Tag Archives: propaganda

Häxan [1922)

One of my ancestors was hung for being a witch.

Susannah Martin.

1692.

When I speak of it or think of it, it gives me chills.

It.

What?

No, she.

As Danish director Benjamin Christensen makes so clear in this masterpiece.

Häxan is Swedish for “witch”.

Our film was released by Svensk Filmindustri:  a Swedish film production company which still exists to this day.

Thus the Swedish title.  And the Swedish premier(s) in 1922.  And the Swedish intertitles.

The Danish would be Heksen.

Swedish, Danish, English…

Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.

This is the horror of religion.  The horror of irrationality.  Violence against women.  Abuse of the elderly.  Mistreatment of the mentally ill.

Christensen’s film is a masterpiece precisely because it combines the clarity of modern thought with the mists of medieval superstition.

It begins almost as a documentary.

Unlike me, he lists his sources.

But then the film takes on a life of its own.

As if the director was not quite sure whether to dismiss superstition outright.

As if some dark Freudian specters were haunting his deliberate phantasmagoria.

It was meant to be a lucid montage.

But the letters became transposed.

Lucid, Lurid.  Live.  Evil.

Miles Davis had it right.  And Howlin’ Wolf (by way of Willie Dixon) [not to mention Howlin’ Pelle].

Svensk Filmindustri.  Founded a mere three years before Häxan.

Only fitting that the parent company (Bonnier Group) should have its roots in København.

Because Benjamin Christensen is brilliant as the Devil.

And now for the juicy stuff.

Not Hell, but Hellerup.  Denmark.

Birthplace of Stine Fischer Christensen (ooh la la!).

But we’re mainly interested in ASA Filmudlejning.

Or are we?

An unfinished symphony of horror.

…eine Symphonie des Grauens

1922.

Possessed by self-punishment.

“More weight!”

And even more wait.

Tom Waits for no man.

I was tricked.

Must have been needles and pins.  Voodoo.

He can’t even remember her name.

Ripped my heart from my chest.

Call it punk rock.

Moloch.  Bohemian Grove.

If it’s all a bunch of bollocks, then these blokes are just bluffing, right?

-Bechtel

-H.W.

-Warren Christopher

-George Creel (investigative journalist and propagandist)

-Harlan Crow (this guy…son of Trammell Crow…buddy of Clarence Thomas [more on him later]…Thomas, who gave Crow the Bible of Frederick Douglass [what the fuck?!?]…Crow…owns at least one painting by Hitler…Napoleon’s writing desk…the Duke of Wellington’s sword [ca. 1815]…but weirdest is his Alec Trevelyan (006) / Janus sculpture garden which includes such spoils of war as Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Marx, Mubarak, Tito, Ceausescu, and Guevara)

-Draper

-David Gergen (of course)

-Inman

-Kissinger (naturally)

-John Lehman (9/11 commission)

-Henry S. Morgan (cofounder Morgan Stanley)

-Reagan (Owl’s Nest)

-George Shultz [sick]

-Tony Snow [“]

-Caspar Weinberger

Weaving spiders come not here.

 

-PD

 

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Pokolenie [1955)

You think you’ve lost because you don’t know the truth.

Right now.

This very second.

But it takes a lifetime to mull and savor.

Each bit of propaganda proffered.

Yes.

I am a coward.

But honest.

Just scared.  Scared at the rustle of leaves.  Worthless in battle.

When pursued by dumb, fearless slabs of meat.

The brave wear white.

Purely afraid.

We have no real dream to comb out.

And you say we’re not in a real war.

But we are playing chess with Lucifer, age-old.

And so now I apologize to Bobby Fischer.

If you can get to that.

Because he started multiple games.  At random.  In progress.

Textbook tells one way.  And wake up early works well.

But weird candlelight attic window can’t be replicated.

The most valuable aberration.

For now I have created language.

And I no longer need you.

Your wars have ceased in importance.

Because I can implode your machines.  Which you rely on so heavily.

Andrzej Wajda a third time.

Tadeusz Łomnicki was a Daniel Craig orphan here.

And you think left better off a poem.

Why shoehorn Cahiers?

We can all do it for the sake of a Urszula Modrzyńska.

Curls to comb out like Marx’s beard.

And our Jewish comrades.

It’s no joke.

Keep the beat, Tadeusz Janczar.  Neu!  Neu!  Neu!

Like Klaus Dinger.  Single-minded.  Double-footed.  Almost an arm to spare.

You will see Roman Polanski act.

And scream.

Like Beavis.

Ah!  Ah!  Ah!

No Butt-Head doth stem the bathos.

Dodoism, now and forever!!!!!!

 

-PD

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Les Misérables: Les Thénardier [1934)

When last I left Raymond Bernard’s three-part masterpiece, I was comparing Donald Trump to Jean Valjean.

But one thing is for sure:  the world from which the Donald comes is that of the Thénardiers.

Trickery.

Fakery.

Deception.

Violence.

Anything for a buck.

To extend my past diatribe, every time Ted Cruz opens his mouth he merely helps the prospects of Mr. Trump.

I am convinced that Mr. Cruz made it through Harvard Law School by requesting his course materials be in coloring book format.

An intellectual debate between Cruz and George W. Bush would be a toss-up.

Cruz and W. are two of the most dense personages ever to have matriculated from Ivy League institutions.

But that is only part of the story.

Ted Cruz is a walking lie.

Ted Cruz is Edward Bernays’ 1928 book Propaganda with feet.

All of this is to say that there is something very wrong with the enemies which Donald Trump has made in his “wrecking-ball candidacy” (to borrow a phrase from the esteemed Dr. Webster Tarpley).

Fox News has created Donald Trump (the candidate) by badmouthing him for so long.

As Fox News has zero (ze-ro) credibility, this criticism has given credibility to Trump.

All of the major media outlets are bad, but none are as Twilight Zone, Orwell vicious as Fox News.

But we still have to examine these pesky Thénardiers.

For dramatic purposes (in the novel of Victor Hugo), they are “the arch conspirator[s]” (to borrow another phrase from another esteemed fellow, Mr. Len Bracken).

The Donald tells us [and I paraphrase], “Vote for me and you’ll find out who really knocked down the towers [WTC].”  He tells us we might find it’s the Saudis…

That’s a brilliant maneuver.

Trump sunk Jeb Bush’s candidacy with fear.

Jeb’s got stuff to hide.

The family business might finally fall afoul of the law (officially) for the first time since Prescott.

Whatever the case may be, Bush got out.

Sure, his numbers were horrible, but I think Dr. Steve Pieczenik nailed it in a particular interview on the Alex Jones radio show.  You can find a video of that [for the time being] under my “links” tab.

So getting back to these pesky Thénardiers, they would seem to be the vicious thugs who pulled off 9/11 (if we are to superimpose a humanist novel onto modern geopolitics).

A massive ad campaign (grassroots, of course) sounded the bell for the longest time that “9/11 was an inside job”.

While that may be true in many respects, it has all the hallmarks of a marketing tagline.  Which is to say, what appeared to be an organic movement (9/11 Truth) may have been steered by the real culprits away from the bona fide jugular.

It certainly seems that the Thénardiers in question had many high-level moles (to borrow a line of reasoning from Tarpley) of the George W. Bush administration in thrall to their machinations.

But then another ad hoc deflection recently resurfaced.  The “28 pages” chorus.

Alex Jones, who used to so vehemently pronounce that 9/11 was an inside job, recently became more concerned with the “28 pages”.

The “28 pages” seems to essentially be an attempt to blame Saudi Arabia for 9/11.

Therefore, Trump’s bombshell statement can either be taken at face value (to paraphrase, “You might come to find out that it was the Saudis…”) or as coded language.

If it is coded language, then it is brilliant.

But the question is this:

is Donald Trump a). Jean Valjean or b.) Thénardier?

Donald has done hard time in the free-range world of corporate stratagems.

The real question remains:  does he have a heart?

Jean Valjean had a heart.

Thénardier had none.

As Cosette asks about the convicts, “Are they still human?”

Valjean answers “Sometimes.”

Did Donald make it through the gauntlet to finally bring the RIGHT perps to justice for 9/11?

I sincerely hope so.

 

-PD

 

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Nuit et brouillard [1955)

A propaganda film by the very talented Alain Resnais.

I wonder, for instance, if Olga Wormser’s script can be tied to David Wurmser’s script?

Wormser and her husband Henri Michel were “historical advisors” for Nuit et brouillard.

“…elle a été conseillère historique”…a historical counselor.

Like Philip Zelikow, perhaps?

Or like Edward Bernays.  The father of “public relations”…author of the 1928 book Propaganda. 

But I have totally skipped over dear Mr. Wurmser.  Nay, Dr. Wurmser.  Mr. Dr.  We’ll get to Ms. Dr. soon enough.

David Wurmser would seem related in spirit to Olga Wormser.

One of the principal authors of A Clean Break:  A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.

Such language…”the Realm”.

Only neoconservatives would dream up the projection of Israeli terror on neighboring countries (and Palestine) in terms fit for The Legend of Zelda.

But let’s not forget Ms. Dr.  David’s wife, Meyrav Wurmser.

Also a Ph.D., she’s a doozy.

Why take this tack?

Me.

Because I know too much of Godard.

I know that the greatest film of all time (Histoire(s) du cinema) takes as its focus “the camps”, but also takes issue with history as it has been handed down.

And so let us turn to CODOH.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, CODOH is a “hate group” or some such term.

More terrifying is that, if the SPLC is to be believed, nearly everything is a hate group.

So thanks for nothing, you punks!

(See, now I’m marked too.  It’s as easy as that.)

We must remember the yellow stars that the Jews were made to wear during deportation to the camps.

Resnais makes this all very clear.

But Resnais makes a disingenuous oopsy (in the spirit of faux documentarian Robert Flaherty):  real color footage of the camps (circa 1955…sappy, but at least with no pretense) is intercut with footage which, in context, seems to be from inside the camps during the war.

Resnais can be slightly forgiven…because (supposedly) no such footage exists.

And so he cobbles together replacement footage.

It would, by necessity, largely be from after the liberation of the camps.

Some is perhaps prewar.  Deportation.

Some appears “Hollywood” (i.e. the dramatized becomes real because real footage in this regard is absent).

Even though this film is a classic (a “chestnut”, so to speak), I take issue with the entire thing.

It is not a good film.

The film is neither less vague nor less misleading than my review.

I am vague only because I cannot tell you the exact Hollywood movie.

I cannot tell you exactly what Chris Marker did as an assistant director (though he be naturally drawn to still images [of which several figure prominently within]).

But I can tell you about a very strange and potentially important article on CODOH (that would be, Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust).

It is by a “Franco-British…holocaust denier” named Robert Faurisson (as if that is his profession).

“Hi, my name is Robert.  Oh, what do I do for a living?  Well, a little of this and a little of that.  My real bread and butter is in my capacity as a professional holocaust denier, but I also make some dough on the side as an Egyptologist.”

Main point…being “Franco-” (French), his work would be banned in his home country.  Yes, denying the Holocaust (which is not at all what he does) is a crime in France.  Also in Switzerland too, I think.  Surely in Germany, yes?

[N.B.  Holocaust denial is illegal in 14 of the 28 EU member countries…plus Switzerland…and, of course, Israel.  What a disgusting misuse of police power.]

Why criminalize a thought or opinion?

Because “denying” something as horrible as the Holocaust is somehow evil.  However, in today’s legalistic nightmare world, “denial” IS (among other things) a river in Africa.

Denial could be anything.

Five million Jews died instead of six million?  Holocaust denier!

Seven million Jews died?  Ok, we’ll give you a pass…because you have the right spirit.  But remember:  6 million.  Six, ok?  Six!

And so Faurisson, a very articulate man, tipped many sacred cows in 1980 with his piece “The ‘Problem of the Gas Chambers'” (published in the Journal of Historical Review).

It might be said that Faurisson was the James Tracy of his time.  For me, James Tracy is an American hero.

Faurisson, born in England, was an important part of French society and academia until a witch hunt occasioned by the repugnant Gayssot Act (Loi Gayssot).

Faurisson has his doctorate from the Sorbonne.  He taught there and in Lyon for 21 years at the collegiate level.  But the French are all anti-Semites, right?  Dreyfus?  Zola?  Dream on!

Well, my friends…I’m afraid the “problem with the gas chambers” is also the problem with Resnais’ Nuit et brouillard.

You can judge for yourself here:

http://codoh.com/library/document/868/

Really, that’s what is at issue here.  Read and study and judge for yourself.

The Holocaust was an immensely sad event.

But we must know it in detail.

My ignorance is inexcusable.

And, likewise, any misleading, cynical use of ANYONE’S death (from the Holocaust to 9/11) is the worst sin of all:  knowingly cashing in…perhaps even for geopolitical chips.

Question what you’ve always known.

Learn everything again for the first time.

Be free to speak.

Exercise thought.

Be humble, but don’t grovel.

Do your best.

One of the few things I can be proud of in America today…Gayssot thoughtcrime is not quite here.

But Sandy Hook is censored by Amazon.com, Inc. (Nobody Died at Sandy Hook).

9/11 coverage was/is a joke in the USA (Public Enemy was right).

And with kudos to Mike Adams of Natural News for noticing, Amazon still sells Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

For the five Ph.D.s and one J.D./Ph.D. who contributed to Nobody Died at Sandy Hook, I salute you!

Allors…d’accord.

 

-PD

 

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Deutschland im Jahre Null [1948)

The first thing film critics have to get right is the title.

Let me explain a bit.

On my site, I always list a film in its original language (to the best of my ability).

In my opinion, that is the best way of honoring the film.

So far, I have encountered the mild idiosyncrasies of Romanian, Serbo-Croat, Czech, and Polish in addition to the mind-blowing intricacy of Farsi and Japanese.

But with Deutschland im Jahre Null we are seeing a German-language film by an Italian director…sort of.

Italy has a very peculiar tradition concerning voiceovers and direct (or, conversely, indirect) sound.  It is an oddity which caught the attention of Godard in his role as film historian.

I cannot give you as erudite an explanation as my hero Jean-Luc, but suffice it to say that foreign (non-Italian) films in Italy have traditionally been overdubbed into Italian.  So, in other words, no subtitles.

This is distinct from an American viewer watching a Fellini film.  The “American” version (whether on DVD or as a film print in a theater) will be in Italian with subtitles in English.  This goes for almost all foreign-language (non-English) films marketed in the United States.

But getting back to Deutschland im Jahre Null…  It is similar to the Danish director Carl Th. Dreyer directing the French film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc…with one major difference.  Dreyer’s film was a silent one (the only French being the intertitles).  Rossellini’s Deutschland im Jahre Null is very much in German.  We are hearing German actors speak (exclusively) German dialogue.

What is most interesting is the linguistic lineage of this film.  In English, this film is known as:

Germany, Year Zero

Which is quite similar to Rossellini’s preceding masterpiece (in linguistic parallel):

Rome, Open City

To be fair, let’s consider the Italian name (the real name) of Rome, Open City:  Roma città aperta.  Fine.  That is the way I recognize the film.  The true name is (in my mind) Roma città aperta.

But with Deutschland im Jahre Null we come to a very strange case.  If we do not recognize the primacy of its English title (Germany, Year Zero), and I do not, then we are directed by that great arbiter of cultural legitimacy Wikipedia to consider our options exhausted by being cognizant of the Italian title (Germania anno zero).

What is the message of this omission by English Wikipedia?  I believe the message is that Germany was (and continues to be) a null.  A zero.  A conquered culture.

We see a similar thing in the kowtowing stereotype of conquered Japan.  And though Japan might be experiencing some moderate-to-light financial troubles in recent years, Germany is by all accounts the economic powerhouse of continental Europe.  Why do I bring economics into the discussion?  Because wealthy nations are able to assert themselves.

But let us step back a bit.  Wikipedia does have some tasty morsels of information concerning this film.  If the source can be trusted, this 1948 film was not shown in Germany (the country from whence the language of the film takes its name) until 1952.  After its single screening in München (Munich), it was not heard from again within those borders until it ran on German television in 1978. 

Wow…26 years.  Either this film was grossly misunderstood, or it was understood all too well.  From my reading, this is a very pro-German document.

Rossellini was not George Stevens making concentration camp propaganda.  Roberto was making art.  The sign of art is the admission of possibilities.  Art seduces us because it is subtle.  Art does not proclaim in blanket statements.  Art does not underestimate the intelligence of the viewer.

Roberto Rossellini did something with his “war films trilogy” which seems to have been unprecedented.  The desire of neorealism was to film fiction as if it were documentary.  This fiction would be, likewise, based on reality.

But why is it, then, that we have very different views of Roberto Rossellini and Robert Flaherty?

I will tell you my guess.  Flaherty’s sin was in the framing of his presentation.  To wit, he presented his staged documentaries (take the oil industry propaganda piece Louisiana Story for instance) as if they were naturally-occurring, spontaneous documentaries. The sin, then, was his duplicitous relationship with his subjects.  He actively made his human subjects into actors.

Rossellini takes a different tack.  There is no pretense that Deutschland im Jahre Null is an ACTUAL documentary.  It merely has the feel of that medium.  Likewise, Rossellini’s use of nonprofessional actors was likely more of a precursor to Robert Bresson than a twist on Flaherty’s bizarre formula (which predated Roberto in both Nanook of the North [1922] and Man of Aran [1934]).  No, Rossellini had created something new. 

It’s not so much the films of Flaherty to which I object as it is the idea of them.  At least one of his concoctions (perhaps thanks to director F.W. Murnau) is very fine indeed:  Tabu [1931].  Flaherty and Murnau co-wrote this ostensible documentary.  Indeed, with Flaherty we come into contact with inchoate, obscure film genres such as docudrama, docufiction, fictional documentary (ethnofiction), etc. etc. etc.

Most importantly, none of what I have written here has even scratched the surface of Deutschland im Jahre Null.   What ever became of the heartrending main child actor Edmund Moeschke?  I do not know.

One thing is certain to me:  no film before Rossellini’s “war trilogy” (Roma città aperta, Paisà, and Deutschland im Jahre Null) [1945/1946/1948] takes on such politically sensitive and important topics in such a raw way.  The closest would be the socialism of Eisenstein or the humanism of Chaplin. 

It is, therefore, no wonder at all that Rossellini spawned a million “new waves” the world over.

 

-PD

 

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Monsieur Verdoux [1947)

Being unwanted is a powerful feeling.

A life devoted to a profession, and then (poof!)…

But aging is a powerful experience even when separated from an event of displacement.

Let me clarify:

Aging can make one vulnerable.

We are only all too aware that we aren’t as handsome or as beautiful as we once were.

We are made aware of this decline by way of “the spectacle” (to borrow an idea from Guy Debord).

Sure, we can read it in the glances of everyone we meet, but we must realize that those eyes have glanced upon the ideal.  Those eyes are connected to minds.  Those minds have been imprinted like microchips.

With what?  “The tyranny of good looks…” to quote the brilliant Marilyn Yalom.

The quote comes from her excellent volume How the French Invented Love (2012).  Yes, this nonfiction tome is only too relevant to the subject at hand:  Charlie Chaplin’s bizarre Monsieur Verdoux.

This one won’t have you laughing yourself into the aisle.  Not till the back nine (at the earliest).

Charles Chaplin was a rebel.  When it worked, the world loved him.  When it didn’t?  Ah-la-la…  No one can be completely spared the wrath of the public.

A quick glance at the ever-reliable Wikipedia [cough cough] tells us that Monsieur Verdoux fared better in Europe than in America.

Quickly perusing the section marked “Reception” we might come to the conclusion that audiences in the United States did not “get” this film.

So then did we merely have a cultural barrier (and its opposite) in operation as far as world reception?

I think not.  I think that Europe’s humor was forever changed by the World Wars.  Coming just two years after the second ended, this film was a litmus test.  What could be found funny in this cruel new world?

The entire world had lost its innocence.

And so the comedian was forced to make do with the sordid rubble.

It is not spoiling much to tell you that in this film Chaplin plays a serial killer.  The idea apparently originated with Orson Welles, but the treatment was no doubt a full Chaplin adaption.

Yes, it is shocking.  A bit.  Nowadays.  But then?!?  It must have been much more scandalous.

This was the first time Chaplin took to the screen in a feature film without relying to any extent upon the Little Tramp character.  It was a brave departure!

What I find most fascinating about this film is that the fictional Verdoux, like the real-life Hitler, was a vegetarian and animal lover.

Ah!  However…Verdoux was based on a real killer:  Henri Désiré Landru.

They share the same first name (and a rhyming last):

Henri Verdoux?

Henri Landru.

They also share a profession:  used furniture merchant.

It is not clear to me (without further research) whether the vegetarian/animal lover aspects were inventions of Chaplin or not.

I’m guessing they were.

In any case, they are effective reminders about the intricacy of human personalities.

Schindler’s List comes down to us as a hack film because it lacks life.  That is the message I get from reading Godard’s critique of Spielberg.  What is more, Godard seems to lament (mourn) the lack of video footage shot within German concentration camps during WWII.

Some have construed this as holocaust denial.

I don’t think that is the point.

However, Godard’s presentation of his argument brings with it a certain amount of skepticism.  Put simply, his question seems to be (in my own words), “How could the Germans be so technologically advanced (particularly in film and motion picture equipment) yet fail to shoot any footage within the camps?”

What comes down to us today is footage of said camps’ “liberations”…  Indeed, Hollywood directors were tasked with making propaganda of the hideous findings (George Stevens comes to mind) [not that they needed much help there].

And so why have I made this detour?  Simply to illustrate that the human brain is smarter than Hollywood assumes it is.

Spielberg is not a great director.  He’s merely a rich director.

Chaplin was a great director.  Monsieur Verdoux was largely a failure in the United States.

To come back to Guy Debord (and I paraphrase heavily in translation from the French), “Reality has been turned on its head…”

The spectacle reigns supreme.  Who cares if it’s true?  Even better than the real thing.  That is the message of Debord’s La Société du spectacle (published in 1967).  And that message is relevant to Monsieur Verdoux.

Perhaps it was the Letterists (of which Debord was a member)…perhaps it was the Situationists (of which Debord was the guiding light)…one of these groups boycotted Chaplin when he arrived in France.

Ah, I have found it.  Indeed.  1952.  It was the Letterists.  Their screed pamphlet called Chaplin a “con artist of sentiments”.  [translation by Len Bracken]

Indeed, that is just the role Chaplin took up five years previous in our film Monsieur Verdoux.  It is also part of the argument which Godard has made against Spielberg.

As much as I love Debord (one of my three favorite writers), I have to disagree with his early (pre-Situationist) position against Chaplin.  Godard would likely disagree with Debord and the Letterists on this matter as well (judging from the abundance of Chaplin films referenced in his magnum opus Histoire(s) du cinema).  But I must agree with Godard regarding Spielberg.  It does no honor to the memory of Holocaust victims nor survivors to give the sad event the “Hollywood touch”.

Godard has (along with most of humanity) been called anti-Semitic.  I don’t believe that to be the case regarding the most important director to have lived.  A single glance is not enough to absorb what Jean-Luc is saying in any of his films (not to mention writings or interviews).

Ah, but now I am far off-track.  I have left Verdoux in the dust.

But that is alright.

Perhaps the measure of a film’s greatness is how much it makes us think?

 

-PD

 

 

 

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Nóż w wodzie [1962)

I wanted to not like this film.

For some reason.

Because it wasn’t my first love.

That would be Popiół i diament.

But Knife in the Water is as good a place as any to start.

Poland.

Quite frankly, this film blew my socks off.

Nóż w wodzie is a strange little masterpiece.

Truly.

On this day when Paris burns.

Appropriate.

That we get to a Parisian director named Roman Polański.

Yes, this film is like the day.

Today.

Yesterday.

All along we are afraid that someone is going to kill someone.

We suspect the vagrant.  The migrant.

But we find out that the real asshole is the yachtsman.

That shouldn’t have been hard to guess, but for some it takes a moment.

I first suspected the yachtsman thanks to Thierry Meyssan.

A couple of his books.

9/11:  The Big Lie.  And another called Pentagate.

These were among the first books to take aim at the fraudulent War on Terror by questioning the foundational event which birthed the current pall hovering over humanity.

“…an attack on humanity,” President Obama?  No.  YOU are an affront to humanity.  With your sullied Peace Prize.

Only fitting…considering Alfred Nobel invented dynamite.

Et allors…a Frenchman showed the way.

Meyssan.

The U.S. State Department branded his books as anti-American black propaganda.

In other words, they were claiming that the books stemmed from a foreign government’s attempt at geopolitical destabilization.

And you would know, State Department…because that is your specialty.

And so, as always, in the midst of my more adrift reviews the question arises as to the pertinence of my diatribe to said filmic document under consideration.

Nóż w wodzie is a political statement.  The bourgeois couple out for a day of leisurely sailing as pitted against the nature-boy tramp.

Salt in the wounds vs. salt of the earth.

I will leave it up to the reader to connect certain unspoken dots.

But, frankly, the spectacle I saw on 24-hour-news television tonight screamed false-flag terror to me.

What do I know?

I’m merely a boy with a rucksack and a couple of black radishes.

Far be it from me to discern real from fake.

As Guy Debord said (and I paraphrase), “Reality erupts within the spectacle.”

C’est-à-dire, it is very likely that many innocent people lost their lives tonight in Paris.

Therefore, the equation would be:  real death amidst fake terror.

It is the narrative which is fake.

Playing cui bono pretty quickly gets us from Islamic terrorists (who do not stand to benefit) to Western intelligence agencies (including possibly Israel) who very much stand to gain from tonight’s deadly shenanigans.

It is sad.

We don’t want it to be true.

You didn’t really cheat on me with the wanderer, did you?

And yet, the yachtsman’s wife is mostly innocent.

Sometimes it takes a miracle to realize that our lives suck.  Our life sucks.  We are living a sham.

That is the miracle which the yachtsman’s wife finds in a stolen kiss.

A moment of tenderness.  A reminder of what real life was like.

But Roman Polanski succeeds most of all (with the help of writer Jerzy Skolimowski) in showing us that we’re all guilty as hell.

Yeah.

That’s about right.

I’m no saint.

We’re no saints.

And so false-flag terror mostly annoys us at this point.

Every time an incident “erupts” we’re not sure whether anyone died whatsoever (to begin with).

As I said, things look very grave indeed tonight in Paris.

We mourn those 100 or so young people who died at Le Bataclan…sacrificed on the altar of war profits.

It is truly Satanic (if such things exist).

A very dark ritual which terrorizes the planet.

And so the only hope for the suspect intelligence agencies is to present us with the heads of their masters.

Call them the New World Order.  Call them SPECTRE.

Just call them and notify them that you will no longer be their whipping boys.

No doubt, the majority of intelligence agency employees are good, decent people.

That is why they should put their butts on the line to end this endless War on Terror charade.

Yesterday was all about sufficiently shocking the masses so as to regain control of the inhumane war against Syria from the leveling presence of Russia.

We know the equation.

Putin will never call out 9/11 as false-flag terror because he does the same thing to his people.

Just like Nóż w wodzie.  No one is really innocent here (myself included).  We’re all just trying to show off.  And on the world stage, it is truly a deadly game.

The NWO (let’s call them) seemingly has but one trick in their bag:  false-flag terrorism.  15 years of the same tune.  A one-trick pony.

And how do we know this?  Because of Operation Gladio.  Because of revelations gleaned over the years.

The CIA is tasked with this kind of stuff.  Doesn’t mean they get a whole lot of enjoyment out of it.

No, dear friends…I can’t give you the exact names–the exact chain of command, but someone can.

And maybe they are reading this and on the fence regarding their messy role in destabilizing the world.

But let’s be simple.

I can give you the name Jolanta Umecka.  What a beauty!  With her kitty-cat glasses.  Early-60s.  1950s.  The lagging fashion of the Eastern Bloc.

It’s not much.

I can give you a film review.  I can put myself out on the line as the village idiot.

It is both the least and the most I can do.

I may be mistaken about everything.

Like Thoreau, I will admit when I was in error.  In strong words.  Tomorrow.  Just as strong as those I used today.

Dear friends.  What a pity that these proxy games must go on.

We are above such machinations.

There is great art to be appreciated.

Great art teaches the way.

Great art like Nóż w wodzie.

-PD

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.سنگسار ثريا م‎‎ [2008)

[THE STONING OF SORAYA M. (2008)]

Every time I write a political post I take my life in my own hands.

Because I let everyone have it.

Out into the ether.

An equal opportunity whistle-blower.

And so I must let you know that this is almost a great movie.

Yet, I’m not even sure if it’s a good movie.

Let me explain.

The Stoning of Soraya M. was released at a very suspicious time.

By a very suspicious (and talented) director.

All through the George W. Bush presidency there was a pervasive itch…a green tide of bile just waiting to drown the country of Iran.

First we reduced one of the poorest countries on Earth (Afghanistan) to rubble.  It was mostly rubble to begin with.

Our military had trouble finding high-value targets to hit.  There were none.

Then our trumped-up intelligence hit the big stage:  the U.N. General Assembly.

Colin Powell knowingly lied.  The U.S. intelligence community was used as a pawn.

The intel was being propped beneath a faulty case like a gratis jack beneath a compact car.

Remember?  The Downing Street memo?

And so we knocked off another country.  Iraq.  The neo-con wargasm really kicked in.  No doubt the poet Ed Sanders was unsurprised.  He coined the phrase wargasm and had been documenting the demented drive of American bloodlust for decades.

And then the steamroller sputtered.

Iran was always next.

Always.  Always.  Next month.  This fall.  Imminent.

Praise be to God that the neo-con luck ran out.  Like the serial killers they are, their ability to trick and deceive abated.

And what the hell does any of this have to do with the film I’m reviewing?

Quite simply, the film I’m reviewing is perfect propaganda to bomb the hell out of Iran.

It was premiered in the final months of the Bush junta.

Perhaps the director and producers had dragged their heels a bit.

Perhaps they realized they were being used?

Perhaps…

But the story goes deeper.

Director Cyrus Nowrasteh is best known for directing a two-part ABC miniseries called The Path to 9/11.  It is “controversial”…which is to say, it is critical of the U.S. government…but only in the most kid-gloves, “oh they should have killed more Muslims” kind of way.  To reframe my argument, Cyrus Nowrasteh was already a propagandist whether he knew it or not.

And that’s where this film comes in.

Let me start by saying that the acting in this film is fantastic.  The direction is stellar (yes, the guy I was just insulting has world-class talent).

What we must ask ourselves is this:  was this film merely meant to pull on the heartstrings like a flippant Laura Bush quote about the Taliban or was Nowrasteh sincere in this unfortunately-timed release?

I believe the director was sincere.

In fact, I believe the director is the parallel of the character Ebrahim in this film.

Ebrahim is the mayor of a small town in Iran.

Ebrahim wants to do the right thing, but he is tricked.

Even so, Ebrahim is a victim of dogma.  Ebrahim’s a dumb-ass.

And yet, we respect him somewhat.

The same goes for Nowrasteh.

If my reading of The Path to 9/11 is correct, then Nowrasteh has never considered the possibility that the United States attacked itself on 9/11.  Adding further color to that false-flag would be the involvement of Israel.

One thing is certain:  it seems that Nowrasteh showed a shocking lack of curiosity when making The Path to 9/11.

Fool me once, Cyrus…shame on…

And so then Nowrasteh gets to direct this piece of cinema.  It is cinema.  But how much can we invest our hearts in a story told by a facilitator of untruths?

It pains me to discount the amazing acting of Mozhan Marnò.

And I do not discount it.

She is one of the most talented actresses I have witnessed in a long time.

The same goes for Shohreh Aghdashloo.  Tremendous thespian skills!

And Nowrasteh (whom I’ve spent “paragraphs” berating)…what a talent!

But is that talent misdirected?  [no pun intended]

I’m not cowing to Iran.

I have nothing to gain.  I have everything to lose.

This film, on its own merits, is extremely remarkable.

But taken in the context of Hollywood propaganda, it becomes suspect.

The Mullah in the film is a scumbag.

The husband is a scumbag.

The town mayor is essentially a scumbag (dupe).

There are very few subtle shadings of character here.

We end up with an unfortunate equation.

Iran = bad.

Islam = bad.

Islamic men = bad.

Islamic women = good.

The equation is begging for some stealth bombers to fill the gap and vaporize those Muslim men.  “Liberate” those Muslim women.

Come on:  we’re pros at it!  Look at our resume!!  Afghanistan?  Check.  Iraq?  Check.  This is our line of work!

We’ll give it a snappy name like Enduring Freedom (how much of our “freedom” can they endure?) and it’ll be over in a few weeks.

We’ll be greeted as saviors.

Let me point out one final detail.

There are some sub-equations here.

Shah = good/bad.

Ayatollah = bad.

And so, mathematicians of ethics, how does the SAVAK compute?

What was Mosaddegh’s good/bad rating?

All we ask in cinema is for a real story.  If you don’t pimp yourself out to the bomb boys, then the Palme d’Or is yours.

Perhaps I am wrong.

I am willing to admit that I may be wrong.

If you can’t tell by the title of this film how it ends (don’t see Titanic), Soraya gets stoned.  As in murdered. As in disgusting.

But what is most disgusting?

Hypocrisy.  The film starts with a quote by Hafez.

The corrupt Mullah is no worse than the military-industrial director.

And for those of immense talent (like Nowrasteh), there is always redemption in the next film.

Tell the real story.  Read a book.

The path to 9/11 almost certainly started in Langley and Herzliya.

One or the other.

Perhaps both.

Or was it the old boys network of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Poppy Bush?

Somebody better get it straight or this world ain’t going nowhere good.

Help us out Cyrus!  The truth will free both our countries.

-PD

11 Comments

How I Live Now [2013)

I have a keen eye for bullshit.  But only in certain areas.

We all have our specialties.  We all have our areas of knowledge.

Just to be clear, this film is not bullshit.  This is quite a good film.

But there is an element of this film which is pure propaganda bollocks.

I’m very sensitive to propaganda.  Allergic, you might say.

On the one hand, I can sniff out a false-flag a mile off.

On the other, I make a habit of rewatching James Bond films.

No one is totally immune to propaganda.

It takes a deep understanding of the self to assess what is really going on.

Movies, music, literature, painting…all of these arts play on the emotions.

Artists are ALL emotionally intelligent insofar as their lexicon of emotional triggers is robust and bursting at the seams.

This does not mean that artists are well-adjusted.  Rather, the reality is often quite the contrary.

In this film, our heroine Saoirse Ronan is not at all well-adjusted.

Upon first seeing her arrive at the airport (our film’s first scene) we assume she might be some kind of pop star.

The reality is that she’s merely a spoiled brat from America who’s pilfered Devendra Banhart’s stylist.

Yes, Daisy (Ronan) has quite a look here.  She oozes “hip” from the outset.  She also oozes the angst of conflict.

An angry girl.  Never knew her mother.  Voices in her head.  On psychotropic medication.  Hypochondriac.

It is hard to confront this film without knowing that it is “post-apocalyptic” (such a buzzword in the less-talented cadres of Hollywood).

Being so informed, we notice as Daisy’s plane lands in scene #1 that Paris has been bombed.  It looks serious.

Daisy seemingly couldn’t care less.

And just where has she landed?  Somewhere in England or Great Britain.

And so off to the country to stay with cousins for the summer.  Not her usual routine.  First time to visit these relatives.

The story is powerful.  The story is lovely.  The acting is tremendous.

But slowly the bullshit creeps in and cannot be ignored.

And just what bullshit of propaganda has this film swallowed to then spit out at us?

Terrorism.  The oogly-boogly bogeyman of hidden hand terrorism.

It is all very unimaginative.  There is nothing here to indicate that the writers or directors have ever gotten their news from

anyplace other than the BBC or CNN.

Though they never say “Islamic terrorists,” the frightfully dumb premise is advanced with absolutely no critical thinking evident.

In other words, if this film was a religion, its Bible would be the 9/11 Commission Report (the layman’s title).

And so these terrorists with magical powers somehow invade an otherwise fine movie.

It is like the Red Scare.  The terrorists are everywhere.  They’re unstoppable.  Ha…

It is really sad when such hackneyed brainwashing passes for erudition.

And so, in some ways this film is no better than Fox News.  Sure, films are allowed to take poetic license and “play” on our fears.

But in our current world, the stakes are too high to sink millions of dollars into vehicles such as this which merely reinforce the lies of the fraudulent global war ON terror.

How many times must it be repeated that terror cannot be fought with more terror?

That is like aiming to eliminate the scourge of forest fires by burning the flames themselves.  Ludicrous.

But we do not simply refer to the error of approach.

The fundamental truth is that the war on terror is a charade.

There is big money to be made by blaming Islam for all the world’s evils.

And as Islamic countries are plundered we see the cowed world populace let their brothers and sisters in the Middle East be sacrificed for an inhuman system which needs total control to expand.

It really is, then, a joke to talk about free markets.

And so, to put it succinctly, we have many intelligence agencies to “thank” for our current imbroglio.

The American CIA must certainly take a bow.  The NSA likewise should be recognized for their part in the global reign of terror.

But let us not leave out Mossad.  Cui bono?

But really, it takes a village of intelligence agencies to raise the demonic child known as ISIS.  And so we must thank James Bond’s MI6.  We should likewise not leave out the Saudis and Pakistan’s ISI.

The artist formerly known as al-Qaeda (now rebranded as ISIS) has been very useful to the Western powers.

Russia and China had the opportunity to call bullshit long ago, but they squandered that moment.  And now the world really is closer to WWIII.

It is not easy to pay attention to a film which gives credence to fake terrorism.  Fake terror.  Synthetic terrorism.  False-flag terrorism.

But all is not lost.

Someone (perhaps director Kevin Macdonald) has at least read his Orwell.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, things go very badly for all involved when lies become truth.  When self-inflicted attacks precipitate martial law…

And so the British troops in this film are not portrayed in a propagandistic light.  Quite the contrary, they display the insolence of misplaced power.  Power upon which there are no checks…

The government troops in this film are paranoiacs with automatic weapons.  Sound familiar?  Yes.  We are told that such types are a menace to society (and they are).  Unfortunately, your tax dollars are paying their salaries.

But this is not about military bashing.  To extrapolate from the statements of NSA whistleblower Wiliam Binney, it’s only in the upper 15% where you see the real hardcore corruption.  What do we mean “corrupt”???

Those who would sell their own country out.  The moles in the FBI and CIA who allowed and facilitated (respectively) 9/11.  The high-ranking military and government officials who were likewise moles.  The highest level.

And so we have great sympathy for our military men and women knowing that their corrupt leaders (at the very top) have no real allegiance to country or fellow soldier.  There are exceptions, but consider the words of Binney.  The top 15%…that is where the real culprits are.  They are among the good leaders.

But this begs a question:  does one have to be a scumbag to advance to such echelons of power?  I’m afraid the answer may very well be a resounding “yes”…  And so, at the upper level of governments, intelligence agencies, militaries, etc. we are faced with finding the lesser of evils.  We would much prefer adulterers, drug addicts, etc. to psychopathic criminals.

I will be the first to admit that my diatribe is not really fair to this film.

This is quite an excellent film.  But artists cannot play with gelatinous archetypes like “terrorism” and expect a free pass.

There is glorious acting in this film (for Christ’s sake).

It pains me to write so much about the premise.

For fuck’s sake, don’t copy the fear-mongering of Fox News.  Those “journalists” will have their Nuremberg.  They will have no press passes.  They’ll be on the stand.

Don’t sully yourself in that stream.  Look at your box office.  $60,213.  Sixty-thousand measly dollars!  If you had put Ronan and George MacKay in a room together with no script they would have surpassed the trite constraints laid upon them (presumably) by Meg Rosoff’s novel. Dear Rosoff:  whatever paper you read, cancel the subscription.

-PD

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Comment ca va? [1976)

Ça va.  From the year I was born.

If you search Google for “comment ca va godard,” you might get 83,000 results in 0.42 seconds.  Google tacks on the time to remind us of its power.

Well, I must admit I was a bit powerless in slogging through this film.  Keep in mind, the first time I saw Pierrot le fou I thought it was overrated.  Also keep in mind, by that point Godard was already my favorite director (by a long shot).

I came to regard Pierrot le fou as one of Godard’s best films, but it had to grow on me.

Perhaps Comment ça va will also grow on me.

What must be remembered is that Godard loves games.  For me, the end of this film is easily the most brilliant part.

Godard (or his collaborator Anne-Marie Miéville) plays with the editing program like it is Pac-Man.  There is something very ATARI about the whole affair–that green console font and the playful symbolism of a wandering cursor.

But admissions on my part should be more specific here:  I was really tired.

So perhaps I did not give this film a fair shake.

It should be no surprise to viewers of Godard’s mid-seventies oeuvre that this film makes little to no effort to entertain.  It is, as are many of his films of this era, an investigation.  In this case, the investigation is filmmaking itself.  It is, in that sense, a bit like his earlier masterpiece Le Gai savoir.  The role of Anne-Marie Miéville should not be underestimated here.  It is as if Godard and Miéville were recalibrating their artistic sensitivities with this film.  While many (most?) filmmakers would leave such a “product” on the shelf and chalk it up to practice or research, Godard had been in the habit of releasing these “attempts at film” for some time.  As I have mentioned in previous articles, there is a particular connection between the French word essai (a test, an attempt) and the English usage of essay (particularly, for our purposes, the genre known as film essay).

And so this is very much a film essay which we are dealing with.  As such, I feel like a teacher compelled to “grade” said essay.  This is the traditional job of critics:  to assess value.  It is, perhaps, a far more subjective form of the S & P, Moody’s, Fitch gambit.

So yes, I dozed off briefly at a few points.  I feel bad about this.  One school of thought says that it was Godard’s job to entertain me, but I do not entirely subscribe to that way of thinking.

But let us consult Italian Wikipedia (the English site is slacking) to jog our memory…

It does indeed feel to be shot in Grenoble (certainly not Paris)…  I could verify this, but I am very lazy on such points.

The contributors to Italian Wikipedia make a very good point in comparing the film under consideration to Godard’s earlier Letter to Jane.  Indeed, the director once again fixates on a particular photo and what it means.  We, as the audience, spend a great deal of time staring along with the creators at a picture from a protest in Portugal.  1976.

What is new here is that Godard employs his editing equipment in a novel way.  A photo from a French protest three years previous (1973) is superimposed upon the Portuguese picture.  It is a similar methodology as found in Letter to Jane when Jane Fonda’s facial expression was compared to other Hollywood actors (including her father Henry).

The story (if it can be called that) involves esoteric distinctions between “the left” and communism.  Exactly.

What is not at all clear is that Odette (played by the very, very beautiful Anne-Marie Miéville) is the lady helping with the editing of a film.  We see Odette’s face in her interaction with her young worker boyfriend, but we only see her hands (unless I dozed off one too many times) on the typewriter in her directorial capacity.  What is significant is that her collaborator is her boyfriend’s father.  We see his face.  Boy do we see it.  Over and over and over again.  It should be noted that the typewriter is a motif in Godard’s work stretching all the way back to the machine-gun edit in Vivre sa vie and culminating is Godard’s magnum opus Histoire(s) du cinema.

In our film, the typewriter and the eyes of the dictator (as in dictation…taking dictation) frame a philosophical investigation of language.  We might call it “lost in transmission.”

What is at stake are the alienated products of journalists.  The father (head of a newspaper) deprives his staff of true journalistic activity when they become merely glorified secretaries.  There is no time to think.  Deadlines deadlines.  And, as such, dead text.  An anonymous caption for a photo (no byline) is the sole work of the editor.  A journalist merely types.  No time for discussion.

And thus the extension:  why should a picture need a caption at all?  Shouldn’t a picture tell a story and thereby eliminate the need for text?  Is a complex picture which requires explanation inferior?  And why not let the picture speak for itself in such a case?  Why always explain what the reader is to feel???

A dictatorship falls.  Strikes ensue.  We hear a radio tell us Franco is dead.  A subtle touch.  From Portugal to Spain.

Carnation Revolution.  Yes, I thought of Angola, but not Mozambique.  And it makes sense.  Mozambique.  The only Marxist Western (as in horses and cowboys)…Vent d’est (1969).

Saint-Brieuc.  It was a factory strike in ’72.  We are one year off.  1975.  Deadline deadline.  Go to press.

Now television has completely won.  Your show.  Shows.  On demand.  One senses that the battle of art films vs. mass communication was [for Godard] not about format (film vs. video), but rather a question of diffusion and delivery.

The speed of news.  The news cycle.  “Information cascade” and Operation Mockingbird.

-PD

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