philosophy in film

For some, if there is something in their life they want [maybe desparately] but lack they will readily delude themselves into believing it is within their grasp. They will even create a reality in their head that bares almost no resemblance to the world as it is.

This seems especially true when that which is lacking is love. Or lust. Or both. And if you feel you deserve it…worlds can crumble. You want two things but, in the end, you can only have one. But sometimes the end doesn’t really come until you have neither one.

The only antedote for this is to, first and foremost, always – always – become your own best friend. Some here are particularly lucky. They actually come to thrive on it.

But this is also a movie about class. Still, where one ends and the other begins can get tricky as hell.

NOTES ON A SCANDAL
Directed by Richard Eyre

[b]Barbara [voiceover]: Here come the local pubescent proles. The future plumbers, shop assistants, and doubtless the odd terrorist too. In the old days, we confiscated cigarettes and wank mags. Now it’s knives and crack cocaine. And they call it progress.

…

Headmaster [holding a single sheet of paper]: This is your report on the history department? On its entire workings?
Barbara: You’ll find it’s quite thorough, Headmaster.
Headmaster [reading the report out loud]: “The history department functions much as one would expect for a school of this stature and intake. Examination results have been consistent for 30 years: below the national average but above the level of catastrophe. Recommendation: no change necessary”.
Barbara: Took me most of the summer to write it.

…

Barbara: Why were you fighting? Perfectly simple question.
Steven: [mumbles] Dunno, miss.
Barbara: You don’t know. One minute you’re an inert lump, the next you’re trying to castrate a fellow pupil. Nothing occurred between these two states?

…

Sheba: When you started teaching, didn’t you want to give them a real education to help overcome… the poverty of their backgrounds?
Barbara: Oh yes, of course. But one soon learns that teaching is crowd control. We’re a branch of the social services.
Sue: Console yourself with the gems. That’s when it’s satisfying. Then you can make a real difference.
Barbara: The rest is just cattle-prod and pray.

…

Barbara [voiceover watching Sheba and her brood dance after eating]: After lunch a rather mortifying family tradition. They do things differently in bourgeois bohemia.

…

Barbara [voiceover]: It’s a peculiar trait of the priveleged: immediate, incautious intimacy. But Sheba went well beyonde the tendencies of her class. She was utterly incautious.

…

Sheba: You know, marriage and kids—I mean it’s wonderful. But doesn’t give you meaning. It gives you an imperative but it doesn’t help you…My father always used to say… you know, on the tube…“Mind the gap”. I don’t know…it’s just the distance between life as you dream it, and life as it is.
Barbara: I know exactly what you mean.

…

Barbara [voiceover]: A gold star day!

…

Barabara [voiceover]: S. and I share the ability to see through the quotidian awfulness of things. In a different, better age, we would be ladies of leisure, lunching together, visiting galleries, traveling, putting the world to right. We would be…companions.[/b]

Unless, of course, she’s screwing around with one her students.

[b]Sheba: I hadn’t been pursued like this for years…I knew it was wrong, and immoral, and completely ridiculous, but, I don’t know. I just allowed it to happen.
Barbara: The boy is fifteen!
Sheba: But he’s quite mature for his age!
Barbara: “But” is not a helpful word here.
Sheba: This is going to sound sick, but something in me felt…entitled. You know, I’ve been good all my adult life. I’ve been a decent wife, a dutiful mother coping with Ben. This voice inside me kept saying “why shouldn’t you be bad, why shouldn’t you transgress? I mean, you’ve earned the right.”

…

Barbara: We are bound by the secrets we share

…

Barbara: [voiceover] And then I realised my fury had blinded me. There was a magnificent opportunity here. With stealth, I might secure the prize long-term, forever in my debt. I could gain everything by doing nothing.

…

Steven [giving Sheba a necklace as a Christmas present]: It’s made of real fake gold.

…

Steven: Was that your dad?

…

Sheba: So that’s your vicious father?
Steven: You wanted a sob story, I gave it to you. Made you feel like Bob Geldof.
Sheba: You lied to me!
Steven: Ooooh, sorry, Miss! What, would you prefer it if I lived in a shithole?
Sheba: And your mother?
Steven: I think she’s gonna pull through. What do you want? What’re you doin’ here?

…

Steven: I really like you. You’re a nice person, and you’ve been cool, and it’s been great, okay? But it’s supposed to be fun. Now it’s a serious thing. Whatever shit you’re working out, you know, with your husband, your kid, you - I don’t know. I can’t help you.

…

Barbara: People languish for years with partners who are clearly from another planet. We want so much to believe that we’ve found our other. It takes courage to recognise the real as opposed to the convenient.

…

Barbara: When I was at school, if one of us had had some bad news or was a bit down, we used to stroke each other. You know, someone would do one arm and someone else the other. It was a wonderful sensation. Did you do that at your school?
Sheba: [embarrassed] No.
[Barbara looks down at Sheba’s cleavage]
Barbara: It’s incredibly relaxing - for the giver and the receiver.
[Barbara takes Sheba’s hands in hers]
Barbara: Close your eyes. It doesn’t work if you don’t.
[Barbara starts to stroke her fingers up and down Sheba’s forearms]
Barbara: That’s a good girl.
[Sheba pulls away, her face showing revulsion]
Sheba: I think that’s enough.
Barbara: No, close your eyes.
Sheba: [firmly] I really think that’s enough, Barbara.

…

Barbara [voiceover]: You say the words and it’s done. Easy. Judas had the grace to hang himself, but only according to Matthew, the most sentimental of the apostles. Is this the last night of her old life.

…

Barbara [voiceover]: People like Sheba think they know what it is to be lonely. But of the drip, drip of the long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. What it’s like to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the launderette. Or to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor’s hand sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. Of this, Sheba and her like have no clue.

…

Richard: You’re his teacher!
Sheba: And you were mine! I’m not justifying. I’m not trying to justify it…
Richard: You are so full of shit! It’s totally different. You were twenty!
Sheba: He’s sixteen in May. He’s not some innocent…
Richard: Of course he’s innocent! He’s fucking fifteen! Are you insane? If you meant to destroy us, why not do it with an adult? That’s the convention, it’s worked for centuries!
Sheba: It wasn’t about us…
Richard: W-W-Why?!
Sheba: I j-just wanted him.
Richard [pleading]: Why?
Sheba: I don’t know!
Richard: Well, find out!!

…

Barbara: [voiceover after Sheba has moved in with her] This last month has been the most delicious time of my life. Of course we have had our ups and downs. The pressure is intense when two women share their lives. But, oh, but what marvellous intensity it is! Circumstances are not always ideal. The swinish press, the stringent bail terms, meetings with lawyers and so on. But all things considered, we’re coping admirably. In fact, gold stars abundant. The cuckold permits her to see their children once a week. Thee are usually tears and fits of teenage tantrums, too. In time she’ll recognise she’s just not the mothering kind, and then Barbara will be there to comfort her. Nurse, beloved friend and wise counsel.[/b]

Then Sheba finds the diary…

[b]Sheba: What you say about me, about Richard - you’re not fit to shine his shoes. And Ben, and Polly, that I’d be happier without them. Why did you do it?
[slaps Barbara]
Sheba: Because I didn’t help you collect your cat?!
[slaps Barbara again]
Sheba: You’ve cost me my family!

…

Sheba: You think I wanted to be here with you?
Barbara: You need me, I’m your friend!
Sheba: You put me in prison, I could get TWO years!
Barbara: They’ll fly by! I’ll visit you every week! We’ve so much life to live together!
Sheba: You think this is a love affair? A relationship? What, sticky gold stars, and - and a strand of my hair? A sticker from Pizza Express? It’s a flat in the Archway Road and you think you’re Virginia frigging Woolf! And where did you get my hair? Did you pluck it from the bath with some special fucking tweezers?

…

Barbara: You know it’s rude to read a person’s diary, it’s private!
Sheba: We’re not companions! We’re not friends! You don’t even like me!
Barbara: That’s not true, I only have tender feelings for you, only love!
Sheba: You’re barking, fucking mad. You don’t know how to love. You have never, your whole life. Me, Jennifer Dodd. You’re nothing but waste and disappointment! You bitter old virgin. You’re lonely for a reason. They loathed you at school, all of them. I was the idiot who bothered, but only because no one told me you’re a fucking vampire! So what is it, Bar? You want to roll around the floor like lovers? You want to fuck me, Barbara?

…

Sheba [out on the street confronting the reporters]: Here I am! HERE I AM!!

…

Barbara: I’m Barbara.
Annabel: Annabel
Barbara: I wonder, Annabel, do you like music?
Annabel: Oh, yes.
Barbara: Uh, it’s just that I’ve got tickets for Handel’s Water Music at the Albert Hall.
Annabel: Oh.
Barbara: On Saturday night. You could bring a friend if there’s, uh, someone.
Annabe: Oh, no. Oh, no. There isn’t.
Barbara: Well, there we are.[/b]

It must get exhausting being someone others think you are instead who you think you are yourself. And being in show biz – does that make it harder or easier?

But where’s the Marilyn Monroe some insist is bursting at the seams with intelligence and depth and complexity. Just how far below the surface was it? But then what do I know about her?

And what must it have been like to fall in love with her? Did Colin get any closer to the person Marilyn thought she was herself?

Unfortunately, there seems to have been no one around back then able to properly introduce her to dasein. As dasein you expect to be both broken into pieces and misunderstood. You don’t even really understand the pieces yourself.

IMDb

“Scarlett Johansson was approached for the part of Marilyn Monroe but turned it down.”

Hmm…

“Colin Clark went on to have a successful career in film and television making. After retiring from filmmaking in the 1980s he became an author whose books included ‘My Week with Marilyn’ and ‘The Prince, the Showgirl and Me,’ both of which form the basis for this film. He died in 2002 at the age of 70.”

Here’s the thing though: The stuff in these books [and this film] could be mostly bullshit. Marilyn was dead so who can say what really happened when the two of them were together alone back then?

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN
Directed by Simon Curtis

[b][first lines]
Title Card: In 1956, at the height of her career, Marilyn Monroe went to England to make a film with Sir Laurence Olivier. While there she met a young man named Colin Clark, who wrote a diary about the making of the film. This is their true story.

…

Colin: I’m off now, Mama.
Mother: Off?
Colin: My job interview, remember…?
Mother: Can’t you stay for dinner? There’s nothing to eat but I’m sure the conversation will be charming.

…

Sir Laurence: You in the union?
Colin: No.
Sir Laurence: Then you can’t have a job on the film.
Colin: Well, how do I get into the union?
Sir Laurence: By getting a job on the film.

…

Sir Laurence: Third’s job is to do whatever the fuck I tell him.

…

Sir Laurence: She should be on time like everyone else.
Milton: She’s a star.
Sir Laurence: I’m a fucking star.
Arthur: She’s the greatest piece of ass on earth. With tits like that, you make allowances.

…

Sir Laurence: Marilyn, my darling, you are an angel and I kiss the hem of your garment but why can’t you get here on time for the love of FUCK?
Marilyn: Oh, you have that word in England too?

…

Sir Laurence: Marilyn, will you just try to be sexy. Isn’t that what you do?

…

Sir Laurence: Trying to teach Marilyn how to act is like teaching Urdu to a badger!

…

Sir Laurence: Christ! Pills to sleep. Pills to wake up. Pills to calm her down. Pills to give her energy. No wonder she’s permanently ten feet underwater!

…

Colin: Maybe she’s scared.
Sir Laurence: We’re all scared! I’ve spent half my professional life in abject bloody terror! It’s what actors do!

…

Milton: She’s not feeling the part.
Sir Laurence: It’s a light comedy. How much feeling can it possibly require?

…

Sir Laurence: Remember boy, when it comes to women, you’re never too old for humiliation.

…

Sir Laurence: What is Marilyn doing on the phone with my third fucking assistant?

…

Colin: It’s agony for him because he’s a great actor who wants to be a great film star, and it’s agony for you because you’re a great film star who wants to be a great actress. And this film won’t help either one of you.

…

Marilyn: Do you know I’ve been married three times already? How did that happen?
Colin: You were just looking for the right man.
Marilyn: They always look right at the start.

…

Milton [to Colin]: Listen kid, I’ve known Marilyn for seven years. I fell in love with her just as you’ve done. We had ten days together, and that was it. She picked me up, she put me down, that’s what she does. She breaks hearts. She will break yours.

…

Marilyn: All people ever see is Marilyn Monroe. As soon as they realize I’m not her, they run.

…

Lucy: Did she break your heart?
Colin: A little.
Lucy: Good, it needed breaking.

…

Sir Laurence: She’s quite wonderful. No training, no craft to speak of. No guile, just pure instinct. She’s astonishing.
Colin: You should tell her that.
Sir Laurence: Oh, I will, but she probably won’t believe me. It’s probably what makes her great. It’s almost certainly what makes her profoundly unhappy…I tried my best to change her, but she remains brilliant, despite me.

…

Sir Laurence: I think directing a movie is the best job ever created, but Marilyn has cured me of ever wanting to do it again.

…

Marilyn: Don’t forget me.
Colin: As if I could.

…

[last lines]
Colin: Here’s what I remember most: her embrace. Her belief in me. And the joy she gave. That was her gift. When I think of her now, I think of that time when a dream came true. And my only talent was not to close my eyes.[/b]

This is the kind of movie that, when you are younger, it makes you think, “yeah, this is the way the world should be.”

And then, as you get older, you watch it again and again just to remember what it was like to think and to feel that way.

In the end though the name of the game is power. Back then. Here today. Who can enforce the way they think things ought to be. This can be done politically through the laws of a legislature, religiously through the laws of Scripture or personally through the laws of the jungle. But you rarely escape for long the brute facticity of political economy.

IMDb

“In the funeral scene, the dog consistently refused to look into the grave. Finally, director George Stevens had the dog’s trainer lie down in the bottom of the grave, and the dog played his part ably. The coffin (loaded with rocks for appropriate effect) was then lowered into the grave, but when the harmonica player began to play ‘Taps’ spontaneously, the crew was so moved by the scene that they began shoveling dirt into the grave before remembering the dog’s trainer was still there.”

“According to the commentary on the DVD, during the scene where Shane and Joe are fighting in the corral, the tied horses were supposed to panic. To instill hysteria in the horses, the director had two men dressed in a bear’s costume to scare them.”

“In the scene where Alan Ladd practices shooting in front of Brandon De Wilde, it took 119 takes to complete.”

SHANE [1953]
Directed by George Stevens

[b]Joey: Somebody’s comin’, Pa!
Joe Starrett: Well, let him come.

…

Shane: You were watchin’ me down the trail for quite a spell, weren’t you?
Joey: Yes, I was.
Shane: You know, I like a man who watches things go on around him. It means he’ll make his mark someday.

…

Joe: Looks like your friends are a little late. What are the Ryker boys up to this time?
Shane: Rykers?
Joe: That’s what I said.
Shane: I wouldn’t know a Ryker from your Jersey cow.
Joe: Don’t forget to close the gate on your way out.
Shane: Do you mind putting down that gun? Then I’ll leave.
Joe: What difference does it make, you’re leaving anyway?
Shane: I’d like it to be my idea.

…

Ryker: I don’t want no trouble, Starrett. I came to inform you. I got that reservation beef contract…I’m gonna need all my range.
Joe: Now you’ve warned me, get off my place.
Ryker: Your place? You’ll have to get out before the snow.
Joe: Supposin’ I don’t?
Ryker: You and the other squatters.
Joe: Homesteaders, you mean.
Ryker: I could blast you outta here right now.
Joe: Listen to me. The time for gun-blastin’ a man off his place is passed. They’re building a penitentiary right to take care of…
Marian: Joe, that’s enough.

…

Ryker brother: Who are you stranger?
Shane: I’m a friend of Starret’s.

…

Joe [to Shane]: In case you wanted to know, that’s Ryker’s spread all over there. He thinks the whole world belongs to him.

…

Shane: That was an elegant dinner, Mrs Starrett.

…

Shane: Good morning, Joey.
Joey: How did you know it was me?
Shane: Well, I figured the cow couldn’t work that latch.

…

Shane: How much do I owe you?
Grafton: Now, let’s see…Pants, a dollar. Two shirts, 60 cents. Belt…Young man, you owe me two dollars and two bits.
Fred: What’s the matter, son? You look kinda pale.
Shane: Been a long time since I got store-bought clothes.
Fred: Money don’t go very far these days.

…

Ernie: I’m wore down and out. Tired of being insulted by them fellas. Called a pig-farmer. Who knows what comes next?
Joe: Well, don’t throw your tail up. Tell you what, we’ll all get together here tonight and figure out something.
Ernie: I don’t know about me.
Joe: I’ll get the word around. You tell Shipstead and Torrey.
Ernie: All right, but if we’re having a meeting, it’d better be more than pokin’ holes in the air with your finger.

…

Marian [in Grafton’s holding a jar used to preserve fruit]: My, my what will they think up next.

…

Shane: Joey…you let me take it in.

…

Joey: Shane, come on!
Shane: Joey, get out of here.
Joey: But, Shane, there’s too many.
Shane: You wouldn’t want me to run away, would you?
Joey: But there’s too many, Shane.
Shane: Go on, son, please.

…

Joey: When that chair came down on you, Shane, I thought you were a goner.
Shane: It was an easy chair, Joey.

…

Marian: This turpentine’ll hurt.
Joey: He wouldn’t say nothing. No matter how much it hurt. Would you, Shane?
Shane: I’m afraid I would, Joey, if it hurt bad enough.

…

Marian: Joey.
Joey: Yes?
Marian: Don’t get to liking Shane too much.
Joey: Why not?
Marian: I don’t want you to.
Joey: Is there anything wrong with him?
Marian: No.
Joey: Then what, Mother?
Marian: He’ll be moving on one day, Joey. You’ll be upset, if you get to liking him too much.

…

Joey: You wanna know something, Mother?
Marioan: What is it, Joey?
Joey [motioning to his mother to come to him]: Mother, I just love Shane.
Marian: Do you?
Joey: I love him almost as much as I love Pa. That’s all right, isn’t it?
Marian: He’s a fine man.
Joey: He’s so good. Don’t you like him, Mother?
Marian: Yes, I like him, too, Joey.

…

Joe: What’s the matter, honey?
Marian: Joe…Hold me. Don’t say anything. Just hold me tight.

…

Joey: They cut Mr Wright’s fence and Mr Shipstead’s, too.
Shane: They did?
Joey: Shane, what would you do if you caught them cutting our fence?
Shane: I’d ask them to please go around by the gate.
Joey: Aw, Shane!

…

Joey: Gosh! Is that what real gunfighters do?
Shane: No, Joey. Most of them have tricks of their own. One, for instance, likes a shoulder holster. Another one puts it in the belt of his pants. And some like two guns. But one’s all you need if you can use it…

…

Shane: A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or no worse than any other tool: an axe, a shovel or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that.

…

Grafton: I want you to know I like Joe Starrett.
Ryker: Fool oughta listen to reason.
Grafton: Your reason?

…

Joe: You’ve made things hard for us, and we being in the right.
Ryker: Right? You in the right? When I came to this country, you weren’t much older than your boy. We had rough times. Me and other men that are mostly dead now. I got a bad shoulder yet from a Cheyenne arrowhead. We made this country, we found it and we made it, with blood and empty bellies. Cattle we brought in were hazed off by Indians and rustlers. They don’t bother you much any more because we handled 'em. We made a safe range out of this. Some of us died doing it, but we made it. Then people move in who never had to raw-hide it through the old days. They fence off my range and fence me off from water. Some of them plough ditches, take out irrigation water. So the creek runs dry sometimes and I gotta move my stock because of it. And you say we have no right to the range. The men that did the work and ran the risks have no rights? I take you for a fair man, Starrett.
Joe: I’m not belittling what you did, but you didn’t find this country. There were trappers here and Indian traders before you. They tamed this country more than you did.
Ryker: They weren’t ranchers.
Joe: You talk about rights.You think you got the right to say nobody else has got any.[/b]

How absurd would it seem to either one of them to raise the issue of rights for the Indians they stole the land from.

[b]Joe [looking at Wilson]: What do you make of him?
Shane: He’s no cow puncher.

…

Ryker: I like Starrett, too, but I’ll kill him if I have to. I’ll kill him if I have to.
Wilson: You mean I’ll kill him if you have to.

…

Joe: Torrey was a pretty brave man. We’d be doing wrong if we wasn’t the same.
Fred: Last time you argued that, Torrey was alive. You want us to stay for more of this?
Joe: We can have a regular settlement. We can have a town, and churches and a school…
Fred: Graveyards?
Joe: I don’t know. You’ve just got to, that’s all.
Shane: He wants you to stay for something that means more than anything. Your families. Your wives and kids. Like you, Lewis, your girls, and Shipstead with his boys. They’ve got a right to stay here and grow up and be happy. It’s up to you people to have nerve enough to not give it up.
Joe: That’s right. We can’t give up this valley and we ain’t gonna do it. This is farming country, a place for people to bring up their families. Who’s Ryker to run us away from our own homes? He only wants to grow beef, and we want to grow families, to grow them good and strong, the way they were meant to be grown. God didn’t make all this country just for one man like Ryker.
Fred: He’s got it though, and that’s what counts.

…

Chris: Shane.
Shane: Who is it?
Chris: Calloway. Chris Calloway.
Shane: Stay where you are. I can drill you.
Chris: Hold it, I got something to tell you.
Shane: What do you want?
Chris: Starrett’s up against a stacked deck.
Shane: Why are you telling me?
Chris: I reckon something’s come over me.
Shane: I don’t figure.
Chris: I’m quitting Ryker. So long.
Shane: Chris.Thanks.[/b]

I always loved this scene.

[b]Joey: Pa! Shane’s got his gun on. He’s coming!

…

Joe: What’s the idea?
Shane: This is my kind of game.
Joe: But it ain’t yours.
Shane: Maybe you’re a match for Ryker, maybe not, but you’re no match for Wilson.

…

Marian: You’re both out of your senses. This isn’t worth a life. Are you fighting for this shack, this ground and nothing but work? I’m sick of it, I’m sick of trouble. Let’s move, let’s go on, please!
Joe: Marian, don’t say that! That ain’t the truth. You love this place more than me.
Marian: Not any more.
Joe: Even if it’s true, it changes nothing.

…

Joey: Shane! You hit him with your gun! I hate you!
Shane [to Marian]: Walk him around when he comes to. Here, Marian [holding Joe’s gun] hide this. He’ll be all right. No one can blame him for not keeping that date.
Marian: Shane. Wait! You were through with gunfighting.
Shane: I changed my mind.
Marian: Are you doing this just for me?
Shane: For you, Marian…and Joe and little Joe.
Marian: Then we’ll never see you again?
Shane: Never is a long time, Marian. Tell him…Tell him I was sorry.

…

Shane: I came to get your offer, Ryker.
Ryker: I’m not dealing with you. Where’s Starrett?
Shane: You’re dealing with me, Ryker.
Ryker: I got no quarrel with you, Shane. You can walk out now and no hard feeling.
Shane: What’s your offer, Ryker?
Ryker: To you, not a thing.
Shane: That’s too bad.
Ryker: Too bad?
Shane: You’ve lived too long. Your kind of days are over.
Ryker: My days? What about yours, gunfighter?
Shane: The difference is I know it.
Ryker: So, all right. We’ll all turn in our six-guns to the bartender, and start hoeing spuds, is that it?
Shane: Not quite yet. We haven’t heard from your friend here.

…

Joey: Was that him? Was that Wilson?
Shane: That was him. That was Wilson, all right, he was fast, fast on the draw.

…

Shane: I gotta be going on.
Joey: Why, Shane?
Shane: A man has to be what he is, Joey. Can’t break the mould. I tried it and it didn’t work for me.
Joey: We want you, Shane.
Shane: Joey, there’s no living with…with a killing. There’s no going back from one. Right or wrong, it’s a brand. A brand sticks. There’s no going back. Now you run on home to your mother, and tell her…tell her everything’s all right. And there aren’t any more guns in the valley.
Joey: Shane…
[Joey notices that Shane is wounded]
Joey: It’s bloody! You’re hurt!
Shane: [Shane starts to stroke Joey’s hair ] I’m all right, Joey. You go home to your mother and father and grow up to be strong and straight. And, Joey… take care of them, both of them.
Joey: Yes, Shane

…

Joey: Pa’s got things for you to do. And Mother wants you. I know she does! Shane! Shane! Come back![/b]

What happens when ostensibly civilized adults sit down to rationally discuss a fight their children were involved in? Well, the main point is this: Anything can happen.

Thinking gets entangled in emotional and psychological states that become entangled all the more when you try to fit your own into all the others. Then there’s self-deception. Then you get bombarded with extraneous stuff that aggrevates you all the more. Here it was only a matter of time before the discussion becomes less about the fight their sons had and more about the things they are coming at from a distance themselves. Between the spouses especially.

And then there’s the problem of Zachary. The maniac. Oh, and the poor little hamster! And that goddanm cell phone!!

The stuff, in other words, the funniest of black comedies are made of.

Warning: THIS FILM IS BURSTING AT THE SEAMS WITH CYNICISM.

Hell, I could have written the screenplay myself.

IMDb

“The film was shot in real time, without breaks and, with the exception of the park scenes, in a single location.”

CARNAGE [2011]
Directed by Roman Polanski

[b]Penelope: The issue is, do they wanna talk about this? Do they want to work this out?
Michael: Ethan does.
Penelope: Does Zachary?
Nanvy: We won’t give him a choice.
Penelope: But it has to come from him.
Nancy: Zachary acts like a thug. We’re not gonna wait around for him to see the light.
Penelope: Well, if Zachary sees Ethan in a punitive context because he’s forced to, I really don’t see anything positive coming out of that.
Alan: Mrs. Longstreet, our son is a maniac. If you hope he’ll suddenly and spontaneuously get all apologetic, you’re dreaming.

…

Penelope: I’m sure your son is not a maniac.
Nancy: No, Zachary is not a manic.
Alan: Yes, he is.
Nancy: Alan, don’t be an idiot. Why are you saying that.
Alan: Because he is a maniac.

…

Penelope: Are you planning on sanctioning Zachary in any way? You two can have your plumbing discussion some other time.
Nancy: If we decide to reprimand our child, we’ll do it in our own way and on our own terms.
Michael: Absolutely.
Penelope: Why absolutely?
Michael: It’s their kid. They’re free to do as they see fit.
Penelope: Well, I don’t agree.
Michael: You don’t agree about what, Penny?
Penelope: They’re not free.
Alan: Oh, is that right?

…

Penelope: It couldn’t be the cobbler, that much I do know.

…

Alan: A little warm coke and “bang”.

…

Michael: I was right on the edge with that toilet-flushing shit.
Penelope: You were incredible.
Michael: I held my own, right?
Incredible. Jamaica, Queens. Now that was genius.

…

Michael [to Nancy]: You’ve certainly perked up since you tossed your cookies.

…

Michael: Now that I know you two, I’m not surprised Zachary may have some behavioral issues.
Nancy [storming toward him]: When you killed that hamster…
Michael: Killed?!
Nancy: Killed.
Michael: I killed the hamster?!
Nancy: Yes. You do everything you can to make us feel guilty. You stake out the high ground as your own, but you yourself, are a murderer.
Michael: I definitely did not kill that hamster.
Alan: Worse.
Nancy: Worse. You left it out there trembling with fear in a hostile environment. That poor critter was probably eaten by a dog or a rat.
Penelope: She’s right about that.
Michael: What do you mean, “she’s right”?!
Penelope: I mean, come on, Michael. It must have been horrible what happened to that poor animal…

…

Michael: Their son beats the shit out of Ethan, and you’re in my face over a hamster?
Penelope: What you did to that hamster was wrong. You can’t deny that.
Michael: I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE HAMSTER!!
Penelope: You’re gonna give a shit when your daughter gets home!
Michael: Bring her on. I’m not going to be told how to act by some 9 year old snot-nosed brat.

…

Micahel: We were nice to you. We bought tulips!

…

Michael: We’re born alone and we die alone. Who wants a little scotch?

…

Penelope: Who said not to touch the cobbler this morning? Who said we should leave some for the Cowans? Who said that?

…

Mother [on the phone]: Mikey, it’s me again. I forgot to ask how Ethan is.
Michael: He’s fine. He got his teeth knocked out but he’s fine.

…

Penelope: Why can’t things be easier, you know? Why…Why does everything have to be so exhausting?
Alan: You think too much. Women think too much.
Nancy: Well, there’s an original response.
Penelope: I don’t know what it means to think too much. You know, I don’t know how you can just go on living with absolutely no moral sense of the world.
Michael: Look at me, I’m living.
Penelope: Oh, Michael, shut up.
Michael: What happened to your sense of humor?
Penelope: I don’t have a sense of humor and I don’t want one!

…

Michael: If you ask me, the couple is the worst ordeal God has ever inflicted on us. The couple and the family.

…

Alan: Penelope, I believe in the god of carnage, the god whose rule’s been unchallenged since time immemorial. See, I just got back from the Congo. They got kids there trained to kill at the age of 8. In the course of their childhood, they might kill hundreds of people. They kill with a machete, a shotgun, Kalash, a thumper. So, obviously, when my kid busts some other kid’s tooth, even two teeth with a bamboo switch by the sandbox, I’m not quite as shocked and indignant as you are.
Penelope: Well, you should be.
Michael: Thumper?
Alan: What they call a grenade launcher.

…

Penelope: Don’t you tell me about about Africa. I know all about suffering in Africa.
Alan: I don’t doubt it.
Penelope: That’s all I’ve been thinking about for months.
Michael: Don’t get her started on this, please.

…

Alan: Morally you’re supposed to overcome your impulses, but there are times you don’t want to overcome them.

…

Michael: Give it a fucking rest, Penelope. Enough with this politically correct bullshit!
Penelope: Which I believe in.
Michael: That you believe. You believe. This crush you got on these Sudan sambos is spilling over into everything now!
Penelope: I’m horrified. How could you be so openly despicable?
Michael: Because I feel like it. I feel like being openly despicable.
Penelope: One day you will understand the sheer horror of what’s happening in that part of the world and you will be ashamed…ashamed of your contemptibly nihilsitic attitude.[/b]

By this time you are starting to feel a bit uneasy. It’s just a comedy, however black. But laughter somehow doesn’t seem all that… appropriate?

[b]Nancy: We come over here to work things out with them and they insult us, they browbeat us, they lecture us about being good citizens of the planet. I am glad our son kicked the shit out of your son and I wipe my ass with your human rights!

…

Alan: [to Penelope] I saw your friend Jane Fonda on TV the other day. Made me want to run out and buy a Ku Klux Klan poster.

…

Nancy: At least our kid isn’t a little wimpy-ass faggot!
Penelope: Yours is a FUCKING SNITCH![/b]

You’re laughing your ass off at folks you know really aren’t that far off from reality in some parts of the country. Well, in some parts of my own country anyway.

How in the hell do the Coens think these things up?

And, on top of that, come up with the perfect soundtrack.

IMDb

“Fifteen babies played the Arizona quintuplets in the film. One of the babies was fired during production when he learned to walk.”

“Kevin Costner turned down the lead role.”

In that case, maybe there is a God.

RAISING ARIZONA
Written and directed by the Coen Brothers

[b]Hi.: I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn’t easy with that sumbitch Reagan in the White House. I dunno. They say he’s a decent man, so maybe his advisors are confused.

…

Hi: Ed rejoiced that my IawIess years were behind me and that our chiId-rearing years Iay ahead. And then the roof caved in.
Ed: Hi…l’m barren!

…

Hi [voiceover]: We tried an adoption agency.
Ed: It’s true that Hi has had a checkered past.
Hi: But Ed here is an officer of the law twice decorated, so we figure it kinda evens out.
[Clerk looks through the long string of Hi’s convictions]
Hi: But bioIogy and the prejudices of others conspired to keep us chiIdIess.

…

Hi [voiceover]: I even found myself driving past convenience stores…that weren’t on the way home.

…

Ed: Which one you get?
Hi: l don’t know. Nathan Junior, l think.
Ed: Gimme here.
Hi [dropping a copy of the Dr. Spock baby care book on the car seat]: Here’s the instructions.

…

Cellmate: …and when there was no meat, we ate fowl and when there was no fowl, we ate crawdad and when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand.
Hi.: You ate what?
Cellmate: We ate sand.
[pause]
Hi.: You ate SAND?
Cellmate: That’s right!

…

Ed: You mean you busted out of jail.
Evelle: No, ma’am. We released ourselves on our own recognizance.
Gale: What Evelle here is trying to say is that we felt that the institution no longer had anything to offer us.

…

Hi.: Prison life is structured - more’n some people care for.

…

Detective: Sir, were you born Nathan Huffhines?
Nathan Sr.: Yeah, l changed my name. What of it?
Detective: Can you tell us why?
Nathan Sr.: Yeah. Would you buy furniture at ‘‘Unpainted Huffhines’’?

…

Detective: Was the child wearing anything?
Nathan Sr.: Nobody sleeps naked in this house!

…

Dot: I’m sure you have the life insurance squared away?
Ed: Have we done that honey? We gotta do that honey!
Dot: You gotta do that Hi! Ed’s got her hands full with this little angel.
Hi: Yes, ma’am.
Dot: What would Ed and little angel do if a truck came along and splattered your brains all over the interstate?
Ed: Yeah honey! What if you get run over?
Dot: Or carried off by a twister.

…

Glen: How many Polacks it take to screw up a lightbulb?
Hi: I don’t know, Glen. One?
Glen: Nope, it takes three.
[Glen laughs. Hi doesn’t]
Glen: Wait a minute, I told it wrong. Here, I’m startin’ over: How come it takes three Polacks to screw up a lightbulb?
Hi: I don’t know, Glen.
Glen: 'Cause they’re so darn stupid!
[Glen laughs again. Hi doesn’t]
Glen: Shit, man, loosen up! Don’t ya get it?
Hi: No, Glen, I sure don’t.
Glen: Shit, man, think about it! I guess it’s what they call a “way homer.”
Hi: Why’s that?
Glen: 'Cause you only get it on the way home.
Hi: I’m already home, Glen

…

Glen: Say that reminds me, how’d you get that kid so darn fast? Me and Dot went in to adopt on account a’ somethin’ went wrong with my semen, and they said we had to wait five years for a healthy white baby. I said, “Healthy white baby? Five years? What else you got?” Said they got two Koreans and a negra born with his heart on the outside. It’s a crazy world.
Hi: Someone oughta sell tickets.
Glen: Sure, I’d buy one.

…

Glen: Say, did you hear about the person of the Polish persuasion who walked into a bar with a big 'ol pile of shit in his hands and he says, “Look what I almost stepped in”?

…

Hi: What are you talkin’ about, Glen?
Glen: What am I talkin’ about? I’m talkin’ about sex, boy, what the hell you talkin’ about? I’m talkin’ about l’amour! I’m talkin’ that me and Dot are swingers, as in “to swing.” I’m talkin’ about wife swappin’. I’m talkin’ about what they call nowadays open marriage. I’m talk…
Hi: [Knocks Glen to the ground with a punch] Keep your goddamn hands off my wife!

…

Hi: Wake up, Son.
[aims gun at the clerk]
Hi: I’ll be taking these Huggies and whatever cash ya got.
Ed: [sees Hi from the car] That son’ bitch. That son of a bitch! You son of a bitch!
Hi: Better hurry it up, I’m in dutch with the wife.

…

Hayseed truck driver: Son, you got a panty on your head.

…

Gale: l wouldn’t be surprised if the source of the marital friction weren’t financial.
Hi: As a matter of fact, l did lose my job today.
Evelle: Hi, you’re young and you got your health. What you want with a job?

…

Evelle: We come to invite you in on a little score.
Gale: A bank, Hi.
Hi: Come on now!
Gale: l know you’re partial to convenience stores, but dammit, Hi, the sun don’t rise and set on the corner grocery.

…

Leonard: Name’s Smalls. Leonard Smalls. My friends call me Lenny…only I ain’t got no friends.

…

Nathan Sr.: I got the cops and the Federal BI out there lookin’ for my boy…
Leonard: Cops won’t find your boy. A cop couldn’t find his butt if it had a bell on it. You wanna find an outlaw, you call an outlaw. You wanna find a Dunkin’ Donuts, you call a cop.

…

Evelle [buying diapers]: You know how to put these things on?
Grocer: Well, around the butt and up over the groin area.
Evelle: I know WHERE they go, old timer. I just want to know if I need pins or fasteners.
Grocer: Well, no, they got them tape-ettes already on there. It’s self-contained and fairly explanatory.

…

Evelle: Hey, do these balloons blow up into funny shapes and all?
Grocer: Well no…unless round is funny.

…

Gale: Say…where’s Junior?
Evelle: What do you mean? Didn’t you put him in?
Gale: No, l thought…Where’d we leave him?
[They both look up at the roof of the car’]
AAH! AAH! AAH! AAH! AAH! AAH! AAH! AAH! AAH! AAH! AAH! AAH!

…

Grocer: [still counting backwards after Evelle has robbed him] Seven hunnred an’ ninety two Mississippi, seven hunnerd an’ ninety-one Mississippi…Aw, bullshit!

…

Gale: All right, ya hayseeds, it’s a stick-up. Everybody freeze. Everybody down on the ground.
Feisty Hayseed: Well, which is it, young feller? You want I should freeze or get down on the ground? Mean to say, if’n I freeze, I can’t rightly drop. And if’n I drop, I’m a-gonna be in motion. You see…
Gale: Shut up!

…

Ed: We don’t want no reward. We didn’t bring him back for money.
Nathan Sr.: We could work it that way too.

Hi: This whoIe dream. Was it wishfuI thinkin’? Was I just fleein’ reaIity, Iike I know I’m IiabIe to do? But me and Ed, we can be good too. And it seemed reaI. It seemed Iike us. And it seemed Iike, well…our home. lf not Arizona, then a Iand not too far away, where all parents are strong and wise and capabIe and all the chiIdren are happy and beIoved. I don’t know. Maybe it was Utah.[/b]

How hard is it to believe this is all based on…actual events?

The individual – sometimes even the mightiest – can get swept up in human history like a grain of sand in a windstorm. Begetting still the arrogance of those trying to ascertain [or even establish] what it all means. But then, as Bob Dylan once reminded us, “I guess that’s better left unsaid”.

And yet another narrative from Mr. Dylan leaps to mind: “He’s only a pawn in their game”.

In the course of human events, there are narratives so overwhelming that, once you are caught up in them [at a young enough age], acting them out becomes like breathing. Especially with no one around to suggest an alternative. Then R.J. Johnston arrives with his own rendition of the aristocrat. The English gentleman. But there will be many more to come. Both foreign and domestic.

Again, only narratives and those with the capacity to enforce one over the others prevail.

IMDb

“The first feature film granted permission by the Chinese government to be filmed in the Forbidden City. This was the first western film made in and about the country to be produced with full Chinese government cooperation since 1949.”

“The Buddhist lamas who appear in the film could not be touched by women, so extra male wardrobe helpers were hired to dress them.”

“Two thousand soldiers had the front of their heads shaved in order to play Qing banner men. They were persuaded to do so by their officers who convinced them that it showed friendship to the Italians and British. They were given a bonus of $3.50.”

“1,100 schoolchildren were brought in to play Red Guards who composed the Cultural Revolution march (1967). Bernardo Bertolucci had problems instilling the right amount of anger in them, as none of them knew of the attitudes of the Cultural Revolution.”

“Bernardo Bertolucci talked at length with Sean Connery, regarding the role of Reginald Johnston. Connery ended up convincing the director not to cast him.”

Wiki

“In Japan, the Shochiku Fuji Company edited out a thirty-second sequence from The Last Emperor depicting the Rape of Nanjing before distributing it to Japanese theatres, without Bertolucci’s consent. The Rape of Nanjing — in which hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians were massacred by the Imperial Japanese Army — is an event disputed by the Japanese government, and a diplomatic stumbling block with China. Bertolucci was furious at Shochiku Fuji’s interference with his film, calling it ‘revolting’. The company quickly restored the scene, blaming ‘confusion and misunderstanding’ for the edit while opining that the Rape sequence was ‘too sensational’ for Japanese audiences.”

THE LAST EMPEROR:
Written and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

[b]The Governor: [setting a recurring theme of imprisonment throughout the film] Open the door! Open the door! Open the door!..Open the door!

…

Birth Mother: Ar Mo, I am giving you my Son. My son is your son.

…

Attendent:You are the Lord of Ten Thousand Years.
Puyi: I am the Son of Heaven! I am the Son of Heaven![/b]

Well, sort of.

[b]Brother: Is it true that you can do whatever you want?
Puyi: Of course I can. If I am naughty someone else is punished. One of them.

…

Puyi: Why are you wearing that? You are not allowed to wear yellow. Only the Emperor can wear that yellow. Take it off.
Brother: No.
Puyi: Take it off!
Brother: No, and you’re not the Emperor any more. There is a new Emperor now. He has cut off his queue. And instead of a camel he has got a car.
Puyi: What did you say?
Brother: You’re not the Emperor. You’re not the Emperor any more.
Puyi: How dare you. [to his attendent] Am I the Emperor or not?
Attendent: Your Majesty will always be the Emperor
Puyi: You see.
Brother: Prove it.
Puyi [to attendent]: Drink it. Go on, drink the green ink.

…

Puyi: Why is this wall here, Lord Chamberlain?
Lord Chamberlain: It is just a wall, Your Majesty. Nothing has changed here.
Puyi: You are lying. High Tutor, am I still the Emporor?
High Tutor: You will always be the Emperor inside the Forbidden City. But not outside.

…

Puyi: You are all liars!!

…

Governnor: This is the detention centre of the Fushun Bureau of Public Security and I am the Governer. During the war this was a Japanese prison. Many of you may remember it because you worked with the Japanese. You were responsible for building it and you filled it with innocent people How could this happen? Why did you betray your country? What turned you into war criminals? We believe that men are born good. We believe that the only way to change is to discover the truth and look at it in the face. That is why you are here. You will begin by writing the story of your lives and by confessing your crimes. Your salvation will lie entirely in the attitude you take. I advise you to be frank and sincere. Otherwise things can still go very badly for you.[/b]

Sound familiar?

Johnston: Words are important.
Puyi, at 15: Why are words important?
Johnston: If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say and a gentleman should always mean what he says.

Oh boy…

[b]Puyi: Are you a gentleman?
Johnston: I would like to be a gentleman, Your Majesty. I try to be.
Puyi: I am not a gentleman. I’m not allowed to say what I mean. They are always telling me what to say.

…

Puyi [looking at a magazine cover]: Who is this George Washington?
Johnston: A famous American, Your Majesty. A revolutionary General, the first American President.
Puyi: Ah, like Mr Lenin in Russia?
Johnston: Not quiet.

…

Puyi: Is it true, Mr. Johnston, that many people out there have had their heads cut off?
Johnston: It is true, your majesty. Many heads have been chopped off. It does stop them thinking

…

Communist official: The toothpaste prisoner needs to be squeezed every now and then or else he forgets to keep confessing. The water tap prisoner needs just one good hard twist before he starts…but then everything comes out. Now you’re an intelligent person. I’m sure you understand me?

…

Communist official: Why do you think you’re in here?
Puyi: I am accused of being a traitor, a collaborator and a counter revolutionary.
Communist official [furious] IT IS NOT AN ACCUSATION! YOU ARE A TRAITOR! YOU ARE A COLLABORATOR! YOU ARE A COUNTER REVOLUTIONARY!

…

Puyi: What do you want me to confess?
Official: You know what you did and what others did. So why don’t you volunteer the information?
Puyi: I do not understand.
Official: We don’t tell people what to confess. We already know everything about you.
Puyi: I…I wanted reforms.
Official: What did you want to…reform?
Puyi: Everything.

…

The High Tutor: There has been Eunuchs in the Forbidden City for eight hundred years. There are still more than a thousand of them.
Puyi: I decided to expel them all. I had to ask for Republican troops to help me.
Wife: What are they carrying?
High Tutor: Their organs. Whatever their crimes they cannot be deprived of the right to be buried as whole men.

…

The Governor: How did your friendship with the Japanese begin? Who introduced you? When?
Puyi: I think it was…it was 1924. Parliament had been dissolved again. The President had fled. At first I thought it was just another coup d’etat by just another warlord. Only this time it was different. This time it was my turn.

…

Puyi: What are you all looking at? What are you standing there for? You always wanted to leave the Forbidden City. Now you have got an hour to pack. So go!

…

Puyi: I always thought I hated it here. But now I am afraid to leave.

…

Communist official: But you didn’t go to the British Embassy, did you? You ended up at the Japanese Embassy.
Puyi: The Japanese were the only people prepared to help me.
Official: Help you for nothing?
Puyi: Japan has an Emperor. We are almost the same age. I thought it was kindness. The same time I realized that for many Chinese I was an alien. Simply because I am Manchurian.

…

The Governor: While you were in Tientsin most of China came under the control of General Chiang Kai Shek the so-called Nationalists…the Kuomintang. What were your relations with them?
Puyi: None. I felt useless in Tientsin. I was twenty-one. I dreamt of going to the West. I became a playboy.

…

Yoshiko: You smoke opium? Be wicked. It’s the best in Shanghai. Why are you going to Europe? The place to go is Japan. It’s more fun than anywhere. It’s modern.
Wanrong: How do you know we are going to Europe? It is a secret.
Yoshiko: Oh, I know everything. I know Chiang Kai Shek has got false teeth. I even know his nickname, “Cash-my-check”. I’m a spy. And I don’t care who knows it.

…

High Tutor: The Japanese invasion of Manchuria will be condemned by the League of Nations and by every civilised country on Earth.
Puyi: The Chinese Republic has broken every promise it ever made to me. Chinese troops desecrated the tombs of my ancestors. And Chinese troops did not defend Manchuria from the Japanese.
High Tutor: But Manchuria is still China.
Puyi: China has turned its back on me![/b]

This is how it plays out. There is the personal. There is the political. And then they become hopelessly intertwined in dasein.

[b]Wanrong [bursting at the seams with irony]: Ten thousand years to His Majesty the Emperor!

…

Japanese official [hammering in the final nail]: The Japanese are the only divine race on our earth. We will take China, Hong Kong, Indo-China, Siam, Malaya. Singapore and India. Asia belongs to us!

…

The Governor: There have been complaints from your cell mates. You must learn how to urinate at night without waking them all up. The way to do it is to urinate against the side of the bucket not into the middle.
Puyi: Yes, comrade.

…

Puyi: You are all pretending. You are just pretending you have changed.
Fellow prisoner: The party teaches us to be new men. We are working for a new China.
Puyi: You are still the same people. People do not change.

…

Newsreel announcer: The attack on Shanghai was one of the first civilian bombing raids in history. It left thousands homeless. Thousands dead. Three months later Japanese armies were besieging the provisional capital at Nanking and when the city fell the atrocities began. Trying to terrorise the rest of China into surrender the Japanese high command ordered a massacre. More than two hundred thousand civilians were systematically executed. The world watched in horror but no help was given…Manchukuo the Japanese bustion in North China was still ruled by the puppet Emperor Puyi. But behind the facade of triumph was a country enslaved. A country where Japanese experiments in biological warfare were carried out on live human beings. A country where opium production became the easiest way to finance the war/ Millions of people were deliberately turned into drug addicts.

…

The Governor: [Confronting Puyi in the prison gardens, where Puyi works alone] Perhaps you think we’re here to teach men to lie in a new way?
The Governor: [Puyi continues working as if trying to ignore the Governor] Why did you sign every accusation made against you? I didn’t stop you from killing yourself to see you like this! Someone who will sign anything to please his enemies…to please me!
The Governor: [Puyi continues working] You knew about a lot of things in Manchukuo…even the secret agreements. But you couldn’t possibly have known about the Japanese biological warfare experiments in Harbin! Could you? So why did you sign these papers?
Puyi: I was responsible for everything.
The Governor: You are responsible for what you do! All your life you thought you were better than everyone else. Now you think you’re the worst of all!
Puyi: [sighs] Why can you not leave me alone? You saved my life to make me a puppet in your own play. You saved me because I am useful to you.
The Governor: Is that so terrible? To be useful?

…

The Governor: By order of the Supreme People’s Court the War Criminal Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, male, fifty-three years old of the Manchu nationality and from Peking, has now served 10 years detention. As a result of remoulding through labour and ideological education during his captivity he has shown that he has genuinely reformed. In accordance with Clause One of the Special Pardon Order he is therefore to be released.

…

Puyi [watching a student march during the Cultural Revolution]: Pu Chieh, look. It is the Governor of our prison. Comrade. This must be a mistake, I know this man. He is a good man. Protest leader: Who are you?
Puyi: I am a gardener.
Protest leader: Join us comrade, or fuck off.
Puyi: But what has he done?
Protest leader: He’s been accused.
Puyi: Accused of what?
Protest leader: Emperor’s lackey. Revisionist element. Rotten rightest [to the Governor] Confess your crimes.
Governor: I have nothing to confess.
Protest leader: Kowtow to Chairman Mao. Confess your crimes.
Governor: I have nothing to confess. I have nothing to confess.
Puyi: Wait. He is a teacher. He is a good teacher. You cannot do this to him.[/b]

If it wasn’t all so serious it could come straight out of the theatre of the absurd.

There are different ways in which to understand “being” as “unbearably light”. And I don’t pretend that my way should be yours. Or even, from time to time, that it should be mine. I only know that in my mind [here and now] it revolves around “being free unto death”.

But this being “in the movies”: it is inevitably experienced first and foremeost by the beautiful [and scripted] people.

Look for the narratives before and after the Soviets invade. Look for lives to change forever.

But men like Tomas and women like Sabina merely adapt.

And where is Czechoslovakia today? Gone.

IMDb

In 1989, the film was shown in Russia for the first time. Screenings were low-key, and held at midnight. Still, more than three thousand people attended each showing, with another thousand being turned away at the door. Many of the people had seen the Czech invasion footage before from the Soviet point of view - reedited to show the Soviet invaders as the heroes and the Czechs as the rebels. For many Russians, this was the first time they’d seen the point of view from the other side.

The assumption being of course there is only one right point of view.

Milan Kundera didn’t particular care for this version of his novel and refused to do publicity for it.

…

Jean-Claude Carrière’s original script deviated drastically from the final film version. Philip Kaufman feared it was too ‘arty’ for a commercial audience. Milan Kundera read Carrière’s original script after seeing the film and said, ‘That’s how it should be done.’

The unbearable lightness of the film industry as it were.

From wiki [regarding the book the film is based on]:

[b]Challenging Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence (the idea that the universe and its events have already occurred and will recur ad infinitum), the story’s thematic meditations posit the alternative; that each person has only one life to live, and that which occurs in life occurs only once and never again — thus the “lightness” of being. In contrast, the concept of eternal recurrence imposes a “heaviness” on our lives and on the decisions we make (to borrow from Nietzsche’s metaphor, it gives them “weight”.) Nietzsche believed this heaviness could be either a tremendous burden or great benefit depending on the individual’s perspective.

The “unbearable lightness” in the title also refers to the lightness of love and sex, which are themes of the novel. Kundera portrays love as fleeting, haphazard and perhaps based on endless strings of coincidences, despite holding such significance for humans.[/b]

Is the film then faithful to these assumptions? Well, how heavy or light is your own perspective here?

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
Directed by Philip Kaufman

[b]Tomas: Take off your clothes.

…

Tomas: I must go.
Sabina: Don’t you ever spend the night at the woman’s place?
Tomas: Never!
Sabina: What about when the woman’s at your place?
Tomas: I tell her I have insomnia… anything. Besides, I have a very narrow bed.
Sabina: Are you afraid of women, Doctor?
Tomas: Of course.

…

Sabina: I really like you, Tomas. You are the complete opposite of kitsch. In the kingdom of kitsch you would be a monster.

…

Chief Surgeon: Tomas? They called from Geneva. They are still offering you that job.
Tomas: Why should I go to Geneva? Everything’s fine here.
Chief Surgeon: Well… I hope so. You think the Russians won’t interfere? Think about what happened in Hungary.
Jiri: They couldn’t. The world wouldn’t allow it. Besides, we have socialism with a human face. Who could be against it?

…

Tomas [to Sabina]: If I had two lives…with one, I’d have her stay at my place. With the other, I’d kick her out. Then I’d compare and see which was best. But we only live once. Life’s so light…like an outline we can’t ever fill in or correct. It’s frightening.

…

Sabina [to Tereza]: I always try not to get too attached to a place, to objects. Or to people.

…

State official [marrying Tomas and Tereza]: I have to tell you this. Don’t think a life is a walk on a sunny meadow. Life isn’t a walk on a sunny meadow, and life isn’t a walk on a rose garden. Our socialist country has done much for you. Now it’s up to you.
[Mephisto the pig causes a commotion]
State official: I make you laugh?
Tomas: No… no.
Official: You are laughing at me?
Tomas: I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Offical: I refuse to go on. In this country, is nothing sacred anymore? If you can’t be serious, you don’t deserve to be married![/b]

I think this is an important scene in differentiating the old from the new. Who are they laughing at—the pig or the official’s authority?

Tomas: Tereza, what are you talking about?
Tereza: I know you see other women. I know it! You can’t hide it from me. Every day, I try to tell myself, “Well, it’s nothing. It’s not important. He’s just playing around. He can’t resist it. But he loves me. I’m sure about that. He loves me. He loves me!” But I can’t stand it. I tried hard. I just can’t. Take me to them. Don’t leave me alone!
Tomas: Tereza, calm down. Stop talking. Try to sleep. You need some sleep now.
Tereza: I don’t want to sleep. You’re tired of me. I know that. I can see it in your eyes.

But of course: She is wrong. He wants her. He wants them. Always both.
And then the tanks come.
How brave would you be?

[b]Speaker: The invasion of our country constitutes a clear act of aggression against an independent country. Our Czech people had the right and the duty to fight against the aggressor. People who don’t have the courage to fight with arms in their hands do not deserve freedom.
Sabina: So why did you emigrate? Go back and fight. It’s easy to tell other people to fight.

…

Franz: My name is Franz. I came to that meeting to listen. No, no, I’m not from the police. I’m a professor at the university.
Sabina: I have nothing in common with these people. The only things holding them together are defeats and the reproaches they address to one another.
Franz: It’s hard to be in exile. People feel abandoned. They feel a lack of understanding. They feel at a loss, lonely. Your country’s occupied. Are you indifferent to that?
Sabina: I can’t stand pointing fingers and raised fists.
Franz: So what do you want to do?
Sabina: I want to go to lunch. I’m hungry.

…

Franz: What happened to your country is a tragedy.
Sabina: You think so?
Franz: Of course. There was hope. They killed it.
Sabina: You’re not going to become boring, are you?[/b]

And she is beautiful enough to ask this of course.

[b]Sabina: Waiter? Can you stop that noise?
Waiter: Noise?
Sabina: Yes…what you call music.
Waiter: I’ll have to ask the manager.
Sabina [to Franz]: Everywhere music’s turning into noise. Look. These plastic flowers…they even put them in water. And look out there. Those buildings—the uglification of the world. The only place we can find beauty is if its persecutors have overlooked it. It’s a planetary process…and I can’t stand it.

…

Tereza [in letter to Tomas]: I know I’m supposed to help you, but I can’t. Instead of being your support I’m your weight. Life is very heavy to me, but it is so light to you. I can’t bear this lightness, this freedom… I’m not strong enough. In Prague, I only needed you for love. In Switzerland, I was dependent on you for everything. What would happen if you abandoned me? I’m weak. I’m going back to the country of the weak.

…

Tomas: I suppose a lot of them have signed these letters. They’re kept on file. They know they can be published at any moment, so they keep quiet, see? They can’t say anything anymore. They accept everything. Cowardice slowly becomes a rule of life.

…

Tereza: I don’t understand how someone can make love without being in love.

…

Tereza: Are you sure he was from the police?
Former government official: I’m not sure of anything. Anybody can be from the police. Maybe your engineer is a real engineer. Who knows? They know. And now they have what they wanted. Now you are afraid.

…

Mailman: I got a special delivery here for you, from Europe.
Man: What is it? Bad news?
Sabina [now in America after reading the letter]: Some friends died. They were coming back from spending the night in some small hotel there, gone there to dance, and they…It was raining, and the brakes on their truck didn’t work. They were killed instantly. I was…I was their closest friend.[/b]

Contingency. Chance. Change. Coincidence. Big ones. Small ones.

Tereza: Tomas, what are you thinking?
Tomas: I’m thinking how happy I am.

And [of course] irony.

This is a bad terrible movie. But I was compelled to watch it. Why? Because it is based – barely – on my favorite novel by John Fowles. Maybe my favorite novel period. And what particularly baffles me is that the screenplay was written by John Fowles. After all, it’s not like Tom Wolfe had anything to do with the cinematic abomination that was, The Bonfire of the Vanities.

The problem no doubt revolves around trying to reduce a novel like The Magus down to 2 hours on the screen. The only way it can be done is to leave out approximately…99% of it?

But to mangle it this badly along the way falls somewhere between tragedy and travesty. At least for those of us who loved the book.

Still, however inadequately, it does manage to convey a man being spun around and around and around. In the book though the spinning is nothing short of extradordinary. Intellectually, for example.

Wiki:

The film was a critical disaster. Fowles was extremely disappointed with it, and laid most of the blame on director Guy Green, despite having written the screenplay himself. Michael Caine himself has said that it was one of the worst films he had been involved in…because no one knew what it was all about. Woody Allen has made the comment that if he could live his life over again, he would do everything the same except for seeing The Magus.

I know exactly what he means.

But the novel is still fucking brilliant.

THE MAGUS
Directed by Guy Green

Nicholas: I came here to return this.
Conchis: You came to meet me. Please. Life is short. My name is Conchis.

If you have read the book this exchange makes perfect sense. Here it is a non sequitur.

Conchis: Tell no one over there you have met me. Believe nothing they say. They understand nothing. They know nothing. They mean nothing.

Now this was written by the author of The Aristos!

Conchis: One does not have to be psychic to see that you are not the happiest of young men.
Nicholas: I’m just a child of my century.
Conchis: Now, I will show you something. The ultimate reality. Not the hammer and sickle, not the stars and stripes, not lysergic acid, not the sun, not gold, not yin and yang. But…
[he reveals a bust]
Conchis: …The Smile.

I know: huh? Uh, read the book.

Conchis: How highly do you value your life?
Nicholas: There’s a fairly widespread impression, which I share, that it’s not worth much.
Conchis: Then you would risk death without any qualms?
Nicholas: Why not?
Conchis: All men feel the need to risk death at least once in their life. If I had my way, all young men would go to a clinic and throw a die. Numbers two thru six would mean life. Number one, death. A painless death. One throw of the die. [he brings out a small metal box] These were issued to certain special agents during the war in case of interrogation. Prussic acid. Death is immediate.
[Conchis hands Nicholas a die]
Conchis: A war in one second.
Nicholas: Wouldn’t a corpse be rather embarrassing for you?
Conchis: Not at all. Another suicide.
[Nicholas grabs the die, Conchis grabs his arm]
Conchis: I am not playing at make-believe. Swear to me that if the number is one you will take the pill.
Nicholas: Yes. I swear.
[He roles a one. Conchis gives him the poison. Nicholas shakes his head]
Conchis: I congratulate you. You have passed the test. You refused death on the throw of a loaded die.

This is a very powerful exchange in the book. And that’s because Fowles had very dramatically illustrated the [con]text. Here it is hopelessly superficial and contrived.

[b]Nicholas: Okay. I’ll play. I’d just enjoy it more if I knew what it is all about.
Nicholas: Man has been saying that for the last 10,000 years. But the one common feature of all the gods he has said it to is that not one has ever returned an answer.
Nicholas: But why me?
Conchis: Why anyone? Why aything?
Nicholas: I said I would play. But not until I know the rules.
Conchis: Then, my friend, this world is not for you.

…

Julie: Is this how the script goes? You could be working him.

…

Nicholas: You are frightened.
Julie: Sometimes. And sometimes I love every minute of it.

…

Nicholas: Julie!
Julie: There is no Julie.[/b]

Then comes “the trial”. The gap between the one in the movie and the one in the book is something like the gap between a crack in the sidewalk and the grand canyon. It is nothing short of completely preposterous.

What would you do if you won the lottery? Would you kidnap an intelligent [and of course beautiful] young woman [whom you love from afar] and lock her in your basement—convinced that in time you can get her to fall in love with you?

Maybe not. But you can’t help but wonder how many men fantacize about it.

And regarding all of these particularly strange human motivations you can’t help but wonder in turn how much of it is explanable and how much of it is not. How much is just rationalization and how much is something more analogous to mental illness. How much is conscious and how much is sub-conscious.

Or even…reptillian.

What would make the plot more intriguing still is a Freddie worth falling in love with. This one is a complete dullard. I mean, surely, if given the chance Miranda would have fallen in love with someone like me.

And, of course, you.

Fortunately, Mr. Fowles allowed others to write the screenplay for this one.

IMDb

This film was cited by notorious serial killer Bob Berdella as a key inspiration for his crimes.

…

According to Samantha Eggar, “The ending of The Collector, in fact, is almost illegal, because the Stamp character, Freddie Clegg, gets away with murder, and you weren’t allowed to do that in those days.” However, John Trevelyan, the censor, who had recently married a woman about half his age, nodded off during the screening, and never saw the ending of the film. He woke up and signed off on it. Had he been awake, we might have had a very different film, or people might have been arrested.

Tell me this is actually true.

THE COLLECTOR [1965]
Directed by William Wyler

Miranda: You’ve gone to a lot of trouble. All those clothes and art books. I’m your prisioner, but you want me to be a happy prisoner. Why? Since you know my father isn’t a rich man, it isn’t for ransom, as you say. The only other thing is sex.
Freddie: It’s not that at all! I shall have all the proper respect.

And he means it. Or thinks he does.
Then he tells her he loves her.

[b]Freddie: Funny thing is I told myself a dozen times I wasn’t going to tell you. I was going to let it come natural on both sides. But I touched you just then and it came out…From the first time I saw you I knew you were the only one…I want you to get to know me.
Miranda: But you don’t kidnap people so they’ll get to know you.

…

Freddie: Yes…everyone is looking for you. But, you see, no one is looking for me.

…

Miranda: How long are you going to keep me here?
Freddie: It depends.
Miranda: On my falling in love with you? Because if that’s what you want, I’m going to be here until I die![/b]

Freddie tells a joke:

[b]Freddie: What’s got four ears and eight legs?
Miranda: What?
Freddie: Two dogs

…

Miranda: I wouldn’t be a good prisoner if I didn’t at least try to escape.[/b]

He shows her his butterfly collection:

[b]Miranda: It’s beautiful. But sad. How many butterflies have you killed?
Freddie [missing the reproach]: You can see.
Miranda: Think of all the living beauty you have ended.
Freddie: That’s silly. What difference does a few specimens make to a whole species?
Miranda [more to herself]: And now you’ve collected me, haven’t you?

…

Miranda: You could do much with the money you won. You could travel, learn, meet people. You could have a wonderful life. But this [motioning to the butterflies] is death, don’t you see? Nothing but death. These are dead. I’m dead. Everything here is dead. Is that what you love? Death?

…

Miranda: Don’t you see what’s happened? You’ve had this dream—this dream with me in the center of it. It’s not love. It’s the sort of dream young boys have when they reach puberty, only you’ve made it come true.
Freddie: I’ll tell you something. There’d be a blooming lot more of this sort of thing, if more people had the time and the money.

…

Miranda: We all want things we can’t have.
Freddie: We all take what we can get. I never had your advantages. My father wasn’t a la-di-da doctor. I never went to a posh school. I was just a clerk in a bank.

…

Freddie: That’s a good painting, isn’t it?
Miranda: Yes, it’s a Picasso.
Freddie: People don’t look like that.
Miranda: Well of course they don’t. He’s not trying to draw a face as it is. He’s trying to express a face as he sees it and feels it.
Freddie: Because he sees it that way that makes it good?
Miranda: But it’s not a photograph.
Freddie: What’s wrong with photographs?
Miranda: Nothing is wrong with photographs.
Freddie: Photographs don’t lie!
Miranda: Neither does this. It’s a face from all different angles. It’s a character behind the face.
Freddie: It’s just a joke, that’s all it is. It’s just a bad joke.
Miranda: Just because you can’t grasp it right away…
Freddie: Well, how do I grasp it?! I’ll tell you something about this. It doesn’t mean anything! Not just to me. To anybody else. You just say it does because some professor somewhere told you it did. It makes you so superior, you and all your friends. I don’t think one-in-a-million decent, ordinary people would say this is any good. It’s rubbish![/b]

And so, according to Freddie, are books like Catcher in the Rye.

[b]Miranda: I’ve stayed the four weeks.
Freddie: I just have to have you here a little longer.
Miranda: Why? What more can I do? What more can you want?
Freddie: You know what I want… it’s what I’ve always wanted. You could fall in love with me if you tried. I’ve done everything I could to make it easy. You just won’t try.

…

Freddie: She’s in the box I made under the tall oak.

…

Freddie: For days after she was dead I kept thinking perhaps it was my fault, after all, that she did what she did and lost my respect. Then I thought, no. It was her fault. She asked for everything she got. My only mistake was aiming too high. I ought to have seen I could never get what I wanted from someone like Miranda with all her la-di-da ideas and clever tricks. I ought to have got someone who would respect me more. Someone ordinary. Someone I could teach.[/b]

Like the considerably less posh woman he is following now.

The moral narrative in this film revolves around one thing: That what “the boys” did was just a prank. Once you recognize the difference between a prank and a far more serious offense you become awash in the ambiguity inherent in a world without God.

Here is yet another film where the consummate cynic bites the dust. And I bought it. Even though the ending was pat beyond belief.

The guy is a character and then some. And you gotta love a bellowing bullhorn able to humiliate Mr. Trask and his ilk. It’s like watching someone make a fool out of Mitt Romney. Or Barack Obama for that matter.

To really appreciate this film though you have to have been suicidal yourself once. And you have to know what it is like to find a way up out of the hole. I was and I did. And Al Pacino’s acting here [in encompassing this frame of mind] is nothing short of magnificent. It still gives me goosebumps. It goes without saying he won the Oscar that year.

As for those who complain the movie was too long…I challenge them to note the scenes that should have been cut. Okay, maybe the last couple.

IMDb

Director Martin Brest disowned the version of the film shown on airlines and television.

Christ, I can just imagine that “version”.

But here is a director who does Midnight Run and Scent of a Woman back to back. Then goes on the direct Meet Joe Black and Gigli back to back. And nothing since.

SCENT OF A WOMAN
Directed by Martin Brest

[b]George: What’d you do that for? You know he’s on aid.
Harry: On major holidays, Willis, it’s customary for the lord of the manor to offer drippings to the poor.

…

Karen: Down deep, he’s a lump of sugar.

…

Charlie: Sir?
Frank: Don’t call me sir!
Charlie: I’m sorry, I mean mister, sir.
Frank: Uh-oh, we got a moron here.

…

Frank: Your father pedals car telephones at a 300 percent markup. Your mother works on heavy commission at a camera store. Graduated to it from espresso machines. Hah!
[pause]
Frank: What are you, dying of some wasting disease?
Charlie: No, I’m right - I’m right here.
Frank: I know exactly where your body is. What I’m looking for is some indication of a brain.

…

Frank: How’s your skin, son? I like my aides to be presentable.
Charlie: Well, I - I’ve had a few zits. Um, but my roommate, he lent me his Clinique because he’s from…
Frank: “The History of My Skin”, by Charles Simms.[/b]

The Prank:

[b][Headmaster Trask drives into the Baird School driveway in his brand-new Jaguar. He gets out, to hear a voice on a loudspeaker]
Jimmy: [on loudspeaker, but unidentified] Mister Trask is our fearless leader.
[students hear this and gather, looking on at Trask]
Jimmy: A man of learning, a voracious reader. He can recite “The Iliad” in ancient Greek, while fishing for trout in a rippling creek.
Trent: [Trask grins slightly, trying to figure out where the voice is coming from] Endowed with wisdom, of judgement sound, nevertheless about him, the questions abound.
[We now see the same three Baird guys who set up this prank the night before; Harry opens the valve to an oxygen tank connected to a large balloon on a lamppost as Trent passes the microphone to him]
Harry: How does Mister Trask make such wonderful deals? Why did the trustees buy him Jaguar wheels? He wasn’t conniving, he wasn’t crass… he merely puckered his lips… and kissed their ass!
[balloon spins around to reveal a cartoon bearing the words being spoken; the students laugh and mock Trask. Trask pulls out his car keys and opens the Jaguar door, then jumps up to try to pop the balloon with the key. He misses on the first try. On the second try, he succeeds, and a flood of white paint splashes down onto him and all over the car. The students applaud loudly and shout obscenities at him as this catastrophe concludes with Trask kicking the car door closed and attempting to dry his face with handkerchief]

…

Frank: When in doubt… fuck

…

Frank: Ooh, but I still smell her.
[inhales deeply through nose]
Frank: Women! What can you say? Who made ‘em? God must have been a fuckin’ genius. The hair…They say the hair is everything, you know. Have you ever buried your nose in a mountain of curls…just wanted to go to sleep forever? Or lips…and when they touched, yours were like that first swallow of wine after you just crossed the desert. Tits. Hoo-ah! Big ones, little ones, nipples staring right out at ya, like secret searchlights. Mmm. Legs. I don’t care if they’re Greek columns or secondhand Steinways. What’s between ‘em…passport to heaven. I need a drink. Yes, Mr Sims, there’s only two syllables in this whole wide world worth hearing: pussy. Hah! Are you listenin’ to me, son? I’m givin’ ya pearls here.

…

Frank: Charlie, give me your hand. This is just the start of your education.

…

Frank: This bat has got sharper radar than the Nautilus. Don’t fuck with me, Charlie.

…

Frank: Oh, uh, Charlie - about your little problem - there are two kinds of people in this world: those who stand up and face the music, and those who run for cover. Cover is better

…

Frank: The one that got away…

…

Randy: You want to know the truth?
Frank: You got a handle on that, do you, Randy?
Randy: He was an asshole before.
Frank: Hoo-ah!
Randy: Now all he is is a blind asshole.
Frank: Hoo-ah.
Randy: Hey, God’s a funny guy.
Frank: God doth have a sense of humor.
Randy: Maybe God thinks some people don’t deserve to see.

…

Frank [to his brother]: Goodbye, Willie. I’m no fucking good. I never have been.

…

Charlie: Where’d you get the gun, Colonel?
Frank: Piece or weapon, Charlie, never a gun.

…

Frank: You do see the sense in it, Charlie, don’t you? I can’t chew the leather anymore. So why should I share the tribe’s provisions?

…

Frank: Haven’t you heard? Conscience is dead.
Charlie: No, I haven’t heard.
Frank: Well, then, take the fuckin’ wax outta your ears! Grow up! It’s fuck your buddy, cheat on your wife, call your mother on Mother’s Day! Charlie, it’s all shit.

…

Frank: Ooh, I haven’t had a ticket for in years.

…

[Charlie comes back to the room to see Frank putting on his uniform]
Frank: You’re back too fast. You didn’t get my cigars, did you? Get outta here, Charlie.
[loads the .45]
Charlie: I thought we had a deal.
Frank: I welched. I’m a welcher. Didn’t I tell you?
Charlie: No, what you told me was, that you gave me all the bullets.
Frank: I lied.
Charlie: Yeah, well you could’ve fooled me.
Frank: And I did.
[pause]
Frank: Charlie, how you ever gonna survive in this world without me?
Charlie: Colonel, why don’t you just give me the gun, all right?
[Frank picks up the gun and points it at Charlie]
Charlie: What are you doing?
Frank: I’m gonna shoot you, too. Your life’s finished anyway. Your friend George is gonna sing like a canary. And so are you. And once you’ve sung, Charlie, my boy, you’re gonna take your place on that long, grey line of American manhood. And you will be through.
Charlie: I’d hate to disagree with you, Colonel.
Frank: You’re in no position to disagree with me, boy. I got a loaded .45 here. You got pimples. I’m gonna kill you, Charlie, cause I can’t bear the thought of you SELLIN’ OUT!

…

Frank: You break my heart, son. All my life I’ve stood up to everyone and everything, because it made me feel important. You do it because you mean it. You’ve got integrity, Charlie. I don’t know whether to shoot you or adopt ya.

…

Charlie: You’re just in a slump right now.
Frank: Slump? No slump Charlie. I’m bad. I’m not bad no. I’m rotten.
Charlie: You’re not bad. You’re just in pain.
Frank: What do you know about pain? hmm? You little snail darter from the pacific northwest. What the fuck you know about pain?
Charlie: Let me have the gun Colonel.
Frank: [cocks the .45] No time to grow a dick son.

…

Frank: [pulls the hammer on the gun back] Fuck! Get outta here!
Charlie: So you fucked up all right? So what? So everybody does it. Get on with your life would ya?
Frank: [screaming]: WHAT LIFE? I GOT NO LIFE! I’M IN THE DARK HERE. YOU INDERSTAND? I’M IN THE DARK!

…

Trask: [furious] I am left with no real witness. Mr. Willis’s testimony is not only vague, it is unsubstantiated. The substance I was looking for, Mr. Simms, was to come from you.
Charlie: [remorseful] I’m sorry.
Trask: I’m sorry too, Mr. Simms, because you know what I am going to do. In as much as I can’t punish Mr. Havemeyer, Mr. Potter, or Mr. Jameson, and I won’t punish Mr. Willis. He’s the only party to this incident who is still worthy of calling himself a Baird man. I’m going to recommend to the disciplinary committee that you be expelled. Mr. Simms, you are a cover-up artist and you are a liar.
Frank: But not a snitch!
Trask: Excuse me?
Frank: No, I don’t think I will.
Trask: Mr. Slade…
Frank: This is such a crock of SHIT!
Trask: Please watch your language, Mr. Slade. You are in the Baird School, not a barracks. Mr Simms, I will give you one last opportunity to speak up.
Frank: Mr. Simms doesn’t want it. He desn’t need to labeled, “Still worthy of being a Baird man”. What the hell is that? What is your motto here? “Boys, inform on your classmates, save your hide. Anything short of that, we’re gonna burn you at the stake”? Well, gentlemen, when the shit hits the fan, some guys run and some guys stay. Here’s Charlie facing the fire and there’s George hiding in Big Daddy’s pocket. And what are you doing? You’re gonna reward George and destroy Charlie.
Trask: Are you finished, Mr. Slade?
Frank: No, I’m just gettin’ warmed up. I don’t know who went to this place, William Howard Taft, William Jennings Bryan, William Tell, whoever. Their spirit is dead, if they ever had one. It’s gone. You’re building a rat ship here. A vessel for seagoing snitches, and if you think you’re preparing these minnows for manhood, you better think again, because I say you are killing the very spirit this institution proclaims it instills. What a sham. What kind of a show you guys are putting on here today? I mean, the only class in this act is sitting next to me, and I’m here to tell ya this boy’s soul is intact. It’s non-negotiable. You know how I know? Someone here, and I’m not gonna say who, offered to buy it. Only Charlie here wasn’t selling.
Trask: Sir, you’re out of order.
[Trask hits the gavel; Col. Slade stands up angry]
Frank: Out of order. I’ll show “out of order”! You don’t know what “out of order” is, Mr. Trask. I’d show you, but I’m too old, I’m too tired, I’m too fucking blind. If I were the man I was five years ago, I’d take a FLAMETHROWER to this place! Out of order? Who the hell do ya think you’re talking to? I’ve been around, ya know? There was a time I could see. And I have seen. Boys like these, younger than these. Their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there is nothing like the sight of an amputated spirit. There’s no prostetic for that. You think you’re merely sending this splendid foot solder back home to Oregon with his tail between his legs, but I say you are executing his SOUL! And why? Because he’s not a Baird man. Baird men. You hurt this boy, you’re gonna be Baird bums, the lot of ya. And Harry, Jimmy, Trent, wherever you are, fuck you too!
[the student body and the committee are in shock as Trask’s anger is further aggravated]
Trask: [yells; hits the gavel three times] Stand down, Mr. Slade!
Frank: I’m not finished! As I came in here, I heard those words, “Cradle of Leadership”. Well, when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. And it has fallen here. It has fallen. Makers of men, Creators of leaders. Be careful what kind of leaders you’re producing here. I don’t know if Charlie’s silence here today is right or wrong. I’m not a judge or jury, but I can tell you this: He won’t sell anybody out to buy his future! And that, my friends, is called integrity. That’s called courage. Now that’s the stuff leaders should be made of. Now I have come to the crossroads in my life. I always knew what the right path was. Without exception, I knew. But I never took it. You know why? It was too damn hard. Now here’s Charlie. He’s come to the crossroads. He has chosen a path. It’s the right path. It’s a path made of principle that leads to character. Let him continue on his journey. You hold this boy’s future in your hands, committee. It’s a valuable future. Believe me. Don’t destroy it. Protect it. Embrace it. It’s gonna make you proud one day, I promise you.[/b]

Is there a movie John C. Reilly is not in?!

Right from the start you know something terrible [really terrible] is going to happen…

Never raised a “bad seed” myself so I can only imagine what it must be like. On the other hand, I’ve been around a lot of them. Hell, I may even be one myself. Fortunately [for others] I always kept him on a very short leash.

And I do remember how fucking grateful I was that my own child was of the female gender.

Near the beginning there’s a great scene where Eva takes the baby [who never stops crying] over to a man using a jackhammer in the street—just to drown the baby out!

Kevin Khatchadourian: The creme de la creme of nihilistic cynics.

What makes this film especially scary is that it leaves you with the idea that he really is just a “bad seed”. That’s as good an explanation as any. At best, you can rationalize it as part of God’s plan.

wiki

Jake Martin, a Jesuit priest and movie critic, wrote in his review in Busted Halo that the film is not “yet another installment in the pantheon of post-modern films intent upon assaulting the human desire to give meaning to the world.” Instead, he says, We Need to Talk about Kevin in fact needs to be talked about, as what it is attempting to do by marrying the darkest, most nihilistic components of contemporary cinema with a redemptive message is groundbreaking."

Maybe. But where exactly is the part about redemption?

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN
Written and directed by Lynne Ramsay

[b]Eva [to Kevin in the crib]: Mommy was happy before “widdle” Kevin came along. You know
“dat”? Now Mommy wakes up every morning and wishes she was in FRANCE!

…

Eva: Haven’t you ever wished you had somebody else around to play with?
Kevin [aged 6]: No.
Eva: You might like it.
Kevin: What if I don’t like it?
Eva: Then you get used to it.
Kevin: Just because you’re used to something doesn’t mean you like it. You’re used to me.

…

Mormon [at door]: Good afternoon, ma’am, I hope this isn’t an inconvenient time.
Eva: Well, it is actually.
Mormon: Well, we just had a couple of quick questions for you.
Eva: What’s this about?
Mormon: Do you know where you’re spending the afterlife?
Eva: Oh. Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. I’m going straight to hell. Eternal damnation. The whole bit. Thank you for asking. Okay?
[then she closes the door as they gawk in disbelief]

…

Kevin: It’s like this: you wake and watch TV, get in your car and listen to the radio you go to your little jobs or little school, but you don’t hear about that on the 6 o’clock news, why? 'Cause nothing is really happening, and you go home and watch some more TV and maybe it’s a fun night and you go out and watch a movie. I mean it’s got so bad that half the people on TV, inside the TV, they’re watching TV. What are these people watching? Huh? People like me. I mean, what are you all doing now? You’re watching me.[/b]

Can’t argue with that, right?

[b]Celia: Me and Kevin were playing Christmas kidnapping.

…

Kevin: You know, you can be kind of harsh sometimes.
Eva: You’re one to talk

…

Eva: So, how’s school going?
Kevin: It’s going.

…

Kevin: Your computer is fucked, isn’t it?
Eva: It’s fucked. And so are all the ones at work. I guess I deserved it. Why would you have something like that?
Kevin: I collect them.
Eva: Isn’t that a weird thing to collect?
Kevin: I don’t like stamps.
Eva: Then what’s the point?
Kevin: There is no point. That’s the point.

…

Franklin: Hey, Kev. Listen buddy, it’s easy to misunderstand something when you hear it out of context.
Kevin: Why would I not understand the context? I am the context.

…

Eva: You don’t look happy.
Kevin: Have I ever?

…

Eva: I want you to tell me…why.
Kevin [after a long pause]: I used to think I knew. Now I’m not so sure.[/b]

A great movie that just happens to use the Navy as a prop? Nope, the military here is a lot more than that. I know because I spent three years in the Army. But [as expected] it leaves out the part about American foreign policy and the military industrial complex. But then you have to make allowances for a film this engaging.

And, yes, yet another cynic bites the dust. It seems that flying jets and the love of a good woman is what it took this time. Maybe I ought to give it a try.

All that aside the film captures dramatically how life can spin you around and around and around. Some things are beyond your control and some things depend almost entirely on what you are able to with them.

IMDb

According to “High Concept”, Charles Fleming’s biography of producer Don Simpson, the producer was alleged to have said to the auditioning Debra Winger, “There may be somebody else for this part. I need somebody fuckable. You’re not fuckable enough.”

Like, uh…

Kristy McNichol and Brooke Shields were each offered the role of Paula, but both turned it down.

And here are four actors who turned down the role Richard Gere finally took: John Travolta, Jeff Bridges, Kurt Russell and [believe it or not] John Denver.

Jack Nicholson turned down the Gunnery Sargent Foley role played by Louis Gossett

Wiki

Richard Gere balked at shooting the ending of the film, in which Zack arrives at Paula’s factory wearing his naval dress whites and carries her off the factory floor. Gere thought the ending would not work because it was too sentimental. Director Taylor Hackford agreed with Gere until, during a rehearsal, the extras playing the workers began to cheer and cry. When Gere saw the scene later, with the music underneath it (“Up Where We Belong”) at the right tempo, he said it gave him chills. Gere is now convinced Hackford made the right decision. Screenwriter Michael Hauge, in his book Writing Screenplays That Sell, echoed this opinion: “I don’t believe that those who criticized this Cinderella-style ending were paying very close attention to who exactly is rescuing whom.”

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN
Directed by Taylor Hackford

[b]Byron: I’m out at sea three weeks out of every month, and when I’m back at port I don’t have time for this daddy stuff 'cause that’s not who I am.
Young Zack: That’s okay, sir
Byron: Wait a second, kid, you don’t understand. I’m too old for this. I don’t care what the Navy says. This is no place to bring up a kid like I told you on the telephone. You’re better off at that state school back in Virginia.
Young Zack: I’m never going back there. They treat me like shit.
Byron: Maybe that’s not for you to say. Goddamit, don’t look at me that way. What happened to your mother had nothing to do with me.
Young Zack: It did. You said you were gonna come back. You promised.
Byron: Is that what she said? That’s a female lie. That’s bullshit! That’s a lie!
Young Zack: I found your letters. I read them right after she did it. You said you were gonna come back for us. You said you loved her, and she believed you. You’re a liar!

…

Zack: Get ready. This one will blow you away.
Byron: Nothing you do is ever going to surprise me. Tell me.
Zach: I joined the Navy.
Byron: You joined the Navy?
Zach: That’s right, I did. I’m on my way to Port Rainier, this officer’s training school over there.
Byron: What for?
Zach: Jets. I want to fly jets.

…

Byron: I just don’t want to see you do something you’ll regret. You got to give up six fucking years of your life if you want to fly. Six fucking years, with the most uptight assholes on earth.

…

Foley: I expect to lose half of you before I’m finished. I will use every means necessary, fair and unfair, to trip you up, to expose your weaknesses as a potential aviator and as a human being, understand? The price at the other end is a flight education worth one million dollars! But first, you got to get past me!

…

Sid: It’s grown out more than an inch, pal.

…

Paula: So, you got a girl, Mayo the wop?
Zach: No, Paula the Pollock. And I ain’t looking for one either.

…

Zach: I should have walked away.
Paula: Zack, he didn’t give you a choice.
Zach: A man’s always got a choice.
Paula: Where did you learn to fight like that?
Zach: I don’t want to talk about it.
Paula: All right [pause] You know, it wouldn’t kill you to open up to me.
Zach: What do you want? You want to fuck? Come here. Take your clothes off. I’ll give you a good fuck.
Paula: Where’s that coming from?
Zach: Get on the bed.
Paula: I wouldn’t fuck you now if…
Zach: Then get the hell out! I don’t need this shit!!
Paula: Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m not some whore you brought in here. I’m trying to be your friend, Zack.
Zach: Then be a friend. Get out of here.
Paula: Fine. Fine. Man, you ain’t nothing special. You got no manners. You treat women like whores. If you ask me, you got no chance of being no officer!

…

Foley: You never know when you’ll trip up, Mayo. It could be the grades…or it could be some character flaw that comes out under stress.

…

Foley: In every class, there’s always one joker who thinks that he’s smarter than me. In this class, that happens to be you. Isn’t it, Mayonnaise?

…

Foley: Mayo, I want your D.O.R.
Mayo: No sir. You can kick me outta here, but I ain’t quitting.
Foley: Get into your fatigues, Mayo. By the end of this weekend, you’ll quit.

…

Foley: Wave good-bye to your buddies, Mayonnaise! Oh, I forgot. You don’t have any buddies, do you? Only customers!

…

Foley: Look over there, Mayo. Look at her. She decided to stay instead of taking liberty this weekend. She may not make it, but she’s got more heart and character than you’ll ever have!

…

Foley: You can forget it! You’re out!
Mayo: Don’t you do it! Don’t! You… I got nowhere else to go! I got nowhere else to go…I got nothin’ else. I got nothing else…

…

Zach: Sid…
Sid: Yeah?
Zach: Thanks.

…

Zach: My old lady took a bottle of pills one day when I was at school.
Paula: Oh, God.
Zach: The thing that got me about it…She didn’t leave a note. She didn’t… Nothing. She just checked out. I always hated her for that.
Paula: Oh, God. That must really hurt.
Zach: Hurt? No. No. You’re all alone in the world. Once you got that down, nothing hurts anymore.

…

Lynette: Paula…just how far would you go to get Zack? Would you let yourself get pregnant?
Paula: No way, Lynette. Would you?
Lynette: Well…I never used to think I’d do something like that. But I don’t know anymore. Nine weeks just ain’t long enough for a guy to fall in love with you.
Paula: That doesn’t justify trapping him or getting pregnant. I can’t believe you’d think that. It’s real backward.
Lynette: It ain’t any more backward than the way these hotshot assholes use us till they’ve had enough, then ditch us like we’s trash.

…

Bunny: Comes a time, right after survival training, they start to believe they can make it without you.
Paula: [referring to Zack] They said he’d already left, didn’t know when he’d be back.
Bunny: If he ain’t called by now Paula, he ain’t gonna call.
[Paula runs out crying]
Lynette: [angrily] Bunny!
Bunny: [bitterly] May they all crash and burn.

…

Mother: Let him go. Don’t trick him or trap him.
Paula: I wouldn’t do that. I’d never try to trap him.
Mother: If you find him, you’ll say anything. You will.
Paula [agonizing over it]: Mama, you’re right.

…

Zack: [getting ready to eat in the mess hall] Sit. Adjust. Pray. Attack.

…

Zach: It’s like your brother getting killed. It’s the same damn thing - him getting killed instead of you. That’s why you promised to marry Susan. You do everything out of some bullshit code of ethics.
Sid: It may be bullshit to you, but I wasn’t raised that way! We’re responsible for the people in our lives. That’s all that separates us from the animals! I’m not like you, Mayo. I can’t shit on people and sleep at night.

…

Lynette: Sid…There’s no baby.
Sid: What?
Lynette: I’m not pregnant. I got my period this morning. There’s no baby, Sid.
Sid: I’ll be goddamned. [then, after thinking about it] What do you say we get married anyway? I love you! I don’t think I really knew that till just now, just this second. I have never been happier in my life than I have in the last seven weeks. I’ve never felt so relaxed, and I’ve never felt so loved for who I really am. Lynette, marry me. Make me the happiest man in the whole world.
Lynette: I’m sorry, Sid. But I don’t want to marry you. I really like you, and we’ve had ourselves some really great times, but I thought you understood. I want to marry a pilot. I want to live my life overseas…the wife of an aviator!
Lynette: [Getting visibly angry with Sid, whom she now considers a total loser] Damn you! Goddamn you! Nobody D.O.R.'s after 11 weeks! NOBODY!

…

Zach: What did you tell him about the baby?
Lynette: That there isn’t one…as of today. I got my period this morning. I couldn’t believe it. He still wanted to marry me.
Zach: What did you say?
Lynette: I said no, of course. I don’t want no Okie from Muskogee. I can get that right here.

…

Zach: Why can’t I learn? Just like her all over again. Just like her.
Paula: Zack, don’t do this to yourself. You didn’t kill your mother. You didn’t kill Sid. They killed themselves. There’s nothing you could have done about it.
Zach: I got to leave. Want money for a cab or something?
Paula: I don’t deserve that. You’re not the only one that’s feeling awful. Maybe I had something to do with it. I knew what Lynette was doing.
Zach: Look, you got no problems! Another class will come through soon. You and Lynette… right back into business!
Paula: That’s not fair. I never lied to you. I never did what Lynette’s doing. - I’m not Lynette. I love you. I’ve loved you since I met you. Don’t you understand?
Zach: No! I don’t want you to love me! I don’t want anyone to love me. I just want out!

…

Zach: Sir, this officer candidate requests permission to see you in private… Sir.
Foley: [gently] … Mayo, the whole class already knows about Candidate Worley, and we’re sorry.
Zach: Oh, I bet you are.

…

Mayo: I never would have made it without you.
Foley: I know.
Mayo: I’ll never forget you.
Foley: Get the hell out of here.[/b]

This is a true story. But truer for some than for others.

Like other communities organized crime families revolve around rules and rituals. You do the same thing in the same way over and over again. This way you know that what you do is necessary. It weights everything down: right, wrong…good, bad.

Punishment, reward.

But this is always in an endless tug of war with power.

Joe becomes Donnie in part because it feels good to be weighted down. And damn near anything will do.

We also learn that most of these guys are…pretty fucking dumb. And scary.

Here’s what I can’t figure. Why doesn’t the mob make it a requirement that anyone who is just “a friend of mine” commit some major crime. Like, say, murder. Every undercover cop would be exposed then. What am I missing?

IMDb

In Joseph Pistone’s report, he lists Lefty, Lefty Guns, Lefty Two Guns, Half Cocked, and Horse Cock as false names for Benjamin Ruggiero (Pacino)

The film’s version of “Lefty” Ruggiero is an amalgam of the real “Lefty” and the real “Sonny Black” Napolitano.

The movie ends with the implication that Lefty was killed after being “sent for”. In real life, the FBI intercepted Lefty on the way to being killed and arrested him. Sonny Black, however, was “sent for” and subsequently murdered, his body turning up a year later on Staten Island. The individual who had orchestrated his murder, Joe Massino, wasn’t convicted until 2005. Lefty was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, extortion, distribution of a controlled dangerous substance, and running an illegal gambling operation; he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but received early parole in 1992 after it was discovered he was suffering from terminal cancer. He died of lung cancer in 1994.

DONNIE BRASCO
Directed by Mike Newell

[b]Lefty: You know who you’re talkin’ to, my friend?..In all the five boroughs, I’m known. Forget about it. I’m known all over the fucking world. Anybody ask anybody about Lefty from Mulberry Street. You’re pissing up the wrong fucking tree.

…

Lefty [to Donnie]: I got 26 fucking hits under my belt and you’re the one he’s scared of. Hah!

…

Lefty: A wise guy’s always right. Even when he’s wrong, he’s right.

…

Lefty: There’s the boss. And, under him, there’s the skipper. You know how this works?
Donnie: Yeah, it’s kinda like in the army.
Lefty: Bullshit. It ain’t nothing like the army. The army is some guy you don’t know telling you to go whack some other guy you don’t know.

…

Lefty: [to Donnie] When I introduce you, I’m gonna say, “This is a friend of mine.” That means you’re a connected guy. Now if I said instead, this is a friend of ours that would mean you are a made guy. A Capiche?

…

Lefty: Wise guy don’t carry his money in a wallet. Wise guy carries money in a roll. Like this. Beaner on the outside…That mustache—you gotta get rid of that mustache. That’s against the rules. And get a pair of pants. No jeans. This ain’t a fucking rodeo. Dress like I dress.[/b]

Apparently, it’s against the rules to have a mustache in the FBI too.

[b]Joe [to his FBI contact]: I got him. I got my hooks in him.

…

Lefty: I’ll die with you, Donnie. But anything happens, I’m responsible.

…

Joe: Seven days a week I’m out there busting my ass and this is the kind of shit I have to come home to.
Maggie: You said it would be three months. It’s going on two years.

…

Donnie: Sonny Black is your friend. What’s the big deal?
Lefty: Friend? What friend? The whole time Sonny Black’s in the can he’s got a family, he’s got a mistress. He’s got a mistress for the mistress. I watched out for all of them. Me. I was the only one. Nobody else gave a fuck. 200 fazools, week in, week out.
Donnie: Exactly. Why are you worried then?
Lefty: Donnie, sometimes I thing in that orphanage they dropped you on your fucking head.
Donnie: How am I supposed to know if you don’t explain it to me?
Lefty. I know how a hit gets set up. You think I don’t know that? How many times have I been on the other end of that phone? Twenty-six times.
Donnie: Right, but you just got finished saying that you and Sonny Black are friends.
Lefty: Donnie, I got sent for. In our thing, when they send for you, you go in alive, you come out dead, and it’s your best friend that does it.

…

Lefty: Whackin’ the boss…another thing I get left out of.

…

FBI contact: What’s forget about it?
Joe/Donnie: Forget about it is like if you agree with someone, you know, like Raquel Welch is one great piece of ass, forget about it. But then, if you disagree, like A Lincoln is better than a Cadillac? Forget about it! you know? But then, it’s also like if something’s the greatest thing in the world, like mingia those peppers, forget about it. But it’s also like saying Go to hell! too. Like, you know, like “Hey Paulie, you got a one inch pecker?” and Paulie says “Forget about it!” Sometimes it just means forget about it.

…

Sonny Black [to Donnie]: You belong to me now. That’s it.

…

Maggie: Joe, I want a divorce.

…

Sonny Black: You know what to do when you find that rat, Lefty.
Lefty: Could be I found him already.

…

Nicky: C’mon Donnie, let’s fillet this fat fuck.[/b]

The last words he ever spoke.

[b]Lefty: Nicky was a rat because Sonny Black says he was a rat. Who the fuck am I? Who am I? I’m a, a spoke on a wheel. And so was he, and so are you

…

FBI Agent [to Maggie]: Standard procedure is that he checks in with us every day. Now maybe he might miss a day or two but it’s been three weeks now.
Maggie: I want you to tell me where my husband is. I demand that you tell me where he is.
FBI agent: We can’t tell you because we don’t know. If he gets in touch with you, you have to talk sense into him.
Maggie: You want me to help you out? You want me to help the FBI that used my husband and sucked him dry?

…

FBI agent: Mrs. Pistone, there is a war going on in the Mafia family where Joe is undercover. Three leaders of a rival faction have been murdered. He’s right in the line of fire not because he’s one of us but because he is one of them.

…

FBI agent: We’ve got to pull him out. Help us. He’ll listen to you.
Maggie: You think so? He was here a week ago. He snuck into the house after I was asleep. He didn’t even wake me up. Didn’t even say hello to me. He came to get a sports coat.

…

Lefty: We got the contract to kill Sonny Red’s kid. Now, this thing gets done right…when the books open up, I’m proposing you for membership. You know what that means?
Donnie: Yeah.
Lefty: What?
Donnie: It means I can’t fuck it up.

…

Lefty [to Donnie]: You gonna be a made man. A Capiche?

…

Joe [to Maggie]: This job is eating me alive. I can’t breathe anymore. If I come out alive, this guy Lefty dies. They’re gonna kill him because he vouched for me…because he stood up for me. I live with that everyday. That’s the same thing as me putting the bullet in his head myself. I’ve spent all these years trying to be the good guy in the white fucking hat. For what? For nothing. I’m not becoming like them; I am them.[/b]

We are made to sympathize with Lefty here. But let’s not forget who he is: He himself has already “whacked” 26 others.

…

[b]Donnie Brasco: You think I knew that was a federal boat? You think I’m a fucking rat…?
Lefty: How many times have I had you in my house? If you’re a rat, then I’m the biggest mutt in the history of the Mafia.

…

Lefty [to his wife after being “sent for”]: And listen to me, if Donnie calls tell him if it was gonna be anyone, I’m glad it was him. All right?

…

Afterword:

The evidence collected by “Donnie Brasco” led to over 200 indictments and over 100 convictions. Special agent Joseph Pistone lives with his wife under an assumed name in an undisclosed location. There is still a $500,000 open contract on his head.[/b]

I can still add and subtract. And multiply. Though I’m not too sure about division anymore. This is a movie about math and I am more or less lost when it comes to anything beyond, well, arithmetic. But then most of us are, right?

On the other hand, mathematicians have often been portrayed as being rather deficient regarding most everything else.

In any event, I’ve always been more intrigued by the things in which there seem to be no “proofs”.

Catherine. Is she crazy? How do we prove it? Some people are so far out in left field it just makes sense to try to pull them back in. But others are out there for a perfectly good reason and fuck those meddlesome “members of the family” ever intent on saving them. From themselves in other words. I like wackos myself. The kind that know the difference between being and not being too far gone. The truly self-contained iconoclasts.

And what can we prove today about going insane?

IMDb

The plot of the original play was based on the life of John Nash, professor at Princeton, who won the Nobel Prize for his work in game theory and also spent many years suffering from schizophrenia. His story was later adapted into A Beautiful Mind.

wiki

[b]Since 1993 (when Andrew Wiles first claimed to have proven Fermat’s Last Theorem), there have been several feature films about mathematicians, notably Good Will Hunting (1997), A Beautiful Mind (2001) and Proof (2005).

The mathematician Daniel Ullman says: “Of these three films, Proof is the one that most realistically illustrates the world of mathematics and mathematicians.” Timothy Gowers of the University of Cambridge, a Fields Medalist, acted as mathematical consultant, but Ullman praises the director too: “Madden should be credited with capturing the feeling of the mathematical world.”[/b]

{PROOF}
Directed by John Madden

[b]Robert: I hope you’re not spending your birthday alone.
Catherine: I’m not alone.
Robert: I don’t count.
Catherine: Why not?
Robert: I’m your old man. Go out with friends.
Catherine: Yeah, right.
Robert: Aren’t your friends taking you out?
Catherine: Nope.
Robert: Why not?
Catherine: For your friends to take you out, you generally have to have friends.

…

Catherine: Wait.
Robert: What’s the matter?
Catherine: It doesn’t make sense.
Robert: Sure it does.
Catherine: No.
Robert: Where’s the problem?
Catherine: The problem is, you are crazy.
Robert: So?
Catherine: So you said a crazy person would never admit that.
Robert: Ah. I see.
Catherine: So?
Robert: It’s a point.
Catherine: So how can you admit it?
Robert: Well because, I’m also dead.

…

Hal: Some friends of mine are in this band. They’re playing in a bar on Diversey. They’re good. They have this song called “i.” You’d like it. Lowercase i. They just stand there. They don’t play anything for three minutes.

…

Catherine [to her well meaning but hopelessly officious sister]: I’m fine, you know. I’m totally fine. And then you show up here with these questions. Like, “Are you OK?” with that soothing tone of voice. And…Oh. The poor policemen. I think the policemen can handle themselves. And bagels and bananas and jojoba. And “Come to New York.” And vegetarian chili! I mean, it really pisses me off, so just save it.[/b]

I hear that!!

[b]Catherine [at the church service before her father is buried]: Wow. I can’t believe how many people are here. I never knew he had this many friends. Where have you all been for the last five years? I guess to you guys he was already dead, right? I mean, what’s a great man without his greatness? Just some old guy. So you probably wanna catch up on what you missed out on. Um… He used to read all day. He kept demanding more and more books. I was getting them out of the library by the carload. There were hundreds. And then one day I realized he wasn’t reading. He believed aliens were sending him messages through the Dewey decimal numbers in the books. He was trying to work out the code. He used to shuffle around in his slippers. He talked to himself. He stank. I had to make sure he bathed, which was embarrassing. Then he started writing 19, 20 hours a day. I got him this huge case of notebooks. He used every one. I dropped out of school. You see, he was convinced that he was writing the most beautiful, elegant proofs. Proofs like music. I’m glad he’s dead.

…

Hal: You sure read a lot of math books.

…

Catherine: I didn’t find it.
Hal: Yes, you did.
Catherine: No, I didn’t
Hal: You didn’t find it?
Catherine: I didn’t find it. I wrote it.

…

Hal: I know how hard it would be to come up with something like this. You’d have to be your dad at the peak of his powers.
Catherine: Just because you and the rest of the geeks worshipped him does not mean he wrote the proof.
Hal: He was the best. My generation hasn’t produced anything like him. He revolutionized the field twice before he was 22. I am sorry. It’s too advanced. I don’t even understand most of it.
Catherine: You think it’s too advanced?
Hal: Yes.
Catherine: It’s too advanced for you.
Hal: You could not have done this work.
Catherine: But what if I did?
Hal: Well, what if?
Catherine: It would be a real disaster for you. Wouldn’t it? You and the other geeks who barely finished their PhD’s, who are marking time doing lame research, bragging about the conferences they go to. Wow. Playing in an awful band and whining that they’re intellectually past it at 26, because they are!

…

Catherine: Am I on that list?
Claire: What?
Catherine: “Square away crazy sister.” Check.

…

Catherine: Dad, I think we should get some sleep.
Robert: Not until we talk about the proof!
Catherine: I don’t want to talk about it.
Robert: Goddammit, open the goddamn book! Read me the lines!
Catherine: [reading from Robert’s Notebook] “Let X equal the quantity of all quantities of X. Let X equal the cold. It is cold in December. The months of cold equal November through February. There are four months of cold, and four of heat, leaving four months of indeterminate temperature. In February it snows. In March the Lake is a lake of ice. In September the students come back and the bookstores are full. Let X equal the month of full bookstores. The number of books approaches infinity as the number of months of cold approaches four. I will never be as cold now as I will in the future. The future of cold is infinite. The future of heat is the future of cold. The bookstores are infinite and so are never full except in September…”

…

Catherine: [voice over] How many days have I lost? How can I get back to the place where I started? I’m outside a house, trying to find my way in. But it is locked and the blinds are down, and I’ve lost the key, and I can’t remember what the rooms look like or where I put anything. And if I dare go in inside, I wonder… will I ever be able to find my way out?

…

Catherine: …and there’s no way to prove that I wrote it.
Hal: No. But we could sit down, we could talk it through and determine if you couldn’t have.[/b]

It’s hard to get your mind wrapped around the fact this guy is The Dude!

You reach a point in life where you figure you’ll be dead and gone without ever knowing if there is someone else “out there”. Films like this are just the attempt to imagine what it might be like if there are. And if they ever make it down here.

I think it is reasonable to assume we will never be the ones who go out and find them. Not in my lifetime. After all: “The star nearest to the Sun is Proxima Centauri. Astronomers measure the distance between stars in units called light-years. A light-year equals 5.88 million million miles. And Proxima Centauri is 4.3 light-years from the Sun.”

All the usual Hollywood tropes are on display here. But it’s still a film well worth your time.

IMDb

The role of Starman originally went to Kevin Bacon.

Sorry, but I can’t even imagine that.

wiki

This script was being developed at Columbia at the same time as another script about an alien visitation. The studio did not want to make both, so the head of the studio had to choose which film to make; he decided to make this one and let the other script go to a rival studio. The other script was for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Clip from the ending [with some great music]

youtube.com/watch?v=w4KHF4gUlPQ

STARMAN [1984]
Directed by John Carpenter

[b]Starman: I send greetings.
Heinmuller: What the hell’s going on here?
Jenny: I’m being kidnapped!
Starman: Greetings.
Heinmuller: You better let her go pal, I’ll give you some greetings.

…

Jenny: How’d you do that? Those little gray jobs?

…

Shermin: I think the balloon has gone up, sir.

…

Jenny [to starman]: I have to go to the bathroom. The ladies room. The rest room. It’s when a person has to…uh…oh, to hell with it. Figure it out myself.

…

Jenny: You want to know what kidnapped is? It’s being dragged out of your house in the middle of the night by some—whatever you are…being forced to drive all night with a gun pointed in your side and not knowing where you’re going or what’s going to happen to you after you get there. So, if you’re going to shoot me, go ahead…becasue Iwould rather be shot than go on being scared to death.
Starman: I mean you no harm, Jenny Hayden.

…

Starman: Okay?
Jenny: Okay? Are you crazy? You almost got us killed! You said you watched me drive, you said you knew the rules!
Starman: I do know the rules.
Jenny: Oh, for your information pal, that was a yellow light back there!
Starman: I watched you very carefully. Red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast.

…

Fox: Do you seriously expect me to tell the President that an alien has landed, assumed the identity of a dead housepainter from Madison, Wisconsin and is presently out tooling around the countryside in a hopped up orange and black 1977 Mustang?

…

Fox: What the hell are we talking about here?
Scientist: We’re hypothesizing a technology that’s 100,000 years ahead of us. We’re the ancients, Mr. Fox.

…

Deer Hunter: What’s the matter, cried when you saw Bambi?
Starman: Define ‘Bambi’?
Deer Hunter: Huh?
Jenny: He doesn’t understand, he’s not from around here.
Deer Hunter: [laughs] You don’t speaka English, huh? Heh-hey!
[walks away snickering]
Jenny: [to Starman] Steer clear of that bozo.
Starman: Define ‘bozo’?

…

Starman: Define “shit”.

…

Starman: Shit!
Jenny: Don’t mind him. He’s just learning English.
Roadhouse Waitress: Well, he’s got a hell of a start on it!

…

Jenny: No, no. You eat that last. Sandwich first, dessert last.
Starman: Why?
Jenny: I don’t know. It’s just how it’s done.

…

Cook: What’s your line?
Starman: Line?
Cook: Work. Whaddya do when you’re not hitchin’ rides?
Starman: Oh, I make maps.
Cook: Make any money?
Starman: I make maps.
Cook: Well, you don’t get rich cookin’ either!

…

Cook: You’re not from around here, are you?

…

Starman: Jenny, there is something I must tell you. I gave you a baby last night.
Jenny: No that’s impossible. I told you, I can’t have a child.
Starman: Believe what I tell you.

…

Starman: Define “giant jackpot”.

…

Fox: Shermin, you are finished. I will have you eviscerated for this.
Shermin: Well, as much as I hate to stoop to symbolism.
[Shermin takes a puff from cigar and blows smoke into Fox’s face][/b]

Never been to a French prison. But the guy who made the film hired lots of men who had. The film is said to be a realistic portrayal of what the conditions are like. The rest [as usual] is politics. And not the voting kind.

This is a world in which so much revolves around simply surviving from day to day. Among monsters. And it is the monsters who run the prison. So you become a monster too. The bigger the better. And then there are the monsters outside the prison. It’s a world most of us could not possibly be farther removed from.

And Malik is always asking the same questions: What am I willing to do in order to survive? And what do I really have a choice regarding?

Malik is an Algerian immigrant who gets sucked into a gang of Corsican mobsters. The world he lives in now is surreal to say the least.

And what an unimaginably vicious dog-eat-dog world of thuggery. And then, for some, they still have to fit in the family they love. And cancer.

IMDb

[b]To ensure the authenticity of the prison experience, Jacques Audiard hired former convicts as advisers and extras.

…

Prior to making this film, Jacques Audiard had screened a film to prisoners in France. Shocked by the conditions in the prison facility, he decided his next film would take place in one.[/b]

A PROPHET [Un Prophète] 2009
Written and directed by Jacques Audiard

[b]Chef de détention: Any family on the outside?
Malik: No, sir.
Chef de détention: No one to wire you money?
Malik: No, sir.
Chef de détention: Friends inside, or outside?
Malik: No one, sir.

…

Cesar: Just remember one thing. Now that you’re in on it, if you don’t kill him, we’ll kill you.

…

Ceasar’s thug: Your turn now. You be the girl.

…

Santi: [handing Malik a bag of gifts] From César Luciani. You’re now under his protection.

…

Vettori: These fucking Arabs! At least dogs fuck in silence.

…

Ryad: One day I saw a job ad. For security guard. I didn’t have a dog, so I bought one secondhand. I didn’t know, so I got a rottweiler. Know what they’re like? And his name was Tyson. He came with the name Tyson. He was humongous! See this? This was the size of his poops. He took enormous dumps. Bigger than mine. So I work in a store. A big supermarket. I leave the dog to sniff around. I go outside for a cigarette. Then I try to go back in. I couldn’t. He didn’t always recognize me.
Malik: Your own dog?
Ryad: But he was crazy. Tyson was a psycho. I go inside and he comes charging towards me. I panic, reach out my arm. He grabs me like this. I take out my mace, spray him. He lets go. I run out, scared shitless. What do I do? I leave him inside. Soon the employees start coming. I didn’t know they used a back door to go inside. The hound had a field day. He tore every last one to pieces.

…

César: If you weren’t spying, what were you doing? Making fun?
Malik: If I was making fun, I’d never have told you.

…

Cesar: Llbanez will transfer you to the cell next door. I’ll have you made a porter. You’ll get paid, shop at the commissary, walk anywhere you want. You’ll be my eyes and my ears.
Malik: And the others?
Cesar: What, my friends? You watch them too.

…

Malik: If you want a favor, learn to ask.
Hassan: What do you want?
Malik: What can I get out of it?
Hassan: Respect.
Malik: Do I look Corsican?

…

Sampierro: César said you ask no questions.
Malik: César said I’d be paid.

…

Cesar [looking over at the Muslims]: Am I crazy or do they keep multiplying? Soon they’ll bring out the rugs. Before, we ruled the yard. Good thing they’re dumb. If they stopped thinking with their balls they would have evolved more.

…

Malik: [his hands tied] Is this necessary?
Lattrache: Doesn’t bother me.

…

Lattrache: You’re their Arab. They protect you.
Malik: No, I work.
Lattrache: What’s the price? You rat? Run errands? Suck them?
Malik: What the hell?
Lattrache [pulling a gun on him]: Why does an Arab work for the Coricans? You belly-dance? You their waitress?

…

César: I’m going to ask a favor of you, not because you work for me, but because I trust you. Understand the difference?
Malik: I’m not sure.

…

Malik: Want to know how I feel?
César: I couldn’t care less.

…

Malik: Are you Jacky Marcaggi? Don’t talk! I can’t hear! Just nod…Your pal Luciano sent us to kill you. I won’t. I’ll leave him to you. Take your revenge![/b]

There are rats and then there are rats. But what does it take to be one kind rather than the other?

Same thing as with Donnie Brasco: Costello wants to know if Billy is a rat, working for the cops. Well, order him to hit the next guy he wants whacked. Order him to commit a major crime. Would he if he were a cop? Isn’t that what gangs do?

Of course, Frank…he’s kind of a rat himself, isn’t he?

What must it be like to live in a world where you really can’t trust anyone around you. A world where every other word out of your mouth [and every other word you hear] is probably a lie. And one in which you have to pretend to be someone else. Slipping in and out of very different frames of mind.

And somehow this is all about “being Irish” too—as though there must be a gene for that.

IMDb

[b]Mark Wahlberg based his performance on the police officers who’d arrested him about two dozen times in his youth, and the reactions of his parents who had to come bail him out with their grocery money.

…

The only remake of a foreign film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.

…

The Departed, and the character of Francis “Frank” Costello (Jack Nicholson), is loosely based on the story of Whitey Bulger [born 1929], a Boston Southie considered by Law Enforcement to be one of the last Irish mobsters. Bulger often gave information to John Connolly, an FBI agent, on the Italian Mafia in Boston, in order to take over the city himself. Bulger spent his career as a psychotic killer and even ran guns for the IRA in the 1970s. Even after Bulger stopped passing on actual information to the FBI, Connolly still protected him from the Staties. Bulger was captured in Santa Monica, CA in 2011 after being on the run for over 15 years and is currently awaiting trial after pleading not guilty to nearly 50 criminal charges.[/b]

wiki

Film critic Stanley Kauffmann describes a major theme of The Departed as one of the oldest in drama—the concept of identity—and how it “affects one’s actions, emotions, self-assurance and even dreams.”

Maybe, but not the way in which Donnie Brasco experienced it. The persona did not become the actual point of view.

Andrew Lau, the co-director of Infernal Affairs, who was interviewed by Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, said, “Of course I think the version I made is better, but the Hollywood version is pretty good too. [Scorsese] made the Hollywood version more attuned to American culture.”

THE DEPARTED
Directed by Martin Scorsese

[b]Frank: I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me. Years ago we had the church. That was only a way of saying we had each other. The Knights of Columbus were real head-breakers; true guineas. They took over their piece of the city. Twenty years after an Irishman couldn’t get a fucking job, we had the presidency. May he rest in peace. That’s what the niggers don’t realize. If I got one thing against the black chappies, it’s this - no one gives it to you. You have to take it.

…

Frank: You do well in school?
Young Colin: Yeah
Frank: Good. So did I. They call that a paradox.

…

Frank: Church wants you on your place. Kneel, stand, kneel, stand. If you go for that sort of thing, I don’t know what to do for you. A man makes his own way. No one gives it to you. You have to take it. “Non serviam.”
Young Colin: James Joyce.
Frank: Smart, Colin. Guineas from the north and down Providence try to tell me what to do. And, uh, something maybe happens to them. Maybe, uh, like that.
[cuts to Costello executing two people on beach]
Frank: Jeez. She fell funny.
[chuckles at the dead bodies]
Mr. French: Francis, you really should see somebody.

…

Frank: When you decide to be something, you can be it. That’s what they don’t tell you in the church. When I was your age they would say we can become cops, or criminals. Today, what I’m saying to you is this: when you’re facing a loaded gun, what’s the difference?

…

Billy: Look at it this way: You’re a black guy in Boston. You don’t need any help from me to be completely fucked.

…

Billy: You a psychiatrist?
Dignam: Well, if I was I’d ask you why you’re a Statie making 30 grand a year. And I think if I was Sigmund fuckin’ Freud I wouldn’t get an answer. So tell me, what’s a lace-curtain motherfucker like you doing in the Staties?
Billy: Families are always rising or falling in America, am I right?
Queenan: Who said that?
Billy: Hawthorne.
Dignam: [makes a farting sound] What’s the matter, smartass, you don’t know any fuckin’ Shakespeare?

…

Queenan: We have a question: Do you want to be a cop, or do you want to appear to be a cop? It’s an honest question. A lot of guys just want to appear to be cops. Gun, badge, pretend they’re on TV.
Dignam: Yeah, a lot of people just wanna slam a nigger’s head through a plate-glass window.
Billy: I’m all set without your own personal job application. Alright, Sergeant?
Dignam: What the fuck did you say to me, trainee?
Billy: [to Queenan] With all due respect, sir, what do you want from me?
Dignam: Hey asshole, he can’t help you! I know what you are, okay? I know what you are and I know what you are not. I’m the best friend you have on the face of this earth, and I’m gonna help you understand something, you punk. You’re no fuckin’ cop!

…

Mr. French: [calmly] Hey, hey, hey… do you know me?
Billy: No, no.
Mr. French: Well, I’m the guy that tells you there are guys you can hit and there’s guys you can’t. Now, that’s not quite a guy you can’t hit, but it’s almost a guy you can’t hit. So I’m gonna make a fuckin’ ruling on this right now. You don’t fuckin’ hit him. You understand?
Billy: Yeah.

…

Dignam: My theory on Feds is that they’re like mushrooms, feed 'em shit and keep 'em in the dark.

…

Frank: I’m going to have my associate search you.
Billy: No, no one’s fucking searching me. Searching me for what?
Frank: Contra-fucking-band. Take your shoes off.
[French slams Costigan into a chair]
Mr. French: Shoes.
Frank: [to Costigan] I knew your father.
Billy: Yeah? You know he’s dead?
Frank: Oh, sorry. How’d he go?
Billy: He didn’t complain.
Frank: Yeah, that was his problem.
Billy: Who said he had a problem?
Frank: I just said he had a fucking problem. There’s a man who could have been anything.
Billy: Are you trying to say he was nothing?
[French slams Costigan onto a pool table and continues his search]
Frank: I’m saying he worked at the airport.

…

Frank: Who let this IRA motherfucker in my bar?
[the man looks startled]
Frank: [laughs] Only kidding. How’s your mother?
Man in Costello’s Bar: Oh… I’m afraid she’s on her way out.
Frank: [walks away] We all are. Act accordingly.

…

Colin: What Freud said about the Irish is: We’re the only people who are impervious to psychoanalysis.[/b]

No, not really.

[b]Frank: Good day, father.
Older Priest: Good day, Francis.
Frank: You recall our chat? Little boys. Sucking on their peckers, etc… and so forth. I am as God made me. Is that your rationale? May I remind you - in this archdiocese, God don’t run the bingo.
Young Priest: May I remind you - that pride comes before the fall.
Frank: How’s Sister Mary Teresa doing? Had a tasty relationship before she took her vows.
[Costello hands the priests a nude of the nun]
Frank: Enjoy your clams, cocksuckers.

…

Billy [to Madolyn]: You sit there with a mass murderer. A mass murderer. Your heart rate is jacked, and your hand… steady. That’s one thing I figured out about myself in prison. My hand does not shake…ever

…

Billy: So, do they all come in here and cry your cops?
Madolyn: Sometimes they do yeah. If they’ve had to use their weapons…
Billy: Use their weapons? Let me tell you something. They signed up to use their weapons. Most of them. But they watch enough TV so they know they have to weep after they use their weapons. There is no one more full of shit than a cop…except for a cop on TV.

…

Dignam: Hey, what do you think…you can pop somebody and there’s a special card to play? That guy, Jimmy Bags whose jaw you broke happens to work undercover for the Boston Police Department.
Billy: Look, I’m going fucking nuts, man. I can’t be someone else every fuckin’ day. It’s been a year of this. I’ve had enough of this shit!

…

Billy: When are you gonna take Costello, huh? I mean, what’s wrong with taking him on any one of the million fucking felonies that you’ve seen him do, or I’ve seen him do? I mean, I mean, he murdered somebody, right? The guy fucking murders somebody, and you don’t fucking take him! What are you waiting for, honestly? I mean, do you want him to chop me up and feed me to the poor? Is that what you guys want?

…

Billy [to Madolyn]: Two pills? Great. Why don’t you just give me a bottle of Scotch and a handgun to blow my fucking head off?

…

Madolyn: Why is the last patient of the day always the hardest?
Billy: Because you’re tired and you don’t give a shit. It’s not supernatural.

…

Frank: If these chinks wanna nuke Taiwan anytime in this century, they better shape up and show me $1 million dollars! What we generally do - in this country! - is one guy brings the item, and the other guy pays him. “No tickee, no laundry”!

…

Frank [to Billy]: They didn’t figure we had a Navy.

…

Billy: [to Frank Costello] You accuse me once, I put up with it. You accuse me twice… I quit. You pressure me to fear for my life and I will put a fucking bullet in your head as if you were anybody else. Okay?
[Frank drops something. He reaches under the table and pulls up a gun. He looks at it as if he’s never seen it before and then points it at Billy]
Frank: You got something you wanna… ask me?
Billy: Look, you’re seventy fucking years old. One of these guys is going to pop you. One of your own guys is going to pop you. As for running drugs, what the fuck. You don’t need the money or the pain in the ass, and they’re going to catch you.
Frank: I haven’t “needed the money” since I took Archie’s milk money in the third grade. Tell you the truth, I don’t need pussy any more either… but I like it.

…

Billy: Frank, how many of these guys have been with you long enough to be disgruntled, huh? Think about it. You don’t pay much, you know. It’s almost a fuckin’ feudal enterprise. The question is, and this is the only question, who thinks that they can do what you do better than you?
Frank: The only one who could do what I do is me. A lot of people had to die for me to be me. You wanna be me?
Billy: I probably could be you, yeah. Yeah, I know that much. But I don’t wanna be you, Frank. I don’t want to be you.
Frank: “Heavy lies the crown”…that sort of thing?
Billy: Yeah.

…

Ellerby: Queenan is dead. I’m your boss now.
Dignam: I don’t give a fuck, I’d rather hand in my papers first.
Ellerby: World needs plenty of bartenders - two weeks, with pay!

…

Frank [to Colin]: One of us had to die. With me, it tends to be the other guy.

…

Frank: Fucking rats. It’s wearing me thin.
Mr. French: Francis, it’s a nation of fucking rats.

…

Frank: How the fuck did this happen?
Colin: You’re an FBI informant? Are you fucking kidding me?
Frank: Grow up!
[laughing]
Frank: Of course I talk to the FBI.
Colin: Do they know who I am?
Frank: I…I never gave up anybody who wasn’t going down anyway. Nobody knows nothin’.
Colin: Frank… Frank. Do they know about me?
Frank: I know about you, Colin. You know I’d never give you up. You’re like a…
Colin: What, like a son? To you? Is that what this is about? All that murderin’ and fuckin’ and no sons?
[They shoot at each other]
Colin: Fucking rat prick!!

…

Colin: Okay.[/b]

How many reading this will be familiar at all with this particular war? Or, when push comes to shove, are they all pretty much the same: flailing testosterone.

The folly of war here is matched only by the folly of those fighting it. And that’s nothing compared to the folly of those fomenting it. The blind leading the blind doesn’t come close to describing it.

They argue less about what the war is being fought for than they do who started it and who is committing the most atrocities. According to “the world”: the Serbs. But at the time of the conflict a woman I worked with [a Serb] made it a point to put that in perspective day after day.

Then there’s the problem of language. Here are life and death situations that can sometimes come down to figuring out a way to communicate whether or not there are mines. They all know what mines are but they have only a primitive way in which to talk about them.

Think Catch 22 with [at times] even bigger idiots.

wiki

No Man’s Land (Bosnian: Ničija zemlja) is a 2001 war drama that is set in the midst of the Bosnian war. The film is a parable and marked the debut of Bosnian writer and director Danis Tanović. It is a co-production among companies in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Italy, France, Belgium and the UK. The film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2001.

NO MAN’S LAND [2001]
Written and directed by Danis Tanovic

[b]Ciki: Do you even know what’s the difference between a pessimist and an optimist?
Soldier: No, what?
Ciki: A pessimist thinks things can’t be worse. An optimist knows they can

…

Nino: What made you want to ruin this beautiful country?
Ciki: Us? You’re crazy. You wanted to separate not us!
Nino: Because you started the war!
Ciki: You started it!
Nino: You started it!
Ciki: You started it!
Nino: You started it!
Ciki: [aims the gun at him] Who started the war?
Nino [after long pause]: We did.

…

Nino: Why?
Ciki: Because I’ve got the gun and you don’t.[/b]

Later:

[b]Ciki: Why?
Nino: Because I’ve got the gun and you don’t. By the way, who started the war?
Ciki: We did.

…

Cera [who is laying on a bouncing betty]: I hope those aren’t my cigarettes.
Ciki: When I took them, I didn’t know you’d need them. But now I hope . . .
[lighting one up and taking a drag, then putting it into Cera’s mouth]
Ciki: …that you’ll die of cancer.

…

UNPROFOR Colonel Soft: Captain, you know perfectly well that there is nothing that I can do without the approval of the General Assembly of the United Nations. I don’t think the General Assembly will convene itself specifically to deal with the problems of two unknown men trapped in no man’s land.

…

Ciki: Cera, here come the Smurfs!

…

UN Sargent: What a fuck up!

…

Jane Livingston [reporter]: Neutrality does not exist in the face of murder. Doing nothing to stop it is, in fact, choosing. It is not being neutral.

…

UN Soldier: Fuck, what a job. They say a mine expert only ever makes one mistake.
UN Sargent: Two mistakes. The first is when he chooses the job.

…

Bomb disposal expert: This is the mine under the man? I can do nothing. It’s impossible to de-activate once the mechanism is on. This man is already dead.

…

Ciki: You’re all the same! And you vultures film it. You get good money? Does our misery pay well?

…

Cameraman: You’re sure you don’t want me to film the trench?
Jane Livingston: No. A trench is a trench. They’re all the same.[/b]

Of all the characters I have seen in all the films I have viewed [lots and lots and lots] Stephane comes closest to capturing the manner in which I view myself “out in the world”. In other words, he is a relatively innocuous sociopath. Which is to say he does not feel as others seem to; but he is able to blend in as though he does. But his is also the same heart in Spring, Summer and Fall. I don’t know the extent to which one is “born this way”. I have always felt this way. And later in life, as I became more and more familiar with human identity as dasein, this frame of mind became all the more entrenched.

Here is the scene that captures this best:

youtube.com/watch?v=oJzPd1WeTOk

I don’t see him as resentful of Maxime [or others]. Okay, maybe a little. Or, yeah, sure, sometimes, alot. Mostly though I see him as unable to be other than what he is. His congenital predisposition perhaps. Or maybe I simply project the manner in which I see myself into this character on the screen. It is so rare that I see myself in others cinematically. And never at all “in reality”.

IMDb

Emmanuelle Béart actually learned how to play the violin for the part.

wiki

An important part of the film is the use of chamber music by Maurice Ravel, played by Jean-Jacques Kantorow (violin), Jacques Rouvier (piano) and Philippe Muller (cello). New Zealand musician Jeffrey Grice appears in the film in the role of the pianist.

The music is superb. Excerpt. Sort of.

youtube.com/watch?v=20CxzzwBMs4

A HEART IN WINTER [Un Coeur en Hiver] 1992
Written and directed by Claude Sautet

[b]Stephane [voiceover]: Maxime and I have known each other so long, we didn’t need words. We work together but he is the boss.

…

Stephane [voiceover]: Maxime needs to expend himself. He is at one with his body. He so loves to win that losing for me becomes a pleasure. Life hangs lightly on him.

…

Stephane [voiceover]: Maxime never asks where I go or who I see when we aren’t together. Which is fine by me.

…

Stephane [at Helene’s bookstore]: It’s odd that in three-quarters of these books, when thay talk about love, whether it’s an airport novel, a masterpiece or a cook book it’s the same vocabulary. Overflowing.
Helene: And you find that obscene?
Stephane: No. As written it is often beautiful.[/b]

Then the classic discussion about Art and the masses:

[b]Daniel: What upsets me, as I wrote in my last book, is that on the pretext that it’s all culture some rate a pop video alongside a Claudel play, a Piero Della Francesca or the Ravel sonata our friend is playing. The confusion is unprecedented. It’s all lumped together, pell-mell.
Regine: People can still choose.
Daniel: Yes, but with everything meriting equal attention concensus of opinion becomes a wooly horror. I believe in a certain mental vigilance. Is that pompous?
Lachaume: No. We’re listening. It’s the voice of tradition.
Daniel: Tradition! So I’m a reactionary.
Lachaume: No, you speak for an anxious elite in a world threatened by democratic excess.
Daniel: I’ve fought elitism all my life.
Camille: There’s confusion, I agree. If culture is still a privilege it isn’t reserved for quite so few.
Daniel: It’s worse, all these clueless clodhoppers in the museums.
Camille: Yes, but if in this museum a clodhopper’s life is changed by a work of art, isn’t that something?
Stephane [to Camille]: You almost agree. For you, too, there’s the sensitive individual in the blind masses.
Camille: I didn’t say that.
Maxime: No, you said there’s a natural selection of people destined…
Camille: No not at all.
Maxime: You said some see things that others don’t.
Stephane: Yes. That’s what you said.
Camille: Yes. I mean, no. But…I exclude no one.

…

Lachaume: And you? You have no opinion?
Stephane: No.
Camille: None?
Lachaume: He’s above the debate.
Stephane: I hear contradictory arguments, all valid.[/b]

Bingo. But:

[b]Camille: We all cancel each other out, we can’t talk about anything anymore?
Stephane: A tempting prospect, I guess. I don’t have your goodwill.
Lachaume: We respect your silence.
Camille: In speaking, one risks sounding stupid. Not speaking you may appear intelligent.

…

Regine: I’d never met Stephane socially. He’s so disagreeable.
Maxime: You have to know him. It’s all a game he’s playing.

…

Helene: You establish a real intimacy.
Stephane: It was she who came to me.
Helene: But it’s what you were waiting for.
Stephane: Let’s say, what I hoped for.
Helene: Are you in love with her?
Stephane: In love?
Helene: I know you bristle at the word.
Stephane: No, it disorients me. Let me think. No, I don’t think I am. No.
Helene: Anyway, it’s Maxime she loves.
Stephane: Yes. At one point though I did get the impression she would rather be having dinner with me than with him.

…

Camille: He said he was coming, but he didn’t. He seemed put out when I called.
Regine: But you told him to stay away.
Camille: I’m not talking about Maxime. I’m talking about Stephane. I don’t vunderstand. When he’s there, he’s there. Then suddenly it’s as if I didn’t exist.

…

Camille: You might have sruples about seeing me because he is your friend.
Stephane: There’s no friendship between us.
Camille: No friendship?
Stephane: No. We’ve been partners for years. We complement each other.
Camille: He thinks of you as a friend.
Stephane: I can’t prevent that.
Camille: I don’t believe you.
Stephane: Why? Because it’s not something one admits? But it’s true. Are you shocked?
Camille: No. Saddened.
Stephane: Misusing words is sad.
Camille: You devalue them and everything else…You aren’t like that. Nobody is. It doesn’t happen. It’s a pose.
Stephane: What do you want? Do you want me to invent reasons, traumas? Unhappy childhood, sexual frustration, career nipped in the bud?

…

Camille: You act as though emotions don’t exist. Yet you love music.
Stephane: Music is the stuff of dreams.

…

Camille: I’m feeling low, Maxime. I don’t feel good about myself. And not because of the sonatas.
Maxime: Stephane…

…

Camille: It’s like…a pressure.

…

Camille: It was you I played for…I spoke to Maxime. About us. It was hard. He heard me out. I told him what’s happened. I want you. It’s not like me but I had to tell you.
Stephane: Camille…I don’t think I can give you what you are looking for.
Camille: You want it to. I know you and accept you as your are. I don’t mind about this close world you built around yourself long ago. I’m here for you. Look at me…You can’t go on living like that. You must see that you’re changing.
Stephane: Camille…You’re beautiful. You’re going to be a great musician. You have almost a surfeit of gifts…But you’re fooling yourself. You insist on seeing me as you imagine me…as someone else. But I’m not that person.
Camille: Don’t deceive yourself. It’s so simple.
Stephan: I must tell you the truth. I’d decided to seduce you, without loving you…probably to get at Maxime…You don’t understand Camille. You talk of feelings which don’t exist…to which I have no access. I don’t love you. [pause] You know…
Camille: Don’t talk, please. Don’t look at me.

…

Camille [later, in a restaurant]: We can’t leave it like this. I can’t accept it. Say something.
Stephane: Camille, I told you the truth.
Camille: You know you didn’t. At the studio that day it rained, I didn’t imagine your attentiveness.
Stephane: That’s my job.
Camille: Don’t tell me I was just like some musician on TV.
Stephane: No. Certainly not.
Camille: Your way of looking at me…
Stephane: I was sincere.
Camille: Everything we said to each other.
Stephane: But we didn’t say anything.
Camille: Oh, but we did. Or was it I who…No, it’s not possible. It’s not…possible. But why?
Stephane: I told you why.

…

Camille: But if it was just to get at Maxime, you should have fucked me. Sordid, but at least it’s life.

…

Camille: Ah, it seems he loves music because it’s the stuff of dreams and has nothing to do with life. You know nothing of dreams. You have no imagination, no heart, no balls![/b]

What does it mean to “have” things like this? Are there switches your brain you can turn on like there on the wall for lamps?

Lachaume: What did you have in mind? Disrupting things. The pleasure of demystification? But one can’t demystify feelings.

No more than Lachaume [very ill] cannot not die.

[b]Maxime: I went to see Lachsaume. He’s not well. He’s suffering. Doesn’t talk anymore. He wants to die.

…

Amet [to Stephane regarding Lachaume’s wish to die]: He’s been asking for three days. But I can’t. I can’t.[/b]

So, Stephane does it.

These are the kind of “terrorist cells” that prompted Dubya Bush to raise the security alerts over and over again. Especially as we got closer and closer to elections. And no one does farce better than the pols in Washington.

Alas, the closest thing to threats they have now are still on TV. Homeland, for example.

The “terrorists” are far more dangerous to each other.

I’m trying to imagine how actual Muslims who embrace jihad would react to the way in which they are portrayed here; as, well, buffoons. I smell fatwas looming.

Me, I don’t have a dog in this fight. If you know what I mean.

But, okay, sure: there are plenty of religious fanatics out there that really are dangerous. But not nearly as dangerous [sometimes] as those charged with hunting them down. In me own opinion, of course.

FOUR LIONS
Written and directed by Christopher Morris

[b]Barry: How can you do a jihadi video with a box on your head?!

…

Barry: Bollocks, I’m a liability? I am the Invisible Jihadi! They seek him here, they seek him there, but here’s not there, he’s blowing up your slag sister!
Omar: Invisible? Right. Like the time you got on the local news for baking a Twin Towers cake and leaving it at the synagogue on 9/11?

…

Omar’s Uncle: Is he as stupid as he looks?

…

Hassan: [Raps at community meeting]: I’m the Mujahideen and I’m making a scene / Now you’s gonna feel what the boom-boom means / It’s like Tupac said, “When I die, I’m not dead”/ We are the martyrs, you’re just smashed tomatoes / Allahu Akbar!
[Audience screams as Hassan detonate his suicide belt releasing party streams]
Hassan: [Looking at the audiences] Oh, what, man? Come on. What? Just cos I’m Muslim, you thought it was real?

…

Barry [to Hassan]: These are bad times, bro. Islam is cracking up. We got women talking back. We got people playing stringed instruments. It’s the end of days.

…

Jihadist at Pakistani training camp to Omar and Waj: You fucking Mr. Beans!!

…

Waj: Maybe it was God’s will I would do my video so…so maybe it’s not my fault.
Omar: No it’s your fault. It was God’s will that you were acting like a complete idiot, apparently. But it was definitely your fault.
Waj: So, if that was God’s will, then I am God’s fault?

…

Barry: Bomb the mosque!
Faisal: The Masjid?
Barry: Yeah, the masjid, the mosque. But we go in dressed like kuffars. They think it’s the unbelievers attacking, so all the Muslims rise up and fight back. Start things up proper, big time, fast-track, the final days – total war![/b]

You know, like the Weather Underground and the SLA. People actually do think like this!

Faisal: But my dad goes to the masjid. What if he’s in the masjid?
Barry: Has your dad ever bought Jaffa orange?
Faisal: Once or twice.
Barry: Right, he’s buying nukes for Israel. He’s a Jew.

The look on Faisal’s face? Priceless.

[b]Omar: We have instructions from the Emir to bring havoc to this bullshit, consumerist, godless, Paki-bashing, Gordon Ramsay “Taste the Difference” specialty cheddar, torture endorsing, massacre-sponsering, “Look-at-me-dancing-pissed-with-my-nob-out”, Sku1 Uncovered, “Who-gives-a-fuck-about-dead-Afghanis?” Disneyland!

…

Faisal: Let’s bomb Boots. They sell condoms that make you want to bang white girls…

…

Omar: The next time Barry tells you to do something—don’t.

…

Omar [to Ahmed]: Have you got 150 quotes from scholars saying we can’t squirt a water pistol?

…

Barry [lining up bolts for the bomb]: Jew. Gay. Fed. Sodomite. Gynecologist. Innocent bloke? Doesn’t exist. Leonard Cohen.

…

Barry: [after car breaks down…again]: Fuck, Fuck, fuck it!
Omar: Did you fix this then, Barry?
Barry: Yes, I fixed it!
Omar: Did ya?
Barry: It’s the parts…they’re Jewish.
Omar: What parts in a car are Jewish?
[pause]
Omar: Hmm?
Faisal: Spark plugs.
Barry: Spark plugs! Jews invented spark plugs to control global traffic.

…

Barry [looking down at a garbage bag containing what’s left of Faisal]: It was a martyr’s death.
Waj: Gone to paradise.
Barry: He disrupted the infrastructure.
Omar: How did he do that?
Barry: He took out a sheep.
Omar: Did he?
Barry: Attacked the food supply.
Omar: So what is he lads, is he a martyr or is he a fucking jalfrezi?
Barry: He’s a martyr. He’s part of the war.
Barry: What war? The war on kuffar sheep?

…

Waj: We’ll blow something up.
Omar: What we gonna blow up Waj?
Waj: The Internet. We’ll blow up the internet for brother Faisal.

…

Ahmed: Why not come to our study group, Omar?
Omar: What, and get a four-hour dose of that face? The floaty face of the wise bird, hovering on a million quotes, about to do a massive wisdom dump on my head. Forget it.

…

Omar: Faisal’s dead. He was carrying explosives and he tripped over a sheep. They’re total idiots, Sof.
Sofia: Well, it must have been God’s plan for him to be blown up on a sheep.
Omar: Come on Sof. How can that be God’s plan?
Sofia: Well, it can’t be God’s plan to leave the lads with Barry, can it?

…

Omar: Sof, I can’t even get them to stir their tea without smashing a window.

…

Omar: The police found Faisal’s head. The head you said you buried five feet under your shed. It fell out of a tree onto a dog.
Barry: Good. Dogs contradict Islam.
Claude: I told you it was a knee.
Barry: That was a head. It was obviously a head.
Calude: It had a hinge!!

…

Barry: You cannot win an argument just by being right!
Omar: No?
Barry: No.
Waj: I think maybe you can, Barry.

…

Omar [to Waj]: Bro, I swear, Bro, I may ask you to blow yourself up but I will never ask you to piss in your own mouth.[/b]

Like Barry did.

[b]Omar [near the place where they will all blow themselves up]: Waj, don’t listen to your brain, bro. The devil gets in there. What you’ve got to do is listen to your heart. Remember? What’s your heart say?
Waj: It say, “it’s wrong Waj, don’t do it”.
Omar: And what’s your brain say?
Waj: It says, uh, “we’re here together, strapped up, and it would be like, well, pathetic to cop out now.”
Omar: Right, um…
Barry: So, he should listen to his brain.
Omar: No, he’s got to listen to his heart, Barry. And this is Waj’s brain we’re talking about, Sorry, Waj.
Waj: No, I agree. I’m thick as fudge.
Barry: His brain says do it, so his brain’s got to be right!
Omar: That can’t be his brain, right? That’s his heart, Barry.
Waj: But it feels like my brain, brother.
Omar: Okay, this is what happened. What’s happened is that the devil has confused you. He’s swapped around your brain and your heart. So, don’t listen to what you think is your heart 'cause that is actually your brain in disguise as your heart. And what you thought is your brain, that’s your heart.
Waj: My brain is my heart.
Omar: You got it.

…

Barry: You just killed the special needs donkey!

…

Sniper 1: [into walkie-talkie] The bear is down. Repeat, the bear is down.
[to other sniper]
Sniper 1: We got the bear.
Sniper 2: I think that’s a Wookie. That’s a Wookie!
Sniper: No it’s not! It’s a bear!
Sniper: [into walkie-talkie] Is a Wookie a bear, Control?
Control: The bear target has changed. The bear target is now a honey monster.
Sniper 1: Is a honey monster a bear?
Control: A honey monster is not a bear.
Sniper: A honey monster is a bear. The honey monster is down. He was a target. He was a bear.
Sniper 2: The honey monster is not down, control. We have a Wookie down.
Control: What’s a Wookie?
Sniper 1: A bear. It’s a bear!
Sniper 2: No, it is a wookie. You just shot it as a bear.

…

Waj [answering his cell phone]: Omar?
Omar: Waj?
Waj: Are you in paradise, bro?
Omar: No, I’m in a cafe. Where are you?
Waj: I’m in a kabob shop.

…

Waj: I’ve got hostages and everything. Just like x-box Counter Strike.

…

Waj: When I press the clicker just think about taking out kuffar.
Hostage: But there’s no kuffar here, bro.
Waj: Yeah, but…Brother Fasial, he’s a martyr and he only blew up a sheep.
Hostage: I think you might be confused, brother.
Waj: I’m not.
Hostage: You look confused.

…

Waj [to Omar]: Tell me what to do, bro, I think I might be confused, but I’m not sure!

…

Malcolm Storge MP: The report makes crystal clear that the police shot the right man, but as far as I’m aware, the wrong man exploded.

…

TV newsman: This footage, taken from an American spy plane appears to show two trainee Mujahideens struggling with a rocket launcher, accidently firing it at an Arab training camp and blowing up Osama bin Laden.[/b]

So, much for Obama’s claim, right?