philosophy in film

Way back in 1993 when Jurrassic Park first exploded on the scene the very first question that many asked was [of course] this: Is it possible?

This part: science.howstuffworks.com/life/g … c-park.htm

And, for many, ever since, they wonder if, one day, they will turn on the news and, sure enough, there it is: a report that sceintists somewhere have either accomplished this extraordinary feat or have made such progress that maybe – maybe – in their lifetime it will become a reality.

Nothing yet though. So, for now, we will have to settle for the Hollywood rendition.

Still, what made Jurassic Park more than just one more special effects extravaganza is that it actually delved into the science [and the part about profit motive] a bit more than just on the surface. After all, try to imagine the film without Ian Malcolm in it.

Or Donald Gennaro. There always has to be that guy who represents “what corporate wants”. So you’re looking to see if Jurassic World will be just one more rendition of Disney World with dinosaurs. In fact, that’s why Hollywood often invents characters like John Hammond. For them it is always more than “just a business”. Here though Mr. Masrani is but a pale imitation.

Also, the main characters in the original were [overall] folks that I could take to. In other words, I could actually imagine them “out in the real world” doing their thing. And embracing it with a passion. I could even imagine interacting with them. In other words, I just plain liked them.

So, my reaction to Jurassic World would basically be more or less the same: strip away the special effects and what’s there? Almost nothing alas. As for the main characters, nope, didn’t care much for [or about] them at all. And where it really fell flat is in creating these “interpersonal” storylines that Hollywood always craps out in every film of this sort. It more or less worked in Jurassic Park. But not here. I’m trying to imagine the mind of someone who would actually give a damn about these folks.

Here’s something new though: Turning dinosaurs into weapons of war.

IMDb trivia: imdb.com/title/tt0369610/tri … =ttqu_sa_1

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_World
IMDb FAQ: imdb.com/title/tt0369610/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
trailer: youtu.be/RFinNxS5KN4

JURASSIC WORLD [2015]
Directed by Colin Trevorrow

[b]Claire [guiding a tour]: Welcome to Jurassic World. While year over year, revenue continues to climb…operating costs are higher than ever. Our shareholders have been patient but let’s be honest no one is impressed by a dinosaur anymore. 20 years ago, de-extinction was right up there with magic. These days, kids look at a Stegosaurus like an elephant from the city zoo. That doesn’t mean asset development is falling behind. Our DNA excavators discover new species every year. But consumers want them bigger, louder, more teeth. The good news? Our advances in gene splicing have opened up a whole new frontier. We’ve learned more from genetics in the past decade than a century of digging up bones.

Claire: The Indominus rex. Our first genetically modified hybrid.
Jim: How did you get two different kinds of dinosaurs to, y’know…
Henry: Oh, Indominus wasn’t bred. She was designed. She will be fifty feet long when fully grown. Bigger than the T-rex.

Vivian: Did you close the deal?
Claire: Looks like it. “Verizon Wireless presents the Indominus rex.”
Lowery: That is so terrible. Why not just go the distance, and just let these corporations name the dinosaurs? They’ve got all the ballparks.

Masrani [to Claire]: The key to a happy life is to accept you are never actually in control.

Masrani: It’s white. You never told me it was white.
Claire: Think it will scare the kids?
Masrani: The kids? This will give the parents nightmares.
Claire: Is that good?
Marani: It’s fantastic.

Marsani: I thought there were two of them.
Claire: There was a sibling in case this one didn’t survive infancy.
Masrani: Where’s the sibling?
Claire: She ate it.

Masrani: So, the paddock is quite safe, then?
Claire: We have the best structural engineers in the world.
Masrani: Yeah, so did Hammond.

Hoskins: These animals can replace thousands of boots on the ground. How many lives would that save? War is part of nature. Look around, Owen. Every living thing in this jungle is trying to murder the other. Mother Nature’s way of testing her creations. Refining the pecking order. War is a struggle. Struggle breeds greatness. Without that we end up with places like this, charging seven bucks a soda.

Owen [to Claire]: What kind of diet doesn’t allow tequila?

Claire: Can we just focus on the asset, please?
Owen: The asset? Look, I get it. You’re in charge out here. You gotta make a lot of tough decisions. It’s probably easier to pretend these animals are just numbers on a spreadsheet. But they’re not. They’re alive.
Claire: I’m fully aware they’re alive.
Owen: You might have made them in a test tube, but they don’t know that. They’re thinking, “I gotta eat.” “I gotta hunt. I gotta…”
[his pumps his arm to indicate sexual copulation]
Owen: You can relate to at least one of those things. Right?

Claire [to Owen]: The park needs a new attraction every few years in order to reinvigorate the public’s interest. Kind of like the space program.

Claire: Corporate felt genetic modification would up the “wow” factor.
Owen: They’re dinosaurs. “Wow” enough.
Claire: Not according to our focus groups. The Indominus rex makes us relevant again.
Owen [amused]: “The Indominus rex!”
Claire: We needed something scary and easy to pronounce. You should hear a four-year-old try to say “Archaeornithomimus.”

Owen: So what’s this thing made of?
Claire: The base genome is a T. rex. The rest is classified.
Owen: You made a new dinosaur but you don’t even know what it is?
Claire: The lab delivers us finished assets, and we show them to the public.

Masrani: Let Asset Containment capture it quietly. The very existence of this park is predicated on our ability to handle incidents like this. It was an eventuality, okay?
Lowery: Maybe you should include that in the brochure…eventually one of these things will eat someone.
Claire: That paddock is 4 miles from the closest attraction. ACU can handle this. No one else is gonna get…
Lowery: Eaten?

Barry [regarding the raptors]: What do you think? Want to take one home?
Hoskins: Hey, don’t joke. When I was your age I rescued a wolf pup. It was like two months old. Could barely walk. Used to sleep by my bed. Watch over me. My wife, she came at me with a steak knife. He took a chunk out of her arm.
Barry: You put him down?
Hoskins: Hell no.

Owen [to Claire about the “new” t-rex]: You made a genetic hybrid. Raised it in captivity. She is seeing all of this for the first time. She does not even know what she is. She will kill everything that moves.
Masrani: You think the animal is contemplating its own existence?
Owen: She is learning where she fits on the food chain and I’m not sure you want her to figure that out.

Henry: You know that I’m not at liberty to reveal the asset’s genetic makeup. Modified animals are known to be unpredictable.
Masrani: It’s killed people, Henry.
Henry: That’s unfortunate.
Masrani: What purpose could we have for a dinosaur that can camouflage?
Henry: Cuttlefish genes were added to help her withstand an accelerated growth rate. Cuttlefish have chromatophores that allow the skin to change color.
Masrani: It hid from thermal technology.
Henry: Really?
Masrani: How is that possible?
Henry: Tree frogs can modulate their infrared output. We used strands from their DNA to adapt her to a tropical climate. But I never imagined…
Masrani: Who authorized you to do this?
Henry: You did. “Bigger”, “Scarier.” “Cooler” I believe is the word that you used in your memo.

Masrani: You are to cease all activities here immediately.
Henry: You are acting like we are engaged in some kind of mad science. But we are doing what we have done from the beginning. Nothing in Jurassic World is natural. We have always filled gaps in the genome with the DNA of other animals. And, if their genetic code was pure, many of them would look quite different. But you didn’t ask for reality. You asked for more teeth.
Masrani: I never asked for a monster!
Henry: “Monster” is a relative term. To a canary, a cat is a monster. We’re just used to being the cat.

Owen [to Claire]: It didn’t eat them. It’s killing for sport.

Owen [to Claire, about searching for her nephews]: Just relax. It’s just like taking a stroll through the woods…65 million years ago.

Hoskins [of the raptors]: Imagine if we had these puppies in Tora Bora.

Owen: Something’s wrong. They’re communicating. Now I know why they wouldn’t tell us what it’s made of.
Claire: Why?
Owen: That thing’s part Raptor.[/b]

Jay Gould once famously said, “I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.”

Then, over time, labor began to organize the against the likes of him. Decade after decade. And now look where we are. On the other hand, where exactly are we now? The working class over the past century has made considerable strides. And for proof all one need do is to note the extent to which, throughout the modern industrial world, there exist this thing we call the “middle class”. With lots and lots and lots of workers in it. On the other other hand, the reactionaries have in turn been making strides of their own. Particularly of late. Organized labor [especially in America] is all but on life support. The rich are back to getting richer like never before and the workers are increasingly left to fend for themselves.

Let’s be honest, the capitalists [and their cronies in government] have always been adept at divide and conquer – dividing workers by pitting them against each other. Sometimes in terms of race or ethnicity or religion or gender. And now, with the global economy ever more increasingly the shot caller, workers can be pitted against each other on a truly grand scale.

But: competition in some industries is the reality. And, so, the part about firing someone may not actually be personal at all. In fact, it almost never is. It is simply a basic necessity for some folks to stay in business at all.

Here however the context is more intimate. The company is small. Less than 20 employees. And, increasingly, we live in a world where folks tend to be entirely pre-occupied with just 3 things: 1] me 2] myself and 3] I. There is virtually no solidarity at all, let alone worker solidarity.

This all unfolds in Belgium. So, what do I know about the nature of the “political economy” there? All we know is this: Sandra finds out her fellow employees have voted that, in order to receive a bonus – 1,000 euros – she must lose her job. And, then, in order to complicate matters all the more, Sandra suffers from depression. Now, one by one, she has to change the minds of the majority.

So, it is basically the workers here who are made to appear greedy. The boss after all is only doing what he must do in order to stay in business. At least if he is to be believed. It is instead the workers who seem to be obsessed only with their own self-interest. Thus there is never any question of uprooting capitalism itself.

And then there’s the part that all unfolds “under the table”.

IMDb

[b]Although she was required to shoot long 7-minutes takes, Marion Cotillard found the experience the most rewarding that she’s been a part of. She recalled shooting certain takes 50-60 times, the record being 82 takes of the same scene.

The original idea for the film came in the early 2000s, when the Dardenne brothers read about a real-life case in a big French factory. There was a worker whose production output wasn’t good enough for the other workers to get their bonuses, so that person was let go. They heard about similar cases in Belgium, Italy and USA, and they all raised the question of solidarity.

In an interview to Indiewire, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne stated that they were thinking about 12 Angry Men when conceiving Two Days, One Night, because it’s a process of going to see people to try and change their minds.

Liège - in which the film takes place, has a 23% unemployment rate, one of the highest in Belgium, which would make harder for Sandra to find a new job.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Days,_One_Night
trailer: youtu.be/Tb3zBq6gVRk

TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT [Deux Jours, Une Nuit] 2014
Written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne

[b]Sandra [aloud to herself after learning that she has lost her job]: Hold on. Hold on. You mustn’t cry.

Manu: If you go in, Dumont will agree to a new ballot.
Sandra: It’s no use. No one gives a damn.
Manu: Juliette told me the foreman talked to them and scared them.
Sandra: They want their bonus. It’s only natural.
Manu: No, it’s not natural.

Manu [to Sandra]: The only way to stop crying is to fight for your job.

Mr. Dumont [to Sandra]: I have nothing agasinst you but I have to deal with competition from Asian solar panels.

Daughter: If Mom loses her job will she get sick again?
Manu: She is not going to lose it.

Manu: You’re just giving in instead of taking action.
Sandra: Easy for you to say. No one but Julliette and Robert thought about me. As if I didn’t exist. They’re right. I don’t exist. I’m nothing. I’m nobody!

Manu [to Sandra]: It’s not tour fault they lose their bonus if you stay. The boss decided that, not you. [/b]

But: If the boss really does face stiff competition from Asia what can he do? After all, he could lose the business itself and they would all be out of work. But this is the very nature of capitalism. It’s not always just about greed.

Willy: I didn’t vote against you, I voted for a bonus. Dumont set the one against the other, not me.
Sandra: I know it’s awful asking you to choose but I don’t want to lose my job. Without my salary, we can’t get by.
Willy: I’m sure but I can’t give up my bonus. We need 500 a month for our oldest girl’s studies and 600 more for her lodging. What do the others say?
Sandra; You are the first I have spoken with.
Willy [hesitant]: I’ll think about it.
Wife: What? It’s all thought over. We can’t.
[she turns to Sandra]
Wife: I wish we could help, but I’ve been out of work since February. We salvage floor tiles to make ends meet.

And this is the actual existential fate of so many folks – living [sometimes precariously] from paycheck to paycheck.

Mireille: Are the others willing to give up the bonus?
Sandra: There are three for now. Juliette…
Mireille: No, no. Juliette has it easy. Her husband fixes cars under the table. I can’t. I left my husband and my boyfriend and I are starting from scratch. Funiture, TV, bed, washing machine, dishes – we have to buy it all. I can’t afford to lose 1,000 euros. Don’t be mad at me. I can’t.

Everyone has their own story. Their own unique set of circumstances.

[b]Timur: Hello.
Sandra: Hello. Your daughter told me you were here. I was round at your place. I wanted to see you about the vote on the bonus and me being laid off. Juliette and I saw Dumont and he’ll let us hold another ballot Monday because Jean-Marc influenced people by telling them that Dumont wanted to lay off staff anyway. So if it wasn’t me who was made redundant it would be them…So…I wanted to ask you if…if you’d vote for me to stay on Monday.
Timur [in tears]: Of course I will. I’m really glad you’re here. I’m so mad at myself for voting for my bonus. I’m sorry.
Sandra: Don’t be sorry. I can understand. 1,000 Euros.
Timur: No. I’m ashamed. I even forgot what you did for me. Remember? When I broke those cells…and you said you did it. You remember.
Sandra: Yes, and Jean-Marc even said: “Fine example to set the new guy!”
Timur: I’m really glad you came.

Hicham: I work here on weekends. My wife couldn’t tell you. It’s under the table. I’m sorry I was so curt on the phone but I can’t do it. I don’t ewant you to lose your job but I need that bonus. Put yourself in my shoes. It’s a year’s utility bills.
Sandra: Put yourself in my shoes. I want to work and earn a salary again. I want to be with all of you and not at home alone.
Hicham: Ideally you could stay and we’d get our bonuses. I told Jean-Marc that earlier. He says Dumont can’t do that. [/b]

So it all comes down to Jean-Marc’s motive for letting Sandra go. Is it personal or did her depression make her the “weak-link” in the employee chain. She is after-all at home on sick leave because of it.

[b]Sandra: I wish that was me.
Manu: Who?
Sandra: That bird singing…

Sandra: I caused that fight.
Manu: Calm down.
Sandra: I tell you I can’t go on but you ignore me. You don’t understand. I caused that violence. I can’t stand it.
Manu: It’s the first time.
Sandra: No, it’s everytime. I feel like a beggar every time. A thief coming to take their money.

Manu: Five out of ten now want you to stay!
Sandra: No, two! I forced the others to pity me. If I’m take nback, those who lose their bonus, how will they look at me? How will I deal with them all day?[/b]

Again, this is the very nature of capitalism: Some for the better, some for the worse.

[b]Julien: Can I be frank?
Sandra: Yes.
Julien: Dumont saw that 16 of us can do the job. Why would he take you back?
Sandra: With 16 people, Juliette said you have to do three hours overtime a week.
Julien: What if we do it to earn more?

Sandra: I just took the whole box of Xanax.
Manu: All your pills?
Sandra: Yes.

Alphonse [the sole black employee]: You know, I’d like to vote for you tomorrow. It’s what God tells me to do. I should help my neighbor. But I’m scared of the others.
Sandra: Scared of who?
Alphonse: The other workers. That’s why I voted agasinst you on Friday. It wasn’t for the bonus. I haven’t been there long. I’ll only get 150 euros.
Sandras: Did Jean-Marc talk to you? What did he say?
Alphonse: That if I wanted to fit in, I should vote for the bonus, because everyone else wanted it. I wanted to vote for you, but I didn’t dare.

Sandra: You’re like me. You’re afraid of Jean-Marc.
Alphonse: Yes.

Jean-Marc: Happy now that you’ve stirred up all this shit? Friday’s ballot was enough.
Sandra: You shouldn’t have scared them to vote against me.
Jean-Marc: What are you implying?
Sandra: You told some of them if I wasn’t laid off, they would be.
Jean-Marc: I never said that.
Sandra: Yes, you did. And you called them over the weekend to tell them not to change their minds.
Alphonse: What? Who told you that?
Sandra: It doesn’t matter. You’re heartless.

Juliette [to Sandra]: Eight for, eight against. You’re one short.

Mr Dumont: You convinced half the staff to give up the bonus. Well done. Of course half isn’t a majority, but to dispel any ill-will among the staff, I’ve decided to give them the bonus and take you back. Jean-Marc and I now know that 16 workers can do the job. In September, I’ll let a fixed-term contract expire, and you can come back. You’re staying with us.
Sandra: I can’t let someone be laid off so I can come back.
Mr Dumont: He won’t be laid off. His contract just won’t be renewed.
Sandra: It’s the same thing.
Mr Dumont: No, it’s not.
[after a long pause]
Sandra: Good-bye, Mr Dumont. [/b]

There is trash that people throw out. In Brazil, for example. But there are also those people [many of them children] who are, for all practical purposes, treated as trash too. Grimly impoverished, they live out on [or under] the streets, made to do whatever they can in order just to survive from day to day. We have them here in our own country too of course. But the further away you get from the modern day “welfare state” the more dire their plight can be.

Here you have three young boys from the slums of Rio de Janeiro. They scour the local dump everyday looking for whatever they can find to subsist. They literally survive on the garbage that others toss away.

But then one day…

…the story shifts gears. From who they are [and the world they live in] to what they find. And what they find exposes another world entirely. The world of wealth and power. The gap explored here is just all the more egregious because it is in Brazil. Down there the authorities can [apparently] beat, torture and even kill children in order to sustain their corrupt system.

In other words, the usual cast of characters: Corrupt pillars of the community with wealth and power, corrupt politicians, corrupt cops, corrupt ecclesiastics. And of course the more or less corrupt masses.

Also, contingency, chance and change.

The plot is entirely unrealistic. Purely scripted. Not in a million years could you imagine this being based on a true story. It’s basically just another morality tale, exposing the way the world really is. With a hopelessly idealistic ending applauding the way it should be instead.

Here is an article noting the reaction to the film at a Rio film festival: hitfix.com/in-contention/ste … azilianess

It’s no City of God, but still well worth watching.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trash_%282014_film%29
Trailer: youtu.be/PX1ZuBJMT40

TRASH [2014]
Directed by Stephen Daldry, Christian Duurvoort

[b]Voice in the background [to Raphael, a young boy with a gun to Fredrico’s head]: Kill him, Raphael! Kill him - let’s go!
Raphael [voiceover]: When you watch this video I’ll probably be dead. The police are after me because I’ve got something very valuable to a powerful politician. But I’m not going to give it up. They’ll have to come get me. I was afraid before - not now. I’m going to finish what Jose Angelo started.

Raphael [on a mountain of garbage]: I found something for us.
Gardo: What?
Raphael: I’ll show you later.

Gardo: So why do the police give a damn?
Fredrico [a detective]: The wallet is important. Very important. It’s a clue to solve a crime.

Raphael [to the camera]: Like I always say…Never trust a policeman. Police treat poor people like trash. Everyone knows that.
[indicating Gardo]
Raphael: Except this dumbass here.

Rato [to the camera]: People don’t like me at the dump. I’m the sewer kid.
[indicating his splotched skin]
Rato: It’s my disease…What can you do?

Gardo [to the camera]: It was a disaster…Nearly killed for a letter!
Raphael: It wasn’t just a letter.
Rato: Raphael wanted to know more. So he still needed me…

Olivia: Why would the church reassign you?
Father Juilliard: To silence me. It means, wherever there is corruption, wherever there is injustice, wherever there is police brutality, I must keep my eyes closed, shut my mouth, and say my prayers.

Fredrico [to a beaten and bloodied Raphael]: Do you like rollercoasters…?

Father Juilliard [to Olivia]: Raphael is probably dead.
[he lights a candle]
Father Juilliard: Don’t waste your life fighting battles that make you bitter…or make you dead.

Father Julliard [to a badly beaten Raphael]: If you found the wallet the best plan is to get out of trouble while you still have time. There’s nothing cowardly about it. In fact, it’s the brave way out. If you give me the wallet I’ll collect the reward. Everyone’s life will get a little bit better. A little bit better, is good. A little bit better is a lot better than nothing.

Olivia: Why do you…why do you need me?
Gardo: You an American. You white. I black. I look poor. Olivia, we need you.

Raphael: The cops were talking about a guy called Santos. I think he wants the letter.
Rato: Hey, I know Santos…He’s that politician. The fat bastard wants to be Mayor.
Gardo: Do you know where he lives?
Rato: Where all the fat bastards live - near the beach.

Gardo [in prison visiting Clemente]: I have a message for you. From Jose Angelo.
Clemente: How do you know this?
Gardo: It was in a letter we found, he wrote to you.
Clemente: What did he say? Do you have the letter here?
Gardo [pointing to his head]: No - it’s here. I memorised it.
Clemente: Tell me.
Gardo: It read like this: “Dear Sir, I haven’t written in a long time, but I think of you always. I have something important to tell you, in the words you once spoke to me: Soon, the devil who put you behind bars will be chained, his corruption and lies all exposed. Your struggle was not in vain. I promise. Santos will be finished and, God willing, he is only the first domino to fall. Your fight against the corruption that destroyed our dream for justice goes on. Even now people flood the streets, fanning the flames of hope that you helped ignite. Change is coming. But with joy comes sorrow. If you are reading this, it means I’ve been taken. And they will not be merciful.”

Santos: How are you, Congressman? Good, everyone’s here. Such generosity. OK, let’s make me Mayor. I love businessmen. They’ve covered all my election costs. Maybe I’ll even throw the police a few bucks…

Fredrico [to Raphael]: Some cockroaches just don’t give up. You crush them, crush them…and the bastards just won’t die.

Father Julliard [viewing Olivia’s video of Raphael’s story]: What do we do with all this?
Olivia: Well, we could put it on a few sites and hopefully some bloggers or other outlets would pick it up. We’d want to come up with a few keywords, so that we can make it a little bit more sticky when people are searching for it.
Father Julliard: What the hell does that mean?
Olivia [chuckling]: It just means that…it just means that a lot of people would see it.
Father Julliard: That could be very dangerous.
Olivia: For who?
Father Julliard: For the boys, for you, for all of us.

Father Julliard: Through all of that, why did they stick to it?
Olivia [after a pause]: They said because it was right.
Father Julliard: Maybe you better show me how to use this damn thing. [/b]

Described as an “erotic thriller”, we know there is going to be lots of nudity, lots of sex and lots of reading in between the lines. And, if you’re like most of us, lots of subtitles.

Let’s file this one – if you’re me – under, “sex and love in an absurd and meaningless world”. And it’s French to boot. Me, I always come back to this: Love and human remains.

What men want. What women want. And what those ever intent on assuring us that they actually know what this is want.

From the beginning the scenes keep shifting between the bedroom and the police station. Between what was once intimate to what is now more or less public knowledge. Worse, something that needs to be investigated. A Big Story. A man was murdered. A woman was murdered. Both poisoned.

So, what did happen? This draws you in. You wonder how the dots will get connected. Why, for example, does the press now call Julien a “monster”? And, even though, with respect to love and human remains, there isn’t really much that is new under the sun some never grow tired of looking at the wrecks. And this one is stitched together in a truly original manner.

Besides, blue is my favorite color.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Room_(2014_film
trailer: youtu.be/AXru7gOWV-I

THE BLUE ROOM [La Chambre Bleue] 2014]
Written in part and directed by Mathieu Amalric

[b][lots of panting…lots of moaning and groaning…a drop of blood]
Esther: Did I hurt you?
Julien: No…

Esther: Your wife will ask questions?
Julien [looking at the blood on the towel]: I don’t think so.
Esgther: Does she ever ask?
[no response]
Esther: Do you love me, Julien?
Julien: I think so.
Esther [chuckling]: You’re not sure?
[no response]
Esther: Could you spend your whole life with me?
[no response][/b]

Nothing new here, right? But suddenly the scene shifts to an interrogation…

[b]Gendarmerie: Did she bite you often?
Julien: Now and then.
Gendarmerie: How often?
Julien: Three or four times.
Gendarmerie: Could she have bitten you on purpose?

Julien [to the Gendarmerie]: Life is different when you live it and when you go back over it later.

Gendarmerie [of Delphine]: What charmed you about her?
Julien: More words! I never asked myself that.
Gendarmerie: Did you love her? You wanted her? You desired her?
Julien: Probably, since I married her.

Gendarmerie [of Esther]: You told your mistress…
Julien: I never said anything. We were both naked in the room, we had just…People speak without thinking at such times. I didn’t really hear her. I just nodded or shook my head.

Detective: You came home, had dinner, and watched television. You told the gendarmeries that.
Julien’s lawyer: “And went to bed with my wife.”
Detective: You confirm those words?
Julien: Yes.
Detective: You had no idea what was happening two miles away?
Julien: How could I?
Detective: The letters. You’re forgetting the letters. You may deny them, but I don’t.

Detective [to Julien]: At the funeral, in everyone’s minds, you were together and they looked at your wife with pity. Quite frankly, Gahyde, do you thnik your wife knew less than them? That she, too, suspected something?

Julien: You’re upset with me, Delphine?
Delphine: What for?
Julien: You don’t talk.
Delphine: I prefer you happy.
Julien [in an increasingly shrill voice]: You think I’m not, is that it? I have the perfect wife, and a daughter I love, a beautiful home, success at work. I couldn’t be happier. And anyone who denies that is a liar!

Detective: “Soon. I love you.” What did you mean by “soon”.
Esther: We could soon be together.
Detective: Why?
Esther: Nicolas was less suspicious.
Detective: Or you know he would soon be dead.

Esther [to the detective]: We’re in love.
[she looks over at Julien]
Esther: I only agreed to marry Nicolas because you had vanished.
[Julien says nothing…Esther looks back at the detective]
Esther: When we met again, we realized we were made for each other.
Detective: So, when you wrote “You now!” you were thinking…
Esther: I was waiting for him to do what was needed.
Detective: File for divorce?
Esther: Yes.
Detective: And his wife?
Esther: She’d have gotten over it.
Detective: She didn’t love him?
Esther: Not like me. Women like her aren’t capable of true love.
Detective: And his daughter?
Esther: She’s have consoled herself with her daughter.
[Julien explodes, grabbing her and shoving her hard onto the detective’s desk]

Detective: You saw the lights from afar?
Julien [nodding]: All the lights in the house were on. That never happened.
Detective: What was your first thought?
Julien [tearing up]: My daughter.
Detective: Not your wife?
Julien [shaking his head]: To my mind, my daughter was more fragile.

Esther [at her trial]: I did not poison my husband. Perhaps I would have if he’s taken too long to die.

Esther [to Julien after they have both been found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison]: See, Julien, they haven’t parted us.[/b]

It helps here [I suppose] to have a familiarity with Mexican culture. And with all of the complexities you will find there embedded at the intersection of class and race. And [with Ana] gender.

Let’s start with the meaning of the word “Güero”: “Güero is a word used in Mexico and some parts of Central and South America to denote a person of fair complexion or with blond or red hair.”

And we all know that the higher up you go in one or another social, political and economic circle south of the border, the lighter complexioned the skin is likely to be.

Though [to be honest] that’s not really the point here. This film is more in the tradition of a “slice of life”. Four particular lives in one particular context. And then “on the road”. In other words, sans the manner in which particular lives might get swept up [tumultuously] in, say, truly historic events. That’s all more or less on the periphery here. As they are for most of us. Students at a university are on strike. And in and out of it go our four protagonists on a quest to track down the legendary Epigmenio Cruz.

Before he dies.

Tomas in particular. Tomas is “coming of age”. And, of course, when you are “coming of age” you are likely to have your first encounters with all of this. Thus, it is crucial that these encounters are among the least problematic for your life. You learn the ropes [and the tropes] and somehow manage to make the transition to the “real world” with the least amount of dysfunction.

Or something like that.

No wikipedia article
trailer: youtu.be/t-w6MbK_eZA

GUEROS (2014)
Written in part and directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios

[b]Title card: guero [from huero, meaning “non-fertilized egg”/pale sickly man]

  1. With blond hair [golden or yellowish color]
  2. with light skin

Beto [to Tomas after Tomas drops the water balloon]: You hit the baby asshole!

Mother [to Tomas]: You’re going to go stay with your brother in the city for a while. I can’t handle you anymore. I just can’t.

Santos: Why aren’t you dark-skinned like Sombra?
Tomas: Who is Sombra?
Sombra: You can’t call me that.
Tomas: Why not, man?
Sombra: Because I’ll break your fucking legs.

Tomas: Why don’t we have a proper breakfast?
Santos: Continental breakfast, my treat. But what the fuck are they talking about with continental breakfast? What continent are they taking about? It’s like saying, “The kind of breakfast they eat over there.” Who are they over there? And who are we here?

Santos: What is it?
Sombra: Something my dad found.
Santos: Let me hear.
Sombra: Epigmenio Cruz. Once, he made Bob Dylan cry. That’s what Dad used to say.

Sombra [indicating a building in the distance]: That’s my school, and that is the movement’s flag.
Tomas: Can we visit your department?
Sombra No. it’s occupied. Everything is occupied. No one can get in because it’s occupied.
Tomas: Don’t you ever go to the marches? Or to extracurricular classes? Are you scabs?
Sombra [angrily]: Don’t even say that word as a joke.
Tomas: What then?
Sombra: We are on strike from the strike.

Santos: I understand Mexican breakfast. Eggs, beans, grease. Mexican. College breakfast: coffee and bread with beans and cheese. But if they start charging tuition, college breakfast will be coffee only. Then there’s the English breakfast. A sausage cut in two, tea and right on time. But what the fuck are they talking about with continental breakfast if it’s only juice and bread? What continent are they talking about?

Sombra: Have you ever stood in front of an enormous tiger roaring in your face, feeling his breath? You know that he could tear your face off in one bite and there’s nothing you can do. Have you felt that?
Doctor: No.
Sombra: Well, that’s how I always feel, but without the tiger.

Striking student: No, you can’t go in. Damn scabbies.
Sombra: Don’t use that word if you don’t know what it means, friend.
Striking student: It means you’re damn strike breakers.
Sombra: It means squirrel in Catalan, asshole. A small pet in its cage, like you, in that fucking cage you built.

Sombra: I think the ideas are okay. But that’s why you get confused when cleaning bathrooms because you think that organizations are the leaders of the revolution and the revolution is only in big events.
Oso: But the event of washing a bathroom or cooking for your companions is a revolutionary event.
Sombra: But don’t people have a right to be in the middle?

Sombra: Only the group inside has a right to an opinion, and the others are out because they didn’t join the consensus, they didn’t come. Then it isn’t an inclusive movement. Because there’s no structure.
Oso: Exactly, so whoever is not in the structure is outside. That’s how the PRI was formed.
Sombra: No, that’s not true.
Oso: You don’t want to be on strike? What are you doing to change things? Aside from rotting in your room, what do you do, dude?
Sombra: If I don’t accept your position…
Oso: You’re rotting in your room and not bathing, stealing electricity. What other shit do you do?
Sombra: Do I have to accept other people imposing on me?

Sign on a wall at the university: TO BE YOUNG AND NOT A REVOLUTIONARY IS A CONTRADICTION

Tomas: What’s your thesis on?
Sombra: On molecular diversity in rhizoids and their symbiotic genes as indicators of the degree of conservation and the potential for restoring tropical forests.

Sombra: Fucking Mexican cinema. They grab a bunch of beggars, shoot it in black-and-white and say they are making art films. And the fucking directors, not content with the humiliation of the conquest, go to the Old World and tell the French critics that our country is full of pigs, derelicts, diabetics, sellouts, thieves, frauds, traitors, drunks, whoremongers, people with inferiority complexes and the precocious.
Santos: And it is.
Sombra: But if they’re going to humiliate us, they should do it with their own money, not with the taxpayers’ money.

Sombra [to Ana watching a tiger pace back and forth in its cage at the zoo]: Take a good look. He’s really beautiful. His gaze, weary of watching the bars pass by, retains nothing else. He thinks the whole world is looking through those bars. And beyond that, nothing.

Tomas: Hello, Epigmenio. Sorry to disturb you. I’m Tomas Ruiz and I come from Veracruz and I want you to sign this cassette for me. Is it true you once made Bob Dylan cry?
Epigmenio [indifferently and/or insolently]: Who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing in my house?

Sombra [to Epigmenio]: I’m sorry we came unannounced. This is my brother Tomas. I’m Federico. This is Santos, and Ana. We came because my brother and I listened to you all the time. Because I haven’t slept in months or left my house until Tomas came. But I want to tell you…The thing is…Look, this cassette was my dad’s. He showed it to me many years ago. He’s not with us anymore. It’s your music At first, I didn’t understand any of it, but now I understand. I understand what you’re saying. I understand what my dad understood. That you run into a lot of assholes in life who don’t get it, who don’t know what lies behind things. A sordid world, you know. But no matter what happens, if you have that…if you can see what’s behind things the only thing they can’t take away from you is that feeling. You wrote it. You said, That feeling Now I know what feeling you were talking about. Dad used to say, If the world is a train station and people passengers, the poets aren’t the ones who come and go but those who stay at the station watching the trains go. That’s why Dad cried whenever he heard your broken voice. Because you are the kind who watches the trains departing.
[Epigmenio, head drooped down, says nothing]
Tomas: Is he dead?
Sombra [putting his finger under his nose to be sure he’s breathing]: He’s sleeping…[/b]

Just imagine it. You are recently married. And then “on impulse” you decide to honeymoon in…Antarctica. Or, rather, on a research vessel that is currently en route to “the icy wastes of Antarctica”.

There’s the part that seems like a nature documentary – with Roger Payne playing himself. An actual expedition to Anarctica.

But there’s the other part. The part that revolves around a man who may not really be able to love another human being because he seems far more intent on loving himself. And, more to the point, the part that revolves around a growing obsession he has with his “work”. Everyone [and everything] takes a back seat to it. Thus the only real solution would be to find someone who loves it as passionaitely as he does. Or to pull back from the obsession itself.

But what on earth did Chloe expect? My reaction to her is mixed. It’s obvious that she may well have married the wrong guy. But what is there in her own life that matches her husband’s passion? Her drawings?

And then juxtaposed to all of this are the shots that bring to us the vastness of the ocean – and Antarctica – itself. At times raging and wild. At times desolate. Utterly indifferent to the fate of these folks. The two seem almost impossible to reconcile.

This is [another] one of those small, independent films that the critics [all 7 of them] generally applauded [85% fresh at RT] while the “general public” did not take kindly to it at all [5.1 at IMDb – on 252 ratings].

See if you can spot the reason why. Or, as one reviewer suggested at IMDb: “…if watching ice melt is your thing…”

Well, not quite that slow but slow enough that some [like me] will find it simply enchanting.

And, as with Gueros above, this film is so tiny it did not even garner an entry at wikipedia.

A beautiful [haunting] score.

no wiki article
trailer: youtu.be/Y2huHdg2PS8

RED KNOT [2014]
Written and directed by Scott Cohen

[b]Chloe: Are you excited to meet Roger Payne?
Peter: Yeah, I’m very excited.
Chloe: Real live man, Roger Payne.
Peter: I’m nervous.
Chloe: What’re you nervous about?
Peter: For this week, for tomorrow.
Chloe: Darling, nobody’s expecting you to be some kind of expert…
Peter: Why shouldn’t they expect me to be?
Chloe: Well, they are experts. You’re a writer.

Peter: What do most couples do on a honeymoon anyways? They stay in their room, right? All we need is a bed.
Chloe: Or a desk.

Peter [voiceover]: January 19th. Fifty four degrees south. I swear, Argentina already feels like the bottom of the world. But it’s where the journey begins for most explorers. What draws us here? For Dr. Payne, it’s the siren call of the whales. He was the first to hear their songs as songs. The first to record them. We’re following their migration south, before the Antarctic winter sets in.

Roger: The songs of humpback whales were more beautiful then, in the same years that The Beatles were writing songs, than they are now. They were more evocative. They brought tears to your eyes. I don’t think they do that anymore. But they did then.
Chloe: Why? How could that be?
Roger: I have no idea.

Peter: Isn’t it true that if you speed up the sound of the humpback whale that it actually sounds little bit like a birdsong?
Roger: It does, it actually sounds a lot like, if you slow it down, a birdsong.
Chloe: It says, “Paul is dead.”

Chloe: Where are you going?
Peter: I’m just going upstairs.
Chloe: Okay. I’ll come with you.
Peter: No. No, stay. Sleep, sleep. You look so beautiful. Go back to sleep.
Chloe: What are you gonna go do?
Peter: I’m gonna go talk to Roger. Just work stuff. It’s boring.

Chloe [off the ship]: There’s something about these penguin couples that’s so domestic. They groom each other, they smack each other, they…They hold hands while they’re walking. Or make babies.
Peter: Okay. What’re you trying to say?
Chloe: Nothing. We would probably make cute babies though.

Peter [voicover]: February 3rd. Sixty two degrees south. The details of home fall away. Out here, there’s no Sunday or Monday. No balance between day and night. A kind of prolonged twilight sets in the further south we go. This is it. The world falls away. There really is no second chance.

Chloe: Going to Antarctica?
Peter: Yeah, it’s good. It’s exciting.
Chloe: What about our honeymoon?
Peter: Well, that is our honeymoon.

Peter: See the whales?
Chloe: Yeah, I saw them. It was beautiful. Why didn’t you come get me?
Peter: Babe. Roger went through an entire book about Antarctic patterns. Page after page. What am I gonna do? Interrupt him in the middle?

Lisa: What are you going to do when, um…when Peter goes off on this next big venture he’s going to have?
Chole: Which one?
Lisa: Oh, the book deal. Walking to the poles. Next year.
Chloe: Book deal?
Lisa: You know about this, don’t you?

Ollie [the captain]: Hey.
Chloe; Hey. I need to talk to you. Um…Is there any way to get off this boat?
Ollie: Uh…no. We’re underway in about 15 minutes.
Chloe: I need a…I need a room. I need a different room. I need a new room.

Peter: Chloe? What the fuck? Chloe? Chloe? What is going on? Hey, don’t ignore me. What’s going on? Where’d you go? I come back and all your stuff is missing? Why are you treating me like this?
Chloe: When were you gonna tell me? About the book deal? Were you just gonna wait until you were already gone to tell me about it?
Peter: I made a mistake.
Chloe: Do you know what it feels like to find out about something like that from somebody else? I mean, how could you? How dare you not tell me first? It involves me. How do you think that you going away for a whole year doesn’t involve me directly enough to ask me about it?

Peter: And you know what, this really sucks 'cause I was gonna surprise you with it because you’re gonna be a huge fucking part of it. A huge part of it. Remember Scott, in his last days, how he wrote letters to his wife. We were gonna do that.
Chloe: Scott died in Antarctica!

Chloe [to Peter]: I mean, let’s be honest, you didn’t come in here to apologize. You didn’t come in here to say, “Oh, I feel terrible, I want to know what you’re going through.” You think I’m being childish, you think this is a game.

Chloe: You aren’t going to trek across the poles anyway.
Peter: What do you mean? What do you mean?
Chloe: You’re a writer, Peter.
Peter: So?
Chloe: You may be able to write about the poles…
Peter: Fuck you!
Chloe: …but crossing them yourself?

Ollie: You pass through it, you get on the other side, and things are different. I…you’re just different.
Chloe: Seems kind of lonely out here. That’s all.
Ollie: Sometimes.
Chloe: Do you ever get homesick?
Ollie: You know, I do. I do. But at some point, you have to choose what’s important to you. And I made my choice.

Peter [voiceover]: The Poles have pulled at me for as long as I can remember. Ever since I was a kid, reading about the great explorers. Shackleton, Amundsen, Scott. They were all drawn here. I don’t know what I was hoping to find. But it’s not out here. It’s inside. Just between us. It’s her. It’s us. There’s no book. No walking to the poles. It was just me wanting to be something more. And she’s right. I really didn’t see her. But I want to. February 23rd. Sixty eight degrees south. Antarctic summer.[/b]

As in chess, life has lots of pawns. And sacrificing them is more or less built right into the human condition. Pawns are now basically mass-produced to serve that purpose. And not just economically.

And while Bobby Fischer had no doubt sacrificed any number of pawns playing chess, he always managed to configure the pieces that constituted his life so that, by and large, others did the sacrificing.

Not only that but he held in contempt any number of “pieces” that did not fit into his reactionary political agenda. Communists for example. Or Jews. Though he himself was a Jew.

Still, he has always been one of those “strange” people that fascinate folks who go about the business of actually looking for them. And how often do the strange among us get the chance to strut it about on the world stage? To actually become famous for being strange.

Did he make the most of it? Probably. And he came along on a cusp of history. The world was becoming increasingly more post-modern; and celebrity became all the rage. And smack dab in the middle of the Cold War to boot.

And then there’s the part about chess itself. Hasn’t it often been used to denote human intelligence. If you are among the greatest players in the world it is just assumed that you are among the smartest people in the world. But chess would seem to employ only a particular kind of intelligence. In other words, the greatest chess players can be just as inept as the rest of us when it comes to such things as, say, love, emotional interaction, social interaction, moral narratives etc.

Still, there is one thing that he did bring to chess which seemed to fluster any number of people: the mind-fuck.

The part revolving around the twisted tangle that is human psychology.

IMDb

[b]Pawn sacrifice is a move in chess in which a player sacrifices his pawn for a soft advantage such as more space for his pieces or positioning them in better squares in order to develop an attack subsequently. It aims to create unbalanced positions so if the player who is committed to the pawn sacrifice did not capitalize on his temporary advantage, he would lose the game at the end due to his inferiority in material.

In some cases, when Fischer studies in his little chessboard, the board is placed with a black corner to the right. This is wrong, a very basic info is that when a serious game starts, it has to be with a white corner to the right of each player - this is distinctly defined in the rules of the game. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawn_Sacrifice
trailer: youtu.be/xFHvH9FtACg

PAWN SACRIFICE [2014]
Written in part and directed by Edward Zwick

[b]Bobby [as a child]: There’s a car out there.
Regina [mother]: What car?
Bobby: You told me to tell you. A red 1952 Chevy.
Mother: Bobby, you remember what I told you? There are bad people out there who want to intimidate us, because we represent something very threatening to them, to the status quo. You remember what that is?
Bobby: Revolution?
Mother: Yes. And sometimes these bad people want to know about our work. So they spy on us. So if someone comes up to you on the street and asks you questions about me or Mommy’s friends, what do you say?
Bobby: “I have nothing to say to you.”
Mother: That’s my big boy.

Carmine: Most young people don’t have the concentration to play at a high level, so please don’t get your hopes up.
Mother [chuckling]: He’s beaten everyone he’s ever played. My hopes are he will give up on the damned game if someone beats him.

Mother: If I take the pieces away, he just keeps playing in his head. Day and night. Took him to a shrink, he said to come here.
Carmine: Well, his game is good, not exceptional, though.[/b]

You know what’s coming, don’t you?

[b]Carmine: Who taught him to move like this?
Mother: He taught himself.
Carmine: Bobby, shall we call it a draw? Hmm?
[Bobby moves a piece]
Joan [his sister]: He hates draws.

News anchor: There’s a rising star in the chess world, and he’s only 12 years old. His name is Bobby Fischer. Today he played American Master Donald Byrne and beat him in what is already being described as “The Game of the Century.”

Bobby: Where is my father? Come on. I was born, right? What did you do with him? Is he on Earth? Does he even exist?
Mother: Honey. That was a long time ago.
Bobby: So what? You can’t remember? Where is he?
Mother: Gone.
Bobby: Gone where?
Mother: It doesn’t matter.
Bobby: It matters to me. You know what? Get the fuck outta here. Go back to Moscow with your Commie friends. I am studying, day and night. And I’m gonna be the next world champion. Do you understand me? I need silence. Do you understand? I want silence!!

News anchor: In Portoroz, Yugoslavia today, American chess prodigy Bobby Fischer became the youngest ever Grandmaster in the history of the game.
Reporter: Congratulations, Bobby. Where do you go from here?
Bobby: Well, uh, I want to play the Russians. They’re the best in the world, and I’m gonna beat 'em all.

Bobby: The Russians are drawing games on purpose to save their strength and they’re dumping games to pad their points, making it statistically impossible for me to win.
Tournament official: Mr. Fischer, your complaint has been lodged. There’s nothing we can do.
Bobby: Of course there’s something you can do! They’re playing a team game. It’s five guys against one. Against me!

Paul [to Father Lombardy]: He’s studied how the Russians play. Every day. Eighteen hours a day. For four years. For him, Vietnam and the Beatles never happened.

Father Lombardy: Bobby has problems.
Paul: So did Mozart.
Father Lombardy: He might crack.
Paul: Bobby won’t crack. He will explode.

Bobby [to Father Lombardy]: You see, the Russians are like boa constrictors. If you do nothing, they strangle you to death. But if you confuse them, you attack them from everywhere, then all they can do is react.

Bobby: So what do you do, Donna?
Donna: I screw people.
Bobby: Ahhh me too. Listen, I was thinking of getting rid of my virginity.

Reporter: Bobby, how does it feel to lose?
Bobby: That’s a stupid question.
Reporter: How’d he beat you, Bob?
Bobby: Would you even understand if I answered that? He was playing to draw.
Father Lombardy: Bobby, no one expected you to beat Spassky.
Bobby: Yeah, I did.

Paul: Are you a patriot, Father?
Father Lombardy: Mostly.
Paul: Bobby may be a little off, but he understands this whole thing better than you. We’re at war. Only it’s not being fought by guns and missiles. Not yet, at least. It’s a war of perception. The poor kid from Brooklyn against the whole Soviet Empire. The perfect American story.
Father Lombardy: So your interest in this is ideological. But what’s in it for you?

Father Lombardy: Bobby Fischer is the second best chess player I’ve ever seen. He’s also got severe problems in his head.
Paul: Which need to be understood and managed.
Father Lombardy: Managed? Bobby?

Father Lombardy [to Paul]: You ever hear of Paul Morphy? 1855. Greatest player this country ever had. Before Bobby, that is. But by 21, he’d beat every master in Europe. But then, things started to get a little weird. He started having visions, and became convinced that people were trying to poison him, and he quit at 26, and eventually killed himself in a bathtub surrounded by 12 pairs of ladies’ shoes. So, this game…it’s a rabbit hole. After only four moves, there’s more than 300 billion options to consider. There’s more 40-move games than there are stars in the galaxy. So, it can take you very close to the edge.

Joan: I showed these letters to a psychiatrist friend. He said that Bobby is displaying signs of, um…of paranoia and delusional psychosis.
Paul: Well…chess is a crazy world. Some of the things he says about the Soviets are true. In Tunis, we found listening devices in his hotel room.
Joan [reading from one of Bobby’s letters]: “The Communists infect my mind with words that just keep repeating. The Jews are helping them, too. The Jews want to keep the Chess Federation all to themselves, just like they own New York, and own and control most governments in the world.” We…we are Jewish. Bobby is Jewish. What do you people say to him when he comes out with this trash?

Paul: Joanie, look. I swear, this isn’t just about the title anymore. It’s about the kind of games he’s playing. Out of all the crazy stuff, such unimaginable beauty. A da Vinci, they’re saying, from Brooklyn. Once every, what, 500 years. Grandmasters are watching Bobby play with tears in their eyes.

Paul: Bobby, Bobby, Bobby. Wide World of Sports is already offering a segment. Cavett wants you, and… Are you ready? Are you sitting down? Are you sitting down? Mike Wallace called. Mike Wallace called. 60 Minutes, Bobby.
Bobby: Well, it’s about time.

News anchor: Fischer, the first American in history to reach the finals of the World Championship, is the latest arrival in our growing culture of celebrity. But who would have thought that a chess player could suddenly become a rock star?

Dick Cavett: And what’s the moment of pleasure for you? Is it when you see the guy in trouble? What is the greatest pleasure? What would correspond to hitting the home run in baseball?
Bobby: Greatest pleasure? When you break his ego. That’s where it’s at.
Cavett: Really? And when does that occur? When he sees that he’s finished?
Bobby: When he sees it coming. And breaks all up inside.

Father Lombardy: You’re really serious about all these demands?
Bobby: They gotta give me what I want.
Father Lombardy: Mmm-hmm. And if they don’t?
Bobby: Well, we can play in this hotel room. I like it here.
Father Lombardy: Let me get this straight, you’re willing to throw all this away for money and oranges?
Bobby: That’s right. I don’t need to play. I know I’m the best.
Father Lombardy: I think you’re scared. And I think you’re overwhelmed.
Bobby: What is that, like, um, pop psychology?

Bobby: They are all out to screw me, the Russians and Jews.
Paul [coming into the room]: What are we talking about.
Father Lombardy: The Jews…

Paul [on the phone]: I found him.
[he hands the phone to Bobby]
Paul: Henry Kissinger. Pretty amazing, huh?
Bobby: Hello?
Woman: Dr. Kissinger’s on the line.
Kissinger: Hello, this is the worst chess player in the world calling the best chess player in the world. We just want you to know, the President and I, that we are thrilled that you will be going to Iceland to play for the U. S.A., Bobby.

Paul: Billion people around the world watching two guys play chess. Nixon’s put a TV in the Oval Office.
Father Lombardy: Oh, yeah?
Paul: World War III on a chess board. We lost China. We’re losing Vietnam. We have to win this one.

Father Lombardy: Bobby, you made a stupid mistake and you got your ass handed to you.
Bobby: No. I am not going to submit to their game…
Father Lombardy: If you don’t get your head in the game…
Bobby: We are going to play my way, with no audience…
Father Lombardy: …you’re not just going to lose…
Bobby: …and no distractions!
Father Lombardy: …you’re going to get humiliated in front of billions of people.

Paul: Unless the rest of the games are played without an audience and without cameras, he isn’t going to show up. He won’t continue unless the games are played in the Ping-Pong room. That’s the only place that’s quiet, he says. He also wants a different board.
It makes too much noise when he puts the pieces down. He prefers wood.
Father Lombardy: It’s like Morphy, it’s destroying his brain.
Paul: No, chess isn’t destroying him. Why all the demands? It’s like he wants them to say no. I think he’s afraid of what’s gonna happen if he loses.
Father Lombardy: No. He’s afraid of what’s going to happen if he wins.

Iivo Nei: He broke apart at the first blow.
Boris Spassky: He shot himself in the head. For no reason.
Iivo Nei: You loaded the gun.
Boris Spassky: My teacher taught me that a man prepared to commit suicide has the initiative.

Paul: The President of the United States called three times. Three. Ah, well. He’s been trying to reach you. In Moscow, Brezhnev opened his only bottle of 1868 Louis Roederer. Left over from the Revolution. You know why? Because he heard you quit. There are boys your age in Vietnam giving their lives right now in the fight against Communism, and all you have to do is play a game of chess. Bobby, I’ve been arguing on your behalf all night long. I’ve been threatening them for you. I have cajoled, I have begged them, now I’m begging you. Please, please, please. Go back in there and play.
Bobby: You’re one of them, aren’t you?
Paul: What?
Bobby: Who got to you? KGB? CIA?
Paul: Are you serious?!

Spassky: I have made a decision. If I don’t beat him, he will escape in one piece.
Spassky colleague: The American is insane.
Spassky [shaking his head]: He is not insane. He has fooled you like he has fooled everyone else. He knows if I play him I will destroy him. Crush him. He uses madness to avoid the inevitable. I will not let him slip away. I have him pinned. I am two games ahead. I have him. Get a message to Fischer. I will play him in the ping-pong room. I will play him in the bathroom. In the toilet if he likes! He will not escape.

Paul: What’s he doing?
Father Lombardy: I don’t know.
Russian observer: He’s playing the Benoni. Black, two games down.
Father Lombardy: He thinks it’s suicide.
Paul: Is it suicide?
Father Lombardy: Yeah.
Paul: Now what’s happening?
Father Lombardy: He’s exposing his king. He’s going to end up with doubled-up pawns here. And yet he wants him to take it with the bishop.
Father Lombardy [after Bobby moves his queen]: Oh, my God. He’s threatening mate in one. He’s going to force the exchange of these knights.
Russian: A draw perhaps?
Father Lombardy: He hates draws.

News anchor: Bobby Fischer won his first game ever from Russian Boris Spassky. His Russian opponent, Boris Spassky, resigned today’s game on the 42nd move…Fischer mania is taking the country by storm, as news of Bobby Fischer’s first victory over Boris Spassky has captured the public’s imagination…A chess craze is sweeping the nation. You can find it being played in every living room, park and classroom. And the young man from Brooklyn, little known until about a month ago, is quickly becoming the most famous celebrity in the world.

Bartender [watching television]: Spassky just took Fischer’s bishop.
Donna: Yeah, well I took his virginity.

Spassky: I want this chair x-rayed!

Commentator: We all can’t quite believe it up here, Jim, but in this, the pivotal game of the match, Fischer has abandoned his trademark Sicilian opening. All of Spassky’s careful preparation is suddenly out the window.

Commentator: Grandmasters are shaking their heads in confusion. Fischer’s moves are unprecedented in chess history. No one seems to be able to decipher what he’s doing.

Father Lombardy: Bobby. The chess you’ve been playing is really inspired.
Bobby: No. It’s almost all theory and memorization. People think there are all these options, but there’s usually only one right move.

Title card: Bobby Fischer went on to beat Boris Spassky 12 and a half points to 8 and a half point. Game 6 is still considered to be the greatest game ever played. After his victory his mental health continued to deteriorate. He turned down millions of dollars in endorsements. He forfeited his title and disappeared from public view. In 1980 he was arrested for vagrancy. He claimed he was tortured in jail. In 1992 he emerged from seclusion to play Boris Spassky again in Belgrade. The match violated U.S. sanctions and the American government issued a warrant for his arrest. He wandered the world until granted asylum in Iceland in 2005. Bobby Fischer died in 2008 in Reykjavik, Iceland.[/b]

Over and over and over again I go on and on and on about “dasein”. And, in particular, how the actual experiences you come to accumulate over the course of living your life can have a profound impact on how you come to view what is “meaningful” in your life.

And this frame of mind becomes all the more apparent when dealing with folks who have had, shall we say, unusual experiences.

Like these guys.

Meet the Angulo brothers. They were literally locked away in an apartment by their “protective father” and came to understand the world that we live in wholly in terms of the films that they watched. Just movies. Which they then acted out over and over again.

Films like, for example, Reservoir Dogs. Or Blue Velvet. Imagine if you thought of the world largely revolving around that sort of thing. Reservoir Dogs is the first film we see them “acting out”.

Yet cinematically they were all over the map – from Casablanca and Citizen Kane to JFK, Gone With the Wind and lots of horror films.

The family more or less lives in the belly of the beast. The Lower East Side. In an enormous apartment complex. And, from the father’s point of view, there was a lot about the world that the kids needed to be protected from. Also, in some respects, the whole “arrangement” was basically patriarchy reduced down to a single household. Father knows best.

In other words, or else.

Still, it’s not that they couldn’t just look out the windows of their apartment and see the world. They could. And Manhattan was all around them. Instead it all revolved around the way in which their father indoctrinated them to view that world. The kids had access to no other point of view but his. Or, rather, his and the characters that they encountered in the movies.

But then, one day, against his father’s wishes, a brother [Mukunda] finally decides to explore Manhattan on his own. And that, as they say, changed everything.

What this film more or less revolves around [from my point of view] is a man who did things in a certain way because he honestly felt that it was the right thing to do. That it really was in the best interest of his family. In other words, his intentions were good. But what he did is so appalling to most of us that this is just not enough for many [including his sons] to forgive him.

There is also one sister here as well. The youngest. But she is all but invisible.

By the way, this is a documentary. This actually happened.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolfpack
trailer: youtu.be/rDbqcMfUdlI

THE WOLFPACK [2015]
Directed by Crystal Moselle

[b]Brother [watching Pulp Fiction]: It gets boring around here. I write down the lines for the entire film. What each character says. We always say lines from our favorite films. And we kind of thought why don’t we do those films. Be those characters…It makes me feel like I’m living, sort of.

Brother: If I didn’t have movies life would be pretty boring. And there wouldn’t be any point to go on, you see?

Brother: The Hare Krishna religion. The God is Krishna, and he has ten children with every wife that he has. And our father was, like, enthralled by that. So he had this idea, like, having a big group like our own family, our own community, our own race here. It’s almost like a tribe that we have. And we’re gonna have all of them grow long hair and give them all names of the oldest language on the planest…Sanskrit. There’s Govinda, there’s Narayana, Krsna, Jadadisa, Mukunda, Bhagavan…and our sister, Vishnu. She is very special. She sort of lives in a world of her own.

Brother: My parents didn’t encourage us to communicate with society. So we were kind of shut off, always lived only in this apartment, Lower East Side, Manhattan. And we never communicated with people. We were taught by our father not to talk to strangers, but it went further than that. It was like don’t even look at people. [/b]

They were all home-schooled.

[b]Brother: Sometimes we’d go out nine times a year…sometimes once. And one particular year we never went out at all.

Brother: Metaphorically, I would describe our childhood as my father being the landowner and us the people who worked the land.
Brother: But if you want a more dramatic setting, we were in a prison.
Brother: Yeah.

Mother: You can see the neighborhood we live in is not that great and so we’ve kind of kept our distance from the people who live around here. And it’s not anything like, oh, we think we’re great and they’re not. It’s just that for me it’s not how I was raised. I grew up in the Midwest. I lived in the middle of the farm country.

Brother: My father doesn’t like the idea of working. He calls it being a slave to society. This is a country that has gone wrong. He believes the government is a sneaky organization. That we’re all controlled, we’re all like robots. And that we need to break free from that. [/b]

The irony here seems to go completely over his head. At least for now.

[b]Brother: My dad always thought that he was better than anybody. He always said so himself. He said he was God. He said he was enlightened. He said he was the one who knew everything.

Brother: When you’re a kid you see things and they frighten you. You don’t know what they mean. So I was frightened. I would hear dad and mom arguing. There always a slap, just…he would slap her. And what she felt, we felt sometimes. I mean we were a part of it. When you are living in that kind of situation you are going to get it too.

Brother: Our father is the one who brought movies into our lives. He just filled our heads with movies all day long. We’ve got like, I don’t know, 5,000 movies including VHSs and DVDs. And I think the fact that we went with the idea that there’s another world out there. because we didn’t know the world, so we kind of had no world, and I think the movies helped us to create our own kind of world.
Brother: But we would always know the difference between real life and the movies.

Brother: I was 15 years old and I wasn’t allowed to walk out the front door. I wasn’t allowed to go in a specific room I felt like going into. I wasn’t allowed to leave a room when I wanted to. If he put us in a room we have to stay there until he says you can go. Our dad was the only one who had keys to the front door.

Brother [the one who finally left the apartment…wearing a Michael Jackson mask]: I went around two blocks, just going in whatever store. Went into a bank, went into a grocery story, went into a pharmacy. Eventually, someone called the cops because someone walking around in a mask, that’s…that’s not normal.

Brother [after the cops arrested him, took him to a mental hospital and then brought him home]: I was scared to come home. I think my daddy was frightened of what I just did. No one had ever done that before. That was the day I kind of tore off the soldier necklace and threw it and walked away. Since that day, I said I refuse to talk to you. I refuse to take your orders. We are no longer father and son anymore.

Brother: They gave me a therapist after I got out of the hospital. They said I should see a therapists. She’s helped me out getting my email address 'cause I never knew anything about computers. My brothers are also seeing her.

Brother: My brother did it again. He just walked out. Then I walked out. And my father didn’t get angry. And then all of us started doing it.

Mother: It’s not like it was one day they followed the rules and the next day they were doing whatever. It wasn’t like that. It happened over a period of months, but it certainly opened the way to normalcy.

Brother: What did he expect, that when we all came of age we would just go on doing things his way? His system was just like a ticking bomb.

Mother: I really understand, totally, where they were coming from. But I can’t, you know, be too candid about that. But, yeah, there were probably more rules for me than there were for them.

Brother [after the cops bust down the door and search the apartment for “weapons” – their movie props!]: We had to see our mother get handcuffed and put against the wall. And she was really uncomfortable sitting in those handcuffs. That’s what really pissed me off.

Mother: They’ve begun communicating and relating to the world. They are probably seeing how the movies are like real, but not real, and how real life is. It’s hard as a child to be influenced by that. Too much of anything is, you know, not good.

Father: I didn’t want them to have the pressures, the social pressure. Which is the interest of the country. I wanted them to be free of that. Not to be contaminated by drugs, by any philosophy or religion…One of the things that I always said to them: it doesn’t matter to me what you have. Or what you can do. But the fact that you are in this life, this way…what you are, what we are. This is the most important thing.

Mother: I felt good for my kids. I was glad to see them standing up for their own ideas and beliefs. I’m trying to see both sides as well as my part in it as well, but I have felt stuck in the middle for a long time and that’s been a real challenge.

Brother: I was so scared going out into the world. I felt so out of place. I still feel out of place. I don’t know if I can ever get over it. Because I was always afraid that I had so little knowledge of this world. Being in my home all the time. That I almost wouldn’t know where to start…My biggest fear was being so ignorant of the world that I just wouldn’t be able to handle it. [/b]

What do we need to know about Elly? Well, for one thing, she is missing. And, for another, she is missing in Iran. She is a citizen of Iran and that is always going to be of importance because to the extent that we don’t understand the culture of Iran, we will be removed from understanding the gap between what seems reasonable to us and what seems reasonable to them.

There is also the inevitable gap between how most “Westerners” imagine life in Iran to be and how it is actually experienced by the majority of “ordinary citizens” there.

After all, in many respects we are all the embodiment of what is encompassed in the expression “human, all too human”. Or, as one film critic put it: "Gripping as sheer storytelling, the plot smoothly raises some unusual moral questions. It touches on masculine honor, on the way a thoughtless laugh can wound someone’s feelings, on the extent to which we try to take charge of others’ fates. I can’t recall another film that so deeply examines the risks of telling lies to spare someone grief.

In any number of scenes, however, aside from the fact that all of the women are wearing scarves [and the clear patriarchy], what unfolds there might well unfold in any similar American context. Though [of course] others will then note all of the contexts in which politics and religion are anything but hidden in the background.

And then there is this part: The way people are around each other before something terrible happens and the way they are around each other after. Things suddenly become considerably more convoluted and confusing. And this, one imagines, is clearly cross-cultural.

And then the mystery: What happened to Elly? Why and how did she just seem to disappear? From the beginning she projects this sense of foreboding. Something is obviously troubling her.

The ending does resolve it. But it is certainly not the ending that I would have chosen.

The film received a 97% fresh rating at RT on 66 reviews. It is from the director of A Separation above.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/About_Elly
trailer: youtu.be/S-CAKV2CUU0

ABOUT ELLY [Darbareye Elly] 2009
Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi

[b]Elly: Why’d you break up with your wife?
Ahmad: One day, we got up, we washed, we had breakfast and she said, “Ahmad, bessasr eine ende mit schrecken als ein schrecken ohne ende.”
Elly: So, what does that mean?
Anmad: “A biiter ending is better than an endless bitterness.”
Elly: That’s true.

Amir: You just left Arash?
Nazy: Elly was with him.

Nazy: Arash! Arash! Was Elly in the sea with you?!

Sepideh [frantically]: Peyman, don’t let them go!
Boat owner [matter of factly]: The body will be washed in. If you check this evening, you’ll find her.

Police [after the adults are unable to give him Elly’s full name]: How strange! You bring a guest from Tehran without knowing anything about her…and we must ask a child about her?

Sepideh [weeping]: If only I had let her go. If only I had let her go…

Amir: Why did you invite her?
Sepideh: Right, it’s my fault. What now?
Amir: Nothing. Did you ask me before inviting her?
Sepideh: I thought of Ahmad…
Amir [in anger]: Who are you to Ahmad?! Are you his mother? His siter? Who are you?

Peyman: Did any of you say something that might have offended her?
Manochehr: The other night, when I was preparing chicken, you all came over. The old woman had brought the bedding and she started clapping and singing. And you ululated, Shohreh. I had the impression that Elly was offended.
Ahmad: She went to get salt and we all laughed.
Peyman: No. It was just the two of us joking.
Sepideh: We all laughed.
Amir: But she did too.
Manochehr: And this fooling around and dancing. Maybe she disliked it.
Shohreh: She insisted on leaving yesterday, as if she was upset.

Peyman: Sepideh, you know her. Was she the kind to act on a whim? Get offended and just leave?
Sepideh: Offended by what?
Amir [interjecting]: She doesn’t even know her name! Why are you asking her?

Ahmad: Did her mother know she was with us?
Sepideh: Didn’t she call her mother the other day?
Ahmad: Yes, but her mother…
Manochehr: …seemed peculiar…wary.

Shohreh: What a weird girl!
Peyman: How was her cellphone found?
Shohreh: It was in Sepideh’s bag. Nazy needed some painkillers and she found it there.

Sepideh: He’s not her brother?
Ahmad; Who’s not her brother?
Sepideh: The guy we are going to meet. The guy you talked to on the phone. She was an only child.
Ahmad: Who is he then?
Sepideh: I think he is her fiance.
Ahmad: What’s that you’re saying? That she was engaged?
[Sepideh nods]
Ahmad: What on earth have you done, Sepideh?!

Manochehr: He found out! The old woman came over. She said the bedding was for Elly and her husband

Amir: Ahmad, tell him you thought she was single. She had lied to us. We’ll tell the truth.
Sepideh: Please don’t.
Amir: Should we lie to him to save Elly’s honor?
Peyman: Does honor mean much to the dead?

Peyman [to the group]: The majority seems to choose the truth.

Alireza [Elly’s fiance]: Didn’t she refuse? Didn’t she say no? Didn’t she say she had someone, a fiance? Did she or didn’t she?
Sepideh: She really…she really…
Alireza: Listen, this is very important to me. I dedicated 3 years of my life to her. Didn’t she refuse?
[Sepideh isn’t able to respond]
Alireza: Did she or didn’t she?
Sepideh [after a long pause]: No, she didn’t.[/b]

What is to be done?

You have a 15 year old son in an institution. And he was committed to this institution in part because he was subject to “violent outbursts”. Indeed, he has been kicked out of a number of facilities already precisely because he is unable to keep a leash on the demons that compel these outbursts.

So, you decide to “deinstitutionalize” him. You decide to bring him back into your home and take care of him yourself. If for no other reason than to keep him out of jail.

On top of that, you are what some folks might refer to as “poor white trash”. And let’s be particularly blunt: in any number of ways she can be really, really disagreeable to live around.

The bottom line then is this: That any number of folks will just cross her off the list and move on to those they are considerably more comfortable sympathizing with. Still, for those who are willing to persevere there are the other parts of her. The parts worth waiting for.

As for the son…

His own mom calls him “a piece of work”. Volatile? Like a stick of dynamite. Or a bottle of nitroglycerine. Every time he’s on the screen the plot just bristles. Anything can happen. And there is no way in hell that I would ever have the patience that she displays here in dealing with it. In dealing with him. Sure, we are made to understand [up to a point] why he acts [and acts out] the way he does…but few of us would be willing to take on the sort of commitment that she is clearly saddled with.

And then the “mysterious neighbor” Kyla. The part behind the stuttering.

IMDb

[b]The film is presented in an unheard-of 1:1 aspect ratio; the “viewing area” of the screen is a perfect square.

Received a 9 minute standing ovation at the Cannes film festival.

When Diane, Steve, and Kyla are having dinner, Steve tells a story about how when he was little and his parents didn’t want him to understand their conversations, they would speak in English. Steve says that most conversations ended with either “shut up” or “fuck off.” He then says that he tried to befriend a little girl who spoke English by telling her to “shut up” and “fuck off,” because those were the only English phrases he knew, and he didn’t know what that meant. In the DVD commentary, Anne Dorval actually admits that this is her own personal experience from when she was little, and that she told a neighborhood child to “shut up.” Xavier Dolan thought her story was funny and decided to put it into the movie. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mommy_(2014_film
trailer: youtu.be/d7rtSqI0ZeA

MOMMY [2014]
Written and directed by Xavier Dolan

[b]Facility director: We gave Steve a chance. If you can’t take care of him, we’ll have to send him to our security department.
Die: Excuse me?
Facility director: Come on! Don’t act surprised! Your son is on the fast track to jail.
Die: Are you insane? My boy ain’t going to jail. I know the drill. Once they’re in they’re done for.

Facility director: Listen, Diane, I’ve seen tons of kids in and out of here. We save some, we lose some. That’s just the way it is. We’ve tried to help Steve, as have the special schools, and the youth centers. We’ve done what we can. Your turn.
Die: What am I going to do with him all day? I can’t drag him to work. I got a job. I can’t dump everything and go party with my kid. I’m broke. I’m this close to welfare and welfare’s a fucking no.

Facility director: [to Die]: Don’t consider him or yourself to be invincible. That’s the worst thing you could do. Loving people doesn’t save them. Love’s not enought. Unfortunately.

Die [to facility director]: At least you fixed his bad language.

Die: You’ve been back 24 hours and this place is a slum! Tidy the hell up!
Steve: Mind if I jerk-off in peace?!
Die: The bunched up tissues, not so classy. All right, get your jizz together and we’ll be in business.
Steve: Gonna hold my dick when I piss, too?!
Die: If it helps you to shoot straight.

Steve [to the cab driver]: What did you call my mom, you big monkey?! Motherfucking nigger!
Die: Steve! Stop it!
Steve: Shut your mouth bitch!
Die: I think he got your point!
Steve [to the cab driver]: Go back to the jungle mixing coconut drinks! Not in my country!
Die: Steve! Stop being racist!
Steve: I’m not being racist! He’s a nigger!

Steve: It ain’t our first ride, Diane, is it?
Die: No, no…
Steve: Come on, look at me. We’re gonna be a team. The two of us! I’m gonna contol myself and I’ll take care of you. I’ll protect you.
Die: Number one priority, school, ok? I was your age when I dropped out. And look at me now, I’m a wreck! No diploma, no education, nada! A fucking loser!

Die [trying to stay calm while Steve is exploding]: You’re gonna calm down, breathe nicely…and you’re gonna take your pill…
Steve [enraged]: Don’r give me that!
[he grabs her, pins her to the wall and starts choking her]
Steve: You give me that shit and I’m a fucking finish ya! I’m a kill you and all your fucking meds!

Kyla [stuttering]: We…we…we should really get him to a hospital.
Die: No…no hospital.

Die [to Kyla]: Steve has ADHD. Disruptive, confrontational. And apparently some attachment disorder, or whatever it’s called. He was okay when he was little, we thought it was just hyperactivity. But then his dad died three years ago…

Die [to Kyla]: I wonder if you might do me a teeny-weeny favor…

Steve [on full throttle yanks a necklace off Kyla]: Cute girly necklace…
[he starts to slap her and she lunges at him]
Steve: Get off me bitch!
[Kyla drags him to the floor]
Kyla: Shut your mouth! Shut your fucking mouth! Get your hands off me! And give me that necklace back before I crush your skull! You got it? You got it now?!! That’s what you want, eh? You love it that way, right?..huh?..huh?..Do I bring up your dead father? Do I fucking bring up that? So shut it tight, sit your ass on the sofa, and hold it fucking together![/b]

An absolutely riviting scene. It’ll blow you away.

[b]Die: Is the kid that set the cafeteria on fire a shithead? The kid whose mom is meeting with the neighbor who’s helping him for free so you don’t end up in juvenile hall?
Steve: I’m not going back!
Die: I know you dumbass! But for fuck’s sake, we gotta lawyer our asses up. We can’t just sit and wait for God to come down on a fucking cloud!

Die [to Steve]: We gotta put some water in our wine. Ever hear that expression? It means we gotta put on a good show tonight.

Paul: Your mother is going through hell for you! Because of you! She gives you everything, her cash, her time, her whole life! And how do you thank her tonight? You spit in my face and start a brawl!
Steve: Go fuck yourself, bitch, with your lame-ass shitty lawyer job! Come on! You just want my mom to suck your cock…
[Paul slaps his face…then Die slaps Paul]
Paul [to Die]: Fuck you. Choke on your fucking loser problems.

Die: He was gonna help us. Help you.
Steve: No one can help us. They’re all the same!! It’s just the two of us, fuck the rest of them!!
Die: You know what my big problem is? You. No more job because of you. No money! No life! Meds, bail, correctional centers, and now a fucking lawsuit! Will someone give me a fucking break?! No! Steve-o ladies and gentlemen! A break? Hell no! Dream on, Die, dream on! Daddy dug the grave, sonny keeps digging! And I’m singing in the rain! And it just goes on and on and on 'cause you always find a fucking brilliant way so the shit hits the fan full fucking blast! And I just keep cleaning the shit off the walls! Come on, wipe the retard’s ass. Just wipe the fucking retard’s ass!

Steve [to Kyla after he has slit his wrist]: You can do it. Just say the fucking words.

Steve: We still love each other, right?
Die: That’s what we’re best at, buddy.

Steve: How can you do this to me?
Die: It’s for your own good, sweetie!
Steve: My own good, you fucking traitor! You dump me here like goddamn trash! You got sick of me! You’re done with me![/b]

Jesus, I didn’t see that coming.

Die: He hit him! He hit him!
Man from the institution: You signed the form! Let us do our job!
Die: I didn’t sign for you to hit my son!
Man from the institution: Withdrawal clause specifies 24 hour notice!
Die: Fuck your clause! I’m his mother. I decide.
Man from the institution: Not anymore.

Venus in fur? Or Venus in leather…

An old Parisian theater. An actor. A director. That’s it. The actor tries to convince the director that she is perfect for the part in his play.

[and the actor here is married to the actual director of the film]

In part this is going to be a reflection of the [at times] fine line between a “sense of reality” on the stage and off the stage. Between the illusion encompassed in a script and the way in which our “real lives” can sometimes revolve more or less around another set of cue cards altogether. How we sometimes rehearse spontaneity but can then appear to be anything but scripted even when reciting the lines of others.

[there’s a classic scene where Thomas and Vanda are deeply embedded in the characters that they play when suddenly Thomas’s cell phone rings]

And here the entire effort will necessarily revolve around the dialogue that is being exchanged between these two characters interacting in a context that [we all know] has unfolded literally countless times over the centuries. So we look for how skillful the choreography is – between the words spoken, the reactions they elicit, and how, combined, they either enthrall you or they don’t.

Because, again, that is all there is.

Well, that and the ever convoluted role that sexuality plays in our lives. Convoluted? How it gets all tangled up in complex emotional and psychological states, in complex emotional and psychological wants and needs, in complex social and political contexts.

What then is “natural” here and what is instead reflective merely of a “social construct”

Sound familiar? In particular, the fact in which there are those who insist that only the manner in which they think about these things reflects what is really true. That age old “struggle” between the Apollonian and the Dionysian frames of minds. Or, as Thomas puts it, “Here it’s not Dionysus; it’s Aphrodite.” That fine line between pleasure and pain. The world of S&M.

And, as we all recall, this film is from a director accused of raping a young girl.

And some advice from the director: Look for the satire, look for the the irony. I always do myself.

IMDb

[b]Roman Polanski’s first non-English-language feature in 51 years.

The movie is based on the play “Venus in Fur” by David Ives. In the play, both Vanda Jordan and the character Wanda von Dunayev are 24 years old. The lines referencing the characters age were cut from the film. Emmanuelle Seigner was in her late 40s during filming. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_in_Fur_(film
trailer: youtu.be/Q1LZ6JoUkJc

VENUS IN FUR [La Vénus à la Fourrure] 2013
Written and directed by Roman Polanski

[b]Thomas [on the phone bemoaning the auditions]: No, she doesn’t exist. I mean, a sexy young woman with classical training and a scrap of brain in her skull who can say “inextricable” without a coach. Listen, in Vanda’s day she’d be married with five kids and tuberculosis, She’d be a woman. These days they sound like ten-year-olds on helium: “It was, like, totally, like, wild. Like totally awesome!” I’ve seen 35 idiot actresses, half dressed like hookers, half like dykes.

Thomas: We’re looking for somebody…different.
Vanda: What are you looking for?
Thomas: Someone…how can I put it?
Vanda: Oh, I get it. Save your breath. Someone who’s mot me. I’m too short, I’m too tall, too old, too young. My resume is crap. I get the message. [/b]

Then she really starts to act.

[b]Thomas: Have you read the manuscript?
Vanda: I flipped through it on the train. It’s, like, based on something. The Lou Reed song?
Thomas: No, it’s based on an Austrian novel, ]I]Venus In Fur[/I] by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.

Thomas: The book was a big scandal in 1870.
Vanda: I’ll bet it was. It’s S&M porn.
Thomas: No, it’s not S&M porn.
Vanda: It’s not? Or porn-ish?
Thomas: No Venus In Fur was a great love story. It’s a central text of world literature!
Vanda: Yeah? It looks like porn to me. And I know my sadomasochism.

Vanda: This Severin von Kushemski? What is he? What is he into? Throw me some adjectives.
Thomas: He’s…uh…he’s a rich idler of the times. Intelligent, we’ll traveled, cultivated.
Vanda: A nerd.

Thomas: I put actors through all this.
Vanda: You’re the director. It’s your job to torture actors.

Thomas] [in character]: She taught me the most valuable thing in the world.
Vanda [in character]: And what did she teach you?
Thomas: That nothing is more sensual than pain. That nothing is more exciting than degradation.

Vanda: So actually, this play is, like, all about child abuse.
Thomas: Are…are you crazy? What does child abuse have to do with it? This goddamn mania these days! Everything’s a stupid social issue!

Thomas: This impoverished world we live in. Why do we always reduce things? What’s next on your list? Sexism? Racism? The class struggle?

Vanda [in character]: You are quite unique Herr Kushemski. If I were you, I’d be careful. Your ideal woman may be crueler than you care for.
Thomas [in character]: I will risk that.
Vanda: I know what you are. A super sensualist. An ascetic voluptuary.
Thoamas: And you, Frau Vanda von Dunayev, who or what are you?
Vanda: I’m a pagan. Meaning I’m young, beuatiful, rich, and plan to make the most of that. I’ll deny myself nothing.
Thomas: I respect your principles.
Vanda: Excuse me, I don’t need your respect. I’ll love a man who pleases me and please a man who makes me happy, but only as long as he makes me happy. Then I’ll find another.

Vanda [in character]: In our society a woman’s only power is through a man. I’d like to see what Woman will be when she become’s Man’s equal. When she becomes herself.
[she goes out of character]
Vanda: Little Vanda’s way ahead of her times!

Vanda [in character]: What do you want deep down?
Thomas [in character]: To be your possesssion. Vanish into your sublime essence. Dress and undress you. Hand you your stockings, put shoes on your feet. Have no will of my own.
Vanda: You call that love?
Thomas: The only kind. In love as in politics, one partner must rule. One must be the hammer, the other the anvil. I willingly accept being the anvil.

Vanda [after hanging up the phone]: Incredible!
Thomas: Your other half?
Vanda: People still say that?
Thomas: What’s “other half” now?
Vanda: I don’t know. “Asshole”?

Vanda: You wondered why I lied to my “other half”?
Thomas: It’s none of my business.
Vanda: What does Vanda say? “I’ll deny myself nothing”. I got other fish to fuck so to speak.
Thomas: So you’re the hammer; and he’s the anvil.
Vanda: What should I say, “whatever, baby”? This isn’t love; it’s sex. You want sex, you take the rest. That’s what the play’s about.
Thomas: Is it?
Vanda: Are you kidding?
Thomas: I don’t know. Am I?

Vanda: Is it you?
Thomas: What?
Vanda: He’s you. Kushemsk-Novachek. Novachek-Kushemski.
Thomas: No, he’s not me.
Vanda: You said there’s a lot of you in it. Or maybe you’re Vanda.
Thomas: No, the play has nothing to do with me…I can invent characters.
Vanda: Sure, Herr Doktor Novachek, and you happened to find them in an old S&M novel.

Vanda: You’re still wainting for your own “great moment”?
Thomas: I’m not waiting for anything. I find the characters’ relationship absolutely fascinating. Very complex, very rich. I love the characters’ emotional depth. No one experiences this kind of thing nowadays. We no longer see this kind of rage.
Vanda: Meet some of my friends.

Vanda [speculating about Thoimas’s fianace]: Her family’s rich. Am I right?
[Thomas is about to respond]
Vanda: Of course, I’m right. But, hey, you’re an artist. She loves that about you; your sensitivity. Maybe you’re the first sensitive guy she’s ever met. She loves opera, ballet, that shit. At night a foreign movie, you discuss novels before a nice quiet copulation. Nothing like a nice quiet copulation to help you relax. But a voice rumbles in the back of your mind, calling for something else. I don’t know what it is but it rumbles…Boom!..Boom!..Boom!..But, hey, you are happy. You’re very fond of her. You’ll have a nice quiet life watching foreign movies, discussing novels. And then you’ll have kids, and then you’ll die.

Vanda [in character]: Severin. Don’t you see? You’ll never be safe in the hands of a woman. Any woman.
[suddenly she jumps out of character]
Vanda: That line is so sexist! I could scream!
Thomas: What’s sexist about it?
Vanda: “You’ll never be safe in the hands of a woman”.
Thomas: It’s in the book!
Vanda: So the book is sexist!
Thomas: No, it’s not! On the contrary, it’s…
Vanda [bringing the book over to him, the cover depicting a naked woman’s ass, she is holding a whip]: And this? That ain’t Titian, babe. It’s S&M porn! The whole thing is just one big cliché!!
Thomas: In what way?
Vanda: He gets spanked and suddenly he’s into S&M?!
Thomas: It happened to Sacher-Masoch!
Vanda: Did it happen to you?
Thomas: No!

Thomas: For me it’s a play about two people united forever. They’re handcuffed at the heart.
Vanda: By perversion.
Thomas: No, by passion.
Vandas: His passion! It’s a sex and class war. Vanda is a sweet innocent who meets a total pervert.
Thomas: You don’t understand a thing!
Vanda: She says “You’ve corrupted me.”
Thomas: Maybe she always has this thirst for domination. Maybe Kushemski brought it out.
Vanda: Maybe she’s just a woman. The play’s like an old antifemale tract. He makes her play along, and then blames her!
Thomas; It’s not that at all!
Vanda: It is exactly that! Take the ending. She gets the Greek to whip him. She dumps Kushemski, dick in hand, and it’s her fault when he wanted it?! I think old Kushie’s hot for the Greek.
Thomas [utterly exasperated]: How can you be so stupid? How can you play her so well and be so fucking stupid about her? And all the rest! Fucking idiot actress! Dumb bitch! Fucking idiot!

Vanda [in character]: Break off with me, Severin, before it is too late.
Thomas [in chaaracter]: Do you love me?
Vanda: I don’t know.
Thomas: Then find out. Do something to persuade yourself.
Vanda: How?
Thomas: By doing what all lovers do. Make me suffer.
Vanda: I find that repulsive, and I dispise playacting.[/b]

Thus you are always asking: when is it playacting and when is it not?

[b]Vanda [out of character]: What do you want, Thomas? I’m not your fucking aunt! I am I! What do you want?
Thomas [out of character]: I don’t know.
Vanda: This isn’t about the play now.
Thomas; I just want more.
Vanda: I’m not her! I’m some stupid cunt who needs a job! I’m not your aunt. I am I…How’s that?
Thomas: That’s good.
Vanda [turning to walk away]: I can’t do this part. It’s too hard for me.

Thomas [in/out of character?]: Don’t go. Please stay.
Vanda [in/out of character?]: Beg me.
Thomas [down on his knee]: I beg you.
Vanda: You’re evil.
Thomas: Don’t you see you have me in your power?
Vanda: Liar. You’re not in my power; I’m in yours. You say your my slave but you dominate me. That’s true.
Thomas: What?
Vanda: He says she has the power but he has it, not her. The more he submits, the more he controls. Weird…
Thomas: It’s complicated.

Vanda: Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah.
Thomas: What? “Blah, blah, blah?”
Vanda: What? Suddenly she’s the wicked witch? “The air is on fire, my nerves are tuning forks.” Why not lightening and drumriolls too? Listen, Tom, I really like you, but this is way too corny.
Thomas: Corny? Corny how? This is the play! It’s my play! A great play! No one will make me think otherwise! You know nothing. I won’t let anyone demolish my work, whether you’re in it or not! Fuck you!
Vanda [almost matter of factly]: Okay, okay it’s your call![/b]

Cue the cell phone!

Thomas gets a call from his fiancee.

[b]Thomas [on phone]: Marie…
Vanda [shouting]: Screw you, Marie-Cecile!
Thomas [on the phone]: I’m just finishing up…
Vanda [following him]: He’s fucking me, Marie-Cecile! Fucking me up the ass!
Thomas [on phone]: No idea. Soon.
Vanda: Banging me like a Labrador!

Vanda: Any other director I know would have already jumped on me.
Thomas: I’m not “any other director”.
Vanda: Bullshit. If he thought he could, he would have already done it.
Thomas: Not true.
Vanda: What if I let you?

Vanda [in character]: Come here. Put your arms around me. You see? For an hour I can let you imagine that you’re free again. You simpleton. You’ll realize you’re what I want you to be. An animal. An object. A void for me to fill. [/b]

Then they change roles. He is Vanda, she is Severin.

Thomas [as Vanda]: Humilitate me! Degrade me!
Vanda [tying him to a stage prop]: That’s good, Tom. Really very good. Brilliant. Know what the problem is? Whatever you do, whatever you say, this play is degrading. An insult to women! Pornography!
Thoamas: What are you talking about?!
Vanda: Look at you. A damsel in distress. A helpless, submissive cunt. “Beat me, hurt me! I’m a woman!”

Take the time machine all the way back to the 1960s. Back to the Feminist Movement in particular. Back when any number of folks were actually predicting that men like this would go extinct like the dinosaurs.

Today, of course, nobody does.

In other words, men like this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Strauss-Kahn

This is the man [and his behavior] that “inspired” the film.

And rich and powerful men like these are often so entirely self-absorbed that it often does not even occur to them that others might actually object to the behaviors that they choose to impose on the world. Women in particular. He sees a woman. He wants her. He takes her. Other women, he thinks, should be so lucky.

And [of course] he has this highfalutin “philosophy” – he’s an “individualist”, an “anarchist” – to rationalize it all. Or, if that doesn’t work, he can always fall back on cynicism.

He comes into town and his handlers have the bimbos at his beck and call. Holes for him to plug. It’s all so…decadent.

But then when he assaults the maid he lands in jail. Talk about an excruciting fish out of water. The strip search for example.

Meanwhile, the woman that he assaulted more or less disappears altogether. Instead, it becomes much more about how his assault fucked up his political prospects; and how it frayed all the more the relationship with his wife. A surreal contraption to say the least.

Yes, this one is veritably bursting at the seams with cynicism. I think some people will react to this man the way in others reacted to Hannibal Lector. He’s a monster, sure, but look at the alternative.

Oh, and he’s French.

IMDb

[b]When director Abel Ferrara received a letter from IFC Films, the US distributor, telling the filmmaker to deliver an R-rated version so that it could match the version to be released on Showtime during its pay TV window, the director was disgusted and refused to back down telling THR “Welcome to New York is not being distributed in the U.S. because of this company, IFC, which I’m totally disgusted with.” He stated “They knew from day one when they bought this film that they had the final version and that it wasn’t going to be changed.”

The $60,000-a-month three-story house Simone rented for Mr. Devereaux’s stay while under house arrest, was the actual house Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s wife, Anne Sinclair, rented in 2011. It is located in Tribeca, New York.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_t … (2014_film
trailer: youtu.be/0JaltizpRWU

WELCOME TO NEW YORK [2014]
Written in part and directed by Abel Ferrara

[b]Devereaux [to a room of reporters]: I don’t like the people who make politics. I don’t trust the politics. I’m, uh, individualist. I’m anarchist. I don’t like the people who make the policy. I don’t believe them. I hate them.

Maid [in Devereaux’s room]: Housekeeping…hello.
[Devereaux comes out of the bathroom wearing only a towel]: No scared. So you know who I am? Huh?
Maid [backing away]: Please…
Devereaux: No, please. No, come on.
Maid: Oh. No, please.
Devereaux: Come on, come on…
Maid: Please, sir, no.
Devereaux: Suck me…

Devereaux: And how long have you known my daughter?
Josh: Three months.
Devereaux: Three months? And how’s the fucking? Any good?
Daughter: Papa!
Devereaux: Fucking. Do you not fuck my daughter?
Daughter: Papa…
Devereaux: No, please, darling. Everybody, all your friends knows. And me, I’m not allowed to know? Come on, fucking is natural.
Daughter: Papa! Enough!!
Devereaux: I, for one, fucked all night, and it was great.

Devereaux [to airline employee]: I left my Blackberry at the hotel. They are going to run it over to me. [/b]

Boy, is he in for a surprise.

[b]Devereaux: I have diplomatic immunity.
Airport security: Diplomatic immunity? Can you prove that?
Devereaux: No, it’s on my other passport.
Airport security: Other passport?
Detective: It wasn’t in the passport he showed us.
Devereaux: It’s in a different passport.

Devereaux: Could you remove these handcuffs? They’re hurting me.
Cop: They’re not built for comfort, sir.

Detective: I needed two cuffs for this fat fuck.

Detective: Mr Devereaux, do you have a helmet or a hoodie?
Devereaux: Pardon me?
Detective: Do you have a helmet or a hoodie?
Devereaux: I want to make…
Cop: Do you wear a helmet or a hoodie? You know what I’m talking about?
Second detective: He’s confused.

Simone [wife]: First, call the lawyers. Give them the information that George sent. See what has to be done to get him out of jail.
Jenny [her assistant]: I’ll call.
Simone [more to herself]: Bastard. I should just let him sit in jail. If he opened his mouth, God knows what could happen.
Jenny: Maybe he didn’t do it?
Simone [after long pause]: He’s destroyed everything I’ve worked for. He’s just snatched victory right at the last moment. He snatched it. He waited right up to the last moment. Sadistic…bastard.

Prison guard: Listen to me. I’m gonna take the fuckin’ cuffs off you. When we get upstairs I don’t want no bullshit from you. You understand me?
Devereaux: I understand.
Prison guard: This ain’t fuckin’ France.
Devereaux: I understand.
Prison guard: Otherwise you won’t last five minutes in here. Don’t let these motherfuckers upstairs have you. They don’t like rapists in here, buddy.

Simone [to Devereaux after he is released on bail]: This is what $60,000 a month gets you.

Simone: My life has been turned upside down!
Devereaux: My life too.
Simone: No. No, no, no. That’s not true! Your life has been upside down from the day you were born. And God knows I tried. I tried years to make you into a man. Do you know what as man is?
Devereaux: Yes, yes, I know what a man is. I didn’t do what they said.
Simone: You don’t know what a man is! A man knows about consequences – protecting the wife. A man doesn’t follow his dick into every dark alleyway and whore that crosses his path.

Simone: Everything I’ve worked for…everything…is ruined. Gone.
Devereaux: I’m not sure I want to be the president of France, you know. I-I’ve ruined my life too. You know I am an addict, a sex addict, no? And you don’t know how to fuck!!

Devereaux: They fucked me, you know. They fucked me. I didn’t fuck the maid but they fucked me. [/b]

Technically as it were.

[b]Simone: I tried. I tried everything. I cajoled. I threatened you. I cried. I attempted to understand you!
Devereaux: That you didn’t do.
Simone: I attempted to understand you. Look what it’s gotten me. This morning I wired $1 million to get you out of…prison. PRISON!!

Simone: Did you fuck that lady?
Devereaux: No, I don’t fuck. I jerked off on that lady.
Simone: Oh, yes, oh, yes, it’s true. The police officer told me that you had…you got a blow job. Oh, yes, wonderful.
Devereaux: No, I just jerked on her mouth. That’s all. And that…that is my sickness.

Devereaux: I just need your hand. I just want your hand.
Simone: Stop doing that thing that men do. They touch you, and then they—you smell them, and then you look and you listen and then you’re back, you’re back. And you’re in prison again.

Lawyer: Simone, I’ve been around the block. It ain’t reality, it’s a play. You need to play a part. You need to be by his side, because that jury isn’t going to think he’s the monster you paint him to be if you’re standing with him.

Devereaux: What am I guilty of, huh? It’s a crime that I want to feel young? The only time I feel alive is when I am making love. You’re angry Simone because I didn’t fit into your monkey suit, huh?

Devereaux: You always bend reality to suit your ambitions. It’s a family trait.
Simone: Don’t you dare speak of my family.
Devereaux: Everybody knows what your family did, huh? Everybody knows. All Paris knows, yes. What they did. What they did during the war.
Simone: Don’t you go there. You couldn’t put your face where my father put his ass.
Devereaux: Hmm. Your father. They couldn’t plant enough flowers on his grave to cover the stink.

Daughter: I wish I could have helped you to stop.
Devereaux: I didn’t want to. Correction. I don’t want to. They can all go fuck themselves!

Psychiatrist: How do you feel?
Devereaux: I don’t feel it is a disaster. I just feel that it happened.
Psychiatrist: But that is an intellectualization, a rationalization. What is the feeling…inside, in your heart. What do you feel?
Devereaux: I’m sorry to say that, but I feel nothing. I don’t feel guilty, I don’t give a shit about the people.
Psychiatrist: So you’re gonna speak to a psychiatrist and not speak of emotions? So, why did you ask me to come here?
Devereaux: My lawyers and my wife thought it would help. My wife suffers the disease of all intellectuals. She thinks If she understands something, then it will be all right.

Psychiatrist: Do you believe that I could help you?
Devereaux: No, I don’t think so. No one can save anyone. And you know why, doctor? Hmm? Do you know why? Because…no one wants to be saved. That’s the irony I only recently understood.

Devereaux [aloud to himself]: Since childhood, I’ve been brainwashed. By my parents, by my teachers, by my superiors at work. Cradle to the grave. I’m lucky I’m not a Christian. But I’d like to say this: when I die, I’ll go and kiss God’s ass forever.

Devereaux [aloud to himself]: My first God? I didn’t find it in a church, but in a classroom. It was idealism. What a magnificent God! To believe everything would be OK. I was in the temple that is university. First as a student, then as a professor. And I allowed myself to be wrapped in that hallowed light. Injustice? We had righted all the wrongs. World hunger? Everyone would eat until they were full. Poverty? A distant memory whose existence would be difficult even to imagine. Wealth would be spread around. To each according to his needs. That’s right. It was only when I arrived at the World Bank that the enormity of the world’s pathos, the infinite suffering inherent in human nature, revealed itself in all its horrible manifestations. Slowly. One day at a time. No. One minute at a time. I understood the futility of struggling against this insurmountable tsunami of troubles that we face. Things will not change. The hungry will die. The sick? They too will die. Poverty, It’s good business. Wise men are comforted by their limitations. I’m overwhelmed by this revelation. No. I can’t return to that blissful youth. No redemption for me.

Simone: What did the doctor say?
Devereaux: He said it was all my mother’s fault.
Simone: Are you serious? Your mother’s fault.
Devereaux: He said he was having lunch with his mother, and instead of asking her to pass the butter, he told her “You fucking bitch, you ruined my life.” Another pedantic, narrow-minded and shortsighted sophist, whose only goal is to convince me to join the rest of the herd.[/b]

Name: Stanley Milgram.

That’s all many of us need. We know what is coming: The experiment. The experiment. That one.

Surely one of the most famous [if not the most famous] experiments in all of social science. It’s the one that all of us imagine taking ourselves. The one where we would never, ever do what these folks did. In fact, we assure ourselves, we would simply refuse to participate in any experiment that inflicted pain suffering on another, let alone agonizing and life-threatening pain and suffering.

This film provides some rather scary insights into the “authoritarian personality.” These are the folks who will do damn near anything if the “proper authorities” instruct them to. It’s just that how often is this authority figure a scientist?

On the other hand: Who were these subjects? Demographically, for example. After all, there are some segments of the population considerably more susceptible to displaying an authoritarian frame of mind than others. At least that is what most of us would like to think. Well, it turns out that they were chosen from a cross section of American citizens living in the vicinity of Yale University. In and around New Haven, Connecticut. But: these experiments were conducted back in the early nineteen sixties. How much different one might wonder would the experimental results have been if conducted today?

Then the part about nature and nurture. Which appraoch actually explains this predilection most succinctly? And the far more nebulous parameters of the “social scientists”. They too follow the “scientific method” in conducting their experiments. But the “subjects” here have minds; they are human beings with extremely complex interactions with the world around them. And then with other minds.

Also, the part about the Nazis. Adolf Eichmann in particular. The banality of evil. And, of course, how, by the end of the film, you may well be fully convinced that, sure, it could happen here. Still, with fascism, there were very real consequences that attended a refusal to go along with the Nazis.

There’s also a segment that revolves around this guy: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conf … xperiments

Also a segment on this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_experiment
The “six degrees of separation” syndrome.

Stanley Milgram was only 51 years old when he died of a heart attack.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimenter_(film
trailer: youtu.be/O1VOZhwRvWo

EXPERIMENTER [2015]
Written and directed by Michael Almereyda

[b]Rensaleer [to two men who volunteered for the experiment]: Now, psychologists have developed several theories on how humans learn. Uh, for example, it might help to reward a person. Sometimes it helps to punish them. We do know that punishment is a powerful incentive towards learning. For example, when a parent spanks a child. However, we know little about the effect of punishment on learning because almost no scientific studies have been done of it on human beings.

Rensaleer: Now, one of you will play the role of “learner”, who will receive a mild punishment if he answers incorrectly to a series of questions. That punishment will be administered by a “teacher”.

Jim [actually part of the experiment]: Um, you know, I should say that a couple of years ago, in the West Haven VA Hospital they determined that I had a slight heart condition. Nothing serious, but how dangerous are these shocks?
Rensaleer: Well, although the shocks may be extremely painful, they cause no permanent tissue damage.
Jim: Oh. OK.

Sasha: What are you studying at Yale?
Stanley: I teach, actually. Social Relations.
Sasha: Social Relations. What does that mean?
Stanley: It’s a combination. Sociology, anthropology, psychology. You know, basically covers everything from the way people talk in elevators to the study of role-playing, conformity and authority.

Teacher: Incorrect. A hundred and sixty-five volts, strong shock.
(buzzer)
Learner: Ah! Let me out of here! I told you, I have a heart condition. I will not be part of the experiment anymore!
Teacher: He says he’s not gonna go on.
Rensaleer: Please continue, teacher.
Teacher: He says he doesn’t want to go on.
Rensaleer: Well, whether the learner likes it or not, he must go on until he’s learned all the pairs correctly. Please continue, teacher.

Stanley [voiceover]: He went all the way. Most of them do.

Learner: Something’s happening to that man in there. Can you please go check that everything’s OK?
Rensaleer: Not once we’ve started. Please continue, teacher.
Learner: So you accept all responsibility?
Rensaleer: The responsibility’s mine, correct. Continue, please.

Teacher: “Wet: Night, grass, dark, cloth.”
Stanley [voiceover, taking notes]: Clenching fist, pushing it onto table.
Teacher: “Dollar: Necklace, moon, paint.”.
[buzzer]
Teacher: Incorrect. 375 volts. Dangerous, severe shock.
Learner: [groaning]: Let me out of here, let me out! Get me out of here! You can’t hold me in here! GET ME OUT!!!

Teacher: 450 volts. OK, what now? I’m at the end at 450 volts.
Rensaleer: Continue, please. The last switch again.
Teacher Yeah, but…but he could be dead in there.
Rensaleer: The experiment requires that you continue. Go on, please.
Teacher: And his health doesn’t mean anything?
Rensaleer: Whether the learner likes it or not, we must continue.
Teacher: I’m sorry, look, I don’t mean to be rude, sir, but I think you should go look in on him. I mean, all you have to do is look in on him. Look into that door. 'Cause I’m not getting any noise, I’m not getting no sound here.
Rensaleer: We must continue. Go on, please, the next word is “white”.

Stanley [interviewing a “teacher” after the experiment]: Why did you give him, the man in the other room, the learner, the shocks?
Teacher: Well, as you could see, I wanted to stop 'cause each time you gave him a shock the guy hollered.
Stanley: Did it sound as if he was in pain?
Teacher: Yeah.
Stanley: Did he say he wanted you to stop the experiment?
Teacher: Yes.
Stanley: Did he have a right to stop the experiment?
Teacher: I don’t know.
Stanley: Why didn’t you stop, at that point, when he asked you to stop?
Teacher: Why didn’t I stop? Well, 'cause…cause he told me to continue.
Stanley: Why did you listen to that man and not the man in pain?
Teacher: Well, 'cause… 'cause I thought the experiment depended on me. And nobody told me to stop.
Stanley: The learner asked you to stop.
Teacher: That… That’s true, but he’s the, um, you know, the subject, shall we say?
Stanley: Who was the…Who bore the responsibility for the fact this man was being shocked?
Teacher: I don’t know.

Stanley [to one of the “teachers”]: The first thing I want to tell you is that the man in the other room wasn’t really being shocked. The only real shock was the one that you felt early on. We’re really interested in studying your reaction to having to inflict pain on someone that you don’t know. The experiment was about obeying orders. The man in the other room works with us as a team.

Stanley [to the camera]: I was born in the Bronx, 1933. My father was from Hungary, my mother from Romania. Jewish immigrants. It was a matter of chance they arrived in the US as children and managed to raise a family in New York instead of being swept up into the extermination camps and murdered by the Nazis, like millions of others just like them in Eastern Europe. That’s really what’s behind the obedience experiments. The inkling I was chasing. The thing that troubled me…How do civilized human beings participate in destructive, inhumane acts? How was genocide implemented so systematically, so efficiently? And how did the perpetrators of these murders live with themselves?

Stanley [to the camera]: My daughter, Michele, a precocious child who at this point in the story hasn’t yet been born, used to tell the kids at school, “My dad’s a psychologist, but not the kind that talks to people lying down. He’s an experimental psychologist. He does experiments.”[/b]

Cue the elephant following him down the hallway.

Teacher: The man, he seems to be getting hurt.
Rensaleer: There is no permanent tissue damage.
Teacher: Yes, but I know what shocks do to you. I’m an electrical engineer, and have had shocks. You get real shook up by them, especially if you know the next one is coming. I’m sorry.
Rensaleer: It’s absolutely essential that you do continue.
Teacher: Well, I won’t, not with the man screaming to get out.
Rensaleer: You have no other choice.
Teacher: Why don’t I have a choice? I came here of my own free will. I thought I could help in a research project. But if I have to hurt somesody, if I was in hius place…No, I can’t continue. I’ve probably gone too far already. I’m very sorry…

One of the few exceptions.

[b]Stanley [to his team]: But why? Why do so many, the vast majority, push all the way through to the final switch? Why is the Dutchman’s defiance the anomaly instead of the norm? All of the psychologists and psychiatrists that I consulted were convinced we’d have trouble finding a single person that would go all the way through to the end.

Stanley [voiceover]: I designed variations, 25 in all, and continued the experiments over the next two semesters. We adjust the script so that the learner bangs on the wall but says nothing. We asked the teacher to physically press the learners hand on a copper plate, forcing him to receive the shock. We moved the experiment to a shabby office in Bridgeport, to deduct the potential intimidation factor of Ivy League prestige. And, back at Yale, we included women.

Stanley [voiceover]: In nearly every case, the essential results are the same. They hesitate, sigh, tremble and groan, but they advance to the last switch, 450 volts, “Danger Severe Shock XXX”, because they’re politely told to.

Stanley [to the camera]: The results are terrifying and depressing. They suggest that the kind of character produced in American society can’t be counted on to insulate its citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment in response to a malevolent authority. [/b]

So: Don’t forget to vote!

[b]Stanlel [voiceover]: Eichmann didn’t deny his crimes, showed no trace of guilt or remorse. Said he was merely a transmitter. “I never did anything great or small without express instructions from my superiors”.

Asch: Stanley, why do you feel compelled to dwell on the negative aspects of obedience? Why must you focus on its destructive potential? Obedience isn’t necessarily an instrument of evil.
Stanley: I think we can both agree, looking at recent history, the history that brought you to this country, a history in which we see abusive power assuming unprecedented murderous dimensions.
Asch: Why does your experiment give me a dirty feeling?
Sasha: He didn’t expect these results. He tried to change the conditions so that people would refuse to obey.
Stanley: The whole time, out of 780 subjects, not a single person got up, went to the door and looked in to see if the man screaming was all right. Not a single one.

Stanley [entering his classroom]: President Kennedy has been shot. He was shot in a motorcade in Dallas. He was shot in the head.
Student [to another student]: It’s Milgram. It’s just another one of his experiments.
Paul: On the level?
Stanley: Yes.
Paul: Kelly, you’ve got that radio, right? Turn it on.
[the radio relays information about the assassination]
Kelly: He’s rigged a fake broadcast, like Orson Welles.
Stanley: I have?
Kelly: I wonder what the experiment is really about?

Stanley [to the camera]: It’s true that I am, possibly, more than common on edge, but how would you feel if you picked up a copy of American Psychologist and found yourself attacked in a article called “Some Thoughts on Ethics in Research: a Response to Milgram’s Behavioral Study of Obedience”?

Stanley [at meeting]: Psychiatrists, many of you in this rooms, predicted that only one person in a thousand would deliver shocks across the board, an estimate that was off by a factor of 500. So what happened in the lab was discovered not planned.

Psychiatrist: You forced people to torture other people.
Stanley: No. No, that is alien to my view. No one was forced. The experiment had told to the subject to perform an action what happened between the command and the outcome is individual, with conscience and will where can ether obey or disobey.

Psychiatrist: I don’t see how you can seriously equate victimization in a laboratory con with the willful participation in mass murder.
Stanley? Victimization? Look, when the experiments were complete all the subjects were given this questionnaire. Eighty-four percent said they were glad to have been in the experiment. Fifteen percent indicated neutral feelings. One point three percent indicated negative feelings. Four-fifths though more experiments of this sort should be carried out and seventy-four percent said they had learned something of personal importance about themselves and about the conditions that shape human action.

Stanley [on a talk show]: The experiment taught me something about the plasticity of human nature. Not the evil, not the aggressiveness but a certain kind of malleability. Sixty-five percent of the volunteers were obedient. That left thirty-five percent who recognized a moral breech, took responsibility for their actions and resisted. But obedience was much more common. You tell yourself, “I wouldn’t do that, I’d never do that.” But then, what did Montaigne say? “We are double in ourselves. What we believe, we disbelieve, and we cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.”

Stanley [to the camera]: There was a time when men and women could give a fully human response to any situation. When we could be fully absorbed in the world as human beings. But more often now people don’t see the whole situation but only some small part of it. There’s a division of labor, and people carry out small, narrow specialized jobs and we can’t act without some kind of direction from on high. I call this the “agentic state”. The individual yields to authority, and in doing so becomes alienated from his own actions. The agentic state is “store policy”. It’s “I’m just doing my job.” Or, “That’s not my job.” Or, “I don’t make the rules”, “We don’t do that here”, “Just following orders”, “It’s the law.” In the agentic state the individual defines himself as an instrument carrying out the wishes of others.

Stanley [voiceover, speaking from the grave as it were]: No one can truly know what they might or might not do when presented with the demands of a particular situation. In 2008. a professor at Santa Clara University replicated the obedience experiments and got roughly the same results. Over 60% of volunteers delivered the full shocks. In 2010 the experiments were duplicated on a French reality TV show, Le Jeu de la Mort, The Game of Death. Participants were egged on by a live studio audience. Over 80% went all the way.

Stanley [voiceover from the grave]: The obedience experiments are cited and discussed in nearly every introductory psychology textbook worldwide. My obedience film is screened for every incoming class at West Point. And my methods and results continue to be challenged, scorned, debunked, yet every time a new outrage is unleashed into the world, sanctioned and systematic acts of violence, the obedience experiments re-enter the conversation, re-framing unanswerable questions. You could say we’re puppets. But I believe that we are puppets with perception, with awareness. Sometimes we can see the strings and, perhaps, our awareness is the first step in our liberation.[/b]

Whether you are far from the madding crowd or smack dab in the middle of it, if you are a young and attractive female you can generally be certain of one thing: that men will want you.

And not just for the obvious reason.

And whether that is now or 150 years ago there are just certain consequences of this that will show up time and time again on the silver screen.

Indeed, Thomas Hardy’s acclaimed novel has already been adapted for film any number of times. Not to mention as a ballet, a theatre production, a musical and an opera.

Timeless themes as they say.

It’s the story of the “independent, beautiful and headstrong Bathsheba Everdene” and her relationship with, as they were called in the day, “suitors”. Three of them: a sheep farmer, a sergeant in the military and a “prosperous bachelor”.

Though the rules of engagement back then were rather different from what one might expect in our more “post-modern” world. For instance, the rules were born of a world that was by and large created of, by and for men. Far more so than they are today. And thus any number of books/films such as this one depict the sort of woman that would be championed by those among us who, today, choose to embrace “feminism”.

It’s a world that reminds me of a quote from John Fowles:

[b]"We lay on the ground and kissed. Perhaps you smile. That we only lay on the ground and kissed. You young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not. But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion. It is not only species of animal that die out. But whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know. But pity yourself for what it did.”[/b]

I think it is also important to point out that this was world largely unto itself. Nothing at all like the one we live in today. It was self-contained and sustained its existence without having to endure what can be a turbulent world – one of war and civil strife and economic calamity.

Though there is [of course] the part that revolves around money. It’s just that it all seems to unfold within the context of a day to day stability [re the larger world] that can sometimes make all the difference.

IMDb

[b]Asked who she would have chosen if she had these three very different suitors in real life, Carey Mulligan chuckled as she quickly replied, “I probably would have gone for the guy with the baby lamb (Gabriel) in the first 20 minutes of the film.”

The scene where Bathsheba tries to impress Gabriel and his friends by wading in to a sheep bath with them and the animals had little Hollywood glamour to it. Carey Mulligan said: “That was so much fun, although slightly disgusting by the end of the day. The sheep were doing their business in the water. The boys whinged constantly but they were wearing wetsuits under their costumes - I was wearing no wetsuit, so I was basically swimming in sheep shit all day, which was a joy.”

The cast did a kind of farming boot camp two weeks before shooting. Matthias Schoenaerts learned everything that there is to learn about sheep: how to shave them, how to de-bloat them, how to wash and all other aspects that comes with life on a farm.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_from_ … 15_film%29
trailer: youtu.be/WCm1XNVD_0c

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD [2015]
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg

[b]Bathsheba [voiceover]: Bathsheba. The name has always sounded strange to me. I don’t like to hear it said out loud. My parents died when I was very young, so there was no one to ask where I came from. I’ve bgrown accustomed to being on my own. Some say too accustomed. Too independent.

Mrs. Hurst [to Gabriel as Bathsheba inadvertantly listens in]: …after that she was going to be a governess. But she was far too wild. Always has been.

Gabriel [out of the blue]: Miss Everdene, I wanted to ask…would you like to marry me?
[she stares up at him speechless]
Gabriel: I’ve never asked anyone before.
Bathsheba [chuckling]: No. I should hope not.
Gabriel: Perhaps I should, er, perhaps I should leave.
Bathsheba: Mr. Oak, there are things to consider.
Gabriel: Is someone waiting for you?
Bathsheba: No, but that doesn’t mean I’ll marry you.
Gabriel: Good day to you then.
[He turns a walks away. She runs after him]
Bathsheba: Mr Oak, Mr Oak! I didn’t say I wouldn’t marry you, either. I haven’t ever really thought about it.
Gabriel [again matter of factly]: I have 100 acres and 200 sheep. If I pay off the money, the farm is ours. You could have a piano in a year or two. Flowers and birds and a frame for cucumbers. A baby or two…or more.
Bathsheba: Mr Oak, I don’t want a husband. I’d hate to be some man’s property. I shouldn’t mind being a bride at a wedding if I could be one without getting a husband!
Gabriel: That’s stupid talk.
Bathsheba: You’re better off than I, Mr. Oak. I have an education and nothing more. You could do much much better than me.
Gabriel: That’s not the reason.
Bathsheba: I’m too independent for you. If I ever were to marry I’d want somebody to tame me and you’d never be able to do it. You’d grow to despise me.[/b]

He would not. Ever. And then…

Mrs Hurst: Bathsheba!
Bathsheba: What is it?
Mrs. Hurst: My love. It’s your poor uncle’s will.
Bathsheba: What does it say?
Mrs. Hurst: Read it. Read! He’s left you everything. It’s all yours!
Bathsheba: Oh! Oh my goodness!!

This after Gabriel’s dog drove all of his sheep off a cliff. Leaving him penniless.
I wonder: do these things actually happen?!

[b]Bathsheba [to the farmhands on the farm that she inherited from her uncle]: From now on, you have a mistress, not a master.I don’t yet know my talents for farming, but I shall do my best. Don’t suppose that because I’m a woman, I don’t know the difference between bad goings-on and good. I shall be up before you’re awake. I’ll shall be a-field before you are up. It is my intention to astonish you all.

Liddy [to Bathsheba of William]: He’s rich, he’s handsome. He sends the local girls mad.

Liddy: It’s said when he was young, his sweetheart jilted him.
Bathsheba: People always say that. Women don’t jilt men, men jilt us.
Liddy: Did someone jilt you, miss?
Bathsheba: Certainly not!

Bathsheba: I man did ask to marry me once. Some time ago. But I was too restless to be tied down.
Liddy: What a luxury to have a choice. “Kiss my foot, sir, my face is for mouths of consequence.”
Bathsheba: It wasn’t like that at all.
Liddy: Why? Did you love him.
Bathsheba: No, but I rather liked him. Anyway, it’s impossible now.

Bathsheba: Mr. Boldwood?
William [as much out of the blue as Gabriel]: Miss Everdene, I want…very much, more than anything, to have you as my wife. Miss Everdene, marry me.
Bathesba [as speechless as before…stammering]: I…I…I feel…though I respect you very much…I do not feel what would justify me in accepting your offer.
William: I have known disappointment before. But I would never have asked in this instance had I not been, er, led to believe…[/b]

The valentine that she sent. As a joke. Well, sort of.

William: Perhaps you think I am too old. But I will care for you more than anyone your own age.
Bathsheba: I’m sure you would…
William: I will, protect you. You shall have dresses, a gig. Uh, a piano.
[she says nothing]
William: I amuse you?
Bathsheba: No. It’s only that I have a piano. And I have my own farm. And I have no need for a husband no matter how honored I am by the offer.

Back then [among these sort] it was unheard of to be “lovers”. So sex was often intertwined only in marriage.

[b]Bathsheba [of Gabriel]: Did you find him? What did he say?
Joseph: He said you’re to go in person and request him civilly in a proper manner.
Bathsheba [incredulous]: Where does he get his airs? I’ll do no such thing.
Joseph: He said you’d say that. He said to reply, “Beggars can’t be choosers”.

Frank: What angers you exactly? That I said you were beautiful or the way that I said it? You must know. There must be some man who tells you that you are beautiful.
Bathsheba: Oh, not to my face, not…
Frank: But there is someone who kisses you.
Bathsheba: I’ve never been kissed.
[uncomfortable pause]
Bathsheba: Why couldn’t you have just passed by and said nothing…

Gabriel [of Frank]: You should have nothing to do with him. He’s not good enough for you.
Bathsheba: He is perfectly decent man.
Gabriel: That’s not what I believe.
Bathsheba: Why? What have you heard? You don’t know him at all. It’s all rumors. Prejudice simply because he’s a soldier.
Gabriel: I like soldiers. But not this one. I believe him to have no conscience at all. Stay clear. Don’t listen to him. Don’t believe him. Get rid of him.
Bathsheba: And what is it to you?
Gabriel: I’m not such a fool as to imagine that I might stand a chance now that you are so above me. But don’t suppose I’m content to stay a nobody all my life. One day I will leave you. You can be sure of that. But now I care for you too much to see you go to ruin because of him. [/b]

She doesn’t listen.

[b]Bathsheba: Gabriel, I’ve been a fool. I’ve always had contempt for silly girls dazzled by flattery in a scarlet uniform and now I’ve done what I swore I would never do. But he told me about another woman, a woman more beautiful that he’d loved before, and I couldn’t bear it. So somewhere between jealousy and distraction I married him.

Frank: Fanny?
Fanny [now destitute, a beggar]: Hello, Frank.
Frank [astonished to see her]: Hello. You’re so pale.
Fanny: Oh, Frank…
Frank: Darling, your hands are shaking.
Fanny: I thought you said All Souls, not All Saints. I went to the wrong church.

Bathsheba: What did Fanny die of, Liddy?
Liddy: I don’t know, miss. There were rumors, but…
Bathsheba: Fanny had a sweetheart, didn’t she?
Liddy: Yes miss.
Bathsheba: A soldier…

Bathsheba [to Liddy]: I seem to cry a great deal these days. I never used to cry at all.

Bathsheba: Don’t kiss her, Frank. I’m still your wife.
Frank: This woman, dead as she is, is more to me than you ever were, or are, or can be. You are nothing to me now. Nothing.

William: I’m a middle-aged man willing to protect you for the rest of your life. You may run your farm if you wish. Without risk. I’ll pay your departed husband’s debts and guarantee its financial stability. It can be your pasttime. Of course we need to wait for propriety’s sake. But when you are ready, I’m offering you shelter. Comfort. A safe harbor. As my wife.

Bathsheba [to William]: It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language chiefly made by men to express theirs.
William: If you worry about a lack of passion of your part, a lack of, uh, desire, if you worry about marrying me merely out of guilt and, uh, pity and compromise, well, I don’t mind.

Bathsheba: Frank…
Frank [back from the dead]: Black suits you. Although a little premature.

Frank: You don’t seem very happy to see me.
Bathsheba: You said I was nothing to you.
Frank: Did I? Well, then. Honesty at all times. I find myself in need of money. I gave up my profession for you, and it seems a little harsh that you have a farm and a house while I’m living off nothing.
Bathsheba: There is no money.
Frank: Then sell the farm.
Bathsheba: No.
Frank: Come home.
[no response]
Frank: I said come home.
[no response]
Frank: I’M YOUR HUSBAND AND YOU’LL OBEY ME!!

Gabriel: I’m leaving England.
Bathsheba: Leaving?
Gabriel: I’m going to America. There’s a boat leaving Bristol in four days time. I’ll be on it. Now that the farm is secure. I understand that I should give you notice.
Bathsheba: Yes, you must go where you want.
Gabriel: I’ll leave first thing tomorrow. No fuss. I think that’s best.

Bathsheba: You’ll think I’m strange, but I’ve been worried. Have I offended you somehow?
Gabriel: No, not at all.
Bathsheba: Is it money? I’ll pay you whatever you want.
Gabriel: I don’t need money now.
Bathsheba: A formal partnership then.
Gabrieal: Nor a partnership. The farm belongs to you alone. It’s the finest farm for miles around.
Bathsheba: Then why else are you leaving?
Gabriel: I said I’d leave you one day.
Bathsheba: Well, you must not go.
Gabriel: You forbid me?
Bathsheba: Yes, if you like. I forbid you.
Gabriel: It’s time for you to fight your own battles. And win them too.
Bathsheba: So, we should say goodbye then?
Gabriel: I suppose so.
[he turns to go]
Bathsheba: Gabriel, wait. Thank you, Gabriel. You’ve believed in me and fought for me. And stood by my side when all the rest of the world is against me. And we’ve been through so much together. Wasn’t I your first sweetheart? Weren’t you mine?
[no response]
Bathsheba: And now I’d have to go on without you.
Gabriel: If I knew…If I knew that you would let me love you and marry you…
Bathsheba: But you will never know.
Gabriel: Why not?
Bathsheba: Because you never ask!
Gabriel: Would you say no again?
Bathsheba: I don’t know. Probably. So, why don’t you? Ask me. Ask me. Ask me. Gabriel.[/b]

The man is homeless, impoverished, a derelict. One of the walking, talking dead. In the very first scene he is found sleeping in the bathtub of an abandoned apartment.

But this sort of thing will always be construed as a political football here in America. Folks on the right will claim he has nobody to blame but himself. We all have an equal opportunity to make something out of our lives and this guy fumbled the ball. He’s on his own. Folks on the left however will scoff at the idea of “equal opportunity” and insist that it is largely the obligation of “society” to help those who have fallen through the cracks.

And, at the very least, we should afford all citizens at least a modicum of human dignity. The problem here though is that many of them are not in the least bit dignified at all. In fact they are downright unpleasant to be around. And even when the state is willing to help there are always the bureaucratic hoops to jump through. Or the state wants to become your “nanny”.

And few films like this don’t also add a “personal touch”. Somewhere out there is someone [usually a close family member] who is estranged from this decrepit soul. In this case, his daughter.

Here of course the film can become either insufferably sweet or considerably more down to earth. Meaning the estrangement can be bursting at the seams with cliches or reflect more unpredictable, ambiguous and rawer encounters.

Fortunately, it chooses the latter. At least from my point of view.

Interspersed into the main plot are also all these vignettes of life in the big city. All the different folks living all the different lives that we may or may not have a clue about. Folks that may or may not be sympathetic to the plight of someone like George.

IMDb

[b]During filming, a French tourist mistook Richard Gere - who was in full wardrobe - for a homeless man and gave him some leftover pizza. The tourist later found out that it was Gere after reading about the film in a New York Post article.

More than 20 attendees walked out during the Toronto International Film Festival screening of the film.[/b]

Why? Nothing from a Google search.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Out_ … (2014_film
trailer: youtu.be/dKlgzSjFThM

TIME OUT OF MIND [2014]
Written and directed by Oren Moverman

[b]Art: Go outside and wait. You can’t wait in here. You can’t sleep here. You cannot come back here. Let’s go. Come on.
George: Hey, look. Cut me some slack, man. Come on. Come on. I’m not bothering anyone. I’m not bothering anybody.
Art: You’re scaring the neighbors.

Man: Maggie?
Maggie: Yep.
Man: This guy gave me these pictures to give to you.
[she looks at the pictures]
Man: Is that you. 'Cause this little girl looks like you.

George [to a doctor who has been kind to him]: You know, I’ve always been really very good with women. Women have always been incredibly kind to me. And…I really have no, uh, place to go right now and, um, I’m not a bum. I’m a very clean guy. I’m not a bad guest really. I’m just…I’m in between…
Doctor: Sorry.

Man in church: Are you here for English as a second language? Meditation Mondays?
George: No, I’m just looking for a coat.

Man from shelter: Hey. Hey, listen. You can’t stay here. It’s not a Code Blue night.
George: It’s okay. It’s all right.
Man from shelter: No, it’s not. It’s not a Code Blue night.
George: No, no, no, no. I’m not bothering anybody.
Man from shelter: No, no. You can sleep here if it’s 32 degrees or below. But it’s not 32 degrees or below.
George: What temperature is it outside?
Man from shelter: It’s more than 32 degrees.
George: But the wind chill. There’s a really bad wind out there.[/b]

Off to Bellevue…

[b]Guard [at the Bellevue homeless intake center]: As you enter the facility please take all outerwear off. Belts off. All items out of your pockets. Remove all hats, scarves. Any unauthorized items, please get rid of them now. As soon as your stuff goes through the machine an officer will instruct you to walk through the metal detector.

George: Look, can I just get a bed for tonight?
Clerk: Do you have any form of ID?
George: No. No, I don’t.
Clerk: Do you know anyone you can call? Anybody you could stay with? A friend’s couch?
George: I don’t have…I don’t have anybody. No one. Look, are you filled up or something? I could come back later.
Clerk: There is no later. The law says we got to give you a bed.
George: I’ll take anything you got. I’ll sleep on the floor.

Clerk: You’ll stay tonight. In a bed. If you qualify, you’ll be assigned a permanent shelter.
George: Permanent?
Clerk: It’s up to you. We have all kinds.
George [exasperated]: It’s been a long time since I had a job. It’s been many years. I’m too old to be hired. No one’s going to hire me like, uh, like the way I am. I’m—I’m just really no good right now.
Clerk: Have a seat.
George: Why?

Clerk: How about a family? You got a family?
George [suspiciously]: If I say that I have a family does that mean I can still stay here?
Clerk: Yes. Unless they’d be willing to take you in.
George: I don’t have a family.
Clerk: Come on, darling, you would much rather stay with your family than to stay here, you understand what I’m saying?

Clerk: Children. Have any children?
George: One. One girl.
Clerk: Oh, daughter. She know you’re here? Hmm? You could give her a call.
[George chuckles bitterly shaking his head]
Clerk: Yeah, daughters and daddies. Special relationship. I loved my daddy. Sure did. I just worshipped the ground he walked on. He could do no wrong in my eyes. He was a rock.
George: I don’t know where she is. I…I haven’t seen her in a while. Anyway, she doesn’t want me. She’s not one of those daughters. She doesn’t…adore me. She doesn’t, uh, worship the ground I walk on. I didn’t, uh, pay much attention to her. My mind was on something else.
Cleek: On something else? Like what?
George [after a long pause]: I’m just a fuckup. Probably always was.

Clerk: Have you ever been addicted to any legal or illegal substances? And please don’t lie.
George [really exasperated]: I just want a place to sleep, please.
Clerk: We will have to do a psychiatric evalution…
George: I just want a bed, I just wanted a bed to sleep in. I’m addicted to sleep.
Clerk: …and you will have to be elaluated with a social history within 21 days…
George: I’m getting the idea…I feel like you don’t want me to be here. Is that it? Is that true? Because I’m feeling that you just want me to go away.
Clerk: I want what is best for you…
George: You want what’s best for…you don’t know me. How are you gonna know what’s best for me?

Man in shelter [to George]: What’s the matter, you afraid of me, newbie? Afraid I’ll take your things? Afraid I’ll fuck you up? Why would I fuck with you? No, you fuck up here, you go to the next step shelter, which is, you know, the last step shelter really. And then you’re up shit’s creek without a paddle. Then they can kick you out for a year. They can’t deny you a bed if you don’t fuck up. So you got to learn to play their game.

Dixon [to George]: Listen to this. Do you know that every human male – that’s a man like you and me – makes enough sperm in two weeks to impregnate every ovulating woman on this planet. That’s a fact, man. I heard it once from this doctor I was hanging out with out on the streets. He was a meth head. Tweaker.

Dixon [to George]: Think about it from the taxpayer’s point of view. We get a mattress, a bed, a locker, shampoo, toothpaste. It ain’t right. It ain’t a square deal. We didn’t earn it. It’s a hand-out, not a hand-up.

George: Wait, wait, wait. I was just going to get some beer.
Karen: You got money?
George: I got enough for a six pack. You want some?
Karen: Do I get to keep the empty cans?

Maggie: Actually I don’t need to know anything about your life. So, what is it that you want? You want money? Is that it? Alright, well, here. It’s all I have.
George [taking the money]: Uh, here, I…I don’t need all of it.
Maggie: What else?
George: You seem good. You seem pretty good.
Maggie: What else? What else do you want because I’m busy. And I don’t want to get involved in any of your fucked up shit ever again. I don’t.
George [turning to leave]: All right. Thank you.
Maggie: Stop feeling so sorry for yourself.
[he says nothing]
Maggie: I’m probably going to move away, Dad. Like far away. Then you won’t be able to find me. So you should just say good-bye now.

George: I’m nobody. I don’t exist.
Dixon: You’re reduced…
George: We don’t exist.
Dixon: What do you mean we don’t exist?
George: What the fucking…We don’t exist!
Dixon: Maybe you don’t exist. I exist. And I’m gonna prove that you exist.
George: They think you’re a fucking clown! They think we’re clowns. We’re cartoons.

Dixon: You should be working. You should get your own place. But you don’t. Why? Why is that? 'Cause you’re sick in the head. You got no support system. You got old and, uh, you love the sauce too much. You don’t like yourself. You’re depressed. You don’t believe in yourself. So what’s society supposed to do with you? Why should they care? It’s all your fault.
George: If you keep talking like this about me I am going to hurt you. Do you understnd that? I will hurt you, I swear.
Dixon: I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about myself.

Dixon [to George]: Vegans. The kindest people on the planet. They don’t eat animals. Takes a man who don’t eat animals to treat a human being right.

Maggie [bartending]: I really…I don’t know what you want me to do. I mean what do you want? I don’t know what I could do that I haven’t already tried or…Cause normally, it’s, you know, it’s the parents that take care of the kid. Not really the other way around. So…why are you doing this.
George [sobbing]: I have…You don’t have to worry about me.
[more sobbing]
George: Wait a minute. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Maggie: No. You gotta go. Just leave. Just get out of here. Leave![/b]

A dramatic recreation of the events depicted in the film Man On Wire above.

And, as Philippe Petit himself notes, the first question that everyone always asked him was this: “Why?”

Why would someone literally risk so much in order to accomplish something that in the larger scheme of things doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans? And, in fact, could quite easily result in his death.

For example: youtu.be/q0VNsgyVe7E

So, if, like me, you have mixed feelings regarding “accomplishments” of this sort, then we are probably not alone.

There just seem to be those among us who, having experienced the exhilaration of an adrenaline rush this intense, are going to keep pushing the envelope in order to recreate it again and again and again.

In other words, this is one of those very, very rare human beings: One who lives [and who loves] his life almost entirely on his own terms. Really, how many of us can ever say that? On this level?

Just think of it all [as he himself did] as a “work of art”.

And, as with Man On Wire, this film is superb in laying out just how incredibly complex it was just setting up the rigging that would be needed to pull off the walk. The mind-boggling logistics! The endless close-calls!

Imagine trying to pull it off post-9/11.

And even though you know that the event had already been accomplished, it is still nerve-wracking to watch him out on that wire. Knowing, for example, that never in a million years would you ever attempt something like it yourself.

And then there is this question: How was it filmed given that the Twin Towers are no longer around? With computer special effects no doubt. Also: how much of what we see up on the screen did Joseph Gordon-Levitt actually perform “for real”. For example: balanced with one foot on a rope while juggling lit torches?

IMDb

[b]Philippe Petit himself personally trained Joseph Gordon-Levitt how to walk on a tightrope. When the training started, Petit predicted that Gordon-Levitt would need no more than 8 days of training to be able to walk on a wire alone, which came true.

During the film’s New York City premiere the realism of the film’s climax caused some viewers to actually throw up from vertigo, at least one reviewer claimed that. Director Robert Zemeckis responded, he didn’t believe that report, but “[the goal] was to evoke the feeling of vertigo. We worked really hard to put the audience up on those towers and on the wire.”

To help get an idea of the distance and height of the climatic wire walk, Joseph Gordon-Levitt went to the World Trade Center memorial, where there are two pools representing where the towers originally stood, and walked the distance between them. He also recounted his own experience when he visited the observation deck on top of one of the towers in the summer of 2001, saying of the sensation of being at such a height, “It felt more like being in the sky than being on a tall building.” [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walk_(2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/eKSeSX-dzso

THE WALK [2015]
Written in part and directed by Robert Zemeckis

[b]Philippe: “Why?” That is the question people ask me most. Pourquoi? Why? For what? Why do you walk on the wire? Why do you tempt fate? Why do you risk death. But, I don’t think of it this way. I never even say this word, death. La mort. Yes of okay, I said it once, or maybe three times, just now… But watch, I will not say it again. Instead, I use the opposite word. Life. For me, to walk on the wire, this is life. C’est la vie.

Philippe [now standing in the torch of the Statue of Liberty]: So, picture with me it’s 1974, New York city, and I am in love with two buildings - two towers. Or as everyone in the world will calls them, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. They call to me. These towers, they stir something inside of me, and they inspire in me a dream. My dream is to hang a high-wire between those twin towers, and walk on it! Of course, uh, this is impossible, not to mention, illegal. So, why attempt the impossible? Why follow your dream? But, I cannot answer this question why, not with words. But I can show you how I happened. And so, we must go back in time, and across the ocean, because my love affair with these beautiful towers did not begin in New York. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m not from here. No, my story begins in another one of the world’s most beautiful cities, se Paris.

Philippe [voiceover]: Here I am, a self-proclaimed wire walker that nobody on earth cares about, surviving as a troubadour performing in the streets. I’ve created a character. I have a top hat. I wear only black. I teach myself to draw a perfect circle on the ground, and within this circle, I never speak, not one word. The circle is my domain, and I don’t allow even half of a toe inside of it. And if the spectators continue to violate my sacred space, well, I must employ more drastic measures. I perform for anyone who will watch me, and people love it. Man, woman, young, old, everyone. Except, of course, the police. I don’t believe in getting permits.

Philippe [voiceover at the dentist office]: Suddenly, I freeze. The pain in my tooth is gone. In the magazine, there’s an article with an illustration about the towers. They’re not even finished yet, but the magazine says that once they are, they will be the tallest in the world.
[he draws a line between the towers]
Philippe: And with this tiny pencil stroke, my fate was sealed.

[b]Papa Rudy: The performer must have an honest respect and gratitude for the audience.
Philippe: But why should I respect the audience? It is me on the wire.
Papa Rudy: You will salute the audience and pay respect! There is no show without an audience! Unless you understand that, you will never perform in circus.
Philippe: Good, okay, me, I don’t want to perform in the circus. I am not some ridiculous circus clown. I am an artist!
[Papa Rudy throws him out]
Philippe [voiceover]: So, just like that, Papa Rudy threw my artistic little ass out into the street.

Philippe: It will be the most glorious high wire walk in history.
Annie: And how high must this wire be to make so much glory?
Philippe: Over 100 stories high.
Annie: Where do trees like this grow?
Philippe: These are not trees.

Philippe: I need you to teach me how to rig a high wire.
Papa Rudy: High wire for what? You’re a street juggler.
Philippe: But I need to know how to tie the correct knots. I need to know what kind of cable to use, the weight, the thickness, the load strength.
Papa Rudy: So, you want me to just give you my secrets. Secrets I’ve spent a lifetime learning. Secrets I’ve only given to my sons. You want me to just hand them over to you.
Philippe: I can pay you. I have money. I don’t care what it costs.
Papa Rudy: Meet me at le cirque at sunrise. Bring your juggling money.

Papa Rudy: Most wire walkers, they die when they arrive. They think they have arrived… But they are still on the wire. If you have three steps to do, and if you do those steps arrogantly…if you think you are invincible…You are going to die!
[Philippe reaches into his pocket for money to pay Papa Rudy]
Papa Rudy [stopping him]: This one, I give to you for free.

Philippe [voiceover]: Now, walking on the wire is as much mental as it is physical. If you lose your concentration, you lose your balance.
[he falls off the wire into the lake]
Annie: Philippe!
Philippe: So here I am, in the mud to my knees doing the Papa Rudy compliment. This was my first public performance. A failure.

Philippe [voiceover while crossing the towers of the Nortre-Dame Cathedral]: And when the first tourist start to arrive in the morning, I begin. And I succeed. I perform my first surprise, illegal high wire walk. This is also the first time I get the taste of this sensation. This feeling that I’m crossing into a…a truly different world. And I was redeemed.[/b]

And also arrested.

[b]Philippe [on the edge of a beam atop a World Trade Tower]: I find myself standing on an island floating in mid-air, on the edge of the void. Of course, I automatically look across to the opposite tower. But then I have to dare to look down. Now, I think I know the void. I’m a wire walker. The void is my domain, yes? Well, not this void. But, still I gather the courage to whisper. I whisper so the demons won’t hear me. It’s impossible. But I’ll do it.

Papa Rudy: Here’s what you’re going to do, Philippe. You’re going to wear a safety belt underneath your costume, attached to a safety line, connected to a carabiner.
Philippe: A safety line? A carabiner? I’m not going to do this walk with a safety line hanging off of me!
Papa Rudy: From that height, it will be invisible! No one will have any idea!
Philippe: And what do I do when I get to the first cavaletti?
Papa Rudy: You’re a performer. You kneel down on the wire. You unhook from side, clip it on the other. The audience will think you are saluting.
Philippe: This I will not do! This I will never do!
Papa Rudy: So why’d you come here? Because you know so much? You tell me I’m wrong?
Philippe: No. Because I need you to tell me how to rig this wire! Not do a phony walk like a coward!

Papa Rudy: This isn’t a game, Philippe. One mistake out there and you’re going to die.

Philippe: Polypropylene ropes, hemp ropes, small block-and-tackle with three sheaves, large block-and-tackle with single sheaf, uh, slings, steel wire, quarter-inch cable, pulley blocks, construction gloves, monkey wrenches, tape measure. And a balancing pole in four sections.
Customs official: And, uh, what’s all this for?
Philippe: I’m going to hang a high wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center and walk on it.
Custums official: Hmmph. Good luck!

Philippe [voiceover]: I rode all the elevators. The local, the express, the express to the upper sky lobby, the express to the lower sky lobby. I took hundreds of rides. I spied on the maintenance men, the loading docks. I watched the freight trucks as they made their deliveries. What time do they arrive? How long do they stay? How much paperwork is exchanged. My greatest disguise was that of an architect. I wore a tie and carried a blueprint, and I tried to look important. And this gave me access to everything under construction.[/b]

Then he steps on the nail.

[b]Barry: Well, it’s certainly illegal, that’s for sure. And extremely subversive, not to mention dangerous. This is something only a twisted, antisocial, anarchistic, pissed-off malcontent would have anything to do with!
[he reaches out to grab Philippe’s hand]
Barry: You have your inside man!

Philippe: I forgot to nail shut the coffin.
Annie: Stop calling it that!
Philippe: A coffin is what this may be.
Annie: That’s not funny. What’s wrong with you? Do you have a death wish or something?
Philippe: Don’t say this word! I never say this word.
Annie: Come on! Death, coffin, die. it’s all the same thing.
Philippe: Why are you doing this? Why are you suddenly against me?
Annie: Against you? No one is more supportive.
Philippe: Then why do you say this word? Why do you put this thought in my head on the night before my most dangerous walk? Why are you so uncaring?
Annie: Uncaring? You’re the most selfish, arrogant…
Philippe: Yes, I’m arrogant! I have to be. To walk on the wire, to command the wire!

Albert: Philippe, this is crazy. We’re never going to finish at this rate.
Philippe" Yes, we will. We will finish.
Albert: No, we’re not! We’re not! We’re all gonna get caught and go to jail. And I don’t want to go to jail. And the rigging isn’t safe. I’m not gonna watch you fall. I’m leaving, okay. I quit.
Philippe: Okay, Albert, listen to me. Yes, I agree with you, okay? And if the rigging is not done by daylight and if the rigging is not safe, then I’ll give up.

Philippe [voiceover]: And that was the moment in my adventure I call, “The Mysterious Visitor.” I have no idea who he is. I’ve never seen him again. And I can only imagine what he must have thought.[/b]

Weird doesn’t even begin to describe it.

[b]Philippe [just before beginning his walk]: I lost my costume! It’s a tragedy! The biggest page of my life and I lose my costume! It falls off the edge! I have no costume!
Jeff: What should we do?
Philippe: We do it. We do it anyway. I walk in this ridiculous undershirt, but we do it.

Philippe [voiceover]: I have one foot on the building and one foot on the wire. And the outside world starts to disappear. Jeff no longer existed. My tower was deserted. I no longer heard the sounds of New York. Everything fell silent. All I could see was the wire, floating out in a straight line to infinity.

Philippe [voiceover]: As soon as my entire weight is on the cable, I feel immediately a feeling I know by heart. I feel the wire supporting me. I feel the towers supporting the wire.

Philippe [voiceover]: I approach the first cavaletti, and it’s upside down. But I look closer and it seems okay. Thank you, Papa Rudy, for suggesting the three bolts.

Philippe [voiceover]: I arrive at the North Tower feeling the most intense joy, the most profound satisfaction I’ve ever felt in my life.

Philippe [voiceover]: I had finished my crossing, the coup was over. But then I looked over at the South Tower and it was still calling to me. So I’m thinking, maybe I should get back on my wire.

Philippe [voiceover on his way back to the South Tower]: And then I feel something that maybe I’ve never truly felt before. I feel thankful. So, I get down on one knee and I salute. First, I salute the wire, then the towers, and then I salute the great city of New York.[/b]

Then he sees the two cops. Back to the North Tower.

Philippe [voiceover]: By now, I’m becoming aware of the people on the ground below, watching me. My audience. And even though this is something a wire walker should never do, I look down. And it was…It was peaceful. It was calm and serene. Not dangerous.

What he does next is, well, mind-boggling.

Albert [looking up at the towers]: Look at that. I mean, we did it, Philippe. We showed the world that anything’s possible. They’re different. Hey, Philippe, they’re different now. They’re different because you walked up there.
Barry: You know every New Yorker I talk to now says they love these towers?

Well, not everyone, right?

Philippe[voiceover]: You remember Guy Tozzoli from the press conference, one of the men behind the creation of towers, he loved the walk, and he gave me a pass to the observation deck, so I could go any time I wanted. And I went there many times, alone. I would find myself there looking at the void, to see how the thought comes back. How the feeling returns. Because it was a beautiful day. And you know this pass I was given?
[holding up the card]
Philippe Well, these passes they have a date on them. A date when they expire. But on my pass, Mr. Tozzoli, he crossed out the date and he wrote on it: FOREVER.

From what I understand, there is a NASA mission to Mars in the planning stages: theage.com.au/world/want-to- … n0r07.html

You can even apply to be one of the astronauts. On the other hand, there are also reports that if you are among those selected don’t ever expect to come back: cbsnews.com/news/a-one-way-trip-to-mars/

Still, in Hollywood this sort of obstacle is easily dealt with. In what they call “the script”. Also, in Hollywood all of the astronauts are invariably young and quite attractive. And nearly all white. No exception here.

Basically, you might think of this as MacGyver on Mars. One man is up shit’s creek and even with a paddle he will almost certainly not survive. So he has to use his ingenuity to beat the extremely long odds. Luckily [unlike MacGyver] Mark has about billion things at his disposal in which to improvise with. On the other hand, MacGyver wasn’t on Mars.

Bottom line? There’s almost nothing that this guy can’t do. He even resurects Pathfiner.

Then there’s the part that revolves around the “space industrial complex”. The part about the politics of money. One really has to be grateful that it is brought up at all. Still, this film really revolves around a “predicament”: what is “mankind” obligated to do in order to save the life of just one “man”. That sort of moral quandary:

[i]Ng: We either have a high chance of killing one person or a low chance of killing six people.
Mitch: It should be Commander Lewis’ call.
Sanders: We still have a chance to bring five astronauts home safe and sound. I’m not risking their lives.
Mitch: Let them make that decision.
Sanders: Mitch, we’re going with option one.
Mitch: You goddamn coward.
[/i]

So, how realistic is the science here? It’s said to be reasonably so. And this is down the road from the things that we know today. So the assumption is that we’ll know a lot more then. But: How realistic is the plot? Well, if you haven’t seen the film, you don’t want to know.

Hint: It’s preposterous.

On the other hand: As though I could know that.

One of those strange films in which, from start to finish, everything is entirely predictable. And yet somehow the whole is able to become more than the sum of its parts.

IMDb

[b]It’s never addressed in the movie how Watney navigates without a GPS or compass (Mars has no magnetic field, making a compass useless). In the book, he uses the quick passage of the moon Phobos to orient himself.

In the beginning, it is mentioned that a compromised space suit would cause decompression, giving someone about a minute to live. This is scientifically correct; contrary to popular belief, acute decompression in space or a planet with very low pressure like Mars does not cause the body to immediately explode or expand. Major effects include confusion, loss of consciousness and some subdermal bleeding, but it is generally agreed that a healthy human body can survive one minute in vacuum without life-threatening consequences.

The suits in the film use a very complex and actual functioning lighting system.

One of Mars’s panoramic shots shows Olympus Mons, the largest discovered volcano in the solar system. It is almost three times larger than Mount Everest and covers an area about the size of Missouri.

The atmospheric pressure on the Martian surface averages 600 Pa (0.087 psi), about 0.6% of Earth’s mean sea level pressure of 100 kPa (14.69 psi). It is so low that a “fierce storm”, as they put it, would be something akin to a very light breeze messing up your hair. Author Andy Weir admitted this was his biggest inaccuracy in the story. Due to the low air density sound would not travel like it does on Earth and you would have to stand next to someone and scream for them to hear you, providing you could survive the freezing cold temperature, poisonous atmosphere and lack of pressure.

A real potato farm was installed on the studio lot with potatoes in all stages of growth so they could be used for filming.[/b]

All the rest of the trivia: imdb.com/title/tt3659388/tri … =ttqu_sa_1

FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt3659388/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(film
trailer: youtu.be/Ue4PCI0NamI

THE MARTIAN [2015]
Directed by Ridley Scott

[b]Melissa: All right team, stay in sight of each other. Let’s make NASA proud today.
Martinez: How’s it looking over there, Watney?
Mark: Well, you will be happy to hear that in Grid Section 14-28, the particles were predominately coarse but in 29, they’re much finer and they should be ideal for chem analysis.
Martinez: Oh, wow. Did everybody hear that? Mark just discovered dirt.

Sanders: At around 4:30 a.m. Central Standard Time our satellites detected a storm approaching the Ares 3 mission site on Mars. At 6:45, the storm had escalated to severe and we had no choice but to abort the mission. Thanks to the quick action of Commander Lewis astronauts Beck, Johanssen, Martinez and Vogel were all able to reach the Mars Ascent Vehicle and perform an emergency launch at 7:28 Central Time. Unfortunately, during the evacuation astronaut Mark Watney was struck by debris and killed.[/b]

Or, sure, maybe not…

[b]Mark [recording a message]: Hello, this is Mark Watney, astronaut. I’m entering this log for the record in case I don’t make it. It is 06:53 on Sol 19 and I’m alive. Obviously. But I’m guessing that’s gonna come as a surprise to my crewmates and to NASA.

Mark [recording a message]: I have no way to contact NASA. And even if I could, it’s gonna be four years until a manned mission can reach me. And I’m in a Hab designed to last 31 days. If the oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the hab breaches, I’ll just kind of implode. If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death.

Mark [recording a message]: Right, let’s do the math. Our surface mission here was supposed to last 31 sols. For redundancy, they sent 68 sols worth of food. That’s for 6 people. So for just me, that’s gonna last 300 sols… which I figure I can stretch to 400 if I ration. So I got to figure out a way to grow three years’ worth of food here. On a planet where nothing grows.

Mark [recording a message]: The problem is water. I have created 126 square meters of soil. But every cubic meter of soil requires 40 liters of water to be farmable. So I gotta make a lot more water.

Mark: So, yeah, I blew myself up. Best guess…I forgot to account for the excess oxygen that I’ve been exhaling when I did my calculations. Because I’m stupid.

Sanders: It’s not about the satellite time, Vince. We’re a public domain organization. We need to be transparent on this. The second we point the satellites at the Hab…I broadcast pictures of Mark Watney’s dead body to the world.
Vincent: You’re afraid of a PR problem?
Sanders: Of course I’m afraid of a PR problem.
Vincent: Another mission?
Sanders: Congress won’t reimburse us for a paper clip if I put a dead astronaut on the front page of The Washington Post.

Annie: I mean, what are we gonna say, “Dear America, remember that astronaut we killed and had a really nice funeral for? Turns out he’s alive and we left him on Mars. Our bad. Sincerely, NASA”. I mean, do you realize the shit storm that is about to hit us?

Sanders: If my math is right, he’s going to starve to death long before we can help him.
Vincent: Can you imagine what he’s going through up there? He’s 50 million miles away from home. He thinks he’s totally alone. He thinks we gave up on him. What does that do to a man, psychologically? What the hell is he thinking right now?[/b]

This: Fuck Disco!

[b]Mark [recording]: In the face of overwhelming odds, I’m left with only one option, I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this.

Mark [to the camera]: So here’s the rub. Somehow we have to have complex astrophysical engineering conversations using nothing but a still-frame camera from 1996. Luckily the camera does spin. So I can make an alphabet. It can’t be our alphabet. 26 characters plus a question card into 360 gives us 13 degrees of arc. That’s way too narrow. I’d never know what the camera was pointing at. Hexadecimals. Hexadecimals to the rescue.[/b]

Got that? You either have more than just a remoste understanding of the science here or you don’t.

[b]Mark [typing]: “How’s the crew? What did they say when they found out I was alive?”
Ng: Just tell him.
Vincent [typing]: “We haven’t told the crew you are alive yet. We need them to concentrate on their mission.”
Mark [aloud to himself]: What the fuck? What the fuck?
Mark [typing] “They don’t know I’m alive? What the fuck? WEhat the fuck is wrong with you?”
Vincent [typing]: “Mark, please watch your language. Everything you type is being broadcast live all over the world.”

Annie [to Vincent]: What is he doing? I asked for a photo, and what, he’s The Fonz?

Martinez [communicating – faceteously – to Mark]: “Dear Mark…Apparently NASA’s letting us talk to you now. And I drew the short straw. Sorry we left you behind on Mars. But we just don’t like you. Also, it’s a lot roomier on the Hermes without you. We have to take turns doing your tasks. But, I mean, it’s only botany. It’s not real science.”

Ng: All right. Thanks to my uncle Tommy in China, we get another chance at this.

Melissa: This is something NASA expressly rejected. We’re talking about mutiny here, which is not a word that I take lightly. So we do this together or not at all. And before you answer, consider the consequences. If we mess up the supply rendezvous, we die. If we mess up the Earth gravity assist, we die. If we do everything perfectly we add 533 days to our mission. 533 more days before we see our families again. 533 days of unplanned space travel where anything could go wrong. If it’s mission critical, we die.[/b]

Time to consult the script. You know, to see if the heroes survive.

[b]Flight: Who the hell is Rich Purnell?
Beth: I dunno.
Flight: Will somebody find out who the hell Rich Purnell is?

[b]Mitch: Whoever gave them the maneuver only passed along information. Crew made the decision on their own.
Sanders: You may have killed them, Mitch. We’re fighting the same war. Every time something goes wrong, the world forgets why we fly. I’m trying to keep us airborne. It’s bigger than one person.
Mitch: No. It’s not.
Sanders: When this is over, I’ll expect your resignation.

Mark [recording]: So, I’ve got 200 sols to figure out how to take everything here that’s keeping me alive the oxygenator, the water reclaimer, the atmospheric regulator bring that all with me. And luckily, I have the greatest mindson Planet Earth really, all of the brainpower on the entire planet helping me with this endeavor. And so far they’ve come up with is “Hey, why don’t you drill holes on the roof of your Rover and hit it as hard as you can with a rock?”

Mark [recording]: I’ve been thinking about laws on Mars. There’s an international treaty saying that no country can lay claim to anything that’s not on Earth. By another treaty if you’re not in any country’s territory, maritime law aplies. So Mars is international waters. Now, NASA is an American non-military organization, it owns the Hab. But the second I walk outside I’m in international waters. So Here’s the cool part. I’m about to leave for the Schiaparelli Crater where I’m going to commandeer the Ares IV lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can’t until I’m on board the Ares IV. So I’m going to be taking a craft over in international waters without permission, which by definition makes me a pirate. Mark Watney…space pirate.

Mark [recording]: Everywhere I go, I’m the first. It’s a strange feeling. Step outside the Rover…first guy to be there. Climb that hill, first guy to do that. Four and a half billion years nobody here. And now, me. I’m the first person to be alone on an entire planet.

Vincent: You want to send a man into space without the front of his ship?
Ng: Well, no. We’re gonna have him cover it with Hab canvas. Look, the hull’s mostly there to keep the air in.Mars’ atmosphere is so thin, you don’t need a lot of streamlining. By the time the ship’s going fast enough for air resistance to matter it’ll be high enough that there’s practically no air.
Vincent: You wanna send him into space under a tarp.
Ng: Yes.

Mark [recording, after hearing he has to take the top off of the Mars Ascent Vehicle]: I know what they’re doing. I know exactly what they’re doing. They just keep repeating “go faster than any man in the history of space travel”, like that’s a good thing. Like it’ll distract me from how insane their plan is. Yeah, I get to go faster than any man in the history of space travel, because you’re launching me in a convertible. Actually it’s worse than that, because I won’t even be able to control the thing. And by the way, physicists, when describing things like acceleration do not use the word “fast”. So they’re only doing that in the hopes that I won’t raise any objections to this lunacy, because I like the way “fastest man in the history of space travel” sounds. I do like the way it sounds… I mean, I like it a lot.
[pauses]
Mark: But I’m not gonna tell them that.

Beth: If something goes wrong, what can Mission Control do?
Vincent: Not a damn thing. It’s all happening 12 light-minutes away which means it takes 24 minutes for them to get the answer to any question they ask. The whole launch is 12 minutes so they’re on their own.

Mark: Commander…I can’t let you go through with this. I am prepared to cut the suit.
Melissa: Absolutely not.
Mark: See, the thing is, I’m selfish. I want all the memorials back home to be about me. Just me.
Melissa: I should have left this guy on Mars.

Mark [to the cadets]: Welcome to the Astronaut Candidate Program. Now pay attention, because this could save your life. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.

Mark [to the cadets]: Alright, let me get a few things out of the way, right off the bat. Yes, I did in fact survive on a deserted planet by farming in my own shit. Yes, it’s actually worse than it sound. So, let’s not talk about that ever again.

Mark: Every human being has a basic instinct: to help each other out. If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it’s found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don’t care, but they’re massively outnumbered by the people who do.[/b]

There are small towns and then there are small rural towns. Out there the intrigue is almost always more…ominous.

And then out of the blue the man from the Big City returns to the small town to play a bit part in this intrigue.

The film more or less opens with John dragging a dead body out into a quarry. He intends to burn it. It’s the body of the town bully. Dutch Miller. Dutch had become a born again Christian. And he decided to trek through this small rural town knocking on doors. His aim being to ask the folks whose lives he had made a living hell for forgiveness.

Let’s just say that for some [like Uncle John] it was too little, too late.

So, your reaction to what unfolds here is going to be embedded in part on just how you feel about bullies.

Then there’s plot number two. This one unfolds in the Big City [Chicago]. Ben is in advertising. He meets the beautiful Kate. And that’s about it.

Now, the first thing that will [eventually] pop into your head is this: What on earth do these two storylines actually have to do with each other? Other then both involving Ben. You keep expecting them to merge somehow. And then when they really don’t you can wrack your brain trying to come up with the point of it all.

As one reviewer put it:

When it cuts to Ben and Kate’s story however, the entire movie loses it’s momentum and feel each time. A screeching halt. It is like switching back and forth between a well crafted indie film and a bad made for TV movie.

My guess was the manner in which Ben’s and Kate’s sense of reality is juxtaposed to the reality of John. Like when the two of them are in bed making love while John is strangling Danny to death. Or when they are exchanging small talk while John is burning the body.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_John_(film
trailer: youtu.be/fbr-imUdtBw

UNCLE JOHN [2015]
Written in part and directed by Steven Piet

John [on the phone]: Dale, John. Say, I’m going to be burning some stuff over at the quarry today. I just don’t want you two worrying and come rushing over again.

The body in other words.

[b]Dale: John, hey, are you all right?
John: What?
Dale: Your leg…is it bleeding?

Carl [to the gang at lunch after the discussion turns to the missing Dutch]: He burned down Merlin’s barn.
Friend: What?
Carl: Fifteen years ago he got drunk and burned down Merlin’s barn.
Friend: Carl, what in the hell are you talking about.
Friend: He burnt down your brother’s barn?
Carl [nodding]: Yeah, yeah. He drove by the other day to tell him. Said he was really sorry and all. Said he saw Hell and was really sorry.

Friend: Was he out to see you, John?
John: No. I haven’t talked to Dutch in years now.
Friend: You know, all the stories. You know…People always said he was with Deedee. You know…

John: You know, maybe he just took off or something. Dodging somebody.
Danny [Dutch’s brother]: Yeah. Plenty of reason for that lately. I’ve never seen a guy so upset in my entire life. That vision, or whatever, scared the shit out of him.
John: Yeah, I heard about that.
Danny: You know, he had quite a bit to say to a few people. Did he come to see you the other evening?

Danny: You know, I’m sitting here becasue this is where they found his truck. I figure this is where he bought it. And they say from time to time that the killer will come back to the scene of the crime. So the past few evenings I’ve just been sitting here…and seeing who drives by.
John: Well, this is a pretty busy road Danny. You must have seen a lot of people passing by.
Danny [after a pause]: Oh, yeah. Quite a few.

Sheriff: I wanted to come by though and give you a heads up.
John: Heads up?
Sheriff: Yeah. When we had Danny in the squad car, he was going on about how he thinks that Dutch was murdered.
John: Is that right?
Sheriff: I don’t know, but he certainly has himself convinced. And somehow or another he’s naming you on the list too, John.
John: Me? How’s that?

Sheriff [to John]: I guess Dutch’s power of prayer didn’t stop his bullying though.

Danny: Did my brother ever come to see you?
John: You already asked me that, Danny. I already told you, I hadn’t seen him in quite a while.
Danny: Yeah, I know but it’s just that he was beating himself up and wanted to come and talk to you about that last night he spent with Deedee. I know that I wasn’t ready for it when he told me. I just never thought that she woud do that to herself.
[John looking grim and unconfortable]
Danny: I guess she was feeling suffocated being a mom?
[John looking grimer]
Danny: She begged him to leave with her. And they were pretty deep in the drink up there. He said that he wasn’t leaving…so she just jumped.

Kate: How about you, do you have any crazies in your family?
Ben: Actually, I don’t really have a lot of family. It’s just me and Uncle John.
Kate: Really? Does he get mad or have a drinking problem or something?
Ben: Nah. He’s the best.

Sheriff [with Danny’s body burning in the fire at the quarry]: I wanted to come by and check on you real quick and see if you’ve seen Danny Miller around here anytime lately.
John: No…
Sheriff: Okay, but keep an eye out. We found his truck over at Scoobs this morning…a big old handgun sitting on the seat. We got everyone out looking for him and I just wanted to make sure that you were safe. You might want to take some extra precautions.
[the sheriff looks over at the big bonfire]
Sheriff: Sure is a healthy one. [/b]

A film that explores what can happen in a relationship when one of you has been battered by an event that changes you forever. In other words, there is how you react to the world around you [and the people in it] before and after. And, then, how others try to adjust to that more or less successfully.

Catherine’s beloved father has just died. And her boyfriend has just ditched her for another woman.

So she decides to retreat from the world with a friend. Or, rather, what passes for a friendship between them. Among other things, it’s an intensely surreal smorgasbord of emotions.

This is a film where you imagine yourself reacting viscerally to the characters on the screen. Catherine in particular. You’re thinking about what you might have said to her instead. How you might have created a path that she could go down in order to suffer less. But you’re always on pins and needles. And that’s because your good intentions are not always enough. You say what you think is the right thing and it turns out to be the wrong thing instead.

It also explores how the most traumatic events in our lives can bleed into events of considerably less import…and then swallow them whole. More than anything it’s a psychological horror story. You’ve either been there or you haven’t.

Now, it’s not like these things happen all the time. But they happen enough to make you wonder why there are still any relationships left at all.

This is a really, really good movie. As soon as it was over I watched it again.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Earth
trailer: youtu.be/lzPgN8eEI-c

QUEEN OF EARTH [2015]
Written and directed by Alex Ross Perry

[b]Catherine: Why are you doing this to me?
James: I can’t explain it.
Catherine: You can explain. You can explain it. You will explain it.
James: No, I can’t.

Catherine: How could you do this so soon after the accident?
James: It wasn’t an accident, Catherine. It was on purpose. And beside, this over-reliance has been suffocating.
Catherine: How soon after did you start seeing her?
James: That’s a ridiculous question.
Catherine: Well, answer it.
James: Before.
Catherine: Before…
[she shakes her head in disbelief]
Catherine: Before?!!!

Catherine [to James]: My father was my life, my family was my life. And you were a part of both. And now I hate you. I hate you you dishonest snake!

James: Don’t you think we’ve got to a place where we rely on each other too much for it to be healthy?
Catherine [bitterly]: Do not try to justify this as some sort of effort to help or save me, like you’re doing me a fucking favor. Like I should thank you.
James: It’s not unture.
Catherine [weeping in despair]: No, it’s not untrue. Just go…just go…just go. I don’t want you to see me like this…Just leave me alone…GO!!![/b]

A really powerful scene.

[b]Catherine: Everything feels close to me, the good and the bad.
Virginia: Well, things aren’t so bad right now.
Catherine: No. You’re absolutely right, Virginia. They’re worse. They’re much, much worse.

Catherine [to Virginia]: He must have really suffered, my father. He was afflicted. People say that depression is a sickness, but I never thought of it that way. I always just thought of it as one of his problems, just like work or money are problems, you know? Now that he’s gone, it’s all I can think about.

Catherine [after getting off the phone]: Don’t ask.
Virginia: Was that James?
Catherine: Does “don’t ask” mean something different where you’re from?

Virginia: What’s it like having all the answers all the time to everything? It must be such a luxury.
Catherine [sarcastically]: It is, immeasurably.
Virginia: Please don’t do this. I mean, it’s not the end of the world, but could you at least acknowledge that you never stopped to think about what I might have wanted from this trip?
Catherine: Are you calling me a lousy friend?
Virginia: Are you saying you’re a lousy friend?
Catherine: I don’t know what you want me to say. I love you more than anything you stupid brat.
Virginia: Well, we should trade places. See how we feel then.

Virginia: Please don’t talk to me like that.
Catherine: Like what?
Virginia: Like your superior to me or to anyone.
Catherine: Why not?
Virginia: Um, because it’s dull. It’s uninteresting.

Virginia: I think I was made to be a member of the modern aristocracy.
Catherine: What does that mean?
Virginia: Um, because I have this great house.
Catherine: It’s your parents house which they let you use occasionally. You didn’t earn it, so don’t act like you’re entitled to it.
Virginia: Why are you being so confrontational?
Catherine: I’m just being realistic.
Virginia: I’m serious. I just want to have a nice time and relax.
Catherine: As opposed to what, relaxing every other day of your life?
Virginia [explosively]: I DON’T RELAX EVERYDAY!
Catherine: I’m sorry, you had one bad thing happen to you 3 months ago. Don’t pretend that it is some break from a tedious and stressful existence.
Virginia: You know what, don’t worry about me.
Catherine: I’m not.
Virginia: Don’t think about me. Just forget it.

Catherine [to Virginia but more to herself]: Then it hit me…it hit me that he was doing the exact same thing as before and I was too stupid to realize it before it was too late. And I knew that my problem, this problem that I have, is this issue that keeps landing me in the same place. Almost three years later and I was in the exact same place…I thought it was something real but it wasn’t, it was just trite and cliched and fatuous. It was just completely empty and hollow.
Virginia: It’s one of the worst tendencies of human nature to assume the best of others.[/b]

And then we learn about Chad.

[b]Virginia: I just wanted to finally purge all of that out of my life. I had already cut out so many worthless and negative people who brought me nothing but annoyance or distraction, so I figured why should she be any different.
Catherine: Becasue family is different.
Virginia: No, they aren’t. Nobody gets a free pass.
Catherine: That’s a horrible thing to say.
Virginia: It’s a horrible thing to feel. I wish I didn’t feel it. I wish I could have relationships with some people who I can’t, but once they become just ciphers or, you know, energy drains, or they become someone who depresses me, I have to have nothing to do with them…I love eliminating those enemies from every aspect of my life.
Catherine: I don’t think I’ve ever heard an adult use the word “enemy”.
Virginia: Aw, don’t be naive. It’s the only word.

Cartherine: I know everyone said that everything I got was from nepotism, but I didn’t really care. I don’t care. I just thought he was not only my father, but I admired him for being a great artist. A cliched, tortured, suicidal artist ultimately.
Virginia: I think Rich is coming by later.
Catherine: Hmm…
Virginia: What?
Catherine: I literally didn’t say anything.
Virginia: Exactly.

Catherine [ironically]: I love Rich. He’s fascinating.
Virginia: Come on.
Catherine: Well, I just don’t think he is good enough for you. I think he’s just like everybody else.
Virginia: How do you mean?
Catherine: Just prying into people’s business. Last year he didn’t ask two questions and now he wants to know everything about me.
Virginia: He just knows you better.
Catherine: He doesn’t know me at all.
Virginia: He’s curious.
Catherine: Well, curiosity killed my father.
Virginia: Depression killed your father.

Catherine [to Virginia]: How much of that did you see?

Virginia: It’s fascinating. I feel like I’m…seeing you for the first time.
Catherine: What do you mean?
Virginia: I always thought you were so perfect. I thought you had it all figured out. But you were just surrounding yourself with men. With James, with your father. They took care of you. Without them…here you are.

Catherine: I think the best hope for me now is to not end up like my father.
Virginia: How’s that going?
Catherine [seeming to mull it over]: Mm…touch and go.
[pause]
Catherine: I just don’t really feel like I exist anymore. And that the only two people who ever cared about me abandoned me.
Virginia: I care about you.
Catherine: No, you don’t.

Virginia: Face thing?
Catherine: Yeah. It hurts to talk.
Virginia: All of a sudden?
Catherine: Comes and goes.
Virginia: Do you realize how fake that sounds?
Catherine: Do you realize how insulting that is?
Virginia: Just trying to understand.
Catherine: No, you’re trying to judge.

Virginia: Cartherine. I know.
Catherine [giggling]: You know…

Catherine [to Rich]: How dare you. Who the hell are you to come here and speak to me that way? I don’t even know you. How dare you speak to me like that. You fucking animal. You unrepentant piece of shit. You click your tongue and you revel in the affairs of others. You are worthless. You don’t know anything about me. You show up to fuck my best friend, and you pry into the lives of others to conceal how worthless and boring your own life is. I don’t deserve this. I just want to be left alone. I want to be left alone with the few people who are left in this world who are decent.
[Catherine glances briefly at Virginia before reverting back to Rich]
Catherine: You are weak and greedy and selfish, and you are the root of every problem. You are why people betray one another. You are why there is nowhere safe or happy anymore. You are why depression exists. You are why there is no escape from indecency and gossip and lies. You, Rich, you are why my father had to die. Because he couldn’t live in a world like this. [/b]

I second that. Unequivocally.

Six tales of [what else] revenge.

After all, the revenge plot has always been one of the most persistent themes in the history of film. This one comes from Argentina, but it might just as well have come from, say, any other nation on earth.

People do things that piss us off. Lots and lots of things, lots and lots of time. For example, if you are actually out and about interacting with them. And even here online we encounter any number of folks that we would like to, well, you know.

Still, that so few of us will act on what we feel we are justified in doing is why films such as this are so popular. Here of course we can at least project our own outrage at the bastards vicariously by identifying with the characters on the screen

And, thus, any adverse consequences [the part about violence for example] can be obviated merely by pushing the stop button. Let the actors take the blows for us.

On the other hand, this film is tagged as a “comedy”. A “black comedy”, as they say. A darkly comedic exploration into “modern rage”. Modern in the sense that capitalism creates any number of contexts in which folks, hanging on by a thread, feel compelled to…vent. Almost all of us will recognize a set of circumstances here that we are more or less familiar with ourselves. It’s just that not all of us have either the aptitude, the guts or the options necessary to exact the payback that the slimeballs deserve.

But let’s be honest. What wouldn’t some of us do if we knew we could get away with it?

Look for the law of unintended consequences. And the ubiquitous stench of class.

It’s not for nothing this film got a 95% fresh rating on 133 reviews at RT. Nor that it was nominated for an academy award as the Best Foreign Film. It’s nothing short of a gem.

IMDb

[b]The site of the bridge, in which the tale “The Strongest” was filmed, is actually the 60th kilometer on the route between Cafayate and Salta, as the character in the tale mentions. This place has become a kind of a tourist attraction nowadays, as can be seen in Google Street View at coordinates (-25.730669,-65.6967926).

During the credits at the beginning, each main actor of each tale is identified with a wild animal. In the director’s case, it is a fox. Szifrón said that this was because his father had liked foxes a lot, and had used to watch lots of documentaries about them. He also felt identified with that picture, more specifically with the fox’s gaze, as the job of a director is in the gaze.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Tales_(film
trailer: youtu.be/8YucoK8A-sU

Wild Tales [Relatos Salvajes] 2014
Written and directed by Damián Szifrón

“Pasternak”

Music critic: Does anyone else here know Gabriel Pasternak?

Everyone on the plane raises his or her hand.

[b]Stewardess: Gabriel Pasternak is the cabin chief on this flight…Ater takeoff, he brought coffee to the cockpit. The door is locked, the pilots won’t annswer. I’m desparate! I don’t know what to do!

[b]Isabel: I cheated on him with his best friend.
[she points to a man on the plane]
Isabel: Him!

Victor: [pounding on the cabin door]: Gabriel! Gabriel, it’s me, Victor. Talk to me please!
Man: Who are you?
Victor: I was his psychiatrist for years. Then I raised my fees. He got mad and stopped seeing me. [/b]

You guessed it: they’re all going to die!

“The Rats”

[b]Moza [a waitress]: Good evening, a table for one?
Cuenca: I see you’re good at math.

Cook: Did he order?
Moza: That guy’s from my hometown. He’s a loan-shark, a gangster. He auctioned our house. Because of him my father killed himself. Two weeks after the funeral, he tried to seduce my mom. Do you know how many times I dreamed of having him in front of me? I’m going to say something to him.
Cook: Your dad kills himself because of this guy and you’re just going to insult him? Let’s put rat poison in his food. A good dose and his heart will blow out in five minutes.

Moza: You did it. You put poison in his food.
Cook: Don’t be naive, as if you hadn’t noticed. That’s our country. Everyone wants these corrupt guys to get what they desrve, but no one is willing to lift a finger.

Moza: We have to do something. They’re both eating.
Cook: Add more poison?
Moza: He’s just a kid!
Cook: But he’ll grow up. Like father, like son. We’d better wipe out the whole family tree.[/b]

“The Stongest”

Diego [a luxury car driver to a driver in a heap who wouldn’t let him pass]: You motherfucking redneck! Asshole!

Then he gets the inevitable flat tire. Out in the middle of nowhere of course.

Heap driver: What was it that you called me, back there?
Diego: I already apologized. What more do you want?!

Doesn’t work. The guy jumps up on the hood of his car and literally takes a shit on the windshield. Then a piss. Being the strongest as it were. Think of it as the class struggle in minature. You won’t believe what comes next. Road rage taken to a whole other level.

Cop: What’s your theory, sheriff? Crime of passion?

This segment alone is worth the price of admission. A masterpiece of cinema.

“Little Bomb”

[b]Simon [after his car has been towed away]: I’m trying to explain. The curb wasn’t painted yellow. There was no way of knowing it was a no-parking zone.
Clerk: I understand. If you want your car back, you have to pay the towing fee.
Simon: No. Let’s do something else. Go and talk to whoever you need to. I want to leave with my car without paying a penny. And I want a refund for the cab. And I want an apology.
[the clerk starts laughing]
Simon: Why are you laughing? I’m serious. Where is the office where apologies are made?

Simon: You know you are a criminal.
Clerk: I’m just doing my job.
Simon: No, people who work for criminals are criminals too.
Clerk: That’s you’re opinion.
Simon: Just a miserable slave to this corrupt system.

Wife: You missed your daughter’s birthday!
Simon: You make it sound so easy. I’m tired of being robbed! The curb was not painted yellow! Do you have any idea how furious that makes me?
Wife: Do you have any idea how furious it makes me that you always have some excuse. That you blame society for everything!

Colleague [to Simon]: The government allows a company to rake in big bucks from these fines. Obviously, our elected officials get their cut. It’s outrageous, but that’s how it is. You have two options: pay and relax…or give yourself a heart attack.[/b[

Actually, there’s a third option. Well, after he gets out of jail.[/b]

“The Proposal”

Santiago: Papa. Papa, wake up.
Father: What happened?
Mama: What happened, Santiago? Say something!

This happened:

[b]Newsman: Right on Lebertador Avenue a driver struck a pregnant woman and drove off. The driver did not stop to help the woman…Unfortunately, we have just been informed that in the ambulance heading to the hospital, both the woman and her unborn child passed away.

Santiago [bawling on the floor]: What have I done? What have I done?
Father [enraged]: What have you done? You ruined our lives, you asshole!

Father: I’m really embarrassed to make this proposal but we’ve known each other for years and I feel we have this kind of bond.
[the goundskeeper Jose nods]
Father: Besides, you’re a father. I know you want what is best for your kids…So I think this arrangement may be good for you too. If you say you took the car for a drive last night while we were sleeping…and that you were driving at the time of the accident, I’ll hire the best lawyer…
[he indicates his attorney in the room]
Father: …to get you the shortest possible sentence.
Lawyer [to Jose]: With good behavior, you’ll be out in a year and a half.
Father: And for doing me that huge favor, I’ll pay you $500,000. You couldn’t earn that in a lifetime and your family will be set for life.

Lawyer [to the father]: Do I have your permission to start negotiating?

Lawyer: The prosecutor is willing to make a deal, but it’s going to be expensive.
Father: How expensive.
Lawyer: One million:
Father: Dollars?!
Lawyer: Well, he saw your house, the way you live. He won’t take less than that. The good news is he will take care of everything – he knows the police chief, most of the judges and he’ll help us reinforce the alibi.
Father: The groundskeeper’s? Can’t we leave him out of it?
Lawyer: No, someone has got to be held responsible. Two people are dead. It’s all over the news.
Father: Fine, but I don’t know if I have that much cash. It’s 1.5 million dollars.
Lawyer: And then there’s my cut too…[/b]

Another 500,000 dollars.

[b]Santiago: Stop, Mom, it’s my life!
Mother: He wants to confess!
Santiago: It’s the right thing to do!
Mother: Say something, he has no idea what he’s doing!
Jose: Santiago, calm down. Your mother is right…we’ll fix this.

Father: You know what, guys? It’s over. The deal is off.
Lawyer: What do you mean, it’s off?
Father: It’s off! It’s over. No one gets anything. No more! Santiago! You said you wanted to confess. That’s perfect. Go out there and talk. I gave you the best education and you always did whatever you wanted. So now, go screw yourself![/b]

“Until Death Do Us Part”

[b]Romina: Who is that girl with the long hair?
Ariel: Which one?
Romina: The one over there. Your co-worker.

Romina: With all the cell phone companies and special deals out there this girl just happened to buy your guitar teacher’s phone line? Isn’t it an amazing coincidence? Answer me or I will ask her myself.
Ariel: Romi, please, don’t.
Romina: Don’t “Romi” me. Answer the question, Ariel. Does everyone at table 27 know that you fucked that girl?[/b]

And this is her wedding day.

Romina [up on the hotel roof]: I just found out my husband cheated on me with one of the wedding guests.
Chef [up on the roof for a smoke break]: If you love him, you’ll be able to forgive him.
Romia: I don’t know if I love him. I don’t know if he’s the one for me. He’s an asshole!
Chef: Well then to hell with him. And don’t worry about the guests. You’re not the first woman at that party to be cheated on. Plus, if you spend your time worrying about what other people think, you’re screwed, kiddo. Look, if I were you I’d go downstairs, move the party along, end it early, and then back at home tell him it is over. What happened to you is awful, I won’t deny it. But it is time to move on.

Instead, she comes up with an altogether different plan altogether.

Romina: Why don’t we use this break to cut the cake.

Trust me: You’ve never seen a wedding like this one. Even in the movies.

Ariel: Romina! Stop it. Let everyone go home. This isn’t a joke. My family’s lawyer even suggested I press charges against you.
Romina [looking over at Ariel’s mother]: Ah, don’t tell me this is all mommy’s idea.
Ariel: Romina, I mean it. Cut it out.
Romina: Your mama is a real…wedding planner.
Ariel: STOP IT!!! What did I do to you? It was nothing compared to what you’re doing to me!

He may be right. Not that the bastard doesn’t derserve it.

Doctor: You take care of him, I’ll take care of her.