The Ecstasy of Truth

Over the last two days I saw Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World, both documentaries by Werner Herzog.  Herzog's view is so uncompromising, so grand, and so idiosyncratic, that it simultaneously shows you something new, and something old in a new light. I can't remember the last time I've been excited about film as an art form.

In the last month, that bolt of inspiration has hit three times. First with Kurt Vonnegut, whose playfulness and sense of humour inform the realism-by-way-of-science-fiction genre he invented. Then with Henning Mankell, who has fused the mystery novel with the themes of loneliness, abandonment and despair that run through the work of his father-in-law Ingmar Bergman. And now with Herzog, who possesses a boundless curiosity and a determination to get something new into and out of film. 

In school I study Freud and Lacan under the watchful eye of Marxists with tenure. But on my own I get to the real shit that people who view the world as correctable can't deal with. I live for finding artists like Vonnegut, Mankell and Herzog. And guess how likely any of them will show up on a syllabus any time soon?

On an unrelated note, Dan downloaded the new Wolverine movie. I have taken bowel movements with better character development. However, seeing Liev Schrieber, a brilliant Shakespearean actor, eviscerate the dink from the Black Eyed Peas was somewhat gratifying. 

Yum

From the Post/CP:

In what she described as a gesture of solidarity with seal hunters, Governor-General Michaëlle Jean gutted a freshly-killed seal and ate a piece of its heart.  [Full story here]

First of all, let me say that seal hunting is primitive and unnecessarily cruel. The market for seal products has dropped a bit in the last two hundred years, so allowing a commercial seal hunt is basically a way for white Canadians to humour the Inuit ("honour tradition," as liberals would say) in lieu of building infrastructure and manufacturing up north. But I don't really care--if bludgeoning doe-eyed baby seals to death is your thing, have at it, hoss.

But the fact that a politician would not just hunt an animal, but gut it and eat its heart? I salute you, Michaelle Jean. That is truly badass. The only thing that could make that better is if you wrenched the still-beating heart from the chest cavity of a seal while screaming KHALI-MAH, KHALI-MAH!

I would give ANYTHING to see her pull that finishing move on Gordon Campbell, Michael Ignatieff or Stephen Harper. During the next debate, Jean should just rip their hearts out and take a big sloppy bite. Or rip out Gilles Duceppe's heart and drown it in cheese curd and gravy. I would cross party lines for that.

Yes, I'm just posting this so the C word won't appear on your web page

It's been years since I've been able to say this, but I'm enjoying Metallica's new album. Death Magnetic actually sounds like a Metallica album. The first couple tracks are great, and the instrumental, Suicide & Redemption, is epic. As far as I'm concerned, they've redeemed themselves for the Let's-use-a-teflon-pot-for-a-snare-drum awfulness of St Anger (although the St Anger movie, Some Kind of Monster, is funnier than Spinal Tap). Rick Rubin's production on Death Magnetic is much more low-key than Bob Rock's (who ruined The Tea Party's last album Seven Circles), and their new simian bassist Robert Trujillo hauls ass. And I think it helps that James Hetfield wrote songs that are in his new more limited register--a man's got to know his limitations. 

And if you're not a fan, please recommend something better, cause I haven't heard a decent metal album in years. 

That Was Just Your Life (and Ecstasy of Gold) below:

It's Not About You, You Stupid Cunt!

From the National Post:

The Oxford Community Police have made no plans to apologize for their investigation into the abduction of eight-year-old Victoria Stafford despite the Ontario girl's mother's accusations of being mistreated by detectives.

During her first news conference since the arrests of two people earlier this week in connection with her daughter's kidnapping and murder, McDonald told reporters Friday she was "disgusted" with how police had considered her to be a prime suspect in the case. [Full article here]

The mother is upset that the police considered her a suspect. What the FUCK are they supposed to do when most abductions are perpetrated by family members? Take your fucking word for it? You should be lucky that the police care enough.

Despite the fact that we have one of the greatest police forces in the world, Canadians do not appreciate their police whatsoever. They want a security blanket that ensures nothing bad will ever happen to them, but they also want their police to proceed like liberal arts undergrads, kowtowing to every special interest group and taking shit from asshole citizens who think they know their job better than they do. 

We want our airports kept safe, but we hang our cops out to dry when they bring down a violent asshole who dies due to an unfortunate reaction to a non-lethal weapon. Not to rehash the Dziekanski thing yet again, but it's a goddamn shame that those cops might face criminal charges. If I was Kwesi Millington, I would have done the same thing--you don't fuck around in an airport, dude, I don't care how long you have to wait. 

This fuckhead wants her daughter found, but wants to tell the police how to conduct their investigation. She's probably seen tons of CSI and Law and Order and wants the fucking soft, ball-less tv-palatable phony type of cop to console her and vow revenge. She wants Grissom to deduce the truth from a box of kleenex and a black light, then whisper sweet nothings to her while Warrick and Nick bring back the kid. Instead she probably got a squad of humourless detectives who proceeded through the case clinically and diligently, which meant treating her as a suspect until she could prove her innocence. 

In other words, the cops were working in the best interest of the missing girl, not the best interest of the mother. What this awful bridge troll really wanted was to be the centre of the story.  She wanted to be Angelina Jolie in Changeling: "Give me back my baby!" This was her big break.

Now, her daughter was murdered, and her neighbours probably got the wrong idea from the police presence at her house. It would be horrible to be accused of the murder of a child. But what kind of sick piece of shit uses a press conference for her murdered daughter to say "Y'all thought I murdered her, but guess I proved YOU wrong." How about some private grief and some understanding for the complexity of the police officer's job?

On Realism

What makes Dubliners or The Sun Also Rises more "realistic" than the work of Marquez and Borges? Why is Blade Runner a more "realistic" science fiction film than Star Wars? Since Graham Greene and Tom Clancy both write about spies, why does Greene's work feel more "realistic" despite the mammoth amount of "realistic" detail in Clancy's work? And why are the French New Wave films, which deal with murder and police chases almost as much as Hollywood does, more "realistic" than the work of Ford and Hitchcock? What of the work of genre writers, children's writers, writers of satires and farces? Can't their work be "realistic?"

Realism in the context of art is a fluid term, with multiple overlapping meanings. What makes a work of art realistic or not is a quality almost as ephemeral as what makes it good or not. A lot of my favourite writers aren't considered realistic, yet I would argue their work is. 

It's common to equate realism with plausibility. A short story by Joyce or Hemingway, to take our first example, is more plausible than a story like "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" because the latter story involves an implausible detail (the appearance of an angel on earth). But since both are fictitious, how can one be judged "more fictitious" than another? Isn't that like saying someone can be "more dead" than someone else?

Equating realism with plausibility isn't a satisfactory answer. In the second example, of Blade Runner and Star Wars, both are speculative, yet most agree that Blade Runner is more realistic. It is the characters which make it so, not the fact that the science is more within our reach.

In every story there is a given. The given may be something outlandish, or something that generates high tension (the old ticking timebomb), or something quite ordinary. Hitchcock called it the Maguffin. It is the premise on which the story stands, and upon which "suspension of disbelief" is built. A given exists in Star Wars and in Ulysses. (The given can be that there is no given, but that's too French for this informal discussion.)

The character of the piece relates in some way to the given, whether she stops the bomb, rescues the prince, or negotiates through the streets of Dublin on a shopping trip. 

The given may be plausible or not, but I would argue it is characters who are realistic or not.

Realism, to me, is a moment where a person in a story acts or thinks or speaks in a manner in which you would act or think or speak. It is a moment where, given the situation the character finds herself in, she behaves in entirely appropriately given her character. It may be a scene of high drama or it may be someone doing nothing. The context may be fantasy, mystery, romance or comedy. The character may be likeable or unlikeable, may know everything or nothing of herself. The other characters around her may be realistic or unrealistic. But those moments of realism make a character realistic.

Some examples:

1. In Lonesome Dove, the novel by Larry McMurtry and the tv miniseries, Captain Call (Tommy Lee Jones's character) has fathered a son with a prostitute. He has adopted the boy, but keeps his fatherhood a secret out of shame. Late in the novel, his son, Newt, is being attacked by a Calvary officer for refusing to sell Newt's horse. Call sees the boy being quirted by the officer and rushes over to administer a severe beating, while the rest of the officer's regiment looks on. This act of violence is perfectly in keeping with Call's nature: he sees nothing contradictory in beating a man nearly to death for quirting Newt, yet refuses to tell Newt that he is Call's son.

2. The moment in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross when Aaronow and Moss ( Alan Arkin and Ed Harris in the movie) are discussing breaking into the office and Moss reassures Aaronow that they're not "talking" about breaking in, they're only "speaking" about it "as an idea."

3. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the speech of Frankenstein's monster (also named Frankenstein, technically, and yes, in the book he can speak) as he carts away his dead master's body.

4. The shirt scene from The Great Gatsby.

5. The exchange in Tony Kushner's Angels in America where Prior Walter references Tennessee Williams by saying "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers" and Joe's mother says "That's a stupid thing to do."

6. MacBeth's last words, and the last words of the American MacBeth, Ahab. Warriors facing battles they can't win, aware of their fate, and yet choosing to go out fighting. I guess one could count Beowulf's battle with the dragon if viewed along those lines.

7. Raymond Chandler's example of top-knotch movie writing: An elderly man and woman board an elevator. The man in wearing a hat. At the second floor a young woman gets on the elevator. The man removes his hat.

One of the advantages of viewing realism as a product of character and not of plausibility (people, not places) is that not all characters in a work need to be realistic. Conrad's Hart of Darkness has been touted for its realism in depicting European Colonialism, but African authors like Chinua Achebe have detested Conrad's unrealistic depiction of blacks. The characters of Marlow and Kurtz can be seen as realistic without blanketing the other depictions as realistic or not. Also, this approach rescues writers such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Harris, and even Dr. Seuss, whose writing may be fantastical, yet not without realism of character.

Interesting trivia relating to my last post: After seeing Branagh's show Wallander and noticing the Bergmanesque qualities of the show, I found out that Henning Mankell, author of the Wallander novels, is married to Bergman's daughter. How cool is that? Imagine the speeches at that wedding.

Branagh!

I just saw Valkyrie, a really underrated movie that everyone missed due to the misbehaviour and subsequent desperately-desired-comeuppance of Tom Cruise. Valkyrie reunited director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie, who did The Usual Suspects, and boasts a terrific supporting cast, including Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Kenneth Branagh, who only gets better as he ages. And Tom Cruise does a smashing job as the Guy Who Almost Got Hitler.

You'd think a movie about a botched assassination attempt would lack suspense, given that we know the outcome. But Day of The Jackal was a terrific film about the attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle, and it managed to build suspense despite historical knowledge. What makes the plot so intriguing is not the assassination attempt itself, but the attempt to take control of the Reich which happens afterward....and how goddamn close they were.

Another reason why the film is great: no accents. Singer pulls the Hunt For Red October trick, where the characters talk a little in German and then switch to English. Cruise and the rest of them speak with their normal accents, none of that "Velcome, ve haff bin vating for you" bullshit. I think Tom Cruise is a damn fine actor, but he's not an Accent Guy. He knows it and he works to his strengths. Nothing detracts from a good film like a bad accent.

The only casting flaw is Hitler himself, who looks like a cross between the archnemesis of Invader Zim and Christopher Walken's goth son in Wedding Crashers. We KNOW he's the bad guy; you don't have to turn him into Golum. My only other gripe is that there's not enough Branagh, who's whisked off to the Russian front only to pop up at the end.

Speaking of Branagh, I've been enjoying the new BBC series Wallander. It features Branagh as a Swedish homicide detective going through an existential crisis after a fifteen year old girl immolates herself in front of him. Branagh looks haggard as fuck, yet I've never seen a tv show with better cinematography. Every shot looks beautiful. And thankfully all the actors speak in normal English. Imagine the Rockford Files directed by Ingmar Bergman and you have Wallander. Try to fit it in amidst reruns of Jon and Kate Plus Eight.

Overheard on Public Broadcasting

"Peter Paul and Mary turned people on to peace."

Yeah, and that worked out real fucking good for everyone. PBS acts like folk music got our boys out of Nam and passed the Great Society legislature. Gimme a break.

If PPM introduced us to peace, then why don't we send them to Baghdad? "If I had a hammer, I'd sever your clitoris. I'd sever in the evening..."

Why can't folk singers just be recognized as folk singers? Why do they push this man-of-the-people bullshit? Two bald nitwits and a fat broad who sang other peoples' songs. Great voices, but they're not Martin Luther King, despite what PBS says. And as far as their social conscience: their biggest hit is about a dragon who lives in a magical kingdom. Peter Paul and Mary: big fucking deal. I'd like to see Ronnie James Dio, Lemmy and James Hetfield square off against these clowns. 

I love camping but can't afford it. That's one of the saddest statements I think I've ever written. I honestly can't afford to lie down in a forest, that's how poor I am.

I look at myself at 27, four years of school ahead of me, still living with my parents, and I wonder: when is this supposed to get fun?

Before Kwantlen and SFU I drove a forklift illegally in a warehouse for almost minimum wage. Ten, twelve hour days, working weekends and holidays, in order to pull in paychecks in the high three figures. I realized then I couldn't support myself as an unskilled labourer. I went back to school. My parents helped, I got student loans, I won scholarships, and I worked two jobs. 

Now after getting my BA and being accepted into the master's, I still don't see any money on the horizon.

Where are the jobs that pay you a livable wage, that allow you to have fun? As soon as school starts up I'll be TA'ing, which is a good gig. But so far that's the only job in my field that pays a decent wage for non-objectionable work and doesn't require moving to the Philippines for opportunity of Engrish magnificent pay for job number one.

I want an enjoyable job that allows time to write, enough money to pay rent or mortgage and still have a few beers on the weekend, low stress and low bureaucratic nonsense. I'm smart, hard-working, competent (not the same as smart) and ambitious. So what's the problem? Why is a non-labour, non-corporate-douchebag job that pays twenty bucks an hour an impossibility?

Criminal Geniuses, and other legal news

So: Someone hacked into my bank account. They deposited 1000, bringing my account total up to positive 800. They then withdrew 500 bucks, leaving me with a suspicious positive balance of three hundred. That's right, the criminals actually left more money in my bank than I had before. How fucked up is that?

I have to remember to appreciate my depression more, since it always seems to come right before a period of real inspiration.

A much more cogent portrait of balance-of-power theory is the scene in The Godfather where the five families agree to get into the heroin business and divvy up the territory. (That's nearly a metaphor for the Congress of Vienna.) Better still is the scene in The Godfather Part II in which Hyman Roth, Michael Corleone, and the chiefs of various U.S. corporations, standing on a hotel balcony in Havana, slice up a birthday cake that's decorated with the map of Cuba.

Fred Kaplan, Slate: "Hillary Clinton, Watch these Movies!"

The Godfather films as textbooks on diplomacy...brilliant. Another layer of signification added to my favourite films.

"Did anything happen after you were twelve that you could write a song about? He's like Jesus. You just know about Baby Bruce, and the Bruce that was crucified. Anything happen after high school? Anything?" 

The best Springsteen impression ever...and the most painful trashing.