I'm not sure I have the gumption to say much about Edward Scissorhands. It's well done as fable. All hyperbole and all artist as misfit.
Interestingly there is only one truly mean character (and this played by "the geek" anthony michael hall). He meets an hyperbolic end.
The rest of humanity is simply inane and stupid but for our "mother" figure and our muse.
The Father (inventor/"mad" scientist) begets the artist but does not finish his invention (ah geppeto) before dying; the avon lady (ah the mask of "normalcy) mothers him with acceptance and security; the daughter (romantic muse) will release his gift.
And almost he becomes "one of us"...but we misunderstand him and he retreats back into his art and his solitary existence.
Funny and sweet and while being "grotesque" in it's characterizations--"modern life" in suburbia is boring and enlivened yet degraded by commerce and sex...shocking realizations, right?
Monday, October 26, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Fairy Politics (Among Other Things)*
*I'll confess right off that I wrote this upon my original viewing of this tremendous film--recycling myself.
Pan's Labyrinth has so many things going on in it that it might be hard to find a starting point and be somewhat brief.
But where to begin? I think I'll just say that it seems, with a few days of pondering and some helpful discussions, that this is a story of the loss of family.
Ofelia's family is broken by the death of her tailor-father (I think? Did this death seem suspicious--like the Captain saw Carmen, wanted her, and had the tailor offed?) who is replaced by the military strong-man. This seems tailor-made (sorry) to fit the Fascist reality of Spain--the authoritarian/paternal/dictator Franco is represented by Captain Vidal.
The fairy tale that Ofelia tells eventually reunites her with her true father and her mother in the underworld.
So many things that my thinking goes off in so many directions. And it reminds me of how I used to read certain books--looking for clues.
* Time: the Captain's "stopped" watch--seems odd and undeveloped as a story or motivator for the actions of Captain Vidal. However, can we imagine that this is perhaps the largest theme in the movie? That time is a construct of man and really comes to be a tyranny? The fairy tale is timeless and (even if however it seems the clock is running down on its viability within the film) mans' singular life is not (and specifically the replacement father/tyrant goes down to death just as the fairy tale is given fresh life).
* Father as tailor. I like trying to give this one symbolic import and trying to connect it to the stitching that the Captain had to do in the movie (after the only real maternal figure in the movie, Mercedes, dominates him--cuts his mouth to stop his lies).
* Mercedes--and speaking of Mercedes--she really is our beginning and ending here--she replaces the tyrant--her family of rebels (common man? men of the earth/forest?) succeeds, seemingly only with her help--she replaces the mother, Carmen (beautiful yet incapacitated--about to give birth to the new Spain) who has abdicated (royal theme?) and given herself to the tyrant. Mercedes protects Ofelia and though she cannot save Ofelia, she does save the "new Spain" and erases the memory of the tyrant father.
*I don't know where to begin with the Faun--but what an amazing creation. One is ambivalent about him (it)--old as time itself; can we trust the Faun?...likely he has his own agenda (as all fairies and demons do).
I'll stop there but there is so much more!
Pan's Labyrinth has so many things going on in it that it might be hard to find a starting point and be somewhat brief.
But where to begin? I think I'll just say that it seems, with a few days of pondering and some helpful discussions, that this is a story of the loss of family.
Ofelia's family is broken by the death of her tailor-father (I think? Did this death seem suspicious--like the Captain saw Carmen, wanted her, and had the tailor offed?) who is replaced by the military strong-man. This seems tailor-made (sorry) to fit the Fascist reality of Spain--the authoritarian/paternal/dictator Franco is represented by Captain Vidal.
The fairy tale that Ofelia tells eventually reunites her with her true father and her mother in the underworld.
So many things that my thinking goes off in so many directions. And it reminds me of how I used to read certain books--looking for clues.
* Time: the Captain's "stopped" watch--seems odd and undeveloped as a story or motivator for the actions of Captain Vidal. However, can we imagine that this is perhaps the largest theme in the movie? That time is a construct of man and really comes to be a tyranny? The fairy tale is timeless and (even if however it seems the clock is running down on its viability within the film) mans' singular life is not (and specifically the replacement father/tyrant goes down to death just as the fairy tale is given fresh life).
* Father as tailor. I like trying to give this one symbolic import and trying to connect it to the stitching that the Captain had to do in the movie (after the only real maternal figure in the movie, Mercedes, dominates him--cuts his mouth to stop his lies).
* Mercedes--and speaking of Mercedes--she really is our beginning and ending here--she replaces the tyrant--her family of rebels (common man? men of the earth/forest?) succeeds, seemingly only with her help--she replaces the mother, Carmen (beautiful yet incapacitated--about to give birth to the new Spain) who has abdicated (royal theme?) and given herself to the tyrant. Mercedes protects Ofelia and though she cannot save Ofelia, she does save the "new Spain" and erases the memory of the tyrant father.
*I don't know where to begin with the Faun--but what an amazing creation. One is ambivalent about him (it)--old as time itself; can we trust the Faun?...likely he has his own agenda (as all fairies and demons do).
I'll stop there but there is so much more!
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Revolutionary Road--ennui street
Well, this was a disappointment. Possibly the worst performance I've seen from Kate Winslet; something like the performance in Little Children (which seems a very close relation to this film in terms of "disillusionment") but without the clear motivations and connection to real feeling.
In Little Children Winslet is "not like the others"--she reads (!) and she's disheveled and not very suburban mom but she's got a clear hunger and she wants to eat life (and the neighborhood stud). She's a caged animal that will bite. In RR she's just a thing without feathers. (Hope that is hopeless?--there's a line in the movie about this somewhat, the "hopeless emptiness" of their lives.)
The movie presents itself as standard suburban ennui with "life failure 101" being the main drive for dramatic tension: Winslet's community theater fails (in the opening scenes--before the title sequence); DiCaprio is a replica of his "old man" working for the same company and getting nowhere. His ennui is "normal" I suppose--schlub who thinks he's more than he is but doesn't put in the effort--expects others to see it and hand it to him maybe. Time for a dalliance; but this too is really "normal" in this story. (And normal in our depictions of the desultory family man who works and doesn't really seem connected to the family.)
They have two kids but they're rarely seen--a real mis-step perhaps as one imagines having kids and moving to the suburbs IS part of the problem--but it's unseen and barely even commented on.
There are elements to the story I haven't touched on but they were so disconnected--by the screenwriter and director I suppose--that they seemed to have no relevance other than to be a narrative device inserted to clarify the "truth" of the scenes that didn't really carry any on their own. (Suburban life=bad and soul-crushing.)
There's the neighbors who are more "regular" and the husband there that pines after Winslet's character; there's the middle-aged realtor whose husband turns off his hearing aid when she speaks; the realtor's son, a once-prominent, promising mathematician who has gone loony--and speaks, Sybil-like, TRUTHS about our couple's inner lives, etc...
I'm sure the book must have been much better.
In Little Children Winslet is "not like the others"--she reads (!) and she's disheveled and not very suburban mom but she's got a clear hunger and she wants to eat life (and the neighborhood stud). She's a caged animal that will bite. In RR she's just a thing without feathers. (Hope that is hopeless?--there's a line in the movie about this somewhat, the "hopeless emptiness" of their lives.)
The movie presents itself as standard suburban ennui with "life failure 101" being the main drive for dramatic tension: Winslet's community theater fails (in the opening scenes--before the title sequence); DiCaprio is a replica of his "old man" working for the same company and getting nowhere. His ennui is "normal" I suppose--schlub who thinks he's more than he is but doesn't put in the effort--expects others to see it and hand it to him maybe. Time for a dalliance; but this too is really "normal" in this story. (And normal in our depictions of the desultory family man who works and doesn't really seem connected to the family.)
They have two kids but they're rarely seen--a real mis-step perhaps as one imagines having kids and moving to the suburbs IS part of the problem--but it's unseen and barely even commented on.
There are elements to the story I haven't touched on but they were so disconnected--by the screenwriter and director I suppose--that they seemed to have no relevance other than to be a narrative device inserted to clarify the "truth" of the scenes that didn't really carry any on their own. (Suburban life=bad and soul-crushing.)
There's the neighbors who are more "regular" and the husband there that pines after Winslet's character; there's the middle-aged realtor whose husband turns off his hearing aid when she speaks; the realtor's son, a once-prominent, promising mathematician who has gone loony--and speaks, Sybil-like, TRUTHS about our couple's inner lives, etc...
I'm sure the book must have been much better.
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