-Y4iVdAdivRrRthH-Nf_0CzWSro/s200/28059e2564af7be4b5d04bc01637d1ae.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Elongated barnacle-like growths emerge from the wall,
around the far bend. Their pearlescent-grey scooped-out contours could almost
cradle a human body, and inspire a vague recollection of Japan’s infamous capsule
hotels. A much more subjective association to Hadid’s capsule forms is yet
again from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Woman in the Dunes. </i>The
nameless man sits inside a small abandoned skiff, slowly being consumed by
desert sands. This existentially ripe image of a landlocked seacraft has
appeared in numerous films - <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Never Let Me
Go </i>(2011), and Ki-duk Kim’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Samaritan
Girl</i> (2004) to name a few. The boat’s form, and therefore its emptiness are
asserted by its unconventional locale, just as Hadid’s capsules raise curiosities
about their proportional relationship to the human body vs. their vertical
arrangement<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">The movement of the exhibition – the overriding
directionality of the wall / floor-piece, and the smooth curvature of all Hadid’s
sculptural forms - has a kinship to the elliptical cinematography of Taiwanese
filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien. In particular, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Form
In Motion</i> recalls <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Café Lumiere,</i> Hou’s
homage to Yasujro Ozu. The film patiently </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">revolves around Yoko, a young and suddenly pregnant
Japanese woman researching a Taiwanese composer. The film is airy and crisp in
its simplicity as Hou negotiates Yoko’s relationship with her parents, her quietly
budding friendship to a bookstore clerk, and to the city itself. As always, Hou’s
camera </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">follows the movement of
individuals in spaces from relatively fixed perspectives, without breaking
continuity. The unblinking lens allows the viewer to enter fully into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Café Lumiere</i>’s environs<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>and to bask in the days’ softly
diffused light. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Café Lumiere</i> draws
parallels between the chaotic-yet-regulated beauty of Tokyo’s rail systems, and
the chaotic-yet-regulated courses of individuals. It isn’t difficult to extract
Hadid’s river from Hou’s rails. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-19429802690936877562011-12-28T18:01:00.000-08:002011-12-28T18:01:18.692-08:00OCCUPY NOWHERE FINALE: United Red Army (2007)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsuOdilu-etbU78owch44PGHmXKXbica_qu6TerBQzEFqVa07nVyZ2cWh1QTcqqwrldV4CsdEVQfXqELo5Itaqznx_6Tbx-kCPrALpsKQ25kU9b429dfLRHMFqX3K8mwPp36vEpnH3o3w/s1600/gd-affiche-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsuOdilu-etbU78owch44PGHmXKXbica_qu6TerBQzEFqVa07nVyZ2cWh1QTcqqwrldV4CsdEVQfXqELo5Itaqznx_6Tbx-kCPrALpsKQ25kU9b429dfLRHMFqX3K8mwPp36vEpnH3o3w/s320/gd-affiche-uk.jpg" width="239" /></a>As films
were mined each week for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Occupy Nowhere</i>,
two camps emerged from within the loose genre framework that the column
intended to elucidate. It became relatively consistent that for characters that
deliberately and knowingly occupied a particular nowhere, the act was one of
diversion and avoidance (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Woman With
Red Hair</i>) of the greater tides of change. These tales tend toward
incongruities of personal growth (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Young
Adam</i>) and err on the side of defeatism. However, for films in which exile is
forced (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Skin I Live In, Woman in the
Dunes, Pleasantville),</i> a more substantive course is undertaken. Individuals
in the latter camp prove themselves industrious, inventive, and introspective. Certainly,
this genre split is imperfect, with the example of Matthew of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dreamers</i> who is invited into exile
and evolves within that shared seclusion where his counterparts Theo and Isa do
not. What the draw suggests is that imprisonment foments reactivity and adaptation.
Survival instincts streamline human ingenuity, ferocity, and also patience, therefore
the more engaged exile is the one who finds themself occupying nowhere (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World On A Wire</i>), not the one who
decides to.</div>
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Though both
camps of films are uniquely existential, the result of diversion tends to
somatic or bodily (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dreamers</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Young Adam</i>), and where imprisonment is
the mandate, the result is something more cerebral. Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Skin I Live In,</i> which uses sexual reassignment as the material
for one man’s undoing and another’s existential evolution, Director/Writer Koji
Wakamatsu’s incendiary sociopolitical drama <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United
Red Army</i> inhabits a middle-ground (a nowhere even within the Occupy Nowhere
dichotomy) where its matters of deliberate seclusion by radical communist youth
in “military camps” yields both an intensely cerebral and deeply somatic
product, fusing the connection between physicality and the phenomenon of
ideology. URA creates a new paradigm of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nowhere</i>,
in which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nowhere</i> is occupied
deliberately, not as a diversion from the tides of change, rather a preparation
for them. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsUxeqFHVMG9IXduieQLjmHyiAdXqZCGPer3JYvyu2qPwoRXZal1hao-CZqVYxD1eeIJr_IMU-Q_S-JU2nx51HigsI802cXpHSnFpO4HNWD-ZlfETEW7w6hqhOkv6EtkG-BaLx8gGwkdc/s1600/unitedredarmyreview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsUxeqFHVMG9IXduieQLjmHyiAdXqZCGPer3JYvyu2qPwoRXZal1hao-CZqVYxD1eeIJr_IMU-Q_S-JU2nx51HigsI802cXpHSnFpO4HNWD-ZlfETEW7w6hqhOkv6EtkG-BaLx8gGwkdc/s320/unitedredarmyreview.jpg" width="320" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United Red Army</i> (URA) is a film I never
thought I’d see twice, much less theatrically, but this is exactly what has
happened. URA screened at the NY Japan Society in 2008 and quite recently in
Washington DC’s Freer Gallery (which boasts excellent free film screenings).
Much to this reviewer’s surprise, URA is even receiving a US DVD edition on
January 17th from Kino/Lorber. Wakamatsu, who has been making films since the
events of URA took place, is no stranger to the unsavory dimensions of the
human psyche or to the left-wing political wildfire that lapped Japan’s mid
century. He is remarkably unflinching and unsparing in his vision, so much so
that in the two years that lapsed between viewings, precious little detail had
been swiped from memory, and all the stains of its rigor were in tact. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A
perfect candidate for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Occupy Nowhere</i>,
this three-hour three-act epic is an expository docu-drama about the uniquely radical
politics of protest in 1960’s-70’s Japan. Analogous to numerous student uprisings
the world over – which the film draws its own connections to - Japan too was
creaking and moaning as it grappled with post war reshaping, but these growing
pains escalated to a violence unseen anywhere else. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Wakamatsu
takes on a reductive strategy with URA. Act one is a quickstep expositional
history lesson aided by narration and archival material spliced with
dramatization. It sweeps through the constellation of names entwined in the complicated
causality that birthed with the National Student League in the mid 60’s,
through the formation of the Red Army Faction from several radical sub-groups,
and ends with the violent implosion of the United Red Army altogether in the
early 70’s. Emerging from the tangled timeline, act two plunges into the radicalization,
politicization and militarization of leftist student groups and their
consolidation into the United Red Army’s now infamous training camps, with a
turn towards visceral dramatization. Act three quarantines the characters and
audience even further as it hurtles towards an action-thriller climax with URA
members on the run from the police.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiYWN8lMOkQPf2kq-0IRaJLLePWp_sJTpnqRuXijD1KT7cZ-F4CldQZaa1X60B6mr0ITaL-TmmXVQqW8__m_ibsRrs0oK6hfmVzgi-kdXJt6qGtGgWNp_EEVDEWfFbfW3QkdN1Do_odzI/s1600/united-red-army.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiYWN8lMOkQPf2kq-0IRaJLLePWp_sJTpnqRuXijD1KT7cZ-F4CldQZaa1X60B6mr0ITaL-TmmXVQqW8__m_ibsRrs0oK6hfmVzgi-kdXJt6qGtGgWNp_EEVDEWfFbfW3QkdN1Do_odzI/s320/united-red-army.jpg" width="320" /></a>As
per the second act, in an effort to ready themselves for the inevitable “all
out war” that would decide the socio-political fate of Japan and the world, the
United Red Army assembles in two isolated woodland camps to commence
self-directed military training after unifying under the URA banner. The intent
of occupying this nowhere is to sew bonds of friendship, instill the warrior
instinct, and clarify the language of their political ideology. In camp is
where the ultimately dismantling practice of self-critique, in which
individuals are obliged to appraise and dissect their own “ability to be a
communist,” takes its grip. In some form, self-critique could have been a
helpful ritual of assessing ones actions and their impact on the cohesion and
success of the URA’s movement, instead it becomes a stage to “thin the herd” of
the weak hearted. The megalomaniacal leaders of these camps drive what becomes
a cyclical degradation of purpose and functionality through the redundant practice
of self-critique. The impending “all out war” that is the ultimate intent seems
impossibly distant, and the camps turn on their own proponents. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Act
two of URA bears all the fundamentalist finger-pointing shades of Arthur Miller’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Crucible</i>, in which any
infraction, misstep, or objection is put under the microscope of a scrutiny
that can never satisfied to the contrary, where the worst is drawn out of
people and a grand potential for broadly scaled change is squandered. Petty
motivations lead to victimization, and the demand for self-critique becomes a
weapon. The critical point of abstraction occurs when self-critique exteriorizes
to include the other members of the camp; meaning that, in the communist spirit
of universality, the group becomes an extension of the individual, and is
expected to critique with their fists. In that sense, all critique is self-critique,
no matter where directed. This trend, which in a sense absolves anyone’s
culpability through metaphor, escalates to the degree of “death sentences,” handed
out by the titular leader. The intensely physical and psychological act-two stretches
itself well past the point of the audience “getting it,” and rightly so. The confounding,
enraging, and seemingly fruitless practice of self-critique is made as grueling
and seemingly endless as possible to simulate the inescapable horror that it
was for those encamped. Thankfully it breaks.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizptSnVtv5XnKj4-caWJrJpQbBG5nVXg_4WYPukYEc-VhoKcU16pIopC5C71Cvwb2a_vV-ImTFBkeE0gQqeW6G7qW3Do_OPpmVMKAbIpi_JIVtCOqN09KazdHZ_oXM8THcsLwJfMwQivg/s1600/united-red-army-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizptSnVtv5XnKj4-caWJrJpQbBG5nVXg_4WYPukYEc-VhoKcU16pIopC5C71Cvwb2a_vV-ImTFBkeE0gQqeW6G7qW3Do_OPpmVMKAbIpi_JIVtCOqN09KazdHZ_oXM8THcsLwJfMwQivg/s320/united-red-army-1.jpg" width="320" /></a>Act
three is an even further distillation of filmmaking, and takes place as the
remaining URA members of the training sessions are chased down by the police to
the Asama Mountain Lodge (the director’s own lodge is used and destroyed in the
film), knee deep in snow, forced to occupy yet another nowhere. However, this
nowhere, like the Occupations on City Hall and Wall Street, is in plain sight, televised
across Japan. These final members take the lodgekeeper hostage for 10 days as
they are pushed to the brink of their own ideology, to the basest most modes of
survival, and confront their ultimate failures as activists and as human
beings. This final primal stretch of URA - a futile struggle helmed by cornered
wolves raging against the dissolution of their newly consolidated form before
any real war could be waged, before any change could be affected through direct
action - is a confused barrage of attacks and counter attacks, told entirely
from the frenetic perspective of the entrenched URA members. Wakamatsu, in the
reductive end to his earnest, even, and ever-refining film keeps the audience
cloistered in the lodge, as confused and confined as the trapped URA men, left
to grapple with defeat and guilt in nowhere.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-80610278984114535542011-12-16T15:44:00.000-08:002012-04-12T13:58:22.795-07:00OCCUPY NOWHERE: WORLD ON A WIRE (Part II) (**spoilers**)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSzSNdtw2i7U9vR8T1XzK8zn7bbEn0SroPM0mzInGznPzibgYgJtEB46X4dab9_l1BZyGQKz1VUHtaQae1hIsATULa5401U8zhN8FlV2EyZjA4AhfnIWlGK0IWd-RYS9-6nTbOp2fRz7c/s1600/header.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSzSNdtw2i7U9vR8T1XzK8zn7bbEn0SroPM0mzInGznPzibgYgJtEB46X4dab9_l1BZyGQKz1VUHtaQae1hIsATULa5401U8zhN8FlV2EyZjA4AhfnIWlGK0IWd-RYS9-6nTbOp2fRz7c/s320/header.jpg" width="215" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">“The materialists
say that ‘Thought is conditioned by Being,’ and not ‘Being is conditioned by
Thought,’ and that Being - with its basis in itself – is conditioned by itself.
…But it forgets that without thought, Being is No-Being. Being comes into Being
only when it becomes conscious of itself. As long as God is content with
himself, he is non-existent. He must be awakened to something that is not
himself when he is God. God is God when God is not God, yet what is not God
must be in himself too. And this – what is not himself – is his own thought or
consciousness. With this consciousness he departs from himself and at the same
time returns to himself. You cannot say that thought is conditioned by being,
and that Being has its basis in itself. You must say that Being is Being
because of Thought, which is to say, that Being is Being because Being is not
Being.” </span></i><br />
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"The world starts only when there is a mind that appreciates, a mind critically aware of itself." -Daistez T. Suzuki<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2aU6DEg0AvUKZEU4McpPrtMw1pDZ_aPpQhYCZYCDjGvEJrCW5mINFjq1ldYB8WzjGWecGmrAuWLN7bTcEhNBtIREOkTdOI68hRWdOwIEhCWoZVwpH8ioMwC8fdbhU46YEj2JjS5SOW_A/s1600/worldonawire3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2aU6DEg0AvUKZEU4McpPrtMw1pDZ_aPpQhYCZYCDjGvEJrCW5mINFjq1ldYB8WzjGWecGmrAuWLN7bTcEhNBtIREOkTdOI68hRWdOwIEhCWoZVwpH8ioMwC8fdbhU46YEj2JjS5SOW_A/s200/worldonawire3.jpg" width="200" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">At the end of part one (literally
the last seconds), Fred Stiller is made privy to what a modern audience has likely
suspected since Günther Lause’s split-second disappearance and certainly since
Stiller’s drive to where “the road wasn't finished”; that Stiller’s world is a
simulation. This means that Simulacron-3 is actually a sub-basement of reality,
and furthermore that a dimension exists above Stiller’s world. What isn’t clear
is precisely how many worlds are wrapped around one another (at the least,
three), who is “real” and who is not (who is a Contact and who is merely an
identity unit), and whether there is a way to escape the nowhere Stiller finds
himself occupying; a nowhere more literally no-where than any other film in the
Occupy catalogue for its “existing” in the digital abstract. Ironically though,
Michael Ballhaus’ (The Departed, Quiz Show) cinematography has been asserting
the notion of space, surface, dimension, and geometry with every sleek, gliding
shot the whole film long. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Stiller’s persistent investigation
along the hypothesis of corporate conspiracy, which stems from Vollmer’s death
and Lause’s disappearance, takes on the concern of his world’s falsehood in
Part Two. Stiller goes through a full course of emotional states, much like a
grieving process as he negotiates a changing perception of reality, addled by a
reality that keeps rearranging <i>itself</i>,
and shaken by the question of personhood as he may in fact be just an identity
unit. Is this not the same dismay or deflation one might feel about the notion
of intelligent design, perceived as an existential challenge against ones own
autonomy and agency rather than an infusion of purpose? Stiller’s ultimate insistence
of his corporeality and intentionality splinters the preconception that
personhood is an exclusively biological event.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjom4QpS3Lr0ucO8OWJGhyphenhyphen6lejJia5JW_emobsbBNdwCjJQ3G0PhX-kPn1dEaP1CRDPtQI26ai5nYrluxeE8XtH5aGQpfsqm8n1ohHHV-V3dy3ticwMXlcO667Too5TR29xS38Ri7XpiUI/s1600/wire-tunnel4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjom4QpS3Lr0ucO8OWJGhyphenhyphen6lejJia5JW_emobsbBNdwCjJQ3G0PhX-kPn1dEaP1CRDPtQI26ai5nYrluxeE8XtH5aGQpfsqm8n1ohHHV-V3dy3ticwMXlcO667Too5TR29xS38Ri7XpiUI/s320/wire-tunnel4.jpg" width="320" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World on a Wire</i> questions
where imitation ends and authenticity begins and posits a common science
fiction bent that “something like human consciousness” could aspire to “become
consciousness.” Thus, as Buddhist
scholar Daisetz Suzuki discusses in the opening quotation, Consciousness and
Being qualify one another. Suzuki proposes that only through Thought – what he
considers necessarily external to the individual’s autopilot existence - does
Being quantify into Being (in the full sense of someone able to contemplate
their own existence). Stiller rises from like-consciousness (or rather the
no-consciousness of complacency) to consciousness by negation. He ideologically
negates his inclusion in a reality determined to be a simulation. Thus he is
able to differentiate his intent (conscious decision and opinion) from his
action (his basic functions as an identity unit). Though yet to be proved as
more than a computer program, Stiller is able to actualize and appraise his own
Being-ness by verging against the medium in which he floats. In the language of
Suzuki, Stiller is Stiller because Stiller is not Stiller, meaning that he comes
into Being not when he is passively told he is no-being (an identity unit) by
his mind-hacked coworker, but when he has proved it actively by unraveling the
perceptual veil which aims to perplex him into subjugation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Suzuki remarks of Zen that, “When
we say that we <i>live by Zen</i>” …rather
than simply living zen, which all life supposedly does passively…“this means
that we become conscious of the fact,” and therefore active.<i> </i>Relational to <i>Wire</i>, it is Stiller’s achievement of “thought,” that brings him to
a critically self-aware state, able to assess, dissect, and contradict
Simulacron by degrees. Even though he verges against the virtual system of
which he is a part, it is through that painful effort of consciousness (reflected
in his dizzy spells and migraine) that Stiller, who merely <i>lived simulacron</i>, comes to <i>live
by simulacron</i>, in a sense<i>.</i></span> <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPG5J3U9JV_Fy3Olkb9VS_Kul7bnyJl8xFz82Do88AYXfyCyd7AfyPjt1V3xXO8Mh4RL5cZyMNbwKsKSXwwm1YhTZ0BExP9gTIEiuK0S0AXCX7PcBuRMqUkF-1TNsx571sdX9D1ZWJqH8/s1600/tumblr_ln0rbxC2Ov1qzv3wdo1_500.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPG5J3U9JV_Fy3Olkb9VS_Kul7bnyJl8xFz82Do88AYXfyCyd7AfyPjt1V3xXO8Mh4RL5cZyMNbwKsKSXwwm1YhTZ0BExP9gTIEiuK0S0AXCX7PcBuRMqUkF-1TNsx571sdX9D1ZWJqH8/s320/tumblr_ln0rbxC2Ov1qzv3wdo1_500.png" width="320" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">From that attainment of differentiation,
Stiller is able to endeavor towards a kind of transcendence of nowhere, or at
least is able to want and to fight for it. It is only with the aid of the much
sought-after Contact from the real world - inhabiting Stiller’s world as
Professor Vollmer’s daughter Elena Vollmer, who falls in love with Stiller,
reveals that there is a less than desirable “real Stiller” and switches their
minds at the moment the virtual Stiller is killed – is he able to bring his
practice of negation to completion. Ascended finally to what is presumably the
real world, and into corporeal Being, Stiller is as giddy as Ebenezer Scrooge
on Christmas morning, elated about his Being and fully aware of it. Juxtaposed
against the bullet-riddled Stiller on the roof of a car, he and Elena hold each
other, roll on the floor, kiss, and laugh; which, though starkly opposed to one
another, are the first moments of the entire film which feel….real. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-77363943055662633252011-12-15T20:49:00.000-08:002019-04-16T19:37:16.805-07:00OCCUPY NOWHERE: WORLD ON A WIRE (Part I)<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
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<span style="color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimPD4sA8G4_ZX3cvoysI3EZc3rL6ASWENpSRs2AHBD23wwhbsVUO2egVlGpa3ipD01VmxvwCV5J7JDVDOHvGtP6g8pEMFJGJvElFy31Hv6KPOHhJK7JH-9dbc4y4OnmFzExycfpXVHMAA/s1600/6006943532_ce79fea5d2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimPD4sA8G4_ZX3cvoysI3EZc3rL6ASWENpSRs2AHBD23wwhbsVUO2egVlGpa3ipD01VmxvwCV5J7JDVDOHvGtP6g8pEMFJGJvElFy31Hv6KPOHhJK7JH-9dbc4y4OnmFzExycfpXVHMAA/s200/6006943532_ce79fea5d2.jpg" width="134" /></span></a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;">Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World on a Wire</i> (1973), which recently screened at Philly’s
International House, expects a February DVD/Bluray edition from Criterion, and
deservedly so for its contemporary resonances, unexpected humor, aesthetic
brilliance (even if it is a bit long in the tooth). This two-part TV adaptation
of Daniel F. Galouye’s sci-fi novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Simulacron-3</i>
predates another of director Fassbinder’s massive undertakings for the small
screen,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Berlin Alexanderplatz</i> (1982),
and like it, has all the scale and craft of cinema. The relationship between
these two adapted projects is that which scribes them into the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Occupy Nowhere</i> family: the centrality of
“a man apart,” who uses something akin to the Zen practice of negation to
affirm his personhood within systematized alienation. For recently released
prisoner Franz Biberkopf, exiled to the to the Alexanderplatz district of 1928
Berlin, negation means a self-aware effort to “go straight” no matter the
overwhelming prevalence of corruption and </span>coercion; a challenge against his own
criminal identity. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World On A Wire</i>,
set in a technocratic future where virtual reality is tapped as a market
research tool, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Institute for Cybernetics and
Future Science’s</i> Dr. Fred Stiller’s act<span style="background-color: white;"></span> of
negation is aimed at the very tenets of his physical Being (“Being” as both a
noun and a verb), and of the two presents the more fundamental existential
query.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGYrM3JlDIAL2hG_en6jL2QWnC037FxyQP47TK5YqMygjkkfnXPSQSlqaSIaEnPmv_vcAOrySMnMf_e-ZanE7Wny-8w9TgHfBwVzb-aODIX6LLqinLd3gbRG3eDP13QN3WhB_HSzlZHok/s1600/woaw6-sm-300x296.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGYrM3JlDIAL2hG_en6jL2QWnC037FxyQP47TK5YqMygjkkfnXPSQSlqaSIaEnPmv_vcAOrySMnMf_e-ZanE7Wny-8w9TgHfBwVzb-aODIX6LLqinLd3gbRG3eDP13QN3WhB_HSzlZHok/s200/woaw6-sm-300x296.jpg" width="200" /></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World On A Wire</i> is an anachronistic treasure of dystopic</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"> future
storytelling that has elapsed its temporal leap, but is only slightly askew in
its positions and premonitions about man’s undoing. <i>Wire</i> is the story of cybernetics engineer Fred Stiller, a man
who doesn’t know that he is “occupying nowhere,” what “nowhere” encompasses, but
sparks to life as he exposes the pervasive nature of that exile. <i>Wire</i> is also the story of Simulacron-3,
a self-evolving virtual city devised by the Institute for Cybernetics and
Future Science (IKZ) to mirror the real world. Like “the strangers” in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dark City</i> (1998) who supernaturally
manipulate the architecture of a perpetually nocturnal city and rearrange the
memories of its inhabitants for study, IKZ Scientists code conditions and
events into the fabric of the Simulacron city, populated by 8,000 identity-units;
virtual humans imbued with idiosyncrasies and “something like consciousness.”
That like-consciousness is so convincing that the identity units are unaware -
save for one deliberate implant called Einstein - that they are collections of
electronic impulses in a computer. Operators download into Simulacron-3 via a
digital avatar in order to observe, effect change, or extract information from
Einstein. The rippling impacts of events that are programmed into Simulacron
are used as microcosmic predictors for future policy changes in usage of
resources and commercial trends in “real world.” Particularly interested in
this information is the company United Steel.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlIv8-sCGxQyDqQh25VLd0__F7ra9gDkXyQdH24z4_Eei0R4eajJ4XGm2udw-PcG2OrNIUMe4vszj591xJKHJFIV30eGU5DKlDWazFmOVa6F5Cx0IDbIoTU4haSxNVLXaEY0tW8PN60Pg/s1600/World-on-a-Wire2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlIv8-sCGxQyDqQh25VLd0__F7ra9gDkXyQdH24z4_Eei0R4eajJ4XGm2udw-PcG2OrNIUMe4vszj591xJKHJFIV30eGU5DKlDWazFmOVa6F5Cx0IDbIoTU4haSxNVLXaEY0tW8PN60Pg/s320/World-on-a-Wire2.jpg" width="320" /></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">The film begins with an anxious
Professor Vollmer, technical director of Simulacron, who is in possession of a
distressing secret. Moments after bequeathing his secret to IKZ’s security
officer, Günther Lause, Vollmer meets a mysterious end. Vollmer’s successor,
Dr. Fred Stiller, has a discussion with Lause at a party about his mentor’s
suspicious death, but Lause disappears (without trace) before he can share
Vollmer’s apparently preposterous theory. Things get even stranger when, much
to Stiller’s frustration, the IKZ employees seem to have no memory of Günther
Lause. Accumulating inconsistencies with the media, selective amnesia,
disappearances and reappearances of characters, a gaggle of emotionally
near-automaton women (including Stiller’s appointed secretary) and general
ambiguities press Stiller to eventually suspect everyone of conspiracy, including
the overall intent of the IKZ, if not the fabric of his own reality. To this
effect <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wire</i> unravels like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All The President’s Men</i> (1976) blended with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brazil</i> (1985)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>dipped in
neon blue. Stiller escalates in his suspicions the more he uncovers about the
“wires” that the film’s title infers about.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Fassbinder’s film is a veritable
Russian Doll. The director renders worlds within worlds literally, and through
a potent visual language. His persistent use of mirrors, glass surfaces and
enclosures, compositional fragmentation, diegetic visual distortions, and
frames within frames (such as TV monitors) lend themselves to both
conspiratorial fractures of information, and of multiple realities. Brilliantly
kitchy sets, location shooting, a textural soundtrack, and the modern chic of a
gliding camera create a clinical sense of urgency and a rich sense of place (more
accurately no-place). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT2L9QwdvC65cBk-tky97SFzltma_sC1ErP8t4ZUUUTpc02CH8qF8YS7ui_0BOiTtk2CA1H1ShXrJvmiPYxwMdgI-s-C5u4GiVpqkqvAQMifvjXR_6LXz0VpxOZc1SScYRdzLwuhqmmAc/s1600/World+on+a+Wire+TVs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT2L9QwdvC65cBk-tky97SFzltma_sC1ErP8t4ZUUUTpc02CH8qF8YS7ui_0BOiTtk2CA1H1ShXrJvmiPYxwMdgI-s-C5u4GiVpqkqvAQMifvjXR_6LXz0VpxOZc1SScYRdzLwuhqmmAc/s320/World+on+a+Wire+TVs.jpg" width="320" /></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Above and beyond the unambiguous corporate critique,
Fassbinder’s ultimate concerns here are about the manipulability of information/perception
and the flaws in the architecture that we erect around reality (ie. technology,
commerce, bureaucracy, routine). Through the abuse of a virtual reality
enterprise, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wire</i> questions where
intrinsic human-ness lies or where “so-called reallity” occurs, and supposes
the evolutionary apex at which our probing, framing, and manipulating of
reality leads to perceptual and spiritual collapse. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wire</i>
also infers that removed of its sci-fi shroud, the machinations and abuses that
unfurl within the film are mere variations of those which can and do occur in our
reality, and have everything to do with the correlation of identity and
technology (internet/social media) and also commerce. If unseen or
unquestioned, we find ourselves Occupying Nowhere, just as unawares as Stiller
before his “fateful” promotion. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">End of Part One.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-68083850316226381662011-12-05T16:20:00.001-08:002011-12-07T14:48:28.986-08:00OCCUPY NOWHERE: THE DREAMERS<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyqUqqZOEKIZxNhg9waJOOTfYFYo0nNaTt-YiZ99E0Iq6GATSVRFIdRcyM-ixLUvov8P-_44PVoBKazvqmqWlCaALTZw5qeHP_hvYlDM0lsOmIicSqSmav6x_lz8u22sYNJMftjCAfRiQ/s1600/6nrt4akmhmth4tk6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyqUqqZOEKIZxNhg9waJOOTfYFYo0nNaTt-YiZ99E0Iq6GATSVRFIdRcyM-ixLUvov8P-_44PVoBKazvqmqWlCaALTZw5qeHP_hvYlDM0lsOmIicSqSmav6x_lz8u22sYNJMftjCAfRiQ/s320/6nrt4akmhmth4tk6.jpg" width="227" /></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Matthew</i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">: “…There’s
something going on out there…something that feels like it could be important.
Something that feels like things could change. Even I get that. But you’re not
out there. You’re in here with me, sipping expensive wine, talking about film,
talking about Maoism…Why?”</i></div>
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Bernardo Bertolucci’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Dreamers</i> might well be the benchmark of Occupy Nowhere’s genre make up. It sensually
explores the cloistered lives of three cinephilic young adults - twins Theo (Louis
Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green), and their friend Matthew (Michael Pitt) - as
Paris verges into social upheaval after the forced deposition of Henri Langlois
as head of the film mecca that was the Cinematheque Francaise. In it, director
Bertolucci furthers his thesis on existential isolationism begun with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Last Tango in Paris </i>(1972) and<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> The Last Emperor</i> (1987). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dreamers</i> unfolds during the famed May
’68 uprisings. Bertolucci uses that historical material not as academia to be
exposited, but as a source of brewing intensity rendered peripherally. The film
is insularly about the three main characters’ shifting perceptions of “self,” their
construction of a personal language, and the forging of a shared emotional
identity over a month of self-imposed house arrest. Various degrees of
intimately waged war and stagnation that occur within the closed-off apartment
- termed the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Quartier des Enfants</i> in
the source novel - are reflected by publicly waged war (riots) and stagnation (uncollected
trash, debris). Gilbert Adair, author of the novel and screenplay, explains in
his DVD commentary that the telling of the story and the making of the film
holds no implicit irony, but now, seven years later amid a global society of
dreamers waking from a complacent daze, occupying the public arena in protest, a
relevance to that history is drawn by the event of watching. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_1SS4LLUJ81DDJ9K0D_i20kN48H2fPx8HMbqApi5R8QRAwD_sDZ2Xu15HJTKRE1N33QsdbaSeOsJnu09eDRfGLs08BdjLf0epThyphenhyphennQe56IQb5osSqSxGy_7st8BrVRg9efYmFv8UtiUo/s1600/The_Dreamers_mkv0076.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_1SS4LLUJ81DDJ9K0D_i20kN48H2fPx8HMbqApi5R8QRAwD_sDZ2Xu15HJTKRE1N33QsdbaSeOsJnu09eDRfGLs08BdjLf0epThyphenhyphennQe56IQb5osSqSxGy_7st8BrVRg9efYmFv8UtiUo/s320/The_Dreamers_mkv0076.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Timid but ponderous Matthew, brimming from the first shot
with boyish enthusiasm<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 11pt;">
</span><span style="color: black;">and naiveté</span>, is an American student
studying French in Paris. But as he suggests in voice-over-narration, his real
education is earned at the Cinematheque Francaise. Matthew meets Theo and Isa during
an inclement day of protest against that institution’s closing, and thinks
himself in love. Matthew has dinner with the siblings and their parents the
next evening at their flat. The father is a somewhat distracted thinker, apparently
renown for his poetry. The mother is a sympathetic but utterly strong-willed
woman whose domesticity never appears like submission. <o:p></o:p></div>
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During the intimate meal, Matthew shares a rather
implicating dialogue with the father… implicating in what it predicts about the
nature of Matthew’s own impending role in the twins’ binary orbit. Amid the father’s monologue about the
spontaneous nature of inspiration, Matthew fidgets with Isabelle’s tin lighter,
not paying attention. When the father calls him out on his behavior, Matthew apologetically
explains the discovery he’s made in the course of his brief distraction. Upon
placing the lighter on the table he noticed that the lighter’s length is
exactly that of the diagonal of the plaid pattern of the tablecloth, and that
further investigation revealed that every other measurement (height, width,
depth) of the lighter is equal to some dimension of the same pattern. Matthew demonstrates
all the places and configurations it fits into; between two plates, the length
between the knuckles on Isa’s ring finger, etc.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8PU0D54AfOhuWZ0DOUpI6wH2vVdM2lUaO6zyWZJM5M4Gu6lUWi6hGTPrtyIEUWbwAwclrDd9gMShTPosZHUaRntZyUvWtTKsVUKtchjDI7Ao3ShhxitVLEDkrGvQn8osMQ6okTUh1rVA/s1600/dreamers-cosmic-dinner-party.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8PU0D54AfOhuWZ0DOUpI6wH2vVdM2lUaO6zyWZJM5M4Gu6lUWi6hGTPrtyIEUWbwAwclrDd9gMShTPosZHUaRntZyUvWtTKsVUKtchjDI7Ao3ShhxitVLEDkrGvQn8osMQ6okTUh1rVA/s320/dreamers-cosmic-dinner-party.jpg" width="320" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">4. “I was noticing
that the more you look at everything; this table, the objects on it, the
refrigerator, this room, your nose…the world, suddenly you realize that there’s
some kind of cosmic harmony of shapes and sizes. I was just wondering why? I
don’t know why that is… I know that it is.”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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Matthew has this revelation, not outside, but
at a cramped and dimly lit dinner table in a small kitchen by simple accident,
and thereby illustrates the father’s point of spontaneous inspiration perfectly.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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The father, genuinely engaged by Matthew, adds
to the epiphany. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“We look around us and what
do we see?...Complete chaos! But, when viewed from above, viewed as it were, by
god, everything fits together. You have a very interesting friend here,” </i>he
declares to Theo and Isa,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> “more
interesting, I suspect, than you know.”</i> The father goes to the topic of the
student demonstrations and his children’s appeal of their viability. The father
says directly to Theo, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Before you can
change the world you must realize that you yourself are a part of it. You can’t
just be on the outside looking in.” <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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After dinner Theo and Isa invite Matthew to stay with
them for the subsequent month of their parents’ absence, and in that time he assumes
the role of observer - not from above or outside, but from within. During these
almost mythical weeks, Matthew slowly realizes his objectivity in the palpable
claustrophobia of the twin’s stunted evolution and the winding flat, much like
the claustrophobic dinner table, where all the details came together first.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha5tcVyp7Fu3BtIsR3fLRnJnOjybNYTUHggScbdTZP2BQ26kJg8_52AkVfC57qVIKrJiMOzP3LNrHV9vGByD60dB2_hUrzpDBA2nLO6MzsCB0Z8xKLuIhzI4mc0t-kTtvzKCouWYS8LR8/s1600/protectedimage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha5tcVyp7Fu3BtIsR3fLRnJnOjybNYTUHggScbdTZP2BQ26kJg8_52AkVfC57qVIKrJiMOzP3LNrHV9vGByD60dB2_hUrzpDBA2nLO6MzsCB0Z8xKLuIhzI4mc0t-kTtvzKCouWYS8LR8/s1600/protectedimage.jpg" /></a>
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">In
their time apart from the broader goings on of May ‘68, the twins include
Matthew (as somewhat of a play-thing) in their private film-derived language,
and use it to further dismantle reality and one another. The game of it evolves
more deeply from his participation. Without a cinematheque, Theo Isa and
Matthew impersonate films from the reels imprinted in their cinephilic minds.
Sometimes it is mere sport – for which wrong guesses are punished with sexual
hazing - and sometimes it is integrated into their person as bodily as a mother
tongue. In the same way, Bertolucci grafts the scenes being evoked by the
characters into the very skin of his film, which is its own kind of penetrative
act. For the three dreamers and for Bertolucci, the prism of cinema - itself a
screening from and framing of reality – is the only means through which they
can understand or accept that reality. Matthew - the sexual, ideological,
critical, spatial, emotional penetrator of this world, sees and understands
this.</span>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is such a fragile architecture though. Just as the
airlessness of a film-watching experience can be shattered by a cough, a phone,
a lobby door opening and allowing sounds and light to filter in, so too the
sanctity of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">quartier des enfants</i>
can be ruptured buy the persistence of reality from without. The formative
course of their alienation too gives rise to the very contradictions, plateaus,
oversaturation, analysis, and redundancies that dissolve the seeming perfection
of that exile. That's what makes the story so rich. Through their total love of
film and their cannibalistic use of it as part of their identities, it becomes
clear that Theo Isa and even Matthew had “occupied nowhere” long before they
sealed themselves off in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">quartier des
enfants</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-58694177946193345912011-11-28T15:15:00.001-08:002011-12-07T14:42:41.965-08:00OCCUPY NOWHERE: Akutagawa Rynosuke (1892-1927)<br />
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNBeVfUF0O0QxKhnL7gDZFn34VnXTNTRRhTNyLWchsnDv14yHqzzBO7QtcoiOkVN9gxpvS53RTins7cNVw-kxvRhcLARDVzV9Ftj42Rnbmlg-2uicnCepNARkKNu4rHg0ybIRr81m_zdo/s1600/240px-Akutagawa_Ryunosuke_photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNBeVfUF0O0QxKhnL7gDZFn34VnXTNTRRhTNyLWchsnDv14yHqzzBO7QtcoiOkVN9gxpvS53RTins7cNVw-kxvRhcLARDVzV9Ftj42Rnbmlg-2uicnCepNARkKNu4rHg0ybIRr81m_zdo/s200/240px-Akutagawa_Ryunosuke_photo.jpg" width="153" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“As for my vague
anxiety about my future I think I analyzed it all in </i>A Fool’s Life (1927)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, except for a social factor, namely the
shadow of feudalism cast over my life. This I omitted purposely, not at all certain
that I could really clarify the social context in which I lived.” </i>-Akutagawa (1927, in his suicide note)</div>
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In 1915 the prolific Japanese writer Akutagawa Rynosuke penned
the novella <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rashomon</i> which - combined
with another of his stories titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In A
Grove</i> - became the basis for Kurosawa Akira’s cinematic “shot heard round
the world,” as well as an American adaptation called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Outrage</i> (1964) by Martin Ritt, starring Paul Newman. Like Kurosawa after him, Akutagawa reinterpreted
Japanese folkloric traditions and mined the caverns of his own dismal history
in a quest for linguistic mastery, unflinchingly cinematic in his clarity
despite his choice of medium. Akutagawa’s
two main phases of literary output could be generalized in the former by
folkloric/historical extracts, and in the latter by autobiographical extracts. All throughout, one constant exists; the
dissolution of “truth” or “fact” through the blending of reality and fantasy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjl8v7Z0ksiWrmpf-BaqFZeR79USaHCA6YrAO4d3h9GSpZ480PLFnlkkl_gXUAjSOyyY491FvxmUt4H4NzQco_fdfwafYJXZ8IUZs5MQMyIZMphfdeQ7ZVFrHBbNrdxvja11pZ_PNTss/s1600/hellscreen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjl8v7Z0ksiWrmpf-BaqFZeR79USaHCA6YrAO4d3h9GSpZ480PLFnlkkl_gXUAjSOyyY491FvxmUt4H4NzQco_fdfwafYJXZ8IUZs5MQMyIZMphfdeQ7ZVFrHBbNrdxvja11pZ_PNTss/s200/hellscreen.jpg" width="126" /></a>Akutagawa’s later autobiographical works, such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Fool’s Life</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cogwheels</i> were dedicated to a character (himself) ill-at-ease in the
purposeless patterns of daily life, whose obsessive dejection is the playground
for revelation, no matter how pained. The
diary chronicle <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cogwheels</i> charts
Akutagawa’s rise to a hallucinatory tipping point, steeped in the anxieties of
one afeared of losing their mind. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Fool’s Life</i> is a poetic volume of
epigrams (numbered 1-51) that express “moral and philosophical reflections,
parables and metaphors” as Akutagawa collides pure fiction, autobiography, and
sheer musing seamlessly. It is this particular
focus that inducts Akutagawa into the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Occupy
Nowhere</i> conversation. The character
of his self undergoes existential upheaval while exiled-in-plain-sight by the
tides of expectation and the mundane. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcFr79kQr6XCZ8iR-SAWcE-HrR0gcYVxODmnJ3cciy8WVcd0qga9SsvrpeIWXTQI5Oag7vh-_uPGvG8a6xwRXy4zWTaYCgfaFrzOVktafEZILFw2TL2vlZSGZarHvW-FQC1AMLkMjZda0/s1600/akutagawa2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcFr79kQr6XCZ8iR-SAWcE-HrR0gcYVxODmnJ3cciy8WVcd0qga9SsvrpeIWXTQI5Oag7vh-_uPGvG8a6xwRXy4zWTaYCgfaFrzOVktafEZILFw2TL2vlZSGZarHvW-FQC1AMLkMjZda0/s200/akutagawa2.jpg" width="168" /></a>To celebrate Akutagawa’s consequential contribution to
cinema, and the undeniable cinema of his language, I have included several excerpts
from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Fool’s Life.</i> Consider how
each, in their brevity, resonates with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Occupy
Nowhere’s</i> emotional core, and how Akutagawa interprets so many shades of escape
or disenfranchisement – physical, emotional, psychological - which are dismaying
but ultimately revealing. He observes
that which can only be expressed by one inhabiting that disenfranchisement, and
also that which escapes them – as reflected in the opening quote above. That sentiment of not knowing how to clarify
his own social context is reminiscent of the same incapacity held by the first
Occupy Wallstreet protestors. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This first selection entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Self,</i> is altogether a swan song for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Occupy Nowhere</i>, wholly about formative escape. The exact volume that contains the stories
referenced here can be found inexpensively on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hell-Screen-Cogwheels-Fools-Life/dp/0941419037/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1322522540&sr=8-2-spell">amazon</a> and even at <a href="http://brickbatbooks.blogspot.com/2008/11/new-arrival-from-japan.html">Brick Bat Books</a> in South Philadelphia.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<u>5. SELF<o:p></o:p></u></div>
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With a
graduate, sitting at a café table, puffing at one cigarette after another. He hardly opened his mouth. But listened intently to the graduate’s
words.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Today I
spent half a day riding in a car.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“On
business, I suppose?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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His senior,
cheek reclining on palm, replied extremely casually.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Huh? –
Just felt like it.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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The words
opened up for him an unknown realm - close to the gods, a realm of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Self.</i>
It was painful. And ecstatic .<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The café
was cramped. Under a painting of the god
Pan, in a red pot, a gum tree. Its fleshly
leaves. Limp<o:p></o:p></div>
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<u>3. HOME<o:p></o:p></u></div>
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In the
outskirts in a room on the second floor he slept and woke. Maybe the foundation was shaky, the second
floor somehow seemed to tilt.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On this
second floor he and his aunt constantly quarreled. Nor was there a time when his foster parents
had not had to intervene. And yet, above
all others, it was his aunt he loved. All
her life alone, when he was in his twenties she was almost sixty.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the
outskirts in this room on the second floor, that those who loved each other
caused each other misery troubled him. Feeling
sick at the rooms tilting.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<u>7. PAINTING<o:p></o:p></u></div>
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All at once
he was struck. Standing in front of a
bookshop looking at a collection of paintings by Van Gogh, it hit him. This was painting. Of course, these Van Gogh’s were merely photo
reproductions. But even so, he could
feel in them a self rising intensely to the surface. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The passion
of these paintings renewed his vision. He
saw now the undulations of a tree’s branching, the curve of a woman’s cheek. <o:p></o:p></div>
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One
overcast autumn dusk outside the city he had walked through an underpass. There
at the far side of the embankment stood a cart. As he walked by he had the feeling that
somebody had passed this way before him. Who? – There was for him no longer need to
question. In his twenty-three year old
mind, an ear lopped off, a Dutchman, in his mouth a long-stemmed pipe, on the
sullen landscape set piercing eyes. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<u>30. RAIN<o:p></o:p></u></div>
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On a big
bed with her, talking of this and that. Outside
the bedroom window rain was falling. The
blossoms of crinum must be rotting away. Her face still seemed to linger in moonlight. But talking with her was no longer not
tiresome. Lying on his stomach, quietly
lighting a cigarette he realized the days he spent with her had already
amounted to seven years.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Am I in
love with this woman?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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He
wondered. Even to his self-scrutinizing self the answer came as a surprise.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“I still am.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<u>51. DEFEAT<o:p></o:p></u></div>
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The hand taking up the pen had
started to tremble. He drooled. His head, only after a 0.8 dose of Veronal,
did it have any clarity. But only then
for half an hour or an hour. In this
semi-darkness day to day he lived. The
blade nicked, a slim sword for a stick.<o:p></o:p></div>
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**Look forward to a post about the film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Portrait of Hell</i> (1969), adapted from Akutagawa’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hell Screen.**</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-53703510759257243942011-11-22T13:08:00.001-08:002011-12-07T14:43:23.435-08:00OCCUPY NOWHERE: THE SKIN I LIVE IN<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
**spoilers**<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1AVWaNtTmnDVNsVVYWYbiN-jLaVaMpIz0Fm5CQUb16Fqpcxno5nVRM61wTCAif3UxRe5k3lXKOS3_N4Y6f3Quv9p4NHS478ezUjK4JnjbZ5LU3KDjaWuIVIvHQ4n4IynDf9wadrTj1cI/s1600/the-skin-i-live-in-movie-poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1AVWaNtTmnDVNsVVYWYbiN-jLaVaMpIz0Fm5CQUb16Fqpcxno5nVRM61wTCAif3UxRe5k3lXKOS3_N4Y6f3Quv9p4NHS478ezUjK4JnjbZ5LU3KDjaWuIVIvHQ4n4IynDf9wadrTj1cI/s320/the-skin-i-live-in-movie-poster.jpg" width="164" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSMjqfi280jDsvpUdk_HzDXpejedQCWgUChN_IPMEll51Za7TkU5eLyyfcz1AZMUiFSm2aTPAvcXbzZEzLPiB5MWxIbtN002jGIDRaYXtIDb9hMYsXT1BY-jueK5GMw0MAjWrUXqZaNHs/s1600/skin4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="107" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSMjqfi280jDsvpUdk_HzDXpejedQCWgUChN_IPMEll51Za7TkU5eLyyfcz1AZMUiFSm2aTPAvcXbzZEzLPiB5MWxIbtN002jGIDRaYXtIDb9hMYsXT1BY-jueK5GMw0MAjWrUXqZaNHs/s200/skin4.jpg" width="200" /></a>Almodovar’s
latest fits right into the OCCUPY NOWHERE fold, and brings the shared idea of
“formative seclusion” more inward (literally) than any other film to be
discussed in this column. It is also the first example of forced seclusion. Perhaps
it is the stained-glass makings on protagonist Vera’s (Elena Anaya) body that brings
percentages to mind, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Skin I Live
In</i> gives new meaning to “the 99%.” So much of human identity exists beneath
the corporeal surface – residing in memory, desire and cognition – despite the
staggering significance we afford the exterior 1%. Vera’s sculpted surface, and
her darkly concealing eyes evoke notions of icebergs; how the majority of their
mass (upwards of 90%) is actually beneath the waves. Nothing of what is exposed
can express what lies beneath. Vera, imprisoned in numerous ways by the
calculating Dr. Robert Ledgard (a severe Antonio Banderas), turns inward on her
own 99% - and cultivates a true identity of self awareness and freedom.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKGqvKRznOdL6_MmgRxHixbdChspFkX2hZJw6Rinot33HBeNMa8425GHq3l2RnaTXFhr1XOpxNT0lRqOv1p9dpKWISAunuYZ3RbMsJrT2JHZlnF4jBxPnCq1xPzQSHbgLriwhwNm3Xa1w/s1600/The-Skin-I-Live-In-Theatrical-Still.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKGqvKRznOdL6_MmgRxHixbdChspFkX2hZJw6Rinot33HBeNMa8425GHq3l2RnaTXFhr1XOpxNT0lRqOv1p9dpKWISAunuYZ3RbMsJrT2JHZlnF4jBxPnCq1xPzQSHbgLriwhwNm3Xa1w/s200/The-Skin-I-Live-In-Theatrical-Still.png" width="200" /></a>Dr.
Robert Ledgard - a surgical genius, performer of two face-transplants - addresses
an auditorium. He reveals aims to develop a synthetic <span style="color: #262626;">skin replacement, boasting its resilience against
burns and mosquito bites in “animal” testing</span>. Not only has Ledgard produced
the skin, he has tested it on a human subject, Vera. Like the sheer swatches of
flesh he grows in petri dishes at the secret medical facility beneath his
mansion, Ledgard’s agenda to “improve the species” is a veil upon his obsession.
The fervor to develop this miracle skin arose from his wife’s tragic demise. Burned
head to toe in an automobile fire but survived, she leapt to her death upon
glimpsing her tortured reflection. She was unable to understand her own identity
as entwined with her visage, which is the films conceptual crux. Though
Ledgard’s intentions are far more personal than professional, the ethics and
taboo surrounding his intra-special trans-genetic method (combining human and
pig genetic material to firm and strengthen human skin) are timely considering
the rate of medical and technological advances, congruent with raging debates
over enterprises like stem-cell research, cloning, and genetically modified
organisms. In a sense, the climate of controversy and the lethargy of ethical
courses is what forces Ledgard to occupy his own nowhere within which his
innovation can be viciously unbound. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3znv89Qxt4Vy2QIgiF8IseUZYWKVuD8-XukMB7F2vfTn0mZqa0HwMa2e7GN8rN_d4fzGXLF5yiQW9hdwXQQ4QabtrXkm2onk4yE4sJWZ2vguXL-m3rMT7lANh59nnGrC1wL-3t3Ystck/s1600/the-skin-i-live-in04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3znv89Qxt4Vy2QIgiF8IseUZYWKVuD8-XukMB7F2vfTn0mZqa0HwMa2e7GN8rN_d4fzGXLF5yiQW9hdwXQQ4QabtrXkm2onk4yE4sJWZ2vguXL-m3rMT7lANh59nnGrC1wL-3t3Ystck/s200/the-skin-i-live-in04.jpg" width="200" /></a>As <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Skin I Live In</i> sway’s backward in
time through the dreams of Ledgard and his prisoner Vera (between which a
sexual dynamic arises), a new character, Vincent, enters the melodramatic fray.
This charismatic lost young man crashes a gala party at Ledgard’s mansion.
While high on pills, he has an unsavory ambiguous sexual encounter with Norma, the
doctor’s emotionally unstable daughter. Ledgard stumbles upon his unconscious
daughter outside who awakes into screams and sobs. He assumes the worst – rape
- deciphers the Vincent’s identity, and kidnaps him. Ledgard holes Vincent up
in a dark cave beneath his mansion, chained to the wall, starving, with only a
blue tub full of drinking water. During this time, a very damaged Norma,
commits suicide in the same manner as her mother. Vincent eventually graduates
to small meals of rice, the ability to read magazines, and changes of clothes. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The worst comes as Ledgard indentures Vincent
as an unwitting surgical pet. The stunning twist of the film is that Ledgard forces
Vincent into rigorous sexual reassignment. Vincent moves into the mansion
proper and is locked in as minimalist a room as can be conceived, monitored by
a camera. The only communication allowed is through the intercom, to the
caretaker of the estate. Food, books, magazines, and art supplies are delivered
via an electronic dumbwaiter. Over the course of several years Ledgard sculpts
Vincent’s entire body, down to the structure of his face, to bear an uncanny
resemblance to his deceased wife. Thus, from the clay of Vincent, Vera is born.
A stunning dark eyed beauty, whose every glance is as empty as it is full, and
swells with as much fatalism as vitality. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlE5Gpg5u-E75fchlTh-MItPGBE-iWukojF_g5wc6pdYkmDSkt21_GNxUqp_A4RQCyihF_NEunhJcfH2lb1p80UF5O0Rf-2C8SSBrm3AEnJkF-TzZI6SrbyfZU2jom0J2ZyIfP8KlwSCE/s1600/skin_that_i_live_in180.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlE5Gpg5u-E75fchlTh-MItPGBE-iWukojF_g5wc6pdYkmDSkt21_GNxUqp_A4RQCyihF_NEunhJcfH2lb1p80UF5O0Rf-2C8SSBrm3AEnJkF-TzZI6SrbyfZU2jom0J2ZyIfP8KlwSCE/s200/skin_that_i_live_in180.jpg" width="200" /></a>Living in the skin of Vera - one of many levels
of captivity - Vincent culls a personal language that eluded him in his bouts
of unrequited love, drugs or craft (making
widow arrangements for his mother’s small vintage fashion boutique). Underneath
his aloofness and drug use, Vincent seemed dissatisfied with his life,
especially in his affections for a coworker - a woman who loves only women. In
the reductive atmosphere of his imprisonment, Vincent/Vera discovers the
discipline of yoga. Vera learns two
powerful truths; that a hidden place of solitude and infinity resides within,
and that above all “art keeps you free.” Vera scrawls these words on the wall
amidst an epic chronicle of ideas and observations drawn floor to ceiling. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A relationship exists between Vera as a
sculpturo-surgical patchwork, Ledgard as the sculptor, and the layered fabric works
of artist Louise Bourgeois (seen in books by Vera). Bourgeois taps into themes
of sexual fragility, concealed emotional trauma, and “architecture as a visual
expression of memory.” Almodovar interprets the existential challenge of
holding the memory of oneself (the 99%) after the physical architecture of ones
body (the 1%) is changed. Inspired by Bourgeois and his own circumstances,
Vincent/Vera writes, draws and sculpts. For the first time he creates from a
source of ingenuity tapped deep within. Later, in Vincent’s climactic savage
bid for freedom, he embraces Vera Cruz, and kisses a picture of Vincent goodbye.
A gesture built upon much introspection.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Upon returning to his
mother’s shop, Vincent-as-Vera reveals his/her true identity. Here, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Skin I Live In</i> twists its morally
objectionable events into something devastatingly and strangely soulful, as something is alight between Vera (now a woman)
and Vincent’s unrequited lesbian love, still working at the shop. Thus, the
film concludes upon an end-which-is-a-beginning. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Skin I Live In</i> builds the foundational significance for all the
possibilities unseen after the final frame, but which were laid by the destructive-cum-formative
experience of Vincent/Vera’s forced occupation of nowhere.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-77127393820539448802011-11-15T13:29:00.001-08:002011-12-07T14:42:55.894-08:00OCCUPY NOWHERE: The Woman With Red Hair (1979)<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“The Woman’s hair was reddish blonde. Lifeless and fake-looking. The color
suited her rough skin.”</i> <sup>1 </sup><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHBTeHEIFpCoqQBvZOPazpOLpMtJhj16EBoOpVlzTQ1JVrjTmduVcZIisDuF-1gFPfyJ4i7MLSwoD_JnqMb7xlTNucz85LKknqYD78KYTe5PFO-BImTr1YPY0jK6NrBXa0qSHuHFJfNp4/s1600/header.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHBTeHEIFpCoqQBvZOPazpOLpMtJhj16EBoOpVlzTQ1JVrjTmduVcZIisDuF-1gFPfyJ4i7MLSwoD_JnqMb7xlTNucz85LKknqYD78KYTe5PFO-BImTr1YPY0jK6NrBXa0qSHuHFJfNp4/s320/header.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
1. If the first Pinku Eiga one saw were Kumashiro
Tatsumi’s<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> The Woman With Red Hair </b>(Akai
Kami no Onna)<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">, </b>one would be starting
arguably at the top, as he is considered to have brought the form to an
artistic height. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Woman With Red Hair,</b>
recently screened at the 2011 NY Film Festival, is an adaptation of Nakagami Kenji’s
equally spare short story <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Red Hair</b>, which
entails little more than a grueling sexual marathon between Kozo, a rugged
construction worker with no conscience, and the nameless redheaded woman (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Junko Miyashita</span>) he
picks up on the road, as the two escape working-class malaise and personal
history. In many ways it stands as the basest most extraction of Bernardo
Bertolucci’s <b>Last Tango In Paris </b>(1974),
the inspiration for which is that Bertolucci once
dreamed of seeing a beautiful nameless woman on the street and having sex with
her without ever knowing w<span style="color: #262626;">ho she was. </span>Though described here in detail,
the joy of Kumashiro’s film is not spoiled at all by foreknowledge. Its utterly
earthly expression is its purpose. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The
Woman With Red Hair</b> should be seen for its gritty non-intellectualism,
where that sole concentration on the body, absent of any morality or “story,”
is absolute. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-DuGoFt3sWwbJn5V97mOgulMQLJiUGBrZIUxtMuWhdEKTtj70S8Cq_zSyXE6TU9Zjytt34b8U1Ic1e6h-QFr04_QQMddWtUdaiB9dO0mQCkhLGIiz0ureDs7yKzLx-b5B01fvp5ETMys/s1600/824033The+Woman+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-DuGoFt3sWwbJn5V97mOgulMQLJiUGBrZIUxtMuWhdEKTtj70S8Cq_zSyXE6TU9Zjytt34b8U1Ic1e6h-QFr04_QQMddWtUdaiB9dO0mQCkhLGIiz0ureDs7yKzLx-b5B01fvp5ETMys/s320/824033The+Woman+5.jpg" width="320" /></a>2. The opening sequence says a
great deal rather simply. With the camera set low, the redheaded woman walks toward
us astride cars and trucks in the middle of a busy road. Framed by the ground
and the arc of a distant overpass, she emerges from the behind the crest of the
road. Just as in the opening lines of the book (written above), the first visual
detail is the woman’s hair. The woman is established immediately as an object
(the hair), and as a motion contrary to the industrial currents of the day (a
meaning more significant to Kozo [the driver of the truck in question] than herself).
Cut to a shot that scans the ocean and the surrounding seaside industrial
landscape, and ends on the emergence of an oncoming truck. Elegantly quick editing
captures the woman and the truck’s crossing with a sense of electricity. After
the freeze-frame title, the film cuts to a close-up of dirt being dumped from
that same truck at a construction site. The sounds of heavy machinery resound. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-0AR8JQDwHRpUKBQSt3cOr_993hRzuZqXskS9clvdwMVXCayPvQRLK2EvK0rLv4h7cvNIKtVGKbCyNXN7DQS_NPoH98T3qZBt8NgsVf2uIPE2DT0Sa7XKKxcOjCwLj7sIS4bbn1VeXWg/s1600/519548.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="83" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-0AR8JQDwHRpUKBQSt3cOr_993hRzuZqXskS9clvdwMVXCayPvQRLK2EvK0rLv4h7cvNIKtVGKbCyNXN7DQS_NPoH98T3qZBt8NgsVf2uIPE2DT0Sa7XKKxcOjCwLj7sIS4bbn1VeXWg/s200/519548.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvxUbAqMyFyavKpWoNmrVaDT5s_nqpFQWNOwZMkCEgKEs1xBQLTjMXQeKhTYshdZdPShzvj1MJNSFP4Id70oXvOHtwC4hukQHHO250VQ6Ctx0Ow8_TaugibqPbhHoehI6pFJccCzV82Us/s1600/584463The+Woman+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="82" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvxUbAqMyFyavKpWoNmrVaDT5s_nqpFQWNOwZMkCEgKEs1xBQLTjMXQeKhTYshdZdPShzvj1MJNSFP4Id70oXvOHtwC4hukQHHO250VQ6Ctx0Ow8_TaugibqPbhHoehI6pFJccCzV82Us/s200/584463The+Woman+6.jpg" width="200" /></a>3. Kozo; Marlon Brando to the redhead’s Maria
Schneider, is introduced with every bit of his malingering and unscrupulous
character on display. Kozo delivers the truck and conspires with his friend/coworker
Takao to leave early. A young woman, yet to be named, sidles Takao to give him
a lunch. He is indifferent. These events are intercut with another sequence in
which Kozo and Takao (in different clothes) have secluded this same young woman
in what looks like a seaside parking-garage and gang rape her. The oppositional
sounds of the ocean during the rape, and of machinery during the excavation, amplify
the already disjunctive nature of the time/place shifts and establish a kind of
seasick violence to both acts. The back and forth cutting conceals how
Kumashiro favors the “long take,” and prefers simply to slowly zoom in and out,
or apply handheld techniques to keep actions immediate. The events at the
construction site emerge as the present. Driving away, Kozo and Takao reveal through
ebullient conversation that the rape occurred three months prior and that the
woman victimized - the woman who now clamors for Takao’s attention - is their
boss’s daughter Kazuko. <o:p></o:p></div>
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4. In as unsavory and pointed a way as John
Boorman’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Deliverance </b>(1972), sexual
rape is used to reflect the rape of resources (material and human). Herein lies
the film’s subtext - a vague but physical revelation about the rapacious
development of ¾ century Japan earned on the backs of laborers who feel no
connection to the result, or even the process. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Buildings come down and go up at a pace unmatched in other cities of
the world; six months’ absence from a major Tokyo district is sometimes enough
to render it virtually unrecognizable.”<sup> 2</sup></i> To underscore this point during the rape, Kazuko
realizes the futility of her resistance and shouts <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Okay okay!! But not here.”</i>
Kozo replies, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Any place’s the same,”</i>
and the rape continues as planned. The backfire comes later when Kazuko, the
brunt of some revenge act against her father’s rule of law, becomes pregnant
and expects Takao to “take responsibility.” Her logic dictates that Takao is
the father because he was the first one inside her. This thread ironically
produces the only opportunity for tenderness in the whole film because Takao eventually
rises to the occasion, and the two bolt to Kyoto to start a new scraping life
together. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">5. “The days when a laborer rhythmically dug a
hole and mixed cement with a shovel were over. In three or four hours an
excavator could to the work of five men working three days. ….Instead of
swinging a pick you pulled a handle. Though he [Kozo] loved cruising around in
trucks, [He] hated being sent out by the company to operate excavators and
bulldozers at other work sites.”</i> <sup>1 <o:p></o:p></sup></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXv5uq3rd06B2gE51SbNGV2mezEtILluuwJata8bVKenIydtUoqBrKBD9Hq-aQdR6fnDb4sLjwZZVFN5aP-ilJTyl3_0QIFqoqOElMe_0lnvtRhOWX2SpNUxAOLzpew_Q-WEw1FrhYZlw/s1600/woman-red-hair-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXv5uq3rd06B2gE51SbNGV2mezEtILluuwJata8bVKenIydtUoqBrKBD9Hq-aQdR6fnDb4sLjwZZVFN5aP-ilJTyl3_0QIFqoqOElMe_0lnvtRhOWX2SpNUxAOLzpew_Q-WEw1FrhYZlw/s320/woman-red-hair-2.jpg" width="320" /></a>6. Later that day, Kozo picks up the redheaded
woman at a gas station bus stop in the rain, not realizing they had passed
earlier. He brings her back to his squalid cramped apartment, and the two commence
a symbiotic coital escapade devoid of identity. As long as the rains defer
construction jobs, Kozo and the redhead isolate themselves indefinitely. Their
malaise is existential but their ultimate act of reclusion is diverting rather
than introspective. Uniquely, Kozo and the redhead understand and assert that very
aversion. Whenever they feel an admission or inquiry bubbling up, they dive
into antidotal sex acts as a proxy. What raises the couple’s entrenchment above
a mere exercise in salacious misogyny (a benchmark of the Pink Film industry)
is their intent towards mutual exploitation and adherence to anonymity (another
quality shared with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Last Tango)</b>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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7. Kumashiro presents
his content not intellectually, but within a framing that is bodily. Thus it is
dangerous to flirt too strongly with conceptualization when discussing <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Woman With Red Hair </b>without overstepping
the bounds of a story deliberately concerned with surface values. French
conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin of the Philadelphia Orchestra poignantly
observes of his own discipline, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“the
first quality of a conductor is to be absolutely without afterthought, without
anything between the mind and the gesture. As soon as we start to think about
the physicality of the thing, I think we are lost.” </i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF-GNK8NaZAYs1PjobLQqGZz2lOLEf7ArHK3b_BE7NU5v7z8Zpqlh5D-7TTxcMLMHCk84N2WXkrJgdE-U4eM_hu8kHe2MXjNUc2UB1HCrsB61rX0cJp3UDIO7aPVKEQ0jIi4U8cUx4xHY/s1600/images-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF-GNK8NaZAYs1PjobLQqGZz2lOLEf7ArHK3b_BE7NU5v7z8Zpqlh5D-7TTxcMLMHCk84N2WXkrJgdE-U4eM_hu8kHe2MXjNUc2UB1HCrsB61rX0cJp3UDIO7aPVKEQ0jIi4U8cUx4xHY/s400/images-1.jpeg" width="400" /></a>8. Nakagami, author of the source novella, is
even more insistent of the redhead’s anonymity than Kumashiro, simply calling
the story <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Red Hair</i></b> and not <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Woman With…,</i></b> She is defined by façade
even in the title. Only the fact that she has two children (one three years and
the other four), the impression that she is escaping an abusive relationship,
and that she learned her favorite sexual position from her husband, are expressed.
Yet Kumashiro makes it stirringly evident that her history claws from within. Director
and author alike, fully appreciate the potential of withholding her history. The
audiences’ curiosity is activated without ever being satiated. All throughout,
torrents of emotion swell within the redhead and in true bipolarity, they spurt
out of her in sudden episodes of tears, which she alternates with sexual
elation and banal conversation. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">9. “On the way home from Sakoto’s [Kozo’s
Cousin] house, the woman wept. But Kozo had no interest in finding out about
the woman’s past. All he needed was a warm body….The woman washed her tear
streaked face at the sink and dried it with a towel, and a few minutes later
spoke in a voice that sounded as if it was someone else who had been weeping so
pitifully.”<sup>1</sup></i> Kozo
does in fact wonder about her past, with a shallow insecurity about the source
of her sexual prowess, but he quells that curiosity, as does she, by diving
into more unthinking sex.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVjf_TTUOAS1KNmz6Iy4e39Qms0pMVZkhZor9fDJCxmK8yTO12fslyNT9DbsVu8HrbEtLKR9G6_Ih3zOPkEk-yqfInDmQ9iDEvC5H27qiGFQ8zBQusE-ZqGfYk853apbVWDNFuXvv6Cv0/s1600/woman-red-hair-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVjf_TTUOAS1KNmz6Iy4e39Qms0pMVZkhZor9fDJCxmK8yTO12fslyNT9DbsVu8HrbEtLKR9G6_Ih3zOPkEk-yqfInDmQ9iDEvC5H27qiGFQ8zBQusE-ZqGfYk853apbVWDNFuXvv6Cv0/s320/woman-red-hair-1.jpg" width="320" /></a>10. With his short story <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Red Hair </b>as no exception, author Nakagami Kenji (1946-1942) is
venerated for giving voice to the Burakumin minority of Japan, himself a
Burakumin – the prejudice against whom was virulent in the early to mid 20<sup>th</sup>
century. Nakagami speaks of alienation from within an unspoken alienation, and breaks
open a gritty, unkempt, sexually unhindered, morally ambiguous swath of society.
Kumashiro’s film, made shortly after the publication of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Red Hair</b>, has the same brazen spirit of marginal individuals writhing
in marginality, which cannot help but reflect something of Japan’s then-modernity.
Like the terseness of Nakagami’s prose, Kumashiro’s use of rough Kansai accents
and carefree popular music places the film in time and buoys his characters’
evasions of a reality that is only ever shown in periphery. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">11. The
Woman With Red Hair</b> is
elementally diametric to an upcoming film in the OCCUPY NOWHERE column; Teshigahara
Hiroshi’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Woman in the Dunes</b> (1964)<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">.</b> Where <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Red Hair</b> - awash with rain, water, the sea, menstrual fluids,
semen, sweat, saliva, urine - has fundamentally to do with saturation and evasion,
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Dunes</b> pervades with depravation –
sand, heat, dryness, scraping, the panic of a man imprisoned, and his
industrious efforts to get out of a massive sand pit that he finds himself
stuck in with a woman. Both films have to do with forms of decay, and the
fragmentation of human identity into body parts, instincts, and textures. Both
films depict in different measure, and with different meanings of the word “pleasure,”
how “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the search for pleasure involves
taking hostages and exerting control over a limited environment when the world outside
is beyond one’s control.”<sup>1</sup> </i>However the glaring divide is that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Dunes</b>’ captivity is forced, and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Red Hair’s </b>hostages are elective. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(Zimmerman)</i> <o:p></o:p></div>
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12. Kozo and the Redhead’s alienation is
essentially nonparticipation-as-protest against working-class / status-quo
distastes, and a reaction to the rapidity of change. Kozo cares little for his specialized skill in
the professional sphere because it is ultimately abstract to him. In the
interim of a rainy season that halts construction, Kozo is addicted to acts of
penetration in the intimate sphere; in bed with the redhead where they perform
all manner of sexual acts which are direct and appraisable to them both. The
film’s entire metaphoric potential is drawn across this thread; industry and construction
which level history in architectural terms, parallel to sexuality which is here
used to level the past in sensual terms. The finitude of the couple’s escapism,
and the fact that mitigating circumstances (the weather) have allowed that very
escape, becomes clear to them. The final lines of the film, uttered
unexpectedly by the redhead reveal this awareness. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“It’s raining again, we can stay in bed all day. But its not always
going to rain like this.”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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13. Nakagami ends his story where it began;
with hair.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> “The woman with red hair
pressed her lips to Kozo’s throat. Her lips were wet and unbelievably warm,
thought Kozo. The red hair shone.” </i>Kumashiro interprets by freeze-framing
the woman’s face and hair in a throw of pained ecstasy as the credits roll. She
remains an object…. but an object by her own design.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1. Nakagami Kenji, Eve Zimmerman (translation by),
“The Cape: and other stories from the Japanese ghetto.” Stone Bridge Press,
2008.</i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2. Donald
Richie, “Introducing Japan.” Kodansha, 1978.</i></div>
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<br /></div>Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-31257497498441793142011-11-08T05:57:00.000-08:002011-12-07T14:43:10.108-08:00OCCUPY NOWHERE: YOUNG ADAM (2004)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL-ANdlIuAgMU-kW7kHm4UcccE4C6PvFmq626g0WPrUfnAePVaNjNs97GnMrxM8tn6zCogmmw14KEkUU9pdKlOaWLTNXqBsQtnQd59967ghU_ZDWj87eJJ3e5kLkltuZTbJsoHqnh7LI0/s1600/HEADER.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL-ANdlIuAgMU-kW7kHm4UcccE4C6PvFmq626g0WPrUfnAePVaNjNs97GnMrxM8tn6zCogmmw14KEkUU9pdKlOaWLTNXqBsQtnQd59967ghU_ZDWj87eJJ3e5kLkltuZTbJsoHqnh7LI0/s200/HEADER.jpg" width="142" /></a>1. With
eight features to his credit, Britain’s David Mackenzie (<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Asylum, Hallam Foe</b>) is somehow still below the radar of popular
discourse, which may change with two of his recent works having shown at the 20<sup>th</sup>
Annual Philadelphia Film Festival, one of which (Perfect Sense) will be
distributed theatrically in January. In his 2004 treatment of Alexander
Trocci’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Young Adam, </b>Mackenzie masterfully
exploits the sensuality of cinema, devises drama through structure, and accesses
the disclosive potential of sexuality in an ongoing investigation of human
impulse as a microcosm of social impulse.<span style="color: #1f497d;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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2. A
rippling skin of water fills the first frames of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Young Adam</b> and cuts to a solitary swan floating in the chop. The
camera holds this icon for but a moment before delving beneath the water,
revealing its dark rugged legs aflutter in the translucent blue/green. We sink
lower to riverbed debris. In its rise back to the surface, the camera closes in
on the silhouette of a woman’s body, lifeless, non-descript, floating up to the
ripples. Like the opening sequence of David Lynch’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Blue Velvet</b> - which, after a montage of idyllic and then suddenly
violent suburbia, burrows beneath the grass to reveal writhing insects - the
murky underbelly will be <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Young Adam’s </b>stage.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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3. Scotland,
after the war. Joe Taylor (Ewan McGregor) works on an old fuel barge with Leslie
(Peter Mullan) and Ella Gault (Tilda Swinton) and their young son Jim (Jack
McElhone), carting fuel cargo up and down the rivers and canals between Glasgow
and Edinburgh. Les and Joe discover the unknown woman’s body floating in the river
and fish her out. This grim catalyst precipitates a degradation of morality the
length of the film that slips between timeframes of Joe’s past with a woman named
Cathie Dimley (Emily Mortimer) and his present on the barge, as subtly as it
lists between the tone of a dream and bleak reality. Eventually a wending
portrait draws the span of time and souls together.<o:p></o:p></div>
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4. From
the start, Director/writer Mackenzie ensconces in a dour and dense mood, yet is
somehow electric in that regard. He paints a portrait of constriction. The
canals are scarcely wider than the barge that is used to traverse them, and the
tunnels are even tighter. The bowels of the barge haven’t a single opportunity
for privacy; small cabinet sized quarters sectioned off by thin walls or
curtains, a ceiling just tall enough for someone to stand, a tight and steep
staircase, dark. The outdoors, overcast. A cool muted palate and the pervasive
cold physically accentuate a sense of contraction, of shrinking space,
ambition, expectation, and the massing of disappointment. The inside of the
barge is first shown warmly, with the faintest suggestion of isolation as form
of freedom. That irony soon collapses. The slow crawl of barge life,
emblematized by the camera’s glide, weighs everything like the riverbed debris.
A flashback expresses Joe’s stifled creativity as a writer. Even the structural
non-linearity of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Young Adam</b> confines
the viewer to an unpredictable clarification of the dramatic elements.<o:p></o:p></div>
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5. We
learn that Joe is adrift, at times like the floating corpse; silent yet teeming
with a history concealed. He drifts, and deposits, and when he perceives Amontillado’s
cask 6. being mortared around him by complacency, stagnation, or expectation,
he drifts once more, always a trail of eviscerated souls behind him. He purports
to be the architect of his waywardness – an objection to commitment,
sentimentality and normalcy - but he sometimes seems the victim of its
inherency. A shot of Joe walking from bow to stern as viewed from above, gives
the impression he is standing still as the barge moves beneath him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrIHN3mwH4UEvwdTCka10kl_-HtnedJtm-h3DT1tT7NXeA2tz5IFYnxNWQDzrXZJg747cm07DmOF4jrPR-h2yDVYZuvd_FY3SM7V7o6l4-h3NlYWDoFxA6hEn9oMPUK1mZCnT2QsLw-6I/s1600/paragraph7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrIHN3mwH4UEvwdTCka10kl_-HtnedJtm-h3DT1tT7NXeA2tz5IFYnxNWQDzrXZJg747cm07DmOF4jrPR-h2yDVYZuvd_FY3SM7V7o6l4-h3NlYWDoFxA6hEn9oMPUK1mZCnT2QsLw-6I/s320/paragraph7.jpg" width="240" /></a>6. Though
much the observer, Joe learns best through touch. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I was struck by the fact that sight is hypnotized by the surfaces of
things; more than that, it can only know surfaces at a distance, meager depths
at close range. But the wetness of water felt on the hand and on the wrist is
more intimate and more convincing than its colour or even than any flat expanse
of sea. The eye, I thought, could never go to the center of things.”</i>
(Trocci, p.29) Joe’s mistrust of sight
leads him to acts of physical penetration as a primary mode of research and
experience. One of the first things we see him do is touch, from which we continually
appraise his corporeality, as does he. After plucking the woman’s body from the
water, he looks at her intently, draws her translucent petticoat over her
buttocks, and as if wanting to leave a trace of himself, places his palm gently
on the pallid skin between her shoulder blades (shown in close-up). The film too
is obsessed with surfaces; wood, water, gravel, iron, coal, skin, cobblestone,
and hypnotizes through clean gliding movements that read like caresses. Presiding
over this is the fact that a film too is bound to a surface (the screen),
therefore confinement resounds even in the medium itself.<o:p></o:p></div>
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7. Though
the draft of the narrative is slow, its dramatic movement is a powerful
undertow, and wastes no time in the commencing. Ella ties the laundry on the
line as Joe, framed by the wide river, watches the body being taken away. Through
memory-like incisions that Trocci describes as a “brainwave;” Joe’s hand
against the wet skin, a close-up of Ella’s equally corpselike lips, the dead woman’s
leg sliding off the gurney and her heel dragging in the gravel, Mackenzie draws
together death and a spark of erotic awareness between Joe and Ella. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsx4bp97WVaWePZpm8xF0RFbyF4F84xL7coJS-TZCkhoxMNiSX1EMoIk6c383p6NxWQs9zIcmWuI_wu4LYEwD_dHyomPjBvR01RFXS4avs9XjQiY47W__wPnliksyTobM4gJyTDxJ9rzM/s1600/paragraph9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="84" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsx4bp97WVaWePZpm8xF0RFbyF4F84xL7coJS-TZCkhoxMNiSX1EMoIk6c383p6NxWQs9zIcmWuI_wu4LYEwD_dHyomPjBvR01RFXS4avs9XjQiY47W__wPnliksyTobM4gJyTDxJ9rzM/s200/paragraph9.jpg" width="200" /></a>8. That
very night, Joe undertakes the first proactive steps in an affair with Ella, right
under Les’s nose. At dinner he grazes Ella’s calf with his own, testing her,
studying her microscopic reactions. He runs his hand gradually up her thigh and
under her panties, testing further until Ella removes his grasp. They remain
almost unflinchingly placid above the table, where below, like the swan and the
murk, something unclean transpires. <o:p></o:p></div>
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9. Later
that night Joe breaks away from Les at the pub, knowing Ella will be alone on
the barge. Seizing the moment they consummate their curiosity. Thereafter, Ella
becomes increasingly driven in their affair. A sense of abandon sparks life and
softness in her where there was none. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Joe’s
abandonment is like a political act, a political philosophy. He’s a libertine.
She [Ella] is going on some weird instinct about mortal spirit. So the erotic
charge is essentially mutual but is coming from a very different place. A
strange sort of eden, like being a child again.” </i>(Tilda Swinton, actress) Hers
is antidotal against marginalization, where his is an act towards it. Characteristic
of Mackenzie, the sexual exchanges are rugged and earthy, without the sheen or
idealism of more commercial fare. 11. These scenes increasingly ascribe to
personal meaning. For example, after Jim is sent off to boarding school she
says to Joe, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Every time I see him go….it
breaks my heart. He needs an education</i>.” Presumably she wants Jim to have options
other than working on the barge his entire life. As such, the demands of an
increasingly educated society alienate her from her own son and create a gulf
of loneliness that she navigates by busy work and by the diversion of a primal
enterprise with Joe. In the scene in which she expresses these feelings to Joe,
Ella bears her breasts and he kisses them in the midst of her mournful maternal
sway. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNc79Yq6Nbm-JwN2wFXjv-q93OdHXc0xFjrva4rRPP3S0MDiByftjs0-SUbFvKfh_g_gyH3gVPIs-z4Wdn6S5hV5m55assFXCtheiHFILp44e0e7qSJ0QtGQuqqWMdmshhQGjwyCZbwgE/s1600/paragraph11censored.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNc79Yq6Nbm-JwN2wFXjv-q93OdHXc0xFjrva4rRPP3S0MDiByftjs0-SUbFvKfh_g_gyH3gVPIs-z4Wdn6S5hV5m55assFXCtheiHFILp44e0e7qSJ0QtGQuqqWMdmshhQGjwyCZbwgE/s200/paragraph11censored.jpg" width="200" /></a><o:p><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">10.
These scenes increasingly ascribe to personal meaning. For example, after Jim
is sent off to boarding school she says to Joe, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Every time I see him go….it breaks my heart. He needs an education</i>.”
Presumably she wants Jim to have options other than working on the barge his
entire life. As such, the demands of an increasingly educated society alienate
her from her own son and create a gulf of loneliness that she navigates by busy
work and by the diversion of a primal enterprise with Joe. In the scene in
which she expresses these feelings to Joe, Ella bears her breasts and he kisses
them in the midst of her mournful maternal sway. </span>
</o:p></div>
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<o:p>11. </o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px;">Past and present, everything Joe does is an
analysis of his own loneliness,</span></div>
an
antidote, but of a confirmation that that loneliness isn’t exceptional. What
sparks his passion is any confrontation with a soul as electrically lonely as
his own, which is as affixed to that loneliness as he is. In a strangely Zen
exercise, he probes into these individuals – literally through sex - as a way
to understand himself through them as a reflection. On this point Joe Taylor
finds a conceptual kinship with William James (Jeremy Renner) of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Hurt Locker </b>(2008), a film that also
favors personal storytelling over explicit socio-politics. Like Joe he
relegates himself from society as a deliberate mode of actualization. As with
Joe’s pattern of sexuality, James, part of a US bomb-squad in the Middle-East, only
sparks when in the field, faced with perilous but empirical matters,
situational analysis and survival. He is equally tactile, equally stilled on
the surface, equally spare on words, equally at odds with expectation and
normalcy. Much like James’s reaction to banal domesticity, what diffuses Joe’s passion
most is when those lonely souls he courts become comfortable and expectant,
shattering the mutual veneer of a dismal worldview and eliminating their
viability as a test subject. Ella does this by anticipating their marriage and future.
In the course of his exteriorized self-study, Like James’s reckless decisions
in the field, Joe is astounded by what acts he is willing to partake of in
anticipation of a consequence which never befalls him; citing the sexual hazing
scene with Cathie that undulates between rape and play. Her unspoken unblinking
forgiveness afterward signals her invalidity as a mirror and is his queue to
move on.<br />
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12. As
attained easily on a barge, the peripheral world remains so for most of the film.
The viewer has only passing revelations on which to hinge a socio-political subtext,
as do the characters, which follow the dead woman’s story through newspaper
articles. After Les discovers the affair, seemingly by Ella’s machination, he
leaves and Joe finds himself assuming his post. In a conversation with Joe,
Ella puts forward Les’s fear that “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Once
fuel rationing stops, the trucks’ll take over</i>.” Just after this remark, the
barge is shown easing through a dense fog. So dense that Ella must direct from
the bow with shouts. Joe spies prisoners paving a road. The infrastructure that
will eventually supercede the canals is being built-up before Joe’s eyes. This
moment resounds with notes of entrapment; that of Joe having inherited a scraping
conventional life, that of a systemic uncertainty about his navigating a
changing world, that of guilt. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuoMgpt3_1DPDNMRHfMMANbB5YQrbDkV7E6SiksoI9IhNoJiHa0N-dOEAWOz8vtdbBEP0COyB4zyTXumGo8KK4vUnVXjdEKnryeVt2BKNemNM4C0IKF2ZzHIe4LJ0d2RelkGgqyfBjBXI/s1600/paragraph14.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuoMgpt3_1DPDNMRHfMMANbB5YQrbDkV7E6SiksoI9IhNoJiHa0N-dOEAWOz8vtdbBEP0COyB4zyTXumGo8KK4vUnVXjdEKnryeVt2BKNemNM4C0IKF2ZzHIe4LJ0d2RelkGgqyfBjBXI/s320/paragraph14.png" width="320" /></a>13. At
this point of the film Ella’s brother-in-law dies, having fallen off his Lorrie
and then run over by a bus; an off-screen event coupling even the industry of
roads with death. As if inviting full collapse, Ella asks her grieving yet
brazen sister Gwen (Therese Bradley) to stay on the barge. In a transparent scheme
of “going to the pictures,” Gwen and Joe have sex in an alleyway in town; an
unsavory means to an end for Gwen to spite her sister’s seeming happiness, and
for Joe to incite a way out. Joe moves into a shared flat in the city and
becomes infectiously drawn to the trial of one David Gordon, a plumber and
family man convicted of murdering the woman found by Joe and Les with whom Mr.
Gordon was having casual relations. Joe’s intimate knowledge of the circumstances
of the woman’s death; that she is in fact Cathie Dimley, that she cannot swim,
that she slipped into the river after telling Joe she was pregnant with his
child, that he did nothing to save her, that he covered up the evidence of
their clandestine sexual contract that night (revealed in bits of savage
dramatic irony) is Mr. Gordon’s only salvation, yet the guilt does not impel
Joe to speak out in other than an ineffectual unsigned letter which he drops at
the court<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. </i>Joe writes his confession
in a phone booth, where even the airing of the truth is conditional, confined
and anonymous.<span style="color: #1f497d;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">14. Young
Adam</i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> is in a sense a post war
story. Not just WWII. Post any war. That story about a society that’s so
traumatized by so much violence for so many years and trying to get itself
together and trying to construct all sorts of boundaries, and intellectuals
feeling alienated and not wanting to join in… </i>Unable to relate to his
generation’s status quo optimism - the gulf of which is sealed in the image of
three university students walking past him with utter levity - Joe unmoors from
trappings of monogamy, career, possession, morality; the very buoy of his
alienation. But Joe tangentially participates with society; allowing the cogs
of industry to turn by carting fuel on the barge, and allowing the machinations
of justice to churn by bystanding the wrongful sentencing of Daniel Gordon. <o:p></o:p></div>
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15. The
story is partly an indictment of the death penalty and the ease of factual
distortion. The seeking of a conviction is as much a feverish means-to-an-end modality
as Joe’s own sexual exploits. The halls, corridors, and arches of justice are as
narrow as the tunnels, canals, locks, and the barge. In the courtroom where
“truth” is excised in short parentheticals and strung together to paint
portraits of extremes, Joe plays with his pocket mirror and watches himself
watching with the detachment he affords all his tests of fate.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> </o:p>16. By
trial’s end Joe is more intense than ever. He steps to the river’s edge framed
again by the ripples. We look down upon him from behind almost as though his were
now the body floating dead. He looks at himself in the pocket mirror, the last
time he will do so seeking glimmers of humanity or reason to think lightly of
life. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And Joe’s great nightmare, that it
is indeed possible to live a life without leaving fingerprints, to drift
through without responsibility…that seemed some kind of liberal dream… it’s
actually a nightmare.”</i> (Swinton)</div>
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17. Where
at the end of the novel Trocci writes, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“…the
disintegration had already begun</i>,” Mackenzie masterfully interprets; From
above and behind, the camera swoops into a ¾ close-up of Joe looking at the
river. Joe’s absence-of-presence is a weight where it should be a
weightlessness. He holds and then walks off, the weighty pack on his back, into
the deep blurred disintegration of the background. The film is merely a
preamble to Joe’s ultimate course of immorality and marginalization in a world
where justice is subjective and guilt is livable. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-86798469933585175262011-11-03T11:20:00.000-07:002011-11-03T11:23:47.663-07:00ADDRESS UNKNOWN (2001)<br />
"Love in Winter"<br />
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Published in Korean Quarterly</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp96Vmyd6AqKI_rhAFQisxuu5ffqoZ-eImQFaP-qhKfO3lO-BDIlUprg3hiHat48-BuiMEifewp_08PD_0JBdpEBIHzhSm__En5f48RFSJWtvwSUCYmCx6OlIyvJlXjDZ3xIcmzoiGuKI/s1600/c48ff7dc7c0630_thumb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp96Vmyd6AqKI_rhAFQisxuu5ffqoZ-eImQFaP-qhKfO3lO-BDIlUprg3hiHat48-BuiMEifewp_08PD_0JBdpEBIHzhSm__En5f48RFSJWtvwSUCYmCx6OlIyvJlXjDZ3xIcmzoiGuKI/s1600/c48ff7dc7c0630_thumb.jpg" /></a>It is almost difficult to write a review of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284815/">ADDRESS UNKNOWN</a>
because it requires one to reinsert oneself in the miserable company of its
alternately unfortunate, pitiful, frustrated, victimized, and demonstratively
cruel characters. That's not a qualitative judgment of the film itself, which
is handled with a bravura banality and startling savagery, but merely an observation
of the tone and texture of the sore and gritty world Kim Ki-duk sets before us.</div>
<o:p></o:p><br />
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Kim Ki-duk’s 6<sup>th</sup> film follows another coupling of
society’s downtrodden and reveals the stages in which they perpetuate their own
piteous overthrows, as well as deal with the realities of a difficult life spurred
on after war, interrupted by occupation. The context of Kim Ki-duk’s dreary and
often grisly account of a rural South Korean town bordering an active US army
base in 1970, is critical as a contribution, but not as a singular cause, to
the misery. 17 years after the armistice of 1953, South Korea finds itself
having traded Japanese rule after WWII for an American occupation and continued
military presence, yet to substantially find it’s footing and concrete its new
north-south binary culture. Despite the centrality of its context, like a good
film, ADDRESS UNKNOWN derives dramaturgy from a number of conflicts and
conditions. Whittled down though, nearly every strain, every desperate scraping
act, every wrenching pitiful submission in ADDRESS UNKNOWN stems from one
single force – the desire to be loved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL6wBDeATPM4sahpGOiI7TdhmjdwONa_DImt_f-r4px7h3aJiJByVXeMW28WZ3fAseYBPRIT50fXrofPxnZ_L-3kvjgB2btdQr91VnAirD79sPVdG2i4r_rOS-IYH1nG2GOz9JbPgScDk/s1600/Address-Unknown.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL6wBDeATPM4sahpGOiI7TdhmjdwONa_DImt_f-r4px7h3aJiJByVXeMW28WZ3fAseYBPRIT50fXrofPxnZ_L-3kvjgB2btdQr91VnAirD79sPVdG2i4r_rOS-IYH1nG2GOz9JbPgScDk/s200/Address-Unknown.png" width="200" /></a>Whether it is a mother living in a converted bus on the
outskirts of town, sending letter after letter in a vain effort to locate her
son’s father in the US, or Chang-guk the illegitimate half-black child of her
and her former army boyfriend who struggles through racism, poverty, and
fatherlessness. Whether it is Eu-nok, the young woman who’s right eye is
blinded by her selfish brother with a homemade beebee gun and which garners her
ridicule, or Ji-hum the timid near-speechless boy who pines for her, victimized
by two miscreant thugs who plague him with violence and theft. Whether it is
they, or any of the other characters in this film, the desire is the same.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtWGBCLaEu16DuBF5c5kEhMaeTh-cAdp91BGxa-X_5J5vjqUw0UmmhJGGO2XfNxNMcPbtjPe2H0jrRNBtrhbO-CtI-Co-Fj9so3kAcUhiStMBIIBsWXj6BuoKD1rjFSz5GyMmXPcDKLzg/s1600/4722414875_8fd9784362.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtWGBCLaEu16DuBF5c5kEhMaeTh-cAdp91BGxa-X_5J5vjqUw0UmmhJGGO2XfNxNMcPbtjPe2H0jrRNBtrhbO-CtI-Co-Fj9so3kAcUhiStMBIIBsWXj6BuoKD1rjFSz5GyMmXPcDKLzg/s200/4722414875_8fd9784362.jpg" width="200" /></a>The presence of the army base is none-the-less felt
constantly, with jets and planes flying overhead like punctuations to the
unfolding tragedy, English being alternately embraced and despised by locals, and
soldiers filtering out into the town on recreation or drills. James, one such troubled
American – more troubled than we first realize - injects himself Eu-nok’s
family, using her as a cover for his drug abuse and eventually exchanging restorative
eye surgery at the military hospital for her becoming his “sweetheart.” James
turns out to be at the breaking-point of his sanity, is emotionally fragile,
and is at complete odds with being stationed in Korea without any real
conviction or understanding of his purpose. It is because of this nuance that
Kim’s film is not simplistically critical of America’s post-armistice presence,
but rather contains a note of complexity in the attitudes of those men and
women stationed at the 38<sup>th</sup> parallel.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Amidst the sprawl,
again, this cast of desperate beings strives for one utterly simple essential
attainment…. Love. Love in the form of acknowledgement, acceptance, and
tenderness. They hope for nothing more than a future brighter than the
consuming bleakness of the winter of 1970. <span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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**Available on Palisades Tartan DVD**</div>Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-21491759940823203632011-11-03T11:09:00.000-07:002011-11-03T11:24:44.481-07:00TAKE CARE OF MY CAT (2001)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSX_imiJk-Ou3jqrntN1R6LgzsuPkaHlxTBjBbX9Z-bPDyxrnrp9VxFc_k_A2-OpgPd65dkzstRqxy7k7ob3yRwO-dLIZtRzI1sfBTpEBsfv577lJA8p3jaMC5R8YJVIFuithAs3ecVeU/s1600/images-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSX_imiJk-Ou3jqrntN1R6LgzsuPkaHlxTBjBbX9Z-bPDyxrnrp9VxFc_k_A2-OpgPd65dkzstRqxy7k7ob3yRwO-dLIZtRzI1sfBTpEBsfv577lJA8p3jaMC5R8YJVIFuithAs3ecVeU/s1600/images-3.jpeg" /></a>With her debut film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0296658/"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Take Care of My Cat</i></b>,</a> writer/
director Jeong Jae-eung eschews simplistic sentimentality and confining
causality as she fluidly unravels the thread connecting five female friends as
they struggle against the riptide of young adulthood. Tae-hee, Hae-joo, twins Bi-ryu
and Ohn-jo, and Ji-young, freshly graduated from high-school, all hail from the
industrially booming port city of Inchon, pictured with vitality and texture by
cinematographer Yeong-hwan Choi. Each
of these young women finds themselves in a differing stratum of the attitudinal
spectrum as they negotiate expectations, changing roles, and varying ambitions
in the unstable medium of a developing South Korea. In fact, simply by following
the scattering orbit of these young women, a dynamic socio-economic portrait is
scrawled scene-to-scene. The girls act almost as status milemarkers, Hae-joo
attaining the “top” and Ji-young holding the bottom, and the backgrounds; pedestrians,
city streets, service workers, office workers, buildings, and shantytowns, fill
the gradation into something rounded.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyh_0h8IBAGMzpyhzjEs-7sHAXPiYpS5eUfBMtCEt7q9kC2HYcuGp2alHEOjAr3UvzYd5eWQ9SdKoa7vRpjIgVz1nyxNlg5sLFSIZHTIbkrRmlMcB3VfVLiDNiHIOc8dz9PSRJnE5Ls3s/s1600/take-care-of-my-cat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyh_0h8IBAGMzpyhzjEs-7sHAXPiYpS5eUfBMtCEt7q9kC2HYcuGp2alHEOjAr3UvzYd5eWQ9SdKoa7vRpjIgVz1nyxNlg5sLFSIZHTIbkrRmlMcB3VfVLiDNiHIOc8dz9PSRJnE5Ls3s/s1600/take-care-of-my-cat.jpg" /></a></div>
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The foremost of Jeong’s concentration is character. Ji-young,
somewhat sullen and reserved, has lost both her parents and lives in a collapsing
ramshackle home with her ailing grandparents in the poorest section of town. Finding
a job proves almost impossible. She keeps the depth and nature of this condition
to herself, but it surfaces in tones of bitterness. Ji-young has two qualities
to sustain her; creativity and patience, devising the most intricate textile
patterns by hand, quietly hoping to study abroad and expand her abilities. She
has partly the platform to bound out of the dismal pocket of existence into
which she has been thrust, and around which so may others seem to build
success. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuMDq6B6gUhPCNZDLLRQsfXzwGl553VYqkIbGWozqEhR8js51Tsf9J64c19vebt_dqEXlbW-HtR_9qjMfln8CL3UG7G-WnCbFJ0FGHfg1BLv_YBi7f1saW1EjfVUqKaab8km-vpVvEkLs/s1600/take-care-of-my-cat-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuMDq6B6gUhPCNZDLLRQsfXzwGl553VYqkIbGWozqEhR8js51Tsf9J64c19vebt_dqEXlbW-HtR_9qjMfln8CL3UG7G-WnCbFJ0FGHfg1BLv_YBi7f1saW1EjfVUqKaab8km-vpVvEkLs/s200/take-care-of-my-cat-1.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Intrepid Hae-joo wills herself into a pitfall of narcissism
and materialism after starting her ultimately low-level job at a big city brokerage
house, made through connections by her affluent family. She moves into a clean
but meager dorm-sized apartment in Seoul, dreaming of bigger and better things.
Her action of removal provides the most blunted impact against the group’s
waning solidarity. Her ambitions are common and vain which splinters the
fracture further, especially between herself and Ji-young. This turn of
character makes her seem unlikable and yet Jeong earns her a modicum of sympathy
for the anonymity and under-appreciation that will be systemic in her corporate
ladder climb.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZwrAwrD2vrI1MPDsItz2w8UQpWH2A500ZDot-_Fvaz4v77mWYE50q3e4w4VBOyV9v5mU06kf2jL2o7EgsOzeKiixF1f4oiZWpb4vWq-pseLsXI8Z6qziBvRbTmgmrfpc1WIE5FLQn_9o/s1600/doona5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZwrAwrD2vrI1MPDsItz2w8UQpWH2A500ZDot-_Fvaz4v77mWYE50q3e4w4VBOyV9v5mU06kf2jL2o7EgsOzeKiixF1f4oiZWpb4vWq-pseLsXI8Z6qziBvRbTmgmrfpc1WIE5FLQn_9o/s200/doona5.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Tae-hee floats in the middle of the spectrum and seems at
first the most “free,” but is burdened by her split roles; working at her father’s
tradition hot-rock healing spa for free, types for a young poet stricken with
cerebral palsy, and tries to be the sustaining thread between her circle of
friends. Tae-hee combines qualities of selflessness, self-destruction (smoking),
naivety, maturity, modesty, and passion. A mix of so many opposites, she
doesn't know what she wants out of life, but knows deep down that it resides somewhere
other than Inchon and that it has none to do with material possession. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyGHVk674CMt6qEDFz019PO4bJlWnhCQXm-Ylo2dEyuhSVOE2gyImmURdHnJO0UDHfwVtnq9PP9YiQ4uvRO5PYnVDojlr1PuS5eifFvjv44IT9eVeSyb-sH_o3DjJDvInFdPIcWM2TIew/s1600/00122e3e_medium.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" height="115" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyGHVk674CMt6qEDFz019PO4bJlWnhCQXm-Ylo2dEyuhSVOE2gyImmURdHnJO0UDHfwVtnq9PP9YiQ4uvRO5PYnVDojlr1PuS5eifFvjv44IT9eVeSyb-sH_o3DjJDvInFdPIcWM2TIew/s200/00122e3e_medium.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Bi-ryu and Ohn-jo are twins. Their spirits are high and
playful. They have each other no matter what, and this is possibly why they
seem so resigned to things, so at ease. They hawk jewelry on the streets and
have an air of contentment about them. None of Hae-joo’s feverish ambition or
Ji-young’s sunken woe rubs off on them. Nearly peripheral in presence, but
wholly essential to the roundness of this film, they are simply “going with the
flow.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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And between these five is passed around Tee Tee, Ji-young’s
kitten. This helpless beacon of innocence passively represents a stage of their
lives that has been lost.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The question might arise; why review a film with one decade
under its belt? The reason, more than any excellence of craft, is its sustaining
relevance. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Take Care of My Cat</i></b> is as indicative of its own time and place;
2001 Inchon, South Korea, as it is of ten years later, where all the same
concerns of uncertainty, identity, economy, and connectivity (elegantly
exemplified through the use of onscreen text-messaging, and constant use phones),
seem like an unmodified transplantation, not only through time but through
culture. These women wade through the same practical and existential mire of
circumstance and choice that can be found this very day in America, or any
developed/developing nation for that matter. Jeong culls something universally
appreciable out of the specificity of her sororal cross-section. Choosing
Inchon; a city growing incongruously in different directions, appearing to be
in a constant and ambiguous fluctuation between construction and destruction,
as the home of this narrative simply adds to the dramaturgy, wedded to the
struggles of its protagonists.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The greatest competence of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Take Care of My Cat</i></b>,
which is a pooling of so many wonderful talents and intuitions of modern/
independent filmmaking, rests in the telling. Jeong’s narrative, under the
knife of editor Hyeun-mi Lee wanders but does not stray, floats yet does not
drift. Her story is a construct of passing moments that ebb and flow rather
than arc, yet the continuity never appears broken because Jeong has found a
means to thread everything together tonally. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Take Care of My Cat</i></b> provides
an accumulating person-centered narrative that meanders as a rule but never
actually loses its focus on these five characters and their dispersal into the
currents of life.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> </o:p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGk0kfysSUBgZUiuvqyXLc2FXZW6k0Oshd3kRLRiQ6gScEunheZkIBTb03yNAyO3Wu-QX1pRQZc0pdO8PW-mZ7I0AsdAWe3HbWcN2mrEDr79sLAajF7cyS_x6deertXe5iE3D8cdVcEcg/s1600/take_care_of_my_cat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGk0kfysSUBgZUiuvqyXLc2FXZW6k0Oshd3kRLRiQ6gScEunheZkIBTb03yNAyO3Wu-QX1pRQZc0pdO8PW-mZ7I0AsdAWe3HbWcN2mrEDr79sLAajF7cyS_x6deertXe5iE3D8cdVcEcg/s320/take_care_of_my_cat.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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**Available on Kino International DVD**<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-46230198243307103632011-11-03T10:58:00.000-07:002011-11-03T11:26:19.202-07:00STRAY BULLET (OBALTAN) (1960)Published in Korean Quarterly<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw6nt8ug_yDQhxTLTsviSLDmLQo4llgfXiz0oHs6RMNdxj3QesfI1FbRiYgXNGVOky18ngr66t5t-c167Qq5v4zir0kWbvJR781R6g1FZCpQdTnws_i6CgQQjOu0DR7KMAqn3C0PIljps/s1600/887511Stray+Bullet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw6nt8ug_yDQhxTLTsviSLDmLQo4llgfXiz0oHs6RMNdxj3QesfI1FbRiYgXNGVOky18ngr66t5t-c167Qq5v4zir0kWbvJR781R6g1FZCpQdTnws_i6CgQQjOu0DR7KMAqn3C0PIljps/s200/887511Stray+Bullet.jpg" width="141" /></a>“I tell you. In this crazy world we have to be like crows.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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“What kind of courage does a crow have?” <o:p></o:p></div>
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“Crows aren’t courageous, but they are tough – tough enough even
to attack a scarecrow. “The crow sits on top of its head and picks out its
eyes.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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As unremittingly dismal as Kurosawa’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lower Depths</i> (1957), as socially observant as Kim Ki-young’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Housemaid</i> (1960), as basely
existential as De Sica’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bicycle Thieves</i>,
and drawing from shades of American Noir, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053577/">STRAY BULLET (OBALTAN)</a> creates an
effect of having been dragged through the worst mire of post-armistice South
Korea, where the sweat is left on our brow, the sting remains dull in our gut,
and the dirt laces the fibers of our worn clothes. STRAY BULLET leaves a
residue on the viewer because it sinks us into its universe wholly with no
sense of how to resurface. Misery loves company one might say, and director Yoo
elects us as such for the Song family as he dredges the bottom-most experience
of this period of social upheaval. <o:p></o:p></div>
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STRAY BULLET, a reference to waywardness and drifting
through experience, depicts the darkest turns in the life of public accountant
Chul-ho Song (Kim Chin-Kyu, of The Housemaid) who struggles with money and the
fracturing post-war era. Burdened in this time with the responsibility of
supporting two children, a mentally trouble mother, a malnourished pregnant
wife, his troublesome jobless younger brother Yong-ho (two years since returned
from the war), his sister Myong –sook who resorts to prostituting herself to
American Soldiers in order to make ends meet, and upholding the roof of their
dilapidated home, he hasn’t even the money to visit the dentist to resolve his ever-constant
toothache or buy his young daughter a pair of pretty shoes. But he tries. He
endures. He blankly thrusts himself into each grueling seemingly ineffectual
day, wearing the strain on his face, his posture, his stride, and in his
decaying tooth. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Yoo’s vision is steeped in the piteous condition of the Songs,
microcosmically indicative of the condition of an economically polarizing South
Korea still reeling from war and occupation (first by the Japanese and
afterward by the US.). Soldiers return home and cannot find work, those who
have jobs make meager sums, and an elite class (movie stars in particular)
occupies the higher tier while the poor get poorer – a wedge driven home by the
aesthetic noir-esque contrast of scenes drown in shadow, or awash in midday
sun. Kim Hak-sung’s location shooting also lends immediacy, gravity, and
authenticity to a story that requires all three qualities.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The concerns of OBALTAN are socio-economic, but also
existential, and moral. Yoo plainly exposes extreme conditions in lieu of directly
criticizing or politicizing the catalyst <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of</i>
those conditions – even though critique and politics are perhaps unavoidably involved
simply through his act of observation (enough to have the film banned upon its
initial release). Yoo also allows for a range of relationships to form and be
challenged in ways more subtle than the main thread of economic disparity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6U7QtNCyAcpIuITEZnxcTYV2AOsCV9M4oIOHNyXkZ8HF_KnRyhL0K6dwIYZyL4MDtIgJaMAKryUsvcmEXJ4J1onch5b_y859QgjEurGl5dp_vuh_Ue73jR9v51vmtp9MUrTPgLj54CuM/s1600/images-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6U7QtNCyAcpIuITEZnxcTYV2AOsCV9M4oIOHNyXkZ8HF_KnRyhL0K6dwIYZyL4MDtIgJaMAKryUsvcmEXJ4J1onch5b_y859QgjEurGl5dp_vuh_Ue73jR9v51vmtp9MUrTPgLj54CuM/s200/images-1.jpeg" width="200" /></a>Scathing moments of Lee Beom-seon’s script ask fundamental
questions of morality in a time where dog-eat-dog is the rule. The frequent orator
of these questions is younger brother Song Yong-Ho. Seeming at first the most
aimless, spending his days drinking and complaining with war buddies, he
emerges as the most complex, immediate, and the most desperate among the group,
inherent in the crude culminating bank robbery scheme he hatches, and the
argument that takes place just before with his older brother. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yong-ho</i>: “I admire your [Chul-ho’s] way of life;
reasonable, honest, and poor as hell. But your life is like a ten-cent peep
show -- watching others get what they want. That's not enough for me. You and
your toothache! You think you’re helping us by not going to the dentist? That’s
how all tragedy starts. By some stupid futile sacrifice like that. Why do we
have to live in a cage? A cage of conscience!”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chul-ho</i>: “How
could we live together without any conscience?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yong Ho</i>: “We’d just live, that's all. I should have
been bitter enough to take things into my own hands before my mother went crazy
and before my sister sold her body away! I should have started cheating the
first day we had that pitiful little shop in the market. I should have cheated
before those god-damned bullets went through my belly!”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg721VxWrME_O4Z1fUJlSJGQ-Wk0scGENe6Y92_Pl8Vk7SuWiBVlagRtLtHtMqVDMZ6yU-XveH8ntq7KIdFafLPRDJa-FLll5rbspZkqjuKPU0rAKD1bYWgw2BAeYQAzepSihcdWU2wHiQ/s1600/Obaltan_The_Aimless_Bullet-511820280-large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg721VxWrME_O4Z1fUJlSJGQ-Wk0scGENe6Y92_Pl8Vk7SuWiBVlagRtLtHtMqVDMZ6yU-XveH8ntq7KIdFafLPRDJa-FLll5rbspZkqjuKPU0rAKD1bYWgw2BAeYQAzepSihcdWU2wHiQ/s200/Obaltan_The_Aimless_Bullet-511820280-large.jpg" width="131" /></a>All the other characters seem by degrees to submit to the
banality of their suffering, seem to be – as the cab driver remarks of delirious
post-surgery Chul-ho Song at the end of the film, “like one of those wild
shells that fired aimlessly.” Their courage to endure and participate in
scraping by with threadbare souls might even be seen as complacency next to
Song Yong-ho’s fever-pitch, or even Myong-sook’s nefarious methods, but they
can hardly be blamed in acknowledgement of the reality of their circumstances
and challenges, especially as the film concludes its escalating downward spiral
with only one small modicum of hope resounding. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Now, after 50 years of history, are these conditions yet
changed? Is the polarity and disparity any softer, and does the disadvantage
enabled by the system still produce attitudes like Song Yong-ho’s? Watching a
film like Jong Jae-eun’s TAKE CARE OF MY CAT from 2001 as an example, one might
fearfully see that the same spectrum endures, only the gray-scale is much subtler.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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**Available on Cinema Epoch dvd**</div>
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<br /></div>Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-82613339299200176052011-10-31T13:53:00.000-07:002011-10-31T15:01:33.155-07:00ARCHITECTS OF UNREST: Ki-young Kim and Sang-soo Im bisect class in two versions of The Housemaid<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Published in <a href="http://www.koreanquarterly.org/Home.html">Korean Quarterly</a>, Fall 2011<br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">by Aaron
Mannino</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-cXBXGKT5yxjzScaz2epVY5AheyT0ricgfDzUfwfTk97IR3IKAkMQ8xQvnllX6F0wjvti1FCcm_2CysW1eHopaTAM4te9RicSzpJmpgVw5hZ2fCMbGCUXlbBAvKUGbLkjegAVTbeP3Lc/s1600/24d87_HousemaidPoster2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-cXBXGKT5yxjzScaz2epVY5AheyT0ricgfDzUfwfTk97IR3IKAkMQ8xQvnllX6F0wjvti1FCcm_2CysW1eHopaTAM4te9RicSzpJmpgVw5hZ2fCMbGCUXlbBAvKUGbLkjegAVTbeP3Lc/s200/24d87_HousemaidPoster2.jpg" width="152" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGOPTI_3WPSpeXfCJ6NDj4o8oKZwPdJG3KkXlQgMKeNMyBxkB1xB-Q1tTjI6V20faq4jpdgrMqTV0h1KbACzz92fplmLmlnZJskk2fZ9kzzST0gMbjOhCNHQVdERueHuY9eJawGTLxIk0/s1600/220px-Housemaid_1960_Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGOPTI_3WPSpeXfCJ6NDj4o8oKZwPdJG3KkXlQgMKeNMyBxkB1xB-Q1tTjI6V20faq4jpdgrMqTV0h1KbACzz92fplmLmlnZJskk2fZ9kzzST0gMbjOhCNHQVdERueHuY9eJawGTLxIk0/s200/220px-Housemaid_1960_Poster.jpg" width="154" /></a>In 1960, Ki-Young Kim made a film entitled <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Hanyo</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Housemaid)</b></i>, and in
2010, filmmaker Sang-soo Im did the same.
The titles are identical, but Im’s version is more a reimagining of
Kim’s reputed masterpiece than a classic remake.<br />
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There are many similarities. Both artists use cinema to explore
how a foreign presence (a woman who becomes a housemaid to the family) can expose
flaws in the architecture of a system. The “system” here is a family. From the
basic principle of exposure-through-intrusion, Kim and Im’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Housemaids</i></b>
express a realm of horror that arises from sexual and material desire, laced
with overtones of social critique. They design stories about human fallibility with
a unique quality of “sympathetic ambiguity,” by which the seeming “victims” of
their films are always complicit with their own undoing. I have found this to be distinct among much of
Korean cinema, especially those films in the prolific revenge/horror genre.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Both incarnations of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Housemaid </i></b>describe a family’s
downfall after their patriarch impregnates a housemaid. Aside from their title
and setup, each film is distinctive and contemporaneous to the time in which it
was created. Each reflects its maker’s unique sensibilities. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI_nGIU8C0JFbexFkKI3q9fRIlVuICIor7qzWbYLmc6UFLdSY3FjIOf8ON0KCwgvC82BgUQHBzJAdloRRkfa_fk17n0DzLesNZEMVThJ2FKrSUVk2Oprc4kPs02B3u5_8ZK7eGfNsgmK4/s1600/fullsizephoto119868.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI_nGIU8C0JFbexFkKI3q9fRIlVuICIor7qzWbYLmc6UFLdSY3FjIOf8ON0KCwgvC82BgUQHBzJAdloRRkfa_fk17n0DzLesNZEMVThJ2FKrSUVk2Oprc4kPs02B3u5_8ZK7eGfNsgmK4/s200/fullsizephoto119868.jpg" width="200" /></a>Ki-young Kim centers his story on the newly-middle-class
household of piano composer/teacher Dong-shik, his pregnant wife, and their two
children. After moving into a new two-story house, earned by the sweat and
exhaustion of the wife’s dedicated needlework, a housemaid is selected from the
ranks of the factory at which Dong-shik teaches choir. The unnamed housemaid is
thin, slinky, and curious in her movements. She immediately stirs commotion
with her emotional detachment and her disregard for the children. <o:p></o:p></div>
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One night, after seeing Dong-shik rebuff a piano student’s
confession of her love, the housemaid springs into action and seduces him with unexpected
success. The housemaid becomes pregnant and Dong-shik confesses to his wife. To
preserve the household’s reputation, his wife convinces the housemaid to
miscarry by having an “accident” on the staircase. Thereafter, the machinations
of the desirous and disturbed housemaid sends Dong-shik’s household into a
self-topping sprawl of misery, vengeance, and intimidation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGJXDuoiL-J1INduI95Y7Czi21P279EiTWU7wm5vRKXvKQ4hSUIGpFgujJz0-H_b_dhT-FJavAh4ICC2dlIA_P-u7fTHV0gP7LXbEV_1fps0vH4iuqOI3T31RCUTQDSuGDE6Z6k9BYHa4/s1600/850a69656da13c3bb44cc1503cb6fd7b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGJXDuoiL-J1INduI95Y7Czi21P279EiTWU7wm5vRKXvKQ4hSUIGpFgujJz0-H_b_dhT-FJavAh4ICC2dlIA_P-u7fTHV0gP7LXbEV_1fps0vH4iuqOI3T31RCUTQDSuGDE6Z6k9BYHa4/s200/850a69656da13c3bb44cc1503cb6fd7b.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Sang-soo Im crafts the tale of Eun-yi, a young working-class
woman (a pot scrubber at a fish market) who is contracted by an extremely
wealthy household as a housemaid. She is quiet and childlike, especially around
Nami, the daughter of the household. Eun-yi is simple but not stupid, as she is
certified as an early childhood educator. Eun-yi is supervised by Byung-sik, an
older servant woman, resentful but fastidious. Nami’s mother Hae-ra, is the kind
but idle lady of the house, though her intellect is subtly suggested by her
choices of reading. Hae-ra is very pregnant with twins. Her husband, Goh-Hoon,
is often absent due to “work” (the nature of which is never revealed). He is refined,
confident, and masculine. One night Goh-Hoon imposes himself upon Eun-yi and she
becomes pregnant. Byung-sik, the character who seems to know all, informs
Hae-ra’s calloused mother. Thereafter the household becomes a misanthropic
tailspin of vengeances, spite, and manipulations aimed to “deal” with the
housemaid and her baby. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In each of these filmmakers’ visions, cinematography is the
most vocal element. The camera is used to describe two opposing worlds; the
common versus the opulent; the upstairs and the downstairs, and the social and
the personal.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Im imagines a lower/middle-class apartment-renter who works
in an environment of opulence, and the camera emphasizes that polarity.
Cinematographer Hyung-deok Lee visualizes the outside world - and moments of “commonness”
- in documentary style. The brief opening sequence sets the grit and immediacy of
the outside world. The shots are warmly lit, showing Eun-yi working with her
portly friend as a dishwasher, people walking in the streets and enjoying
nightlife in window-front bars, crowds eating and talking, and markets
flourishing. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Im offers a fleeting glimpse into the class divide, where some
prepare food and others enjoy it. While the texture of life unfolds, Im revisits
a disheveled woman atop a building, always with her back to the camera. She climbs
over a railing, makes her way to the edge, and leaps. A commotion stirs with reactions
of concern, curiosity, and apathy. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Later that night, Eun-yi and her friend return to the scene
of the suicide, the light is now cool blue. Their motor-scooter approaches the
woman’s chalk outlines and the camera makes a precise, V-shaped fall-and-rise crane
shot. From this grim icon, Eun-yi enters the world of a “higher class.” The new
clean camera movement, which presides in most of the film thereafter, is
associated with this death and with emptiness. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkgQ2Qx3bbWVfXYlXArkDBB9-7P2GvPZJBEU76Xzo2FkqqM10T8tjtvOweK5Uy0Mr7omOOxlE-bAM9RhgosVj0oEWWy4Q24RsBXAoIqwt1PrQm43CRgQHfcwehS26zuHaSoyoUJG84Tss/s1600/img_222_the-housemaid-official-trailer-hd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkgQ2Qx3bbWVfXYlXArkDBB9-7P2GvPZJBEU76Xzo2FkqqM10T8tjtvOweK5Uy0Mr7omOOxlE-bAM9RhgosVj0oEWWy4Q24RsBXAoIqwt1PrQm43CRgQHfcwehS26zuHaSoyoUJG84Tss/s200/img_222_the-housemaid-official-trailer-hd.jpg" width="200" /></a>In Goh-hoon’s mansion, Im captures each polished surface and
structured space with geometry, residing in cool muted tones. Architecture
dictates the smooth movement of the camera, and implies that there is no
fragility in this family’s status. Within the household, Im’s camera follows a
motif of pans and track-in/track-outs. These motions speak as much to opulence
as they do to sexuality. The cinematographer translates ideas of penetration, extraction
and caress as the lens presses into, away from, and along surfaces. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Kim uses the same gliding motif, equally integrated into the
fabric of storytelling. Every space and character of Kim’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Housemaid</i></b> is defined by
this smooth tracking camera. Kim’s connotation with cinematography is partly sexual,
partly a swinging pendulum that counts the days of misery in physical and
emotional confinement. For example, a descending crane movement is used just
outside of Dong-shik’s house each time a guest approaches; the viewer zooms in
from above. Kim seems to suggest that approaching this house means descent to degradation,
not ascent into positive space. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Dong-shik’s family swims drudgingly upstream from lower to
middle class by embracing a code of materialism. They are not a bourgeois
family, rather, they are hard-working and fearful, unable to actually enjoy
their upgraded lifestyle. Kim’s setup is
reflective of the shaky economic climate of South Korea in the late ‘50s to early
60’s South Korea, during which owning a house was the most powerful and stable
asset one could obtain. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1L3n5LFf6JC2ZgxFew7ktEQ03Io9YAkQO-dYzhKi9aOX9oiOREk54Xw3Uu0wyMxfq0-VKfYo6mQMegtQJEzvu2iDfjQCTt9LghRJKE2nuXtZPlvlT5-0xmIMDmh_MUpyqyMEqU9k9qRw/s1600/800_housemaid_pdvd_029.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1L3n5LFf6JC2ZgxFew7ktEQ03Io9YAkQO-dYzhKi9aOX9oiOREk54Xw3Uu0wyMxfq0-VKfYo6mQMegtQJEzvu2iDfjQCTt9LghRJKE2nuXtZPlvlT5-0xmIMDmh_MUpyqyMEqU9k9qRw/s200/800_housemaid_pdvd_029.jpg" width="200" /></a>The couple create a mixture of desperation and over-extension,
the breeding ground for the film’s unrest. Acquisition of space is their ultimate
vanity, as they aim to occupy a two-story house. Therefore emptiness becomes
the film’s paradigm of materialism, as well as the basis of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Housemaid’s </i></b>visual language. The camera pours over the emptiness of
rooms and hallways, as the characters reveal the emptiness of their hearts. Contrasted
against the vacated space is a revolving constellation of objects (rats,
poison, water, stairs, the piano, the sewing machine), which Kim draws fully into
drama to create powerful degrees of tension.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The biggest difference in Im’s and Kim’s films, beyond the
50-year gap, is that they are commenting on different times and different
socio-economic realities through drama. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In the modern (Im’s) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Housemaid, </i></b>there is no thread
leading back to the means by which Goh-hoon’s wealth was obtained. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“From the day he [Hoon] was born he had
everything he ever wanted. Whatever he saw, if he wanted it, it was his. No
matter what. All the men in that family are like that.”</i> Wealth has never
been uncertain for Goh-hoon, and it shows in his assured expectant demeanor. In
his world, wealth comes through scheme, which is why we never discover his
occupation. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Only small gestures are made by Im to place his film in a
contemporary time period. Brief appearances of an iPhone, and an iRobot vacuum,
are the only “updates” to speak of. Im seems to isolate the viewer in an
experience of the house’s removal from time, common life and even from specific
culture. Nothing within the mansion speaks of a particular<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Korean modernity, and is frankly western in its design, furniture,
meals, wine, attire, and music. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Absent these details, where typically modern technology
might be evoked to express alienation and detachment, what is Kim’s parallel
statement to Im’s original film treatise on the materialistic grasping of the
modern age? <o:p></o:p></div>
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Kim goes to great lengths to forge a bond between wealth and
means by showing what Dong-shik and his wife do. The wife is slavishly stuck to
a sewing machine to earn money, and Dong-shik must continue to teach piano. The
two are shown in many scenes from many angles, performing these tasks; most
poignantly in the opening scenes where Dong-shik and his wife are crowded in
their small living room together, seated using their hands and pressing petals.
Kim creates a visual analogy of the couple’s unified struggle. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Later, in their two-story household, the piano room is
upstairs and the wife’s sewing machine remains downstairs. Here they are
literally divided from one another by their “affluence.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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In both films, sex introduces a riptide into an
already-churning sea of tension. Kim and
Im present their sex scenes as accumulations of strange details. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYWxc8OOgjhIAo4im3Z2NTKorT_ofkvH2KQtCXJ1fN_cl8p6qkVin0wAKExC5KKFPLTcDGhXA9tnbgV1_RiHDvyCkmeBpHLmRIz5-Bf0fF2skb07XrxpNgkPsjhqapJGe4LxyMW19-GK4/s1600/the-housemaid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="83" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYWxc8OOgjhIAo4im3Z2NTKorT_ofkvH2KQtCXJ1fN_cl8p6qkVin0wAKExC5KKFPLTcDGhXA9tnbgV1_RiHDvyCkmeBpHLmRIz5-Bf0fF2skb07XrxpNgkPsjhqapJGe4LxyMW19-GK4/s200/the-housemaid.jpg" width="200" /></a>The seduction in Im’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Housemaid</i></b> is carried out in three
significant scenes. The first scene is a suggestive glance between Goh-hoon and
Eun-yi. He walks in on her washing the couple’s bathtub. The camera captures sexuality
in her movements, caressing a smooth round surface, her legs exposed as she
squats. In the second scene, things become physical. After his pregnant wife is
unable to satisfy him, Hoon descends the staircase of their winter cottage into
Eun-yi’s sleeping space. He presents himself shirtless, offers her wine, and
caresses her gently. Eun-yi is hardly
resistant. She looks awkwardly around the room, and then yields to his
suggestion, even becoming enthusiastic. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeQDmtM_0KopvRFu43W1vrvEsHGaVfBKhlwaMU9S5ycBJ6s7_Phs76Ql6gLOHEbd5kmtnrMDPQITW8XPIrL2FlOD2CYNFVPvPyzsRbFte9D4pMjAtqJfCe7ArToTh712eTFMWA5EB09Gk/s1600/1297216984_The_Housemaid_2010_3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="90" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeQDmtM_0KopvRFu43W1vrvEsHGaVfBKhlwaMU9S5ycBJ6s7_Phs76Ql6gLOHEbd5kmtnrMDPQITW8XPIrL2FlOD2CYNFVPvPyzsRbFte9D4pMjAtqJfCe7ArToTh712eTFMWA5EB09Gk/s200/1297216984_The_Housemaid_2010_3.png" width="200" /></a>For the third and final seduction Goh-Hoon awakes at night
and strolls into Eun-yi’s room with wine, his singular trick. She has been
waiting for him, and they fall into her bed together. Diverging from the established rules of
cinematography, we see drastic close-ups of their sweaty bodies; his abdomen, the
small of her back. The light is pure and bright and the tones of flesh are
warm. It is as if the abstraction of their forms is a visual reset for the
viewer after many shots of architecture and cool tones.<br />
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Im’s seduction is diametrically opposite of the main
seduction in the original <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Housemaid</i></b>, in which Dong-shik the
patriarch is coerced by the housemaid. There is an undercurrent starting early
in the film, Dong-shik offers the housemaid a cigarette and tells her to smoke,
which she does fervently. A bright piano
melody, played by Dong-shik’s student upstairs, is a contrast to this dark
foreshadowing of betrayal. The main scene of seduction is magnified by built-up
stress. A factory woman shows interest in him, and sends a note; later, a piano
student admits her attraction to him face to face. The confinement of the narrow
house, and the storm raging outside build up the tension to a tipping point. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXZWZ_S3dqgNJxpxpKyBWuAggILWGGWsprCCZQ1Ni7Ga1fuxRFFlFKRp9p5EzcPukPjl0wTjYNlyrAhtslVPluRlIzCDtQ6aU-VZUsXXrl3yvlB3uYh31zj5txmVjSASTXCw3KyxjmBZE/s1600/800_housemaid_PDVD_026.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXZWZ_S3dqgNJxpxpKyBWuAggILWGGWsprCCZQ1Ni7Ga1fuxRFFlFKRp9p5EzcPukPjl0wTjYNlyrAhtslVPluRlIzCDtQ6aU-VZUsXXrl3yvlB3uYh31zj5txmVjSASTXCw3KyxjmBZE/s200/800_housemaid_PDVD_026.jpg" width="200" /></a>Strange details accrue as the housemaid lures Dong-shik into
her room; the dropped cigarettes, the skin of her back, her shifting glances
that denote thrill and curiosity about what her own actions will lead to, her
bare feet placed upon his shoes to stop his walking away, her hands wrapped
around his back to keep him close. In those two moves, a slim, small seductress
paralyzes a man. Moments before, he had slapped another woman down to the floor
who tried to entrap him. This third attempt at his affections, the most primal,
breaks him down. <o:p></o:p></div>
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These two seductions reveal the difference of the times in
which the two characters live, in particular, the external forces of the
economy around them. Im’s film has a
strong persuasive man at its center; rich beyond imagining. In contrast, Kim’s male protagonist seems
almost incapable; fearful of his stature. He must yield to the housemaid, and
he is unable to deny his wife her dreams of affluence. He is worn down by the effort to get ahead,
and possibly emasculated by his wage-earning wife. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRUWUxCXG25IdJ1XyjEhVIQmQj6qfOjIklhlgvMUeZd5Pwo7vfHQqJGjPdMaK0pMogghxShtmUQRRruaWdpSGdDJkVeUH9XQdybLlXGkn-f5ocqDkvhgM1AQHOk2Xhy27KijuqtwjvTrg/s1600/7ca0fa3225.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRUWUxCXG25IdJ1XyjEhVIQmQj6qfOjIklhlgvMUeZd5Pwo7vfHQqJGjPdMaK0pMogghxShtmUQRRruaWdpSGdDJkVeUH9XQdybLlXGkn-f5ocqDkvhgM1AQHOk2Xhy27KijuqtwjvTrg/s200/7ca0fa3225.jpeg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5eqVI240iotoHHUfMRYED_kqHtwiq46wLtW2jMrDX1eLWh0noCIHD6MhEW7nLH_XCmktvpi8e3-MKYPLg-36xKLYTt9oHv58kpX2mRXVjgS8Jle_l6qptU9cSbf1xmPE1WahmNhOLyJ4/s1600/4560251_l2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5eqVI240iotoHHUfMRYED_kqHtwiq46wLtW2jMrDX1eLWh0noCIHD6MhEW7nLH_XCmktvpi8e3-MKYPLg-36xKLYTt9oHv58kpX2mRXVjgS8Jle_l6qptU9cSbf1xmPE1WahmNhOLyJ4/s200/4560251_l2.jpg" width="200" /></a>These scenes also speak to the differences between
housemaids. As Ishirô
Honda (who created Godzilla and Mothra) might unearth a monster amid the
context of nuclear ambitions or shrewd post-war enterprise, Kim releases the housemaid
into an environment of middle-class materialism and post-armistice malaise. The
family’s frail sanctity in an upward economic crawl might as well be Nagoya
city, lying in wait for the ravages of a lumbering unsympathetic creature to
sweep through and crumble buildings like toys. Kim’s housemaid appears to us
first from inside a closet at the factory dorms, shrouded in smoke from her
cigarette as she slinks into the dorm room. She is literally a monster in a
closet, unleashed. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Kim’s housemaid is childlike, obsessive, watchful,
conniving, and capable only of extremes. She observes the attempts of two young
women vying for Dong-shik’s love, and adopts that ambition in her own plot. The
housemaid is the puppeteer who can manipulate and degrade those with whom she
interacts. Kim’s housemaid brazenly tries to possess Dong-shik, caring nothing
for the children or the wife and sees to it that they are subjugated by misery,
holding their reputation ransom. Im’s housemaid, on the other hand, is the
victim of forces she has unleashed.. <o:p></o:p><br />
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As a viewer, it is difficult to discern clear victimhood,
therefore, it is difficult to sympathize. Ultimately, Kim’s housemaid is a
self-destructive force, and a victim of her own malicious personality. <o:p></o:p></div>
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If there is a monster in Im’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Housemaid</i></b>, it is not
Eun-yi - although she is pushed to monstrous action at the height of her
punishments. Eun-yi is neither malicious nor derisively ambitions. She is
simply one who easily yields to her sensual desires. Eun-yi is is made solely the
brunt of the spiraling consequences of her betrayal. As we see her being brutalized
by Hae-ra and her mother; forced into an abortion, a drugging, and her
attempted murdered, we take pity on Eun-yi. Although she is also culpable for
the situation that unravels, the severity of the reprimand is extreme against
her and against the innocent child within her. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The climax of each film builds staggering heights of tension,
drama and retribution. Ultimately, both works of horror/ melodrama are
developed from the seed of discontent and injustice that exists between the
social classes; the “us versus them” mentality driven to its horrific and
hysterical endpoint. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-18703160696625451292011-08-31T05:50:00.000-07:002011-11-03T11:28:46.280-07:00THE QUIET MIRROR<br />
KIM KI-DUK'S CULTURE OF SILENCE CULMINATES IN 'SAD DREAM.'
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZgT_OWgoNpQ58mfW39UiNb4Vj6tJLh6-LYF2h0Nq7q88SuQhcpqSftTwqj4o3FEriMbbjoAHUMzXqcWG2npnQQd8iL4p1ncqvXpEqtIChLt5wxtdShjBsJFA7HVzKPbaS70QPEyKTZDI/s1600/dream.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647005941890992274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZgT_OWgoNpQ58mfW39UiNb4Vj6tJLh6-LYF2h0Nq7q88SuQhcpqSftTwqj4o3FEriMbbjoAHUMzXqcWG2npnQQd8iL4p1ncqvXpEqtIChLt5wxtdShjBsJFA7HVzKPbaS70QPEyKTZDI/s400/dream.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 266px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
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It has been three years since Ki-Duk Kim wrote and directed Dream in 2008, his 15th film in as many years. During this hiatus in the filmmaker’s career, it is appropriate to look back and reflect on the transcendent qualities which thread his entire oeuvre, and observe how they manifest essentially in Dream, Kim’s most introspective work. This and other Ki-Duk Kim films have been neglected in the U.S., with the possible exception of Spring Summer Fall, Winter…and Spring (2003) and 3-Iron (2005), which both enjoyed some popular and critical success.
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Kim’s impending self-retrospective film Arirang, and the other significant works in this artist’s prolific career, describe a filmmaker who creates spaces of silence, secrecy, individuality and alienation. He also shows spaces of rooms and of open air, where characters and the viewer can reflect, relate, and expand the concept of what it is to be human.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiZi9eOcJORnpEBNqXE475jaymgfDXNGf5o2J1AN2T6E_D52YYAfTztx8aJAY7b6LCf7fejZd_YQscK0im1_f6rQ38hfm0aQ5boXkWEfHFUfMiSRIvDvZ2kIeZr8AdGgDCME-DSYtQ3a4/s1600/Spring_Summer_Fall_Winter_and_Spring_12.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647008241656618514" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiZi9eOcJORnpEBNqXE475jaymgfDXNGf5o2J1AN2T6E_D52YYAfTztx8aJAY7b6LCf7fejZd_YQscK0im1_f6rQ38hfm0aQ5boXkWEfHFUfMiSRIvDvZ2kIeZr8AdGgDCME-DSYtQ3a4/s200/Spring_Summer_Fall_Winter_and_Spring_12.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 110px; margin: 0 0 10px 10px; width: 200px;" /></a> Kim’s spaces are both literal and abstract. Literal spaces include the Buddhist temple in the lake-filled valley of Spring, Summer, the aged claustrophobic boat amidst the grey expanse of the sea in The Bow, the many domestic environs in 3-Iron, and the ever-changing prison meeting cell in Breath. Within these literal structures, Kim channels abstract spaces; setting fly desperate states of desire that permeate the physical.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhscE0KI8GILTVADVmkFqSG2gl2Ub8O9GIivhHxufVtn43RU2Opi8-VUD03fXijiZOqw-uQGoFpExwxtM4bB9E1qLywehRZbQjirRgOdBcjNagPMzleEtZGdKTGcY0wXwu9R_qK-6uJB44/s1600/samaritan3.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647009142142583778" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhscE0KI8GILTVADVmkFqSG2gl2Ub8O9GIivhHxufVtn43RU2Opi8-VUD03fXijiZOqw-uQGoFpExwxtM4bB9E1qLywehRZbQjirRgOdBcjNagPMzleEtZGdKTGcY0wXwu9R_qK-6uJB44/s200/samaritan3.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 146px;" /></a> These abstract spaces include the family orbit of Samaritan Girl, in which a daughter’s secret quest for penance unleashes violent unintended consequences. In the everydayness of Time, Kim topples a couple’s sense of physical identity in an increasingly cosmetic society. Most recently, Kim explores a shared sub-conscious space in Dream, in which the lives of two strangers merge in a destructive cycle which is tied to their unresolved pasts.
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Kim uses silence successfully in his films to illustrate his understanding of space. In reducing the number of spoken words, Kim amplifies the sense of human vulnerability, desire, frailty, strength, and communicability like no other filmmaker today. His sense of intimacy, enhanced by spare dialogue and periods of silence, provides a fluid exchange of inside and outside, public and private, emotional and physical, cultural and universal. The silent spaces, enabled by his many selectively mute characters, forces us as the audience to begin listening with our eyes.
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Into the silence Kim injects casual details about the modern South Korean culture - food, objects, technology, homes, economic status, religion, interactions - which the viewer absorbs as part of the drama. Somehow, these details seem familiar, having been saturated in their human-ness first, and their Korean-ness second. His films exist within and outside of culture, involving individuals who belong, yet are apart. Therefore, even the non-Korean speaking viewer, allowed into the very epicenter of personal downfalls, degradations, grieving, comings of age, etc, never experiences a cultural impasse because spoken language never dominates the telling of the story.
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Instead, Kim utilizes film to develop a new language which reflects pure experience. Language becomes visual and sensual, and the viewer comprehends the characters through their courses of action, use of objects, movement of bodies, and eruptions of emotion. This technique lends strength and depth to the characters’ authenticity and impact, and is enhanced by cinematography and editing. The effect is visceral.
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Kim ushers his films to the screen at a critical time. We have an increased level of communication due to modern technology, but our connections may only be skin deep. Awash in a discontinuity between the finitude of the physical realm and the seeming infinitude of the digital realm, Kim reminds us again of “pure experience” and “pure language.” Pure language isn’t merely about what it is saying, but is also part of it. It is a totality of expression that comes from the creative centers within each person; this is the part lost to the colloquial trends of social networking. Kim’s characters remind us of this loss as they use their actions to communicate their most basic yearnings and objections.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAfbbw5opne8vZEV5K6xQo0NRmaztukWeSPAtfEDc8ESsqiNL7u5YkXKTgpr6hm3rbjIpNOwsuYYoLFEsHD3SgByK9D_t7SnxSSI4xv0xgCDfYg82uW_Ph9gPZr5dugH66Swj0jnAwdOU/s1600/dream-2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647007208239001266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAfbbw5opne8vZEV5K6xQo0NRmaztukWeSPAtfEDc8ESsqiNL7u5YkXKTgpr6hm3rbjIpNOwsuYYoLFEsHD3SgByK9D_t7SnxSSI4xv0xgCDfYg82uW_Ph9gPZr5dugH66Swj0jnAwdOU/s400/dream-2.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 126px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
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Kim provides ever more inventive forms of space in the dark existential drama, Dream. The filmmaker also employs silence to express the spreading poison of repressed emotion and the refusal of individuals to reach catharsis. Dream relies less on outright speechlessness, and focuses more on specific things that are left unsaid.
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Principal characters Jin (Odagiri Jo) and Ran Lee (Na-yeong Lee) are strangers to one another, but a dire motive entangles them after the peculiar goings on of one evening. To Ran’s surprise, she is awakened by the police in the middle of the night. They inform her that she has caused a car accident. Inspecting her damaged car, she becomes confused and frantic. Jin, having dreamt of himself causing a car accident, investigates upon waking, even so far as following the police and Ran back to the station where she is shown a traffic-cam photo of herself driving.
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Seeing the coincidence of details to his dream, Jin is convinced of his culpability. The existential predicament that the two strangers are forced to accept is that when they are asleep at the same time, Ran acts out the motions of Jin’s dreams like a puppet sleepwalker. Jin’s dreams take him ever closer to his former lover whom he consummately longs for, however Ran’s actions while sleepwalking draw her in reality to her own former lover whom she loathes unimaginably. Intrusive and brooding, these dream-driven stages become more and more destructive, but not in the least arbitrary. The yearning on the part of Jin, and seething resentment on the part of Ran reveals itself more and more potently with each occasion. The final piece of the puzzle, a fourth party who is revealed late in the film, completes the mystery of Jin and Ran’s connection.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjslxcD_Dk9co6aiO_dDucPbYfJPT8_j5iJ68DZ_ohhs2QUMOvMm6gGABbQNIwpPPwSqkK1aHV0ifn7hy1X_hgoi2f3I0BJ48JaTATNwQlZsyxhFW9HCqDYEnL-11jYq3fguuso9hbrwcY/s1600/dream-playingstones-cr.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647009435022104610" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjslxcD_Dk9co6aiO_dDucPbYfJPT8_j5iJ68DZ_ohhs2QUMOvMm6gGABbQNIwpPPwSqkK1aHV0ifn7hy1X_hgoi2f3I0BJ48JaTATNwQlZsyxhFW9HCqDYEnL-11jYq3fguuso9hbrwcY/s400/dream-playingstones-cr.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 267px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
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So it is with Dream that Kim accesses the most primordial experience of language, from the one space he had not yet penetrated; that of the mind. With matter-of-factness Kim presses into the floating realm of the subconscious, and allows it to equally press back through Ran’s sleepwalking. Kim dissolves the contained nature of dreams, just as he dissolves dualities of time (old and new) through his design of Jin and Ran’s alternately traditional and modern dwellings, and questions the singularity of personhood (you apart from me) through the concept of shared identity.
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In Dream, Kim resides more directly than ever in the interstices of language. Dream also happens to be comparatively his most talkative film. Jin and Ran unknowingly siphon their emotional overflow into a circuit between their subconscious. Their innermost selves carve out a space in dreams, and instigate sleepwalking as a form of expression. The potential healing of Jin and Ran’s dream-language is compromised by their incongruous attempts to contravene or resist it and its implications; unsuccessfully sleeping in shifts, handcuffing each other together, enacting physically self-destructive acts to remain awake (pricking scalps with needles, slapping, taping eyes open, and eventually leading to more grisly methods).
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZFwMtJ3g6cDgRxqyILF2pOC_zbFVgGHnHUvzt2H-vb9ETbC_m95dGWHSsZF44VaATNHlGtGvHZqArNrGgXu26uCeUwyZIrkw3ASHjYyovKQZ26vcBH93dBjxlfCji-HYjHkHIW7f5JwA/s1600/dream-3.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="133" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647007998579188738" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZFwMtJ3g6cDgRxqyILF2pOC_zbFVgGHnHUvzt2H-vb9ETbC_m95dGWHSsZF44VaATNHlGtGvHZqArNrGgXu26uCeUwyZIrkw3ASHjYyovKQZ26vcBH93dBjxlfCji-HYjHkHIW7f5JwA/s200/dream-3.jpg" style="float: left; height: 213px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 320px;" width="200" /></a> Jin is a calligraphic engraver who excises words in stone, and Ran a designer/decorator who conceals and veils with vibrant sheer tones. Yet despite their artistic enterprises - which speak volumes about their emotional identities - a new sensual language sparks itself into existence, connects their opposite poles, and renders them into a type of symmetry. As Jin grasps more quickly than Ran, there is no choice in the matter of experiencing the dream-language, just as there is no choice in what one feels or desires. Their only choice is whether to participate with it or against its currents, and to resolve what it highlights of their states of being. Because this central language of Dream operates in the realm of impulse and instinct, Dream distills questions about the nature of personhood and being human. <img alt="" border="0" height="133" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647005666906743666" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfon_NOsBw-Q20tQS7_JGNXylE9gYrd1Q3Ke0_c5U-QNyMfdu_I52syRVAlZxVs1dkwPOIsLTETA7WB8sm1g1We6mgLgYwgSn3XWspEswsJvfDvbhz58uCpiZgMk73mLmxQ1aD3cQ6udY/s200/pic_phpJYQgLh_1246977792.jpg" style="float: right; height: 200px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; width: 300px;" width="200" />
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Some circles suggest that the designation of personhood has partly to do with our understanding the difference between action and intentionality, as much as it has to do with our understanding of abstraction apart from actuality. Therefore in Dream, as Kim poses language as an instinctual event with all its inherent qualities of abstraction, one wonders about how much the “intentionality” of language and abstraction can be used strictly to assign personhood.
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What is most interesting about Dream is not the scenario itself, nor the plain-faced gravity Kim lends to such ethereal subject matter. It is the use of two different languages. Kim has Jin (Odagiri Jo), speak his native Japanese, and Ran (as well as every other character) played by actress Na-yeong Lee, speak Korean, however no one draws attention to this use of two languages. In words and in silence, in Korean and Japanese, in waking and in dreaming, Kim renders the phenomenon of speech as a human behavior, universal rather than cultural.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzvNF1pgbitoxJOD4PkIIPwg9_oPUi-GtK8cgQNMZoMpj5FodakWeCz021ZCwGnGpBzrk2PdzCxoXDU0eC0weNYcyBcpjXRu8JprWcpAFmgVjM60cxq-JQiHU-eO_sMNi3n0zQ1QFRSUc/s1600/dream-kim-ki-duk_322.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647006433673153362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzvNF1pgbitoxJOD4PkIIPwg9_oPUi-GtK8cgQNMZoMpj5FodakWeCz021ZCwGnGpBzrk2PdzCxoXDU0eC0weNYcyBcpjXRu8JprWcpAFmgVjM60cxq-JQiHU-eO_sMNi3n0zQ1QFRSUc/s320/dream-kim-ki-duk_322.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 214px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 320px;" /></a> The multi-lingual aspect of DREAM must be all the more glaring, and perhaps all the more effective for a Korean speaking viewer as they would be most notably confronted by Jin’s Japanese dialogue; being most frontally aware that he is speaking a language apart from their own and the other characters. For a viewer that speaks neither Japanese nor Korean, the divergence is somewhat lost, due to the fact that one is already entirely dependent on translation and faces a summary distance from all the spoken dialogue.
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Jin and Ran share dialogues, respond to one another and comprehend each other’s words, but the escalating strain that stems from their unique relationship makes one wonder; do they truly understand one another? Are they listening fully? Is the irony true; that unless you share the same language, you cannot hear the silence? Jin and Ran may not share the same language in tongues, but they are led to do so in mind. For that reason, Jin and Ran are connected more deeply and more inextricably than anyone in Kim’s entire oeuvre.
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The two of them shatter the encapsulation of dreams - first by sharing them, and second by enacting them in reality. Just as <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiKdBI-_yY_jnM_O3dzBCMnWlvxtk6w_e7qYLeko6r6aenevtKoMoqSDp9qlKszjsS_t4olM95isQ5GfM_5eKFOqBOreEMB95ls76BXwnIhpoWNgJEVgu9NVAhhJaSD7u_HjIAWY2sFYs/s1600/dream-1.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647006677359536530" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiKdBI-_yY_jnM_O3dzBCMnWlvxtk6w_e7qYLeko6r6aenevtKoMoqSDp9qlKszjsS_t4olM95isQ5GfM_5eKFOqBOreEMB95ls76BXwnIhpoWNgJEVgu9NVAhhJaSD7u_HjIAWY2sFYs/s320/dream-1.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 180px; margin: 0 0 10px 10px; width: 320px;" /></a> “black and white are the same color,” as the healer woman tells them, dream and waking are the same state. As the terms of their new reality reach a feverpitch of violence, Jin and Ran are able to hear and to heed the silence as they color the climax of their unification with a shade of red and a stroke of acquiescence.
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With Dream as the tipping point, Kim crafts a filmic description of how language is larger than mere words. He expresses this description through the most coalescent artistic language – that of cinema - how very innate, irrepressible, and inevitable the impulse and manifestation of language itself is. It is as natural as dreaming.
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**a version of this essay appears in KOREAN QUARTERLY Summer 2011**
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<br />Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-34554884965017055662010-03-16T17:11:00.000-07:002010-12-09T20:42:58.321-08:00AVATAR..."HISTORICAL TACTILITY"TIME-LANGUAGE-MEMORY-DREAM<br /><br />AVATAR resonates with chords of the human condition, keying especially to those that are warping into dissonance against the assertions of the “information age.” Resonate is perhaps too gentle a term for a film that strikes like bludgeon. What constitutes the conceptual chorus is a cross-section; a manifold discussion of history-as-memory; in confluence with time, compounded by language, abstracted by technology.<br /><br />Thought is a torrent, a flurry, within which we try our best to grab hold of a “still point;” a grounding of understanding and preception. How do we manage to find clarity enough to see into the spinning chaos around us? Or better still, how do we see the degree to which we are a part of that very chaos, how we fit into its sprawl and shifting constellations, and how we reconcile that relationship via the mirrored chaos we contain within our own minds… which can seem even greater? <br /><br />TIME<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdXP_yyVJk0NHMuS2YUs7kPYGyRSyzjUvugDrrh396C4CJqsfUQBEwRn9bMzFv3zLZgQmlbpRqPSvEZio3bcAsHJumSeWjk9MUmJh4nZB9JdzHukLOR68E694D4IlS42i5UYfI05JbZz0/s1600-h/eris_keck.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdXP_yyVJk0NHMuS2YUs7kPYGyRSyzjUvugDrrh396C4CJqsfUQBEwRn9bMzFv3zLZgQmlbpRqPSvEZio3bcAsHJumSeWjk9MUmJh4nZB9JdzHukLOR68E694D4IlS42i5UYfI05JbZz0/s320/eris_keck.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449390380821107378" /></a> The thing about time is, it’s illusory. It's a word. We hear it said, “live in the present,” or “there’s no time like the present,” but what that means, once time is conceptually deconstructed, seems anomalous at best. I’m tempted to suggest that there isn’t even a “present.” Time, or the continuous experience that we call time, is completely fluid and incorporates past-present-future into its movement. Perhaps we’ll call this the “dynamic present.” What makes the dynamic present terminologically “time” is the graft of category and increments placed upon the experience of something ceaseless, consuming, and yet intangible. The same occurs of our reaction to open space and to infinity. As a modern society, which has constructed its experience of life as that of separations, borders, and enclosures, we draw distinctions no matter how concretely, abstractly, or subjectively motivated. We decide what’s within a space and without, where lines exist and where they don’t, where is here and where is there, where is far and near, or too far and too near. Pluto, once considered the absolute boundary of our solar system, was superceded by the discovery of the even further oriented Khyber Belt, and thereafter, massive celestial bodies, dwarf planets even larger than Pluto, in vast orbits around our same sun, have been discovered farther still. Once known, they become part of our celestial composite. This is a prime evidence of how our sense of proportion, distance, boundary, etc, is malleable, constantly subject to change and discovery… and, in a sense arbitrary. I am not suggesting that human structuralism concerning time (and space) isn’t helpful, because it absolutely is. Nothing in this world (the one which man has devised for himself; agriculture, architecture, industry, technology) would happen if we didn't have some concept of temporality, of relativism, of limitation, of causality… to balance our warping sense of potential and ambition.<br /><br />The lesson here is to maintain a deconstruction of time in one’s mind… mind being where time is in fact most innately deconstructed. We supercede time… or rather the false linearity of time that is enforced through custom… by remembrance, by daydreaming, by working out a problem in our head, by making a connection between disparate experiences, by thinking of something that is anything but what is in front of us. Multiplicity, superimposition, and transposition of thought, is THE primordial gesture. The first place we ever dwell, before sight, before words, before learning, is our own mind, interiorly. We absorb language. We are not born with it. What we ARE born with is an instinctual ability to abstract and a desire to structuralize our existence… the breeding ground FOR language.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidV6JKIRn6DkJ9YyqoSIagAj6yE8A15Tcr5uiwKTTGrpKJayhtA4BA0pl6h0u4lCsSZY_eXjYJLQRGda7J2ttJ3CokLfWLvo9uaR2Vj84Kihfp2PJri8HVEmpBmz0i_fszUgZNlFVnKRE/s1600-h/11-cubism_Picasso_Woman-Playing-Mandolin.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 232px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidV6JKIRn6DkJ9YyqoSIagAj6yE8A15Tcr5uiwKTTGrpKJayhtA4BA0pl6h0u4lCsSZY_eXjYJLQRGda7J2ttJ3CokLfWLvo9uaR2Vj84Kihfp2PJri8HVEmpBmz0i_fszUgZNlFVnKRE/s320/11-cubism_Picasso_Woman-Playing-Mandolin.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449390965364363138" /></a> Because dynamic non-linearity (as in thought and dreams) is instinctual, arguably our most basic sentient action, it seems we should never be satisfied in accepting things; situations, circumstances, people, conflicts, simply as they “appear to be.” If fact, to do so seems like a contradiction of our own nature… and yet that very form of complacency occurs almost systemically in modern American society. In this respect, we can derive a great deal of instruction from an artistic movement like Cubism, which is nearly cinematic in its attempts to cluster multiple perspectives into simultaneity; such as a chair shown from above, to the right, and from slightly to the left looking up. This is how we should all strive to see the world, our problems, everything. <br /><br />And of course, Cinema; the moving image, would be the ultimate expression of this ideal.<br /><br />Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci (THE LAST EMPEROR), in discussion of his 2003 film THE DREAMERS, touches upon the complexity in building a temporal-yet-physical (and therefore emotional) relationship between characters, actors, and the audience, in their experience of a film (as being the unique venue for this very phenomenon) <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLJpltEUXPUi2MDyr93KxHtlBhvjr9njut4e_hJju7Womzw-sCG8a-LIWAZgMdy-HVkmzYT2YPIc_wHHG0aDqM_KXgXEJtOboGIPAy8W59nYaj3edXzOosLjPEFDpJygZuv42LSMFzLd0/s1600-h/the-dreamers.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 136px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLJpltEUXPUi2MDyr93KxHtlBhvjr9njut4e_hJju7Womzw-sCG8a-LIWAZgMdy-HVkmzYT2YPIc_wHHG0aDqM_KXgXEJtOboGIPAy8W59nYaj3edXzOosLjPEFDpJygZuv42LSMFzLd0/s200/the-dreamers.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449404924081494418" /></a> “In cinema you are allowed to conjugate only one tense, the present. Because when you shoot, you are contemporary to what you shoot and to whom you are shooting. This prevalence of the present is something we cannot forget or ignore. Even if you shoot a character in ancient Rome dressed up like Julius Cesar, the people in the theater are contemporary to Julius Cesar. This is really a privilege of cinema. The three kids who are acting the part of three kids from ’68 [The Dreamers], they, in their bodies and experiences carry the present.” <br /><br />What this means, is that in watching any film, AVATAR included (and maybe especially) we are rendered contemporary to the world it realizes, reacting to it with emotions we would lend to any personal tactile experience. We become contemporary to the war on Pandora, to Jake Sully, and to the Na’vi. We are contemporary to a future-tense that also incisively reflects our own “present-tense.” In this thought-centered subversion of time; we receive a renewed capacity of sight concerning our contexts as affected by the weight of our individuated experiences. We see as if from within AND from without. Because of its advance in IMAX 3D projection, AVATAR is a bridge unmatched. It convinces by the depth and perfection of its visualization and the distillation of its themes, that the viewer indeed EXPERIENCES rather than WATCHES. <br /><br />Through their forging of touch-based transient neural bonds called Tsahaylu, with other organisms and exteriorized, organic, collective memory sources, the Na’vi (indigenous peoples of the fictional planet Pandora in AVATAR) create a perspectival assembly, and through this instilled physiological capacity, are able to see, experience, utilize, and participate in the whole of their planetary ecosystem, which distinctly includes themselves. The Na’vi, have the ability to create site-specific pockets of a ‘unified present’ when forming a Tsahaylu; two bodies, two histories, two synchronous movements of past to future, two differently limited models of life expanded in the circularity of a symbiosis. <br /><br /><br />A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE<br /><br />As staggeringly complex as the human capacity for memory is, and indeed the insanity of its intricacy, we tend to forget things… quickly…and frequently… and, not just small things… big things. We move on. What’s happening “now” is all. Thus, we survive the moment. As though holding fast to the illusory calm at the eye of a storm, we are fixated on ‘the present,’ while living in anxious, if not defensive, anticipation of the future, and so easily relinquishing the past. <br /><br />Perhaps the ultimate question… How do we make history tactile?… so tactile, in fact, that we never forget its lessons? How do we ingrain a perception of history as an experiential continuum that is a consummate body of past-present-future, moving in concert? If we could find a means to hold our histories fully, inter-disciplinarily, would we be at greater ease rather than conflict in the world? What if we could experience time in the same manner as light, distance, form…? From this new precipice of optical tactility enabled by 3D cinema, expressed in its height by AVATAR, one wonders, is film the answer?<br /><br />On the very issue of history (specifically North American history), many critics have censured Cameron’s narrative as being merely another reflex of “white guilt,” concerning American Colonialism of the 17th-19th centuries (as in the lineage of films like ‘Last of the Mohicans,’ ‘Dances With Wolves,’ and even ‘The Last Samurai.’). An aspect of that specific history is evident (though not singularly) in AVATAR, as it projects a cautionary scenario of that history’s unfortunate repetition… <br /><br />This issue should be considered. The inescapable fact is that the United States of America was, by no exaggeration of these terms; beaten, raped, intimidated, indoctrinated, slaughtered and stolen out of the hands of its indigenous populations (termed Native Americans), who’s surviving populations were then relegated to squalid pockets of the country, and had their cultures and languages all but eradicated from their possession. Oral histories were destroyed, ancestral lands paved over, resources purloined and exhausted. Let’s face it, it wasn’t called “The Trail of Tears” for irony. Frankly, I don't think that this history, nor its tragically foundational significance, should EVER be forgotten or deemphasized. It is the seed for every privilege afforded American society from that point of transgression onward, and yet all we tend to remember is “I cannot tell a lie!,” and “Four score…” <br /><br />What was enacted upon the Native American people must be reconciled by each American citizen, and must be framed in every full imaging of the United States by its people, and in its larger successes. That doesn't mean we should let ourselves be crippled by the guilt of something that cannot be undone, that wasn't condoned by our action or inaction. What it does prompt is a fuller understanding of the US’s contextual spectrum. It should be an ingrained component of the American identity, in order to instill the will to “make good,” to achieve, to show that this purloined land will be known for great things in the smallest and grandest ways. The fact that racial and ideological prejudices are, to this day, virulently prevalent in the US and around the world, suggests that we need something as striking, emphatic, empathetic, and simply confrontational of these enduring realities as AVATAR to exist and to sweep the entire planet with its craze. I don't know what the effect will be if any. The narrative straddled by AVATAR’s bevy of unique specificities renders a salient similitude to Colonists’ early conquests and usurpations of Native American tribes and lands, as well as to the recent practices of the US government in the Middle East and proxy conflicts during the Cold War, and is built into something potently experiential. Audiences wrench and contemplatively emote. They are seeing the film over and over again. An effect is taking hold, but perhaps, for the time being, we’re too close to the center. <br /><br /><br /> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIm9UIVFOkZ26t3ZECUbD-VSTW901VvMzTmXx7m3v4irmFMXmPVBeXVZB8-UgzRQkQbN4HSThlDhZT6-umF_KbNcW8p3uWikB7KN_7mpl4wG-_7fUhWmmZze-X6AAIY7s-Nbx2PwiL_ug/s1600-h/my_dinner_with_andre_xl_01-film-a2.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIm9UIVFOkZ26t3ZECUbD-VSTW901VvMzTmXx7m3v4irmFMXmPVBeXVZB8-UgzRQkQbN4HSThlDhZT6-umF_KbNcW8p3uWikB7KN_7mpl4wG-_7fUhWmmZze-X6AAIY7s-Nbx2PwiL_ug/s200/my_dinner_with_andre_xl_01-film-a2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449405184133907762" /></a> “I think of myself as just a perfectly decent person, just because I’m friendly to most of the people I happen to meet everyday. I mean, I really think of myself quite smugly. I just think of myself as a perfectly nice guy, so long as I think of the world as consisting of just the small circle of people that I know as friends, or the few people that we know in this little world of our hobbies; the theater, or whatever it is. …But I mean let's face it, there's a whole enormous world out there that I just don't ever think about. I certainly don't take responsibility for how I've lived in THAT world. If I were actually to confront the fact that I'm sharing this stage with a starving person in Africa somewhere, well, I wouldn't feel so great about myself. So now, actually, I just blot all those people right out of my perception. So of course, OF COURSE I'm ignoring a whole section of the real world. But frankly, when I write a play, in a way one of the things… I'm trying to do, is I'm trying to bring myself up against some little bits of reality. And I'm trying to share that with an audience. I really do think the theater can do something very important. I do think the theater can help bring people in contact with reality.” (My Dinner With Andre, 1981)<br /><br />I wonder though, if AVATAR’s arguable component of “white guilt,” laced with a retroactive sympathy, teaches us renewed senses of plurality, receptivity, acceptance, and humility (as film can engender like no other artistic medium), and cautions us not to repeat actions of judgment or greedily entitled conquest… is it not ultimately constructive, whether or not its effect is measurable beyond a dollar sign? <br /><br />More to the point, the emergence of a nearly formalized topical genre of cinema deriving from realms of, lets say, “Colonial guilt,” categorized as “Noble Savage” and “Magic Negro” tales, seems to be evidence of a persisting American identity crisis; a seeded remorse for a history that stings as unacceptable, a desire to rewrite that history which cannot be changed, but also to rise above it, and to warn against its repetition. It is ironic that these films often also contain, to varying degrees, what could be described as an “imperialism via assimilation,” where a white man enters into and is accepted by an indigenous culture and bests their own ways in order to save them from his own peoples’ encroachment. It's a contradiction that only makes for more complex discussion. Is it productive or counterproductive to create films like this?<br /><br />What it comes down to is that each generation needs it’s own reminder, and its own medium of “assisted exposure to reality.” The generations of the 20th century have been dependent upon art: theater, film, music, to carry this responsibility. <br /><br />“Information travels faster in the modern age.” (Death Cab for Cutie) <br /><br />The internet has taken a substantial flicker from that torch. Children that are now 13 years old, just old enough to see AVATAR, though growing up with the internet and wikipedia, have likely never seen a film like Dances With Wolves, or even Terence Mallick’s The New World (2005). At best they’ve seen Pocahontas, which is a frightening prospect. <br /><br />Institutional schooling presents the young mind with an onslaught of essentially distant facts and figures, timelines and textbooks, all laced with obligation, jotted down in proper outline format. The internet presents a not too dissimilar proclivity in terms coldness and transience. Neither venue impresses history deeply enough, especially not in this age of, forgive the oxymoron, unmitigated distraction. Pieces of information slip in and out of our minds. What’s required for permanence is a sense-memory. From this dilemma, Art rises as the most penetrative medium with which to express and instill histories (it is also the most enduring, because almost all of what we know about cultures before and after the advent of writing, is by their art). Art contains an affecting subjectivity. It retains the presence of histories (private and public) of processes, of ideas, of emotions, and of contexts, in its mortar. Books are particularly fantastic because they illicit a response of creativity in the reader’s imagination. We read, and somehow we see. We invent, colliding the finitude of words with the infinitude of imagination (which itself enabled the invention of words and there organization into the book which you may be reading), as though our mind had hands to pummel clay, and the consequence of this collaboration is that we can recall these images long after the last page of the book is turned, despite having never occurred empirically before our eyes. Rather, it was behind our eyes.<br /><br />In its active imagining, Cinema, descendent of photography, takes to the fore of tactility, but it doesn't do ALL the work for us. In watching a film, we are still required to make sense of its parts, and are subject to the power of its emotions and convolutions. The evidence lies in how a film like, say, Ken Burns’ documentary epic THE WAR (2007), made for PBS can be so remarkably affecting, despite how much we already know about WWII (easily one of the most well documented periods of American/world history). In its combination of textural media, archival footage, photography, and firsthand accounts, and at the cross-section of its expansiveness and radical intimacy, this sprawling episodic film builds itself into a dynamic re-visitable account (the commodity of dvd is the key here, in terms of historical tactility. Not only does a single viewing instill a sense-memory, but the fact that it can be revisited, each time allowing the viewer to bring their ever-growing individuated perspectives into the experience, creates an enduring historical tactility. At least, it is a step in the right direction). In film-watching, our mind draws the lines together and blurs them where necessary, in order to reconcile the combination of still images, moving images, movement applied to still images, stillness applied to moving images, archival and new materials, diegetic sound and composed sound, emotionality and banality, the vagueness between truth, honesty, and fact. <br /><br />The lessons of history should not, and are not, however, relegated to the documentary discipline, nor concerned only with the “larger events” of public history, but encompass histories so personal and so microscopic, we actually NEED film and theater and art to capture them for posterity. Fiction and fantasy have a visceral penetrative potential, within whose sweep can be instilled the very same lessons as specific histories, now enlivened within the freedom of imagination, tapping into our creative dream centers and expanding into modes of universality. <br /><br />But, again the question stands; <br /><br />How do we make history tactile? <br /><br />Perhaps history is tactile when a Jewish person wears a Kippah and prays in Hebrew, or a Japanese woman prepares tea in Kimono, or when a young student walks through the Vietnam War Memorial in DC, runs their hands across the names and sees their own reflection behind the etch. History is tactile when a son takes over the family’s fifth generation business, or when a third-generation Japanese-American girl learns to speak the language of her ethnic origin (see chapter Worlds Within Words). <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN-mdfavNf7iZgUe9ANcVtwrX5hQEyLlbrR9nwl8kgDM2jX2GufaNR_HsPL071xc2hJxDsTSdsh5fLJwlJGUc3a2eX-6H5UuWMqPBksaemhLyyf9sx-B4HUZjvO4AXnkjYrxS3o6_e-iI/s1600-h/681x454.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN-mdfavNf7iZgUe9ANcVtwrX5hQEyLlbrR9nwl8kgDM2jX2GufaNR_HsPL071xc2hJxDsTSdsh5fLJwlJGUc3a2eX-6H5UuWMqPBksaemhLyyf9sx-B4HUZjvO4AXnkjYrxS3o6_e-iI/s320/681x454.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449392567558689314" /></a> In Southwest China, the Long-Horn Miao people enact a beautiful and unique tradition of memory bulding. “On special occasions and during festivals, the women construct an elaborate headpiece utilizing the clan's namesake long horn. These horns are first fixed to the women's real hair, then a highly structured decorative bun of linen, wool and ancestral hair are wrapped in a figure eight around the horn. The hair is then secured to the horn by a geometric white ribbon.” The meaning of this adornment it to create a tactile lineal bond, a history threaded by hair. The bearers feel a strong sensual connection to their ancestors, their culture. AVATAR boasts a significant reflection (if not reference) of this practice in how the Na’vi possess long cerebral appendages braided into their black hair,<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA68swaz1C-Cr2gC588u70wmiPGRK-y6Bi7ZW3XrHGuolN6MiJGaHDEUWcYeQ-DVallXi6IA9ERCnmcmO1BCCgVGm3YIXxu1CYG36bM6c3mBF0n48Ux6_h3jE0lXSwy6A1wY26jwI4okw/s1600-h/images-5.jpeg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 94px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA68swaz1C-Cr2gC588u70wmiPGRK-y6Bi7ZW3XrHGuolN6MiJGaHDEUWcYeQ-DVallXi6IA9ERCnmcmO1BCCgVGm3YIXxu1CYG36bM6c3mBF0n48Ux6_h3jE0lXSwy6A1wY26jwI4okw/s320/images-5.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449401613213963650" /></a> <br />which allow for them to create Tsayhaylu (neural bonds) with other organisms and organic memory centers, and exchange a circularity of history and feeling between those parties. <br /><br />But for human beings, there is still a gap to bridge, a source to be manifested between actions of physicality / materiality, and the subjective meanings they render. <br /><br />…And then came the internet; a fluid, ever expanding universe of information and interactive interconnectivity unto itself, that stands outside of temporal and spatial concern; a universe that has woven itself irreparably into the fabric of modern existence and survival in every sphere. Economies and social networks would, by degrees, incur collapse where it to disappear.<br /><br />The nature of the Internet bears a binary consequence. On one hand, the success of the Internet is the inclusiveness and intuitiveness of its forum, the infinite breadth of its stores, and the rapidity by which content can be found, shared, updated, adapted, and exchanged by even the most rudimentarily adept. On the inverse, there is a danger; which supposes that the very same immediacy of information, alongside the standards of brevity reinforced by internet mediums like youtube (the shorter the video the more likely one is willing to watch), ever increasing bandwidths/ download speeds, and the growing multiplicity of contemporaneous sources and points of view used to corroborate information (or misinformation), will render in the ease of their acquisition, the reduction of our minds to a likewise hair’s width attention span, an un-desire for tactility (even an ineptitude), creating ever changing standards of temporality; as in, what feels like a long time is becoming shorter and shorter. Because information is only a keystroke or domain name away, we tend to hold that information only as long as is necessary in order to copy and paste, or expel it into a different forum; a report, a conversation, an email, etc. And afterwards we forget. So we have to “look it up again.” Here, ubiquity and “immediacy” seem to create a ruling standard of transience, rather than a tactile interface for dynamic retained history. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoHPreIbBLfw2y6vzwUBXGnbDcLI_fflCkmNZJ7wyUo5jyYmFOkVx9FHUW-MkYGUmJDMFqgqQOXV_wsxO0gPl7Zo4CTE8sfta9d-lIiyoWOw8hZZJCQBIh0vH_ZTe5f-gwiwHljSNjIq8/s1600-h/images-4.jpeg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 84px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoHPreIbBLfw2y6vzwUBXGnbDcLI_fflCkmNZJ7wyUo5jyYmFOkVx9FHUW-MkYGUmJDMFqgqQOXV_wsxO0gPl7Zo4CTE8sfta9d-lIiyoWOw8hZZJCQBIh0vH_ZTe5f-gwiwHljSNjIq8/s320/images-4.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449403479652254802" /></a> If we keep pitching the scale so heavily towards “dichotomous” computer-based processes that are essentially abstract (complex workings behind a screen, or in the nebulous arena of cyberspace), and away from body-mind-environment-energy engaging practices that have arguably clearer causalities and components, degeneration will occur. In short, why go to Portugal when you can create and be satisfied in a nuanced, remote, facsimile experience through information mediums; watch travel clips on youtube, consult wikipedia for culture/history, spy vacation pictures on a Flickr page, Skype with someone in Lisbon, etc. It raises the question; has the digitized subversion of geographic and lingual borders begun to subvert its own better intention; that of encouraging the individual to reach and to seek without credence to walls and to distance? Are we forgetting how to make “the big reach” because we’ve learned how to double-click, or because “distance” has been vitiated in the abstract by .com? I tend to think ‘not yet,’ seeing a great deal of evidence to the contrary within my own social network of contemporaries eager to spread wings and ideas. But these are people, like myself, who ENCOUNTERED the internet, rather than having grown up with it as a staple component of life. People of this former generation still have an objectivity, and an outside-looking-in capacity. We’ve witnessed the growth of the Internet from well before youtube and google, and therefore it appears to us like parts, rather than a fluid aspect. I can’t answer for the latter generation, experiencing cyberspace as a literal existential self-extension, but I fear that the concern and caution I’m outlining is viable (maybe especially so), if only in its infancy <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh7BzEJ23uIIJ90x3sw1hv8am8bkP34w69SO7RBiM7wVDMG_e31gLHx9zYleJ81PPtay6MbGe2cF8UP1LIp7-D4IeoAyqgDIZhyphenhyphen-xA0r_wW20Mp1LwK1Io3UI8vjF6DGnrcS3M8onsgpQ/s1600-h/avatar-movie-pic-1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 166px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh7BzEJ23uIIJ90x3sw1hv8am8bkP34w69SO7RBiM7wVDMG_e31gLHx9zYleJ81PPtay6MbGe2cF8UP1LIp7-D4IeoAyqgDIZhyphenhyphen-xA0r_wW20Mp1LwK1Io3UI8vjF6DGnrcS3M8onsgpQ/s320/avatar-movie-pic-1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449401893034626386" /></a> AVATAR takes this phenomenon to a sort of cyclical conclusion. The apex of technology which offers humans the capacity to transcend the finitude of their singular bodies, in order to pilot, via cerebral inhabitation, exteriorized biological vessels (Avatars), is a descendent of the internet’s seed (its striving for dynamic interactive immediacy of information and facsimile experience via composite media; text, video, image, design, sound, art). While the Internet still holds fast to a dichotomy (between the limitation of the physical world and the seeming infinite possibility of cyberspace, or our mystification in the unseen processes that exist between touching a keyboard and manifesting an occupied character space in a document), Avatar’s bridge the gap. They require an act of unmitigated immersion; a becoming, rather than a using; as in the way we would USE a pen to write, or USE a car to drive, but don't cohabitate the same form as the pen or car. We don't BECOME pen or car. We remain differentiated, dichotomous. But Sully BECOMES his Avatar, syncs with its physiology and it with his, and his entire identity is thrown into flux. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7ruJtbvtmeSTi5CPNKpB_LbTWRM_2suVWKnQcad4RPjzZveIeaJDmkAF-pOePGrjdb0LW-r65FLAdrpi68Jv80EtkIUy0n7r5wZXRUBMwUDQ9cgi6bbBsZI0NDZ5Pj8eb0tGwMtwmIO8/s1600-h/avatar-movie-01_1920x1080.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7ruJtbvtmeSTi5CPNKpB_LbTWRM_2suVWKnQcad4RPjzZveIeaJDmkAF-pOePGrjdb0LW-r65FLAdrpi68Jv80EtkIUy0n7r5wZXRUBMwUDQ9cgi6bbBsZI0NDZ5Pj8eb0tGwMtwmIO8/s320/avatar-movie-01_1920x1080.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449402873770707682" /></a> In this same way, the Na’vi have a tactile access to their histories, and can therefore heed its lessons fully. Their sensitivity to the endurance and continuance of life (in all stages), their lack of disconnection between physiology and spirituality (which is itself physiological / ecological for them), and an awareness of the pervading symbiosis of which they are a part (based on an empirical condition of their biology), enables something unique and life sustaining. In the same way a vaccine teaches the body’s immune system to recognize specific foreign agents and coordinately dispatch them; in effect uploading a software patch, the Na’vi can emulate receptivity of information and incorporate that information into their source consciousness Eywa for access by other Na’vi. Lessons learned are proliferated and integrated into the system (Eywa). What works is practiced, and what does not work; ie what is contrary to the “balance of life,” is not practiced. The Na’vi have no need for leaps in invention or innovation, or a desire to start down the slippery slope of a technological set that enforces separation, categorization, and polarized social compartmentalization. Their identity is one of plurality, in which personhood is a manifold aspect of all life, therefore dominion, excess, and anything that disrupts the homeostasis of life, is not a venerable standard.<br /><br />This is where the depth of their common expression of greeting is most evident. When they say “ ‘I see you,’ it’s not just ‘I’m <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEsz8FXYBEahCIxvL_vlbkMUQC1ieW7bgjoJ-hnso_Ix8UB5KC_wn4sjr-nueOterhyphenhyphenu1GTGtsHFhsHBi-pYtHe4tnCZEpBfWzSld78nB4utdUxS_382_9zEK_eg8WT45Rn3jQVNCSU_8/s1600-h/images-2.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 94px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEsz8FXYBEahCIxvL_vlbkMUQC1ieW7bgjoJ-hnso_Ix8UB5KC_wn4sjr-nueOterhyphenhyphenu1GTGtsHFhsHBi-pYtHe4tnCZEpBfWzSld78nB4utdUxS_382_9zEK_eg8WT45Rn3jQVNCSU_8/s320/images-2.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449403222273326466" /></a> seeing you in front of me.’ It’s ‘I see INTO you,’ ‘I know you.” The direct line that each Na’vi shares to Eywa, the source (the hard drive if you will), is their connection to one another. A shared tactile history creates a bond of unparalleled intimacy. It is akin the bonds we gain in shared experience, in shared suffering, but amplified by its empirical expression and continuance. <br /><br /><br />WORLDS WITHIN WORDS<br /><br />“…The purpose of this is to find out how to preserve the light… life, culture… how to keep things living. I keep thinking that what we need is a new language. A language of the heart… Some kind of language between people that is a new kind of poetry… the poetry of the dancing bee that tells us where the honey is. And I think that in order to create that language you're going to have to learn how you can go through a looking glass, into another kind of perception, where you have that sense of being united to all things. And suddenly you understand everything.” (My Dinner with Andre, 1981)<br /><br />One of the significances of language is that it is a tool of culture building and cultural retention. The way we speak, the formation of our lingual syntax and morphology, is largely the basis for our formulation of thought. Put simply, we think and speak with our words, and the manner in which we do this; differing from place to place, culture to culture, era to era, informs upon our attitudinal and ideological aspects. <br /><br />The colloquial arena, however, is where truly exciting things are enacted upon language. It is there that the rules of words are bent and broken, where, in the act of breaking, new and vital meaning is manifested. Spontaneous invention occurs. We can call this event ‘phenomenological poetry.’ It is as inevitable as the invention of language itself. I wonder then, if our common tongue, with its influence upon our modes of thought and conception, were formed in a manner of poetics so as to express the living and relational facility of all objects (animate and non-), would our histories be less marked by war? This thought occurred to me after seeing AVATAR, and was compounded by the serendipitous occasion of listening to the songs of Mariee Sioux, who expresses in a singular fashion, the “living facility” which I had arrived upon. Mariee Sioux sings of “building cabins of redwood heart,” or of “A place where love is like a perfectly quilled arrow, made from bones of pure willow,” of bundles of muscles, of “branch-arms,”… she refers to her mother as “…my vein braider,” and across a whole topography of such language, she creates something potently elemental, infused with urgent-yet-calm emotion. Hearing a song by Mariee Sioux is like pressing your ear to the knot of a tree to hear the secret it holds in its concavity, feeling the bark on your cheek, the smell of pine and earth in your lungs, the tack of sap on your fingertips, and the wet carpet of leaves and needles breaking beneath the balls of your feet. How would this sensuousness, if applied pervadingly to the spoken language, reframe our actions, affect our decisions, reconstitute our sensitivities? It is clear that we need texture and poetry and experience to burnish words into our memory. We need them ingrained in a sense memory, or made into senses themselves. <br /><br />The following is an exerpt from the song “Bravitzlana Rubikalva” by Mariee Sioux which speaks of a made-up country (the song’s namesake) and expresses how a kind of poetic facility of its physiology allows for conditions not unlike the Na’vi’s Tsahaylu. Sioux wonders-by-example… if we speak in the manner of touching, perhaps we might speak and think and act, consequently, with more… feeling. And from this sensitivity, enable a dynamic scope of understanding.<br /><br />“bravitzlana rubakalva, our very own country<br />bravitzlana rubakalva<br />oh, there, we have see-through bellies<br />where we can, where we can<br />where we can watch all the miracles happening<br />and we can watch our organs clapping<br />and we can, and we can<br />and we can watch our bread dissolving<br />and we can watch our cells dividing<br />and we can see our babies floating<br />and we can watch them form from nothing<br />sit back and just watch them form from nothing<br />we can, and we can, we can watch our blood a-rushing<br />rushing past the walls of our canyons<br />and we can watch each other's muscles dancing<br />as we lay in each other's arms…”<br /><br />The point being, when we can SEE with our eyes, and experience a constant presence of history (the dynamic present), our humanity asserts itself. The Na’vi have this unified sight. Mariee Sioux sings of it. <br /><br />FRAGILE MEMORY<br /><br />Fred Madison: “I like to remember things my own way.<br />Ed: “What do you mean by that?”<br />Fred Madison: “…How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened.”<br />(Lost Highway, 1997)<br /><br />Memory, but most of all its relational phenomenon of dreams, may be the only true tactile history, the most visceral history. Dreams are a piecemeal composite of individuated experiences and spaces, derived from memory that distorts naturally through filters of subjectivity, mood, distraction, time, etc. But make no mistake, the distortion of memory within thought and dreams and across time is native to our physiology, if not the most primordial act. Within that distortion is a truth. <br /><br />“Artists use lies to tell the truth.” <br />Does that make dreaming the first art? <br />Is art therefore inevitable? <br /><br />Art (as in painting, photography, theater, music, sculpture) brings us very close to a state of tactile history (particularly for the artist who knows each component of their works’ fruition), inciting emotional reaction from our sensitivity to abstraction, our perceptivity of the residues of presence and feeling that we often derive from objects, and our instinctual flurry of connection building that spider-webs spherically from every encounter. But each of these static artistic mediums, aforementioned, contains a point of separation; the artwork is a fixed and finite object which we encircle, pass by, observe as a singularity, in venues designated for “art.” Differently, dreams take us “all the way.” They are the original Brechtian stroke; they first create a space, a distance, and from that we find the capacity to merge with, or verge against the course of things, to observe as actor, character, and audience. As historical representations go, facts, figures, dates, and charts are, in effect FAR more abstract than dreams and art, by virtue of their strict formulation, their attempt at simplicity and linearity, of identifiable causality and consequence, which are qualities that have little to do with the workings of thought. The term “stream of consciousness” applies to all thought, a racing churning medium, tossing objects into the chaos of its current, breaking its banks in its winding, never ceasing, “rapidly raging.” <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV4QZLb-Or9XnffGQPG2Rjuul8v5rIZ0RyQzBWjOut2ws5Lq_S5VJCanVOV9DRxlhTsHaxMo06AJYVfImnWYqTiE9pcIUiyO6bBTy0dV1d9WTDxVJK3Y689vsoHQ7tKiVgqIPYFHAtIc8/s1600-h/images-3.jpeg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 135px; height: 90px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV4QZLb-Or9XnffGQPG2Rjuul8v5rIZ0RyQzBWjOut2ws5Lq_S5VJCanVOV9DRxlhTsHaxMo06AJYVfImnWYqTiE9pcIUiyO6bBTy0dV1d9WTDxVJK3Y689vsoHQ7tKiVgqIPYFHAtIc8/s320/images-3.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449404347318653154" /></a> Cinema brings us right into the rapids of this stream, because it operates as the mind does, breaks the rules that the mind does, thrives on the same framework, tendencies, malleability, and non-linearity of dreams and thought. Additionally, film unfolds WITH time (while subverting it), rather than standing still in seeming opposition to it. Cinema is able to respire; it breathes out and we breathe it in. This match to our cognitive capacities, aside from the necessary contradiction of being a dream-by-intentionality (whereas dreams of sleep [save for the practice of lucid dreaming] are void of direct intentionality), is how we are able, as an audience, to enter a film so fully. Its “abstractions” (of time, space, character, psychology, tone), which aren’t abstractions at all, make sense to us intimately. Just like Jake Sully is able to “patch into” his Avatar because it is grown from a component of his own genomic material (taken from his twin brother), so too we immerse into films because of their relationship to our basic processes of cognition (which is how we necessarily experience life). And for their span, we live inside of films, garnering emotive /stress/ and even physical reactivity, just as Sully inhabits his secondary Na’vi body and incurs the effect all of its sensitivities. Here we encounter another aspect of AVATAR’s ‘form suiting its content,’ whereby cinema is the perfect medium for Cameron’s conceptual expression.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0o-zhQX1756c2gCxqfkd2bsSXW45H2Qcz-DNiMGM2nDgLq2MkGj-YwyfW_u5AbyQXVpoWi_6lm21-NvH60N_ER2OuJVLO5Y65-LsCz1RpIpmDO57JRJvrQiLyHYLhttOBcVdfaI-m-Mk/s1600-h/avatar-movie-stills__20091216112428.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0o-zhQX1756c2gCxqfkd2bsSXW45H2Qcz-DNiMGM2nDgLq2MkGj-YwyfW_u5AbyQXVpoWi_6lm21-NvH60N_ER2OuJVLO5Y65-LsCz1RpIpmDO57JRJvrQiLyHYLhttOBcVdfaI-m-Mk/s320/avatar-movie-stills__20091216112428.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449403989752272386" /></a> AVATAR exploits the capacity of dreams as far as it can be taken. Recall that it is only in a dream state, the point where the mind is “let go,” that the Avatars in Cameron’s film may be accessed by their human “drivers.” The Na’vi even refer to the active Avatar bodies as “Dream-Walkers,” which turns out to be an astute and literal interpretation. “Just relax and let your mind go blank,” is the almost singular instruction offered Jake Sully before his first day of Avatar training. In his act of falling into a dream, Jake Sully awakens. A profound irony later solidified when he says, after weeks of Avatar immersion, “Everything is backwards now, like out there [on Pandora with the Na’vi] is the true world, and in here [his wheelchair, with humans] is the dream.” <br /><br />Human beings pilot Avatars every time that they dream, inhabiting memory bodies, holding mutating forms and sometimes non-forms, jumping from first to third-person orientation and every gradation in between. We deconstruct and collide spaces like drunken cosmic architects. We create entire worlds from scratch, inhabit them, and follow no-laws, and we do so as a basic function of our sentience. <br /><br />The technology of Avatars is predicated on this, possibly the most fundamental “haphazard action” of sentient life; dreams, which are THE evidence of the inevitability of abstraction, art, and invention. The collision of thought and dreams and memory allows us to invent, to build language, to solve problems with that utterly unique and creative deconstruction made possible by our minds, buoyed by our discernment between action and intentionality, and our seeking to understand all that we sense with dynamism. In the world of Cameron’s film, dreaming allows for the use of Avatars as much as it facilitated the invention of the technology itself. <br /><br />In the cross-section of thought and physicality, we necessarily learn to strike the balance between the infinitude of interiority and the finitude of exteriority. After all, we are subject to the conditions of having a body… and yet we say, “anything is possible.”<br /><br />PARTS AS A WHOLE<br /> <br />Mutating this dynamic awareness further, I’m reminded, as an artist, of the physicality and structuralism of the printmaking medium; particularly screen-printing. You begin with an image, a conception, a template of the finished product… and then you destroy it. You deconstruct it color-field by color-field. And from this deconstruction, you enable the reconstruction... color-field by color-field (and variation by variation, thereof). After all is said and done, the artist gains an extremely complex and abstracted intimacy with this image, a sense memory of all its processes, knowing all of its parts as parts, and as a whole. The Na’vi, in their accumulation of Tsahaylu (transient neural bonds), gain a perspective from many other nodes within the Pandoran ecosystem… again, perceiving and tapping into a shared tactile history, seeing their own broader orientation via experience and via counterpoint. <br /><br />So where do we go from here? How do we attain a pervading standard of interconnectivity and social plurality? How do we make history tactile as in the way of dreams? Avatar doesn't really answer these questions (unless its very existence is the answer), so much as present them, as well as a projection of our attitudinal future. Cameron’s film realizes an idealism in the Na’vi so as to highlight the contrary state of our own existence, while also showing us an inevitable point of conflict. Can ways be unlearned? Can the course of things be changed? Is our break from nature wholly irrevocable? More and more questions. Important questions. <br /><br />Cinema, and the advent of the 3D experience, seems to be a kind of answer to historical tactility… or a leap towards it. For our time, AVATAR has set off an unprecedented wildfire of reactivity, positive and negative. All of which converge upon its undeniable significance. It is the highest grossing, most attended film (in its initial release) of all time, and continues to best that record. There is something curious in this phenomenon, something well beyond novelty, something we are taking quite seriously whether we admit it or not.<br /><br />*to r from aAaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-81382797320063595782010-02-13T10:30:00.000-08:002010-02-16T21:14:02.775-08:00AVATAR<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyzGAMviaS-MYQcNLHsnmOPf4aUw-kh8JDOjN069tVPV_p69LQcFdKYZgueokAZc11FEkKfOIT5nkwv5RhvakF241wBntSefHTCusgAtF0lxWv9DM_OWu425Dzu7jiQlQae_pSqrCnpI8/s1600-h/Avatar-Pics-avatar-2009-film-9677400-2560-1600.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyzGAMviaS-MYQcNLHsnmOPf4aUw-kh8JDOjN069tVPV_p69LQcFdKYZgueokAZc11FEkKfOIT5nkwv5RhvakF241wBntSefHTCusgAtF0lxWv9DM_OWu425Dzu7jiQlQae_pSqrCnpI8/s320/Avatar-Pics-avatar-2009-film-9677400-2560-1600.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437798097961536578" /></a><br />EXPLODING THE FOURTH WALL<br /><br />What many reviewers seem quick to either sidestep or to de-emphasize, in favor of rather banal and obvious criticisms (some valid, some controvertible, non of which should act as a point of absolutism), is that AVATAR serves as a nodal point from which branch a number of the most pressing philosophical and existential dilemmas concerning our age. Its relevance is potent, even in its more peripheral elements of critique ( healthcare, military in use by corporations, preemptive war). AVATAR “presents and opportunity that is both timely and unique;” unique in its experience, its absolute demolition of the fourth wall, congruous with an emergence from the uncanny-valley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley). Some people seem unable to reconcile the notion of an “un-original premise,” in favor of constructive ideational discussion, despite the arguable reality that AVATAR’s very premise; so basic in its elements, so clear in its conflicts and characterizations, and so brazen in its borrowing, facilitates the inverse dynamism and potency of its reception and reactions. Whether the causality of my reaction is subtly distinguished between “the film is about these ideas,” “the film made me think of these ideas” or “I saw the film, and I thought of these ideas” is irrelevant, because constructively, the result is uniform (and after a second viewing I air on the side of the film definitively containing these ideas). So, in that interest, the following response to Cameron’s film (IMAX 3D) is that of concepts (BESIDES “imperialism through assimilation” and free-market capitalism. I’m simply not versed enough to discuss those issues incisively. I do briefly attest that its lesson of acceptance and cautionary representation of racism [especially compounded by economic ambition] is apparently still vehemently necessary in an age like today. "This is how its done," Jake Sully exclaims in disgust, "when you're are sitting on sh*t they want... make them the enemy so you're justified in taking it from them.") <br /><br />Chiefly among AVATAR’s preoccupations is an exploration of the ever-expanding point of interface between technology and human identity; technologically enabled extensions of existentiality like the internet. Even now we are daily enveloped by this phenomenon. Whether we’re talking about gamers ensconced in the fantasical worlds of Everquest or World of Warcraft, or the networking / “whats on my mind” practices of Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, IM, Skype, and even cell-phone Texting which have become fully integrated social commodities encompassing all social spheres (each garnering their own dynamics, dialects, if not languages, etc) we’re talking about Avatars; vehicles for the extension of experience, acquisition, and identity. All of these abstracted venues create a platform for expression, expansion, and proliferation of ideas, information, criticism, etc. They vitiate the incapacities rendered by the spatio-temporal world. Users can contact hundreds of people all at once with a keystroke, join a forum and have conversations with people two feet away or two continents, buy a t-shirt from Japan or sell one to a person in France, download a program that teaches Portuguese or comment on someone’s Photography blog, write an essay while researching sources online while chatting to a friend while consulting a thesaurus widget and following the video link sent to you via email. Paradoxically, in their current states, these technologies, while seeming comparatively immediate (rightly so, in their vast degrees of access that operate outside of time and space) and which facilitate an exchange of internality and externality (Facebook status / Twitter function / stream of consciousness searches) enforce a dichotomy; a kind of attitudinal schism between limited physical existence and the abstraction of limitlessness in cyberspace; where we clearly understand the threshold of a computer screen and the sensation of a keyboard. There exists a growing perceptible bleed though, a blur of lines, though subjective, radiating from the center of a gaining world standard of intangible world connectivity. I recall when Jake Sully, after weeks of using an avatar says, I recall when Jake Sully, after weeks of using an avatar says, “The days are starting to blur together,”…“Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world, and in here is the dream.” Unprecedented degrees of social organization of found-cultures, facsimile experience, and freedom of selective identity is here aided by the ironic underscore of distanced anonymity and/or malleability of self-presentation inherent in the internet medium. While many people protest to be most honest in the information and feelings they expel into cyberspace, (as I myself often do), much like the phenomenon of “honesty with strangers,” it cannot be denied how distance and time, though vitiated by the internet, are also an inherent component of its utilization. The very things it supercedes, are the very thing that enables its success. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTe0rPSQ-83_AloEqpDMxm4-2O3O6UfN3F_OIWNKNIk14VC3oGkap5rTKnKqyrM_JrNjeQcyuF-VmLzHbq28vbFMBA0FlZYWTvXwt2luPMbTXNFRi83Zuj1gTOc9y3zMz274fh05fKh2A/s1600-h/images.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 104px; height: 124px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTe0rPSQ-83_AloEqpDMxm4-2O3O6UfN3F_OIWNKNIk14VC3oGkap5rTKnKqyrM_JrNjeQcyuF-VmLzHbq28vbFMBA0FlZYWTvXwt2luPMbTXNFRi83Zuj1gTOc9y3zMz274fh05fKh2A/s320/images.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437799371807861938" /></a><br />In my “review” I suggested that the viewer “necessarily experiences” AVATAR “rather than watches,” but considering the strength of its emo-socio-cultural angles, ‘immersion’ is more fitting language. We immerse, enabled by an apex of visual technology, just as protagonist Jake Sully immerses into his Avatar and subsequently the Na’vi ways, by an apex of technology. Where there is essentially no point of disconnect for Sully between his cerebro-existential self and the accumulating sensory encounters of his Avatar, which transcends his own physical form with a seamless bond, there is as scant a disconnect as there has ever been in cinema between the audience and the film. By virtue of the honed and pervading 3D aspect, which affects the AVATAR’s entire spatial characteristic, we are likened to Sully; crippled, if you will, by our affixation to our seats and to good public custom (he to a wheelchair, to the access chamber of his Avatar, to concepts of loyalty and militarism), but we able to have a startlingly immediate sensory/emotive encounter. AVATAR’s form is perfectly and emphatically fitted to its function, not in the least arbitrary.<br /><br />There’s a certain paradox, if not irony to Jake Sully’s situation. An “apex of technology” is necessary for him to integrate with the Na’vi’s world, but the world he arrives at is one void of technology, and that’s precisely why he is so drawn to it. The Na’vi are so substantially connected to their world in a way that human beings, because of their technology, no longer are. But this is further paralleled in the fact that audience, immersed in the movie because of the advanced technology it uses, are themselves drawn by that product of technology back to a primordial connection to nature, and empathizing deeply with it. <br /><br />The Na’vi carry this concept farther via their own immersion into nature. A number of reviewers seem to mistakenly attribute their harmony with nature as a mere or simplistic “nature worship.” To the contrary it’s not ideological or theological, or at least not according to strict associations of those terms; not because the Na’vi aren’t spiritual, but because the basis of their “beliefs” are empirical and biologically evident, as opposed to being “matters of faith.” Remember that it is the humans, in fact, who apply the language of “Deity” when explaining Eywa to Sully, whom the Na’vi themselves refer to as “great mother.” Theirs is distinctly a term of kinship, familial not dogmatic, to a center, a source, a keeper of memory. Eywa not only retains a brain-like physiological functionality for the entire ecosystem (discussed further in the latter section of this response), but expresses an analogy to the human digital technology of “storing memory.” When the Na’vi die, they are brought to a kind of ecological access port, where the “information and histories” perceived and expressed in organic terms as essences and voices, are reincorporated into Eywa as bio-electric energy, able to be accessed when the Na’vi connect to receptors (fiber optic-like willow tendrils) that grow from “The Tree of Souls.” <br /><br />The Na’vi instinctually exist without the weight of dualism, neither between themselves and the environment, nor themselves and other creatures, nor themselves their history and their “afterlife.” The Na’vi don’t aim to control or reshape nature to suit new modalities with any sense of entitlement or dominion. Rather they are innately, and very literally, a component of its composite, a node of its dynamnic inter/intra-functionality. They understand their place, and see how that understanding preserves the balance which sustains life. This doesn't mean that Na’vi are “perfect;” void of conflicts, making no mistakes, suffering no moments of pride. It simply means that their sensitivities are attuned to a larger tangible context that informs their behavior and expression of life. <br /><br />--------------------------------<br /><br />The other “big issue” that AVATAR elucidates by example is whether the field of industry and technology can be developed into a state of continuity with nature, not simply an effort of environmentally friendly innovation (which is a sensible, fantastic, and necessary goal in its own right), but symbiotic, whereby both organics and mechanics are extensions of the same processes and energies, who’s interests are in striking and maintaining a balance, and such that the means towards that balance are an instilled capacity of that interface. AVATAR wonders, if not states, that we may be doomed to proliferate the historical trends of man voraciously seeking mastery over nature, the elements, the laws of physics, (and of course himself), enacting epic scales of consumption and waste along the way. Man razes the playing field in his act of rapacious technological advancement. resetting or eradicating conditions to specification, stemming invention from the terms established thereafter. You know how the song goes… “they paved paradise, put up a parking lot. Ooooh, bop bop bop bop!” Man has manifested an entire illusory universe of information that can be accessed, manipulated, landscaped, demolished, re-raised, and adapted with seemingly infinite potentiality and without pain of irreparable damage, and yet he chooses continually to devour fossil fuels, erect shoddy housing in vast excess over any stretch of available land, and essentially manifest the most colossal dilemmas of modern existence upon himself. etc. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbh-c2-gIV4iDzWtJyf0xbYpbeNHwZyhiWVVtAv2ONLpJHv6LskKE7oqxkj-hX2H90jZ5DRt9Q9J6XNWpr1fic6xhKGvkuOM5JQEmwl_fupPhnsdSDESGT3qj7HzcYEGlGN-Ul0XDUchE/s1600-h/Avatar-Pics-avatar-2009-film-9677407-480-266.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 178px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbh-c2-gIV4iDzWtJyf0xbYpbeNHwZyhiWVVtAv2ONLpJHv6LskKE7oqxkj-hX2H90jZ5DRt9Q9J6XNWpr1fic6xhKGvkuOM5JQEmwl_fupPhnsdSDESGT3qj7HzcYEGlGN-Ul0XDUchE/s320/Avatar-Pics-avatar-2009-film-9677407-480-266.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437798215661213218" /></a> Man’s advent of technology is combative against the terms of natural selection. Having decisively removed himself from nature, and taken the reigns of his evolution, man strives for an exemption from its laws and conditions. Medical advances are extending human life-spans to record lengths; however, the ripple effect is that populations increase exponentially, as do rates of mass consumption and waste, rates of illnesses related to industry and the communicability of disease, rapid depletion of resources, scarcity of space, stronger polarization of economic castes, spikes in cost of living, etc. These are extant an calculable causalities, not a doomsayer’s projections. In a not-so far-flung effort, science is even investigating possible augmentations of the very chromosomal components that cause us to biologically age, in effect seeking to retard the process, perhaps indefinitely. Coupling again with medicine’s advancement, people would live longer with the most increased capacity to stave off or fight illness and degeneration. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV2R862B9egH3tNLgfZ9IZtoIbx6tPu9mLFdRjDIhf_3qifpgYt83DBF9OXYF3VMydlEfi6obZzfCoSQsNMzSD9aanZo1uI5bYeHCtruVZgsHTku6CBsaYes9qWaaJTE6GAOFOfVWg8D0/s1600-h/Neytiri-and-her-Ikran-avatar-2009-film-9642674-1034-432.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV2R862B9egH3tNLgfZ9IZtoIbx6tPu9mLFdRjDIhf_3qifpgYt83DBF9OXYF3VMydlEfi6obZzfCoSQsNMzSD9aanZo1uI5bYeHCtruVZgsHTku6CBsaYes9qWaaJTE6GAOFOfVWg8D0/s320/Neytiri-and-her-Ikran-avatar-2009-film-9642674-1034-432.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437798533539164578" /></a><br /> The Na’vi differ greatly. They don't regard natural death as a negative ideal, or as something to be avoided. Only unnecessary death, or unnatural death is mourned as an occasion of “sadness” and of “wrong.” Because they are so necessarily attuned to the state of nature of which they are an integral part, the Na’vi don't feel as substantially disconnected from the “after” stage of their lives as humans do (with their stigmas, dogmas, that enforce the dichotomy of life and death, life and afterlife, etc). Death isn’t an act of finality or removal for them, but rather the fullest degree of systemic integration. Again, their “spirit” is absorbed into Eywa and expressed as information. This partly ideological seed is why Na’vi don't suffer from over population and its subsequent problems.<br /><br />With the Na’vi, their “technological set” is organic. It isn’t, as with the human beings, about isolating and protecting the self, about encasement, about singularity, about emphasizing distinction from inside and outside. I’m referring mostly to the military technologies in AVATAR, which actually find analogy with those of the Na’vi. <br /><br />-The robotic “A.M.P Suits” used in mounted ground attacks and load lifting are analogous to the established concept of Avatars. The A.M.P is a vessel from which to attain increased physical force, “allowing a human operator to amplify his every move in the safety of a tank-like machine,” literally by wearing it. <br /><br />-The propellered “Scorpion” vehicles are analogous, of course, to the winged Banshee (Ikran) ridden by the Na’vi, not only in their flight capacity but in proportion and their almost animalistic design. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLWLjm9P1q6y2weKdlGqqoqUVLLGxNNKcnwanj4DVrkpVSLoaBwY0uzZiCMQQDicgN3T5TrhHXNJE29ZSwop4pK5MAXgJYuQ31JR8Uw0L8JImAaTHAuIEEm6fb170xQEcoo212ZpmPNlw/s1600-h/images-3.jpeg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 84px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLWLjm9P1q6y2weKdlGqqoqUVLLGxNNKcnwanj4DVrkpVSLoaBwY0uzZiCMQQDicgN3T5TrhHXNJE29ZSwop4pK5MAXgJYuQ31JR8Uw0L8JImAaTHAuIEEm6fb170xQEcoo212ZpmPNlw/s200/images-3.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437800072822598418" /></a> Both of these cross-sections establish the manner in which man’s technology (that of force and domination) enforces a strict disconnect between the product and the practitioner, and between the practitioner and the environment. The Na’vi engage their “technology,” not as a domination but as a becoming, with no disconnect. They access their “technology,” completing a circuit between themselves and another organism. The result is inverse; an expansion where far more that physical power is attained. Harmony and circularity become the paramount ideal, not mastery in the base sense. There is a curious analogy in the fact that the Na’vi “plug in” so to speak, to other organisms, but more accurately, they create a site-specific symbiosis.<br /><br />The AVATAR technological set, that of its bio-existential linking of Sully to a Na’vi body, is on par with what the Na’vi practice as a basic function of their lives. <br /><br />The ecology of Pandora is manifest thusly, with a systemic capacity for dynamic linking, not unlike a software suite. Because we come to understand, in an accumulation of scientific investigations, that Pandora is a kind of planetary organism, one that communicates and connects its parts bio-electrically, and makes possible this communication through exteriorized cerebral appendages. These necessarily exist for the disparate parts of its [Pandora’s] whole to collaborate and strike the balance of life, a homeostasis. Neytiri says, “Our great mother Eywa does not take sides, Jake; only protects the balance of life.” The mind of AVATAR, simply but forcefully, posits a model of that intercommunicative ideal, unfortunately having no notion of steps that might be taken towards its realization.<br /><br />Inside of this system, the Na’vi essentially have no need for leaps of invention or any exceptional desire to amend their orientation of “evolution” because of how perceptive they are of its success and their presence within it as nodes, or appendages rather than <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQAz4o2_7gv0oElNpMzRjntGIWEgiN6TXiVCkMkNL-oL-qcGP_lAabJefHis8k3ocGGfwwPB9kL3urcSOH6tl0GfAU7Eyw5kyThhR9jAlcFQ_zsjVdhc2bmwXoc592OhaW7ravbW6BaRw/s1600-h/34d4d74c97e6801df1bfb0daf32a42cd20091222193516.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQAz4o2_7gv0oElNpMzRjntGIWEgiN6TXiVCkMkNL-oL-qcGP_lAabJefHis8k3ocGGfwwPB9kL3urcSOH6tl0GfAU7Eyw5kyThhR9jAlcFQ_zsjVdhc2bmwXoc592OhaW7ravbW6BaRw/s320/34d4d74c97e6801df1bfb0daf32a42cd20091222193516.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437798760171828530" /></a> Contrary to the Human’s predominating dominion over their technology; machines designed for specialized tasks to be used in specific unchanging ways, in order for the Na’vi to access and utilize their own “technology,” that is to say the act of coupling with other organisms, they must meet that occasion of want or necessity on its own extant terms, at their own possible peril. <br /><br />(**technology for specific purposes vs. technology that is infinitely adaptable—changing the system it’s integrated into**)<br /><br />[upon Sully meeting the task of choosing his Ikran.] <br />Neytiri: Now you must choose your Ikran (flying creature). This you must feel inside. <br /> If he also chooses you, move quick like I showed you. You will have one chance Jake.<br />Sully: How will I know if he chooses me?<br />Neytiri: He will try to kill you.<br />Sully: Outstanding.<br /><br />In this physical contest, each party is of equal value and the result is dictated by conditions rather than their vitiation. AVATAR therefore isn’t a film about the rejection of technology. It embraces the necessity of its technologies, within the film and which allowed the film to be made. Ironically or paradoxically, it is the very existence and reach of technology that achieves the capability and opportunity of its superceding; the ability of Sully to transition from one self to another; physically crippled marine to virile Na’vi, to accumulate experiential knowledge via a mobile two-way bio-existential channel, to master a new physicality and to actualize a new morality, and then to shake off the yolk, to break from the chrysalis of his transcendence’s enablement through through his intergration into the Na’vi technological set.<br /><br />(Special thanks to Ben Dench and Mike Cifone for the aid of great conversation)Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-54493600154600261062010-02-07T17:19:00.000-08:002010-02-07T17:58:13.575-08:00AVATARAn Intrigue in Success and in Failure<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxSx9PzjCy-0aeXiPdZOrBNLBvDwR880WEJNIJHjT-WRTPCQqMklX7MqywyZZCxfmBBZQtKEYgMObCKFRU-1c4KuES5jgAlROst1DrAAchBoQKr-tEblQsHMy5t2C6cDp7yWtRqywfOpM/s1600-h/avatar_movie_based_ubisoft_game_concept_art_3.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 191px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxSx9PzjCy-0aeXiPdZOrBNLBvDwR880WEJNIJHjT-WRTPCQqMklX7MqywyZZCxfmBBZQtKEYgMObCKFRU-1c4KuES5jgAlROst1DrAAchBoQKr-tEblQsHMy5t2C6cDp7yWtRqywfOpM/s320/avatar_movie_based_ubisoft_game_concept_art_3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5435677578900311330" /></a>As an experience, it is singular and frankly amazing. As a sheer creative/technical effort and advancement to the visual potential of cinema, it's an olympic gold medal long-jump. As an ethnography, it is rich and fascinating (though it has the potential to be so much more). As an ecological survey it is staggering. As a story, it is erupting with unique specificities, and emotes powerfully though broadly. As a premise… well, its been done before. To reduce things crudely, AVATAR is an interplanetary version of The Last Samurai via Pocahontas, with a twist of the She’s All That’s “You mean I was just a bet!?” thrown in the mix. But truthfully, there is so much contained within the universe of AVATAR, a film that you necessarily experience rather than watch, that if you summarily dismiss it at any single point of criticism (viable and crucial to the whole as they may be), you are in neglect of a bounty of intriguing captivating moments and heights.<br /><br />The best complement to AVATAR is that it begs questions, many important questions. Questions more immediate and important now, in this information age of astounding global connectivity and learning, than ever before. Questions I ceaselessly pose to myself, and fervently seek to answer in the way I open myself to all experiences and ideas. As I watched AVATAR, these questions bubbled to the surface and molded into the tactility of its manifestation. While it hasn’t the aptitude to truly and deeply explore and answer these inquiries, AVATAR none the less stands, as best it can for what it was made to be, as an example, a full-blooded scenario, and allows if not inspires us to think more deeply in its stead. <br /><br />It asks... what is cultural identity? If cultural identity is learned through accumulation, can it be learned after the fact? Is culture fluid, or fixed? Are we born into our home, or do we find it? What is home? Is culture a matter of choice, and when does it become so? Is language culture? Can culture exist without language? Is culture only quantifiable in relativity? At what point does imitation become embodiment, or deceit transform into honesty? At what point does façade seep deeper into the tissue and simply… become? AVATAR explores a now classic scenario of “going native;” in this case a kind of elective Stockholm Syndrome, where “seeing how the other half lives” is a platform for self-criticism and learned humanism. And because of the films groundbreaking optical tactility and subsequent inclusiveness, this message effects deeply, perhaps deeply enough to actually affect a generation so swamped in the ubiquity of information and art, that nothing upon nothing shocks them. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRAs8oSLCs5QwX6WhJyThOiYRk1OuEU_73pO1xMYDKMC8_7sgifuXf2MZ6Auv0kjis66pXpi3ctNM0poG2LXnv2Z2E_n57ifByPF3jCdo_Y0RkGBzWkMBC8hLO8CgEZHizsj3e4esuFY4/s1600-h/Avatar+movie+image+(2).jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRAs8oSLCs5QwX6WhJyThOiYRk1OuEU_73pO1xMYDKMC8_7sgifuXf2MZ6Auv0kjis66pXpi3ctNM0poG2LXnv2Z2E_n57ifByPF3jCdo_Y0RkGBzWkMBC8hLO8CgEZHizsj3e4esuFY4/s320/Avatar+movie+image+(2).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5435677825048015154" /></a> One of the most admirable material qualities of AVATAR, a film whose fully realized sense of place and space is its presiding facility, is how seamlessly the technology of the humans is incorporated into the fabric of its orientation and usage, meaning that it is shown and therefore understood mostly diegetically, seeming to be as natural a part of its environment as a Plasma TV and a two-section couch is to the modern American living-room. There is a relationship between all the technologies that makes them seem contemporaneous as a whole, if not familial, and strikes a perfect blend between material and digital, abstract and mechanical. Unfortunately, this treatment of diegesis is not afforded to the same degree to Na’vi, where, as a result of the central plot device of an outsider “learning the ways,” higher instances of exposition are employed. Thankfully though, even those are expressed minimalistically, and much is allowed to be shown and enjoyed without words (A proclivity that, had it been applied much more liberally and as a general rule, would have engendered a great sense of earned and imaginative learning from the audience about Na'vi culture. Cameron should have watched Malick's THE NEW WORLD). <br /><br />AVATAR’s other cause for accolade is its development of the strong and beautiful spoken Na’vi language, which contains its own uniquely crafted morphology, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. Because the Na’vi people are so attuned to nature and its processes, the spoken language incorporates a great deal of gesture and movement in its expression. It has a clear relationship, as does most components of the Na’vi, to Native American lingustic, aesthetic, and spiritual culture. <br /><br />What endeared me the most about the Na’vi language is its greeting, “I see you,” whose implication is that of a deeper sensibility of knowing, awareness, and feeling of another person. Its not just “I see you” its “I see into you.” It reminded me of the Mayan greeting “In’Lakesh,” and its response, “Ala’kin.” Roughly “In’Lakesh” means “We are different faces of each another” or more concisely, “I am another you.” “Ala’kin” is the confirmation “it is so.” Implicit here is the notion of each person being an expression of the same life and energy, a communion despite differentiation. In short, we are all one. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji7aCR05AunT1d5z7gDFgB7DtMAAxrKC10REcoDxOV9Ep_8G-2KuetUdR_tOkXdfzJ0T9hzttIKmM1pv_iEYXXGegeC4nuN3OUj1zNAteSjLHEOq3_D5H3sdvACx3W3Sqi9AeJnX8sN0E/s1600-h/tn_avatar-movie-photos.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji7aCR05AunT1d5z7gDFgB7DtMAAxrKC10REcoDxOV9Ep_8G-2KuetUdR_tOkXdfzJ0T9hzttIKmM1pv_iEYXXGegeC4nuN3OUj1zNAteSjLHEOq3_D5H3sdvACx3W3Sqi9AeJnX8sN0E/s320/tn_avatar-movie-photos.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5435678070327229874" /></a>In Maori culture, a common greeting is for each party, with eyes closed, to place their noses to the other and take a deep breath, as if inhaling a sense of that person, both bodies taking in air and living simultaneously. This gesture is borrowed by the Na’vi and assimilates perfectly into their gestural vocabulary. But more than all that, what the functionality of these lingual flourishes touches upon the facility of language to inform upon attitudes, how its nature can affect if not determine the way thoughts are conceived, communicated, and how people relate to one another. It finds evidence in languages where words like “mine,” or “lie,” don't exist, and how within these cultures, often tribal, concepts of deceit or possession or singular self-preservation have no place. Does language form culture, or the other way around?<br /><br />My main, and apparently common, quarrel with AVATAR, beyond its use of a wholly unoriginal plot premise and dramatic character arcs (get over it, AVATAR didn't invent “unoriginality”), is the fact that it posits a white man (crippled in fact) as becoming a better Na’vi than any Na’vi could be; learning their ways, leading them into battle as a warrior king, uniting their clans, communing with their deity, mating with the Chief’s daughter, etc. <br /><br />This presents a bifurcated issue. <br /><br />In one sense AVATAR creates a positive ideal; that not just in the sharing, but in the combination of our efforts, minds, hearts, ideologies, and convictions we can achieve great things. That in the collaboration of disperate selves and attitudes lay the greatest power. <br /><br />Inversely, AVATAR employs a kind of subversion of cultural sanctity; almost an imperialism through assimilation; a reversal of imperialism through indoctrination and conversion. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_EzLeQ8w28yiMSI98bRJCS05oOYLH-JlULhiem1h5hw5mFCrOpGgU-X3g-VBGP3O5vm6GFnHoFLWq-NdUif1MmlaEKXhEQzh7nw0o_Qp6Ne7X4VE8XUq95LcOA2D7dWMnx6cMP2IL8DQ/s1600-h/avatar-movie.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 112px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_EzLeQ8w28yiMSI98bRJCS05oOYLH-JlULhiem1h5hw5mFCrOpGgU-X3g-VBGP3O5vm6GFnHoFLWq-NdUif1MmlaEKXhEQzh7nw0o_Qp6Ne7X4VE8XUq95LcOA2D7dWMnx6cMP2IL8DQ/s200/avatar-movie.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5435680883567700674" /></a>This is where a film like DANCES WITH WOLVES, which AVATAR has been both properly and improperly compared to, succeeds fantastically; because in spite of his affection for and investment in the Sioux Indians, his exploration of their customs, language, and daily life, Union Soldier Lt. John Dunbar (Costner) doesn't become a Sioux Indian, doesn’t assimilate beyond a point of no return, doesn’t assume an infallible measure of acceptance (though he might hope for it), doesn’t lead the Sioux proudly into battle (The chief refuses to allow hip to assist in a war party against invading Pawnee, and later, in fact it is THEY [the Sioux] that mount an attack to save HIM from Union Army imprisonment)… and in the end the cultural divide sorrowfully asserts itself. Dunbar attests that his presence with the Sioux could only be transient, and that the oncoming storm of subjugation would separate them with inevitability. As a testament to the tact and sensitivity of his portrayal of the Sioux and the film’s enduring popularity, Kevin Costner was <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeyw6OzlQFCt29W7-K3DcAH-XkUbOXbav1XuxMpobIsfgEXJSK6aQU9XUavpJxxwN851wnlkWdRIb6E6cYJqUNV_dKdXeYNi0sB8p2IJL09aZsskjOUxXNpnAglQzxrHEOgJ_WLiGyRJQ/s1600-h/dances-with-wolves-sequel.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 102px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeyw6OzlQFCt29W7-K3DcAH-XkUbOXbav1XuxMpobIsfgEXJSK6aQU9XUavpJxxwN851wnlkWdRIb6E6cYJqUNV_dKdXeYNi0sB8p2IJL09aZsskjOUxXNpnAglQzxrHEOgJ_WLiGyRJQ/s200/dances-with-wolves-sequel.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5435683865315243410" /></a>adopted as an honorary member of the Sioux Nation, an interesting if not ironic phenomenon in context with this discussion of cultural identity. <br /><br />My other quarrel is that AVATAR, which takes place in a somewhat distant future, purports to carry such archaic and simplistic attitudes of race and personhood, and renders such standardized caricatures for its antagonists (even some of its principal cast) to inhabit. AVATAR infers that the human race is in a dire situation of survival, but inferred is all. No weight is given to that basic desperation to “find a new homeworld,” and ALL weight is given to the propensities of economic voracity, indiscriminant shows of military force, professional arrogance, etc. The scientists are sympathetic, inquisitive, and ultimately weak, the soldiers are complete goons, and “the company” is a heartless profit-seeking beast. Are these archetypes COMPLETELY out of line? No. Are they reflections of historical and extant attitudinal realities? Yes. Does racism and prejudice still virulently exist today, as in places like Uganda in which anti-homosexuality legislation is in place to criminalize homosexuality as punishable-by-death? Yes. Will racism always exist? Probably. Does it make for interesting complex drama, rife with engaging and natural ambiguity, to create a story about as “Good Guy, Bad Guy” as you possibly can? No. But does AVATAR, alongside clear inadequacy, create an utterly sweeping, broadly appreciable experience with clear lines of conflict, obvious cautionary intentionality, and a valuable lesson of understanding and collaborative existence? A resounding Yes.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDfTAkrdacIdcx-0JX5NcJgR9ih8BGoJjNQt9sEP6CSJHu2TSRXAraMXq00geNjjUjLl6K9Tv6IiZQGPH74B9HquIpaahtuW0fAYCm52O_BsCZJ7eXB0krX2o7m_zqFU7lodbd69-vDxg/s1600-h/avatar_movie_03-550x308.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDfTAkrdacIdcx-0JX5NcJgR9ih8BGoJjNQt9sEP6CSJHu2TSRXAraMXq00geNjjUjLl6K9Tv6IiZQGPH74B9HquIpaahtuW0fAYCm52O_BsCZJ7eXB0krX2o7m_zqFU7lodbd69-vDxg/s320/avatar_movie_03-550x308.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5435678289193649282" /></a><br />Pluses and minuses considered, AVATAR wins. It is wholly interesting in its successes and failures, in its emphasis and miss-emphasis, in the ideas it delves into, the questions it raises whether it knows it or not, the enveloping experience it provides, the emotional catharsis it revels in (though tinged with more than just a little bit of “white guilt”), and the dynamism of its physicality, its surface, and its dance.<br /><br />OTHER FILMS TO WATCH<br />These following films are virtual master-classes in where AVATAR either miss-emphasizes, treats its subjects too simplistically, or avoids opportunities for irony and ambiguity. They posit varied outcomes, degrees, and motivations of cultural integration and exchange. <br /><br />THE BULLFIGHTER AND THE LADY (Budd Boetticher, 1951)<br />THE NEW WORLD (Terrence Malick, 2005)<br />HOW TASTY WAS MY LITTLE FRENCHMEN (Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1971)Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-78575147463440431172010-01-17T17:56:00.000-08:002010-01-22T07:42:48.906-08:00TOP 11 FAVORITE FILMS OF THE DECADE(not in order of preference)<br /><br />This was a near-impossible task, selecting only ten films from a decade of immeasurable cinematic prolificity and creativity… so I decided to pick 11. My goal, not to chose an absolute top 11, but simply to create a culturally diverse and challenging swath of dynamic films from the past decade, films that have struck me deeply and sustained their effect over time and multiple viewings, if not enriching over the span. <br /><br />1. KABEI: OUR MOTHER (Yoji Yamada, Japan 2008)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7ziUGJQxm3bKPlDQsa40XU2jzgzdd0A1dKPlsURaaHaxbWOrkroK3N2CbM7-FiV_QjEdbtLrt4Xi_vvQIhIqis5lTCMJUZ7NVIU2u7KspGLgVUwHXx3dE_9RlYFasG7sLFyWiYn_d7XM/s1600-h/22kabei600.1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 177px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7ziUGJQxm3bKPlDQsa40XU2jzgzdd0A1dKPlsURaaHaxbWOrkroK3N2CbM7-FiV_QjEdbtLrt4Xi_vvQIhIqis5lTCMJUZ7NVIU2u7KspGLgVUwHXx3dE_9RlYFasG7sLFyWiYn_d7XM/s320/22kabei600.1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427898431275620530" /></a> For 133 min I was a member of the Nogami family. I laughed, smiled, worried, and cried with them. I inhabited the rooms of their house, I ate dinner at their table. I was wholly taken into their lives. This film is as sensitive a transposition as I’ve ever known in cinema. Maybe I just saw it when I was most receptive.<br /><br />KABEI tells the story of the Nogami family in the years leading up to and during WWII. After Shigeru, the patriarch, is imprisoned for the “incendiary” content of his writing, Kabei (the children’s pet name for his wife, their mother) must carry the family (two daughters) on her own. Toru, a former student of Shigeru’s pays respects to his sensei and becomes a devoted helpful friend to the Nogami’s, developing a deep but secretive affection for Kabei… and her for him. A complex range of Japanese attitudes, in conflict and acquiescence to custom and policy, builds a grand portrait of wartime humanity. <br /><br />Yoji Yamada is a man of considerable acclaim in Japan, having directed the 36 installments of the Tora-san film series, and most recently reached international acclaim for his Samurai Trilogy (Including the Oscar nominated Twilight Samurai). If there were a living director that one could call intrinsically Japanese; meaning that they can tell a story in the way only a Japanese person could tell it (despite the ubiquity of cross cultural information rendered by the 20th century), it is Yoji Yamada… but perhaps only because his subjects are Japanese. Perhaps his prevailing sensitivity, hints of sentimentality, gentle maturity, and observance of the everyday (all of which bring Ozu to mind) could benefit most any cultural context. After all, where does one culture begin and the other end if culture, like time, is fluid? <br /><br />2. BABEL (Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu , Mexico 2006) <br />**BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCES OF THE DECADE!** (Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrj9QL2fY9AgzQ5CJPscLepbnNAKCT86OM_glhjFf_qHCl5QnWG1Ea3iSYDNCUMhJKwzkN3jYGFOWWfIlu5f2PJ6iVOzNkMR7kg3pAElVHS4a959IslCVxgAPS7teqiCbP84mJvh24opQ/s1600-h/babel_rinko1.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 298px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrj9QL2fY9AgzQ5CJPscLepbnNAKCT86OM_glhjFf_qHCl5QnWG1Ea3iSYDNCUMhJKwzkN3jYGFOWWfIlu5f2PJ6iVOzNkMR7kg3pAElVHS4a959IslCVxgAPS7teqiCbP84mJvh24opQ/s320/babel_rinko1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427898719059693602" /></a> A sprawling, razing, profound, and accomplished film. Innaritu crafts an arresting proof by contradiction; by exploring the realities of emotional distance through a structural fragmentation, with narrative threads scattered across four continents, BABEL reveals the spontaneous but inevitable weave of causality and sheer humanity that connects us. BABEL reaches a new height in all aspects of cinema, most important and timely being the global scale of its exploration. BABEL is powerful and humbling enough even to dissolve the celebrity of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchette. (One of the best scores of the decade.) <br /><br />3. THREE TIMES (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan 2005)<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh86mMPJJ1UCRFrzlITmrElWS6nIa38WPYWD5KJ0xMx27sOQUSF4mjTFxYrMQLktbvxDj2MvszjUUkLLHZtAv0DT-NDMwPecwgHVd4ptRUpKeKCLaNuK-CVpOhCWUfaJfLvxyVLj_IZD88/s1600-h/threetimes_1966_2.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh86mMPJJ1UCRFrzlITmrElWS6nIa38WPYWD5KJ0xMx27sOQUSF4mjTFxYrMQLktbvxDj2MvszjUUkLLHZtAv0DT-NDMwPecwgHVd4ptRUpKeKCLaNuK-CVpOhCWUfaJfLvxyVLj_IZD88/s200/threetimes_1966_2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427899560396826946" /></a> <br />Hou Hsiao-Hsien (Millenium Mambo,) is one of the most talented filmmakers working today, and yet despite being the most salient of the Taiwanese New Cinema directors to emerge in the mid 1980’s is almost entirely relegated to the festival circuit in the US (save for Flight of the Red Balloon). THREE TIMES explores three pairs of lovers (played by the same principal actors Shu Qi and Chang Chen) in three different time periods of Taiwanese 20th Century history (1966, 1911, 2005). Each couple incurs obstacles toward intimacy; ranging from practical circumstance, social constraint, and the aching indecision of modern freedoms (emotional, professional). But rather than a mere structural decision, THREE TIMES utilizes the nature and conditions of each “time” to inform pragmatically, attitudinally, and aesthetically upon its character’ wills, actions, and facilities of communication. Like all of his works, THREE TIMES moves with a clean breathlessness, a remarkable continuity and elliptical capturing of each moment that allows one to enter completely into its space and time. It is ravishing to behold when you surrender to its patience. And across all three vignettes, Hou evinces a spanning portrait of Taiwan, as if a kind of summation of the generations he has heretofore visited in his catalogue, if not a virtual abstract of his retroactive thesis.<br /><br />4. TALK TO HER………………….(Pedro Almodovar, Spain 2002)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCLA4W3Rz5b9z7nTFaUMth_5IF0xcKexaAAEdGxNVTaUV7ruJn97w0Ter0MDVZEWhzDkE49VMFrr46_Mm2kr5VxcSgdyP_vYwSY6oEQIQfZrfTanCSPjyyCzv7W0iObP92jWW9Jmnfrik/s1600-h/talktoher.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 142px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCLA4W3Rz5b9z7nTFaUMth_5IF0xcKexaAAEdGxNVTaUV7ruJn97w0Ter0MDVZEWhzDkE49VMFrr46_Mm2kr5VxcSgdyP_vYwSY6oEQIQfZrfTanCSPjyyCzv7W0iObP92jWW9Jmnfrik/s200/talktoher.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427899162987657010" /></a> Almodovar at his absolute height! Full and unforgettable characters, an affecting complex moral scenario, abounding with tones of melodrama, gentleness, urgency, vitality, desperation. Critic Peter Travers said “Almodovar doesn’t just make movies. Almodovar IS the movies.” If Almodovar had only “Talk To Her” to his credit, I’d still be inclined to agree.<br /> <br />5. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN……….(Ang Lee, USA 2005)<br /><br />Lee elicits great sympathy through this story rather than simplistic pity, an oft’ confused discrepancy. Sympathy is earned through nuance, authenticity, honesty, and complexity, whereas pity manipulates through broad, forceful strokes that lack in enriching ambiguity. Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) are, in the most helpless and human way, sparking a friction against their context, their time and place, their upbringing. Both of them are equally products of their environments, by degrees wanting to fulfill the tenets of what they understand as being a normal American life and to accept the limits of their potential (Ennis more than Jack). But both of them is charged by a desire (a desire that is only able to reveal itself to them after the isolation and utterly basic existence on Brokeback has worn down their conditioning) that conflicts with their upbringing and especially with the social progress of 1960’s small-town southern US. What makes this story so notable, besides the near primordial and tactile manner in which Lee explores what is truly an existential dilemma, besides the formal excellence of its execution, is that the practical and damaging consequences of Jack and Ennis’ decisions; their increasing waywardness in regards to their families, the damage Ennis does to Jack through his prevailing fear and confliction of learned and intrinsic values regarding their love, and the literal danger they bear in expressing that love in a repressive conservative social arena, are a constant element, a predominating topic in their dialogues and behaviors. Lee creates characters subject to expectation that are fully culpable for their inadequacies, their failures, their anxieties, and broken promises. Because of this complexity, not one stroke of this film speaks “woe is me.” <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2f2CqctM-q-joXdZ1zXfB3zbyigLvK-PhNMew0mMWhKglO8FskjoVzXwNgl_AKwUyVzWPSmjIV3Pezm8b4CDnjadE_xm2GTZesmLx9HHmBOyo0Lk9sQpEpkl-wffbG7GGzj0N6E0SJKk/s1600-h/brokeback_mountain.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 197px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2f2CqctM-q-joXdZ1zXfB3zbyigLvK-PhNMew0mMWhKglO8FskjoVzXwNgl_AKwUyVzWPSmjIV3Pezm8b4CDnjadE_xm2GTZesmLx9HHmBOyo0Lk9sQpEpkl-wffbG7GGzj0N6E0SJKk/s200/brokeback_mountain.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427900197087313522" /></a> BROKEBACK calls from the recesses of the “pure self,” the immediate and visceral self, which verges against our means, circumstances, and loyalties always. This vergence rises between the intrinsic and the learned, the inborn and the imposed, the internal (desire) and the exteriorized architectures of society (morals, values, trends, economy, etc). It is in this ultimately primal struggle that BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is wholly universal. This basic struggle is highlighted, and given a renewed significance by virtue of being a mainstream product involving a homosexual relationship. That slight but impactful irregularity calls attention once again to extremely important and relatable aspects of the human condition. <br /><br />6. MULHOLLAND DR. (David Lynch, USA 2002)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja2f2g_QHrYsYHTM0i5diWj92USTbCgoyoA0Ox3kyzZrRNp3QG72kNUitA1YVBCxtR4IuT1MWi_tuLUuC8S7dK362WMsJVi-Vj7XfF5r3xLSY0kGB6xmn_vi30azgtpv-BZUUWEI48ZV8/s1600-h/mulholland_drive_001.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 224px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja2f2g_QHrYsYHTM0i5diWj92USTbCgoyoA0Ox3kyzZrRNp3QG72kNUitA1YVBCxtR4IuT1MWi_tuLUuC8S7dK362WMsJVi-Vj7XfF5r3xLSY0kGB6xmn_vi30azgtpv-BZUUWEI48ZV8/s320/mulholland_drive_001.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427901439929774626" /></a> Speaking mostly of the relationships shared between Lost Highway, Inland Empire, and Mulholland Drive, David Lynch is a weaver of dreams. He understands their modes, their spontaneity, their density of details, and their refracted qualities of space, time, and superimposition, like no other artistic mind. Lynch has also chosen the greatest medium possible through which to explore these anxious, passionate, and frustrated subconscious realms, which he can emulate in an absolutely singular fashion. They are remarkably full experiences, and they can remain just that, an experience, but their bevy of details, layers, and interlaced instruction are far too much to neglect. Whether you want to or not, your mind will draw lines in the constellation he has scattered between frame one and frame last. Mulholland Dr. was my first Lynchian experience. I had no idea what I was getting into, and afterwards… had no idea what I had gotten into. I saw it again the next day, and every subsequent time it’s played at the County Theater. It is absorbed into me. I consider my relationship to this film, and how it enlivens my mind to this day, my greatest cinematic love affair. (Another standout score!)<br /><br />7. SPARROW…………………….(Johnny To, Hong Kong 2008)<br /><br />Veteran Hong Kong action auteur Johnny To (Election, Triad Election) creates a vibrant love letter to a rapidly changing Hong Kong, to fraternal loyalty, and unabashedly to the vivacious Hollywood films of the 1950’s and 60’s. Sparrow traces a small gang of master pickpockets who eke out their living in an old quarter of Hong Kong. Their unity, however, is disrupted when a mysterious woman enters into their lives and manipulatively threads them into her own dilemma. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggj1mQtXEED4y-vw4ZRHGrCaNWR4DO_42Jxn2YI8Yxp9MJyUaxXV21R8V2BmZpIBTdAJjgm408oHdceMyeeX5XFX0Fq8xTqanY2ix7k7XywDG0Jdf3doGqv5bXlkfjo3hs0YMvK3i76Vw/s1600-h/sparrow.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 212px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggj1mQtXEED4y-vw4ZRHGrCaNWR4DO_42Jxn2YI8Yxp9MJyUaxXV21R8V2BmZpIBTdAJjgm408oHdceMyeeX5XFX0Fq8xTqanY2ix7k7XywDG0Jdf3doGqv5bXlkfjo3hs0YMvK3i76Vw/s320/sparrow.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427901226176365138" /></a><br />SPARROW, with its bright endearing center, is as close as you can get to a musical without singing, and boasts a cleanly specific, choreographed vision (as is typical with the director). Johnny To has crafted a film that rejoices in the fact that it is a film. SPARROW revels in its movements, framings, and moods, which owe as much to Charlie Chaplin as they do The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The final pickpocket showdown (slow motion, in the rain, at night… with umbrellas!)…MAGIC! (This film also boasts a light, fluttering, energetic score!)<br /><br />8. SAMARITAN GIRL……………...(Kim Ki Duk, South Korea 2004)<br />**BEST FILMMAKER OF THE DECADE!**<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQxHTtR5MF0Kj5cn0yh5TxL1uDR8P0M4WLWcU9hRiaP9RAU8_7IkWwTSSmHpg9HT54NuEitIXl7i9Vwjd0zd9EOP9Y4gqhOAKNQawprwyWigdzbBejfMYhSt7iNQipX6BRwPxHSLrxnB4/s1600-h/images-3.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 124px; height: 93px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQxHTtR5MF0Kj5cn0yh5TxL1uDR8P0M4WLWcU9hRiaP9RAU8_7IkWwTSSmHpg9HT54NuEitIXl7i9Vwjd0zd9EOP9Y4gqhOAKNQawprwyWigdzbBejfMYhSt7iNQipX6BRwPxHSLrxnB4/s320/images-3.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427901705957113794" /></a> <br />“Hoping to save enough money to travel through “Europe, teenagers Yeo-jin (Ji-min Kwak) and Jae-young (Min-jeong Seo) enter into a risky trade: Jae-young becomes a prostitute, and Yeo-jin manages their business. After Jae-young is killed, Yeo-jin assumes the role of sex worker to keep their clients happy. But Yeo-jin's father (Eol Lee) discovers his daughter's secret, setting off a chain of events that bring father and daughter to a crossroads.”<br /><br />Kim Ki Duk has made his name as an uninhibited architect of coarse emotional unravellings, and I recommend any and all of his films for the depths they tap into. Kim is a keen observer of small yet resonant gestures, is spare on words and yet says volumes. His films become universal this way. As inclement and tumultuous as they may seem, they contain undeniable familiarity of feeling and of desire. Kim has a unique understanding of the friction caused when emotion penetrates into the physical realm, when what we want is outside of our reach or understanding, and what it means when words are too obcsure to explain our desires. Actions speak louder than words. SAMARITAN GIRL is perhaps the most challenging and wrenching of his portraits, and stands as the perfect rubric for his utterly singular idiolect. (Kim won best director at the Berlin International Film Festival for this film)<br /><br />9. THE NEW WORLD …………….Terence Malick (USA 2005)<br />**BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY OF THE DECADE** (Shared with ‘Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsvYpr3fQcTpzTisihg5Pfom6vU2bq1ZRC1fIPc_X1JQTsBxtr2zRovsMuYpyjkZDp1K5i1Jj6fZjOb4WZjWvina_yIwMCkqhi2Q9B44h6At8bD1kaAVMIGy7DvFc-jPAHwstpCdLolVk/s1600-h/TheNewWorld_08_2-20081007-112608-medium.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 228px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsvYpr3fQcTpzTisihg5Pfom6vU2bq1ZRC1fIPc_X1JQTsBxtr2zRovsMuYpyjkZDp1K5i1Jj6fZjOb4WZjWvina_yIwMCkqhi2Q9B44h6At8bD1kaAVMIGy7DvFc-jPAHwstpCdLolVk/s320/TheNewWorld_08_2-20081007-112608-medium.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427900577535896706" /></a> THE NEW WORLD is a story written on the truth of a dream, one that leaves the trace of soil and breath upon the acres of our skin, that wets with its rains, soaks into the heart, and then warms with the beat of its rays, saying "I will find joy in all I see." Never has a film so entered into me as though through my fingertips or my lungs, so subverted my orientation as though a transposition by its wholeness and grace and movement. I am transformed by the wistful yet rejoicing remembrance, the poem of textures, of senses, of thoughts, and of conflicts that is THE NEW WORLD! And lets face it, any time Emmanuel Lubezki touches a camera he should be handed an Oscar. <br /><br />10. LOVE EXPOSURE……………Sion Sono (Japan 2009)<br />**BEST FILM + SCREENPLAY OF THE DECADE!!!** <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0dqCW93E6VqfrHkIgsR3qnO58y9TK3oQxKgYmcYZ8mcSKpz4Yp-5AxoSD4h1FKvdNoqAzYrU8Vus5puBfysYbDe-YyFl63gLQe1hoLkKr_AEqGcwMub5ILgfWB2VMVKcp4L5qCyY6Nb4/s1600-h/ff20090206r1a.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0dqCW93E6VqfrHkIgsR3qnO58y9TK3oQxKgYmcYZ8mcSKpz4Yp-5AxoSD4h1FKvdNoqAzYrU8Vus5puBfysYbDe-YyFl63gLQe1hoLkKr_AEqGcwMub5ILgfWB2VMVKcp4L5qCyY6Nb4/s320/ff20090206r1a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427900991607643986" /></a> “Having grown up in a devout Christian family, Yu (Takahiro Nishijima) has always been a well-behaved kid. After his mother dies, his priest father is seduced by a woman who breaks his heart, causing him to torment Yu by forcing him to confess his sins on a daily basis. Of course, being a fairly normal kid, Yu has no legitimate sins to confess. To appease his increasingly demanding father, Yu is determined to become a true sinner, eventually training to become an expert at sneak upskirt photography. Pornography being the one sin no priest can overlook, Yu gets the attention he s been so desperately seeking from his dad. One day while hanging out with his fellow sinner pals but dressed like Sasori as punishment for being on the losing end of a bet Yu meets a beautiful girl named Yoko (Hikari Mitsushima). Their first meeting is a glorious one, beginning with an all-out street brawl and ending with a kiss. There are only two problems: she thinks he s a woman and a devious cult leader named Aya (Sakura Ando) is carefully manipulating both of their lives.”<br /><br />Little can be said of this film before it is seen. It is a singular, varied and unmitigatedly hilarious experience. And even after seeing it, words seem to fall radically short; though "revelatory" "ambitious" "epic" spring to mind first. LOVE EXPOSURE is a cinematic experience imbued with such vibrancy, complexity, spasticity, absurdity, honesty, and observance; that one cant help but feel revived of life afterward. Though writer / director Shion Sono (Suicide Club) builds so many ideas, threads, and tones, what resonates deepest is its feelings; heartfelt, ironically innocent (considering some of its rather coarse specific content), and utterly full! What stands tallest is Sono’s exploration of how externalized perceptions and unknowing misconceptions inform upon our individual processes of identity building. In a world that is now staggeringly connected, and where information is so ubiquitous it requires actual effort to be avoided, Sono’s curiosity seems most relevant. <br /><br />Though lasting 4 hours, each frame is brimming with a vital energy that defies its duration, and is somehow able to remain startlingly intimate in defiance of its grandeur. As was said at the introduction of this film on its NY premier... "it’s the shortest 4 hour film I've ever seen." It goes by in a flash!<br /><br />11. THE WAR (Ken Burns, 2007)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnSPb4w1QY95IsLAvS7JWA55k48bhD5v3oTY5t75wEoFe6kVW669LKXIdeafFwGVhEw7Dw78OlYkotw4CwwabgkeI36VxcppCf3A55Gophgn8-evdz9GoohlC0ikX9EeRKQfc20wsSCG4/s1600-h/fleeing+the+war.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnSPb4w1QY95IsLAvS7JWA55k48bhD5v3oTY5t75wEoFe6kVW669LKXIdeafFwGVhEw7Dw78OlYkotw4CwwabgkeI36VxcppCf3A55Gophgn8-evdz9GoohlC0ikX9EeRKQfc20wsSCG4/s320/fleeing+the+war.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427905467002537778" /></a> Though made for television and episodic in design, THE WAR is most certainly a film. Enormous in scope, thorough but captivating in its historical detail, an unfathomable feat of editing, garnering a fair and fantastic range of perspectives (unafraid to highlight the US’s own missteps and poor wartime practices, alongside the strides of progress and generosity). <br /><br />THE WAR is historical yet radically personal. While a documentary of mostly archival materials, it feels more tactile, visceral, if not elemental, to me than even a film like Saving Private Ryan. Perhaps that is a quality earned through its combination of mediums, modes of storytelling, and the textural artistic processes involved in drawing a vast narrative with existing and new materials; the amalgam of which feels potently direct, and is given ample space to accumulate its affect across a 15hour feature. THE WAR also strikes me as a technical milestone for editing and sound design.<br /> <br />HONORABLE MENTION:<br /><br />-Hayao Miyazaki.. all of them<br />-Wes Anderson… all of them<br />-Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola 2003)<br />-Inglorious Basterds (Tarantino 2009)<br />-Brick (Rian Johnson 2005) <br />-Atonement (Joe Wright 2007) <br />-21 Grams (Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, 2003) <br />-Assassination of Jesse James (Andrew Dominik 2007) <br />-The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach 2006), <br />-Lust Caution (Ang Lee, 2007), <br />-Autumn Ball (Veiko Ounpuu 2007, Estonia), <br />-A Bittersweet Life (Kim Ji-woon 2006, South Korea), <br />-3-Iron (Kim Ki-Duk, 2005 South Korea), <br />-The Dreamers (Bernardo Bertolucci, 2003), <br />-CHE (Steven Sodorbourg 2008, USA), <br /><br />FAVORITE DISCOVERIES OF THE DECADE:<br /><br />-BULLFIGHTER AND THE LADY (1951, Budd Boetticher) Director's Cut, restored to its full 124min length<br /><br />-EROS PLUS MASSACRE (Yoshishige Yoshida, 1969) Shown in NY and Boston in 2008 <br /><br />-THE EXILES (1961, Kent MacKenzie) Rediscovered and restored within the past two years.Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-8563160719441943712009-09-20T09:01:00.000-07:002011-03-02T12:10:58.187-08:00THE NEW WORLD -extended cut- (2005)... 10/10<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOTBE8HQM-ulBUCJFoqJNCagC96S6WKJ-dV4dVkOdTpP8gdcVoInl-Yr0CPxuHgk5CViB5zrKYpKc_lZh6bFkq5ThUa9uBl2u3c1mOuSnUub0T6SWLPkK2oly2LNxaLQ-uyO8YRRj8t_0/s1600-h/new-world-4.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 165px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOTBE8HQM-ulBUCJFoqJNCagC96S6WKJ-dV4dVkOdTpP8gdcVoInl-Yr0CPxuHgk5CViB5zrKYpKc_lZh6bFkq5ThUa9uBl2u3c1mOuSnUub0T6SWLPkK2oly2LNxaLQ-uyO8YRRj8t_0/s400/new-world-4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5383583085731615842" /></a><br /><br />“I thought it was dream... what we knew in the forest. It's the only truth.” <br />-Captain John Smith <br /><br />Why didn't I sense it before? Why didn’t I see what is so plainly the lifeblood and success of THE NEW WORLD… that it is a story written on the truth of a dream, one that leaves the trace of soil and breath upon the acres of our skin, that wets with its rains, soaks into the heart, and then warms with beat of its rays, saying "I will find joy in all I see." Never has a film so entered into me as though through my fingertips, so subverted my orientation as though a transposition, by its wholeness and grace and movement. I am transformed by the wistful yet rejoicing remembrance, the poem of textures, of senses, of thoughts, and of conflicts that is THE NEW WORLD.<br /><br />THE NEW WORLD is a history (more explicitly a history of the Jamestown settlement and the initial tenuous exchanges between Settlers and Indians) as told through the mechanism of remembrance, what one might call a multifarious as-it-is-happening sense-memory; that of John Smith (Farell), Pocahontas (Kilcher), and Rohn Rolfe (Bale), in their experiences of one another and of their lives during this irrevocable epoch, imbued with apt distraction, curiosity, subjectivity, and introspection. THE NEW WORLD is a dream that addresses the amorphousness and poetry of its own nature, both in its spontaneous construction, visual juxtapositions, the constant interjections of natural imagery and landscape, as well as through monologue and through physical action that gain life in their overlapping. John Smith reflects upon the moments shared between himself and Pocahontas after living in her tribe for two seasons, saying “If only I could go down that river. To love her in the wild, forget the name of Smith. I should tell her. Tell her what? It was just a dream. I am now awake…There is only this, all else is unreal.” He makes a severe suggestion here; one that posits the "present" and the "pragmatic"- having to maintain the Johnstown settlement and its people - as the definitive reality, as opposed to a confluence of past, present, and future, of experience, perception, memory. He does this as a mode of emotional self-preservation though, to protect his fragile heart from the sting of separation from Pocahontas, the simplicity she embodied and expressed to him, the pain of loss he suffers from his encounter with the "natural," and the relinquishment of a state "pure experience" that was allowed in his relationship to nature and the linguistic tactility forged between he and Pocahontas.<br /><br />“I don't know where or when, just that it happened. I have tried all day to recapture the feeling. There was a scent of trees. I was the world, the world was me. A landscape is like a face.” (2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, Jean-luc Godard)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif7eIBNH8H4fm4nm9uPJKMRc8lUyt46BsycL0Iwt1GmN20nTah3xqB882XOis82AyQtNaDg5SEGTbYQmWBCQQ5K7XNtconqB3yI5JFbh8yaTaq4TA3i8jIA4fwch2YWD7lTdpLzKAkXaY/s1600-h/new-world-farrell-w-native.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif7eIBNH8H4fm4nm9uPJKMRc8lUyt46BsycL0Iwt1GmN20nTah3xqB882XOis82AyQtNaDg5SEGTbYQmWBCQQ5K7XNtconqB3yI5JFbh8yaTaq4TA3i8jIA4fwch2YWD7lTdpLzKAkXaY/s200/new-world-farrell-w-native.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5383581090563141458" /></a> A subjective and existential modality laced with historicity, Malick’s film is not stringently historical. This is not to say that THE NEW WORLD is not an exceptionally researched and accurately designed film, particularly on the account of the Algonquin Indian’s representations, of Jamestown’s construction and its squalid degeneration, and the lifestyles enacted by both groups. But what Mallick aspires to, what makes this film the exception and the work of art that it is, more than a text-book accuracy, is the existential and spiritual themes that brim and flourish in the world we are exposed to, in the alternate clashing and coalescing of cultural anatomies, and in the cascade of questions, conscience, and prose that snare the wind like spores inside the mind, setting fly a felt stream-of-consciousness with the voices of John Smith, Pocahontas, John Rolfe, and on occasion others. And in this binary focus of a tactile history and its subjective experience, Mallick weds the polarities of the utmost external, with that of the utmost internal. History becomes diegesis, and emotion becomes something manifest.<br /><br />“As the story is developed from something out of history; something that's been told over and over again, and told incorrectly in some peoples’ eyes, the most important thing…is to bring the body language of Indian people into this. To speak a language of memory… and remembering that we tell the story our own way, through our bodies.” Such is at the very core of ones experience of THE NEW WORLD, and also something embodied by settler and Indian alike, both steeped deeply in their circumstances. (Raul Trujillo; Tomocomo, Choreographer) Pocahontas varies this notion. She speaks to herself, “Come spirit, help us sing the story of our land.” And ‘sing’ she does, though not as the word commonly denotes. She sings on all levels; out loud but mostly inside her own heart, and through a private language of gestures, of natural evocations; pantomime that airs on the side of veneration and communion rather than mimic, of nature. She sings every time she touches her hand to a blade of wind, the roughness of a tree’s bark, or swims in cool waters. Even her analogies all sing a kinship with the natural world. “You flow through me, like a river,” she says of John Smith. “He is like a tree. He shelters me. I lie in his shade,” she relates of John Rolfe.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLD6FKoJ3qWHYsgi4luGi0Q-TK6y18zFrZ9gFJP2wJRZg8xRTrHgc7Mok6jbm54YDGQGhmDPCYtNCt4Oghyj28soS1H2YIjvO-bJlb0msazL4lsQ_9-ii408WoKYFR7CMbfpfFWKcENjo/s1600-h/8_main.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 138px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLD6FKoJ3qWHYsgi4luGi0Q-TK6y18zFrZ9gFJP2wJRZg8xRTrHgc7Mok6jbm54YDGQGhmDPCYtNCt4Oghyj28soS1H2YIjvO-bJlb0msazL4lsQ_9-ii408WoKYFR7CMbfpfFWKcENjo/s320/8_main.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5383584958607772610" /></a> In its sensuously ponderous method, Malick’s film expresses thus: that the “new world” is in fact bifurcated, that beyond the discovery of a new land to settle by the English and the subsequent shock of alarm sent through Indian life, it is the mutual rediscovery of “home.” The frontier is also the process of ‘loss’ and ‘reclamation,’ within and without the body. It is the settlement of Jamestown, the fleeting integration of John Smith into Indian society, and the integration of Pocahontas into settler society, and then her journey to England itself. The “new world” is all these things, and it is also not. What it is, most profoundly, more than a mere adjustment of attitude, is Pocahontas’s rediscovery of her own sense of life, and a sense of how to once again “find joy in all she sees,” purely and fully. To be able to say, roaming a vast garden of unnatural design, chasing her sun and feeling the dew in the air, “mother [earth], now I know where you live.” <br /><br />For some, for those who see not borders, who build not walls, this “frontier” is a constant condition, a state that exists at the intersection of soul and earth, of man and men, of tactility and ethereality. For them, such as the Algonquin people, there is no separation… that is to say, until one is explained what a ‘wall’ is, until someone stands behind one and touches it and knows their distinction from what is on the other side… and then once changed, they understand all things in terms of walls, and places them into the abstract so that they can proliferate the symbolical damage that is the worser side of their intentionality. John Smith says of the Algonquin, “They are gentle, loving, faithful, lacking in all guile and trickery. The words denoting lying, deceit, greed, envy, slander, and forgiveness have never been heard. They have no jealousy, no sense of possession. Real, what I thought a dream.” These will be taught to them, as we know. <br /><br />“We often try to analyze the meaning of words but are too easily led astray. One must admit that there's nothing simpler than taking things for granted.” (2 or 3 Things I know About Her: Godard) <br /><br />More than anything else, we take for granted that we will be understood, or that our words, once spoken, gain some importance despite their innocuity, or the arbitrary basis of their make. “The phenomenon of ‘automatic pilot’ is universal, and a common feature of our experiences. The formulaic call and response of the salutations between human beings ("how are you" ... "I'm fine, and you?"), usually chanted out of some unspoken compunction, is but one example. When done many times over, it looses a potential connection to any real, inward emotion from which one might be motivated to utter this formula, and does not reveal or express any actual relationship between the two interlocutors; rather, this chant merely serves to further a simulacrum of human connection.” (Mike Cifone) <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_qu-5uImAzs8wrnd6pLOeWLwSFjTLeWfRnv3FZ32ib0yAQaM81YQYIuUHBPmFQOmB5zAmwg8HBQvJIyuVpzCHg5JD9e74Z3A7sLmgLt9cqKUZseygQA4RO9o232TonjSp1DLMGUAUZLk/s1600-h/world14.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_qu-5uImAzs8wrnd6pLOeWLwSFjTLeWfRnv3FZ32ib0yAQaM81YQYIuUHBPmFQOmB5zAmwg8HBQvJIyuVpzCHg5JD9e74Z3A7sLmgLt9cqKUZseygQA4RO9o232TonjSp1DLMGUAUZLk/s200/world14.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5383581635262735858" /></a> But some conditions breath life back into our discourses. In college I had a Japanese friend. She was an exchange student, and native of Japan. What was so exciting about our exchanges with one another, more than the exhilaration of a tactile cultural crossroads, is how her “handicap” with the English language inversely challenged my own aptitude towards it. With her own linguistic sidestepping, she offered me a reactivation of the spoken word. In our conversations, I began to reduce my expressions, sometimes to a kind of relational poetry, in order to communicate ideas, feelings, and concepts of art and culture and emotionality. And even in what might have been the most banal topics, there was a vitality, a newness, a spark in the manner of how aware I was of each word, and of its placement, and of the breadth of its potentiality. This is a reality addressed not only in the intimate communion between John Smith and Pocahontas in the wild, but also between settlers and coping with their shattered expectations of “The New World,” in John Rolfe’s acquiescence to Pocahontas’s quietude and trepidation, and between Pocahontas and the friction of life behind walls; the wall of a dress, of shoes that make walking difficult, the wall of an imposed faith, of all the things that impede her experience of nature, her mother. All of these confrontations present individuals and groups alike with a challenge against their prescribed modalities, make them question themselves as much as they question what newly surrounds them, and forces them, by degrees, into adaptation. <br /><br />“What is language?” “The house that man lives in.” (2 or 3 Things I Know About Her)<br /><br />“If all we have created up till now are mere words...” (Eros + Massacre: Yoshida Kiju)Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7819111893889590969.post-60550037511624308492009-08-17T20:37:00.000-07:002009-08-17T20:45:58.620-07:00War of Imitation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK2108Kh2ESeFtGbvEljnzBb6oSCKYHVifOSiHCsWPZKYB1872_J0dtnVMbbDZLb3FvHt6i5zVgKvGZlqf3a7Q5ViR9EULNQ3UtiVysnBsib6Y2sQJXKLCyB3NC8-BJdWL2DZtkoofpXM/s1600-h/22zxxd.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 142px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK2108Kh2ESeFtGbvEljnzBb6oSCKYHVifOSiHCsWPZKYB1872_J0dtnVMbbDZLb3FvHt6i5zVgKvGZlqf3a7Q5ViR9EULNQ3UtiVysnBsib6Y2sQJXKLCyB3NC8-BJdWL2DZtkoofpXM/s200/22zxxd.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371145008070918610" /></a><br /><br />http://proofsoflove.blogspot.com/ is a new blog that I've produced, dedicated to the analysis of a singular film, Bernardo Bertolucci's THE DREAMERS. I make a full-blooded case for its formal and ideological excellence, particularly on its constant intersection of those two fronts. Among many things discussed are THE DREAMER's powerful examination of imitation as a tool of not only communication but of identity building, as well as an in-depth discourse on the film's highly competent visual language.Aaron Manninohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05150080805731800132noreply@blogger.com0