philosophy in film

Malcom is black. Malcolm is a geek. And even in the age of Barack Obama that’s still seen as a contradiction in terms to some. Especially in his neighborhood. The Bottoms.

In other words, he needs to come up with a strategy for straddling this particular fence. At least to the extent that others will let him.

And by that I mean this:

Narrator: For most geeks, a bad day might be being the butt of jokes in class, the occasional food prank and the worst—being beat up by a jock. But when you live in The Bottoms, a bad day might be accidentally getting killed.

Like Wytony Johnson.

So, how far removed is this from…reality? Well, I’m not the one to ask, am I? But if the real world is anywhere near what is being portrayed here it’s a miracle there are any black geeks around at all. Not in this neighborhood.

Anyway, it’s not often you get the chance to see two worlds collide [and then coalesce] like the two worlds here do. I know which side I’m on. But then you also know how I come about that. Still, there are [no doubt] any number of geeks who do in fact envy those who live life right on the edge. That dionysian personality all but bursting at the seams with adrenaline.

So, if you’re a geek and you can’t beat them…join them. But only after you learn all you need to know about bitcoins.

American youth. The Kid culture. Only now hard-wired into a technology that the gangsters of old could scarcely have even imagined.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dope_(2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/strEm9amZuo

DOPE [2015]
Written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa

[b]Title card:
Dope:
1] noun: a drug taken illegally for recreational purposes
2] noun: a stupid person
3] slang: excellent. Used as a generalized term of approval.

Malcolm: I just read that money as we know it is dead. Soon the world is only gonna buy and sell products using Bitcoins. It’s like a complicated math equation.
Mom: So, one day we’re gonna buy things with numbers from a math equation?
Malcolm: Dope, right?

Narrator: Malcolm Adekanbi is a geek. Malcolm lives with his single mother. Malcolm lives in Inglewood, California, in the Darby-Dixon neighborhood referred to as The Bottoms.

Narrator: Malcolm, Jib and Diggy are all deeply obsessed with '90s hip-hop culture, submerging themselves in the music, watching old Yo! MTV Raps episodes for fashion tips…and using the slang.

Narrator: Oh, did I mention that Diggy was a lesbian? Although from the way she dresses, you might not have noticed she’s a girl. Save her, Lord! Yo, hallelujah! Hallelujah! Every Sunday, her grandmother asks the church to lay their hands on her in order to pray away the gay.

Narrator: Malcolm, Jib and Diggy don’t play sports and they aren’t in a gang. They’re always getting ridiculed by their peers because they’re into white shit like skateboards, manga comics, Donald Glover and for listening to white shit like Trash Talk, TV on the Radio and for doing white shit like getting good grades and applying to college.

Mr. Bailey: Malcolm, when I see stuff like this personal essay, I think you’re not taking the process seriously.
Malcolm: I’m taking it seriously, Mr. Bailey. I promise. I’m talking about something that I love. I mean, it’s well-reasoned, supported with historical data, it shows creativity, critical thinking. If Neil deGrasse Tyson was writing about Ice Cube, this is what it would look like.

Narrator: The only way to get home is down 104th Street. But that’s where the dope dealers are who, for sport, routinely try to steal their bikes. Such is the life of a geek in The Bottoms. A daily navigation between bad and worse choice.

Dom: If I let this slide, we got what you call a slippery slope. Do you know what a slippery slope is?
Crip: Do it got anything to do with skiing?
Dom: Sit your ass down!

Dom: He’s probably got one of those photogenic brains.
Malcolm: You mean photographic memory?
Dom: What I just say?
Malcolm: I mean, yeah, you just said it.

Crip [watching a video of a drone strike]: Check this nigga out. He’s walking his jihad dog and shit, scratching his nuts. Yo, man, straight up, I really used to think Obama was a bitch, man. Drones though, nigga? That’s some gangsta shit. I need one of those motherfuckers.
Dom: This shit ain’t funny. It’s fucked up if you really think about it.
Crip: How, nigga? He killing all them Al-Qaedas and shit.
Dom: Nigga, that ain’t all that gets killed.

Nakia: Thanks for helping me. Most of those niggas just saw me and stepped over me.
Malcolm: Luckily for you, I’m not one of those niggas.
Nakia: Oh, really? What are you, then?
Malcolm: I don’t know. I’m just…I’m black as fuck, right? Uh, I guess I’m just used to hearing that, uh, niggas don’t listen to this, niggas don’t do that, niggas don’t go to college unless they play ball or whatever. It’s just time to accept it. I’m just not one of those niggas.
Nakia: Well, me neither then 'Cause I’m going to college. Just gotta get my GED first.

Austin [to Malcolm]: I want you to get out of The Bottoms just like I did. I know from growing up there it’s very, very dangerous and that your family or your friends could get killed at any moment just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’d hate for that to happen to you.

Diggy: We’re talking about Molly, Jib, not fucking heroin. All we gotta do is find the white people. Go to Coachella, Lollapalooza.
Jib: Yeah, yeah. We can backpack and hitchhike and sing Mumford and Sons songs and all that faux fucking shit. Fuck you. Okay?
Diggy: I’m just saying it could work.
Malcolm: Bitcoins. That’s how we do it. There’s these sites where you can you can sell everything from fake credit cards to illegal guns and drugs. And they use Bitcoins so they can’t be traced. We don’t have to stand on any corner.
Jib: Dark Web. Could work.

Narrator: William Ian Sherwood the third, musician, scholar, rake, entrepreneur, conspiracy theorist. Malcolm, Jib and Diggy met William at band camp three years ago…
Will: Yo, you niggas need some weed? I got you. Good shit, fair prices…
[Diggy slaps him]
Narrator: William assured them that he used the word nigga only as a term of endearment as explained by Q-Tip in the classic song “Sucka Nigga.” After that, they all hit it off. Though he never used that word again.

Will: This dude isn’t African-American. He’s like fucking Latino or Moroccan or some shit. So technically, he shouldn’t be able to say the word. Why can he use it?
Jib: Because I’m 14% African.
Will: Four- Fourteen? That doesn’t…Shit, I’m probably 14%.
Jib: I am 14% African. Ancestry.com.

Nakia: Dom called from jail the other day. He asked about you.
Malcolm [suddenly suspicious]: That’s why you showed up all of a sudden.
Nakia: What’s that supposed to mean?
Malcolm: It means that Dom sent you here as his messenger. All this crying on my shoulder? Bullshit. You’re supposed to put your feminine wiles on me and find out about the fucking dope. Right? Right?
Nakia [heading for the door]: And here I was, stupid enough to think that you were different than these other niggas.

Malcolm: As I’ve just learned, it doesn’t matter if this bag is real or fake. Because of where I come from, everybody’s going to assume it’s fake. So, since you and I come from the same place, what is the DEA going to assume about you?
Austin: And because you and I are from the same place, Malcolm, you should know what a person like me can do to a person like you.
Malcolm: Yeah. But that’s not what a Harvard man would do. Nah, see, a man of Harvard is smart enough to see that would set off a chain of events that would inevitably come back and destroy him and everything he’s built.

Austin: Malcolm, you forgot your bag.
Malcolm: It’s fake.

Malcolm [voiceover]: Let me tell you about two students. Student “A” is a straight-A student who lives in the suburbs of Los Angeles. He plays in a punk band with his best friends. He loves to skateboard and ride on his BMX bike. His favorite TV show is Game Of Thrones and his favorite band is The Thermals. He’s a '90s hip-hop geek. Student “B” goes to an underfunded school where teachers who would rather not be there teach kids who really don’t care. He lives with a single mother, doesn’t know his father and has sold dope. Now close your eyes. Picture each of these kids and tell me what you see. Be honest. No one’s going to judge you. Now open your eyes. So, am I student “A” or student “B”? Am I a geek or a menace? For most of my life, I’ve been caught in between who I really am… and how I’m perceived, in between categories and definition. I don’t fit in. And I used to think that that was a curse, but now I’m slowly starting to see maybe it’s a blessing. See, when you don’t fit in, you’re forced to see the world from many different angles and points of view. You gain knowledge, life lessons from disparate people and places. And those lessons, for better or worse, have shaped me. So, who am I? Allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Malcolm Adekanbi. I’m a straight-A student with nearly perfect SAT scores. I taught myself how to play guitar and read music. I have stellar recommendations and diverse extracurricular activities. I am a Google Science Fair participant, and in three weeks, I helped make over $100,000 for an online business. So, why do I want to attend Harvard? If I was white, would you even have to ask me that question?[/b]

People are people are people. Or that’s what some will argue. And so, the argument continues, even if there were only three of them left on earth we could still more or less predict their behavior.

In theory.

Or up on silver screen.

The three here: Two young men. One black, one white. Both handsome. One young woman. Beautiful. She’s white too.

Naturally, you will watch the film imagining yourself as one of the three. Instilling that classic “what would you do?” frame of mind. Some no doubt would even want it to happen to them. Nothing better then to show the world [or those left in it] that you could hack it. A survivor. In fact, you would even triumph. Besides, some folks more or less thrive on being around as few people as possible.

But then one survivor becomes two. And then three. And the more of you around the more likelihood you will begin to bump into conflicting goods. It’s no longer just what you want and need. Unless, of course, there’s a role for God too. One of them is an atheist and two are Christian.

Once again a world that comes down basically to surviving from to day to day itself. And that of course changes everything.

But do the math: 2 young, handsome men and 1 young, attractive woman. Suddenly it’s not all just about survival. There’s that part about love and lust. The part about reproducing the species.

And the part about race?

So, what actually happened to bring all this about? And are they really “the only ones left”? I guess we’ll never know.

IMDb

The film is based on the science-fiction novel “Z for Zachariah” by Robert C. O’Brien, which was published posthumously in 1974. The film’s “love triangle” is a major deviation because there are only two protagonists - Ann and Loomis - in the novel.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_for_Zachariah_(film
trailer: youtu.be/5k5tlNHUCj0

Z FOR ZACHARIAH [2015]
Directed by Craig Zobel

[b]Ann: Get out of there! Get out of there quick! Hey! You need to get out of there!
John: Okay, I’m coming. Let me get…
Ann: Get back!
John: Who are you? Who are you? Where are the others?
Ann: Who?
John: Where are the others? Where are they?
Ann: Who are the others? I just, I don’t know what to say? It’s just me. You just need to get out of the water please. Please, it’s just, the water comes from outside the valley. You just need to get out of the water please.

Ann [praying]: Dear lord, please bless this man. He’s very sick and he needs your help. I know you must have a plan for us, but he’s sick from a mistake and I think probably a good person. I will serve you however you see fit. I’m not saying you don’t know better or whatever, but I would feel so blessed if he could stay here and be healthy.

John [to Ann]: There’s got to be an explanation. I don’t know, something to do with the weather patterns or, uh, maybe the ridge created a…just a natural buffer zone. I mean… It’s just crazy this is still here.

Ann: You were…you were up north when it started?
John: Yeah. I was, um, about a mile underground in a government facility…a bunker. I’m a research engineer. Well, I was.

Ann: So why’d you leave the bunker? Just wasn’t safe there anymore?
John: Well, I was a mile underground, you know. There was no there was no sun. There was no rain. There was no sky. There was nothing. You understand me? What I wanted from life wasn’t there. So I left.

John: What happened last winter? It snow a lot?
Ann: Yeah. I…I stayed in the house mostly, bundled up with Faro. I mean, I saved food, but we went through most of it. Truth is, uh… I almost… I almost froze and starved. It…it was bad.

John [of the generator]: This thing’s old. Looks like it’s been repaired a couple of times already. It was liable to blow no matter what.
Ann: Well, it’s too bad we can’t just do, like a science fair thing and just run all our clocks and everything off a potato.
John: That’s a good idea. Come on.[/b]

John was an engineer. A sort of…MacGyver.

Ann: How much wood do we need?
John [indicating the church]: Well, you saw it. We need most of this, right?
Ann: Could we just… could we use something else?
John: Well, no, we can’t…we can’t use the house. We need the barn. We can’t use the store. It’s all cinder block. No, this is it.
Ann: Well…my dad built that. He…he preached there every Sunday, you know? And it’s 'cause of Him that we survived, that, you know, that all of this survived,
John: 'Cause of your father?
Ann: No, no, 'cause… 'cause of Him.
John: But, what if we don’t tear down the church and we don’t survive?

So, John has to come up with a narrative that includes God in his plans. But that gets tricky:

[b]John: I know it’s hard. I know it’s hard. But if you got to tear down a church to get electricity…
Ann: But we don’t really need electricity.
John: It’s about…rebuilding. Maybe God…or your father…put this church here for us. So we can…we can start again. Maybe that’s why we’re here…just to start again. We get a generator, get electricity, plant the fields. We store up food for us. You never know. Maybe we store up food for more than just us.
Ann: Why? You think more people will come? I mean, if more people are coming then we should definitely keep the church.

Ann: You can have the church.
John: No, no, no. It’s just a project. It’s not worth making you upset.
Ann: It’s not. It really means something that you put all this thought into it and you… you’re thinking long-term for us. That really means something.
John: Thoughts are the easy part. Hard part’s finding a reason.[/b]

Then Caleb comes along. And things get considerably more complicated. More people, more daseins. More daseins, more conflicting goods.

[b]Caleb: Like you, Mr. Loomis, I was underground when the shit hit the fan. Most of the guys had families. They went up looking, never came back. Finally ran out of food. Decided to take my chances.

Ann: John, are we really going to invite hin inside?

John [to Ann and Caleb]: One day, I see this warehouse by the main road. There’s some water jugs on the outside. I’m hoping for water. When I come out, there’s someone in my wagon. It’s a boy maybe 13, maybe even 14 years old. He must’ve been on the main road, coming from the south. I was scared of going south back then. I don’t know why. The fallout… I was… He’s the reason I came this way. He was sick… filthy. His belly distended, stealing my food. Everything he put down, he just was throwing up. I couldn’t help him. I get him out of the wagon. He’s grabbing for the door, so we get into it. Pulls out a knife. Swinging at me weakly. That’s when I took out my gun. Soon as he saw it, he gave up. Just started crying. He was on his knees, just begging me to kill him. I couldn’t do anything. I just put him off to the side of the road, and I left him there to die.[/b]

Turns out he did kill him. Turns out it was prabably Ann’s brother.

[b]Caleb: You fancy a wager on which one of us bags that turkey first?
John: All right. What do we stake?
Caleb: Ann.
[John stares – glares – at him]
Caleb: I’m joking, Mr. Loomis. For bragging rights is all.

Caleb: Why were you okay with taking the chapel down?
Ann: I know why John was. I mean…he’s not religious, but…
Caleb: That church…it was only holy because of what you brought to it. That can’t be taken down.
Ann: That’s a nice way of looking at it.
Caleb: That’s the truth.
Ann: Thank you.
Caleb: Do you talk about your belief with Mr. Loomis?
Ann: No. He doesn’t, like, try to make me stop or anything. It’s just… just not somethingthat we share. But that’s okay.
Caleb: And what does he say about what happened out there?
Ann: Oh, you know, just…
Caleb: You haven’t really talked about it?
Ann: Well, not really, no. What do you think?
Caleb: I think He has a plan…and all three of us are part of it somehow. But it was us believers, don’t you think? Just like this valley…why it survived, why you and I did…because we have faith.
Ann: What if you don’t have faith?
Caleb: You have to.
Ann: Not everybody does.
Calrb: You have to. It’s the only way you’ll survive.

John: Yeah, um…I wanted to talk to you about something. Come here. So, um, how do I say this? I’ve seen the way that you and Caleb look at each other, okay? And, um, I wanted you to know that it’s okay, all right? I don’t want…
Ann: What do you mean?
John: No, no, no, no, no, no, I wanted to tell you I’m fine, okay? I’m good with it. You got to…you got to explore, okay?
Ann: I don’t feel the need to explore.
John: I’m not gonna stand in your way is what I’m saying, okay?
Ann: What? Why are you saying this? Because I… because I went for a walk with him today?
John: It has nothing to do with the walk. If you need to figure it out, figure it out.
Ann: I don’t have anything I need to figure out.
John: I’m just letting you know it’s fine, okay? It’s fine. It’s good. You all be white people together. That’s fine, okay? [/b]

Now everything starts to come out into the open. And there are consequences.

[b]John: Caleb, I got to say something. She’s a special girl.
Caleb: She sure is, sir.
John: It’s funny. It took you to make me realize that.
Caleb: You wish I’d never come?
John: No. If you weren’t here, we wouldn’t be so close to finishing the wheel, moving forward, getting electricity. Truth is, though, you were never a threat to me, Caleb. I mean, I…I told Ann to do whatever was necessary to keep you from leaving.
Caleb: All right.
[Caleb starts to snicker]
John: It’s funny?
Caleb: Oh, I don’t believe you, sir. Jealousy doesn’t suit you.[

John: He’s gone, Ann. Caleb. He left.
Ann: Left where?
John: To Anson. Took the safe suit. Said you were welcome to anything of his.
Ann: Oh…
John: I’m sorry.[/b]

She knows. Or one suspects she know. And now they both have to come up with a way to live with it.

I remember as a boy, an uncle of mine was diagnosed with Alzheimers. I wasn’t very close to him and I never I really gave it all that much thought. But that was the first time [as I recall] that the idea of identity first crossed over into my consciousness. I wondered what it really meant to think of yourself as “I” if something can happen inside your brain – something that is completely beyond your control – to take all that away?

And I am still at a loss in grappling with it today. I can speak of dasein – a fabricated self rooted in historical and cultural and experiential parameters – but that doesn’t make the implications of an affliction like alzheimers go away.

On the contrary, it tends to nudge me closer to accepting the arguments of those who embrace determinism as the most reasonable explanation for why we “choose” to do what we do. In other words, even if not afflicted with degenerative conditions like this “in the brain”.

And alzheimers is a degenerative disease. Which is to say, the torture is more along the lines of drip…drip…drip. Then one day you piss your pants because you forgot where the bathroom is in your own home. And then a few days later you forget how to tie your shoes.

Here the drama is amped up considerably because Alice is afflicted at such a relatively young age. After all, it’s one thing to “lose your mind” when you are in retirement, and another thing altogether when you are still more or less in the prime of your life. And thus having much more to lose. Alice is the Lillian Young Professor of Linguistics at Columbia.

Indeed, in the book she was a professor at Harvard. Still, it might be said that she is one of the lucky ones. Lucky in the sense that she has a lot of folks who love her, who care for her…and plenty of money to access all of the options.

IMDb

[b]Alice is shown being a compulsive “Words With Friends” player. Alec Baldwin, who portrays her husband, was notoriously booted off a plane before takeoff in 2011 because he refused to stop playing the game and power down his phone.

The directors of the film, Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer were unable to attend the Oscars to see Julianne Moore win, due to the fact that Glatzer was suffering from ALS and his condition had deteriorated significantly.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still_Alice
trailer: youtu.be/ZrXrZ5iiR0o

STILL ALICE [2014]
Directed by: Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland

Alice: Most children speak and understand their mother tongue… before the age of 4 without lessons, homework or much in the way of feedback. How they accomplish this remarkable feat…well this is a question that’s interested scientists at least since Charles Darwin kept a diary of the alien language of his infant son. He observed man has an instinctive tendency to speak as we see in the babble of young children. Much has been learned since then but today, I’d like to focus on some recent studies from my lab on the acquisition of past tense irregular verb forms in children between the ages of 18 months and 2 1/2 years. Now, you may say that this falls into the great academic tradition of knowing more and more about less and less until we know everything about nothing. But I hope to convince you that by observing these baby steps into the…into, uh…I…

And there it is. That first “gap”.

[b]Doctor [to Alice]: So I’d like to do an MRI just to rule some things out.

Doctor: What worries me are the memory tests that I sent you for. You have sporadic memory impairement totally out of proportion to your age. And there is evidence of decline in your level of mental function. So I think we should do a PET scan. It’s similar to an MRI but it can pick up things at the molecular level…
Alice: I know what a PET scan is. What in particular would you be looking for?
Doctor: I want to see if the results are consistent with Alzheimer’s disease. That would be rare for someone as young as yourself but you do fit the criteria.

Alice [at 4 in the morning]: John, get up sweetheart, wakeup. I have to talk. I have um…I’ve got something wrong with me.
John: What are you talking about?
Alice: I’ve been seeing a neurologist.
John: You’ve been seeing a neurologist…why?
Alice: He thinks that maybe I have early onset Alzheimer’s disease.
John: Honey, that doesn’t make any sense at all.
Alice: I didn’t want to tell you because they don’t know anything for sure but I’ve been doing all these tests and things…
John: Ali, that is completely insane.
Alice: I got lost while I was running on campus a while ago. I can’t, I can’t remember appointments, words.
John: Honey we all have memory lapses. That’s a sign of getting older. The other day I couldn’t remember the word…um… “glucose”.
Alice: It’s not like that. It’s like something drops out of me.
John: But there is no diagnosis yet?
Alice: No.
John: Well then I think that this is ridiculous it’s complete bullshit. You don’t have Alzheimers.
Alice [angrily]: God damn it. Why won’t you take me seriously?! No I know what I’m feeling. I know it’s feeling…It feels like my brain is fucking dying. And everything I’ve worked for in my entire life is going. It’s all going!!

John: Well shouldn’t any diagnosis be accompanied a genetic test?
Doctor: Actually I was gonna suggest that. In a case like this with the onset being so early we would like to check for presynalin mutations. And that would be an indicator of familial Alzheimer’s disease which is a rarer form. We need to make an appointment for you to see a genetic counselor.
Alice: So this concerns my children?!
Doctor: Yes.
Alice: I assume that if I have the gene the odds of my passing it along are 50/50?
Doctor: I’m afraid so.
Alice: And if they are carriers, what…what are the odds of them developing the disease?
Doctor: I’m afraid it’s 100 percent.

Alice: But the thing, the thing is, that, John, the thing is that the type of Alzheimer’s I have is very rare. It’s familial. It’s passed on genetically.
Anna: My god.
John: We believe that she got it from her father and, of course, we’re very worried that about the three of you. Now, there is a test you can take but it’s completely up to you whether you want to find out or not.
Alice: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.[/b]

So would you take it?

[b]Anna [on the phone]: Mom, I got the results. I’m positive.
Alice: Oh, god Anna. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Anna: Tom turned out negative and Lydia didn’t wanna know. But I’m positive.

Alice: I wish I had cancer.
John: Don’t say that.
Alice: Yeah, I do. I mean it. I mean I wouldn’t feel so ashamed. When people have cancer they wear pink ribbons for you and go on long walks and there’s money raised and you don’t have to feel like some kind of social…I can’t remember the word.

Alice [on the computer]: Hi, Alice. I am you and I have something very important to say to you. WHAT STREET DO YOU LIVE ON? WHAT MONTH IS YOUR BIRTHDAY? WHAT IS THE NAME OF YOUR OLDEST CHILD? So I guess you’ve reached that point…the point where you can no longer answer any of the questions. So this is the next logical step. I’m sure of it! In your bedroom there’s a dresser, with a blue lamp. Open the top drawer. In the back of the drawer there’s a bottle with pills in it. It says “take all pills with water”. Now there are a lot of pills in that bottle. It’s very important that you swallow them all, okay? And then lie down and go to sleep. And don’t tell anyone what your doing. WHEN YOU CAN NO LONGER ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS GO TO A FOLDER ON YOUR COMPUTER LABELLED “BUTTERFLY”.[/b]

I actually have my own rendition of this: The names of my family. The names of the Beatles. The names of the original Rolling Stones.

[b]Alice: I used to be someone who knew a lot. No one asks for my opinion or advice anymore. I miss that. I used to be curious and independent and confident. I miss being sure of things. There’s no peace in being unsure of everything all the time. I miss doing everything easily. I miss being a part of what’s happening. I miss feeling wanted. I miss my life and my family.

Lydia: What’s it like? Like, what does it actually feel like?
Alice: Well, it’s not always the same. I have, uh, good days and I have bad days. On my good days, I can, you know, almost pass for a normal person. But on my bad days, I feel like I can’t find myself. I’ve always been so defined by my intellect, my language, my articulation and now sometimes I can see the words hanging in front of me and I can’t reach them and I don’t know who I am and I don’t know what I’m going to lose next.
Lydia: That sounds horrible.
Alice [after a pause]: Thanks for asking.

John: If I could just jump in here, we’re both concerned about the rate of deterioration. Is that normal?
Doctor: Every case is different. With Familial Early Onset, things can go fast. And actually with people who have a high level of education things can go faster.

Alice [at Alzheimers conference]: Good morning. It’s an honor to be here. The poet Elizabeth Bishoponce wrote: ‘the Art of Losing isn’t hard to master: so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.’ I’m not a poet, I am a person living with Early Onset Alzheimer’s, and as that person I find myself learning the art of losing every day. Losing my bearings, losing objects, losing sleep, but mostly losing memories…
[she knocks the pages from the podium]
Alice: I think I’ll try to forget that just happened.
[crowd laughs]
Alice: All my life I’ve accumulated memories - they’ve become, in a way, my most precious possessions. The night I met my husband, the first time I held my textbook in my hands. Having children, making friends, traveling the world. Everything I accumulated in life, everything I’ve worked so hard for - now all that is being ripped away. As you can imagine, or as you know, this is hell. But it gets worse. Who can take us seriously when we are so far from who we once were? Our strange behavior and fumbled sentences change other’s perception of us and our perception of ourselves. We become ridiculous, incapable, comic. But this is not who we are, this is our disease. And like any disease it has a cause, it has a progression, and it could have a cure. My greatest wish is that my children, our children - the next generation - do not have to face what I am facing. But for the time being, I’m still alive. I know I’m alive. I have people I love dearly. I have things I want to do with my life. I rail against myself for not being able to remember things - but I still have moments in the day of pure happiness and joy. And please do not think that I am suffering. I am not suffering. I am struggling. Struggling to be part of things, to stay connected to whom I was once. So, ‘live in the moment’ I tell myself. It’s really all I can do, live in the moment. And not beat myself up too much… and not beat myself up too much for mastering the art of losing. One thing I will try to hold onto though is the memory of speaking here today. It will go, I know it will. It may be gone by tomorrow. But it means so much to be talking here, today, like my old ambitious self who was so fascinated by communication. Thank you for this opportunity. It means the world to me. Thank you.

Alice [after John finds her phone in the cupboard]: I was looking for this last night.
John [whispering to Anna]: It was a month ago.

John: Ali, you see that building over there? You know what that is?
Alice: I don’t think I know that.
John: That’s Columbia where you used to teach.
Alice: Someone told me I was a good teacher.
John: Yes…you were.
Alice: I was really smart.
John: You were the smartest person I’ve ever met.[/b]

Lots of rudderless folks in this world. They go about the business of living their lives from day to day to day but that’s really all there is. Worse, though, are those who are way beyond the point of merely subsisting but still have little more to show for it than the same old shit day after day after day.

But that can change. And when it does chances are it will be as a result of some calamity. Or some tragedy.

Still, that’s when you can come to find out things about yourself you really didn’t know at all. And, then, the more you explore that, the more you begin to connect those dots [more or less constructively] between before and after.

Here Daddy is the corporate executive and the son [who just died] is a musician. The rest will then either be more or less original, more or less able to draw you in. After all, we need the world of corporate executives because they are the folks who make all the “things” that we buy. But, given the world that they create, we also need the musicians able to distract us from all of that. One without the other doesn’t really work, does it?

Even if the musician turns out to be a mass murderer.

The point being that this is how things work in a world where you are never far removed from one or another contingency, chance and change. And then the part about irony. Sam finds his rudder. But only because his son died. And only because he took 6 other lives with him.

IMDb

Billy Crudup sings the songs in the movie, and he plays his own guitar. During the filming of Almost Famous he really took to playing guitar and has played ever since.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudderless
trailer: youtu.be/puOUO2T1H6o

RUDDERLESS [2014]
Directed by William H. Macy

Josh [on phone]: Hey, Dad.
Sam: Where are you?
Josh: I’m at the library.
Sam: Meet me at the Belle.
Josh: No, I got class.
Sam: Cut it.
Josh: Weren’t you supposed to be riding me about going to class?
Sam: Hey, I’m payin’ for it. I say cut it, all right? Get somebody else’s notes. Your old man just, uh, knocked one out of the park, and I wanna celebrate with you.
Josh: Whatever happened to free choice?
Sam: No, that’s a myth.

Instead, Josh chooses to stay at school. Later in the film we find out why.

[b]Reporter: Mr. Manning! I hate to bother you.
Sam: Oh, yeah? Well, if you hated it so much, you wouldn’t be doin’ it, would you?
Reporter: Do you feel that the school bears any responsibility for…
Sam: You know, lemme ask you a question first. You’re a heartless, bottom-feeding
motherfucker. Well, I guess it’s not really a question, is it?

Boss: We’re doing fine here. Take the time that you need to…
Sam: Hey, hey. I appreciate that concern. I really do. But what I need is to work. What I need is to come in here every day and I’m gonna sell some tacos. Okay? I gotta write some catchy copy and I gotta put on a suit, tie and smile. Face the future. That… That’s what I need.

Alaird: I had to file another complaint about you relieving yourself in the lake. The rules are quite clear.
Sam: Alard, do you realize how many of our conversations are about my penis?

Quentin: I thought you might like a donut. Buck’s Space Age. They’re like edible heaven. Good, as in I’d have one over sex.
Sam: Well, you’re doing it wrong, then.

Quentin: You know, I don’t get the appeal of fishing.
Sam: Really. Well, I would imagine that most activities performed in silence don’t make much sense to you.

Quentin: You never told me if you’ve written others, but I’m guessing you have because it doesn’t really sound like a first try kind of tune.
Sam: Back to this, huh?
Quentin: What I don’t understand is you don’t write stuff like this if you don’t want people to hear it.

Sam [to Quentin vomiting into the toilet]: There are 14 people in the audience. And 10 of them are performers.

Del [to Sam]: I don’t understand, man. I just don’t understand. Why not play an instrument that works with the power off?

Del: You are a godsend, Sam.
Sam: What?
Del: You know, what you’re doing for that boy.

Sam: Lighten up, man. You think I haven’t been there?
Quentin: Been where?
Sam: Well, you know. Desperate times call for yada, yada, yada…You know, the girls in the Trill. I mean, the phrase “fistful of 20s in a whorehouse” comes to mind.
Quentin: Joyce is my mom.[/b]

Oops.

[b]Quentin: Man, you’re not the least bit embarrassed to be shopping here?
Sam: Well, I would be, but they’re for you.

Kate: You don’t remember me, do you?
Sam: Were you sitting at the bar?
Kate: I’m Kate Lucas. We’ve already met, in Josh’s room.
Sam: Oh, my God.
Kate: It’s been better lately. Things have died down. I even go out sometimes, like tonight.
Sam: Oh, Kate.
Kate: I go by Ann now. It’s my middle name. So you’re a rock star now, huh? Except you didn’t write those songs, did you?
Sam: Listen.
Kater: How could you play those songs? Shame on you!

Scrawled on Josh’s grave stone: KILLER. BURN IN HELL. YOU WILL PAY FOR WHAT YOU DID. NO FORGIVENESS. EVIL. SAY HI TO LUCIFER CHILD KILLER

Emily: I had breakfast with one of the moms. She wanted to talk, to forgive Josh…She didn’t blame us. It was amazing.
Sam: Don’t. Don’t.
Emily: It was like a weight lifting. I’ve been thinking about reaching out to the others. I’d like you to do it with…
Sam: You know what, I should go.
Emily: It wasn’t our fault.
Sam: You think I don’t know it wasn’t our fault?
Emily: I don’t know, Sam. I don’t know what you think! We did everything right. We did everything we could. Josh was sick.
Sam: You might want to dwell on this, but I don’t. What does it matter? His fault, your fault, my fault. Who cares? I don’t need to ask for anybody’s forgiveness. And I sure as fuck don’t need to meet any of the parents!

Sam: I’m just… I’m too old for this shit, man.
Del: What you talkin’ about, too old? T-Bone Walker played till he was 77. Died with a guitar in his hand.

Quentin: Is it true?
Sam: Yeah.

Sam: What would you say if I told you that my son wrote all the songs the band plays?
Del: Damn. I’d say, “I didn’t see that comin’.” Wait, does Quentin know?
Sam: He does now.
Del: Oh, yeah? How’d he take it?
[Sam gestures: not well]
Del: There ya go. Well, I can’t say as I blame him. Damn! Your boy wrote all that music? Well, what were you thinking?
Sam: He was my son.
Del: They were all somebody’s sons, Sam. Somebody’s sons, somebody’s daughters. Your boy killed them.
Sam: I know, but he was my son.[/b]

Come on, admit it, you never thought they would make a film the plot of which revolves around measuring the weight of the “official Norwegian kilo prototype”.

Official weights and measures. I know: What’s that got to do with me? It’s sort of along the lines of GPS. You just want it to work, not know how it works.

But: There really are people who take this sort of thing very, very seriously. In fact there are all manner of scientists in all manner of fields that take some things seriously that we wouldn’t consider worth sparing any amount of time at all fathoming. But then these are the folks that have reconfigured nature over the centuries into the world that folks like us just take for granted.

And we need people like this. We just don’t know it. Fortunately, we don’t really need to know it, do we?

Really, it is hard to believe just how precise and technical these things can become. Or how seriously these things are taken. And you won’t believe the security involved. And I doubt many of us will really understand the science. In fact most of us will be asking ourselves this: Is that actually how it does work?

So, is it?

Of course the point here as well is to note the gap between those things that can be measured with precision and those things that cannot. For example, human emotional reactions to all those human-all-too-human interactions. And here is someone who does not have to deal with the calamity of, among other things, war or poverty or tumultuous change in her life.

Look for the Buddy car. It makes a Mini Cooper look like a Hummer

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1001_Grams
trailer: youtu.be/FVIAtIHcehM

1001 GRAMS [1001 GRAM] 2014
Written and directed by Bent Hamer

Father: How is the bouncing lottery ball project going? I’ve noticed the number 18 keeps coming up.
Marie: So you watch the drawings?
Father: Oh, yes.
Marie: I haven’t heard of any aberration, but it isn’t my project.

Yes, there really is this project. Shades of Pi and Wall Street.

[b]Marie: Are you attending the kilo seminar in Paris next week?
Father: I don’t think I can get out of it. But soon it will be your turn.
Marie: Oh?
Father: Counting atoms instead of weighing. That’s more for your generation.

Marie: Will you bring our kilo?
Father: All the delegates are bringing their respective kilos. And we’ll find out if our kilo has gained weight.
Marie: Or if the French one has lost weight.
Father: I wouldn’t be surprised.

Director [to Marie]: Ernst found it a little sad to think about. That the kilo is our last physical reference object, since the meter was retired. As you know, there are two schools regarding the calibration of national prototypes. Whether they should be washed or not before they are weighed. Ernst was opposed to washing, and we should support that stance.

Director [to Marie]: Here is a dispatch note in English. It explains what is in the capsule, and that only a trained professional can open it. If anything happens to our prototype, we risk losing our membership.

Marie [at airport]: This is the national kilo from Norway.
Customs official: Open it, please.
Marie: No, that is not possible. I am not authorized. It is made of 90% platinum and 10% iridium. It must not be touched. That could change its weight.
[customs official is properly dumbfounded]
Marie: I also have here…Here is the address for BIPM, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. With a contact person and phone number.

Father: Would you be interested in taking over the farm? Would you?
Marie: You’ve never asked me before.
Father: True.
Marie: No, Dad. I’ve never thought about that. Why ask me now?
Father [who is in the hospital after a heart attack]: It’s time to put my life in the balance. That’s what ultimately needs to be weighed.

Father: It would be fascinating to find out how much you actually weighed at the end.
Marie: At the end?
Father: Yes. You remember that I want to be cremated?
Marie: Yes, I’ve registered that.
Father: Supposedly our soul weighs 21 grams. But considering all the people I have met, I find that highly unlikely.

Marie: I found a notebook at the hospital. I think it was Gunnar’s. It was empty, except for a quote on the last page. Written in pencil. It said: “Life’s heaviest burden is to have nothing to carry.” What do you think?
Friend: I think that’s true. Sad. Maybe that’s how he felt when he left.

Marie: What is this research project?
Pi: It’s a research project about birdsong. I found out that birds change their dialect as they approach Paris.
Marie: How did you find that out?
Pi: By coincidence. I was at a party at some friends’ outside Paris. I was biking home early in the morning, and I noticed that the birds’ song changed character as I neared town.
Marie: Why?
Pi: Communication?

Friend [colleague from work]: My God! What happened to you?
Marie: I had an accident.
Friend: What happened?
Marie: I drove into a ditch.
Friend: How is the car?
Marie: Totaled. But that isn’t the worst of it. The kilo was totaled too.
Friend: No way!
Marie: The capsule was dented and the bell jars were smashed.
Friend: What about the kilo itself?
Marie: It-It seems fine. I have to go back to Paris and try to get it fixed before anyone finds out.
Friend: The important thing is that you’re OK.
Marie: I don’t know. It feels like…like everything around me is breaking.

Pi: What happened to your eye?
Marie: I was in a car accident.
Pi: No!
Marie: And the kilo was thrown out.
Pi: The kilo can be fixed.
Marie: Really? I hope so. That’s why I’m here. No one at home knows what has happened.
Pi: Today is a public holiday. Most everything is closed. Don’t worry. Some countries have lost their kilo altogether.
Marie: No way!
Pi: It’s true.

Pi: Were you and your father close?
Marie: I miss him terribly. He was all I had. It’s as if every reference point in my life is crumbling away.
Pi: But we need some chaos in life. Our need for references is really nothing but a comfort answer.
Marie: A comfort answer?
Pi: Yes. A thousand grams. Seven decimals. Twenty-seven decimals. Ten raised to the power of eight. How much does a life weigh? And love? How much does that weigh, Marie? What we are simply trying to find out is: Who are we?
Marie: My father tried to tell me that, just before he died. You have to put your life in balance.
Pi: The French poet Aragon said… “By the time we learn to live it is already too late.”

Pi: I recorded the goldfinch in three different locations. The first one, 15 kilometers from town.
[he plays the recording]
Marie: It’s magnificent!
Pi: And now the second one, seven kilometers from town.
Marie: It’s different, yes. But also beautiful.
Pi: And now the last one, in the center of town.
Marie: It’s - It’s completely different.
Pi: Would you like to join me in the field?
Marie: Yes, I’d love to.[/b]

Three’s company. Or three’s a crowd. But what it always comes down to is the context: Which particular three people in which particular set of circumstances. And how in particular did they come together. Which is why I’ve often wished that someone would make a film based on Simone’s de Beauvoir’s novel She Came To Stay

This is certainly one of the strangest love triangles. Even for the cinema. So many improbable pieces have to fall into place in order for it to happen at all. The role that chance plays. A missed train. A heart attack. You think: Do we connect the dots or do the dots connect us? The role of coincidence. And two of the three sides in this particular triangle are sisters. Sisters who adore each other. That makes it all the more intriguing.

In a nutshell: Marc meets Sylvie [think Jesse and Celine from Before Sunrise]. But, through a series of unforeseen events, they are not able to consummate the relationship. Sylvie leaves France. Marc meets Sophie. Marc marries Sophie. Sylvie returns to France. Sylvie and Sophie are sisters.

This is a film that prompts you – really prompts you – to imagine your own reaction if something of this sort were to happen to you. And then to ponder in turn what it might possibly mean to “do the right thing”. And it’s always intriguing to note what others do when what they do is nothing at all like what you would do. You may even find yourself dumbfounded because you think that what they do is so obviously…wrong.

Here love means never having to say “I don’t know”.

IMDb

In real life, Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni are really mother and daughter, like in the film, and Benoît Poelvoorde is Chiara Mastroianni’s soul mate as well.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Hearts_(film
trailer: youtu.be/fAmgGcBG9qY

3 HEARTS [3 coeurs] 2014
Written in part and directed by Benoît Jacquot

[b]Marc: Do you live here?
Sylvie: Yes.
Marc: I don’t know where I live anymore.

Marc: What turns me on when I meet a woman is that I tell myself I am entering her private life right away. That’s what overwhelms me. The rest doesn’t matter.
Sylvie: So with me you are thinking: “I want to enter her private life right now.”[/b]

Yes, that has often been what fascinated me as well. Aside from all the rest of it.

[b]Marc; What happened to you?
Sylvie: Nothing. Choices to make. Yes or no answers.

Marc: Are you okay?
Sophie: It’s tough since my sister left. I can’t manage.
Marc: Where did she go?
Sophie: To the United States. We’ve never been separated. She means the most to me. Without her, it’s like anything can happen.

Sophie: I’m moving out.
Husband: What?
Sophie: I met someone.
Husband: What?
Sophie: I can’t stay with you. I’ve fallen in love. I can’t help it. Sorry.
Husband: Who is it?
Sophie: I have no choice. [/b]

She tells him this in a crowded theater. Casually. As though she is talking about the weather.

Narrator: Marc’s life is here now, in this small country town. He and Sophie now barely say “I don’t know”. He is happy. With her, he finds a peace he has never known. It is a normal life.

We know what this is setting up. Then he finds the lighter.

[b]Sylvie [on skype…out of sight, Marc listens]: Where is the invisible man?
Sophie: At work. Want a picture? I have none. Not his thing.
Sylvie: I’ll see him for real.
Sophie: When?
Sylvie: Very soon I hope.

Sophie [to Sylvie and Marc]: Say hello. You’re like two ghosts.[/b]

It’s such an extrordinary occurance. What is to be done?

[b]Narrator: Once again, life goes on. 3 or 4 years go by. Sylvie never returns to France. She still lives with Christophe in Minneapolis, USA.

Narrator: Perhaps Marc thjought too much of Sylvie. Not anymore. He leads his life.

Sophie: Mom is turning 60 and Sylvie 40. Why don’t we throw a big party for them both. Something unforgettable. What can we do?
Marc: I don’t know.[/b]

Uh-oh.

Sophie: Sylvie’s not well, don’t you think? I wonder if she’s happy there? She mustn’t waste her life. She’s capable of so much. Wonderful things.
Marc [suddenly exploding]: STOP IT! Stop with “wonderful”. Everything is wonderful with you. EVERYTHING!

In other words, he has slept with Sylvie.

[b]Marc: About that time in Paris.
Sylvie: No, I don’t want to know.
Marc: I went.
Sylvie: I don’t want to know.
Marc: You must know. I had a coronary thing. A heart attack. I almost died. I made it there but you had already left. Do you believe me?
[Sylvie doesn’t respond]
Marc: Say that you believe me!

Sylvie: Why did you choose her?
Marc: I didn’t choose her.
Sylvie: Sophie means the most to me in the world. You understand? If she finds out, I die. I beg of you to never tell her.

Narrator: They fly away. Far and fast. In secret.

Christophe: What’s going on? If your mom hadn’t warned me…I’m going to tell Sophie. She has to know.
Sylvie [pleading]: No! Don’t tell her!
Christophe: Tell her what? Don’t tell her what?
Sylvie [falling to her knees clinging to him]: Forgive me! I’ll die if you tell her!![/b]

And all the while you’re wondering: who knows what?

Sylvie [on the phone to Marc]: I’m leaving…

The people that we come to know “here and now” also have a “there and then”. So when you fall in love with them it includes the parts you know nothing about at all. The parts buried in the past. And that can include the parts invested in the relationships that they had in the past. So, out of the blue someone your husband knew in high school has insinuated himself into your life. And he comes bearing gifts. Lots and lots of gifts.

And secrets. And, in films, what are called “horrifying secrets”.

The parts, in other words, that now resurface in the present and make your life a living hell.

Or, as Gordo puts it:: “See, you’re done with the past, but the past is not done with you.”

In fact over and again you see this sort of thing on any number of “true crime” documentaries. All we can really know about the past of many people that we meet is what they tell us.

Where things get particularly tricky here is that Gordo couldn’t possibly be more friendly. At first. But we suspect that this is just a facade. That something really, really troubling happened back in high school. That they didn’t call Gordon “Weirdo Gordo” for nothing.

Or does the problem here revolve more around Simon? Him being a bully. Him being an assshole. Him being a parthological liar. Or Robyn? All those pills. And what happened back in Chicago?

The whole thing just draws you into this sense of impending doom. The way in which the gap between what we think we know about people and what they really are can lead to all manner of unforseen consequences. After all, they don’t call these films “psychological thrillers” for nothing.

What’s real and what’s not?

IMDb

Joel Edgerton not only directed and starred in this movie, he also wrote the script.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_(2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/3kWjKFQIq50

THE GIFT [2015]
Written and directed by Joel Edgerton

[b]Gordo: And what do you think about this whole government thing of, you know, listening in to people’s private information? I mean, that’s crazy stuff.
Simon: Who knows?
Gordo: I mean, fuck them, you know? An eye for an eye, I say.

Simon: You know, it’s so amazing how some people change so much after high school and some just stay exactly the same. You know what I mean? I feel kind of bad for him. Did he seem right to you? That guy is odd.
Robyn: He is a little socially awkward, but, I mean, I can be that way.
Simon: I think that guy’s delusional. He thinks we’re friends. The whole thing just has me very uncomfortable.

Simon [to Robyn]: I just don’t want you to be stressed, honey, because that’s when those other things can happen.

Robyn: Well, we have to thank him this time.
Simon: For what? Coming onto our property without asking? No. This is not troubling to you?
Robyn: I really don’t think that he meant it to be troubling. He wouldn’t see it like that, he just…He just thinks he’s giving us some fish.
Simon: You know, they used to call him Weirdo in school. Gordo the Weirdo.
Robyn: That’s not very nice.
Simon: Everybody had a name. I was Simple Simon.
Robyn: Yeah. Kids. Kids are mean.
Simon: Kids are honest.

Robyn: You know what, I actually think he’s nice. And he’s been very generous.
Friend: So then he saw the thing that you wrote and then what?
Simon: Yeah. So get this for confusing. After he’d supposedly been offended by what I wrote on the board, he calls us a few hours later on the phone and he invites us to a dinner party.
Friend: Alone?
Simon: No. With another couple.
Friend: Well, surely you’re not going to accept the invitation. After the whole insult thing, I’m surprised he wants you around at all. Unless he wants to chop you guys up with an axe.

Simon: Did he just leave us here?
Robyn: Yeah. Yeah, I think he did.
Simon: He’s in his car… He’s leaving us alone in his house? He doesn’t even know us.
Robyn: Yeah, well… What? Maybe it’s an emergency.
Simon: Well, he did say it was an urgent work thing. But what is it that he even does?

Simon [on the phone to Robyn]: Don’t touch them. Don’t touch the water.

Robyn [after Simon sees the dead fish]: Jangles is gone. I can’t find him anywhere.
Simon: That son of a bitch. [/b]

Jangles? Of course the dog.

[b]Simon reading from Gordo’s letter: “Dear Robyn and Simon, I guess I owe you both an apology. It seems I have misjudged our situation. Please know that I would never do anything to upset you both, and I really wish I could start all over again. However, I will honor your wishes of leaving you be, i.e., alone. You won’t hear from me again, except for this letter which I hope expresses how sorry I am that things turned out the way they did. I also apologize about the dinner.”
Robyn: Turn it over. There’s more.
Simon: “Simon, after all these years, I really was willing to let bygones be bygones. I had nothing but good intentions.”
Robyn: What does that mean?
Simon: I don’t know.

Robyn: Will you please just listen to me? If we say sorry to him, we will make this right and I will feel better.
Simon: Robyn, it’s over. I said it, he said it, he wrote a letter.
Yeah, what about the letter suggests that it’s over? The whole thing. What does “bygones be bygones” mean?

[b]Simon [to Robyn]: I want you to just look forward and be strong. Time gets rid of a lot of things. It heals everything. Let’s just get on with doing what we came here to do. Let’s make a family. We’ll start a new life. A life of our choosing, without him. It’s really important to not look back.

Lucy: Listen, so don’t look now, but there is a creepy guy watching you from outside. Do you see him?
Robyn: Oh, my God. It’s him. It’s the guy from before. The one I told you about.

Robyn: Joan, do you remember a guy called Gordon Mosley? Gordo? He was at high school with you and Simon?
Joan: Yeah. Yeah, Gordo. He was…He was the kid that got sent away.
Robyn: He got sent away? Why?
Joan: Man, it was like a million years ago, but they found him getting molested in a car by this older kid. It was really just…it turned into a huge deal. They pulled him out of school. I guess he was getting bullied by the kids for being gay, the poor thing.
Robyn: So Simon would have known all about it, right?
Joan: Simon was the one that reported it. Simon and his friend Greg. They were the ones that found him.

Robyn: Lucy, why was Simon running a background check on Gordon without telling me?
Lucy: Robyn, why don’t you just ask him?

Greg: Look, it was nothing, and then it kind of became something.
Robyn: I’m sorry, but you’re not making very much sense. I’m just asking you to tell me…
Greg: It was all a lie.
Robyn: What was a lie?
Greg: The whole thing. The whole story. Not one part of it was true. Simon made the whole thing up about Gordo being with a guy in a car. About him being gay.
Robyn: But why? Why would he do that?
Greg: 'Cause he could. Simon was a bully. He had a real mean streak, and Gordo was a target. One of the weak kids. He made this whole thing up, and it basically ruined Gordo’s life.

Greg [to Robyn]: I mean, it’s amazing how an idea can take a hold and really bring a person down. Look, we were just kids. We didn’t realize how crazy this whole thing would get, but we did have a chance to stop it. Simon could have told the truth, but he didn’t.

Robyn [to Greg]: What happened with Gordo and his dad?

Simon: This world’s about fucking winners and losers, and we’re all in the same shitty playground, you know? Guess what? That this guy lost and then he’s moaning about it, is just him being stuck because he wants to be stuck because he can’t get past the fucking moment. He’s not going to pull me back and apologize for something I don’t know about, that I’m not responsible for, that I don’t care about. I don’t owe that guy shit.
Robyn: You could say you’re sorry for your part of it.
Simon: Fuck that!

Robyn [to Simon]: You’re a bully. You were then and you still are now.

Robyn [to Simon]: Funny, when someone lies to you enough, you just stop believing anything they say. 'Cause all this time, I thought that I was crazy, and I’m not. And you let me. And I just realized I have no idea who you really are.

Gordo [to Simon]: See, you’re done with the past, but the past is not done with you.
Simon: What? What do you mean by that?
Gordo: It’s a saying.
Simon: I know it’s a saying, but what do you mean by it?

Robyn [looking at Gordo’s busted up face]: What happened to you? Uh…Did Simon do that to you?
Gordo: He just…I don’t know what’s going on with him. He just went crazy. Boy or a girl?
Robyn: He’s a boy.
Gordo: I’m very happy for you. Good people deserve good things.

Gordo [on the phone with Simon]: I didn’t do it. There. I didn’t touch her. Or maybe I did. I don’t know. See, I could tell you the truth. Maybe I didn’t do it, but a liar won’t believe anybody else, right? I think you just need to go and have a look at the baby. It’s all in the eyes, you see. You see what happens when you poison other people’s minds with ideas?[/b]

If you have ever loved a dog more than you have ever loved any other living thing [and who hasn’t] this is the film you’ve been waiting for. Well, along with all the other ones of course. And [for some of us] going all the way back to Lassie Come Home no doubt.

Yet even among dogs there are those who insist on invoking class. In other words, the dog that you love either has a pedigree or it does not. And, if you are unfortunate enough to love one of “mixed breed”, you may well end up losing it. Which Lili does.

And what recourse do the “mutts” have but to organize against their human oppressors. Mongrels of the world unite!

So there is certainly a lesson to be learned here by, say, our own species? After all, plenty of us are just basically mongrels to the purebreds, right?

This is a world where some men treat dogs worse than they treat people. They put them into small cages and they train them to fight. And part of the training is to beat the dogs viciously in order to make them vicious in turn. You won’t fucking believe the things these brutes do to these animals. And it’s all about the money of course.

So the film is often about this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_fighting

Also, a classic snapshot of the tension that always arises when “we” and “I” are not in sync. How much then should “society” bend and how much the individual?

Lili: Will you take me back?
Teacher: If you behave.

And dogs of course being the least of it.

Look for the part where it transitions into Planet of the Apes. The part that comes straight out of The Twilight Zone. Would that it could be that way some will think. And not just for dogs of course.

It’s all basically just a fairytale, make-believe, la la land. But at least for a couple of hours you can triumph vicariously against the “powers that be”.

Not exactly sure though why it is called White God. Anyone know?

IMDb

[b]274 dogs were used in the making of this movie which is the world record for the most dogs used in a feature film. By the end of the film, because the dogs were all over the streets with individual trainers all the time during filming, they all found homes.

Hagen is portrayed by twin dogs Luke and Body. They were found in a caravan park in Arizona just as their owner was about to take them to an animal shelter.

The sound for the dog fight scene was recorded by human voice actors in Sweden.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_God
trailer: youtu.be/kIGz2kyo26U

WHITE GOD [Fehér Isten] 2014
Written in part and directed by Kornél Mundruczó

[b]Title card: All of the untrained dogs used in this film were rescued from the streets or shelters and placed in homes with help from an adoption program.

Woman: What’s that mutt doing here? You want to keep it here?
Father: For a while.
Woman: It can’t stay here. They posted the ruling. Mutts must be reported. They’re making a list now.

Government official [at the door]: We’ve received a report. Canine control. About the dog. Someone reported being bitten by your dog.
Father: I don’t own a dog.
Government official [looking down at Hagen]: What’s that then?
Father: It’s an elephant, can’t you see?
Government official: Sir, this is a mixed breed street dog. It’s not a Hungarian breed. You have to pay a tax.

Trixi: And your bastard?
Lili: It’s a mongrel!

Lili: I don’t want him taken to the shelter!
Father: You don’t have a choice, kid.
Lili: Let’s find a good home for him.
Father: Nobody wants a stinking mutt. That’s what shelters are for.
Lili: But I don’t want to take him there! I can’t believe you won’t pay so they don’t kill him.
Father [shouting]: You want me to throw it out of the car right now? Put it on the street here? Is that what you want?
Lili: I’d rather. [/b]

So, he does.

[b]Homeless man [to Hagen after hiding him from the dog catchers]: You’ll work for me. We’re both hungry dogs, fuck yeah.

Teacher: So, what is Tannauser about? Lili?
Lili: Who cares?
Teacher: Parden me?
Lili: Do you want to teach us to tell lies or play the trumpet? Tannhauser is about love, but you wouldn’t understand, because you are heartless.

Pound woman: Don’t lie to me.
Lili: I’m not. My dad threw him out.
Pound woman: And you helped, right? What kind of dog? Is it a Labrador or Shar Pei?
Lili: No, mixed breed.
Pound woman: Oh, of course, not purebred. Well, you threw him out in the garbage obviously. When did he disappear?
Lili: Weeks ago.
Pound woman: Then you’ve got no dog. If it’s out for weeks there’s no hope. Either it’s lost or got hit by a car or ended up in the Danube.
Lili: Or you put him down!
Pound woman: No, people spread lies. We don’t put them down here.
Lili: You kill them!!

Pound Woman [putting a needle in a dog]: That didn’t hurt. See? That’s all it is. You won’t have any enemies where you’re going. No one will hurt you anymore. It’s no lie. I mean it.

Daniel [Lili’s father to slaughterhouse employee]: Wake up. I must get into the slaughter hall. My card is not working. They’ve gone wild.
Employee: Who?
Daniel: The dogs! The dogs are here!!

Lili [as Hagen growls viciously at her]: Hagen, it’s me. It’s me, Hagen![/b]

What’s the difference between dealing with a senior citizen just diagnosed with cancer and dealing with a young girl in high school just diagnosed with cancer? In some respects, of course, all the difference in the world.

There’s just something about acquiring a serious disease while you still have pimples that makes for the larger tragedy. What exactly is it appropriate or not appropriate to say and do around them when a “kid” contracts an affliction of this sort.

In this case, leukemia.

My favorite film dealing with this painful subject is still this one: youtu.be/FQ3mc5z7NX8

But “Me and Earl”, while, at times considerably more “balanced” than Keith, does a reasonably good job in straddling the fence between humor and horror. The fact is that one of the things that makes life so unbearable for many are all of the thousands upon thousands of kids in “real life” who do become afflicted with these terrible maladies. And how helpless we can feel when we are around them.

Still, in some respects it is just one more grim snapshot of American Youth: the High School edition. Where by rote we are introduced to all the tropes and all the cliques. From the jocks to dorks. And then struggle along with the protagonist to somehow rise above it all.

And then there’s Earl. At times he seems to be there in order to explore issues of class and race. Sort of. Like way, way, way, way in the background as it were.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_and_Ea … Girl_(film
trailer: youtu.be/2qfmAllbYC8

ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL [2015]
Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

[b]Greg [voiceover]: I have no idea how to tell this story. I don’t even know how to start it. Like, I guess I could use one of those classic story beginning sentences. “It was the best of times: it was the worst of times.” But what would that even mean? I mean, obviously, somewhere in the world, it’s the best of times for someone…Meanwhile, some other guy is having his will broken by professional torturers who are suspending him over a crocodile-infested pool of acid. Worst of times: check.

Greg [voiceover]: All right, look. I’ll just start. This is the story of my senior year of high school and how it destroyed my life. And how I made a film so bad, it literally killed someone.

Mom: I just got off the phone with Denise Kushner, Rachel’s mom. You know Denise?
Greg: Um, not really.
Mom: You’re friends with Rachel, though.
Greg: Yeah, I mean, we’re like, acquainted.
Mom [holding out her hand]: Come here.
Greg [reluctantly]: Uh, okay.
Mom: Rachel’s been diagnosed with leukemia. They just found out. They’re doing all kinds of tests. They’re doing everything they can. They just don’t know.
Greg: Man, that sucks.
Mom: You’re right. It sucks.
Greg: It sucks really bad.
Dad: It sucks quite a bit.

Mom: Just give Rachel a call.
Greg: Yeah, well, what do you want me to say? “Hey, it’s Greg, the guy who’s never really paid any attention to you but now that you have cancer, let’s hang out”?
Dad: That’s not gonna work.

Rachel: Look, I don’t want you hanging out with me. I don’t need your stupid pity. It’s fine, you can just go.
Greg: No, no. You got it all wrong. I’m not here 'cause I pity you. I’m actually here because my Mom made me.
Rachel: That’s actually worse.

Greg: My dad is a tenured sociology professor. His job allows him to be frequently at home doing nothing.
Dad [pointing Earl and Greg to the TV screen]: You’ll want to pay close attention to this. The insane Conquistador, Aguirre, is raging through the jungle in search of a golden city that doesn’t exist. The wrath of God. It’s a classic of foreign cinema.

Greg [voiceover]: Obviously Earl and I come from pretty different backgrounds. But somehow, we like most of the same things. And we learned pretty early on that we were the only ones who liked, for example, classics of foreign cinema. Why did We like them? It’s hard to say. Maybe it’s that they were weird and often violent, like us. Or confusing and possibly meaningless, like life.

Earl: You gonna go see that girl again?
Greg: I mean, probably, yeah.
Earl: You gonna play with them titties?
Greg: No. It’s not like that.

Greg: Or another thing you can do is just flat-out pretend to be dead. Say something annoying to me.
Rachel: “Um…Hey, Rachel. I just want you to remember that your cancer is all part of God’s plan.”

Rachel: Yesterday you were saying you’d mapped out the entire high school by group. What’s my group?
Greg: Seriously?
Rachel: Yeah.
Greg: Boring Jewish Senior Girls, Subgroup 2-A. Please appreciate how honest I was just now.
Rachel: You’re an asshole.

Greg [voiceover]: So, we’re pretty far into this stupid story now and you’re probably saying to yourself, “Hey. I like this girl Rachel. And I’m gonna be pissed if she dies at the end.” So, I’m just telling you: don’t freak out. She survives. So, hopefully, that reassures you.

Greg [to Rachel, tongue in cheek as Werner Herzog]: Why I want to go to college. By Werner Herzog. “The highly selective admissions process weeds out the cruel and the stupid. So college is unlike the senseless chaos and sickening enormity of high school. High school is the mouth of a great demon biting and chewing and smashing people in the face. It is simply overwhelming.”

Greg [voiceover]: So again, if this was a touching, romantic story we’d obviously fall in love and she’d say all the wise, beautiful things that can only be learned in life’s twilight or whatever. And then she’d die in my arms. But again, that’s not what happened. She just got quieter. And unhappier.

Greg [after Rachel tells him she is going to stop her treatment]: So, that’s it? Just, to hell with college, to hell with growing up?
Rachel: Greg, don’t.
Greg: Rachel, what the hell is wrong with you? This is your life!
Rachel: Yeah, it is my life. It’s me who has to lie in bed all day, with a shaved head getting weaker and uglier, and more miserable, with no hope in sight. I’m the one who has to suffer through this, not you, so don’t yell at me.
Greg: I’m sorry, but I’m not gonna sit here and get comfortable watching you die. Okay? I’m not. I’m not gonna do that. So don’t ask me to.

Rachel: Get outta here, Greg. You’ve done your time. You don’t have to hang around with the sick girl anymore.
Greg: How can you even say that to me?
Rachel: Your mom forced you to hang out with me. Earl forced you to show me your movies. Madison forced you to make a movie about me. So, what part of this did you actually want to do?

Earl: Look, nobody gives a shit about you, Greg! All right? Nobody give a shit! And then the one girl who does actually care about you you wanna come over here and bitch and whine about some films, yo? Because somebody actually cares about you? Like, damn, I’m so tired of you treating this girl like she’s a burden. You know, her life is over after this! And you want to come over here bitchin’ and whinin’ about some irrelevant bullshit!

Earl [in a video message to Rachel]: Hey, Rachel. Uh…We tried a lot of different ways of making a film for you but they were all too goofy or irrelevant or just not what we wanted. So, now I’m gonna talk to you directly. Um… All right, I’m gonna be honest here. Okay? Sometimes, white girls are particularly stupid. I mean, everybody’s stupid, but white girls, you know…They think they better than everybody and self-centered and pretend they are not. But you aren’t like that, you know. Um… It’s just crazy how patient you’ve been. You know, I know if it was me that had cancer, uh…I’d be upset and angry and trying to beat everybody’s ass half the time. So I’m just, I’m just amazed at how patient you’ve been. You, you make me feel blessed.

Greg [voiceover]: That was the last time I saw Rachel. She went into a coma shortly after that, and died about 10 hours later. I know I told you she doesn’t die. And I’m sorry. Deep down somehow, I didn’t think she would. But she did.[/b]

You’re watching this film knowing that the man being interviewed will one day commit suicide. But the man interviewing him all those years ago doesn’t know that. And what prompted him to conduct the interview was based on the gap between his reaction to the critics reacting to the author and his book [Infinite Jest] before and after he had actually read it. In other words, he thought the reaction of the critics was hyperbolic to say the least. How could a book – any book – really be as good as the reviews that he was reading? Then he read it. And the book so astonished him he managed to convince the publishers of Rolling Stone magazine to let him interview the author.

David Lipsky is the interviewer. And he is a good writer – a published writer – himself. But he is also a writer who recognized the gap between himself and a great writer like Foster. So part of his reaction is awe and part is envy. Maybe even resentment. It’s that feeling anyone of us might have when we read something and know that, however much we want to be recognized as a great writer too, there is simply no way that we ever will. And we know this because someone writes a book like Infinite Jest and we recognize immediately that it can never be us.

[Also, having attempted suicide myself many years ago, I am always fascinated with those who actually do it. I’m looking for anything that might link us together – either in terms of circumstances or a state of mind. And I have always been partial to the idea that when the two come into sync you are much more likely to attempt it…and much more likely to succeed.]

It’s hard for folks like me who dreamed of becoming David Foster Wallace to imagine what frame of mind would prompt him to just flush it all down the toilet.

So maybe it somehow revolves around this:

David: …why are we - and by “we” I mean people like you and me: mostly white, upper middle class, obscenely well-educated, doing really interesting jobs, sitting in really expensive chairs, watching the best, most sophisticated electronic equipment money can buy - why do we feel empty and unhappy?

We also catch a glimpse or two of a man who could really be quite the asshole. Plenty of chinks in this armor. Or in what he calls his “regular guy-ness”. But it still always comes down to him being a very complicated man with an extraordinary mind. And thus folks like you and I will always ever only be scratching the surface in understanding him.

IMDb

[b]Although this is never made clear or followed up on in the movie, David Lipsky never published the article he was assigned to write on David Foster Wallace in Rolling Stone.

When Lipsky gives Wallace his book to read at the end of the film, Wallace is frustrated that Lipsky was allowed to choose his own cover art for a relatively unknown book. It is well known that David Foster Wallace had no say in the original cover art of “Infinite Jest” and hated what his publishers settled on. Aside from being a light hearted in-joke amongst fans of Wallace, this also provides irony to the story, providing a comedic payoff to Lipsky’s envy of Wallace’s success. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_Tour
trailer: youtu.be/DBk1Mrb4RyM

THE END OF THE TOUR [2015]
Directed by James Ponsoldt

[b]Lipsky [on phone]: Hey, Bob, what’s up?
Bob: Listen, according to this unconfirmed report… David Wallace is dead.
Lipsky: What? No no no no, must be a college prank or something…
[Lipsky googles “david foster wallace"]
Bob: I thought if anyone might know if it was true…

Bob [off screen on the radio]: Now a remembrance of writer David Foster Wallace. He was found dead, an apparent suicide, on Friday night. Wallace’s novel, “Infinite Jest,” brought him fame and a wide audience. Writer David Lipsky has this appreciation.
Lipsky: To read David Foster Wallace was to feel your eyelids pulled open. Some writers specialize in the away-from-home experience. They’ve safaried, eaten across Italy, covered a war. Wallace offered his alive self cutting through our sleepy aquarium, our standard T.V., stores, political campaigns. Writers who can do this, like Salinger and Fitzgerald, forge an unbreakable bond with readers. You didn’t slip into the books looking for story, information, but for a particular experience. The sensation, for a certain number of pages, of being David Foster Wallace.

Lipsky [reading from the newspaper to Sarah]: "Next year’s book awards have been decided.” Can you believe this? “The plaques and citations can now be put into escrow.” Unbelievable. “With Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace - a plutonium-dense, satirical whiz-kid opus that runs to almost a thousand pages - not including footnotes - the competition has been obliterated. It’s as though Paul Bunyan had joined the NFL or Wittgenstein had gone on Jeopardy! The novel is that colossally disruptive. And that spectacularly good.” That’s the fucking opening paragraph!
Sarah: What if it actually is that good? You know? You may just have to read it.[/b]

Cut to him reading the book.

[b]Lipsky: How many times have we interviewed a writer in the last ten years? Guess.
Bob: Um… how many?
Lipsky: Zero. I checked.
Bob: Maybe that’s because Rolling Stone doesn’t interview writers.
Lipsky: There hasn’t been a writer like this one. Once in a generation, maybe. Hemingway, Pynchon. Let me have this story.
Bob: What story?

Lipsky: It’s a nice view.
David: Thank you. I can’t take credit for it.

David: I have this terrible problem, I just really hate to hurt people’s feelings. So I did something kinda cowardly.
Lipsky: Unlisting your number’s not cowardly.
David: It kinda is. I mean, I changed my number so these folks couldn’t find me anymore. There was this computer operator in Vancouver, lived in a basement. Who I found really moving. In terrible terrible pain.
Lipsky: What did he want from you?
David: Wasn’t clear, and when I would sort of ask him, he’d get angry, and that’s when it got scary.

Lipsky: What’s wrong?
David: It’s just, you’re gonna go back to New York and sit at your desk and shape this thing however you want. And that to me is extremely disturbing.
Lipsky: Why is it disturbing?
David: ‘Cause I would like to shape the impression of me that’s coming across. I can’t even tell if I like you yet ‘cause I’m too worried whether you like me.

David: I can’t stand to look like I’m actively trading on this sexually. Which of course I would be happy to do. In retrospect, it was lucky that I didn’t.
Lipsky: Why?
David: Basically, it just would have made me feel lonely.
Lipsky: Why lonely?
David: Because it wouldn’t have had anything to do with me, it would have just been…
Lipsky: Your fame?
David: Yeah.
Lipsky: You’re famous. You can say that. Except if they’re responding to your work, and the work is so personal then trading on it is actually another way of meeting you, isn’t that right?
David [impressed by Lipsky’s analysis]: That is so good.

David: The minute I start talking about this stuff, it sounds, number one: very vague. And, two: really reductive.
Lipsky: I don’t think you’re being reductive or vague at all.
David: Because it’s like, I don’t have a diagnosis, a system of prescriptions. You know? Like, why are we - and by “we” I mean people like you and me: mostly white, upper middle class, obscenely well-educated, doing really interesting jobs, sitting in really expensive chairs, watching the best, most sophisticated electronic equipment money can buy - why do we feel empty and unhappy?

David: I’m not saying TV is bad or a waste of your time. Any more than, you know, masturbation is bad or a waste of your time. It’s a pleasurable way to spend a few minutes. But if you’re doing it twenty times a day, if your primary sexual relationship is with your own hand, then there’s something wrong.
Lipsky: At least with masturbation, some action has been performed, though, right?
David: Yes, you’re performing muscular movements with your hand as you’re jerking off. But what you’re really doing, I think, is you’re running a movie in your head. You’re having a fantasy relationship with somebody who is not real… strictly to stimulate a neurological response. So as the Internet grows in the next 10, 15 years and virtual reality pornography becomes a reality, we’re gonna have to develop some real machinery inside our guts to turn off pure, unalloyed pleasure. Or, I don’t know about you, I’m gonna have to leave the planet. 'Cause the technology is just gonna get better and better. And it’s gonna get easier and easier and more and more convenient and more and more pleasurable to sit alone with images on a screen given to us by people who do not love us but want our money. And that’s fine in low doses, but if it’s the basic main staple of your diet, you’re gonna die.
Lipsky: Well, come on.
David: In a meaningful way, you’re going to die.

Lipsky: Being a writer. It comes with the territory, though, doesn’t it? Self-consciousness?
David: Well, there’s good self-consciousness. And then there’s this toxic, paralyzing, raped-by-psychic-Bedouins selfconsciousness.

David: …There’s a Mitsubishi plant, and then there’s a lot of farm-support stuff, like Ro-Tech, Anderson Seeds…
Lipsky: What are you doing here? I mean, why aren’t you in New York?
David: Every time I go to New York, I get caught up in this - there’s this enormous hiss of egos at various stages of inflation and deflation. It’s me-me-me-me.

Lipsky: So, I gotta ask: What’s with the bandanna?
David: What? What do you mean?
Lipsky: People think it’s a way you’re trying to connect with the younger reading audience.
David: Is that what people think? I don’t know many Gen-Xers who wear ‘em. Jeez. I don’t know what to say. I guess I wish you hadn’t brought this up.
Lipsky: Why?
David: Because now I’m worrying that it’s going to seem intentional. Like if I don’t wear it, am I not wearing it because I’m bowing to other people’s perception that it’s a commercial choice? Or do I do what I want, even though it’s perceived as commercial - and it’s just like one more crazy circle to go around.

Lipsky: Did you think you were done then?
David: Yeah. I was pretty sure life was over.
Lipsky: This is after your suicide watch?
David [his whole demeanor changing]: How’d you know about that?

Lipsky: You were at McLeans, right? How long were you there?
David: Eight days, I think.
Lipsky: Why were you there?
David: Mostly ‘cause I was scared I would do something stupid. I had a friend from high school who tried to kill himself by sitting in a garage with the car runnin’. And what it turned out was, he didn’t die, but it really fucked up his brain. And I knew, that if anybody was fated to fuck up a suicide attempt, it was me.
Lipsky: So there you are still in your twenties somewhat in pain about your desire to become a sort of successful literary person…
David: I think probably the not very sophisticated diagnosis is that I was depressed. 'Cause by this time, my ego’s all invested in the writing. It’s the only thing that I’ve gotten, you know, food pellets from the universe for. So I felt really trapped: Like, “Uh-oh, my five years is up. I’ve gotta move on, but I don’t want to move on.” I was really stuck. And drinking was part of that. But it wasn’t that I was stuck because I drank. It was like, I really sort of felt like my life was over at twentyeight. And that felt really bad, and I didn’t wanna feel it. So I would do all kinds of things: I mean, I would drink real heavy, I would like fuck strangers. Oh, God – Or, then, for two weeks I wouldn’t drink, and I’d run ten miles every morning, in a desperate, like very American, “I will fix this somehow, by taking radical action” sort of thing.

Bob [on the phone]: Well, what does he have to say about the heroin rumors?
Lipsky: I haven’t gotten to that.
Bob: What are you waiting for? LIPSKY What am I supposed to say: “Is it true you were a heroin addict?”
Bob: Yes. That’s your story.
Lipsky: Okay. It’s hard.
Bob: Why? Because you like him?
Lipsky: Well…Yeah.
Bob: David. You’ve got to press him. Be a prick if you have to. You’re not his best buddy, you’re a reporter.

NPR host: My guest today is David Foster Wallace, who has burst on the literary scene with his 1,079-page, three-poundthree-ounce novel, Infinite Jest. Jay McInerney called it “something like a sleek Vonnegut chassis wrapped in layers of post-millennial Zola.” David Foster Wallace, welcome to our show.
David: Thank you, glad to be here.
NPR host: You have said that you saw yourself as - quote - “a combination of being incredibly shy, and being an egomaniac, too.”
David: I think I said “exhibitionist, also.”
NPR host: Meaning?
David: Well, I think being shy basically means being self-absorbed to the extent that it makes it difficult to be around other people.
NPR host: Difficult for you, or difficult for the other people?
David: I suppose a little of both

Lipsky: So, is that what you think Infinite Jest is about, loneliness?
David: I think if there is sort of a sadness for people under forty-five or something, it has to do with pleasure and achievement and entertainment. And a kind of emptiness at heart of what they thought was going on, that maybe I can hope that parts of the book will speak to their nerve endings a little bit.

David [regarding the literary critics praises]: It’s like, if you’re used to doing heavy-duty literary stuff that doesn’t sell well, being human animals with egos, we find a way to accommodate that fact by the following equation: If it sells really well and gets a lot of attention, it must be shit. Then, of course, the ultimate irony is: if your thing gets a lot of attention and sells really well, then the very mechanism you’ve used to shore yourself up when your stuff didn’t sell well is now part of the Darkness Nexus when it does, so you’re screwed. You can’t win.

Lipsky: You make a point of holding back - there’s something obvious about you holding back your intelligence, to be with people who are younger or maybe not as agile as you are…
David: That would make me a real asshole, wouldn’t it? I don’t think writers are any smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in their confusion. But I think one of the true ways that I have gotten smarter is, I’ve realized that I’m not much smarter than other people.
Lipsky: Yeah, right.
David: There are ways in which other people are a lot smarter than me. Like, I don’t know, it makes me feel kinda lonely…

David: And, you know what, this is a very clever tactic of yours. Get me a little pissed off, a little less guarded, I’m gonna reveal more. Yes, it’s true: I treasure my regular-guy-ness; I’ve started to think it’s my biggest asset as a writer, that I’m pretty much just like everybody else. You know what? I’m not doing any kind of faux thing with you; I’m not gonna say it again.
Lipsky: Okay, but the faux thing - what you just said - is an example of the faux thing. You don’t want to take the risk of giving the full you.
David: Look, I don’t know if you’re a very nice man or not. It’s very clear that you don’t believe a word I’ve said.
Lipsky: All your protesting… “I’m just a regular guy.” You don’t crack open a thousand-page book ‘cause you heard the author’s a regular guy. You read it because the author is brilliant. Because you want him to be brilliant. So who the fuck are you kidding?

Lipsky: Well, if you’re deriving your satisfaction from talking about your work, as opposed to writing, then, yeah, I guess you’d get a lot less done.
David: Exactly. And there’s nothing more grotesque than somebody who’s going around, “I’m a writer, I’m a writer, I’m a writer.” I don’t mind appearing in Rolling Stone, but I don’t want to appear in Rolling Stone as somebody who wants to be in Rolling Stone…To have written a book about how seductive image is, and how many ways there are to get seduced off any kind of meaningful path, because of the way the culture is now…? What if I become this parody of that very thing?

David: It may be what in the old days was called a spiritual crisis or whatever. It’s just the feeling as though the entire, every axiom of your life turned out to be false, and there was actually nothing, and you were nothing, and it was all a delusion. And that you were better than everyone else because you saw that it was a delusion, and yet you were worse because you couldn’t function.

David: Well, I think being shy basically means being self-absorbed to the extent that it makes it difficult to be around other people.

David: I was not, I never was a heroin addict.
Lipsky: Okay. The rumor I heard… was that in the late ‘80s, when you were at Harvard, you’d gotten involved with drugs and had some kind of breakdown…
David: I don’t know if I had a breakdown, I got really really depressed. I told you that. It had nothing to do with drugs. I mean, I’m somebody who spent most of his life in libraries. I never lived that kind of dangerous life. I would never stick a needle into my arm.

David: Part of my reticence about this whole drug thing is that it won’t make very good copy for you. Because, no, I was not like that at all! I’m also aware that some addictions are sexier than others. My primary addiction my entire life has been to television. I told you that. Now, television addiction is of far less interest to your readers than something like heroin, that confirms the mythos of the writer.
Lipsky: A myth I do not believe, okay?
David: I know you don’t believe that. I’m also aware that one of the things swirling around here is you want the best fucking article you can have! Why don’t you write whatever the fuck you want, but the fact of the matter is, it was not a Lost Weekend sort of thing. Nor was it some lurid, romantic writer-as-alcoholic-sort-of-thing. What it was, was a 28-year-old person who exhausted a couple other ways to live, really taken them to their conclusion. Which for me was a pink room, with a drain in the center of the floor. Which is where they put me for an entire day when they thought I was going to kill myself. Where you don’t have anything on, and somebody’s observing you through a slot in the wall. And when that happens to you, you become tremendously…unprecedentedly willing to examine some other alternatives for how to live.

David [later to Lipsky after mulling over what had just been exchanged]: I was just thinking… It wasn’t a chemical imbalance, and it wasn’t drugs and alcohol. It was much more that I had lived an incredibly American life. That, “If I could just achieve X and Y and Z, everything would be OK.
[pause]
David: There’s a thing in the book when people jump out of a burning skyscraper, it’s not that they’re not afraid of falling anymore, it’s that the alternative is so awful. And then you’re invited to consider what could be so awful, that leaping to your death seems like an escape from it. I don’t know if you’ve had any experience with this kind of thing. But it’s worse than any kind of physical injury. It may be what in the old days was known as a spiritual crisis. Feeling as though every axiom of your life turned out to be false, and there was actually nothing, and you were nothing, and it was all a delusion. And that you were better than everyone else because you saw that it was a delusion, and yet you were worse because you can’t fucking function. And it’s really horrible. I don’t think we ever change. I’m sure there are still those same parts of me. I’ve just got to find a way not to let them drive. Y’know? Well, anyway…Good night.[/b]

Isn’t this basically what I struggle with in my posts here?

[b]David: I’m not so sure you want to be me.
Lipsky: I don’t.

Lipsky [at a bookstore reading from the nook this film is based on]: I see David and me in the front seat of the car. We are both so young. He wants something better than he has; I want precisely what he has already. Neither of us knows where our lives are going to go. It smells like chewing tobacco, soda, and smoke. And the conversation is the best one I ever had. [/b]

The philosophy of many of these movies are incomplete henids, like they were written by hipsters who didn’t know any better. Incomplete philosophies with no inherent goal other than self-reference. And it sucks you in with the loud mouths, ego centric dialogue and sheer intensity of the bone headed characters. Read those scripts long enough, and you too, will become a victim of dasein, a helpless sperm swimming in the ocean of life, who didn’t know any better.

Long before you came on the scene I let it be known that the films on this threads [like the songs on my music thread] basically just reflect what I like. So, sure, skip the part about philosophy.

Still, you just couldn’t resist taking a dump here, could you? :wink:

This thread is basically a dump, where you dump scripts of movies that don’t belong to you, yet you post them here, like a slave, for our reading pleasure. What’s it to you if I criticism them? Are these movies so entangled in your consciousness that it bothers you?

Well, that settles it then, okay?
Thanks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JURASSIC WORLD [2015]
Directed by Colin Trevorrow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IMDb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But then one day…

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

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

Also, contingency, chance and change.

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

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

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

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

TRASH [2014]
Directed by Stephen Daldry, Christian Duurvoort

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Besides, blue is my favorite color.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before he dies.

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

Or something like that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A beautiful [haunting] score.

no wiki article
trailer: youtu.be/Y2huHdg2PS8

RED KNOT [2014]
Written and directed by Scott Cohen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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