Posted to imdb.com. Click here to be forwarded or copy this address into your browser: http://imdb.com/user/ur10841632/comments.
Read that first, and then, here's some additional comments I had noted elsewhere, plus a random comment.
I think what I love about this film is that the central mystery, the excuse for the story, the macguffin, isn't really important. There is no great secret to be revealed... except for one, and we find that it doesn't really matter compared to the journey it took to find out. All there is is the place, the journey, the people, the moment.... and the light, which comes in different colours, at different angles, and in different intensities.
The lack of mystery might be a problem for some people.... I imagine they lose interest. That lack of tension is exactly what intrigues me. We know that by introducing Lucy's state of virginity, that it will be 'solved', and the rest is the journey, just as it was for all of us. There we are on the edge of forever, and the view from the brink bears contemplation. All those moments from which we do not return - we don't return from any of them, really. - and then there are those moments which we feel passing, knowing even as they exist, that they will never exist again: weddings, funerals, orgasms...
RANDOM COMMENT... noted earlier today... what is it about N. American men (or is it men in general?) and their need to tell everyone about how they got the better of someone else? "So I said to him, 'Over my dead body!' Hahahahahah...." It's like lions or wolves pissing on their territory. Why don't they just take out their dicks and swing them around to impress everyone? Perhaps that will be my next response to boasting... or how I'll respond to my own urge to brag...
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Savigny-sur-Orge, 27 June 2006
I walk outside; the light is dim, green, the light of dreams. Overhead, a rag-bottomed cloud blocks the sun. It must be a mile deep to cut the midsummer glare so completely. I can feel the weight of all that rain above me. Puffs of wind whisk through dust and gutter-litter, and all is filled with a sense of waiting.
The merchants in the square feel the weight of impending rain, too, and they scramble to cover their luggage and their racks of polyester blouses. A few fat drops smack into the paving stones, so few that I only hear their impacts but cannot see their spots. The plops become patter and a single drop strikes my neck and slips under my collar. Dots appear on the hot cobbles, and begin to fade, evaporating back from whence they came.
I duck into a café and await the show, relishing the idea of a refreshing summer storm seen over the rim of a coffee cup, from the safety of a familiar haunt; but first a ray, and then a beam of sunlight appear, and finally, the full face of the sun is revealed. The cloud moves on to clean up another town, perhaps, leaving us with our dust, our worries, and the rest of our hot summer day.
The merchants in the square feel the weight of impending rain, too, and they scramble to cover their luggage and their racks of polyester blouses. A few fat drops smack into the paving stones, so few that I only hear their impacts but cannot see their spots. The plops become patter and a single drop strikes my neck and slips under my collar. Dots appear on the hot cobbles, and begin to fade, evaporating back from whence they came.
I duck into a café and await the show, relishing the idea of a refreshing summer storm seen over the rim of a coffee cup, from the safety of a familiar haunt; but first a ray, and then a beam of sunlight appear, and finally, the full face of the sun is revealed. The cloud moves on to clean up another town, perhaps, leaving us with our dust, our worries, and the rest of our hot summer day.
Mystic River
This was originally posted to the now-defunct "parlons film" on July 11, 2005.
**CONTAINS SPOILERS**
The first time I watched this movie I felt like it was a justification of a violent male code of conduct; or if not a justification, at least an impartial look at it. Having viewed it a second time, I'm not so sure. I think I missed the importance of Kevin Bacon's character, near the end of the film, saying something like, "Maybe we're all still eleven-year-olds locked in a dark cellar." My own hang-ups about that masculine code led me to react to the film in the same negative way I reacted to the characters, but now I think the message of the film is a judgment on the masculine code.
Here is what I wrote after my first viewing (commenting on another review).
You can find a synopsis onimdb.com or elsewhere, but here's a very brief plot summary: three eleven-year-old friends, Jimmy, Sean, and Dave, are playing street hockey one day in their working-class Boston neighborhood when a car stops and two men pretending to be cops force David into a car, and take him away, lock him in a cellar, and sexually abuse him for four days until he manages to escape. Twenty-five or so years later, Jimmy's 19-year-old daughter is brutally murdered in the same neighborhood where the three friends still live. Jimmy, who has gone through crime and doing time and has gone straight, is heartbroken. Sean, a detective with the State Patrol, is investigating the murder with his partner. Dave has become an introverted, broken man, with a wife and a young son, and he becomes a lead suspect in the murder. Even his wife suspects him, and she tells Jimmy, who, with his thug friends, takes matters into his own hands and kills Dave. In the meantime Sean and his partner solve the case, overpowering the teenaged killers in the nick of time.
It's a good story, based on interesting characters, with plenty of suspense and unexpected twists, and Clint Eastwood's direction is flawless. I watched it with Jen and she commented that it's a summary of all classic film. We wondered how septuagenarian Eastwood finds the energy to keep making films and surmised that he might feel he has to because if he doesn't, no one else will - no one else can.
Anyway, back to the story. My initial reaction was one of anger, which I am starting to learn is a good sign that the movie was good enough to draw me in and make me react to the characters as if they were real people, which is not as easy at it seems. I admit that I have a big problem with the tough-guy code of honour which sees the best man as the one who accepts no insult and wins all his fights. I tend to see someone who gets in fights as being a big loser. It's the 'What-did-you-say-about-my-mother?' mentality, which looks for imagined insults when real ones are not present, in order to prove one's masculinity again and again. It's the constant fear of losing masculinity, and it makes victims out of all those who can be dominated, put down, or controlled. It's what makes those of weak character, who have no confidence in their own masculinity, try to prove something that they never really believe: that they are good enough, tough enough, manly enough.
On my first viewing, I was especially offended by the fact that when Jimmy blatantly confesses the murder of his friend and neighbor to his wife, she completely supports him. She doesn't look at him as if he's just admitted he's a monster, she tells him that he was acting in the best interests of his family. The fact that he killed the wrong man doesn't seem to bother either of them, and their lust for revenge is apparently spent; there is no mention of killing the actual murderer. What's more, police officer Sean knows that Jimmy killed Dave, and yet does nothing about it. I took the support of the wife and the non-action of the cop to mean that Eastwood was telling us this was all inevitable: that the stunted system of playground honour these men live by is reality, and even if mistakes get made, it's a necessary system.
Now, however, I think that Eastwood does what few directors do: he allows the audience to make up their own mind. I think that he is showing us just how limited and immature these men are, and how their code of honour makes them into lesser human beings. But instead of telling us that, he allows us to infer it from their behaviour. They wear their crosses (Jimmy has a giant one tattooed on his back), but that's all about being Irish-Bostonian-American, not about anything Jesus might have said about forgiveness and mercy.
Eastwood tells his story in a classical way, and has a very subtle touch with irony - the old-fashioned kind of irony, the way it was before self-conscious post-modernists beat us all over the head with it. He simply shows us what the characters believe about themselves, and what they say about themselves, and he shows us that it's not really true, at least not on every level.
A final note is that these are great actors, and the performances are amazing. Despite their well-known faces, I saw nothing but the characters they were playing. Laura Linney doesn't have much of a role here (there are no strong female characters), but I liked seeing the hardness she portrayed here, since I'm more used to seeing her in cute, dimple-oriented roles. Everyone deserved the awards they got or were nominated for, and if Tim Robbins didn't have political problems in Hollywood, he would have been all over that supporting actor award!
**CONTAINS SPOILERS**
The first time I watched this movie I felt like it was a justification of a violent male code of conduct; or if not a justification, at least an impartial look at it. Having viewed it a second time, I'm not so sure. I think I missed the importance of Kevin Bacon's character, near the end of the film, saying something like, "Maybe we're all still eleven-year-olds locked in a dark cellar." My own hang-ups about that masculine code led me to react to the film in the same negative way I reacted to the characters, but now I think the message of the film is a judgment on the masculine code.
You can find a synopsis on
It's a good story, based on interesting characters, with plenty of suspense and unexpected twists, and Clint Eastwood's direction is flawless. I watched it with Jen and she commented that it's a summary of all classic film. We wondered how septuagenarian Eastwood finds the energy to keep making films and surmised that he might feel he has to because if he doesn't, no one else will - no one else can.
Anyway, back to the story. My initial reaction was one of anger, which I am starting to learn is a good sign that the movie was good enough to draw me in and make me react to the characters as if they were real people, which is not as easy at it seems. I admit that I have a big problem with the tough-guy code of honour which sees the best man as the one who accepts no insult and wins all his fights. I tend to see someone who gets in fights as being a big loser. It's the 'What-did-you-say-about-my-mother?' mentality, which looks for imagined insults when real ones are not present, in order to prove one's masculinity again and again. It's the constant fear of losing masculinity, and it makes victims out of all those who can be dominated, put down, or controlled. It's what makes those of weak character, who have no confidence in their own masculinity, try to prove something that they never really believe: that they are good enough, tough enough, manly enough.
On my first viewing, I was especially offended by the fact that when Jimmy blatantly confesses the murder of his friend and neighbor to his wife, she completely supports him. She doesn't look at him as if he's just admitted he's a monster, she tells him that he was acting in the best interests of his family. The fact that he killed the wrong man doesn't seem to bother either of them, and their lust for revenge is apparently spent; there is no mention of killing the actual murderer. What's more, police officer Sean knows that Jimmy killed Dave, and yet does nothing about it. I took the support of the wife and the non-action of the cop to mean that Eastwood was telling us this was all inevitable: that the stunted system of playground honour these men live by is reality, and even if mistakes get made, it's a necessary system.
Now, however, I think that Eastwood does what few directors do: he allows the audience to make up their own mind. I think that he is showing us just how limited and immature these men are, and how their code of honour makes them into lesser human beings. But instead of telling us that, he allows us to infer it from their behaviour. They wear their crosses (Jimmy has a giant one tattooed on his back), but that's all about being Irish-Bostonian-American, not about anything Jesus might have said about forgiveness and mercy.
Eastwood tells his story in a classical way, and has a very subtle touch with irony - the old-fashioned kind of irony, the way it was before self-conscious post-modernists beat us all over the head with it. He simply shows us what the characters believe about themselves, and what they say about themselves, and he shows us that it's not really true, at least not on every level.
A final note is that these are great actors, and the performances are amazing. Despite their well-known faces, I saw nothing but the characters they were playing. Laura Linney doesn't have much of a role here (there are no strong female characters), but I liked seeing the hardness she portrayed here, since I'm more used to seeing her in cute, dimple-oriented roles. Everyone deserved the awards they got or were nominated for, and if Tim Robbins didn't have political problems in Hollywood, he would have been all over that supporting actor award!
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