“Dangerous Liaisons” is based on an epistolary novel written prior to the French revolution. It is 18th century France and the idle rich are amusing themselves by practicing the art of deception and seduction. At the head of it all is the Countess (Glen Close), master manipulator and society’s reigning queen for whom control is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Her devoted and lustful Vicomte (John Malkovich) is her partner in crime. Trust us, the modern day shenanigans portrayed in those cheesy reality shows have nothing on the machinations of the idle rich in 18th century France.
Bonded through a deeply cynical view of love, the Countess and the Vicomte strike a deal. If the Vicomte can seduce the pious Mme de Tourvelle, he will receive what would be his greatest conquest – the Countess herself. The perfect plan is hatched and our Vicomte is confident that he is in it only for the thrill of the seduction and the prize. But love it seems has a gravity of its own that pulls on each of them, causing them to lose control.
Love and truth, two things we try desperately to deny them when they disappoint us. You cannot control love and the truth will not only be eventually revealed, it will also reveal you. This is the lesson that we see our Vicomte learning as his heart is conquered by Mme de Tourvelle and then broken by his inability to rightly honor that love.
The climax of the movie is reached when the Vicomte repeats “It’s beyond my control” over and over again. It is the blunt instrument that he uses to break the heart of Mme de Tourvelle and placate the Countess. Is he lying? Certainly being in control in affairs of the heart has been his absolute. Control is what enables him to ignore what is best in humans and instead delight in their humiliation. The truth is that the control he prizes is a sham. The Countess has, by giving him this phrase, sent him on his way to Mme de Tourvelle like a missile fully armed. Malkovich delivers the line with a robotic intensity. The Vicomte is losing whatever humanity he pretended to have. His growing anger as he repeats it is a sign that he himself is not unaware of what he is losing. The only suitable punishment is death, which he elegantly turns into revenge upon the Countess.
So often people mistake love for their desire for control. Think about the wife who tolerates her husband’s infidelity. Is it love she is hanging on to or is she merely driven by the fear of losing her own fairy tale? In the name of control we deny the absence of love and its presence. Nothing good comes from this denial.
The closing scene of the film is chilling. We see the Countess seated at her dressing table staring into a mirror as she removes her "masque”. What lies beneath is the emptiness sown by denial.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
A Few Days in September ****
Unlike so many of them out there, this is a good political drama. Lately we have been staying away from this genre because much of what has been produced in the last few years has been done so with an agenda so obvious that you feel as if you made the mistake of inviting Sean Penn over for dinner and now you are sorely regretting it as he launches into his third tirade during the second course and blows cigarette smoke in your face (think “Lions for Lambs”). But lately we have been on a Juliette Binoche kick so when this film popped up on our Watch Instantly radar with the additional carrot of John Turturro, we bit.
Aside from it being an entertaining, well-acted film, what you can deeply appreciate about “A Few Days in September” is its treatment of our political world with the complexity that the subject matter deserves. The world has grown simply too big for there to be just two sides to anything. It’s naïve to think that a government as big as the United States can be simply “for” something and also not be ambivalent towards or against it. Have you ever tried getting even a four-person family to decide unanimously on where to go to dinner Friday night? Good. Now imagine a huge bureaucracy trying to come to a consensus on anything. Instinctively we know this and yet we continuously attempt to turn every issue into a black and white picture that is easy on our eyes and requires nothing more from us than to pick a side. So what is the answer? Oddly, “A Few Days in September” seems to be suggesting – poetry.
The first clue we receive is that the principle adversaries in the movie are named Pound and Elliot. The hit man, Mr. Pound has learned an appreciation of poetry from the master spy, Mr. Elliot. Pound recites Blake while watching the blood drain from one of his victims. Meanwhile Elliot’s stepson, David, loves poetry as much as his father much to the vexation of Elliot’s estranged daughter. But perhaps the most poetic character is Irene who functions alternately as master spy and “mother” to the two charges that her friend, Elliot, has asked her to chaperone to a meeting with him.
The movie culminates in poetic justice. The attack on the twin towers has inadvertently spawned a love between two young (and technically incestuous) hopefuls.
Aside from it being an entertaining, well-acted film, what you can deeply appreciate about “A Few Days in September” is its treatment of our political world with the complexity that the subject matter deserves. The world has grown simply too big for there to be just two sides to anything. It’s naïve to think that a government as big as the United States can be simply “for” something and also not be ambivalent towards or against it. Have you ever tried getting even a four-person family to decide unanimously on where to go to dinner Friday night? Good. Now imagine a huge bureaucracy trying to come to a consensus on anything. Instinctively we know this and yet we continuously attempt to turn every issue into a black and white picture that is easy on our eyes and requires nothing more from us than to pick a side. So what is the answer? Oddly, “A Few Days in September” seems to be suggesting – poetry.
The first clue we receive is that the principle adversaries in the movie are named Pound and Elliot. The hit man, Mr. Pound has learned an appreciation of poetry from the master spy, Mr. Elliot. Pound recites Blake while watching the blood drain from one of his victims. Meanwhile Elliot’s stepson, David, loves poetry as much as his father much to the vexation of Elliot’s estranged daughter. But perhaps the most poetic character is Irene who functions alternately as master spy and “mother” to the two charges that her friend, Elliot, has asked her to chaperone to a meeting with him.
The movie culminates in poetic justice. The attack on the twin towers has inadvertently spawned a love between two young (and technically incestuous) hopefuls.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
The Purple Rose of Cairo *****
When we read the Cave Allegory from Plato’s “Republic” we all think of the movies; when Woody Allen reads Plato it leads to a movie.
In the “Purple Rose of Cairo” Wood Allen creates a movie within a movie, showing you scenes from a fictitious black and white depression era movie (also entitled The Purple Rose of Cairo) because his heroine can’t help but watch it over and over again. For her it is escape and an impossible inspiration. According to the fictitious movie, the purple rose of Cairo is supposed to grow in a pharaoh’s tomb - the expression of a perfect love. Of course no rose is purple and flowers do not grow without light. It is an impossible inspiration. It’s all Plato’s fault.
According to him our relationship to the truth is dreadful. We are like people chained facing a wall in a cave, behind them a fire, and between the fire and their benches men parading objects whose shadows project upon the wall. Hankering for the truth, the viewers take shadows for reality. But Plato has another important point. Although our sense of reality is shadowy at best, we are only capable of understanding anything, thanks to a set of ideals which are beyond real experience. The impossible inspiration guides us through our shadows and intimates that there is more.
The movies are all that counts for the heroine of “The Purple Rose of Cairo”. Her chains are the miserable life to which she is subjected by the depression of the 30’s and her abusive husband. After too many hours in a theater watching her new favorite movie, about people with ideal life styles, one of its characters impossibly leaves the screen, and while comically attempting to establish himself in the real world, falls in love with her.
Screen characters running free in New Jersey, is bad for the movie business. So the actor who played the role is enlisted in the task of capturing his shadow and returning it to the screen. When he also falls for our heroine she has the ultimate Platonic choice: perfection or reality. Which would you choose?
In the “Purple Rose of Cairo” Wood Allen creates a movie within a movie, showing you scenes from a fictitious black and white depression era movie (also entitled The Purple Rose of Cairo) because his heroine can’t help but watch it over and over again. For her it is escape and an impossible inspiration. According to the fictitious movie, the purple rose of Cairo is supposed to grow in a pharaoh’s tomb - the expression of a perfect love. Of course no rose is purple and flowers do not grow without light. It is an impossible inspiration. It’s all Plato’s fault.
According to him our relationship to the truth is dreadful. We are like people chained facing a wall in a cave, behind them a fire, and between the fire and their benches men parading objects whose shadows project upon the wall. Hankering for the truth, the viewers take shadows for reality. But Plato has another important point. Although our sense of reality is shadowy at best, we are only capable of understanding anything, thanks to a set of ideals which are beyond real experience. The impossible inspiration guides us through our shadows and intimates that there is more.
The movies are all that counts for the heroine of “The Purple Rose of Cairo”. Her chains are the miserable life to which she is subjected by the depression of the 30’s and her abusive husband. After too many hours in a theater watching her new favorite movie, about people with ideal life styles, one of its characters impossibly leaves the screen, and while comically attempting to establish himself in the real world, falls in love with her.
Screen characters running free in New Jersey, is bad for the movie business. So the actor who played the role is enlisted in the task of capturing his shadow and returning it to the screen. When he also falls for our heroine she has the ultimate Platonic choice: perfection or reality. Which would you choose?
Friday, March 19, 2010
Departures ****
Just this way, just this once, never again
This movie borders on exquisite. No small task for a movie that not only deals with death, but with the tradition of ceremonially preparing the dead in front of mourners before their bodies are placed in the coffin.
There is always a taboo about death. People who spend time with the dead are “creepy”. It is perhaps not surprising that that those immersed in taboo are true artists in Japan. The principle of Japanese aesthetics was once summed up as follows: just this way, just this once, never again. There is nothing more mortal than we mortals. Each of us is just the way we are, just this once, never again. In Departures when the dead are prepared for cremation it is a public ceremony, wherein those present get to see the most tender treatment carried out with the utmost respect on those who have fully demonstrated their mortality.
Our hero, Daigo, departs with his wife for his childhood home after losing his job as a cellist. This departure signifies the beginning of a journey that takes him out of his comfort zone and into a pretty unusual job as a “casketer” that brings him closer to himself and ultimately culminates in the rediscovery of a Father he has lost.
In the Iliad of Homer there are a number of occasions when the warriors address a fallen ally or enemy. Even though they may have breathed their last the conversation is prolonged by the living. So it happens even now those in mourning address a corpse. In Departures the “casketers” are those who give dignity to the dead and to their mourners in the final moments…those moments when we stare into the deepest absence.
This movie borders on exquisite. No small task for a movie that not only deals with death, but with the tradition of ceremonially preparing the dead in front of mourners before their bodies are placed in the coffin.
There is always a taboo about death. People who spend time with the dead are “creepy”. It is perhaps not surprising that that those immersed in taboo are true artists in Japan. The principle of Japanese aesthetics was once summed up as follows: just this way, just this once, never again. There is nothing more mortal than we mortals. Each of us is just the way we are, just this once, never again. In Departures when the dead are prepared for cremation it is a public ceremony, wherein those present get to see the most tender treatment carried out with the utmost respect on those who have fully demonstrated their mortality.
Our hero, Daigo, departs with his wife for his childhood home after losing his job as a cellist. This departure signifies the beginning of a journey that takes him out of his comfort zone and into a pretty unusual job as a “casketer” that brings him closer to himself and ultimately culminates in the rediscovery of a Father he has lost.
In the Iliad of Homer there are a number of occasions when the warriors address a fallen ally or enemy. Even though they may have breathed their last the conversation is prolonged by the living. So it happens even now those in mourning address a corpse. In Departures the “casketers” are those who give dignity to the dead and to their mourners in the final moments…those moments when we stare into the deepest absence.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The Invention of Lying **
Is the Truth Overrated?
In “The Invention of Lying” we get to imagine a world where no one can tell a lie – not just that they won’t tell a lie, but that they cannot even imagine anything beyond the truth. If it can’t be touched it’s not even imagined. There is not possibility, only actuality. We were using the movie to talk to our son about the value of telling the truth but instead learned the value of the lie.
For example, much of the film’s comedy is built around the absolute necessity of lying when it comes to social graces (who hasn’t been there?). But more surprisingly, the film gets you to think about how the possibility of a lie is intricately connected to our ability to see and grasp what is really essential.
The inventor, thanks to his gift for prevarication, becomes nearly a god in his world. He has money, a very strange kind of fame and yet he lacks the woman that he loves because he refuses to lie in order to convince her to marry him. The woman our inventor loves seems a pretty obnoxious choice, precisely because she has only an eye for the surface. No matter what our hero achieves in this world, she can’t forget that his genes will produce “unattractive” children. When it comes to the essentials, lying is not a useful tool. And yet, seeing what is essential needs the possibility of lying. The ability to consider plausible alternatives to what happens to be the case means knowing what underlies the possibilities. Were there no horizon of possibility, the essential would lurk behind the actual and remain undiscovered. Our hero, because he wants what is essential, manages to impregnate his love with it. Against her “better” judgment she gives birth to a genuine love for him, one that lets his shortcomings function as a signature for his noble soul. Holding out for the truth gives the essential a chance to shine.
Of course such observations will be lost on a twelve year old who has a gift for lying. But one wonders if they can be found by an American public.
In “The Invention of Lying” we get to imagine a world where no one can tell a lie – not just that they won’t tell a lie, but that they cannot even imagine anything beyond the truth. If it can’t be touched it’s not even imagined. There is not possibility, only actuality. We were using the movie to talk to our son about the value of telling the truth but instead learned the value of the lie.
For example, much of the film’s comedy is built around the absolute necessity of lying when it comes to social graces (who hasn’t been there?). But more surprisingly, the film gets you to think about how the possibility of a lie is intricately connected to our ability to see and grasp what is really essential.
The inventor, thanks to his gift for prevarication, becomes nearly a god in his world. He has money, a very strange kind of fame and yet he lacks the woman that he loves because he refuses to lie in order to convince her to marry him. The woman our inventor loves seems a pretty obnoxious choice, precisely because she has only an eye for the surface. No matter what our hero achieves in this world, she can’t forget that his genes will produce “unattractive” children. When it comes to the essentials, lying is not a useful tool. And yet, seeing what is essential needs the possibility of lying. The ability to consider plausible alternatives to what happens to be the case means knowing what underlies the possibilities. Were there no horizon of possibility, the essential would lurk behind the actual and remain undiscovered. Our hero, because he wants what is essential, manages to impregnate his love with it. Against her “better” judgment she gives birth to a genuine love for him, one that lets his shortcomings function as a signature for his noble soul. Holding out for the truth gives the essential a chance to shine.
Of course such observations will be lost on a twelve year old who has a gift for lying. But one wonders if they can be found by an American public.
Pirate Radio **
Just How Important Is Rock-n-Roll?
When the words ‘rock and roll will never die’ are sung, no one is making an assertion about a style of music, or a form of entertainment; it's a fundamental affirmation of life. The phenomenon of pirate radio counted on that affirmation, but I don’t think that the movie does. It finds the radio personalities on board rather dated, and it wants us to know that the best days of our life our over. The movie is embarrassed that people actually took rock and roll so seriously; consider its treatment of Bob, the graveyard shift DJ, who would rather drown than abandon his albums.
But as my wife pointed out to me, rock and roll changed the way generations are. People twenty and thirty years younger than the Woodstock generation can understand and appreciate its music whereas those ten years older cannot be bothered. The divide is abysmal, because music ceased to be a form of entertainment, something for diversion or recreation, and became a way to envision the world and find one’s place in it. Now most of the Woodstock generation has probably become the 401k generation and like the movie makers is uncomfortable about its memories of 1967. Whether these baby boomers have the honesty to realize that 401k’s are less worthy to contemplate than say “Blonde on Blonde” only time will tell. The extent to which this movie "rocks our boat" is the extent to which it is good. The objective of the movie should have been to convince us to get out the discs and spin them again; but you tell me if it has the courage of its conviction.
When the words ‘rock and roll will never die’ are sung, no one is making an assertion about a style of music, or a form of entertainment; it's a fundamental affirmation of life. The phenomenon of pirate radio counted on that affirmation, but I don’t think that the movie does. It finds the radio personalities on board rather dated, and it wants us to know that the best days of our life our over. The movie is embarrassed that people actually took rock and roll so seriously; consider its treatment of Bob, the graveyard shift DJ, who would rather drown than abandon his albums.
But as my wife pointed out to me, rock and roll changed the way generations are. People twenty and thirty years younger than the Woodstock generation can understand and appreciate its music whereas those ten years older cannot be bothered. The divide is abysmal, because music ceased to be a form of entertainment, something for diversion or recreation, and became a way to envision the world and find one’s place in it. Now most of the Woodstock generation has probably become the 401k generation and like the movie makers is uncomfortable about its memories of 1967. Whether these baby boomers have the honesty to realize that 401k’s are less worthy to contemplate than say “Blonde on Blonde” only time will tell. The extent to which this movie "rocks our boat" is the extent to which it is good. The objective of the movie should have been to convince us to get out the discs and spin them again; but you tell me if it has the courage of its conviction.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee ***
What Comes Next
You may come to this movie looking for a lot of meaning and given that, the ending might disappoint you. But don’t be disappointed because what you are getting instead is a whole lot of truth. While Pippa Lee (played brilliantly by Robin Wright) is described as “an enigma” in the opening scenes of the movie and is in fact a rather peculiar woman with a colorful past, in many ways she is very much like the rest of us. She struggles to weave the threads of her life into some kind of meaningful pattern. While not a chick flick, this is a woman’s movie…and not just a woman’s movie, but an American woman’s tale. A portrait of the American deconstructed life where you wake up in your 50’s in the midst of the busy world you’ve created to protect yourself and you’re just not able to buy into your own shit anymore. Working as a metaphor for a “great awakening”, Pippa discovers that while sleeping she raids the refrigerator and drives to the convenient store to buy cigarettes where an equally troubled younger man with a tattoo of Jesus on his chest (Keanu Reeves) awaits. Just as she starts questioning her own sanity and getting kicked out of pottery classes, she discovers her much older husband is having a hard time buying into his shit as well. We also learn a bit more about the secret guilt that binds them. While infidelity is a major plot theme, this is not a move about affairs nor is it a movie about marriage. Rather it’s about our willingness to face ourselves and what comes next in a life that is not only alarmingly unpredictable but just might not ever answer all the questions we have about ourselves. Towards the end of the movie we find Pippa embarking on a journey and declaring “…I’m just going to see what comes next”. I’m reminded of the Stephen Dobyns poem, How to Like It. It’s last stanza reads…
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.
You may come to this movie looking for a lot of meaning and given that, the ending might disappoint you. But don’t be disappointed because what you are getting instead is a whole lot of truth. While Pippa Lee (played brilliantly by Robin Wright) is described as “an enigma” in the opening scenes of the movie and is in fact a rather peculiar woman with a colorful past, in many ways she is very much like the rest of us. She struggles to weave the threads of her life into some kind of meaningful pattern. While not a chick flick, this is a woman’s movie…and not just a woman’s movie, but an American woman’s tale. A portrait of the American deconstructed life where you wake up in your 50’s in the midst of the busy world you’ve created to protect yourself and you’re just not able to buy into your own shit anymore. Working as a metaphor for a “great awakening”, Pippa discovers that while sleeping she raids the refrigerator and drives to the convenient store to buy cigarettes where an equally troubled younger man with a tattoo of Jesus on his chest (Keanu Reeves) awaits. Just as she starts questioning her own sanity and getting kicked out of pottery classes, she discovers her much older husband is having a hard time buying into his shit as well. We also learn a bit more about the secret guilt that binds them. While infidelity is a major plot theme, this is not a move about affairs nor is it a movie about marriage. Rather it’s about our willingness to face ourselves and what comes next in a life that is not only alarmingly unpredictable but just might not ever answer all the questions we have about ourselves. Towards the end of the movie we find Pippa embarking on a journey and declaring “…I’m just going to see what comes next”. I’m reminded of the Stephen Dobyns poem, How to Like It. It’s last stanza reads…
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.
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