Picture you and me together in the jungle, it will be okay.
Right, an entry with actual content. I had a really good conversation with heysawbones about gender identity last night, which ended in me saying, "The moral of this story is clearly FUCK A GENDER BINARY I DO WHAT I WANT, said in a loud voice with head bobbing." I think this should probably be my mantra, or possibly, as Tish said, "Screw haters. BE FABULOUS." Anyway, it was a refreshing conversation to have. I don't know what my purpose is in writing about it here, other than possibly to feel proud that said conversation existed. Also, this:
K: I was talking to my friend Jekka about this very subject the other day and the conclusion we came to was basically, being human is hard, let's not cheapen anybody's struggles unnecessarily.
T: I agree. And it seems like when you start defining yourself by those struggles, and it becomes institutionalized in a sense, you start using that as a tool to undermine how other people are struggling.
I don't know if I want to talk about anything else of consequence in my real life right now, because I'm pretty convinced I'm going to end up working at the Gap for the rest of my sad days, making no money, struggling, and living hand-to-mouth and I'm also in one of those phases where I hate everything I draw. WHAT ARE FACES. I don't know. I finally came up with my first decent idea for an involved series of paintings in a while, and I'm hoping that working on them pulls me out of my inadequacy funk.
Instead, here is a post I have been waiting to make for a really long time about a movie. It is called Reprise. It is Norwegian. It is on Netflix Instant. There is no reason for you not to watch it.
Reprise is the story of Phillip and Erik, two twenty-something best friends and aspiring writers who live in Oslo. The film begins when they each drop their completed manuscripts into a post box, grinning at each other and hoping for the best. They walk back through the streets of Oslo, through a parade, a spectacle of strange human behavior at its finest.
Phillip gets published. Erik doesn't. There isn't any adolescent posturing, no real sense of competition between them, and you get the feeling that maybe this is the way this relationship works - Phillip stands out a little more, Erik fades into the background, but happy to do so. Something happens, though; we never come to understand it fully, we only catch glimpses of it, but something about the pressure, the newfound notoriety, or perhaps it's the sudden, crushing depth of feeling he develops for a girl named Kari, but Phillip suffers a break from reality, and is hospitalized. And when he gets out of the hospital, he can't write.
Meanwhile, Erik is adrift. He's the kind of person, maybe, who defines himself by the support structure he provides for others. The group of friends he surrounds him with are all intelligent, upper middle-class, liberal people, and none of them have probably ever had a 'real' problem in their lives. This doesn't trivialize the movie, though; instead, it throws into sharp relief just how little it can take to throw someone's sense of self off-balance. There's a beautiful scene where Erik, being mean to someone, remembers the last time he was deliberately hurtful, when he was eight years old.
Erik's need to be there constantly for Phillip drives a wedge between himself and his friends, his girlfriend, possibly even his parents, and, most tellingly, Phillip himself. Erik gets a book published. It's about a man whose search for "the perfect language" drives him mad. It gets mixed reviews. He continues to insert himself in Phillip's struggle. He doesn't want to be replaced by Kari, though he wouldn't ever say such a thing. He wants Phillip to get better. He wants things to be the way they were before.
But the moral of Reprise is that you can't make things the way they were before, and that sometimes you have to learn to let go a little bit. That sometimes growing up means having the courage to let other people take care of the things you consider precious. That you have to learn to let go, to loosen your grip. That things don't last forever, nothing stays static, and it's okay. It's a quiet, clear film, and there are these incredible moments of humor contained within it that just serve to contribute to how refreshingly honest the whole thing feels.
I could probably go on forever. There's much more to it than just what I've written here. The acting is fantastic, the cinematography is gorgeous. The structure of the film (it's called Reprise for a reason) is deeply interesting, and the whole thing just made me want to move to Oslo and know these people. I can't promise that anyone else will feel as strongly about the movie as I did - there's a degree of self-identification with the character of Erik, a type of character you don't see very often, that I'm sure everyone won't feel. (But there are also Phillip and Kari and a whole host of other interesting characters, minor but clearly drawn, to identify with as well). It's certainly worth two hours of your time to find out, though, I think. If anyone else watches this movie, let me know what your opinions are. I'm interested. Click this terrible thumbnail below for a giant screencap sampler.
K: I was talking to my friend Jekka about this very subject the other day and the conclusion we came to was basically, being human is hard, let's not cheapen anybody's struggles unnecessarily.
T: I agree. And it seems like when you start defining yourself by those struggles, and it becomes institutionalized in a sense, you start using that as a tool to undermine how other people are struggling.
I don't know if I want to talk about anything else of consequence in my real life right now, because I'm pretty convinced I'm going to end up working at the Gap for the rest of my sad days, making no money, struggling, and living hand-to-mouth and I'm also in one of those phases where I hate everything I draw. WHAT ARE FACES. I don't know. I finally came up with my first decent idea for an involved series of paintings in a while, and I'm hoping that working on them pulls me out of my inadequacy funk.
Instead, here is a post I have been waiting to make for a really long time about a movie. It is called Reprise. It is Norwegian. It is on Netflix Instant. There is no reason for you not to watch it.
Reprise is the story of Phillip and Erik, two twenty-something best friends and aspiring writers who live in Oslo. The film begins when they each drop their completed manuscripts into a post box, grinning at each other and hoping for the best. They walk back through the streets of Oslo, through a parade, a spectacle of strange human behavior at its finest.
Phillip gets published. Erik doesn't. There isn't any adolescent posturing, no real sense of competition between them, and you get the feeling that maybe this is the way this relationship works - Phillip stands out a little more, Erik fades into the background, but happy to do so. Something happens, though; we never come to understand it fully, we only catch glimpses of it, but something about the pressure, the newfound notoriety, or perhaps it's the sudden, crushing depth of feeling he develops for a girl named Kari, but Phillip suffers a break from reality, and is hospitalized. And when he gets out of the hospital, he can't write.
Meanwhile, Erik is adrift. He's the kind of person, maybe, who defines himself by the support structure he provides for others. The group of friends he surrounds him with are all intelligent, upper middle-class, liberal people, and none of them have probably ever had a 'real' problem in their lives. This doesn't trivialize the movie, though; instead, it throws into sharp relief just how little it can take to throw someone's sense of self off-balance. There's a beautiful scene where Erik, being mean to someone, remembers the last time he was deliberately hurtful, when he was eight years old.
Erik's need to be there constantly for Phillip drives a wedge between himself and his friends, his girlfriend, possibly even his parents, and, most tellingly, Phillip himself. Erik gets a book published. It's about a man whose search for "the perfect language" drives him mad. It gets mixed reviews. He continues to insert himself in Phillip's struggle. He doesn't want to be replaced by Kari, though he wouldn't ever say such a thing. He wants Phillip to get better. He wants things to be the way they were before.
But the moral of Reprise is that you can't make things the way they were before, and that sometimes you have to learn to let go a little bit. That sometimes growing up means having the courage to let other people take care of the things you consider precious. That you have to learn to let go, to loosen your grip. That things don't last forever, nothing stays static, and it's okay. It's a quiet, clear film, and there are these incredible moments of humor contained within it that just serve to contribute to how refreshingly honest the whole thing feels.
I could probably go on forever. There's much more to it than just what I've written here. The acting is fantastic, the cinematography is gorgeous. The structure of the film (it's called Reprise for a reason) is deeply interesting, and the whole thing just made me want to move to Oslo and know these people. I can't promise that anyone else will feel as strongly about the movie as I did - there's a degree of self-identification with the character of Erik, a type of character you don't see very often, that I'm sure everyone won't feel. (But there are also Phillip and Kari and a whole host of other interesting characters, minor but clearly drawn, to identify with as well). It's certainly worth two hours of your time to find out, though, I think. If anyone else watches this movie, let me know what your opinions are. I'm interested. Click this terrible thumbnail below for a giant screencap sampler.