To the People of Japan

AUSTIN, TEXAS—I am here at South by Southwest, ready to begin the deluge of cinephilia that awaits me in the next nine days. And yeah, I'm excited.

For now, though, a brief moment of prayer for the victims of another deluge: the tsunami that came about as the result of the 8.9 earthquake that hit the coast of Japan today. This morning, I woke up and watched pieces of video footage of the earthquake and tsunami...and my God:





After I spent a few minutes looking at videos like these, I called my dad—who was born and raised in Japan—and asked him if any of our relatives in the country were affected by this. He said he would make some calls later tonight to make sure, but that he didn't think they were hit; apparently they live far away from where the worst damage took place.

In any case, my thoughts are with all of the people of Japan—personal relatives and everyone else—and with the people of other nations who have been affected by the tsunami (as of this writing, much of the West Coast had been put on alert).

If you want to donate money to help with the inevitable relief effort in Japan, the American Red Cross has come through again with this link.

Brooklyn: The Borough that Bloomberg Forgot?

NEW YORK—Four views from the intersection of Kingston Ave. and St. Johns Place in my Brooklyn neighborhood:

Admittedly, a good amount of the snow you see on these streets was cleared away today, so this intersection doesn't look nearly as, well, apocalyptic as it did both yesterday and the day before. Nevertheless, there are still many side streets that, as of this morning anyway, were still buried in snow. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

The blizzard was more or less over by early Monday morning...and still there are whole neighborhoods in the outer boroughs of New York City that are reportedly blanketed in unplowed snow.

But, of course, Manhattan streets are, save for a few annoying puddles of slush, relatively free of white stuff on the ground...because hey, Times Square needs to be cleaned up as soon as possible for New Year's Eve festivities Friday night!

The clean-up operation is over, Mayor Bloomberg? Really? It sure doesn't look like it in my neighborhood, for one.

Free Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof!

NEW YORK—

Jafar Panahi

Mohammad Rasoulof

This is a day late...but no matter, because this isn't likely to become any less relevant in the coming days...or years, actually.

I refer, of course, to the recent sentence handed down by Iran's repressive government sending Iranian filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof to prison for six years and banning Panahi—an internationally renowned world-cinema giant—from making any more films for 20 years. This ruthless silencing of artistic voices would be terrible for any nation, but it is especially enraging in Iran, for which this kind of thing is a deeply unfortunate way of life.

Admittedly, my exposure to Panahi's work is, as of now, limited to his last—and maybe final?—film Offside (2006), a trenchant and subversive humanist comedy-drama set detailing the attempts of a handful of women—who are banned from entering sports stadiums altogether—to watch a major soccer match live. It's a fantastic film, available here in the United States on DVD but banned—as are all of his films—in his home country. And I've seen nothing by Rasoulof, though I hear from many of my New York cinephile friends that his most recent film The White Meadows (2009) was one of the highlights of this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Putting all that aside, however, this kind of governmental clampdown on free artistic expression is absolutely unacceptable and needs to be fought whenever it pops up, as it has here in upsetting fashion.

David Ehrlich, a writer for Cinematical, sums up the outrage eloquently, so I'll let him have the last word here (and, of course, read his full post here):

The Guardian spoke with Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, who opined that, "This is a catastrophe for Iran's cinema. Panahi is now exactly in the most creative phase of his life and by silencing him at this sensitive time, they are killing his art and talent." Dabashi later detailed the national ramifications of Panahi's sentence, offering that, "Iran is sending a clear message by this sentence that they don't have any tolerance and can't bear arts, philosophy or anything like that. This is a sentence against the whole culture of Iran. They want the artists to sit at their houses and stop creating art. This is a catastrophe for a whole nation."

Editorializing, ahoy! To echo Dabashi's sentiments, this is obviously both a tragic day for cinema as well as a tragic day for human progress. It appears as if the autocratic forces of regressive censorship haven't just robbed the world of one of its most vital artists, but also a country of one of its most essential voices. As film lovers and free-thinking people alike, we have no choice but to shine a light on this atrocity and shame those at fault into reversing their decision. This all feels like a ghastly clerical error, a mistake so flippantly unjust that it seems inevitable that the forces of reason will descend upon Panahi's cell and absolve him of this insanity. If only.

We're not here to stir our readers into political action, but art must be allowed to flourish, and Jafar Panahi's cinema is important in a way that cinema should no longer have to be. We urge you to consider both his films and his plight.

Aung San Suu Kyi: A Real "Triumph of the Human Spirit" Story

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Now here's a real "triumph of the human spirit" story for all of you to chew on.

For those who hadn't heard, over the weekend Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was finally released from military junta-imposed house arrest after about 15 years.

Fifteen years! Damn...that's a long time to be imprisoned in one's own home, especially by decree of a military-led government trying to suppress the pro-democracy ideal for which you stand. (I get antsy even after one day of being trapped at home; imagine fifteen, especially if you're as much of a political activist as she is!)

And yet, judging by public comments she has already made upon her momentous release, she is sticking to her political guns, even after all these years, and planning to continue her fight for a free, democratic Myanmar...even if it means risking future imprisonment. She and her burning flame of belief endures. That's real bravery right there.

I, for one, wish her the best of luck; a genuinely inspiring figure such as this deserves all the support she can get for such a worthy cause, against all odds.

Here is some video of the inspiring response from the Burmese people that greeted her release on Saturday:

Video for the Day: Nigeria—Where Oil Spills Every Year

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Though BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill is a terrible occurrence indeed, apparently Nigeria has been a victim of oil spills over the last 50 years, according to John Vidal, environmental editor of U.K.'s The Observer, in this article. I had not realized this 'til I clicked on a friend's link on Facebook; it is sad news indeed, the lengths that oil companies and a country's government will go to keep such disasters under wraps from the rest of the world. And while the U.S.'s efforts to handle the environmental crisis raging in the Gulf of Mexico right now get all the press, Nigeria's problems get ignored.

On the theory that awareness is a reasonable first step: here's a video news report, from Al Jazeera, on Nigeria's long-running crises:



Sure provides a sense of perspective about the perhaps more serious troubles going on in the rest of the world, does it not? Well, it does for me, anyway.

Critical Distance Redux

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—

Yesterday I had perhaps the most memorable moviegoing experience of this year to date when I finally saw Band of Outsiders projected on a big screen at the IFC Center in New York. Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 film is among my top five favorite films ever, but my only exposure to it until yesterday was via DVD viewings on various-sized television displays. This weekend, however, IFC Center programmed it as part of a season-long series of French crime classics, and I figured, since I was planning to be in New York anyway to catch up with that French Oscar nominee A Prophet, I might as well take this opportunity to experience this film for the first time in a movie theater. Well, folks, Band of Outsiders not only still holds up as a masterpiece, but it's even more charming, poetic and affecting when its resolutely working-class trio, so full of romantic desires and mundane frustrations, is given the kind of larger-than-life projection they crave. Who knew that the film's final 20 minutes—as we witness Franz, Arthur and Odile's robbery plans fall disastrously apart—would not only be sad and unfortunate to watch, but also agonizing in its visceral impact? In short, it was truly a revelatory experience, making what I already knew was a great film seem even greater and more profound than I had even realized. After I left the IFC Center, I felt blissfully lightheaded, walking on air, with a big grin on my face. (You know that feeling, don't you? Treasure it whenever you can!)

Alas, that ecstasy was tempered by news of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Chile early yesterday, a natural disaster even more massive in scale than the earthquake that rocked Haiti weeks ago. This catastrophe, in fact, hit closer to home for me than the Haiti disaster did. A very good hometown friend of mine has been in Chile this past week as part of his graduate-school studies; naturally, when I heard on NPR that an earthquake had hit the country, I immediately started worrying about his well-being. Thankfully, I later found out, from both him and his girlfriend, that he was alive and well—but of course, that doesn't even begin to make up for the unimaginable loss of life that has surely resulted from this latest calamity.

You wouldn't think the earthquake in Chile had anything to do with Godard and Band of Outsiders, would you? But there's a small yet precious throwaway moment tucked into the film that, in its own way, brought me back momentarily into the real world.

The moment comes as Franz (Claude Brasseur) and Arthur (Sami Frey) kill time as Odile (Anna Karina) stakes out her aunt's house for the money she says is secretly stashed there. At one point, Franz and Arthur are seen reading newspaper stories out loud to each other. They're having some fun with the "usual" extravagant crime reports, but then Arthur starts reading aloud a news item about massacres in Rwanda: "Hutus [sawing] off the legs of giant Tutsis, their former masters, to bring them down to size."

In this moment, and in many other instances peppered throughout the film, Godard pointedly injects real-world tragedy into an otherwise playful/melancholy work, implicitly wrenching these dreamers—and, by extension, us dreamers in the audience—out of their B-movie-inspired reveries. It momentarily wrenched me out of my own euphoria as well; in fact, seeing that scene play out again made me flash back to something I posted a few weeks back about the unease I felt with my admittedly rather distant reaction to the Haiti disaster. In that blog entry, I cited a moment from Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965) to help explain that detachment. Someone near and dear to me may have gotten caught in this latest natural disaster, but I still feel that same emotional distance, no matter that Chile's earthquake is even more serious in nature than Haiti's. And judging by the dispassionate way Arthur reads about "Rwanda's rivers" being "choked with the bodies of 20,000 victims," Godard seems to understand that distance all too well.

It'd be easier to just cut ourselves off from the tragedies that, let's face it, happen all the time around the world. But we are all a part of this world; in that way, then, we are arguably all responsible to at least be aware of what goes on in the world outside of our individual purview. Even in the movies, Godard lyrically suggests in Band of Outsiders, we cannot forget the occasional drudgeries and outright tragedies of real life; nor should we necessarily do so. For me, it's that real-world awareness is makes the film as gloriously enlivening and beautiful as it is.

I may have more to add about Band of Outsiders in a later post, but for now, my deepest thoughts and prayers are with all the victims in Chile right now. If anyone knows any way I can help, I'm all ears.

Critical Distance

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Guess I spoke too soon, because here I am already with a new post! I guess this is what slacking off from going to the gym will do: free up time for blogging. I'll be back to my two-session-a-week routine next week, I promise!

In the meantime, there's something that's been on my mind recently that I'd like to put down here. To introduce it, then, an image:

Amidst the many random postmodern bits of movie-movie business strewn throughout Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965) is one cherishable bit of real-world insight, one that's now more relevant than ever in ways I'll explain below. It comes early in the film, as Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is driving Marianne (Anna Karina) home. Marianne turns on the radio and hears a news broadcast reporting the number of soldiers on both sides of the Vietnam War killed that day. From that instant comes the following exchange (at least, as rendered on the Criterion DVD's subtitles):

MARIANNE: Awful, isn't it? It's so anonymous.

FERDINAND: What is?

MARIANNE: They say "115 guerrillas," and it means nothing to us. But each one is a man, and we don't even know who he is—if he loves a woman, if he has kids, if he prefers movies or plays. We know nothing about them. All they say is "115 killed."

This particular dialogue exchange crossed my mind last week when I heard about the massive devastation in Haiti. Obviously, what's going on in Haiti right now—70,000+ people dead as a result of a 7.0 earthquake—isn't quite the same as people dying in war; the casualties in one come from a natural disaster, while the casualties in the other are entirely man-made. Here's the dovetailing point of interest, though: I'm hearing about the destruction in Haiti through media sources, just as I'm certain a lot of people around the world heard about the violence in Vietnam through radio and television. In other words, I'm hearing about it all from a distance. Unless you're physically present to see, with your own eyes, the unconscionable loss of life in both those situations, can you truly grasp the magnitude of destruction, particularly on an intimate human level? You may have an idea, buttressed by eyewitness reports you may see and/or hear, of how bad it is in Haiti right now, but that may be all it is: an intellectual grasp, but, depending on the kind of person you are, not necessarily a visceral or emotional one.

That kind of distance can be a slightly disturbing sensation especially if you are aware of it. I was sitting at my cubicle at the Wall Street Journal news desk when initial reports of the Haiti earthquake started flowing in, and honestly, I didn't think too much of it at first. The simple fact that a huge earthquake occurred in a third-world country like Haiti affected me no more than a standard murder reported on a local evening newscast usually would—which is to say, not all that deeply. But then more details started pouring forth: the initial death-toll estimates, the Richter-scale reading of the quake, and, later, the heartbreaking images and soundbites right from the stricken area. Only then did I start to get an idea of just how bad this situation was.

Even with that awareness in mind, though, it all still feels far away for me (literally and emotionally). I have no relatives in Haiti, and no one in my immediate circles of friends have been affected by the wreckage, at least as far as I know as of now. If I knew people affected by the tragedy, I might feel differently. But, as it stands for me right now, it feels like...well, a news story. And my comprehension of this feeling (or lack of it?) unsettles me just a tad. (Maybe I really just need to watch more TV news?)

And that's why I flashed back on that particular moment in Pierrot le fou. Godard, early in his filmmaking career, may have made films that, on a certain level, expressed a certain yearning for life to be like a movie. But he knew, deep down, even literature, sound or image had limits on accessing the various human truths of a situation. The distance is always there, however much a medium tries to bring you the cold, hard facts.

These realizations, of course, haven't stopped me from trying to do my part in contributing to the relief effort underway in Haiti. So far, I've donated some money to UNICEF online, and now that it may be possible to be able to write off those donations as 2009 tax deductions, I will probably contribute more. Short of actually going into Haiti to help the relief effort in person, I feel like it's the least I can do.