Time Out of Joint:

My Boy Jack | PBS

                  

"Have you news of my boy Jack? Not this tide."
— Rudyard Kipling, My Boy Jack

In 1914 England, patriotism is high in the early days of WWI, and writer Rudyard Kipling (David Haig, Four Weddings and a Funeral) is one of its most eloquent and passionate voices. John "Jack," (Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter films), Kipling's only son, is underage, hopelessly myopic, and eager to join the war effort. Kipling's outspoken American wife Carrie (Kim Cattrall, Sex and the City) remains more sanguine on the course of the war, and the fate of her family. My Boy Jack, based on a true story, tells of a nation at war, and offers an intimate portrait of one family's complex and divided experience in it.

via www.pbs.org

Tomorrow we will conclude our investigation into Die Hard as Christmas movie. And although my initial list of reviews will be severely truncated I think this limited progression will work well.

Twelfth night will will hopefully bring a brief exploration of Joyeux Noel (2005) and the apocalyptic nature of Christmastide, and Epiphany will culminate with the adoration of the Christ child in Children of Men (2006). With that said, I should note an absolutely beautiful movie that aired last night on PBS, My Boy Jack.

It is a movie of value. It is a movie with substance. Well directed, despite the fact that the original material was a stage play. It doesn't try to pretend to be a play. When it can, it uses the language of cinema to tell its story. Wonderful performances by Daivd Haig, Kim Catrall (yes), Carey Mulligan, and Daniel Radcliffe as the idealistic adventure seeking son of Rudyard Kipling.

Ginia Bellafante's review at the New York Times is an absolutely abysmal display of myopic post-critical trash. Don't buy into it.

It is difficult for us to comprehend the the apocalyptic horrors World War 1 unleashed on Western civilization. The best and brightest minds of the European continent were decimated in the meat-grinder of the Somme. We still live in its shadow. World War 1 signaled the end of classical Liberalism. World War 2 signaled the end of humanism.

Ours is  a world where dead bodies, murder and sex are shown on television (commercials) at noon on a Sunday afternoon, and the cinematic industrial complex thinks that the concerns and pain of a family struggling with sending a son to the gates of hell belong on a small budgeted television production. Despite this madness, My Boy Jack is an honest and artful taste of the dregs of personal and social human existence. It forces us to face up to the apocalyptic element of existential life, even if it happens to be the privileged family of Rudyard Kipling.

You may not get the roller coaster rush, or the sexual twinge, or the feeling of post-colonial righteous indignation, but you will be a better human being for examining these human struggles ...

 

 

also read: Meditations on Apocalyptic Romanticism Part 1 and Meditaions on Apocalyptic Romanticism Part 2

Narrative and the Grace of God: The New 'True Grit' - NYTimes.com

The words the book and films share are these: “You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free with the exception of God’s grace.” These two sentences suggest a world in which everything comes around, if not sooner then later. The accounting is strict; nothing is free, except the grace of God. But free can bear two readings — distributed freely, just come and pick it up; or distributed in a way that exhibits no discernible pattern. In one reading grace is given to anyone and everyone; in the other it is given only to those whom God chooses for reasons that remain mysterious.

A third sentence, left out of the film but implied by its dramaturgy, tells us that the latter reading is the right one: “You cannot earn that [grace] or deserve it.” In short, there is no relationship between the bestowing or withholding of grace and the actions of those to whom it is either accorded or denied. You can’t add up a person’s deeds — so many good one and so many bad ones — and on the basis of the column totals put him on the grace-receiving side (you can’t earn it); and you can’t reason from what happens to someone to how he stands in God’s eyes (you can’t deserve it).

What this means is that there are two registers of existence: the worldly one in which rewards and punishment are meted out on the basis of what people visibly do; and another one, inaccessible to mortal vision, in which damnation and/or salvation are distributed, as far as we can see, randomly and even capriciously.

via opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

Be sure to check out the Stanley Fish review of the Coen Brothers' new film True Grit. It seems Mr. Fish has been reading a little Thomas á Kempis, and this brief investigation into the mysteries of Nature v. Grace may prove to be an exquisite preparation for Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.

Caution in the Wilderness

I recently experienced the new Arcade fire 'hyperlink-video', The Wilderness Downtown, and was  cautiously moved. The video allows you (or more accurately you allow it) to access the memories of your childhood by incorporating Google Earth images of the address where you grew up.

I must confess that the sense of nostalgia for place, smell, texture, and sounds is overwhelming if you give yourself over to the experience. And certainly, this concept of moving image as a Borgesian 'garden of forking hyperlinked images', may very well be the future of digital cinema. Just image what could be done if, instead of using google earth, we allowed them to use our iPhoto file or our video files!

But I’m leery of the possibilities. For one, this is certainly perfecting the advertising technique called Lovemarks, which is intended to be some kind of 'hyper-brand' or a 'brandless brand' that uses sensuality, intimacy and mystery to sell a product. And lets face it ... the new Arcade Fire album is a product. What greater tool than suturing your own sense of nostalgia for youth and innocense to a product!

The other product is, of course, the Google Chrome web browser, which is 'recommended'. I ran into problems not using it so 'recommended' comes with an ironic asterisk. At one point, I think 6 different screens are used to create a pastiche of memory and movement. You can type a post card to your younger self and share it via cyber magic ...

Even more, however, I'm leery of the digitalization of memory through video and photographs which may spell the end of memory as we know in the human race. We don't remember in web-browser frames at 1080p by whatever --if you're lucky. And we certainly don't remember using copyrighted technologies that give us vantage points that we have no recollection of in the first place. Memory is fleeting and imprecise, it comes and goes as it wills not always when we will. It begins one place and often ends non-diegetically in another.

This is where the cinematic time-image will always be, not only, a superior aesthetic experience, but be a superior medium for entering into the complex mysteries of time, space, and memory. The cinematic time-image is a medium of contemplation and growth rather than the colonization of commerce and the components of the mega-machine via it's increasingly sophisticated delivery device --'artful entertainment'.

It's no wonder the two most successful art forms of the late 20th century and early 21st are advertising and pornography ...

time is certainly out of joint

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

F.W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Story of Two Humans is one of those films I've waited to see so I could experience it in a cinema atmosphere. I finally had that chance last night at the Paramount Theater in Austin.

I must admit that I was utterly unprepared for how 'Modern' a film Sunrise actually is. I was overcome by, what Deleuze calls, the dynamic sublime of Murnau's  movement-image. Conceived in Germany and not wholly bound by the 'action' montage of D.W. Griffith, the members of the 1st Academy awards probably didn't know what to do with Sunrise. Although they recognized it's acting (Janet Gaynor) and cinematography (Charles Rosher and Karl Struss) they didn't award it with 'best picture'. That distinction went to the WW1 action epic Wings. Instead, the academy awarded Sunrise with an award recognizing it as a 'unique' and 'artistic' production thus setting a precident for the next 8 decades.

It is quite telling after all that Sunrise is 'A SONG of Two Humans' rather than a 'Story' of two humans. Murnau's fluid camera technique, evocative cinematography, and insitance on human forms all tell the 'story' more than title cards, which are few and far in between. Time is always pulsing through the film trying to bind past and present and reveal itself subjectively. As Henri Bergson notes, movement in time is like the concatination of notes in a melody, when you break down the chain into series of successive notes you no longer have the tune.

Murnau's deep focus, a camera that is always trying to push through or have action come towards it, his dream sequences and flashbacks all point towards techniques Welles and Ozu will perfect in the 30's and 40's and the Italian Neo-Realists and successive New Waves will apply towards political and philosophical ends after WW2.

Saddly, Sunrise was't a 'box-office success' and Murnau lost directorial autonomy on his final three films. Apparently the American audience and studios wanted his work to look and feel more like Wings. My God, what this industry does to its visionaries and geniuses ...

Murnau died in a car crash in 1931 (at the age of 42), but the Goodness, Beauty and Truth of his Sunrise lives on ...

a true masterpiece.

Everlasting Moments: The Gift of Seeing

I finally had a chance to see Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments (2008). A beautiful film shot in 16mm, Everlasting Moments is an evanescent tale of the artist's eye ... the gift of seeing the beauty in the world even if life is weighed down in the ruts of the everyday.

Without sentimentality Troell's film moves; it never reflectively or self consciously pauses to embrace the magnitude of artistic craft but only allows us to glimpse these divine moments of calm creation in the midst of life's torrential gale.

Like IFC's other 'film about the nature of art', Summer Hours, art/craft/and life are experienced as interchangeable and often unnoticeable. As supposed to the manufactured and consumable 'Star', the (often unknown) artist help us see. The artist enriches our everyday world.

It's certainly a call to us all to slow down, be present, and learn to see with new eyes.

Summer Hours: review

 

"i took something ordinary. what would i do with something valuable?"

Glenn Kenny hits the nail on the head: Olivier Assayas' beautiful film Summer Hours  strikes the perfect chord between ideas and characters. It manages to be both a meditation on the nature of what we call Art versus an art that is an active part of our lives, the nature of craft, beauty and artifact, and also on time, family and memory in a rapidly changing globalizing world. From the opening credits which slowly reveal the spectral image of a house --as in a dream or a fleeting memory-- I was entranced by its simple beauty. Although i missed this film last decade (the film was shot in 2007 and released in 2009), i'm going to retro-actively add it to my 'best of list'.

i'm having a 'panic attack'

 
Panic Attack dir. Fede Alvarez

By now, you may have already heard about the internet success story Panic Attack! by Fede Alvarez. Director Sam Raimi was so impressed with the '$300' 4:49 Youtube sensation that he is giving Mr. Alvarez $30 million dollars to make an original feature.

Panic Attack! is being hailed as evidence of the democratization of cinema through the mediums of digital video and social media distribution (5 million Youtube hits!).

But there are so many things about this story that irks me as illusory, consumer, and propaganda --all of which not only constitute the death of quality cinema but the death of the human soul ...

Big Red One

It's Memorial Day in the States . . . always a difficult day to commemorate when a country is at war. the most people know about war is through the cinema. war films generally range from the absurd to the pornographic.

One film that does get it right, in so many ways, is Samuel Fuller's epic The Big Red One. "The real glory of war is surviving", Fuller said. More of a pastiche collecting Fuller's own memories of World War 2, The Big Red One contemplates war as murder, heroism, duty, futility, madness and justice. Most importantly though --and Fuller, the former crime beat reporter, always seems to distill things to a truthful essence in his films-- war is about surviving.

Sam Fuller is a simple hard boiled story teller who manages to remember that cinema is about action/movment/images rather than talking. Situated somewhere between Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (one of the greatest 'war' films ever made) and Saving Private Ryan (a total rip-off of Fuller's greatest moements shot in pornographic realism) Fuller manages to make a war movie without turning it into an action flick. "Everyone is a hero and a coward", Fuller says in an interview, "what matters is what you do in the moment." Most revealing is Fuller's casting of Lee Marvin (gaunt and wizened like death) over John Wayne. Marvin delivers one his finest performances as a World War 1 vet who has seen too many winters, knows that killing is the only way to survive in war and longs for life . . .

The war film is always a difficult thing . . . every great war film is actually an anti-war film. the choice of war over peace should never be confused with valuing heroism over cowardice or giving ones life so another may live. Heroism and Self-emptying sacrifice are virtues that shine despite the hellish inbreaking that is war. In the end, these virtues are not to be set apart but are to be valued because they reveal the most important 'glory of war' . . . life.

Exorcism of Emily Rose

if you visit rottentomatoes you'll find a mixed bag of reviews of The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005). I finally watched it last night and was pleasantly surprised . . .

The film is loosely based on the events surrounding the death of Anneliese Michel and the subsequent trial (called the 'Klingenberg Case') of the Priest(s) who performed the Roman Rite of exorcism on her. This is the best use of the horror genre i've seen since The Mothman Prophecies: the techniques of the horror genre are used to disclose the fantastic and the strange inbreaking (manifestation) of the spiritual into the physical world.

Have you ever noticed how often the phrase "Do not be afraid . . ." comes up in the bible? It comes up so often because when the supernatural breaks into the narrative it's a frightening event: people get scared! This is how EOER makes use of horror. Images, sounds and actions that break the plane of the 'normal'.

The films disjunctive visual technique is carried over into the structure of the script as well. The film isn't a straight horror flick but moves between the cool rationalism of the courtroom drama and the bizarre disjunctive images of horror. Rather than a Law & Order episode on acid that needs to pick a genre there is a justification for this genre slide that serves the purpose of the narrative. There is a responsibility to "Emily's story" which is under attack. Can rationalism do justice a narrative of faith? The answer isn't easy . . . and the film plays to this hermenutical problem.

with pornography like The Hills Have Eyes and Hostel it's nice to come across a film that uses horror to ask questions rather than overstimulate our reptilian brain stems. It's even more rewarding to find a horror flick that can use the genre to ask theological questions . . .

(for some expert advise of theology and horror visit my friend and colleague Phil at the conversation) . . .

post script: The film is only strengthened by the cast. Tom Wilkinson (see Normal), Laura Linney (see the Squid and the Whale) and Campbell Scott (see The Secret Lives of Dentists) bring integrity to the film.

German filmmaker Hans-Christian Schmid -displeased with the Americanized version- is currently in post-production of Anneliese Michel's (who died in Bavaria) German story.

black Jesus: Son of man

I really appreciate it when people take risks with their art and their theology. 'Son of Man' is such an endeavour. Filmed in South Africa, Son of Man portrays Jesus as a non-violent African revolutionary born in a shanty town ...

It seems that the filmmakers have managed to create a well balanced mix of liberation theology and orthodox christology:

"Dornford-May says focus groups of church leaders and ordinary Christians in South Africa, where Christianity often comes in a conservative form, broadly praised the film, which he hopes will prove a hit on the continent and worldwide."

I'm interested in what a Jesus film for a 'world come of age' would look like. After reading Norman Mailers 'The Fight' I'm fascinated to see what the Christ narrative would look like --on screen-- through the lens of the African (not african-american!) sensibility.

"Dornford-May, who says he subscribes to Christ's teachings without necessarily believing he is the son of God, says the Jesus in the film is a divine being who rises from the dead. [emphasis mine]

His resurrection is meant to signal hope for Africa, the world's poorest continent which is sometimes dismissed by foreigners as a hopeless mess of conflict and corruption."

At this point the Christ narrative is losing its ability to 'shock' (but not liberate!). It will be wonderful to see how cinematic contextual appreciation of the Gospel can visually add to our theological interpretations.