the flame
I saw a lot of movies on my birthday, two I've seen before, but which mean so much to me, reminding me how to live: Synecdoche and The Passion of Joan of Arc. And also Malick's Days of Heaven. We also rewatched Ink, which I continue to love, and The Muppet Movie, which I'll talk about first.
Æ said she thought The Muppet Movie might be the best children's movie she's ever seen, and along at least one axis, I think she's right. It has a depth and humanity that has rarely been seen in children's movies, and is never seen anymore. I have a certain amount of nostalgia for the Muppets, but I barely remember seeing this as a kid, and let me tell you, when I caught some old episodes of "The Muppet Show" I didn't think they held up very well. But this--I'm having trouble seeing what makes it different, but it actually had something meaningful to say to adults (as opposed to entertaining adults with double-entendres or whatever).
It also doesn't believe its own hype. Every movie, especially a Hollywood spectacle, creates a myth of its own existence, and a road movie about making it big in Hollywood faces the temptation to make its catharsis about acceding to that myth. (Myth! Myth! ...Yeth?) But when the Muppets finally sign their rich and famous contract (oh, the irony of using Orson Welles for that part) and start making their movie, it's obvious to the audience that the production pales compared to the adventure we've just witnessed. It's a little slapdash and precarious, and it ultimately collapses under its own weight, to be replaced by the glory of friendship and community (heralded by the famous rainbow). It demystifies media spectacle and Hollywood artifice, knowingly, but without cynicism. Most movies will claim to espouse those values, but won't dare to put them head to head against the promised mirages of glamour, fame, wealth, beauty. (Crispin Glover related, at the Q&A for his stage show, a story about how he found the ending of Back To The Future objectionable, because isn't it enough that George McFly learns to stand up for himself and live his dream? Do we have to literalize it by making him also rich? Is that really why we care about those things? Zemeckis bit Glover's head off, apparently, but Glover was at least convincing enough to have the black housekeepers replaced by the subservient Biff character.)
Even the glorious end title shot is literally torn apart by the arrival of Sweet'ums, which finally fully reunites the gang. (Hey, jenlight, if Sweet'ums is Slavoj Žižek, then the name of his book is "Jack Not Name, Jack Job.") There's something about humor serving as the sign of the bond of community that allows them to deflect not just the predations of the Doc Hoppers of the world, but also media ideology. The Muppets are far from glamourous, but they're having so much golldurn fun that glamour seems irrelevant. I think the cameos function in a similar way. I love the moment when Richard Pryor's balloon man says "Why not get both?" like he's revealing a secret of the universe.
Anyway, these are all probably the truths you learn when you find yourself getting paid a ton of money for putting a sock on your hand.
So let me get this straight: before Malick went into seclusion, his towering reputation was based on two movies, Badlands and Days of Heaven? Is that right? It's a little surprising to think that Hollywood A-listers were lining up for the chance to get cut out of The Thin Red Line on the reputation of those two films. They're both little movies, in a certain sense, although of course they deal with the biggest of themes. Both are undeniably gorgeous movies, though, with a rare meditative mood, and a reverence for the natural world.
Perhaps too predictable a reverence: when the accountant urges the landowner to get out while he's ahead, knowing what I know about Malick, I found it a little too easy to see how misfortune would upend everyone's mundane little plans--although I never foresaw the locusts. Locusts might seem a little too biblical, but I've seen plenty of locusts, and while I've never seen swarms like that, one locust has always seemed to me to represent the threat of a swarm, the threat of nature, and also the sheer futility of resistance.
The other incipient threat that loomed throughout the movie, at least for me, was the little sister's (Abby's?) adolescence. She was supposed to embody the principle of detachment, but I could never forget that any day now she would become vulnerable to the difficulties and constraints that had ensared her brother's girlfriend. I couldn't tell whether Malick intended that or not, whether that threat is intended to highlight Abby's detachment, or whether Malick is trying to say something about sexuality and prelapsarian innocence.
I don't know. It's definitely worth seeing, but I wanted more from it than I got.
I hadn't seen The Passion of Joan of Arc in years. Maybe more than ten. In my mind, it remains one of the best films of all time, which is pretty astounding for a silent film. (Try not to think about the fact that it was considered lost for about fifty years.) Dreyer again, man, and Artaud, and, needless to say, Mlle. Falconetti. This was the Criterion DVD with the Einhorn score, which worked marvelously.
But this film is also very special to me, because Joan is my patroness. I don't know what else to say about it. If you haven't seen it, you must, if you care about film at all.
Oh, there's this: we're all awed by Joan's humility, her loyalty to truth outside of her self-interest, the only explanation for her uncanny canniness, but when I was younger I was always a litle dissatisfied that Joan signed the confession and then recanted. (Of course, in the film, this is a fulfillment of her stated intent when they threaten her with torture.) This time, though, I saw it in a couple of new lights: first, Joan's commitment can manifest through both her strength and her weakness, and second, I found something very powerful about Joan casting away safety and its promises. It's one thing to refuse safety when it's offered, in the name of integrity, but here, Joan's integrity had already been compromised. She had signed the confession in front of God and everyone. When she recants, she doesn't even have the possibility of reclaiming her heroic integrity. She can only do the right thing, knowing it will mean agony and destruction.
"Je n'ai avoué que par crainte du feu," says the title card. "I only confessed for fear of the fire," or, as the subtitles had it, "Everything I said was for fear of the stake." She shames me. I think the title of my next collection, the Burning poems, will come from this.
Æ said she thought The Muppet Movie might be the best children's movie she's ever seen, and along at least one axis, I think she's right. It has a depth and humanity that has rarely been seen in children's movies, and is never seen anymore. I have a certain amount of nostalgia for the Muppets, but I barely remember seeing this as a kid, and let me tell you, when I caught some old episodes of "The Muppet Show" I didn't think they held up very well. But this--I'm having trouble seeing what makes it different, but it actually had something meaningful to say to adults (as opposed to entertaining adults with double-entendres or whatever).
It also doesn't believe its own hype. Every movie, especially a Hollywood spectacle, creates a myth of its own existence, and a road movie about making it big in Hollywood faces the temptation to make its catharsis about acceding to that myth. (Myth! Myth! ...Yeth?) But when the Muppets finally sign their rich and famous contract (oh, the irony of using Orson Welles for that part) and start making their movie, it's obvious to the audience that the production pales compared to the adventure we've just witnessed. It's a little slapdash and precarious, and it ultimately collapses under its own weight, to be replaced by the glory of friendship and community (heralded by the famous rainbow). It demystifies media spectacle and Hollywood artifice, knowingly, but without cynicism. Most movies will claim to espouse those values, but won't dare to put them head to head against the promised mirages of glamour, fame, wealth, beauty. (Crispin Glover related, at the Q&A for his stage show, a story about how he found the ending of Back To The Future objectionable, because isn't it enough that George McFly learns to stand up for himself and live his dream? Do we have to literalize it by making him also rich? Is that really why we care about those things? Zemeckis bit Glover's head off, apparently, but Glover was at least convincing enough to have the black housekeepers replaced by the subservient Biff character.)
Even the glorious end title shot is literally torn apart by the arrival of Sweet'ums, which finally fully reunites the gang. (Hey, jenlight, if Sweet'ums is Slavoj Žižek, then the name of his book is "Jack Not Name, Jack Job.") There's something about humor serving as the sign of the bond of community that allows them to deflect not just the predations of the Doc Hoppers of the world, but also media ideology. The Muppets are far from glamourous, but they're having so much golldurn fun that glamour seems irrelevant. I think the cameos function in a similar way. I love the moment when Richard Pryor's balloon man says "Why not get both?" like he's revealing a secret of the universe.
Anyway, these are all probably the truths you learn when you find yourself getting paid a ton of money for putting a sock on your hand.
So let me get this straight: before Malick went into seclusion, his towering reputation was based on two movies, Badlands and Days of Heaven? Is that right? It's a little surprising to think that Hollywood A-listers were lining up for the chance to get cut out of The Thin Red Line on the reputation of those two films. They're both little movies, in a certain sense, although of course they deal with the biggest of themes. Both are undeniably gorgeous movies, though, with a rare meditative mood, and a reverence for the natural world.
Perhaps too predictable a reverence: when the accountant urges the landowner to get out while he's ahead, knowing what I know about Malick, I found it a little too easy to see how misfortune would upend everyone's mundane little plans--although I never foresaw the locusts. Locusts might seem a little too biblical, but I've seen plenty of locusts, and while I've never seen swarms like that, one locust has always seemed to me to represent the threat of a swarm, the threat of nature, and also the sheer futility of resistance.
The other incipient threat that loomed throughout the movie, at least for me, was the little sister's (Abby's?) adolescence. She was supposed to embody the principle of detachment, but I could never forget that any day now she would become vulnerable to the difficulties and constraints that had ensared her brother's girlfriend. I couldn't tell whether Malick intended that or not, whether that threat is intended to highlight Abby's detachment, or whether Malick is trying to say something about sexuality and prelapsarian innocence.
I don't know. It's definitely worth seeing, but I wanted more from it than I got.
I hadn't seen The Passion of Joan of Arc in years. Maybe more than ten. In my mind, it remains one of the best films of all time, which is pretty astounding for a silent film. (Try not to think about the fact that it was considered lost for about fifty years.) Dreyer again, man, and Artaud, and, needless to say, Mlle. Falconetti. This was the Criterion DVD with the Einhorn score, which worked marvelously.
But this film is also very special to me, because Joan is my patroness. I don't know what else to say about it. If you haven't seen it, you must, if you care about film at all.
Oh, there's this: we're all awed by Joan's humility, her loyalty to truth outside of her self-interest, the only explanation for her uncanny canniness, but when I was younger I was always a litle dissatisfied that Joan signed the confession and then recanted. (Of course, in the film, this is a fulfillment of her stated intent when they threaten her with torture.) This time, though, I saw it in a couple of new lights: first, Joan's commitment can manifest through both her strength and her weakness, and second, I found something very powerful about Joan casting away safety and its promises. It's one thing to refuse safety when it's offered, in the name of integrity, but here, Joan's integrity had already been compromised. She had signed the confession in front of God and everyone. When she recants, she doesn't even have the possibility of reclaiming her heroic integrity. She can only do the right thing, knowing it will mean agony and destruction.
"Je n'ai avoué que par crainte du feu," says the title card. "I only confessed for fear of the fire," or, as the subtitles had it, "Everything I said was for fear of the stake." She shames me. I think the title of my next collection, the Burning poems, will come from this.