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.

Quotation of the Day

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.: This just reemphasizes how this president has moved the United States from a foreign policy of strong national defense to one based on multinational cooperation. That is the kind of change that the Nobel committee believes in. This, apparently, is a criticism of Obama receiving the  Peace Prize.

The Movie of the Year: Overtures

OVERTURES

Three opening sequences have embedded themselves in my mind this year:

Youssou N’Dour’s anthemic call, at the beginning of Elizabeth Chai Versalihis’ ‘I Bring What I Love’ to the young people of Africa, tears streaming down his face, asking his people to be guided by their own vision to unshackle themselves from the dependency fostered by sentimentalized Western views of the continent.

The first section of ‘Up’, which I saw a few weeks before my own wedding in May, the most glorious animation and design fused with a powerfully resonant story: the arc of a love affair, beginning in childhood, and reaching a crisis with the death of one party; whole films have dedicated to this arc, of course; ‘Up’ manages to make you believe it in five minutes; the whole rest of the movie is about what happens next, and how love always outlasts its object.

And the first half hour of ‘Inglourious Basterds’, which manages to invoke the memory of Lee van Cleef, the ‘Hills are Alive’ sequence in ‘The Sound of Music’; and even the face of Stanley Kubrick.  Beyond that, it provides the most credible reason in cinema history for a French and German character to speak English to each other; announces the arrival of a fantastic actor – Christoph Waltz - on international screens; and declares Tarantino’s intention to make Nazi violence look even worse than it has ever done by the very absurdity of its portrayal in his film.

More suggestions?

The Movie of the Year 2009

Earlier in the summer I began an ill-advised attempt at writing haiku over at The Film Talk (what’s the verb for composing a haiku?  Haikuing?  Haiku-tecturing? Haiku-grammising?) in response to some of the films that have intrigued me this year.  The experiment was abruptly ended by an outbreak of good taste, but as we roll into the fourth quarter of 2009, in anticipation of the awards season ‘quality’ epidemic that’s sure to colonise our screens over the next few months, I thought I’d return to reflecting on how intriguing a year this has been at the movies. As the last three months of the year traditionally see the release of Oscar-bait, our vision of the best films of 2009 will inevitably be somewhat skewed toward films that haven’t been released yet.  I’ve mentioned before that Roger Ebert may have made the most sensible suggestion for renewing the Academy Awards in a fashion that would both help films released earlier in the year not to be forgotten, and allow audiences to expect decent movies from January to September.  In that spirit, let’s have a thought experiment: I’m going to attempt having two ‘best lists’ for this year; starting with this last week of the month, I’m going to post my treatment for the film of the year – a quixotic notional endeavour, in which the bits that made me feel happiest to be a film lover are cut together in a genre-bending masterpiece that exists only in my head, because that’s the only place it can exist – you will have your own choices, and I’d love to hear about them here on the site – so please share your own imaginings in the comments section.

We’ll break it down into sections – today I’ve written about the premises that I enjoyed the most; I’ll post again on Wednesday with thoughts on the best intros and moments; Friday will see the best endings and even closing credit sequences (trust me, there are a few) that I’ve seen.

And I promise to return to all of this when the year is done; some of these films will be forgotten in year-end lists, and part of the reason I’m writing this as a reminder to myself. Please forgive the indulgence if you’re not interested; but if you are, I’d love to have a conversation in the comments, starting today with your thoughts on the best premises and/or opening sequences you’ve seen this year.

THE BEST PREMISES OF 2009

Old guy saves the world through non-violence; gives a kid a car.

Middle-aged guy saves world through old movies; gives a guy a scar.

Old guy gets his world back by letting go of a balloon-powered house.

Depressed guy falls in love with both Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw; they love him back.  Kind of.

Depressed artist lives with an incredibly beautiful woman in Argentina but can’t write; learns to love his brother.

Old guy friends try to heal their boredom by failing to have sex with each other but film the foreplay and end up figuring out what happens when a generation is raised on boredom.

Old guy talks about the pictures he took; one of which ended the War in Vietnam.

Old guy runs Italy into the ground.

Old guy and young guy drive around in a taxi.

Guy lives on the moon.

Old guy saves dolphins from amphibocide.

Middle-to-older aged guys play loud music; get big in Japan.

Young guy enjoys bomb disposal; can’t choose between cereals.

Male Violence, the End of Empire and 'Lawrence of Arabia'

I'm seeing David Lean's 'Lawrence of Arabia' tonight at the Carolina Theatre in Durham.  Again.  I've been fortunate to see it in 70mm (if you don't know what 70mm is, let's just say that it's what movies used to look like when you were a kid - HUGE and CLEAR and EPIC; and it's a format that's very rarely used these days).  This film is approaching fifty years old, but the last time I saw it - a year ago - it seemed so sure of itself and its themes so universal that it could have been made anytime.

Most of us who know it from TV screenings on wet Saturday afternoons, or because our grandparents told us about it may too easily disregard it; seeming like an artefact from the pre-CGI, pre-Tarantino, pre-indie witticism past.  But if what is past is prologue, then this film - about war, and the effects of war on those who try to make it happen - may demand our attention.

This is a film that evokes the end of the British Empire, and therefore the potential end of the concept of Empire itself; even though it's set during the first world war, it was made in 1962, by which time the notion of one monarch somehow ruling the world was fading into memory, and post-colonial theorists were beginning to make the case that Empire was a bad idea to start with.  The place where I was born and raised was about to take on the mantle of the last vestige of this Empire, and some of its people were about to take a leaf out of the revolutionary playbook that had been put to such awful use in places like Algeria, while tragically ignoring, avoiding or de-emphasising the tactics of the non-violent revolutionaries of India and the US Civil Rights Movement.  Turns out that those who wanted to hold onto Empire, and those who wanted to overthrow it were both wrong.

Killing people to prove that injustice is wrong may be the most contradictory paradox.  To keep Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, the government turned it into something like a security state; to make Ireland free, Irish people killed other Irish people; to keep Ulster British, British people killed other British people.  For decades.  And then we came inexorably to the conclusion that Empire (or an Independent Ireland) didn't matter as much as ensuring that every citizen has a stake in the governance of the society; that equality of opportunity should be enshrined in law; and that the only way to bring a violent conflict to an end is for someone to stop shooting first.

'Lawrence of Arabia' may have stirred a kind of nostalgic patriotism among British audiences in the 1960s - it is, on the surface after all, largely about how an English soldier helped Arabs defeat the Turkish army.  But it's much more subtle than a simple flag-waving exercise - its examination of Lawrence's psyche is deeply subversive in that it admits something that popular war movies tend to ignore: that killing can be addictive.  It foreshadows the recent amazing film 'The Hurt Locker' in Lawrence's admission that he 'enjoyed it' when called upon to execute a misbehaving nomad - but it actually goes further, in that it's clear that while he enjoyed it, he doesn't enjoy the fact that he enjoyed it.

He's deeply troubled, and at the end of the war is no longer the integrated, Noel Coward-esque wit we saw at the beginning.  Lawrence has 'a funny sense of fun' - and David Lean had a very sharp sense of the brutalisation that so many men embrace in order to feel alive, and how we have mislaid other rituals that used to pronounce and even convey adulthood.  The most well known line in the film is probably 'Nothing is written' - Lawrence's refusal to endorse the fatalism of pre-rational ways of doing religion; the human being is supposed to act on history, not be swept away by it.  I don't watch 'Lawrence of Arabia' to be thrilled by the violence or excited by the military 'victories' - they didn't last; and they certainly didn't produce a lasting peace in the Middle East; geo-politics is still dealing with the legacy of how Britain and what became Saudi Arabia tangoed a hundred years ago.  I watch it because, apart from the fact that it moves with grace and notes and a propulsive narrative, and imagery that has never been repeated, it tells the story of a man who faced a crisis, made a choice, and changed the world.  His was dangerous change.  I need to be reminded that I am subject to the male addiction to transformation through outer violence; because if I don't find a way to transform that violence into something that neither seeks to wound nor colonise others into my own little Empire of Self, my life will be dynamite, and not in a good way.