Some of what works in Farrell's _Troubles_

Don't be misled by the title of this post: pretty much everything works in Troubles. But because so much works I won't be able to discuss it all.

The jacket copy murmurs something about the novel being about the decline of (British) empire, embodied by the decline of a hotel on the Irish coast. A neat idea, but one fears the allegorical temptation might be too much for Farrell, that the characters and events will be a little too obviously driven by the overarching scheme. We've all suffered through narratives where the characters were clearly dancing to the author's tune whether they made sense as humans or not.

Farrell writes humans. He writes them with a clear eye to their fallibility but with compassion and humor. It may even be that there is pure allegory here, maybe Sarah Devlin stands for the Irish Spirit or the Major is British Chivalry, but if so you won't be left muttering to yourself, "Please, JG, I get it, you needn't keep hammering away." They're human, and you care about them.

The hilarity of this novel is hard to describe. I think it derives from the quiet, warm tone of the narration contrasting with the absurd events and the small confusions of various characters. I can't remember a novel that's so, well, well-behaved that yet made me laugh out loud. (Though even as I type "well-behaved" it doesn't seem right. There's some delightfully naughty bits here and there, too, described in that same unflappable tone.)

And of course, laughter often works best for me in the service of heightening emotional impact, and Farrell perfectly executes this too. After all the mostly benign madness, when the real troubles finally arrive it is both terrifying and right. The finish of this novel elevates it well above mere comedy.

This book got a little bubble of notice when it won the Lost Man Booker prize, and we can be grateful it is now so easily available. Farrell should not disappear from view.

And of course it always warms the heart to know that a great favorite novel is only the first in a loose trilogy. I'm quite looking forward to The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip.

What I learned from The Instructions

On Levin's The Instructions:

Wanting to like a book doesn't always work.

A book with many clever bits might not add up to something clever, in the end.

A book over 1000 pages is almost certainly less than the sum of its parts. (Aphorism not applicable to Infinite Jest.)

Funny carries you so far. Same kind of funny, over and over, begins to carry you less and less far.

Creating characters that the reader may not know how to take is a good start. It is not all that is needed.

Setting up your 1000-page novel as directly comparable to Infinite Jest via similar setting and smart-alecky characters is a bad idea. Unless you're really, really good.

McSweeney's binds books beautifully.

I'm glad to be done. A reviewer on Goodreads said they wanted to turn back to the first page. Not me. Levin's left me wanting less.

A return of sorts

To get this blog moving again, here is the commitment: short posts.

Oh, there may be longer ones here and there, but I need to leave behind the belief that each post should be long, artfully constructed, carefully considered. Get the conversation going.

Quick thoughts:

Iron Man 2: Atrocious. The first film succeeded on its repartee and star power, not on its just-okay action scenes. So what do they do? Fail to bother to write any decent dialogue, make Tony Stark pouty and entitled (I was rooting for Mickey Rourke by the end), and increase the amount of still-just-okay action scenes. On top of that there were serious credibility problems, even for a comic-book-derived film. ("I'm being chased through the air by dozens of missile-launching killer robots, but rather than taking this fight out over the very nearby Pacific Ocean I'll go ahead and fly this missile-fight into/around/through traffic and as many innocent bystanders as possible!")

Winter's Bone: Solid indie drama. Noirish. Great lead performances and a strong female protagonist to boot. The Missouri locations are stark, beautiful and terrifying, and the cinematographer uses them well.

The Secret in Their Eyes: I was angry with this film before I saw it for its effrontery in winning Best Foreign Oscar over Haneke's The White Ribbon, but once I finally saw it I forgave. Suspenseful, surprising, touching and even a bit romantic.

The White Ribbon: Haneke's always interesting, even when he's unwatchable (see either version of Funny Games, or maybe don't) but this film is gripping even as it continually eludes your expectations. The tone of it reminds me of Bolano's 2666 in a strange way (I only thought of it just now) in that there are events that give one pause, but there's something else, almost as if it's just out of the corner of your eye, that leaves you perpetually unnerved, on edge. An amazing film.

The Celebration: This one's pretty old, actually, one of the early Dogme films, one of them not directed by Lars von Trier. I finally got it on DVD and wished I'd seen it years ago. The grimy, unstaged feel of Dogme works wonderfully, and the characters ring true in all their confusion and angst. (Note, too, how care is extended, by the writer/director, to characters regardless of their social class or position.)

Dormant too long

After weeping through a re-viewing of the original cut of _Donnie Darko_, I realize I must start writing of film again. The vagaries of life should not be allowed to interfere with the process of reflectively engaging the art of film.

But, I'm a little too far gone in this evening to delve deep. I'll merely splatter some titles onto the post, and clean up another day. Here are the films that are essential to me:

Magnolia
Donnie Darko
Miller's Crossing
Requiem for a Dream
The Royal Tenenbaums
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Mulholland Drive
L'Avventura

I'm sure there are more. Those are the unavoidables this melancholy night.

More.

Soon.

More about Antonioni

First, the previous post on Michelangelo A failed to mention another key element of his films: the astounding cinematography. These films (L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse) feature countless frames that could be (and probably have been) placed on the walls of an art museum. Antonioni sees the scene like a painter, and his placement of the characters against architecture, or in frame, or half out of frame, is always deliberate, always meaningful, and frequently strikingly beautiful.

L'Eclisse: The third film in the loose trilogy begins with a couple breaking up. Riccardo and Vittoria (Monica Vitti) have come to the end, and the scene chronicling this separation is, as usual, stunningly presented. We learn many key details about each character, and the placement of the camera and the editing all speak this disconnection. Vittoria is set adrift, now, and the rest of the film follows that drift into, if not a new love (with a stockbroker played by Alain Delon, whom you may recognize from Melville's excellent Le Samourai), at least a new relationship. Another incredibly rich, beautiful film from Antonioni. You can read it straight, you can read it as social/societal critique, you can read the social critique as metaphor for human relationship, or leave it ambiguous in your head and just savor the many valencies of meaning. And I'll say no more about the striking close of the film other than that it will force you to frame it yourself, even more open than the ending of L'Avventura.

(Note: this is also the first film I've ever watched twice in a row. My friend David and I literally went back to the first scene to watch that scene again. Then watched another. Then another. And before we knew it we'd watched it again. And uncovered depths. How many films can stand up to that?)

I've got two more of Antonioni's films at home now, but I'm afraid. This trilogy is supposed to be his masterpiece. Will I be disappointed?

My Antonioni Devotion

Sometimes you need to be at the right time of your life to really appreciate a certain artist. Those times vary from person to person. An example: For most people, The Catcher in the Rye should be read in high school. For me, though, it was good that I didn't read it until later in life, when I was a little more comfortable with rebellion and the idea that adults weren't always (or even usually) right. But I would be sad if I'd never had the chance to appreciate The Catcher in the Rye.
My main point here, though, is to make sure that you're watching yourself, and staying vigilant to recognize just when it is that you should dive into the films of Michelangelo Antonioni. If you care about film at all, and what it can do to you, that time will come. His films move at their own rhythm, and in this case I don't (necessarily) mean slowly. But scenes move with a different beat. The camera lingers after characters leave the frame, or arrives on the scene well before them. We follow a character off one side of the screen, and when they reappear in the view of another character... it's not quite where we expected them. He uses sound, architecture, and unusual framing to accomplish fascinating psychological effects. (Why are we looking at the back of her head during this key emotional scene? Why, because we should be reflecting, looking into ourselves to find what emotions it might be that she is experiencing.) This is cinema that looks into you, expects you to bring your intellect and emotions both to the screen with you. And it is cinema that will reward you for the effort.

L'Avventura: In the course of just a few days last month, this film became one of my all-time favorites. The plot follows Claudia as she accompanies her friend Anna and Anna's boyfriend Sandro on an idle tour among the idle rich. It's all very idle, until Anna goes missing on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean. Claudia and Sandro commit themselves to the search, but must also struggle with the complexities of their own emotions. No plot summary could ever do justice to the subtlety and complexity of what's going on here. Sandro and Claudia are wondrously embodied by Gabriele Ferzetti and the luminous Monica Vitti respectively. Watch it twice.

La Notte: Second in a loose trilogy begun by L'Avventura, this film follows a writer and his wife through 22 or 23 pivotal hours in their relationship. This time it is Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau in the lead roles. (Antonioni didn't have trouble getting good acting talent in his films.) It begins in a hospital with their dying friend, and ends at an all-night party thrown by a wealthy industrialist with designs on the writer's skills (and also perhaps his integrity?). This film is less oblique than its predecessor, with fewer pregnant pauses for the viewer to work to fill in, but it remains very rich, and the leads are marvelous. (As is Monica Vitti, again, in a key supporting role.) A warning: after you watch films like this, it can sometimes be a bit jarring (or even annoying) to go back to American films that bang you over the head with the point of each conversation and scene.

Blowup: The first time I saw this film, I was utterly mystified, and a little angry. The ending of this film has an effect on a lot of people. The second time I saw it (yes, I watched it again a few years later) I loved it. Yes, I understood the ending a little more. Not completely, but a little more. But I was better able to take the ride earlier in the film. It follows a photographer who seems utterly bored with life, glamorous though it may be. He wanders around trying to find... what? Even he seems unsure. Then he takes some pictures of a couple arguing in a park. The woman asks him to give her the film, and he refuses. Later she comes to his studio to try to get the film again. Now he (and we) begin to get curious. As with L'Avventura we should prepare ourselves for... well, something less than full-on American-style resolution.

So, in the end, what I'm saying is this: don't force it. It may not be your time for Antonioni yet. But someday, it probably will be. Pop in La Notte, or maybe L'Avventura, and see where he takes you. Bring your A game, don't passively consume (I know, I know, so difficult for us Americans!) and you'll be rewarded.

We need another New World...

Terrence Malick, in his moving film The New World, spares us many things. But he spares us only so the full impacts can strike home more powerfully. This is a film graced with moments of overwhelming beauty, yet it leaves us with a profound and desperate sense of loss. Malick argues that these beautiful moments, these shards of perfection, these emanations from a time before our innocence was lost, can somehow dampen the defeats that overwhelm us as life proceeds.

Does this film speak of romantic love in the face of responsibility and obstacles? Or is it rather the Edenic harmony with nature that we have shattered with modern life? What is it exactly that we have lost? Everything?

Like any great artist, Malick resists easy conclusions, and refuses to dictate to the audience. Some particularly beautiful moments occur as the three European ships arrive in the waters off Virginia. We see them first on the water, resplendent, beautiful, then we see them from the shore, over the shoulders of the Naturals (as the Native Americans are called in this film), through the trees. We watch them watch the ships in wonder, these huge masted canoes beyond their ken, we share their mix of wonder and fear, we notice how they must, must look at the ships, but also how they linger still behind the leaves of the trees. We feel their childlike innocence and note the clean lines of their lean bodies. When we cut to the ship we (if we are of European descent) recognize ourselves in these hairier, smellier and more stern fellows. (Much time could be spent on Malick's idealization of the Naturals' life, and to be sure at first it smacks of the facile "Native Americans good, Europeans bad" over-correction of modern multicultural education, but Malick's hunting bigger game here. This isn't about such small things, it's about the promise of humanity and the ways it always, always falls short. So be offended if you must, but be offended at turning everyone into metaphors (or metonyms) not at some hippie/boomer-type 6th grade history teacher revisionism.) Indeed, the Naturals sniff at the Europeans once they're ashore and the two groups mingle to inspect one another. Again, Malick captures a fresh view of this moment, portraying neither hostility nor open-armed welcome on either side, instead letting us balance at the knife-edge of exhilaration and caution on each side. (Note he takes care to move the camera as well, now over a European shoulder, now over a Natural's shoulder, again emphasizing that this time the camera (and by extension the film) will take no sides. Or, perhaps better, will take all sides.)

This works brilliantly for the narrative as well, for when violence erupts (as we know and dread it must) we feel the horror of it twice, once for the frightened dislocated Europeans, and once more for the once-friendly, now-threatened Naturals. We feel visceral disgust at the waste of violence and war. Someone once said it's impossible to make an anti-war film because the inherent drama and kinetic nature of filmed violence sweeps the viewer into it in a gripping way. I've never quite agreed with the statement, but understand the sentiment. Here Malick films and edits his action skillfully, yet it remains horrifying rather than exhilarating.

So, yes, the Naturals are idealized. Yes, the grimy smelly Europeans stand in for corruption and rot entering into the New World. But they are not demonized. It is more nuanced. The Europeans seek nonviolent interaction (though primarily so they’ll have someone to trade with if their crops don’t succeed). Of course, Malick is also setting up the natives as more in touch with nature.

Early on, John Smith’s voice-over speaks of this new land being a place where no one need suffer want, where no man need fall under the control of another. Pynchon worked some of this same ground in Mason & Dixon, though in far jokier ways. But it doesn’t matter. It strikes home. It hits you in the gut.

This film is littered with beautiful images and striking juxtapositions, but it would be wrong to finish this meditation upon it without mentioning the fine performances found within. No review went without lauding Q'orianka Kilcher, and rightfully so. She captures the innocence and slow maturation of Pocahontas with grace and subtlety. The wonder of young love as she falls for John Smith is convincing and heartbreaking. Colin Farrell is well-cast as John Smith. He's not an actor that I find generally impressive, but he's excellent here. Similarly solid are Christian Bale and Christopher Plummer. Sometimes in meditative, shot-to-the-hilt films like this the performances are overwhelmed or forgotten, but this time they keep it anchored. Malick understands his ideas will strike home more forcefully if we're given humanity to which they can be attached.