Movies

Or better, “Old Chestnuts Mangled!” Here’s what might have happened to these famous movie scenes if the writers had been on strike at the time. It takes a quick read, but some are quite appropriate, or not!

The video is called A World Without Writers from AWorldWithoutWriters.

The guests having all left this morning and it being a quiet Labor Day afternoon, I thought why not watch the rest of Pan’s Labyrinth, the wonderful movie by Guillermo del Toro, the great Mexican director. So I did. I had purchased the DVD several months ago and watched a bit of it a couple weeks ago. But this time I watched it from the beginning to the end and it shook me with its earth-shattering tragedy balanced by its profound and, yes, wondrous fantasy. This fantasy experienced by an eleven-year old girl who alone can see the fairies, the Fawn, and various other characters in the labyrinth, is balanced by the terrible struggle of a sadistic fascist captain and his men fighting the remaining rebels in the woods in 1944 in Franco’s Spain. I breathlessly focused on the well-presented subtitles — the movie is in Spanish — as the action moved excitingly on, alternating between the struggles in the real world and those of the girl performing her tests in the fantasy world to prove to the Fawn that she indeed is the real princess. It turns out that she wins her struggle and the evil captain is defeated but there are prices for this victory. I can’t find the words to express the power of the ending in the fantasy world as it intersects with the real world. Yes, it’s a totally profound and beautiful movie. Y’all should see it.

Update: I should mention that I first heard about this movie on Steve Hayes’ blog. He has a good discussion of it here, and there are a number of interesting comments bringing out points I left out. But I would see the movie first: the comments give away a lot of the action.

It is perhaps curious that the great film director of the 1960’s, Michelangelo Antonioni, age 94, died on the same day as the great film director Ingmar Bergman, age 89, namely, July 30, 2007. Again, the NYT has a four web page article Michelangelo Antonioni, 94, Italian Director, Dies on the career of the movie maker. Antonioni’s great film, L’avventura, I saw during the early 1960’s and thought myself quite hip at the time for sitting through this lengthy avant-garde film. Some of my friends were bored by it but I was determined to defend its drawn-out eroticism and existentialism. I remember very little about it now, but here’s a scene I found on the net:

Will she jump? Or is she just looking for Anna? Could be either one or both.

Ingmar’s passing at 89 today, or was it yesterday, brought to mind again how much I was fascinated by his films. I think my favorite was Wild Strawberries. The clock with no hands, the funeral processions, the waste of hate, the contrast of youth and age, the isolation, the uncanniness, all these are vague memories now but at one time were more intensely felt and remembered. (I should see the movie over again?)

I’m perusing, as I write this, the NYT article this morning, Ingmar Bergman, Famed Director, Dies at 89. OK, here’s an excerpt from the article:

In 1957, the same year as “Seventh Seal,” Mr. Bergman also directed “Wild Strawberries,” his acclaimed study of old age. In the film, the 78-year-old Isak Borg (played by the silent-film director and actor Victor Sjostrom), drives through the countryside, stops at his childhood home, relives the memory of his first love and comes to terms with his emotional isolation. “I had created a figure who, on the outside, looked like my father but was me, through and through,” Mr. Bergman has said. “I was then 37, cut off from all human emotions.”

I think I first saw the movie and became fascinated with it in the early 1960’s when I was in my early thirties, but now I’m the same age as Isak Borg in the movie, although I’m certainly not suffering the way he did. It’s interesting that I was so fascinated with it at the time, and perhaps still am.

UPDATE 7/31/2007: Eric Alterman’s first Bergman film was Wild Strawberries and he has interesting comments on the film here.

I just discovered this, as a result of looking up MaharishiUniversity, as a result of looking at the link Danielle gave me to a YouTube video by John Hagelin. A small world, lots of connections! There’re some great videos of David Lynch talking about Transcendental Meditation and how he’s been doing it for 32 years and the effects it has on him. Fascinating! Here!.

See an earlier post of mine entitled, Lost Highway, a movie by David Lynch. Here’s a review.

Update: On second thought and after reading some material on conspiracy theories, for example, here, I’m not quite so enraptured by David Lynch. Yes, he’s a creative genius, I feel, but one must take much of what he preaches with a grain of salt. For example, I’m not at all convinced by his questioning of 9/11. However, I do agree that proper meditation, whether transcendental or not, would be good for the soul. I’ve tried it but haven’t gotten very far. Ah well, I can’t do everything.

We watched this David Lynch film last night on the Independent Film Channel. How bizarrely bizarre! Even Roger Ebert couldn’t pin it down as to purpose. But that was the idea: great schemes and scenes but no purpose. Still, the scenes were often fascinating and sprinkled with humor amidst the atmosphere of dark and ghostly film noir, including human morphing in a death row cell. It held our interest, or should I say fascination, until the end. And then! What did it all mean? Who knows? It was a David Lynch film.

This is a great and powerful movie, a miraculous Israeli-French co-production by Radu Mihaileanu, which is given five stars by the Montreal Gazette. It’s the story of a semi-starving Ethiopean Christian boy who is pushed on a plane to Israel with Ethiopean Jews also in a semi-starving state. It’s his mother’s hope when she forces him to take the plane that he will “live and become and not come back until then”. The movie traces his development through three phases (boy, adolescent, and adult) of his struggle in Israel as portrayed by three wonderful actors. He is adopted by a liberal Israeli family and gradually overcomes rejection and suffering in the new culture to find his place in family, society and the world. I was captivated by the film, by its power and its reinforcing music, from beginning to end, and came away with a feeling for the reality of the desparate situations that can develop in far away lands, as well as a great love and sympathy for the leading characters in this wonderful movie.

Another name for this German movie (in English) is “Wings of Desire”. Anyway, I think it’s a great and deep movie.

As the film begins you see Berlin from an aerial view in monochrome. Then you see a man way up on a high tower and it is his view that we are seeing. He is in another world, the world of the supernatural, of angels. He is dressed in a conventional overcoat, looks totally human. Then we see another angel. They are back on earth sitting in a car. The two are comparing notes. Their job is listening to the voices of people, consoling the troubled, the disturbed, the sick, unbeknownst of course to the person being consoled — or are they somehow a part of the person’s feeling?

Later one of the angels falls in love with a beautiful trapese artist and decides he’s had enough of being an angel. He wishes to become mortal. This takes place. The other angel helps but does not cross over. The real world is shown in color; the world as the angels see it is in monochrome.

Peter Falk is in the movie, lending it a touch of folksy humor and reality. Turns out though that he was once an angel. He helps the angel who wants to become mortal.

There is much beauty in the film. Many touching scenes. Great and mysterious music. Even the rock star Nick Cave appears. But the haunting music, as though of a million voices blending in a never ending quest for reality in the world, really got to me.

The poetry was written by Peter Handke and the film was directed by Wim Wenders.

Check out the reviews.
Do a google on “Wings of Desire” Ebert, for example.

– Mardé

PS. I got my dvd through Netflix.