Off to Guantanamo to get my meds

Just went to see Sicko a couple nights ago, and like all of Moore's films, the images stick pretty well. First of all, I thought it was an excellent movie--compelling, funny, irritating, and earnest. All of the criticisms that one can make of Moore are probably true but ultimately not very interesting. The bottom line is he just makes good movies about important topics. This one especially I thought had a sense of improvisation, lightness and self-deprecating humor that really made it a joy to watch. He has a measured sense of his own image and weaves it deftly into the substance of his film. I suggest people watch this in the theaters too, because the reaction of the audience is a big part of the show. When Moore shows the creation of HMO's via a white house tape of Nixon and Ehrlichmann people got genuinely angry (and foul-mouthed), and not in the pansy ass liberal way. More like that LA street riot way. And when we broke into applause at the words of a British statesman, it wasn't a self-righteous nod to someone who is affirming our own presuppositions, but acknowledgment of how surprising the truth can be, what a good idea democracy is, and the huge potential that Americans, perhaps alone among the peoples of this earth, have to mark this world with a genuine form of it.

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Seven Samurai: Do I see a self-sacrificial act on the horizon?

I'm halfway through Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, so let me begin by saying that if you respond to this post, please don't blow the ending for me before I can watch it.

I put Kurosawa off for years. Don't ask me why. I love nearly everything on the Criterion Collection, so much, in fact, that I have been plotting for about three years now to own the whole collection someday. When Borders has its teachers weekend, it's all Kate can do to keep me from buying whatever Criterion films borders happens to accidentally still have, like the original Solaris, wedged neatly between Snakes on a Plane and Spartacus, or more Ingmar Bergman. And while it's not a Criterion film, I'm probably the only person who owns the Decalogue who is still tempted to buy it every time I see it in all of its boxed-set glory.

Anyway, I'm finally watching Seven Samurai, and I completely see why it's a pillar of film. It's so witty, and the camera angles are great, and the music is awesome. Super subtle fight scenes amidst almost-clownlike acting.

One of the characters, Kikuchiyo, played by Kurosawa's main-man Toshiro Mifune, is introduced in the first hour as a total loser, who also has a tendency to seem a bit of an ass-hole, though he could be totally crazy. But you can see it coming, if you look hard enough. This guy is going to pull of a total Aragorn. Just as many of the humans thought Aragorn, also Strider, was just a "lowly" ranger, so too Kikuchiyo is dismissed as a clown, a wannabe samurai. I'm predicting now that he's either something along the lines of the long lost king of the samurai, or the savior of the village of the farmers. But, I don't really know anything about film, so my doozy of a prediction is probably way off.

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The Supernatural in Film

The Chicago Reader Film Blog has a cool post about the use of the supernatural and cosmic in the latest Pirates of the Caribbean. The post asserts that while some of the imagery is borrowed from the french director Eric Rohmer, especially the green flash symbolizing the transference of a person from this world to the other, the film ultimately fails to plumb the depths of the supernatural to which it sets out. I agree. On a purely symbolic level (we won't even discuss the quality of the film), many images are introduced, but, like many of my high school students' essay, the movie fails to seal the deal. The introduction is given, a lot of irrelevant details are used (presumably) as supporting evidence, and the conclusion predictably is a happy one although divorced from the deep, spiritual elements. One feels as though one has been shot by Dick Cheney's shotgun, left with nothing else to do but apologize for being there in the first place.
Which brings me to the movie I really wanted to talk about today: The Fountain, directed by Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream). If you want to get really fucked up tonight, go out and rent this gem. Aronofsky, unlike Verbinski, seems to recognize that what matters more in the fantasy genre is drawing the audience in with the question of the supernatural, not the assumed, unexplored premise of the supernatural. "We've seen it all. It's not really interesting to audiences anymore. The interesting things are the ideas; the search for God, the search for meaning." This is where Pirates fails, not so much because it lacked the "ideas", but because it seemed to be unaware (inasmuch as a movie can be unaware or aware) that it even had the ideas.... maybe that's a little harsh.
The Fountain, on the other hand, is bursting with the ideas and the questions. The imagery is overflowing, yet understated. Rather than throwing many different images on the screen, they return to the same imagery throughout the film, exploring new aspects, letting the chaos settle as the story nears its conclusion. I really appreciated the way the question of the supernatural didn't fight death, but embraced it, unlike Pirates where in the end the main character managed to evade death for the moment. Whereas Pirates of the Caribbean advocates and uneasy truce with death, the Fountain's main character takes a 100 year voyage to finally be at peace with his and his wife's death, the end of the book.
I'm watching The Fountain with an 11th grade AP English class tomorrow morning. I'm afraid it may be a bit heavy for them, but they'll at least get exposure to religious imagery in film. So, I'll let you all know how it goes.

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As usual, Business

Last week, I posted a photo of Johnny Depp, from his role as Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean III. As a result of my inclusion of that photo and the current interest in the movie among the masses, TLOU has received a crazy number of hits this week. So, if you're new to this blog, and even if you're just here for the photo of Johnny, welcome. Hopefully you'll stay for the content, which I'll admit is not usually along mass-media lines.
AD and I are in the midst of a unit on Theology and Art in the adult education at St. Mark's. Yesterday, AD presented Auden's Ars Poetica, The Sea and the Mirror, a continuation of sorts of the Tempest in poem form. AD had originally hoped to record it and post it here, as our first podcast. Unfortunately, that didn't work out, but I think he plans to share an outline and/or some of the more salient points of the discussion - maybe he'll even share one of his Auden songs with us, so there may yet be a podcast!

I'm up next Sunday with a discussion of Balthasar's opus proposal, which I was delighted (and somewhat chagrined after reading a heft chunk of the Herrlichkeitto find nicely summed up in Love Alone. Per Caritatem has hosted a cool series on Love Alone, so please visit her. I'm really interested in Balthasar's turn to the irrational via the concept of Love to explain the core of Christianity and delineate the task of the theologian. So, I hope to share some of that with you all over the next few days (as I come up with it).

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Pirates of the Never Ending Story about the Caribbean

At least, about 2.5 hrs into the newest installment of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (hereafter PC), I felt like it was a neverending story. Not that it was that bad, but rather that it could have been shorter. Kate and I agreed that PC would have been more coherent, less like the runon sentences you occasionally read here at TLOU, had it been shorter - this coming from someone who just watched all three Lord of the Rings movies in their extended versions! As many of the reviews have indicated, the push for action and CG suffocated the drama, although Johnny Depp's schizophrenic routine really added a new element to the Jack Sparrow character. I'm not going to try draw any profound conclusions from the movie, because if there were any, I probably lost track of them at that 2 hour mark.

Speaking of Lord of the Rings, thanks to Jay for drawing Aron's and my attention to The Children of Hurin (click the link for an interesting writeup), a new volume edited by Christopher Tolkien, an expansion of Tolkien's notes on a shorter story from the Silmarillion, and the newest addition to the TLOU bookclub. Summer reading, anyone?

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Spider Man III: Aesthetic Opus, or Bricolage Mishap?

While I don't usually subscribe to the Action Hero genre, I did attend the newest instalment of Sam Raimi's SpiderMan series. Back in 2002, Kate and I were looking for something fun to see as a date, not that we're that typical in our dating habits... ok, we are. Anyway, since then, each new Spiderman has been something of a tongue-in-cheek event for us. So, before my memory of the movie evaporates into the vacuous wasteland in which I put most other Hollywood spectacles, a few thoughts.

This Spiderman is certainly more adventurous that the first two in 2 ways (or, at least, I only noticed two - remember, it was a date). From the beginning of the movie, the audience is introduced to classic music and staging, recalling the age of Swing and Fred Astaire musicals. Raimi even goes so far to have Mary Jane walking down a circular staircase in a white satin gown, a hat tip to era pieces like Ziegfield's Follies. And the swinging-ness doesn't end there.

Enter the New Goblin, and then Sandman, and then Topher Grace, and then problems with Mary Jane... blah blah. Anyway, the second theme of the movie - memory - makes its first entrance with its dissappearance, that is Harry Osborn's amnesia from his short fight with Spiderman. This amnesia leads to a complete turn in Harry's behavior: he takes up painting, smiling, cooking, anything lighthearted enough to make him seem happy-go-lucky enough to distinguish him sharply from his father's alter-ego.

Whereas Harry forgets, Peter's memory haunts him. He seems incredulous that Harry has forgotten his former hatred. Then, he becomes obsessed with finding his uncle's killer. He has visions of his uncle's death, and his culpability in it. His vices win out when finally they congeal, represented by a substance from space that looks conspicuously like the X-Files' Black Oil. His clothes himself in his guilt, becoming the audacious Black Spiderman. He initially finds the increase in testosterone, or real-super-powers, maybe both, exhilirating. However, it blinds him to the plight of others. After he thinks he's killed the Sandman, he looses all sense of himself and becomes a cabaret-esque jigilo.

The dance scene is amazing; not so much for its artistry. Rather, this entire segment (on Peter's new, hubristic relationship to the world) seems so incongruous to the rest of the trilogy. Peter's dance is so frenetic, so Disney, that I couldn't help but laugh through the whole thing. It's at the same time both ridiculous and radical, like a scene from Jim Carey's Mask fused to a dance in Cabaret. Of course, Peter becomes disgusted with this new self, and attempts to shed his guilt by ripping the black suit from himself. However, the suit won't be silenced, and latches on to another, one so obsessed with revenge that he is in a church praying to God that he kill Peter Parker.

While the movie is clearly cheesey at times, and indulges in the spectacle throughout, there are certainly some insightful elements (I guess I'm thinking like a high school teacher here) that could be useful for demonstrating sometimes hard to grasp concepts like the communal nature of sin, the long term effects of habits (Peter's increasing aggression and jigilo-ness as he chooses to use the black suit more often), and the power of memory in making ethical decisions... and maybe the importance of real church bells instead of recordings in fighting off evil black substances from other planets!

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On the film "Die Grosse Stille" (Into Great Silence)

It's worth it just to see them sledding
Or to see a spider moving its foreleg
How moving! Its going to get something to eat!

These monks are as close to children
As spiders are to the grass
Around the vegetable garden

And when they speak. . . .
But they have forgotten exchange
But prayer is changing

A reviewer said that they were aliens
The Word comes from outside us
The Bell clangs from other side of galaxy

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This week with Hans Urs Von Balthasar (Huvb)

Dan and I are reading Volume 5 right now of A Theological Aesthetics, and we're going to be posting often on our reading and subsequent discussions. We just looked at his section on Nicholas of Cusa, who he definitely respects as being kind of a super-Catholic--I say this because Cusa, like Pico, was obsessed with explaining all phenomena and all religion in terms of the catholic faith. Kudos to Cusa says Hans. Apparently Cusa was down with the analogia entis as well, which Hans likes, but what we gleaned this past week was that the analogy may be a little too tight with Cusa, as Hans accuses him of preparing the ground (eventually) for Idealism, which equals loss of feeling for eros, and an inability to see eros and God in the same picture. Every metaphor must limp it seems. I agree here, we must be careful about tightening these comparisons too much. The analogy must grow in both directions. Advice I take seriously as I critique Carl Jung's notion of quaternity for my thesis, definitely an example of too clean a symbol. Wrapping up an analogy should always falter at the last step (between the 3 and the 4) like Bjork says in Dancer in the Dark, where she hoped the penultimate song would never end.

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In between the church and God

The Passion of Joan of Arc, by Carl Dreyer (1928). Another dumb signifier, this one in a silent film, and perhaps one of the very first, for it seems like in order to be able to identify one we must have a sense of individuality, we must be ripped away from the church.
We see this played out on Joan's face during this intense film. She is placed between the church and God, and she learns that this the only place where she may take the sacrament, this is the only place where she is delivered, even if at the end she knows she is delivered by none other than Death. This is the desert of the real, something Simone Weil also touched on, something which the existence of the Catholic Church will always send looming up. It is true that we must always ask ourselves why we are not Catholics, and the answer should always set us somewhere outside of the domain of salvation, in between salvation and God. It occurred to me that, however deserted this place is, Mary must be there, an Ark herself, a tabernacle of grace. We see schizophrenia being created as the wily priests use her absolute faith in their cloth and absolute loyalty to the vision God has sent her. She defies Descartes by affirming that it was an angel and not a devil which appeared to her, but she does not escape being tortured by the representatives of this doubt. Is she pure because she does not know this doubt? Perhaps, but she must die and the church must function as the vehicle of this act, which ultimately is one of enjoyment, which at the end spreads to the crowds and the soldiers (British, I think) who cut them down with maces. Most crucial, and what sets Joan apart from the crowd, is that she at one point signs the abjuration, denies that the visions came from God, but then abjures this act as well. She is now in a desert beyond all human reach, for she cannot even trust her own insane loyalty. And this is where death, I don't know how the film manages this, death comes to appear welcoming. We feel that it is a consummation, a love feast. But only she has won it for herself.

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Being There

I just watched the movie Being There, starring Peter Sellers. It's a real fantastic movie, one of the most profound statements on death, language, and TV that I've seen in a long time. The story revolves around this gardener whose name is Chance Gardner, who has grown up in an estate that he's never been allowed to leave. His only source of knowledge of the outside world has come through TV, which he watches constantly, while eating, sleeping, and talking to people. The movie opens with the death of his boss, the owner of the estate, and Chance is simply dumped out on the means streets of DC, completely out of place, an autistic baby man.
By the end of the movie the movers and shakers our great capital want him to run for president of the United States of America. How did this happen? I don't want to go into the details because what I'm really interested in is the relations to language, image, and The Other. In Lacan, the master signifier, while truly ruling the world of discourse, is primordially dumb, both in the sense that it’s most powerful when it's silent, and that it is in essence ridiculous, absurd, stupid, meaningless. The master signifier is not a word, but it is the Word. And it is not only the Word that determines our lives (perhaps a phrase that we misunderstood when we were three years old) but the Word that created the universe. How absurd that at the end of analysis we see that our desire is compelled by a misunderstanding, by a slip of the tongue, and that tongue was not even ours--we can't even claim the mistake as our own. Like at the end of The Death of Ivan Ilyich where everyone gathers around the bedside of the pitiful dying Ivan, and when they see the end has come, say "it is over." But Ivan Ilyich hears in his eternal fall, "Death is over." His ear fails him as he gains the ranks of the blessed.
But back to the movie, where we must take into account the name of our Gardener, that is, Chance. The master signifier is arbitrary, aleatory, pure chance, pure gamble, as is the Word--why does God speak to Israel, to Abraham, and Moses? Why does he choose the dunce, Peter, and all those greedy and cowardly tax collector types? We cannot know but we must believe, like Adam in Paradise Lost, which makes us end up sounding pious and ignorant, a label that we will never completely shake. . . . We should notice too that his last name is problematic as well—we never know if people call him Gardner because he is one or because that’s his name. Does not the Master Signifier name hold all the confusion that is related to trying to distinguish a name from a proper name, trying to distinguish Adam from Man, Jesus from the archetype laid down by Joshua.
As Chance finds himself in the middle of big money and big politics in Washington all of a sudden we realize people are calling him Chauncey; they have misheard him, there was some confusion, and he doesn't take any pains to clear it up. Is it Chance or Chauncey? Is he a gardener, or is Gardner simply his name? In avoiding the signifier Chance are they betraying their disavowal of the arbitrary nature of the Word, the kind of fear we feel when we read that, "God hardened the heart of Pharaoah"? How could heaven and hell be so arbitrary? But beyond that, how could Christians accept such an arbitrary God? Pascal said that we must simply wager on the truth of God's reveleation! Gambling? with God? Its ridiculous. Could even be a fraud.
How does the film represent this? By showing that everything Chance does he learned from TV, the ultimate source of dumb (even with all that talking!) if there ever was one. He shakes hands like prime ministers do, he kisses like fake lovers, he does yoga and aerobics simply because he sees it on the screen—and everyone says that he is the most authentic, the most real, person they have ever met. He is the only one who doesn’t lie in Washington, and yet everything he does comes from that buzzing talking box. Now this isn’t completely true because we must remember that he is one who works in the garden, and who knows the life and death of trees and shrubs. He becomes famous overnight for saying on a talk show that economics must be like gardening, having a time to grow and a time to die. We should also note that he is illiterate.
The women adore him, want to sleep with him, the men idolize him (some of them also want to sleep with him, especially when he tells them he just “likes to watch [TV!]”). He gets adopted by an extremely rich “king maker” and his wife: Ben and Eve. Ben is dying and Chance sees what everyone else does, but doesn’t mince words. He simply looks at Ben and says, “You’re dying, aren’t you?” Which makes Ben trust him with all his being and soul. So the master signifier, the Word, is not only dumb, but it makes friends with death. It sees death as simply another episode on television, a child’s view of death, mixed with an unassuming resurrection (watch Ponette). And we love nothing more than those who are close to death. And those like Yeltsin we can love only after they are dead.

When Eve, who is falling in love with him, attempts to kiss him, he can’t take his eyes off the TV, luckily enough there is a love scene at the moment on the screen and so he can imitate that with Eve and have a moment of “sexual relationship”--but the channel changes and his body goes limp. He says to her “I like to watch”; she is confused, but then falls to the floor, writhing. Is she masturbating? Is she coming? It's hard to tell. Chance is not really interested, as he’s attempting to imitate the yoga posture on TV at that moment. The next morning she says to him that because he did not take her, did not take advantage of her, she was finally able to take advantage of herself, and she was opened, purged, renewed. Is this a sexual relationship? I would say yes, a Lacanian, non-sexual relationship, relationship. They are truly in love because they give to each other what they do not have. He, as the final Word, has no desire, and thus cannot not desire her, cannot make love to her. But he has given her desire back to herself, and she finally sees her own self-love. Is she just a narcissist? Perhaps, but she has finally seen herself as one. Will they ever make love again? Will he become the president? These questions are absurd, which is why the final scene in the movie shows him walking on water, while Ben’s funeral goes on behind him. Here the narrative breaks down, well, the movie is over for one, but our ability to look into the future of these characters is nullified, for they have no future. Their exposure to the Word has un-sutured their lives, and they have become like mad Peters, walking on water in spite of themselves.

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