steve & townes

steve & townes

Todd Haynes' I'm Not There

I just finished Todd Haynes' he's-all-this-and-so-much-more Dylan biopic I'm Not There. Too clean, safe, and literal. For an item which wants to embrace and enact confusion and the jagged to and fro it runs down fairly well trod paths -- cinematically and thematically. You keep hoping it will catch a splinter or cut itself, just so it might bleed a bit. What was probably viewed as a strength of Haynes' in regard to the material -- his formal preference for the distance and inauthenticity of pastiche might seem well-suited to mirror the man of many masks myth of Dylan -- in fact limits the film's ability to take seriously both the dense thicket of history and the freedom of the artist. What we get are set pieces (with some sections playing like rather stale music videos) and caricatures. The performances of Charlotte Gainsbourg and Heath Ledger are going to linger in my mind -- for they seem least concerned with Dylan. These are individuals, not myths. If only Haynes had spent more time letting "Dylan" get on a motorcycle and run it smack dab into a wall.

Moyra Davey's Copperheads at the Fogg

The contemporary photographer Moyra Davey has an exhibit at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum. Davey's subject is literally the dustbin of history. Phonograph needles, stereo receivers, stereo records, book-shelves, liquor bottles, pennies: these items bear the weight of material history for Davey. She goes so far as to photograph someone (herself?) holding two books and blowing-off their dust.

I can't say most of it did much for me. Some of the photos, like one detailing a crammed together collection of items on a shelf with a poster for Jacques Tati's Playtime and a (Mondrian-like) window frame with many vertical and horizontal lines behind it, are witty. But, more often than not, the photos start and end with physicality and prompt little speculation. The numerous re-workings of liquor bottles on tabletops in particular seem inert, even, ironically, banal given the attempt to bestow metaphysical/metaphorical import to the everydayness of these objects through repetition.

But then we have those pennies, and a world of speculation on materiality, decay, history, and the figure of Lincoln opens up. A Harvard publication summarizes this part of the exhibit:

The entryway to the gallery features 100 of Davey's Copperheads (late 1980s–early 1990s), in a 10 x 10 grid form under Plexiglas. This series, taken with a macro lens, depicts extreme close-ups of President Lincoln's profile on various pennies. Each image shows a different penny whose surface has been nicked, scarred, gouged, and tarnished, or a combination of all mutilations that make it sometimes impossible to discern the profile.

We can start with the title for the exhibition – Copperheads. Copperheads were Northern Unionists who despised Abolitionists and blacks, opposed the Civil War, and regarded Lincoln as a despot destroying republican values. Copperhead newspapers were known to make vicious and scurrilous attacks on Lincoln. Copperheads are also a venomous pitviper species of snake found in North America. These are figures of attack and disfigurement. Thinking along these lines, out of the 100 pennies on display, perhaps the most startling penny for me -- and once my eyes found this particular penny, I was given a definite jolt -- was one which had a deep indentation at Lincoln's temple. This is where Davey's macro-photography work does wonders: the detail offered in the photos renders these objects available for a degree of detailed scrutiny not available to the naked eye; the pennies assume the status of miniature sculptures in these photographs. When the pennies are granted this amount of scale and detail, the indentation is palpably felt as a reminder of Lincoln's assassination in a way simply not accessible to someone who has just picked-up a penny for observation. The bas-relief of Lincoln by Victor David Brenner-- the depth and alteration throug decay of which is, again, bolstered by the photography -- was based on a Matthew Brady studio portrait of Lincoln. After I left the exhibition my brain somehow latched onto how these pennies were related to Brady's Civil War photographs. Specifically, how the "primitive" photographic apparatus used by Brady to produce his immortal images of Civil War soldiers called attention to the materiality of the image. These photos were literally "rough around the edges." (Some of Brady's, and his company of photographers, photos may be found here.

One last note. Both Davey and the introduction to the exhibit call attention to the psychoanalytical life around money. In an interview, Davey maintains that the dust and dirt revealed through the macro-photographs of the pennies "are a perfect encapsulation of the scatological nature of money." I'm tempted to say this is bullshit. First, dust and dirt are not scatological. Second, the photographs don't really detail dust and dirt – they detail decay. While there is something to notion of decay being related to anality and the scatological, in this instance the relationship doesn't seem to be exhibited by the pennies. If anything, it seems to me that the Lincoln pennies' more obvious psychoanalytical categories would be loss, melancholy, and mourning – categories which rhyme with the larger concerns purportedly addressed in Davey's other works on display in the exhibit.

Recent viewing

Fists in the Pocket: It’s got it all! Overstuffed mise-en-scene, very bold inter-scene editing choices, epileptic brothers, incest, murder, rat-hunting for pleasure, Lou Castel channeling (and challenging) Brando, one of the scariest kid actor scenes ever. The liner notes tell me that Pasolini said Bellocchio was the prose to Bertolucci’s poetry, but I’m not so sure. Made 3 years after La Commare Secca, Fists is just as self-assured a debut as Bertolluci’s film.

Superbad: best romantic comedy of 2007? These kids are seriously scared of being gay.

Southland Tales: the good people over at the village voice seem to think this sophomore effort by Richard Kelly (of Donnie Darko fame) is trenchant (and will find its audience on DVD and the late night cult circuit). They would know better than me, but, not for lack of trying, I can’t see it. Contra Kelly: If this is the way the world ends, then it is a whimper, not a bang. I think Conduct for Zero nails it.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: more pulp, less art, please.

Killer of Sheep: Kids doing their best to prepare for life by throwing rocks at each other and our man Stan pulling 40 hours a week for what you will, which just happens to be in his case impotence, insomnia, and a used car engine. The anti-Sweetback, Burnett’s masterpiece is one of the most patient films of all time. If film is editing, then Burnett’s refusal to cut the carrying the engine down the stairs scene tells you all you need to know about his cinematic sympathies. But if that didn’t do it, then the wrenching and unforgettable portrait of desperation and alienation in the “this bitter earth” dance scene, would. Bazin would be proud.

Feldman & Shariah

I was just as baffled as plenty of other people when Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, suggested the acceptance by the UK government of Shariah for certain family law issues in UK Muslim communities. I associated Shariah with harsh and oppressive patriarchal norms and acts within Muslim society, and I could not understand why the Archbishop would publicly endorse such a legal system. In the March 16th edition of The New York Times Magazine Noah Feldman attempts to re-access the issue by providing a brief historical overview of the origins, transformations, and current calls for the reinstatement of Shariah in the Muslim world. His primary focus is on the role Shariah has played in balancing power within Muslim states and safeguarding individual legal rights (life, property, and legal process). In this telling, Shariah has been wielded by religious scholars as a means of keeping a certain class of political elites from gaining or asserting too much power and overrunning the legal rights of the everyday citizens. Thus, its revival today – in a more “legislative” form, shorn of its dependence upon scholars as spokesmen -- is largely articulated and advanced by groups hoping to place limits on autocratic regimes which they believe no longer respect the rule of law.

Individuals and groups hoping to transform society use ideologies, discourses, and images at hand; resistance and change do not operate in a vacuum, they are embedded within larger histories. Prof. Feldman does us a service by pointing out the ways in which Shariah has been used to support individual rights, including those of women. He makes it easier to grasp why Shariah would be considered – even by women – a means to achieve justice within Muslim societies.

Obviously, a writer can only cover so much ground in a Sunday magazine section of a newspaper. But questions remain. The essay serves as a corrective to limited thinking about the ways in which Shariah law addresses women, but it does not dispel some of the deeply troubling questions concerning women’s rights. Many of the questions I have concern local rather than theoretical issues. Shariah is being requested and fought for in certain Muslim states. How do those advocating other legal “frameworks” (which might extend even broader protection to women)– such as international human rights or secularized, “liberal” constitutional rights – fair in these states? And how do Islamist groups in those states respond to criticisms by these groups? Prof. Feldman writes that “In its essence, Shariah aspires to be a law that applies equally to every human, great or small, rule or ruled. No one is above it, and everyone at all times is bound by it.” But as feminists have gone to great lengths to show us, men and women are often “bound” by laws in radically different ways. Prof. Feldman asserts that “large numbers of women support…the ideal of Shariah in particular.” I would like to know more about the particulars of this support. For support of any regime or ideology within societies with such highly circumscribed gender orders begs the question of how consent, consensus, and support are arrived at. And then there is the local Western issue. Prof. Feldman starts the essay by referencing the Rowan Williams controversy, but he never responds directly to the criticisms the Archbishop’s statement brought forth. One of the most vexing being how to square Shariah with a “western” liberal democratic legal system which has come to grant (if not completely achieve in theory or practice) women an array of rights which are not found in the Shariah framework.

Fargo

So I gave Fargo another chance. And I still walked away with the same sour taste in my mouth. It's a real head scratcher, for it seems that the Coen brothers grasp the seriousness of the subject matter, but they just can't get past their tendency to caricature. With a film as outrageous as Raising Arizona, the art of caricature works in their favor: we don't need to believe these people exist, so their blank impossibility doesn’t place us in a cooly superior position to them. But with material as brutal as the Coens’ claim Fargo is built upon, caricature exhausts itself in condescension and reduces the moral and ethical issues to vacuous nonsense. When the pregnant female cop (Frances McDormand) gives her “all for a little bit of money” speech to the captured killer, it comes across as rank idiocy. Is it possible that in the presence of so much wanton brutality she could be such a simpleton? More importantly, any possibility of spectatorial identification with her judgment of the killers has been negated by the Coens’ patronizing treatment of her, her husband (another cop), and anyone else not associated with the killers. Anyone not evil or compromised in some way is depicted as a north country fool; If the Coens could have, they would have all these creatures just say “doncha knooo” for the entire film. The same skills with narrative that they have been praised for with No Country for Old Men, are in ample evidence here. The first thirty minutes -- before the caricatures take over -- is a vigorous piece of film-making.

Vietnam -- explicit and implicit

I’m looking for any excuse to link to a couple of songs I’ve heard recently which have really blown me away. So, I’ll try this gambit. Steve Goodman’s a cappella rendering of "Penny Evans" is explicitly about the USofA’s war on Vietnam and the effect this war has on one American family. Bob Martin’s “mill town” (from his 1972 Midwest Farm Disaster album) never mentions Vietnam, but I can’t shake the feeling that the war hovers over this song of working class, small town USA life. The Martin mp3 can be found at The Rising Storm, an excellent blog which should be consulted quite often. Here’s the Goodman clip

Neil Young & Crazy Horse -- Live at the Fillmore East 1970

My pal Mike asked me how I ranked Neil Young's Decade. Oddly enough, I'd been thinking about another one of Young's albums -- Live At Fillmore East. When I first heard about the release I was very excited. Here was Young in one of his prime moments, playing some classic songs -- Down by the river, Cowgirl in the sand, and Everybody knows this is nowhere -- with Crazy Horse and Jack Nitzsche thrown in for good measure. Sad to say, but the album is a rather big disappointment. "Everybody knows" is perfunctory. "Winterlong" stumbles along. "Wonderin" is trying to figure out how to be more than half a song. The Danny Whitten penned "Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown" is a fun ride with a rollicking push and pull feel. There's a briskness to the playing on this song which I'd hoped would have been evident on "Everybody knows." That leaves "Down by the River" and "Cowgirl." Both can be found on the Everybody Knows album (and Decade), clocking-in, respectively, at 9:13 and 10:06 minutes. The live versions add, respectively, 3 and 6 minutes. For "Down by the River" this extra time dooms the song. There is far too much 4/4 drumming and plodding bass to listen through. (Molina, a pretty straightforward drummer to begin with, never pushes the band into being more aggressive by using some of the rhythmic ideas that can be found on the studio versions of the songs.) The song grinds to a halt for a long section. It feels like Young and Whitten and the boys are trying to explore the central musical ideas of the song rather than attack them ferociously as they do on the Everybody Knows album. Hell, even CSNY rips-up the song better on this live TV-show version (check that host!). "Cowgirl" escapes this problem, thanks to some shredding guitar work. Maybe it's just the lack of creativity on Molina's part, but I also think the long format of these versions don't play to Young's and Crazy Horse's strengths. I'm sure there are more live treats in the vaults, and I'm looking forward to them.

I watched Juno at a 10:05am Tremont Street showing, hoping I'd be the only person in the theatre. I was one of two. Roger Ebert and Andrew Sarris (yes, folks, the auteur of auteurism Andrew Sarris is still alive and you should be listening to him – just not this time) have claimed Juno is the best film of the year. It is not. Instead, if Dana Stevens' piece in slate.com is any guide, it seems that my reaction was similar to most viewers: the first 20-30 minutes of the film were practically unbearable, while the rest of the movie was a quiet pleasure. But that first 20-30 minutes! Given my cultural sympathies and aversions, I thought someone had gone out of their way to make me submit to cinematic hell. Juno (Ellen Page) is that non-existent teenager a certain class of thirty-somethings love to project all their hipness onto; sadly, she's the coolest high school-version of themselves they can imagine. Arch. Wry. Ironic. These words don't do justice to the absurdly truncated and supposedly hip teen-speak Juno is made to spit-out at every moment. Given the film's narrative, a defense could be mounted for the hyperbolic nature of the first 20-30 minutes. On this reading, Juno's way of talking is a defense against the complexities of life, and as she matures physically and emotionally throughout the pregnancy she progressively drops the hipster defense pose. Sentiment and substance replace ironic distance. I don't know if that reading is valid or grants the film's screenwriter too much credit, but I know I'm not buying it. The biggest problem with that line of argument is that it ignores that everyone in the movie talks like this for the first 20-30 minutes. But there is another issue here. By making Juno, specifically, talk like she does for that first section of the film, the screenwriter (Diablo Cody) lessens Juno's intelligence -- for would a teen as smart as Juno obviously is talk incessantly like Diablo writes? -- and denies the audience the pleasure of watching a whip-smart yet fragile teen drop the occasional liberating rhetorical flourish on unsuspecting adults and peers. She drowns Juno and the audience in quips rather than let Juno and the audience swim in that rough sea of high school life. Put another way, in those first 20-30 minutes Cody denies Juno her youth and the pleasures of transcending that youth during those brief, delicious moments of superiority certain high-schoolers seem to attain. Thankfully, this overbearing writing style gives way to something more generous and open.

Zabriskie Point

Thank god Michelangelo Antonioni has a profound cinematic imagination, for if it weren't for the many purely cinematic pleasures of Zabriskie Point, there would be almost no reason to talk about the movie. The dialogue of the two main protagonists careens between the incoherent and inane. We might generously call this living-in-the-moment speech, for neither character is written as though even the most minimal consensual bounds to conversation are to be accepted. It is as though after the "revolutionary meeting" free for all in which whites, blacks, men, and women talked over one another, Antonioni just wants to see how far two symbols of pure will and imagination can take us. (And, of course, until the last glorious bit of wishful thinking in which the female lead imposes her will upon the elite's desert getaway house, it is a man who is willful and a woman who is imaginative.) And that's a shame, for Daria’s (Daria Halprin) counterculture idealism and Mark’s (Mark Frechette) post-liberal any means necessary desperation deserve better than what they get here. (For a far more astute treatment of these late sixties groups and issues and a radically different depiction of California's deserts, run immediately and rent Peter Watkins' Punishment Park.) But if Antonioni and the other screenwriters can't seem to think outside of clichés about students and elites, at least Antonioni can perform a series of wonder works with the camera. I am particularly fond of an early section when Mark is driving through the city and Antonioni masterfully plays with space, reflections, close-ups, different film speeds, and editing. During this scene he also uses the soundtrack to amp up the alienating omnipresence of capitalism as a built urban environment of endless advertisements. The utopic libido-fest in the desert is justly famous – it’s a joyous wish-fulfillment of physical intimacy and delight, with Jerry Garcia’s lyrical close-reading providing poignancy and extra verve to the entire affair. While Antonioni’s camera is more static in this long scene, he still has a keen eye for gesture and touch and the right editing moment. (I think there are problems with his valorization of the desert, but I believe the incarnation of eros escapes the organizing and mechanistic dialectic which Antonioni seems to want to articulate between the desert and the city.) There is a long tracking-in camera movement over the desert towards Daria and that old Buick that deserves mention. Antonioni has the camera glide in on Mark and Daria. He gets fairly close to the car, then we hear Daria laughingly say to Mark “stop it.” At that moment Daria and Mark start to giggle and Antonioni slowly pulls away from the car, letting it move on towards Zabriskie Point. The on the wind tracking shot here is distant and yet tenderly playful. While I can’t say that the last scenes of destruction are a stunning rebuke of all things capitalism -- it’s almost like Antonioni had a rather large budget and said, Fuck It, let’s destroy a really large something or other, and the first half of the Pink Floyd-scored second half of the destruction (writing school, must go to writing school) is just too ethereal and mesmerizing to be thought of as any sort of critique of capitalism or consumerism -- I gotta admit that when the Floyd starts screaming, I want to kick down some doors with Daria.

The Wire: too "bleak"?

In the January/February issue of The Atlantic Mark Bowden, addresses the issue of truth-telling in HBO's The Wire. Bowden thinks the show's primary creator, David Simon, a former newspaperman for the Baltimore Sun, has dropped the search for (journalistic) truth and substituted in its place his own personal, changeless Idea about how the city of Baltimore works. For Bowden, journalism is an open-ended practice in which the truth you know one day can be completely undercut the next day by new information. In contrast to this, fiction -- no matter how closely it attempts to mimic the jumbled to and fro of reality -- will always present a falsified, because static, view of any given historical moment. With this schema in mind, Bowden, while not denying The Wire's realism or depth of insight into Baltimore's street-life, the collapse of unions, the bureaucratic machinations within city hall and the police department, and the city's educational apparatus, nonetheless believes the show, because of its relentlessly negative depiction of these issues and spheres, tells us more about Simon's passionate and artistically vital views on contemporary Baltimore than about what's actually happening on the ground there now.

Simon is the reporter who knows enough about Baltimore to have his story all figured out, but instead of risking the coherence of his vision by doing what reporters do,…he has stopped reporting and started inventing.

Unfortunately, Bowden doesn't really dig into the differences between what's actually going on in Baltimore and what happens on The Wire. He doesn't follow any given story-line to tell us how it differs from reality. Instead, to prove that Simon's vision of Baltimore is "unfair" he quotes the Yale sociologist Elijah Anderson (whose own work doesn't offer any pollyannish vision of American ghettos) to the effect that the show has left out the good and brave people working for change in the poorest sections of the city. And then he spends the last part of the article chronicling Simon's apparently notorious penchant for harshly criticizing those whom he disagrees with, especially former colleagues at the Sun.

I think Bowden has seriously missed the mark here. His section on Simon's personal life comes across as more ad hominem argument than actual insight gleaned through biographical knowledge. But it all really comes down to his assertion that The Wire is too "bleak." Is it? Does Simon leave out all the good, decent, brave folk? I don't believe so. What I think Simon has done is show how those working for justice in a densely flawed system struggle against the extremely course grain of bureaucratic, economic, and political forces which work in the service of prestige, power, and the status quo. But more importantly, Simon has decided to devote a series to the fallout of post-industrial America. The Wire is an extended ethnographic expose on the fate of a city devastated by the decline of skilled and unskilled manufacturing jobs. The fragile opportunities and stark limitations faced by so many inner city black Americans in such an economic landscape gets fuller treatment here than anywhere else on TV, save a random Frontline special. And, yes, the picture is not pretty. Should Simon, like Jim McKay, spend more time on the no shame in my game kids? Sure. Are there more chances than the show allows for retraining or going back to school for those first fired when the economy moved to service sector positions? Perhaps. But these seem like quibbles when weighed against a show as rich and detailed as The Wire. No show on cable or network tv comes close to giving us such a subtly drawn tableau of a segment of society which faces institutionalized racism, last-hired & first-fired "policies", and the seemingly unending difficulties of breaking-out of ghetto-life. How often do we see these lives in anything more than racist “Cops” shows? Yes, Simon and his fellow writers could give us a show less “bleak” than the one they produce. But given the fairy tale land most of us live in compared to life in the ghetto, wouldn’t that be a failure to honor truth?

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Apparently some regard Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) as his most nihilistic film. I'm going to have to track down the articles claiming it is such, for I feel the film is not only far from being nihilistic – it contains a sustained critique of the male and patriarchal violence (against women) which has been at the moral core of many of Peckinpah's most noted films (The Wild Bunch and the misogynistic Straw Dogs).

From the opening series of scenes in which a pregnant woman is abruptly taken from her lake-side reverie to be tortured by her wealthy father's henchmen to the very last scene in which this same woman gains revenge upon her father by having the film's protagonist Bennie (another wild-in-the-eye Warren Oates performance) kill him, we witness men from all stations in life treat women with casual contempt and physical abuse. Peckinpah depicts each of these men as sadistic and morally hollowed out by both the desire for and the abuse of power and, in the case of the protagonist, schizophrenic jealousy.

Peckinpah incoherently contrasts these shameful souls with the Mexican family which attempts to stop Bennie from defiling the body of Alfredo Garcia by cutting its head off and taking it to the Jefe who put out the bounty for it. Their commitment to family and the lengths to which they will go to maintain the dignity of one of their own mark them off as worthy of respect and admiration, especially when placed in reference to the odious men who stand against them.

Alfredo Garcia, like Straw Dogs, contains a rape scene in which the woman (Elita, played by the phenomenal Isela Vega) gives herself over emotionally to the man about to rape her. Yet unlike Straw Dogs, Peckinpah depicts the rapist as pathetic and incapable of completing the act when confronted by a self-assertive woman. The rapist (affectless-as-ever Kris Kristoferson) seems to sense that his attempt to rape the woman is a vile act. However, Peckinpah still can’t keep the woman from giving herself over emotionally and physically (after she has slapped and been slapped by the rapist, who subsequently walks away from her) to a would-be rapist. This self-giving seems to be a defining feature of her character: Elita is, by far, the most understanding and empathetic subject in the movie. However, that does not lessen the venality of having yet another woman “accept” her rapist. I hesitate here to say anything more general about gender (and violence) in Peckinpah’s films, but in a movie so scathing in its indictment of male violence towards women, I wonder about Peckinpah’s failure to understand the inherently violent nature of showing a woman as desirous of her rapist.

Harlan County, USA

Harlan County, USA is a kaleidoscopic account of a recently unionized group of miners’ struggle for a new contract with better wages and benefits. In under two hours Kopple somehow manages to cover not only the day-to-day life on the striking miners’ picket lines, but also the gendered complexities of the strike effort, the harsh facts of everyday life in an impoverished mining town, the cultural resources (notably music) locals employ for emotional support, the violent struggles in “bloody Harlan” during the 1930s, and conflicts within the United Mine Workers Union (UMWA).

In many ways the film is an extended sorrow song, providing an unflinching look at physical decay, death, and the necessity and ubiquity of suffering. Whether it’s black lung destroying miners’ ability to breathe, the atrocious living conditions for most miners, or the seeming necessity of one miner’s murder for the coal company to finally agree to a new contract, we witness a group of dignified men, women and children whose lives are filled with troubles. There are joyous moments, laughter, and the consolations of family and friends, but the tenor of life in this community is best captured halfway through the movie when Kopple films a daughter and her father singing the lament “O, Death” with its stark plea for death to “spare me over til another year.”

The young miner’s murder near the end of the movie marks the end of an increasingly violent struggle between the miners and the “gun thugs” hired by the company to break the strike. The escalation of violence – fists, bats, guns – and the necessity of this escalation for justice to be achieved are central themes of the film. (Kopple, who makes no effort to hide her sympathies for the striking miners, is at one point physically attacked by strikebreakers.) Individuals counseling non-violence are openly mocked by other miners. Responding to the use of handguns and machineguns by Basil Collins and his “gun thugs,” miners begin showing up to the picket-line with guns of their own. After one meeting by the women in the community, Lois Scott, the most vocal woman amongst many strong female activists, reaches down her shirt to withdraw and show to her compatriots a newly purchased handgun. (Why burn your bra when you can use it as a holster?) In a perceptive accompanying essay to the Criterion Collection DVD which places the film in the broader context of 1970s documentaries, Paul Arthur remarks that Scott “embodies the film’s most troubling, and enduring, question: how to fight against corporate intimidation without jeopardizing the goals or moral capital of the union cause.” Given the gross inequalities of power and prestige between the miners and the mining company (Duke Power), it is hard to believe that the company would have ever signed the contract if the miners had not become more willing to use violence as a regrettable means to a just end.

Elisha Cook Jr’s middle-age double sat in front of me on the T today. I love Cook as a desperately grasping (and in way over his head) husband in Kubrick’s The Killing and as the honorable tough guy who falls for another (minor league) femme fatale in Hawks’ The Big Sleep.