Allen Ginsberg: 'The Best Minds of My Generation' (2017). Part II

Allen Ginsberg, The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats, edited by Bill Morgan. New York: Grove Press, 2017. Foreword by Anne Waldman.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky. "The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov were our favorite books then . . . (p. 101).

Visions of Cody. "I had the idea that Kerouac was influenced by Neal [Cassady] reading [Marcel] Proust aloud. In 1947 when Cassady was in town we had a copy of Scott Moncrieff's translation of Proust and Neal would read that aloud when we were high on grass. He read Proust very beautifully and . . . enjoyed the long organic sentences that were inclusive of many varieties of thought forms and associations that rose during the composition of the sentence. . . . as in [John] Milton, Proust used long sentences to include everything in his mind."  (pp. 105-106)

"When you hear yourself echoed in somebody else's indulgent, tender, sympathetic consciousness, you begin to appreciate yourself." (p. 115)

William S. Burroughs. "Burroughs ascribes Kerouac's enthusiasm and encouragement as the greatest single force in making him write, finally . . . Kerouac and I saw Burroughs as very shy, tender, and sweet, with good manners. Quiet with a sense of humor cutting through."  (p. 116)

Kerouac imagined writing an American Civil War book, with Burroughs as a "morphine-addicted . . . general." (pp. 120-121) 

Herman Melville and "American loneliness. The central image of that for Kerouac was everybody looking for 'the center of Saturday night in America' . . . in the back alley, under a redbrick building, under a neon sign, with nobody looking at him . . . which is where everybody wound up, unsatisfied." (pp. 121-122

"Visions of Cody is the most serious text we'll run into . . . Kerouac . . . undergoes a transfiguration and becomes his art, he ceases to be a guy writing at his art and becomes interchangeable with the art . . . His writing and his personality become identical and becomes a superprofessional in the sense that he's a saint of writing. (pp. 128-129)

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. For Burroughs, writing "was not so much . . . redemption, but . . . a communicative activity which linked him with me and other people, with the rest of humanity, with friends." He found writing to be more practical than "a romantic thing." (p. 153)

Burroughs "sees right through everything immediately with no illusions." (p. 164)

"Trace back along the word vine to find the source of control. Who started the whole maya, the illusion, and to what extent does language dictate to our sense of what we see, hear, smell." (p. 169)

Burroughs on New Orleans: "'The drivers orient themselves largely by the use of their horns, like bats. The residents are surly. The transient population is conglomerate and unrelated, so that you never know what sort of behavior to expect from anybody.'" (p. 171) 

Burroughs as visual writer. (pp. 179-180)

"The Waste Land is not much different from Burroughs . . . collage method . . . Apollinaire . . . I think that the thing Burroughs and Eliot have most in common is 'music down a windy street,' . . . spare, nostalgic, pungent images that will haunt you with an echo of time past." See also Saint-John Perse, Anabasis. (p. 188)

"His unconscious life and his every day life are merged. With Burroughs writing becomes a probe into consciousness, or a probe into depth." (p. 191)

". . . the entire fabric of appearance and phenomenon." (p. 199) 

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Donald J. Raleigh: 'Soviet Baby Boomers' (2012), Part II

Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia's Cold War Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

"Soviet teachers were among the strongest believers in socialist values." (page 94)

From the Young Pioneer manual: "'It will be the best, the most just and the happiest society on earth.'" (page 110)

"influence, connections, and pull -- blat in Russian." (page 118)

Soviet schools: "They instilled in their charges basic human values that would be appreciated in most societies." (page 118)

A Soviet Baby Boomer about living in the 1960s: "'We always had decent food; we went to the theatre, to the movies, to the circus, and to whatever else was of interest. We didn't differ from other average people of our time.'" (p. [120]).

Many Soviet Baby Boomers developed an "identification with a larger global youth culture;" guys in particular tinkered with space-related themes (page 121).

"Many female Baby Boomers loved theatre, ballet, dancing, reading, hanging out with friends . . . Olga Gorelik liked to read, draw, go to the movies, and spend time with her girlfriends." (page 122) 

Many enjoyed sporting events. Pioneer palaces gave people places to hang out. (pages 122-124) Kids loved to play in apartment courtyards (dvor), too. (page 125)

On social relationships, Raleigh notes: "Friendship lacks a definition that works for all times, places, and peoples, because the phenomenon is a cultural and historical one that changes over time: the type of society determines the nature of friendships." (page 126) Soviet friends provided emotional and practical support for each other, and they could counter or at least alter government and family controls (pages 126-127). A fair number of high school friends remain friends for life. (page 127)

"The Soviet Union prided itself in being the 'most reading' nation," and many continue to read heartily long after the collapse of the USSR. Friends traded books and they also utilized libraries, like many sensible people still do wherever they are available. "Reading conferred status" (page 129). During an interlude in the 1960s, Mikhail Bulgakov (Master and Margarita), Solzhenitsyn (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) Kafka and Kierkegaard were published (pages 130-131). Samizdat (underground writings produced in the USSR) and tamizdat (things smuggled into the country from the outside) also made the rounds (page 131) -- and made reading all the more exciting, no doubt. Eventually, photocopy machines sped up the process of underground writing production. (page 132)

Movies opened up portals to other worlds (as T. Bone Burnett, an American Baby Boomer, has put it, after growing up in conservative Fort Worth, Texas). These were real social events: "it was always something you simply had to see. . . not only so that you could take part in conversations but also because they really were worth seeing" (such as Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky films) . Through cultural diffusion, in came American jazz, Western fashion and music, and exotic tastes. (page 135)

"'[B]ut it was difficult to get hold of such things. . . and we need to "get hold of" them. The meaning of the very "get hold of" is probably uniquely Russian' . . . it means acquiring something with great difficulty." (page 136)

Tape recorders became popular when they were made available -- music could be recorded and shared, especially underground material: "'forbidden fruit is always sweet.'" (page 140)

[To be continued.]

Today's Rune: Possessions.

'Fahrenheit 451' (2018)

Ramin Bahrani's 2018 adaptation of the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451 on HBO stars Michael B. Jordan as Montag, Michael Shannon as Beatty, and Sofia Boutella as Clarisse.  There's enough action in the novel to make a mini-series; it's harder to pull off in a 101-minute movie. I like the new version, however. It's updated to include recognizable social media and contemporary variations on book burning. In this version, too, the carriers of books and oral traditions are "eels" - derogatory slang for "illegals." Some technology critics seem to hate all of this new stuff, but they also seemed to have missed the boat, the train and the book. When the US is led by a man who does not read, the nation is already half in the bag of dodoville. It's a worldwide trend -- backward. In light of today's socially retarded emotional fascism, one cannot afford to be too subtle. 

In the opening sequence of Fahrenheit 451, there are images of burning books and visual art and, at one point, a picture of Frederick Douglass (circa 1818-1895).

Fact number one: in the first month of taking office, the current American president said this: "Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice." (Multiple sources. Here's one: David A. Graham, "Donald Trump's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," The Atlantic, February 1, 2017). Fact number 2: Douglass was born a slave and died long before Trump's birth,  but as he (Douglass, not Trump) learned to read, the possibilities of freedom became more palpable, and eventually he escaped to freedom.

Some folks didn't like the carrier bird in this version of Fahrenheit 451. I thought it was totally cool. Incidentally, I also just saw Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), in which books also play a big part -- as do carrier pigeons, which were also important during the Great War of 1914-1918, of which this year is the centenary of its last year. 

Finally, the flames. I had an English teacher who had my class read Max Frisch's Biedermann und die Brandstifter / The Firebugs, a play that was first published in 1953 -- the same year as Ray Bradbury's original Fahrenheit 451. In The Firebugs, arsonists are stand-ins for totalitarian brutes who talk their way into people's homes, only to torch them in the end. She --- Joan Boyd -- also had us read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932). Ann Barlow, another inspiring English teacher, strongly encouraged outside reading, including in my case several novels by Ray Bradbury. Such wonderful English teachers would be classified as "eels" in the new movie, which is like a blend of The Firebugs, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), Brave New World, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and Fahrenheit 451. Dig it or douse it -- your choice. 

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.

Akira Kurosawa: 生きる / 'Ikiru' (1952)

No, Toyo Odagiri is not looking at her cellphone. This is 1952, okay?

I love Akira Kurosawa's films, which hyper-link into many deep things: Japan, the universal human condition, Russian literature, existential philosophy, songs, theatre, visual design and so much more. I also love that Kurosawa's films sometimes meander a bit unexpectedly, like a good novella or novel.

Ikiru (1952) is, indeed, inspired in part by Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), and the spirit of Fyodor Dostoevsky is there, too.  

The premise of Ikiru: what happens when a person -- in this case Mr. Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) -- figures out that he (or she) has only six months or a year to live?  

For one thing, Mr. Watanabe wants to spend more time hanging out with Toyo Odagiri (Miki Odagiri aka Santo), who is so full of life and mischief. 

Ikiru also has the feel, at times, of Charles Dickens' 1842 novella, A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas. Though Mr. Watanabe is not such an awful man as Scrooge, he's often just as (almost comically) freaked out when he first glimpses his own mortality. 

Ikiru is a film about nothing less than the meaning and purpose of life. 

As Roger Ebert phrased it on September 29, 1996: "I think this is one of the few movies that might actually be able to inspire someone to lead their life a little differently." (Link to full article here.) No higher praise needed. 

Today's Rune: Flow. 

Akira Kurosawa: 白痴 / 'The Idiot' (1951)

What we have left to see is about half of Akira Kurosawa's orginal epic cut of 白痴 / The Idiot (1951), based on the hefty novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky first published in complete book form in 1874. As is, Kurosawa's film conveys the mood, atmosphere and existential thickets of the Russian original through a Japanese scrim.   

Even cut in half, The Idiot still works, provided one is willing to employ a little imagination to help fill in the gaps. The gist remains. Here, the title character (Masayuki Mori), suffering from post traumatic stress (thanks to his wartime experiences), has the thousand yard stare; Denkichi Akama (Toshiro Mifune) burns holes into his best frenemy with an equally mystified stare.   

Enter Taeko Nasu (Setsuko Hara) and Ayako (Yoshiko Kuga) into a four-way staring contest. Note Toshiro Mifune on the left, a clear prototype for spaghetti Western characters in his look, well emulated by Clint Eastwood in the 1960s.

In the previous post, Charles asked about a biography of Kurosawa. There are these two books, neither of which I've read yet. But they look good.

Peter Cowie, Akira Kurosawa: Master of Cinema (Rizzoli, 2010).

Donald Richie, The Films of Akira Kurosawa: Third Edition, Expanded and Updated (University of California Press, 1999). 

Today's Rune: Protection. 

Akira Kurosawa: わが青春に悔なし / 'No Regrets for Our Youth' (1946)

Blend one portion of Jane Austen with two of Fyodor Dostoevsky, season with a little Gone with the Wind. Sit down for a Japanese meal during the Second World War period and voila, you have tasted of  Akira Kurosawa's わが青春に悔なし / No Regrets for Our Youth (1946).  Bon appétit!

Let's look briefly at three aspects of this early post-war film.

1. Love triangle, beginning in 1933. Yukie (played by the astonishing Setsuko Hara) is wooed by Noge and Itokawa (all pictured above).

At one point, Yukie matter-of-factly spells things out for Itokawa:

"If I follow you, my life will be peaceful.  But, if I may say, it'll be boring . . . If I follow [Noge], something dazzling will await me. My life will be stormy . . . It terrifies me and fascinates me."  

2. Family. We learn important things about the connections between Yukie, Noge, Itokawa and their family systems, how they help inform their existential decision-making -- even in rebellion. 

3. Society under pressure. Japanese fascism and nationalism begin to squash socialist and even the most moderate dissent. At first, the students and faculty fight for free speech and against militarism, but eventually, many of the students are absorbed into the war machine and most of the faculty either removed or cowed into silence.

Noge goes to prison and is seemingly rehabilitated by the time of his release, though he still remains, in actuality, a member of the resistance. Itokawa becomes a government prosecutor and is seemingly sympathetic, though in actuality, he has become part of the new status quo. 

Yukie is the character who changes the most, and, existentially, for the better.

No Regrets for Our Youth has additional facets worth exploring -- including fine matters of technique and craft -- but three are enough for one post!

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.  

Akira Kurosawa's 赤ひげ / 'Red Beard' (1966)

Akira Kurosawa's 赤ひげ / Red Beard (1966) is a meticulously crafted film, an example of cinema as a masterful art form in its own right that includes elements of fiction, poetry, visual art and architecture but is also distinctive. The aesthetics of black and white film (this was Kurosawa's last before shifting to color) allow one to focus on shadow and form as well as sound. Kurosawa is a master filmmaker and one need not understand Japanese to appreciate his works. Indeed, as in the most moving silent films, many of Kurosawa's shot compositions illuminate the power of facial expressions and, in particular, the look of a person's eyes. Kurosawa's work is very satisfying aesthetically and I'm learning a great deal about technique in reviewing his films.

I have never really understood modern medical doctors, their motivation or disposition, but Red Beard makes me wish we had in the everyday now many more such as these doctors from 200 years ago, working hard at a Japanese medical clinic. 

The title character, Dr. Kyojō Niide (played by the always memorable Toshiro Mifune), frequently strokes his beard which is, though we see him in black and white film only, red. One can readily compare his character with Atticus Finch, as played by Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird, an American film made in the same decade as Red Beard, though the good doctor is a bit gruffer than the lawyer. Just as Atticus takes up a rifle to shoot a threatening rabid dog, Red Beard has a scene in which he opens up a can of whoop-ass on a threatening group of hooligans in a courtyard outside a brothel.

Red Beard approaches his patients, most of them poor, in a holistic manner, strengthening the body, mind and spirit of each when it's still possible to help. He works patiently and effectively with people afflicted by fevers, alcoholism, mental illness, "spiritual scalding," and physical wounds. His holistic approach could be put to good service in the 21st century.

Blanket airing on left is of the same pattern as the one in the top image

Red Beard is based on Shūgorō Yamamoto's The Tales of Dr. Redbeard (1958), plus an additional thread from Fyodor Dostoevsky's Humiliated and Insulted (1861).

Red Beard has heft as well as breadth. In flashback sequences (which sometimes remind me of surrealistic Luis Buñuel flashbacks), there is a landslide and the aftermath of an earthquake. In one sequence, we can see a character stumbling around in the foreground while at the top of the screen a line of people exit the "stage." Having experienced firsthand the nightmarish devastation of the Pacific War that ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and having earlier lived through a massive earthquake, Kurosawa is deep diving through these scenes.

There's another sequence that begins with a strange chanting, a beckoning to the underworld to spare an imperiled young boy's life, that ends with a visual shot from the perspective of the bottom of a well, a water-reflection of the people shimmering above -- a mind-blowing achievement. 

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Titus Maccius Plautus: Menaechmi ('The Identical Twins,' circa 200 B.C.)

Pompeii mural, Villa of Mysteries

Titus Maccius Plautus (circa 254-184 B.C.): Menaechmi (The Identical Twins, circa 200 B.C.).

In this Roman comedy, identical twins are engulfed in confusion, forming the basis for William Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors (circa 1595, first published in 1623).

To make a long story short, in the set-up for Menaechmi, two identical twins are accidentally separated at age seven, and their father dies within days of this mishap. A grandfather renames the boy he can find the same name as the still missing (and presumed dead) boy, as an honor. Years later, the former, after traveling far and wide and always hoping to find his long lost twin brother, stumbles into said twin's town and a delicate situation involving Matrona (twin's wife) and Erotium (twin's paramour), exacerbated by various in-betweens. 

In the case of Plautus, adapting from a similar Greek play, his tale of identical twins works. The basic groundwork is laid for all sorts of similar -- and similarly ludicrous, comic, or horror-filled -- storylines.

Thinking you know someone and discovering an alien presence can be quite disconcerting. Hence, the ever-enduring fear and dread of zombies, vampires, alien or demonic possessions, clones and reprogrammed memories, pretender-imposters and dementia.  

Such Doppelgänger-type stories that have always impressed me include Nikolai Gogol's Нос / "The Nose" (1836) and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Двойник / The Double (1846, 1866). All inspiration for The Twilight Zone, no doubt. 

Identical twins as a device have been exploited in many soap operas, a fine example being Stuart and Adam Chandler (David Canary) on All My Children. Great way to squeeze new arcs out of the same actors. The phantom twin can be haunting and unsettling, too: such as Elvis Aaron Presley's twin brother Jesse Garon, who was stillborn.

Today's Rune: Protection.  

Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Солярис' / 'Solaris' (1972): Take II

Andrei Tarkovsky's Солярис / Solaris (1972) uses windows, mirrors, water, color and intermittently, black & white film to enhance its existential themes, to great effect. 

"This is my wife." So says Kris Kelvin (played by Lithuanian actor Donatas Banionis) to his colleagues, formally introducing them to Ocean-created Hari / Khari (played by Russian actor Natalya Bondarchuk).

There is a cool driving scene featuring a Japanese cityscape that manifests complexity and pattern recognition in human social relationships. 

The Library on the Solaris space station is a key meeting point; it's also where a gorgeous scene of zero gravity takes place. Solaris explicitly cites Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Miguel de Cervantes, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy, among other cultural touchstones. 

Bruegel, Jagers in de Sneeuw (1565), a copy of which Hari examines with great intensity, looking for clues about human nature. 

Woody Allen: 'Irrational Man' (2015)

Through the scrim of an entertaining little story, Woody Allen's Irrational Man (2015) covers the basics of existentialist philosophy. This movie is more dramatic than comedic, but given its setting in academia (specifically here, a fictional college in Rhode Island), there's plenty of fun to be made on that score. There always is.

Enter the Nutty Visiting Philosophy Professor (played with some restraint by Joaquin Phoenix, though seeing him in action often inspires chuckles no matter what he does or says). Take his ennui, combine with a yearning for Spain in another professor (Parker Posey, also smile-inducing), add a curiosity-driven student (Emma Stone), connect with a Dostoyevsky-inspired triggering moment, and presto -- that's the basic set-up. Let the fun begin. 

 Wanna get existential? You betcha!

An added bonus: connect cleverly embedded references in Woody Allen's Irrational Man with William Barrett's nonfiction work, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (Anchor Books, 1990; originally published by Doubleday in 1958). 

By the way, I still have a fifth avatar of this book, having given away four other copies over the years.

The beautiful thing about existentialism is that -- like the concept of karma -- it works with or without a religious framework. That is to say, you can be an agnostic, a Catholic, an atheist or whatever else, and its ideas still apply, so long as one believes in the core ideas of free will and choice. 

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

Existential This

For the fifth time in my life's arc to date, I've threaded through William Barrett's Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (Anchor Books, 1990; originally published by Doubleday in 1958). Some of Barrett's lingo could be updated, but the book still has juice -- even after reading directly many of the folks and ideas under discussion.

You want some existentialism, man? Well existential this . . . Like music, existentialism works equally well with religion, "spirituality" and non-religion. 

"To lose oneself walking down a country lane is, literally, to lose the self that is split off from nature: to enter the region of Being where subject and object no longer confront each other in murderous division." (Irrational Man, page 232).  

I think we all have an idea what "murderous division" means. If you do not, check out the headlines, visit a war zone or consider the moral equivalent. 

"Real thinking, thinking that is rooted in Being, is at once an act of thanking and remembrance. When a dear friend says, in parting, 'Think of me!' this does not mean 'Have a mental picture of me!' but: 'Let me (even in my absence) be present with you.'" 
(Irrational Man, page 235). 

Amen to that.

If you want to get your Kierkegaard on, your Sartre and Red Pepper, it behooves you to dig it out and groove to the move.

Today's Rune: Flow.  
    

Ray Donovan

Ray Donovan, Ann Biderman's new series, began recently on Showtime. So far, excellent work. It's sort of like The Departed meets Dostoyevsky,* The Sopranos meets The Brothers Karamazov -- with a dash of Entourage and Californication on the side.

Ray Donovan (Liev Schreiber) is the badass protagonist and generally laconic "fixer" holding it all together; Mickey Donovan is his creepy but resilient father (Jon Voight) and main antagonist.

It's fun to watch how the ramshackle Donovan family system is revealed through various actions, pictures and flashbacks, bringing constant reminders of Boston to the West Coast. Very entertaining. 

Today's Rune: Movement.  *(or Dostoevsky, if you prefer).       

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

Another precious gem from the book mines -- Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982).

And I'm seeing a clear series of interconnecting patterns, along the lines of the quip (inspired by a thought that is longer and more complex) by Søren Kierkegaard: "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" (1843). Clever lad, but when shortened to virtually slogan length, not entirely true. We do have some understanding, some inkling, of where life is going, or could go, when (or if) we take time to muse.

But as for All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, Kierkegaard makes appearances, as do Gogol, Baudelaire and Dostoyevsky (Berman goes with the Dostoevsky spelling) -- among a gob of other groovy writers, thinkers, dreamers and knowers. In a nod to Bob Dylan and the 1960s, there's a chapter called "The 1970s: Bringing It All Back Home." And throughout this book, everything that might seem eclectic and loosely based is seen holistically, even as constant change often makes people feel as if they (along with the years and decades) are blowin' in the wind.

Technological-communications, town and city planning, transportation, time itself as measured and understood by human beings -- all through the past couple hundred years have brought and have seen and have experienced dramatic change.

Take some examples, and then some water and an aspirin. Ha:

Railroads
Telegraph lines
Engine-powered ships
Electricity
Widespread indoor plumbing
Telephone lines 
Airships and aeroplanes, submarines and jets
Automobiles
Radio broadcasting
Air conditioning
Poison gas and rockets, nuclear bombs, napalm
Television
Reliable birth control
Spacecraft and satellite communications
Personal computers, internet
Digital, mobile wireless devices
Pilotless drones and miniaturized robotics
Social Media
3D Printing/Micro-manufacturing
Holographic projections, image cloaking
The known and the unknown
The foreseeable and the unforeseeable

Yeah, Steve Miller has it this way:

Time keeps on slippin,' slippin'
into the future . . .

And don't you know it?  That's why, I suppose, it's somewhat comforting to have or develop some kind of feeling of continuity, some grounding, some context, some historical and philosophically glimpsed sense of things.   

Today's Rune: The Self. 
      

Robert Rossen's Lilith

Lilith (1964) was the last film made by Robert Rossen (A Walk in the Sun, All the King's Men original, The Hustler). It's easy to watch with Jean Seberg in the title role, Warren Beatty as an occupational therapist in training, Peter Fonda as a fragile, sensitive mental patient, Kim Hunter as head of the swank "Funny Farm" in Rockville, Maryland, where most of the action takes place, and Jessica Walter and Gene Hackman as a goofy married couple. I really enjoyed this. It's sort of like watching a prototype for Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, with its pulse on the rapidly changing 1960s. There are several African American characters, but they aren't given any dialogue. There are cloistered lesbians and there's a philosophical "Dostoyevsky," as well as musings on mental illness and artistic ability. Then there's the bored wife who tells her ex-boyfriend Vincent Bruce (the Warren Beatty character, a somehwat PTSD'd veteran of an unspecified war -- hard to tell which, there have been so many) something like, "I told you we had to wait till marriage before we could have sex." Pause. "Well, I'm married now. . ."  Good one.

The movie is shot in black and white. Rossen does a nice job with both interiors and exteriors. Jean Seberg eats up the role of Lilith -- great stuff. Too bad Seberg committed suicide in "real life" in 1979, at age 40. Apparently, Warren Beatty was a huge pain in the ass during filming, but he's good showing a man in transition from what seems like slightly unmoored to batshit crazy, thanks to "the  war," "Mommy issues," and his amour fou for Lilith. Peter Fonda plays the role of Stephen in a stylized manner, the nervous and easily hurt gentleman. This would be fun to do as a remake, rearranging the emphasis on certain characters and having the silent ones speak.

Today's Rune: Possessions.  

Luchino Visconti: Le Notti Bianche / White Nights

Luchino Visconti's Le notti bianche / White Nights (1957), based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1849 story of the same name (albeit literally Белые ночи), seems simple but serves as a sort of microcosm for humankind. There are dreams and there is surface reality. There are traditional ways of life and there are modern ways. There are things that seem eternal and things that change. 

The storyline is unexpectedly enhanced through black and white film, and by the physical setting -- a simulacrum or replica of a small handful of Italian urban spaces, exteriors and interiors -- recreated in a film studio in Roma. The effect is surreal, but the story feels real. 

The set-up is simple. New Dude comes to town for work and is seeking social interaction. Comes across a Distraught Woman at night, and they create a connection. Turns out she lives with her grandmother, an older woman who lets out room space in their abode to short-term boarders. About a year before this moment, the Mysterious Man was one such boarder. He became enamored of Distraught Woman, and she of him. The Mysterious Man (perhaps a writer) said he'd return in a year, but had to leave -- without explanation. New Dude has come across Distraught Woman as she waits for The Return of the Mysterious Man. Over the next few nights, New Dude wooes Distraught Woman, drawing her from traditional living into modern living. But will he succeed completely? There are other elements and contrasts, too, ranging from live opera vs. early jukebox rock and roll, letters and notes and books vs. Esso and petrol, snow vs. electric lights. And there's a prostitute ("world's oldest profession," very traditional) and random folks, some of the old world, some of the new. 

With New Dude (Mario) played by Marcello Mastroianni and Distraught Woman (Natalia) by Maria Schell (sister of Maximilian Schell), La notti bianche works beautifully. (Note: Mysterious Man -- Jean Marais -- appears elsewhere as Jean Cocteau's Orpheus.)        

Today's Rune: Possessions.

Jill Sprecher: 13 Conversations About One Thing

Jill Sprecher's Thirteen / 13 Conversations About One Thing (2001) dovetails nicely with the work of existentialist writers like Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Albert Camus and Hanna Arendt. On the one hand, we can do certain things, make certain choices; on the other, we take our chances anytime we wake up and get moving. Besides that, there's an uncertain amount of randomness and entropy at play in the universe.

A snippet of the Roxy Music song "Editions of You" (1973) covers the gist of it:

They say love's a gamble, hard to win, easy lose
And while sun shines you'd better make hay
So if life is your table and fate is the wheel
Then let the chips fall where they may
In modern times the modern way . . .

And the rejoinder:

Love me, leave me
Do what you will
Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

When somebody came a knockin' at her door, Dorothy Parker would occasionally mutter, "What fresh hell can this be?"

In any case, the film makes clear that kindness is rarely a bad thing, certainly preferable to cruelty, violence or indifference. As Tennessee Williams put it, attention must be paid.  

 

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing is not a documentary. It's a dramatic film structured around statements made by characters, unspooled in nonlinear form. The disjointed structure invites a second look, once the basic contours of the storyline are better understood. 

 

The one thing?  That state of being/perceiving called Happiness.

 

Jill and her sister Karen Sprecher have here woven together a meditative, sometimes brooding film, but physical events do occur, significant ones in the lives of the characters played by heavy hitter actors, including Alan Arkin and Clea DuVall (both now in Argo), Amy Irving, Matthew McConaughey and John Turturro. The last named reminds me that Thirteen Conversatons has a similar sort of take on life as the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man (2009).

 

Today's Rune: Joy.