God in Ruins

Decalogue

I watched episodes 4 and 5 of Kieslowski's The Decalogue last night.  I'm finding the only approach for me to take in watching The Decalogue is to savor one episode, think on it for several days and watch another.  It's the same approach I'm taking with reading the Cassavetes on Cassavetes book.  Although the book is several hundred pages long, I can only read a few pages at a time or I start to feel I'm missing too much.  I'm Charlie with his one Wonka bar.

I sat in a living room full of friends (9 in all) and when episode 5 ended we could do nothing but sit in silence for several minutes.  What is strange is that all of us in that room are not well acquainted with each other–usually adding pain to an awkward silence–and still none of us said anything.  Usually I'm busy trying to make myself sound intelligent or my mind is going in a thousand different directions, but there just weren't words last night.

It is said that the 10 episodes of The Decalogue are each an examination of one of the Ten Commandments.  But they are by no means morality tales.  In fact they are full of ambiguity. 

I saw this a little fundraising game once next to the cash register on the counter of a McDonald's.  The game consisted of a large jar filled with water.  Submerged in the water were these little platforms.  The object was to drop a quarter into the jar and, if it lands on a platform, then I'd get a free milkshake or something.  So I aimed and dropped the quarter.  It hit the water and careened away from the platforms, settling on top of a pile of once hopeful quarters in the bottom of the jar.  I see Kieslowski take each commandment as a quarter.  He then drops it into the jar of the world we live in.  Where it lands is as hard to predict as the direction my quarter took when I dropped it into the jar.

I would venture to say that Episode 5 deals with the "Thou shalt not murder" commandment.  I have watched thousands of people die on screen in my lifetime.  Never have I wanted somebody to not die as much as I did watching Episode 5 last night.  None of the characters were particularly "good."  But something intangible occurred.  I think we all felt how purely against nature it is for a man to murder another man.  I think we were speechless because sometimes we connect with people–even if they only exist in a film–in a way that goes beyond words.  Beyond our words was a reverence that comes when seeing something so true, so clearly for the first time.

Family Portrait

My wife noticed the other day how much my family history indirectly influences what shows up here for the readers of God in Ruins. She got me thinking that maybe there needs to be a little context provided for those of you who don't have it. I have chosen to explore a photograph as a reference point in order to launch into what otherwise would be an overwhelming amount of information. I've changed the names around to be safe.

This photo was taken at a family reunion in 2002.

At the left edge of frame is my wife in mid-gawk. In the foreground are the remaining members of a generation that was once ten brothers and sisters and their ten spouses. At the center is my cousin Dave's butt crack. You'll notice that everybody in the background has their elbows cocked at a 90 degree angle, standard posture when conversing over booze in a Solo cup. The old folks are smiling, glad to have been blessed to return for another year. In front of them is the camera catching, as it has so many times, the portrait of Family.

On the third weekend of July in 1945, two parents and their 10 children gathered at the family's farm in North Carolina to celebrate the homecoming of their brother, Beau, from WWII. It was a weekend long celebration and the first time in years all ten children had been under the same roof. The patriarch, C.E., declared that every year on the 3rd weekend of July the family would reunite under one roof. Every year we have. Of course, over the years the family has expanded into larger venues and the roof we gather under  now is a drop-ceiling in the conference room of the Best Western Motel off Interstate 40.

Maybe it's a Southern thing, but my family not only has a tendency to mythologize the dead, we go one step further and erase any facts that may make the mythology unpretty. Recently one of the cousins was scrounging around in some old family documents and found a letter from C.E.'s wife, matriarch of the family. The letter was written under great distress.  Apparently ol' C.E. had taken up philandering again and she wrote that this time she couldn't take it.  In the letter she asked for prayer to give her the strength to weather this familiar storm. In the pile my cousin also found an intervention type of letter. It basically declared that the repeated sexual affairs of C.E. were hurting not only his wife but his ten children as well.  At the bottom were the signatures of his wife and all the children save for the two youngest.

I believe the old adage that the sins of the father are visited upon the son. Maybe it's not the son repeating the exact same behavior, but the effects are present the way fruit carries the seeds of the tree it comes from. We all carry the weight of past generations' humanity, both the good and the bad.

My problems have come when the myth of the good eclipses the reality of the bad. So, somebody had a run in with the law, but we don't talk about it. So and so died this year. He was rumored to have inappropriate relations with children, but we don't talk about it. Most of the old men died alcoholics, but why dwell on that?

The only inheritance passed on to me has been the myth. The myth is all I have to help me understand why I–and many of my family members–are so messed up. Much like the Old Testament, there are the mythological elements that as a family we hold up high and aspire to as humans. I've been watching Kieslowski's Decalogue which deals so beautifully with what happens when the 10 Commandments mingle together with humanity. The reality is that the myth gets dirty the second I reach out and touch it. My family steps in front of a camera to have a lovely portrait taken only to have an ass show up in the background.

So, to make sense of where I come from and where I'm going, I dive into the foggy place between the perfection of the myth and the messiness of humanity. The in between area is where I find God, but I find Him in ruins.

Palindromes and Point of View

I cannot help feeling that the stories of many different and potentially inarticulate people are more interesting than a contrived narrative that exists only in one articulate man's imagination.
-  John Cassavetes

In my experience, I have found it to be hands down, every time easiest to remove dimension from the people in my life and reduce them down to either the greatest thing they've ever done or the worst thing they've ever done.  I think the same goes for filmmaking.  It is far easier for a director to remove dimension from the characters he is working with.  However, honest compassion for The Other has always risen up in me when I can see beyond the best or worst thing about that person.

This "contrived narrative" is the norm for most American films, it's The Director's story that the audience is allowed to sit in on.  Like in The Cider House Rules, a hero character goes on a journey.  Along the way he gains wisdom and switches sides from anti-abortion to pro-abortion.  Making an argument for a particular Point of View through a fictional story is, I think, more and more expected from audiences. 

Palindromes opened theatrically last April and has since played in 46 theaters.  The director, Todd Solondz, is one of the most challenging (and in my opinion one of the best) directors living today.  His films often ask the audience to sympathize with some of the most unsympathetic characters and that in itself places his work in with a small handful of American directors.  With Palindromes he asks the audience to sympathize with human beings on both extremes of the abortion issue.  He has caught a deluge of napalm-inflamed criticism as a result.

I will not write a review for Palindromes here because I cannot write a better one than David Lowery wrote at Reversing the Gaze.  But I will use an excerpt of Solondz's words from an interview  with Dave Canfield at twitchfilm.com:

One of my favorite scenes is the Sunshine Family Singers musical number. During the filming I was very moved by it. The kids took such pride and joy into bringing that song to life. Hopefully people can take that away with them without losing the ability to decipher what’s being said in the song, which is rather disturbing.

And the fact that some of the kids in the family are disabled makes it even harder for people trying to decipher what you’re up to as a writer or director. Are you making fun of kids with disabilities? I guess my response would be 'Are kids with disabilities not supposed to dance and sing?'  What people are most often most unhappy about is their own response to these sorts of things.

Film reveals for me the hideous and beautiful in humanity.  A good film forces me to swim in another's murky life.  To look at them as God in ruins.  Often my response to what is on the screen reveals within me what is ugly and in need of help.

It is far easier to watch films that reveal none of these things to me; films that only ask me to sit and listen to one man's Point of View.

Palindromes will be released on DVD September 16th.

The Game of "Sorry."

"I believe it's a cumulative thing, a seismic evolution of people's habits," said Mr. Shaye, chairman of New Line Cinema. In previous years, he said, "you could still count on enough people to come whether you failed at entertaining them or not, out of habit, or boredom, or a desire to get out of the house. You had a little bit of backstop."

For more go to Sharon Waxman's NY Times article, Summer Fading, Hollywood Sees Fizzle

Good to know that Hollywood was hedging their bets on the fact that they could crap in front of an audience and still count on making money.  Trying to offset laziness with larger budgets is a sure sign of a business model in decline.

This is an interesting tack that these executives are taking (one from Universal said that there were films released by them this summer that should have never been made).  I guess it's a sort of marketing ploy that looks like contrition.  Kind of a:

"We're responsible for wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on unoriginal crap and then trying to fool you into watching it.  But we're really sorry now and next year we'll be looking extra hard for the next Citizen Kane.  We swear this time."

This "seismic evolution of people's habits" that Shaye refers too, is it the habits of the audience or the habits of studio executives to always chase the dollar into formulaic stories targeting the lowest common denominator?  I'm inclined to believe the latter.

Anyway, change is coming and it's about damn time.  When TV shows that were ridiculous the first time they aired are made into movies, something has to give.

On a positive note, I am damn proud of the American people for finally, organically boycotting companies that look down their nose on our intelligence.  For everyone who never got around to seeing The Dukes of Hazzard or Bewitched, give yourselves a pat on the back.  We won.  For now.

Hope is the new Angst.

[Motion] Pictures are supposed to clarify people's emotions, to explain the feelings of people on an emotional plane.  An art film should not preclude laughter, enjoyment and hope.  Is life about horror?  Or is it about those few moments we have?  I would like to say that my life has some meaning.
-  John Cassavetes

I watched Marcus Wolland in his play, The Magnificent Welles (2002, available on DVD).  Wolland wrote and stars as Orson Welles in this one-man play.  Set in a hotel room in Rio De Janeiro, Welles carries on a conversation with the audience in between phone calls from RKO Studios on the night his film, The Magnificent Ambersons, is taken from him.  Historically, Welles believed Ambersons to be his masterwork. While Welles was shooting another film in South America, RKO Studios cut 44 minutes from Ambersons, reshot the ending, and burned the cut negatives so that Welles could never show the film the way he wanted.

It's an insightful play that pulls no punches in revealing Welles and all of his shortcomings. It brings to life the real tragedy of a man and the work that has been lost.  But it is not the final word on this artist.

Some months ago I saw Welles' final completed film, F for Fake (1974, available on DVD from Criterion).

There have been mixed reviews on F for Fake.  Some call it dated, trivial, and forced.  A sign of Welles' degeneration from wunderkind to martyr.  True, Fake was made in the 70's and of course has that feel.  He maintains his predisposition for larger than life characterization (something that had lost its luster in the heyday of Pacino and De Niro), but that's who the man was; a larger than life character.  What I found to be most rewarding about Fake was exactly that Welles is a larger than life character, brimming with vitality, and not the dejected Van Gogh of filmmaking persona that has been imposed on him.

With Fake, Welles is infusing life into the work of his hands by any means necessary.  Although he had every right to be fatalistic about his work and the abuse it suffered, he refused to "preclude laughter, enjoyment and hope," if for nobody else than himself while he made it.  That is what makes the film so inspiring.  It's a film made by a man who had every reason to abandon filmmaking, but for the pleasure that making film brought to him.  It's also brilliant.

Welles took another filmmaker's documentary, cut it up, added some footage from an abandoned doc he himself had been working on, and shot some new stuff.  Then he cut and cut and cut.  As a friend of mine put it, "It just proves that a great film can be made anywhere with anything."

F for Fake opens with an elusive and quick cut sequence of Orson Welles' donning a black cape and a mischievous smile.  He is performing snappy slide-of-hand tricks for a little boy, making a key disappear then reappear as some coins, show up again in the kid's pocket, only to transform back into coins falling from the boy's nose. These tricks continue for sometime.  Somehow, in a way that is difficult to describe, the next 2 hours is Welles performing that same trick using film. The editing is the magician's hands and the story is the key disappearing and reappearing as a coin then disappearing again and showing up as a key that the audience pulls out of their pocket in amazement and asks, "How did he get this in there?"

If Fake achieves one thing, it is the constant upheaval of the audience's perception.  From moment to moment what we consider to be fact becomes fiction, what we consider to be art becomes crap, whom we consider to be experts become deceivers.  I think of it as the lecture of what Welles has learned in his life told at break-neck speed.  I've never had an experience with a film to compare it to.

F for Fake is Welles' last completed film.  It's so fast and fresh it feels like it's made by a 25 year old prodigy. Of course, Citizen Kane was made by a 25 year old prodigy, but feels like the work of a mature, calculating director.  Maybe that's the mark of true genius: They don't let their gift ripen on the vine, but keep picking it and letting it grow back new and fresh each time because they stay confident that their life has meaning.

A man I once called a woman.

I came back from a long weekend to find out that George is gone.  I don't know what to make of the tears that started coming out of my eyes other than somehow, through a brief banter and my admiration for George's blog, I felt a stronger connection to him than I ever realized.

I tend to gravitate toward father-figures and maybe in George's rebuff of my post not too long ago, he unconciously stepped into that category.  I don't know.  I know I'm sad that a man is gone whom I've never met in real life and whose voice I only heard in writing.  I'm surprised that strands of human affection can become so robust over such intangible terrain.

My heart goes out to his widow, Ruth.  So long George, my Netflix friend.

M

One of the basics of screenwriting is to establish the hero's world in your story and then throw off that world's equilibrium.  Dorothy loses her dog, Luke loses his droids, and Dumbo's born with a birth defect.  In Fritz Lang's M, a little German town has a serial killer on the loose.  Made in 1931, M established many conventions that would become staples in the Psychological Thriller genre.  However, unlike most of the pioneering films of its time, M's value isn't only in its historical significance because it's still more terrifying than most serial killer movies put out today. 

I have to applaud Lang for realizing so early that horror happens in the imagination.  That realization has unfortunately not carried over into many of today's psychological thrillers.  Silence of the Lambs is one of the few exceptions.  Jonathan Demme (dir. of  Lambs) uses the darkest recesses of our minds to fill in what Hannibal Lector is capable of instead of showing it on screen.  When Ridley Scott came out with Hannibal, all of that horror got a big alka-seltzer tablet dropped into it precisely because Scott chose to show Hannibal performing his heinous deeds.

Lang does with the Psychological Thriller genre what John Sayles did with the Western genre in Matewan.  Sayles took the classic western and asked, "What if I switch out the gunslinging hero in a white hat with a pacifist?"  The result is a totally original story that sets up genre expectations and then smashes them scene after scene.  I expect a genre story, but wind up examining the Story's world as something totally new and subsequently I start seeing the world around me with fresh eyes.  Fritz Lang does the same thing with M when he takes out the Gumshoe (typical hero in this genre) who is chasing down the killer and replaces him with a community on the brink of madness with fear for their children.  Considering the film was made in 1931, some may argue that Lang did more to establish the genre than break from it, but the fact remains that the conventions of genre are broken by M.

It's far more interesting to me to see what having a serial killer on the loose does to disintegrate the fabric of a community, than to watch what a serial killer does to the convictions of a lone detective.

M delivers on a nail biting level for two hours, then ends in such a way that won't let the audience think our little Bavarian town is back to normal.  The Killer is not just a bad guy in a black hat.  In fact, Lang turns his finger from the Killer to the town.  One of the realities that Lang explores (a reality briefly eluded to in Lambs) is that serial killers aren't born, they are made.  They are made when a society refuses to look at and act on the abuse of children.  In some ways, Lang's killer is the Pied Piper coming to finally collect on generations of a town in denial.  Denial of all the evils that were wrought behind closed doors.  In the final scene, a court sentences the Killer.  In the courtroom sits a row of mothers whose children were victims.  Their sobs are not comforted by the guilty verdict.  One of the mothers cries out, "We must protect the children!"

I was shocked once when I read that well over 60% of reported child sexual abuse cases in this country happen in the home at the hands of a father or step-father.  The proverbial "dirty old man" that I have always imagined as the main perpetrator of these crimes accounts for between 2% - 5% of all reported cases.  In my own experience I have spoken with many adults who were victims of abuse as children.  In almost every conversation I've heard the same thing: What hurt more than the abuse itself was when it was glossed over or outright ignored by the adults who were in a place to protect the victim.

I don't believe that the valiant detective was ever meant to carry the responsibility of protecting everybody, like Superman being swooping in at the last possible minute to save a child stepping in front of a car.  I believe our society is has grown accustomed to turning the other way, to the idea of a hero like a gun-strapping sheriff or detective to step in and do what must be done when a "monster" is on the loose.  But it falls on our shoulders to act when a future "monster" is being created in the house next door.

I am amazed at how Fritz Lang conveyed on film this social disease of believing in "the monster" that magically appears and the subsequent hero who is responsible for killing it.  I am even more amazed at what a prophet he was for his own people to produce this film in Germany just before the rise of Hitler, who determined the Jews to be monsters.

Stories usually start by setting up a world then throwing off that world's equilibrium.  I know I always tend to revert to that formula in my world view.  "Oh, once upon a time there was a beautiful town, then one day a monster started killing people."  The truth is that long before "Once upon a time..." there was the story of a child who was suffering and was ignored.  Those stories are not told very often.  I think it's to our own detriment that they go untold.

For the pleasure of it.

Babyjane often has trouble sleeping.  Like her old man, her brain gets going in a lot of different directions right around bedtime.  Unlike her old man, this is usually remedied by making shooing sounds and patting her on the butt.  When I think she's at the point of drifting off, I usually slink down onto the floor next to her crib and read one her books to myself.  If she's not crying by the time I finish, that usually means she's down for the count.

So I spend a lot of time rediscovering how brilliant Dr. Seuss is (BOOM!  BOOM!  BOOM!  Mr. Brown is wonder!  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Mr. Brown makes THUNDER!...  He makes lightning SPLATT! SPLATT! SPLATT!  And it's very, very hard to make a noise like that.)  Last night I scanned The Five Chinese Brothers for mythological elements that might give me insight into the Chinese culture.

So I was primed for some side-splitting laughter when I saw these today:  Unfortunate Childrens Books.

Enjoy.

Matewan, part 2

I most frequently hear talk about Unions as sort of a tongue-in-cheek type reference like, "We made this movie for 200 thousand dollars.  But if we'd gone through the Union, it would have cost 20 million." 

Cue a round of chuckles.

Unions are synonymous with corruption and bloated industries sinking beneath the weight of their own girth (ref:  The Entertainment Industry).  Unions are bureaucratic, not progressive.  Unions are the knee-jerk reaction to change and roadblock to innovation.  Unions ignore the evolution of our economy from manufacturing driven to an economy based on ventures with shorter life spans but bigger steps in creative innovation (GM vs. Microsoft).

So I'm thankful to John Sayles for taking the sparse history about the union wars of the 20's in West Virginia and turning it into a great film, Matewan.  This film resurrects the nobility of what Unions originally were.  In a time when legislation didn't exist to prevent the working man from being paid slave wages, Union organizers (or "agitators," depending on whose side you fell on) were doing what Martin Luther King Jr. did; in the face of an unbeatable foe, they held our nation accountable to its promise that every man has certain inalienable rights.

What really moved me about this story is how each man, woman, and child in order to save the fledgling Union had to suppress their most fundamental instinct: self-preservation.  Self-preservation is the prime directive hardwired into every living creature.  It is why during famine a mother bear will eat her cubs to save her own life.  The coal miners lived in camps under constant danger that Union Busters would come in to maim and kill.  The Union Busters knew that every human's most fundamental instinct is to preserve their own life and if they could activate that instinct, unity between the coal miners would dissolve.

Joseph Campbell refers to "one-pointed meditation."  Campbell talks about it in the context of spontaneously risking one's own life to save another.  In that moment everything falls away: responsibility toward family, job, desires, goals, toward even self-preservation.  One completely irrational reality remains.  The reality that I must risk sacrificing my own life to save another.  In that moment the visible falls away--I must let this man die so that I may live--and the invisible becomes clear:  My life and the life of the man I'm saving are one.

Survivors of plane crashes talk about this realization when, in the moments before the plane is engulfed in flames, they see business tycoons cowering in their seats while some little old lady takes bewildered passengers by the hand and pushes them out the door.  The most unlikely people are often the hero that is unveiled only at the point of crisis.  What I love about Matewan is that it tells the story of regular people developing a super-human ability to sustain a type of one-pointed meditation for months, even years.

I have met men who seem to live in an in between place between the invisible and the visible, like Chris Cooper's character, Joe Kenehan.  Kenehan is the agitator who through words alone can pull the scrambling, divided coal miners into seeing that, in the invisible, they are all one.  Men like Kenehan see clearly almost always how we are not animals that must eat their neighbor when famine strikes.  But we are higher beings possessing a gift that enables us to sacrifice ourselves.  I want to see clearly like that all of the time. 

I'm disappointed in myself most of the time.  Most of the time I can't see beyond the face of the person standing in front of me.  I'm tired of laughing at other people or hating another person because what I see on the surface repulses me.  I want to be part of a Union.