Monsoon Wedding: 'There's a temple right in the middle of the driveway'

The good folks at the Criterion Collection have set a new standard for themselves with their edition of Mira Nair's 2001 'Monsoon Wedding', out today, and, if it wasn't for the fact that they're giving us 'Wings of Desire' in a couple of weeks, it would be my choice for simply the best DVD release of the year.

I remember being exhilirated by the film when I saw it in Belfast - a mostly handheld family soap opera centering on the microcosm of all human life that takes place around a Delhi wedding, that also manages to take in the impact of globalisation, the economic transformation of India, sexual identity, the re-interpretation of religious traditions to accommodate modernity, but most of all the question of how love on earth is possible.  For four days it feels like the whole world has arrived in India to dance, to fight, to eat, to complain, to stress out, to wear extraordinary colors and carry out the tensest of rituals: a family gathering.

And so we get Old and New India scattered in our direction, English and Hindi in the same sentence, remixed Bollywood dance tunes underscoring ancient rituals (flowers arranged as if their lives depended on it, mothers-in-law hiding the fact that they smoke, motivations mixed).  It's utterly exuberant, but far deeper than that: this is about what India is really like.  It's kinetic enough to feel like a rehearsal for 'Slumdog Millionaire', its scope wide enough to invoke the spirit of Robert Altman, its high drama mingled with a smidgen of magic is undeniably sourced from Fellini.  (While it's become fashionable to detract from 'Slumdog', I'm still a fan (with reservations); but there's a scene of a boy with an eyepatch carrying coconut halves through the rain in 'Monsoon Wedding' that's as evocative than anything I saw in this year's Best Picture winner.) Nair knows when to up the emotional ante (to 'milk it', as she says on the erudite and illuminating commentary track); her cinematographer Declan Quinn arrives at a representation of these people and this place that makes you feel like you're there (and was to repeat this technique for 'Rachel Getting Married' last year, a film that could be considered a sister to 'Monsoon Wedding'); the music and editing dovetail perfectly.

Nair's early work was in the theatre, and she says that with the wedding scene she wanted to create 'an enormous drama in one night'.  It's obvious that in making this film she organised things so that something approximating real life would happen on screen.  And you're into it from the opening frames; totally compelled by these people who remind you of yourself, even if you feel that you have nothing in common with their rituals or culture.  What's most compelling is how there are so many well-rounded characters - Naseeruddin Shah's patriarch chief among them, granting his role dignity, soulfulness, authority, and - the hardest thing - a moment of change that feels completely convincing.

Now, I just got married, so I may be allowing the residue of sentimentality that derives from that day to prejudice me in favor of this movie; I'd counter that by saying I liked it when I was single too...It's a genre-defying film patched together from Bollywood/Hollywood romance, musicals, a bit of psychological thriller here, a family soap opera there.  It will make you cry and laugh, and think about your own family while it teaches a gentle lesson about how the world is changing, and the place of India in the world (it shouldn't be a surprise that Steven Spielberg sees the future of Dreamworks as intimately bound with the country).  Most of all, though, 'Monsoon Wedding' portrays the mad courage that it takes to enter into love with other people; it's liberating to imagine that life could be like this.

Criterion's edition includes several short documentaries and fiction films from Nair, and a crop of thoughtful interviews, alongside the requisite essay; there's almost nothing you could imagine being left out of the supplements.  It's a fantastic edition of a wonderful film that repays repeat viewings.

*Images courtesy Criterion Collection.

'I'm up to my Neck in being an American, whether I like it or not'

Wallace Shawn - you know, Wallace Shawn, man of wit and letters, agreeable suppers with theatre directors,  and potentially poisoned cups of mead, has some things to say about life.  Haymarket Books have gathered his elegant essays in a book which turns out to be one of the wisest and most pleasurable I've read in a while.  He riffs on topics as varied and inextricably connected as the relationship between artists and the corporations who fund so many of us, the dependability of sex and our inability to talk about it, and what he considers the detachment from morality that occurs when you stop noticing the connection between imperialism and you.  You can hear his inimitable voice as you read, and, for myself at least, might rather wish you were discussing this with him in a cafe, just like he does with Michael Moore in 'Capitalism: A Love Story'.

The most striking thing about Shawn's writing is how seriously he takes the artist's vocation to re-humanise the world.  He knows that he is complicit in oppression, simply because the global structure deems it so; and he knows that by art and kindness he can up-end the scales of history.  It's a rich and challenging experience to read him, because he goes beyond the typical blame-everybody else-my-view-of-the-world-is-just-fine-thank-you-very-much rhetoric that tends to dominate these days.  He wants to write about life in a way that allows for the possibility of change on his own part, not just those he's angry with.  I'm still reading this super little book, but for now, here's some wisdom from Wallace, that I'd like to let speak for itself:

From the Introduction: 'My congenital inability to take the concept of inviolable 'self' seriously - my lack of certainty about who I am, where I am, and what my 'characteristics' are - has led me to a certain skepticism, a certain detachment, when people in my vicinity are reviling the evil and alien Other, because I feel that very easily I could become that Other, and so could the reviler.'

On Patriotism:'For people who are already in love with themselves, who worship themselves, who consider themselves more important than others, more self-esteem is not needed.  Self-knowledge would be considerably more helpful.'

On Morality:  'Everyone knows that ... goodness exists, that it can grow, or it can die, and there's something particularly disingenuous about extricating oneself from the human struggle with the whispered excuse that it's already over.'

More from Mr Shawn here:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv0fduTDDAY&hl=en&fs=1&]

*Image above from Cinema Strikes Back

What I Learned from the Devil at the Movies

Yesterday I spent a monumentally pleasurable afternoon in the presence of Satan; in the form of the ridiculous and wonderful performance that Walter Huston (above) gives in 'The Devil and Daniel Webster', a film about American history and the mythopoetics of the Yankee soul that deserves to be compared with 'Citizen Kane' (and not just because they were both edited by Robert Wise and released by RKO within a month of each other).  It's an astonishing movie, of the kind that evokes an utterly romanticised vision of pastoral, political and religious life but manages to appear even more realistic for it.  (Story hook?  Poor farmer sells soul to the Devil in exchange for money and crops.  Doesn't make him happy.)

There's a hell of a lot more to it than the soul-selling plot point, and I'm writing something more extensive about the whole film, but for now I thought I'd post about what the movie devil looks like.  (I'm also honored to be currently involved in a project with Walter Wink, a theologian and writer who has done more than anyone I can think of to develop an understanding of the concept of Satan as a projection of human evil that is both psychologically healthy and intellectually rigorous, and avoids not only the neurosis that some religious practices can reinforce but also the societal resignation that results when people don't think clearly about evil.  The fruits of that project should be published in the next year or so; I'll post details then.  In the meantime, some of you may be interested in Wink's incredible book 'Engaging the Powers', which describes the way in which story/myth is manifested in real-world violence, and how ending the cycle of oppression depends partly on finding a new way to tell stories, and meeting violence with its opposite, rather than pouring gasoline on a fire; this book will, I believe, be read, and its themes practised, for generations to come.)

Walter might enjoy his namesake, Mr Huston's performance in 'The Devil and Daniel Webster', partly because it's played for dark laughs, and partly because it reveals the structure of all human temptation to selfishness: looking up from a sense of scarcity to find an easily-imitated set of behavior played out by someone who seems to offer jealous reward.  You have it, so I want it.  Given that 'Daniel Webster' is a myth, it has a moralistic climax - in which the victim is defended on the grounds of national pride; but the film has the maturity to end not on a note of triumph, but a warning: it could happen to you too.  Movie Satan is usually a source of fear; but while fear can teach you something,  for now, I thought I'd write about some of what I have learned from Satan in the movies.  Lessons 5-8 may present the most valuable psychological idea I've ever heard; although watching Film Number 8 may make you feel like you're in Hell.

1: Beware men with long fingernails who hire private detectives.

2: Use a reputable adoption agency.

3: Always bring a Swedish guy with you.

4: Be careful how you judge little things.

5: You'll be paying those law school debts forever.

6: The Devil only has the power you give him.

7: He really only has the power you give him.

8: Honest.

Escapism Film Festival Next Weekend: You're Invited

I'm happy to announce that through my secret identity as a film critic and co-host of The Film Talk, next weekend I'll be at the Escapism Film Fest in Durham, North Carolina.

If you're a regular listener to the show or reader of this blog, you'll know that my love of cinema was catalysed at the impressionable age of 4, when my dad took my brother and I to see the darkest film ever released by Disney, 'The Black Hole'.  I was utterly captivated by the scope of the images - the spaceship might just be the biggest spaceship in the movies; for some reason the old character actors already seemed familiar, even though it was the first time I ever saw them; and I knew there was something dramatic going on, even if I couldn't quite understand the metaphysical proposals that result in [SPOILER AHOY] the mad evil scientist played by Maximillian Schell becoming possessed by the spirit (and the body) of his hench-robot, the imaginatively named 'Maximillian'.  The script's not up to much, but the whole thing looks magnificent; thirty years after I first saw 'The Black Hole', it has an irreplaceably special place in my heart, along with the adventures of Marty McFly, Clark Kent, the pirate-treasure seekers of Astoria, Oregon, and the other cinematic fantasy figures whom I connected with first by seeing them on screen, and spent much of the years 1983-1989 trying to recapture by listening to the soundtrack albums.

So thank God that the Carolina Theatre in Durham is screening these and other pictures of memory next weekend, in its glorious old and cavernous in all the best ways large screen, along with so many of the films that shaped me as a child that I can assume the programmers at the theatre were reading my diary.  Jett and I will be covering the Escapism Film Festivalin person - and if you're anywhere nearby, please join us for the opportunity to see Superman, Back to the Future, Dr Strangelove, The Goonies, Return to Oz, and the camp classic with Topol's second greatest screen performance 'Flash Gordon'.  Please join us if you can.

The Movie of the Year 2009: Climaxes

I hate missing the ending, so as a conclusion to my interim reflections on the year so far, let's get to the climaxes.  (Trying my best to avoid spoilers, but read the following at your own risk):

THE MOVIE OF THE YEAR CLIMAXES

Moon: When Sam emulates Dave Bowman’s ultimate trip, but instead of experiencing terror, he’s whopping and hollering like a child on a rollercoaster; the most delightful homage to Kubrick I think I’ve seen.

The moment when Ric O’Barry interrupts a lie by wearing a television in ‘The Cove’.

The last section of ‘Inglourious Basterds’, which appears to be pushing the audience to face what we might prefer to ignore: that when we watch violence as entertainment, we may be complicit in its real world analogue.  (This section begins with an extraordinary image of a woman in a red dress [of the kind that Rita Hayworth used to be sewn into], smoking a cigarette, framed against the window of a cinema projector; the fact that said window seems to have been imported from the Emperor’s decompression chamber in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, and that the music that accompanies the scene was written by David Bowie and Giorgio Moroder thirty-eight years after the events depicted in the film took place in Tarantino’s imagination only serves to heighten the sense of both the universality of the film’s point, and the fact that ‘Inglourious Basterds’ might be the most aesthetically rich and philosophically profound film released so far this year.)

The climax of ‘Mary and Max’, the astonishing Sundance opener that regrettably still doesn’t have a US release date; one of the most honest unbroken vision of how life ends, and life goes on that I’ve seen in a movie.

The ‘Gojira’ exclamation by Steve 'Lips' Kudlow at the end of ‘Anvil’ – the only heavy metal documentary that will make you cry (let me grant the fact that I'm not an expert on heavy metal documentaries); with admiration for the titanic struggle of these guys to do what they do best, and the vicarious pleasure one takes from imagining that the life of a film blogger might one day be as exciting as playing for free to an audience of 12 in a Prague basement club.

The very last image of ‘The Hurt Locker’ – revealing violence-inspired adrenaline as an addiction that will not be ended without the wisdom of old men like Clint.

END CREDITS

Speaking of Clint, you'd have to go far to get a more enveloping and meaningful end credits sequence than the one that has him singing over the embers of ‘Gran Torino’; an actor getting to control his swan song at the end of a film that reconciles the past violence of his iconic characters with the need for someone to end it.

The coruscating static camera throughout the end credits of ‘In the Loop’, observing the business-as-usual scene in the UK civil service, bureaucrats wandering in a formal haze, as if they haven’t just legitimized a war that will kill hundreds of thousands of people, dilute the moral credibility of their own nation, and make the world less safe than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Having said all this, the best experience I had in a cinema was my once every three or four-yearly revisitation of 'Lawrence of Arabia', whose 'funny sense of fun' gets more disturbing each time I see it; my virginal encounter with 'Andrei Rublev', whose scene of medieval town-sacking is one of about seven hundred reasons why Jett's weekly statement about it might be unarguable.  But, as far as elevated aesthetic experiences go, none of these matched the sense of delirium I had last week in the presence of the Sun Ra Arkestra, their heavy horns pounding out the kind of sound you might expect to greet you in jazz heaven.  Having said that, I'm going to see a movie at a festival at the end of next week that happens to be the first film I ever saw, and one that I haven't seen on a cinema screen since 1979.  I don't know if the 'The Black Hole' holds up as a coherent movie; but I'm hoping that the part of me that was captivated by cinema as a four year old kid thirty years ago gets to live again for a night.  And if you're in or near North Carolina, you should join me.  If you do, you'll get to see this:

And why on earth would you want to miss that?