Amour (film)

Amour (Directed by Michael Haneke)/2012

Amour for me isn’t about love, but our obsession with the concept of love that is to some extent a social construct related to a state of beauty, peace, and happiness.  The film shows how this concept fails to work in the relationship between the dying one and the carer when they are faced with the brutalities of the degradation of the human body.

George and Anne are a retired couple in their 80s.  They live a relatively prosperous life after careers in classical music.  The film opens with their outing one night to a concert and George tells Anne that she looks pretty.  Anne is elegant and sophisticated: a delicate porcelain doll.  George is in awe of her beauty even after all these years and is still deeply in love with her.  The next morning, Anne fails to respond to anything for a few minutes; this is the beginning of the series of strokes that paralyses Anne bit by bit until she is rendered completely helpless like a new born baby.

Death is a delicate topic and there is a certain script one should follow: one must always be somber and sad and the dying person’s wishes come above everything else.  There is a power that one gains by being the “dying one”: you can demand and be petulant and get away with it because the script allows you to behave in such way. 

Initially the couple does not know how to deal with this distortion in the power dynamic of their relationship.  Anne tries to carry on as if she is still the same but gradually comes to enjoy the privilege and patronises George who is consistently on eggshells and doesn’t know what to do.  

At the same time the deteriorating condition of Anne and the care she requires in self-maintenance and grooming takes it's toll on George's idealisation of Anne, his lover. George is faced with some of the grotesque aspects of caring for a human body. Both George and Anne are embarrassed by what each other has to go through and George feels guilty for being repulsed by these duties.  For Anne, her loss of cognition soon renders her unable to feel shame and embarrassment.  

The couple’s only visitor is George and Anne’s daughter who comes from England every now and again for a visit.  She finds it easy to follow the 'death script'; crying and being sad, but she does not have any insight into the practical, everyday difficulties George faces.  As an occasional visitor, their daughter is shocked by her mother’s worsening condition and is critical of the whole situation without offering help. This leaves George to feel even more inadequate and lost.  The film in some respects is critical of the nuclear family dynamic and lack of social support that is available.  The couple hires a nurse who only fulfills her duties in professional capacity and the majority of the time George is left alone in the big apartment with Anne’s moaning and grunting haunting his consciousness.

In his state of complete loss of control, George is incapable of carrying on.  He has one clear vision of what is most important to him: the love that him and Anne shared and his beautiful memory of Anne.  He carries out his mission to protect just that and there is nothing more left for him.

This film for me ultimately poses questions about what our idea of love and death should be. In this film, both ideas seem so inflexible, they clash and create traumatic experiences. We place our love and death each on a pedestal that is incapable of absorbing any humane character.  Should we be thinking about love and death differently or is the trauma worth going through because the inhumanity of the concepts is what makes them super and awe inspiring?

8 ½ (film)

8 ½ (Directed by Federico Fellini)/1963

Only one character really matters in this film: Guido. Guido is a famous director and the film opens with him at a health retreat somewhere in Italy. He has dark rings under his eyes and everyone wants something from him. People want to know about or be in his next movie, his opinions on abstruse topics, his money, his love.....

The first scene sees Guido in a dream sequence: trapped within a car and then at the mercy of people who control him. However, this movie is not solely about a man who is pushed around by the world. It displays how we all want people to be a certain way due to a range of unconscious desires and fears drilled into us through our unique upbringings and the experiences that follow, but how the world will not let us live out the fantasies we secretly desire.

The film presents the role of film director as a metaphor for each of us. We are the central organising point of our subjectivity. We want people to play the role we assign to them and the world to be a certain way. However, like life, the actors want to be something different, and both the intersubjective life of human beings and the physical environment impose a restricted framework in which we can create our “film”.

Throughout the movie Fellini blurs reality, dream, fantasy and nightmare into a whole. Each moves into and informs the other. Guido sees his fantasies in reality and tries to create films based on those fantasies. People then interject their thoughts and feelings into the proposed film which pulls the fantasy back in. We see Guido acting in the world, then Fellini will move into a fantasy sequence where people play the role Guido wants, only for his dream to be shattered by his fears and the demands of others.

8 ½ reminded me greatly of Synecdoche New York (2008), which clearly modelled itself on it. The fears and fantasies on display are a fascinating presentation of two different times. Guido is a person working through Catholicism and its associated guilt and promise of salvation. In Synecdoche New York the main character Caden deals with his fears of sickness and loneliness and relies on a psychologist and a doctor for the salvation that the priest formally granted.

Both Guido and Caden are thwarted in their attempts to direct reality to suit their desires. Both seem somewhat cut down and weakened by a world that continuously wants something from them and stands in the way of their fantasies. Synecdoche New York is a darker film though. It lacks the joy that flows through many parts of Fellini’s film. 8 ½ is shot in black and white, but it is one of the most lush and colourful films I have seen. Even when Fellini’s fears direct reality, it is within the framework of a tender dreamlike river of colour and sound. In contrast Synecdoche New York presents individuals just holding on in the midst of existential despair until eventually finding solace in their coming exit from reality.

To watch Fellini is to see how confrontation with reality need not turn into darkness and despair. Our lives are dreamlike and much of the time beyond our control. This can lead to fear and despair, but can also lead us to loosen our grip and enter the flow of the river. Never being able to separate reality from fantasy could lead us to throw our quest for truth away on angst, or can lead us to see the game of it all, and relax into it with acknowledgement of its absurdity. Fellini is fundamentally an optimist: maybe not consciously, but his optimism pours out of his unconsciousness into the film and provides an extremely tender experience for the viewer.

Short Cuts (film)

Short Cuts (Directed by Robert Altman)/1993

Watching Short Cuts makes you feel like a Buddha looking down into the petri dish of modern human existence: all squabbling over each other, each with their own fears, worries and weaknesses.  But it is not a bleak film as you may think it would be, rather its message seems to be that it is all part of course of human life.

The time is late 80s in the LA.  The film opens with the city lights sprawling across the darkness with helicopters circling around spraying chemicals, as we find out, to deal with Medfly epidemic.  There is a panic in the air as people worry about Medflies and getting cancer from the sprayed chemicals.  People are having domestics, some look resigned and others are simply not affected by it at all.

Short Cuts is about the lives of about 20 characters that are all related in some way.  Each has his/her own fears and desires, successes and failures.  They are all different: meek, aggressive, artistic, addictive, self-absorbed, caring, depressive, manic, desperate, intelligence, hedonistic, motherly etc.

The film starts off with the theme of pests (Medfly) but also carries on to depict pestering and irritability as part of the modern condition of human existence.  Bosses, customers, phone calls, mess, children and yapping dogs.  For these characters just living day to day without any incidents seems tiresome enough.

Fear also drives people to frenzy; depicted initially by cancer.  The film explores the rising fears of all these characters.  These are fears of losing whatever the character thinks is important to him or her: respect, love or control.  All these fears play out in a random and reactive way like a squash ball getting bounced around.  There is retribution, anger, escape, rampage and reconciliation.

One of the characters I found the most tragic was Jerry Kaiser, played by Chris Penn.  Jerry is a pool cleaner with 3 children and his wife runs a phone sex business from home.  As she goes about her chores she is on the phone talking dirty to other men as Jerry looks on anxiously.  He feels rejected and inadequate that he doesn’t earn enough meaning she has to do that work.  He is also worried that their young children will hear her.  Jerry just simmers away bottling up everything inside.

Altman then decides to increase the tension and throw some deaths into the story. Some go about their business as if nothing happened while others get deeply affected by it even if it’s not directly related to them.  But I didn’t feel that the characters were callous for not reacting to the death.  Somehow it was understandable that some would prioritise their own enjoyment because when people are down in the dumps, the moments of joy are so rare to come by, they feel desperate to relish it.

In the final climax of the film, there is a great earthquake that rattles up all these characters and creates confusion.  Jerry who had been bottling up all the tension finally explodes.  For others, their lives simply go on.  This film however isn’t about human resilience.  The part I found the most comforting about it was the moments of kindness characters show.  Despite where they were in the society, I felt that people who chose to act kindly and care for others, rose above where they were in their position in the socio economic scale.  They acted in a way that was truly human and their lives were richer for that, making it seem worthwhile to make an effort to be kind and care.

Badlands (film)

Badlands (Directed by Terrence Malick)/1973

Terrence Malick has an ability like almost no other director to make ordinary things beautiful. He sees something in nature that other people don’t and can capture it on film. His movies try to take the viewer into a mystical experience, where the shots and music have a meaning much greater than the story being told. The piece of art as a whole tends to rise above the story, which turns into a vehicle for the message: a message communicated through vision and sound rather than conceptual language.

Badlands has some of Malick’s idiosyncratic abstract/mystical style, but the message is more about human behavior than some of his later films. It is an earlier Malick movie and is much more character driven (like Days of Heaven 1978). It is a story about a 15 year-old girl named Holly (Sissey Spacek) who enters a relationship with a man in his mid 20’s named Kit (Martin Sheen). Kit murders Holly’s father for preventing their relationship and Holly and Kit become vigilantes on the run across America.

Kit has a complete lack of ambition and direction and acts completely in the moment. This leads him to kill and rob without much anxiety or reflection on what he is doing. On the other hand, throughout the movie he's philosophical and talks about his actions in moral terms such as explaining why he killed this person or that based on ethical principles. There is a complete disconnect between the values with which he judges other people and the behavior he engages in; he shows no remorse for hurting others so long it is in his interest.

There is also the 'James Dean' aspect to Kit. Kit, it seems, has intentionally modelled himself on James Dean: both his look and his reckless bad boy behaviour. I think Malick is pointing out that when individuals have no meaning and ambition in their life, they shield themselves with some arbitrary persona: in this case being the one popularised through movies. Movie and television step-up to fill the nihilist void for a vessel who has forgotten his perfection.

Holly follows Kit across America. Her mother died when she was young and throughout the movie is involved in an extreme chain of events but also completely detached. Having Holly narrate the film emphasizes this detachment. Holly has disengaged from life and moves with whatever is the stronger force acting upon her. On the other hand, she speaks at times of going with Kit because he, unlike other people, was actually interested in her, a thought scarcely based on reality as throughout the film she argues with Kit about him never listening nor being interested in her.

What is Malick saying here? The film was made in 1973: a time where there was a tension between young people who wanted to live away from the restrictions of society and have a more transient and counter-cultural lifestyle. One could argue that Malick is making a statement about the hypocrisy and childishness of the youth of his generation. They make decisions based on pure selfishness and cover this up this with rhetoric.

I think the fact that Badlands is a movie set in the 1950s in rural American seems to discredit the above interpretation: the environment could not be further from the counter-culture movement of San Francisco in the 60s. It could be that Malick is saying ‘yes, this is going on now among the hippy generation, but it is nothing new: humans have always acted selfishly under the guise of something grander.’ I think that whatever one takes the message it be, it is likely to be more universal than a simple statement about the selfishness of the 1960s and early 70s.

Malick is such a subtle filmmaker. Nothing in this film is overstated and the viewer is left with enough to have a idea of that the message is, but not with the sense of it being forced. It's not a depressing movie either: he presents the characters as engaging thoughtlessly in a chain of events rather than being tormented by inner demons. It is very watchable: aesthetically pleasing, and gentle even while dealing with a violent story.

This is my favorite Malick movie (possibly tied with Days of Heaven). While Badlands is at times abstract, I sense at this stage Malick had not completely solidified how he saw the world. It has the mystical elements of Tree of Life, but isn't completely detached from human life.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (animation film)

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Directed by Isao Takahata)/2013

Do not get me wrong, there is no doubt that this film is one of the most visually exquisite animation films I’ve seen in recent times.  I am however unsure about what the story was and the message it was trying to convey.  The story originated from the old Japanese folk story called The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.  As it is with any of these folk tales, it is difficult to distinguish which part of the story is original and which part of the story is a twist added by its creators of the film.

The story of the film is about a bamboo cutter who discovers a light shining out of a bamboo shoot and discovers a thumb-sized princess inside it.  He understands it to be heaven that gave her to him and brings her home.  When she arrives home she turns into a baby and the bamboo cutter and his wife raise her.  The baby soon grows into a beautiful young woman.  The bamboo cutter finds gold and silk robes in the bamboo forest and deems that heaven is telling him to provide a place for Kaguya where she could be a princess with a lifestyle befitting of silk robes.

The bamboo cutter builds a mansion for Kaguya filled with servants and the finer things in life and hires a tutor that will educate Kaguya on how behave like a princess.  The film delves into the ostentation and absurdity of the customs in the upper class.  After having grown up running around wild in the countryside, Kaguya struggles with “how the princess should behave”.  She attempts to fight back initially but unexplainably succumbs to it and falls into depression.

The story romanticises the country life of gardening, cooking and weaving which the bamboo cutter’s wife continues to engage in at the mansion.  She has a little cottage built next to a garden that is reminiscent of Marie Antoinette’s farm cottage.  This is much to the frustration of the bamboo cutter who is ashamed of his past and desperate to fit in and gain the acceptance of the upper class.

The film however lets these developments go which were for me the most interesting points and instead it goes back to the traditional story line.

The news of Kaguya’s beauty spreads and various princes try to become her suitor and she declines all of them.  Finally the king himself becomes interested and tries to gain her affection.  She becomes repulsed by the king and cries out for the moon people to take her.

It is then revealed that she was originally from the moon and she wanted to experience life on earth, which is considered unclean and full of suffering.  Before she goes back to the moon she makes a final trip to her country village and meets her childhood sweetheart, Sutemaru.  Kaguya tells him that she would’ve been happy if she was with him.  They talk about eloping together but she slips from his grasp and he wakes up and thinks it’s a dream.   I found it odd that Sutemaru was so ready to leave with Kaguya and didn’t give a minute’s thought to the fact that he had a wife and a child!

While the film romanticises the country life and glorifies nature, it also shows how bleak it can be when Sutemaru asks Kaguya whether she is willing to live the life of working hard and in poverty and half-starving all the time.  It makes us think that perhaps it was easy for the bamboo cutter’s wife and Kaguya to romanticise the village life while they are living in a mansion. This point builds on how Kaguya romanticised life on earth but once she got here she realised there was suffering and despair.

The day the moon people come to retrieve her, the bamboo cutter has an army prepared to protect Kaguya from getting taken but everyone falls asleep due to the celestrial music.  The moon people tell her to wear the robe from the moon that’ll make her forget all the suffering and uncleanliness of the life on earth.  The final message of the film is when Kaguya protests and tells the moon people that amongst all the suffering on earth there is also great beauty. What Kaguya seem to be saying is that it is better to have this suffering and be able to dream rather than live like the moon people with no awareness at all.   To me, this is consistent with her behaviour, throughout the film.  She had been always missing what she doesn’t have which caused great unhappiness and just before she’s about to leave earth where she had been miserable, she has a change of heart and suddenly the life on earth is just beautiful despite all its sufferings.

Is it that ultimately there are good and bad aspects too all life: be it rich, poor or celestial, and its our subjective view that disproportionately glorifies or romanticises certain aspects of a different life that causes us envy and suffering.  It seemed that Kaguya had a choice to use her wealth to do what was good and pleasurable for her; instead she chose to languish in despair thinking about her childhood past.

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Starred Up (film)

Starred Up (Directed by David Mackenzie)/2014

Starred Up is a movie about the futility of the justice system. We send people to prison, they lose contact with their children, they become part of the prison-culture, their children are brought up without a parent, and the children join their parent(s) in prison.

The cold emotional/psychological reality that prisoners inhabit is manifested by Starred Up’s cinematography and music. The lighting is dark and there is no music. The clothes are grey and the buildings bland. Viewers are forced into the sensory experience of what prison would feel like. Viewer sensory arousal comes due to the anger and hatred that prisoners express on a continuous basis: the sensations we are made to feel are not pleasurable, but exhilarating in a dangerous, chaotic way.

The movie focuses on the movement of an angry British man named Eric Love (Jack O’Connell) from the youth ward into the adult prison. This is what the term Starred Up means. He clearly has antisocial personality disorder, and his only enjoyment in life seems to be pressing back against any kind of authority: perceived or otherwise. As the movie plays out it becomes clear that much of this rage comes from the troubled relationship he shares with his father Neville Love (Ben Mendelsohn), who is in the same prison ward.

The other central aspect to the movie is the attempt of a psychologist to help the prisoners with their anger. The classes appear to help some of the prisoners to a small extent. The point being that no matter how broken prisoners are they can improve; but improvements take time and the changes will often be small.

The relationship between the prison management and the psychologist is one of the weak points of the movie. Rather than presenting the prison management as not promoting rehabilitative services due to fiscal restraints or jadedness, Starred Up instead shows them as aggressively thwarting any attempts at rehabilitation. Prison management is presented in a one-sided and over the top fashion. This betrays the broader realism of the movie.

The movie finishes with a somewhat positive message of family affection staying strong regardless of what is said and done. I’m uncertain whether this message works in the midst of all that happens. Is the movie saying that this is a silver lining to all the other trauma and loss? Without going into detail, I feel that the movie once more plays against itself. If this part of the movie is taken as realistic (which is doubtful), it is pointless as it presents something that is supposed to be positive but without any tangible results for those involved. It is a whimpering, limp positive message that is simultaneously incongruous with the rest of the movie.

My verdict of this movie is that  it loses its identity as it progresses. The lighting and sound captures the bleak emotional landscape of the individuals that inhabit the prison. The prisoners are presented in a realistic fashion; individuals with both strengths and weakness: prone to violence but also at times able to reflect and change. The psychologist likewise has his own anger issues, and does not manage to cure the prisoners of their demons through some therapeutic magic. Yet at times Starred Up falls into exaggerations and black-and-white portrayals of characters. It is a movie that is brutally realistic but often falls into cliché.

Deadwood (TV Show)

Deadwood (Created by David Milch)/2004-2006

Deadwood is a misunderstood show. It is the brilliant, precocious bad-boy of the HBO catalogue. Deadwood ran for only three seasons and was shunned by people who failed to see past the surface-level whirlwind of swear words. One can watch Deadwood without grasping what is being said due to the deep philosophical reflections hiding behind what appears to be simple and crude language.

The language is symbolic of the show. At first one might assume Deadwood is a brutally violent western show: a show for people that like violence and swearing. However, as it progresses we realise that Deadwood is a genuine presentation of the better and worse sides of humanity, and a compelling thought experiment of what humans become in times of lawlessness and desperation.

Deadwood is a violent mess of a town existing outside any kind of government control. Its time period pre-dates the existence of the United States of America. As the show proceeds  Deadwood increasingly becomes under the influence of central government for better or worse. Many in Deadwood have found solace in the isolation of statelessness and fear the emergence of government and civil society. 

The setting provides the perfect scene for a thought experience.  It involves exploring how society would function without any legislation or enforcement to ensure behavioural compliance. What we get is the most physically powerful and violent characters taking control and establishing their own interpretation of what morality is.

The most electric and addictive character is the seemingly tyrannical brothel owner Al Swearengen. Al and his followers essentially take over the role of government. They decide who can buy property in the town, what shops can be set up and who can live or die. They have their own code of conduct and expect others to comply.

As the show progresses it starts to question who is truly moral in Deadwood. Al is violent and temperamental but also shows concern for prostitutes and a disabled woman that lives with him. He is a man with a very dark view of human nature, but knows how to operate in an environment of extreme brutality. We learn of his victimisation as a child and begin to understand, if not accept, who he is. He is brutal, but only as needed. He also helps the more vulnerable additions to Deadwood adjust to its severity.

As the show advances we are introduced to progressively eviler characters. Cy Tolliver buys another casino/brothel across the thoroughfare from Al’s. Cy develops as more malicious than Al. Cy seems to enjoy inflicting pain on others, but at the same time is more willing to demean himself in order to get what he wants. Al's staff actually take pleasure in being with him and many in Deadwood begin to admire him; however, no one loves nor even likes Cy: something he knows and resents.  

Eventually the most deplorable person arrives in Deadwood: George Hearst. Hearst is a man addicted to power. It is slowly revealed throughout the show that Hearst feels cut off from his fellow humans and has sought pleasure in life by dominating others. Unlike Al, who will inflict pain on others to avoid pain being inflicted on him, Hearst hurts others out of pleasure.

When Hearst arrives in town Cy slowly turns himself into his slave. In this relationship we find a common theme throughout Deadwood: individuals being dominated by those that are stronger and taking their frustration out on those that are weaker. Whenever Cy demeans himself out of fear of Hearst, he inevitably takes his resentment out on his staff. Al on the other hand never grovels or puts himself under the thumb of another and therefore never hurts others out of the shame of being bullied.

With too many memorable characters to mention, I will refrain from analysing them all. However, I will mention two more as they stand out as somewhat different from the rest.

Doc Cochran is the Deadwood doctor. He is an instantiation of Camus’ ethics and plays a similar role to the physician in The Plague. Living in an environment of savagery, death and madness, Doc Cochran devotes his entire existence to his calling of helping others. Regardless of how he feels about his patients, or what they have done, he will attempt to heal them. He moves between the warring cliques, and is respected by all. In usual Deadwood fashion he is  also not a person without flaws: he is prone to alcoholism and fits of rage. He is however a very good human being.

The final character I want to focus on is Alma Garret. She is the most successful woman in Deadwood and is the only female businessperson. She has acquired power through wealth: the wealth allows her to purchase the muscle that keeps her above the plane of violence which would otherwise destroy her. She is admired by the prostitutes that represent 90% of the woman in Deadwood. She is prone to opium addiction, at times cruel to women worse off than herself, but is incredibly strong.

Given the position of women in Deadwood it raises the question of whether this show is more suitable for men. In response to this, I would argue that the context dictates the presentation of women in this show. Deadwood is a historical show that attempts to be true to its environment. Moreover, it has no qualms about pointing out how horrific life was for women during this period, and the freedom that the emergence of government and law provides women. Deadwood is a show for anyone interested in history and reflections on how goodness and evil is in us all.

The other thing I thought about was whether it was OK to like Al. He is a murderer, prone to violent outbursts and aggression. However, it is through the contrast with even worse characters that I started to admire Al. It is as if the show distorts one’s conception of what is acceptable so that even small gestures of kindness take on great meaning. This is the problem one faces whenever one views history through the modern context, or war time actions through the lens of peace. If it is too much to say context is everything, it can certainly explain the affection many Deadwood viewers eventually feel towards Al.

Paths of Glory (film)

Paths of Glory (Directed by Stanley Kubrick)/1957

My love for Stanley Kubrick’s movies developed through exposure to his most crafted, aesthetic works: in particular, Barry Lyndon and 2001 Space Odyssey. These movies showcased Kubrick’s amazing eye for detail and his ability to weave music into elegant cinematography to create something uniquely beautiful. 

Paths of Glory is one of Kubrick’s lesser known movies. It's not as crafted as his later movies and is more concerned with making a moral statement than creating something aesthetically perfect. However, the battle scenes that occur show glimpses of later Kubrick: meticulously crafted scenes that use music to create an enhanced emotional response.

The movie is set during the First World War and follows a group of French soldiers that are sent on a suicidal mission to take a key tactical position held by the Germans called the ‘Ant Hill’. The mission is conducted less to advance the French troop’s position than to promote the careers of those that ordered the mission.

What is particularly abhorrent about the decision to take the Ant Hill is that the soldiers are told they are doing it for their country and the values it stands for when in reality the decision was made out of naked ambition. We see here Nietzsche’s idea of ideology and "morality" being used as a control mechanism by those in power to fulfil their self-interested agenda. The irony however is that while Nietzsche focused on the use of Christian virtues as a social-control mechanism, Paths of Glory demonstrates how "warrior virtues" are abused in the same manner.

Kirk Douglas plays Colonial Dax. Dax leads the troops’ mission to take the Ant Hill while sceptical of the intentions behind the invasion. When the soldiers fail to take the Ant Hill and are tried in Military Court for cowardice, Dax acts as their defence lawyer (his profession in civilian life). One could argue that the movie presents characters in a black and white fashion. The generals are comical personifications of ruthless self-interest; Dax a human of only pure motive and universal concern for others; the soldiers presented as innocent victims of natural human emotion and the propaganda of courage and patriotism. On the other hand, the movie is not attempting to present a full account of the motives operating during the First World War, but is a metaphorical message about the wastage of war, and the deceptions that lead individuals to throw their lives away to promote the interests of others.

Paths of Glory presents something different to many contemporary war movies. It operates on a moral level, and its intention is to recreate the ideas at play during war rather than the physical environment. While not a perfect display of subtlety, Paths of Glory presents a powerful criticism of the evils involved war: in particular, the use of morality and patriotism by cynics to manipulate people into a violence that is against their better interests.

Véra (Mrs Vladimir Nabokov) (book)

Véra (Mrs Vladimir Nabokov) (Written by Stacy Schiff)/1999

This book is a biography of an enigmatic woman who dedicated her life to literature.  The amount of research that went into this book is phenomenal; the author carefully weaved together sources from articles, books, anecdotes, and official documents to create a magnificent work that Véra would have approved.  Despite multiple and often contradictory materials, the book reads almost like fiction and not like a historical book that can quite often be intensive.  You get a sense that each sentence would have been considered and pored over just as the Nabokovs had done with their work.

There is a better-known book about the Nabokovs called “Letters to Véra”, which is about the couple’s love affair before they became famous.  This book, by contrast, is not a love story but a story of a partnership dedicated to creation of quality literature that lasts for over 50 years across 3 continents and two major world events: the Russian Revolution and WWII.

I would highly recommend this book to not just fans of Nabokov but anyone interested in the writing process, because it talks a lot about the couples writing, editing and translating process as well as interaction with the media, publishers and film studios.

The book details how in the early years, the Nabokovs struggle to earn enough money to enable Vladimir to focus on writing.  They worked multiple jobs, teetering on the edge of poverty and working on their creations in the evenings.  What struck me as remarkable was the way they were so certain of their art and they always prioritised it at the expense of stability and comfort.  The couple also translated many Russian novels and poetry.  They worked to perfection even to their late years when the aging body posed difficulties in reading for long hours at a desk.  They would not tolerate reading badly translated work or poetry as to them such work disfigures the beauty of the original: a truly grave sin.  They couldn’t help but create a better representation.

Véra was Vladimir’s lover, muse, collaborator, secretary, agent, driver and generally the one who front footed and dealt with the world as Vladimir wrote.  For some reason she completely shied away from any recognition and was even wary of a description as a collaborator, and very disturbed by any mention that it was her that wrote some of the work.  But the couple’s identities were deeply intertwined: they wrote in each other’s hand writing and signed each other’s signatures.

From the time they first met until the day she dies, she maintained an iron mask of strength, elegance and beauty.  She rarely expressed her irritation, sadness or worries – even to those that were closest to her.  For this reason, I found it at times difficult to empathise with her.  By contrast, Vladimir is a creator, dreamer, forever the optimist and romantic.  Initially I was irritated by this relationship because it felt unfair, but after 300 pages, it becomes clear that they are essentially one person: “twin souls”, and they both loved the part each other plays in the relationship.  It would be impossible to write a book about either one of them without talking about the other.  The book is essentially a biography of two people living one life.

Being There (film)

Being There (directed by Hal Ashby)/1979

I had seen glimpses of Peter Seller’s talent in Lolita and Dr Strangelove, yet I didn't realise the extent of it until I watched Being There.

Sellers plays a middle-aged man called Chance. He has lived his whole life in an older man’s house, working as a gardener and watching television. When the previous owner of the house dies, Chance is made to move out and begins an aimless wander into the outside word.

From Chance's first interaction with people, he is revealed as not having a personality. He has spent his whole life socializing with a television, and his mind has turned into one. He simply expresses what he hears, with the messages not being mixed with other ideas or reshaped by emotion. He does not have human emotion: emotion blended and shaped by ideas and desires. While he has a kind of fear, it comes across as the fear of a deer in the wild, rather than a human responding to a situation based on past experiences and future plans.

Being There suggests the human personality is shaped by socialisation: we are products of our interactions. Chance’s interactions have been with a television, and he has been shaped through those interactions. In this we hear both echoes of Locke’s notion of tabula rasa, and the Hegelian thought that our personalities are the result of our interactions with external beings, either good or bad.

The intention of the movie is not only to examine the creation of the human self, but also how we project our emotions and desires onto other people and create a social reality where truth is no longer clear. As Chance moves into the world, he encounters a range of people that project themselves onto him. He tells Eve (the wife of a wealthy businessman) that he is Chance the gardener; from this point on he is known as Chauncey Gardiner – a name one would not be surprised to hear in wealthy circles.

When he repeats something someone says to him, or something he heard on television, he is viewed as speaking words of wisdom: people take him to be a modern Confucius; a man who expresses great truths through vague statements. Others take him to be espousing economic theory, a tendency towards sexual deviance, or reflections on death.

Being There is a philosophical masterpiece but is also comedy. There is something hilarious about the seriousness of the people that project their agendas onto Chance. It is not incidental that the things taken by Chance to be statements of wisdom are taken straight from television or from the mouths of others. The movie is making fun of what humans take to be wisdom: of how we hear ideas and repeat them without truly reflecting on them. This perfect blend of comedy and deep insight is encapsulated by the music to that plays when Chance enters the world: a jazz/funk arrangement over Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss.

Sellers plays this role perfectly. Throughout the whole movie he never once fails to convince. A personality simply never emerges to make us sense that this is an actual person pretending to be nothing. It is simply astonishing that Sellers failed to win an Oscar for this performance: who really takes the Academy Awards seriously anyway? Hal Ashby, the director of Being There, is not well known in 2015. In researching I discovered that shortly after making this movie Ashby entered a downward spiral of mental illness and addiction, and never made another well-regarded movie. The movies Ashby made before Being There are also nowhere near its greatness. We are left to speculate whether Ashby had only one great idea, or whether the world was deprived of more masterpieces due to a premature decline.

Ida (film)

Ida (directed by Pawel Pawlikowski)/2013

Ida is a film about the dichotomy between the reality of human existence and the social norms and expectations that reality laughs in the face of.

It is shot in black and white, again symbolising duality, yet the overall texture of the film is thick soft grey; scenes always look either foggy or cloudy as if to also say that that is the final outcome of our existence: a grey river that flows by nonchalantly.

Ida is a girl who grew up in a convent as an orphan in post WWII Poland.  The film opens with the montage sequence of her going about her chores at the convent.  It all seems very peaceful, quiet and…boring.

Before she takes her final vows to become a nun, the head nun tells her to go visit her aunty (her sole surviving family member) and stay as long as she needs to.  Ida is reluctant but she is made to go.

The initial impression of the aunty, Wanda, is that she is a “woman of ill repute”.  She's in her dressing gown smoking a cigarette with a man getting dressed and leaving.  The director plays with our preconceptions and teases the audience with purported misrepresentation.  She casually says to Ida “So, you’re a Jewish catholic”.  Ida takes this news in without much reaction.  Here we find a first major challenge to the social expectation, the idea of the deep rootedness of our religious identity where in reality Ida does not seem fazed by the potential conflict.  Wanda tells Ida to go back to the convent and leaves for work where we find out that she's actually a Judge.

As Wanda is watching a criminal trial unfold before her, we sense that she’s thinking about Ida.  She changes her mind and decides to take Ida in.  They go on a road trip to a small town to find out more about their family.  All the while, Wanda is chain smoking and vodka sculling (as a respectable Judge would! – another contradiction) and Ida is treated by everyone they come across like a divinity; people bless her and ask for her blessing.  Ida is quietly surprised but enjoys the attention and feeling of holiness.

The pair finds where Ida's parents used to live before they were killed and their house and land taken over.  Ida ends up blessing the child whose family had murdered her parents.  One would expect some kind of reaction at the realisation of this absurdity: Christians murdering Ida's parents who were powerless Jews in the time of the NAZI occupation of Poland.  But Ida takes all this in relatively calmly.  Kim Ki-duk often plays with these kind of themes but Pawliokowski presents them in a more subtle and gentle manner.

Wanda and Ida spends a night in a rural town where Ida meets a young handsome saxophonist.  Here we see cracks appear in Ida's facade of divine authority.  Isn't it a truly human reaction to not feel anything when you learn of the tragic passing of your parents you never knew, but be shaken by a stranger you long for? This debunks the ye old canon that blood is thicker than water etc. etc.

Wanda comments what sacrifice it would be if Ida had not experienced carnal love before giving up herself to god; you don't know what you're missing out on girl!  When Ida lets her hair down (literally) and spends a night smoking, drinking and making love we wonder whether she is experimenting or whether she is grieving: over her aunty, over her suffering and sacrifice to come and celebrating the life time of her vow to god?  Or is it everything just coming together in a blur of soft grey?

The next morning she asks the saxophonist what would happen to them and the conversation is along the lines of:

"Come with my band to this beach side town, we’ll eat ice cream and go to the beach"

"And then?"
“We can get a small dog”
“And then?”
“We’ll have children and live in the country”
“And then?”
“…”

Perhaps the dialogue demonstrates the futility of the common life just as much as how Wanda saw the life of a nun as a "waste".  What is a worthwhile life?  Is it the suffering and sacrifice that has the ultimate value? Because in the end, without constant temptation and resistance, there is only "and then?"

Disclaimer: I realise now my constant reference to grey and this is in no relation to "50 shades"

Foxcatcher (film)

Foxcatcher (Directed by Bennett Miller)/2014

Some reviewers have claimed that Foxcatcher is at essence a movie about repressed homosexual tension. To me, this is an instance of the projection of an individual’s own concerns and ideological framework onto a movie.

In response, you may ask why any interpretation that I develop is in anyway different: surely I have my own dogmas and conceptual constructs that get in the way of an “objective viewing”. Such an objection would have some truth to it, but I won't be willing to concede the post-modern notion that there is no objective truth to any piece of art as all artists and their supporters have intentions.

If interpretation was merely projection, then I cannot see how any kind of discussion could take place about a piece of art: regardless of the question of whether it is good or bad, there must be some objectivity to what it is. Foxcatcher is a movie about power. The movie nearly explodes with tension: a tension between individuals dominating each other psychologically and physically, under the all embracing power of wealth. It is also about narcissism. The attempt of someone to create a reality about themselves that is wildly disconnected from who they are.

The movie presents events that occurred in the real lives of Mark (Channing Tatum) and Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo). Both brothers won Olympic gold medals in wrestling at the 1984 games held in Los Angeles. The movie opens with them practicing together. When Dave gets the better of his younger brother, Mark reacts with a cheap blow to the face, making Dave bleed. This action symbolises the relationship that follows: an emotionally vulnerable younger brother, who lashes out at his older brother in the knowledge that his older brother will not hurt him back; an older brother who knows the vulnerabilities of his younger brother, but does not react due to a understanding of his own role as the holder of power in the relationship and his perhaps deluded self-definition as benevolent leader.

The power dynamics intensify with the introduction of John du Pont, played by Steve Carell. Carell plays du Pont as a slightly disfigured man on the threshold of insanity. Carell could be criticized for overacting the role; however, the performance works when contrasted against the considered Ruffalo and the quietly brooding Tatum. Du Pont is the heir to one of the wealthiest families in the United States and lives in an enormous compound with his mother. His mother disapproves of him, and du Pont is desperate for her approval. We are made to feel that du Pont is a man without any achievements of his own and has bought his way to artificial success. His mother has a large stable of expensive horses, for which she has won various awards. Du Pont attempts to out-do his mother with his own stable of successful wrestlers, and in doing so gain her respect.

With the promise of money, stability and a paternal role model, Mark takes up an offer to live in du Pont’s commune as part of Team Foxcatcher. At one stage, Dave asks Mark what du Pont gets out of the relationship, to which Mark states that du Pont simply wants to help people and advance America. As the movie progresses we realise that du Pont wants to be the team’s guru: their respected life coach who they look to for wisdom and support. Essentially he wants to help himself, by manufacturing a reality to confirm his narcissistic veneer.

The movie escalates when Dave joins Mark as the coach of Team Foxcatcher. Dave realises upon arrival that Mark has entered an unhealthy relationship with du Pont: his once idealistic brother has been victim of du Pont’s narcissistic rages, and is once more playing the role of tormented child. This time the master’s intentions do not contain staged concern and true affection. Dave is the true threat to du Pont, as he enjoys the true respect of the wrestlers, and has a sense of genuine authority. His authority has been won by achievement and wisdom rather than money. Dave also sees through du Pont’s mask more clearly than the others, which is something du Pont both senses and resents.

The final stages of the movie see du Pont’s mask gradually slipping, and Mark moving back under the comforting shade of his older brother. Upon being revealed as psychologically disfigured to the people that he was desperate to lead, du Pont explodes under the tension, and by killing Dave murders the shame he felt towards his own weakness and ineptitude. Foxcatcher is a magnificent account of power: power between siblings; true versus bought power; and ultimately the power that misplaced shame can have on the life on an individual and those around him.