Die Große Stille
(Into Great Silence) directed by Philip Gröning, 2005.
When I was a young girl, communion was my favorite part of the worship service. As we passed around the symbols of spiritual sacrifice, I would read the story of Jesus in the garden and sometimes cry, because it was so sad but also the moment when I felt closest to god.
Then, when I was a teenager, I studied the history of religion, developed a personal philosophy contrary to Christianity, stopped believing in god and stopped praying. But there’s this moment when religious iconography and ritual – particularly the most reflective, meditative moment – fills you up and you feel close to god. Not “THE GOD,” but close to that spiritual inclination of your consciousness. It’s been a really long time since I’ve had that sort of inner swelling, and this film brought it back for me.
The running time is close to three hours, and while it was paced slowly, I never thought to look at my watch. It was slow and long, but not in a laborious way. It was meditative; we breathed with the film. With almost no dialogue, no narration, and no distracting music, we were forced (free) to reflect on details, on the small textures of life that give it its substance. I find the monastic life very attractive in its simplicity, and only wish one didn’t have to believe in god in order to really experience it. They live their life in the hope that god will reveal himself to them, and I hope he does. I hope they perceive a higher force revealing itself to them, and I hope that their souls are full of what they were searching for in coming to the monastery.
The only part of the film that I didn’t completely feel was when the blind monk talked about the world’s lack of faith and the sublime nature of god. It reminded me of why I’m no longer a Christian, and it made me sad that these moments are so hard to get without that faith.
I highly recommend it for those who like the meditative slowness of Bresson’s or Tarkovsky’s films. However, if you find yourself not enjoying it, becoming fidgety, messing with your cell phone and talking to your friend, please just leave the theater quietly. Don’t detract from the experience of those around you.
Institute Benjamenta
(or This Dream People Call Human Life) directed by Stephen and Timothy Quay, 1995.
The whole film was like looking at the world through layers of gauze. But what does the haze reveal to us? The smallness of our understanding? Our limited perceptions? The world we watch is a mystery, but it’s unclear how we (or Jakob) should set about unravelling it. Or perhaps it’s not meant to ever be unraveled?
So lovely, but at the same time uneasy. I love the Quays’ films.
Europa Europa
directed by Agnieszka Holland, 1990.
[Re-view review. Does that make sense? Copying Beethoven got me wanting to watch this flick again.]
I’m still not sure what to think about that main character. Opportunistic coward? Or just doing what he had to do? Doing what anyone would do in his situation? Perhaps all of the above. While I couldn’t believe that he would betray his own identity to such an extent (a Jewish kid as a Hitler Youth!), could I say that I would’ve taken a stand? And if I did, where would I be? According to the film, I would’ve been shot by a German soldier, like the Polish boy who refused to renounce his God to the communists. That’s what’s interesting about this film; it’s a hero tale without being a hero tale. It’s not about the glory, it’s about how people really react, and what really happens to them when they do.
So do I like Solek/Josef? I think by the end, I did. I didn’t much care for him as a communist, but for some reason, he was much cooler among the Hitler Jungen. Perhaps because he was hiding his true identity? Not sure… I didn’t get to spend much time with him and his family, to see how he behaves with the people who’ve known him longest.
The scene between Jupp/Solly and Leni’s mother was wonderfully played. It really made you speculate about the mother’s past and about the ethnicity of Leni’s father (on that note, there was also a slight look from Leni at the dinner table that hinted that the father’s “purity” might be in question). It also conveyed both of their desperation. The mother wonders how her daughter became such a human being, and Jupp/Solly wonders how he will get his identity back.
Next, while there were some highly effective shots (of the train at sunset as “Jupp” is being transported to the school, of the swimming pool at the school, straining through the one clear part of the window while riding through the Jewish ghetto), I wanted more from the film visually. Perhaps I’m too much of a formalist. Kieslowski, Tarkovsky, Bergman and Kubrick have spoiled me. I just felt that while there were moments, there could’ve been more.
Still, it’s a fascinating flick. Not well received in Germany… But it’s not really a German perspective. Holland is Polish and and Solomon Perel (the real-life figure on whose book the film is based) is Jewish. Is the subject still too sensitive in Germany for people to be able to talk about it?
15
directed by Royston Tan, 2003.
If you want a good review, read Tom Dawson’s from the BBC. He’s one of the few critics who seemed to get this film among the few critics who actually reviewed it. I don’t have much to add to that, but I did want to give the film a nod here. You can rent it on Netflix, and I highly recommend, especially to those who enjoy stylized Asian cinema.
The film is episodic, straying from the strictly chronological, causal logic type filmmaking we’re used to. It’s not that Tan mixes up the chronology like Tarantino, but more that the scenes don’t propel each other forward (kind of like O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried).
It has some great “out-of-time” moments with the boys practicing their karaoke, music video style. Except it’s not really a music video, but a fantasy of a music video from a bunch of kids. I love how Tan stays with his characters, and the film looks exactly how it should in order to present their perspective (and makes sense considering Tan’s background).
There’s also this wildly violent animation sequence that pops up in the middle of the film. You know how I love random animation sequences.
Invisible Monsters
by Chuck Palahniuk (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999).
I started this novel at about 6 p.m. and finished it around 2 a.m., taking breaks to talk to my dad on the phone and keep an eye on the Colts and Saints games. (Colts v. Saints in the Super Bowl! That’s what I say!)
My dad sent me this book back in October, but I just got around to it this evening. (A case for Sheldrake’s morphic resonance: I haven’t talked to my dad since Christmastime and he happened to call me tonight, of all nights, from a bookstore, of all places, while I was in the middle of the third chapter.) Needless to say, it was a quick read, and certainly an engaging one, though the book was more than a tad predictable. Once I figured out Palahniuk’s method of dropping clues, the twists were a cinch to decode. However, I never saw the final reveal coming. Oh man, that was a good one, and I have to give him props for it. Like Brandy Alexander, I was left saying, “That, I didn’t know.”
My main problem with the book was the beginning of Chapter Two, where Palahniuk does what 99% of novelists and filmmakers cannot resist doing: he makes sure we “get it.” He tells us how he’s going to tell the story, just in case we might get lost. He exhibits a lack of trust in his readers. “Don’t expect this to be the kind of story that goes: and then, and then, and then.” This will read like a magazine, he (in the voice of his narrator) informs us. This leaves me asking, “Why not just write it that way instead of telling us you’ll write it that way?” And then, as I was expecting this fragmented narrative, he actually tells it in a quite conventional way. When it boiled down to it, it really kind of went “and then, and then, and then…” It just varied the chronology slightly and used the words “jump to” in place of “and then.” Tarantino films are harder to fucking follow. Also, the last chapter was weak. Thank god it was short enough not to ruin the final reveal.
That said, though, I enjoyed the hell out of it all evening, and there were even some “ring true” moments. Some lines I enjoyed:
“The murderer, the victim, the witness, each of us thinks our role is the lead. Probably that goes for anybody in the world.” (16)
“Years of living in the hope that what you’ll get will be better than what you have. Years of looking and feeling worse in the hope that you might look better.” (213)
“What I need is to fuck up so bad I can’t save myself.” (224)
And all the talk of copies of copies and products of products of products reminded me of Baudrillard’s simulacrum. Oh Baudrillard! You penetrate even my mass market paperbacks!
Black Gold
directed by Marc and Nick Francis, 2006.
Many of us consider coffee a necessary component to our day, but do we ever wonder where it comes from? Marc and Nick Francis’ documentary Black Gold asks us to do just that. Through juxtaposing the western world’s consumption with the perspective of Ethiopian coffee growers, the filmmakers successfully instill a sense of consumer activism in the audience. While we don’t get to know the farmers as well as we could, we still feel compelled to support their cause.
Black Gold is a “call to action” documentary like the recent An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore or the more classic Housing Problems produced by John Grierson in 1935. This type of documentary means not only to persuade but to inspire the viewer to “do something about it.” Black Gold wants us to do something about the inequities of the world’s coffee market by supporting free trade.
Marc and Nick Francis focus on Ethiopia, whose economy almost entirely depends upon coffee exports. However, with the demise of the International Coffee Agreement in 1989, international coffee prices fell below a sustainable amount for many farmers in countries such as Ethiopia. The filmmakers hint at the irony that despite the low purchase price of raw coffee, retailers charge record high prices for specialty coffee beverages.
Tedesse Meskela, the General Manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union, leads us through the Ethiopian perspective. He proudly points out the high quality of the cooperative’s coffee, makes numerous trips around the world to drum up new markets, introduces us to farmers in the cooperative, and explains important aspects of the Ethiopian coffee trade. He knows what he’s talking about and works diligently on behalf of his farmers.
However, instead of Meskela acting as the primary authority, Marc and Nick Francis include information intertitles with coffee-related facts. Through these intertitles—commonly used in educational documentaries to highlight key points—we learn, among other things, that coffee, an $80 billion per year industry, is the second most traded commodity in the world. These titles act in the place of a narrator in order to keep the film from falling into a “Discovery Channel” impersonality. Still, while a voice-of-God narrator never imposes upon the story, the filmmakers take an authoritative position higher than their main character.
The film repeatedly juxtaposes the West (U.S., England, France, and Italy) with Ethiopia, highlighting the sharp contrast in the standards of living. If we took out the scenes in Ethiopia, the remaining sequences set in Europe and North America are a fun, light-hearted look at the culture of coffee. We see barristers compete, hear a philosophy of fine coffee, and listen to an interview with a chirpy manager at the first Starbucks. When edited next to scenes of the impoverished Ethiopian farmers, suddenly what was fun becomes frivolous and irresponsible. The Starbucks manager boasts, “It’s not just about how much bigger we’re getting, but the lives that we’re touching.” The film cuts to Sidama, a region that supplies Starbucks’ coffee. They are enduring a famine, and the Therapeutic Feeding Center must turn away an obviously malnourished child because her case is not severe enough. The obvious message: Starbucks charges $4 for a frappuccino made from beans bought at a marginal price from a starving farmer.
Indeed, the lives of Ethiopian farmers are so compelling, they should have received more screen time. As it is, the filmmakers do not show the daily life of individual farmers until about halfway into the film. Even then, we only spend time with one family. We meet a farmer, Burte Arba, and his adult son, who would like to continue school if they had money. Until then, though, he’ll work where he can. With a running time of only 78 minutes, Black Gold certainly had time to spare for this family and perhaps a couple others.
At one point in the film, Meskela remarks that the farmers don’t want anything extravagant like a car. They just want clean water, nutritious food, and to send their kids to school. These sound like such small demands to a western audience so wealthy that we can afford to sit in the air-conditioned or heated luxury of a movie theater feeling pity for these poor people halfway around the world. After playing off our guilt and sympathies for 78 minutes, the film closes by letting us know what we can do to support free trade.
La Captive
directed by Chantal Akerman, 2000.
This film just felt so quiet, and I really liked that about it. It’s so hard to describe emotional reactions to films. So often our emotions don’t fall into descrete, definable categories. La Captive made me feel very sad, but not in a tragic way. It made me look inward, but not at anything in particular. It just focused my attention inside myself.
I can’t think of a way to more clearly articulate my reaction. There were just some really beautiful moments within this movie. It won’t go down as one of my favorites, I don’t think, but it won’t leave my mind quickly either.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
directed by Peter Weir, 1975.
Perhaps after spending my entire day reading Jane Austen, I was predisposed not to like this film, but I have to say, even if I revisit it and come around a little, it will never be a favorite. Most of it shot in this heavenly light with soft focus, and it came across as this rediculous fantasy of Australian/British school girls, all dressed in white, with poetry in their hearts and mysticism in their heads.
The friend I saw the movie with came up with a good analogy: You know that part in Virgin Suicides where the boys dream of the girls frolicking in a field? Well the entire movie, Picnic at Hanging Rock, was like the scene in the field. Except with rocks. The whole thing was like if Flaubert wrote a dimeback novel in the 70s.
And that damn music. Oh god enough with the Pan flute already!
However, one thing I will say is that it might be one of the most random movies I’ve ever seen, and I like random. Random can be great fun.
This was not great fun. At least for me.
[I debated whether to put this in the "Drama and Melodrama" category or "Sci-fi /Fantasy." Ultimately, I decided both.]
Persuasion
by Jane Austen (New York: Signet Classic, 1989). [Orig. published 1818.]
Any time I pick up a Jane Austen novel, there’s no putting it down until I read the last word. Even then, I might be inclined to start back at the beginning, because I wasn’t ready to leave the book yet. Persuasion was no different. I read 50 pages yesterday evening and the other 230 this morning and afternoon. I had to find out the fates of Anne and Captain Wentworth!
With the mass of unsatisfying female characters populating literature and films, it feels so nice to turn to Jane Austen and find well-rounded representations of women, who exist in the stories for their own sake and not just for the fantasies or fears of men. Excepting perhaps Emma, Austen’s protagonists are consistently women of integrity and strong character. They reason well and act with conviction; a stark contrast to the allegedly easily swayed female passions presented in such novels as Flaubert’s Mrs. Bovary.
Austen herself realized the need for representations of such women when she speaks through Anne: “Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.” (264)
Thank you, Austen, for setting out to tell our story. But the question remains, with women now possessing the same educational opportunities as men and allowed to take up the pen to as great a degree, why are Austen’s novels still such a relief from the usual dreck? Why does it still feel like female characters (even written by women) are still written for men or according to the terms set by men? Why does it still feel like our stories are not really being told?
