Violent Brain Fever

Two followups

2011-08-02T10:44:00.006-04:00

Sorry for the absence. The last month has been a bit crazy. On top of being sick and sustaining multiple back injuries, I had to embark on the first stage of my first comprehensive exams, which is a two week paper. (You draw a topic out of an envelope and are given exactly two weeks to research and write.) I have survived that, and must now study for the exam proper, which is sort of like a Music History 101 final exam, only more harrowing. So if any of you have any broad historical questions, such as, "What is baroque music?" or "What makes an opera an opera, as opposed to an oratorio, etc?" then this is an excellent time to ask! It will help me study.

I am going to return to the Byzantine chant issue I inflicted on myself, before getting to some of your Music 101 questions. Man, I remember now why "Byzantine" is a synonym for "labyrinthine." It's no wonder none of my professors know anything about Byzantine chant -- the topic is impossible to follow. So for now, two notes following up on previous posts.

First, a note on the post about the earliest known music. I found a few more specific and interesting nuggets about the earliest chant notation in the course of reading up on Byzantine chant.

One scholar thinks he has identified the first [surviving] chant to be associated with any kind of notation. This is the prosula Psalle modulamina, from the early 9th century (probably first quarter). The first unquestionably notated chants appear in the manuscript Musica disciplina, which is a treatise from the 840s. A bit later in the century, we start to get whole books of chant with notation. (In between are various manuscripts with examples of music here and there.) Levy, the scholar who identified Psalle modulamina, has argued that neumatic notation was common during the reign of Charlemagne, but it seems he’s in the minority. Most people seem to agree that the scarcity of notation in the 9th century reflects a true scarcity of practice.

Second, I realized something about the ending of the Tree of Life. I suppose I should issue a spoiler warning -- if I haven't already spoiled it -- but it really is a non-issue. It isn't a plot development, per se.

Ready? Ok. At the end of the film, Sean Penn's character appears in a salt plain, which gradually fills with people from his life. This scene, like the rest of the film, is wide open to interpretation, and something of it rings of the afterlife. I forget now why I assumed it was the afterlife (it just makes sense, given the film's continuum), but in the back of my mind, I constantly questioned this assumption. I think it remains a possible reading, but I'm not as convinced.

The first and biggest reason is, Penn's character, Jack, is not just there with friends and family, he's there with himself. He follows himself as a boy, and then there they are, in the plain together. Second, his parents appear as they did in the 50s. From a screen writing point of view, this is pragmatic, simply so we can immediately recognize the characters. (His parents are only shown in the 50s; we don't see them in the present day.) But, if it were supposed to be Heaven, why would Jack see everyone as they appeared in his childhood? (I guess there are many possible reasons, and I can find no compelling reason he wouldn't--it's just a bit odd.)

So, it is my new conclusion that this scene in the plains is simply a visual representation of his sea of thoughts. It's a reflection on all of the people in his life, including his own past. The entire film is a progression of memories. Even the depictions of the beginning of time, of dinosaurs, and so on, can be seen as only Jack's imagination; the voice overs are not artificial voice overs, but his thoughts to himself as he contemplates these images. In the end, he follows himself through a maze of cliffs, before passing through a door and arriving at the plains. This functions a kind of summary of the movie, his journey following himself back to the community of his youth, the connection of his past and present. Everyone standing together in the plains shows that all of the people of Jack's life are always with him, in thought. The past leads to the present and future, temporally speaking, but we can return to the past through memory and bring our experience to it. These reflections, in turn, contribute to our present/future, and so experience is not truly linear, but is in constant dialog.

Edited to add: The Hindu has a nice, succinct review of the film here.

More ruminating on Tree of Life

2011-06-28T16:33:00.003-04:00

I’m continuing to puzzle over Tree of Life. If you read my previous, brief musings, then you know I loved the primary ‘plot’ portions of the movie, but I’m still waiting for my impressions of the cosmic portions to settle. I suppose I won’t really know how I feel about them until it has been a few months and I’ve see the movie a second time.

The cosmic scenes simply did not resonate with me as much as the 50s scenes. Critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Steven Rea, says, “The scenes with the dinosaurs (yes, dinosaurs!) are goofy, sure, but have you ever cared so much about the emotional life of a raptor before?” You know, he has a point. But, what bearing does the origin of the universe have on the rest of the story? (In Nature, you’ll only end up with a raptor stepping on your face, but in humanity, you can find Grace? Or did the raptor show mercy?)

A part of the obstacle between me and the cosmic scenes is the soundtrack, because he didn’t choose music that worked for me. At first I wondered if that was the only obstacle, but now I think there is more to it. A number of critics complain that it feels most of the material you need to make sense of the story has been left on the cutting room floor. I’ve heard that some initial cuts of the movie were at least 4 hours long, so I can believe this. The movie can benefit from expansion, especially of the present-day portions of grown-up Jack. We know that he is conflicted, but we never learn much about this conflict. How has the struggle played out in his adult life? He’s at work, and he seems successful but sad, and then…he’s in the afterlife? Como?

This need for more information in Jack’s part of the story is, I think, the main source of my misgivings about the cosmic scenes. They’re nice, but what do they accomplish? (I’m not asking that with the implication the answer is, “nothing,” I am genuinely considering.) The film might need to be 4 hours long in order to reconcile them with the rest of the film, so perhaps it would have been better to either release a 4 hour film, or cut them drastically, devoting most of the 138 minutes to Jack’s life.

What Malick has produced is rewarding, but perhaps it could be rewardinger…

I wonder if some of my confusion doesn’t come from the clear theological differences that Malick and I have. I am an atheist, and to insert the trials of these people, however metaphorical, into the entire continuum of the universe seems to trivialize them. They’re only a few people in the entire history of time, so what is the real significance of their emotional conflicts? I have to remind myself again, these people are metaphors. We are shown several points in their lives in order to further illustrate the development and struggles of life, in all forms. So as for their significance, Malick seems to hold them in opposite regard—the universe has been created to lead to this moment. We do not exist as a momentary blip in the universe, but Creation exists for us, so that we may know God.

That particular viewpoint, if indeed it is Malick’s, is not one I can identify with, but the push and pull between what he terms Nature and Grace is a universal struggle.

As per the epigraph from the book of Job, Malick seems to want to bring us back to the beginning of time so that we may better understand God. Or, perhaps he only wants to highlight all that we were not there for and that we will never truly understand. In either case, the struggle to understand the universe is the struggle to understand God, and vice-versa, and that seems to be the essence of the story.

I think I have run out of steam for the present, so to conclude, I can only say: that anyone is asking these questions and suggesting answers is enough proof that his film is a success, despite its imperfections. Mike LaSalle, reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle, put it better than I can: “If someone gave you, as a gift, a bag of diamonds and rocks, you would not see it as ‘a mixed bag.’ You would see it as a bag of diamonds with some rocks that can be easily pushed aside, and you would be happy to be rich.” All I can really say is that if Malick ever does release a 4 hour cut of this movie, I will see it gladly. Tree of Life might be an intensely, nigh-incomprehensibly personal film, but I think Malick’s mind seems like a nice place to visit.

A film intermission

2011-06-23T00:31:00.006-04:00

I’ve been working on a Music 101 post about Byzantine chant, before getting on to questions in the queue, but I’ve been sick since Sunday, so right now it’s a non-starter. Spice is not flowing. I have seen a lot of movies recently, though, so I’ll take a moment to return to the original premise of this blog.

First of all, I’m ecstatic that the extended cuts of Lord of the Rings finally have a theatrical release. This week was the screening of The Two Towers. The march of the Ents on Isengard is truly one of the greatest things ever committed to celluloid. (Anyone who has ever been stricken with feelings of helplessness has to find immense satisfaction in seeing a tree fight back and win.)

I was just saying to a friend, LotR is the Star Wars of our generation. In 30 years, we’ll still be talking about seeing it opening night and many nights after. We will be the nerds who go see it each and every time there’s a theatrical re-release, who know every trivial detail of the making of the films. (And it’s encouraging to know that Peter Jackson is one of us…)

Funny thing, Cate Blanchette and Billy Boyd are both credited as charter members of the LotR fan club in the credits on the extended editions. (If you’re surprised that I have read the full credits enough times to have spotted this, you’ll want to revisit the previous paragraph…)

I saw Tree of Life over the weekend, after being intrigued by the trailer. It looked like it could be brilliant or utter pap. I think it might be a bit of both, but I’m still making up my mind. Only time will tell whether I approve of the cosmic birth scenes. On the one hand, there’s something profound about them, and they are certainly beautiful to watch. On the other, it seems at odds with the heart of the story, or rather, in excess of it.

The heart of the film, the scenes of Jack’s childhood, are simply beautiful. There’s a wonderful simplicity in the way his memories play out as only segments of life and not segments of a plot. To say there is no narrative, as some reviewers have suggested, is missing the point—the narrative is not the unfolding of events but the unfolding of influence. Jack’s parents are, obviously, metaphors—nuanced and successful ones, I think—but these childhood scenes succeed admirably as a realistic depiction of childhood. Director Terrence Malick clearly has a keen memory of the inner space of a child, and the way he captures the internal conflicts, the frustration of expectations, the anxiety of being confined and knowing nothing but this confinement…

Does it really need to be pointed out that the absence of plot is quite intentional? Life is not what occurs in the exceptional circumstances that make interesting stories, but in the small details of how we live our daily lives. Our relationships with people are these small interactions. The important choices are not only the major ones that can radically affect our circumstances, but the ones we make each moment of our waking hours. Those are the choices that build our character.

I’m somewhat surprised, albeit pleased, to see that professional reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. (If nothing else, it has to be agreed that the film is achingly beautiful in its photography.) I’m sadly unsurprised to see that fan reviews typically center on the words “pretentious” and “pseudo-intellectual.” It’s funny that I should see this movie the same week I resurrected this blog, when one of the films that drove me to start blogging was The Fountain. If you look back over oooold posts, you’ll see that a response to criticism of the Fountain was one of my first ones. (Bob knows what it says. I will assume I was brilliant, even if not well-spoken, and stand by my arguments.) If you’re going to call a film the worst thing ever, please do me a favor and come up with a good reason. “Pretentious” and “pseudo-intellectual” are the most maddeningly empty criticisms, usually bandied by people who, frankly, just didn’t get it. If you don’t want to get it or if you got it and hated it, then more power to you, but if you tried and failed, back away from the keyboard. Your not getting it is not necessarily a failing on your part or on the filmmaker’s—you’re simply on different frequencies. Learn this, live it, love it, because it describes most things in life. No better or worse, just different.

Lastly, I saw Super 8 tonight. I was surprised that Abrams has the sole writing credit, because Spielberg’s hand is all over this screenplay. (Super 8 is E.T., only E.T. eats people instead of Reese’s Pieces.) There’s something wonderfully nostalgic about the movie, and it isn’t just the setting, it’s the storytelling. It’s, well, Spielbergian story telling (right up to having a cast that can inexplicably survive even the most brutal accidents), and Super 8 makes me realize that JJ Abrams might be Spielberg’s only true analog among the current generation of filmmakers. I don’t mean to say there is nothing good happening in film these days, because there is, but there’s nothing like Spielberg. His films are classics for a reason. They aren’t niche pieces, even when they’re genre ones. Each little moment of a film, when he’s at his best, sparkles with life, without feeling like fluff or like it has been engineered to accomplish something in the narrative. Scenes work without calling attention to what they’re accomplishing. His movies (and JJ’s) have a little bit of something for everyone, and it’s rare to find a person who can honestly do that, and not just pander to demographics.

The oldest music in the world

2011-06-15T13:26:00.011-04:00

I got two similar questions -- "What is the oldest composition I know of," and "What is the earliest form of music and which civilization was the first to use it as a form of entertainment?" Unfortunately, both of these questions are difficult to answer, because of the ephemeral nature of music and the inevitable decay of time.

I'll tell you about historical records of music and then try to give you some specific examples. When you see a link, click on it to have a musical example opened in a new tab.

Studies in prehistoric and ancient music are fascinating but sadly inconclusive, just by virtue of "ancient times" being so damn long ago. Apparently, there are wall carvings from the 4th dynasty of Egypt (c. 2700 BCE) that depict a person using hand signs to give musical cues (cheironomy). These signs and their accompanying hieroglyphics are the earliest known record of any kind of musical notation, but we cannot interpret them into actual musical sound. There are clues that particular hand signs might represent particular notes or intervals, but we have no actual music, only these depictions of acts.

The earliest surviving written notation comes from Mesopotamia, from the 2nd millennium BCE. Rather than using symbols to represent musical sound, this notation is roughly equivalent to writing out music with note names. (e.g. "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is C-C-G-G-A-A-G.) But, we do not have musical works; these surviving tablet fragments only describe how to create scales. Around the same time as Egypt and Mesopotamia, China developed its own phonetic form of notation (using ideographs for note names, as in Chinese language). The oldest record of this notation comes from the 2nd millennium BCE, but references to it exist from the 4th millennium. Which end of Asia did it first?

Notation using letters as note names continued to develop throughout ancient civilizations. The theme, as you'll note, is that we only have evidence of scales and intervals. Does this mean they didn't write musical pieces down, or that we just don't have it? Such an extremely minute percentage of all historical documents survive, there is no way to be sure. It seems to be the case, however, that music generally was not written down. The cuneiform tablets, for example, include hymn texts alongside guides to scales and intervals. At the time, it was probably just common knowledge how the hymn could have been sung, and the scale was meant to guide a musician in accompanying the hymn.

So! We can say that the earliest recorded music is around 4000 years old, we just can't pick it up and play it on the family piano. (The idea of the musical object, that exists fixed as one person's sacred intellectual property, is an incredibly recent idea, so don't look for it yet.) Music itself is, of course, as old as homo sapiens. The oldest surviving bone flute is 25,000 years old, and people had voices long before they invented tools, so clearly, folks have been making music for a very long time.

Was the music strictly for ritual or communication, or for entertainment? It's impossible to say--early humans wrote no letters to the future--but I would speculate that ancient people made no real distinction. Church chant serves a practical purpose, aiding memory of liturgy and encouraging spiritual focus, but it is also enjoyed and appreciated as an object of beauty. (Medieval clerics wrote extensively about the virtues of music.) A community's spiritual life has also, often, been its social life. Festivals derive from religious observations. Who is to say where functionality ends and pure entertainment begins?

So far, music throughout the world was always--as far as we can tell--memorized or improvised. The written records are not art, but educational tools. But at some point, we obviously started writing our music down. From here on, I can only speak about Western music. Musical notation was developed in order to standardize and unify church practice as the Western empire grew. As such, the earliest surviving works are plainchants used in liturgy. (All sacred music is liturgical until approximately the 13th century. Then, the music of the liturgy begins to take on life as art music, in a genre called motet. Motets could be performed during a mass but also existed outside of it.)

References to notation exist from the 8th century, and our first examples of figurative notation (as opposed to phonetic) exist from the 9th. This notation uses a system of neumes, which are squiggles over words that approximate pitch and duration. (Shown left.) These squiggles were gradually refined into square shaped notes located on a staff, so music in this square notation is the earliest that can be performed with any real certainty as to intended pitch. (Shown below.)

Although church music is the earliest we have, written secular music emerges around the same time as square notation. All of the earliest written secular music comes from the Troubadour traditions, which began around the 12th century. Written copies of their music appear in the 13th. Troubadour songs are most famously about courtly love, but they reflect many aspects of court life (as Troubadours were always noblemen--or women!). Some Troubadours wrote about their professional relationships with their patrons, some wrote songs about their experiences in the crusades, and so on. At this time, we also encounter the first secular musical drama, Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, by renowned trouvere Adam de la Halle. (I have to caution that the recording in the link is quite dated, with an extremely Orientalist interpretation, but it's fun. Skip ahead to 5:15.) This is a satirical pastourelle, so as such, its songs have a folksy character that possibly reflects the popular music of the time. (Two of its songs, "Robin m'aime" and "He, resvelle toi Robin," were quite famous in their day!)

We often wonder why people suddenly decided to start recording their music. Although there are 13th century sources, they become much more common in the 14th. Sometimes it's suggested that the Black Death inspired people to start keeping better records, to stop being reliant on oral transmission. I think the answer is likely much more simple: the 14th century is when the technology became practical. (Think of it as roughly analogous to the internet in the 80s versus in the 90s.)

Although I've focused on Western church music, it's important to bear in mind that they did not have notation locked away in the Ark somewhere, hidden from the rest of the world. The Eastern empire and also the Germanic "barbarians" used similar notation, and they were all in contact, trading musical ideas.

So to sum up, it seems safe to say that music is as old as humanity, and it has always filled a variety of purposes. There seems to always have been a division between sacred music and folk music, and what typically survives in written form is the sacred music. People started thinking about writing it down at least 4000 years ago, but we can't find any real pieces of music until about 1000 years ago (at least, in the West--the Chinese were as much as a millennium ahead of us there.) But thanks to whatever motivated court culture in the high Middle Ages and the development of more precise notation, we finally get some secular art music in the 12th-13th centuries. (Folk music remained largely unpreserved.) I wish I could tell you more about what went on in the rest of the world, but I don't yet know. Perhaps this can be a topic for us to explore together in the future.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite pieces of way early music, which happens to be one of the most famous. This is the Viderunt omnes from the Magnus liber organi (which you saw a snippet of in the example of square notation). This manuscript is, incidentally, one of the first in Western history that can be linked to named individuals, Leonin (who is credited with the 1-2 voice works) and Perotin (the later 3-4 voice ones). The music is organum, which is polyphonic chant. I love the contrast of free chant sections with the rhythmic clausula. So here you have some of the first polyphony from the "first" composers!

What be this "musicology"?

2011-06-14T12:47:00.006-04:00

To inaugurate the Music 101 series, my friend asks, "What is musicology and what does a musicologist do?"

This is question I get frequently, and unfortunately there's no neat way to answer it. Musicology is simply, infuriatingly, the study of music. Daniel Leech-Wilkinson writes in the conclusion of The Modern Invention of Medieval Music that (and I'm paraphrasing), "Musicology is whatever musicologists do, interestingly." Truly, we make it up as we go.

When you apply to a graduate program for music, you have several courses of study to choose from. You can apply for performance, composition, music theory, musicology, or ethnomusicology, typically. Performance, composition, and music theory, you can see, are fairly specific. You must study all areas of music, to some extent, in any program. Even non-composers must compose as exercises for theory classes. But your primary purpose is relatively clear cut. A music theorist analyzes music--is primarily occupied with seeking out and describing its internal mechanisms.

(Ethno)musicology, though, is much more nebulous. While we certainly must know and perform some music analysis, our domain is effectively everything else. This can be the lives of composers, the process by which a piece was written, a survey of a composer's body of work in a particular place or time. It can be an examination of the relationship of a song's music to its lyrics, a reading of sexual or cultural violence in music, contemplation on the ability for music to imitate some aspect of life (mimesis).

Can we tell if Schubert was gay by looking at the way he wrote music? One musicologist thinks you can. What importance did arabesque motifs (as in, the visual motive) play in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring? What can the depiction of motherhood in late 18th century opera tell us about attitudes toward the sexes in that era? Why do certain books of English lute tablature from the early 16th century contain much heavier ornamentation than was typical of musical style in those decades? These are all papers I've heard recently.

Ethnomusicology is interested with much the same questions, but it focuses on music outside of Western art music. It examines world music, folk music, rock music, jazz, and so on. Because Ethnomusicology is often concerned with indigenous musics (which includes those of 21st century North America), it involves a lot more anthropological training, and it is for this reason that it's treated as a separate program of study. But as perspective continues to develop, we are now considering that we can even look at European history through an ethnographic lens--after all, 16th century Germany is a society that is very foreign to 21st century America. So at times the line between musicologists and ethnomusicologists is quite clear (the writing of my Enlightenment-era specialist teachers have little in common with my teacher who studies Albanian weddings), and others it's completely indistinct.

As for my own work, I'm still finding my way, but I am interested in historical musicology, especially medieval history. I'm currently seeking out ways to integrate early music and social theories. (One easy way is through Marxism--how do feudal versus free market economies affect musicianship and compositional output?) Perhaps ironically, current Medievalism typically focuses on using the past in order to facilitate tolerance and acceptance in the present. If we can treat medieval Europeans as Other in a constructive way, to stop conceiving of the present as the inevitable outcome of the monolith of history ("the church is against homosexuality now as it always has been"), then we can deconstruct our biases and obstacles.

I am also interested in pop music, particularly industrial music. Industrial music attracts me not just as a fan, but because it is musically and culturally unique. Its music is a hybrid of electronic and rock elements, so it defies conventional definitions of "rock" music, and at its most experimental, it defies all formal analysis. When does it stop being pop music and turn into art music? Does this line actually exist? How can music that sounds so different--experimental noise on one end, and techno on another--be cataloged as the same genre? How do industrial artists enact their politics? It's fascinating because the politics don't exist only in the lyrics, but in the performance, the presentation, and even in the structure of the music itself. Throbbing Gristle performed their music as a form of psychological and cultural warfare. What kind of dialog did they open?

The great struggle of musicology is that it can be whatever you want it to be. Sometimes it asks the Platonically big questions: what is music, and how can we know? Other times, it must concern itself with the gritty, boring details: how many singers were employed at the Papal chapel in the 1550s, and how much were they paid? Both schools of question are valid, and they need each other.

Spring comes in the summer...

2011-06-14T12:13:00.003-04:00

While I have some free time, I am resurrecting this blog. Grad school leaves me with little to no time for blogging, so who knows what will happen once school returns in the fall, but for now, bring it on.

Inspired by my friend's Art 101 series, I'd like to start a Music 101 series. Basically, you can take this as an opportunity to ask me anything about music that you'd like to know more about. What is serialism? How did we figure out how to write down music? Where does rock music come from? What the hell is emo, anyway?

Is there a genre you hate and you want its existence justified? Do you know what John Cage was smoking when he wrote 4'33"? Do you want to know if the music you hear at Renaissance festivals anywhere within the realm of historical accuracy? Do we even KNOW what's accurate to history?

Classical, pop, jazz, world musics, whatever. I don't know it all, but we can find out some things together.

Problems with Brideshead Revisited

2008-09-01T20:40:00.005-04:00

Holy crap, has it really been an entire year? I knew it had been a while since I felt like writing anything, but... huh.

I made it to see Brideshead Revisited before it left town, and I loved it, initially, because I apparently completely misinterpreted it. I wasn't familiar with the story beforehand, so the reviews and things I read when I got home were very illuminating.

The basic story (as in the film -- I haven't read the book) is that Charles, a normal-seeming middle class young man, becomes enamored with an aristocratic family that is mired in Catholic guilt. He becomes fast friends with the family's gay son, Sebastian, whom he has a 99.9% platonic love affair with before falling for Sebastian's sister, Julia. Although Charles never seems to have much more than brotherly affection for Sebastian, Sebastian's feelings clearly run deeper and he's devastated by Charles' choice. Already a heavy escapist drinker, Sebastian falls into serious alcoholism. Charles loses Sebastian and the Marchmain family matron denies him any shot at Julia. Julia marries some boorish, opportunistic American just because he's Catholic and has an affair with Charles many years later, after she has freed herself from some of her family baggage, but ultimately doesn't run away with him, in order to preserve her soul.

Charles is an atheist. He has an inherited indifference from his secular upbringing, but faced with extremely dogmatic Catholicism, he seems to stand firmly on his atheism. Catholic guilt, hammered into the children by their overbearing, zealot mother, basically ruins everyone's lives. (The fountain in front of Brideshead has Atlas in the center. Every stone of that place is depicted as a burden.) Their father ran off to Italy to live joyously with a happy-go-lucky Catholic mistress. He rejects the suffocating (and if I recall correctly, that's his word) religiosity of his wife. He complains that many beautiful things are ruined by bringing god into them, but has a deathbed conversion.

What I saw in the movie was, our atheist protagonist observes everyone's lives being ruined by their religion. They all have shots at happiness, which is all they profess to want from life, but they choose instead to remain in their miserable ruts, because those paths are the godlier ones that they're obligated to ("destined"). When the father, who had initially turned the priest away, crosses himself before dying, Julia looks up at Charles with an expression of joy and relief. Charles can only look back in horror. His relationship with Julia ends then. (She makes her choice to remain with her husband, but he clearly sees something in her that he can't understand.) He gets on with his life, perhaps not so happily, and revisits Brideshead as a soldier. He walks around wondering if it's true that he wanted too much (to be close to both Sebastian and Julia, to have a family and the Marchmain's lifestyle), and if it was his wants that destroyed the Marchmain family. He goes into the estate chapel and starts to snuff out the candle on the altar, but hesitates and decides to leave it lit.

Berardinelli writes in his review, "In the end, however, Charles learns that his opinions about religion may not be fully informed." And you know what? I think that's actually the message. When he leaves the candle lit, I initially read it as saying he chooses to keep his memories of Brideshead rather than give them up (when Julia leaves him, he says he understands he has to let go), but I suppose it's actually saying that he chooses not to condemn their Catholic lifestyle. (In the book, apparently Charles ultimately converts to Catholicism.)

Throughout the film, characters criticize others' attempts to do something only to "fit in." This is especially true of Sebastian and Charles' relationship. Sebastian chooses someone who is entirely unlike him (and, by extension, nothing like the family and history he's desperate to escape) and then constantly highlights all of the ways in which Charles is different. He quite defiantly refuses to allow Charles to make an effort to blend in. Instead of being encouragement to stay true to your own heart, in the end, this seems to play out as encouragement to either do it right or not at all. It seems to say, never pretend to be something you're not, but counters it with, don't be what you are, either, if it's not the right thing.

Julia's sleazy husband converts only to get into the family wealth, and he criticizes Charles for not being smart enough to do the same thing himself. We're definitely not supposed to like the guy, so this seems to be additional criticism of those who would fit in for personal gain. (And if Charles converts sincerely later in life, then this enforces the idea of doing it right or not at all.) When Charles protests the family's decision to force a priest on their father, the eldest brother argues, it's their duty as Catholics to protect the ones they love. (Apparently in this instance, they don't see it as forcing their father to fit in, because they're hoping they're giving him one last chance to sincerely repent.)

The father admits that his own negligence contributed to Sebastian's downfall and that Charles also played a part in it. As enablers, they didn't uphold their duty to protect him. While this is an important admission, I'm not sure if it's trying to blame them for also enabling Sebastian's homosexual wickedness. It would seem that the Catholic family is to blame for Sebastian's unhappiness for trying to force him to be something he isn't and making him self-loathing, so are they (the writers) really trying to suggest the opposite?

So, basically, what could have been a devastating condemnation of dogma turns into... everyone losing everything they wanted simply because they never truly gave in and converted? Seriously? At one point, Lady Marchmain does say to Charles that happiness in this life is irrelevant; all that matters is the afterlife. Apparently the author means it.

The more I think about it, the more confused the message of the film seems to be. (And the more confused I get.) Perhaps both points exist in the book, or perhaps the book said one thing and the filmmakers wanted to offer a different take on it. Instead of being complex, it seems contradictory. Who was ruined? The family, for trying too hard to fulfill obligation and fit in, or Charles, for doing the opposite?

Or, to look at it another way: Charles' motivations are relatively pure, it seems. He loves Sebastian and Julia, and although he envies their lifestyle, in the end, I think he only wants to be with them and for them all to be happy. He could have behaved like Rex and faked his way into inheriting the estate if he'd only wanted the title. While Julia and Sebastian both love Charles, they also use him as an escape. He's an avenue to the things they truly want, but he also represents temptation. For Julia, he's the right man for a happy life, but it's not the godly life she wants. For Sebastian, Charles is an anchor in the straight world, but instead of helping him bury his feelings, Sebastian falls in love and his struggle only intensifies. (Of course, if Charles returns Sebastian's feelings, then he's the same as he is for Julia: the right man for happiness, but not for godliness.)

Sebastian criticizes Charles for never belonging to a gang -- never committing to one -- but this seems to be projecting. Sebastian never chooses whether to be true to his desires or be chaste. Julia, likewise, doesn't choose not to be with Charles and ends up marrying a horrible person just because he isn't Charles. They don't renounce the things they want to escape, they just try to pretend them away, and they suffer for it. And, again... is the point that they suffer for not following their hearts, or that they suffer for not committing to getting rid of temptation?

Notorious

2007-09-09T17:51:00.000-04:00

Well, I know I've been neglecting this blog this year. I tend to go through spurts of wanting to write a lot and not wanting to write anything, which is perhaps a major part of why I've never considered myself a writer of any description. The one thing that does actually compell me to write regularly is music, which I have been doing, but not always on paper, and nothing that I've felt is worth posting here. See, I write things in my head, and since they're done, I don't always get around to putting them down, because mentally I'm moving on to other things.

I recently saw Notorious, and I have to admit, I was a little underwhelemed by it. I enjoyed it, and it's a good film, but I wasn't completely won over. I've only seen it twice, so my memory for it isn't perfect, but basically, I felt the love story came up a bit short. (Heh, maybe it's just that almost any screen romance pales in comparison to the English Patient.)

My first thought at the ending was, where's the third act? The Nazi storyline is left unresolved. It was only then that I realized, the Nazi storyline is only a vehicle to put Devlin and Alicia together. In that case, it's fine if the story is unresolved, but -- should I have even noticed that it wasn'tresolved? If the true center of the film were as engaging as its meant to be, then everything else would be peripheral. We shouldn't want answers to the Nazi storyline. As it is, there's some confusion, although to an extent, Hitchcock does pull you into the romance by the end. Cary and Bergman have good chemistry and they make you believe what they're feelI believed that their characters were in love. By the end of the film, I did care more about what happened to them than what happened in Nazi catching. My problem, I think, is that the story doesn't make their relationship plausible to me. I believe what they're feeling, but I don't believe why they're feeling it. They meet, and Alicia sets her wiles to work on Devlin, as she does everyone. She grows cold to him, he begins to seem interested by her, they have lunch, and suddenly, they're in love. When did that happen? I can believe people falling in love overnight in films, if given a reason. I can believe that simply meeting a few times is enough to bring on raging infatuation, but something has to happen then to cement their feelings.

But that's the rub -- the whole point of their story is that they never fully acknowledge their feelings and allow them to cement until the very end. Devlin remains both fascinated and repulsed by Alicia's "loose" qualities, and I think Alicia is also fascinated and repulsed by Devlin's ambivalence. The push and pull in their relationship is certainly the most captivating part of their story. You can assume that Devlin is perhaps the first "good" and genuinely loving man in her life, and yet he also puts her down. You get the sense that she's used to having boyfriends who go as soon as they come, who don't really love her and are perhaps even a little abusive. A woman with a strong relationship history would have no reason to pursue a man such as Devlin, who spends most of the film treating her as inferior. Devlin has done nothing more extraordinary than show her some routine kindness, so why is Alicia so in love with him, when it seems they barely know each other? In the way she keeps coming back and asking him to say he loves her, she's obviously clinging to the hope that someone truly loves her. You almost don't know whether she's truly in love with Devlin or just with the idea that someone finally loves her. And that makes a compelling story.

So if the point of the film is that it takes them all this time to be able to cement their relationship, why do they actually talk about how much they love each other early in the film? Why, if the whole point is that they can't acknowledge the fact they're in love? Perhaps the point is that, Alicia is only obsessed because Devlin did actually speak of loving her. He said he loved her, and then acted completely indifferent. Certainly that would drive a woman crazy, wondering, does he or doesn't he? While that makes for a fine story, it also completely undermines the idea that Devlin is incapable of admitting his true feelings. I think it would have been much more compelling if he hadn't said anything about his feelings until the very end -- if only his actions had led Alicia to wonder.

So, I think it is largely well done, but with a seriously compromising flaw. Other than the tension of Devlin and Alicia's relationship, I really enjoyed the Devlin/Alicia/Sebastian triangle. It's an interesting dynamic, because in love, Sebastian is arguably more sympathetic than Devlin. Were he not a Nazi, his only flaw would be his extreme jealousy. He is sincere and genuinely cares for Alicia. Even when he discovers that she's only playing him -- when he not only has his feelings crushed but realizes that she's put his life in danger -- he is unable to allow her to come to direct harm, even if he is complicit in her captivity and illness. I think it's easier for him to watch her be slowly poisoned than to violently murder her in one fell swoop. Devlin protests to Alicia's assignment when he initially learns of its full nature, out of care for her safety, because the agency obviously doesn't think her death would come as a great loss to soceity. They're just trying to get their job done, at whatever cost. But later, he refuses to speak up, even when he knows the assignment is going too far. Just as Sebastian allows Alicia to slowly waste away out of fear that he will be discovered and killed, Devlin's cowardice causes him to push Alicia away and allow her to become mired in the assignment to the brink of death. Alicia apparently walks straight into danger only to see if he will try to stop her.

I have to say, I don't entirely understand why she seems to act as if she has nothing to live for. She seems to act like that from the moment she steps into frame, but we're never give a reason. I guess we're just supposed to take it as fact that she's simply No Good.

From a technical standpoint, of course the film is brilliantly done, with a lot of creative techniques that are certainly on the cutting edge for the 40's. In particular, he uses subjective shots to great effect. Alicia wakes up groggily and watches Devlin enter her room one morning, and another day she falls ill and staggers out of the room while the walls pitch and bend. I hoped that I would have more to say about the technical aspects after a second viewing, but sadly, I have nothing. I can only say, on the whole, I appreciated that this film seems to be a lot less heavy handed than Hitchcock can be. The moment where Alicia realizes her coffee is poisoned is a little over the top, but that's the only scene that comes to mind. Alicia makes it pretty obvious, by pointedly glaring at Mother Nazi, that she's caught on. I guess Mother Nazi either doesn't seem to realize or just doesn't care. I don't think Hitchcock cared which, either.

In the end, I'd say it's well worth watching if you're a fan of Hitchcock, film noir, or classic love stories, I just don't think it deserves a place in my all time top 100.

Misunderstanding and the Last Samurai

2007-01-08T12:32:00.001-05:00

The more times I see The Last Samurai, the more I love it, but I seem to be in the minority there. I don't know how to set this up, so I'm going to dive right in.

I think there are many misconceptions around the movie. Most often, I hear the complaint, "I liked the movie, except for the fact the last samurai was Tom Cruise." I guess it's all in understanding the filmmaker's intentions. (That, and I think most people just can't take Tom Cruise seriously these days.) While Zwick means to encapsulate this moment in history and to be true to the details, I think he's more concerned with the cultural heritage. He isn't trying to write a history book, and I think the particular historical setting serves more as a backdrop to the samurai's way of life than anything. The period of the film, the 1870's (1876), is the period in which Japan began to westernize. Japan wasn't a complete stranger to the west, because it had maintained at least a small amount of trade with Europe and the US since the 16th century, but it had only taken certain products from the west, never imitated a way of life. It wasn't until Commodore Perry's visit that Japan began to see a need to catch up to western industrialization, which also involved imitating everything from aspects of government to fashion. It's a fascinating time in Japanese history because it marks the spontaneous death of the old way of life and the very rapid birth of modernity. (I suppose the process was completed post-WWII.) It's the conflict of east and west, old and new. The film considers the cost of modernization/westernization, the balance of progress and conserving tradition. Even today, I think this struggle is present in Japan. Japan is obsessed with newer and better, and while they have a strong sense of Japanese national identity, I think there's sometimes a sense that all of the newest and best comes from abroad. Although, I suppose it's not so uncommon for any country's youngest generation to feel that its own country's culture and traditions are generally boring and inferior compared to those of other countries, which have the freshness of being unfamiliar.

Anyone who stayed awake through American history should remember that the latter half of the 19th century is also the period in which the US had taken it upon itself to subdue savages and spread the Light of the Western World. As I mentioned, many people are skeptical of the film promoting a white guy as the last samurai. I suppose some are worried that it's presenting the American characters as implicitly superior to all others, or something like that. I think that some of this confusion may come from the title, and the fact many people don't realize that the proper plural of "samurai" is "samurai". Tom Cruise's character Algren is the last samurai, Katsumoto is the last samurai, and all who fight and die at the final battle are the last samurai. The film in no way presents Algren as superior, or as a western hero civilizing a backwards foreign culture. This is obvious from the outset, when Algren's superior officer commissions Algren to train the Imperial army to subdue the rebellion. Zwick uses this character to represent "a man of his time", the prevailing western attitude that WASP culture is superior. He describes the rebel samurai as "savages, with bows and arrows", a phrase which Algren returns with irony later in the film. Unlike his superior officer, Algren is haunted by his past and is slowly destroying himself. He doesn't necessarily respect the "savages" he's subdued, but he feels bitterly about it.

If anything, the film takes the opposite approach, which is to idealize the samurai. While their presentation is idealized, it's important here to remember that Zwick makes no claim of telling a history. The film isn't a a critical historical study of the samurai, it's meant to be a presentation of its ideals. In his DVD commentary, Zwick is perfectly well aware of the true history of the samurai and isn't deluded into think that they were saintly and perfect. As a historian notes in the History Channel's special of "History Versus Hollywood", in the true historical account of this story, the samurai were pretty much the bad guys, the reactionary conservatives fighting to keep their power. But in this film, Zwick wants to dramatize all of their best qualities, the ideals that have endured as cultural legacy, and this period of history provides a poignant setting. Also, he intends for the story to be highly subjective. We're experiencing Japanese culture from Algren's point of view, as he comes to know and love it. The film revolves around two opposing developments: while Japan is looking to improve itself by imitating the western way of life, Algren finds himself again and is bettered through imitating the Japanese way of life. Because the film revolves around Algren, it makes sense for him to be the last character standing. For the Japanese samurai to survive would undermine the impact of the finale and, truly, the entire story. But Algren can't die at the final battle, because the story needs him to have his final audience with the emperor, to conclude his character arc and to conclude the film's idealogical arc. For all of these reasons, I strongly believe that even the idea of Algren himself as the last samurai is meant as a compliment to the culture, because in bushido, the way of the samurai, he finds his salvation.

pretentiousness and The Fountain

2006-12-18T00:24:00.001-05:00

If had a quarter for everytime I've heard someone use "pretentious" or "pseudo-intellectual" (bonus points when they're in the same sentence), then I might not be so irritated at seeing it thrown around so often. I've been reading press concerning The Fountain, which is the sponsor of this rant. When did "pretentious" come to mean "any ambitious effort in earnest" or "anything that tries to be different"? I've met pretentious people. I've experienced pretentious and pseudo-intellectual works. Most of them came from students. Amateurs who don't yet know their own voices and haven't fully developed their technique. There are plenty of pretentious professionals, to be sure, but I suppose by then they tend to have the chops to support their pretenses. (Then again, if you really are that good, I guess you're not so much "pretentious" as a pompous braggart.) Apparently "pseudo-intellectual" applies to anything that either tries to be smart and thoughtful or has faith in its audience's intelligence. Is it still "pseudo" if you actually have an idea what you're talking about? Anyway, not all style is lacking in substance.

I think people only toss around the terms around because they're self-conscious. It's too dippy new age or fannish or something to give a person some credit. They, apparently, need to be constantly undercut. Critics call people pseudo-intellectual because they assume the person is trying to put forth an appearance of knowing more than they do. They call people pretentious because they assume the person is vainly seeking recognition. Assuming something doesn't make it true, not even if everyone assumes the same thing. Why is it necesssary to make these kinds of assumptions so often? Do so many people's self-esteem really have to come at the expense of others?

And look where it's gotten us. A culture of irony. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for irony, but these days it is terribly passe to be sincere, and that's a sad thing.

As I mentioned, it's criticism of The Fountain that inspired this. Reviews of this movie are so hugely mixed. It really reinforces my belief that most criticism tells you more about the critic than the criticized. Not that it renders their reviews invalid, but sometimes I feel like I have to read 10 reviews to get one good review's worth of quality content. So far, a lot of critics hate The Fountain but a lot of fans love it. They don't just like it -- they looooove it. I guess I'm no exception. At first I wasn't completely sure what to make of it, but a lot of the film has lingered with me, and that has really increased my affection for it. A second viewing didn't hurt, either.

There are two reasons that I love a film like this. First, it's touching without being sentimental. In my opinion, anyway. That aspect of the film is hilarious to see in reviews, because opinions are so divided. Many people think it's clinical, and others call it sappy. How can it be both? I say that it's in the middle (as I so often do), and I think the soundtrack plays a big role in that. In an interview I read recently, Clint Mansell said that he spoke with Darren about what kind music they don't like in movies when beginning work on The Fountain, and they agreed they don't like film music is basically, as they call it, emotional wall paper. It's not really music, it's just ambience to guide you through and tell you how to feel and when. Clint strove to provide a score that would enhance the feeling of a scene, not dictate it, and I think he succeeds. Without a pappy soundtrack, a scene can be emotional without being cloying.

As for the accusations that the film is clinical, I think that Aronofsky is someone who is more interested in the ideas in his films than the character journies. Not that he isn't interested in the characters, but that sometimes they can perhaps become vehicles for presenting ideas, rather than letting the ideas flow organically from the characters and plot. That's where The Fountain finds many of its flaws, because it's supposed to be a movie about these two people's journies, and yet somehow, it seems many viewers left feeling like a bit of something was missing (based on various comments I've read). As to what may be missing, I can't say.

Perhaps the characters are actually given very thorough treatment, and it's the gaps in the ideas that we're feeling and pinning on the characters. Which brings me to the second thing I like about Aronofsky's films, and that's that he has faith in his audience's intelligence. I recently saw the The Singing Detective, and I think that its tagline fits Aronofsky perfectly: All clues, no solutions. He develops his ideas and takes them to some conclusion, but it isn't laid out in a Cliff Notes summary. How can an artist tell you what you're supposed to take from their art? All filmmakers can do is present their piece as best they can and have faith in the audience. An artist gives you food for thought, but can't tell you what to think. The problem lies in presenting the ideas coherently. It's a hard line to walk -- giving the audience everything it needs without laying it out too neatly. It's especially hard to remember that the audience doesn't know everything that you know, and might not be able to fill in some of the holes as easily. But you can never know what the audience will or won't connect; there will be people who get everything right away and people who never have any clue. Like I said, it's just a hard line. I think Aronofsky is getting better and better at walking it, though. Until the final act, The Fountain, though not linear, is very clear and easy to follow. There's room for you to interpret what's going on (is it literal, are we only seeing into the book, etc), but all of the things that are essential to the story are there. It's only the ending that becomes confusing, and even it is pretty well presented.

It may take a few viewings to catch everything, and you may have a shallower understanding if you can't catch all of his references. But that's been a hallmark of great literature and poetry for centuries. Why do we expect films to be so easy to digest? I don't think a filmmaker should aim to make his/her work as difficult as possible, just for the sake of being difficult, but I applaud anyone who is willing to make their audience meet them halfway.

about this blog

2006-12-17T23:52:00.000-05:00

This is a place for arts and entertainment reviews, criticism, musing, and -- let's be honest -- ranting. You'll find casual remarks as well as more academic and more thorough pieces. I often read reviews and criticism online, from accredited so-called professionals, and feel compelled to point out all of the ways in which they're so often horribly wrong. (How can people who do this for a living totally miss the point of so many works?) So it's quite likely you'll also find many review reviews. (It's a compulsion.) It is my firm opinion that most reviews reveal more about the critic than the subject of the review. I am, of course, no exception, but I make it my goal to be as fair as possible. Even an amateur critic's job is to review the quality of something based on its flaws and merits, not on his/her own personal hangups. We all have our frames of reference, but we don't have to dismiss something as crap just because we either didn't like it or, more often (as seems to be the case), didn't get it.

Most often, I will probably make posts related to movies and music. For movies, any genre is game, from classics to new releases. Music posts are most likely to be related to alternative, as well as classical and film scores. I may also post about books, but as I don't always have time to read and have a habit of re-reading the same books over and over, those posts may be somewhat few and far between. Meanwhile, feel free to make recommendations or requests, if so inclined.