Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson

There's something strange about reading books by writers who have a very particular style. I really like Winterson's writing, but it almost becomes cliche after awhile. The first book of hers I read, Written on the Body, blew me away, and I still think it's the best of her books. Because the thing is, you sort of have the feeling that once you've read one, you've read them all. I still enjoy reading something of hers from time to time, but I often come away feeling mildly disappointed.

What's great about her books is the curious blend of naivete and cynicism, matched by a keen intelligence for language. She's fond of clever, overarching statements like "What constitutes a problem is not the thing, or the environment where we find the thing, but the conjunction of the two; something unexpected in a usual place (our favourite aunt in our favourite poker parlor) or something usual in an unexpected place (our favourite poker in our favourite aunt)." It's charming, but it can get old. Another beloved technique of hers is re-telling fairy tales or legends from a rooted individual perspective, thus capitalizing on their mythic powers while using them to make a point. Again, lovely at first, but it can get somewhat grating, especially when they always seem to come back to the same wounded feminist moral.

This book, which I take it is highly autobiographical, starts out strong but fizzles as it progresses. It begins with the life of a precocious young girl in a community of religious fundamentalists, and is quirky and lovable. But then it gets increasingly bitter as the girl discovers her lesbian tendencies and is cast out by her family. The problem, I think, is that the material hits too close to home for Winterson, and she's unable to maintain a narrative distance. She also seems rather unwilling to really delve into the plot, and increasingly turns to allegorical fairy tale anecdotes to convey the plot, which begins to feel like she's avoiding the story rather than developing it. Time quickens and suddenly months and even years are flying by as she seems unable to finish the story, not really knowing where it's going, until at the very end she sort of lamely reflects on what seems to be a visit home for Christmas.

It's not a bad book, but it's definitely a first attempt, a writer still trying to really get a handle on things. Her later works are more mature and self-assured, and thus, more finely crafted.

Killer of Sheep

This movie reminded me a lot of Soy Cuba (although that film is, I think, far better, and has much more impressive cinematography) - both films have an extremely intimate feel to them. It's quite incredible actually - there's a way in which you constantly feel as though you're getting a glimpse of people at their most private moments, even when you're watching them at work in a crowded slaughterhouse. There's something very poignant about the footage, despite the fact that most of it is actually quite mundane.

There's not a lot of plot to the movie, but it's of interest just for the documentation of life in Watts in the late 70's. What kind of intrigued me about it was the way it was simultaneously urban and curiously rural. It occurs to me, once again, that America is actually a very young nation, and a lot of its major metropolitan areas have only really become big cities in the last 50 years or so. So it's almost like the people living in them are inadvertently finding themselves there, and are still kind of figuring out how it works. I dunno, there's something interesting about it.

Tears of the Black Tiger

A restless, meandering sort of film. It's a kind of pastiche of comic books, old westerns, 1950s melodrama and neon day-glo color, set to a Thai soundtrack. While visually, it's quite incredible, it ultimately fails to come together into a really compelling movie. There's something about the way it tries to balance a kind of playful parody with tragic love that doesn't quite work. While the hybridization of East/West is interesting, the movie just doesn't DO that much. For instance, you get a scene that looks like this:



It's two guys on a stage, with some wheat and a beautifully painted back-drop. It's shot as though someone were filming a play. Fairly standard stand-off, but you can't really get into it, because it's so awkwardly staged, but it's played entirely in earnest. What is one to make of it? Is it a parody? Is it an homage? It's difficult to really engage with the film emotionally at all, because the characters are such caricatures, but aesthetically, the film seems so advanced. It's a strange juxtaposition. You can't really take it seriously, but it doesn't seem to be a critique either, and you're not quite sure what the point of it is, so all you can really do is appreciate the striking colors and sort of dumbly watch it play itself out.

Sweeney Todd

Let me begin by saying that I went and saw this movie because everything else was sold out and I lost on a coin toss. So, be forewarned, I may not have gone into it with the most winning attitude. Secondly, I don't like most Tim Burton's movies. Actually, a quick check on imdb reveal that this is not so true - I really like some of his movies. I love Beetlejuice, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, and Big Fish. On the other hand, I can't stand Nightmare Before Christmas, The Corpse Bride, Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Sleepy Hollow. Aka, the goth bullshit. Beetlejuice manages to work somehow, partly, I suspect, because I first saw it as a little kid, before I had seen the other movies and realized that they're all the same gloomy grayscale aesthetic. Anyhow, point being, the "look" of this movie not only doesn't appeal to me, it straight up pisses me off. When the movie opened with the ridiculously fake looking blood drop careening through some mysterious dark machine, I rolled my eyes and sighed loudly (earning an elbow to the ribs and hiss from my companion). But seriously - the gothic, as an aesthetic, was actually politically meaningful in its time. Sure, here there's a bit of lip service paid to class conflict, but it's really all about the look, and this ridiculous nostalgia for a romanticized past. Seriously, if you really want women to go back to wearing corsets all the time, you're a moron. If you walk around in black velvet and dye your hair red and you're over 15, then it's time to roll for initiative to grow the fuck up.

But the point of this is, I was probably a lost cause from the get-go, so maybe you shouldn't take my word for it.

That said, this movie sucked, bigtime. It was a steaming pile of crap. Actually, to be fair, I did doze off for about 20 minutes in the middle, and apparently missed one of the best songs, so maybe I'm not giving it proper credit. Fuck that, no, this movie sucked.

First off, it's boring. I mean, it drags. You pretty much know exactly what's gonna happen, and lo and behold, it does. Whoopee. Second off, it's ridiculous. When Johnny Depp starts killing his clients, for instance - ok, the first time, you're a little taken aback at how brutal it is, but after 6 victims in a row, you're mostly desensitized, and also a just struck at how poor his business sense is.

Here's the real problem - the music, for the most part, blows. I dunno why it's gotten such good reviews. The lyrics are so appallingly stupid that it makes your head spin. Not to mention, as a musical it suffers from the usual strategy of every character getting a particular tune associated with them, ie, every time you see them they're singing the same damn chorus over and over, which is all the more annoying when that chorus is so incredibly lame. The music is ok, at best. Some of the duets are actually kind of neat, but I think I just kind of like duets in general, because they're kind of interesting.

Now, the music being bad is a major problem, because this movie has the one virtue of being a true musical. The songs are not superfluous. They play an instrumental role in the film, in ways that few other musicals really dare to do, namely, they carry the entire burden of character development. When someone bursts into song, it's to share their inner thoughts and feelings - which you simply don't get access to at any other point in the film. What this means though, is that if the songs are cliche trite bullshit, then the characters are too, which means that you don't give a fuck about them. So, not to have a total spoiler, but let me put it this way - the final scene of the movie left me nodding in satisfaction. Actually, I would have taken it a bit further and cooked up a nasty end for the two other characters who are basically left hanging, but I was willing to settle for what I got. Mostly, I was ready for the credits to roll so that I could get the hell out of there.

In summary, ugh. I wish I had not contributed to the financial gain of anyone involved in this movie.

Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, by Jonathan Lear

This is an interesting book, a kind of philosophy underpinned by anthropology. The devastation referred to in the title is that of the Crow Nation, as voiced by Chief Plenty Coups. It takes as a starting point Plenty Coups words, describing his history to his biographer, that after the buffalo were gone and the Crow moved to the reservation, "nothing happened". Lear doesn't presume to attempt understand what these words meant to Plenty Coups, or to describe the truth of the Crow culture, but rather, he reflects on what it could mean for nothing to happen after a certain event in a philosophical sense, what happens when a group of people has basically been robbed of their ability to make sense of the world. This is the first third of the book, and its as terrifying as it is compelling.

He goes on to describe how the Crow coped with this apocalypse under the guidance of Plenty Coups. This is incredibly fascinating, and part of what makes it so incredible is the methodology. Lear doesn't presume to be an authority on Crow culture, and is very careful about the kind of claims he makes. He's mainly interested in the kind of formal structure of things within a given system. He tells you what he can about Crow culture in order to situate things in their proper context, but he's very careful to avoid anthropologizing, which I really appreciated. It's hard to explain, but it's a very individual kind of account - in fact, in a way, the last 2/3 of the book are basically dream interpretation. Plenty Coup had two major dreams in his life that warned him of the impending disaster and gave him advice on how to cope with it. Again, Lear does not claim that these dreams were in fact sent by the gods, as Plenty Coups believes, but rather, looks at how the symbolism of the dreams was translated into real world action, and thus, how Plenty Coups found a way to adapt to White culture in a manner that was in keeping with his Crow customs. This leads one to think about assimilation and cultural integration in really interesting ways. For instance, we learn that Plenty Coups basically encouraged people to stop practicing certain rituals that no longer had any utility, because doing so would actually vacate them of meaning and make them nothing more than tributes to nostalgia. So the question becomes, if a people are deprived of the opportunity for meaningful cultural expression, how can their culture survive?

A fascinating work.

Edit: Lear has an essay about the book online that is quite nice, albeit very short.

Best of 2007

In no particular order, my picks for Best Movies of 2007:

Czeka na nas swiat (The World is Waiting for Us)

Love in the Year of the Tiger

(sadly, neither of these films seems to have secured a wider release)

No Country for Old Men

Superbad

This is England

Hot Fuzz

Live Free or Die Hard

Lars and the Real Girl

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

This movie is definitely on my top 10 list for most incredible cinematography I have ever seen. Visually, it's poetry. It's incredible, just gorgeous. Also, it ought to be noted as being the best portrayal of uncomfortable laughter I've seen in a very long time. It nails awkward conversations in a really ingenious fashion - very well done. The acting, throughout, is also pretty phenomenal - Brad Pitt is fantastic, and Casey Affleck manages to make his boyishly cute face do all kinds of fascinating things, from resentment to awestruck admiration to shame to a delicate femininity that goes nicely with the film's undercurrent of homo-eroticism - which, incidentally, is subtly and skillfully handled.

Unfortunately, the movie is long as hell, and doesn't really hold itself together well. The individual scenes are great, but they're kind of haphazardly strung together with a ponderous monotony that leaves you stretching and looking at your watch halfway through. The movie tries to be epic and contain multiple narratives about various characters, but it ends up somewhat bloated. While it is somewhat interesting to watch the in-fighting among the gang, all these rambling digressions ultimately make the movie seem unfocused. We know that Ford is going to kill James. But somehow, it's hard to care. Actually, the film is at its most interesting after the murder, when it shows Ford traveling around the country and performing the deed onstage, and the strange transformation his brother undergoes. It holds your attention for a minute, but then somehow it loses it again... and goes on for another half an hour. Worst of all, perhaps, is the droning omniscient narrator - jesus, couldn't they find someone with a better voice? Not to mention a better script?

The movie wants to explore hero worship and the romanticization of criminals, and tries to balance humanizing the characters and showing their less flattering sides while simultaneously letting us see why they were lionized the way they were, and I guess it does a decent job of it, but somehow it feels incredibly flat and uninspired. I suppose a lot of it ultimately turns on whether you end up sympathizing with Ford or not, which I couldn't quite manage to do. I didn't despise him, I just never cared much about him. James, on the other hand, was a fascinating character. Though I must say, the narrator told me early on that he blinked more often than most people because of an eye condition, but Pitt plays him with an unflinching stare that seems to directly contradict this. Which is too bad.

So yeah, not so much on this one. Though goddamn, the cinematography is amazing.