Actually, I’ll do a couple in short sequence, having seen a couple of movies the last week and having something to say about most of them. But this is the first.
I was reading a review of “Brokeback Mountain” a few weeks ago where the critic had the pleasure of seeing the movie along with the last of the test-audiences. In this audience, at the end of the movie, someone remarked: “They never should have made this movie.” I agree. Not because BbM is a bad film (because it isn’t), or because it is wholly about somebody who is so unable to communicate that it is amazing for anyone, let alone at least three people, to fall head over heels for him (because it is).
No, Brokeback Mountain should not have been made because the world that makes the movie a possibility should not be there. People should NOT be killed because they love in an uncommon configuration. The world should be made in such a way that the subject matter of BbM can only be conceived in a general “what if the world was really fucked up” way, and serve as a cautionary tale along the lines of “look how good we have it”.
The fact that viewing the movie gives one the distinct impression that even though it is not based on a true story for as far as the writers know, it might, and probably will, have been played out just so, somewhere, is a sad and twisted thing to have in a world.
The knowledge that indeed a good parent only ten years ago would’ve cried at the kitchen table when their child vacated it’s closet is not a good thing to have. And yes, a good parent would’ve done just that, not for the loss of grandchildren but for the knowledge that someone somehow wants to hurt their child based on a stupid and ultimately inconsequent preference, and what parent would not weep?
But Brokeback Mountain was made, and, in my personal opinion, it needed to be made, given the world as we have it before us. Perhaps it will, in a small way, change the world so that our children’s children can watch this movie and see it as nothing more than fiction.
Yesterday, I went to “the New World” and god, if ever there was a movie that should simply not have been made, and which ads very little, if anything, to the world it now inhabits, it is this one.
Furthermore, should my children’s children find out that this movie has changed the world in even the smallest way and should they not do anything about this fact, I will rise from my grave, urn, crypt, riverbed or concrete pillar to haunt them till they even take their own lives or that of the scriptwriter(s). And yes, I would prefer for them to kill rather than to be killed, but one can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.
Now there are a few things I need to say in favor of this movie.
Start with the lead. Not Colin Farrell. His character has no arc, no change, no development, nothing. He is just Colin Farrell, nice-bodied but whiny-faced catalyst to a story he has no idea of how to handle. He has a tendency for grand roles but nowhere near the acting skills to pull of high-drama.
Let’s for now and all face it people: Farrell is beefcake. Good face, good body. He is an actor for romantic comedies and action flicks, nothing more. He should not be allowed to puppy-dog his way through another historical drama or any other thing that requires him to have depth or layers. For Christ sakes, he is out-acted by Christian Bale in this flick and nobody can accuse him of a consistent acting-strength
No, the lead, without a doubt goes to (and I need to google spelling here) Q'Orianka Kilcher. Her character, Rebecca (Pocahontas, though she is never called this during the movie) is as far as my limited acting experience can deduce, extremely difficult to pull of, and she does it. Wonderfully. Starting out as an innocent, growing half insane with grief and abandonment, turning into a woman that makes a conscious choice to better her life and ending a mature stranger in a world she doesn’t understand but can view as she does herself, with apparent humour and elegance.
Now I would put it to most present day actresses to do this believably, honestly. Just about the only thing in this movie I have nothing negative to say about is she.
The scenery and camerawork is simply sublime. The deserted landscapes, the boats, the people moving through waving grasslands and marshes are all lovingly, slowly set up, making for truly astounding imagery. Fair enough, most of the movie is visually perfect, beautiful and poignant. But only visual.
And don’t get me wrong, I am a visual person. I LIKE looking at pretty things/people. But there just aren’t enough in this movie, and when they do saunter ‘cross the screen they do so very, very little that watching them is a chore. An actual chore. A boring one.
And the movie is just too damn long. EVERYTHING takes ages. And it’s basically stupid. I’m sorry but it is. At the end of the film the two main characters meet again in England. John Smith, having left his Indian wife alone amongst strangers, meets up with her at her new husbands’ estate near London. They talk, for the first time in about five years, and he tells her that he has heard of her through the courtiers and nobles in town. Apparently our redskin has made quite an impression and is widely known as “her ladyship” and who would’ve thought?
Well, everybody...
Considering she is the most beloved daughter of the most powerful chieftain in, well, Virginia, I would say that merely becoming “her ladyship” is quite a step DOWN, you mongrel. She was a Princess! A goddess to her tribe, loved by all, and now she is a nobody with a good dress.
Stupid.
Simply stupid.
And then there is the sweet and simple scene in the beginning of the movie where we use the “pointing/touching and saying the word” method of language transference. She touches his lips, says “(&*&(“ and he says “lips” and they have both learned a new world. So on with eyes. And skin. And arms. Ears. Nose. Hair. Nose-hair. Earwax.
And this lengthy but useless filler is done by the Indian girl with sweetness and innocence, but by the western invader with a look that suggests that any moment now he is going to take her hand downwards out of the screen and say “erection”.
(I’m sure at least one porn-parody will use this technique)
This is not wrong, until we consider the fact that the girl is all but 13 or something like that.
And then it becomes wrong…
And wrong it stays. We KNOW Pocahontas was an Indian princess, and we KNOW that she is a good deal younger than Disney would have us believe, but in this movie that has been brought to the attention so very, very well. She is a young child, she plays games with her brothers, walks barefoot, smiles a lot, is sweet and kind and caring and she is about to be poked by some murdering Englishman with his one-eyed gopher and somehow it is icky.
Yes they love each other. Sure. But it is still icky.
And dull.
So very, very dull.
Seriously, dull. I could write this review in about real time with the movie and it would consist of basic phrases. Hmm, lemme try this.
The first five minutes:
A boat.
Another boat.
Another boat.
The boats.
Boats, different angle.
Boats again.
Shore, behind boats.
Boats.
BoaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
Dull.
Very dull.
If you do go and see it, see it because of the female roles, even though there are only two of any consequence. Ignore the males, watch the scenery and if you ever think “I want to leave but I’ll stay to see if anything will happen” just leave, cause it won’t.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Still there
They say that Marie-Antoinette died with two diamond studs in her ears, but that when head and body were reunited for the burial the earrings had gone. Those stones still exist, somewhere. Perhaps by now they have been buried with the grandniece of a tricoteuse, perhaps they have been lost behind the wainscoting in an old house in the countryside, and perhaps they are being worn at this moment by a young women ready to get married, given to her by her grandmother, because they are the oldest things available, nobody really knowing exactly how old.
The possibilities of these stones are endless, but, due to the nature of diamonds, we know they still exist, are still somewhere, are more than likely still touched by people but untouched by time. And this is good. They were innocent in the light of what happened, not to be blamed for the events surrounding them, and devoid of meaning in the greater scheme of things, and should therefore be able to end their existence in relative peace and quiet.
Adam was made from dust, and given a wife. Not, as so many would state, Eve, who was third, but Lilith. Made from dust, she was female to his male, alike in any aspect, she was powerfull, intelligent, strong. They were both perfect for created in the likeness of a god. She denied her place of subservience to man and fled paradise.
Adam, not likely an island unto his own and used to the companionship that animals cannot give willingly or at least consentingly, was given a second wife, made from nothing in front of him.
Made from nothing, but build. Bones first, then organs, muscle, eyes, skin, hair and breath last.
Adam, understandably but cruelly shaken by the knowledge of what lies underneath the skin of his new lover is unable to touch her. She is beautiful, a model in an age of nothingness, her face would have been the face of whorship, storms raged in her eyes and honey would've poured from her lips, but he would not touch her, would not even name her.
Some say she was allowed to leave the garden, some that she was destroyed and returned to nothing, some that she remained and he fled to the other side of paradise. Either way, he exhaustedly fell asleep, and from his rib was made a woman. Flesh of his flesh, beauty again but different from the last two, the birth of man, Eve. This last one was the one that took a bite of something she should no have been given acces to, thusly condemning man to mortality, and pain, and the expulsion from paradise.
...
Mortality was a punishment. The imminence of death and the end of self is something used to punish. The poor creature set as second companion did nothing to be punished and therefore is not likely destroyed. And, since no sin befell her she is or should be living still.
If the story is mercifull, she would have left the garden and lived among man, thusly allowing her in time to sin, then die in peace. We know that Eve lived longer than any mortal female, and we therefore know that the unnamed one was never mortal, she would've after all been older than Eve by at least some measure of time.
So either she never sinned, or never left... Imagine... 6010 (the world according to the scripts was created at about 4004 before the birth of christ, and who is to say it isn't so?) years of living in a garden, alone, with the only companionship an Angel garding a gate and a series of animals who've lost the voices they were once given. Insanity should be her due, according to all, but when created perfect is insanity even a chance? An option? I take great comfort in the knowledge that should life ever become too much for me I can always allow myself to follow at least one inner urge and be safely put behind the high and barb-wired walls of the nearest mental institution, peacefully drooling away my days shuffling between the two picture books in the library and the isolation-chamber (crazyness is fine, but take my books and I'll try to gnaw out every nurses artery in sight)
But not for her, still unnamed, still virgin, still alone. Forever.
So it would be better if she left... if she left, but never sinned, only loved for the pure pleasure of love, took what she needed but gave back so much more, never broke a law or crossed a line and left something of herself in all those who have touched her.
The perfect gene, somewhere, somehow, in all of us, giving some people that little something out of nothing, as she was made of nothing, and showing that sometimes knowing what someone feels like inside is not such a bad thing, when controlled well, as her only fault was to be shown to whole, too much, too soon..
Sometimes I dream about her, or at least, I think I do. She is a young woman standing and waiting for a love she never knew more than a few seconds, she is Ophelia who died knowing her love was perfect, not Juliet who whined her way into her own tragedy. She is the girl at the end of the pier waiting for a sailor dead to pox in a harbour far from her, the woman at the end of the bar that drinks too much and tells of how she once was beautifull, and she is the still face of a girl I keep sketching in any notebook or on any white peace of paper they hand to me.
Sometimes I give her cat's eyes, sometimes she smiles or lifts a sarcastic eyebrow, sometimes she is old, sometimes young, always, to my eyes, beautiful.
For she is also the woman one comes home to at the end of the day that has cooked your meal, she is my mother when she has frozen a portion of andive and mashed potatoes with vinegar because she knows it is my favourite food ever.
I see her in the fierceness of Sandra, who probably never reads this blog, but should know that her power lies in much more that her blue eyes and blond hair, but in the strength that draws her through things time and time again.
I see the second wife in the smile of Sabine, who nags herself about her weight and girth but never really sees the fact that she could weigh in at 300kg on a complementary scale and it could still not hide the fact that she has the almost annoying ability to turn a man's head by simply not noticing him form across the room. (I sometimes think the French girl's talent of making a man your slave by ignoring him for five minutes was wholy copied from Bienie, if not for a slight indiscrepancy in time).
"Wife" is to me somewhere in the character and faces of all people dear to me, male or female. All people have something of the lost child, of the feeling of "what did I do to get here without you?" and never really understanding who this "you" is supposed to be. Miranda and her constant search for understanding a world not meant to be understood reminds me of her innocense, Martin and his relentless energy towards those he cares about of her power of redemption, my brothers creativity of her willpower to stay sane in a world that rejected even the world you live in.
But I see her too in the faces of those unknown to me. The beauty of a person for a second completely unaware that he or she is being watched and who unselfconsiously tries to track the flight of a bird or the perfection match of a certain bartender's face and the face in my teenage fantasies. She is also in the kiss of my boyfriend or the way that he will tease me sometimes, even though I wish now that he would continue the poking and prodding into a bit more sweetness, as he used to do but doesn't anymore that much, but even this is her, somehow, for it shows a distance she must have learned to protect herself, I guess. I sometimes worry if these people see in me something of her as well, and I think they do or they would've moved on by now already, and somehow I think this small bit of insecurity is what I have gotten of her, the thing that keeps me not being punched everytime my mouth runs away from me, the general goodwillingness of my very evil nature, so to speak, but who's to say, I hope it's true. I also hope to remain seeing her often in my dreams, feeling an arm around me and looking in the face of whatever configuration my subconscious has chosen for that night and waking up smiling with the knowledge that still some good is there.
I don't blame Eve, I blame very few people, but the purity of form and function inherent in the tale of the three wifes of the first man should not be wasted on zealous idiots who would rather forget the first two. Lilith can take care of herself, and Eve was laid to rest in love and understanding of the world, but nameless one, I hope you have by now found a word to describe yourself. I know you left your sterile garden.. I see you too often not to believe you are in everything.
For she too, is still there. Somewhere around us all. And this is good, because somewhere she is also living out her life in peace just for the sheer joy in living. And I hope someone bought her a pair of really old diamond earrings once, and that she wears them proudly.
The possibilities of these stones are endless, but, due to the nature of diamonds, we know they still exist, are still somewhere, are more than likely still touched by people but untouched by time. And this is good. They were innocent in the light of what happened, not to be blamed for the events surrounding them, and devoid of meaning in the greater scheme of things, and should therefore be able to end their existence in relative peace and quiet.
Adam was made from dust, and given a wife. Not, as so many would state, Eve, who was third, but Lilith. Made from dust, she was female to his male, alike in any aspect, she was powerfull, intelligent, strong. They were both perfect for created in the likeness of a god. She denied her place of subservience to man and fled paradise.
Adam, not likely an island unto his own and used to the companionship that animals cannot give willingly or at least consentingly, was given a second wife, made from nothing in front of him.
Made from nothing, but build. Bones first, then organs, muscle, eyes, skin, hair and breath last.
Adam, understandably but cruelly shaken by the knowledge of what lies underneath the skin of his new lover is unable to touch her. She is beautiful, a model in an age of nothingness, her face would have been the face of whorship, storms raged in her eyes and honey would've poured from her lips, but he would not touch her, would not even name her.
Some say she was allowed to leave the garden, some that she was destroyed and returned to nothing, some that she remained and he fled to the other side of paradise. Either way, he exhaustedly fell asleep, and from his rib was made a woman. Flesh of his flesh, beauty again but different from the last two, the birth of man, Eve. This last one was the one that took a bite of something she should no have been given acces to, thusly condemning man to mortality, and pain, and the expulsion from paradise.
...
Mortality was a punishment. The imminence of death and the end of self is something used to punish. The poor creature set as second companion did nothing to be punished and therefore is not likely destroyed. And, since no sin befell her she is or should be living still.
If the story is mercifull, she would have left the garden and lived among man, thusly allowing her in time to sin, then die in peace. We know that Eve lived longer than any mortal female, and we therefore know that the unnamed one was never mortal, she would've after all been older than Eve by at least some measure of time.
So either she never sinned, or never left... Imagine... 6010 (the world according to the scripts was created at about 4004 before the birth of christ, and who is to say it isn't so?) years of living in a garden, alone, with the only companionship an Angel garding a gate and a series of animals who've lost the voices they were once given. Insanity should be her due, according to all, but when created perfect is insanity even a chance? An option? I take great comfort in the knowledge that should life ever become too much for me I can always allow myself to follow at least one inner urge and be safely put behind the high and barb-wired walls of the nearest mental institution, peacefully drooling away my days shuffling between the two picture books in the library and the isolation-chamber (crazyness is fine, but take my books and I'll try to gnaw out every nurses artery in sight)
But not for her, still unnamed, still virgin, still alone. Forever.
So it would be better if she left... if she left, but never sinned, only loved for the pure pleasure of love, took what she needed but gave back so much more, never broke a law or crossed a line and left something of herself in all those who have touched her.
The perfect gene, somewhere, somehow, in all of us, giving some people that little something out of nothing, as she was made of nothing, and showing that sometimes knowing what someone feels like inside is not such a bad thing, when controlled well, as her only fault was to be shown to whole, too much, too soon..
Sometimes I dream about her, or at least, I think I do. She is a young woman standing and waiting for a love she never knew more than a few seconds, she is Ophelia who died knowing her love was perfect, not Juliet who whined her way into her own tragedy. She is the girl at the end of the pier waiting for a sailor dead to pox in a harbour far from her, the woman at the end of the bar that drinks too much and tells of how she once was beautifull, and she is the still face of a girl I keep sketching in any notebook or on any white peace of paper they hand to me.
Sometimes I give her cat's eyes, sometimes she smiles or lifts a sarcastic eyebrow, sometimes she is old, sometimes young, always, to my eyes, beautiful.
For she is also the woman one comes home to at the end of the day that has cooked your meal, she is my mother when she has frozen a portion of andive and mashed potatoes with vinegar because she knows it is my favourite food ever.
I see her in the fierceness of Sandra, who probably never reads this blog, but should know that her power lies in much more that her blue eyes and blond hair, but in the strength that draws her through things time and time again.
I see the second wife in the smile of Sabine, who nags herself about her weight and girth but never really sees the fact that she could weigh in at 300kg on a complementary scale and it could still not hide the fact that she has the almost annoying ability to turn a man's head by simply not noticing him form across the room. (I sometimes think the French girl's talent of making a man your slave by ignoring him for five minutes was wholy copied from Bienie, if not for a slight indiscrepancy in time).
"Wife" is to me somewhere in the character and faces of all people dear to me, male or female. All people have something of the lost child, of the feeling of "what did I do to get here without you?" and never really understanding who this "you" is supposed to be. Miranda and her constant search for understanding a world not meant to be understood reminds me of her innocense, Martin and his relentless energy towards those he cares about of her power of redemption, my brothers creativity of her willpower to stay sane in a world that rejected even the world you live in.
But I see her too in the faces of those unknown to me. The beauty of a person for a second completely unaware that he or she is being watched and who unselfconsiously tries to track the flight of a bird or the perfection match of a certain bartender's face and the face in my teenage fantasies. She is also in the kiss of my boyfriend or the way that he will tease me sometimes, even though I wish now that he would continue the poking and prodding into a bit more sweetness, as he used to do but doesn't anymore that much, but even this is her, somehow, for it shows a distance she must have learned to protect herself, I guess. I sometimes worry if these people see in me something of her as well, and I think they do or they would've moved on by now already, and somehow I think this small bit of insecurity is what I have gotten of her, the thing that keeps me not being punched everytime my mouth runs away from me, the general goodwillingness of my very evil nature, so to speak, but who's to say, I hope it's true. I also hope to remain seeing her often in my dreams, feeling an arm around me and looking in the face of whatever configuration my subconscious has chosen for that night and waking up smiling with the knowledge that still some good is there.
I don't blame Eve, I blame very few people, but the purity of form and function inherent in the tale of the three wifes of the first man should not be wasted on zealous idiots who would rather forget the first two. Lilith can take care of herself, and Eve was laid to rest in love and understanding of the world, but nameless one, I hope you have by now found a word to describe yourself. I know you left your sterile garden.. I see you too often not to believe you are in everything.
For she too, is still there. Somewhere around us all. And this is good, because somewhere she is also living out her life in peace just for the sheer joy in living. And I hope someone bought her a pair of really old diamond earrings once, and that she wears them proudly.
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