Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

When I arrived at Bard College in 1961, some of the greatest film-makers of the 20^th century were in their prime. It seemed that every month a new film by a Kurosawa, a Bunuel or a Truffaut would show up at the movie theater in Red Hook, a nearby town. But the most eagerly anticipated films were those of Ingmar Bergman who died today at the age of 89. Films like “Smiles of a Summer Night,” “The Seventh Seal,” “Wild Strawberries” and “The Magician” made such an impact on me that I devoted my freshman year “field period” (an intersession that was meant for independent study or internships, etc.) to a reading of Bergman’s screenplays. I was captivated by the kind of dialogue found in “The Seventh Seal,” a film I watched for the first time in over 40 years on the Turner Classic Movie channel a few months ago. Here is a conversation between the Knight Antonius Block (Max Von Sydow), who has lost faith, and the angel of death:

Antonius Block: I want knowledge! Not faith, not assumptions, but knowledge. I want God to stretch out His hand, uncover His face and speak to me.

Death: But He remains silent.

Antonius Block: I call out to Him in the darkness. But it’s as if no one was there.

Death: Perhaps there isn’t anyone.

Antonius Block: Then life is a preposterous horror. No man can live faced with Death, knowing everything’s nothingness.

Death: Most people think neither of death nor nothingness.

Antonius Block: But one day you stand at the edge of life and face darkness.

Death: That day.

Antonius Block: I understand what you mean.

Although “The Seventh Seal” was made in 1957, it really didn’t hit its stride in the US until the early 1960s. This was when Bergman was at the top of his game. His tales of religious angst and men and women failing to communicate struck a chord with the more literate sectors of American society who had adopted existentialism and psychoanalysis as articles of faith. His films were the natural counterpart to the sort of books that were required reading at Bard College, from Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling” to Camus’s “The Rebel”. Bergman’s films were steeped in gloom and preached salvation through faith, even if it was not the conventional faith of the Sunday morning sermon.

By the time that the Vietnam War and the Black rebellion in the US were in full swing, Bergman’s films were a bit passé. A new generation of mostly American film-makers was much better at capturing the contemporary social upheaval such as Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” or “The Godfather.” A family drama like Bergman’s 1972 “Cries and Whispers” that took place in a gloomy mansion in the late 1800s almost seemed like self-parody to me, although the critics loved it.

One of Bergman’s biggest fans was Woody Allen who aspired to the Swedish master’s moral and psychological profundity without ever really carrying it off. His 1978 “Interiors” even had a title that sounded like something Bergman would come up with, not to speak of the plot which involved a dysfunctional family. Variety newspaper probably spoke for most critics when it said:

“Interiors” also looks like a Bergman film. Characters are photographed against blank walls, Keaton’s discussions with her analyst appear almost to be a confession into the camera. And the final third of Interiors was shot near the ocean in Long Island and looks like the Swedish island on which Bergman has photographed so many of his films.

Although I had trouble taking the message of the “The Seventh Seal” very seriously when I saw it on TCM a couple of months ago, I remained in awe of Bergman’s cinematography. The climax of the film, which shows a number of the major characters in a dance of death across a hilltop, still sends shivers down my spine. If nothing else, Bergman was a true poet.

While Bergman’s films do have a somewhat dated quality, they have achieved the status of classics. Fundamentally, they are about the longing for transcendence in a society that debases all human relationships and turns everything into a commodity including love itself. In the 1950s, when Bergman was finding himself as an artist, there was a deep sense of pessimism about the power of human beings to transform their world for the better. Unlike the 1930s, intellectuals sought escape in mysticism or adopted existential stances in order to cope with alienation.

Bergman shied away from interviews but in 1964 he made an exception for Playboy Magazine. These words might serve as a credo for what he was trying to get across in his films. Obviously, they will remain relevant in whatever type of society one lives in:

What matters most of all in life is being able to make that contact with another human. Otherwise you are dead, like so many people today are dead. But if you can take that first step toward communication, toward understanding, toward love, then no matter how difficult the future may be – and have no illusions, even with all the love in the world, living can be hellishly difficult – then you are saved. This is all that really matters, isn’t it?

Of course, the big question is how we are to be saved. For those of us who were transformed by the stormy 1960s, that mission will be carried out through the collective efforts of humanity and not a capricious deity.

A couple of documentaries have come my way that are worth considering. The first of these is “Escape to Canada” courtesy of Disinformation, a left-of-center film distribution company based in Canada. The other is “Primo Levi’s Journey,” which begins a theatrical run at Quad Cinema on 8/17/2007.

“Escape to Canada” is a salute to the Great White North after the fashion of “Sicko” but concentrates on three of Canada’s other assets besides health care–namely gay marriage, the legalization of marijuana and providing a haven for GI deserters from the war in Iraq. Directed by Albert Nerenberg, it is mixes affirmation of 60s counter-culture and cutting-edge political issues. There is a tendency to flatter Canadian bourgeois politicians by comparing them favorably to George W. Bush that borders on Canadian nationalism, but all in all it demonstrates that things are a bit more civilized to the North. The film presents Canada as the ultimate Blue state, to use the political categories operative in the USA. You generally get the impression that the average Canadian shares the values of Madison, Wisconsin students and professors and there’s nothing wrong with that.

On July 20, 2005 Canada became the fourth country in the world to sanction gay marriage. The film profiles Michael Hendricks and René Leboeuf whose successful law suit knocked down existing homophobic institutions. They were married on 1 April 2004 and many USA’ers now go to Canada to become “legal”. That was around the same time that the state of Massachusetts and the cities of San Francisco legalized gay marriage as well. The White House went on a big campaign for “family values” that resulted in retreats across the board in this country. However, despite attempts to organize a “pro-family” movement in Canada, the legislation remained intact. It have been interesting to hear a deeper analysis of why Canada is less fertile ground for religious fundamentalism, but the documentary tends to shy away from such a thing. It is mainly content to tell a lively story in a humorous manner, which is all to the good.

Besides Hendricks and Leboeuf, the other major character dealt with in the film is Marc Emery, the publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine. Emery was a leader of the legalize marijuana movement in Canada that won a significant victory in 2004 but that was eventually reversed. The film makes it clear that the same kinds of forces that operated from south of the Canadian border to oppose gay marriage were at work to make the weed illegal as well. Emery was arrested on July 29, 2005 by the Canadian cops, who were acting on a request from the US DEA who claimed that he was selling marijuana seeds in the US. He now faces life in prison and has become a symbol of Canadian sovereignty. In keeping with its determination to tell lively stories about sympathetic characters, the film does not get into Emery’s libertarian politics. Emery was a founder of the Freedom Party in Ontario that describes itself as in the tradition of Ayn Rand. They oppose bans on drugs, pornography, prostitution, and etc. but advocates privatization of health care–something at odds with Michael Moore’s vision of a more civilized society.

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I was particularly interested to see “Primo Levi’s Journey” because I knew next to nothing about him except for the fact that he had been a prisoner at Auschwitz and wrote about his experience there in works like “The Periodic Table” and “The Drowned and the Saved.” The film, however, is connected to a lesser-known work–“The Truce”–that Levi wrote after WWII ended. It is a kind of journal that tracks his circuitous journey along with other Italian ex-concentration camp survivors across Eastern Europe, the USSR and eventually back to Italy under the auspices of the Red Army. Interspersing excerpts from Levi’s book, Director Davide Ferrario follows the route that Levi took and interviews a wide variety of people whose lives have been impacted by the end of socialism. Since Ferrario has been connected professionally with experimental directors ranging from Rainer Fassbinder to Poland’s Andrzej Wajda, it is not surprising that the film has a rather oblique quality. Although it is an artful work, it is really not the place where one will find a straightforward narrative of Levi’s life, nor an analysis of the changes that have taken place in the former USSR and the Eastern bloc.

Now that I have begun to get a better handle on Levi’s life and career (he died at the age of 68 in 1987 from a fall down the stairs at his house, probably an accident rather than suicide), I can understand why Ferrario was drawn to his life and work. Levi was very much the intellectual and the observer. His written work was a protest against man’s humanity to man, but it is not put forward as a “solution” to the Jewish question. Unlike other men and women who are associated with the “holocaust industry”, as Norman Finkelstein puts it, Levi was a secular Jew before and after Auschwitz. Moreover, he never saw Israel as a haven against Nazi-like violence–to the point that he signed a statement in 1969 with other well-known intellectuals. When his long-time supporters took exception to this, he stated “Everyone is somebody’s Jew,” and that the “Palestinians are Israel’s Jews.”

There is little doubt that Ferrario is appalled by the end of socialism, despite his refusal to editorialize. He allows Andrzej Wadja to hold forth on the evils of Communist Poland, but this is more than counter-balanced by the voices of ordinary peasants in Moldavia and Belarus who feel that they have been screwed. In the press notes, Ferrario is asked, “After making this film, what is your Idea of Europe?”

He answers, “Very contradictory. Where capitalism (and sometimes democracy) is setting its roots, all that has to do with the past is swept away. Globalization makes everything all the same everywhere.”

That is the message that “Primo Levi’s Journey” communicates, but without hitting you over the head with it.

In offering the following comments on the one Hong Kong and four Japanese films I saw as part of this year’s Asian Film Festival in New York (I have already written about Chinese and Korean films), I understand that there is only an outside chance that they will be shown in theatres or become available through rentals. However, I do offer them as a reminder of the creativity and intelligence of films off the beaten track. If it weren’t for documentaries and foreign films, I doubt that I would ever have gotten involved with film reviewing, even as an avocation.

Hong-Kong

Directed by Soi Cheang, “Dog Bite Dog” is exactly as the name implies–a brutal struggle between a bad guy and Hong Kong cops. Unlike other films in this genre, Cheang is not interested in showing the more picturesque sides of Hong Kong. Instead he focuses on the seamy underbelly, from garbage dumps to the grimy back lots of warehouses and factories. With unredeemable characters on either side of the law, the ugly scenery serves as the perfect visual backdrop.

Pang (Edison Lee) is a hit man imported from Cambodia who has spent his childhood fighting other children in a grotesque version of “tough men” contests in the U.S. Bred like pit bulls, the boys are kept lean, mean and hungry. Pang, a survivor of many matches, has moved up in the world and now shoots people for a living. In the opening scene at a restaurant, he opens fire on the wife of a Hong Kong lawyer. Still haunted by the gnawing hunger of his youth, Pang wolfs down the food off her plate as she lies dead at the table.

Pang in full combat mode

Pursued by Hong Kong cops in the streets near the restaurant, Pang reveals himself to be a ruthless and efficient killer. Using knives and guns, he leaves one dead cop after another in his wake. Finally, he eludes his pursuers and flees to the outskirts of the city where he happens upon a vast garbage dump, which looks for all practical purposes like an actual Hong Kong garbage dump. There he spots a hut inhabited by a man and woman who apparently make their livings as scavengers. Looking through the window, Pang discovers them having sex. It will soon be obvious that he finds the woman named Pei Pei (Weiying Pei) totally irresistible despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that she is as grubby as him.

After the man is done screwing Pei Pei, he demands a meal. When she responds a bit slowly, he begins cursing and beating her. In showing another side of his character, Pang comes to her rescue and chokes the man to death. But as a creature of habit, he cannot show the woman the affection he obviously feels and proceeds to bully her into becoming his accomplice. He is mainly interested at first in getting help in finding the next boat out of Hong Kong. Since he doesn’t speak a word of Chinese, he can only communicate by drawing pictures (one is of a boat, a leitmotif throughout the film), hand gestures or the occasional slap.

The remainder of the film involves their growing affection for each other and finally their love. When the cops hold the woman as hostage, Pang defies the odds to rescue her. No matter how evil he is, we feel sympathy for him in his willingness to sacrifice everything for the woman he loves. As symbols of Asia’s most marginalized social layers, they only struggle for a normal life. Like Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables”, they have to fend off cops bent on bringing Pang to justice. The most determined of them is Wai (Sam Lee), the son of a crooked cop who is trying to redeem his father’s lost honor through his own heroism even when it means breaking departmental rules.

In many ways, this film is simply a reworking of Hong Kong policier traditions handed down from John Woo to Johnnie To. Virtuoso performances by Edison Chen and Sam Lee, who bring a kind of primal intensity to their roles, separate this film from the pack. This is especially true of Edison Chen, whose character really has no lines in the entire film. He must express his feelings through facial expressions, just like in a silent film, and he does it very well.

Japan

While released separately, “Death Note” and “Death Note: The Last Name” are essentially two parts of the same movie. Based on a best-selling manga (comic book), it tells the story of a law student named Light Yagami (Tetsuya Fujiwara) who stumbles across a notebook lying in the street one day that belonged to Ryuk, a god of death. When he takes it home, he discovers that it will allow him to cause the death (heart attack is the default) of anybody whose name is written in the book. As the son of the chief of police and a law student, Light is preoccupied with criminals getting off with a light sentence or going free like O.J. Simpson. Like the Charles Bronson character in the old “Death Wish” movies (but without his guts), Light proceeds to dispatch dozens of criminals by heart attack each day. He becomes known as Kira, the avenger god.

Light Yagami and Ryuk, from the original manga

Ryuk the death god, a 12 foot computer-generated figure, is Light’s constant companion and is one of the most interesting characters in the film. Like the rabbit Harvey who could only be seen by James Stewart, Ryuk is visible only to Light or anybody else who touches the notebook. He has a sardonic sense of humor and a fondness for apples. He accompanies Light everywhere he goes offering critical support for his vigilantism. But when Light begins to kill cops who are on his trail, Ryuk begins to be repelled by his young master and accuses him at one point of being more bloodthirsty than the god of death himself.

Light Yagami is a totally bloodless character. Although he has convinced himself that he is on a mission to uphold justice, he seems more like the youthful killers Leopold and Loeb, who were dramatized in “Compulsion.” They too were law students who turned to crime out of a thirst for power. Like them, Light is a fan of Nietzsche and is seen at one point in the film with his nose buried in “Man and Superman.”

There’s a fascinating article on the Death Note manga in today’s Salon. I concur thoroughly by this observation made by the author Douglas Wolk:

The core of the creeping fear in “Death Note,” actually, is its moral uncertainty: Most of its characters perpetually struggle with doubts over whether they’re doing right or wrong. Light is an unrepentant serial killer, a butcher on an enormous scale, but he isn’t a Freddy Krueger, a monster who represents pure evil, or a Patrick Bateman, a demonic symbol of his age. As coldly manipulative and egomaniacal as he is, he genuinely believes he has the moral high ground, and he sort of has a point — Ohba suggests that Light’s totalitarian world, ruled by a propagandistic TV channel and an arbitrary secret executioner, is in some ways a better, happier world than ours. And over the course of the series, we see glimpses of how the Death Note could be far worse in someone else’s hands; in the books’ only really weak sequence, a corporation acquires a Death Note of its own and uses it to prop up its business interests (by committee, no less).

Like “Death Note”, “Freesia: Bullet Over Tears” is based on a manga. Additionally, it deals with killing as an act of redress. In a future Japan, professional executioners licensed by the state carry out ritual revenge killings. The intended targets are allowed to hire their own armed defenders, also licensed by the state. These killings serve to release pressure in a society that is coming apart at the seams. The ritual might remind one of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” a short story that was required reading for high school students in the 1950s. There are constant riots in the street by people with all sorts of grievances. The cops run from one outbreak to another like the Keystone Cops. Time and place are announced on television and hit-squads descend on a street to ferret out their victims, who are usually pretty bad people who have escaped arrest and imprisonment–just like the characters who succumb to Death Note’s heart attacks.

Mr. Kanou

The film revolves around one of these professional killers, a Mr. Kanou (Tetsuji Tamayama) who is in his twenties and as bloodless as Light Yagami, even more so. Throughout the entire film, Kanou is totally indifferent to danger. Indeed, he is indifferent to just about everything, having been a victim of an army experiment that left him stripped of feelings.

The film is somewhat limited by Kanou’s lack of emotion, but moves along crisply nonetheless through set pieces involving combat between rival squads of executioners as well as being visually striking.

Finally, some words about “Memories of Matsuko,” a film that has the visual “snap, crackle and pop” of the manga-based films discussed above but that is derived solely from the hyperactive visual imagination of director Tetsuya Nakashima. Like his “Kamakazi Girls,” shown at the last New York Asian Film Festival, Nakashima’s latest is filled with pop art/camp sensibility flourishes. Typically, when the main character Matsuko, a woman who is abused by men her entire life, has hooked up with the latest heel, little cartoon bluebirds appear above their heads while an off-screen chorus sings a saccharine love song. Nakashima is heavily into irony, to say the least.

When the film begins, Matsuko Kawajiri (Miki Nakatani) has just died. She was an obese bag lady who is living in a garbage-filled tenement apartment who was murdered by an unknown assailant on the shore of a nearby river that she haunted. Her brother, who leads a conventional middle-class existence, sends his son out to her apartment to clean out the garbage. While there, he comes across various newspaper clippings and old letters that reveal the true story of this woman in a fashion reminiscent of Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane.”

It turns out that Matsuko was a beautiful young woman who had a good job teaching school. One day, when some money turns up missing, the principal accuses one of her students, a sullen and hostile creep, of theft. In an attempt to cover up for him, Matsuko “borrows” money from another teacher to make up for the stolen funds but gets caught in the act. Not only does she lose her job, the student she was trying to protect tells her to piss off. He was not interested in her protection and would be happy being punished.

From that point, everything goes wrong in Matsuko’s life. She hooks up with a nonstop procession of gangsters, pimps and psychotics who beat her at the drop of a hat. So dependent is she on the attention of a man that she cries out at one point that she would rather be beaten than be alone. Suffice it to say that this is not a very appetizing subject matter for a film, even if the abuse is presented in a black comedy fashion not unlike Terry Southern’s “Candy.”

I found this film thoroughly distasteful but compelling in an odd way. Whatever you want to say about this and the other Japanese films discussed here, they are certainly not interested in lulling the audience with a false sense that everything is right in the world.