Tuesday 29 January 2008

The return of the Coens



I am not the biggest of the Coen fans, and although I think that the Big Lebowski *is* the funniest movie of all times and the man who wasn't there the most stylish one, their most recent work has left me fairly unimpressed (oh brother where are thou, intorelable cruelty, ladykillers)... I have never read any Cormac McCarthy either so I really didn't know what to expect.

The movie was ever so stylish, atmospheric and darkly funny at times, in a way that only the Coens can be funny. I think that is what I like the most about them in the end, this dark sense of humor that is found even in the unlikeliest of situations. The story is unimportant, any entangled crime story would do. That is why the most straightforward elements of the plot are left unanswered (who took the money, who killed Llewelyn etc) and the most important crimes are not shown(like in pulp fiction with the suitcase, now that I think about it). Nothing is important plot-wise, replace any detail, any character and the essence of the story would stay the same.

And the essence of the story is what? I read a nice entry in wikipedia on that, stating the usual suspects in the Coens' inventory of obsessions: the absolute evil, the role of chance, fate and choice in human lives. I agree with all of these, especially the issue of choice and I think the scene between Chigurh and Carla Jean demonstrates this perfectly: (obviously, spoiler follows) he's gone to kill her out of a perverse idea of 'keeping his word' although he has no other reason to do it. So she pleads 'you don't have to do this you know' to which he answers 'ok I'll cut you a deal' and tosses his favorite coin and asks her to call it. And she just looks at him, I think in disgust, and says something along the lines of 'fuck you and your stupid coin, me living or dyeing is *not* a matter of luck, this is the ultimate choice, do *you* want to kill me or not'? We never see what happens, but the next scene is of Chigurh, leaving her house, checking underneath his boots: he never likes to step on blood. He has made his choice.

Another curious detail: the three male leads never meet on screen. The movie is like three separate monologues, three parallel lives that collide and crash somewhere beyond our screen. This reminds me of my beloved James Ellroy masterpiece, the big nowhere, where the three main characters, Howard, Mickey and (my favorite) Danny never meet in any scene. They are three people who could very well be just one. Each of them so incomplete but all of them together perfect.

Sunday 27 January 2008

Και οι πεθαμένοι έχουν ψυχή*



If I touch a burning candle I can feel the pain
If you cut me with a knife it's still the same
And I know her heart is beating
And I know that I am dead
Yet the pain here that I feel
Try and tell me it's not real
For it seems that I still have a tear to shed

I was sitting in my sofa and this song came to my mind. Every time I listen to it, I feel this sorrow, the sorrow of the corpse bride when she sings this because the man she (thinks she) loves, loves someone else. The analogy between the dead girl who can still feel and every person that can still feel something they're not supposed to, always speaks volumes to me.

*The dead have a soul as well (such a bad translation, this doesn't work in English at all.)

Saturday 26 January 2008

The steam



This will be a simplistic entry. The message will be simple: dancing is great. But as always the issue in life is not the message per se, but how you get to it. So I can still write this entry, I think.

I went to this salsa club yesterday and I was so shocked. I live in this city, where foreigners are a rarity and yesterday night I think I was in the place that had all of them together. If an extreme right-wing fundementalist (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7210036.stm) wanted to get rid of all the foreigners in Belfast, he'd better have put a bomb there last night. Most effective.

So, I go to this club for the first time last night and I really don't know what to expect. In the beginning there's a standard salsa class from out teacher, clumsy couples on the dancefloor trying to get the steps right, looking at our teacher with such a frightened look. And then the class stops and the dancing starts. I've never seen anything like it. Salsa is so cool, you know, because the steps are few and simple and the possibilities with them are endless. The people yesterday were amazing, innovative, funny, flashy, sweaty but NOT sleezy. Nobody was dancing with only one partner, everybody changed and adapted to their new partners. Ugly men were being transformed to kings of the dancefloor. Skinny trendy women were being trashed by chubby salsa queens. And as I was sitting there, sometimes dancing with brave partners, sometimes just staring with my mouth open, it then it hit me, this IS what people are supposed to be doing in life. Just dance and give no damn. Fuck psychotherapy, salsa is the key to a happy existence.

And imagine, I don't even listen to this music normally.

Wednesday 23 January 2008

Letting Go


I see and hear it everywhere recently...

in the cover of women magazines, in people’s communication, in my personal therapy, in TV. Why can’t people let go of this and that, why is it so difficult to accept somebody’s feelings and decisions, what is the matter if you let something/somebody go…?
Even the famous and utterly charming Dr Greg House refused to switch off the machines and let a patient die, unless he figured out the reason she died from.
I am trying to get used to the idea that many things in my life have been and will be determined by external factors. That leaves me with the dilemma, either to try and figure out what, when, how, who is responsible for these, getting myself angry, feeling weak and powerless or... to accept and let go.. I spend hours, days, and weeks, (must be years by now) to understand what this life is all about and what I can do to make it livable. It is only recently that I have come to terms with this “letting go” act and feeling. I love calling it an act, as it is something you are doing for yourself and I admit that it is a relief! By this I mean that we all ought to be(come) adaptive. I have cried over men, friendships, ideas that have passed, have hurt me and that have made me who I am. The act of “letting go” is something like a survival instinct that widens the picture, kicks you gently and diverts the attention to the future.

I read somewhere that humans that are stuck in time, stuck in the past, are condemned to be left alone. And I definitely don’t want to be left alone. I want to feel that I roll with life, with time, with those who care for me..

Monday 21 January 2008

Spaghetti western, this is not



January is the month for movies and since Youkali watched and posted on 'I'm not there' I thought that I should watch and post about a different movie, for the benefit of our readers of course.

So, I saw the assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford. And I liked it a lot, not because Brad Pitt is so damn handsome. Or Casey Affleck is so talented. I liked it because it was a cross between the ultimate story of betrayal of master by beloved pupil (cf. Jesus-Judas = 0-1) and the chronicle of a death foretold. It was a movie seemingly without surprises (the guy dies and the other guy kills him-it says so in the title) that held the best surprise for the end: the fall, this endless fall after the committed sin.

And this is why I like westerns more and more, from the three burials of melquiades estrada to the assassination of jesse james, the western appears as the best setting for modern day tragedies: simplistic setting, powerful stories and superficailly simple protagonists. If you love tragedy and you don't live in Athens, 5th century B.C. or London, 16th A.D., the great American West is the place to be. After Korea, of course.

Sunday 20 January 2008

A camp man can sing your sorrows (and I feel that I'm wasting away)

This is the way you left me,
I'm not pretending.
No hope, no love, no glory,
No Happy Ending.
This is the way that we love,
Like it's forever.
Then live the rest of our life,
But not together.

(Next time I feel really miserable, that's what I'd like to be listening to)
(I think that THIS is the best song of 2007)
(Mika forever)

Friday 18 January 2008

A different life in a parallel universe

A girl emailed me yesterday. She was never my friend, but I used to know her a long time ago when I was doing my first degree and I lived in Crete. She was a nice short girl with very white skin and very short pitch black hair. I knew her because we were "fighting for the same cause", we were asking our university to leave a building in the centre of the city for the cultural teams. I was involved in the student magazine and and the music team and I don't remember what she was doing. She was hanging out with a guy we called the Doctor. I think he was studying medicine and was smoking a lot of weed. I was a bit scared of him, he din't talk a lot and he wes tall with a shaved head.

One day there was tension between students and the police and the girl who emailed me, let's call her Eleni, got beaten up by them. All of us heard, so I went to see her. You could see it on her face, they had beaten her up. I felt so weird, I was ashamed to look at her because I hadn't gone to that march. I don't think I talked to her too much after that.

Years later I heard she was in Scotland, doing a PhD in philosphy and some of my friends knew her. Yesterday, she emailed me saying she saw my email by accident in the webpage of the University that I work for. She said she was not sure it was me. She said she was in Dublin. "I hope you're well" she wrote.

I was extremely happy she emailed me. I felt connected with a time that feels a million years away. I felt connected with myself, of that time. My life in 1999, it feels like a different life in a parallel universe. How do people change so much? Do people change so much?

I want to remember that person. I am the same in so many ways but so different. I don't have any pictures from that time and I wish I did, I wish I could see myself back then, I wish I could see if I would recognise me.

Tuesday 15 January 2008

I'm not there

I haven’t written anything in a long time and I missed my chance of writing about the best (and worse) of 2007. However, I feel it is my duty as a viewer to praise in a very enthusiastic manner the excellent ‘I’m not there’ by Todd Haynes. I understand that Cate Blanchett has got a Golden Globe in the mail for her cynical Bob Dylan and in my view it is entirely well deserved, although I must say that, if Blanchett gives the movie its artistic singularity and originality, Christian Bale delivers very good, serious acting. I loved his singing (or lip synch, should I say) and his clipped, determined voice, very similar to Dylan himself. But the movie is not just an emulation of Bob Dylan. It is perhaps a reflection, homage, an artistic interpretation not only of his life but also of his work. The songs are rendered in an emotional (non cheesy, may I add), relevant way and they just make sense. And it is fun to guess which character is inspired by which real person (which in the case of Joan Baez/Julianne Moore is sooo easy, and I’m sure it’s on purpose). The end sequence, with Richard Gere in small townville, is just visually stunning albeit all the cryptic surrealism, which can perhaps also apply to the sequences with a character called Rimbaud (the name sounds familiar…).
It’s a great movie to watch even for those who are not hard-core Dylan fans like me. The soundtrack is great as well and it offers a really good opportunity to go through Dylan’s songs to understand what really made him the icon that he is. However, previous to seeing this movie, I had watched the Scorsese’s documentary ‘No Direction Home’, which really helps understanding this movie. I had some idea of Dylan’s life before watching the movie and the plot became a bit easier to follow. I guess it would be hard to understand what was going on otherwise.
I loved this movie because I hadn’t watched a proper “arty” beautiful movie in a very long time. And ‘I’m not there’ is all about music, art and being an artist. And I must also point out that I loved the previous Todd Haynes ‘bioptic’ (if I can call it so), ‘Velvet Goldmine’. A lot of people hate it (some of my friends do). I love it, so FORÇA, TODD!
My expectations for 2008 lie all with the Coen Brothers – No Country For Old Men. I saw ‘The Man that Wasn’t There’ again recently and I was blown way. Again.

The Harry Issue



I wanted to write about Harry Potter's last book ever since I finished reading it, on the third day of its release in July. But I didn't have a blog then. So I thought that my imaginary top 5 (or however many) end-of-year lists could be a good place to discuss this.

I got quite late into HP, it was when I was writing up my PhD, and although I think that not all books are great (for example 1 and 2 are admittedly childish and 5 is quite over ambitious) I am sure that there is something substantial in this series that touched all these people all over the world. Beyond the craze and the mania and the endless tribute sites and (until July) countless conspiracy thories, most importantly beyond the straightforward battle of good versus evil, HP has something more.

Although I know that there are no (or very very few) truly original works of art, Harry is another version of the beloved brainchild of 20th century: the antihero. What has arguably started with Euripides's Orestes and Shakespere's Hamlet, who don't want to do what is expected of them (resulting in far worse things that they would have, had they been decisive when they should) Harry is not indecisive, he is just... a boy. Harry is an antihero not because he is not certain about his actions, on the contrary he is very certain of what he wants and has to do. But he is a mediocre kid, a mediocre wizard, far less important than his reputation.

And he knows that and he cannot deal with it easily. He wishes he was better, but at least he has his friends, none of which is exceptionally good by himself but all together make a decent team. And it is this decent team that is joined by the common beliefs and by the love for each other that manages to defeat evil in the end of this series. The end of the Harry Potter saga is not yet another analogy of good and evil, not a hidden Christian analogy, none of that. It is the triumph of love and the triumph of mediocre friends. Like all of us. Nothing new though, just somehow fresh.

Tuesday 8 January 2008

Praise for the electricity of the human mind!*

This is the first morning I have to myself, after two weeks of being back home and I'd like to write a small post, although I am not sure I know what I want to say.

Returning, it is always nice. Leaving again (tomorrow), how will that be? I might be a bit tired from the endless coming and going of the last 12 years of my life. It is always nice and refreshing, each place has its own charm. But I think I might be missing the stability of a home, where books don't stay in boxes waiting for the next move. Keep your fingers crossed, maybe you see a happy change of location in the blog soon.

Theatre in Athens in the winter: this is what I like to do when I come here. I saw nice things, interesting things, some Dostoyefsky, some Ovid and a new Greek playwriter, who wrote a powerful relentless play, Greece's version of Requiem for a dream. I went there with friends, always disagreeing, about what how theatre should be done in our times.

I am reading Samarcande by Amin Maalouf again, such a nice book. I always like returning to old books that I've read before. They give me the stability of an old friend. The beauty of tried and tested.

I don't have a new year's resolution this year. I am not sure why. I have a lot of things I want to do but I am not sure they should come in the form of a resolution. Will see...

In any case, happy 2008, blogger-friendly friends...

*The change of the translation of the title is due to my boyfriend. (Thanks baby!)