Tag Archives: Journey to the End of the Night

Napapiirin sankarit [2010)

Here is a masterpiece.

Not since Aaltra (2004) has a movie so perfectly made use of the dark humor pioneered by Louis-Ferdinand Céline in Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932).

Lapland Odyssey is Finnish film which is currently free to watch on Tubi.

I cannot give enough praise to the director, Dome Karukoski.

This is not just a miraculous feat of storytelling, but the mise-en-scène of a true auteur.

I was born 15 days earlier than Mr. Karukoski:  43 years ago.

Our director hails from Cyprus.

Where Eric Schmidt has recently applied for citizenship.

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/11/9/21547055/eric-schmidt-google-citizen-cyprus-european-union

Funny timing, that.

Wouldn’t Eric Schmidt welcome a Biden Presidency?

Does Mr. Schmidt fear something in the United States?

Perhaps the former CEO of Google knows something we do not?

Might it concern impending public corruption trials?

And, just maybe, a reelection of Donald Trump?

Lapland Odyssey premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2010.

That was the same year that Toronto-based company Dominion Voting Systems acquired not only Premier Election Solutions (an American company [Ohio]) from ES&S (Election Systems & Software [Omaha, Nebraska]), but also Sequoia Voting Systems [California] from Smartmatic [U.K.].

PES had only been acquired by ES&S the previous year (2009).  Before that, PES was owned by Diebold.

Premier Election Systems was formerly known as Diebold Election Systems.

Before Diebold bought it, it was known as General Election Systems.

Before General Election Systems bought it, it was known as I-Mark Systems.

You get the picture.

Dominion Voting Systems is now owned by American private equity firm Staple Street Capital (which has extremely strong ties to the Carlyle Group [George H.W. Bush’s former benefactor]).

https://www.osler.com/en/expertise/deals-cases/dominion-voting-systems

None of this would have been possible without Jussi Vatanen.

Vatanen is our hero.

He is tasked with the impossible.

Find a digital TV receiver (“digibox”) in one night.

After the local electronics store has closed.

This involves a trip to Rovaniemi:  the main city of Lapland.

[population 63,032]

Hundred of kilometers to get to Finland’s 17th most populated city.

In Finland, Lapland is not only the northernmost province, but it is also the largest province of the country.

It bears mentioning that there is also a Swedish province called Lapland.  

The cleavage of these two Laplands dates to 1809:  when Russia annexed the eastern part of Sweden and declared it the Grand Duchy of Finland.

My closest brush with this region was a single musical concert I played years ago in the town of Kiruna (in Swedish Lapland):  Sweden’s northernmost town [population 22,906].

It was an experience which profoundly changed me and which stays with me till this day.

Finnish Lapland borders Sweden’s Norrbotten County.  At Norrbotten’s northernmost point can be found Kiruna (north of the Arctic Circle).

At the southeast corner of Norrbotten County is Piteå:  my favorite town in Sweden.

The town of Piteå sits on the Gulf of Bothnia–just across the water from Finland.

I also played a musical concert in Piteå.

It was, perhaps, the happiest time in my life.

So I can imagine Rovaniemi.

A city just four miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Jussi Vatanen plays the loser who makes good.

Which makes him, in fact, not a loser.

I can intimately relate to that.

I have lost my job (again).

I am addicted to drugs (again).

And I am addicted to alcohol (a first for me).

It is in these days, when I am having the first true experience in my life with alcohol withdrawal, that I come to this film.

It is the perfect film.

It is just exactly the film I needed at this particular time.

Because I, like Janne (Vatanen’s character), am trying my damnedest to get my life together.

Last week, I got engaged.

Actually, REengaged.

I exercise (pacing back and forth in my parents’ garage as my phone records my steps).

I drink less.

I exercise.

I drink less.

Nausea.

Dizziness.

ANXIETY.

And extreme fucking INSOMNIA.

When I was in Kiruna, the sun only went down for four hours.

I didn’t see the Northern Lights.

But you can see them in this film.

And they are glorious.

If it is CGI, then I am losing my touch.

Because I don’t believe it is.

I appears to be the genuine article.

Aurora borealis.

And headaches!

Lots of sunflower seeds.

Big red welts all up and down my arms and torso from nicotine patches.

I can no longer afford my General Snus.

Sure, I have some stashed away…

But my wise old psychologist once told me:  “just move one thing at a time”.

  1.  alcohol
  2. tobacco
  3. valerian?
  4. Ambien?
  5. Xanax?

I put question marks because I am unsure of the order.

Main goal is STOP DRINKING.

Or, should I say, the FIRST goal.

If I can get an MBA, surely I can stop drinking.

[God willing]

For every hero, there needs to be a doubter.

To provide context.

The hero forges forward (when it would probably be best to just quit).

The hero quits (when it would be much easier to just continue).

The hero is determined.

The hero gives energy and inspiration to those around him.

But the doubter adds richness.

Because it is human to doubt.

Will Donald Trump be reelected President?

We will find out when the Electoral College meets on my birthday to ELECT a new President-Elect.

Till then, Joe Biden is at best the worst kind of poseur.

He is doing exactly what he promised Chris Wallace and the American people he WOULD NOT do:  to declare victory before the election is independently certified.

What a hypocrite.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-victory-election-independently-certified

Each state certifies its vote.

Biden does not have enough votes at the moment (by way of certified state votes and their concomitant electors) to declare victory.

N.B.  It is the Electoral College which will ELECT the next President (who THEN AND ONLY THEN becomes known as the President-Elect).

And so we doubt.

Me and Jasper Pääkkönen.

Was there fraud?

I believe so.

And you may doubt in the other direction.

Was there fraud?

You doubt there was.

But I know there was.

Because I have basic research skills.

And I availed myself of Rudy Giuliani’s masterful delineation of the case for fraud.

[no thanks to American mass media (which completely blacked out all coverage of Giuliani’s press conference with Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis)]

So we all doubt, each in our own way.

And someone may convince us.

The law may even compel us.

The U.S. Supreme Court may weigh in on the legality of certain ballots in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Cold states.

Particularly Michigan and Wisconsin.

Fort Meade.

4thPOG.

Dark Horse.

Fly fishing.

Fort Bragg.

Timo Lavikainen is the late-bloomer.

Along for the ride.

But absolutely essential.

Able to love.

You must become like a child to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Sibelius.

Karelia.

1893.

News of war.

Siege.

National anthem.

At some point we might mention the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Which lasted about 500 years (until 1795).

For beauty, we have Pamela Tola.

She just wants a fucking digibox, for christsakes!

Something about those blonde bangs.

Then there is the villain.

A bit like Alex “Scott Evil” Soros.

A bit like Martin Vanger.

Kari Ketonen plays the boy who never got anything.

…and let it make him evil.

He plays the cheater.

The trickster.

A character with absolutely no morals.

Strictly driven by lust.

[and a good bit of narcissism]

He comes off looking a bit like Kip in another masterpiece of a film:  Napoleon Dynamite.

Imagine Kip as an irredeemably-unscrupulous character and you will have a pretty good idea of who Pikku-Mikko is.

Little Mikko.

Short.

Short people.

Randy Newman.

Mikko moves in for the kill while the matrimonial bed is still warm.

Mikko false-flags his way into manipulating his enemy.

Mikko is a master of PSYWAR.

But God wins in the end.

And Moa Gammel is the real star of this film.

In a strange way.

Principal siren.

Debussy.

A Swede.

Almost the doppelgänger of Pamela Tola.

The Swede is the world image of beauty.

Alluring.

Beckoning.

The Finn is more quixotic.

Cute.

Harsh.

Soulful.

None of this, of course, means a damn thing.

And all the while Timo Lavikainen just wants to see Miia Nuutila’s tits.

License plate.

Ali G.

There will be helicopters.

-PD

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Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne [1945)

Bresson has been slaying me recently.

First Balthazar, and now this.

They are similar.

Films which seem boring.

You watch them once.  They wash over you.  Very little effect.

And then you are stranded at the end of the world.

Just you and Górecki’s third symphony.

Yes, you pack away some life beneath your belt.

You ingest the poison trickery of the world.

Et voila!

The film comes to life.

All the Frenchies start out looking the same in black and white.

You furiously follow the subtitles.

But the film presents meaning the second time around.

First were the forms.

A donkey.  Some sluts.  Bad memory.

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is so forgettable the first time around.

All we remember is the Bois.

Conflated with some lines of Céline’s Voyage…

But this is the real deal.

Maria Casarès was like the Alida Valli of The Paradine Case here.

Indeed, it just may be that Hitchcock lifted the essence of his criminally underrated film (no pun intended) from Bresson’s minor masterpiece of two years previous.

Whatever the case may be, Casarès is absolutely diabolical as Hélène.

Revenge is a dish best served.

Simmer, reduce, garnish, and serve.

Revenge revenge revenge.

And yet we feel for Hélène.

And so in the grand mystery of the spheres we wonder, “What is God if not an impossible camera angle?”

A crumpled note.

Our hearts torn to shreds.

And always raining.

Like some goddamned B-movie with a thunder sheet in the wings.

If I didn’t hook you at first, then you’re not still with me.

HOW TO BLOG:

brevity.

The oppression of Twitter.

So we must think of the greatest tricks of all time.

The recent Microsoft Tay psyop.  To make Trump and his followers look stupid.

As if he needs any help.

But a very real conspiracy none the less.

For some events are so transparent.

And some pure whores like  Agnès (Elina Labourdette) have that bullshit detection meter straight out of The Shining.

Preternatural, if not supernatural.

We might think we’re being tricked.

Too good to be true IS.

“Deceit deceives itself.”  Guy Debord.  D.N. Smith.

It is a very delicate story.

The crystallization of immense pain.

Vanity, yes.

But also human nature.  Survival of the ego.

A hurt so deep as to propel plans.  Special plans.  Operations.

Some countries blow up their own cities.

The old “self-inflicted wound” ploy…as Clouseau would call it.

Orwell was very clear about this in 1984.  The government is firing rockets at its own people.

Because it is only natural to assume an outside enemy as culpable, the true authors slip by.

And as the narrative becomes codified and accepted…and everyone has come back to the NFL, and hockey, and soccer…then the beast can’t be disturbed.

The beast which knows not its own power.

The beast whose abuse rises from below.

The Lilliputians in charge condescend upwards.

All bark and no bite.

And the beast bites the wrong lands.

Afghanistan.  Iraq.

With each passing year the creation myth (9/11) requires inference upon inference upon inference to justify the next humanitarian bombing.

Libya.  Syria.

Very few understand the importance of replacing due process with death by Hellfire missile.

Yemen.

No wonder the video game makers consult with the Pentagon.

A seamless transition from energy drinks in mom’s basement to the joysticks of drone strikes.

Far afield.

From those ladies.

Those ladies who have been used.

Sold a false bill of goods.

A very sloppy expression.  Arcane.

Left dangling like a modifier.

And so we want to go back to a simpler time.

Before we gave up on our dreams (in the blink of an eye).

I call out to cold regions.  Cold rooms.

I call out to cold hearts.  Mixed response.

But the one true miracle is to push onwards.

No more sugar-coating the shite she dished out.

She was a real bitch.

And I was as mad as any painterly glass of absinthe ever existed.

I can’t forget.

No, never.

But I can forgive.

Not much here to steal or ruin.

A very marginal existence.

I can sleep because of a girl.

A dream of a girl.

A girl I don’t even know.

She is hope.

A sort of personification of liberty.

And when will we revolt from this life and bolt?

One step at a time.

Not hasty.

So many years piled on my shoulders.

This is, by the way, a film review.

Not caring how ridiculous I look.

Take your best shot.

World, shut your mouth.

I was no trick.

I’ve been desperate.  Money troubles.  My ethics in the gutter.

But given a second chance by the universe I made an important decision.

To be boring.

A few days longer.

Some dreams worth chasing, others are a disease.

People over profit.

Sign me up, Chomsky!

Better get right with the lord.

Or git hit in yer soul.

It’s easy.  Chomsky won’t touch 9/11.

And Alex Jones won’t touch Israel.

It’s easy.

Why?  Same team, different squads.

I don’t care.

Not being run down by no third-rate psyop.

Fuck your Godwin’s law.

This was 1945.

An odd year to be jilted.

 

-PD

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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

7 Comments

A bout de souffle [1960)

To paraphrase Lester Bangs regarding The Velvet Underground, modern cinema begins with Jean-Luc Godard.  The strangest part is that Godard’s trajectory has been somewhat like that of the great French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline.  Both would be primarily recognized in their lifetimes for their first creation.  For Céline it was the groundbreaking spleen of Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932) and for Godard the film in question (his first full-length feature).  The most criminal aspect of this whole equation is that Godard IS STILL ALIVE AND MAKING GREAT, GREAT FILMS!

For awhile, my dissatisfaction with the public’s reception of Godard over his long career led me to undervalue his earlier works (to perhaps balance out the disproportionate attention these films get in relation to his oeuvre as a whole).  What cannot be denied, however, is that Breathless (literally “at the end of breath”) is as important to film as Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage…) is to literature.  There are more similarities.  Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is not so different from Céline’s Bardamu.  The spirit of youth and anarchy run throughout these two works…all of it tied together with a dark humor which disarms as much as it offends.

The key to Godard’s film is that it is radical while also being somewhat subtle.  Perhaps this is only accurate in hindsight (considering what has followed Breathless in the cinematic canon), but the avant-garde nature of the film is really in all of the little rules it breaks.  The most oft mentioned are the jump cuts (and there are plenty of them).  A deeper reading into the history of the film might reveal that Cécile Decugis and Lila Herman were responsible for this novel approach as much as Godard.  Agnès Guillemot did not become Godard’s regular editor until Une femme est une femme (or Le Petit soldat…take your pick).  There is reason to believe that the jump cuts were mainly in the service of keeping the action going.  Along with Martial Solal’s excellent noir jazz, the pace rarely slackens but for a few contrasting scenes.

What is less-discussed is the plethora of filmic references which play like an inside joke for the Cahiers crowd.  Breaking “the fourth wall” is just one of the many transgressions which Godard takes up joyfully in this affront.  One might venture to guess that what was truly “dégueulasse” to Godard was the state of the French film industry leading up to his first real foray into direction.  At every turn, the “tradition of quality” is left in the dust as Breathless speeds away wild and free.

-PD

8 Comments