charter is not a great internet provider, but i now have unlimited bandwidth that i can use to acquire media of all sorts. it's kind of incredible to think about how much happier and productive i am when i can consume all the culture i want. someone said to me, in so many words not too long ago, that movies are just movies, and not to be taken to heart when contemplating life and life's decisions. after considering that platitude for a while, my only response is that the same can easily be said of music and literature, which is to say that if you can't personally find a reason to apply the great gatsby or rigoletto or the godfather to your life, it's your grand loss, and that is sad to me.
"we do not go [to the theater] like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it." /charles lamb
in the past few days, i've watched "doubt," "frost/nixon," "slumdog millionaire," "milk," and "the wrestler," to round out the new film category. for good measure, i've also been repeating some old favorites, like "groundhog day," "shawshank redemption," "amelie," "reservoir dogs," and "adaptation" (to compare meryl streep's performance with "doubt"). every single one of these movies adds something to my life, and adds something novel every time i watch each. "frost/nixon" and "the wrestler" (maybe even "groundhog day," to a certain extent), stick loneliness square in the limelight, and that's a theme i love to be explored in film. it's virtually impossible to get a decent film made entirely on one's own, so to see such a universal downfall of the human condition conveyed so well in film is actually a joy to see and with which to empathize. after all, negative emotions are no reason to get down on life. avey tare says, "either way you look at it, you have your fits, i have my fits, but feeling is good." he also says, "i can't hold what's in my hand / don't do any good to say this isn't what i planned." no doubt.
"true tragedy may be defined as a dramatic work in which the outward failure of the principal personage is compensated for by the dignity and greatness of his character." /joseph wood krutch
i told a friend recently that nixon's downfall, as portrayed in "frost/nixon" by frank langella (who was also great in "good night, and good luck"), is exactly the kind of punishment i wish would befall bush 43. killing the dude with a bullet or putting him through endless trials for war crimes and rampant disservices to humanity would be a waste of time and effort in the quest for true justice. no one feels any better putting that douchenozzle peanut factory ceo through a trial where he pled the fifth to every single question, and no holocaust survivor feels any better that hitler put a gun to his head in his final, cowardly moments as a genocidal warmonger. what did make people feel like they'd at least gotten some sort of relief or revenge on a man of this calibur was nixon's admission of wrongdoing, and that it was public, humiliating, and humbling. sam rockwell, playing james reston, jr., wonderfully delivers the following lines in response to the closing frost/nixon interview:
You know, the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, trenches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. At first I couldn't understand why Bob Zelnick was quite as euphoric as he was after the interviews, or why John Birt felt moved to strip naked and rush into the ocean to celebrate. But that was before I really understood the reductive power of the close-up, because David had succeeded on that final day, in getting for a fleeting moment what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get; Richard Nixon's face swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist.
fuck that guy (who happens to be nixon, in this instance), and serves him right for ending up the way he did. but a lot of other things could be said on the contrary, and that's basically what i got out of the movie. among other less salient themes.
"a film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet." /orson welles
"slumdog millionaire" was entertaining. i didn't really gather any grand life lessons or feel the kind of loss i did while watching "the wrestler" or "milk," for example, but i was engaged and entertained for sure. it wasn't a bad movie, but it certainly didn't evoke my ethos, pathos, or logos any more than any other relatively good movie. it wasn't earth-shattering; it wasn't the axe that broke the frozen sea within me. mostly, i was reminded of the scene in the coffee shop episode of stella where an old businessman (played by cameron of "ferris bueller's day off") falls, completely unwarrantedly, in love with a barista after knowing her for about fourteen seconds and proposes that they spend the rest of their lives together. the girl, probably half his age, feels exactly the same. it is ridiculous, and at the end, the three unrelated protagonists are discussing their relationship, and michael black dryly recants, "yeah, it didn't really work out in the end. they went out a couple times, but it sort of fizzled out. it turns out, they didn't really have a lot in common." and that is how i feel about the reunion of the slumdog millionaire and latika. for people who enjoy happily ever-afters, this movie delivers. and perhaps i'm missing cultural cues here, but the dance scene at the end was preposterous. how can i take a movie like that seriously when it culminates in a mumbai train station, coordinated dance-off? it's like ending the great gatsby with a syncronized swim number as nick carroway paddles ceaselessly into the past. although when salim resigns himself to death in a money-laden bathtub before a shooting spree and whispers, "god is great," that was an awesome moment. the rest of the movie was cumbersomely structured. in light of the other films i'm blaggin' about, i'm quite confused as to why it walked away with so many awards. sort of like the diametric opposite of gladiator winning every oscar except best actor, which went to denzel washington. what the hell was that all about.
"the real actor--like any real artist--has a direct line to the collective heart." /bette davis
"milk" is one of those movies that feels like it was made by some of your own friends, for your own friends. it encapsulates a massive feeling of excitement that i have for moving to san fransisco. there are just more people involved in social progression over there than there are in madison, wisconsin, and the land itself has the history to go with it. movies told quasi-documentary style with plenty of fiction added in always make me feel this way if they're done properly. doubt and slumdog were entertaining, but milk makes me excited to do something tangible and meaningful with my life, and that's more than most people can say after watching any ol' flick. not only was it a fantastic movie with seriously great acting on the tail end of talent's range, it also beautifully juxtaposed puccini's "tosca" with the fall of harvey milk as complicated by dan white. before his death, tosca's lover realizes all the good things in the world that matter are essentially over for him, and it whips him into a rapturous optimism about life. the opera concludes with tosca throwing herself off a building after realizing it was kind of her fault that the one she loves is now dead in her arms. in a nutshell. take a gander:
vissi d'arte
e lucevan le stelle
now imagine these sentiments applied to the life of harvey milk and all that he fought for. there's a scene in "milk" where the eponymous character is watching the final scene of "tosca," and this look that's transfixed on sean penn's face is really harrowing. he's more than aware of all the threats on his life made by assholes (that is actually not a bad pun), and it's as if he can see himself as cavaradossi and tosca simultaneously, wondering as which character he'll wind up and who'll be his foil. maybe i have a soft spot for film that refers to opera in order to convey a really simple message too powerfully expressed to be put into a soliloquy or dialogue. see the fifth element, closer, shawshank redemption, pretty woman, and a slew of other movies where the opera is a direct shout out to a major theme in the movie. this dude, who i guess is some guy on a blog whose words i could never legitimately use in a graded paper, makes a good point about the marriage of opera and film:
Perhaps a better though unexpected reference for the use of narrative by a different medium is opera. Yes, stories are told by opera, but they take a very different form. For one, the marriage of music, voice and acting require different approaches, and value different aspects of story. In opera, story creates the trajectory for the opera, and provides the context for the music and vocals. But it is not really the heart of the creative form. The music and vocals are. The storyline of many operas can be summarized nicely in a sentence or two. That is fine for the medium, as the real value lies in the sound, not the story.
it's about "the spectacle; the bigger than life emotions," as harvey milk may or may not have actually said.
"a play should give you something to think about. when i see a play and understand it the first time, then i know it can't be much good." /t.s. eliot
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