Films of the Year So Far, Part 1: The Cove

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw5qgVp0jng] Sorry for the light posting over the past few days from me - it's a crazy busy time and isn't going to get any less intense for a couple of weeks, so this week I thought I'd try something that has worked on occasion in the past, and may either be a stroke of genius or the worst idea in blogging since Perez Hilton figured out people would click on advertisements after prying into other people's private lives: The Review Haiku.

Please try to contain yourselves.

Roger Ebert expresses his disappointment annually that the timing of the Academy Awards means that the 'quality' films are released together, in the last three months of the year, which means, of course, that they are in competition with the Thanksgiving and Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/'Holiday' enormo-prints; October-December become like a theme park, with far too much going on, so smaller films are lucky to have a week on a local screen, and I always end up frustrated at my inability to see the films I want in their natural habitat.  (And at the fact that many of the 'serious' films are rushed to the finish line, suffering from the half-bakedness that comes with a director being forced to lock a cut before the film is really complete.  Yes, I'm thinking of you.)

Ebert suggested a few years ago that the Academy could make things easier for audiences (and encourage more quality films to be made) by dividing the voting period in two, with nominations being made at the end of June and December each year.  The logic would be that films released in January - June would have a better chance of being recognised; and we the ticket-buyers would have more decent movies to see in late winter/early spring.  There are enough examples of films released early in the year whose momentum for recognition burned out before the votes were cast (remember how everyone was saying that Richard Jenkins would win for 'The Visitor', released last April?); there are exceptions, of course, and who knows if Ebert is right; for my money, anything that shakes up the staid and repetitive vision of what passes for a 'Best Picture' qualifier can only be a good thing.

With that in mind, and as we approach the mid-point of the year, I thought I'd cast a look back and share my putative choices.  All a game of course, but I feel bad about not posting much lately and thought I'd enjoy the haiku exercise (tongue in cheek.  I hope).  I'll try to post one each day this week.

To that end, herewith the 'First Half of 2009 Best/Worst Pictures/Honorable-Mentions and Haven't-Seen-Yets (5-7-5 Formation) Part 1':

Best Picture nominee #1

'The Cove'

Dolphins are cute, right?

Not in Japan. They die there.

Not waving.  Drowning.

I'll Remember This Carrot Forever

We're supposed to be depressed by 'Waiting for Godot', a play so full of pessimism about the meaning of life that you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a wonder people actually buy tickets to see it.

But, watching the first Broadway revival since its premiere New York production in 1956, last night at Studio 54, it was impossible not to feel exhilirated, even inspired.  Maybe it was the magnificent anxiety of Nathan Lane, Bill Irwin, John Goodman and especially John Glover in the roles of the men who talk and don't talk about everything and nothing while incapable of taking responsibility for their own lives.  It's easy to be inspired by those four actors - Lane and Irwin bringing despair and humour to Vladimir and Estragon, standing by the tree, afraid, alone, together; Goodman monstrous as Pozzo the businessman, Glover insane and disturbing as the slave Lucky, all hollow-eyed and duck-like movements. This is a play about the torment that prevails when people do not love.

And because of that, it was an inspirational experience in the theatre last night.  There are moments in the play when the characters reveal their depth of need for human community - when Pozzo's cursed blindness has rendered him unable to stand up; when Estragon has to follow 'Don't touch me!' with 'Stay with me!'  They want the freedom to be alone; but can't stand it when they have it.  When Vladimir gives hungry Estragon a vegetable, Gogo says 'I'll remember this carrot forever' - a suggestion that, whatever else is happening or not happening, kindness will last too.  This production has Didi and Gogo holding hands as the curtain falls - affectation or affirmation?  Beckett probably wouldn't tell us.  He'd want us to make up our minds for ourselves, which is of course something that his characters never do.  The hope in 'Waiting for Godot' comes from the fact that it's a warning of what life is like when love is absent.  And if you're already feeling depressed, it might not be the best play to see just now; or it might show you that things really aren't as bad as they seem.

PS: Before I am deluged with comments about how I've misunderstood the play let me acknowledge that it's probably also about whatever else you want it to be.  There's a certain ironic sense in saying that no one has the monopoly on interpreting something that was intended to reflect absurdity.

The Girlfriend Experience

Steven Soderbergh has managed to build an enviable career - he gets to make fun, huge projects like 'Ocean's Eleven', and alternates these with smaller, self-consciously serious films such as 'The Underneath', 'Kafka', and 'The Girlfriend Experience', which I saw this afternoon at the Chelsea Clearview next door to the Chelsea Hotel, in, as you might expect, Chelsea.  Name of the lead character of this movie?  It's an easy guess - my sense is that Soderbergh's protagonist, played by an adult film actor called Sasha Grey is supposed to represent an entire social cohort as well as an individual soul.  In that regard, naming her after a part of New York City known for its cultural creativity and sociological excess seems not only obvious but just right.

'Just right' is how I felt about most, though not all, of the film - Grey is a sex worker who hires herself out for something more than sex: she approximates relationships, for an hour, or a night at a time.  She has a boyfriend called Chris at home, who's also trying to sell his body - he's a personal trainer.  It would not be unfair to say that her job eventually creates domestic tension.

The story is set against the cultural shift that was the US Presidential election of just over six months ago.  Let me say it again: Just Over Six Months Ago.  In that sense, it already feels dated; although that's not a criticism, just an indicator of how quickly things change, or give the appearance of changing.

And so, it's about the moral impetus of privatised capitalism (if I wanted to sound less pretentious I might translate that as 'it's about what happens when the love of money drives our sense of pleasure and satisfaction'), the status anxiety that is the shadow side of telling each other that we can achieve anything, and then defining that 'anything' purely in terms of materialism or celebrity, and something else that might sound even weirder: a hidden yearning for a return to pre-industrial society.  One where it's easy to imagine being part of a community that actually did share its possessions, that actually did offer people much of what they needed, that simplified relationships, didn't idealise the nuclear family, didn't force people to create insatiable appetites for things.

Now I know it's easy to overstate the benefits of the past, the good old days and all that.  So let me say this: I know that disease and violence were characteristic of the pre-industrial age, as much as any romanticised notion of extended families living together in pastoral bliss.  But I also strongly suspect that the rates of depression, disappointment, and inability to sit still and think for a few minutes that seem to be characteristic of our contemporary culture have something to do with how we interpret what it means to be human.  If we believe that the ultimate end of our lives is only to become fully self-actualised individuals, then the wider community will suffer.

What Chelsea in 'The Girlfriend Experience' does for a living is not the main point of interest here: she could just as easily have been an actor or a model or a salesperson on the floor of Macy's; because the movie is suggesting that we are all prostitutes; or at the very least, we are all subject to the impersonal forces of an economy that has abandoned gift exchange in favour of fast buck selling to the highest bidder.  Or at least an economy that thinks it has the upper hand; it has pulled the wool over its own eyes.  Because behind the stories of companies too big to fail and 'where's my bailout?', communities everywhere are rediscovering what a social structure based on mutuality could look like.  We are only enslaved by money if we put our wrists in its shackles.  Chelsea is a slave.  So is Chris.  So is everyone in this movie.

So, while it's gorgeous to look at, and amusing when it's observing the games people play (casting film critic Glenn Kenny as a self-appointed sex reviewer is funny and smart, and not just because he's great in the role), 'The Girlfriend Experience' is depressing.  And if it represented what life is really like, instead of the delusions that we know can be cast away, and are in fact just waiting for us to see through them, we'd all have reason to be depressed too.

Just War on the Radio

'Beyond Belief', Ernie Rea's BBC Radio Four discussion programme on religion and ethics is weekly listening for me, along with my good friend William Crawley's 'Sunday Sequence'.  They're among the best radio shows on the BBC, partly because of the personalities and characters of their hosts, and partly because of the fact that they devote substantial time to issues that matter.  Just heard a recent 'Beyond Belief' - a discussion on the ethics of war; it's not the most elegant conversation but is worth a listen. Last week's Beyond Belief on Just War theory.

Crawley's interview with Richard Dawkins.

Sunday Sequence homepage.

Happening This Week

We spent yesterday with Walter and June Wink, courageous peace workers and thinkers; last night I read something of Walter's that feels like a good way to begin today, whose fathomless mystery of course cannot and must not be underestimated: 'There is no such thing as objective powerlessness.  Our belief that we are powerless is a sure sign that we have been duped by the Powers.'

A few things for this week:

We've a new Podcast about 'The Hangover' and 'Up' at The Film Talk.  'Up's pretty gorgeous, with some true cinematic magic, although flimsy motivation for the villain and the merciless manner of his despatch were disappointments.  'The Hangover' divided us - if it's commenting on a certain kind of American male selfishness and idiocy, that's all well and good; problem is, I think it's celebrating it.

There's a thoughtful reflection on reversing your perceptions about who is 'in' and who is 'out' from Nadia Bolz-Weber at Queermergent

One of the most elegant and moving films of recent years, Clint Eastwood's 'Gran Torino' is out on DVD Tuesday - there's never been a figure in cinema like Eastwood.  He's been making some of his best movies in his older years; and if, as has been suggested, 'Gran Torino' is his last on screen performance, then he's going out in a manner completely under his control: an atonement for the violence of his earlier years, a vision of community restored, an assertion that it is being responsible that makes us human.

If you're in the NYC area on Thursday, I highly recommend going to hear the Dave Dellinger memorial lecture hosted by War Resisters International.  It's presented this year by Nicolson Baker whose astonishing book 'Human Smoke' up-ends readers perceptions of the Second World War, doing more than any previous work to challenge the myths of redemptive violence associated with that conflict.  Lecture's at 7pm Thursday; I'll be there - let me know if you're planning on it and I'd be glad to meet up.

For Belfast friends, this Friday sees the release at QFT of a new print of Kubrick's 'Barry Lyndon' - if I were home I'd be on University Square on Friday, and would return at least once more to see this magnificent work of art.  It's over three hours of extraordinary imagery, biting wit, and a central performance that makes Ryan O'Neal one of those actors who never needed to make anything else to be assured of a place in film history.

As for my day, I'm meeting with Ian Cron to discuss a retreat we're working on together, and trying to get some thoughts together about a couple of writing projects - one of which I'm very excited about if it ends up actually happening.  Hope we all have a good day.  Keep in touch.