Danny Boyle’s movie proposes another version of SF come true—a tale of warfare as stardom. Steve Jobs dramatizes the true visionary era of the advent of the personal computer and the rise of its “oracle”, as one protagonist labels the eponymous hero. The early words and prophecies sound like history now, yet the magic remains. The film stops short of the recent developments to focus on the beginning pages of this modern Odyssey and groundbreaking steps of its undaunted Ulysses. We share in the enthusiasm of the early chapters of a true “poem”—the making of a wonderful machine (little did we know, then, that the tool would claim unexpected prerogatives as a quasi extension of the human body).
Remembering your words about this particular beach being a place where you would/could take vows—swear eternal love. Self-fulfilling prophesy: a couple taking wedding pictures, giving flesh and blood to a mere idea, a pleasant memory, a poetic vision.
Wind and sea in amorous embrace bristling with a thousand lights, resounding a thousand notes.
A lot of fans have complained about “repetitions”. But repetitions in a different context are repetitions with a difference. So is Star Wars: The Force Awakens sequel, prequel, or coquel?
With The Hateful Eight, Tarentino once again skillfully blends Western and Southern genres, and uses the resources of the grotesque mode, calling on a type of comedy that comes with the baggage of terror. The French title “Les huit salopards” silences the ambiguity inherent in the term “hateful”: if Tarentino’s latest characters are “bastards”, they are also full of hate, which is perhaps the main issue of the movie.
“I don’t record a dry history of events and facts. I’m writing a history of human feelings. What people thought, understood and remembered during the event. What they believed in or mistrusted, what illusions, hopes and fears they experienced … I’m searching life for observations and nuances, details. Because my interest in life is not the event as such, not war as such … What I am interested in is what happens to the human being…” (quoted in NYRB November 19, 2015, p. 10)
2015 Literature Novel Prize Svetlana Alexievich’s words could be used as an epigraph for Suffragette. The subject’s encounter with the Law and her/his resilience is given pride of place in this historical drama dealing with the suffragette movement in early 20th century Britain. Working wife and mother Maud has to deal with the law of the jungle prevailing in the microcosm of the laundry where she has been abused since her childhood; inspector Steed has to come to terms with the laws he has to enforce against his own sympathies. The movie artfully rehearses History and stories with a cameo appearance of Meryl Streep who is very convincing in her role as Mrs Pankhurst, the mentor and politician towering above her devoted followers. Depictions of a political class ruling through hypocrisy and empty promises intertwine with sketches of individual journeys to empowerment. The film also explores the theme of female bonding and solidarity in an unforgiving world. A turning point in the battle takes place with Emily’s personal sacrifice in an act of self immolation reminiscent of recent similar gestures, when all that is left to oppose the logic of power is your own body—whether it means standing nonplussed in front of approaching military tanks or setting yourself on fire in a desperate attempt to draw some attention to your existence. Mrs. Pankhurst ‘s call “Never give up the fight” is literalized by one person’s decision to go to her sure death in order to bring life to others—a martyr to the “cause” in an ultimate form of commitment and generosity.
Is posthumanism a myth? A master narrative of transformation? The latest avatar in man’s Promethean dream of stealing the fire from the gods?
From God, certainly.
Samuel Beckett : “If you don’t love me, I shall not be loved”
Israel Horovitz’s film is based on his own play. There IS a theatrical dimension to the movie, in particular beautiful and powerful dialogues. And a “huis clos” mood until a cathartic exit opens up. The movie rehearses a couple of enjoyable interfilmic references (the mirror scene of Taxi Driver; the two-fold ending of Deliverance); it stages the Parisian street and a reluctant “Flaneur”. At first, Mathias Gold (known in New York City as “Jim”) fits the cliché of the expatriate who has shed his American identity with the hope that France will adopt him: a man of two cities, he soon becomes a man of two countries. Displaced, Mathias ultimately comes to terms with space and—perhaps more importantly—with time. His search for a new future indeed brings him face to face with his past as he revisits his roots and identity by retrieving the lost link with his father. In the process, he moves from being a passive observer to being a participant in city life, as illustrated in his encounters with the opera singer, for example: the first time he sees her, he just overhears her singing; the second time he meets her, he gives her the cue and they sing together in a “Paris is a Moveable Feast” moment. Gradually, Mathias exorcises his demons, regaining agency over his life. His journey leads him to pay tribute to his dead father, coming to terms with a mysterious quote by Samuel Beckett he can now appropriate for himself.
The thematic explorations revolve around family and storytelling. Love/passion versus family commitment/social status. Loneliness and aging. Remembering and forgetting. Nemesis and haunting. Illusions and delusions. Curses and sudden reconciliations. Imagined hurts and real wounds. The master narrative is the family story patiently reconstructed from pictures, artifacts, memories offered or extorted, words uttered amidst screams and tears. And silences.
The other ingredients of the film include a gallery of interesting characters such as a real estate agent who lives on a barge on “the blood of Paris”—a tramp of some sort who, like Mathias, might be in search of meaning and truth. The playful linguistic dimension—the “franglais” and the recycling/recontextualizing of selected colorful expressions (“petit bouquet” and fellow travelers)—illustrates what Rosi Braidotti describes as “words not standing still”, and “following their own ways” (Nomadic Subjects 29). As she adds, “There are no mother tongues, just linguistic sites from which one takes her starting point” (NS 40). From her/his old lady to her/his new one, there is a will. And a way.
The sky is at war. One breakthrough lets an unruly beam of light peer out through the aerial wall. Clouds hide the mountains, they have stolen the high daunting ridges away. You are walking, suspended between earth and sky. Thoughts poised between physical and spiritual longings. Clouds hanging over you like cruel gods. Like cruel thoughts in the mental landscaped that will not go away. Relentless, stubborn, indomitable. Thoughts that will continue to conceal the beauty beyond. Invisible but present, if you could only see it! But happy are those who can believe without seeing.
It seems like you are sitting above the clouds. Striding right into them. Yet distracted by a pale pinkish slip in the far away distance, harbinger of hope and truth, reminder of the all-powerful presence of the sun. Of God. You looked up just on time to see it.
Remembering A Voice for Earth: American Writers Respond to the Earth Charter (2008).
“April is the cruelest month” T.S. Eliot
Recent natural catastrophes might come as a cruel nemesis about the urgent call to (re)consider ecology. Not just in April, on Earth Day. But every day.
The gothic model reflects on the present by conjuring up a dead past—often through the figure of the ghost. The Road begets a number of ghosts—dead or alive. McCarthy revisits some national obsessions and “curses” to use William Faulkner’s image, in particular abuses connected to the occupation of the territory and slavery. At one point, the father and the son come across a camping scene: some people have left in a hurry, abandoning the food they were getting ready to eat: “They had taken everything with them except whatever black thing was skewered over the coals. He was standing there checking the perimeter when the boy turned and buried his face against him … What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit” (The Road 198).