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[neznans]

"romeo and juliet, for example. when romeo kills himself, thinking juliet is dead, that’s profane." Why is that? Somewhere else you wrote that dignity is about having (a sense of?) control, and I couldn't agree more. The way I always understood tragedy is that it emerges when people are the agents of their own undoing. People acting in circumstances of ignorance in a way that they wouldn't had they had knowledge, had they understood the situation. The punishment, as it were, of acting with self-assurance when it's unwarranted. Wouldn't it had been profane if what had happened was that some brigands passed by, and out of some maliciousness killed Romeo? And then, when Juliet woke up, lying on her dead lover, they passed by again and killed her too? The end result would have been the same, but their death would have been meaningless. Oedipus committed a murder. Murders can have all kinds of dreadful consequences for the living, but for Oedipus it was just a cheeky rude passerby that he had killed (if I recall correctly), but really it was his father, and therefore tragic (to put rather simply). Had he acted differently, the death of his "real father" would have been spared. Romeo committed suicide. Was that a virtuous act? The world sucks but we have to deal with it, or remit the pleasures of life. It was his own doing that put a final end to his acquaintance with Juliet. As far as I see it, the tragedy of Juliet's suicide is contingent on Romeo's death being tragic. Romeo killed himself because of Juliet's death, ignorant of the fact that she was alive. Juliet killed herself because Romeo was dead, as he was indeed. Romeo thought he knew what he was doing. Juliet knew what she was doing.

profane vs tragic

i was talking to a friend about my post on the profane, and she asked me how the profane differed from tragedy. what it came down to is that profane things contain an element of indignity, while tragic things do not have to, necessarily. the profane is stuff that has to do with gross, cosmic unfairness.

romeo and juliet, for example. when romeo kills himself, thinking juliet is dead, that’s profane. it’s the part that fills you with a helpless feeling of “what the fuck?” but when juliet kills herself, that’s tragic. it at least makes a narrative kind of sense. or take eponine in les miserables. unrequited love is fairly profane, but it can be borne with a becoming stoicism. overall, eponine dies quite nobly. but imagine that eponine is, say, also barren. and then marius and cosette get married and have a kid. and then cosette dies. and then eponine has to raise their kid for some reason. and marius still doesn’t like her.* that’s profane. the profane is what gives a tragedy bite. it’s the part that it’s hard to feel catharsis about and the thing that is difficult to make noble.

when things feel profane in real life, i think that is when we are most at risk of narrativizing. there is a need to resolve profane things and real life will usually not cooperate with that need. say someone has rejected you romantically, and you feel like shit about it but (of course) you have no moral high ground from which to punish them for that rejection. maybe you start telling yourself that they were actually a bad person. maybe they led you on. maybe you adopt a woeful persona (so that rejection is no longer a narrative contradiction). say you were harmed by your upbringing, but your parents were not outright abusive. maybe you tell yourself they were. there’s a narrative for that. it’s no coincidence that conspiracy takes root in the profane. say you can’t cope with the loss of life on 9/11: over-narrativize it. systemic, deliberate villainy has a certain dignity to it. fighting nazis and secret cabals feels somehow noble, cowboy-like, narratively familiar and complete.

soothing, ritualistic behaviors probably have a lot to do with coping with the profane. compulsive tics restore order. a romantic book soothes the profane reality that pair bonds are rare and difficult to find. getting off to a piece of porn that depicts your humiliating sexual desires allows one to have the narrative experience of fulfilling them. when i cringe-pause during a movie or tv show, it’s usually because it’s making me face some sort of ugly indignity. it refuses my desire for resolution.

*i’m cribbing from the plot of the most interminable, awe-inspiringly unpleasant piece of fan fiction i ever read, here.

[neznans]

אפס ביחסי אנוש

"Zero Motivation" is funny and candid. However, beside its formal partition into three stories, it feels very much episodic, like a collection of short stories rather than one whole. Sure, the characters thread all the stories and there are evolutions inherited from one story to the next (one of which is very enjoyably Gogolesque, in my opinion), but otherwise they don't cohese into a unit. I say "beside" because there are other films that are also formally partitioned, yet the parts transcend their separation, as it were, like they do in "Pulp Fiction" (to take an example of an extremely good film). This lends to the idea (in my mind, that is) of making this film a tv series, though I'm afraid that it would make it lose its filmish quality completely, and make for just an alright series*. Though this cohesiveness is generally speaking extremely important for a film, I think this lack is of the easier foibles to overcome in film-making, and the only thing in this promising debut film of Talya Lavie that inhibits it from being the kind of a masterpiece film that I am sure she is able to, and hopefully will in the future, make: it's frank and unpretentious; it's funny, its humour spanning a spectrum from parodical slapstick to very subtle witticisms; it's cleverly written; it operates on many layers (or perhaps, contains aesthetics of different kinds?), from its familiar verisimilitude to the Israeli military service, to cinematographic quotes (or what I thought was one); heck, I'd say I even very much appreciated certain choices in regards to casting and makeup. While not in itself a masterpiece, it very much alludes to Lavie's potential to make such, and I very much look forward to see what she comes up with next. Otherwise, it's a very enjoyable film and I highly recommend it. * Frankly I have not watched in my life many series, and those that I like I tend to almost exclusively put into two dichotomic categories: "alright ones", and "extremely amazing eternal masterpieces". Now that I think about it, it seems that the distinguishing factor is whether the episodes create a whole, or rather remain "episodic".

[neznans]

The Heart is a Lonley Hunter

Good. In this film, too, one cas sense the script's origins in a novel; it contains this, if not depth, then complexity that most written-for-the-screen screenplays seem to be devoid of. Acting was not its best aspect (though I do not intend to say it was very bad), but it was often very touching (not in a melodramatic gooey kind of a way) and heartfelt. I recommend. Also, I tried to find subtitles for the ASL parts, and failed. It didn't, however, hurt the watching experience for me.

[neznans]

Blue Valentine

Extraordinary film. This is the first film that I remember seeing that seems to really capture the dynamics of emotion. It might seem a peculiar statement, as the "expression of emotion" is everywhere from the very beginning of stage art--- but usually, it seemed to me, emotions were strictly dependent on the rationale, so to speak, a certain derivative... while in reality it seems to me that, many a time (and perhaps, many a crucial time) it is very much the other way around (it's a complex relationship, no doubt; but grossly speaking).

This film is a great achievement, in my opinion. Go watch it, please!

[neznans]

Smultronstället

I really enjoyed this one, "Wild Strawberries". I recommend!

[neznans]

Notre musique

Very interesting. I didn't have time to reflect on it at the time (something big, let's say, have happened just as I finished watching the film), but I remember it to be interesting and worth watching. Be warned, however: the subtitles that I had, translated the Hebrew speech not just erroneously but outright wrong in some parts. Wrong as in "completely different", which makes me suspect that the subtitles for the Arabic, for example, were also wrong, which is of course a big deal. It wasn't consistently wrong, but even a couple of such harsh deviations make you lose trust.

This makes me fear also that the official subtitles (as in, the ones coming with commercial releases) are wrong---- perhaps somebody should take the task to investigate and if it is indeed so, to produce an accurate translation.

[neznans]

Såsom i en spegel

I think this is the first Bergman I had watched which actually intrigued me. Go for this one.

[neznans]

Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí / Milan Kundera

I used to think it slightly amusing, that despite the fact that -- quite arbitrarily -- Kundera is the author of whose books I've read the most, I haven't read his schlagers. But now that I read one that seems to be by reputation the "one big hit", I don't think my reading order of his books was anything like "from worse to best". "The Unbearable lightness of Being" is a good and interesting book, for sure, and provides good food for thought (I always find it hard to convey this one specific notion---- I often think of books and movies and media in general, and sometimes about the content of conversations, as "exercises of the mind". Well, some exercises are better (for certain minds) and some are worse. This book provides a good exercise). But I didn't find it to excel over his other books. I write this at a distance of three months from having read that book, but I think I'd remember if it was otherwise. I remember dwelling on the ideas of the book, but I think that Kundera's "La Lenteur" ("Slowness") is a much more remarkable book, and I'd recommend it before I'd recommend "lightness of being", which I almost think became his biggest hit because of the successful title. 

[neznans]

Skepp till Indialand

I liked this one. Bergman's "A ship bound for India" does better certain things than the other films of his that I saw. Or to be more accurate, I think what this film tries to achieve is more achievable with Bergman's tools than the other films I've seen thus far. This films actually falls -- or rather, becomes unpleasantly annoying -- precisely at those points where it tries to deal with raw emotions the way his latter films (which I saw) do.

I think this film goes better than those others, precisely because it has a solid story/plot at its center, instead of being a representation of the unfolding of the relationship(ic) forces between a cast of characters.

[neznans]

Chasing Amy

While watching this film, I changed my mind about it several times, because it tricked me several times. I thought, "this is bullocks!" only to realize I had fallen into a deceit. This is one film I'd really like to discuss with somebody.

[neznans]

Django Unchained

Well done again, Tarantino. I highly recommend.

[neznans]

Sommarnattens leende

I really liked this one of Bergman. It was funny and entertaining, I can say for sure.

[neznans]

Mies vailla menneisyyttä

Really good. Double thumbs up.

Really.

[neznans]

Gycklarnas afton

I liked "Sawdust and Tinsel", it contained some very enjoyable/delighting (so to speak) moments, but overall this movie of Bergman, too, didn't quite penetrate. I'm not even quite sure why. Perhaps it still the resemblance to the theatrical form, which lacks the verisimilitude of more... mature (as in, ripe, not "adult movie" adult) cinema. Theater is fine to convey plot and the actions of characters, but you have to care for them first to care for their actions. When the actions are heroic or great than they take care of themselves, but when the "plot" is intimate than you have to provide the feeling of intimacy, the sense of the private. The similarity to one's own experience of the private. When it lacks then the actions are of out concern. People don't act in private they way they act in the political public realm, but the theatrical form is the quintessential representative form of public action. Surely theater can present and represent the inner world, but there is some sphere of intimate life and events that theater cannot hold, and this film, too, is still very much theater-like.

[neznans]

Höstsonaten

The memory of writing a post about this film is so certain, and yet the original Swedish name is so foreign, that I honestly feel like getting out of my mind. Perhaps I was just forming it in my head, but not writing it down.

Bergman's Autumn Sonata is very dramatic, perhaps melodramatic, but it also deals about those things that people tend to become "dramatic" about. Either way it is very theater-like, and while I liked it I don't find it extraordinary.

[neznans]

Almanya Willkommen in Deutschland

Good. This is another film I have seen a while back, but I remember finding it somewhat unpolished and not without its foibles, but laudable for trying out (what I see as) new cinematic techniques. But I don't want to make it sound like some "experimental film", which it's not. It's good, funny, interesting, and pertinent (to what? To me, to the current world). I do recommend watching it.

[neznans]

TPB AFK

Rather angering (by reflecting the frustrating current world--- though I think the pillars are already shaking. Just let the kids of the 90's to graduate their law schools, ripen as thinkers, and find each other in the world), it deals with important issues. I don't remember exactly what it addresses in the film (it was a little while back), but it sent me to ruminate these issues and I'm thankful for that. Check it out. Download it from the pirate bay, it's probably well seeded.