Seven Types of Ambiguity, by Elliot Perlman

I was so impressed with this book for the first 50 pages. I was totally enthralled. The next 80 so pages, my enthusiasm faded a bit, but I still enjoyed the book. It was around page 300 or so that I started being more annoyed by it than anything else. So, here's the thing - it's an interesting story. And it's told in a creative way, it's just that unfortunately, the writer isn't talented enough to pull it off. So there are these nice aspects to it, but ultimately, it gets way too irritating.

The book is divided into 7 sections, each with a different narrator (though some people narrate more than one section). This allows the nice effect of getting to hear different sides of the story, and when done well, allows you to see how people misunderstand each other, and the effects such misunderstandings have. It's a move I'm generally partial too, but its a tricky thing to pull off well, and most authors (and Perlman is an excellent example) who attempt it are so pleased with their own cleverness that they botch the whole thing. Perlman clearly wants to play with the idea of ambiguities in personal relationships - aside from being the title of the book, he makes his various characters talk about it so much that after awhile you're like DUDE. I GET IT. YOU'RE VERY CLEVER. It's kind of amusing, actually, that Perlman clearly thinks he's being incredibly smart by accenting this multiple perspectives story with literary theories of ambiguity, but the book fails precisely because he's unable to leave anything ambiguous - not only does he have to keep calling attention to just how clever he is, but he also insists on ultimately getting every character's perspective on everything, and telling you just what happens to pretty much everybody. 

The real problem, though, is that if you want to be a virtuoso and have seven different narrators, fine, but they have to actually be different. They can't all sound like a slightly angsty, melodramatic, intelligent but vaguely pretentious, self-absorbed guy. This is really why my ardour for the text cooled after the first section. I liked the first narrator. Sure, he dropped a lot of literary references in a vaguely pretentious way, but hey, I'm a lit dork, so I didn't really mind. The second narrator was somewhat similar, but not overly so - he actually, kind of, had a personality of his own. And he's probably the most effective character, in that he is frequently completely misperceived by others, but actually becomes likeable when you get his perspective. Though given how very likeable he is from the inside, it is a bit hard to understand how he can be so detestable to most everyone else. But after that, all of the narrators are basically similar. The female characters are particularly disastrous - their voices ring so false, it's painful. All of the characters are slightly ridiculous, "literary" types who have ridiculously eloquent conversations and thoughts, and unbearably poignant lives (it's the textual equivalent of the kind of performance in movies that makes my friend Jen assume a stiff posture and yell ACTING! in a booming voice), but the women, for me, were even worse. Although I generally believe that gender identity is a social construct rather than a biological one, and I don't think it's true that a man cannot write in the voice of a convincing female character, Elliot Perlman can't. But that's mostly because, it seems to me, Elliot Perlman can't really write ANY convincing character other than a self-absorbed, angst-ridden, over-sensitive pseudo-intellectual one, or at least, not in this book he can't.  But for some reason, it's when he tries to speak as a woman that this becomes so starkly clear. I suppose there is a kind of masculinity to a certain sort of self-absorbed melancholy. It's not that women aren't self-absorbed or depressed, it's just that they tend to do it in a slightly different way. And his women are clearly products of that kind of male imagination. I ain't sayin', I'm just sayin'. I have a sneaking suspicion that the author of this book might be kind of an annoying guy. 

All of this is very unfortunate, because actually, the story is quite interesting. Is it so interesting that it's worth 623 pages? Well... hard to say. I can't unabashedly recommend it, but I can't also say it's a waste of time. There are plenty of worse books out there. All the same, there are so many better ones...

WALL-E

I've been squirming with excitement about this movie ever since I saw the first preview. And the reviews, and word on the street, were hot. "Transcendent," people said. "The best Pixar movie ever." So having now seen it twice (I kind of fell asleep the first time), I still find this somewhat strange. I mean, it's great. But transcendent?

I think the reason people exalt the movie the way that they do is because of its curious blend of apocalyptic vision and hope. Earth has been virtually destroyed by pollution, which is bound to make liberals happy because they feel like it's sending a nice warning signal (with an obesity rider thrown in - you'll destroy the planet and get FAT! eating junk food! and being glued to your laptop!), but they get to have it both ways, because 700 years later, everything works out ok again so long as people defeat the evil robot (with the help of good robots) and "re-colonize" Earth. Let me just pause here to note that if you wanna go with a political reading of the film, then the fact that they use the term "re-colonize" is extremely uncomfortable. But that's nitpicking. 

Moving on, the movie is extremely, ungodly clever with the way it references other films. It's full of allusions to other movies - most noticeably, probably, in the 2001 reference, or the Lilo and Stitch-like bra scene, but the one that really blew me away, which probably no one will notice, is that there's a little robot who goes around frantically wiping up the trail Wall-E leaves in his wake, and every time he does, the background music is a modernized version of the music that the mysterious broomdog in Alice in Wonderland makes when he's eliminating the path in the forest when Alice is lost. I can't believe I noticed that. But I was extremely impressed.

More bizarre, to me, was the film's obsession with Hello, Dolly! Don't get me wrong - I LOVE Hello, Dolly. But seriously, what was it doing in this movie? I mean, yeah, it's got romance, and the glitter of the cosmopolitan, and it was a nice touch to also throw in a Louis Armstrong song to reinforce the allusion, but seriously, what was it doing there? For as much airtime as it got, I expected some kind of substantive, extended parallel, or something, but I really can't work it out. Please, please tell me if you have any thoughts on this, because it's tormenting me. 

Although I will say that one of the things I liked about the movie was that it had a kind of randomness to it. The objects Wall-E collected, for instance, were so... strange. Some of them were obvious, sure, but some of it was just, I dunno, random. It was kind of neat.

Someday, I will write a paper on lovable robots, and this movie will feature strongly in it. 

I guess what makes this movie strange to me is that it deploys all the tropes and does all these things that beg for interpretation and scream depth and meaning, but then when you try to decode it, you get... nothing. What's with the hospital scene? Crazy robots? Seriously, what's that about? Or the random couple that hooks up, and the moment when they decide to save the children, kinda? And oh my god, what about the penultimate rebooting scene, which seriously made me cry my eyes out? In fact, let's step back a minute and talk about how emotionally traumatizing some of that movie was? When EVE goes into sleep mode and Wall-E is piteously bleating her name, my god, my heart was torn asunder. It was seriously upsetting.

It's a good movie. It's a fun movie. I am highly impressed that someone went out on a limb and made a children's film with almost no dialogue. It's worth watching. But chill out with this greatest movie ever talk, eh?

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

A really well-made, very interesting movie. The focus is not so much the details of Roman Polanski's infamous encounter with a 13 year old girl as the events surrounding it - his life more generally, and more importantly, the legal proceedings. I was expecting a movie that focused on the way Hollywood and mainstream culture sexualizes young women, but instead, I got a movie about the intersection of celebrity and the legal system, and it was fascinating. The main villain of the film is the judge who presided over the case, and this, as my friend Ruchama pointed out, is kind of a cheap move, given that the guy is dead. It's easy to heap all the blame on the dead guy. That said, I left the movie fully convinced that the man should never have been made a judge, I mean, my god. It was scandalous, what he did. What the movie shows you is how pride steps in, the way a judge behaves differently when he's in the public eye, and more importantly, when the person accused is in the public eye. 

Some other fascinating things about the movie (I'm feeling lazy today, and I've been devoting a lot of organization-of-argument energy to my dissertation, so it's bullet points from here. Sorry.):

1. The culture divide. I'd like to take this moment to point out to the Santa Monica law officers involved that sex with a minor is most certainly NOT legal in Poland. So take your "well I don't know how these things work in Mr Polanski's country [aka, the barbaric outposts of civilization], but in AMERICA..." and shove it. In the meantime, take a good long look at society and mass culture in your country, then look up hypocrisy in the dictionary, and report back with your general impressions. Even the judge had a 20something year old girl on the side for goddsakes. As Polanski says, "Yes, I like young women. Doesn't every man?"

2. Which is not to say that I approve of Polanski cavorting with underage girls. This is one of those strange emotion-trumps-logic issues for me. Because personally, I've never felt inclined to blame Polanski at all, even before I saw this movie. At the same time, I suspect that if this same case hit the newsstands now, I'd be appalled. But it seems fairly clear to me that he was moving in a crowd where this kind of thing was fairly normal (does this make me a hypocrite, re: point 1? oh dear.). Maybe a bit risque, but still, free-wheeling 70s, sex and drugs, celebrity, etc etc.

3. The way the movie subtly indexes the shift from the 60s to the 80s, depicting the 70s as a moment of transition between the hippy dippy 60s and the more decadent and pessimistic 80s. 

4. A point that the victim makes, that none of the people involved in the case really seemed to care about her and whatever suffering she might be undergoing. Instead, the police seem to take a rather prurient interest in the details - a description of the defense team dissecting her stained underwear is exemplary in this regard. Another example, for me, about how moral outrage tends to emerge more from puritanical self-righteousness than any actual concern for others.

5. As he's preparing his initial case, the prosecuting attorney goes to the movies and watches Polanski's films, and finds all kinds of convenient parallels between the case and the films, and uses this to make his case. My reaction is "Bullshit! That's totally ridiculous and unfair! You can't assume that a man's art maps so transparently onto his life!" The film seems to support this view. But then, throughout the movie, there are clips from the films that elegantly map onto the events. And this, I have no problem with, in fact, it actually seems clever and poetic. Errr... I guess there's a difference to me between appreciating it aesthetically and putting a man's life on the line over it.

6. The clear smug glee that the French feel about the fact that THEY appreciate Polanski, unlike zee prude americains. Heh heh. 

7. A point made by Polanski's psychiatrist - he's undergone some truly horrific stuff in his life, stuff that would leave your average person a neurotic nutcase curled in the fetal position, and yet, he's managed to rise above. What's interesting to me about this is that every time I say it, I want to say "a normal person" instead of "average person". Which makes me think about psychiatry and normativity. Kind of intriguing.

Anyhow, great movie, much recommended. 

Romance and Cigarettes

This is one of the most peculiar movies I have ever seen. It's raunchy and ridiculous and strangely lovely. The characters speak in bad poetry, the musical numbers are absurd, the plot is ridiculous and yet there's this wild beauty to it. It's a triumph of kitsch. The emotional register is very, very skillfully handled, so that, by the end of the movie, the story is genuinely moving. In other words, it goes from campy caricature to heartfelt drama - an extremely difficult shift, and yet, it works. The cinematography moves, too, from bizarre to beautiful. For the first 15 minutes, I thought it was stupid, then it just seemed deranged, and then I fell in love with it. Really, it's kind of a brilliant movie.

The movie is written and directed by John Turturro, and produced by the Coen brothers. The  story is fairly basic, in some ways - a guy cheats on his wife and regrets it. The cast is outrageous - James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet (with a Cockney accent, a lewd mouth and a shock of red hair), Mary-Louise Parker, Eddie Izzard, Christopher Walken, Mandy Moore (I am consistently impressed by the bold acting choices either she or her agent is making), Steve Buscemi, Aida Turturro (I love her, I really do), Amy Sedaris... it's star-studded, to say the least. And it's a musical! And it's just so... bizarre. Really. I spent about half an hour with my mouth open, struck dumb with astonishment. But while it's outrageous, it never goes too far, I think. Somehow it manages to work. And the dialogue, while cheesy and ridiculous at times, has this strange sort of poetry to it. 

You've got to check out this movie. It's wild.

Oh yeah, also - check out the deleted scenes in the bonus features. And the featurette thingy. They're actually worth it.

Dwoje biednych Rumunow mowiacych po polsku, by Dorota Maslowska

I'm sorry to say that this book will probably never be translated. And even if it is, I doubt it'll be done well. Maslowska has an absolutely fantastic style, a marvelous way of rendering vernacular Polish that I think, really, is just untranslatable (I consider the translation of another of her novels, whose English title is Snow White and Russian Red, to be an absolute disaster). It's horrifically vulgar and wonderfully musical, tender and appalling and absolutely delightful. For those who know Polish, a sample (apologies, I don't know how to render Polish characters on here):

Albo daewoo tico. To jest woz. Panie, jak my powiemy w Rumunii, ze tym jechalismy, to hooo. Krewni nam szalas podpala z zazdrosci. Seiczeto. To nie jest samochod, to jest religia. Ludzie popierduja tu jakimis pan widzi. Tego, kurwa, wysciguj go, ja pierdole! Jak pizda, no jak pizda, masz samochod z takimi mozliwosciami, a wleczesz sie nim jak kurwa w kislu. 

For all its horrific vulgarity, it's a brilliant book. Maslowska is an absolute virtuoso, playing with conventions of genre and time, dropping in allusions to other literary works, all in a seemingly effortless way. But her subjects, as per usual, are scum. Their marvelous language is essentially their only redeeming factor. They're lowlifes, drugged out scum who do truly awful things. It reminds one of Irvine Welsh, whom Maslowska is often compared to, or Bret Easton Ellis, but actually, I think Maslowska is a far more interesting writer, precisely for her daring experiments in form, which are more akin, I think, to Beckett and Gombrowicz. She's generally known for her curious capitalist apocalyptic vision, and bizarre phantasmagoria - one never knows what's actually happening and what is hallucination, or if the characters are inhabiting a fictional space where there simply isn't a difference, but this text also, in a quite fascinating way, plays with time as well. It's written as a play, though, given precisely this hallucinatory aspect, it'd be nearly impossible, I think, to stage, but there's a fantastic scene where the characters are actually speaking at different moments in time. The two main characters, Dzina and Parcha, are speaking to a driver. The driver, however, is actually speaking to the police and reporting his conversation with them. It's brilliantly executed, like I said above, in a seemingly effortless and natural way.  

The story is curious, too, in that it purports to be the adventures of two Romanians (the title translates as Two Poor Romanians Who Speak Polish), who turn out, possibly, to be two Polish druggies. In other words, it begins as a caricature of a crude ethnic stereotype, and turns out to be a caricature, kind of, of two Polish lowlifes. The irony, however, is impossible to locate reliably. It's a tantalizing book. 

The Quiet American, by Graham Greene

I suppose this is meant to be this profound investigation of the disastrous consequences of foreigners meddling in the politics of other countries, and the impossibility of genuine neutrality, cleverly couched in a love triangle. But I just didn't find it all that compelling. The racism and misogyny of it wore me down and ultimately robbed me of much sympathy for the characters. By the end I was tired and frustrated by the arrogant idiocy of soft colonialism. 

At first, the cold, somewhat detached style of it really appealed to me, but after awhile, I yearned for a bit of description, a sense of place. The main character is haunted by images of violence, but there's almost no imagery in the novel at all - it's totally flat. It's really just psychological exploration, which can only take you so far when you despise the characters. Ok, sure, so maybe it's a profound exploration of the very racism and misogyny I'm complaining about, but I'm tired of that shit. It's the kind of thing that people calling for a rethinking of the literary canon complain about, and it makes perfect sense to me now. The prose isn't masterful enough to merit listening to the anguished ramblings of colonizers. We hear their side of it all the goddamned time - I'd rather hear the other one, for once.

Close Encounters at the End of the World

I have to admit, I kind of adore Werner Herzog. He's such a lovably strange goofball, I can't help it. But the man has a unique vision, and one that he manages to convey brilliantly in his films. His movies are these fascinating reveries on civilization and what it means to be human, with gorgeous footage and an almost childlike awe of the material. There's a downside to this, namely, that he's got severe tunnel vision - whatever the subject of the film, you only hear about the stuff that Herzog finds interesting. There's no pretense of actually depicting something essential about the subject, it's more about how it fits into his overall worldview. Close Encounters at the End of the World, which documents his explorations of Antarctica, is no different. I actually had the good fortune to watch the movie with a group of scientists, some of whom have in fact done research in Antarctica and know many of the people depicted in the film personally, and they were somewhat annoyed at the way it was portrayed, and how Herzog completely ignored multiple important aspects of the world there. But despite their irritation, I think even they acknowledged that it was an interesting and entertaining film.

At the start of the movie, Herzog (who narrates the entire film) explains that he did said from the get-go that he was not going to make a movie about penguins (though he can't resist giving them some airtime). Instead, he came to seek the answers to several questions. Why do humans enslave and torture other humans? Why do they set out to explore the wild frontiers of their world? Why do ants enslave wood lice? Why don't apes enslave anybody? I would have LOVED to read his grant application. I can't believe the NSF funded him. But anyhow, it's a fitting start to the film, which is a somewhat rambling meditation about Antarctica and the people who live there. While he doesn't exactly illuminate the scientific research they're doing, or even, really, what it's like to live there, and the people he picks are clearly the oddest ones he could finds, the movie is nonetheless fascinating. The footage is gorgeous - especially the scenes of scuba divers under the ice, and the creatures they find down there. Absolutely amazing. 

And while Herzog is an oddball and his questions are totally bizarre, they're also kind of lovely. "Do penguins ever go insane?" I was amazed by how merciless he was about focusing only on his own interests in this film, and especially by how brutal he was to the subjects when they ceased to interest him (a sudden voice over interrupts a woman's monologue to say that "She went on and on"). At the same time, I was occasionally grateful - she really WAS going on and on - though at times, I was also frustrated. It was strange, whenever he asked people how they ended up in Antarctica (which is a damn good question, I think), you ended up with a kind of description of their life beforehand, and then an abrupt end, with no actual description of the relevant transition ("so I was in Guatemala being chased by guys with machetes... and now I'm in Antarctica!").

My only real beef with the film was the music, which was somewhat over the top and rather distracting. Especially the final track, which was some kind of religious hymn in a Slavic language. It might have sounded neat if you couldn't understand it, but meanwhile I'm listening to this strange voice droning on about God and it was seriously getting on my nerves.

Still though, it's a lovely movie. Definitely worth watching.