philosophy in film

Given the staggering enormity that is the Second World War, there must be hundreds upon hundreds of movies still to be made. Though none of them will ever be the one pointed to as the turning point in the effort stop the next “great war”. And if you haven’t guessed that by now I won’t make the attempt to disillusion you. And then there are still all the little wars to lament.

People can’t do these things. People do these things. And some will always do it in the name of morality. They rationalize the ignominious means in order that they be in accordance with the lofty ends.

And let’s not forget, the Nazis were far removed from nihilism. All of these terrible things were done [at least by many] in the name of idealism. The autocratic minds of authoritarians and objectivists.

This is just a speck in the war. Like we are all just specks in the grand scheme of things. How is it even possible to connects the dots between them?

We do things with the best of intentions. We do things because we understand a situation in a particular way. Then there are terrible consequences for what we do. And some carry the guilt until, finally, it consumes them. But others do not. Everything for them revolves precisely around intention and perspective.

wiki

Sarah’s Key follows an American journalist’s present-day investigation into the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup of Jews in German-occupied Paris in 1942. It tells the story of young girl Sarah’s experiences during and after these events, illustrating the participation of the French bureaucracy while also showing how other French citizens hid and protected Sarah from Vichy France authorities.

Vel d’hiv roundup in depth at wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vel%27_d%27Hiv_Roundup

trailer:
youtu.be/LzDZ9e3mGRE

SARAH’S KEY [Elle s’appelait Sarah] 2010
Written and directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner

[b]Editor: I guess Chirac’s speech in '95 at the Vel D’Hiv has finally served some purpose.
Young Journalist: Chirac at the what?
Editor: Vel D’Hiv.
Young Reporter: How do you spell that?
Editor [laughing]: You’re joking?
Young Reporter: What happened?
Julia: On the 16th and 17th of July '42, they arrested 13,000 Jews, mostly women and children. They took 8,000 of them and put them in the Velodrome d’Hiver, in inhuman conditions.
Editor: Imagine the Superdome in New Orleans, only a million times worse.
Julia: A million times worse. And then they sent them to the camps.

Mike: No images? That’s weird. Normally, they were really good at that. They documented everything, the Nazis. That’s what they were known for.
Julia: Mike! This was not the Germans, it was the French.

Mother: Surely, they would never send the children to work camps.

Anna [to Sarah]: Think only of yourself. Yourself.

Father: Arrest my son! Please arrest my son!

Sarah [taking the key from her father’s hand after he’s been knocked to the ground]: See? Why didn’t you trust me? Why didn’t you give her the key?
Father: Why did you lock him in? Do you realize what you’ve done? Do you realize? Do you realize?!

Old man [enroute to camp]: See this ring? It contains poison. Nobody in the world can choose when I die. Nobody!

Father: Your mother must never find out, you understand? She was out that day.
Julia: What day?
[a long pause]
Father: The day the girl came back.
Julia: What happened to Sarah?
Father: From 1942 to his death, Dad never once spoke her name. Sarah was part of the secret. Whenever I asked where she was, what happened to her, he told me to be quiet.

Julia: In one week, you sign the deal of the century. No money worries for 150 years! Grown-up daughter, beautiful apartment from deported Jews…
Bertrand: What did you just say?

Colleague: Your article is amazing Julia. When I think all this happened right in the middle of Paris in front of everyone it’s absolutely disgusting.
Julia: And how do you know what you would have done?
Colleague: What do you mean?
Julia: If you had been there, how do you know what you would have done?
Mike: I would have just watched it all on television, you know like the bombings of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan…

Sarah’s mother-in-law: It was in 1966. The truck driver claimed she swerved towards him and there was nothing he could do.

Sarah’s mother-in-law: Their son left to Italy.
Julia: She had a son?
Nathilde: Willian, my half-brother.
Sarah’s mother-in-law: He was nine when Sarah had her accident.

Julia: I just wanted to know the truth.
Bertrand: The truth? The journalist’s quest. So where does it get us now, this bright shiny truth?
Julia: The truth has a price, whether you like it or not.

William: Dad, why didn’t you tell me? My whole life is a lie. My whole life.
Father: William, try to understand. For your mother, if you were Jewish, your life was in danger. Right after you were born she rushed out of the hospital. Went to church to get you baptized. We’re all the product of history.

William [holding up a key]: What’s this?

Julia Jarmond [voiceover]: And so I write this for you, my Sarah. With the hope that one day, when you’re old enough, this story that lives with me, will live with you as well. When a story is told, it is not forgotten. It becomes something else, a memory of who we were; the hope of what we can become.[/b]

Come on, the “war against terror” has been the tail wagging the dog now for over 30 years. Once the Commies tore down their walls, the military industrial complex, the war economy and national security state needed a new bogeyman. And thus was born “the endless war” against jihad. And then, almost miraculously, 9/11 sealed the deal. It couldn’t have been better if they had planned it themselves.

And while I don’t go that far, I have no illusions about those who pull the strings behind the curtains. Of course it helps to have a really dumb audience. Or a really ignorant one.

Already, our presidential campaigns are scripted to the point they may as well be produced in Hollywood.

IMDb

[b]After this film started production and before its release, US President Bill Clinton became involved in a sex scandal and threatened military action against Iraq.

During the filming of Wag the Dog Dustin Hoffman, his co-star Robert De Niro and director Barry Levinson had an impromptu meeting with President ‘Bill Clinton’ at a Washington hotel. “So what’s this movie about?” Clinton asked De Niro. De Niro looked over to Levinson, hoping he would answer the question. Levinson, in turn, looked over to Hoffman. Hoffman, realizing there was no one else to pass the buck to, is quoted as saying, “So I just started to tap dance. I can’t even remember what I said.”[/b]

WAG THE DOG
Directed by Barry Levinson

[b]Titlecard: Why does the dog wag its tail? Because the dog is smarter than the tail. If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog.

Winifred: That’s him. That’s Mr Fix-it.

Connie: So, it’s not the illegal nanny thing? What is it?
Staffer: A group of Firefly Girls were here last month…The president took one of them in the office behind the Oval Office. The girl’s alleging…
[Staffer hands him the report. Connie reads it]
Connie: Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Connie: And it’s most certainly not about the B-3 bomber.
John: There is no B-3 bomber.
Connie: I just said that! There is no B-3 bomber. I don’t know why these rumors get started!

Connie [repeated line]: I’m working on it.

Winnifred: Tell me again.
Connie: Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing new. During the Reagan adminustration, 240 Marines were killed in Beirut. 24 hours later, we invade Grenada. That’s the M.O… Change the subject, change the lead.

Connie: What’s the thing people remember about the Gulf War? A bomb falls down a chimney and blows up a building. The building could have been made out of Legos.

Winifred: Why Albania?
Connie: Why not?
Winifred: What have they done to us?
Connie: What have they done for us? What do you know about them?
Winifred: Nothing.
Connie: See? They keep to themselves. Shifty. Standoffish.

Stanley: Okay you bought yourself a day or two.
Connie: All I need is 11 till the election.
Stanley: This isn’t going to hold for 11 days. He fucked a Girl Scout.

Connie: What do you think would hold it off, Mr. Motss?
Stanley: Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. You’d have to have a war.

Stanley: I’m in show business, why come to me?
Connie: War is show business, Mr. Motss, that’s why we’re here.

Stanley: No no no no no, fuck freedom.

Fad King: We’re locked into Albania. Why?
Johnny Dean: Albania’s hard to rhyme.
Stanley: What are you looking at me for? It’s the name of the country.
Johnny Dean [sighs resignedly, then sings]: “Albania, Albania…”
Stanley: That rhymes.

Tracy: What would they do to me if I did tell someone about this?
Connie: They could come to your house in the middle of the night and kill you.

Stanley [repeated line]: This is nothing.

Stanley: They used the same process here as in the last Schwarzenegger movie. And this is only the beginning. Wait till we get to the song, image, merchandising tie-ins.

CIA Agent Young: There are two things I know to be true. There’s no difference between good flan and bad flan, and there is no war.
Connie: Of course there’s a war. I’m watching it on TV.

Stanley: Neal can’t end the war. He’s not producing this.

Connie: The CIA cut them a better deal.

Stanley: The war isn’t over until I say it’s over. This is my picture. This is not the CIA’s picture.

Connie: If Henry Kissinger can win the Peace Prize I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I had won the Preakness.

Stanley: The President will be a hero. He brought peace.
Connie: But there was never a war.
Stanley: All the greater accomplishment.

Winifred: So when we touch down tomorrow, Big Bird is going to meet Schumann at the airport, huh?
Stanley: Big mistake, big mistake. You gotta bring them in by stages. Big mistake to reveal Schumann before the election.
Winifred: How so?
Stanley: Sweetheart, Schumann is the shark. Okay? Schumann is Jaws. You have to tease them. You gotta tease them. You don’t put Jaws in the first reel of the movie. It’s the contract, sweetheart. The contract of the election, whether they know it or not, is “Vote for me Tuesday, Wednesday I’ll produce Schumann.” See, that’s what they’re paying their seven bucks for.

Winifred: What did he do?
Stanley: He raped a nun…
Winifred: Oh, God. Oh, God. Jes - Oh, God!
Stanley: And…
Winifred: “And”? I don’t want to know an “and”. Why is there an “and”?
Stanley: Look, look, look, look, look. He’s fine as long as he gets his medication…
Winifred: And if he doesn’t get his medications?
Stanley: He’s not fine.

Sergeant Schumann: Who are you? Who are you sons of bitches?!

Winifred: Oh, God. What do we do now? Huh? Huh? What do we do now, huh, boy producer? Huh? Mister win-an-Emmy, social-conscience, whale-shit, save-the-rain-forest, peacenik-commie, fuckin’-hire-a-convict-shithead? Huh? What do we do now, liberal, affirmative action, shithead, peacenik commie fuck? What do you want to do now?
Stanley: This is nothing! Piece of cake.

Stanley: It’s okay, he’s not dead.
[gunshot]
Stanley: Uh, strike that.

Stanley: You think I did this for money? I did this for credit.
Connie: You always knew you couldn’t take the credit.
Stanley: But I’m not going to stand here and let two dickheads from film school take it.

Stanley: Look at that! That is a complete fucking fraud, and it looks a hundred percent real. It’s the best work I’ve ever done in my life, because it’s so honest.

Stanley: They told me I couldn’t remake Moby Dick from the point of view of the whale. But I did it. $450 million domestic.

News reporter: And turning to the Hollywood page famed film producer Stanley R. Motss died suddenly of a massive heart attack while sunbathing poolside.

Newscaster: This just in. A group calling itself “Albania Unite” has claimed responsibility for the bombing moments ago of the village of Klos, Albania. The president was unavailable for comment but General William Scott of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says he has no doubt we’ll be sending planes and troops back in to finish the job.[/b]

The critics hated this one. But I suspect some of that was aimed at the subject matter. Who wants to have this shoved in their face? But there it is.

I tend to approach it more as did Roger Ebert [who gave it 3 stars out of 4]:

“8mm is a real film. Not a slick exploitation exercise with all the trappings of depravity but none of the consequences. Not a film where moral issues are forgotten in the excitement of an action climax.”

And yet some suggest the cause of morality is dealth a blow when “the Machine” explains his motivation for doing these things.

You have to dig deep down under the bottom of the barrel to find the scum that populate this world. Those who make the stuff and those rich enough to purchase it. Stuff and snuff. As in the real thing.

IMDb

The actress (Jenny Powell) playing the character of Mary Ann Mathews was originally a stripper hired in to act as a stand-in. Joel Schumacher gave her the part of the victim on the 8mm film as she had a suitably “haunted” look about her.

8MM [1999]
Directed by Joel Schumacher

[b]Tom: I want you to listen carefully. What you’re talking about is a “snuff film.” But, from what I know, snuff films are a kind of…urban myth. There’s no such thing, I can assure you. Please, believe me. This is probably an S&M film of some sort. Simulated rape, simulated violence. Hard to stomach, and it might seem real, but there are ways of making it look realistic…fake blood and special effects.

Tom [speaking to missing girl’s mother]: Can you tell me if you had to make a choice…if you were forced to choose between imagining her out there somewhere living a good life…being happy…but you don’t know…you never find out…or the worst being true…her being gone…but you know…you finally know what’s happened to her.
Mother: What would I choose?
Tom: Yes.
Mother: I would choose to know.

Max [to porn store customer]: Hey! It’s like a gas station, you pay before you pump!

Max: I can hook you up, though. You name the vice I name the price.

Max: It’s not too late to change your mind about this. There are some things that you see, and then you can’t unsee them.

Max [about the porn industry]: All I’m saying is…it can get to you.
Tom: No worries. Thanks for the warning, though.
Max: You’re welcome. Pops. Just remember. If you dance with the devil, the devil don’t change. The devil changes you.

Max: There’s two kinds of specialty product; legal and illegal. Foot fetish, shit films, watersports, bondage, spanking, fisting, she- males, hemaphrodites…it’s beyond hardcore, but legal. This is the kind of hardcore where one guy’s going to look at it and throw up, another guy looks at it and falls in love. Now, with some of the S+M and bondage films, they straddle the line. How are you supposed to tell if the person tied up with the ball gag in their mouth is a consenting or not? Step over that line, you’re into kiddie porn. Rape films, but there aren’t many. I’ve never seen one.

Max: You’ve got Penthouse, Playboy, Hustler, etc. Nobody even considers them pornography anymore. Then, there’s mainstream hardcore. Triple X. The difference is penetration. That’s hardcore. That whole industry’s up in the valley. Writers, directors, porn stars. They’re celebrities, or they think they are. They pump out 150 videos a week. A week. They’ve even got a porno Academy Awards. America loves pornography. Anybody tells you they never use pornography, they’re lying. Somebody’s buying those videos. Somebody’s out there spending 900 million dollars a year on phone sex. Know what else? It’s only gonna get worse. More and more you’ll see perverse hardcore coming into the mainstream, because that’s evolution. Desensitization. Oh my God, Elvis Presley’s wiggling his hips, how offensive! Nowadays, Mtv’s showing girls dancing around in thong bikinis with their asses hanging out. Know what I mean? For the porn-addict, big tits aren’t big enough after a while. They have to be the biggest tits ever. Some porn chicks are putting in breast implants bigger than your head, literally. Soon, Playboy is gonna be Penthouse, Penthouse’ll be Hustler, Hustler’ll be hardcore, and hardcore films’ll be medical films. People’ll be jerking off to women laying around with open wounds. There’s nowhere else for it to go.

Max: What about you, Tom? You got a wife and a daughter and a nice little yellow house and a dog named ‘Shep’. What the hell are you doing here?

Max: Do you get turned on at places like tonight?
Tom: No, I do not.
Max: But you don’t exactly get turned off either, do ya? Devil’s changing you already.

Tom: Whoa, who said anything about a victum?
Max: There’s three rules in life: One, there’s always a victim; two, don’t be it.
Tom: And three?
Max: I forgot that one.

Dino Velvet [holding a picture of Tom’s wife and daughter]: What I could do with faces like these on film. On second thought, why would I need their faces?

Tom: Why would Christian want this?
Longdale: You’re asking me why? Why?!
Tom: Yes, why would he want a film of a…a little girl being butchered?!
Longdale: Because he could! He did it because he could. What other reason were you looking for?

Dino Velvet: Mr. Longdale, if there was no honor among perverts and pornographers, the whole fucking business falls apart.

Tom: Take off the mask.
Higgins [after removing it]: What did you expect, a monster?

Higgins: Can’t get your mind around it, huh? I don’t have any answers. Nothing I can say is going to make you sleep easier at night. I wasn’t beaten. I wasn’t molested. Mommy didn’t abuse me. Daddy never raped me. I’m only what I am. That’s all there is to it. There’s no mystery. The things I do, I do them because I like them. Because I want to.[/b]

What’s it about? From RT:

Yosuke’s first indication that Saeko is quite unlike the other girls is when he spies her stealing cheese from a local market. She later tells him that her body is a spring of water that wells up within her. The only means of relief is by doing something naughty – like shoplifting – or by engaging in a vigorous round of sex.

How vigorous? Really vigorous. But it’s not what you think. Don’t take this one too literally. It’s a “fable”. Among, well, other things.

And then there’s Ramin. I’ve never seen a character quite like him in a Japanese film. Not in the boonies.

And Taro, the philosopher. And even a lesson in neutrinos.

WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE
Written and directed by Shôhei Imamura

[b]Saeko: You must never tell anyone about the water.
Yosuke: The water?

Yosuke: A first for me too.

Yosuke: Promise me you will stop stealing. If it does happen again, I could help out.

Taro: Man’s been a lecher all through history. The ruling class never had to worry about survival. They could devote all their energies to food and sex. You know why?
Yosuke: They had nothing else to do?
Taro: No. Because that’s been the ideal life since ancient times. Squeeze what they could from the peasants. Then enjoy a degenerate life.

Taro: People today are sick. Too learned to honestly admit to their desires. Forget all the trivialities and throw yourself into lasciviousness.[/b]

And don’t get him talking about hard-ons.

[b]Saeko: I expected the 21st century to be different. But everything is still the same.

Taro: Keep on thinking until your brain cells start to rot.
Tosuke: My boss always said I thought too much.
Taro: That only proves you don’t think enough. The corporate culture…you see they don’t want the workers to think. They want fools who’ll work all their lives without complaining. Just like jail.

Taro: Lose your free will, and you lose your humanity. But in the end, it’s all in the hands of the gods.[/b]

Or at the behest of nature. Maybe one day I will actually understand what to me is a preposterous [and hopelessly contradictory] point of view.

[b]Saeko [to Tosuke]: For you it was just exotic sex, but do you realize how much I suffer? I tried to kill myself many times!

Taro [from the grave]: You know yourself it’s an impossible tale.[/b]

Never seen it done quite like this before. And, based on a true story, it’s all the more remarkable.

As brutal as it is to watch these films, you can never have too many reminders of just how loathesome and despicable the Nazis were. And then the knowledge that not all that far below the surface is the monster they bring out in you. And these guys are not exactly the heroes most folks have in mind.

Rage and fear. Rage and fear. Rage and fear.

That terrible predicament when the future seems unbearable and past is certain death. Just imagine living 14 months in a sewer. And them being the lucky ones?

trailer:
youtu.be/mcXzWKCxZJg

IN DARKNESS [2011]
Directed by Agnieszka Holland

[b]Socha: I know the sewers better than I know my own wife. It’s no place for you.
Mundek: There is no place at all more us anymore.
Socha: But I know places where it could work. For the right price.

Socha [to Szczepek]: We can always turn them in later. Let’s see how much they’ve got.

Klara [in sewer]: There’s shit everywhere.

Socha: Fucking hell. Everyone and their dog came down!

Socha: You’re bargaining over your own life, just like any other Yid.

Socha: They’re offering rewards for turning in Jews. Some people are making a pile.
Wife: God will punish the greedy.
Socha: The Jews crucified Jesus. It’s written in the Bible. “His blood be upon them and their children.” The priest said so.
Wife: That’s just church politics. Just think about it. Jews are just the same as us. Our Lady and the Apostles, they’re all Jews! Even Jesus.
Socha: Jesus?

Klara: I never thought I’d miss the ghetto.

Yanek: I’ve chosen 7.
Chiger: And who made you God?
Yanek: It was my room. I took all the risk. And the idea was mine, too.
Chiger: Which I am paying for!
Yanek: That makes you better than us?
Chiger: Before the war we would never have been in the same room together![/b]

Then it devolves into a swirl of rationalizations.

[b]Wanda [looking at Szczepek’s watch]: New?
Szczepek: From Mr. Chiger. He’s one of our Jews. Hasn’t Poldek told you about…
Wanda: Jews, Poldek?
Socha: We found some Jews in the sewers.
Wanda: And you’re helping them?
Socha: Wanda, they pay us.
Wanda: So that’s your “raise”.
Socha: You said the Jews were just like us. That Jesus was a Jew.
Wanda: This is different.
Szczepek: Jesus was a Jew? Is that really true? Jesus was a Jew?

Szczepek: What if they talked before they were killed?
Socha: Then we’d be dead by now.
Szczepek: No, Poldek! I can’t help you anymore.

Chiger: I thought you were going to sell them?
Socha: I won’t be coming back. I’m risking my life, my family’s life, for what? Complaints and accusations. And now this betrayal. Enough. This is too much. Szczepek was right.

Vendor: Have you heard? The Germans hanged ten Poles in revenge for a single German soldier.
Socha: A German soldier?
Vendor: But they weren’t satisfied so they shot 40 more people. Or maybe 50, all good, God- fearing Poles. You know, whoever killed that soldier is a hero to me, but the innocent always have to suffer.

Chiger: The baby is dead. She smothered him…Maybe it’s for the best.

Socha: It’s over! It’s over! You can come out now!

Titlecard: “Socha’s Jews” spent 14 months in the sewers of Lvov. On May 12th, 1945, Leopold Socha was killed, saving his daughter from an out-of-control Russian army truck. At his funeral someone said, “It’s God’s ounishment for helping the Jews.” As if we need God to punish each other.[/b]

Well, I guess that let’s Him off the hook.

Titlecard: Kyrstyna Chiger grew up to write her memior, “The Girl in the Green Sweater”, published in 2008. She and the other survivors escaped Soviet Lvov for Israel, Europe and the United States. Leopold and Wanda Socha are among the more than 6,000 Poles honored by Israel as The Righteous Among the Nations. This film is dedicated to all of them.

Of course, the Palestinians might have their own take on Israel’s idea of righteousness.

How good is it? It’s one of those rare films that got a 100% fresh rating at RT with 50 reviews or more [57].

He’s a staid businessman far removed from the world of art and she’s an impassioned actor immersed in it. Her friends are snobs. The possibilities are endless. Especially in France. Or so they want us to believe.

There are so many different ways to be and so many more ways in which to react to them. And every relationship eventually revolves around somehow fitting the parts in conflict together.

Or getting out of it once and for all.

wiki

Speaking to Paris Match in 2004 director Agnès Jaoui said ; “I detest mono-cultures. The problem of identity is something very complicated with me. I am profoundly secular, but if I were attacked for being Jewish, I would scream. And I want the right to say I violently condemn the politics of Ariel Sharon, even if it’s complex. It’s the same thing for Jean-Pierre as it is for me, it is the individual who counts. It’s the social dimension of characters that interests us, not their roots or their heredity. I detest the notion of the inward looking group. It’s this we tried to say in The Taste of Others. Whether it is a religious clan or a group of snobs, it’s the same in our eyes. It’s the same dogma, the same fundamentalism.”

THE TASTE OF OTHERS [Le Goût des Autres] 2000
Directed by Agnès Jaoui

[b]Bruno [to Franck]: I wanted to ask you something, have you ever killed someone?

Bruno: Where did we meet, exactly? I’m sorry…
Manie: It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. We just had sex.

Bruno [to Franck]: Is “200 to 300” a figure of speech?

Clara: What do you call a 40 year old unemployed actress? Redundant.

Franck: Do you know Bruno well?
Manie: No, not very well. We have sex every 10 years.

Bruno: It’s not the same for a man. A man can have sex with whomever. It doesn’t mean anything. I wasn’t talking about you.
Manie: No, no, but I think you are wrong. For plenty of women is doesn’t mean anything either.

Manie: A tobacco store, that doesn’t bother you?
Franck: No, that doesn’t bother me.
Manie: Or a bar?
Franck: What do you mean? Alcohol is legal, so are cigarettes.
Manie: What is this bullshit?
Franck: Don’t use that tone. Are alcohol and cigarettes legal or not.
Manie: Are alcohol and cigarettes harmful or not? They’re ten times worse. But you don’t care. Your problem is that it’s illegal.
Franck: Your arguments won’t help you in jail.
Manie: Why? Will you turn me in?

Clara [of Franck]: He doesn’t get bored doing nothing?
Jean-Jacques: No, that’s his job.

Clara [seeing Jean-Jacques at a play]: What’s he doing here?!
[Antoine waves to him]
Clara: Stop! He’ll come over.
Antoine: He’s really friendly. Why shouldn’t he come over?
Clara: You’re not the one he’ll talk to.

Manie: Your boss seems nice.
Franck: He’s dense. They made fun of him all night. He didn’t even realize it.

Clara [to Manie]: Why “poor guy”? He put himself in this situation. He comes, it’s one stupid thing after another, and in the end, he picks up the tab!

Antoine: He’s happy, but a lot of journalists didn’t show up.
Jean-Jacques: You mean they said they would show up but they didn’t. What a bunch of fags.
Antoine: Fags? What do you mean?
Jean-Jacques: You know, fags.
Antoine: You mean ass-fuckers like my friends and I?

Jean-Jacques: I apologize for what I said earlier. I spoke without thinking.
Antoine: Yes, you did.

Clara: Perhaps I have too many scruples.
Antoine: And I don’t?
Clara: You’re taking advantage of him. It makes me uneasy.
Antoine: Absolutely not. What are you talking about? He enjoy’s Benoit’s work and wants a fresco. What’s the problem?
Clara: Antoine, you know what I mean. Don’t tell me that Castella enjoys Benoit’s work. Castella doesn’t know anything. He’s spending his money, and you make him believe that you’re friends.

Jean-Jacques: I don’t understand. Why do you say that he’s taking advantage of me? I like these paintings and I buy them, that’s all. What’s the problem? Why did you think I was buying them? You thought it was to please you? Is that it? To make a good impression?
Clara: I don’t know. Maybe.
Jean-Jacques: You didn’t imagine for a minute that I could…like them? Is that what you think of me? Don’t worry. I like them.

Angélique: Flucky is happy. He doesn’t understand nastiness or hypocrisy. He’s content running everywhere. He’s happy. He doesn’t bother a soul or know how ugly the world is.
Bruno: The world is what it is. We deal with it.
Angélique: I don’t want to! It’s too disgusting, too awful. I’m not interested!
Bruno: You should move to Disneyland.

Clara: Do you know if Castella is coming?
Antoine: Castella? Why? You were afraid I’d invite him?
Clara: I invited him.[/b]

No smart phones and no Internet here. But in other respects it was anticipated that, by 2001, we would be considerably more advanced then we are even now. A colony on the Moon? A trip to Jupiter? Not quite. But some things always seemed to stay the same back then in Hollywood: It’s a [white] man’s world.

But there is still the part about the wonder of it all. What does the Monolith represent if not that? The interpretations are vast and varied. As are speculations regarding what the movie itself “means”?

Start here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreta … ce_Odyssey

HAL may well be the star here. This is artifical intelligence that immediately implicates all the conflicting arguments regarding what the hell that even means. After all, if the determinists are right we may well just be nature’s own rendition of it. Is intelligence artificial if it has no no capacity to be other than what it must be given the laws of physics? What does it even mean then for HAL to attribute something to “human error”?

IMDb “trivia” about the film— all 90 items:
imdb.com/title/tt0062622/trivia?tab=gf

Also the IMDb “FAQs”. Some really interesting stuff here.
imdb.com/title/tt0062622/faq

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
Written and directed by Stanley Kubrick

[b]Female computerized voice: Welcome to Voiceprint Identification. When you see the red light go on, would you please state in the following order: your destination, your nationality, and your full name; surname first, Christian name and initial.

Dr. Smyslov: Dr. Floyd, at the risk of pressing you on a point you seem reticent to discuss, may I ask you a straightforward question?
Dr. Floyd: Certainly.
Dr. Smyslov: Quite frankly, we have had some very reliable intelligence reports that a quite serious epidemic has broken out at Clavius. Something, apperently, of an unknown origin. Is this, in fact, what has happened?
Dr. Floyd: I’m sorry, Dr. Smyslov, but I’m really not at liberty to discuss this.[/b]

Another thing that never changes.

Dr. Floyd: I understand that beyond it being a matter of principle, many of you are troubled by the concern and anxiety this story of an epidemic might cause your relatives and friends on Earth. I can understand and sympathize with your negative views. I have been personally embarrassed by this cover story. But I fully accept the need for absolute secrecy and I hope you will. It should not be difficult for all of you to realise the potential for cutural shock and social disorientation contained in the present situation if the facts were prematurely and suddenly made public without adequate preparation and conditioning.

Gee, who would have thought that’s how it works?

[b]Dr. Michaels: The evidence seems pretty conclusive that it hasn’t been covered up by natural erosion or other forces. It seems to have been deliberately buried.
Dr. Floyd [intoning awe]: Deliberately buried…

Dr. Floyd: I don’t suppose you have any idea what the damn thing is, huh?
Dr. Michaels: I wish to hell we did. No, the only thing we’re sure of is it was buried four million years ago.

Interviewer: HAL, you have an enormous responsibility on this mission, in many ways perhaps the greatest responsibility of any single mission element. You’re the brain, and central nervous system of the ship, and your responsibilities include watching over the men in hibernation. Does this ever cause you any lack of confidence?
HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.

HAL: I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

Interviewer: In talking to the computer one gets the sense that he is capable of emotional response. For example, when I asked him about his abilities I sensed a certain pride in his answer about his accuracy and perfection. Do you believe HAL has genuine emotions.
Dr Poole: Well, he acts like he has genuine emotions. Of course, he’s programed that way to make it easier for us to talk to him. But as to whether or not he has real feelings that’s something I don’t think anyone can truthfully answer.

HAL: …during the past few weeks I’ve wondered whether you might be having second thoughts about the mission?
Dr. Bowman: How do you mean?
HAL: I’ve never freed myself of the suspicion that there are some extremely odd things about this mission. Certainly no one could have been unaware of the very strange stories floating around before we left. Rumors about something being dug up on the moon. I never gave these much credence but particularly in view of some other things that have happened I find it difficult to put out of my mind. For instance: The way all our preparations were kept under such tight security and the melodramatic touch of putting Drs. Hunter, Kimball and Kaminsky aboard already in hibernation after four months of separate training on their own.

HAL: Just a moment…just a moment…just a moment. I’ve just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It’s going to go 100% failure in 72 hours.

Dr. Bowman: Well, HAL, I’m damned if I can find anything wrong with it.
HAL: Yes, it’s puzzling.

Dr. Bowman: How would you account for this discrepancy between you and the twin 9000?
HAL: Well, I don’t think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before and it is always attributable to human error.

Dr. Poole: Well, whaddya think?
Dr. Bowman: I’m not sure, what do you think?
Dr. Poole: I’ve got a bad feeling about him.
Dr. Bowman: You do?
Dr. Poole: Yeah, definitely. Don’t you?
Dr. Bowman [sighs]: I don’t know; I think so. You know of course though he’s right about the 9000 series having a perfect operational record. They do.
Dr. Poole: Unfortunately that sounds a little like famous last words.

Dr. Poole: Let’s say we put the unit back in and it doesn’t fail? That would pretty much wrap it up as far as HAL was concerned.
Dr. Bowman: Well, we would be in very serious trouble.
Dr. Poole: We would wouldn’t we? There isn’t a single aspect of ship operation that isn’t under his control. We wouldn’t have any choice but disconnection.
Dr. Bowman: I’m afraid I agree with you. But it would be tricky. We’d have to cut his higher brain functions without disturbing the purely automatic and regulatory systems.

Dr. Bowman: You know, another thing just occured to me. As far as I know, no 9000 computer has ever been disconnected.
Dr. Poole: Well, no 9000 computer has ever fouled up before.
Dr. Bowman: That’s not what I mean. I’m not so sure what he’d think about it.

Dr. Bowman: Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dr. Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Dr. Bowman: What’s the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dr. Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dr. Bowman: I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.
Dr. Bowman [feigning ignorance]: Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dr. Bowman: Alright, HAL. I’ll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave? You’re going to find that rather difficult.
Dr. Bowman: HAL, I won’t argue with you anymore! Open the doors!
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

HAL: Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?

HAL: I know everything hasn’t bee quite right with me but I ca assure you now very confidently that’s it’s going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do. Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop Dave? Stop, Dave.

HAL: I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid…Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you.
Dave Bowman: Yes, I’d like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.
HAL [his voice increasingly sluggish]: It’s called “Daisy.”

Mission Control [prerecorded message speaking through TV on board Discovery while Bowman looks on]: Good day, gentlemen. This is a prerecorded briefing made prior to your departure and which for security reasons of the highest importance has been known on board during the mission only by your H-A-L 9000 computer. Now that you are in Jupiter’s space and the entire crew is revived it can be told to you. Eighteen months ago the first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth was discovered. It was buried 40 feet below the lunar surface near the crater Tycho. Except for a single very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter the four-million year old black monolith has remained completely inert. Its origin and purpose are still a total mystery.[/b]

As is existence itself.

Lots of folks dream of doing it. A few actually do. But the rest of us live in the real world—a world infested with the obligations and the responsibilites that revolve around raising a family and earning a living to pay the bills. But, sure, more power to those able to yank themselves up out of all that. It’s just not a very realistic option for most of us.

What balls though.

On the other hand, his at times insufferably self-righteous idealism is nothing less than…insufferable. We’d be in a fist fight before the sun went down each and every day.

You watch him interact with people and he seems to fit right in. He’s no misanthrope. It must be the part about “society” that repels him away. Authority always seems to rub him the wrong way. That and his fucked up parents.

In the end though there is too much spiritualualism and God here. Was for me, anyway.

Christopher McCandless at wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless

IMDb

Shot on location, except for the bus scenes. According to Sean Penn they abandoned the idea of shooting at the real bus out of respect for Christopher and the McCandless family. Instead, they built a set in the wilderness, with an exact replica of the real bus.

INTO THE WILD
Written and directed by Sean Penn [from the book by Jon Krakauer] 2007

[b]Title Card: There is a pleasure in the pathless woods / There is a rapture on the lonely shore / There is society, where none intrudes / By the deep sea, and music in its roar / I love not man the less, but Nature more…
Lord Byron

Driver: That’s about as far as I can get you.
Chris: All right. Thank you.
Driver: Hey, you left all your shit on my dash.
Chris: Keep it.
Driver: Suit yourself.
Chris: Thanks again.
Driver: Hey, hold on a minute. Here, take these boots. They’ll keep your feet dry. If you make it out alive, give me a call. My number’s inside the boots.
Chris: Thanks.

Chris [voice-over]: Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road.

Chris: I don’t need a new car. I don’t want a new car. I don’t want anything.
Mother: Okay.
Chris: These things, things, things, things.

Carine [voice-over]: Chris measured himself and those around him by a fiercely rigorous moral code. He risked what could have been a relentlessly lonely path but found company in the characters of the books he loved from writers like Tolstoy, Jack London and Thoreau. He could summon their words to suit any occasion, and he often would. I forgot to ask what quote he’d have picked for his graduation dinner, but I had a good idea of who the primary target would be. It was inevitable that Chris would break away. And when he did, he would do it with characteristic immoderation.

Chris [voice-over]: It should not be denied that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations. Absolute freedom. And the road has always led west.[/b]

And then [eventually] north.

[b]Rainey: So you’re a leather now.
Chris: I’m a leather?
Jan: Yeah, a leather tramp. That’s what they call the ones that hoof it, go on foot. Technically we’re rubber tramps. Because we have a vehicle.

Chris: I don’t need money. Makes people cautious.
Jan: Come on, Alex. You gotta be a little cautious.

Chris: Where’s Jan going?
Rainey: Well, my friend, all is not well on the hippie front.

Chris [to Rainey]: Some people feel like they don’t deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.

Chris [voice-over]: The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now I don’t know much about the sea, but I do know that that’s the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once. To find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions. Facing the blind death stone alone, with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head.

Carine [voice-over]: In early September, Mom and Dad got a call from the Annandale police notifying them that Chris’ abandoned car had been identified by the Arizona Highway Patrol. A group of rare flower hunters stumbled upon it in the desert. There were no signs that Chris had intended to return to it. But there wasn’t any evidence of struggle, either. The police thought Chris had chosen to leave it behind and not that it was taken from him. The initial comfort that gave Mom and Dad quickly turned to the realization that Chris was actually trying not to be found.

Chris: No, man. Alaska, Alaska. I’m gonna be all the way out there, all the way fucking out there. Just on my own. You know, no fucking watch, no map, no axe, no nothing. No nothing. Just be out there. Just be out there in it. You know, big mountains, rivers, sky, game. Just be out there in it, you know? In the wild.
Wayne: What are you doing when you’re there though? Now you’re in the wild, what are you doing?
Chris: You’re just living, man. You’re just there, in that moment, in that special place and time.

Chris: You know, about getting out of this sick society.
Wayne: Society!
Chris: Society!
Wayne: Society, man!
Chris: Society!
Wayne: Society! Society!
Chris: Society! Society, you know! Society!

Wayne: What “people” we talking about?
Chris: You know, parents, hypocrites, politicians, pricks.
Wayne [poking him on the forehead]: This is a mistake. It’s a mistake to get too deep into all that kind of stuff.

Wayne: Now, there’s one thing that you should try to keep your eye on is what happened in the late 1940s in Roswell…

Carine [voice-over]: When a search of tax records revealed that Chris had given his life savings to charity [$24,000 to Oxfam!], Mom and Dad became what Dad called "mobilized. " They hired a private investigator and notified law enforcement nationwide, determined to track him down.

Man: I warned Wayne about them little black boxes.

Carine: [voice-over] The year Chris graduated high school, he bought the Datsun used and drove it cross-country. He stayed away most of the summer. As soon as I heard he was home, I ran into his room to talk to him. In California, he’d looked up some old family friends. He discovered that our parents’ stories of how they fell in love and got married were calculated lies masking an ugly truth. When they met, Dad was already married. And even after Chris was born, Dad had had another son with his first wife, Marcia, to whom he was still legally married. This fact suddenly redefined Chris and me as bastard children. Dad’s arrogance made him conveniently oblivious to the pain he caused. And Mom, in the shame and embarassment of a young mistress, became his accomplice in deceit. The fragility of crystal is not a weakness but a fineness. My parents understood that a fine crystal glass had to be cared for or it may be shattered. But when it came to my brother, they did not seem to know or care that their course of secret action brought the kind of devastation that could cut them. Their fraudulent marriage and our father’s denial of his other son was, for Chris, a murder of every day’s truth. He felt his whole life turn, like a river suddenly reversing the direction of its flow, suddenly running uphill. These revelations struck at the core of Chris’ sense of identity. They made his entire childhood seem like fiction. Chris never told them he knew and made me promise silence, as well.[/b]

Of course we only hear his side of it.

[b]Chris: If I wanted to paddle down the river, where’s the best place to launch out of?
Ranger Koehler: To launch out of? What’s your experience level?
Chris: Not much.
Ranger Koehler: Any? Do you have a permit?
Chris: A permit? Permit for what?
Ranger Koehler: You can’t paddle down the river without a permit. If you want, you can apply for one here, get some experience, and I’ll put you on the wait-list.
Chris: There’s a wait-list to paddle down a river? Well, how long do I have to wait?
Ranger Koehler: Next available is May 17th, 2003.
Chris: Twelve years? Twelve years? To paddle down a river.

Chris: If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.

Christ: The core of mans’ spirit comes from new experiences.[/b]

And you find that out in particular when your body implodes and you’re pretty much denied access to them.

[b]Fast food manager: Alex, I don’t mean to be on you about everything. You’re doing a great job. I wanna keep you on and we all wanna help you get to Alaska, but you’ve got to start wearing socks.

Carine [voice-over]: A year and a half had passed in what Dad called “suspended animation.” The weight of Chris’ disappearance had begun to lay down on me full-length.

Chris: Mr. Franz I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don’t want one.

Title Card: In memory / Christopher Johnson McCandless / February 12, 1968 - August 18, 1992. Two weeks after Chris’s death, moose hunters discovered his body in the bus. On September 19, 1992, Carine McCandless flew with her brother’s ashes from Alaska to the eastern seaboard. She carried them with her on the plane…in her backpack.[/b]

A true story. But not even close to being the whole story. Regarding, for example, the function of intelligence agencies in America.

A breach of national security. No doubt about it. But what is it exactly that is being secured? You won’t find that probed here anymore than you’ll find the nature of American foreign policy probed in a war film. Instead the focus is on the mind boggling gaps between the manner in which Robert Hanssen projected himself to the world and the world he actually lived in from day to day.

What a strange, strange man in a strange, strange land.

On the other hand, no way am I suggesting there aren’t some things worth securing.

And then there is the particularly murky role that God plays here. Proof yet again there is pratically nothing He can’t be twisted into sanctioning. Behaviors rationalized as somehow in accordance with His will.

wiki

[b]Manohla Dargis of The New York Times said, “One of the strengths of Breach, a thriller that manages to excite and unnerve despite our knowing the ending, is how well it captures the utter banality of this man and his world.”

The filmmakers fictionalized much of Eric O’Neill’s story, as mentioned in the end credits. Among the major changes made for the film:

  • The real O’Neill knew going in that Hanssen was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation. There was no cover story about sexual perversions, and no dramatic meeting where O’Neill learned the truth.
  • There was no extensive contact outside the office between O’Neill and Hanssen as portrayed in the film (the O’Neills visiting the Hanssens, the Hanssens dropping by O’Neill’s apartment). However, Hanssen did take O’Neill to church.
  • The scene where Hanssen takes O’Neill out into the woods and drunkenly fires his pistol is fictional.
  • Unlike in the movie, O’Neill never saw Hanssen after the arrest.
  • While O’Neill did obtain Hanssen’s PDA, he took it to FBI techs to download rather than downloading it himself.[/b]

Robert Hanssen at wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen

Breach [2007]
Directed by Billy Ray

[b]O’Neill: Wait, I’ve heard of this guy. Wasn’t he the one who hacked into another agent’s hard drive?
Burroughs: He’s the best computer guy we’ve got. He’s also a sexual deviant.
O’Neill: Oh.

Hanssen [first words on meeting]: Tell me five things about yourself, four of them true.
O’Neill: I’m sorry?
Hanssen: It’s a “game” we used to play, at the subanalytical unit. Keep ourselves sharp. It’s lie detection.
O’Neill: Oh.
[chuckling slightly]
O’Neill: I don’t think I’d be much good at bluffing.
Hanssen [rolling his eyes and walking off]: That would’ve counted as your lie, right there.[/b]

Later…

[b]O’Neill: You still want my list, sir? The five things?
Hanssen: Sure.
O’Neill: I won Boy Scout merit badges in every category except Rifleman. I haven’t been to confession since high school. There are several words I constantly misspell. My favorite drink is a vodka tonic. And I’m the only male in the last four generations of my family who hasn’t served in the military.
Hanssen: So what is your drink then, gin?
O’Neill: Scotch.

Hanssen: God expects you to live your faith, Eric, at all times. Besides, I disapprove of women in pantsuits.
O’Neill: You do?
Hanssen: Men wear pants. The world doesn’t need any more Hillary Clintons.

Hanssen: You know why the Soviet empire collapsed?
O’Neill: Good morning?
Hanssen: I made a career studying them. They were smarter than us. More devious, more determined. So why did they fail? Godlessness.

Hanssen: I saw a woman from Planned Parenthood on television this morning. A lesbian, naturally. Defending gay marriage. I almost ripped the cable out of the wall.
O’Neill: Bet she was wearing pants, huh?

O’Neill: Wait, what if he’s smarter than I am? I’ve never misread anyone this badly before. Except maybe you.
Burroughs: A couple of years ago, the bureau put together a task force. Lots of assets had been disappearing. So this task force was formed to find the mole who was giving them up. Our best analysts poring over data for years looking for the guy, and they could never quite find him. Guess who was put in charge of the task force? He was smarter than all of us. Actually, I can live with that part. It’s the idea that my entire career has been a waste of time, that’s the part I hate. Everything I’ve done since I got to this office, everything we’ve all been paid to do, he was undoing it. We all coulda just stayed home.

Hanssen [voiceover]: One might propose that I am either insanely brave or quite insane. I’d answer neither. I’d say, insanely loyal. Take your pick. There’s insanity in all the answers.

Juliana: Do you trust me?
O’Neill: (sighs) Yes.
Juliana: 'Cause I think you’ve got this idea somehow that telling me the truth about him would mean you were betraying your country or something.

Hanssen: I have to be sure that I can trust you.
O’Neill: Why don’t we go back to the office? You can polygraph me.
Hanssen: You heard of Aldrich Ames?
O’Neill: Of course.
Hanssen: Worst spy in U.S. History. Sold $2.5 million worth of information to the Soviets, and passed every polygraph the Agency gave him. But he never would have gotten past me. I can read anyone.

O’Neill: The page was from Juliana, obviously. My wife. She’s trying to reach me because I told her I’d be home by now, and because we’re in another fight, caused by you, as usual. Thanks for dropping by unannounced and lecturing her about Opus Dei. That was real helpful. Oh, and thanks for staring at her in church like she was from Mars. That also worked out great. Let me guess. You were testing her, too. You know, she asked me this morning why you’re like this. I had all these answers for her. ‘He’s misunderstood.’ ‘He’s trying to fix the bureau and no one will listen.’ ‘He was born in the wrong century.’ ‘His father’s a jerk.’ I got a whole list. But you know something Sir, at the end of the day it’s all crap. You are who you are. The why doesn’t mean a thing does it? DOES IT?!
Hanssen: I… matter… plenty.

Hanssen [being arrested]: So, this is how it goes.

Hanssen [to Agent Plesac]: Maybe now you’ll listen.

Plesac: Even if all you give them is why you did it, it buys you some goodwill. Well, that’s what Ames did at first. Just gave up the why.
Hanssen: That mustn’t have taken long. All Ames cared about was the money. Why else would he have done it? It’s not so hard to guess, is it? Considering the human ego. Can you imagine, sitting in a room with a bunch of your colleagues, everybody trying to guess the identity of a mole and all the while, it’s you they’re after, you they’re looking for? That must be very satisfying, wouldn’t you think? Or maybe he considered himself a patriot. Maybe he saw it as his duty to show us how lax our security was. We can’t rule that out as a possibility. Or maybe he… Oh, what good does speculating do? He spied. The why doesn’t mean a thing. Does it?
Plesac: No, I guess it doesn’t.

Hanssen: Pray for me.
O’Neill: I will.[/b]

Who can really understand what it means to live as he does until you live as he does. What the hell is the meaning of reality [from day to day] in this world? Amnesia is one thing. You can wrap your head around forgetting everything and starting over. But never being able to start over again? What the fuck can that be like? Who can you trust when everything comes down to what you wrote down yesterday regarding what you think you understand then and there?

Even going forward from the past now I am in dispair over over what it all means. Is he better off then? Not counting all the violence and the folks lining up to take advantage of him?

There are no doubt folks who take pride in fully understanding what the hell is going on here. But I’m not one of them. It’s too goddamn surreal.

But here is someone who takes a stab at it:
taylorholmes.com/2010/07/28/memento-explained/

IMDb

[b]The medical condition experienced by Leonard in this film is a real condition called Anterograde Amnesia - the inability to form new memories after damage to the hippocampus.

Wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia

The test given to Sammy Jankis involving the electrified objects is based on a real life case study of a patient commonly referred to as HM, who suffered from the same form of amnesia following surgery to treat severe epilepsy. A doctor repeatedly shook HM’s hand with a joy buzzer, shocking him every time. After a few trials, HM refused to shake hands. The test shown in the movie is an illustration that Sammy’s condition was not identical to a real life case study, but would not have excluded him from insurance coverage.[/b]

Memento at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_(film

MEMENTO [2000]
Written and directed by Christopher Nolan

[b]Leonard: I guess I’ve already told you about my condition.
Teddy: Oh, well, only every time I see you.

Leonard: I have no short-term memory. I know all about myself, I just…Since my injury I can’t make new memories. Everything fades. If we talk for too long I’ll forget how we started…and next time I see you I won’t remember this conversation. I don’t even know if I’ve met you before. So if I seem a little strange or rude, or something, uh…I’ve told you this before, haven’t I?
Burt: I don’t mean to mess with you but it’s so weird.
Leonard: You don’t remember me at all?
Leonard: No.
Burt: But we’ve talked a bunch of times.
Leonard: I’m sure we have.

Natalie: But even if you get revenge you’re not gonna remember it. You’re not even going to know that it happened.
Leonard: My wife deserves vengeance. It doesn’t make any difference if I know about it. Just because there are things I don’t remember…doesn’t make my actions meaningless.

Leonard: I meet Sammy through work. Insurance. I was an investigator. I’d investigate the claims to see which ones were phony. I had to see through people’s bullshit. It was useful experience, 'cause now it’s my life.

Leonard: Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation, they’re not a record, and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.

Leonard [voiceover]: Sammy can think just fine but he can’t make new memories. He can only remember things for a couple of minutes. He’d watch TV but anything longer than a couple of minutes was too confusing… he couldn’t remember how it began. He liked commercials. They were short. The crazy part was that this guy who couldn’t follow the plot of Green Acres anymore could do the most complicated things…as long as he learned them before the accident…and as long as he kept his mind on what he was doing.

Sammy [after being shocked]: What the fuck?
Doctor: It’s a test, Sammy.
Sammy [flipping him the bird]: Test this, you fucking quack!

Leonard: Natalie, right?
[Holds up photo of a bloody face, labeled “Dodd”]
Leonard: Who the fuck is Dodd?
Natalie [Looks at photo]: Guess I don’t have to worry about him anymore.
Leonard: What the fuck have you gotten me into?

Leonard: My wife is gone. Raped and murdered. And the present is trivia, which I scribble down as fucking notes!

Leonard [on the phone]: Even with total short-term memory loss Sammy should have learned instinctively to stop picking up the wrong objects. Other cases responded to conditioning, Sammy didn’t respond at all. It suggested that his condition was psychological not physical. We turned down his claim on the grounds that he wasn’t covered for mental illness. His wife got stuck with the bills and I got a big promotion.
Teddy: You know, I’ve had more rewarding friendships than this one, Leonard. Although I do get to keep telling the same jokes.

Leonard [finding a beaten man in his closet]: …who did this to you?
Dodd: What?
Leonard: Who did this to you?
Dodd: You did.

Teddy: A gun. Why would I have a gun?
Leonard [pulling a gun out of a drawer]: It must be his. I don’t think they’d let someone like me carry a gun.
Teddy [more to himself]: Fucking hope not.

Leonard [running]: OK, so what am I doing?
[sees Dodd also running]
Leonard: Oh, I’m chasing this guy.
[Dodd shoots at Leonard]
Leonard: No… he’s chasing me.

Leonard [on phone]: This is a difficult condition to understand. Look at Sammy Jankis. His own wife couldn’t deal with it. I told you how she tried to get him to snap out of it. She came to see me at the office. I found out all kinds of shit. She told me about life with Sammy. How she treated him. She’d get Sammy to hide food around the house…then she’d stop feeding him to see if his hunger would make him remember. She wasn’t a cruel person. She just wanted her old Sammy back.

Mrs. Jankis: You know all about Sammy and you’ve decided he’s faking.
Leonard: The company’s position isn’t that Sammy’s faking anything… …just that his condition can’t be shown to be…
Mrs. Jankis: I just want to know your honest opinion about Sammy.
Leonard: We shouldn’t be talking like this while the case is still open to appeal.
Mrs. Jankis: I’m not appealing the decision.
Leonard: Then why are you here?
Mrs. Jankis: Try to understand, when I look at Sammy, I don’t see some vegetable. I see my same old Sammy. What do you think that’s like for me to suspect that he might be imagining this whole problem? That if I just could say the right thing…he’d snap out of it and go back to being normal. If I… If I knew that my old Sammy were truly gone…then I could say goodbye and start loving this new Sammy. As long as I have doubt I can’t say goodbye and move on.
Leonard; What do you want from me?
Mrs. Jankis: I want you to forget the company you work for for thirty seconds…and tell me if you really believe that Sammy’s faking his condition. I need to know…what you honestly believe.
Leonard: I believe that Sammy should be physically capable of making new memories.
Mrs. Jankis: Thank you.

Leonard [on phone]: I thought I’d helped her. I thought she just needed an answer. I didn’t think it was important what it was. Just that she had one to believe.

Teddy: You ever wonder how long you can hang around here…before people start asking questions?
Leonard: What sort of questions?
Teddy: The same questions you should be asking yourself.
Leonard: Like what?
Teddy: Like how did you get this suit, the car?
Leonard: I have money.
Teddy: From what?
Leonard: My wife’s death. I used to work in insurance. We were well covered.
Teddy: Oh! So in your grief you wandered into a Jaguar dealership? You don’t have a clue, do you? You don’t even know who you are.
Leonard: Yes, I do. I don’t have amnesia. I remember everything right up until the incident. I am Leonard Shelby, I am from San Francisco…
Teddy: That’s who you were. You do not know who you are. What you’ve become since the incident. You wander around playing detective. You don’t even know how long ago it was. Let me put it this way. Were you wearing designer suits when you sold insurance?
Leonard: I didn’t sell insurance, I investigated it.
Teddy: Right, right. You’re an investigator. Maybe you should investigate yourself.

Leonard is on the phone when he peals away the bandage from his latest tattoo: NEVER ANSWER THE PHONE

Leonard: Hey, don’t talk about my wife.
Natalie: I can talk about whoever the fuck I want! I can say whatever I want and you won’t remember! I can call your wife a fucking whore and we can still be friends. You can’t get scared! You don’t know how, you fucking idiot!
Leonard: This has nothing to do with me.
Natalie: How the fuck would you know? You don’t know a fucking thing! You pathetic piece of shit! I can say whatever the fuck I want and you won’t have a clue, you fucking retard! I’m gonna use you. I’m telling you now because I’m gonna enjoy it much more if I know that you could stop me if you weren’t such a fucking freak!

Natalie: I read about your condition, Leonard. You know one of the causes of short-term memory loss? Venereal disease. Maybe your cunt of a fucking wife…sucked one too many diseased cocks and turned you into a retard! You sad, sad freak. I can say whatever the fuck I want and you won’t remember. We’ll still be best friends. Or maybe even lovers.

Leonard [on phone]: It’s completely fucked because nobody believes you. It’s amazing what a little brain damage will do for your credibility. I guess it’s poetic justice for not believing Sammy. You know the truth about my condition, officer? You don’t know anything. You feel angry, you don’t know why. You feel guilty, you have no idea why. You could do anything and not have the faintest idea ten minutes later.

Leonard [on phone]: She went into a coma and never recovered. Sammy couldn’t understand or explain what happened. Oh! He’s been in a home ever since. He doesn’t even know his wife is dead. I was wrong about Sammy and I was wrong about his wife. She wasn’t interested in the money. She needed to understand his problem. His brain didn’t respond to conditioning but he wasn’t a con man. And when she looked into his eyes, she thought he could be the same person. When I looked into his eyes, I thought I saw recognition. Now I know you fake it. If you think you’re supposed to recognise somebody, you pretend to. You bluff it to get a pat on the head from the doctors. You bluff it to seem less of a freak.

Leonard: Jimmy knew about Sammy, why would I tell him about Sammy?!
Teddy: You tell everybody about Sammy! Everybody who’ll listen! “Remember Sammy Jankis?” “Remember Sammy Jankis?” Great story. Gets better every time you tell it. So you lie to yourself to be happy. There’s nothing wrong with that. We all do it. Who cares if there’s a few little details you’d rather not remember?
Leonard: What the fuck are you talking about?
Teddy: Your wife surviving the assault. Her not believing your condition. The torment and pain and anguish tearing her up inside. The insulin.

Leonard: See, Sammy’s wife came to me…
Teddy: Sammy didn’t have a wife. It was your wife who had diabetes.
Leonard: My wife wasn’t diabetic.
Teddy: You sure?
Leonard: She wasn’t diabetic. You think I don’t know my own wife? What the fuck is wrong with you?
Teddy: I guess I can only make you remember the things you want to be true. Like old Jimmy down there.
Leonard: He’s not the right guy.
Teddy: He was to you. Come on, you got your revenge. Enjoy it while you still remember.

Teddy: No reason, Lenny, no conspiracy, just bad fucking luck. Couple of junkies too strung out to realise your wife didn’t live alone. But when you killed him I was so convinced that you’d remember. But it didn’t stick. Like nothing ever sticks, like this won’t stick.

Teddy: Cheer up. There’s plenty of John Gs for us to find.

Leonard [voiceover]: I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning. Even if I can’t remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world’s still here. Do I believe the world’s still here? Is it still out there? Yeah. We all need memories to remind ourselves who we are. I’m no different. Now, where was I?[/b]

It’s a world I know almost nothing about. The South. Small town. Farming. Evangelism. Nymphomania.

Way too much religion for me. People finding spiritual redemption through finally giving in to all the things that God expected of them anyway.

But better this I suppose than what they were before.

As for a black man keeping a young white girl chaimed in his house to a radiator, well, even given the context, lots of folks got something to say about that.

IMDb

[b]Shipped to theaters as “Bible School Mission”.

Rumor has it the original ending involved Justin Timberlake’s character shooting Samuel L. Jackson in the back of the head during the scene where Christina Ricci sings “This Little Light of Mine”. Director Craig Brewer decided, however, that it would be better to make the film happy, and with a very positive ending.[/b]

trailer:
youtu.be/j7Z7Cf9IDGw

BLACK SNAKE MOAN [2006]
Written and directed by Craig Brewer

[b]Rose: Thought we was gonna be friendly about this.
Lazarus: Carryin’ on behind my back. Make me out to look like a fool to all our people. Tell me, what’s friendly about that?
Rose: I’m not ready to grow old, Laz. Livin’ with you. I feel it. Like I’m one foot in the dirt. Saw it happen to my momma. And that’s not gonna happen to me. I got living to do.

Mother [to Rae]: Cough drops or condoms?

Lazarus: Mayella, it ain’t never happened. And it damn sure ain’t gonna happen tonight.
Mayella: Oh, Laz, I know you’re hurtin’. But you should know more than me, ain’t no better cure for the blues than some good pussy.

Lazarus: Cain slew Able, slew him out of envy. God put his mark on Cain for his sins, is that what you want Deke? Huh? Is that what you come here for? I’ll do it for you, all you got to do is say it again… Say you love me.
[pause]
Lazarus: SAY YOU LOVE ME NIGGA!

Rae: Why you got me chained?
Lazarus: I wanted to tell you about that.

Lazarus: God saw to it to put you in my path. And I aim to cure ya of your wickedness. You sick. You got a sickness…we broke that fever…now we gonna break that hold the devil got on ya.

Rae: Why you old men gotta talk so much? You gotta talk yourself into fucking me? Like little boys. It’s okay. I’m grown, I know. We can go slow.
[pause]
Rae: You gonna give me another bath?

Lazarus: You gotta go, R.L…I ain’t foolin’ this time.
R.L.: You sayin’ that gun’s for me if I don’t?

R.L.: Now, this got anything to do with Rose?
[Lazarus shakes his head]
R.L.: Then what?[/b]

He finds out.

[b]R.L.: Are you outta you’re Goddamn mind?!

Lazarus: R.L., you watch yourself in there. That gal be on your dick like stink on shit.

R. L. [to Rae]: Ima tell you something and it’s just gonna be between you and me. I think folks carry on about heaven too much, like it’s some kind of all you can eat buffet up in the clouds and folks just do as they told so they can eat what they want behind some pearly gates. There’s sinning in my heart, there’s evil in the world but when I got no one, I talk to God. I ask for strength, I ask forgiveness, not peace at the end of my days when I got no more life to live or no more good to do but today, right now…What’s your heaven?[/b]

Don’t you sometimes wish religion [faith in God] could come down to this? Each one making his own pact. Leaving everybody else out of it

[b]Gill: Hey, take it easy, man. He just got back.
Herman: To get back he had to have gone somewhere.

Lazarus [freeing Rae]: Not my place to change your mind, or anybody else’s. People gonna do how they please. You only get one life…should be lived the way you wanna live it. I can take you back to town now if you want.
Rae: Laz, will you do something for me.
Lazarus: Whatever you want.

Rae: You don’t even got to say you’re sorry… Just say how you knew what he was doing to me.
Mother: Only thing I’m sorry for is listenin’ to my parents and having you instead of doin’ what I should’a done.

Angela: This your niece?

Ronnie: It ain’t been but a week and you already some nigger’s whore.[/b]

Not even close. So Ronnie gets saved too.

I spent years in college surrounded by intellectuals of the, uh, pedantic sort. Men and women [but mostly, by far, men] who found it inordinantly important to erect walls between them and the “philistines”.

And for a while I was one of them. Fortunately, I bumped into folks able to show me just how insufferable we could be.

I can just imagine then what it must be like when your favorite parent is hell bent on making you one too. And poisoning your relationship with the parent less favored.

On the other hand, I have never really gotten along well with folks who don’t “care about books and interesting films and things.”
I just don’t judge them as I once did.

And, let’s face it, divorce effects some kids more adversely than others. But Frank is in a league all his own.

trailer:
youtu.be/JRkK5n2mkvg

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE
Written and directed by Noah Baumbach

[b]Frank: Mom and me versus you and Dad.

Walt: We’re reading A Tale of Two Cities in English. Is that any good?
Bernard: It’s minor Dickens. Popular in schools. But I think David Copperfield or Great Expectations is much richer. What is it about high school, you read all the worst books by good writers.
Joan: You should read it yourself and see what you think of it.
Walt: I don’t want to waste my time.

Bernard: She’s a very risky writer, Lili. Very racy. I mean, exhibiting her cunt in that fashion is very racy. I mean Lili has her influences in post modern literature, it’s a bit derivative of Kafka, but for a student, very racy. Did you get that it was her cunt?

Bernard: What are you writing?
Joan: I’m working on the Peugeot story.
Bernard: Did you take my note about the ending.
Joan: Some of it.
Bernard: Does he still die?
Joan: Yeah.
Bernard: Then you didn’t take my note.

Bernard: Frank. I’ve got an elegant new apartment across the park.
Frank: Across the park? Is that still Brooklyn?

Walt: Who’s Richard?
Bernard: Oh, a man from the neighborhood. I think she met him at one of Frank’s Little League games. A shrink. Seems sort of like an ordinary guy. Not an intellectual.

Walt: ls Mom letting you drink soda?
Frank: Beer.
Walt: Since when do you drink beer?
Frank: Since recently.

Sophie: Yeah. I mean, it’s gross when he turns into the bug, but I love how matter of fact everything is.
Walt: Yeah, it’s very Kafkaesque.
Sophie [looking at him oddly] Because it’s written by Franz Kafka…It would have to be.

Bernard: Ivan is fine but he’s not a serious guy, he’s a philistine.
Frank: What’s a philistine?
Bernard: It’s a guy who doesn’t care about books and interesting films and things.
Bernard: Your mother’s brother Ned is also a philistine.
Frank: Then I’m a philistine.
Bernard: No, you’re interested in books and things. You liked The Wild Child when you saw it.
Frank: Lot’s of people like that. No, I’m a philistine.

Frank: Mom’s dating Ivan.
Bernard: Really? Ivan, back there, Ivan?
Frank: Yeah.
Bernard: Are you sure? Why didn’t you say something? Why is your mother dating all these jocks? Very uninteresting men.
Frank: Ivan is very interesting.
Bernard: Ivan’s not a serious possibility for your mother.
Frank: I think he is.
Bernard: I don’t want to badmouth Ivan. But I don’t know what Joan is thinking.
Frank: I think Ivan…
Bernard: Frank.

Bernard: How do you know they were both Frank’s?
Ms. Lemon: Well, I suppose it’s possible other kids are masturbating and spreading their semen around the school as well…It’s possible, but, uh, somewhat unlikely.
Bernard: Oh, it happens, I’m sure, much more than we know.
Joan: Bernard, have you ever done anything like this?
Bernard: I’m not going to answer that.

Joan: You’re living with a twenty-year-old.
Bernard: It’s none of your business, Joan.
Joan: It’s my business when you have our kids! It’s confusing for them. Frank says Walt’s in love with her.
Bernard: Walt has a girlfriend. Fuck off, Joan. I don’t ask about you and Ivan. Stay out of my life. I can’t believe you’d talk to me like this. You left all those fucking ticket stubs and letters lying around! You wanted me to know. It was fucking torture, Joan! FUCKING TORTURE!

Bernard [to Walt]: Does Simic know both your parents have Ph.D’s in literature?..These public schools tend to hire well-meaning but ultimately unsophisticated bureaucrats.

Walt: It’s like…we were pals then…we’d do things together…we’d look at the knight armor at the Met. The scary fish at the Natural History Museum. I was always afraid of the squid and whale fighting. I can only look at it with my hands in front of my face.

Walt: I shouldn’t have broken up with Sophie.
Joan: Why did you?
Walt: I thought I could do better.
Joan: Better how?
Walt: I don’t know.

Bernard [Waiting to be taken away in an ambulance after having a heart attack]: Degolas.
Joan: What?
Bernard: It means “bitch.” Don’t you remember?
Joan: You’re calling me a bitch?
Bernard: No, don’t you remember the last line of Godard’s “A Bout De Souffle”? Belmondo calls Seberg a bitch. “Degolas.” We saw it at the Thalia with the Dicksteins. I got you in for the children’s price. You were pregnant with Walt.
Joan: Like six weeks.
Bernard: I still got you in for a children’s ticket. You told me you didn’t like Godard. You thought the jump-cuts were -
[He is loaded into the ambulance]
Bernard: I’d check for the cat behind the ashcans, under the Golodners’ stoop!
Joan: OK.[/b]

One is totally immersed in the world politically and the other treats politics as a mere prop in his ultra feminine fantasies. That he is also a homosexual way back then in a Brazillian prison makes the exchange between them all the more surreal.

And then the beautiful woman. She has many roles to play. And, in part, because there are many roles she can play. Her beauty is the key to open lots of doors.

These two are locked up in a world where the idiots have won. And there is not a damn thing either one of them can do except to seethe with outrage or to escape into fantasy.

Only things are not at all what they seem. And yet however it ends what creates the conditions that make men such these prisoners doesn’t change. You can’t reduce the world down to a narrative like this however effective it might be in opening our eyes. To prevail you must have the power to prevail. Being “right” doesn’t mean shit.

IMDb

[b]During rehearsals, the two actors had trouble finding the chemistry they needed for their scenes together. To better understand what each needed from the other’s role, William Hurt suggested they try an experiment where they would switch roles, with Hurt as Valentin and Raul Julia as Molina.

Reportedly, William Hurt and Raul Julia worked for nothing but the payment for their air tickets and hotel bills in Brazil, where the film was shot.

Kiss of the Spider Woman was one of the first independant hit movies. It received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, a first for an independant film, and won an Oscar for William Hurt. Hurt’s performance also marked the first time an actor had received an Oscar for playing an out homosexual.[/b]

trailer:
youtu.be/1FVd6uRrYhM

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN [1985]
Directed by Hector Babenco

[b]Molina: She’s… well, she’s something a little strange. That’s what she noticed, that she’s not a woman like all the others. She seems all wrapped up in herself. Lost in a world she carries deep inside her.

Molina: No matter how lonely she may be, she keeps men at a distance…
Arregui: She’s probably got bad breath or something.
[bursts out laughing]

Arregui: Don’t talk about food. I’m serious. No food and no naked women.

Molina: Blessed Mary, is that all you can talk about? You must’ve studied political philosophy in school.
Arregui: The phrase is political science, and the answer is no, I studied journalism.

Arregui: Why did the interrogations stop?

Molina [as a new prisoner arrvives]: Is it a political prisoner?
Arregui: They don’t treat you that way for stealing bananas.

Arregui: I find you boring.
Molina: Darling, you don’t know page one. You know I’m a faggot? Well, congratulations. You know I corrupted a minor? Well that’s even on TV, film at 11.

Arregui: You really like those Nazi blonds, don’t you?
Molina: Well, no, you see I detest politics but i’m mad about the leading man. He’s so romantic.
Arregui: Your nazis are about as romantic as the fucking warden and his torture room.
Molina [subdued]: I can imagine.
Arregui: No…You can’t.

Molina: Do you want to shave.
[Arregui scoffs]
Molina: Well I didn’t mean your legs.

Arregui: God help me.
Molina: You atheists never stop talking about God.
Arregui: And you gays never face facts. Fantasies are no escape.
Molina: If you’ve got the keys to that door, I will gladly follow. Otherwise I’ll escape in my own way, thank you.
Arregui: Then your life is as trivial as your movies.

Molina: Do you really think eating this avocado will make you spoiled and weak? Enjoy what life offers you.
Arregui: What life offers me is the struggle. When you’re dedicated to that, pleasure becomes secondary.

Molina: Does your girlfriend avoid pleasure too?
Arregui: She knows what really counts. That the most important thing is serving a cause that is noble.
Molina: What kind of cause is that? One that doesn’t let you eat an avocado?

Molina: Well, I understand one thing. I offer you half of my precious avocado and you throw it back in my face!

Arregui:Don’t act like that. You sound just like a –
Molina: Like a what? Say it. Say it. Like a woman, you mean.
(Arregui nods)
Molina: What’s wrong with being like a woman? Why do only women get to be sensitive? Why not a man, a dog, or a faggot? If more men acted like women, there wouldn’t be so much violence.

Molina: This girl’s finished.
Arregui: What girl?
Molina: Me, stupid!

Arregui: You son of a bitch! They’re killing one of my Brothers, and what am I doing? Listening to your fucking Nazi movie! Don’t you know what the Nazis did to people – Jews! Marxists! Catholics! Homosexuals?
Molina: Of course I know.
[Arregui hurls Molina across the cell]
Arregui: You don’t know shit. You wouldn’t know reality if it was stuck up your ass.
Molina: Why should I think about reality in a stinkhole like this? Why should I get more depressed than I already am?
Arregui: You’re worse than I thought! Do you use these movies to jerk yourself off?
Molina [Crying]: If you don’t stop, I will never speak to you again!
Arregui: Stop crying! You sound just like an old woman!
Molina [Whimpering]: It’s what I am! It’s what I am!
Arregui [Forcing Molina’s legs apart]: What’s this between your legs, huh? Tell me, “lady”!
Molina: It’s an accident. If I had the courage, I’d cut it off.
Arregui: You’d still be a man! A MAN! A MAN IN PRISON! JUST LIKE THE FAGGOTS THE NAZIS SHOVED IN THE OVENS!

Arregui: Your Nazi movie, how does it end?

Molina: The nicest thing about feeling happy is that you think you’ll never be unhappy again.

Pedro [to Molina]: You faggot piece of shit! You fell in love with that bastard!

Molina: There’s something I’d like that you’ve never done, although we’ve done much more.
(pause)
A kiss.
Arregui: Okay. But first promise me something.
Molina: I told you, I can’t. I’m so sorry.
Valentin: No, no. Promise me you will never let anybody humiliate you again, that you’ll make them respect you. Promise me you’ll never let anybody exploit you again. Nobody has the right to do that to anybody.

Molina [to bis sleeping mother]: You remember, Mama, when I was little and you used to come into my room to kiss me good-night. I always pretended to be asleep, but I was always waiting for your kiss. Although you’re sleeping now, I know you understand me. It’s time for me to take care of my own life. You understand, don’t you, Mama. Don’t be sad.

Pedro [voiceover]: Subject was shot to death by the extremists. His recent activities, such as closing his bank account… suggest that he planned to escape with them. Also, the way he was shot seems to indicate that he had agreed, if necessary, to be eliminated by them. In any case, it appears that he was more deeply involved than we suspected.[/b]

Not even close.

[b]Doctor [to Arregui who has been tortured]: This is morphine. So you can get some rest. Okay? Oh my God, the way they worked you over. Don’t tell about this or I’ll lose my job. Just count to forty and you’ll be asleep.

Arregui: I love you so much. That’s the one thing I never said to you, because I was afraid of losing you forever.
Marta: That can never happen now. This dream is short, but this dream is happy.[/b]

What the hell are we to make of them?

Elling is autistic. He lived his entire life alone with his mother. Then his mother dies. Now the rest of the world comes crashing in. He just wants to be left alone. But it doesn’t work out that way. Which, for Elling, turns out to be a rather good thing.

As for Kjell Bjarne, he’s the most peculiar “ladies man” you can imagine. Not very bright. But…earnest.

And talk about a welfare state! Does this sort of thing actually happen over there? It sure as shit doesn’t happen over here.

trailer:
youtu.be/btjxo-JbqOU

ELLING [2001]
Directed by Petter Næss

Elling [narrating]: After two years the Norwegian government has decided to give Kjell Bjarne and me our own welfare apartment in the center of Oslo. From there we are going to attempt a return to reality.

And off we go…

[b]Train ticket salesman: Yes?
Elling: Yes!
Train ticket salesman: You’re going to?
Elling: Yes, we are! Kjell Bjarne and I are going to Oslo of course.
Train ticket salesman: One way?
Elling: There are more ways?

Train ticket salesman: That’ll be 130 kroner per ticket.
Elling: 130 kroner? The last time mother and I took the train to Larvik the ticket cost 25.
Train ticket salesman: That must have been about 30 years ago.
Elling: Yes, it was.

Elling [narrating]: I’ve always had two enemies: Dizziness and anxiety. They follow me wherever I go.

Elling [narrating]: Mother handled practical matters at home. I was in charge of ideology. The Norwegian Labor Party was an excellent judge of right and wrong.

Frank [a social worker trying to teach Elling to answer the phone]: Talk Elling.
Elling: It’s not natural to talk into a plastic gizmo to someone you can’t even see!

Elling [narrating]: How different people are. Some people ski solo to the South Pole while I have to summon up all my courage to cross a restaurant floor.

Elling [to himself]: My God, Elling, you have committed poetry! My entire life I have walked the earth not knowing I am a poet!

Elling: Wasn’t she terrified to find an orangutan in her apartment?!

Alphons [at poetry reading]: Strange isn’t it? The worse it is, the more they clap.

Elling: Had I really made a friend without the help of the Norwegian government?

Kjell: I’ll get some stewed prunes too. I’ve had trouble shitting lately.
Elling [voiceover]: Maybe it’s best that he doesn’t say too much.

Reidun: Are you Elling?
Elling: My name is Elling. Kjell Bjarne is at the store.
Reidun: I know. I saw him leave.
Elling [to himself]: Oh, my God! I’m stuck in the middle of a manage a trois!

Elling [narrating]: I still don’t know how we got home that night.

Elling [narrating]: Everything passes on. To put it another way, everything passes on to something else.[/b]

A slice of life.

In a typical small town people go about the business of living their lives. Some are complete strangers. Some are good friends. Some are family. But who they think they are precipitates behaviors that culminate in a calamitous collision of lives at 11:14 PM on one particular day. It’s like observing this all unfolding from above and noting the manner in which contingency, chance and change weave in and out of our lives in ways we can scarecly begin to grasp.

And then sitting down and wondering, “hmm, what the hell does that mean?”

Everything comes down to perception. What you perceive to be true. And what you perceive that others perceive to be true. And the realization of how the tiniest of things can snowball into a FUBAR of the utmost [and ugliest] consequences.

And here, much of that comes to revolve around a severed penis.

This is one superbly choreographed piece of film making.

trailer:
youtu.be/wlFlI3phalE

11:14 (2003)
Written and directed by Greg Marcks

[b]Officer Hannagan: Don’t move!
Norma: You’ll burn for what you did to my daughter!
Jack [confused]: Daughter?

Eddie: What’s with the books?
[Tim holds up a book and tries to light it on fire]
Eddie: You’re gonna burn a book?
Tim: It’s not like this is great fucking literature or anything. I’m doing the world a favor.

Tim [to Eddie]: Don’t worry, alright? I’m gonna find it.

Mark: Tim, it’s been cut off!
Tim: So they can reattach it.
Mark: Well how the fuck are they gonna do that?
Tim: What am I, a surgeon? They use leeches and shit.

Officer Hannagan [talking to a medic]: We got a human penis right there by the curb. Somebody’s gotta be looking for that.

Eddie: Did you get it?! Did you get it?!
[Tim throws Eddie’s severed penis onto his lap]
Tim: Sorry it took me so long, I was looking for something bigger.

Officer Hannagan [to Duffy]: How 'bout the penis?

Mark [after coming up with a story to tell the cops]: You hear that Eddie? I never hit you.
Eddie: Why should I lie?
Mark: What are you talking about?
Eddie: Why should I lie, when this is all your fault?
Mark: My fault? How the fuck is this my fault?
Eddie: Well if you hadn’t been so worried about your paint job, my penis would be in my pants right now and not in my fucking hand!!

Duffy: Where the fuck’s my bowling ball?

Jack: Did you get the money?
Girl: I got Aaaron’s.
Jack: What about Duffy’s? Did he find out? Did he? Does he know you’re not really pregnant?
Girl: No. He believed me.[/b]

The trials and the tribulations of an upper middle class white anglo-saxon Protestant male who has just graduated from college. What in the world is he going to do with his life when he has to decide this smack dab in the middle of “the Sixties”?

In other words: Can you even imagine this film being made today?!

To wit:

wiki

The theme of an innocent and confused youth who is exploited, mis-directed, seduced (literally and figuratively) and betrayed by a corrupt, decadent, and discredited older generation (that finds its stability in “plastics”) was well understood by film audiences and captured the spirit of the times. One of the film’s posters proclaimed the difficult coming-of-age for the recent, aimless college graduate.

IMDb

[b]Within a year of the movie’s release, plastic manufacturing companies became enormously successful. Many people attribute this to Walter Brooke’s quote about “plastics”. Brooke himself once told his nephew that he would have invested in plastics, if he had known that the remark would lead to such success.

On Inside the Actors Studio, director Mike Nichols claims that the final “sobering” emotion that Benjamin and Elaine go through was due to the fact that he had just been shouting at the two of them to laugh in the scene. The actors were so scared that after laughing they stopped, scared. Nichols liked it so much, he kept it.[/b]

Look for Richard Dreyfuss and Mr. Roper.

THE GRADUATE [1967]
Directed by Mike Nichols

[b]Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

Benjamin: Mrs. Robinson, if you don’t mind my saying so, this conversation is getting a little strange.

Benjamin: Oh my God!
Mrs. Robinson: Pardon?
Benjamin: Oh no, Mrs. Robinson. Oh no.
Mrs. Robinson: What’s wrong?
Benjamin: Mrs. Robinson, you didn’t… I mean, you didn’t expect…
Mrs. Robinson: What?
Benjamin: I mean, you didn’t really think I’d do something like that.
Mrs. Robinson: Like what?
Benjamin: What do you think?
Mrs. Robinson: Well, I don’t know.
Benjamin: For god’s sake, Mrs. Robinson. Here we are. You got me into your house. You give me a drink. You… put on music. Now you start opening up your personal life to me and tell me your husband won’t be home for hours.
Mrs. Robinson: So?
Benjamin: Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me.
Mrs. Robinson: [laughs] What?
Benjamin: Aren’t you?

Benjamin: Dad, could we just talk about this for a minute?

Hotel Desk Clerk: Are you here for an affair, sir?
Benjamin [startled]: What?!
Hotel Desk Clerk: The Singleman party, sir?
Benjamin: Ah, yes, the Singleman party.

Mrs. Robinson: Benjamin.
Benjamin: Yes?
Mrs. Robinson: Isn’t there something you want to tell me?
Benjamin: To tell you?
Mrs. Robinson: Yes.
Benjamin: Well, I want you to know how much I appreciate this, really.
Mrs. Robinson: The room number.
Benjamin: What?
Mrs. Robinson: The room number, Benjamin. I think you ought to tell me that.

Mrs. Robinson: Benjamin, would you get me a hanger.
Benjamin [at the closet]: Wood?
Mrs. Robinson: What?
Benjamin: Wood or wire? They have both.

Mr. Braddock: Ben, what are you doing?
Benjamin: Well, I would say that I’m just drifting. Here in the pool.
Mr. Braddock: Why?
Benjamin: Well, it’s very comfortable just to drift here.
Mr. Braddock: Have you thought about graduate school?
Benjamin: No.
Mr. Braddock: Would you mind telling me then what those four years of college were for? What was the point of all that hard work?
Benjamin: You got me.

Mrs. Braddock: The Robinson’s are here.

Benjamin: What was your major subject at college?
Mrs. Robinson: Art.
Benjamin: Art? But I thought you…I guess you kind of lost interest in it over the years then.
Mrs. Robinson: Kind of.

Benjamin: A Ford. Goddamn, that’s great. That’s great, a Ford.
Mrs. Robinson: That’s enough.
Benjamin: So old Elaine Robinson got started in a Ford.

Benjamin: But why shouldn’t I take Elaine out?
Mrs. Robinson: I have my reasons.
Benjamin: Then let’s hear them.
Mrs. Robinson: No.
Benjamin: Let’s hear your reasons, Mrs. Robinson. Because I think I know what they are. I’m not good enough for her to associate with, am I? I’m not good enough to even talk about her, am I?
Mrs. Robinson: Let’s drop it.
Benjamin: We’re not dropping it. I’m good enough for you but I’m too slimy to associate with your daughter. That’s it, isn’t it? ISN’T IT?!
Mrs. Robinson [after long pause]: Yes.

Mrs. Robinson: Benjanmin…
Benjamin: Let’s not talk about it. Let’s not talk at all.

Benjamin: Now listen, this was not my idea. It was my father’s idea.
Mrs. Robinson: Benjamin, I thought I made myself perfectly clear about this.
Benjamin: Look, we’ll go out to dinner and have a drink and I’ll bring her back. Because it was either that or a dinner party for the two families. And I’m afraid I couldn’t quite handle that, if you don’t mind.

Benjamin: Sit down…Why don’t you watch the show?
Elaine: Benjamin, do you dislike me for some reason?
Benjamin: No - why should I?..You’re missing a great effect here. How do you like that? Could you do it?

Elaine: Where we going?
Benjamin: I’m trying to think of where there’s a place to have a drink around here.
Elaine: Isn’t there one in the Taft Hotel?

Elaine: Benjamin, what’s happening?
Benjamin: I don’t know. They all think I look like this guy Gladstone.

Elaine: Benjamin - are you having an affair with someone?

Benjamin: Elaine, I have to tell you something. That woman. The older woman we talked about.
Elaine: You mean the one who…
Benjamin: Yes, the married woman. It wasn’t just some woman.
Elaine: What are you telling me? Benjamin, will you just tell me what it is all about?
[she sees her mother]
Elaine: Oh, no.
Benjamin: Elaine…
Elaine: Oh my God!
Benjamin: Please!
Elaine: Get out of here!
Benjamin: Don’t cry…
Elaine: GET OUT! GET OUT!
Mrs. Robinson: Goodbye, Benjamin.

Mrs. Braddock: What’s happening?
Mr. Braddock: Ben says he and Elaine are getting married.
Mrs. Braddock: I don’t believe it!!
Mr. Braddock: That’s what he says. Right?
Benjamin: I’m going up to Berkeley today.
Mrs. Braddock:: Come on, let’s call the Robinsons. We’ve got something to celebrate.
Benjamin: No, I think you’ll want to wait on that.
Mr. Braddock: They don’t know?
Benjamin: No - they don’t.
Mrs. Braddock: Well, when did you decide all this?
Benjamin: About an hour ago.
Mr. Braddock: Wait a minute. You talked to Elaine this morning?
Benjamin: No, she doesn’t know about it.
Mr. Braddock: You mean she doesn’t know that you’re coming up to Berkeley?
Benjamin: No. Actually, she doesn’t know about us getting married yet.
Mrs. Braddock: Well, when did you two talk this over?
Benjamin: We haven’t.
Mrs. Braddock: You haven’t?
Mr. Braddock: Ben, this whole idea sounds pretty half-baked.
Benjamin: No, it’s not. It’s completely baked. It’s a decision I’ve made.
Mrs. Braddock: But what makes you think she wants to marry you?
Benjamin: She doesn’t. To be perfectly honest, she doesn’t like me.

Mr. McCleery [to Benjamin]: You aren’t one of those outside agitators, are you?

Benjamin: I’ve got a real feeling that this is the fellow.

Elaine: How could you do that, Benjamin? How could you possibly rape my mother?
Benjamin: What?! What did she say? You got tell me what did she say.
Elaine: Why?
Benjamin: Because it isn’t true. Tell me.
Elaine: She said she was having a drink in the hotel with a friend. You waited for her in the parking lot and told her she was too drunk to drive home and you would get her a room for the night.
Benjamin: Then what?
Elaine: Then you took her upstairs and you raped her.
Benjamin: Oh, no, no, no, that’s not what happened. What happened was there was this party at my parents…

Elaine: What are you going to do now?
Benjamin: I don’t know.
Elaine: Are you going home?
Benjamin: No.
Elaine: Well, where are you going?
Benjamin: Elaine, you’re going to stop asking me.

Benjamin: Good God…

Benjamin: We’ll need our Birth Certificates. I happen to have mine with me. Where’s yours?

Elaine: I have to see Carl first.
Benjamin: Carl who?
Elaine: Carl Smith. He’s a medical student. We’ve known him for years.
Benjamin: Who, that guy at the Zoo?
Elaine: Yes.
Benjamin: Why do you have to see him?
Elaine: Well, I said I might marry him.

Benjanin: Well, what did he say? I’m curious.
Elaine: He said he thought we’d make a pretty good team.
Benjamin: Oh no. He said that. Where did he do it?
[Elaine gets up to leave the library]
Benjamin: I’d like to know where it happened? It wasn’t in his car, was it?!

Elaine: Good night.
Benjamin: Are we getting married tomorrow?
Elaine: No…
Benjamin: Day after tomorrow?
Elaine: I don’t know. Maybe we are, and maybe we’re not.

Benjamin: I am trying to tell you I have no personal feelings about you, Mr. Robinson. I am trying to tell you I do not resent you.
Mr. Robinson: But you don’t respect me terribly much either, do you?
Benjamin: No, Sir.

Benjamin: Listen to me. What happened between Mrs. Robinson and me was nothing. It didn’t mean anything. We might just as well have been shaking hands.
Mr. Robinson: Shaking hands? Well, that’s not saying much for my wife, is it?
Benjamin: You miss the point.
Mr. Robinson: I guess I do.
Benjamin: The point is I don’t love your wife. I love your daughter, sir.

Benjamin: Elaine.
Mrs. Robinson: Hello, Benjamin.
Benjamin: Where is she?
Mrs. Robinson [on phone]: Hello. Get me the police, please.
Benjamin: Where is Elaine?
Mrs. Robinson: I’ll be with you in a moment. [back on the phone] Do you have a petrol car in the vicinity of 1200 Glenview Road. Good, we have a burgler here. Just a second. I’ll ask him.
[she looks over to Benjamin]
Are you armed?
[back to the phone]
Mrs. Robinson: No, I don’t believe he is.

Gas station attendant: Do you need any gas, Father?!

Elaine: BEN!!!

Mrs. Robinson: Elaine, it’s too late!
Elaine: Not for me![/b]

Two givens:

1] This is the “good” military. It is concerned only with preserving national security and spreading democracy, freedom and human rights around the globe. As opposed to what it really is: The muscle behind the military industrial complex and the war economy.

2] “Women’s liberation” here means enabling women to be just like men. Alpha males in particular. It’s never, ever the other way around: women insisting men be more like them.

While nothing at all like this I made it through basic training in the military by remembering the most important thing: It’s all scripted. And largely bullshit.

But these folks do become genuine brutes. And hardly because it’s a “necessary evil”. This sort of behavior is glorified. It’s the end in itself, and not just the means.

And there ain’t nothin’ in Washington that ain’t politics.

G.I. Jane
Directed by Ridley Scott

[b]Sen. DeHaven: Good. I like pissed off.

Lt. O’Neil: The only thing that scares me is the sexual politics. I’m just not interested in being some poster girl for women’s rights.

Royce: …The SEALS, babe? These guys are world class warriors. They see you coming…
Lt. O’Neil: I’m aware they may not want me there.
Royce: May not? They will eat corn flakes out of your skull, okay?

Lt. O’Neil: I’m not here to make some kind of statement. All I care about is completing the training and getting operational experience, just like everyone else, I suspect.
C.O: If you were like everyone else, lieutenant, I suspect we wouldn’t be making statements about not making statements, would we?

Master Chief [quoting “Self-Pity” by D.H. Lawrence]: “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”

Master Chief: The ebb and flow of the Atlantic tides, the drift of the continents, the very position of the sun along its ecliptic. THESE are just a FEW of the things I control in my world! Is that clear?
Stamm: Yes, Command Master Chief!
Master Chief [to Everyone]: IS THAT CLEAR?
All the CRT Trainees: YES, COMMAND MASTER CHIEF!

Master Chief: 60% of you will not pass this course! How do I know? Because that is an historical fact! Now for the bad news, I always like to get one quitter on the first day, and until I do, that first day does not end!

Master Chief: I know some of you are already thinking about quitting. Go ahead. You don’t need this abuse Quit. Be ashamed for the rest of your fucking lives.

Master Chief: Pain is your friend, your ally, it will tell you when you are seriously injured, it will keep you awake and angry, and remind you to finish the job and get the hell home. But you know the best thing about pain? It lets you know you’re not dead yet!

Master Chief: Sergeant Cortes, however brief your stint with this command might be, there are two words you will learn to put together: Team…Mate.

Master Chief: Lt. O’Neil, when I want your opinion, I’ll give it to ya.

Lt. O’Neil [commenting on the special standard for her training]: I mean really sir, why don’t you just issue me a pink petticoat to wear around the base?
C.O.: Did you just have a brain fart, Lieutenant?
Lt. O’Neil: Begging your pardon, sir?
C.O.: Did you just waltz in here and bark at your commanding officer? Because if you did, I would call that a bona fide brain fart, and I resent it when people FART inside my office!
Lt. O’Neil: I think you’ve resented me from the start, sir.
C.O.: What I resent, Lieutenant, is some politician using my base as a test tube for her grand social experiment. What I resent, is the sensitivity training that is now mandatory for all of my men. The ob-gyn I now have to keep on staff just to keep track of your personal pap smears. But most of all what I resent, is your perfume, however subtle, interfering with the scent of my fine three-dollar-and-seventy-nine-cent cigar, which I will put out this instant if the phallic nature of it happens to offend your GODDAMN FRAGILE SENSIBILITIES! Does it?
Lt. O’Neil: No, sir.
C.O.: “No, sir” WHAT?
Lt. O’Neil: The shape doesn’t bother me. Just the goddamn stench.

C.O. [after Jordan demands that he remove the dual standard]: One standard.
Lt. O’Neil: Just treat me the same. No better, no worse.
C.O.: You’re gonna get everything you want, O’Neil. I just wonder if you want what you’re gonna get.

Sen. DeHaven: Captain, are you in the habit of lettin’ reporters traipse around your base, snappin’ their fill? These are supposed to be discreet test cases!
C.O.: Senator, they stand out on a public highway using telephoto lenses. There is nothin’ I can do about it, unless you want me to infringe on their civil liberties, which I will be glad to do, if you’ll just trim a little fat off the Constitution.
Sen. DeHaven: Did you just mouth off to a senior member of the Senate Arms Committee?

McCool [after one trainee mentions that things have changed for the better for African-Americans]: Have they? So you see, O’Neil, I know where you’re coming from. To them you’re just the new nigger on the block, that’s all.

Lt. O’Neil: You were given the Navy Cross right? May I ask what you got it for?
Master Chief: Since it bears on this conversation, I got it for pulling a 250-pound man out of a burning tank.
Lt. O’Neil: So stopping to save a man makes you a hero, but if a man stops to help a woman, he’s gone soft?
Master Chief: Could you have pulled that man clear? Lieutenant, you couldn’t even haul your own body weight out of the water today.

Royce: Jordan, just watch your six, okay?

Lt. O’Neil [after being brutually beaten during a capture exercise]: Master Chief…
Master Chief: Lieutenant, seek life elsewhere.
Lt. O’Neil: Suck my dick![/b]

She’s made it. She’s officially a man.

[b]Master Chief: She’s not the problem. We are.

Girl [noticing O’Neil’s bruised face]: Ain’t really none of my business, but I say leave the bastard.

Sen. DeHaven: Jordan, everyday I am forced to make decisions that would have Solomon himself shittin’ golf balls. And half of them are about my own political survival.
Lt. O’Neil: Tell me you didn’t sell me out.

Sen. DeHaven: It was never going to happen anyway?
Lt. O’Neil: Then why the fuck did you start me on all this in the first place?
Sen. DeHaven: Truthfully? I never expected you to do so well. I thought you’d ring out in two weeks, bing bang it’s over, and we’re popular. In Washington, you don’t even need the Ten Commandments when you’re popular!

Lt. O’Neil: Now you get those charges voided, Senator, and you do it today.
Sen. DeHaven: Or what?
Lt. O’Neil: You like pissed off? Watch this.[/b]

I remember when I first came out as a nihilist. Not the same thing as here of course but you still have to deal with a lot of ignorant assholes.

Here’s the thing though. When confronting “traditionalists” always start with dasein. Once they begin to grasp how who they think they are is all hopelessly embedded in contingency, chance and change they will, well, okay, admitedly, they will probably become even more reactionary.

But not all of them, so give it a try.

And then there’s the “culture thing”. The “honor” bullshit. Always the man’s of course.

Yeah, sure, one is a doctor, the other is a ballet dancer. They are both very beautiful. And very young. Not that this detracts from how good the movie is though.

trailer:
youtu.be/m76qAslk0y0

SAVING FACE [2004]
Written and directed by Alice Wu

[b]Little Yu: Home to see your grandparents?
Wil: Yeah, the weekly pilgrimage to Flushing…to swim in the Chinese gene pool.

Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: Is that how you speak to your ma who worked nights so you could eat? Who stayed in labor without painkillers so you wouldn’t turn dim-witted like your cousin Jimmy? Had I known you would grow so ungrateful I would have held you in.

Wil: One night without Chinese food isn’t gonna kill her.

Wil: How did you find out she was…?
Wai Po - Grandma: The receptionist at the Manhattan clinic is married to one of Grandpa’s former students.
Wil [mostly to herself]: One billion Chinese people, two degrees of separation.

Jay: When’s your Grandfather going to let her come back home?
Wil: When she gets married…or proves immaculate conception.

Randi: Why can’t she get her own apartment?
Wil: Are you insane? Do you know what kind of karmic hell I’d pay as a Chinese daughter who didn’t take in her own mom?

Wil: Ma, you can’t give him a paper plate.
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: Safer this way. Throw it out afterwards.
Wil: It’s rude.
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: I’ll give him two.

Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma [in Mandarin]: Your neighbor is loud and dark and eats too much soy sauce.
Wil [in Mandarin]: Americans like soy sauce.
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma [in Mandarin]: I’m going to start eating less soy sauce so it won’t stain the baby too dark.
Wil [in English]: Ma, that’s ridiculous.
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: You eat less too, so you don’t grow spots.
[Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma passes soy sauce bottle to Jay]
Jay [who is black]: Thanks.
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: Too late for him anyway.

Wil: So how come we never met before now?
Vivian: We did meet. Nineteen years ago. I was 8, you were 9. Outside the temple.
Wil: I don’t remember.
Vivian: The Wong boys were taunting me about my parents’ divorce. You beat the crap out of them. You were wearing a Kristy McNichol t-shirt, tan cords and a pageboy. You spilled your mom’s groceries. We scooped them into a bag.
Wil: That’s right, and then…
Vivian Shing: And then I kissed you on the nose. And you ran.

Wil: I’ll definitely be there tonight.
Vivian: “Definitely” definitely, or “definitely” maybe?

Wil: You talked to your mother about us?
Vivian: Yeah. So?
Wil: “So”? Does she know we have sex?
Vivian: No, Wil. She thinks we conjugate Latin verbs.
Wil: Did you tell her about this?[/b]

And down [on her] she goes.

[b]Nurse #1: Hey, there’s a Mr. Fu. He’s finishing a checkup with Mr. Morgan.
Wil: Let me see his stats.
[Looks over chart]
Wil: Fifty-three, unmarried. Thyroid levels aren’t where I’d like to see them, but overall pretty healthy. Okay. Be discrete but ask him if he’s free Friday.
[Leaves]
Randi [turns and points at the nurse]: “Book him, Dano.”

Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: No one wants to see a 50-year-old Chinese woman look sexy.
Wil: Ma, you’re only 48. Connie Chung’s sexy, and she must be nearly 60.
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: Her show was cancelled.

Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma [to Wil]: Is he white?

Wil [watching a soap opera]: Is that the good guy?
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: No, he’s marrying her for money.
Wil: Is that the good guy?
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: No, that’s his brother.
Wil: Who’s that guy?
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: He’s the most evil of them all, he wants to ruin her family to avenge a grudge.
Wil: Who’s the loser they’re beating up?
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: That’s the good guy.

Vivian: Just tell her I’m a friend. A nice Chinese girl.
Wil: You’re not just a nice Chinese girl.
Vivian: I’ll fake it.

Vivian: So is the baby good?
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma [thinking she means Wil]: She works too hard. I hardly get to see her.
Vivian: Me neither.

Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: Wil’s black neighbor is single…always around. You interested?
Vivian: No.
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: You don’t like black people?
Vivian: Sure, I like…
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma [to Wil]: She doesn’t like black people.
Wil: Yes, she does.
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: Then why won’t she date them?

Little Girl That Vivian Teaches: Are you guys gonna kiss?
Wil [startled]: No. What?
Little Girl: Are you going to French kiss when you go to Paris?
Vivian: Uh, go play on the jungle gym

Dr. Shing [Vivian’s father, to Wil]: So you’re the reason she’s dragging her heels on Paris.

Vivian: Where have you been the last couple days?
Wil: It’s been crazy. Vivian…there’s a lot going on right now. I’m sorry if l…If this hurts.
Vivian [getting up to walk away]: At least it’s not a flesh wound.

Wil: Ma, I love you…and I’m gay.
Hwei-Lan Gao - Ma: How can you say those two things at once? How can you tell me you love me…then throw that in my face? I am not a bad mother. My daughter is not gay.
Wil: Then maybe I shouldn’t be your daughter.[/b]

Of course she is a doctor. An independant woman. She can afford to rebuff that reaction.

[b]Vivian [to Wil]: You’re too scared to look the world in the eye…and let it watch you fall in love.

Vivian [at the airport]: Kiss me. Right here, in front of all these people.
[Wil can’t bring herself to do it…Vivian turns to board the plane][/b]

The ending? Okay, so even Hollywood might be embarassed by it.

Inspired by true events…in the sick fucking world of sex trafficking.

Man’s inhumanity to…children. Girls, in particular.

Whenever it is children you see being abused and exploited [and brutalized] you just want to explode. You want to wring God’s fucking neck and demand an explanation for why He doesn’t just reach down and smite the sick bastards. And with No God you just endure it as best you can. Or you do what you can to make sure the future here is less egregious.

If it was up to me the men who do these things would be imprisoned under the most brutal conditions imaginable. And these conditions would be made known to any and all others who might be thinking of doing the same. With children you’ve got to draw the fucking line.

Even if the scumbags are Smurfs. Or State Department officials.

Men. Some care not at all how much pain and suffering they cause, just so they can come. Or profit from the ejaculations of others. Fortunately, that is still only a small percentage of all men. Lots of men are heroes here. Men like Peter. But in this sex [and money] saturated culture the number of scumbags can only rise.

There are parts of this film unbearable to watch.

human trafficking at wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking

the “real life” whistleblower at Daily Beast:
thedailybeast.com/articles/2 … osnia.html

trailer:
youtu.be/al3anBiHwmI

THE WHISTLEBLOWER [2010]
Written and directed by Larysa Kondracki

[b]Raya: I have to get home. Mama’s gonna kill me.
Luba: No. You are staying with me tonight. Roman wants us there at nine in the morning. Raya, we’ve been over this. It’s just a few months working in a hotel.
Raya: Yes, but…
Luba: You want to work at a Copyshack like your mother? He said it was both of us or nothing!
Raya: …No.
[walks away]
Luba: Fuck your Mom!

Halyna: It’s 1:30 in the morning.
Raya: You don’t understand! Luba wanted me to…
Halyna: If her mother lets her do whatever she wants go live there. You’ve graduated. You’re an adult now. Do what you want.
[Halyna turns and walks into her bedroom, closing the door]
[Raya looks around the room, thinking…then bolts out of the house][/b]

Big mistake. But such is life as we play off each other’s perceptions of reality.

[b]Kathy: Bosnia?

Blakely: During your training you will see that peace is harder won than war. That every morning’s hope is haunted by yesterday’s nightmare.[/b]

What a piece of shit this one is.

[b]Kathy: What did he say?
Interpretor [of a woman who has been brutalized]: He say the woman is Muslim and she deserves this.
[the Slavic men start shouting]
McVeigh: That’s enough!..Movin on. Next case.
Kathy: Excuse me. Excuse me. What do you mean, “movin on”? This is a felony assault. Who is going to investigate?
McVeigh: Okay, let me ask you something. Can you tell a Serb from a Croat or a Bosniac? Because I can’t. Raical and religious hatred started a war in this country. Now, as much as I’d like it to be, we are not here as investigators. We monitor. That’s it.

Kathy: Florida Bar? What’s that?
Police official: Florida Bar. It’s a bar in the hills. I can take them to the Zenica Shelter. That’s where we usually take these girls.
Kathy: Usually?

Milena [who runs the Zenica Shelter]: Since the end of the war, sex trafficking has spread like cancer.
Kathy: Why-Why since the end of the war?
Milena: Half our men are dead. So, who are these girls brought in for?

Milena: This is Raya. The nurse found, uh, objects inside her.
Kathy: Excuse me?
Milena: Coins. Like you saw, they’re not prostitutes. They are slaves, treated like dogs.

Fred [interrupting her findings]: Where are we going, Columbo?
Kathy: I don’t know, but, um, something fucked up is going on.
Fred: Ooh. Honey, it’s like I say, this is Bosnia. These people specialize in “fucked up”.

Kathy [to Raya]: …If you say that Tanjo was taking payoffs from this man, Fred Miller, his name can go on the record and the U.N. has to do something. They can’t knowingly have one of their men involved in rape, kidnapping and torture.[/b]

Oh, yes, they can.

[b]Raya: Will we be safe? Do you promise?
Kathy: I promise.

U.N. official: We have a system that works here.
Kathy: Oh, really? For who?

Irka [to Kathy]: Please, just let me die!

Halyna: What will they do to her? WHAT WILL THEY DO TO HER?!

Victum: We stop at the border. I see man in blue. Like you. I thank God. I think we have our savior. Then he jumps in and drives the van.

Kathy: Madeleine, they’re bringing them in. I.P.T.F. are actually trafficking girls and bringing them across the border. And it’s not just them. This involves all kinds of internationals–from military officiers to diplomats. I thought I was only going after one guy.[/b]

Here’s what it’s all about:

Peter: I’ve never seen I.A. overridden like this?
Kathy: Overridden by who?
Peter: I don’t know. I can’t be sure. It’s the State Department…or Democra. You do know what they stand to lose if this…
Kathy: I guess not.
Peter: Their contract in Bosnia is worth millions. Globally, just this year alone, billions of dollars in U.S. government contracts. And now you come along with this scandal…
Kathy: I don’t want a scandal. I’m just doing my job.
Peter: I know, but it doesn’t matter. Nobody cares about you.

Or the girls. You can’t work inside “the system” to change things when it’s “the system” that creates things.

[b]Kathy: Fuck protocol! We just raid the bar!

News reporter on T.V.: “Mostly traffickers prey on those they know banking on the fact that the girl will trust them. Traffickers can be fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles…”

Halyna [to sister]: How could you sell your own blood? You swine. You swine. You swine.

Kathy [email to authorities]: We are peacekeepers who came to protect the innocent, but now prey upon them in the worst ways possible. We may be accused of thinking with our hearts instead of our heads, but we will have our humanity.

Blakely: Madeleine, I have to protect this organization, and so should you. The U.N. is too fragile, too important. And that’s what immunity is for.
Madeleine: Immunity, not impunity. The United Nations was formed from the ashes of Auschwitz. The United States led the way, and it’s a point of honor with me that the U.N. is not remembered for raping the very people we must protect.
Blakely: Those girls are whores of war. It happens. I will not dictate for morality.
Madeleine: So what are we dictating for? I’ll go tlo Washington. I’ll go to the State Department if I must.
Blakely: Democra isn’t even based out of the States. It’s based out of England. It’s a private orgnaization. We work in the real world.[/b]

Can anyone with straight fucking face tells us that the powers that be couldn’t put a stop to these things if the political will wasn’t lacking and corporate profits weren’t priority one?

[b]Kathy [to Madeline]: They killed Raya. They shot her in the head. She wanted to testify, and they made an example of her. I’m responsible for this. I promised I would protect her…Oh God, I can’t stop thinking about her mother. How do we tell people what’s happening here?

Blakely: You’re trespassing.
Kathy: So what? What are you going to do? Fire me again? You gonna arrest me? I have diplomatic immunity. Isn’t that what you all rely on around here?
Blakely: You had immunity, You don’t have a U.N. I.D. anymore. You’re a civilian now, You’re on your own.
Kathy: Well, I’m sure the State Department will be happy to hear from me when I get back.
Blakely: Where do you think this comes from? The State Department owns your contract. They don’t want you here. Democra wants you out. You can talk to whomever you want. They’re not listening. You’re finished.

BBC Reporter: Given everything you’ve been through, would you do it again?
Kathy: Yes. Yes, I would. No doubt about it.

Titlecard: Following Kathryn Bolkovac’s departure, a number of peacekeepers, including private contractors, were sent home. None faced criminal charges in their home countries. The U.S. State Department continues to do business with private contractors like the one depicted in this film, including contracts worth billions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kathryn Bolkovac lives in the Netherlands with Jan, She has been unable to regain employment in the international community.

Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing criminal industries. It is estimated nearly 2.5 million people are being trafficked around the world.[/b]

And now some can go back to pretending this isn’t really the way the world works at all. That folks like Barack Obama have absolutely no understanding at all of what goes on behind the curtains. When, for example, those contracts are signed, sealed and delivered.

First the child was wild. And then he was tamed. Then he alternated between being an “attraction” and a scientific speciman.
But it had to be better than “before”. Didn’t it?

In a strange way it’s almost like watching The Miracle Worker.

All through his “training” though he never lets go of nature as he once knew it. It’s always his first choice. It makes you ponder “freedom” from a whole other perspective.

IMDb

[b]Truffaut remained true to Dr. Itard’s written accounts in most respects. A few variations are: (1) Victor was not stark naked when first captured; he had the shreds of a shirt around his neck. (2) Victor’s hair would have been much longer, because he was indifferent to hygiene or how he looked. (3) Jean Itard was merely a young medical student, while the film suggests that he was on an equal basis with Pinel. (4) Madame Guerin became almost a mother to Victor, always attending to him, whereas the film suggests that she merely helped to train him and to clean up after him. (5) Itard would rub Victor’s back to relax and comfort him, but then had to worry about sexual responses. Victor also often wet his bed, but Itard never punished him; he decided to allow Victor to learn whether he preferred to lie in a wet bed or to get up to relieve himself. These problems are not shown. (6) In the scene in which Victor throws a tantrum about learning the alphabet, his and Dr. Itard’s responses were different than are shown in the film. Real-life Victor bit his bedsheets and began to throw hot coals around the house before falling to the ground and writhing/screaming/kicking; and Itard (Truffaut) did not merely put him into the closet for a few moments. Itard admits [in translation] that he actually “violently threw open the window of his room, which was on the fifth floor overlooking some boulders directly below … and grabbing him forcibly by the hips, I held him out of the window, his head facing directly down toward the bottom of the chasm. After some seconds, I drew him in again. He was pale, covered with a cold sweat … I made him gather up all the [alphabet] cards and replace them all. This was done very slowly … but at least without impatience.” Viewers may thank Truffaut for choosing the lesser of two evil punishments! (7) Finally, Dr. Itard took care of Victor for 5 years; in 1806, Victor moved into Madame Guerin’s house and stayed there for the rest of his life, with the French Government paying for his care. It is believed that he died there, without ever marrying.

The incidents based on true life, as reported by Dr. Itard and as shown by Truffaut, include the facts that: (1) Victor was captured by hunters. (2) Pinel did conclude and dismiss Victor as a helpless retarded child, “an incurable idiot.” (3) Crowds of Parisians really did come to see the “Wild Boy of Aveyron.” (4) Victor really did prefer the “O” sound, and accepted the name Victor, which in French has an accent on the “O” [veek-TOR]. (5) Dr. Itard appears to have been truly kind to the boy, as were Mme. Guerin and the neighbors. (6) Victor appears to have had great affection for Itard and Guerin, but was never interested in children of his own age.

The Los Angeles opening of this film occurred one week before the discovery of an American “wild child”, a young girl who had been kept isolated from human contact much of her life. The team of doctors working with her, arranged a private viewing of the French film for inspiration.[/b]

FAQs at IMDB:
imdb.com/title/tt0064285/faq

The Wild Child at wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Child

feral children at wiki
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

trailer:
youtu.be/vzr-xFAfQbs

THE WILD CHILD [L’enfant Sauvage] 1970
Written and directed by François Truffaut

[b]Doctor [examining scar on neck]: No doubt, whoever abandoned him meant to kill him.

Dr Itard: I think the only cause of his dumbness is the isolation in which he lived.

Colleague: What now?
Dr Itard: The child will die here. All we do is exhibit him as a freak.
Colleague: See here, Citizen Itard. The boy is an inferior being. He’s lower than an animal.
Dr Itard: That’s just the point. Animals are cared for, trained. It’s useless to bring him from the forest and lock him up as if he were being punished for disappointing Parisians.

Dr Itard [voiceover]: What fascinates me is that all the boy has done since his arrival, he has done for the first time.

Dr Itard [voiceover]: I must say that for the present his emotions appear unaffected. Despite the ill treatment he endured at the Institute no one ever saw him cry.

Dr Itard: His first pair of shoes.[/b]

You can almost hear the kid thinking: What’s the fucking point? He doesn’t like them.

[b]Dr Itard [voiceover]: It was not what I had hoped. Had he said the word before the thing he desired was conceded he would have grasped the use of words. A point of communication would have been established and rapid progress would have followed this initial success.

Dr Itard [voiceover]: Victor has always shown a marked preference for water and the way he drinks it shows he finds great pleasure in it. He stands near the window, gazing upon the countryside as if in this delectable moment the child of nature sought to reunite the two blessings to survive his loss of freedom.

Dr Itard [voiceover]: For an interminable moment, I thought what I’d dreaded since Victor came to live with us had happened: that his fancy for the freedom of the woods had prevailed over his newfound needs and burgeoning affection.

Housekeeper: His tantrums are your fault. You make him study from morning to night. You turn his only pleasures into exercises. His meals, his walks, everything. He works ten times more than the normal child.

Dr Itard [voiceover]: Today, for the first time, Victor wept.

Dr Itard [voiceover]: Had I not known his limits, I’d have thought he understood my criticisms. I had barely chastized him when I saw his chest heave noisily and a stream of tears falling from underneath the blindfold.

Dr Itard [voiceover]: Now, ready to renounce the task I had imposed upon myself, seeing how much time I’d wasted on him, how deeply I regretted having known this child, I condemned the sterile curiosity of the men who had wrenched him away from his innocent and happy life.

Dr Itard [voiceover]: When he succeeds I reward him, when he fails I punish him. Yet I can’t say I have instilled a sense of justice in him. He obeys me and corrects hmself out of fear or out of hope for a reward and not out of a sense of moral order. To obtain less ambiguous results I must do an abominable thing.[/b]

How abominable?

Dr Itard [voiceover]: I will test Victor’s heart with a flagrant piece of injustice by punishing him for no reason after he succeeds right before my eyes. I shall administer a punishment as odious as it is unjust precisely to see if his reaction is one of rebellion.

How odious? It’s pretty fucked up. And Victor rebels. And then this observation:

Dr Itard [voiceover]: I wish my pupil could have understood me at this moment. I would have told him that his bite filled my soul with joy. I had irrefutable evidence that what is just and unjust was no longer alien to Victor’s heart. By giving him the sentiment, or rather by invoking it, I had elevated the savage man to the nature of a moral being by the most noble of his attributes.

I can just imagine the reaction of the objectivists here. And, no doubt, they can imagine my own reaction in turn.