The Lives of Others
Sep. 10th, 2007 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zalenaIt's cool and rainy this morning. The heat didn't go on last night, but I did wear my flannel beatnik cats riding mopeds pajamas. I will not be wearing sandals today, but I'm not sure it will stay cool enough for boots.
Yesterday was also cool, with those high, foggy, crystalline clouds that signal snow at a higher altitude. I couldn't see my breath, but it's just a matter of time. We usually have September snow in Colorado, mid-month.
I just wanted to say, if it hasn't been obvious in my posting, I've been feeling really good this week. Something switched last weekend and I finally feel like I can both cope with and/or enjoy all the things that have been coming my way.
I haven't been reading much, but I am in the middle of Dan Simmons Ilium, which like the Iliad has a confusing number of different characters with the same name who keep dying. It's at the edge of what I can tolerate in s/f, which is to say, it's almost too complicated for me to understand. I know I shouldn't admit to that, and I keep reminding myself that I know Mr. Simmons (not particularly well, he was an advanced studies teacher when I was in grade school, I took a writing class with him,) so I know that he's not really a technical guy. A lot of the big words and equations (which are probably invented anyway) can be skipped over without damaging the story.
I am, however, enjoying the 'English major crap' including some lovely analysis of Shakespeare's sonnets (which I've been rereading all summer). One of his characters treatments of Sonnet 116 "marriage of true minds" really works for me. Instead of being an affirmation of love, its a refutation of love. The robot character doing the analysis imagines what the poem is a response to, because his theory involves the sonnets being one side of a correspondance. As a response to a rejection, it really rings in a way it doesn't on wedding invitations. I've always felt that most people don't really understand the poem. "Love is not love when alteration finds," works so much better with a sneer rather than sincerity.
There's also a lot about Proust, but I just can't go there. I'm not old enough. I know it. I think I would find the whole thing boring and depressing, and until I get the right hook, I know better than to teach myself to hate it. (I'm a recovering Francophobe, anyway, I don't need MORE reasons to hate the French.)
I also saw The Lives of Others this weekend, and its a frickin' fantastic film. I almost want to hate it, it's so well crafted and manipulative. But I'm going to stick with fantastic. The basic plot involves an artist under surveillance, which forces a Stasi officer to overhear and be forced to interact with beautiful music and literature. It changes him.
The inevitable tragedy occurs. (How can you not have tragedy in an oppressive state?) But the movie keeps it very focused on the lives of individuals, rather than the sprawling conspiracies we see in most films. (That exists on the peripheral of the film when we see the Stasi archives, later, and one of the characters, now living in a unified Germany, requests his Stasi files.) And then, unexpectedly, redemption. The movie is paced slowly, but it is gripping, and beautiful.
I surprised myself with a wrenching sob when one of the characters, whose life has been completely crushed by the totalitarian regime, hears about the fall of the Wall. I imagined the embarrassment of making that sound in a theatre. Those moments when you hear someone else respond so viscerally to a movie. When someone starts weeping at a key moment, or someone's laughter sets off the whole theatre. One of my favorite, most magical, movie moments was when a small child in the audience started calling the name of one of the missing characters in The Secret of Roan Inish. "Jaimie!" the kid kept crying, the same way that the character on screen was calling, "Jaimie!"
It had me thinking about that period. I was only 13 when the Wall came down, but I remember it so vividly. I remember the kind of youthful optimism that flooded through the world, and how lucky I felt to be a young person in this time and place. It felt like the Youthquake our parents are always talking about.
Of course, I know better now. Most of us would say that the crumbling of Soviet-style communism is a good thing. But the countries are still recovering. There were all kinds of terrible conditions that accompanied the fraying of the entire social gov't. People (still) doing desperate things to survive. The inevitable reignition of the Balkan conflict. And all those peaceful revolutions that everyone seems to have forgotten.
(This all ties into my prejudices about Eastern European women, I'm sure, even though I don't quite understand it now.)
G came over with his computer last year and played a whole bunch of music, including some nostalgia favorites. One of them was Jesus Jones Right Here, Right Now. "Oh, Jesus Jones," I said.
"You know this band?" he asked.
"Yeah, they were really big in the early 90s after the Wall came down."
"What wall?" he said.
"The one separating East and West Germany," I said.
Then I realized this was a generational gap. He was 4 when all this happened. If I was not particularly politically informed or socially aware, he wasn't even conscious of it. For him it's all history.
And that's the thing that really got me about this movie. We are making a movie about history. 1984. Good lord. Am I that old? And we are starting to codify how we remember something from the deep past. Fictional images taking the place of real ones until it becomes completely fetishized (like WWII) and we can no longer separate fact from fiction.
Speaking of which, Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past, The Cat People) directed this noir set in Berlin just before partition called Berlin Express. It's often compared to The Third Man in its dealing with postwar conflict. I wouldn't say its a particularly great film, but I'm always telling people to see it. Tourneur filmed it on location in bombed out Berlin and it's a real eye opener to see the incredible destruction wreaked by war. The film is also incredibly ironic because its made before partition with no idea of what's about to happen in Berlin. Both these things make it really worth seeing. (And if you haven't seen his Cat People, its one of my favorite proto-horror films. Brilliantly shot and surprisingly suspenseful for a film of that period.)
Anyway, those are my thoughts on The Lives of Others which really is one of the best films I've seen in a very long time.
I thought I had something else to say this morning, but I have to stop if I'm going to get to work on time. August was a really difficult month for me, but Septemeber is shaping up to be much better. I just wanted to tell everyone that my baseline mood is positive and its hard not to second guess it. I keep telling myself, "Don't throw bricks at your own windows." Because the knowledge that it won't last is sometimes the hardest thing to live with and the easiest way to spoil a good mood.
Yesterday was also cool, with those high, foggy, crystalline clouds that signal snow at a higher altitude. I couldn't see my breath, but it's just a matter of time. We usually have September snow in Colorado, mid-month.
I just wanted to say, if it hasn't been obvious in my posting, I've been feeling really good this week. Something switched last weekend and I finally feel like I can both cope with and/or enjoy all the things that have been coming my way.
I haven't been reading much, but I am in the middle of Dan Simmons Ilium, which like the Iliad has a confusing number of different characters with the same name who keep dying. It's at the edge of what I can tolerate in s/f, which is to say, it's almost too complicated for me to understand. I know I shouldn't admit to that, and I keep reminding myself that I know Mr. Simmons (not particularly well, he was an advanced studies teacher when I was in grade school, I took a writing class with him,) so I know that he's not really a technical guy. A lot of the big words and equations (which are probably invented anyway) can be skipped over without damaging the story.
I am, however, enjoying the 'English major crap' including some lovely analysis of Shakespeare's sonnets (which I've been rereading all summer). One of his characters treatments of Sonnet 116 "marriage of true minds" really works for me. Instead of being an affirmation of love, its a refutation of love. The robot character doing the analysis imagines what the poem is a response to, because his theory involves the sonnets being one side of a correspondance. As a response to a rejection, it really rings in a way it doesn't on wedding invitations. I've always felt that most people don't really understand the poem. "Love is not love when alteration finds," works so much better with a sneer rather than sincerity.
There's also a lot about Proust, but I just can't go there. I'm not old enough. I know it. I think I would find the whole thing boring and depressing, and until I get the right hook, I know better than to teach myself to hate it. (I'm a recovering Francophobe, anyway, I don't need MORE reasons to hate the French.)
I also saw The Lives of Others this weekend, and its a frickin' fantastic film. I almost want to hate it, it's so well crafted and manipulative. But I'm going to stick with fantastic. The basic plot involves an artist under surveillance, which forces a Stasi officer to overhear and be forced to interact with beautiful music and literature. It changes him.
The inevitable tragedy occurs. (How can you not have tragedy in an oppressive state?) But the movie keeps it very focused on the lives of individuals, rather than the sprawling conspiracies we see in most films. (That exists on the peripheral of the film when we see the Stasi archives, later, and one of the characters, now living in a unified Germany, requests his Stasi files.) And then, unexpectedly, redemption. The movie is paced slowly, but it is gripping, and beautiful.
I surprised myself with a wrenching sob when one of the characters, whose life has been completely crushed by the totalitarian regime, hears about the fall of the Wall. I imagined the embarrassment of making that sound in a theatre. Those moments when you hear someone else respond so viscerally to a movie. When someone starts weeping at a key moment, or someone's laughter sets off the whole theatre. One of my favorite, most magical, movie moments was when a small child in the audience started calling the name of one of the missing characters in The Secret of Roan Inish. "Jaimie!" the kid kept crying, the same way that the character on screen was calling, "Jaimie!"
It had me thinking about that period. I was only 13 when the Wall came down, but I remember it so vividly. I remember the kind of youthful optimism that flooded through the world, and how lucky I felt to be a young person in this time and place. It felt like the Youthquake our parents are always talking about.
Of course, I know better now. Most of us would say that the crumbling of Soviet-style communism is a good thing. But the countries are still recovering. There were all kinds of terrible conditions that accompanied the fraying of the entire social gov't. People (still) doing desperate things to survive. The inevitable reignition of the Balkan conflict. And all those peaceful revolutions that everyone seems to have forgotten.
(This all ties into my prejudices about Eastern European women, I'm sure, even though I don't quite understand it now.)
G came over with his computer last year and played a whole bunch of music, including some nostalgia favorites. One of them was Jesus Jones Right Here, Right Now. "Oh, Jesus Jones," I said.
"You know this band?" he asked.
"Yeah, they were really big in the early 90s after the Wall came down."
"What wall?" he said.
"The one separating East and West Germany," I said.
Then I realized this was a generational gap. He was 4 when all this happened. If I was not particularly politically informed or socially aware, he wasn't even conscious of it. For him it's all history.
And that's the thing that really got me about this movie. We are making a movie about history. 1984. Good lord. Am I that old? And we are starting to codify how we remember something from the deep past. Fictional images taking the place of real ones until it becomes completely fetishized (like WWII) and we can no longer separate fact from fiction.
Speaking of which, Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past, The Cat People) directed this noir set in Berlin just before partition called Berlin Express. It's often compared to The Third Man in its dealing with postwar conflict. I wouldn't say its a particularly great film, but I'm always telling people to see it. Tourneur filmed it on location in bombed out Berlin and it's a real eye opener to see the incredible destruction wreaked by war. The film is also incredibly ironic because its made before partition with no idea of what's about to happen in Berlin. Both these things make it really worth seeing. (And if you haven't seen his Cat People, its one of my favorite proto-horror films. Brilliantly shot and surprisingly suspenseful for a film of that period.)
Anyway, those are my thoughts on The Lives of Others which really is one of the best films I've seen in a very long time.
I thought I had something else to say this morning, but I have to stop if I'm going to get to work on time. August was a really difficult month for me, but Septemeber is shaping up to be much better. I just wanted to tell everyone that my baseline mood is positive and its hard not to second guess it. I keep telling myself, "Don't throw bricks at your own windows." Because the knowledge that it won't last is sometimes the hardest thing to live with and the easiest way to spoil a good mood.
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Date: 2007-09-10 08:24 pm (UTC)