philosophy in film

[iambiguous]

From the director of El Topo above. In other words, nothing in excess if something can be found. And the things that can be found here are well beyond excess for most of us. This film was, after all, “the scandal of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival”.

What makes the mountain holy? What makes anything holy? Almost every image here [however startling or prosaic] is open to endless interpretations. Some will find them sacred and others will find them profane. And when has that ever not been the case. These images in particular are a tangled intertwining of east meets west, west meets east, new age mumbo-jumbo, metaphysical mush and no direction home whatsoever.

Anyway, it has something to do with obtaining immortality. And that [as is always the case] is predicated solely on Enlightenment. And this seems to revolve around dissolving our individuality into the collective…into the “oneness” of the universe.

The Alchemist: The grave receives you with love. Surrender yourself to the Earth. Return what was loaned to you. Give up your pleasure, your pain, your friends, your lovers, your life, your past, what you desire. You will know nothingness, it is the only reality. Don’t be afraid, it’s so easy to give. You’re not alone, you have a grave. It was your first mother. The grave is the door to your rebirth. Now you will surrender the faithful animal you once called your body. Don’t try to keep it, remember, it was a loan. Surrended your legs, your sex, your hair, your brain, your all. You no longer want to possess, possession is the ultimate pain. The earth covers your body, she came to cover you with love, because she is your true flesh. Now you are an open heart, open to receive your true essence your ultimate perfection. Your new body, which is the universe, the work of god. You will be born again, you will be real. you will be your own father, your own mother, your own child, your own perfection. Open your eyes, you are the earth, you are the green, you are the blue, you are the Aleph, you are the essence. Look at the flower, look at the flower, for the first time look at the flowers.

I mean, this was a time when Herman Hesse was all the rage. In fact, I read them all myself – Steppenwolf, Shiddhartha, Damian.

I suppose if you have a more sophisticated understanding of these things the symbolism becomes more accessable. It’s all rather confusing to me. So, as with El Topo, I just allow myself to sit back and to marvel at the images themselves. Besides, all of these sojourns are really just the butt of a joke.

On the other hand, I do get [or think I get] the indictment of both crass materialism, mindless consumption and those who profit by it. The governemnt [of course] is fascist.

It’s like a bloody hell in some parts. And poronography in others. Lots and lots and lots and lots of gratuitous nudity, sex and violence. But [of course] only as a way to enhance The Message: that there isn’t one.

A sheer spectacle otherwise.

Trust me: At times you won’t believe what you are seeing.

IMDb

[b]Before filming began, director Alejandro Jodorowsky spent a week without sleep under a Zen Master’s direction and lived communally with the film’s cast for a month.

The crucified animal carcasses were borrowed from a local restaurant, which were then served to customers upon being returned.

During the boating sequence, Jodorowsky had intended to shoot a scene where the group leaps into the ocean to “get in the infinite waters.” The cast proceeded to leap in, then promptly began to drown. The crew was so busy trying to rescue them that nothing of the scene ended up being shot.

Jodorowsky recalls that the lizard and toad circus was difficult to prepare for and film. The toads themselves were hard to dress, as “their urine was like acid,” and they’d keep filling up with air and then blowing it out, trying to escape. The lizards, on the other hand, were incredibly sedate, and the cameraman would have to leave the camera rolling for long periods of time before they’d even flick their tongues or move their eyes.

The crew didn’t obtain any permits for the shot of the helicopter setting down in the street, merely had an actor in a police uniform shop traffic while they filmed, then proceeded to run off after the shot was complete.

During the decapitation scene, the actor actually struck Jodorowsky for real, cutting his neck and nearly killing him. Jodorowsky reflects that had the sword actually been real, he would indeed have been decapitated.

George Harrison, himself a big fan of Jodorowksy’s work after having seen El Topo (1970), was originally up for the role of The Thief, but disagreed with the director over what he considered gratuitous nudity - particularly, the shot where his anus is bathed. Rather than cast a stand-in, or remove the shot altogether, Jodorowsky stood his ground, prompting Harrison to drop out. Jodorowsky later expressed some regret over this in the Anchor Bay DVD commentary, noting that Harrison’s involvement could have exposed the film to an even larger audience. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_M … (1973_film
trailer: youtu.be/bdXGhsAynGI

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN [1973]
Written and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky

Sign on a shop: CHRISTS FOR SALE

Hundreds of them all cast from the same mold.

[b]The Alchemist [to Christ…I think]: You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold.

…

The Alchemist: It is the master who seeks the disciple. You want to know the secret, but man can achieve nothing by himself. To help you…you must be accompanied by thieves like you. But on another level. These are the most powerful people on the planet. Industrialists and politicians.

…

The Alchemist: We know that people want to be loved, not for what they are but for what they appear to be. So we have created a line of masks…

…

The Written Woman: Our bees make honey, but your flies make shit.

…

The Drugman: The cross was a mushroom. And the mushroom was also the tree of good and evil. The philosophical stone of the alchemists was LSD. The Book of the Dead is a trip, and the Apocalypse describes a mescaline experience. In these flasks are all the holy mountains…[/b]

Then he really pulls back the curtain:

The Alchemist: We began in a fairytale and we came to life, but is this life reality? No. It is a film. Zoom back camera. We are images, dreams, photographs. We must not stay here. Prisoners! We shall break the illusion. This is magic! Goodbye to the Holy Mountain. Real life awaits us.

[iambiguous]

Acolyte: n. attendant, assistant, or follower. Or, in this case, “a beginner…someone who wants to be like someone.”

Here though in a more secular setting. But there are any number of different ways in which one can come to attend, assist or follow another. And [of course] more or less willingly. If less though, there are then plenty of different ways to bring that to an end. Some more horrific than others. And there’s always this: who is following whom?

Why do people do these things? Or, maybe, why don’t more people do these things? Which inquiry is more depressing.

In the past Parker [the one with the swastika tattoos] did terrible things to Mark and James. Bullying them to no end. Raping them. Now there is a dead body, another young girl missing and a chance to get back at him. Not that they can do it themselves though. So they blackmail another man to do it for them. Then things start to unravel. As things are prone to do when you keep adding more components. And Mark and James are “just Kids”. And, like most Kids, they think they know everything.

And so is Chasely. And between the three of them, boy, do they fuck things up. I mean really fuck things up. But then this a world where nothing is really what it seems. Or, rather, where some things aren’t.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acolytes_(film
trailer: youtu.be/ifRKvW3blqo

ACOLYTES [2008]
Directed by Jon Hewitt

[b]Chasely: It’s probably just a dead pet.

…

James: We should have said something.
Mark: Like what?
James: I don’t know. Something.
Mark: Like sorry we dug you up? Sorry you’re dead?

…

Mark: James, what were the cops doing there? James?

…

Man [to Ian while he – the man – is kicking Gary]: If you knew what he did you wouldn’t care if he ever got up.

…

Ian [holding a gun to Gary’s head]: I’m not a fucking cop.
Gary: What do you want then?
Ian: I just want you to tell me a few things.
Gary: Like what?
Ian: Like who are the kids that want you dead?

…

James [to Mark who is walking away from him]: Do you know what she says about you?
[Mark stops, turns to face him]
James: Nothing. You only exist when you’re with me.

…

Mark: Why’d you do it to us?
Gary: Because I could.

…

Ian: Where’s the girl?

…

Mark: Pull it out. Chasely, please, pull it out!!

…

Ian [to Mark about Gary and Tanya]: He knew as soon they saw her, he could tell them that for once it wasn’t his fault. But it didn’t matter. She was dead. And he was Gary Parker.

…

Ian [to Mark]: Fucking amateur…shitting in my back yard.

…

Ian [to Mark]: While you was looking for me, I was looking for you.

…

Ian [to Mark]: So, you got rid of Parker, you got rid of your friend, you got the girl. You want to be like me, man, but you’re not.
[long pause as he stares at Mark]
Ian: She is my girlfriend now.[/b]

But not for long.

[iambiguous]

A sort of wild child. Not raised by and around wolves, but by and around a woman who had isolated herself from all the civilized world. Aside from the delivery boy.

A truly one and a million dasein, in other words.

Fortunately she is found by a man [and later a woman] of science. Not only that but he’s also a doctor who still makes house calls. And she’s a doctor who specializes in “disturbed” minds. So they were able not only to care for her but to probe her for clues as to what in the hell had happened to make her this way. This is a tricky distinction to make at times. You want the truth but there is only so far you can go in “experimenting” with people. Especially someone as vulnerable as Nell. In other words, you can tell her that what you are doing to her is anything. To the extent that you can tell her anything at all.

For one thing, she learned how to speak from a woman who was paralyzed on one side of her face. So her communication is something like a hybrid between a “speech distortion” and a whole new language.

But it does include a healthy dose of what she calls the wor’i’a law. And that allows her to make a distinction between those who either are or are not eva’durs.

Too bad about the hokey ending. The part in the courtroom especially. I mean, please…

IMDb

[b]As part of her preparation for the role, Jodie Foster read the same books that François Truffaut read when he was prepping his similarly themed film The Wild Child. Foster, being fluent in French, read them in their original language.

Christina Applegate was offered the role of Paula, but turned the role down due to her commitment to the TV sitcom Married with Children.[/b]

Hey, that’s a tough choice.

FAQs at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0110638/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nell_(film
trailer: youtu.be/n1Zay9SOYxA

NELL [1994]
Directed by Michael Apted

[b]Jerry: She lived here all alone, huh?
Sheriff: That’s what hermits do, Lowell. They live alone and they die alone.

…

Jerry: What kind of deal is this? The first who finds her is supposed to look after her?
Sheriff [matter of factly]: That means you, Jerry.
Sheriff [reading from Violet’s note]: ‘The Lord led you here.’ There you have it.
Jerry: You led me here.
Sheriff: You want the Lord to take care of her now?
Jerry: The last time I saw the Lord was in church of my wedding and look how that turned out.

…

Paula [seeing the Sheriff’s wife crying]: What happened to her?
Jerry: Nothing and everything. It hits her once in a while.
Paula: Is there any obvious cause?
Jerry: You want a list? Life’s tough.

…

Dr. Paley [to Jerry]: Let me tell you what we are dealing with here…some pretty fundamental issues. How was the personality formed? We don’t know. How much is innate? How much is learned? We don’t know. Where do gender roles come from? We don’t know. Because you can’t take a baby and have it in a lab and monitor and control every influence.

…

Dr. Paley: Everybody has an ulterior motive…Even caring for someone has an ulterior motive.[/b]

In other words, sooner or later [in one way or another] there has to be something in it for you.

[b]Jerry [to judge regarding the custody of Nell]: We all know what happens to these freak cases, Your Honor. They get a year of celebrity, a starring role in a few academic papers and then they get to spend the rest of their lives in a state institution, abandoned by the very doctors and scientists who claimed to be helping them.

…

Paula: We shouldn’t be watching this.
Jerry; Why not?
Paula: She’s naked.
Jerry: So? I think she’s beautiful.
Paula: Mm-hmm.

…

Paula: What is it with you and Nell?
Jerry: It’s like…there’s no one else in the world. Like she doesn’t need anybody. Can you live your whole life that way, or does it drive you crazy in the end?

…

[Jerry plays music making Nell cry]
Paula: Turn that thing off! What the hell do you think you’re doin’? She’s never heard music before.
Jerry: Hey! Sometimes people just do things! It’s called impulse. Try it some time.
Paula: It’s called doin’ what you want when you want to, and not giving a shit about anybody else! I grew out of it by the age of six!

…

Paula: I think Nell can manage it there.
Dr. Paley: Let me give you a little peek into the future, Paula. One day soon some hiker or fisherman is gonna walk out of those woods with a story about a wild woman. And that’ll bring the news reporters and the reports will bring the crowds, who will bring the talk-show hosts. Nell will find she’s hired a lawyer, an agent, a manager, and three bodyguards. You think she can handle that?

…

Paula [to Jerry]: It’s time to show her the big bad world and see how she handles it.

…

Paula [to Jerry]: Where’s Nell?

…

Billy: Gentlemen, I believe we has got us a wild woman here.

…

Paula: To think I was going to be the one to change her life.
Jerry: Me too.
Mary: Don’t you know? You were the first.
Paula: The first what?
Mary: To need her.[/b]

[iambiguous]

The fake orgasm heard around the world. Well, anyway, the fake orgasm of a certain New York demographic.

Besides, in the real world there would almost certainly be the inevitable sequel: When Harry Divorced Sally. Or, even more likely, when Sally divorced Harry for sleeping around. Or, perhaps, when Sally shot and killed Harry for sleeping around. Sorry, I once watched a lot of of true crime docs.

Sure, we know that a lot of the observations here are spot on with respect to the complex relationships that can unfold between men and women wobbling back and forth between friendship and fucking. But they still barely scratch the surface with respect to all of the possible combinations there are. Of course, it’s the same thing between same-sex couples too.

So I tend to stick to the basics: it is well written [Nora Ephron] and it is often very, very funny. But it would have been all the more so though had they not stuck in those cringe-worthy “real-life story people” vignettes every ten to fifteen minutes. Thank god for fast forward. But, hey, that’s just me.

Of course I can well imagine the reaction of the uberman Kids here: Emasculation!

IMDb

[b]The orgasm scene was filmed at Katz’s Deli, an actual restaurant on New York’s E. Houston Street. The table at which the scene was filmed now has a plaque on it that reads, “Where harry met sally… hope you have what she had!”

The quote “I’ll have what she’s having” was not only voted #33 on the AFI’s list of “Best 100 Movie Quotes in American Film”, and the ONLY quote on the list to be spoken by a non-professional actor (it was director Rob Reiner’s mom who delivered the line).[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Harry_Met_Sally….
trailer: youtu.be/V8DgDmUHVto

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY [1889]
Directed by Rob Reiner

[b]Sally: Amanda mentioned you had a dark side.
Harry: That’s what drew her to me.
Sally: Your dark side?
Harry: Sure. Why? Don’t you have a dark side? I know, you’re probably one of those cheerful people who dot their “i’s” with little hearts.
Sally: I have just as much of a dark side as the next person.
Harry: Oh, really? When I buy a new book, I read the last page first. That way, in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.

…

Harry: Do you ever think about death?
Sally: Yes.
Harry: Sure you do, a fleeting thought that jumps in and out of the transom of your mind. I spend hours, I spend days…
Sally: And you think that makes you a better person.
Harry: Look, when the shit comes down I’m gonna be prepared and you’re not…that’s all I’m saying.
Sally: And in the mean time you’re gonna ruin your whole life waiting for it.

…

Sally: It just so happens that I have had plenty of great sex.
Harry: With whom did you have this great sex?
Sally: I’m not going to tell you that.
Harry: Fine, don’t tell me.
[she thinks about it]
Sally: Shel Gordon.
Harry: Shel? Sheldon? No, no, you did not have great sex with Sheldon.
Sally: I did too.
Harry: No you didn’t. A Sheldon can do your income taxes, if you need a root canal, Sheldon’s your man…but humpin’ and pumpin’ is not Sheldon’s strong suit. It’s the name. ‘Do it to me Sheldon, you’re an animal Sheldon, ride me big Shel-don.’ Doesn’t work.

…

Harry: I’ll have a number three.
Sally: I’d like the chef salad please with the oil and vinegar on the side and the apple pie a la mode.
Waitress: Chef and apple a la mode
Sally: But I’d like the pie heated and I don’t want the ice cream on top, I want it on the side, and I’d like strawberry instead of vanilla if you have it, if not then no ice cream just whipped cream but only if it’s real; if it’s out of the can then nothing.
Waitress: Not even the pie?
Sally: No, I want the pie, but then not heated.

…

Sally [on why she broke up with Sheldon]: Well, if you must know, it was because he was very jealous, and I had these days of the week underpants.
Harry: Ehhhh. I’m sorry. I need the judges ruling on this. “Days of the weeks underpants”?
Sally: Yes. They had the days of the week on them, and I thought they were sort of funny. And then one day Sheldon says to me, “You never wear Sunday.” It was all suspicious. Where was Sunday? Where had I left Sunday? And I told him, and he didn’t believe me.
Harry: What?
Sally: They don’t make Sunday.
Harry: Why not?
Sally: Because of God.

…

Harry: You realize of course that we could never be friends.
Sally: Why not?
Harry: What I’m saying is - and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form - is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
Sally: That’s not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.
Harry: No you don’t.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: No you don’t.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: You only think you do.
Sally: You say I’m having sex with these men without my knowledge?
Harry: No, what I’m saying is they all WANT to have sex with you.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: How do you know?
Harry: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Sally: So, you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?
Harry: No. You pretty much want to nail 'em too.
Sally: What if THEY don’t want to have sex with YOU?
Harry: Doesn’t matter because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.
Sally: Well, I guess we’re not going to be friends then.
Harry: I guess not.
Sally: That’s too bad. You were the only person I knew in New York.

…

Harry: And was it worth it? The sacrifice for a friend you don’t even keep in touch with?
Sally: Harry, you might not believe this, but I never considered not sleeping with you a sacrifice.

…

Harry: You’re with Joe, what, three weeks?
Sally: A month. How did you know that?
Harry: You take someone to the airport, it’s clearly the beginning of the relationship. That’s why I have never taken anyone to the airport at the beginning of a relationship.
Sally: Why?
Harry: Because eventually things move on and you don’t take someone to the airport and I never wanted anyone to say to me, How come you never take me to the airport anymore?
Sally: It’s amazing. You look like a normal person but actually you are the angel of death.

…

Harry [after telling Sally he is getting married]: You just get to a certain point where you get tired of the whole thing.
Sally: What “whole thing”?
Harry: The whole life-of-a-single-guy thing. You meet someone, you have the safe lunch, you decide you like each other enough to move on to dinner. You go dancing, you do the white-man’s over-bite, go back to her place, you have sex and the minute you’re finished you know what goes through your mind? How long do I have to lie here and hold her before I can get up and go home. Is thirty seconds enough?
Sally (In disgust): That’s what you’re thinking? Is that true?
Harry: Sure! All men think that. How long do you want to be held afterwards? All night, right? See there’s your problem, somewhere between thirty seconds and all night is your problem.
Sally: I don’t have a problem!
Harry: Yeah you do.

…

Harry: Would you like to have dinner?.. Just friends.
Sally: I thought you didn’t believe men and women could be friends.
Harry: When did I say that?
Sally: On the ride to New York.
Harry: No, no, no, I never said that…
[he thinks about it]
Harry: Yes, that’s right, they can’t be friends. Unless both of them are involved with other people, then they can…This is an amendment to the earlier rule. If the two people are in relationships, the pressure of possible involvement is lifted…That doesn’t work either, because what happens then is, the person you’re involved with can’t understand why you need to be friends with the person you’re just friends with. Like it means something is missing from the relationship and why do you have to go outside to get it? And when you say “No, no, no it’s not true, nothing is missing from the relationship,” the person you’re involved with then accuses you of being secretly attracted to the person you’re just friends with, which you probably are. I mean, come on, who the hell are we kidding, let’s face it. Which brings us back to the earlier rule before the amendment, which is men and women can’t be friends. So where does that leave us?

…

Marie [to Sally]: All I’m saying is that somewhere out there is the man you are supposed to marry. And if you don’t get him first, somebody else will, and you’ll have to spend the rest of your life knowing that somebody else is married to your husband

…

Harry: So I say to her, “Don’t you love me anymore?” You know what she says?
(Jess shakes his head)
Harry: “I don’t know if I’ve ever loved you.”
Jess: Ooo that’s harsh. You don’t bounce back from that right away.
Harry: Thanks Jess.
Jess: No, I’m a writer, I know dialogue and that’s particularly harsh.

…

Jess: You’re saying Mr. Zero knew you were getting a divorce a week before you did?
Harry: Mr. Zero know.
Jess: I can’t believe this!
Harry: I haven’t told you the bad part yet.
Jess: What could be worse than Mr. Zero knowing?
Harry: It’s all a lie. She’s in love with somebody else, some tax attorney. She moved in with him.
Jess: How did you find out?
Harry: I followed her, I stood outside the building.
Jess: So humiliating.
Harry: Tell me about it. And do you know I knew? I knew the whole time that even though we were happy it was just an illusion and that one day she will kick the shit out of me.
Jess: Marriages don’t break up on a count of infidelity. It’s just a symptom that something else is wrong.
Harry: Oh really? Well that symptom is fucking my wife.

…

Marie [to Sally in the bookstore]: Someone is staring at you in “personal growth”.

…

Harry: There are two kinds of women: high maintenance and low maintenance.
Sally: Which one am I?
Harry: You’re the worst kind; you’re high maintenance but you think you’re low maintenance.
Sally: I don’t see that.
Harry: You don’t see that? “Waiter, I’ll begin with a house salad, but I don’t want the regular dressing. I’ll have the balsamic vinegar and oil, but on the side. And then the salmon with the mustard sauce, but I want the mustard sauce on the side.” On the side is a very big thing for you.
Sally: Well, I just want it the way I want it.
Harry: I know; high maintenance.

…

Harry: Had my dream again where I’m making love, and the Olympic judges are watching. I’d nailed the compulsories, so this is it, the finals. I got a 9.8 from the Canadians, a perfect 10 from the Americans, and my mother, disguised as an East German judge, gave me a 5.6. Must have been the dismount.

…

Sally: Well, basically it’s the same dream I’ve been having since I was twelve.
Harry: Which is?
Sally: Okay, there’s this guy…
Harry: What does he look like?
Sally: I don’t know, he’s just sort of faceless.
Harry: Faceless guy, okay.
Sally: He RIPS off my clothes.
[pause]
Harry: And?
Sally: That’s it.
Harry: That’s it? Some faceless guy rips off all your clothes, and that’s the sex fantasy you’ve been having since you were twelve? Exactly the same.
Sally: Well sometimes I vary it a little.
Harry: Which part?
Sally: What I’m wearing.

…

Jess: You tell Sally about other women?
Harry: Yeah, like the other night, I made love to this woman. It was so incredible, I took her to a place that wasn’t human. She actually meowed.
Jess: You made a woman meow?
Harry: Yeah, that’s the point. I can say these things to her. And the great thing is, I don’t have to lie, because I am not always thinking about how to get her into bed. I can just be myself.
Jess: You made a woman meow?

…

Lady at restaurant: I’ll have what she’s having.

…

Jess: When someone is not that attractive, they’re always described as having a good personality.
Harry: Look, if you would ask me, “What does she look like?” and I said, “She has a good personality.” That means she’s not attractive. But just because I happened to mention that she has a good personality, she could be either. She could be attractive with a good personality, or not attractive with a good personality.
Jess: So which one is she?
Harry: Attractive.
Jess: But not beautiful, right?

…

Harry [to Jess and Marie]: Right now everything is great, everyone is happy, everyone is in love and that is wonderful. But you gotta know that sooner or later you’re gonna be screaming at each other about who’s gonna get this dish. This eight dollar dish will cost you a thousand dollars in phone calls to the legal firm of That’s Mine, This Is Yours.
Sally: Harry.
Harry: Please, Jess, Marie. Do me a favor, for your own good, put your name in your books right now before they get mixed up and you won’t know whose is whose. 'Cause someday, believe it or not, you’ll go 15 rounds over who’s gonna get this coffee table. This stupid wagon wheel ROY ROGERS GARAGE SALE COFFEE TABLE!
Jess: I thought you liked it!
Harry: I WAS BEING NICE!

…

Harry: If you’re so over Joe, why aren’t you seeing anyone?
Sally: I see people.
Harry: See people? Have you slept with one person since you broke up with Joe?
Sally: What the hell does that have to do with anything? That will prove I’m over Joe? Because I fuck somebody? Harry, you’re gonna have to move back to New Jersey because you’ve slept with everybody in New York and I don’t see that turning Helen into a faint memory for you.

…

Jess [to Harry and Sally while lugging the wagon wheel coffee table out of the apartment]: Don’t say a word.

…

Jess: Emily is terrific.
Harry: Yeah. But of course when I asked where she was when Kennedy was shot she said, “Ted Kennedy was shot?”

…

Marie: Tell me I’ll never have to be out there again.
Jess: You will never have to be out there again.

…

Harry [to Jess]: It’s just like most of the time you go to bed with someone, she tells you her stories, you tell her your stories. But with Sally and me, we’ve already heard each other’s stories, so once we went to bed, we didn’t know what we were suppose to do, you know?

…

Sally: Is Harry bringing anybody to the wedding?
Marie: I don’t think so.
Sally: Is he seeing anybody?
Marie: He was seeing this anthropologist, but…
Sally: What’s she look like?
Marie: Thin. Pretty. Big tits. Your basic nightmare.

…

Harry: You know how a year to a person is like seven years to a dog?
Sally: Yes. Is one of us supposed to be a dog in this scenario?
Harry: Yes.
Sally: Who is the dog?
Harry: You are.
Sally: I am? I am the dog? I am the dog?

…

Jess [at his wedding to Marie]: Everybody could I have your attention please? I’d like to propose a toast to Harry and Sally. To Harry and Sally, if Marie or I had found either of them remotely attractive, we would not be here today.

…

Harry: I came here tonight because when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of the life to start as soon as possible.
Sally: You see, that is just like you Harry. You say things like that and you make it impossible for me to hate you. And I hate you Harry… I really hate you. I hate you. [/b]

[iambiguous]

This film is based on actual facts. For example, Adele H. is the actual daughter of Victor Hugo. And there is also the actual fact that they lived in a day and age that, in some respects, can be translated [more or less] using the vernacular and the customs of our own but that, in other more important ways still, the translation is all but futile. Especially given the actual fact that she is a woman. And the actual fact she she was, well, schizophrenic.

And that changes everything when you try to assess the “meaning” of her thoughts and feelings and behaviors. In some ways they can be fitted out into a world we understand but in other ways they can only be fitted into a mind that we [or most of us] can never really understand at all.

It is a truly strange tale. As it unfolds you can well imagine how someone might become infatuated with another…and how this infatuation might become an obsession. And yet this person may not at all be suffering from any sort of serious mental affliction. It is only a matter of degree and the telltale signs that this goes beyond what most would consider to be the thoughts and the feelings and the behaviors of someone of a…sounder mind. Especially in the “early stages”.

And even when of sound mind you can find yourself having fallen in love with someone and the love is not requited. That in and of itelf can drive some mad. And Albert did once love Adele. Or so he says. But there was this: Her father, the great Victor Hugo, despised him. And, as Adele points out herself: You are so handsome, Albert. You deserve to have all the women on Earth.

And he seems obliged to agree. And she is even willing to allow him to go on seeing other women if he agrees to marry her. But then, as he says: There are times I wonder what goes on in your head!

IMDb

[b]Gitlis (as the hypnotist) dismisses his Chinese assistant so he can discuss in private with Adele. He allegedly talks to her in Chinese, but actually tells her in Hebrew to get lost.

In 1988, Isabelle Adjani played the title role in Camille Claudel (1988), playing another historical character who suffered from schizophrenia. A major scene in that movie depicts the announcement of the death of Victor Hugo, Adele Hugo’s father.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Adele_H.
trailer: youtu.be/5VdHOEMtSvM

THE STORY OF ADELE H. [L’histoire d’Adèle H.] 1975
Written and directed by François Truffaut

[iambiguous]

Teacher seduces student and/or student seduces teacher. It’s all the rage in our pop culture. So, what’s the catch here? What sets this one apart? Gender. Both the teacher and student are females. And it all unfolds in a Catholic high school. An “exclusive” Catholic high school. One with a “campus”.

Or maybe it’s just one more “prep” school for those folks who can afford to send their kids there. Some sort of weird modern religious hybrid? On the other hand, my own own daughter graduated from Friends. And her mom and I were not exactly what you would call Quakers. Or even remotely wealthy.

Everywhere you look there seems to be a cross. Jesus dying for their sins. Lots of girls here don’t seem to get that part though. Maybe Jesus needs to come back.

And having already been expelled from two schools previously the student here [a Senator’s daughter] seems to embody trouble. But not really. Besides, in some respects she is mature well beyond her years. And that always complicates these things. Especially for those who insist that one size fits all.

She is also very intelligent, with the sort of emotional depth that many of her fellow students seem to lack. And this catches the teacher’s attention. Then they start to go back and forth with it. Lust and love…love and lust. Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop. But then don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop!

Basically we come to find out that, in the end, sexual orientation notwithstanding, we all seem to be “human, all too human”.

IMDb

In the scene where Simone sits in the closet, looking at photos of her former lover, the photos are actually pictures of director Katherine Brooks.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_Annabelle
trailer: youtu.be/w_6lEpMt_E4

LOVING ANNABELLE [2006]
Written in part and directed by Katherine Brooks

[b]Simone [having asked Annabelle to stay after class because Annabelle was a bit risque in giving an answer]: I think you’re trying to get a rise out of me.
Annabelle [slightly suggestively]: And why would I want to do that?
Simone: Perhaps to get attention.
Annabelle: Perhaps I’m intrigued.
Simone: Ingrigued by what?
Annabelle [boldly]: By you.

…

Mother Immaculata [to Simone]: We need to have a serious talk about Annabelle Tillman.

…

Cat [to Annabelle]: Finally, another lesbian. I was afraid we were never going to have one again.

…

Mother Immaculata [after demanding that Annabelle give up her Buddhist prayer beads]: You will wear this rosary and add another one for every day you refuse to give up those beads. I think it will help you to realize how heavy a burden denying Christ can be.
Annabelle: I’m not wearing that.
Mother Immaculata: Your mother informs me that if you don’t comply you will be sent to military school. So I suggest you cooperate.[/b]

On the other hand, apparently, Mother Superior had just as much trouble with Simone – when she was a student there.

[b]Words written inside a book that Simone gives to Annabelle [and then on a note Simone receives from Annabelle]: “The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust

…

Cat: So how’s it going with Miss Bradley?
Annabelle: Nothing’s going with Miss Bradley.
Cat: I had a crush on her when I was a freshman. I’m not gay though, I’m into guys too. Michelle Peters was obsessed with her, she used to write her notes and shit in class.
Annabelle: I’m not obsessed with her.
Cat: But you like her though.

…

Annabelle [after Cat kisses her]: I can’t.
Cat: Why not?
Annabelle: Because I’m not interested in being your science project.

…

Annabelle: You play with your necklace a lot
Simone: Nervous habit
Annabelle: Do I make you nervous?

…

Simone [as Mother Immaculata leaves her roo]: That did not just happen.

…

Postscript: “For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks…the work for which all other work is but preparation.” Rainer Maria Rilke[/b]

[iambiguous]

Danny the dog. No, really. Danny is Bart’s dog.

Is this based on a true story? No. But it may well have precipitated one. There are shades of 13 Tzameti here. And who would really be surprised if this sort of “competition” was not being staged somewhere “in reality”.

Of course the only way these martial arts guys are ever able to be successful is when 1] the opponents come at them one at a time and 2] when they never [or hardly ever] think to employ a gun.

On the other hand, that has nothing at all to do with the story. Or at least the story that could have been.

What makes this film effective in part is this: we know that in any number of heartbreaking ways children are raised by others to do the most atrocious things. Maybe not to actually become analogous to an attack dog but acts equally as dehumanizing and barbaric. And that’s not even counting the instances of sex trafficking.

But how many of them are ever likely to bump fortuitously into someone like Sam and Victoria?

Alas, as with so many other film of this nature, the endless possibilities for the characaters [think, for example, Oldboy] get reduced down to the usual action flick tropes. Cut! It’s a wrap!

IMDb

Morgan Freeman’s character Sam was at first not blind at all. After hearing from a piano school for the blind (with a very high reputation, and where the scholars developed their hearing), Freeman had the idea of making his character blind because like this it is easier for Sam to “see” the child in Jet Li’s character, and not the brutal killer.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unleashed_(film
trailer: youtu.be/nF0ShH6XtN8

UNLEASHED [Danny the Dog] 2005
Directed by Louis Leterrier

[b]Bart [freeing Danny from the collar]: Get em.

…

Bart: You borrow money from me, you’re expected to pay it back. You pay it back, the collar stays on. You don’t pay it back, the collar comes off.

…

Bart [to Danny locked in a cage]: I bet you’ve never had a dream in your life, have you?

…

Infirmier: You know what I have always found fascinating about this whole situation of yours, Bart buddy? You’ve basically turned a man into a dog.
Bart: Like my saint of a mum used to say: Get 'em young enough and the possibilities are endless. Unlike yours at the moment.
Infirmier: Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Now I don’t pay you, you take his collar off.
Bart: Correctimundo.
Infirmier: You take his collar off, he beats us all to death.
Bart: Now who’s the bright penny!
Infirmier: So it seems it’s in my best interest to keep that collar on, then.

…

Infirmier: When you finish with the master, kill the dog.

…

Bart [very angry]: I don’t believe it. He just stood there and watched them beat the crap out of me. Even a dog has got the brains to come to his masters defense. Bite them. Claw them. Piss on them. Anything for fucks sake!

…

Sam [to Danny]: You know a lot of people think because a piano’s so big, it is very strong and you can just pound it any way you want to and nothing will happen, but that’s not so at all. Pianos are a lot like people. I mean, you pound on a person, they get out of tune. Same with a piano. You pound on 'em and…

…

Wyeth: That thing with the collar…how did you do that?
Bart: Like my saint of a mum used to say, “Get 'em young, and the possibilities are endless.”
Wyeth: I thought it was the Jesuits who said that.
Bart: Probably got it from my mum.

…

Bart [after Danny’s “audition”]: If you want us back, you know where to find us.
Wyeth: Oh, we certainly want you back. Only, next time, if you could you make it a bit more… entertaining?
Bart: I’ll see what I can do.

…

Bart: I tell you, I feel really good here. And I feel generous. Danny, what do you want?
Danny: A piano.
Bart: Excuse me?
Danny: I want a piano.
Bart: A piano? Oh yeah. How about a lobster dinner?
Danny: I want a piano.
Bart: How about a woman? You’ve never had a woman.
Danny: I want a piano.
Bart: Danny, you’re starting to piss me off.
Danny: I want a piano.
Bart [laughs]: That’s what I love about you, Danny. One thought at a time.

…

Bart: I tell you, this is going to be one lovely day…

…

Sam [of the collar]: I’ve been meaning to ask you. What is this?

…

Bart: Cause I’m so pleased to have you home, I’ll answer one question. Go on, fire away.
Danny: Did you know my mum?
Bart: Your mum? Why would I know your mum? I found you in the street. Lying on the pavement. You was halfdead. You couldn’t even talk. You was just lying there. No one wanting you. No one caring whether you lived or died. Except me.

…

Bart: What’s wrong with you?
Danny: I don’t wanna hurt people anymore.
Bart: Excuse me. Danny, that’s what you do. You hurt people.

…

Bart: I’ll make you a deal. If you go down there tonight and do your job. I promise you, tomorrow I will buy you the nicest piano in the whole bleedin’ city. How’s that?
Danny: I don’t wanna hurt people anymore.
Bart: Then you’re dead.

…

Bart: This is it? This is your refuge? Your home away from home? This is your place of…awakening? Art, books, music? For what? Did it make you a better person? Look what you made of it. Nice people took you in. They give you everything. And look how you repay them. You destroyed their lives. Like you’ll destroy any life. That’s because you’re not meant for this kind of life, Danny. You’re a dog. You’re my dog. I fed you. I trained you. I own you!

…

Sam: Don’t do it, Danny! Don’t. Don’t kill him!
Danny: He killed my mother.
Sam: This won’t bring her back! And you’ll be just like him!
Bart: He is me. We’re both animals. Fucking dogs!
Sam: No, you’re not an animal! If you kill him, Danny, everything you’ve done to make yourself happy will be lost.
Bart: Don’t listen to this crap! We are animals!

…

Sam [to Bart]: You all right with that thing around your neck?[/b]

[iambiguous]

Cheap Thrills, Fritiz the Cat, Mr. Natural, Keep On Truckin’.

All the way to the bank, for example. Well, eventually.

Only in America some will say. And this time they may well be right. But, still, someone like Robert Crumb could only emerge at a particular historical and cultural juncture. All the other ones and there is hardly a chance at all that anyone would have ever heard of him. If he wasn’t first locked up or worse.

And to this day he is still tainted [or skewered] with [and by] accusations of racism and sexism. And of course perversion. The grotesque. The misogynistic.

Still, he loathed crass commerialism and the rabid, mass quantity consumption of…stuff. Who could not like someone like that?

Then there’s the bizarre sexual [and scatological] history of the other Crumb brothers, Charles and Maxon.

And, unlike Harvey Pekar [American Splender above], he always illustrated his own texts. Only Crumb shows up in Pekar’s doc while Pekar is no where to be seen in Crumb’s.

Here is a man who insisted that if he was not able to draw for any lenght of time he would get suicidal…and that when he did draw for any lenght of time this could make him suicidal. There are of course folks who are the same way about lots of other things too. They just don’t have the talent that it takes to become the subject of a great documentary.

IMDb

[b]All the artwork by Charles Crumb seen in this movie was thrown away by his mother, Beatrice Crumb, after his death. She didn’t think anybody would be interested in it.

When he was trying to raise funds for the film, Terry Zwigoff encountered Terry Gilliam who he knew had worked with Robert Crumb in the late 60s. Approaching Gilliam, Zwigoff asked for some help with the budget. Gilliam reached into his pocket, handed over a nickel and then walked away.

During his years-long, money-starved struggle to make this documentary, director Terry Zwigoff was laid up in bed with crippling back pain and was suicidally depressed.

Prior to the film’s release, Robert Crumb’s brother Charles committed suicide.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumb_(film
trailer: youtu.be/nF_uM-7fuwc

CRUMB [1994]
Directed by Terry Zwigoff

[b]Crumb: When I listen to old music it’s one of the few times I actually have a kind of love for humanity. You hear the best part of the soul of the common people. It’s their way of expressing their connection to eternity or whatever you want to call it. Modern music doesn’t have that calamitous loss. People can’t express themselves that way anymore.

…

Charles Crumb: I haven’t read Kant or Hegel. Maybe I’ll get around to them.

…

Terry Zwigoff: What are you trying to get at in your work?
Robert Crumb: Jesus! I dunno. I don’t work in terms of conscious messages. I can’t do that. It has to be something that I’m revealing to myself while I’m doing it. It’s hard to explain. Which means that, while I’m doing it, I don’t know what it’s about. You have to have the courage, or the… to take that chance, you know? What’s gonna come out? What’s coming out of this? I enjoy drawing. It’s a deeply ingrained habit.

…

Robert Crumb: I remember when I - what was it - about five or six? - I was sexually attracted to Bugs Bunny. And I - I cut out this Bugs Bunny off the cover of a comic book and carried it around with me. Carried it around in my pocket and took it out and looked at it periodically, and - and it got all wrinkled up from handling it so much that I asked my mother to iron it on the ironing board to flatten it out, and - and she did, and I was deeply disappointed 'cause it got all brown when she ironed it, and brittle, and crumbled apart. I had this sexual attraction to cute cartoon characters. Why? I don’t know. You tell me!

…

Robert Crumb [reading something he wrote from 1962]: “Starting about age 17, I started being driven by that obsession that I’ll go down in history as a great artist. That’ll be my revenge. I decided to reject conforming when society rejected me. I heard all that ‘be yourself’ stuff. When I was myself people thought I was nuts. Guess I’ll have to be satisfied with cats and old records. Girls are just utterly out of my reach. They won’t even let me draw them.”
[he laughs]
Robert Crumb: All that changed though after I got famous.

…

Robert Hughes: I think Crumb is basically the Brueghel of the last half of the 20th century. I mean, there wasn’t a Brueghel of the first half, but there is of the last half…and that is Robert Crumb. He gives you that tremendous kind of impassion of lusting, suffering, crazed humanity in all sorts of bizarre, gargoyle-like allegorical forms. He’s just got this very powerful imagination that goes right over the top at times…but it very seldom lies.

…

Robert Crumb: France isn’t - you know - perfect, or anything, but - it’s just - oh, slightly less evil than the United States.

…

Robert Hughes: Crumb’s material comes out of a deep sense of the absurdity of human life. At a certain psychic level, there aren’t any heroes, villians of heroines. Even the victims are comic. I think it is this which people in America find rather hard to take because it conflicts with their basic feelings. That sort of mixture of utopianism on the one hand and puritanism on the other…which is only another kind of utopianism…which has given us the kind of messy discourse that we have today.

…

Robert Crumb: Jesus. Fuckin’ raging, epithet music comin’ out of every car, every store, every person’s head. They don’t have noisy radios on, they got earphones; like, "motherfuckin’, cocksuckin’, son of a bitch. Lot of aggression. Lot of anger, lot of rage. Everybody walks around, they’re walkin’ advertisements. They’ve got advertisements on their clothes, you know? Walking around with “Adidas” written across their chests, ‘49’ers on their hats. Jesus. It’s pathetic. It’s pitiful. The whole cultures’ one unified field of bought-sold-market researched everything, you know. It used to be that people fermented their own culture, you know? It took hundreds of years, and it evolved over time. And that’s gone in America. People now don’t even have any concept that there ever was a culture outside of this thing that’s created to make money. Whatever’s the biggest, latest thing, they’re into it. You just get disgusted after a while with humanity for not having more, kind of like, intellectual curiosity about what’s behind all this jive bullshit. [/b]

This was opined 20 years ago. So, what do you think, has the culture gotten even shallower, more plastic still?

[b]Charles Crumb: How perfectly goddamned delightful it all is, to be sure.

…

Charles Crumb: I’m never constipated. That’s about all I can say for myself.

…

Dian Hanson [an avid pornogtapher]: Robert doesn’t exaggerate anything in his comics. The women are exactly the way he wants them, and he really accurately portrays himself as the skinny, bad posture, myopic man he is. Some people wonder if he doesn’t exaggerate the size of his penis, which always appears awfully big in the comics. Robert does not exaggerate anything. He is endowed with one of the biggest penises in the world.

…

Robert Crumb: I would say that I was never in love. I just don’t have it in me.

…

Peggy Orenstein: When I was about nine or ten, my brother used to collect Zap comics. And when I saw those, they really, deeply, deeply terrified me. I was deeply upset. And I look at them, and thought, on some level, this is adulthood? This is what adult women are? This is what I grow up into? And it was horrifying.
Robert Crumb: Oh, my God!
Peggy Orenstein: And, I wonder if you think about the effect on people who read it, or what you’re validating for boys…
Robert Crumb: I just hope that that, somehow, revealing that truth about myself is somehow helpful. I don’t know, I just hope that it is, but I have to do it. Maybe I shouldn’t be allowed. Maybe I should be locked up, and have my pencils taken away from me, I just don’t know. I can’t say, you know? I can’t defend myself. It was like my daughter Sophie was watching “Goodfellas,” we got a videotape of it, and the violent part horrified her so deeply that she started getting a stomach ache, and I shut it off and wouldn’t let her watch it. Although I think it’s a great movie, a truthful movie, and I got a lot out of seeing it. But it’s obviously not for a kid. And certain harsh realities of life… you gotta, kinda, protect your kids a little bit from that. They don’t understand a lot of things yet, you know? Not everything is for children, and not everything is for everybody.[/b]

[iambiguous]

His name is Mud. Mud from Arkansas. Rural Arkansas. And how many different ways can you be a Mud there? Or a Neckbone?

This guy Mud lives in a boat that is lodged way up in a tree. So you know there’s a backstory here worth telling. But you have to wonder: how dangerous might he be? I mean, here are two young boys alone on an island with him about to find out. A man with a pistol who hammers nails in his boots in the shape of a cross. Why? To ward off evil spirits.

As for the two boys, well, let’s just say that some kids are forced to grow up a hell of a lot faster than others.

Call it, say, a whole other world. And you find yourself either caring about these folks [or folks like them] or you don’t. And, in all honesty, I don’t know if I do or if I don’t. But it is sure is a reminder that no matter where you go, shit happens.

Morally, this is one of those complicated situations that seem [to me] more befitting the arguments of the consequentialists than the deontologists. Of course, to me, that means pretty much every situation there is. Others, I supect, will be more preoccupied with figuring with what exactly is the right thing to do. And here in this place [deep down South, out in the middle of nowhere] that’s about the only thing they seem to know: either/or.

The wild card here though is Juniper. Where does she really figure into all of this? Of course she insists that’s what you’ve got to ask about Mud. Sometimes we only know what people tell us about themselves. And what they tell us about others. And when you are “just a kid” that can get especially complicated.

IMDb

[b]Over 2000 boys auditioned for the role of Neckbone.

Prior to shooting, writer/director Jeff Nichols described the film as Sam Peckinpah directing a short story by Mark Twain.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_(2012_film
trailer: youtu.be/8atscK-3SpE

MUD [2012]
Written and directed by Jeff Nichols

[b]Mud [to Ellis and Neckbone] They’re just good-luck boots. As you can see, it ain’t workin’ too well so far.

…

Neckbone: He’s a bum, Ellis, come on.
Mud: I ain’t no bum. I got money, boy. You can call me a hobo, ‘cause a hobo will work for his livin’, you can call me homeless ‘cause…well, that’s true for now, but you call me a bum again and I’m gonna teach you somethin’ about respect your daddy never did.

…

Mud: There are fierce powers at work in the world, boys. Good, evil, poor luck, best luck. As men, we’ve got to take advantage where we can.

…

Ellis: He’s not dangerous. I know it.
Neckbone [sighs]: Sounds like a shitload of state troopers thinks differently.

…

Neckbone: I knew it. I told you that dirty son of a bitch was trouble. Did you tell them where he is?
Ellis: No, that’s why I called you. He needs to know people are looking for him.
Neckbone: You think he doesn’t know that already? Jesus, Ellis! Why do you even think he’s on that island? I’m serious! We don’t know who this guy is.
Ellis: He loves her, Neck. He told me.
Neckbone: I don’t give a shit who he loves!

…

Mud: Now, there are things you can get away with in this world and there are things you can’t.

…

Ellis [to Tom]: Mud sent me.

…

Mud: Listen to me, if you see that old man, don’t go near him. He’s the triple six real deal scratch.
Ellis: What’s a scratch?
Mud: It’s the devil himself.

…

Juniper [on the phone]: Why are you doing this?
Ellis: What do you mean?
Juniper: Why are you helping us?
Ellis: Because both of you love each other.

…

Ellis [to Mud]: She knew the plan…she just didn’t show up.

…

Juniper: You know you don’t know him, right?
Ellis: I know he’d do anything for you.
Juniper: Is that what you think?
[Ellis nods his head]
Juniper: Mud’s a born liar. That’s why people like him, he makes them feel good about themselves.

…

Ellis: What’s it say?
Juniper: It says it’s over…Bye Ellis.

…

Mud: What she’d say?
[Ellis punches him]
Ellis: You’re a liar! You said you loved her and you lied! You gave up on her. She gave up on you. Just like anybody else. I trusted you. Everything you told me was a lie! You never cared about her and you never cared about us. Not enough to matter. You used us. You made me a thief!

…

Mud [to Neckbone]: The deal’s for the gun, not the bullets.

…

Ellis: It’s the law.
Neckbone: It’s bullshit.

…

Tom [to Mud]: Come on son, you gotta see this.[/b]

[iambiguous]

duplicate post

[iambiguous]

Christian is in no mood to celebrate his father’s 60th birthday. And in a very short time not many others will be either. His father you see is a bit of a monster.

The kind that doesn’t show on the outside. But how do you go about exposing the one on the inside. Well, you could begin by proposing a toast:

Christian: Here’s to the man who killed my sister…to a murderer.

His twin sister. His twin sister who just a couple of months previously had committed suicide.

And this is one of those big, big familes…one where hundreds might show up to celebrate any particular occasion. But not one of them was expecting anything like this. Michael in particular. And then there is “the help”. Only some of them are more like part of the family.

And then Helene’s boyfriend shows up – a Negro. As if things weren’t already bad enough for, say, Michael. After the old man, he is having the shittiest time of it. But there are plenty more here right behind him

So, let’s play a game. It’s called, “getting warmer”.

A dogme 95 film: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95
In fact, Dogme 1

IMDb

[b]On March 28th, 1996 the Danish National Radio (DR) broadcast “Koplevs Krydsfelt” when an anonymous caller, “Allan”, told his story about an unusual speech he held at his step-fathers 60th birthday. One of the many listeners to this strange story was director Thomas Vinterberg, who was inspired to make his first Dogme movie.

On 23 November 2002 Danish Radio found ‘Allan’ again. Allan met with director Thomas Vinterberg. During the interview it was revealed that Allan’s entire story was pure fantasy. However, Allan had adopted the story from a true life experience of a Danish nurse.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Celebration
trailer: youtu.be/vKe_AxTFGXc

THE CELEBRATION [Festen] 1998
Written in part and directed by Thomas Vinterberg

[b]Father: Christian, will you say a few words about your sister tonight?
Christian: I’ve already written something.

…

Christian [before the entire family]: But first, a speech. I’ve written two, Father. One is green, the other is yellow. You choose.
Father: One is green, the other is yellow. I’ll take the green.
Christian: The green is an interesting choice. It’s a kind of “home truth speech”. I call it, “When dad had his bath.”

…

Christian [to the family]: It was much more dangerous when Dad had his bath. I don’t know if you remember, but Dad was always having baths. He’d take Linda and me into the study…as there was something he had to do first. Then he’d lock the door and roll down the blinds. Then he’d take his shirt off and his trousers and made us do likewise. Then he’d put us across the green couch that’s been thrown out now and raped us. Abused us sexually. Had sex with his little ones.[/b]

He is relating this matter-of-factly – as though he were describing his father reading them a bedtime story. And then, suddenly, the celebration is never quite the same. Surreal might best describe it.

[b]Kim: Michelle come here, Pia come here. A word. Steal their car keys.

…

Michael: How dare you drag some monkey to dad’s 60th!
Helene: Are you calling Gbatokai a monkey? How dare you! You Nazi bastard!

…

Christian: Forgive me for disturbing you again. But I forgot the most important bit. We’re here for my father’s birthday, not all kinds of other stuff. If I led you up the wrong track earlier, I’d like to make amends by proposing a toast to my father. Please stand.
[everyone stands]
Christian: Raise your glasses. Here’s to the man who killed my sister…to a murderer.

…

Wife: Bent, have you seen our car keys?

…

Father [to Christian]: What if I got up and said a couple of words instead? About you? About how sick you were as a child? About the way you always spoiled things for the other children? Burning their toys in front of them? About the warped soul you’ve always been? I could also tell them how your mum and dad had to go to France to extricate you from that sanatorium where you lay, sick in the head as ever, pumped full of medicine, to your mother’s despair

…

Father [to Christian]: I could also make a speech about you and your sister. What do you say to that? Did she ever say goodbye to you, eh? No. Was there a card? A letter? No. Nothing. There was for the rest of us. And maybe there was a reason why. Because you just left, as usual. Left your sick sister. She kept asking for you, and rushing to the phone every time it rang; but it was never you. As ever, you were only interested in yourself and your sick mind. Now you sling mud at the family that only ever wanted the best for you. Your mother thinks you should go. She wants to see you no more. But I think you should stay right here and feel what it is like to spit in your family’s face.

…

Christian [to his mother at the dinner]: In 1974 you, my mother, came into the study to see your son on all fours and your husband with no pants on. I’m sorry you saw me like that. And that your husband told you to get out and that you did so. I’m sorry you’re so hypocritical and corrupt that I hope you die.

…

Michael: Do we really have to tie you to this tree, Christian?[/b]

Yep.

[b]Helene [with a letter from Linda]: It’s from my sister. “Dear whoever finds this letter, you are probably my sister or my brother. Because you must be good at “getting warmer”. I know it must be sad to find me in a bath full of water. But it isn’t so sad for me. I know that my brothers and sister are happy, radiant people and that I love you. And I think you should just not think about me. Christian, my beloved brother, who has always been with me, I thank you for everything. I don’t want to mix you up in this. I love you too much for that. And you, Helene, and you, Michael, of course. You nutter. Dad has begun having me again. In my dreams, anyway. And I can’t bear any more. I’m going away now. As I probably always should have done. I know it will fill your life with darkness, Christian. I have tried to ring you, but I know you’re busy. I just want to tell you not to be sad. I think there is light and beauty on the other side. I’m looking forward to it, as a matter of fact. Although of course I am a bit afraid. Afraid of leaving without you. I love you forever. Linda.”

…

Christian [at the dinner]: I’ve just never really understood why you did it.
Father: It was all you were good for.

…

Michael [drunk and enraged]: Lie down, man. Lie down! And stay lying down. I’ve heard enough piss. Lie down, I said. You’ll never see your grandchildren again, man. Never again, get it, Dad? This family…is kaput.

…

Father [to Christian]: You’re killing me…killing me.

…

Father [to the family at breakfast]: I just want to say that I know that when you pack up and go home it will be the last time I see you. I also see now that what I did to my children is unforgivable. I know that all of you especially my children will hate me for the rest of your lives.

…

Michael: Nice one, Dad. Good speech. Well done. But I think you’ll have to go now so we can eat our breakfast.
Father: Of course, of course.
[then to his wife]
Father: Coming?
Mother: I’ll stay here. [/b]

[iambiguous]

Is hypnotism “real”? And to the extent that it is how can one who masters “Mesmerism” inflict it on others in order to further his own particular pathology? Committing murder, for instance. Or, rather, getting others to commit them under the power of hypnotic suggestion. Imgine the legal [moral] entanglements if one could. Wouldn’t it involve being able to convince someone under hypnosis that it is in their own best interest to do away with another? Or, better still, that they are morally onligated to do so?

Mesmer at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Mesmer
hypnosis at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnosis

What are the limitations imposed on Mamiya [the protagonist] with respect to “planting criminal suggestions” in others? And here both the cat and the mouse reflect the manner in which the human mind is susceptible to any number of mental afflictions. And this can in turn impose all manner of distortion on what they perceive to be “reality”.

Only which one is the cat here and which one is the mouse?

So the “horror” in this “horror film” involves the monsters that might be born inside us as a result of any number of variables emanating from either nature or from nurture. Or, more likely, from the complex intertwining of both. A psychotic criminal. A psychotic wife. A psychotic shrink.

So why not a psychotic detective? Or, perhaps, one who is just under a “spell”?

This is as much about the problematic [and, sure, at times, spooky] mysteries of the human mind as anything else.

Speaking of spooky, that deserted building near the end of the film is really a fascinating structure. Both inside and out. Absolutely perfect for this film.

And what to make of the final scene. The waitress in the restaurant. The knife.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cure_(film
trailer: youtu.be/cJgX5spwan4

CURE [1997]
Written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

[b]Takabe: He is like all the others. He admits his intent to kill but then afterwards he is stunned that he did it.

…

Detective: So it “just happened”
Takabe: “Just happened?”
Detective: People like to think that a crime has some meaning. But most of them don’t.
Takabe [showing him a photo of the murdered prostitute]: So somebody “just happened” to do this?

…

Detective: Don’t believe everything you read. No one can understand what motivates a criminal. Sometimes not even the criminal. No one really understands. You’re getting in too deep.
Takabe: No, all I want is to find words that will explain the crimes. That’s my job.

…

Sakuma [to Takabe]: Even if you manage to hypnotize someone you can’t change their basic moral sense. A person who thinks murder is evil won’t kill anyone.[/b]

And if he doesn’t?

[b][repeated line]
Mamiya: Tell me about yourself.

…

Mamiya: You know a lot, detective.
Takabe: Not what’s inside your head.

…

Book Takabe finds in Mamiya’s apartment: MESMERISM AND THE END OF ENLIGHTENMENT IN FRANCE[/b]

Someone who has become obsessed with Franz Mesmer, personality disorder and psychosis.

[b]Mimiya [to Takabe]: You saw your wife dead, didn’t you?

…

Mimiya: The detective, the husband. Which one is the real you? There is no real you.

…

Takabe [to Mimiya]: Lunatics like you have it easy while citizens like me go through hell!

…

Sakuma: Mesmer was an 18th century Austrian doctor…the first man to study hypnosis. It wasn’t recognized then as a medical treatment. They saw it as fakery, magic…or witchcraft.
Takabe: And?
Sakuma: There’s still a lot we don’t know about Mesmer. Some say he really did study magic and alchemy.

…

Doctor [in mental institution after Takabe commits his wife]: Mr. Takabe, you look sicker than your wife to me.

…

Takabe [after watching a video of the first use of hypnotism in Japan]: Did Mimiya see this film?
Sakuma: I don’t know. There’s not much chance that medical students would see it. But even if he had that still wouldn’t explain his actions.

…

Takabe: Who is the man in this film?
Sakuma: Unknown. We do know, however, why he didn’t show his face to the camera. You know what they called hypnotism in Japan back then? “Soul conjuring”. Like clairvoyance, spiritualism…that sort of thing. The authoriites in any age always suppress occultism.[/b]

[iambiguous]

It’s not normal for a man who has been married 25 years to announce that he no longer wishes to be a man…but wants to be a woman instead.

That’s a fact. And it’s a fact that Ruth Applewood, a factory worker living and working out in the American heartland, “transitioned” from a man to a woman. Or it’s a fact in the film.

But what else becomes a fact when others start to react to it? For example, is it a fact that this sort of behavior is unwarranted, unjustified…immoral?

Of course, what becomes almost impossible for others to understand is how conflicted one can feel…how many different directions one can be yanked in when confronting this sort of thing. Yanked by yourself, yanked by others. And really impossible to explain succinctly in words.

And then the political narratives. Many folks who find themselves trapped in the “wrong body” also find themselves trapped in the “wrong frame of mind”. Thus there are men who not only want to be women but want to be very feminine women. And for men in particular there is the reaction not only of family and friends but of other men at work. Especially when the other men all wear blue collars. Not a whole lot of “enlightened thinking” there. Here’s a guy, smack dab in the middle of middle America – the Cornbelt – who actually thinks he can just tell his boss that gradually over time he is going to be dressing as a woman…and then have this operation. He has this “condition”. And here’s a book that explains it. But he does understand if he decides to “let him go”.

And here in turn God and the church get all tangled up in it. Oh, and his father is complete asshole. So is his son. Or he tries to be at first. Fortunately, his wife and his daughter and his boss are not. But there are many, many other ways this might have all unfolded instead.

IMDb

[b]Tom Wilkinson chose not to do any research into the subject of transgenderism, as he felt that a mid-Western farmer wouldn’t know anything about the subject either.

Tom Wilkinson had to endure regular close shaves with a barber to convey the impression that estrogen was working on his face. He also had to shave all the hair off his arms, legs and chest.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_(2003_film
trailer: youtu.be/DdWur61dvqI

NORMAL [2003]
Written and directed by Jane Anderson

[b]Before…

Minister: I don’t know of any other couple in our congregation…or in this town, for that matter…more devoted to each other. More in love than Roy and Irma.[/b]

That’s when Roy faints and falls to the floor.

Minister: Are you having any problems with…intimacy?
Roy: Not really.
Irma: Well, we haven’t had much intimacy lately.
Minister: Because of the headaches?
Roy [too quickly]: Yes.
Minister: Roy, would you like to talk to me…alone?
Irma: Roy, whatever it is just get it out, Honey. I don’t even have to know what it is. I mean, just talk it out with him, okay? Please?
Minister: Irma, if you want, you can wait in the chapel.
Roy: No, no. I’d like Irma to stay.
Minister: Better still. So. Tell us what’s on your mind, Roy.
Roy [in obvious anguish]: I’ve been…I’ve been struggling with something for a long time. I’ve prayed for years for it to go away. But it won’t.
Minister: Go on.
Roy: I was born in the wrong body. I’m a woman. I’ve known it all my life.

The wife and the minister look at each other. They don’t quite know what to say.

Irma: This doesn’t make any sense.
Minister: Roy, I have to agree. I mean, you’ve been married to Irma for 25 years. You have two wonderful children, and suddenly, out of nowhere you make this strange declaration?
Roy: It’s not out of nowhere. I’ve been hiding it for years. It’s been an agony. I can’t go on living my life like this. I’d rather die!
Minister: Meaning?
Roy: Meaning I’d like to have the operation…to same my sex.

The minister brings out the Bible and Irma would like to go home.

Irma: Roy, are you gonna want to be with men?
Roy: No, Honey, you know I don’t.
Irma: Then, if you’re not planning on having intercourse what do you need a vagina for?
Roy: That’s a ridiculous question.
Irma: No, it isn’t. I mean, I had babies with mine. I used it to make love to you. What on earth are you going to do with yours?
Roy: It’s not a matter of what I am going to do with it. I’m doing this to make myself feel complete.
Irma: It’s a sexual organ, honey. That’s what it’s made for. And, as a long time female, let me tell you, I haven’t used mine for anything but to take a penis in, okay?
Roy: There a certainly other things you can do with it.
Irma: Like what?
Roy: You ever masturbated?

Well, that’s one conversation I never had.

[b]Roy: Irma, if you need to have an affair, I’d understand.

…

Irma: When you are in bed with me, are you a man or a woman?
Roy: I make love to you as myself.
Irma: But are you a man or are you a woman?!

…

Roy: I have some books you could read…
Irma: Books?!
Roy: …about my condition.

…

Irma: You mean you expect us to go on living together after you do this thing?
Roy: If…if you’ll have me.
Irma: You know, frankly, honey, there’s no way you’re a woman. Only a man could be this selfish.

…

Irma: Put the gun down, Roy…Put the gun down, Roy…Put the gun down, Roy. Please…
[she holds him]
Irma: I think now you should come home.

…

Patty: Are you gonna shave your legs? And under your arms?
Roy: Yes.
Patty: What about your bikini line?
Roy: My bikini line?
Patty: So your pubes don’t show when you wear a swimsuit.

…

Patty [to her mom]: Is daddy in drag?

…

Patty: Mom, Dad and I have the same breast size now!

…

Wayne: Are you and mom going to keep living together?
Roy: Yeah.
Wayne: So does that mean that…Do you still sleep in the same bed?
Roy: Yes.
Wayne: In other words, sexually, you’re still a woman, you’re into Mom?
Roy: That’s correct.
Wayne: So as a man you’re straight but as a woman you’re gay?..Doesn’t that make Mom a lesbian?
Roy: Not necessarily.
Wayne: Come on, Pop.
Roy: Your mother’s sexuality hasn’t changed. We’re staying together because we love each other.
Wayne: So, in other words, if the two of you ever split up, she’d go back to men.
Roy: Probably.
Wayne: So she’s straight.
Roy: Yes, Wayne.
Wayne: But she’s going to sleep with you when you become a woman.
Roy: Maybe. Maybe not.

…

Roy: You’re just being sarcastic.
Wayne: I’m too fucking confused to be sarcastic!

…

Irma [about to pull up the blanket]: I’d like to look at you one last time.

…

Roy: Irma, thank you.
Irma: Sweet Roy. Sweet soul. What we do for love.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Supposedly based on the Book of Job in the Bible. If the Book of Job were written as a pitch black comedy. In fact, this Book often seems to make into one or another film. But I still don’t know exactly what the signicance of that is. Only this: that however much God tested Job, it’s nothing compared to how much he is testing Ivan.

Ex-con skinheads, God and community servvice in [I think] Denmark.

The first thing Adam does when he settles into his room is to take the crucifix down off the wall and replace it with a portrait of Adolph Hitler. Now, we know that by the end of the film Adam will change. And this being a black comedy the transformation will be entertaining. The set up then is this: Ivan is a minister of the Lord ever intent on seeing the bright side of things. Meanwhile Adam, the really really nasty Nazi is now intent on showing him the error of his ways. Clearly, Good vs. Evil.

And sure enough even after Adam pounds the shit out of Ivan, Ivan turns the other cheek. At worst, he calls this sort of behavior “rude”.

If you’re like me you won’t know quite how to react to all this. What the hell is it trying to tell us about God? about religion? about people? Is it mocking religion more or less than it is explaining it?

Anyway, the good news is that the whole thing is kind of preposterous. Except for the ending. That’s just plain silly. Or it is in the “God works in mysterious ways” tradition.

IMDb

According to the making of-featurette on the DVD, the scene with the crows eating apples was planned to be computer-generated, until a few Czechs showed up with four boxes of real life trained crows, and in the end everything worked out fine for a minimum of cost.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam’s_Apples
trailer: youtu.be/t8kbfBLOIVE

ADAM’S APPLES [Adams Æbler] 2005
Written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen

Ivan [reading from a form]: It says here that you are a neo-Nazi. Are you really? It says here that you are evil. It’s rude to write that on a person’s CV. Are you really evil?

Ivan you see is quite sure that with God there are no really evil people.

[b]Ivan: So, what do you want to do?
Adam [ironically and/or sarcastically]: I wanna bake an apple pie.
Ivan [seriously]: Okay, you’ll bake an apple pie! That’s your task. I think you’ve found your goal.

…

Khalid [to Ivan]: You mean we can just shoot the crows with guns? Why didn’t you say so!

…

Adam [to Ivan]: Your son is a paralyzed spastic, your wife killed herself, your mother died giving birth to you and your father raped you…Just give up, Ivan.

…

Dr. Kolberg [after telling Adam about Ivan’s brain tumor]: Ivan has experienced so much hardship that he needs an explanation in order to deal with it. That’s why he thinks that the Devil has it in for him. Ivan would say that everything is a test. You are a test, his cancer is a test, his son’s handicap is a test. In Ivan’s mind he’s locked in fierce battle with the Devil himself. Ivan has no mind to lose and he blocks everything out. He’s in denial about all the bad stuff. Death, mutilation, hardship, eveil – that simply doesn’t exist in Ivan’s world.

…

Ivan: Give up, Adam. God is on my side. Never forget that.

…

Adam: What if it’s not the Devil that is testing you…dogging you?
Ivan: What is it then…elves?
Adam: God.
Ivan: Why would He do that?
Adam: Because He hates you. I’ve read this book. The Book of Job. Remember God killed Job’s cattle, his seven camels and his ten kids. He takes everything away from him and makes him a leper. Does that remind you of anything?
Ivan: I never had a camel.[/b]

But Adam [and Evil] finally wear him down. For now.

[b]Ivan: God hates us, Christoffer. He’s always hated us.

…

Esben: [a fellow Nazi skinhead to Adam] What the hell are you doing?
Adam Pedersen: Picking apples.
Esben: With a sand-nigger?!
Holger: What happened?
Adam: It was a lightning. It knocked down the tree.
Esben: What the hell is wrong with you? Are you trying to make us look bad?
Jørgen: What do you mean?
Esben: You’re running around talking about apple pie and climbing trees with a nigger. Are you an idiot?
Adam: Listen, Esben. I think you should get out of here.
Esben: What did you say?
Khalid [shooting him]: He said that you should fuck off and take your fat friend with you!

…

Khalid [after shooting the 3 skinheads]: This is a shitty day!

…

Dr Kolberg: In medical terms this is what we call a half-Kennedy.

…

Dr. Kolberg: Adam, this makes no sense at all. I am a man of science, I believe in numbers and charts. Godamnit, I wanna go someplace where people die when they are sick, and don’t sit in the yard earing toast when they have been shot through the head.

…

Adam [to Ivan]: I baked an apple pie. Shall we have a go at it?[/b]

[iambiguous]

“I don’t know.”

You don’t know what? Well, there’s the part about love, the part about sex, the part about kids, the part about money, the part about work, the part about family, the part about all the other stuff.

There really is a lot not to know when you are in a relationship with someone. And that’s not even counting all the stuff you don’t know because you don’t even think of it.

And then there is the part about demographics. Class matters. At least it does in a class society. Some things [we either know or don’t know] seem to cross those lines. But others are more separate and distinct to what can be very different experiences.

Dean and Cindy wobble somewhere between the working class and the lower middle class. And all the different things that can mean to different people. One thing for sure: in some important respects, I’ve been here myself. The same sort of conversations about the same sort of things. Converstaions in which we just kept tripping over each other’s words as we try to untangle all of the possible things we think the other might be feeling.

I think what it captures best though is that part in a relationship [one down the road a bit] in which you still crave the parts that work while becoming increasingly more alienated from the parts that don’t. Only Dean seems to focus more on the former and Cindy on the latter.

You can really become conflicted. I know I did.

IMDb

[b]The scenes in the ‘past’ when Dean and Cindy are falling in love were shot first, in three weeks. After this Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams spent a month together in a rented house to age themselves in preparation for the ‘present’ scenes. They spent a lot of their time grocery shopping, cooking dinner and learning to pick fights with each other.

According to Derek Cianfrance, after shooting the first part of the love story, there were serious discussions about not doing the second one, retitling the movie simply “Valentine”, and make it a depiction of falling in love.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Valentine_(film
trailer: youtu.be/HLPbja1mc3A

BLUE VALENTINE [2010]
Written in part and directed by Derek Cianfrance

[b]Dean [to Marshall at work]: I feel like men are more romantic than women. When we get married, we marry, like, one girl, 'cause we’re resistant the whole way until we meet one girl and we think, “I’d be an idiot if I didn’t marry this girl. She’s so great”. But it seems like girls get to a place where they just kinda pick the best option… ‘Oh he’s got a good job.’ I mean they spend their whole life looking for Prince Charming and then they marry the guy who’s got a good job and is gonna stick around.

…

Cindy [to Dean]: I’m not going to some cheesy sex motel.

…

Dean: I’m asking you, please. Let’s get out of here. We gotta get out of here. Baby, we have to get out of this house. Let’s go get drunk and make love. Now, do you want the Cupid’s Cove…or the Future Room?

…

Dean [to Cindy]: Pack your bags, baby, we’re going to the future.

…

Cindy: What did it feel like when you fell in love?
Gramma: Oh… oh dear, I don’t think I found it
Cindy: Even with grandpa?
Gramma: Maybe a little, in the beginning. He didn’t really have any regard for me as a person. You gotta be careful with that. You gotta be careful with the person you fall in love is worth it… to you.

…

Cindy: I never want to be like my parents. I know they must’ve loved each other at one time right? To just get it all out of the way before they had me. How do you trust your feelings when they can just disappear like that?
Gramma: I think the only way you can find out is to have the feeling. You’re a good person. You have the right to say I do trust. I do trust myself.

…

Dean: You think I stole that money, don’t you? Yeah, you do.
Cindy: No.
Dean: Look, I’ve stolen money before, okay, I know what it’s like to get busted. That’s what it feels like. I didn’t steal it. I’ve got a job. Okay? This is my job.
Cindy: Okay, I got it.

…

Dean [to Cindy]: Whoa. We’re inside a robot’s vagina.

…

Dean [laughing maniacally]: Babe, that’s how they laugh in the future!
Cindy: I thought the whole point of coming here was to have a night without kids

…

Dean: What are you doing?
Cindy: What does it look like I’m doing?
Dean: Gettin’ all wet and naked.

…

Dean [to Marshall]: I don’t know, I just feel like I should just stop thinking about it, you know, but I can’t. Maybe I’ve seen too many movies, you know, love at first sight.

…

Dean: In my experience, the prettier a girl is, the more nuts she is, which makes you insane.
Cindy: I like how you can compliment and insult somebody at the same time.

…

Dean: I don’t know if you are not funny. Tell me a joke.
Cindy: So there’s a child molester and a little boy walking into the woods. They keep walking in further and further. It’s getting darker and darker and they’re getting deeper and deeper into the woods and the little boy looks up at the child molester and he says, “Gee, mister, I’m getting scared!” And the child molester looks down at him and says, “You think you’re scared, kid? I gotta walk outta here alone.”
[Dean just shakes his slowly head back and forth]
Cindy: You don’t think that’s funny?[/b]

Here is the crux of it:

[b]Cindy: Isn’t there something you wanted to do? Isn’t there something you wanna do?
Dean: Like what?
Cindy: I don’t know. You’re good at so many things. You could do anything you wanted to do, you’re good at everything that you do. Isn’t there something else you wanna to do?
Dean: Than what? To be your husband, to being Frankie’s dad? What do you want me to do? What-what-what… in your, like, dream scenario of me, like, doing what I’m good at, what would that be?
Cindy: I don’t know. I just… you’re so good at so many things. You can do so many things. You have such capacity.
Dean: For what?
Cindy: I don’t…you can sing, you can draw, you can…
[chuckles]
Cindy: …dance.
Dean [exhales]: Listen, I didn’t wanna be somebody’s husband, okay? And I didn’t wanna be somebody’s dad. That wasn’t my… goal in life. For some guys it is - wasn’t mine. But somehow I’ve… it was what I wanted. I didn’t know that. And it’s all I wanna do. I don’t want to do anything else. That’s what I want to do. I work so I can do that.
Cindy: I’d like to see you have a job where you don’t have to start drinking at 8 o’clock, in the morning, to go to it.
Dean: No, I have a job that I can drink at 8 o’clock in the morning. What a luxury… you know? I get up for work, I have a beer, I go to work, I paint somebody’s house - they’re excited about it. I come home, I get to be with you. What’s… Like, this is the dream.
Cindy: Doesn’t it ever disappoint you?
Dean: Why? Why would it disappoint me? I could still do whatever I could do.
Cindy: Because you have all this potential.
Dean: So what? Why do you have to fucking make money off your potential?
Cindy: Look, I’m not even saying you have to make money off it. Do you miss it?
Dean: What does potential mean? What does even potential mean? What does that mean “potential”? Potential for what? To turn it into what?
Cindy: We rarely sit down and have an adult conversation because every time we do…you take what I say and turn it around into something that I didn’t mean. You just…twist it. Start blabbing. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.
Dean: If you’re not interested in what I have to say, then maybe I just shouldn’t say anything.
Cindy [laughing]: I’d like to see you think about what you say instead of saying what you think all the time. Good luck. Give it a try.

…

Cindy [to Dean]: You asshole. You fucking asshole. I’m so out of love with you. I’ve got nothing left for you, nothing, nothing. Nothing, there is nothing here for you.

…

Dean [long silence before he speaks]: You know, it’s not just us, we got a little girl we gotta think about.
[he breaks into tears]
Cindy: I know…I…I can’t do this anymore.
Dean: You’re just thinking about yourself. What about Frankie? You want her to grow up in a broken home? Is that what you want?
Cindy: I am thinking about Frankie.
Dean: You’re not thinking about Frankie.
Cindy: I am thinking about my own kid.
Dean: No, you’re not. Is this how you want her to grow up?
Cindy: I don’t want her to grow up in a home where her parents treat each other like this.
[Dean cries and slaps the wall all over and over]
Dean: Tell me how I should be. Just tell me. I’ll do it.
Cindy: I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to say.
Dean: Just tell me. I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’ll do it.
Cindy: Don’t. We’re not good together, we’re not good anymore. It’s how cwe treat each other. I can’t stop, you can’t stop. I don’t know what else to do.
Dean: I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Baby, I’m sorry.
Cindy [sobbing]: I can’t do this anymore.

…

Dean: Baby, you made a promise to me, okay? You said, “for better or worse”. You said that. You said it. It was a promise.
Cindy: I’m sorry.
Dean: Now this is my worst, okay? This is my worst. But I’m gonna get better. You just gotta give me a chance to get better.[/b]

[iambiguous]

How would most people even begin to compare the lives they live with the one they imagine that Bob Dylan has. Some folks it seems are just able to have a fuller life than others. Not that Dylan would probably do much more than scoff at that.

Still, I suspect that most of us wish that our own lives could have been a bit more…eventful.

Not that Dylan wouldn’t be willing to start from scratch if he could be 18 again. That’s the thing about accummulating so much in life. It’s that much more you have to lose when you get to the part where it’s all over.

Dylan was just one of those kids that became transfixed by and through music. It took him out of the place he lived and allowed him to imagine other places…other ways to live. This works with all the arts of course but there is just something about music that seems to sink in deeper. In a similar vein, some folks can’t seem to accommodate themselves to all those other things that “normal” people are taught to think and feel and do. But then deciding what to move away from is not nearly the same thing as deciding what to move towards. So some folks come to make it up as they went along. And out of this comes some things that never were before at all.

One thing about Dylan though is you can never really believe what he tells you about himself. He’ll just make something up that suits him or let others make something up that suits them.

Bottom line: He wrote hooks. He wrote songs that stuck in your head. Songs that make you think and feel things you never thought and felt before. Songs that blended together the personal and the political in a way that had never quite been done before.

And I like where the film ends – about the same time I stopped buying his albums and started borrowing them from the local library. With some obvious exceptions of course.

IMDb

Martin Scorsese never met or discussed the film with Bob Dylan during filming. However he worked extensively with him during the filming of The Last Waltz (1978).

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Direction_Home
trailer: youtu.be/QOUtzHizr9A

NO DIRECTION HOME [2005]
Directed by Martin Scorsese

[b]Dylan: I was born very far from where I’m supposed to be, and so I’m on my way home.

…

Dylan: Time…You can do a lot of things that seem to make time stand still, but of course no one can do that.

…

Dylan: In the house that my father bought I found something…something that had kind of mystical overtones. There was a great big mahogany radio. It had a 78 turntable when you opened up the top. And I opened it up one day and there was a record on, a country record…it was a song called “Drifting Too Far From Shore”. The sound of the record made me feel like I was somebody else…that I was maybe not even born to the right parents, or something.

…

Dylan: The name just popped into my head one day. But it really didn’t happen any of the ways I read about. I mean, I just don’t feel like I had a past and, you know, I couldn’t relate to anything other than what I was doing in the present time and, you know, it didn’t matter to me what I said. It still doesn’t, really.

…

Allen Ginsburg: The poet Charlie Plymell played me a record of this new young folk singer. And I heard Hard Rain. And wept. 'Cause it seemed that the torch had been passed to another generation. From early bohemian or beat to illumination and self-empowerment.

…

Allen Ginsberg: There is a very famous saying among Tibetan Buddhists: “If the student is not better than the teacher, then the teacher is a failure.” …Poetry is words that are empowered to make your hair stand on end, that you realize instantly as being some form of subjective truth that has an objective reality to it, because somebody has realized it. Then you call it poetry later.

…

Dylan: I didn’t realize that Pete Seeger was a Communist. I really wasn’t sure even what a Communist was. If he was it wouldn’t have mattered to me anyway. I really didn’t think about people in those terms.

…

Dave von Ronk: Bobby was not really a political person. He was thought of as being a political person and a man of the left. And in a general sort of way, yes, he was. But he was not interested in the true nature of the Soviet Union or any of that crap. We thought he was hopelessly politically naive. But in retrospect, I think he might have been more sophisticated than we were. [/b]

And that was the gist of it: Not that he turned electric but that [politically] he was no longer “one of us”. And it was particularly galling for many when they had to admit that maybe he never really was. It appalled those he’d “left” because he wrote such good songs. It was all captured here in this song by Joan Baez: youtu.be/R_OnN6u8wXw

But he was able to move on to other things [successfully] because he wrote such good songs. The music was, well, fucking fantastic.

[b]Dylan [about his words at the ECLU]: I was like an ousider, anyway. I’d come to town an outsider, and still, in a lot of ways…I was more outside than I ever was, really. They were trying to make me an insider to some kind of trip they were on. I don’t think so.

…

Dylan: An artist has got to be careful never to really arrive at a place where he thinks he is “at” somewhere. You always have to realize that you’re constantly in the state of becoming, you know.

…

Dylan: I can’t self-analyze my own work and I wasn’t going to cater to the crowd because I knew certain people like it, and certain people didn’t like it. I had gotten in the door when no one was looking. I was in there now, and there was nothing anybody from then on could ever do about it.

…

Bobby Neuwirth: In those days, artistic success was not dollar-driven. It was, you know…Those were simpler times. If you had something to say, which was basically the way people were rated. They’d say “Have you seen Ornette Coleman?” And you’d say, “Does he have anything to say?” And it was the same with Bob Dylan or anybody else. Do they have anything to say or not?

…

Bobby Neuwirth [reacting to Dylan’s music]: No one had ever heard anything like this. They’d never heard anything like it before.

…

D.A. Pennebaker: We showed him the first rough cut of Don’t Look Back. What he saw must have made him look like he was bare bones. And I think that was a big shock to him. But then he saw, I think the second night, he saw that it was total theatre. It didn’t matter. He was an actor, and he suddenly had invented himself as the actor within this movie, and it was okay.

…

Joan Baez: Bob is one of the most complex human beings I’ve ever met. I think at first I tried to figure this guy out. No. I gave it up, and so I don’t know. I don’t know what he thought about, all I know is what he gave us.

…

Paul Nelson: Rock n roll was considered a real sellout music for a lot of folk fans and “Like a Rolling Stone” seemed like a direct slap in the face to everything that topical songs represented. “How does it feel to be on your own”. And they took it as this most extremely negative, you know, selfish statement basically and it was not better-world-a-coming, you know, it was not that.

…

Reporter: How many people who labor in the same musical vineyard in which you toil, how many are protest singers? That is, people who use their music, and use the songs to protest the uh, social state in which we live today, the matter of war, the matter of crime, or whatever it might be.
Dylan: Um… how many?
Reporter: Yes. How many?
Dylan: Uh, I think there’s about uh, 136.
[People around him giggle. The reporter doesn’t laugh]
Reporter: You say ABOUT 136, or you mean exactly 136?
Dylan: Uh, it’s either 136 or 142.

…

Dylan: I’d just about had it, though, I’d had it with the whole scene. And, uh, whether I knew it or didn’t know it, I was, uh, lookin’ to quit for a while.
Reporter: Well, what about the scene? What had you “had it with”? What about the scene were you sick of?
Dylan: Uh, well, ya know, people like you, people like, uh, ya know, just, ya know, like bein’ pressed and hammered and, uh, bein’ expected to answer questions. It’s enough to make anybody sick, really. [/b]

[iambiguous]

I still recall the time my ex-wife and I were coming home from the Enoch Pratt library on a bus. We were sitting in the back when a woman got on and sat down in the front. I looked at her and then I nudged my wife. She looked at her. And then we looked at each other. This woman looked remarkably like my wife. I mean really, really like her. But she never looked back at us and neither my wife nor I made any attempt to bring this to her attention. She got off the bus a short time later and it was all over.

On the other hand, I have never come upon anyone that I thought really, really looked like me. Others pointed to men they thought looked like me but I just didn’t see it. It is true of course that somewhere in the world is someone who looks the most like you. But what are the odds that you will ever see each other. It’s just that I think that my ex-wife did. And they both live in the same town.

What’s it all mean? Nothing as far as I have ever been able to discern. Just a strange coincidence. But there is always a part of us that wishes it might be connected to something more.

Here is one of them. There is the other. The one here is drop dead gorgeous and so is the one there. But the one here literally drops dead gorgeous. A heart attack. And so the other one goes into mourning.

It’s all a bit preternatural to me. But there is so much about existence that is, if nothing else, kind of “spooky”. Yet I have never experienced any sense of my own doppelganger “out there” somewhere in the world.

And then there is the music and the photography here. Both are equally gorgeous.

IMDb

Kieslowski originally wanted Andie MacDowell to play Veronique.

Nope. Wouldn’t have worked. At least not for me.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Double … %A9ronique
trailer: youtu.be/QmnNrgSuQfE

The Double Life of Veronique [La Double Vie de Véronique] 1991
Written in part and directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski

[b]Weronique: I have this strange feeling. I have this feeling that I am not alone.
Father: Not alone?
Weronique: Not alone in the world.
Father: You’re not.
Weronique: I’m not sure.

…

Friend: What’s the matter? Are you sad?
Veronique: No. Yes. I don’t know why. It’s like I’m in mourning.
Friend: Mourning someone?
Veronique: I don’t know.

…

Veronique: I had a strange feeling not long ago. I felt alone, all of a sudden, even though nothing had changed.
Father: Like someone had disappeared from your life?
Veronique: Yes, that’s right. When Mom died, didn’t you feel this way?
Father: But something really had changed then.

…

Alexandre: I want to write a real book now. In this book, there would be a woman, a woman who would answer a stranger’s call. So I was wondering if it was possible. If a woman, psychologically…Well, if it was possible.
Veronique: Why me? Why did you choose me?
Alexandre: Because…I don’t know.

…

Veronique: What else do you want to know about me?
Alexandre: Everything
[Veronique picks up her purse and gently dumps the contents on the bed in front of him]

…

Veronique: Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with why you chose me, or maybe it does. All my life, I’ve felt I was here and elsewhere. It’s hard to put in words, I know, But I always sense what I need to do.

…

Alexandre: That’s a beautiful photograph. You with that big coat.
[Veronique looks at the picture]
Veronique: That’s not me.
Alexandre: Sure it is.

…

Veronique [looking at the puppet Alexandre has made]: Is that me?
Alexandre: Of course it’s you.
Veronique: Why make two?
Alexandre: Because during performances I handle them a lot. They get damaged.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Musicals? Hardly ever watch them. Hardly ever get them. I’m like Jeff, maybe: I don’t understand. In musicals, why do they start to sing and dance all of a sudden? I mean, I don’t suddenly start to sing and dance.

And even with this film, I fast forward at the “song and dance” bits.

It’s just that, for folks like us, there is something disjointed about a narrative unfolding in such a bizarre manner. Especially this grim narrative. There are the parts that break your heart and the parts that infuriate you. Singing and dancing…like this was My Fair Lady or something? It just doesn’t work for me.

Call it a personal prejudice.

Just as you might call it it a political prejudice when I react to a world where people are forced to endure certain things simply because they do not have the monetary wherewithal to access remedies. I know there are people who are fortunate enough never to have known what it is like to barely scrape by from week to week. And I know that some of them concoct political narratives so as to shift the blame for this solely on those that do. And, sure, that is not entirely irrelevant at times. But their simplistic ideological agendas leave no room at all for complexity, for ambiguity, for contingency, chance and change. Aside of course from those who suddenly find themselves caught up in it all themselves.

Here is a woman who is saving up every penny she can so that her son can have an operation to keep him from going blinding like she is going blind. So naturally if her own blindness interferes with that she has no one to blame but herself. Besides, she is only a lowly factory worker.

Then she gets caught up in a web of lies that flows from one man’s life of quiet desparation. The lies then become twisted further into the sort of “truth” we see unfold all too often in America’s criminal “justice” system.

This all takes place in the State of Washington in 1964. Was it really the case then and there that a mother would have to choose between money for a lawyer [to save her life] or money for an operation [to save her son’s sight]? I don’t know. But we do know that folks less well off than others “in reality” face tradeoffs like this everyday.

IMDb

[b]Lars von Trier has said that each morning before filming, Björk would say “Mr. von Trier, I despise you,” and spit at him.

Lars von Trier originally cast himself as the angry man who chastises Selma and Cathy in the movie theater. However, due to the contentious on-set relationship between himself and Björk, he feared that he might end up losing control and overacting, so the part went to Michael Flessas instead.

Premiere voted this movie as one of “The 25 Most Dangerous Movies”.[/b]

In a word: Huh?! Or I suppose one could call it dangerous in that it exposes so much in life that is a sham.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancer_in_the_Dark
trailer: youtu.be/53vr9EiOH7g

DANCER IN THE DARK [2000]
Written and directed by Lars von Trier

[b]Selma: Something up, Bill?
Bill: No, no, I just couldn’t sleep, that’s all.
[pause]
Bill: I have no money. All the money that I inherited is…It’s gone. And Linda… Linda… She spends and spends. And my salary’s nowhere near enough. I can’t say no to her. The bank’s gonna repossess the house because I’m so far behind on the payments. And I’m gonna lose Linda. I know it. I know I am.

…

Bill: I shouldn’t have told you.
Selma: Don’t worry.
Bill: Shouldn’t have told you.
Selma: It’s okay. Don’t worry.
Bill: No, I think you’ve got enough…stuff.
Selma: Would it make you feel better if I told you a secret?
Bill: What secret could you tell me?
Selma: I’m going blind. Not yet, but…soon. Maybe sometime this year.

…

Selma: Well, I came to America because in America, they can give Gene an operation. You know?
Bill: Gene?
Selma: He doesn’t know about it. You…you mustn’t tell him, because then it could get worse. I just have to save up money, you know, enough money to…Oh, I almost got it. To, uh… For the operation.
Bill: And that’s why you put in all these hours and do all these pins and do everything you do. For him. For his operation.
Selma: Well, it is my fault. I guess…
Bill: How is it your fault?
Because l…I knew he would…he would have bad eyes like me. But I had him all the same. [/b]

Why the fuck should some parents have to go through this merely because they were born and brought up on the wrong side of the tracks?

[b]Selma: You like the movies, don’t you?
Bill: I love the movies. I just love the musicals.
Selma: But isn’t it annoying when they do the last song in the films?
Bill: Why?
Selma: Because you just know when it goes really big… and the camera goes like out of the roof and you just know it’s going to end. I hate that. I would leave just after the next to last song and the film would just go on forever.

…

Jeff: I don’t understand. In musicals, why do they start to sing and dance all of a sudden? I mean, I don’t suddenly start to sing and dance.

…

Jeff: You can’t see, can you?
Selma: What is there to see?

…

Selma: But you have put my money in it, haven’t you? To make it look like it’s yours.
Bill: I tried to shoot myself, but…I couldn’t do that either.
Selma: But it’s my money, Bill. I’m gonna have to take it.

…

Bill: Selma, stop. I’m pointing my gun at you, Selma.
Selma: I don’t believe you. You’re just trying to scare me. I can’t see a gun.
[he approaches, let’s her feel the gun]
Bill: Selma…Just…feel this. Feel this. Just feel it! Feel it! Do you believe I have the gun?
Selma: I believe you. But it’s my money.[/b]

He’s a slimeball. But he is also a desparate slimeball.

Prosecutor: So why did you kill him, actually? If I may be so bold to ask?
Selma: He asked me to.
Prosecutor: He did? How intriguing. A man with a fine career and some wealth, a happy marriage, why would this Bill Houston ask you to kill him?
Selma: I promised not to say.

Here’s where you begin to grasp just how differently folks can see themsleves in the world. Or rather here is where I point out that never in a million years could I imagine it myself as she does. The blind leading the blind.

[b]Selma [to prison guard]: You know, when I used to work in the factory…I used to dream that I was in a musical, because, in a musical, nothing dreadful ever happens.

…

Jeff [referring to Gene]: Why did you have him? You knew he would have the same disease as you.
Selma: I just wanted to hold a little baby.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Young girl moves from the big city to a “backwoods hick town”. She becomes involved [entangled] in relationships with both her teacher and the town stoner. So, lots of opportunity here for drama. Then it just comes down [as it always does] to how sophisticated the narrative becomes in exploring it.

On the other hand, I am so far out of touch now with the mentality that might pervade a small town high school, I have no way of knowing just how close to or far away from “reality” this film is. On the other hand, I do see examples of the mindless mentality of American Youth on display in the media…and so often I’ve got to assume it is pretty damned close. But then I suspect few are more cynical about Pop Culture than I am. Among other things, I hold it in utter contempt.

Here however much depends on how you react to Caroline. If you like her you like the movie. I liked her a lot. It’s not that no part of her isn’t infected by the American Youth Syndrome. It’s all the parts that seem to have been yanked clear of it.

This is really just one more snapshot of how fractured the culture has become. And it sure as shit helps to explain the explosion of drug use. Then they just keep feeding on each other to make things worse and worse. Or better and better if you’re actually into this shit.

Of course all of this revolves around the beautiful people.

Look for Travis Bickle.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daydream_Nation_(film
traler: youtu.be/kGGyhDvpzok

DAYDREAM NATION [2010]
Written and directed by Michael Goldbach

[b]Caroline [voiceover]: The year this story takes place is the year nearly everything happened to me. It was the year I moved from the city to a backwards hick town to finish high school. It was the year an industrial fire wouldn’t stop burning just outside of town. The year my dad first discovered an itch that much later became cancer and later still took all his hair and then his life. It was the year a serial killer wearing a white suit roamed the county, leaving pretty young kids dead in his wake. But mostly it was the year when I tried to become someone else for a while and for the first time went crazy insane for love. And it seemed that the whole world was about to end.

…

Security guard [taking a metal lighter out of her purse]: What’s this?
Caroline: A bowling ball.

…

Caroline: The guys here are just so immature and sexist. And the girls are worse. They eat it up – no self-respect. And it’s just all so different from where we’re supposed to be at this point in women’s history, you know?
Barry [her treacher]: Yeah. I wish I could argue.

…

Barry [to Caroline]: I have a hard time believing that Monica Lewinski is the historical figure you most admire.

…

Thurston [talking about Caroline]: A girl like that is born with a boyfriend, I guess.
Rolly: So, you steal her away.

…

Caroline [to Barry]: So, how was Miss Budge in the sack? Did she wear her whistle?

…

Jenny [seeing Caroline in the restroom]: Ugh, slut.
Caroline: What did you call me?
Jenny: I think I just called you a slut, slut.
Caroline: Why?
Jenny: Because everyone knows that you’ve banged, like, forty different guys since you came here.
Caroline: Really? Forty?
[pauses to look in mirror]
Caroline: Okay, let’s just say that I have banged forty guys. What’s the problem? You’re just jealous because you’ve been, ah, brainwashed by puritanical assholes who think sex is a sin. But then again, your, ah, little gerbil-sized brain has been reprogrammed by the media to believe that sex is the be-all, end-all. So now you’re stuck, right? 'Cause on the one hand you love to fuck, but afterwards you feel overwhelmed by guilt & you’re not sure why. Maybe it’s because sex is neither as good or as evil as you’ve built it up to be.
Jenny [hurt pause]: Shut up, slut!
Caroline: Jenny, seriously, listen to me! The highlight of your entire life is gonna be your yearbook photo. You are already nostalgic for shit that has not even happened yet 'cause you have so precious little to look forward to. You’re gonna spend the first half of your life planning your wedding & you’re gonna spend the second half regretting it. And if I were you - and thank god I’m not, 'cause you have terrible hair - I would stop and I would reconsider your whole value system, because everything you think you know is wrong.

…

Caroline [voiceover]: I know you probably think I’m a manipulative bitch for sleeping with two guys, but try looking at it this way: the sexual revolution is just like any other revolution. There are going to be casualties.[/b]

But she is so much more than just beautiful though. She is one of the few young folks on which youth has not been wasted.

[b]Enid [to Thurston]: I can’t believe he kept the cupcakes!

…

Lily [after kissing Thomas]: If you tell anyone, I’ll kill your whole family.

…

Mr. Wexler: And what about your husband?
Enid: Oh, he passed. About three years ago.
Mr. Wexler: He died?
Enid: Well, I don’t know…but I’d like to think so.

…

The serial killer: It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault…I was raised to hate.

…

Caroline [voiceover]: People will tell you nothing matters, the whole world’s about to end soon anyway. Those people are looking at life the wrong way. I mean, things don’t need to last forever to be perfect.[/b]

I don’t know about that. Of course it always makes more sense to think things like this when you are young.

[iambiguous]

Everything [and everyone] eventually expires. So, sure, why not turn it into a philosophical issue. In fact, why not take the time to ponder the implications of this for hours on end. For example, what if memories had expiration dates? Or love?

That’s what Cop 223 does. He thinks about stuff like this. In fact, he has insights into lots of ordinary everyday…things. Of course there is also the part about crime and criminals. How much? Well, let’s just say this is one of Quenton Tarantino’s favorite films.

At least in in the “first story”.

Not that Cop 223 doesn’t also reserve time for love and human remains. This is the modern world. And how much different can things really be in Hong Kong.

And then the “second story”. Cop 663. He just walks a beat. But in the same general vicinity as Cop 223. His thing? He likes to talk to inanimate objects.

And Faye? California Dreamin’ generally. One thing for sure. You don’t want her anywhere near your apartment.

One of the strangest love stories ever filmed.

IMDb

The title is an amalgamation of two “landmarks” in Hong Kong. 1) Chungking Mansions, a drug-filled, rundown hostel populated by Indians, Pakistanis and Nepalese. 2) Midnight Express, a Indian fastfood store in Lan Kwai Fong, a major bar district populated by foreign yuppies.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chungking_Express
trailer: youtu.be/6pBeOHC2BWo

CHUNGKING EXPRESS [Chung Hing Sam Lam] 1994
Written and directed by Kar Wai Wong

[b]He Qiwu [voiceover]: Everyday we brush past so many other people. People we may never meet or people who may become close friends. I’m a cop, No. 223. My name’s He Qiwu.

…

He Qiwu [voiceover]: This was the closest we ever got. Just 0.01 of a centimeter between us. But 57 hours later…I fell in love with this woman.[/b]

That’s the woman in the blonde wig. She’s into human trafficking and dope smuggling. I think. That and cold blooded murder.

[b]He Qiwu [voiceover]: We’re all unlucky in love sometimes. When I am, I go jogging. The body loses water when you jog, so you have none left for tears.

…

He Qiwu [voiceover]: We split up on April Fool’s Day. So I decided to let the joke run for a month. Every day I buy a can of pineapple with a sell-by date of May 1. May loves pineapple, and May 1 is my birthday. If May hasn’t changed her mind by the time I’ve bought thirty cans, then our love will also expire.

…

Woman in blonde wig [voiceover]: Some men might sacrifce their own kid to save their skin…but he wasn’t one of them.

…

He Qiwu [voiceover]: Somehow everything comes with an expiration date. Swordfish expires. Meat sauce expires. Even cling-film expires. Is there anything in the world which doesn’t?

…

He Qiwu: I finally found my 30th can. As May 1 begins, realization dawns. In May’s eyes, I’m no different from a can of pineapple.

…

He Qiwu: I never dreamed two Mays could dump me in one night. To get over it, I promise myself never to go out with another girl named May.

…

Woman in blonde wig [voiceover]: Actually, really knowing someone doesn’t mean anything. People change. A person may like pineapple today and something else tomorrow.

…

He Qiwu [to the woman in the blonde wig]: Wanna jog?

…

He Qiwu [voiceover]: On May 1, 1994…a woman wishes me a happy birthday. Now I’ll remember her all my life. If memories could be canned, would they also have expiration dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries.

…

Cop 663: That was as close as we ever got; we were just 0.01cm from each other. I knew nothing about her. Six hours later, she fell in love with another man.

…

Cop 663: You like noisy music?
Faye: Yes. The louder the better. Stops me from thinking.
Cop 663: You don’t like to think? What do you like?
Faye: Never thought about it.

…

Air Hostess [in dear john letter to Cop 633]: “Change of flight. Your plane cancelled. Here’s your key. Bye.”[/b]

Everyone in the restaurant reads it but Cop 633.

[b]Faye [just as Cop 633 opens his front door and finds her standing there with a bag of goldfish]: What are you doing here?
Cop 633: I live here.
Faye: You live here?
Cop 633: Why are you here?
Faye: Buying goldfish.
Cop 633: No one here sells goldfish.
Faye: No.
Cop 633: You came to buy goldfish?
Faye: Yes.
Cop 633: Buy them or sell them?
Faye: What do you mean?

…

Cop 633: Hmm. Even the sardines taste different.

…

Cop 633 [voiceover]: Once the snack bar manager had gone I started talking to the beer bottles.

…

Faye: Where’s my cousin?
Cop 633: He opened a karaoke bar. Said he needed a change. So I took over here. Didn’t he tell you?
Faye: I haven’t seen him.
Cop 633: He has great business sense. First he sold me fish and chips, then the whole thing.

…

Faye: Where do you want to go?
Cop 633: Wherever you want to take me.[/b]