Sylvie Germain: 'Night of Amber' (1987, 2000)

Sylvie Germain, Night of Amber. Translated from the French by Christine Donougher. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, 2000; originally published as Nuit-d’ambre in 1987.

Here’s a dense and difficult novel that covers the orbit of a strange French family between the end of the Second World War and sometime well after the 1968 uprisings (right into the mid-1980s). If you took a heavy William Faulkner work and blended it with Catholic mysticism and liked the result, this might be for you. Several of the characters are tortured souls, and though there are others that are more delightful, it’s the damaged ones that Germain focuses on the most. Can they gain redemption? Grace? Salvation? Despite vile acts?

Here are some samples of things that drew my attention.

“Music and wind: two naked impulses that give rise to a wandering urge.” (page 81).

“But the time of war was not at all over. In fact it had never ceased. In its impatience and intemperance, the time of war had simply changed location. It liked to carry its fury elsewhere, always elsewhere, that is to say, more or less everywhere.” (page 96).

There’s a fair amount of consideration of the Guerre d'Algérie / Révolution algérienne (1954-1962) and its atrocities, including massacres in Algeria and a deadly police assault against peaceful protesters in Paris at the Pont St.-Michel on October 17, 1961. (The head of the National Police had been a pro-Nazi Vichy official during World War II and was later tried for war crimes dating to that time): «Nobody knows anything about that. No one knows or wants to know.» (page 131). «I saw that crowd marching quietly and peacefully. I saw how the police suddenly charged, encouraged motorists to drive straight into them.» (page 133).

In Paris, the main character (originally from the country) wonders around, observing «stations . . . vast waiting halls filled with movement . . . huge bazaars of people pacing up and down. He never tired of haunting them; he liked to identify the rogues among the crowd . . . There were also the race courses, markets, stadiums, airports, department stores, swimming pools. He had to go wherever it was crowded. He had to get lost in every throng, the better to detach himself from it, to rally himself in his proud, fierce solitude . . . » (page 141).

«Alphabet, keys, and nails: all these formed a strange whirl in Night-of-amber-Wind-of-fire’s eyes, and his gaze up the street and toward the square was that of a diver suddenly rising from the deep.» (page 155).

Back in the country : «The smell of freshly cut hay filled the air, pervading the land and the houses. Even pervading their bodies, a sweetish, heady smell, combining pepper and sugar.» (pages 242-243).

At the Strasbourg Cathedral (Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg), an American traveler quips: «You Catholics are a little nuts! Dormition . . . a pretty crazy word, really . . . »  (page 248).

«He was born of a wound. A war wound. That was a long time ago. But war wounds, like the wounds of love, never completely heal.» (page 269).

«This place, like every place in the world, was nowhere.» (page 281).

«Every place, be it empire or hamlet, is but a place of passage. But people passing through places are engaged in a constant relay, taking over and handing on.» (page 285).

«Every place is nowhere, but wherever [a person?] decides to settle acquires enormous power.» (page 300).

«A heart always to be deciphered, footsteps always to be enumerated.» (page 304).

Sylvie Germain (born January 8, 1954) worked for several years in Prague, where I'm intending to visit next year, so I'll pick up more of her books, particularly the ones set there.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.

Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman: 'Derrida' (2002)

Deconstructing Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman's Derrida (2002). 

In this documentary, we can see layers of Jackie Élie "Jacques" Derrida (1930-2004) over time - sometimes he looks refreshed and relaxed, at other times pensive and taciturn.

Overall, Derrida thinks through words and ideas carefully. 

At times in certain frames he looks like Norman Mailer, then Richard Burton, then Ralph Nader, then Peter Falk -- like a human kaleidoscope.

Derrida was born in Algeria. He was of Sephardic lineage with Jewish-Spanish origins dating back to before the 1492 and later expulsions of Jews and Muslims from Spain. As a boy, Derrida was expelled along with other Jewish students and teachers from "normal" Algerian schools, but he survived the Second World War. This background shaped his outlook as a philosopher. Increasingly, he became attuned to the power of words in discourse and their link to social action. 

In this desultory, entertaining documentary, Derrida speaks about biography, autobiography, history, texts, recording devices, archives, memory, reconstruction, deconstruction, mirrors.

He speaks of the "eye" of the spectator and audience: "between fiction and reality, a phantom eye." (Eg., Facebook)

Seeing his own portrait at one point, he quips: "It's uncanny. It's bizarre." (Iggy Pop expresses similar thoughts in "Success:" upon seeing someone wearing a t-shirt with his face on it approaching him, Iggy sings: "Here comes my face . . . It's plain bizarre . . .")

Derrida speaks of historical dots: "These are facts. Raw facts."

The Story of One's Life: facts vs. autobiography or a biography "in the mode of a story . . . I don't write a narrative. . . I'd love to tell stories, but I don't know how to tell them . . ."

Jackie and Marguerite Aucouturier Derrida, his spouse of many years, decline to say much about their relationship beyond the "raw facts." 

Upon being asked to speak of certain things, he replies, "You need to pose a question."

Of love: "Fidelity is threatened between the who and the what." Initially, one may be seduced by certain of a person's qualities, and later become disillusioned (or as a former brother-in-law once put it: "Love is blind; Marriage is an eye-opener). Or, one loves the "singularity" of another person beyond their most charming traits. 

During a visit to South Africa, after seeing Nelson Mandela's small jail cell when he'd been confined for eighteen years of his life, Derrida speaks of different types of forgiveness and reconciliation.

He delivers general observations and advice: "I am blind to myself . . . It's for others to see. To speak is not to see."

And to the intellectually lazy: "Do your homework and read."

On his archives: "urns in a graveyard . . . An archive is . . . a question for the future."

Of other philosohers: "I'd love to hear something about what they refuse to talk about."

On editing this film, to the directors: "Editing will be your signature, your autobiography."

Fun stuff for a Sagittarian. This post is in honor of Jeron Jackson, RIP. 

Today's Rune: The Self. 
  

Albert Camus: Algerian Chronicles (1958, 2013)

Given the recent release by the US Senate of "The Torture Report" (detailing American torture and general abuse of prisoners during the Bush-Cheney administration for several years after 9/11/2001), reading the new English translation of Albert Camus' Algerian Chronicles becomes more timely than ever. Why? Because Camus, writing of Algerian realities, and most sharply about La guerre d’Algérie / The Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) -- during which the majority of Algerians broke away from France and formed an independent nation -- spends a lot of thought and energy trying to figure out practical ways to safeguard the lives of civilians (especially women and children); guaranteeing the civilized treatment of prisoners; and seeking to minimize both terrorist attacks and revenge repression. 

This was a big deal for an Algerian Frenchman, but he died in a car accident at age 46 in 1960, two years before Algeria became independent, which he had hoped would not have happened with such abruptness.  

Camus' observations sound very contemporary. Apply them to just about anywhere in 2014, substituting "France/French" and "Algeria/Algerian" with any place or people you like. 

Camus in 1945: "French colonial doctrine in Algeria since the conquest has not been notable for its coherence . . . No historical situation is ever permanent. If you are unwilling to change quickly enough, you lose control of the situation . . . Because French policy in Algeria ignored these elementary truths, it was always 20 years behind the actual situation . . ." (pages 102-103).

In 1955: "The inexcusable massacres of French civilians will lead to equally stupid attacks on Arabs and Arab property. It is as if madmen inflamed by rage found themselves locked in a forced marriage from which no exit was possible and therefore decided on mutual suicide" (page 115). 

Camus' stance was  unequivocally against the use of torture by anyone for whatever stated reason. (Let me state here that I, Erik Donald France, agree with Camus 100% against any justification for the use of torture).

". . . how can one be outraged by the massacres of French prisoners if one tolerates the execution of Arabs without trials?  Each side uses the crimes of the other to justify its own. By this logic, the only possible outcome is interminable destruction" ("A Truce for Civilians," page 142).

It's all a fascinating and still urgent existential response to the "actualities" of the world. 

For more, here's a fuller citation: Albert Camus, Algerian Chronicles. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer with an introduction by Alice Kaplan. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Haravrd University Press, 2013. Originally published by Gallimard as Chroniques algériennes, 1939-1958 (1958 and 2002). 

Hiding Out in the Casbah: Julien Duvivier's 'Pépé le Moko' (1937)

Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937) bears seeing once, twice, thrice. . . or more. Professional criminal Pépé le Moko (Jean Gabin) is holed up in the Casbah / Kasbah quarter of Algiers / Alger in between the world wars -- and he's really trapped. The police can't grab him from within the labyrinthine (or labyrinthian, if you prefer) recesses of the Casbah, but they will nab or kill him if he leaves it.  Excellent premise for the whole film.

Besides Gabin, who has been fantastic in everything I've seen him in, cherchez la femme: actually there are two key paramours involved -- Inès (Line Noro), from Algeria, and Gabby (Mireille Balin), from Paris, the latter carried along to Algiers by her Daddy Warbucks while he's on (colonial exploitation) business. Also involved are fellow criminals of dubious stability, numerous Algerian "hosts," French and Algerian police and Pépé's crafty, somewhat smarmy frenemy-nemesis, Inspector Slimane. 

Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko is not only a fun and imaginative movie, it's also an absorbing cultural artifact wide open to consideration from various engaged perspectives (postcolonialism, feminism, etc.).   

The tone of Pépé le Moko moves along and includes dark as well as comic moments -- very much like HBO's The Sopranos. The paramours have real "sex appeal" (a term used in the film itself), covered by humor. What have Pépé and Gabby been doing so clandestinely in the Casbah? "Painting watercolors together," Pépé quips.

The movie, which has been remade by other directors under different titles, is based on the 1931 novel Pépé le Moko by "Détective Ashelbé" (aka Henri La Barthe, 1887-1963). 
  
Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Jean-Pierre Melville: Le deuxième souffle (Take II)

In addition to its meticulous construction of noirish detail, Jean-Pierre Melville's Le deuxième souffle (1966) clearly influences other films and series that likewise deal with grittiness, crime and the tactics of military/police occupation (even in "peacetime"). Fragmentary reflections of Melville's personal experience in the Resistance during World War II and the collective French and Algerian endurance of the Guerre d'Algérie (1954-1962) make their way into many scenes. Maybe that's also why it's sometimes difficult to tell whether "the good" are all that much better than "the bad." When they are, it's only by degree, or so it would seem.


Manouche and Commissaire Blot

Names and relationships. How important are memorable names in making a storyline work for you? Or do names become memorable because of a good storyline?  

Le deuxième souffle has several good names. (It's worth noting here that the movie is based on José Giovanni's 1958 novel of the same name, sometimes also referred to as Un reglement de comptes).

It took me a while to absorb that Gu (Lino Ventura) is Manouche's (Christine Fabréga's) sister, or that her first given name is Simone. Good to know early, because they are nicely contrasted against two gangster brothers, Paul and Jo Ricci. Other key characters include Commissaire Blot (what a name!), the mysterious Orloff -- and Antoine Ripa. I'm familiar with Ripa as a real family name only because, in the mists of some of my French ancestry, the name occasionally appears alongside the Saint-Bonnet folks. It's derived from Latin, meaning riverside, or living by the river (as in "riparian"). Manouche means Gypsy or Bohemian, or something like that. Cool beans!

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

"He's Dead. I'm Crippled. You're Lost."

And now for something completely different: epic war movies. There are many, but the best ones are able to let history speak on a grand scale, without simplistic renderings or overly partisan agendas. The ones I prefer try to get at all sides of war, not just the immediate victors' or -- as is the case with most Vietnam movies, losers' -- angle.

Irish-born Cornelius Ryan (1920-1974), a young war correspondent during WWII, knew how to show the many faces of war with both deftness and fairness; he provided the basis for two excellent film adaptions. His books The Longest Day (1959), The Last Battle (1966), and A Bridge Too Far (1974) look at D-Day, the fall of Berlin, and Operation Market-Garden with a clear, wise eye.

Something of Cornelius Ryan's generous spirit is reflected in the following movies:

The Longest Day (1962). Today's header is derived from the Richard Burton character's final assessment of D-Day at the end of this great film, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, who utilized no fewer than four directors in the field. All sides are given their due, which is incredibly refreshing. "Sometimes I wonder which side God is on. . ." -- Major General Gunther Blumentritt, June 6, 1944.

Zulu! (1964). Rorke's Drift. Michael Caine is superb. Zulu Dawn (1979). Depicts the Battle of Isandlwana, in which the Zulus defeated the British; not bad, either, but not as exciting as the earlier film.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Pearl Harbor from multiple perspectives.

Waterloo / Ватерлоо (1970). Napoleon vs. Wellington. A little ragged in parts, but a great story and amazing to see. Rod Steiger, Christopher Plummer, Orson Welles.

A Bridge Too Far (1977). Near the end of WW2, Netherlands. Sean Connery, et al.

There are, of course, zillions of war movies, and I'm not even including documentaries. The caveat for the above films: viewers can learn a bit of narrative history in an entertaining way. There are also spectacular scenes in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Paths of Glory (1957), and particularly the air assault on the VC village in Apocalypse Now! (1979). Two unconventional but extraordinary war films also worth mentioning here: Gillo Pontecorvo's La Battaglia di Algeri / The Battle of Algiers (1966) and Queimada / Burn! (1969) with Marlon Brando. Most of the war movies of the past twenty-five years either suck or carry a transparent agenda (eg., Oliver Stone) -- or I simply don't like the director/film. An excellent exception is: Der Untergang / Downfall (2004/2005), about the collapse of Nazi Germany from the German perspective. Let's not forget Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima / Iōtō Kara no Tegami (2006).

Today's Rune: Opening.

Slip the Trolley

And so ends May of the Year 2013. In France, same-sex marriage became the law of the land on the 18th, despite protests. More than half in France, according to most polls, favor the change, a logical broadening of human and civil rights laws. 

One opponent to gay rights and immigrants, Dominique Venner, shot himself to death in La cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris on the 21st. I guess he didn't believe in the "Live and Let Live" creed. In fact, he chose the more unusual "Die and Let Live" option, though he seems to have thought his rude act of self-destruction might inspire other homophobic right wing loonies. He done slipped the trolley, as it were. If others of like mind were to choose to commit suicide en masse with their own firearms, who would stop them, or want to?

On another side of the nutter board, last month saw two separate nightmarish attacks by Islamic weirdos -- the hacking one in London on British soldier Leo Rigby and the stabbing one on French soldier Cédric Cordier. Rigby was killed; Cordier survived. Then some National Front types in England and Front national types in France reacted by attacking Muslims and anyone else that "seemed foreign." Good times. 

After all the dust settles, same-sex marriage is here to stay, and so are other forms of diversity. 

Please stop the nasty violence, folks. It causes pain and suffering and solves nothing. 

May June be more peaceful -- at least somewhere.

Today's Rune: Gateway.      

Dreaming in French, Part IV: Angela Davis

The third main section of Alice Kaplan's Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis delves into Davis' initial exploration of Europe, particularly France. But it does more. It provides an overview of her Alabama childhood, early experiences with segregation, then jump off to New York City for summer school, then back to Birmingham ("a terrible awakening" -- page 147), studying French, studying at Brandeis University, learning, absorbing, making new friends. And then off to France.

In the wake of the Algerian Revolution / Guerre d'Algérie (1954-1962), Davis spent a year as a college student living in France, responding to chaotic events in the USA, as well. "For France . . . the end of the Algerian war was only the begining of a fomentation, a questioning of national values that would last beyond the revolutionary days of May '68" (page 143).  Davis took it all in, acquired a German boyfriend and studied German philosophy, as well.

   

  

Kaplan takes us through the unfolding of Angela Davis' ideas, her response to the ever-changing 1960s, involvement with the Black Panthers and Soledad Prison, imprisonment, trial, and dramatic support rendered in France and by French artists. More on some of this at some point, no doubt.

Today's Rune:  Signals.

Dreaming in French, Part II: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy

The first part of Alice Kaplan's Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis (The University of Chicago Press, 2012) delves into Ms. Bouvier and her cohort's Smith College study-abroad residence in France in 1949-1950.  JB's status was closer to genteel poverty at the time than today's Romney rich, but she had plenty of friends and mentors. Travel across the Atlantic was still primarily by ship, and Smith students boarded with French families just recovering from the damages of the Second World War.

Kaplan summarizes nicely: "Throughout her year in Paris, Jacqueline Bouvier inhabited several worlds and managed to keep them separate -- a talent she would need to maintain throughout her complex life" (page 36).  French immersion proved helpful in the long term. Bouvier studied at the Sorbonne and Reid Hall.  Smith professor Jeanne Saleil noted at the time: "Jacqueline is so brilliant, she could be a stellar academic, but she hasn't thrown herself into the intellectual life. Her heart is elsewhere" (page 38).

Upon return to the USA, Bouvier became engaged to stockbroker John Husted, but this was ended in short order. She considered applying for a CIA job, and did apply for a position at Paris Vogue via a contest that she had for the taking, but then thought better of it.  She met JFK in 1952 and married him in 1953. When her husband became president, she drew upon her knowledge of French culture and history to act dynamically as his unofficial advisor and cultural ambassador. In 1961, the American president quipped about their official state trip to France, "I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris" (page 64).

JBK brought style and insight to "La Maison Blanche," aka the White House. Later, after the  Dallas 1963 nightmare, after her second marriage, she became an influential acquisitions editor at Doubleday.

There's more to go into -- Proust, Simone de Beauvoir, André Malraux and other influences and connections -- at some point, perhaps. Overall, the tone of Alice Kaplan's section on JB/JBK/JBKO is sympathetic and the details interesting. Jacqueline in all of her incarnations comes off very well, indeed.

Today's Rune: Journey.     

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975: Take Three

Göran Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011) contains so much material, I can barely tick off all that's shown or heard. In addition to MLK, we see Coretta Scott King (1927-2006). And the Black Power salute at the Olympic Games in Mexico City (1968). The Last Poets, inspired by Malcolm X and formed in 1968. Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, the Black Panther Party. Bobby Seale in Stockholm, saying "in the final analysis" -- a phrase nearly identical to today's "at the end of the day." Free food, free breakfast program hosted by the Black Panthers. J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO. Exile in Algiers, Algeria. Huey Netwon, From Russia With Love in the background. TV Guide taking issue with Swedish journalism. Emile de Antonio (1919-1989 -- director of In the Year of the Pig, 1968, and other influential films). The Attica Prison uprising (1971). Civil rights lawyer William Kunstler (1919-1995). Elaine Brown, Black Panther. Governor Ronald Reagan of California vs. Angela Davis (1972) and her aquittal; her earlier study wih Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979). Robin Kelley, Sonia Sanchez, John Forté, Erykah Badu, Louis Farrakhan, Harlem and Lewis H. Michaux (ca. 1884–1976).        

The bonus "reels" are also well worth delving into in their own right. There's a heartbreaking section about Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) and her bid for the presidency in 1972 -- ahead of her time, she was hopelessly outnumbered, defeated but unbowed. There's more with Stokely Carmichael. And there's a very interesting section on the 1974 trial of Joan Little in Raleigh, North Carolina -- charged with first degree murder for stabbing a rapist-prison guard with the ice pick he threatened to kill her with, immediately after he raped her. She was eventually found not guilty. 

Today's Rune: Harvest.   

Claude Chabrol: Le Boucher

Claude Chabrol's Le Boucher / The Butcher (1970/1971) exposes the strange underbelly of a seemingly idyllic town in Dordogne in the Southwest of France. Similar to, say, David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) and Sofia Coppola's 1999 adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' 1993 novel The Virgin Suicides. However, the main focus is on two characters who meet at a wedding: Hélène (Stéphane Audran), Headmistress at the town school, and Popaul (Jean Yanne), a traumatized fifteen year veteran of the First Indochina War (Vietnam) and the Guerre d'Algérie (Algerian War) who has resumed in civilian life his occupation as a butcher. The interaction between these two is intense, but masked in part by the routine business of town life contrasted with the introduction of murder. Chabrol subverts convention by making the investigating police inspector a minor distraction rather than either plot-driver or mystery solver. 

 

In addition, Chabrol gives words and images their due. The scenery is gorgeous. Cro-Magnon paintings at Les Grottes de Cougnac (the Cougnac Grottoes) are shown in one key segment. Finally, more harrowing than any overt action in the film are certain descriptive passages, such as Popaul's recollections of war:

I've seen a corpse or two, their heads in the wind, cut in half, mouths open. I've seen three or four piled together. Kids with their eyes punctured. Indo-Chinese as old as Madame Touraint completely torn to bits. I've seen pals of mine rotting in the sun, being eaten by maggots.

From one vantage point, certainly, Le Boucher may be seen as a serious contemplation of the hidden costs of war even in remote places. In this case, a combat veteran is clearly damaged and demonstrably capable of murder on the world stage, but is he, in fact, the local murderer, too?

Today's Rune: Wholeness.       

Lost Command/Les Centurions: Take II

If Mark Robson's Lost Command / Les Centurions (1966) -- like his Peyton Place (1957) and Valley of the Dolls (1967) -- could be tweaked here and there, it could be very sharp indeed. I'd start with a whole new soundtrack, something from the mind of Ennio Morricone (who is still with us) probably. In any case, the Algerian Revolution / Guerre d'Algérie (1954-1962) war scenes are particularly strong. Watching them, I couldn't help but see the real similarities with the Iraq War (2003-2011) and Afghanistan (2001-present).

Together with Gillo Ponecorvo's masterful La battaglia di Algeri / The Battle of Algiers (1966), Lost Command / Les centurions gives a clear picture of how this kind of conflict plays out. It's not a pretty sight.

Surprise, ambushes, reprisals, bombings, assassinations, murder, civilian deaths: it's all there, and we're seeing plenty more of the same reality in 2012.

Today's Rune: Signals.

Lost Command: Take I

Even after today's wild tornadic outbreak in North Texas, time to do the twist again. The show must go on . . .

Lost Command (1966) is one of those rare films that ties together elements of three wars, in this case the Franco-Vietnamese or First Indochina War (1945-1954) and the Algerian Revolution or Guerre d'Algérie (1954-1962) directly and, implicitly, the US-Vietnam War or Second Indochina War (1955-1975). It was banned in France for ten years and, apparently, all but ignored in the USA, at least by policymakers at the time.

Based on Les Centurions, Jean Lartéguy's bestselling 1960 novel, Lost Command (Les Centurions in the French language version) was directed by Montreal-born filmmaker Mark Robson. Cultural differences over ideas of race, religion and economics are shown clearly if somewhat clunkily. The international cast is eclectic. George Segal (a Jewish American) plays an Arabic Muslim Algerian French officer, Anthony Quinn (actually Mexican American) plays a tough risen-through-the-ranks Basque lieutenant-colonel paratrooper in the French Army, and so on. Like other Robson productions -- compare Peyton Place (1957) and Valley of the Dolls (1967) -- Lost Command feels a little rusty in 2012, but it's still interesting.

Today's Rune: Signals.  

Jean-Luc Godard: Le gai savoir, Part 1

Jean-Luc Godard's Le gai savoir (1969) mixes in many late 1960s cultural and political icons and touchstones, ranging from texts and images of the 1968 unheavals, the US-Vietnam War, the Black Panthers, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William S. Burroughs, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Cuba, the Pentagon, the Beatles, Mao, William Faulkner, Noam Chomsky, Superman, Spiderman, the Hulk, competing maps of the world and its conflicts, Bertolt Brecht, pop advertisements, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Mozart. Even if it had no other value (it does), Le gai savoir remains a vibrant document still hot off the press from more than forty years ago.

Patricia Lumumba (Juliet Berto): "No, listen, we study links, relations, differences. . ."

If everything seemed to connect in 1968-1969, it still does in 2011. A of people in the know about the workings of the world just got tired, I guess, or are almost forgotten. All one has to do, now as then, is look and listen, with curiosity, and pay attention. Where there's a will, there's a way; where there's no will, there's no way -- in or out of a big ball of confusion.

Today's Rune: Strength.

The Medium and Understanding: War Films

In Homer's The Iliad, the reader comes to understand why the different parties fight and what they are aiming to achieve. It's not a pretty picture, but it's understandable and it makes a powerful, enduring and universal story. The following three movies do the same, and they go "the whole hog."  Turner Movie Classics is airing the first one: Gillo Pontecorvo's La battaglia di Algeri / The Battle of Algiers / La bataille d'Alger (1966/1967). We see what motivates opposing forces, we see tactics, strategy, policy, and (brutal) consequences.

Should we remain in Algeria? If you answer "yes," then you must accept all the necessary consequences.

The enduring importance of this history-based fictional film should be obvious. This is the real deal. I haven't been able to see and process all the recent documentaries about Iraq and Afghanistan, but somehow I doubt more than a fraction of them are able to show all sides with such clarity.

The other two, along the same lines: Pontecorvo's Queimada / Burn! (1969), set in the Caribbean, and Moustapha Akkad's Lion of the Desert (1981), set in Libya.

Opening lines of The Iliad:

Rage -- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,

murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.

(Robert Fagles' translation from the Greek).

Today's Rune: Defense.

Jean-Luc Godard: Le Petit Soldat

Le petit soldat (1960, 1963): the film. Set in neutral Switzerland during the Algerian War (Algerian Revolution, or Guerre d'Algérie, 1954-1962), the film revolves around two people, one played by Michel Subor and the other by Anna Karina, caught in the middle of a shadow war that includes secret identities, targeted assassinations and torture.

Some lines that stick out (in sub-titled translation from the orginal French):

"Photography is the truth, and cinema is the truth twenty-four times per second."
"It's not important how others see you, but how you see your own face."
"Asking questions is more important than finding answers."
"It's strange -- when I look myself in the face, I get the feeling I don't match what I think is inside."
"I win or lose, but fight on alone."
"You look at me but don't know what I'm thinking -- and never will know what I'm thinking."

Le petit soldat: the context. First, it was filmed during the Algerian conflict, a brutal convulsion that ended with Algerian independence but also with the deaths of approximately 25,000 French and nearly one million Algerians. It was therefore just by its subject matter controversial, but furthermore discusses secret killings and shows torture -- including waterboarding. The film was banned from 1960 until 1963, i.e. until after the Algerian War ended.

Le petit soldat is completely topical in 2011, with many flashes of technical brilliance worth seeing in any event. Let's not forget Anna Karina, who is more severe here than in Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (1962), another Godard film discussed in an earlier post late last month. Also worth mentioning: it's another black and white film, with dazzling cinematography by Raoul Coutard.

Le Petit Soldat was banned just as Henri Alleg's book La Question (1958) had been banned for the same reason: exposure of torture.

Certain things are always wrong -- slavery, torture of prisoners, violence against the powerless. But even still in 2011, we need to shout it from the rooftops.



Today's Rune: Partnership.