Ramblings After Drinking a Double Latte

Completed my five film tour of Darren Aronofsky's directorial efforts today with The Wrestler (2008). Using the IMDb 1-10 scale, this is how I'd rate his films: Requiem for A Dream (2000) 10; Black Swan (2010) 9; The Wrestler 8, Pi (1998) 7, Fountain (2006) 4. That's one stinker mixed in with some real gems. Next up he's directing one of those Wolverine films with Hugh Jackman. According to Aronofsky it's not a sequel but a stand alone piece. Can't say that I'm excited that he's doing something based on a comic book. Moreover I can say that I'm decidedly undecided. But then I'm quite the old curmudgeon. (Here's my recent post on Requiem and a post from last December on Black Swan.)

Before The Wrestler, I'd watched two real stinkers. Always disappointing when I find that I've wasted a couple of hours on a dud. Usually I have the sense to cut my losses and hit the stop button before too many precious moments from my life have been wasted. But I stuck with the aforementioned Fountain until the end and also gutted out A Bullet For Joey (1955). I watched the former because I was curious to see all of Aronofsky's films, the latter because it starred Edward G. Robinson, one of my faves. Robinson couldn't have saved this film with a naked Kim Novak (shame on me).

I thought I had a sure thing recently with a film called Buffalo Bill (1944). The great William Wellman directed and it starred Joe McCrea with a supporting cast featuring Thomas Mitchell and Linda Darnell. I stuck it out for 40 minutes before seeing the error of my ways. Recommend Buffalo Bill to someone you secretly despise.

Speaking of despising....How about all the guff those chowderheads at Fox are giving teachers these days. Of all the professions to demonize. They portray us as greedy. Most of my colleagues own a modest home (if they have a working spouse, preferably one with a better paying job) and a car, maybe two. Teachers make enough to help support a family but must plan on continuing to work to put the kiddies through university. Vacations are usually of the backpacking, or Disneyland variety although every few years a major production number involving flying across the proverbial pond is possible. The health benefits help make the job tolerable. Most people who enter the profession do not last three years. I can tell you from 20 years experience, its a grind. No we do not, as one conservative dimwit (oxymoron?) said, end our days at 2:30 -- what school gets out that early anyway? There are papers to grade, lessons to plan, parents to call or email, meetings to attend, paper work to fill out, research to be done, etc. What's exhausting is how much one spends thinking about work. You have five classes, maybe 130 students and a whole school to contemplate. You're constantly reviewing the day you just had the day you have coming up. It's a helluva sacrifice to go into teaching because, unlike many of your friends, you're not going to get rich or even close to it. You do it out of dedication, love, a belief -- and now it teacher's who have to sacrifice. I thought it was a sacrifice just going into the profession. And at a time when resources to schools are shrinking and class sizes are expanding. Good luck finding the next generation of teachers after you're done defecating on today's.

Now I'm going to get really controversial. Miley Cyrus hosted Saturday Night Live last week (I believe it was on Saturday) and did a really good job and I rather like her (as a performer, you twit!). I now await a deluge of outraged emails, letters, faxes, telegrams and inner office memos. Bring 'em on.

Speaking of women I like...Dorothy Parker. A tad last famous then Ms. Cyrus and considerably less alive. I've been reading The Portable Dorothy Parker and loving it. She never wrote the great American novel she dreamed of (gee, I wonder what that's like) but she produced a boatload of wonderful short stories, poems and articles. She was, of course, a founding member of the famous Algonquin Round Table. May I be so bold as you recommend her works, particularly if you are unfamiliar with them.

I'm also reading yet another book that has to do with Nazi Germany. The Nazis are both endlessly fascinating and increasingly repellent to me. I keep wanting to go back and time and reason with them. But how would that work? Hey Adolph, that's racist! Yeah, what's your point? I firmly believe that any understanding of humanity and history will be immeasurably enhanced by a study of the Third Reich. You do realize that they just eked into power and came to enjoy widespread support? It's amazing how many willing accomplices they had to their dirty work. Quite frightening, actually.

On a lighter note: A hamburger and a french fry walk into a bar. The bartender says, "I'm sorry we don't serve food here."

Here's something that I might also make you laugh, then again it could make you cry. My good friend's at the website Listserve recently offered a list of Lesser Known Jimmy Stewart Movies. You'll see that the list includes The Naked Spur (1953), You Can't Take it With You (1938) and The Shop Around the Corner (1940). What exactly are theses films supposed to be less known than? Abraham Lincoln? But sadder still are the comments at the end of the list. I invite you check them out. Here's a sampling: "uummm yeah, i don’t know the guy. The guy seems to have had a lot of talent. I’m not a fan of classics or people who where famous before i was born" and "I don’t really know Jimmy Stewart, but the list was entertaining nonetheless." and finally "jimmy who?"

My latest get-rich-quick-scheme: rotary cell phones. It can't miss!

Amazing Grace, I Finally Watch Requiem for a Dream, How Sweet the Film Twas Viewed By a Wretch Like Me

Now that you've been born the best we can do is try to make you as comfortable as possible until the inevitable. Just think of family and all the friends you make throughout your journey as hospice workers.

Once in recovery, junkies and drunkards come to be happy with the simple notion of being alive and able to participate in the day-to-day. Taking life on life's terms. There is much gratitude at having a daily reprieve from drugs and alcohol. You really need to hear the stories of those who hit very low bottoms to appreciate the miracle of being clean and sober and functioning. It's all very humbling.

Films have a rather mixed record at dealing with most any topic you can name and addiction is no exception. It's easy enough to find a ham actor to play a drunk. These performances can be quite humorous or overly broad and silly. But the film drunk is usually just a highly amusing stage prop. If they are true abusers of booze, it's seldom dealt with. A lot of shaking, vomiting, self recrimination, overwhelming guilt and blistering headaches are not exactly cinematic. Let's just stick to slurring words and stumbling about.

More than ten years after its release I finally saw Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream (2000). Oh my....

It was my admiration for Aronofsky's film Black Swan (2010) that finally quit me hemming and hawing (what on Earth was the delay all about?). It made a very slow climb up my Netflix queue these past few months until finally arriving this week. As much as I appreciated Black Swan (and I did, a lot), Requiem makes it look like student film. Which is only to say that I found Requiem to be a positively brilliant film. (I did not hesitate a millisecond in using the "b" word to describe it.)

It reminds me a little bit of Half Nelson (2006) in its depiction of drug use, only cranked up 1000 more degrees. Full throttle.

I was in the wonderful position before viewing of knowing next to nothing about Requiem aside from the following: Ellen Burstyn was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in it, it dealt with drug use and it was considered by most folks to be depressing. About that last point...I can find nothing depressing about a work of art that so elevates our understanding of the human experience, least of all when its style is so unique and utterly compelling.

Movies can turn a mirror on the world, reflecting people, times places. Most admirable. But movies can also bring you along for the ride, inviting you to join an experience. No, there's no physical pain, but you feel less a distant observer and more a passenger. With Requiem I felt like I was sitting right on the driver's lap.

Requiem focuses on a widow (Burnstyn) her junkie son (Jared Leto, a sort of Anglo version of Gael Garcia Bernal), his girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly) and his buddy (Marlon Wayans). It's not surprising that the three young folks are heroin addicts, but during the course of the film, Mom also develops a powerful addiction. In her case to prescription drugs. It's no use trying to summarize the plot. If you've seen Requiem you know it and if you haven't seen it, you don't need to. I didn't. In any event this is not a film in which plot points are crucial. Life isn't about plot points either. This film, like life, is about the journey and how to describe it. Aronofsky may not use every trick in the director or cinemaphotographer's book, but there's not many left. All the gadgetry in the world is useless unless done in service of the story telling. It's so easy for slow motion or special effects to be a distraction. Depicting drug abuse practically cries out for grumbling refrigerators, walls collapsing and quick montage cuts. All this is to say Aronofsky got it right.

I was wonderfully, happily uncomfortable at times. Reminded of that ugly desperation, that orgasmic relief and the emptiness of a life based on altered consciousness. I writhed and squirmed and wondered at it all. How some of us do these things to ourselves and a few of us even live to tell the tale. But also how that story can be told in such a bravura style.

Life is utterly fascinating if you give it half a chance. It's full of characters and events that defy description, yet we have the best damn time describing and imagining them. Nothing we make up is as truly astounding as what we actually do. From the soaring heights of human invention to the plummeting pratfalls of our buffoonery. Our intellects are capable of creating machines through which we can instantly communicate with the other side of the world. We can also conjure an endless variety of methods by which to murder and torture one another. We are capable of the deepest love and the vilest hate. We have God within us.

Through art we can understand, illuminate and entertain. It is all a wonder. The best of art, such as in a few films, can get us thinking about all of this. Examining our own existence and pondering the previously imponderable. By God, look what kind of mad mind trip Requiem for a Dream has sent me on.

I choose to live within the confines of the serenity prayer and hope that God will grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Here is a film that reminded me of the primacy of this dictum.

What a movie. What a world. Grace, amazing as it is, be on to you my dear reader.

Perfection and Sanity are Boring, Black Swan is Not

Tonight the University of Connecticut women's basketball team set a new record for consecutive wins. I find such perfection boring. Americans are supposed to love underdogs but at least in the world of sports, supposedly flawless teams and players are revered. When one commits an error they are said to be "only human." Humans, in all their imperfection are endlessly fascinating and entertaining. Winning every damn time is ho hum.

Sanity, while functional, is also quite tedious. The sober and sensible make for good accountants but not terribly interesting subjects of art. It is when the mind veers of course that the fun begins.

All of this brings me to Black Swan the new film from director Darren Aronofsky. The story centers around a ballet dancer, Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) tapped for the lead in a new production of Swan Lake. I am going to go ahead and say that in this film viewers come to expect the unexpected and are never disappointed.

Nina is one of the best kind of film characters, the totally obsessed. Many an outstanding movie has featured a totally obsessed lead who either becomes blind to realities other than their pursuit or begins to twist and turn that pursuit to fit their twisting and turning minds. Of course ballet is one of those uber competitive fields that requires a stubborn single mindedness. Nina has tunnel vision and it is all in the direction of her art at which she hopes to be...perfect.

Many of us seek various forms of perfection. In 12 step programs we are taught to eschew such notions realizing that happiness lies in constant progress. Nina could have used a support group, but then, when we should have found the time?

So is Nina not sane? What a loaded question and anyway its the wrong one to ask. The Black Swan can have audiences asking all sorts of questions and trying to figure out this that and the other. Trust me, its the wrong approach. Better to just go for the ride. If anything comes to you along the way, why that's a bonus.

I thought, and I'll have legions disagree with this, I know, Portman underplayed the role. It was the right choice too. Nina is not a terribly interesting person with the major exception, of course, of her inner life that is the real soul of the story. What exactly is going on in Nina's mind and why is something we can wrestle with, but it could drive us to the same mental state as she's in.

Nina has creepy relationship with her stage mom (Barbara Hershey) with whom she shares an apartment and a love/hate/sister/loathing/coaching relationship. French actor Vincent Cassel plays the director who she classifies as "brilliant." He may well be but he also introduces a heavy dose of sexuality to his relationships with lead dancers. Winona Ryder plays Beth who has outlived her usefulness as either a dancer or lover.

But the story's real wild card is Lily (Mila Kunis). What is she exactly? A rival? A pal? A lover? An alternate? A doppelganger? She's infinitely more interesting than Nina, at least outwardly. At least we think so. As for her inner life...well, we've got enough to sort out Nina.

Black Swan is a confusing movie if you try to make sense of it. It would require dicing and mincing and dissecting something that flows. Maybe you can analyze samples. I didn't always know whether what we were seeing was real or Nina's imagination or a dream or a vision. I eventually decided not to worry about it.

I keep coming back to this point about not over analyzing the film, or for that matter analyzing it all. With 24 hour news and sports channels, Americans have gotten used to having every bit of minutia parsed for their benefit. Many people of us choose to join in the fun. So we end up looking at every single tree and missing the beauty of the forest. So what I'm saying is that Black Swan is beautiful

It's beautiful for all its visceral imagery. The blood, the toe nails, the scratches, the distorted feet and everything else about it that explores the messy parts of the body warping business that is ballet and the mind warping world of the obsessed.

Have I not adequately addressed what it's about? How about this: the insanity of seeking perfection.