Showing posts with label movie review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie review. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Wobbly times number 175

Only Lovers Left Alive


In "Only Lovers Left Alive" Jarmusch puts John Hurt in the role of Christopher Marlowe, nowadays a reclusive writer living in Tangier. Seems Chris was the real writer of HAMLET and other works attributed to William Shakespeare. The script goes differently, according to Jarmusch in his latest flick. Jim is both the script writer and director. As we learn in "Only Lovers Left Alive", Marlowe faked his reported early bar room fight to the death to conceal his real being as vampire and, the literary genius feeding Shakespeare his plays. This is an old theory (not the vampire part) surrounding the true authorship of the great Shake's plays and poems. To be sure, there are other theories in with regard to the authorship of RICHARD III along with the others; but this is Jim playing with that notion.

According to Jim Jarmusch, it is now 450 or so years on and Marlowe is still alive in Tangier. He is still writing, still in a kind of self-imposed exile, much like Paul Bowles was in the Tangier of his time. And like Bowles, Marlowe the vamp has mentored a local Moroccan writer trying to make his way up into the world of recognised writers.

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to."

[MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ]”
― Jim Jarmusch


And then we have the two main protagonists: the lovers left alive after centuries have rolled by.  And, spending their time amongst the most imaginative, creative minds of whatever era they happened to have lived through.  Of course, their names are Adam (played by Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton).  

Oh yes, Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden due to their tasting of God's forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.  

No, not quite that pair, but what a pair! These two have been married since the mid 19th century. They are vampires and both know Marlowe.  Eve lives in Tangier and regularly commiserates with Marlowe. Adam's digs are in Detroit. He lives the lone life of the brooding artist. When Adam gets suicidal enough to purchase a special hard wooden bullet he can shoot into his heart, Eve, who does not know about his bullet purchase, senses it after a video phone call.  Eve is not only sensuous, she's a master sensor when it comes to almost anything, including inanimate objects.  Just a touch of say a violin will bring out its history. After a super sonic re-reading of her personal library,she gathers enough books to fit into her two suitcases and takes the first night flight (mai oui) out of Tangier to Paris and from there by red-eye to Detroit. 

The film is sprinkled with wise asides and humour; but at the centre of all the dialogue is the notion that something is awry on the planet. What's rotten in Denmark and across the globe is, to our dear vampires eyes, the utter lack of appreciation amongst the 'zombies' for their own creative geniuses in the arts and sciences.  But this is an old problem, Eve observes as she tries to quiet the suicidal impulses of Adam.  It's just that Adam sees and attempts to demonstrate to Eve, through the empty architecture of Detroit, a metaphor for where the human race is taking the planet now that it has industrialised nature.  In a way, Adam senses the commodification, the cheapening of all that surrounds him as humankind takes itself down the road to environmental collapse.  But Eve won't have it.  She sees the decay, but points to nature's irrepressible life force.  Detroit will come back, she says.  It has water and where there's water life will reappear.  

Adam and Eve are intellectuals.  They observe and create as their very good friends amongst the human community have done: Newton, Galileo, Shelley, Wollstonescraft, Schubert, Byron (although he was a pompous ass, according to Adam).  Their portraits adorn Adam's wall.  According to Adam, imagination is dying in the modern age and he and Eve and one assumes Marlowe are surrounded by 'zombies', meaning most of humanity.  But, in case you thought all vampires are creative, sensitive geniuses, Jarmusch throws in a visit by Eve's little sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska), a vamp from LA--zombie central, according to Adam.  

Ava may be hundreds of years old; but she acts very much like a spoiled, contemporary teen consumer.  As soon as she arrives in Detroit, she begins appropriating everything which she takes a fancy to: Adam's precious music collection; his stash of disease free O negative blood and even his supplier friend Ian (Anton Yelchin), the one who gets him musical instruments and as mentioned, his customised wooden bullet.   

It might be worth having a toke before seeing "Only Lovers Left Alive". The music in this movie is fantastic and what the heck, Adam, Eve, Ava and Christopher are all indulging in O negative. 


Saturday, January 22, 2011

Wobbly times number 99



The Weather Underground (2002)




"Weather Underground", soon to be a major motion picture....see the film, but read this first.

Weatherman said, "We are everywhere." And they were. But, there weren't very many of them. Max, I'd say about 700, if you include active sympathizers. Still, that was a lot of people, mostly kids, who took up the challenge of making a political revolution in order to help stop the Vietnam War and to participate in what the Weather Underground ideologically understood as a world revolution in the late '60s-mid '70s. That was one of the BIG problems with Weatherman. They didn't think too deeply about history or theory. They were the self-described "action faction" of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They weren't going to wait around while a bunch of armchair revolutionaries were intellectually masturbating while black, brown, red and yellow people were being oppressed by white honkeys. No sir-ree, Bob. They were going to stop the Vietnam War by, "bringing the war home" and align themselves with the oppressed peoples of the Third World and people of colour at home in order to meaningfully participate in the anti-imperialist peoples' war. "We chose to become guerillas", they announced as they watched television and saw what they called imperialist soldiers wreaking a "destruction of peoples' culture."

Weatherman's goal was to invigorate anti-war struggle at home by trying the dialectically opposite strategy of the non-violent peace movement. "Piece Now!" was their slogan, the rifle their image. Revolutionary violence was their method. In many ways, Weatherman was an outgrowth of the identity politics of violence which grew out of disillusionment with non-violent tactics identified with Martin Luther King, but you wouldn't know this just by watching "Weather Underground".

Malcolm X proclaimed that "violence was as American as apple pie" and that black people would achieve their liberation from racism, "by any means necessary." Cities burned. H. Rap Brown cheered urban uprisings by ghetto dwellers from LA to Detroit with his famous, "Burn, Baby Burn!". King's attempt at creating an integrated, non-violent mass movement was slowly being challenged by people like Stokely Carmichael and the ideology which stated that blacks needed their own movement–let other "races" deal with getting their acts together. The old ideas of there being only one race, the human race were outmoded, they said and thus a substantial part of a New Left ideology of "identity politics" was born.

The politics of class was not altogether discarded, it was just put in the back seat. The driver's seat was to be occupied by new, more up-to-date, modern ideas. The Revolution was seen as an ultimate coming together of the oppressed peoples of the world, especially people of colour who would surround the urban centres of the First World, and as Mao's People's Liberation Army had done in 1949, come crashing through the gates of the cities from the countryside, seething with Third World revolutionary struggles.

But what were the people *without* colour to do?

What would be their role?

Weatherman thought they saw the prevailing wind. They needed no more understanding, no weatherman to know which way the wind blows. The Black Panthers were correct about the political situation in the USA, they thought. They agreed that the "honkey" proletariat was bought off. The working class was too conservative and comfortable within its "white skin privilege".

Weatherman felt guilty about the oppressive nature of their "race". The real revolutionaries would come from the lumpen-proletariat, people who didn't have jobs and who were "outlaws in the eyes of America": dope smoking students and hippies. To Weatherman this meant white youth. Weatherman was composed of white youth. "They dressed like students. They dressed like hippies", to borrow an image from an old Talking Heads song describing underground life.

According to Weatherman ideology, "every long hair is a Yippie." "America's youth is behind enemy lines," they proclaimed. It was their job as "communist cadre" to "lead white kids." "Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks," they announced. They vowed to fight alongside and support black, brown, yellow and red people. "Never again will they fight alone," they wrote in their communiques. This anarcho-Maoist-Fidelista potpourri is only hinted at in "Weather Underground". The best the film producers can do in terms of critical understanding of the group is to trot Todd Gitlin on camera. The former SDSer turned social-democratic academic, manages to whine about how the Weatherman faction of SDS "stole" the organization's name and occupied its National Office.  A better analysis can be found here.

Weatherman WAS audacious. "Dare to struggle; dare to win" was their favourite Maoist aphorism and they literally LIVED that slogan. Their members were like people portrayed in "Fight Club", alienated about the flatness of sterile comfort and determined to punch a hole in the soft, killing machine which surrounded them. Even if their theory was half-baked, one had to admit, you had to have guts to declare war on the "pigs" and on America herself. And after their penultimate violent demonstration, "The Days of Rage", October 8-11, 1969 failed to draw more than around 150 to 200 white kids to Chicago to show how dirty, dangerous and violent they could be at smashing windows and physically fighting the cops/ "pigs", the group decided to go underground, write America off and act as guerillas, fighting behind those enemy lines, "bringing the war home", "shooting to live" in solidarity with the black, brown, red and yellow peoples of the world who would come eventually, in a kind of whirlwind of revolutionary, racial vengeance.

 "We do not support people who are anarchistic, opportunistic, adventuristic, and Custeristic." Fred Hampton, Black Panther Party, Chicago commenting on the Weathermen shortly before his assassination by Chicago cops in December of 1969.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Wobbly times number 94




Die Stille nach dem Schuß (Silence follows the shot)
This movie has the title "The Legend of Rita" in English.


The Red Army Faction (RAF) was a self-described, communist, anti- imperialist urban guerrilla organisation based in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). The RAF had a theoretically superficial Marxist-Leninist set of politics similar to those of Weatherman in the USA and the Red Army Faction in Japan. These were young people, many of them college students, who felt both a guilt about and sympathy for Third World nationalist revolutions; revolutions they believed, were the vanguard of a world revolution which would eventually sweep the 'fascist imperialist' States away.

Che Guevara captured what Schlöndorff is attempting to portray in his film concerning the mental spirit of these German student, revolutionary romantics when he reflected on his own audacity and political commitment:

"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality... We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force."

Action and audacity were the Red Army Faction's (RAF) strong suit. "The Legend of Rita" (original German title "Die Stille nach dem Schuß" ) is set in the divided Germany of the 70s. Rita is a young fearless romantic in love with a left-wing revolutionary, one Andreas 'Andi' Klein, a guy who is more or less the leader of an RAF group which she is a part of. Their RAF group is armed, ruthless and robs banks to fund 'the revolution'. These revolutionaries naively explain their robberies in terms of 'anti- imperialist' politics : Yes, out loud, to customers as they clean out the capitalist bank vault and cash drawers, with weapons drawn.

Adrenal rush and surprise hit one in this film from start to finish. From jail breaks to motorcycle chases, to life behind the Iron Curtain, the film comes at you again and again with images you've been brainwashed to feel uncomfortable with. (Caution viewers: you may feel a violation of your Hollywoodised sensibilities.) You'll also feel the kind of careless courage these young people of the RAF had, as they consciously faced death, even as they reached out for a better life-- actually,a better life for others, mostly. As many, many of the New Left, Rita and her fellow RAF members are motivated to take violent political action in order to assuage a deeply felt guilt about being born in First World privilege. They are more moralists than materialists--romantic poets ready to use murder as a political weapon. In the midst of all this direct, violent action, some of them change, become more hard hearted, mechanically calculating. Rita's boyfriend is one of them and when this happens, love dies. Rita is a lover first and a revolutionary second. In her heart of hearts, she wants to settle down, have kids, a husband, the whole modern suburban dream, albeit in a more egalitarian, 'anti- imperialist' society. Rita wants mutual love more than anything else and as she learns more about the duplicitous mendacity of the coldly calculating political apparatus in both the East and West, she comes to the realisation that political States are always ready to opportunistically sacrifice their oft repeated, propagandised moral goals and callously toss human lives on the scrapheap for political gain. As a result, she grows closer to the only person who ever measured up to her romantic expectations, an East German woman named, Tatjana.

Volker Schlöndorff has directed a master portrait of a political situation, a time and a place which is quickly disappearing down the 'memory hole'. Not only are the West German RAF, with their Ton Stein Scherben albums and sneering hatred for bourgeois complacency critically and sympathetically examined; but the 'actually existing socialism' of the DDR of that era is laid bare as well. East Germany is portrayed realistically, down to the last idiosyncrasy, from the near empty roads, to the Radeberger Pilsner, to the workers' apartments in those large, multi- storied college dorm-like buildings in urban East Berlin. This portrait will disturb long held mainstream 'Time' magazine inspired conceptions of East Germany, some would say, 'with extreme prejudice'. Rest assured, the film's honesty extends across both sides of the East/West border. Far from revolutionary or socialist, most of the citizens of the DDR are portrayed as being quite conservative, endorsing whichever police are in charge of the political State. The point is hammered home at the end of the movie, when the fall of the Wall in 1989 is portrayed; a time when Rita and her audience are supposed to come to the realisation of just what die Stille nach dem Schuß entails.



Sunday, August 9, 2009

Wobbly Times number 17


The Limits of Control (2008)

A Bohemian conspiracy!




"Life has no value if four people are being killed every minute and in the final analysis, abuse wins the day." That is a rough translation from Spanish of a phrase very relevant to "The Limits of Control" which IMDb won't let me reproduce in the original because of 'spelling errors'. The great Mexican director,Pedro Infante filmed "La Vida No Vale Nada" in 1955. Might be worth checking out that film after watching "Limits of Control".

"Those who think they are important wind up in a cemetery – a handful of dust". Numerous characters repeat this sentence in Jarmusch's "Limits of Control". In fact, many sentences are repeated in "Limits...". "You don't speak Spanish." The answer is, "No." if you are on a secret mission and sitting at a café table with two cups of espresso. This is the intro you get in the assassin's game. Like Jarmusch's "Ghost Dog" our assassin is in to martial arts exercises. Like "Ghost Dog", he doesn't like mechanical, robotic like abusers.

Maybe abusers are CIA agents in Spain. More likely, Jarmusch's secretive base operatives symbolize worldwide power mongering abusers of life. Maybe, just maybe, there are people out there in the world, some maybe even who have taken psycho-active drugs like peyote, who want to demonstrate to these power mongering dominators that they aren't so powerful at that. 'Life is arbitrary" as the anonymous protagonist of the film played by Isaach de Bankolé says before he strangles the CIA Station Chief, played by Bill Murray, with an old guitar string.

Maybe, the limits of control are human beings! Oh, not human beings who use the various electronic trappings of identity of the modern world. Those human beings can be tracked and controlled. "No cell phones", says Jarmusch's protagonist. And what happens to those in the assassin's conspiratorial loop who use them? They are found dead or kidnapped by authorities who travel by black helicopter to secret bases in the Spanish bush. Yes, murder as a political weapon, human beings killed, even if they are beautiful and naked.

"How did you get in here?" Murray asks Isaach de Bankolé. "I used my imagination." And after all, as the French Situationists used to say, "Imagination is revolution." Imagination is also unpredictable, even arbitrary, so unlike machines or uniformed humans attempting to morph into androids in service to their rulers.

This movie is a secret operation. Think of it as an imagination-trip. Take it and be wary. Sometimes, it's not that you're paranoid, it's that they really are out to get you. Have a care. Don't let your guard down, even for one blissful second with a gorgeous woman. You're working now with Isaach de Bankolé. Let it happen. Let it wash over you. But remember the signs: two separate cups of espresso at one time at the café table;matchboxes (the ones with the boxer on the cover) swallow the coded paper which you'll find inside said matchbox after you've memorized the instructions for the next stop on your way towards ending abuse.