Z [1969)

He lives!

[in ancient Greek]

A letter was banned.

Q.

Why did Putin have the letter Z emblazoned on every military vehicle (particularly tanks) invading Ukraine?

Z mean “he lives” in ancient Greek.

Why did Putin have the letter Z emblazoned on every tank entering Ukraine?

There is no Z in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.

There is likewise no Z in the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet.

If Z stands for Zelensky, why not use the Russian or Ukrainian equivalent of a Z?

Why use a Roman letter?

My gut feeling tells me this was psychological warfare.

The obvious answer would be a campaign to scare Zelensky.

But I feel there is more to this story.

Find out.

Did Vladimir Putin like movies?

Yes.

What kind of movies?

Soviet spy movies.

Is Putin a fan of the James Bond franchise?

Yes.

007.

Putin retired as a Lieutenant Colonel of the KGB in 1991 after 16 years of service.

At least five of those years were spent in East Germany.

Putin speaks German as a second language.

This film predates the start of Putin’s KGB career by six years.

Z was taken up by the followers of Yves Montand’s character after his murder in this film.

The Z was painted on the street during a clash between protestors and police.

What is Z about?

Corruption.

At the highest levels.

Durham.

Zorro.

Z.

Revenge.

Righteous vengeance.

May 2, 2014.

Trade Unions House in Odessa.

32 pro-Russian activists died of suffocation.

They were burned alive in the building.

The doors were barricaded so they could not get out.

An additional 10 pro-Russian activists jumped to their death from windows of the building as it was on fire.

Seven of those who died were women.

One was a 17-year-old boy.

As activists tried to escape, they were beaten by Ukrainian “unity” (pro-Maidan) protestors.

The pro-Russian activists were vastly-outnumbered.

46 of those killed in the fire were Ukrainians from Odessa.

The other two were Ukrainians from other towns.

The true story of Grigoris Lambrakis.

And his death in Thessaloniki.

Z.

The first letter of the Greek word, “Zi”.

“He lives”.

A graffito from 1960s Greece after the death of Lambrakis.

But Z is also the last letter of the English alphabet.

Biblical.

I am the alpha (first letter) and the omega (last letter).

The end.

The end times.

The last battle.

The last straw.

The hill to die on.

2/22/22.

The 26th letter of the English alphabet.

Invasion on the 24th of February.

What was the planetary alignment on 2/22/22?

Ezra Pound went by Z.

As you can see why.

Zorro.

An outlaw.

Who avenges the helpless, punishes cruel politicians, and aids the oppressed.

Putin on a horse.

Tornado.

Zorro is Don Diego Vega.

A fictional character created 100 years ago by Johnston McCulley.

An important detail.

Zorro’s mother is dead.

Putin’s mother died of tuberculosis when he was 18.

The dead moms club.

Zorro is a metaphorical chess master.

Intelligent.

Master of complex strategy.

Master of planning.

Planning before a battle.

But also a master of improvisation.

Zorro is not about brute force.

Zorro uses psychological warfare.

Zorro provokes his opponents into errors.

Zorro prods his opponents to seek revenge.

And be blinded by vengeful rage.

Zorro is a master of provocation and setting traps.

Zorro is a spy.

Like Putin.

Zorro provokes anger.

Like a punk rocker.

To keep his enemies off-balance.

Don Q, Son of Zorro.

1925.

Douglas Fairbanks.

Q Z.

Don Trump.

Z, son of Q.

World War Z.

Virus.

Biolabs.

Lavrov confirmed.

https://t.me/GeneralMcInerney/2400

Zombie pandemic.

The last war.

Philadelphia.

Bill Gates.

Smallpox.

Merck.

Costa-Gavras.

The most important thing about this film is Raoul Coutard.

It was just one month ago that the world lost Christos Sarzetakis.

President of Greece 1985-1990.

Let’s not forget that Greece was ruled by a military junta from 1967-1974.

So this film (1969) came at a particularly tense time in the country’s history.

And it was made in French.

Not Greek.

I agree with some of this film.

#NoMoreNATO .

Agreed.

#USAoutofNATO is my preferred tag.

Jan. 6 was a set-up.

9/11 was an inside job.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/68bDf5v7OSzGE43SWlq2Oc?si=9b6adeef05b94d4d

-PD

Mad Max [1979)

Crunch time.

Ghost rider.

Motorcycle hero.

Chain Bowery.

Hand.

Mind games.

Fifi McAfee.

IMG_0865

Toecutter is Wayne Coyne.  Hugh Keays-Byrne.  On Highway 61.  In a forrest-green Ford Focus?  Oklahoma plates.  Near Emerald Mound.  Flaming Lips poster tucked into the back of the driver’s seat.  Soft Bulletin era.  Before Yoshimi.  Dead in December of last year in New South Wales.  Peacefully?  In a hospital?  At age 73?  12/2/2020.  Gay Bubba is Marc Almond.  Satanist.  Now says it was a joke.  This is quintessential Antifa.  As if Johnny the Boy had his eyes gouged out.  Dumb driver runs away.  Left his woman.  Pitiful.  Steve Bisley with compassion.  Goose is Max von Sydow.  We are going to win Australia back for Australians.  And win Canada back for Canadians.  And win the U.K. back for the English and Scottish and Welsh.  And the Irish of Belfast.  My mates in The Answer.  Google me.  No one showed up.  And Johnny walked free.  It’s time to show up, Australia.  Here is your song, Australia.  We will make it together.  https://soundcloud.com/paulydeathwish/australia-here-i-come-original Bernard Kerik is now on our side.  Goose.  We won’t lose.  Lori “Eraserhead” Lightfoot. IMG_0853

That THING is not the Mayor of Chicago.  Intel from Bobby Piton that she is a CCP operative.  Interesting.  Singer licking her lips.  Could suck a golf ball through a garden hose.  Goose’s last taste of life.  Went out with a bang.  But burnt to a crisp.  And not out.  Alive and suffering.  Bike in the back of a fuck-ugly ute.  Under which Goose is cooked.  Antifa tactics.  Mean, nasty people.  Cowards.  Sadists.  Unhappy adolescents who remain unhappy adolescents for their entire lives.  Sick utopians.  If only everyone saw things their way, then the world would be a wonderful place.  They think.  Rebels without an understanding of their cause.  Which is to say, without a cause.  The cause is only a prop.  And so nebulous as to be virtually nonexistent.  West side story.  Cascadia.  Rosa Brooks.  Nils Gilman.  Transition Integrity Project.  Brooks involved in Soros projects like Open Society Foundations.  Gilman with Berggruen in California.  Which is to say, China.  Intimate connection.  Berggruen Institute.  Satellite offices mainland.  Tries to quit and get out.  Some good times.  Family time.  Swimming.  A child.  Tender moments between man and wife.  Sharing childhood memories in vulnerability.  Fifi needed him.  McAfee.  Abandoned.  Had to make a choice.  Chose family.  I chose family.  And now I can buy Bitcoin and shrink Abbey Road to the size of a matchbox.  More or less.  At least as passable as Radiohead glitch fidelity.  Sprog is sperg.  Autists activate.IMG_0647

IMG_1221

Reconcile.  Contempt meets Rambo.  Again it’s Cascadia.  Twin Peaks.  Knives in movies.  They drew first blood, not me.  Paul Hogan.  Mel Gibson never finished fixing the fan belt.  If you wait, it’s too late.  Death Wish.  True romance.  It would seem they needed Toecutter for the sequel.    Good versus evil.  The Flaming Lips versus me.  Versus the Devil in fuckery.  You can saw through the cuffs in 10, or your ankle in 5.  Joanne Samuel beautiful and great acting.  The Mel Gibson contingent is taking back the world.  Just you watch.

-PD

Patriot Games [1992)

This is not a game.

Assassination attempts on motorcades.

Jack Ryan jumps in here.

An expert by Clear and Present Danger.

Since 1972.

Tom Clancy.

Minister of State, Northern Ireland.

The answer.

Paul Channon.

Six months.

We are.

In that period.

Married Ingrid Guinness.

Former wife of his cousin.

Jonathan Guinness.

PC.

Guinness board of directors.

Guinness Trust.

By the way.

What ever happened to Rachel Chandler?

Wife of Thomas Guinness-Taylor?

He being son of the aforementioned Jonathan Guinness and mistress Susan “Shoe” Taylor?

The date of birth seems to match.

1986.

Northern Ireland Office.

Would be equivalent to Robin Walker.

1972-1974: Conservative (Edward Heath).

1974-1979: Labour (Harold Wilson/James Callaghan).

1979-1997: Conservative (Margaret Thatcher/John Major).

1997-2010: Labour (Tony Blair/Gordon Brown)

2010-present: Conservative (David Cameron/Theresa May/Boris Johnson).

The Provisional IRA was socialist.

Not to be confused with the IRA of 1919-1922.

Cells.

Splinters.

Gilded.

Annette is English.

Red wig.

Not a real ginger.

Prisoner transfer motorcade ambushed.

On the move.

Dangerous.

David Robinson.

This was before the Colombian PTSD.

A healthy amount of paranoia.

Highway attack.

By 1994, Fort Huachuca had come into the mix.

Film misdated as 1998 is actually 1992.

Watched out of order.

Keyhole.

Who dares wins.

Flynn.

Lindell.

SAS because British citizens.

CIA assist.

Assassination attempt on American.

Terrorists.

Pence was a mole.

Traitor.

McInerney correct.

London.

Alaska.

Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Diplomatic Security Service.

Maryland State Police.

HRT Quantico.

Crisis management.

A career of crises.

Diversion.

Spartacus.

Next film was already in the works.

You are watching a movie.

-PD

The Actors [2003)

Here’s a lovely movie which brings together many things.

An Irish film.

Directed by Conor McPherson.

Wherein Dylan Moran gets to assume a sort of Peter Sellers breadth.

English, Irish, Scottish.

Accents.

Well done.

And bloody fucking funny.

The best is the Scot.

Where Moran describes himself in apoplectic circumcision as “bordering on genius”.

To dissect:  Moran (an actor) playing an actor (!) who is then further acting (playing a Scot in a real-life scenario rather than on stage).

I’m not sure how confusing that is.

An Irish actor (Moran) playing the role of an Irish actor (a character in this film) is really not that farfetched.

But you see how circuitous this film is.

Yes, Dylan Moran is the best thing here.

You might know him from Black Books, but he is much better here.

Michael Caine is quite good here.

And Lena Headley is a nice foil to all this nerdy testosterone.

But Michael Gambon really steals the show from Caine.

Gambon who, like Moran, is also Irish really gives this picture the color it needed.

The bathos.

The absurdity.

The contrition.

The strangest star is Abigail Iversen who comes off as a sort of Greta Thunberg savant.

She was a dead ringer for the prodigy.

Strangely, Iversen (who is Icelandic) seems to have dropped off the map in 2003 after this film and one other.

Sure, perhaps this film is no masterpiece, but it is a lot better than the gobs of shite currently mucking up most of the Internet.

 

-PD

Hugo [2011)

It’s hard to imagine that perfection would be possible in 2011.

In this very uncinematic era ruined by technology.

But it takes a genius to produce art from tech.

And it takes an artist to produce art.

Martin Scorsese was well up to the challenge.

As the weirdo I am, The King of Comedy has always been my favorite of his films.

Rupert Pupkin spoke to me in a way that perhaps only the totality of Dr. Strangelove ever similarly did.

But Mr. Scorsese had the brass to undertake a project which should have been doomed if only by its trappings.

Films have tried and generally failed at relative tasks.

City of Ember, for example.

But Scorsese was not deterred.

Not least because he had the magical trump card:  Méliès.

Which is to say, he had the story to end all stories (as far as cinema is concerned).

The big daddy.  The big papa.

Papa Georges.

But first things first…

We must give credit to Asa Butterfield (who looks like a cross between Barron Trump and Win Butler in this film).

Butterfield is no Mechanical Turk.

Nay, far from it.

But automata (or at least one particular automaton) play a large role in Hugo.

And why “Hugo”?

Kid living “underground”?  Victor?  Les Misérables?

Yes, I think so.

And it’s a nice touch by the auteur (in the strictest sense) Brian Selznick.

[Yes, grandson of David O.]

We’re at the Gare Montparnasse.

Torn down in 1969.

Site of this famous 1895 derailment.

train_wreck_at_montparnasse_1895

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I’m up to 1,261.

But we press on…

Because Méliès was about dreams.

And Hugo is about dreams.

les rêves

And Scorsese has been “tapped in” to this magic at least since he portrayed Vincent van Gogh in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (Kurosawa-san’s best film).

I must admit…I was a bit confused for awhile.

Something told me Scorsese had transformed himself into Méliès.

It was only later that it all made sense.

Ben Kingsley.

I mean, Scorsese is a great actor (Van Gogh, etc.), but he’s not THAT great!

But I’m jumping ahead…

Sacha Baron Cohen is very good in a somewhat-serious, villain role here.

I fully expected the immensely-talented Cohen to “ham it up” at some point, but he instead gives a very fine, restrained performance which fits like clockwork (sorry) into the viscera of this exquisite film.

But let’s revisit Sir Kingsley.

What a performance!

The loss of a career (Méliès).

The loss of a previous life.

The fragility of celluloid.

All to end up running a pathetic souvenir shop.

Toys.

Very clever, but still…

Such a fall from grace.

Into such obscurity.

I can only compare it to the trajectory of Emmett Miller (which was so artfully documented by my favorite author of all time [Nick Tosches] in my favorite BOOK of all time [Where Dead Voices Gather]).

The speed at which technology moves has the potential to reduce the most eminent personage to mere footnote at breakneck speed.

It was so even a hundred years ago.

And the process has now exponentially accelerated.

But we are coming to understand the trivialization of the recent past.

We are holding tighter to our precious films and recordings.

Because we know that some are lost forever.

Will this vigilance continue uninterrupted?

I doubt it.

But for now we know.

Some of us.

That today’s masterpieces might slip through the cracks into complete nonexistence.

Consider Kurt Schwitters.

The Merzbau.

Bombed by the Allies in 1943.

Es ist nicht mehr.

Into thin air.

But such also is the nature of magic.

Poof!

Skeletons later evoked by Jean Renoir in La Règle du jeu.

Scorsese is a film historian making movies.

And it is a wonderful thing to see.

And hear.

Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre more than once.

As on a player piano.

With ghost hands.

And the gears of the automaton.

Like the mystery of Conlon Nancarrow’s impossible fugues.

I’m betting Morten Tyldum lifted more than the spirit of gears meshing in Hugo to evoke the majesty of Alan Turing’s bombe in The Imitation Game.

But every film needs a secret weapon (much like Hitchcock relied on the MacGuffin).

And Scorsese’s ace in the hole for Hugo is the Satie-rik, placid visage of Chloë Grace Moretz.

Statuesque as water.

A grin.

A dollar word.

The beret.

And the ubiquitous waltzes as seen through keyholes and the Figure 5 in Gold.

Hugo is the outsider.

Scruffy ruffian.

Meek.  Stealing only enough to survive.  And invent.

But always on the outside looking in.

Below the window (like in Cinema Paradiso).

Ms. Moretz’ world is lit with gas lamps.

And you can almost smell the warm croissants.

[Funny that a film set in Paris should require subtitles FOR PARISIANS]

Assuming you don’t speak English.

Tables are turned.

But Paris draws the cineastes like bees to a hive.

THE hive.

Historically.

And that is just what this is.

History come alive.

But another word about Ms. Moretz.

As I am so wont to say in such situations, she’s not just a pretty face.

Though they are faint glimmers, I see an acting potential (mostly realized) which I haven’t seen in a very long time.

The key is in small gestures.

But really, the key is having Scorsese behind the camera.

It’s symbiotic.

Martin needed Chloë for this picture.

And vice versa.

We get a movie within a movie.

And (believe it or not) even a dream within a dream.

Poe is ringing his bell!

Or bells.

“Lost dream” says Wikipedia.

Yes.

It is as bitter a music as ever rained into Harry Partch’s boot heels.

To have one’s life work melted down for shoes.

Rendered.

To click the stone of Gare Montparnasse.

In an ever-more-sad procession.

Méliès becomes the vieux saltimbanque of which Baudelaire wrote.

Such is life.

We never expected to end up HERE.

Astounding!

-PD

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa [2013)

Well, not everything can be a masterpiece 🙂

And while this film (known in the U.S. simply as Alan Partridge) has its moments, it’s a rather lackluster affair overall.

But something kept me watching.

I suppose it was the sheer talent of Steve Coogan.

Bloke’s got a real gift.

But this film just didn’t really do him justice.

24 Hour Party People was much better (if I remember correctly).

At any rate, Alan Partridge is set in Norwich.

Which is in Norfolk.

Which is in East Anglia.

Yes, Mr. Partridge is a pretty shallow gent.

The context, by the way, is that of a radio station.

The film’s action mostly takes place at a radio studio.

It’s a bit of a tense film, but always long on humor.

I must give the director Declan Lowney credit.

There are some quirky bits which work quite well.

And so, perhaps I just haven’t understood this film.

It was relatively enjoyable.

I don’t want an hour and a half of my life back.

It wasn’t that bad.

But something was a bit off.

I must say, the concept was relatively sound.

[no pun intended]

Somehow the execution of the concept was less than stellar.

The acting was all fairly decent.

No doubt that Coogan was the star.

Really, I don’t know quite what to say about this one.

I wouldn’t recommend it as a life-changing film.

It’s relatively light and enjoyable, but there are a good many guns in the film.

The premise is, as stated, quite tense.

If you work in a radio station, you might find certain parts funnier than I did.

At any rate, it was great to know that Steve Coogan’s still got it.

I will be looking out for more of his wonderful performances in the future.

Cheerio!

-PD

Yang Tidak Dibicarakan Ketika Membicarakan Cinta [2013)

By the grace of God I bring you this film review tonight.

Last night I was not feeling well enough to write.

And so I am happy to give you my first review of an Indonesian film.

It is a wonderful piece of cinema and is available on Netflix in the U.S. currently as What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love.

I will just say this.

Any film which includes a character sneezing his glass eye out of his head is ok by me.

Which is to say, this is a pretty strange film.

But it is not strange in an uptight, contrived, David Lynch sort of way.

Perhaps it is the basic situation which makes this film quixotic.

The bulk of the “action” takes place at a “special” school (as it is called in the subtitles).

The beautiful young people at this school all struggle with visual impairment.

There is, however, one very important character who is sighted yet cannot hear.

[We will get to him in due time]

When I tried to watch this film last night, I was not feeling very well (as mentioned previously).

And so in my debilitating moments of bubbling, dull panic I was trying to first situate this film culturally.

There was some blurb about a Dutch film fund.

And the real bit of text at the head of the film which threw me off the scent:  a reference to the Busan film fund.

Knowing Busan, I figured, “Great!  I am watching a South Korean film.”

I felt somewhat comfortable marginally knowing the cinema tradition in which I had just entered.

But as I saw women and young girls in Muslim garb, I began to question.

Indeed, even on tonight’s complete viewing, it was only 3/4 of the way through the film that I realized I was watching an Indonesian production.

Call me stupid.

Fine.

But this is not a cinema (nor a language) with which I have any experience.

It was only when I saw Jakarta on the side of a bus that I felt fairly confident where the story had been set.

So yes, this is an Indonesian film in Indonesian (or dare I say Malay).

The scope and breadth of this language is not altogether clear to me, but it seems that Indonesian is a “register” (in linguistic terms) of Malay.

Being the dunce that I am, “register” seems an awful lot like “dialect”, but I’m sure most linguists would roundly dismiss this generalization.

Perhaps “jargon” is a better synonym for “register”.

In any case, Malay (of one type or another) is spoken by about 290 million people worldwide.

But we will stick to the term Indonesian (as per the language).

Our whole film is in that language (except for one line in Javanese).

Javanese, unlike Indonesian, is not a form of Malay.

It is quite distinct.

But on to the movie!

First we must pay our respects to the highly-talented director:  Mouly Surya.

Based on a cursory search, this would be Mr. Surya (Mouly being far more common as a male name).

Ah…but thank God for research!

Our director, in fact, is MS. Surya.

She is a 36-year-old native of Jakarta.

But really, male or female, this is an obvious work of cinematic art.

What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love isn’t perfect, but it’s frighteningly close.

Which isn’t to say it’s frightening.

It’s not.

But it’s a film which sneaks up on you.

Cineastes may be familiar with the term “slow cinema” which has been bandied about here and there especially in recent years.

There may be some of that here…like when the character Diana combs her hair exactly 100 times.

[I was sure she was going to stop at 88…that number being good luck in Southeast Asian cultures]

Indeed, we are with the character for a seemingly interminable session of hair-brushing at her “boudoir”.

However, that is one of the few times where the “slow cinema” idea has our film run astray temporarily.

Other uses of the technique (an extreme of Deleuze’s “time-image”?) are quite effective and evoke the loneliness of sightless life.

Granted, no two lives are the same.

But the Indonesia pictured in our film is not an economic wonderland.

Quite the opposite.

It is a rather humble school in which students have very basic accommodations.

And as is so often the case, economic struggles exacerbate and compound coexisting problems.

But don’t get me wrong:  it appears that the students portrayed actually have it very lucky in the context of their nation (all things considered).

Arguably the star of the film is Karina Salim.

Her situation is one of ballet lessons…and a doting mother.

That said, her roommate has a family which is struggling economically.

It is a strange juxtaposition.

But let’s focus on Ms. Salim.

Her acting is really fantastic.

Whether she is blind in real life, I know not.

But her portrayal of the character Diana is in the great tradition of pathos which touched on the works of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.

The French adjective pathétique.

In English, we (if I may speak for us English speakers) tend to regard pathétique as descriptive of poetic pathos.

Deep expression.

And that is exactly what Karina Salim exhibits in her delicate acting throughout this film.

Her character, Diana, is right on the cusp of womanhood.

And in a very moving set of sequences, we see her quietly preparing her underwear for the week.

The moment of her first menstruation is a cause for secret celebration.

Indeed, she shares this ascent to adulthood with only her mother…on a joyous little phone call which we overhear.

Which brings us to culture.

We almost feel embarrassed knowing this intimate detail of character Diana’s life.

But American films are so much more explicit in so many ways.

Perhaps we are shocked because the reality of womanhood is rarely addressed in Hollywood movies.

And so we see that Hollywood still has taboos.

In this age in which anything goes, honest depiction of mundane-yet-visceral life realities (such as menstruation) are all but absent (save from a film like Carrie [1976]).

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this particular kind of honesty about femininity onscreen.

But what the hell do I know?  I’m a dude.

So let’s back to the film.

While Ayushita is very good as Diana’s roommate, it is really Nicholas Saputra who is the other star of this film.

His character is a deaf punk rocker.

[Let that one sink in for a second]

Every day he has a different shirt.

The Sex Pistols.  Led Zeppelin (?!?).  The Clash.  Joan Jett.

He definitely has the best hairstyle in the film.

[A strange zig-zag bleach job which I’ve never seen previously]

His character Edo is a social engineer par excellence.

Yes, there is some trickery in this film.

But it is not malicious.

Or if it begins as malicious, it is transformed into something quite beautiful.

[think Amélie]

But here’s where things get really strange.

There is really no decorous way of putting this, but there are a few characters in this film which pop up from time to time…AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THEY ARE!

There is a rather tasteless meme going back generations that all Chinese people look the same to a Westerner.

[And, perhaps, all Brits (for instance) look the same to a Chinese person]

But, again, there are some characters in this film which seem to be playing out some subplot which escaped me completely.

Indeed, I have so rarely seen anything like it that I can only associate my confusion with that felt by so many in relation to the surreal Howard Hawks narrative in The Big Sleep.

Granted, in our film this is a very minor element.

But it is still disorienting.

Was there some series of edits which mangled this film?

Can I really not tell one Indonesian person from another?

I don’t know.

You’ll have to see it for yourself.

And explain to me exactly what is going on.

For instance, does the blind character Andhika somehow learn how to drive a Vespa around town?

And is he cheating on Diana?

Or is Diana cheating on herself?

Are there two Dianas?

Again, a few scenes completely lost me.

But they do not ruin the general continuity of this film.

If anything, they add a mercurial charm to the whole affair.

And so I wholeheartedly recommend this film which portrays a side of life on which many of us are completely uninformed.

Visual impairment.  Braille.  Hearing impairment.  The difficulty of asking a clerk at 7-Eleven, “what kind of cigarettes do girls buy” in sign language.

And there is beauty in this world.

The appreciation for just a glimmer of sight (however blurry).

And yet, the difficulty of EVERY SINGLE TASK.

Most of all, this is a love story.

Two love stories (at least).

[not counting the extraneous players which pop up here and there]

But it is a very, VERY unique love story.

For me, it is an incredibly moving film because of the acting of Karina Salim and also Anggun Priambodo (who plays Andhika).

So take an adventure to Jakarta.  Capital of Indonesia.  World’s fourth-most-populous country.

While Indonesia is approximately 87% Muslim, this film portrays a diversity of religious devotion.

Indeed, while one student prays, another listens to a radio play (as one would have heard in the days of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce on The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [1939-1946]).

Indeed, this scene of overlap…with religion in the background (the praying student) and learning in the foreground (listening to a lesson?  or just a bit of entertainment for the girls who live at this school?) is one of the most fascinating from a visual and cultural perspective.

I cannot pretend to know what is going on in all of the footage.

And so an expert on education for the visually impaired in Indonesia would perhaps be able to elucidate some of the more esoteric aspects of this film.

In the meantime, enjoy!

-PD

Citizenfour [2014)

Four days till the US election.

OK, three.

But we must take a look at things as they seem.

And analyze what they might be.

I have always written about Edward Snowden glowingly.

But this film is an enigma.

If you know the history of film, you realize that certain filmmakers (particularly Robert Flaherty) presented staged events as if they were documentaries.

This is known as docufiction.

And if you have followed my take on the two US Presidential candidates (Johnson and Stein can suck it…though Stein has true credibility), you’ll know that my assessment of Trump and Clinton has been mainly through the lens of film.

What we (I) look for is credibility.

Having watched all three Presidential debates (in addition to extensive supplemental research), it has been a no-brainer to conclude that Hillary Clinton has ZERO credibility while Donald Trump has immense credibility.

The differentiation could not be more mark-ed.

[Docu-fiction]

But what about Edward Snowden?

Let me start off by saying that Mr. Snowden does not come off as a wholly believable whistleblower in this film.

Perhaps Laura Poitras’ inexperience as a filmmaker is to blame.

Perhaps it is indeed because Edward Snowden is no actor.

But Mr. Snowden is completely inscrutable and opaque in this documentary.

HOWEVER…

there is something about his ostensible North Carolina drawl which rings true.

And so there are two major possibilities…

  1. Edward Snowden is an extremely brave individual who succeeded in “defecting to the side of the public” (to paraphrase)
  2. Edward Snowden is a superspy

I had read of Snowden.  In studying what he had leaked, his credibility seemed beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Such a damaging agent could not possibly have been a Trojan horse operation (so I thought).

Indeed, the most believable part of this film is the last 10 minutes or so.

Sadly, my “copy” of the movie switched to a German overdub for this final segment.

Which is to say, I was more focused on images in the finale.

Every once in a while I was able to make out the beginning of a phrase from William Binney or Glenn Greenwald.

At all other times during this last portion, the German superimposed upon the English made the latter an almost palimpsest.

My German is that bad.

Entschuldigung.

But here are my reservations concerning hypothesis #1 (from above).

A).  Glenn Greenwald’s earliest interview after the leak was clearly shot with the skyline of Hong Kong in the background.  It is somewhat inconceivable that the NSA in conjunction with the CIA (and possibly the FBI or DIA) did not immediately follow Greenwald’s every move from that point forward (courtesy of operatives under the Hong Kong station chief of the CIA).

B).  Glenn Greenwald is a little too smooth to be believable (the same going for Snowden).  Greenwald’s sheer fluency in Portuguese (a bizarre choice for a second language) seems particularly suspect.  The credulous me wants to believe that Greenwald is simply brilliant.  The incredulous me sees Greenwald as just as much a CIA operative as Snowden.

Indeed, hypothesis #2 would be that Edward Snowden is in fact a CIA operative.  His complete calm at The Mira hotel in Hong Kong does not harmonize with a computer geek who just lifted the largest cache of the most top-secret files in world history.  Instead, his mannerisms almost all point to someone who has been hardened and trained at Camp Peary rather than someone who grew up so conveniently close to NSA headquarters.

Snowden is admittedly a former employee of the CIA.

But what could the purpose of such a Trojan horse exercise possibly be?

One strong possibility comes to mind.

As we learn in Dr. Strangelove, there’s no purpose in having a “doomsday machine” if the enemy doesn’t know about it.

In fact, we don’t even need cinema to illustrate this.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were demonstrations as much as they were mass-murder war crimes.

Weapons are “tested” often as much for the power of display as for the exercise of weapon efficacy.

But the world has always been a weird place.

And it is indeed possible that Edward Snowden is an idealistic, independent party in this affair.

The esteemed Dr. Steve Pieczenik (of whom I have spoken much recently) has lately called Snowden “no hero”.

I’m not exactly sure what he means by that.

Possibly Pieczenik knows the Snowden affair to positively be an intel operation.

Possibly Dr. Pieczenik (whom I respect deeply) merely sees Snowden as of no great bravery when compared to the men and women (both military and intelligence employees) who risk their lives on battlefields across the world…by direct order through the US chain of command.

But Dr. Pieczenik has also pointed out that some orders must be disobeyed.

That is part of the responsibility of defending the Constitution “against all enemies foreign and domestic”.

So we have a very interesting case here.

And it directly parallels our current election choices.

What SEEMS to be?

What is patriotism?

At what point must standard operating procedures be put aside?

What constitutes peaceful protest?

Who among us has the duty and privilege to spearhead a countercoup?

I’ve often thought to myself that I would be a horrible NSA employee because I would have a framed picture of Snowden on my desk.

Suffice it to say, I’m sure that is strictly NOT ALLOWED.

But this film makes me doubt the Snowden story.

As a further instructive detail, why does Snowden (in this film) feel so confident in his ability to withstand torture (!) as a means of coercing from him his password(s)?

Again, that does not sound like a standard ability of an “infrastructure analyst”.

Snowden does not admit in this film to ever having been a field operative.

Indeed, it almost feels like Louisiana Story or Tabu:  A Story of the South Seas when Snowden drapes a red article of cloth over his head and torso to ostensibly prevent Greenwald and Poitras from visually seeing his keystrokes.

It is overly dramatic.

These are thoughts.

No doubt, someone knows much more than me about the truth in this strange tale.

And so the film is, in turns, shockingly brilliant and daftly mediocre.

In a strange way, it is just as suspect as James Bamford’s books on the NSA (which I have long suspected were really NSA propaganda pieces).

One of the keys to propaganda and social engineering is gaining the trust of your targets.

In a large-scale psychological operation, the entire world (more or less) is the target.

Back to cinema, we need look no further than Eva Marie Saint “shooting” Cary Grant in North by Northwest.

Yes, Body of Secrets (Bamford) was damaging to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and US military in general (the revelation of Operation Northwoods) while also exposing Israel as a craven “ally” (the USS Liberty “incident”).

But if we are not careful, we are taken in by these juicy bits of “truth” (in all likelihood, very much true) on our way to accepting the whole book as an accurate exposé.

And this is what makes the world of intelligence so tricky.

Like a chess game in which you are blindsided by a brilliant move.

It takes years (perhaps decades) or an innate brilliance (perhaps both) to discern the organic from the synthetic in the shifting sands of this relativistic world of espionage.

I can only guess and gut.

 

-PD

Viaggio in Italia [1954)

We push ourselves so hard.

For what?

So that we may see beauty.

For me, it’s this.

Though I can barely hold my eyes open, I see it.

I see what Godard saw when he was just a lad.

A very mature film from Roberto Rossellini.

But by mature, we don’t mean sexual.

Actually, more nuanced than that.

A celebration of woman as human being.

A celebration of Ingrid Bergman as auteur.

Just as much as her husband, the director.

It’s there.

The collaboration.

And it’s unlike any other film I’ve ever seen.

Perhaps…

she fell in love with his genius.

The war trilogy.

We have talked about the great films.

Just after WWII.

Rome, Open City.

Germany, Year Zero.

And enfin…

Paisan.

[in not quite that order]

These are our English names.

But Journey to Italy is a weird feast of linguistic absurdity.

“…you shameless hussy”.

It’s like this, see…

George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman are British,

but they’re speaking Italian.

This was so the Italians didn’t have to read subtitles.

But then George says to a prosititute,

“I don’t speak Italian” (or something)

in English…WHEN HE’S BEEN SPEAKING ITALIAN FOR THE FIRST HOUR OF THE FILM!

And then there’s the Italian tradition of postproduction.

No live sound.

In this film, no ambient noises.

It’s like George and Ingrid are touring Italy in a fucking Tesla Model S!!

And a bit of dialogue.

And a clip-clop and a cloche.

Get out of the way, donkey cart!

Such that at a certain point, we wonder whether Roberto was exploding not only genre (to reference James Monaco), but the Italian version of “the tradition of quality” against which the French New Wave set themselves so polemically.

🙂

It’s possible.

“Do you think I’m insane,” asked Elon Musk.

No, of course not.

You’re South African like me.

But at the heart of this film (this is a film review, right?) are the same marital arts (!) which made Benatar sing love is a battlespace.  What?

Before Godard and Karina, it was Roberto and Ingrid.

And the tension rubs.

Gimme friction, said Tom Verlaine.

And Paul Verlaine said some stuff which was ignored.

And Rimbaud shot his hand.  Or ran guns.

Back when Abyssinia.

Main point is this is beautiful film.

Plain simple.

And it’s no accident Mr. and Ms. Joyce.

 

-PD