tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30015975691972026652024-03-18T02:47:37.045-07:00MOVIE IS MY FAVOURITE WORDreviews of movies I saw between 2010 and 2011, mostly spoilers. loose accounts of actual movie dialogue and plotsMargaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.comBlogger67125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-50459121076777279862013-01-31T07:21:00.006-08:002013-01-31T07:21:55.919-08:00Martina's Playhouse (1989) - Directed by Peggy Ahwesh<!--[if gte mso 9]>-->
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<em>(Tom McCormack at <a href="http://www.uniondocs.org/about/">Union Docs</a> in Brooklyn asked me if I had seen Peggy Ahwesh's Martina's Playhouse. I hadn't. I watched it on Ubuweb one night recently. It was great. It's 20 minutes long and <a href="http://www.ubu.com/film/ahwesh_martina.html">you can watch it here</a>.)</em></div>
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We start on a roof with a little girl named Martina. She looks at the camera and eats a sandwich Though the camera isn't talking back, she figures out how she wants to talk to the camera.<br />
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There is footage of hands examining a flower, with a monologue about flowers and love and organs.
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There's footage of a grown-up woman also figuring out how to talk to the camera - she is clearly more anxious about the situation. You can see her aching a bit to talk to the person behind the camera, to interact with them, maybe even to be reassured.<br />
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There's more footage of Martina, now inside, confidently conducting her own playtime for the audience of the camera.<br />
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More than just evocative or suggestive, Martina's Playhouse reveals a poetic and complicated structure made from subject, camera and quiet filmmaker behind the camera.<br />
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During Martina's interesting and noticeably uncensored play time, we are reminded, as Martina occasionally talks and looks up to the camera, that a camera doesn't blink, express concern, distaste or encouragement. Though we know well enough that a camera changes everything, we are reminded here that people change everything.<br />
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It made me think of parents - and also of good science fiction, where we are often shown how machines are kinder and more cruel than humans.
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-66602372548422713132013-01-31T07:19:00.001-08:002013-01-31T07:19:23.621-08:00Moonrise Kingdom (2012) - directed by Wes Anderson, written by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola<div style="text-align: center;">
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<em>Moonrise Kingdom</em> is a sweet, good-natured, good-looking movie about young love. The love is between two child runaways on a charmingly idiosyncratic island set in 1965.<br />
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I have really liked quite a few Wes Anderson movies, but I found this one difficult to watch.<br />
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Though everything about the movie seemed interesting and pleasurable, my eyes had a hard time instinctively knowing what to look at. <i>Everything </i>was interesting and pleasurable. The movie frame was continuously filled from corner to corner with things lovingly crafted and interestingly arranged: the unusual curtains, the overly solemn children, the coiled rug, the crooked picture. It was as though my eyes couldn’t find the thing that was different. Everything was perfectly off, but to the same degree. So where to look? If all the objects and characters and animals and sky in the movie are as crafted and cared-for as the young lovers, it can make you wonder what the movie wants you to concentrate on. If this sameness makes it hard to understand where to rest your eyes, it makes it even harder to understand where to rest your heart.<br />
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Stern, unhappy adults and an approaching storm offer the main opportunities for disorder. Unfortunately, the stern, unhappy adults on the island are the most perfectly-off unhappy adults to be found in the world (or at least in Hollywood): Bruce Willis is an endearingly hesitating Police Captain; Frances McDormand is a stern and matter-of-fact secret lover; Bill Murray is a deliciously depressed father; Tilda Swinton is a militaristic child-protection employee; Bob Balaban is the wonderfully detached-and-I-know-it narrator. Every single one of these characters, like everything else in the movie, is a treat. But they in no way offer a break from this relentless uniformity of the “perfectly off”. Nor does the storm. The storm is just another charming rival to the charms of everything else.<br />
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If absolutely everything is perfectly off, it perhaps becomes more accurate to describe it as simply perfect, or having evolved towards a state of inert uniformity.<br />
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I started to crave a glimpse of a <i>really </i>sad child, a genuinely thoughtless action, a window that would open up and let you crawl out of this claustrophobic heaven – even if it just led you to a mall in 2002.<br />
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<br />Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-66016781283743401972012-08-09T06:44:00.001-07:002012-08-09T06:44:17.757-07:00Jiro Dreams Of Sushi<br />
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<i>(from June 7 2012)</i></div>
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"<a data-mce-href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jiro_dreams_of_sushi/" href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jiro_dreams_of_sushi/">Jiro dreams of Sushi</a>", to my slight irritation, continues to play in a few theatres across Toronto. It has been playing here for a few months now.</div>
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I have been told this story a million times - this story of a great man who neglects his wife and his children for the greatness of his art. I love a story that gets told over and over again, but this old story has very few mysteries left in it. This old story is starting to sound a bit like a boring, somber holiday greeting card you get in the mail every year and feel slightly obliged to put on your fridge.</div>
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In this particular story of that story, Jiro, of "Jiro Dreams Of Sushi", neglects his wife and his children to make the perfect sushi. "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" is a straight-up and well-made documentary, interesting enough and <a data-mce-href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jiro_dreams_of_sushi/" href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jiro_dreams_of_sushi/">well received on the Tomatomometer</a>. But it sure is about that old story. Sushi doesn't manage to make that particular old story any more interesting.</div>
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Content-wise, I probably would have liked it better if I saw in a program where it was sandwiched between Hayao Miyazaki "<a data-mce-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirited_Away" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirited_Away">Spirited Away</a>" (an animation that includes adults who gorge themselves on delicious food, turn into pigs, and then are threatened death by a witch unless their child can pick them out of a crowd of pigs) and Dan Stone's "<a data-mce-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Edge_of_the_World_(film)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Edge_of_the_World_(film)">At the Edge of the World</a>" (where animal rights activists led by Paul Watson war against a Japanese whaling ship in Antarctica). That probably would have been delicious.</div>
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Act 1<br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/6az9wGfeSgM?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe>
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Act 2</div>
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Act 3</div>
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<br /></div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-182159881984256422012-08-09T06:36:00.001-07:002012-08-09T06:36:25.453-07:00Lynn Crosbie - Life Is About Losing Everything<br />
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<i>(from May 3 2012) </i></div>
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I’ve had the good fortune of becoming friends with the writer/academic/cultural critic Lynn Crosbie in the past few years; I have been a fan for much longer. Though she is famous for many things, there was something about her weekly column in the Globe & Mail that I needed and have always paid close attention to. In retrospect, I think, in some ways, her column was teaching me how to talk.</div>
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I remember, when I first started reading it years ago, I was living in a gloomy basement by the Leslie Spit and finishing George Elliot's novel <em>Middlemarch</em>. <em>Middlemarch</em> has an unsual narrator - a narrator that is sometimes omniscient, sometimes addressing you directly, and sometimes trapped within the knowledge limitations that a typical literary character (or human) often has. The confidently wandering nature of the voice, to where it needed to go, was both thrilling and strangely subtle, both reckless and completely masterful. It was a hilarious voice to have in a novel where the main story arc involves an earnest and intelligent young woman, Dorothea, who wants to use her limited powers on this earth to aid the middle-aged Edward in finishing his great work The-Objective-History-of-Everything.</div>
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*SPOILER* (Edward turns out to be not-such-a-big-genius.)</div>
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I felt an actual sadness in letting this strange voice of <em>Middlemarch</em> go when I finished the 1000 pages. I'm a slow learner and sometimes 1000 pages isn't enough to understand a new thing. I remember feeling grateful that Lynn Crosbie’s column came every week - her deeply human and masterful voice was just as thrilling to me as George Elliot's had been. I think Lynn Crosbie's column helped me to learn, slowly and in my bones, that speaking clearly, from where ever you happen to be standing, with the information you happen to have, accepting of flexibility and imperfection, can be a thousand times deeper and more useful than the boring tomb of carefully constructed cliches that <em>Middlemarch's</em> Edward hoarded and handed down with shaky authority from that fancy desk he had in his study.</div>
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In Lynn Crosbie's column, there are no qualifiers, there is no fear, there is no condescension, there is no sense that the topics or subjects aren't heavy enough or in the proper location for the world's spotlight and respect (or respectful wrath!). She is always just getting down to business, starting or participating honestly and earnestly and humorously in a conversation that she is invariably an asset to.</div>
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I was thinking about Crosbie's work recently (and its effect on me) because, in April, I read her new book of poetic prose <strong><a data-mce-href="http://www.houseofanansi.com/Life-Is-About-Losing-Everything-P1757.aspx" href="http://www.houseofanansi.com/Life-Is-About-Losing-Everything-P1757.aspx">Life Is About Losing Everything</a></strong>. Though is about that, about losing everything, when you look up from the book while riding on Toronto's Dufferin bus, everyone and everything looks so much more valuable.</div>
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Though I know her work very well, I was still kind of amazed at both the depth and the strange brightness of this book. Her heavy talent and heavy intelligence somehow makes her genius seem so light and natural. Maybe in a way it is, and it's the living that's so hard. It's written in short chapters, and involves my always-favourite art project: how to take the bones of loss and meaninglessness and make meaning.</div>
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It is my favourite book of hers so far. I'll be co-hosting the book’s launch, under <a data-mce-href="http://www.theproductionfront.com/" href="http://www.theproductionfront.com/">The Production Front</a>, along with <a data-mce-href="http://www.houseofanansi.com/Life-Is-About-Losing-Everything-P1757.aspx" href="http://www.houseofanansi.com/Life-Is-About-Losing-Everything-P1757.aspx">House of Anansi Press</a> at <a data-mce-href="https://www.facebook.com/events/194212614031241/" href="https://www.facebook.com/events/194212614031241/">The Mascot on May 10th</a>.</div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-46418678045243695052012-08-09T06:32:00.001-07:002012-08-09T06:32:50.777-07:00Goya & Gillray - etchings exhibition<i>(from April 19 2012)</i><br />
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On most mornings, for the last few months, I’ve had the good fortune of having to walk through <a data-mce-href="http://www.ago.net/goya-and-gillray-humour-that-bites" href="http://www.ago.net/goya-and-gillray-humour-that-bites">an exhibit of Goya etchings</a> to get to where I was working. As I pass through, I think, “Goya”.</div>
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There are no other painters that I’ve been so consistently sympathetically in love with (or in love with at all). If anyone ever asks what painters I like, I think “Goya” while thinking to remember, before I speak, if I've learned anything more about the world since I was 15.</div>
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I finally took the exhibition in more carefully and slowly last week before it closed. It was at The Art Gallery of Ontario and was curated by Brenda Rix. The exhibit combined prints of Goya’s with prints of Gillray (who was doing similar political etchings around the same time in England while Goya was in Spain). I had somehow managed to completely ignore the Gillray prints for two months.</div>
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As I walked around the exhibition last week, after my lunch, lingering over the nightmarish Goya etchings with warm feelings, I was pretty surprised that I had trouble looking at the Gillray prints without wanting to throw up.</div>
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Art (and its very often revolting subject matter) very rarely makes me want to throw up so I was pretty curious about my genuine physical trouble focusing on Gillray's prints. It was interesting to think of these two artists together, drawing such different feelings in the way-future audience, these two artists who were both sort of doing the same thing - using humour and metaphors and satire to talk about those who abuse power, probably both with earnest intentions.</div>
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It's been in my head since last week - what was so different between these two men from similar times with similar subject matter and medium. It reduced me to thinking about the differences between the different kinds of lines they made - something I never think about. I thought of Goya's lines - the consistency of regret and empathy that maybe he couldn't help but to include (or wouldn't know why not to) in every mark he made. Is that possible? these empathetic and regretful lines that make up both the villains and victims of the usual human tragedies? the impossibly frustrating (therefore hopeful) harmony between Goya, villain and victim.</div>
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Maybe it's the opposite in the Gillray prints that made me feel sick - a thousand times sicker than the nightmares that came out of Goya's time and imagination. Is there really such a remove and hatred inherent in Gillray's marks? A cloud of his vision that he intended (or couldn't help) - a remove and hatred for the villains and victims he depicted in his etchings? The characters that are more like lunatics from the other side of the moon - etched with professional consistency from the left side of the page to the right with no space in between.</div>
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It made me think more about why Goya’s nightmares (or daily perspective) are so strangely comforting. Nightmares can last for a surprisingly long time and it is always a little bit of a confusion what our horrible role in them is – the audience, the artist, the victim, the villain. I guess it is reassuring to think that someone like Goya would be there (is there), alongside, trying earnestly to make some gentle sense of it.</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-24926127474630417492012-08-09T06:29:00.000-07:002012-08-09T06:29:32.671-07:00My Neighbor Totoro (1988) - written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli.<br />
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<i>(from March 22 2012) </i><br />
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It’s hard to write about this movie because when you start even your first sentence you think: Why am I writing about this movie when I could just be watching it again?<br />
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Now I have the theme song coming in through my headphones. Better.</div>
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Toronto's TIFF Lightbox has been, and will continue to be, <a data-mce-href="http://tiff.net/spiritedaway" href="http://tiff.net/spiritedaway">screening the animated films of Studio Ghibli until April 13</a>. It’s hard to keep track of all the cultural events going on in the city, <a data-mce-href="http://www.ago.net/margaux-williamson" href="http://www.ago.net/margaux-williamson">even my own</a>, but I have carefully written down the screening times for Hayoa Miyazaki’s "Spirited Away" at least two additional times by accident.<br />
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I had never seen Miyazaki’s 1988 "My Neighbor Totoro" and somehow doubted that it could rival his later masterpieces (though it does, effortlessly). This past Saturday, I went with four grown-up friends to a matinee. The audience was filled with kids. We sat in the second row, right in the middle. I had just woken up.<br />
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"My Neighbor Totoro" is about two little girls who have moved into a new, slightly haunted house in the country. The movie is primarily from their perspective. It is so gentle and beautiful and captivating and exciting. It’s full of good and bad things, and is also very smart and comforting.<br />
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The kids in the audience made a lot of cooing and murmuring noises throughout. They sometimes collectively suddenly said something like, "What did the big furry one just say? What did he say?" Or they would all seem to move forward at the same time. It was like being in a gently moving child-ocean. I had no idea kids had such consistency, or that their imaginations could all be harnessed so masterfully by an animator. There, as an audience, they seemed like the most interesting group of people in the world.<br />
Even afterwards, as we all shuffled out of the cinema, kids running around the stairs, or outside on the sidewalk, a couple of them shaking a city tree with all their might (hoping a forest spirit might come out?), they suddenly looked like they really knew what they were doing.<br />
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It made me think of the value in partaking of another culture’s art. It’s easy to remember the importance of that when it comes to other countries, but it's good, too, to remember it applies to groups like age and gender - that there can be entire groups of humans you forget to care about or give credit to, or never thought to in the first place.<br />
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It also made me think of the tricky sport of appropriation; how interesting and useful things can happen when trying on another group’s perspective. It kind of made me long to watch a movie that maybe some 8-year-old out there is making from the perspective of an elder whale or something - a live-action feature, perhaps. I’m sure there are at least two kids out there who have already gotten started on that project.</div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-32707627467543455282012-08-09T06:20:00.000-07:002012-08-09T06:20:05.882-07:00Thinking about Damian Hirst the other day<br />
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My sister, Tara Williamson, brought up the artist Damian Hirst with me last week. She said they had been discussing his new spot paintings on the radio. She asked what I thought of his work. I said that it can be irritating sometimes but that mostly it somehow always worked to break my heart a little bit. She said, I knew you would say that.</div>
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The next day I came across <a data-mce-href="http://artforum.com/diary/id=30021" href="http://artforum.com/diary/id=30021" target="_blank">a text by Katy Siegel on Damian Hirst</a>. It was somehow in my Kindle but maybe it came to me from an Art Forum email. Siegel’s text is useful in its criticism but generous too. In writing of Hirst against the art world Siegel writes:</div>
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<em>It seems silly to feel sorry for successful artists, or for rich people in general, but in the end, there is no attitude to strike that can beat the house. Or, to put it another way, no one gets out of here alive.</em></div>
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I also feel a little silly to feel empathy for Hirst, but I do. Hirst’s work always seems to be saying <em>“ALL IS LOST, I DON’T CARE”</em>, with a much smaller voice in the background asking <em>“all is lost, right?”</em></div>
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It’s interesting when an artist’s work, like in the case of Hirst, shows such a consistency of feeling despite how varied their projects or intent can be.</div>
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Thinking about it this week made me think of the model Kate Moss. She, too, seems to have a consistency in the work she does with her face. Coming across a random picture of Kate Moss in a magazine, her face always seems to say, <em>“TAKE EVERYTHING, I DON’T CARE”</em> with a much smaller voice in the background saying <em>“you can take everything, but you’ll never, ever get anything from me.”</em></div>
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It seems a little like a puzzle. Was she born with this face? Is it her bone structure that tells you to <em>“TAKE EVERYTHING”</em>? Or are her feelings shaping her face? - the feelings that one doesn’t think to hide when the photographers take their pictures since one might not know that they are there.</div>
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Weighing Kate Moss’ feelings verses her bone structure reminded me of the work of Paul Ekman and Maureen O’Sullivan. They are psychologists who study, in great, unimaginable detail, humans’ microexpressions. Microexpressions are the involuntary expressions made unconsciously and received uconsciously. Apparently, microexpressions are very difficult things to repress.</div>
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Come to think of it, anything I came across by the designer ALexander McQueen always broke my heart too. His work always seemed to be saying <em>“If I keep my eyes closed, keep dreaming and work really hard, maybe everything in the world will get better”</em> (he never seemed to have a smaller voice saying something different - other than maybe <em>“I DON’T SEE YOU”</em>).</div>
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Maybe these are the things that happen when you are surrounded by England. Maybe these are things you can’t repress when England takes your picture. Maybe the gestures and the expressions and the objects made by people who are being closely watched by England always break my heart.</div>
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That’s on the other side of what I see when I see Damian Hirst’s work. When I see his work, I think <em>“It’s not just England that’s watching you, it’s not just the filthy rich who are invested, it’s not just the art world that cares.”</em> Maybe it is always a little bit hard to strike a pose for people who aren’t in the room.</div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-76951388751158153632012-08-09T06:07:00.001-07:002012-08-09T06:24:05.956-07:00List of mostly good things, big and small, that I can remember from the world in 2011 – in order of rememberance<br />
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<strong>1. Remembering what a brilliant idea feels like - <em><a data-mce-href="http://occupywallst.org/" href="http://occupywallst.org/">Occupy Wall Street</a></em></strong></div>
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<a data-mce-href="http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/occupy-wall-street-november-5-2011/" href="http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/occupy-wall-street-november-5-2011/"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-5173" data-mce-src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/ows1105110541.jpg?w=300" height="225" src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/ows1105110541.jpg?w=300" style="border: 0px; cursor: default; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="ows110511054" width="300" /></a></div>
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It was a simple and brilliant idea - that people could “occupy” a space in addition to protesting it, that the power and action could be contained and directed inward to make something new, rather than all thrown at an opponent (where it often just falls uselessly at their feet).</div>
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It made me think of something that the physicist <a data-mce-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smolin" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smolin">Lee Smolin</a> wrote in his 2006 book <strong><em><a data-mce-href="http://www.thetroublewithphysics.com/" href="http://www.thetroublewithphysics.com/">The Trouble with Physics</a></em></strong>. In the book he attempts to untangle the genuinely revolutionary ideas in contemporary physics from the ones that might be time-consuming dead-ends. To begin this untangling - and to help identify the promising theories from the dead-end ones - he looks for the commonality and rules that past genuinely revolutionary scientific ideas share. Some of the rules, for instance, involved simplicity, uniqueness, immediate impact on other related problems and, also, that once you truly understand the genuinely brilliant scientific idea, you can’t (for the life of you) see the world in the old way again.</div>
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Coming from the arts, where words like “genius” are flung around just as often in hopeful declarations as in certainty, and where the term avant-garde more often than not describes a genre from the past rather than anything new (or involves an isolated “newness” that doesn’t in the least impact anything else), I had been very attracted to thinking that truly brilliant ideas have a natural order to them and clearly identifiable nature. Because this natural order seemed so comforting when I first read it, I had wanted to apply it (however unwisely) to everything. Though I simultaneously thought that such rules could never apply to something genius like the civil rights movement where the struggle is so long and complicated and where it can take forever to invert people’s world view.</div>
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But seeing the simplicity and brilliance of this protest shift on Wall Street made me remember to be more humble in my thinking of what is a truly brilliant idea - that of course in a movement hoping to get somewhere new, a lot of genuinely revolutionary ideas, thinking and actions are essential along the way. Maybe it is just easy to forget all of the brilliance because the better the ideas are, the more quickly they become obvious to everyone – as though they had never been invented or discovered in the first place.</div>
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I remember awhile ago at a talking tour I had given for Ryan Trecartin’s work at the Power Plant Gallery here in Toronto, I had been asked by someone in the audience (who was skeptical of the brilliance of Trecartin’s work) if the work would still be important in 100 years. I had said - I hope not! I said, I hope it’s such useful work for understanding our time that we’ll completely absorb it into culture and forget that what this artist knew and could express was ever separate from what we knew and what we could express. I said that’s probably why I never thought Picasso was so special - his work probably actually worked, it probably impacted and was absorbed by culture by the time I came around. At which point I was like, duh.</div>
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<strong>2. Music videos - Beyoncé and The Beastie Boys change things</strong></div>
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Beyoncé’s<strong> </strong>song<strong> <em><a data-mce-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBmMU_iwe6U" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBmMU_iwe6U">Run the World (Girls)</a> </em></strong>has given me at least two solid waves of power goosebumps. In the beginning of the song Beyoncé authoritatively sings <em>Girls! we run this motha ___ (yeah!)</em>. To me, it sounded like the censors had taken the <em>fucker </em>out of <em>mothafucker </em>and that She is singing <em>Girls! we run this mothafucking (world)</em>. You hear this suggested adjective while simultaneously also hearing that it was only ever <em>motha - motha the noun, that the Girls are running the motha (the world). Motha </em>(in a second) suddenly becomes more powerful and crazy than <em>motherfucker</em> ever was or could be. <em>Mothafucker </em>has always been a real challenge - it has such weight. But here Beyoncé brilliantly and effortlessly handed the sinister and seductive weight over to something both more ominous and familiar. Re-appropriation at it’s best. Also (and as usual) the dancing is amazing.</div>
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Before watching the 2011 30 minute video written and directed by Adam Yauch <strong><a data-mce-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evA-R9OS-Vo" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evA-R9OS-Vo"><em>Fight For Your Right (Revisited) Full Length</em></a></strong> (the sequel the <strong>Beastie Boys</strong>' <strong><a data-mce-href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8j8v_beastie-boys-fight-for-your-right_music" href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8j8v_beastie-boys-fight-for-your-right_music">1987 music video <em>(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)</em></a></strong> ) I watched the original 1987 music video first. I was surprised at how incredibly slow the original felt. It made me think that things in 1987 must have been ever slower than the video since I had remembered the video as being very exciting. The new one - inexplicably filled with famous actors and comedians - is weighty and strangely fast-feeling for it’s 30 minute length and heavy use of slow motion. The video takes the original premise (of reckless partiers) and simply makes it more real. A more reality-based representation of destruction and stupidity turns out to be incredibly captivating and frightening. After 30 mintues, it is hard to know where the time went but you want to watch it again - this also happens to be the gist of the narrative. More movies from Adam Yauch!</div>
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*It is worth watching to the end credits - Seth Rogen walking down the street in slow motion as the credits role is somehow better than any cartoon I have ever seen.</div>
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<strong>3. THE CLOCK, a 24 hour movie in real time constructed by Christian Marclay</strong></div>
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Congratulations to Christian Marclay for making a great piece of art that would even move and intellectually simulate aliens with superior minds who might be shamefully ignorant of our small and complicated art world. This 24 hour movie is comprised of clips, taken from a million different movies, that all feature some indication of the actual time. The clips from these other time/spaces correspond exactly to the real time of the audience watching.</div>
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If you haven’t seen it, Zadie Smith wrote a beautiful piece on it<a data-mce-href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/apr/28/killing-orson-welles-midnight/?pagination=false" href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/apr/28/killing-orson-welles-midnight/?pagination=false"> here</a>, and Jerry Saltz <a data-mce-href="http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/02/jerry_saltz_on_the_best_movie.html" href="http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/02/jerry_saltz_on_the_best_movie.html">here</a>. It is simple and big and makes you think of the strangeness of time. <a data-mce-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp4EUryS6ac" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp4EUryS6ac">You can see a little piece of it on Youtube</a>, though for instance, this clip has the thoughtful request:<em> In order to respect the concept of Christian Marclay's work, spectators are kindly requested to play this video at 4 pm, local time. If time is passed, please wait for tomorrow or another day same time.</em> <em>Thank you.</em> I hope Marclay puts this work on a 24-hour-moving website soon. This one shouldn’t be hoarded by real space. The aliens need to see this.</div>
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<strong>4. <a data-mce-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Games" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Games">The Hunger Games </a>- the trilogy by Suzanne Collins</strong></div>
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This was recommended to me this year by a lot of tough 12 year old boys. The scenario doesn’t sound exactly promising -"Set in a future where the Capitol selects a boy and girl from the twelve districts to fight to the death on live television" - but the young adult books are very serious and very pleasurable. The story is about how a revolution begins. In the book, the main instigators for revolution are a tough teenage girl with a bow and arrow, a cool-headed adult fashion designer and a sensitive son-of-a-baker who paints. Of course me and the 12 year old boys loved it.</div>
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<strong>5. Thank you for television - <em>True Blood</em> and <em>Whale Wars</em></strong></div>
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I was housebound for a good part of 2011 with health problems which led me to watch a lot of television which led me to want to write a letter to the makers of <strong><em><a data-mce-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK1D9vGJePc" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK1D9vGJePc">True Blood</a></em></strong> and thank them – except then I remembered I wasn’t 11 years old. (The houseboundness accounts for my heavy-on-pop-culture list this year). I started watching True Blood after being compelled by a perplexing video that Snoop Dogg (who often shows up in <a data-mce-href="http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/snoop_dogg_on_the_price_is_right" href="http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/snoop_dogg_on_the_price_is_right">various seemingly random screens</a> around the <a data-mce-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ocre0kXgvg" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ocre0kXgvg">screen world</a> – maybe to tell us that those screens are real, or that he is real, or simply to help identify that the screens we see him in are from the time of now).</div>
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The best thing about True Blood (based on the books by Charlaine Harris and created for television by Alan Ball) is the full insertion of these fantasy characters - vampires, faeries, werewolves - into a reality-based narrative where vampires have to fight for equal rights and where werewolves haven’t yet come out of the closet. This is the only way I can enjoy fantasy, when it is firmly but campily tied to the ground. It is funny when a vampire never lies about being a vampire. The second best thing about the show is that it is more emotionally intelligent than usual, with bad vampires and good vampires, bad Christians and good Christians. The bad vampires often become good and vice versa. And like life, it is the rule that the best (or at least most tolerable) characters occasionally partake in some healthy self-hatred.</div>
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I would alternate between this show and Animal Planet’s <strong><a data-mce-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6gqkSuDlhI" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6gqkSuDlhI"><em>Whale Wars</em> </a></strong> which my friend Steve Kado had brought over. It’s a documentary television show about environmental pirates battling Japanese whaling ships in order to try and save the whales. If you are also sick, I highly recommend watching these shows together – a near real-life (and dream) simulation.</div>
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<strong>Best single episode of television this year – the Louis episode where he goes to Afghanistan</strong></div>
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<b><br /></b>In this episode of the show <em><strong>Louis</strong></em>, <a data-mce-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk">Louis C.K.</a> travels to Afghanistan to perform his comedy act for the American troops. But while there he finds himself to be (for all narratively practical reasons and with the help of an American cheerleader, a group of Afghan locals and a duckling) suddenly a real clown, with actual white face paint, with everyone around him laughing. It was a brilliant shift for what a contemporary comedian can be - far from (but logically connected to) the standard boring shock-talk of cable comedy specials. Thank you Louis C.K. for making everyone laugh and for trying to end a small piece of the violence with some good self-humiliation.</div>
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<strong>6. Melancholia</strong></div>
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Speaking of learning how to see oneself as both good and bad, Lars Von Trier seemed to have opened up like a flower this year to mixed results. He was banned from France’s Cannes Film Festival after a misstep at a press conference. It involved Von Trier’s half hearted and confused attempt to make jokes while also maybe trying to say that it might be just as useful for the world to occasionally identify with a monster as it is to identify with a victim. He was inarticulately crossing into dangerous terrain for the delicate people of earth for sure, but getting banned suddenly made France (or at least the Cannes Film Festival) seem like a television show for children.</div>
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In a funny way, it was as though Von Trier was being more confused and open himself – less in wry attack mode and more just trying to survive and communicate. Or maybe it was that this feeling was very apparent in his latest feature – <strong><em><a data-mce-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzD0U841LRM" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzD0U841LRM">Melancholia</a></em></strong>. Often, the stories for his movies involve a darkly funny punch line with the generosity and depth of his vision reserved for the politics of his structural and aesthetic choices - embedded in every inch of his works.</div>
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But in <em>Melancholia </em>the story is more searching and seems more like a story he needs to tell himself than he needs to tell to others. This makes <em>Melancholia </em>feel like one of his deepest works – or at least certainly the most generous. What we need to tell ourselves is often more complicated than what we think the world needs to hear. And the story doesn’t suffer for this searching – the small but piercing details that connect together a story here resonate deeper – they are the kind of details from our own lives that we grasp together and attempt to make stories out of. When the main character Justine (Kristen Dunst) says passionately and convincingly - in a conversation she is having with her sister regarding her wishful certainty that the evil world will end - “I know things”, we feel both in the heart of the only possible meaning one could find in life and also completely lost. It is the attempt at stories that is heartbreaking here – the paradox of making meaning while telling a story of meaninglessness. One of the nicest things that a human could do.</div>
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<strong>7. Biography & autobiographies big and small</strong></div>
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I read a lot of these books this year. They all seemed to fall into one of two categories - feeling very claustrophobic and depressingly small or feeling very big - even when the facts of the lives presented didn’t seem very different. The most fun big-feeling one was John Water’s book <em><strong><a data-mce-href="http://www.amazon.ca/Shock-Value-Tasteful-About-Taste/dp/1560256982" href="http://www.amazon.ca/Shock-Value-Tasteful-About-Taste/dp/1560256982">Shock Value</a> </strong></em>that my friend Lynn Crosbie gave me. I somehow had never read this before even though I love him. The healthy, generous, positive and curious mind evident in this book is a good reminder of where a lot of great art comes from. It’s hilarious to hear him describe how great everyone was during his <em>Mondo Trasho</em> days, from the local priest to the owner’s of the hair salon he accidentally flooded in a film shoot. Clearly, he is a very easy man to get along with.</div>
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<em><strong><a data-mce-href="http://www.amazon.com/Sempre-Susan-Memoir-Sontag/dp/1935633228" href="http://www.amazon.com/Sempre-Susan-Memoir-Sontag/dp/1935633228">Sempre Susan</a></strong></em>, a short and pleasurable book about Susan Sontag written by Sigrid Nunez, also fell into the bigger category - even though I came to it because it was being passed around gleefully on a summer cottage trip after its original owner described it as a high-class gossipy People magazine article. And though this description was true, the book also is also simple and quiet and good with lots of room to move around in and take things in. The space it allowed me made me think of Sarah Manguso’s book <strong><a data-mce-href="http://www.sarahmanguso.com/ttkod.html" href="http://www.sarahmanguso.com/ttkod.html"><em>The Two Kinds of Decay</em> </a></strong> a beautiful memoir detailing a prolonged illness the author suffered. The two books are similar mainly in that both writers were writing about something they were so entwined in without bothering to mention in any great detail their own fraught feelings or inner turmoil, even as their presence was right there next to you the whole time. The resulting powerful intimacy of both books reminds us that for finding love, excessive emotional transparency might not be the way, but you do probably have to get naked.</div>
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<strong>8. Movie directors waving their hands in front of the camera</strong></div>
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I saw Moussa Touré’s <em><strong><a data-mce-href="http://www.imagesfestival.com/calendar.php?event_id=659&month=y" href="http://www.imagesfestival.com/calendar.php?event_id=659&month=y">Poussieres de ville</a></strong></em> in a program of short works curated by <strong><a data-mce-href="http://www.jmteno.us/" href="http://www.jmteno.us/">Jean-Marie Teno</a></strong> called <em><a data-mce-href="http://www.imagesfestival.com/calendar.php?event_id=659&month=y" href="http://www.imagesfestival.com/calendar.php?event_id=659&month=y">Reframing Africa 1: Representation or Reality?</a></em>. In Touré’s movie, we first see young boys wake up in odd positions in various stalls at an empty market. The work is immediately playful and visually compelling which makes it a bit hard to tell off the bat if it is a fiction or a documentary exactly. As the work progresses, questions start to come from behind the camera, asking the boys more specific questions regarding their homelessness. Near the end of this 52 minute work, hands emerge to offer clothes and new backpacks. And then, with even more presence but also more uncertainty, the hands deliver the kids each to separate relations who may or may not look after them. I am very sympathetic to this solution - you do the best you can with the information you have before you.</div>
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Documentary movie-making can have some pretty crazy and uptight rules. It was great to see a director allow themselves to be a logical human participant in relation to the complicated subject matter before them, and to react in the best way they knew how - rather than a director who thinks that their objective distance is useful (or even possible). In<em> Poussieres de ville</em>, high-minded silliness was abandoned for deceptively simple thoughtfulness.</div>
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<a data-mce-href="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2981.jpg" href="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2981.jpg"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-5186" data-mce-src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2981.jpg?w=300" height="231" src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/2981.jpg?w=300" style="border: 0px; cursor: default; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="2981" width="300" /></a><br />
Werner Herzog’s engagement with subject came out too in his recent <strong><a data-mce-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uV1_Yc8OSw" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uV1_Yc8OSw"><em>Into the Abyss; </em><em>A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life</em> </a></strong>. He introduces himself to a young prisoner on death row before he begins an interview with him. Herzog says to the young man (in essence): I am sympathetic to your situation, I feel for you and your situation - and that doesn't mean that I have to like you, but I am sympathetic.</div>
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This scene made me think of an art movie I had coincidentally watched the day before with my friend Amy Lam at University of Toronto's Justina M. Barnicke Gallery. It was a work from Dutch artist Renzo Martens called <em><strong><a data-mce-href="http://www.enjoypoverty.com/" href="http://www.enjoypoverty.com/">Enjoy Poverty</a></strong></em>. <em>Enjoy Poverty</em> is comprised of footage from Martens time spent in the Congo. His intentionally simplistic and painfully committed approach - that involved his desire and attempt to help people in poverty by getting them to consider their poverty as a commodity to sell - was conceptually smart and tight. But unfortunately, the director's character feels like all cruel fiction (to prove a point) and the world he is engaging with that feels like all fact. So as you see him engage with yet another poor local, saying something intentionally naive and stinging (he is committed!) it very often looks like the local is doing their best not to cry. I am guessing we (the audience) were supposed to feel like villains alongside the director, but we feel like the victims too.</div>
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I love art that engages with the reality of the world and that uses persona, specifically the persona of the director, to create a story. Even better, sometimes, if the director generously plays the villain. But I always think it’s most interesting when there is fact and fiction mixed together in a persona - it is always much less like a cartoon and always more strange. Watching <em>Enjoy Poverty</em> made me think of a Hollywood comedy that I really understood, <em>Tropic Thunder</em> - <a data-mce-href="http://vimeo.com/3945205" href="http://vimeo.com/3945205">specifically a scene</a> where one of the actors playing another actor talks to one of the other actors while they are doing some acting in the jungle. The wiser actor tells the other actor (in regards to winning Oscars), "Everybody knows you never go full retard man. .. never go full retard. You don't buy that? Go ask Sean Penn 2001, <em>I Am Sam</em>, remember? Went full retard. Went home empty handed."</div>
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Herzog is an expert at being comfortable with (or intrigued by) his subjects' discomfort on film - and with his booming voice coming from behind the camera, he often doesn't see so far off from a villain. But in this scene where he introduces himself to the young man, you see the complications and bravery involved in being a real human - even one who is playing.</div>
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Apart from all that, <em>Into the Abyss</em> is also deceptively simple and full of enormous depth. Part of its success (apart from the incredible storytelling craft evident in the way the questions were asked and how the editing was done) is in the equal time that Herzog gives to everyone involved in the execution: a sister of one of the murder victims, a brother of the other, the accused murderer's collaborator, the collaborator's wife, the minister at the prison, the executioner, etc. The suffering of the executioner was particularly eye opening. The story that emerges from these subjects (especially in relation to the various generations involved) hints at something old and sinister and alive - something even more chilling the calm facade of one psychopath.</div>
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<strong>9. <a data-mce-href="http://www.helendewitt.com/" href="http://www.helendewitt.com/">Helen DeWitt’s</a> <em><a data-mce-href="http://www.amazon.com/Lightning-Rods-Helen-DeWitt/dp/0811219437" href="http://www.amazon.com/Lightning-Rods-Helen-DeWitt/dp/0811219437">Lightning Rods</a></em></strong></div>
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Helen DeWitt’s novel feels like a Kafka fable written by a friendly can-do American from the future who filled it, using a confident steady-hand, with insane pornography, solid jokes and an optimistic (or chilling) matter-of-factness about dealing with people not as they should be, but as they are. I wish this book was small enough to allow for teenagers to keep it in their back pockets. DeWitt received a lot of accolades for her first novel “The Last Samarui”, but the deceptively simple and strangely clear Lightning Rods is, in my opinion, the real masterpiece.</div>
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<strong>10. <a data-mce-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28Z_D9Grh18" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28Z_D9Grh18">Rise of the Planet of the Apes</a></strong></div>
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Instead of the desert, in this <em>Planet of the Apes</em>, we have the lush and moist San Francisco. That, right off the bat, makes this Planet of the Apes infinitely more watchable. Also the more ape-like and less human-like apes, makes it infinitely less creepy. But the strange and exciting this about this movie, apart from the AWESOMENESS THAT ONE DESIRES FROM A GREAT HOLLYWOOD MOVIE, is that it’s less a metaphor for human rights than it is actually about animal rights. Sitting in the audience at the multiplex, it seemed suddenly like the first Hollywood blockbuster I had ever seen that dealt seriously with animal rights. These monkeys represented monkeys! It can take awhile, but eventually you’ll get a crazy story right.</div>
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<strong>11. Songs and paintings</strong></div>
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I came across the book <em><strong>1000 paintings</strong></em> while I was staying at my friends Jean and Mic’s place in Thunder Bay (the book had been a gift). I hadn’t seen anyone in a few weeks and somehow, as a leisure activity, I had a great time looking at every single painting in sequence. <a data-mce-href="http://backtotheworld.net/2011/05/27/friday-pictures-maruyama-okyo-1733-1795/" href="http://backtotheworld.net/2011/05/27/friday-pictures-maruyama-okyo-1733-1795/">This painting from Maruyama Ōkyo</a> was my favourite. <em>True Blood</em> television enriched my love for <a data-mce-href="http://www.nekocase.com/news/index.html" href="http://www.nekocase.com/news/index.html">Neko Case</a>’s song <em><a data-mce-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCV-YMD6oXA" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCV-YMD6oXA">Wish I was the Moon</a></em>. It does what most good songs do - makes your bad feelings seem useful. And <a data-mce-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efrim_Menuck" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efrim_Menuck">Efrim Menuck</a>’s album <em><strong><a data-mce-href="http://cstrecords.com/cst078/" href="http://cstrecords.com/cst078/">Plays "High Gospel"</a></strong></em>, which first caught me with the beautiful song <em>I Am No Longer a Motherless Child, </em>proved to be good company when I went back to work making paintings - a good album if you need to get to a deeper place fast - and are too tired to go alone.</div>
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<a data-mce-href="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/moon.jpg" href="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/moon.jpg"><img alt="" class="aligncenter wp-image-5200" data-mce-src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/moon.jpg" height="272" src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/moon.jpg" style="border: 0px; cursor: default; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Moon" width="406" /></a></div>
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<strong>ALSO *My boyfriend and my best friend</strong> wrote a great book called <a data-mce-href="http://www.thechairsarewherethepeoplego.com/" href="http://www.thechairsarewherethepeoplego.com/">The Chairs Are Where the People Go</a> - that I am perhaps too close to to add to my year end list, but luckily The New Yorker <a data-mce-href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/brieflynoted/2011/12/19/111219crbn_brieflynoted?currentPage=all" href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/brieflynoted/2011/12/19/111219crbn_brieflynoted?currentPage=all">added it to theirs</a>.</div>
<br />Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-63879164054939671722011-06-08T12:12:00.001-07:002011-06-08T12:16:51.327-07:00Grounding the Symbolic Realms - Peter Galison and Rebecca Belmore<div><i>- from Back to the World's weekly links posting "Tea With Chris":</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div>I love <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Galison">Peter Galison</a> and <a href="http://www.believermag.com/issues/201106/?read=interview_galison">his concrete ways</a> . He wrote<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Clocks-Poincares-Maps-Empires/dp/0393020010"> a book about</a> how it was probably pretty relevant that Einstein had a crappy job at the patent office where he had to think about how to synchronize clocks for train schedules – a very big problem at that time. It's an obvious idea once you think about – the obviousness a natural sign for a real genius idea. It feels better to think that something as abstract as the theory of relativity could originate from a problem in the world so newly created as "how to coordinate train schedules". One's mundane job feels better too. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/24/science/science-historian-work-peter-galison-clocks-that-shaped-einstein-s-leap-time.html">This New York Times article</a> surveys his incredibly varied works.</div><br />Speaking of grounding the symbolic realms, this reminds me of how, reportedly, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller">Buckminster Fuller had a pretty hard time</a>as a child understanding that the dots on the blackboard represented points in the world - and lines drawn between them represented connections. And how he tried to change the phrase "worldwide" with the more grounded "world around" but didn't have any luck.<br /><br />Which makes me think of how strangely grounded the artist <a href="http://www.rebeccabelmore.com/home.html">Rebecca Belmore</a>'s repetitive gestures are. Sometimes, when people are trying to be more direct with their art, they occasionally think to take their work off the canvas or pedastal or loom. Sometimes the results of this freedom can, unfortunately, become even more trapped by the medium of the gallery - as it can be a challenge for irregular forms or complicated messages to keep their shape outside this context. But the artist Rebecca Belmore always succeeds to escape both the mediums, the gallery boxes and the confusion.<div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/arts/photos/2008/06/26/rebecca-belmore-6.jpg" /></div><br />If you're not familiar with Rebecca Belmore's work, <a href="http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2005.06-visual-art-rebecca-belmore/64564121075/">Daniel Baird’s article in Walrus</a><a href="http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2005.06-visual-art-rebecca-belmore/64564121075/"> Magazine</a> is a good survey of her work. Even if you haven't seen Belmore's work, it is hard not to be horribly moved by even Baird’s simple descriptions of her most famous performance pieces. The works are made up of ideas and gestures and performance. They performances' power are just as undiminished through video or account (though Daniel Baird is to be credited too here). Rebecca Belmore's repetitive gestures seem to be the gestures that she knows are missing in world - gestures of grieving or acceptance or making things right or simply known. Her gestures became part of the concrete world through sheer force of will, repetition and need. Though unconventional, the work communicates directly to anyone who can look.</div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-44208705608027344152011-06-08T11:58:00.000-07:002011-06-08T12:17:48.570-07:00Oldboy (2003) – directed by Chan-wook Park, based on the Japanese manga of the same name written by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya<i><br /></i><em>(My friend Sean Dixon asked me if I was interested in reviewing Chan-wood Park’s celebrated movie </em>Oldboy<em> for his “Revenge Night” – an event involving songs, tales and plays on the theme of revenge to launch his new book “The Many Revenges of Kip Flynn”. I had been meaning to watch Oldboy for 7 years, so I said yes. I’ve been out of town, and couldn’t make it to the launch, so I <a href="http://backtotheworld.net/2011/05/13/oldboy-2003-%E2%80%93-directed-by-chan-wook-park-based-on-the-japanese-manga-of-the-same-name-written-by-nobuaki-minegishi-and-garon-tsuchiya/">recorded my review on video</a> and sent it in. The original text is below.)</em><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style:normal;"><img src="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSY-G4_ifk4oU7wVdS-3nputWmDUs8Xk6LF15Lc7o53ci14FqrU0A" /></span></em></div><br /><div>Oldboy is a celebrated Korean movie about revenge. At its heart there is imaginative violence, heartbreaking mind games, two middle-aged men, incest and high school - a live octopus is eaten, a man has only a television for company for 15 years, people lose their tongues.<br /><br />The first middle-aged man we meet is Oh Dae-su. We meet him right before and right after he was anonymously snatched up and locked away in one room for 15 years. Beforehand, he just looks like a schmuck. Afterwards, he looks like a criminal.<br /><br />During the 15 years, he has no contact with others. His food comes through a slot under the door. If the sheets need changing or an attempted-suicide-wound needs mending, a gas will fill the room and knock Oh Dae-su out. He always wakes up the next morning, alive in bed. He learns how to fight by watching television and pretending. He fills four notebooks with all the slights and evils he may have committed against others – in hopes to discover who would have the motive to punish him. He becomes incoherent with anger, but a poster on the wall reminds him to laugh. He does. And when he does, he looks like a scary clown.<br /><br />Right before this imprisonment, we see Oh Dae-su get drunk and miss his little daughter’s birthday. 15 years later, having been released from his prison as mysteriously as he entered, we see him decide to first seek revenge and then maybe find his daughter. We can see that sure, he probably did something horrible to someone at some point in his life.<br /><br />After Oh Dae-su’s release, Woo-jin, his anonymous tormentor, finally makes himself known to Oh Dae-su. He asks Oh Dae-su to discover what his motives were for punishing Oh Dae-su.<br /><br />Woo-jin is a beautiful, refined man who was once capable of a great love. He seems more like a prince than a villain even though he now has a chauffer, a penthouse and an artificial heart.<br /><br />It’s around this point when we learn what Oh Dae-su’s original “wrong” against Woo-jin was. The movie is not yet half way over (things will continue to get stranger) and I’m not even giving anything away to say: it is this smallness – the actual harmlessness of Oh Dae-su’s original “wrong” that is so surprising. It’s a wild and unsatisfying imbalance to all of the violence that we have already witnessed.<br /><br />It made me think of “The Princess and the Pea”, another story that has a wild imbalance between complaint and origin. A princess has a restless and painful night when a single pea is placed underneath the 20 mattresses where she sleeps. In this story, we already knew about the pea. It was the outsized reaction from the princess that was so funny, even as this intolerance confirmed her true royal nature.<br /><br />And true too for Woo-jin’s delicate nature, the years and years of distance between Oh Dae-su’s first “wrong” and Woo-jin’s heartache only have seemed to increased his pain and made him more beautiful – more princely – his penthouse is a palace, his clothes are immaculate, his brow is troubled just so. But he is much harder to laugh at than the princess of the pea. We have come too far with Woo-jin and have empathized too easily with his genuine heartache – while knowing that Oh Dae-su is no worthy victim of revenge.<br /><br />Like wishing a terrible error away, here (after already so much violence) we wish regressively for Oh Dae-su’s first wrong to have been substantial and cruel – to have been made with horrible intentions, to be as monumental as Woo-jin’s reaction. Even if only to justify Oh Dae-su’s horrible suffering.<br /><br />It is only human to make the mistake of thinking that our own pain comes from an equal and opposite force – or to assume that our own punishments are worthy. It is confusing and arbitrary when our sleeps are greatly disturbed by… not much of anything, when we discover that the source of our mountain of trouble is only a pebble.<br /><br />As the movie continues with its imaginative violence and mind games between a broken prince and a lost everyman, we wish, again regressively, that Woo-jin would have chosen for his revenge, instead, all of society - an unforgiving, conservative, and sexist society, the thing more to blame for Woo-jin’s suffering than anything else. As an origin story for a villain, Woo-jin being the great and sensitive villain, it would have been epic, deeply satisfying and even logical. But in Oldboy we are suddenly and unexpectedly on a path of stubborn realism, and taking on all of society is quite a lot for just one person.<br /><br />So instead of laughing or finding real justice, we descend with these characters into the confusion and meaninglessness of their war. We move further away from the spectacular inventiveness and satisfaction of a revenge genre movie and closer towards the dull familiarity of real life and its most common tragedies. The more satisfying stories we like to hear or tell ourselves are built with less human error.<br /><br />In Oldboy, as real life increases, Woo-jin, having blamed just one thoughtless schmuck for all these years, starts to look a lot less like a prince and a lot more like an ordinary man with a mountain of pain and some very bad defense mechanisms. It is the arbitrary roots of suffering and the meaninglessness of violence that feels so familiar and follows us home.<br /><br /><br /></div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-90058205389631838912011-06-08T11:55:00.000-07:002011-06-08T11:56:55.036-07:00Reframing Africa - curated by Jean-Marie Teno<em>by Margaux Williamson</em><br /><br />Last night at the Images Festival, I saw <a href="http://www.imagesfestival.com/calendar.php?event_id=659&month=y">"Reframing Africa 1: Representation or Reality?"</a>.<br /><br />Boy, what a relief it was to see such good work. It's rare to have <em>all </em>of the short works in a curated program be this full of life, this compelling - to have the story they form together be both so direct and so complicated. It was curated by the African filmmaker Jean-Marie Teno and included the work of 5 other African filmmakers.<br /><br /><img class="aligncenter" src="http://www.imagesfestival.com/images/programme/494.jpg" alt="" /><br /><br />Now that I trust Jean-Marie Teno completely, I can recommend a<a href="http://www.imagesfestival.com/calendar.php?event_id=676&month=y"> conversation between him and Deanna Bowen today, April 5th, at the Gladstone from 3 pm to 4</a> as well as his second curated program of short works that's screening tonight (April 5 from 9 pm to 11 pm) at Jackman Hall (AGO) - <a href="http://www.imagesfestival.com/calendar.php?event_id=669&month=y"> "Reframing Africa 2: Perspectives in Mambety's Footsteps.</a>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-65183269727837956632011-03-29T20:45:00.000-07:002011-03-30T06:57:20.593-07:00Vagabond (1985) – written and directed by Agnès Varda<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><em>(My friend Amy Lam asked if I wanted to go see this at the Bell Lightbox in Toronto. I had seen it before, but only once on my television. We ran into our friend Jon Davies in the theatre and sat next to him. After the movie Jon told us that this particular </em>Vagabond <em>screening had a no-popcorn-allowed policy. Amy and I were pretty surprised by this information though we hadn’t wanted any popcorn.)</em><br /><em></em><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1eqEjKlJmmoHR0ElnRgzs9v080y4YaC43p85qXNYWH_fwFD54vEGD5mMv-0LTO2CIrjuqGdPjEtmmdkGZ-S_aor7dyI8wsNDCtT_knGd0T10f7iZ3LA5-T213DfcwFOR2X_M4G6wb35s/s320/vlcsnap2011020318h02m19.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5589871673374511570" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 183px; " /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><br /><em>Vagabond </em>is about a young female drifter named Mona who lives mostly in a tent that she carries on her back, having abandoned the accepted needs, requirements and rules of polite society. <em>Vagabond</em> could also easily be described as a movie about filmmaker Agnès Varda’s curiosity with a young female drifter. It is one of Varda’s first movies to combine a documentary approach with fictional content – an interest that eventually drew her out of the “French New Wave Legend” category and into the “Influential Contemporary Genius” category.<br /><br />The movie begins with Mona’s dead body lying in the cold landscape of a French vineyard. Varda tells us, from behind the camera, that this young woman seemed to have come from nowhere and that now she is gone without anyone coming to claim her body. Varda tells us that she wants to know what her story was – as best as it can be understood. She says she wants to gather information from the people who came across Mona in her drifting in order to find Mona’s story.<br /><br />And so we start again - with the living Mona coming out of the water. The movie follows the rest of her actions and her interactions (and the testaments of those who interacted with her) until her death. It all takes place in the south of France. Some of the interview subjects offer their judgments of Mona and reveal their prejudices – others express admiration and curiosity. These reactions may not be surprising, but it is compelling that most of the admiration and curiosity comes from the women, old and young. Many of the performers are non-actors. Perhaps it is because Varda is so adapt at directing “play” that the performances from the non-actors fit in so seamlessly with the “actors" and with the loose and direct style of the whole movie. There is a real sense that everyone is “at play” at telling an incredibly serious story.<br /><br />The characters include Mona’s employers for a short time, lovers for a brief moment, hitched rides that end quickly, and casual companions who are easily lost. These characters end up circling each other, too, at different times and places. It starts to look like a small world with cause and effect. We see a community being created through Mona even as she holds herself away from it. These intricately webbed interactions seem a little bit more fairy tale than realistic but we understand this fairy tale is based on evidence from the real world. Along with Varda, we are telling ourselves a story about Mona too. It is often challenging avoiding the human tendency to make stories – to make order out of random interactions. This movie does not repress the urge to connect the dots. It is the movie’s primary pleasure.<br /><br />In the narrative hunt to learn who Mona is, we start to see a map of the south of France as traced by Mona – the rich people, the labourers, the small towns, the vineyard landscapes. Mona doesn’t let anyone (not even the audience) into her thoughts and feelings. We feel grateful for this, grateful for this expanse of land outside human neurosis.<br /><br />We feel grateful too that Varda is more curious about Mona than pitying. Maybe it’s because Mona wants no help, represses nothing and desires little that there is a notable lack of tension around her. Her brutal honesty and lack of social discretion and generosity do her no favours - we see her get kicked out early from a ride because she insults the driver’s car, unprompted. But we also know that she wasn’t really going anywhere anyway so it made no difference that she got kicked out. Her lack of repression combined with her lack of need creates a palatable absence of social anxiety – at least for Mona and for us in the audience who may be inclined to feel sorry for her.<br /><br />The original French title for this movie translates as “with no roof and no law”. Unfortunately, living without rules comes with its own joyless burden. Boredom trails Mona’s lack of social anxiety like a disease. It is boring to not need anything - to not give anything. We only see Mona’s desire ignited, and boredom lifted, on the rare occasions that she drifts by a radio and hears rock n’ roll.<br /><br />Like the differing opinions of Mona help by the characters she comes across, the audiences will have a million different opinions about <em>Vagabond</em>. For me, it made me think that too much freedom from society can feel less like rock n’roll and a lot more like a muddy, boring entropy.</div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-1918866080805321552011-03-22T21:07:00.000-07:002011-03-30T06:58:31.386-07:00Rescue Dawn (2007) – directed by Werner Herzog, based on the life of Dieter Dengler<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><em>(I saw this while in a hut on the coast of Mexico. For dinner, I had split a can of beans with my boyfriend while we looked through the movies I always bring with me when I travel. They are movies that I sort of want to watch and sort of don’t want to watch so they keep for a while. </em>Rescue Dawn <em>was there in a sleeve along with </em>Old Boy<em>, </em>Dawn of the Dead<em> and a Cassavettes movie. We decided on </em>Rescue Dawn<em>. It ended up being a great movie to watch in the tropical dark while the palm trees shook around outside, ants climbed into my drink and giant cockroaches walked by.)</em><br /><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQVHrnrkNMfY7rq4jMZdtsillrCIo8Lcpfr8_MwJhkeXYwct3SVb4Pa28lKO57hU4B0vqNbetGFRDrsVWjiuKsqib9pLJuhyphenhyphenpLEZwIrLMsUY7N4knPoOD2tRhUraBhMJTlhxoic2wrzQc/s320/DSCF0379_400.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5589871963706838530" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><i><br /></i><em>Rescue Dawn</em> is a drama based on the true story of Dieter Dengler’s crash into enemy territory during the early days of the Vietnam War. It was made by Werner Herzog who, ten years previous, made a documentary about Dieter Dengler called <em>Little Dieter Needs to Fly</em>. The drama is pretty accurate, the documentary (one of my favourites) takes some liberties.<br /><br /><em>Rescue Dawn</em> begins and ends within the time of Dieter Dengler’s U.S. Navy service. <em>Little Deiter Needs to Fly</em> is focuses on Dieter as a middle aged man who lives in California. In California, Dieter tells and reenacts the story of his life to Werner Herzog. He is handsome and thoughtful. He is not resentful of anyone he recalls and is quick to smile. He looks a touch uncertain of Werner Herzog’s process but also completely committed to it.<br /><br />In the documentary, he tells us about his childhood in World War II Germany. It involved being hungry and bombings from the U.S. military. He tells us that during a raid on his village, as he stood in an upstairs window watching the chaos, that he caught the eye of a U.S. pilot who happened to be flying by the window. He said it was then that he knew he had to fly.<br /><br />He immigrated to the U.S. when he was 18 and joined the navy. He eventually went to Vietnam where, on his first mission, he crashed a plane into enemy territory. This was followed by his capture, his imprisonment at a POW camp, an escape from the POW camp, a journey through the jungle and an eventual rescue by the U.S. Navy. Hunger is also a big part of this part of the story.<br /><br />When Dieter tells his story, there is very little dramatization or emphasis on emotional pain, very little emphasis on the cruelty of others. It is easy to believe that there is no repressed rage or revenge fantasies for this man – only an endless depth of successful defense mechanisms and a mountain of hard-won understanding on human life. Later, in California, he shows the camera his stockpile of dry food that he keeps in giant barrels under his suburban floorboards. This is almost the most painful part of <em>Little Dieter Needs to Fly</em>, and here he doesn’t say anything. We understand that he is both optimistic enough to survive the unimaginable but also realistic enough to survive it too.<br /><br />I probably would have watched <em>Rescue Dawn</em> earlier had that one person at the Toronto Film Festival not told me that it was very bad and had that movie poster featured a goofily beaming Christian Bale instead of a serious Christian Bale. Also, I loved the documentary so much and had seen it several times so I wasn’t sure it was necessary to see it dramatized.<br /><br />Though after watching Recue Dawn, I remembered that what is even better than a favourite movie is a good story that is worth repeating. Had I not watched<em> Rescue Dawn</em>, I might have missed that within one of my favourite movies was also one of the best stories that I know.<br /><br />In <em>Rescue Dawn</em>, as we witness the actors committing themselves to their roles within the story’s parameters, it is easier to make some sort of logic out of Dieter Dengler’s ways. In one illuminating moment, after a fair amount of ill treatment at the hands of his captors, one of them blows a shot gun close to Dieter’s head – knocking out his hearing for a moment but not hurting him otherwise.<br /><br />After, already, a fair amount of suffering, Dieter finally looks genuinely startled by the blast. “NEVER, NEVER do that again!” he screams, still contained in his handcuffs, surrounded by enemies. It was as though he had been in reasonable negotiations up until that point but now they had really crossed a line. His scream was a warning to not cross that unreasonable line again. Here we understand immediately how reasonable he thinks humans are, how much he is relating to them – even the ones that don’t speak his language, who drag him through the jungle in chains and point a gun at his head. It is as though he really understands that he could have been in their position as captors. But still, he is screaming, he has limits.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; ">This is a person who had somehow managed to be on the ugly side of two ugly 20th century wars, was a victim of both and who voices no complaint</span>. It is fair to say that with this complicated history maybe he did not so easily choose to make villains out of others.<br /><br />Apart from Werner Herzog’s brilliant <em>Little Dieter Needs to Fly</em>, we now have more of the story of Dieter Dengler, a person whose kind, knowing and careful eyes and whose piles of food under his Californian house’s floorboards still have a lot to tell us - something about how to be insanely optimistic about other humans while staying realistic to the core.</div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-9166088920605701962011-03-15T10:26:00.000-07:002011-03-15T14:41:01.088-07:00The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) - directed by Uli Edel, written and produced by Bernd Eichinger, based on the book by Stefan Aust, based on the extr<em><div><em><br /></em></div>(I saw this at a cine club in Mexico City. The club is run by the director Jorge Aguilera. I had been brought in by my photographer friend Lee Towndrow. I was told beforehand that the movies for viewing were chosen “somewhat democratically”. After arriving, Jorge put out a number of movies on the floor. The one I wanted to see most was The Baader Meinhof Complex. I tried to secretly will the group to choose that one, and also tried not to. The Baader Meinhof Complex was somewhat democratically selected. In the end, the two and a half hour movie wasn’t such a big hit.</em><br /><br /><em>It was a strange time to watch a movie about a Western terrorist group while the Middle East was on fire with predominately peaceful protests against oppressive governments; protests ignited by the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit seller who set himself on fire after police confiscated his cart.</em><br /><br /><em>The next night, a few of us ended up gathering again and we watched Jacques Tati’s beautiful Play Time. A good movie to see when you are in someone else’s big city.)</em><div><em></em><i><br /></i><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><em><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4055" title="Baader-Meinhof-Complex" src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/baader-meinhof-complex.jpg" alt="" width="348" height="444" /></em></div><br /><br />The Baader Meinhof Complex tells the story of the leftist terrorist group The Red Army Faction that was formed in Germany in 1970. The group consisted mostly of young activists but also by a well-known journalist. They were known to the public at the Baader-Meinhof Group.<br /><br />The movie is so careful to include all of the details of their history that there is not so much room for the stuff in between ... like tension. Maybe a faithfulness to the details was somewhat necessary with this highly contentious history, but it probably would have functioned better in serial form on television.<br /><br />The movie is good propaganda against glamour and violence. The physical exhaustion of watching so much in an endless stream really does work to create an aversion ... um, for those who don’t already have an aversion.<br /><br />The particulars of the group stayed with me. Visually, the anarchy and cool of the German men and women stood out hilariously at a Jordan Fatah training camp as they proclaimed their shared fight with their Palestinian comrades.<br /><br />At the camp, their volatility stood out too. They conspire against one of their own - telling the Palestinian camp leaders that this newly ostracized member is an Israeli spy. The camp leaders, seeing through the in-fighting, compassionately offer the “Israeli spy” help getting home. The Palestinian camp leaders seemed centuries older.<br /><br />But the strongest particular with the Baader Meinhof Group is that they are all part of the generation of young Germans born right around or just after Hitler’s reign. They are one generation removed and the inheritors of Germany’s horrific legacy. I would guess that what some of these people had was a complex view of civilian responsibility.<br /><br />A lot of us think that we wouldn’t have been complacent as Germans in Hitler’s Germany but what these people might know better than us is how abstract these problems can look like at the time and how painfully clear it all is in hindsight.<br /><br />They might have been acutely aware of how ambiguous that space is in-between tolerance and complacency - especially in the present when the facts and understanding haven’t yet settled. This might be where they were coming from, in 1970, when it was becoming somewhat clear that pretty horrible things were going on in the world.<br /><br />Maybe with some more distance and time, another attempt can be made to tell a story about this very old and universal problem of civilian responsibility and civilian power.<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-34566071597604715962011-02-22T13:14:00.000-08:002011-02-22T13:17:47.189-08:00Nowhere Boy (2009) – directed by Sam Taylor-Wood, written by Matt Greenhalgh, based on biography by Julia Baird<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><em>(I wasn't too interested in this movie, about the childhood of John Lennon, till my friend Sheila mentioned that the director was Sam Taylor-Wood. Sam Taylor-Wood is a British artist. I was curious to see what kind of movie she would have directed and happy that I would be able to see a complete work. She often works in multi-channel video installations and I have only ever seen stills.</em><br /><br /><em>Sheila and I discussed in great detail when and where we would watch Nowhere Boy. Finally, on a very specific and snowy night, I walked over to her house. Inside, it became clear that we had missed the “how” part - neither of us had Nowhere Boy on our persons or in our electronic devices.</em><br /><br /><em>So we played Tetris instead, and drank some tall glasses of water. We wondered if this was what it was going to be like when we were old. )</em><div><em></em><i><br /></i><em></em><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFZo__rBiAot1T2jcipqJFXKBApUHRJ4TFUbQsqyFdXNBgIgsKHR2HFo4qx9uDzZ_8MY154OOoThMoB-UggalcYWgq9kl66cllmeDn3qkigNuFcETRpnXLhSzrVCnNDxBBKQYlPrO-3Jo/s320/tetris5000.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5576626079432442674" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><br /></span></div></div></div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-66524497536480436082011-02-16T06:51:00.000-08:002011-02-16T06:53:50.752-08:00Black Swan (2010) - conceived and directed by Darren Aronofsky, written by Mark Heyman, starring Natalie Portman<em><div><em><br /></em></div>(I saw this movie with my friend Ryan Kamstra. I wasn’t sure if I would like the movie, but I thought I might like it better if I saw it with Ryan. We have a pretty easy time laughing at things while also taking them very seriously. This is usually helpful with work that takes no breaks for jokes. We saw it at a big multiplex during the day.)</em><br /><em></em><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><em><a href="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/claps2-595x334.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3867" title="claps2-595x334" src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/claps2-595x334.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="280" /></a></em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><em>Swan Lake</em> is an old story. Tchaikovsky brought it into form for the ballet in 1876. It tells the story of a princess who is under the spell of an evil sorcerer. By day, she is a swan, and at night, a woman. Other women are under the same spell but the princess is called the Swan Queen. They are confined all together in the prison of Swan Lake. The only thing that can break the spell is the promise of true love from a prince.<br /><br />We have enjoyed this story for so long because the story both helps to clarify and to mythologize the medium that delivers it – ballet. During the day, the ballerinas are on their toes, defying gravity and human limitations to move in freakishly hypnotic and otherworldly unison. We sense there is something wrong but we also so enchanted. Afterwards, if we happen to be at the same party with the dancers, we watch them smoke cigarettes, drink vodka and occasionally glare in our direction. Mere mortals! But mortals are the only things we ever fall in love with.<br /><br />In the movie <em>Black Swan</em>, the story of <em>Swan Lake</em> is updated for both the 21st century and the medium of film. This changes a few things. Here the story extends beyond the stage and into the lives of the people creating the staged performance of the Swan Lake ballet. This solves a perpetual problem with the old story: We never really knew why a sorcerer would turn a princess into a swan - other than “because he was so evil” and that is never such a good answer.<br /><br />Now, freed from the narrow perspective of the stage and the fairytale, we understand more easily that a sorcerer would turn a princess into a swan because it is really something to watch a woman dance like that.<br /><br />In the old story, a prince does come. He even comes close to breaking the spell for the Swan Queen, but his efforts are thwarted by the sorcerer’s trickery. The sorcerer presents his daughter to the prince as though she is the Swan Queen. The daughter, although dressed in black, is a look-alike of the Swan Queen. The prince is fooled and offers his everlasting love to this wrong woman - this black swan.<br /><br />When learning of his mistake, he runs to the Swan Queen begging for her forgiveness. Being young and full of goodness, she easily forgives him, but that is not enough to end the spell. The ballet ends with a suicide or sometimes with a double suicide – since now this is the only remaining option.<br /><br />But here, in the 21st century, we are not so interested in the prince. The prince, whose only purpose is to break the spell of being such a strange creature, is of no use to us. If the spell broke, the Swan Queen would lose her day job. So, in <em>Black Swan</em>, the prince is barely more than a prop. Though we see some elements of his character fused with that of the sorcerer (the company's artistic director) - the man in charge of the swans and picking the right woman for the role of the Swan Queen. What the Swan Queen wants more than anything is to be all swan. The Swan Queen here is Nina played by Natalie Portman.<br /><br />Though the prince has lost sexual value, the sorcerer (the director) and the black swan (a new dancer at the company named Lily) have gained it considerably. The director is the boss that Nina wants to please and learn from. And Lily, with her playfully devious and sensual nature, inevitably interests Nina. Lily has so much to show her. These objects of attraction we can understand. They can only help improve her craft, bringing her closer to staying a Swan Queen forever.<br /><br />Since the origins of the <em>Swan Lake</em> ballet, the Swan Queen and the black swan are often played by the same dancer. Nina's attempt to embody the black swan successfully (having mastered the Swan Queen already) forms the narrative of <em>Black Swan</em>. If she fails to embody the darker, more sensual depths of the black swan, Lily might be cast in her place.<br /><br />In an earlier movie of Darren Aronofsky’s, <em>Requiem for a Dream, </em> his manner of exploring the murky and painful depths of drug addiction in Hubert Selby Jr.'s book of the same name, seemed a little generic or unfocused – as though the formula for serious art was obvious: the darker the art, the better the art.<br /><br />But in <em>Black Swan</em>, Darren Aronofsky’s intentions seem much more articulated and transparent. It seems as though he has set himself up in this underworld, roaming around in the clichés and sludge, because that is the place he loves the best. His pleasure and a very subtle humour accompany everything - though there are no jokes. It helps here that the characters are not victims of drugs, but of excellence. The goal for excellence frames the masochism involved, in this decent into the underworld, as a rare pleasure rather than a necessary cost of pleasure.<br /><br />One of the best things about the movie is the complete naivety that surrounds Nina as she bravely and blindly attempts to descend to the depths. Because of her inexperience in these depths, she gives everything she finds there the same value: sex is equal to murder is equal to confidence. This makes her quite a villain.<br /><br />Throughout the movie, Nina longs to earn the ballet director’s nickname “little princess” that he bestows on only the rarest and finest of Swan Queens. It is really something to see how bloody things get before this small woman finally earns her nickname.Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-60688735056806886972011-02-09T06:13:00.000-08:002011-03-12T01:28:36.901-08:00Get Him to the Greek (2010) - written, produced, and directed by Nicholas Stoller, starring Russell Brand<i><br /></i><em>(I watched this one night on my TV when I couldn’t sleep. When it was over, I watched the good parts again. Before I saw it, I mainly knew that the movie had something to do with drugs and with Russell Brand and Jason Segel - which all sounded like a pretty good idea. It also seems promising when a Judd-Apatow-produced movie involves at least one “handsome” man or at least one “unattractive” woman. It is not the male handsomeness or the female ugliness that I crave, but the lack of sexual desperation that slightly alters the typical equation for women in these movies. I am not suggesting that Jason Segel is the “unattractive” woman in this scenario - especially since he is not in the movie but had some small part in its creation.)</em><br /><br /><em></em><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><em><a href="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/gethimtothegreek.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3744" title="gethimtothegreek" src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/gethimtothegreek.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" /></a></em></div><br /><br />This movie has a really good drug climax. A good drug climax is funnier and more complicated than a car chase climax - though it is less mobile. It's the people’s brains that are speeding ahead while their bodies lag behind with all the wrong gestures. Sometimes the struggle is in becoming (or pretending to be) comfortable or sane. When comfort and sanity are wildly out of reach, the struggle to have them or to emulate them is an understandable goal, but it is always a disastrous one. We watch the characters grasping for the best (and least humiliating) understanding of what is actually happening in a specific situation. There is often much stating aloud of obvious facts or important questions - a crucial act of basic communication between friends during perceptual confusion and emotional vulnerability.<br /><br />In <em>Get Him to the Greek</em> these communications come out like - “Why is Moby whipping us?!”, and - “Let’s go jogging.. Please! For our friendship”.<br /><br />Though this great climax is brief and glorious, “Get Him to the Greek” is a three day journey. It begins with a music company employee Aaron Green (played by Jonah Hill) going to England to retrieve Aldous Snow, a rock star (played by Russell Brand) who is in a slump. Green is to bring Snow back to Los Angeles so he can perform at a concert. The concert will mark the 10 year anniversary of Snow’s most celebrated rock concert that took place during his career peak. The CEO of the company Green works for is Sergio Roma (played by Sean Combs whose role in the drug climax was a drug movie triumph).<br /><br />Snow is the kind of artist who doesn’t sleep, is capable of a complicated intelligence, engages in kindly care-taking <em>after</em> drugs have been ingested, and, as much as he gets himself and his art right, also occasionally gets it wrong.<br /><br />The art he gets most wrong is a song and accompanying music video called “African Child”. We are shown the music video right in the beginning of the movie. The video involves Snow as a pale Christ figure dancing in an African village. The real life fears of art-making are taken here to their pleasurable extremes. Not only does the music video fail to save Africa, it fails to even entertain the masses, and it is described again and again by the media throughout the movie as one of the worst things to ever have happened to the continent.<br /><br />After this flop, discomfort ensues, the love of his life Jackie Q, who is also a rock star (played by Rose Byrne), splits, and Snow awakens a 7-year-sleeping-beast-of-a-drug problem. Green finds Snow in an apartment above the River Thames living with his mother and an assistant. Everyone is immediately irritated by Green, but things ease up a bit.<br /><br /><div>The movie’s narrative suggests Snow’s great abuse of Green on the journey. And though there are plenty of obvious sadistic aspects to Snow’s typically annoying rock star character, it is very difficult not to empathize with Russell Brand and his face. He seems to not have a line of self-pity in there. The less obvious sadistic traits of Snow’s character are surprisingly nuanced. They mostly come with Snow’s selective use of the word “selfish” – as in: “Don’t go to sleep now, it’d be selfish”, or the alternative “Let me go to sleep now, don’t be so selfish”.</div><br />The absurdity of the grand drug climax works best if we have also been in touch with reality. We see it most clearly somewhere in the middle of the movie, in a brief scene where Snow calls his ex girlfriend, Jackie Q, early in the morning. In the shot, we see Green (the man there to guide and guard Snow against himself) passed out on the couch - slayed from a night of debauchery and perceptual confusion. Snow, not sleeping, is without a conscious keeper. “Are you alone?” Jackie Q asks Snow. “No” he answers, “I’m with some affable nitwit”.<br /><br />The scene is still quite silly, but it is also quiet and carries with it a slightly unpleasant consciousness and a deep longing for human connection. Here in this very small and undramatic moment, we all, all of us together, understand the very same stupid, painful, obvious, unavoidable thing.Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-72987972489146981042011-01-26T08:32:00.000-08:002011-06-21T12:42:28.193-07:00The Kids Are All Right (2010) – directed by Lisa Cholodenko, written by Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><em>(I saw this in the middle of a very long train trip headed north. My boyfriend picked it out. We watched it on his laptop with separate headphones. The little boy next to us was watching Spider Man without headphones. I didn’t realize till just before we started watching it that the director was </em><em>Lisa Cholodenko</em><em>. I had seen two of her other movies </em>High Art<em> and </em>Laurel Canyon<em> and never would have guessed this was hers. We both laughed a lot. The movie was what you hope a Hollywood/ independent/ intelligent drama could be, but rarely is - incredibly good and not dumb. )</em><br /><em></em><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj98ayqDWFslt8ISkCbWTxguanGy7vZzxrCy1e3YDHIvQiwDkQcPG_hRlk6xxVqzm7f3dkRdDZjyoIxxXCaZDvAgNu38UKWo_ILH1GakyZAz7HHCkqVgQcQHyXlBHBmisp4U-YDD7dengE/s320/The-Kids-Are-All-Right-movie-image-18_400.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5571718816661240674" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div>The Kids Are All Right is about a sort-of-happy family with two moms, one teenage son and one teenage daughter. The son becomes curious about his and his sister’s sperm donor (each of the moms gave birth but the same donor was used in both cases). Together, the kids contact the sperm donor. This is done secretly so that they don’t hurt their moms’ feelings. The Sperm donor (Paul played by Mark Ruffalo) is handsome and charming and is a soft-spoken ladies’ man. He owns a fancy restaurant, rides a motorcycle and dates young earthy women with tank tops. The kids aren’t sure if they like him or not but he starts coming to family dinner.<br /><br />His presence slightly alters the dynamic of the family, in some ways really positively, empowering some family members, but also threatens the position for the more controlling mom (Nic played by Annette Bening). The more laid-back mom (Jules played by Julianne Moore) abruptly kisses Paul one day after he hires her to do some landscaping in his backyard. He kisses her back. As the days go on, there is much sex, and much understated bemusement and also troubled bemusement. After one sex incident Jules exclaims - “<em>What</em> is <em>WRONG</em> with me?!?”<br /><br />It is more mundane subject matter than the mysteries-of-making-art and woman-rock-stars of Lisa Cholodenko’s other movies, <em>High Art</em> and <em>Laurel Canyon</em> (where there is much seductive yearning for things just-out-of-reach - like sex & mentoring from complicated women, or<em> </em>professional success in the arts), but all three movies are pretty straightforward narratives.<br /><br />What makes <em>The Kids Are All Right</em> weirder and weightier is that it has something unusual to say. The movie builds and communicates the idea that marriage is a strong institution – like a pyramid.<br /><br />After the affair is revealed to the whole family in a tumultuous instant, Paul and Jules have a private conversation on their cell phones. They are both outside because they live in California. He takes a breath and then takes a big leap (maybe the biggest of his life) - “Let’s do this. Let’s make a go of this.. now that it’s out in the open”.<br /><br />Jules’ face moves in a spasm between incredulity and exasperation. I don’t remember what she said first - “I’m married!!!” or – “I’m a lesbian!!!”, but she hung up the phone after one of them. He had had no idea what he was up against. Neither did we really. We are used to marriages in movies being more like straw houses, and the people who blow them down - more like wolves.<br /><br />With Jules’ declarations to Paul of commitments and sexual orientation (and everything that came before them in the movie), marriage suddenly looked like a heavy, intricate object – a thing complicated and structurally sound, with an agreed upon contract that allows construction and maintenance to take place over good and bad times, something difficult but that can ideally change shape, something that can’t be so easily be knocked down.<br /><br />Paul got locked out of the house and it was hard not to feel for him – especially here in this movie where all the characters were complicated. The people inside the house were miserable, but they were warm and they would recover.</div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-63415513294847087712011-01-19T07:00:00.000-08:002011-06-08T17:56:51.378-07:00Exit Through the Gift Shop - movie by Banksy, a movie by Banksy, starring Thierry Guetta<i><br /></i><em>(I rented this movie recently and didn’t watch it. Then I saw it lying on my friend Carl Wilson’s coffee table and asked to take it home. I managed to not watch it again but did pay some more overdue movie money. More recently, I ended up watching it one night as it came through my television from the internet while I sat on my bed with three friends. We all liked it more than we thought we would. I think. )</em><br /><em></em><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/banksy-exit_through_the_gift_shop-002-2010.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3573" title="banksy-exit_through_the_gift_shop-002-2010" src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/banksy-exit_through_the_gift_shop-002-2010.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="324" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>We start out in <em>Exit through the Gift Shop</em> with a lot of amateurish, rough and beautiful video footage. It has supposedly been shot by the star of the movie, a mustachioed and side-burned Frenchman living in California. The Frenchman is named Thierry. He is obsessed first with videotaping everything in his daily life and then with taping famous street artists at work. His obsession does not come with discipline but the years of it has lead to a hoard of unwatched videotapes, the casual neglect of his wife and children, and an introduction to the elusive British artist Banksy. Banksy is an artist who works anonymously and has an unconfirmed identity. In the movie we meet him but do not see his face.<br /><br />Banksy (the more disciplined and purposeful obsessive) encourages Thierry to make a movie out of the videotapes. Thierry comes up with an old-fashioned avant-garde mess. After Banksy see the video, he encourages Thierry to leave the tapes with him and let him see what he could do with them. He encourages Thierry to take a break and maybe have an art show. As Thierry initiates a giant art show of his creation under the name Mr. Brainwash, Banksy makes <em>Exit through the Gift Shop</em>.<br /><br /><em>Exit through the Gift Shop</em> is presented as a documentary. We see bits of Thierry’s sweet private life as shot by him. We are told stories about the narrative by Thierry and Banksy and also by the American street artist Shepard Fairey. We watch the pretty remarkable collected footage of street artists in action. When Banksy takes over the movie, we watch Thierry try to be an artist, to put his tag over other artists work, to put on his art show. We watch the public line up and buy his work.<br /><br />I have read one movie critic who saw <em>Exit through the Gift Shop</em> as a straight up documentary and another, as a complete hoax. My default viewing position for most movies involves being comfortable being “a sucker” who is often mesmerized by story and flashing lights, as well as taking pleasure in my subjective position that often has no access (or admittedly, curiosity) about the “authentic” origin or intention of the work that I’m watching.<br /><br />What helps even more in the case of <em>Exit through the Gift Shop</em> is that in all conceivable possibilities for how this movie was made, it is pretty easy to see that someone with a talented and thoughtful hand was making the most of their resources.<br /><br />Imagine if the movie began with a room full of videotapes with the creator explaining that they had gathered hundreds of hours of footage of street art, shot by a mess of street-artist and their friends, and was now going to try to make something that the world should see.<br /><br />Sometimes a lie wastes our time less and gives us more. Even if the movie is 100 percent true, Banksy’s nudging of Thierry to create an art show and leave him with the footage is a construction. A way of making art in the world from real things in the world. Pretty similar to what Banksy got himself famous for.<br /><br />In <em>Exit through the Gift Shop</em>, we see a room full of videotapes, shot by one man, a man obsessed but, unfortunately, also overwhelmed. Here we demand order or crave it. Please, we think, make some sense of this man’s obsession. Free the disciplined artists caught by this fool.<br /><br />I should mention that this fool has true gifts. In one scene as he sits in a backyard, looking at the camera and grasping for words to explain the feelings he had when he met Banksy for the first time – the performance is beautiful. Whether he is an actual street-art obsessive fan, or an amiable friend improvising, or France’s great actor – he nailed it.<br /><br />The movie is accessible, clear, humorous, thought-provoking and entertaining. Or, to say it another way as one critic did, nothing new! But that is the wonderful thing about some great art – especially great street art. Communicating pain, politics and playfulness with clarity, lightness and charm should never be discounted as old-hat. It is always the hardest trick.Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-12598353199794768762011-01-12T10:15:00.001-08:002011-01-12T10:19:24.225-08:00Somewhere (2010) - written and directed by Sophia Coppola<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>I saw <i>Somewhere</i> with my friend Sheila Heti in Los Angeles. I was curious about what she had to say about the movie and asked her if she could <a href="http://backtotheworld.net/2011/01/12/somewhere-2010-written-and-directed-by-sofia-coppola/">write about it</a> on <a href="http://backtotheworld.net/">Back to the World</a>. <div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1e53WhMS869G6vLN1jyshLN5vphfjaBeSkiuB57UI3OL2gwnCVd0GwXPAfMCQ4s9EE6Fef2QW95Fq7YfDNVGW50g3gOwYZKlrdcK2Ju5KItunF3R_3PJATB2BdHp-20wOS4kphKgTEco/s320/Somewhere-Poster-Sofia-Coppola-500.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561365437094797554" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 207px; height: 320px; " /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><br /></span></div><div><br /></div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-15930546818775142772011-01-11T07:04:00.000-08:002011-06-08T11:48:39.963-07:00Art things I thought about this year, that I can remember today, in order of remembrance.<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><strong>1. The best movie I saw that I didn't write about this year -<em><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7YmojUJagk"> Rocky</a></em></strong><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><em><a href="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/rocky4003.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3283" title="rocky400" src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/rocky4003.jpg?w=300" alt="" width="300" height="200" /></a></em></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>I had never seen any of the <em>Rocky </em>movies. It was recommended to me after a conversation about sports movies with my friend Lucas Rebick.<em> </em>I was surprised at how unfake the aesthetic was. It looked like Philedelphia in 1976.. and kind of like Toronto in 2010. I was surprised at how much I related to it. I related to Rocky and to all of the women he talks to.<br /><br />"Hey Rocky" the loan shark's driver hollers out of a car window. "Yeah?" Rocky asks. The loan shark's driver - "You should take your girl to the zoo. I hear retarded people like the zoo." Rocky flinches, "Fuck you, man!" Rocky shouts back, "She ain't retarded, she's just shy."<br /><br /><strong>2. The other best movie I saw this year and didn't write about - <em><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOkIru_OvC4">My Man Godfrey</a></em></strong><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><a href="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/my-man-godfrey-3001.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3279" title="my man godfrey 300" src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/my-man-godfrey-3001.jpg?w=300" alt="" width="300" height="205" /></a></strong></div><br /><br />My friend <a href="http://graciestarot.tumblr.com/">Gracie</a> has a favourite romantic comedy from every decade. <em>My Man Godfrey</em> is her tops for the 30'<em>s (1936)</em>. Carole Lombard plays a rich socialite who falls in love with her butler. It was pretty interesting to see how rich people were portrayed as such silly and thoughtlessly cruel individuals (as in every situation, the beautiful, charming ones escape total condemnation). Rich people have enjoyed a much better and enduring reputation since all the communists were kicked out of Hollywood. It reminded me of how quickly things can change and how very long they can stay the same.<br /><br />My favourite part came when the family needed to talk about money - the matriarch of the rich family looked horrified and cried “Money is dreadful! We can’t talk about money, it upsets Carlo!” (Carlo is the artist that they support). At this point Carlo turns away, towards the fire, upset and shuddering like an angel. Luckily, the cheese sandwiches come in just as things are about to get awk-ward.<br /><br /><strong>3. <em><a href="http://www.seesaw.com/TV/Comedy/p-32731-Episode-1">Thick of It</a></em></strong><br /><br />I really couldn't get enough of this British TV show from 2005 about the inner workings of the modern British Government. Sample text (if I am remembering correctly) - "Terry, do you know why they call him the Fucker?"<br /><br />"Is it .. is it.. because he's.. a bit of a fucker?"<br /><br /><strong><em>4. </em></strong><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGwjDhRhtVg&NR=1"><strong><em>Work of Art:</em></strong><em> </em></a><em><strong><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGwjDhRhtVg&NR=1">America's Next Great Artist</a> </strong></em><strong>and what people wrote about it.</strong><br /><br />This new reality TV show premiered in the summer. Contestants, from across the U.S., compete in an art competition with a jury of professional critics and artists. It was just like any other reality TV show. It was strange. And people wrote about it.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/top-nup_136872_0540-300x171.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3284" title="top.NUP_136872_0540-300x171" src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/top-nup_136872_0540-300x171.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="171" /></a></div><br /><a href="http://www.artfagcity.com/2010/06/08/the-afc-work-of-art-supplementary-program-guide/">Art Fag City covered it</a> like white on rice, <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/lynn-crosbie/arts-big-missed-chance/article1629197/?cmpid%3Drss1">Lynn Crosbie had some good points</a> for the artists and Jerry Saltz (an art critic who was a judge on the show) <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/06/jerry_saltzs_work_of_art_recap_1.html">wrote an article for each episode</a> after first participating in and then watching the episodes. Jerry Saltz's articles were, hands down, the best art to come out of the show. The articles were written to an audience that included the show’s participants, viewers and art-insiders. He wrote about the art, judging the art and judging himself judging the art. It was strange and good.<br /><br />Some art-insider critiques of the show sounded an awful lot like a reversal of the old art-outsider stereotype - “my kid could paint that”. The equivalent turns out to be - “my friend down the street from me, in Brooklyn, could paint that a lot better”. Sucks to be on the outside.<br /><br />Though there didn’t feel like there was too much at stake (America’s next great artist-wise), the beginning of some hilariously awkward public conversations (involving critics, artists and audience) about what art is felt stupid-smart, meaningful and full of potential.<br /><br />The only “unreality” part was at the end when there were only three contestants left. One would get the bank and the others nothing. Maybe it’s just my world, but every artist I know would have been more than happy to split a hundred thousand dollars 3 ways and then gone about their business. But I guess reality TV without winners or losers is just the NFB.<br /><br /><strong>5. Websites about videos</strong><br /><br />I know about these two websites, <em><a href="http://ryeberg.com/">Ryeberg</a><a href="http://ryeberg.com/"> Curated Video</a></em> and <em><a href="http://www.2pause.com/#/new">2 Pause: Freezing Music Video Culture</a></em>, because I contributed to them. But they're both really interesting and I'm sure there's a lot more of these websites out there - websites that are figuring out how to talk about or organize the massive amounts of videos out there. <em>Ryeberg</em> has contributors write short essays on Youtube videos and <em>2 Pause</em> collects interesting music videos and puts them into categories like these: Lo/No Budget (<a href="http://www.2pause.com/#/item/373/dancing_to_the_end_of_poverty">that is where I am</a> and <a href="http://www.2pause.com/#/item/217/you_are_my_sister">this nice one from Antony and Boy George)</a>, Netherclips, Stop Motion, Electric Cinema (I didn't watch them all but found <a href="http://www.2pause.com/#/item/378/blue_blood">this nice one from Foals and Chris Sweeney</a>) and French Wave. I would like to see the categories that everyone has for their videos.<br /><br /><strong>6. Artists Using and Sharing</strong><strong><br /></strong><br />I really liked that Erykah Badu made <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hVp47f5YZg">this video</a> by borrowing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJkymylTNU4">the idea from</a> Matt and Kim. She credits them in the beginning of the video. The structure of her video is identical, but the feel and meaning are completely different and more to my interests. The borrowing and added art reminds me of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/magazine/25Wall.t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq&st=cse%22&scp=1%22jeff%20wall">this article about Jeff Wall</a> from a while ago.<br /><br />Olaf Breuning's work (consisting of performance based art video) has always looked really interesting but I assumed that he, like a lot of artists, didn't put all of his work on-line. I only just saw one of his videos recently when Jon Davies screened it at the Cinecycle. It was great. Then I went home, looked him up and discovered that <a href="http://www.olafbreuning.com/">all of his videos are available on his website.</a> Thank you Jon Davies for reminding me of Olaf Breuning and thank you Olaf Breuning for sharing. SO much better that way.<br /><br /><strong>7. Moral/ art lessons from popular music videos</strong><br /><br />LCD Soundsystem and Spike Jonze reminds us that drunk people, whom are often beautiful and fun, can also be really fucking annoying. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xT6cdfP_cM">The video</a>, featuring the band being abused by people dressed as pandas, is as good as Spike Jonze's videos always are. And Lady Gaga and Beyoncé <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVBsypHzF3U">remind you again</a> that it's a bad idea to disrespect the people who serve your food. And Kanye West, who likes a lot of the same things I like ( <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7W0DMAx8FY">naked ladies, revolution, ballet,</a> Beyoncé, <a href="http://www.hiddengarments.cn/?p=6715">Takashi Murakami</a>) reminds us to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L53gjP-TtGE">take paintings seriously</a>.<br /><br /><strong>8. Luc Tuyman's painting <em><a href="http://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/9/work_3388.htm">Turtle</a></em></strong><br /><br />I really loved this painting this year, from 2007.<br /><br />I also really love <a href="http://www.bradphillips.ca/tried-and-dismissed_entheogenic.htm">this painting</a> from Brad Phillips.<br /><br /><strong>9. A brief <em><a href="http://www.amylamwebsite.com/craphead.html">LIFE OF A CRAPHEAD </a></em>performance I saw at <a href="http://doubledoubleland.blogspot.com/">Double Double Land</a></strong><br /><br />The performances from Toronto’s LIFE OF A CRAPHEAD (Amy C. Lam and Jon McCurley) feel so good on your brain. They go right to the part that understands but doesn't share with the other parts of your brain – the parts that could explain what is happening. But then those parts start understanding something else and then, somehow, every part of your brain is being massaged by a fire in-the-know and then it is over. It can feel like good drugs, but really, it's more like spinach.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/2449604374_60e27b4a691.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3281" title="2449604374_60e27b4a69" src="http://backtotheworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/2449604374_60e27b4a691.jpg?w=300" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a></div><br /><strong>10. <em><a href="http://www.eagleman.com/sum">SUM: Forty Tales from the Afterlives</a></em> by David Eagleman</strong><br /><br />David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, wrote this strange book comprised of brief scenarios of the afterlife. More about life than after.<br /><br /><strong>11. Missing Objects</strong><br /><br />Is it too late for a really, really long <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrested_Development_(TV_series)"><em>Arrested Developement</em></a> movie?<br /><br />Also, I would like an audio book of Jack Hitt's articles. I would buy two. While we wait, we can read his <em><a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2005/07/0080636">Mighty White of You: Racial preferences color America's oldest skulls and bones</a></em> and listen to his <em><a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/218/act-v">Act 5</a></em>, the 52 minute long audio documentary about a group of prisoners at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center who are rehearsing and staging a production of Hamlet. It's great.<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Gate_Park">12. Golden Gate Park in San Francisco</a></strong><br /><br />Nice work William Hammond Hall and John McLaren.Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-68299061454224324242010-12-07T16:03:00.001-08:002010-12-07T18:26:38.122-08:00The Ring (2002) – directed by Gore Verbinski, based on the the movie by Hideo Nakata, the novel by Kôji Suzuki & the Japanese ghost story Banchō Saray<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><i>(My friend Duane Wall likes horror movies but none of his friends do. So every year on his birthday, he selects a horror movie and then invites his friends over to watch the movie. Last year was Bruce MacDonald’s </i>Pontypool <i>and the year before was David Cronenberg’s </i>The Fly<i>. This year it was the American version of </i>The Ring<i>. The movie’s title was kept secret until it started, when five minutes in someone shouted, What is this called!?)</i><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKP6xKRkf9eDb6eghuUMe_teZBi_X7XeowRIKpe38xITc41QTX1ZMPvCTGDTy1ZuxsWrL3S3KtDOwyuVDt23g4FAf1XyktKhV5bZkv1w6ZF2rGOw4hTalqY1jinDhS-F9c7289rMRHXfo/s320/2886_gal.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5548095593430477522" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 209px; " /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div>The Ring is a horror mystery about an unmarked videotape that somehow kills the people who watch it. The short video work features black and white footage of disturbing and seemingly unrelated scenes. One of the characters, before being properly impressed by the power of the video, expressed his opinion that it just looked like a bad student art video. (His respect deepens quickly enough). After a person watches the video, they receive a mysterious phone call and then die seven days later with a look of horror on their faces. That is, until an investigative journalist (played by Naomi Watts) starts poking around. </div><div><br />The movie also stars a self-sufficient child, a man afraid of monogamy and fatherhood, horses, a cluster of worn and futuristic apartment buildings and a good old-fashioned romantic/creepy island.</div><div><br />The atmosphere of the movie was seductive and its themes pleasurable: “don’t eat that apple!” verses “knowledge will set you free!”, peace-making verses resourceful military strategizing, the goodness of a small community island versus an impenetrable microcosm that is intolerant of foreigners and misfortune, metaphors of scapegoats and viruses becoming interchangeable.<br /><br />There are lots of fun things to say about the movie but they all involve the ending. I never mind hearing the full details of a plot before I see something, but for the kind of movie whose primary success is derived from its surprises – maybe it is best to not give away its secrets.<br /><br />Later on, after watching the movie, my mind wandered to the plot points and tried to connect the ways certain elements fit together. When I could fit them together with logic, I would feel a spooky pleasure. When I couldn’t, and the only end point was “supernatural mystery,” I felt as disappointed as a kid being told that babies come from heaven. We all know the real answers can be a lot crazier than the made-up ones.<br /><br />It made me think of an article I had read awhile ago about David Cronenberg. He talked about being sent scripts from Hollywood that involved the supernatural and how insulting or disappointing that was since he, as an atheist, was philosophically opposed to those views. He assumed that anyone who watched his movies could see that.<br /><br />I loved the image that comes to mind with this scenerio - confused studio executives trying to understand both the moral integrity of David Cronenberg <i>and</i> the difference between <i>The Fly</i> and the script for the demon/god vehicle <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3lfSQTDSVM">Constantine</a></i> while Cronenberg looks on patiently disappointed by what to him was obvious - his horror movies are entirely of this world. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>Postscript: I also enjoyed the movie Constantine.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-86263276134108808632010-11-24T09:51:00.000-08:002011-05-25T22:08:08.611-07:00The September Issue (2009) - starring Anna Wintour, directed by R.J. Cutler<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><i>(This always looked pretty compelling on the video store shelf but was always out when I would think to pick it up. The day it was in, it looked a little less compelling. I remembered, once I had it in my hand, that I had not had such luck with movies about fashion. But it still looked compelling enough.)</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaztgDMA_97hv6fuPD7tqtS9C5a4xiB-wxLPAO-zKxPcFxLvgqTStSgoUThoX3xjIf95GNX1P08Ua8rQC9nVGCoz9mD9RHBdPNrNEaGg4JDLwbRFqBua7VhEm-K2RW6zWY0mfOrk2hSg4/s320/IMG_4765x.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543187548533957138" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px; " /></span></i></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div>The September Issue is a documentary about the all-powerful and greatly feared editor of Vogue magazine, Anna Wintour. Anna Wintour is credited with creating a “fashion bible” through Vogue, jump-starting the careers of young designers, centralizing the power of the fashion industry in a circle around her, striking fear into the hearts of subordinates, reigniting the fur industry, and ending grunge.<br /><br />The movie covers the creation, which Anna Wintour oversees, of the 2007 September issue of Vogue – the bible part. Here, Anna Wintour is a woman who loathes small talk, is self-aware of the relation fashion has to the rest of the world, works incredibly hard, tries to not get mad when others don’t work as hard, uses words more than facial expressions to communicate, is incapable of following her grown child’s every move without adoring and irrepressible love in her eyes, reacts to things she dislikes with silence and reacts to things she likes with genuine praise. She is not primarily negative and she is not a trash-talker.<br /><br />When I was watching this, I couldn’t remember if this is what our culture thinks a bitch is or if this is a very generous portrait of a woman and an industry.<br /><br />Sure, you feel for the people who quiver in her uncomforting presence, but you also hope for a bit more integrity of character. If fashion really is an intersection between art and commerce, we think mostly of the commerce part in these moments. We also see that Anna Wintour does believe (or hopes) that fashion is meaningful and that art is involved. Her relief is obvious when people around her seem more preoccupied with the art than with winning her favour for obvious and easy reward. Her relief is most notable here in relation to Grace Coddington, Vogue’s creative director. The working relationship between these two women forms the poetic spine of the movie.<br /><br />Anna Wintour’s immensity of character was the subject of another movie - fictionalized in The Devil Wears Prada, a movie based on a book of the same name that was written by one of her former assistants.<br /><br />For The September Issue, the man allowed in to document the real Anna Wintour is named R.J. Cutler. R.J. Cutler’s production company is called “Actual Reality Pictures” (quite a tall claim in these early 21st century times, but anyway). Based on the production company’s name, and the other projects listed on their website, it appears as though R.J. Cutler is a man who thinks that reality TV is not real and that he is the man who will make it real. Though this just means his is a old-school documentary filmmaker whose weakness will be in forgetting his own subjectivity and impact on his subject (or his subject’s impact on him).<br /><br />All in all, not a bad fit for a real person who was referred to fictionally as “The Devil” right there in the title of a Hollywood movie starring Meryl Streep. How much worse could it be in an old-school documentary? Not worse, though also not great. And clearly Anna Wintour is a subject worthy of something monumental.<br /><br />If I was Anna Wintour, I too might have invited R.J. Cutler of “Actual Reality Pictures” to take my picture after I was fictionalized as “The Devil”. Had “The Devil” not happened, maybe someone from the production company “Not So Much Actual Reality But Still Kind Of Reality and Killer for Deeper Truth About Humans” would have gained access and made a complicated mountain out of this mountain of a subject. There is still time.<br /></div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-67793624305781715042010-11-16T11:19:00.000-08:002010-12-07T08:32:42.132-08:00Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) – written and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><i>(I didn’t know too much about “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” but I liked the title and I had half-noticed that the word “art” kept being used in relation to it. Somehow the “art” was not mentioned in either a flattering or negative way, just a descriptive way. “Art” can mean a lot of things, like that the characters will have a lot of feelings or that it will be either pretty unpleasant or extremely pleasant to watch or that the movie will be going after something difficult to catch. Very quickly into “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”, it was clear that the “art” in this case related to the words “intuitive” and “unusual” - and also maybe “going after something difficult to catch.”)</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span></i></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjskbcAFRZdfnGTfH-05IgrEUCNcCzrtXdtwjRhSTHbTGlnn4Bw6NfwYkgK3Jb5ZIK4OLQuIrY7ZsIQAPjKZHFTupTwXBFHXtQw1wolMO4Tr_yK173t8M1o0jfMOiHGGub4jf5pHBlwvs8/s320/uncle.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5540231768958902738" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 292px; " /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div>Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is made up of separate stories that happen in various times and places. They are connected literally and/or metaphorically by the title Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.<br /><br />Servants carry a princess through the jungle. It looks pretty unpleasant to carry a princess through the jungle. But also, it looks maybe a little bit erotic. The princess has a face darkened with a scar or birthmark. The party comes to rest at the base of waterfall. There, the princess tries to convince herself that intimacy with one of her servants is love. It doesn’t work. She sends the servant away and collapses alone by the water’s edge. She cries and voices out-loud her longing for pure and white skin and also for true love. At this point of despair a catfish begins to talk to her from the surface of the water. “Are you a ghost?” she asks the catfish. “No, I am a catfish”, the catfish says. She eventually enters the water with abandon and has sex with the catfish. Something is being promised to her but we are not sure what it is.<br /><br />There is a big bull tied to a tree. We stay with the bull for a while in the half-dark. We start to relate to him like any character in a movie. He makes a noise and we sort of know what it means. It seems kind of awful for such a big creature to be tied, by the neck, to a tree in the middle of a field. But maybe it’s ok. In a quick moment he yanks his rope free and lightly runs his giant body to the outskirts of the jungle and then stops there for a bit. Eventually, a man finds him. The man gently leads the bull back towards the field.<br /><br />Uncle Boonmee has a farm where he grows tamarind and sweet and sour honey. Uncle Boonmee’s kidneys are failing and he thinks he will die in two days. He wonders if it’s because of his karma. “I was bad to the communists”, he says during his dialysis treatment. On the porch, he eats dinner with his sister-in-law and her friend when it is dark outside.<br /><br /></div><div>At the dinner table, the ghost of his long-dead wife appears. His ghost-wife looks like a normal wife, but younger. Then a monkey-ghost, the transformed body of his long-lost son, comes to sit down. The monkey-ghost looks amazing. He explains that he was trying to capture something with his camera, on the outskirts of the jungle, when he mated with a monkey-ghost and became a monkey-ghost himself. He explains that now the creatures and ghosts can sense Uncle Boonmee’s illness and are coming closer.<br /><br /></div><div>They all sit together at the table quietly. There is very little small talk. The whole movie feels like this, as though every living thing is cautiously acting and speaking as simply as possible in order to make room for some understanding.<br /><br /></div><div>Eventually, the wife-ghost and the monkey-ghost are shown photo albums of the years they have missed.<br /><br /></div><div>Later on, we are shown still photos too. The photos we see were taken in a field during the day: of a monkey-man being led out of the jungle with a rope tied around his neck by a soldier in camouflage. These photos are the strange cousins of horrific photos we are familiar with from history, but here, in this movie, we see and think about the photos in a different way. Which is good because they are difficult to understand in a logical way.<br /><br /></div><div>There is another photo of soldiers, laughing and smiling – it seems like something bad is happening to the monkey-man. Then there is a last photo of the soldiers and the monkey-man posing together, the rope still tied around his neck, everyone smiling. Maybe it is OK we think, but probably it really isn’t.<br /><br /></div><div>Later, back in real life at Uncle Boonmee's farm, Uncle Boonmee, his ghost-wife, his sister-in-law and her friend start on a journey away from the farm and into a field and down into the jungle. The ghost-wife is leading. Uncle Boonmee is trying to make the best sense he can out of his good and bad deeds before he dies. This journey is the best he can do now. They go deeper and enter a cave that looks like the frozen stalactites of centuries-old falling water. They travel deep down into the cave, Uncle Boonmee moving slowly. At the very bottom, they find a tiny pool of albino catfish. This is where Uncle Boonmee lies down.<br /><br />The movie is not an exploration of filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s wild ideas. It is him trying wildly to make sense of the best and worst of life’s absurdities by expanding and examining them with intuitive logic.<br /><br />If you are adept at intuitive logic (and with navigating the trauma that was the 20th century) his film will be as clear and seductive as early dusk. It will be as practical and as heartbreaking as any story about injustice, hope and despair could possibly be. Funny too. And beautiful.<br /></div>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3001597569197202665.post-11505022593808975442010-11-02T14:07:00.001-07:002010-12-07T08:33:08.276-08:00The Social Network (2010) - based on a book by Ben Mezrich, screenplay by Aaron Sorkin & directed by David Fincher<em></em><br /><em>(I went to this at a big movie house with Misha <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">Glouberman</span> and Jon Davies. I was pretty excited to see it. After the screening, we realized our friend Carl Wilson was sitting behind us. We all sat around talking as the credits rolled. Jon was surprised at how the movie <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">didn</span>’t stupidly go on and on explaining what <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">Facebook</span> is - like you often see in some movies about blogs or in that 1998 Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan vehicle that explains what email is. One of us suggested that maybe it was easier with <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">Facebook</span> to find the actual number of those in the know so that they could count the potential audience and see that they <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">didn</span>’t have to worry about it so much.)<br /></em><br /><br /><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiygdcj8Y9gCuJrwfblNMZ96S5gPKobN_HIyhjX3pejiWFrba6d3RTJO4umO532GRuvggEaAO4EsJhfOMYY3vB_Q5HAJ5hhckcyCkZe7MZsVGttbZdAhbu2PqCb_qDSXWuOJ-AF0MskwnQ/s1600/social-network.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 252px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535063078933880722" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiygdcj8Y9gCuJrwfblNMZ96S5gPKobN_HIyhjX3pejiWFrba6d3RTJO4umO532GRuvggEaAO4EsJhfOMYY3vB_Q5HAJ5hhckcyCkZe7MZsVGttbZdAhbu2PqCb_qDSXWuOJ-AF0MskwnQ/s320/social-network.png" /></a><br />The Social Network falls into one of my favourite genres: The nearly-present-just-recently-past historical drama - like Oliver Stone’s W. (about George W. Bush while he was still in office) or Stephen <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">Frears</span>’ The Queen (about The Queen). One of the good side effects of telling a story still so tied to the present is that it becomes less plausible to make the main protagonist a hero or a god with all the banal evidence still in plain view. But in any case, seeing the more life-size protagonists and daily banalities blown up as big as cinema screen is just as surreal as watching a bunch of gods portrayed in a realistic setting. We are not missing the “awe” factor. The Queen in The Queen is freakishly life-size while the story, both weirder <em>and </em>more familiar than normal, remains a healthy contender for a new kind of <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">epicness</span>.<br /><br />There’s always a bit of complaining when turning a section of life into a bio-pic. Primarily the complaints involve accusations that elements of the truth were sacrificed for the romance of the story, but it’s not just Hollywood that turns things into big stories – our brains do it all the time too, even with our own boring lives. Personal media framing websites like <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">Facebook</span> and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error">Youtube</span> help to speed this up. Luckily, most of us know better than to completely trust the history books or our own memories. Now we just have to learn how not to always trust our own eyes.<br /><br />The Social Network is framed by a typical boy-losses-girl-then-says-internally-I’ll-show-you!-then-becomes-important-though-never-forgets-the-girl kind of story. The boy is a Harvard undergrad, Mark <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error">Zuckerberg</span>. He is the founder of <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">Facebook</span>. Most of the movie is set at Harvard. Harvard looks more excitingly foreboding than Hollywood here with all of its old-school and discreet power. The girl goes to a different university and we can’t quite remember her name. Because the movie is framed this way, the narrative tension and resolution rests on this simple arc and not on the other details of the complicated <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error">Facebook</span> founding story. This is good news because it allows the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-error">Facebook</span> story to be ever-complicated and truthfully unresolved while we still get the delicious full sandwich of a tidy story.<br /><br />The untidy part is up for interpretation. There are the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" class="blsp-spelling-error">Winkevosses</span> - handsome, gentlemanly identical twin brothers. They are Harvard elites who are only a touch sinister. They seem to represent not only each other, but many of their kind that we can't see. They believe that they have gotten their idea of a Harvard-only networking site swiped from under their noses by Mark <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" class="blsp-spelling-error">Zuckerberg</span>. They probably have, but it's hard to worry about them too much. Some of us are not accustomed to this much privilege and it seems more <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" class="blsp-spelling-error">wondrous</span> and strange than what they think they got cheated out of. </p><p>After Mark <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" class="blsp-spelling-error">Zuckerberg</span> gets <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" class="blsp-spelling-error">Facebook</span> up and running, we're happy for him when he becomes friends with Sean Parker (founder of Napster). We imagine that it feels great to find a colleague who is just as obsessed by the same kind of creation as he is. We imagine that they have a lot to talk about. In this movie, this is when Mark <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" class="blsp-spelling-error">Zuckerberg</span> looks happiest, though the creators seem to credit the excitement to cheap glamour more than creative interest.<br /><br />It is hard not to take pleasure here in a representation of the older generation's frequent blindness over Internet matters, as though the kids are talking about a pretend world that doesn't really matter. The freedom of not being seen feels thrilling here. </p><p>And it’s hard to get too upset with Mark <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_19" class="blsp-spelling-error">Zuckerberg</span> when he royally and legally cheats his best friend/ business partner, the sweetheart Eduardo <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_20" class="blsp-spelling-error">Saverin</span>, out of his fair share of the business. We’re not sure if this was one more move on top of a series of fights between the two friends, or if it was just a callous business decision. But we have known since the beginning of the movie that Mark <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_21" class="blsp-spelling-error">Zuckerberg</span> has always been a bit of a jerk, even when he was just a best friend that was a nobody. This last move should not have been too much of a surprise to Eduardo <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_22" class="blsp-spelling-error">Saverin</span>.</p><p>We feel for anyone who has been unpleasantly suprised by a friend even when they shouldn't have been surprised (Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg included). It happens to the best of us - especially when we are young and patient and become friends with people who might not be such a good fit. Nevertheless, we have some optimism that these two may re-friend each other some day (in the imagined post-movie movie-life of this particular movie). </p>Margaux Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01911249795953113967noreply@blogger.com0