Syndromes and a Century (2006)

Very pretty. Very difficult to watch in bed. Zzzzzz. More later...

The Forever War

Apparently The Forever War is ''to the Vietnam War what Catch-22 was to World War II, the definitive, bleakly comic satire'. Or so says Thomas M. Disch (on the reverse of the Orion books edition which I read).

Here's the synopsis from Orion's own website: Private William Mandella is a reluctant hero, drafted into an elite military unit to fight in a distant interstellar war against an unknowable and unconquerable alien enemy. Mandella will perform his duties and, as he survives, rise through the ranks, but his greatest test will come when he returns to Earth. Because of the effects of relativity, every time he comes home after a few months' tour of duty, centuries have gone by on Earth, making him and his fellows ever more isolated from the world for whose future they are fighting.

In order to fully express how fucked up Earth has become in Mandella's absence, Halderman introduced this offensive subplot about humanity being converted to homosexuality. Don't worry though, guys! There's a happy ending! Everyone gets to be a big fucking rabid hetero after all! Here's one of my favourite passages: I'd gotten used to open female homosex in the months since we'd left Earth. Even stopped resenting the loss of potential partners. The men together still gave me a chill, though. Perhaps I'm just being oversensitive, but too often this specific sub-plot comes across as the author's personal bug-bear, rather than a pure narrative device.

Y'know, it would actually be fine if the book was really good, but it's not. Judged purely as a good-ol sci-fi novel, only the final battle packs any real narrative excitement - the rest is a total yawn. How anyone could compare it to Catch-22 is baffling. The most convincing reason to reason I can think of to read the book is as an interesting companion (or counterpoint) to Starship Troopers. And now Ridley Scott is making it into a movie!? Double-urgh.

The Married Man

Yes, yes, I'm slightly embarrassed to have read an Edmund White book, but you should have the seen the glowing pull-quotes on the back of the cover! Plus I read this interview with John Irving the other day where he was drooling over White's prose.

Here's an excerpt from the blurb: Austin is an American furniture scholar living in Paris. He is pushing fifty, loveless, drifting. One day at the gym he meets Julien: French, an architect, much younger and married. Against every expectation, this chance acquaintance matures into profound romance.

I have to say I have yet to be entranced by the beauty of White's language but I did find his description of the fatal progress of a slow, wasting disease entirely credible and moving (and probably autobiographical as well). Hmm.

Wonder Boys (1995)

An immediately engaging and funny book following the trials of a ageing writer struggling (and failing) to finish his lon-awaited-for fourth novel over the course of a single weekend. The dramatis personae assembled for this farce include dead dog, a squished snake, Vietnamese Jews, the jacket Marilyn Monroe wore on the day she married Joe Dimaggio, a tuba, a sad transvestite and an endless assortment of oddballs.

Here's the synopsis from Wikipedia: Pittsburgh professor and author Grady Tripp is working on an unwieldy 2,611 page manuscript that is meant to be the follow-up to his successful, award-winning novel The Land Downstairs, that was published seven years earlier. On the eve of a college-sponsored writers and publishers weekend called WordFest, two monumental things happen to Tripp: his wife walks out on him, and he learns that his mistress, who is also the chancellor of the college, Sara Gaskell, is pregnant with his child. To top it all off, Tripp finds himself involved in a bizarre crime involving one of his students, an alienated young writer named James Leer. During a party, Leer shoots and kills the chancellor's dog and steals her husband's prized Marilyn Monroe collectible: the jacket worn by the starlet on her wedding day to Joe DiMaggio.

The book also includes what I find one of the more memorable names populating the fiction I've recently read: August Van Horn is the tragic writer of sci-fi novels who is revealed to have found some postumous popularity among at least three of the book's characters - functioning as a kind of Shibboleth actually. Dunno why such a hokey name has stuck with me (maybe it's actually got more to do with the narrative than the actual name).

Here's a fairly incisive passage from the New York Times review: Mr. Chabon is that rare thing, an intelligent lyrical writer. Because his comedy always reins in his romantic impulses, his work seems to reflect a nature that is at once passionate and satirical. The result is a tone of graceful melancholy punctuated by a gentle and humane good humor. Mr. Chabon's characters are certainly confused, but he never condescends to them. Grady Tripp is presented as a mass of contradictions, but Mr. Chabon doesn't think he's hapless and neither do we. Mr. Chabon is also wise enough to send himself up.

It was interesting to read this after reading The Yiddish Policeman's Union as there are many similarities, predominanty between the two lead characters. TYPU is a little (okay, a lot) more bleak though, I guess.

I love reading Chabon, while I'm reading him, but I'm never thrilled by the prospect of reading a new one. weird.

La Règle du jeu (1939)

Another first! This time my first Renoir film. 'The Rule of the Game' is an incredibly sophisticated piece of film-making considering the era of its making - but I was nonetheless disappointed. this is, after all, supposed to be one of the ten best films ever made (according to quite a few respectable critics - it's at number three in Sight and Sound's Critics Top Ten!). I also managed to completely miss the film's famously strident critique of European society on the eve of WWII. I'm sure that's just me being dense however, because even the BBC's page on the film informs me that "The divisions between class, sex, social values and even dietary needs, open up like a gaping wound" - yikes!

There is a long hunting scene that makes the whole movie worthwhile though. Really excellent scene.

L'eclisse (1962)

My first Antonioni film. I was shocked by the parallels with Godard's Le Mepris. According the interview with a film critic included on the DVD the film continues Antonioni's investigation of the predicament of romantic love in a world of rabid consumption and commercialization. The same film critic insists that what really makes the film interesting is the way Antonioni is able to present ordinary, quotidian objects and experiences in ways that make them alien and unfamiliar.

It's certainly a very odd movie, with a disturbing, strange and really interesting closing scene. The film's closing consists of a series of different shots of the same street corner that has served as the stage for several meetings between the couple at the heart of the film. I was initially bored and finally fascinated at the way Antonioni subjects the corner to his relentless attention as dusk passes into nightfall. Both characters are absent from the scene, the superficial implication being that their promised meeting never takes place, but this last very odd scene seems to exist outside of the film's narrative for me - an unsettling epilogue which refuses to speak to anything as banal as a happy ending, or even a sad ending. Pretentious perhaps, but at least it's ambitious.

Here's Wikipedia's synopsis: At dawn on July 10, 1961 a young literary translator, Vittoria (Monica Vitti) breaks off her affair with a writer and begins a summer romance with Piero (Alain Delon), an energetic young stockbroker. They are unable to form a steady relationship and shortly before sunset at 20:00, September 10, 1961 they seemingly fail to meet as agreed on the corner of Viale del Ciclismo and Viale della Tecnica by the construction site of a new apartment building in the Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR), a modern suburban neighbourhood south of Rome where Vittoria lives.

L'eclisse (The Eclipse) was also my first sighting of the exceptionally striking Monica Vitti. The beautiful styling of the objects, apartments and locations is very Prada - or at least makes one understand why Italy managed to stake its claim as the arbiter of a certain kind of style.

All That Heaven Allows (1956)

This is my second Douglas Sirk movie. Enormous fun, with a few excruciating moments, but not nearly as affecting as Imitation of Life. It's visually amazing of course. Sort of Norman Rockwell meets Edward Hopper - so I couldn't resist posting tons of stills.

Here's a brief synopsis with a few asides: A lonely widow defies small-town gossip when she falls for a younger man. Not just any young man though. The hysterically handsome Rock Hudson - if you like that whole square jaw thing - plays the widow's gardener. Shock! Horror! On the surface it reads as some sort of class-based fable, with some good 'march to the beat of your own drum' individualism bringing up the rear. There's also this really funny and explicit criticism of television which is odd. There's a brilliant scene of the widow staring blankly into a brand new television her children have foisted on her, just as she realizes that her country club life is empty and meaningless. It's weird how much more attractive Rock is. Poor old Jane Wyman, with a very blunt, square fringe, is an enigma. How on earth this handsome, rugged individualist falls for the personality-less widow is beyond the film.

Here's Criterion's more disciplined synopsis: Jane Wyman (ex-wife of Ronald Reagan!) is a repressed wealthy widow and Rock Hudson is the hunky Thoreau-following gardener who loves her in Douglas Sirk’s heartbreakingly beautiful indictment of 1950s small-town America. Sirk utilizes expressionist colors, reflective surfaces, and frames-within-frames to convey the loneliness and isolation of a matriarch trapped by the snobbery of her children and the gossip of her social-climbing country club chums.

It's not all just fluff though - Douglas Sirk once said: “This is the dialectic—there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.” Jeepers. Here's an intelligent, if not very penetrating essay by my wonderful ex-lecturer Laura Mulvey.

Into The Wild

There are films you want to see because you expect to like them. And there are films you see because you expect to hate them, and you want to be vindicated in your hatred. And there are films you see because you want to hate them, and you end up liking them, and it’s really really annoying. I’ve seen a lot of these lately. First Gone Baby Gone. Then (deep breath) The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. And now this.

Before I come across too effusive, let me just say that if they made punch bags with Emile Hirsch’s face on them, I’d buy one. He always comes across as such a selfish, smug asshole. However, in this film, his character actually is a self-absorbed, smug asshole, so maybe it’s perfect casting. Based on a true story, Into The Wild tells the tale of Christopher McCandless (Hirsch), who took off after graduating from college and promptly became a bum. Over the next two years he meandered around the US growing his facial hair and hanging out with various kindly people, before heading to Alaska. Where he starved to death.

In all that time, he never once contacted his family. And yes it’s true: neither mom nor dad was exactly likely to win Parent Of The Year. But on The Hierarchy of Shitty Folks, they weren’t anywhere near the bottom either. His search for ultimate truth doesn’t seem so much a journey of enlightenment as a very prolonged exercise in parental torture. But the film works because director Sean Penn doesn’t overly romanticize McCandless’ mission. We’re allowed to see the torment he puts his parents through. (They’re not made into martyrs either. In a series of flashbacks, we also get to see the violence that lead McCandless to run off in the first place.) No one gets off easy. It’s this ambiguity that gives the film its strength. Although McCandless claims to loathe the trappings of materialism, he is clearly the product of a privileged background (how many community college graduates do you know who go around quoting Pasternak and Thoreau?). He claims to be on a quest, but more often seems to be running away from something than to it. He says he hates his parents, but as one character points out: “You look like a loved kid. Be fair.” His romantic Rousseauan belief that a return to nature can solve his problems are ultimately his undoing when he eats a poison herb which paralyzes his digestive system and leads to his death. Oh the irony!

Maybe it’s not a great film. But with its gorgeous photography, touching performances (Marcia Gay Harden and William Hurt as the parents) and terrific cast of secondary characters (Catherine Keener and Hal Holbrook – who got an Oscar nomination for this) it’s a pretty good one, which pisses me off. Instead of films I love to hate, the world seems to be filled with films I hate to love.

The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES
BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD.

OPEN. TWO MEN ON HORSEBACK.

JESSES JAMES
Adjusts hat. Whistles tunelessly.

ROBERT FORD
Hums. Looks at watch.

CUT TO: WIND BLOWING ACROSS PRAIRIE, STORMCLOUDS IN DISTANCE.

CUT BACK TO MEN

JESSES JAMES
Sighs. Taps foot.

ROBERT FORD
Clears throat. Drums fingers.

REPEAT FOR 3 HOURS

It’s easy to take the piss out of this languorous Terence Mallick-style epic, which is why I did. But actually, I kind of loved it. The film indulges in a lot of Jesse James-as-Jesus metaphor, and Casey Affleck (as Robert Ford) does an excellent Judas. The burden of his guilt is palpable. A tragic and gorgeous film.

30 Days of Night

I am told I must provide a context for these reviews. In this instance, this will not take long: I watched 30 Days Of Night last night, on my own, at home. Here's one more contextual tidbit: the main reason I wanted to see this film was sartorial. When I bought my Canada Goose jacket back in December, I was told that it’s the same one Josh Hartnett wears in the movie. And it’s true, it is! His is admittedly a different colour: mine is black, while his is the colour of spattered brains and dried blood. But if I look half a good as Josh does, it was an excellent purchase indeed.

On rottentomatoes.com, 30 Days Of Night is sitting at 49%. Which isn’t exactly good. In fact it’s more or less exactly half bad. The movie has a fun premise (that in the Arctic Circle, where it stays dark for 30 days in mid-winter, vampires can get down to some serious eating without being bothered by any pesky sunlight). There are times when you get a glimpse of the darkly claustrophobic film it could have been (there are creepy Anne Frank metaphors when the survivors spend several days hiding out in an attic). And there are some nice gorey bits (watching the good guys reluctantly hack the head off a 5-year-old with an axe was particularly pleasing). But the vamps themselves are pretty silly-looking. With their slanty Mongoloid eyes, they look sort of Down Syndrome-y. It’s hard to be frightened of a creature that looks like it should be doing the 100m at the Special Olympics. Far from cutting their heads off, you feel like Josh should be giving them hugs and telling them they’re doing a good job. They also speak in a language so guttural it sounds like they spend most of the film trying to rid themselves of a particularly persistent and annoying throat itch. As is so often the case with horrors, the film is let down because the bad guys just aren't all that horrific.

It's too bad really. It's a nice premise. There are some scary moments. The performances are fine. And Josh really does look great in that jacket.