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Tag Archives: depressing
Full Metal Jacket [1987)
America is at war.
With communism.
With China.
And with those who collaborate with China to suppress freedom.
Some of those communist agents have risen to the highest levels of U.S. government.
It is not a stretch to say that America is now run by communist China.
Which means people like myself–people who like to have their votes actually count–are placed in a very delicate situation.
I am no longer under any illusion that my vote counts.
My vote was stolen by Eric Coomer.
My vote was stolen by Ruby Freeman.
My vote was stolen by Fulton County and Wayne County.
My vote was stolen by Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee.
My vote was stolen by Maricopa County.
My vote was stolen by Phoenix.
My vote was stolen by Las Vegas.
My vote was stolen by Arizona and Nevada.
My vote was stolen by Chinese hackers.
My vote was stolen by the CIA.
My vote was stolen by the Deep State.
I could go on and on.
My vote was stolen by Mark Zuckerberg and his pathetic wife Priscilla Chan.
My vote was stolen by Mitch McConnell and his pathetic wife Elaine Chao.
And her pathetic sister Angela Chao.
And the Bank of China.
My vote was stolen by China.
China who gave the world COVID.
On purpose.
America is in a war.
It is undeclared publicly.
I’m not sure our military is even smart enough to realize we are under attack.
Because many of our top brass appear to be corrupt.
My vote was stolen by Michael Hayden and John Brennan.
My vote was stolen by Gina Haspel and Avril Haines.
My vote was stolen by Bill Gates.
My vote was stolen by James Mattis and John Kelly.
My vote was stolen by Colin Powell and James Comey.
My vote was stolen by Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok.
My vote was stolen and given to Joe Biden.
My vote appears to have been stolen by Mark Milley.
My vote appears to have been stolen by Chris Miller and Ezra Cohen-Watnick.
My vote was stolen by Mike Pence.
My vote was stolen by Brett Kavanaugh.
My vote was stolen by Amy Coney Barrett.
My vote was stolen by John Roberts.
My vote was stolen by Chris Krebs.
My vote was stolen by Christopher Wray.
South Carolina is where cars crash into trees.
Where drunks wreck their hoopties.
Fucked up on malt liquor.
Cheap wine.
Fuck it.
Beaufort.
You’re almost in Georgia by that point.
But you gotta go inland to find the Georgia Guidestones.
So transparently talking about global depopulation.
But still on the South Carolina border.
Heading towards Alabama hit Atlanta.
CDC.
Depopulation.
CNN.
Suppression.
Fake news.
Was it Ted Turner built the Guidestones or some other worthless fuck?
Some worthless piece of shit like Bill Gates.
Parris Island will get you to Jekyll Island.
Straight shot.
Where those filthy bankers plotted the Federal Reserve System in secret in 1910.
111 years ago.
Two world wars.
A Cold War.
Vietnam.
Afghanistan for us and the Soviets.
Iraq twice.
And now we can never get out of debt.
All goes back to 9/11.
False-flag.
I liked R. Lee Ermey.
Some might say.
Like liking Darth Vader.
But I don’t think so.
Because Stanley Kubrick is a (very talented) propagandist.
True, war is disgusting.
True, Vietnam was depressing.
But now you see what we were fighting against.
Was it misguided?
Perhaps.
But now Chinese communism has conquered our nation (with the installment of Joe Biden).
And so now the heroes of Vietnam–our American Vietnam vets–are truly heroes after all.
To stem the tide.
To buy us time.
And our politicians (and military brass) have pissed it away.
But mainly our politicians.
And our filthy intelligence (CIA) community.
America is not shit.
At its heart.
But Stanley Kubrick and all his commie fag friends want you to believe it’s so.
But we will not tolerate that.
We respect Kubrick’s talent.
But politely disagree with his artistic premise…that America is shit.
Wrong!
D’Onofrio breaks your heart.
And it is more schoolmaster bullying than anything.
Very British.
But it’s all plausible.
Yet Kubrick has to shoot it like The Shining.
Yeah, war will drive you crazy.
And real training should be the same intensity as the war you’re going to.
Otherwise, it’s worthless.
America is at war.
Now.
Already.
China doesn’t declare war anymore.
They just sneak around and poison you.
And fuck with your weather.
And buy off your politicians.
I love jelly donuts.
We’re not all cut out for the military.
But when the enemy invades the homeland (as China has done to us), all bets are off.
I am a digital soldier.
Born To Kill.
Matthew Modine good here too.
The terror.
In the eyes.
Kubrick was a genius.
An evil genius.
Yes, war is bad.
But Kubrick was a communist.
So, for him, a communist world was better than a war.
For me, a war is better than a communist world.
Because at least we got the chance of coming out the other side with some freedoms.
Freedom, motherfucker!
That thing I am using right now to write this blog.
That thing that guarantees I can insult the government.
I can make my views known.
I cannot be violent, but I can unleash a shitstorm of invective.
And my government is supposed to not be able to stop me.
Because they are constrained by our Constitution.
Political speech.
Is protected speech.
I wish no harm to anyone listed above.
Even if they have literally taken communist Chinese money (like Joe Biden).
I don’t wish them harm.
But I can’t vote them out.
Not anymore.
Which puts me in a very delicate situation.
Which necessitates that I study war.
To fight China myself.
Because my government has become (in many ways) one with China.
My loyalty is to the USA.
My loyalty is to my country.
America.
Joe Biden’s loyalty is to money.
And those who give him money.
He and his family have profited handsomely off of Chinese dealings.
And Ukrainian dealings.
China has released a plague upon us.
This is not the time to make friends with China.
But Joe Biden doesn’t understand that.
He just understands corruption.
He just wants his pockets lined.
And Joe Biden’s handlers don’t care about the plague.
For them, it’s just another opportunity to make money (off of vaccines).
And really, they worship the plague…because the plague let them dethrone Trump.
It was the only way.
To get the mail-in ballots.
But some, like Bill Gates (and Avril Haines), are quite obviously more privy to a deeper plan.
A plan to cull the herd.
Unfortunately for them, the rapper Pitbull is onto their Event 201 bullshit.
So it is not looking good for Gates and Haines re: stealthiness.
Do you remember Charles Whitman?
Lee Harvey Oswald?
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman does.
Them’s the facts of life.
The Virgin Mary.
Mary Jane Rottencrotch.
A man can only be pushed so far.
How many people voted for Trump?
What do the rotten bastards say?
69 million?
That’s no small potatoes.
Based on post-election polling, I’m guessing the current number of Trump voters who believe the election was stolen sits at about 46 million people or more. Maybe closer to 50 million. And this is assuming the 69 million total is correct (which it cannot, in reality, be).
But I am not here to lay out the evidence.
I have done it before.
I am sick of doing it.
Research it yourself.
Nothing could possibly happen on Tet.
Never has before.
There couldn’t possibly be a military coup.
Never has been before.
Except in just about every country on Earth (America not withstanding).
But what we have had are:
–a Revolutionary War (which birthed the country)
and
–a Civil War (which tore the country in two).
It was a rebirth.
China (and Russia) would like nothing more than to see us go through a civil war.
China because they want to beat us.
Russia because they still hate us.
But Russia respects us.
Not our leaders, of course.
But us.
Those of us fighting against the New World Order.
China owns the New World Order.
Or vice versa.
It is symbiotic.
Russia is on the sidelines.
More or less self-sufficient.
But a little nervous.
About their neighbor China.
And about the disintegration of the U.S.
Of course Russia wants the E.U. to collapse.
But the E.U. deserves to collapse.
Because it is Chinese communism in disguise.
It is the pet project of the globalists (the Bilderberg set).
Adam Baldwin is also the most real thing here.
But D’Onofrio breaks your heart.
And mine too.
Fat boy.
We fucked up.
But we all get the punishment.
Gotta accept Jesus.
It’s not communism.
It’s grace.
It’s mercy.
It’s harmony.
Order out of chaos (some say).
Sure.
But not cynical.
You gotta offer a choice.
God is the ultimate capitalist.
Free will.
A free market of souls.
Take your pick.
Look around.
Choose the Devil.
Or choose God.
Feel evil.
And feel good.
Make your bed.
Kubrick always goes a bit squiffy just when he could nail it.
Same in The Shining.
That stupid maze scene at the end.
More funny than scary.
Ruins a masterpiece.
Blood in slow-motion.
Empty filmmaking.
Kubrick doesn’t know…why…he’s doing what he’s doing.
Which is why this film is NOT as good (nor as important) as Apocalypse Now.
But Kubrick gets very close.
There’s a lot of Strangelove in this.
The irreverence of Joker.
A little bit of Cries and Whispers.
The gook sniper.
Kubrick is going for juxtaposition.
A nuke and Vera Lynn.
A war crime and the Mickey Mouse song.
Quite aware.
Marx and Coca-Cola.
Learn your lessons now, boys!
-PD
La Bête Humaine [1938)
This might be the most depressing film of all time.
And that’s not nothing.
I seem to remember. Thurston Moore.
A Rolling Stone review of Lou Reed’s album Berlin.
The fucked-up kids will always search out these masterpieces.
Because they are forbidden.
Like the strange death of James Forrestal.
The first U.S. Secretary of Defense.
But let’s back to cinema. [sic]
Let’s active.
Trains.
I often dream of trains.
Such an important part of my lineage.
Whether there were drunkards or not, I have no idea.
But train men there were many in my family.
Enough.
We think it’s gonna be like La Roue of Abel Gance.
That 273-minute behemoth.
But it’s only the trappings which match.
Perhaps, dear reader, you are more perceptive than I.
But I couldn’t have seen this ending coming in a million years.
Like the Maginot Line being overrun.
This was 1938. Jean Renoir.
Madness. Madness.
On the precipice of World War II.
Not history.
But present.
It must be ever present.
We must be terrified of history.
And to each of us is given a special area to study.
I long labored in the musical mines. Studying birdsongs.
But one day I escaped my cage.
And I lived to see the blowout.
Jericho, Kentucky.
But now I am given over to film.
Because I am too old to be a rock star.
“My face is finished/My body’s gone”
It would be a miracle of spectacle for me to be relevant again in the most venal of concert halls.
And so we move on to opera. Silent film. Quail eggs.
Madness vs. madness.
When magazine was a store.
And journal was a newspaper.
When was that?
The false-friends attack of language. Cognates. Faux.
Gripping his steam engine. A night without sleep.
La Bête Humaine. The human beast. Monster.
Fighting it. Fighting it.
The banality of evil had already suffused Europe by 1938.
And so we live with a corpse throughout most of this film.
Pocket watch. Wallet full of dough.
But Simone Simon is already flirting her way to destiny.
Der müde Tod.
Femme fatale. Serial. Concatenation of sickly sweet roles.
Roles.
Jean Gabin.
Here’s to you, my friend!
And Julien Carette. Always sucking on that cigarette.
We begin to covet the boring comfort of his life.
Living from one cigarette to the next.
Vive le tabac!
Piss-poor English Wikipedia will not tell you that Monsieur Carette was an integral part of Renoir’s masterpiece La Règle du jeu. Not, that is, if you are looking at his page.
And so, dear reader, I am here to make those connections for you.
Perhaps they will mean nothing.
Perhaps they will mean everything.
Let me just say this…
La Bête Humaine was an extremely brave film to make in 1938.
More Hitchcock than anything Hitch had made up till that point.
Ahead of its time, yes.
But most particularly…symptomatic of that age of anxiety.
-PD
I fidanzati [1963)
This is a fucking depressing film.
I don’t think I’ve ever started like that before.
Because it matters. How you start.
But maybe it’s just a mirror.
This film.
I can imagine few pieces of cinema summing up my life at this moment quite as well as I fidanzati does.
I’m sure there’s a dangling modifier in there somewhere.
But what about the welder?
The man adrift.
Sent to some godforsaken place for the company.
I made the right decision. But I went to the wrong place.
Unfortunately, there is no separating the two.
Work.
Too much work.
All of our thoughts occupied with work.
And what do we get out of the equation?
Nothing.
Almost nothing.
Might as well be nothing.
It is a particularly Italian version of hell on display in I fidanzati.
Ermanno Olmi was a brilliant director here.
And he lives. 84 years young.
Sure.
Some things end well.
Young girls like happy endings.
But this one is hard to get over.
It’s really harrowing having nothing to live for.
And how would I know that?
You have a phone. It doesn’t ring.
In fact, you sometimes wonder whether your messages get delivered at all.
You have a heart.
When is the last time someone spoke to your heart?
I understand.
We are shackled. Paralyzed. Crippled.
Life is sucked out of us like a lemon peel in the Sicilian heat.
No, I don’t understand.
Is this how karma works?
Surely this jungle will spare me.
I can think of Anna Canzi.
Her face is a melody.
And I relate to those sad cheeks.
You keep writing because you haven’t yet expressed it.
It.
That which you need to get off your soul.
Soul.
That living feeling inside you.
Primitive man suffering with his superstitions.
Poor man paying for his ignorance.
Not all are willfully unprepared.
What could have prepared you for this situation?
Other than this situation?
That is Situationism.
Science and humanities will argue that metaphor…or rather analogy.
That this will teach you.
It is like this. And like that. But unlike the other thing.
No.
I disagree.
It is unlike anything I’ve ever known.
Youth was lonely.
This is vicious.
There is.
A bar down the street.
But only in the movies.
Yet here it is exposed for what it really would be.
Empty.
Loud music and louder lights. Life! Vitality! Excitement!
Inside is an old woman at a cash register.
There is a little metal display tree with ballpoint pens on one side.
The rest of the lopsided taunt is vacant.
And then the little boy.
Getting ahead in life.
Like Michele Sindona.
Making the espresso. Quicker! Faster!
Washing the dishes…
And hauling the fruit back and forth…
The citrus.
The service.
The difference in price from one location to another.
Goldfinger.
They Drive by Night
Good god…
It doesn’t get much more depressing.
And there should be some positive message to end it off.
And there is.
Which makes it even more sad.
Because the film was running long.
And maybe it won’t win shit at Cannes.
Did you ever think about that?
So then you have a depressing film on your hands for domestic audiences.
And they spend their hard-earned cash.
And what the fuck is this shit?
Oh…Anna, Monica…don’t go see this film.
It is so depressing!
But there’s the answer.
I fidanzati succeeds because it shows a side of life we don’t want to see.
What?
It succeeds…53 years later.
Because it was true.
It stuck to its guns.
It was meaningful.
So many other films from that year…
Utterly pointless.
Diversions.
Sad candy.
But here…
Yeah. It’s a bummer.
But it’s real.
You can stare up at it and wonder how Signor Olmi painted such color in black and white.
How he lovingly distinguished gray from grey…and Juan from Gris.
Is it the same?
From language to language?
Gray?
Even within the Commonwealth…
We damned Americans.
No.
And yes.
This.
Sadness transcends.
No explanation needed.
The machines rule us.
Time is our master.
Money mocks our fragility.
On every continent.
An indispensable story.
-PD
طعم گيلاس [1997)
[TASTE OF CHERRY (1997)]
Don’t kill yourself, my friend.
I try to preserve the original language.
From France to Romania and now Iran.
It says Taste of Cherry. And it is a film beyond perfection. Directed by Abbas Kiarostami.
[if you are on a laptop or desktop it may appear to have no title…not very Farsi-friendly this WordPress]
Long ago I saw this quiet juggernaut.
If you’ve never seen an art film, you’ll know the genre when you see it.
Perhaps this was my first.
At an Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas.
How did I end up there?
More importantly, how did I end up here?
This (the latter) seems to be the vexing question which actor Homayoun Ershadi is asking himself while embodying the suicidal character Mr. Badii.
Never have I seen an actor say so much with such economy of means.
Driving around. Driving around.
We are suffocated by the expressionless Mr. Badii.
It reaches a head (of sorts) in the quarry. He’s had enough.
Our protagonist cannot even secure the most essential human contact. He cannot find even a marginal friend.
We do not know his story. It would be impossible for anyone to have complete empathy.
He is right. Your pain is yours alone.
But maybe a miracle is waiting…
Enter Abdolrahman Bagheri.
I have never felt such emotion in a film.
It is real. As Mr. Bagheri (his name in the film and real life) recounts his own suicide attempt we are brought into a rarefied talent for dialogue which I have only seen in Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s novel Voyage au bout de la nuit. Hope in the midst of nihilism. The deepest, darkest desperation pierced by humor…or humanity.
It places Kiarostami (at least in this film) as a forerunner of the Romanian New Wave. The trappings are similar.
We see the most depressing back alleys of urban sprawl. Gravel paths not yet claimed entirely from the grasp of the earth.
Earth.
This film is all about earth. Dirt. The dust of impressionism. Concrete.
Rocks being broken up.
A man (Mr. Badii) whose only longing is, seemingly, to be dead.
Earthmovers, earthmovers everywhere…and not a load to spare.
I have never seen a film like this.
Yes, it fits into the art film genre, and yet…it forges ahead…a new path…take the fork to the right, please.
This film is a testament of hope for the Afghan people.
A testament of hope for the Kurds.
A testament of hope for the Azeris.
And, most of all, this eternal masterpiece is a testament to the genius of Iran.
May the future be as beautiful as the colors of the setting sun.
Even if that sun must piece the sadness of cranes and smog in Tehran.
I will look for the sun if you will…my dear friends.
-PD
paulydeathwish 