C’est arrivé près de chez vous [1992)

Writing is a healing exercise.

We try.

We do the best we can.

Sometimes we have to laugh at how bad things are.

Nietzsche would say we’ve lost something.

And he’s right.

But still we must laugh.

Because nobody knows the troubles we’ve seen.

Jesus wept.

Jesu swept.

We must laugh because the walls are closing in on us.

Our lives should have turned out so much better.

But let’s be optimistic.

Let us remember the good times.

Times when we sang.

Cinema…CINEMA!!!

Times when we shat and sang.

And shits yet to come.

Future shits.

It is not wrong to count life in such base terms.

When we venture out in the world, we only hope that a pretty girl smiles at us.

It’s like a bunch of flowers.

And so we must smile.

With all the bravery we have.

If you drink, drink.

If you smoke, smoke.

If you do nothing, do nothing.

Life is too very sad.  Doesn’t make.

So very sad.  Oui!

In Belgium, perhaps, they can laugh.

As in my heart song Aaltra.

Always a dark song.  Like Jeanne Dielman.

And here is Tarantino back through the French.

Au contraire!  This film predates all Quentin-directed features.

But not by much.

However, QT had the distribution advantage by a few months.

Seems Man Bites Dog (our film “in English”) beat Reservoir Dogs to market by way of film festivals.

In particular TIFF.

But really this is like a Belgian Pulp Fiction (and so much better than that hunk of shite which was still two years away).

As you might know.

Two directors I can’t stand:

Spielberg and Tarantino.

In that order.

Quentin has some redeeming qualities.

Spielberg very few (if any).

But you might want to know about the film I’m reviewing.

Ultraviolence meets Spinal Tap.

Yes, I know that’s not the full title.

But you probably know what I mean.

Kubrick of A Clockwork Orange meets mockumentary.

If someone had described this film (or any other) on such terms, I wouldn’t have watched it.

So I’m glad I didn’t encounter my own review.

Because C’est arrivé près de chez vous is brilliant.

The camaraderie chez Malou…

Rémy Belvaux supposedly committed suicide in 2006.

But it’s probably just as likely that Bill Gates had him whacked.

God damn it…

André Bonzel hasn’t died (according to English Wikipedia), but neither has he been born.

A precarious situation, that.

But Benoît Poelvoorde is gloriously alive!

Damn it!!!

Is it strip-tease or stripe-ties?

Une Femme est une femme.

We are learning the language.

French speakers English.

And English speakers French.

And Turkish.

And Romanian.

And Farsi.

Allors…

Tarantino has acknowledged his debt.

And so I too apologize to Mr. T.

It’s a sad life.  When you’re 39.

Rest in peace, dear Rémy.

 

-PD

Senso [1954)

How does love turn into hate?

Does it ever work the other way around?

Hate into love?

Because the natural course seems to be love into hate.

Vulnerability into hurt.

Hurt into resentment.

And somewhere along the continuum, God forbid, revenge.

Senso, despite its extravagant period costumes and generous budget, is still a product of neorealism.

Sure…it’s hard for most of us to relate to a Countess.

That’s why I can’t read Tolstoy.  I can’t read Fitzgerald.  Not even out of curiosity or hatred.

I can only read Dostoyevsky.  I have only ever related to the outlaw.

Of outlaw literature.

But cinema does a funny thing.

We may not be able to really “get into” Il Trovatore or Der Freischütz, but occasionally a talented auteur can make us appreciate the truly foreign:  a higher social class.

In this case, it is the highest.

The nobility.

In English we might (but probably won’t) know it as the Third Italian War of Independence.  How confusing.  That would seem to entail a July 4th (for us Americans) three times a year (assuming there wasn’t a fourth war).

In plain terms, it was Austria vs. Italy (rather like a soccer match).

Football.  Footie.  FTSE.  Yes…

All rather humdrum after the smoke has wafted away.

Idiots, they call us.

Those who fight.

Some join an army.  Very brave.

Others expose themselves needlessly.  What might be termed “impulsive” or again “thoughtlessness”.

What does this?

In both cases, pride (generally speaking).

Sure, a professional soldier makes a decent living (as long as he or she is living), but said soldier is a chess piece of one type or another…always manipulated from above…lacking autonomy.

And yet, perhaps, no price is too high to pay people who are willing to die to defend their country.

But we must define country.

Defending those who cannot (for one reason or another) defend themselves is indeed honorable.

Defending the abstract structures and mechanisms of a state, perhaps less so…

And yet, a pride can infuse the defense of all of this (either separately or collectively).

And then there is the rebel.

Perhaps the rebel will never again find his army in the first world.

In terms of class warfare, then, the United States is a frozen conflict zone.

Just like Abkhazia or some other little-talked-about blip on the map.

Is there a class war?

Should there be a class war?

Shouldn’t wars of all kinds have been evolved out of existence long ago?

Yes?

No…the rebel shan’t find his army in America.

The battlefield has changed.

And as bathos is my witness, “love is a battlefield”!

Discourse on Benatar.

Cannot contain the dodo on his perch.

But never does Luchino Visconti stoop to such poor taste.

No.

Fever pitch, yes.

But poor taste, never.

Because he is telling Spengler’s story.

And he is still telling WWII.

There can be no avoiding that.  Nine years later.

It must be couched in allegory.

And I, like Baudelaire, am nourished by my own misery.

All of this I owe to Walter Benjamin.

Avoid the jalapeno pronunciation.  ~ath do us part.

Alida Valli gets to show more of her breadth here than in the criminally underrated Paradine Case (no pun intended).

Pennies and “the” will be eliminated from the verbal money supply.

Farley Granger is more of a maniac than in Rope (the Hitchcock closest to my snob heart).

Most importantly, Visconti sets the mood with Bruckner’s 7th Symphony.

And now Carlo Maria Giulini’s recording for Deutsche Grammophon makes more sense.

Senso in what sense?

Direction?

Love leaves you with a worthless compass.

The sun begins to revolve around the Earth.

What a perilous pleasure.

That we hope for forever until our end of days.

No matter the hurt…always more.

For the romantic.

 

-PD

Ici et ailleurs [1976)

God, the horror of struggle

in Palestine Godard filmed

the sadness of conditions

with such beauty of technique

ingenuity of filmic form

And then came the editing.  Back to France.

It was his film and her film.  Anne-Marie Miéville.

Someone with whom he could discuss film.

No more actresses.  A life partner.

And an agitator.  Critique yourself.

Of course Marx offered useful tools.  But there is more than Marx.

And the universe expanded.  You must turn to the images.

Why is the actress not acting?  And why is that beautiful?

Above and beyond (aside from) the fact that she is beautiful.

Just one.  Anne-Marie points it out.  The way things are done.

Early computer console script glowing green and blinking.  Always blinking.

Someone has captured the wrong image.  In the diffusion the stronger image has been diffused.

It was Hitler.  Israel.  Golda Meir in some sort of act of allegiance.

And Godard’s obsession with finding the double s in nature.  kiSSinger, for instance.

The anger of the filmmaker.  Who bombed the editing studio?  Certainly not Arabs.

Certainly not.  Find the true history.  Only one filmmaker was truly brave and crazy.  Godard.

Must be both to be this brave.

The wrong frame again.  “It’s silly to die for an image.”  But not silly to accept death for the survival of your community.

Of course.  Of course.  Bravery.  Simple.

A sad, pathetic Palestinian village.  And how did they come to be pinned in thusly?

Like livestock.

But the true beauty is cautious.  Scared.  Yes.  Tentatively walking the perimeter.

An image which will live a thousand years in the hearts of every serious soul who sees it.

Nameless.

Nothing shocks as much as the bloody face in Amman.  More than the Holocaust.  That the root cause could continue.

A transference of power abuse.  The short step to fascism.  Leaving out a few crucial details.  Voila.

The man in Amman.  Dead.  Text flashing backwards.  Mirrored.  On top of front-facing font.  Palimpsest.

Expired.

Perhaps there was a bad translation somewhere.  Muselmann in the camps.  Not guardspeak.

We don’t know.  I don’t.

Perhaps.

You say for money, to take an unpopular stand.  A pittance.  Film stock.  Plane tickets.

But they did finally recognize that they were borrowing a revolution.  Because making one was too costly.

At home.  France.  Texas.  Ici.  And the endless possibilities of ailleurs.  Elsewhere.  And here.  Here.

They only meant to send a statement.  Probably.  And the film sat for five years.  1970-1975.

But some images are too beautiful.  Too powerful.  Too important.  Indelible.

Godard never forgot.  Anything.  The camps.  Palestine.  Ghettos.  Prisons.  1789.

Only art speaks.

Study and respect.  Change your world.

I have ordered the images from room service.  And Google has only given me a popularity contest.

Click and vote.  Perhaps.

For film to destroy your soul so beautifully and so hard.

Ah, now I can’t even talk like everyone else.

A hard-earned style which jettisoned pretense long ago.

Almost fashionably dead.  To the doubters.

Mais, sanguine!

-PD