Prophets and other religious entities

Prisons are for movie directors, what lollipops are for children: they cannot get enough of them. And just when you think you've seen enough of prison dramas and there no other new thing you could possibly want to see, Un prophéte appears and sets a whole new ball game all together.

Let me be entirely clear about something: I loved the movie. And funnily enough I didn't expect that at all. For once, it is a French movie and I don't get along very well with French movies, I find them slow, long, pretentious and tedious. But this one so was not all of these. I think the best way to describe the movie was that it was crystal. Some movies have this quality, of being so clearly good that you don't have to think about them, you don't have to qualify your answer, you don't have to excuse the mishaps, you don't have to half-cringe some moments when you watch them. You just sit there and enjoy them from the beginning till the end, and just simply like everything about them. I think the last movie I felt so clearly about was oldboy. And un prophéte is way up there with the cunning Korean.

Perhaps it was the script: the rise of a nobody in the microcosm of the French prison, Malik's relationship with Cesar: so complex and deep, the clear analogy between the anthropology of the prison and French society, the haunting relationship between Malik and Reyeb.

Perhaps it was the acting: The glorious newcomer Tahar Rakim as Malik, with his piercing eyes, Niels Arestrup as the arrogant and fooling Cesar and everybody in the supporting cast.

Perhaps it was the cinematography, the grittiness of the prisons, the bluntness of the blood, the sharpness of the Northern sun. Or the innovative techniques of freeze frames, the combination of cinema verité with magic realism and the colours of the movie.

The success of the prophet is found in the combination of all of the above to tell a seemingly banal story (petty criminal enters the prison as a frightened nobody and exits it as a crime lord) with an unexpected breath of fresh air.

If it doesn't win the foreign language film Oscar, I will eat my hat.

In anticipation (a.k.a. ode to the past)

**** Update: awesome album! Fresh, exciting, dark but not solipsistic, modern yet a classic. As always.



Massive attack are releasing their new album, Heligoland, tomorrow. In anticipation of this, the guardian has a small retrospective on their work, their collaborations and their most inspirational moments. Reading it made me realise that some things are really classic despite seeming too era-specific. Let me explain: sometimes it seem that the notion of timelessness that is often associated with classic things is also in turn associated with something that when you see it (hear it, read it etc) it does not reveal the era that it came from. Ancient Greek tragedies for examples are archetypical stories, that when stripped from their era-particular characteristics, they can function perfectly in any space and time. You can direct Medea set in the 21st century and the backbone of the story (revenge and jealousy- the beast that lies in us all) can still work.

I think however that for something to become eventually a classic it needs to be exceptionally modern (almost ahead of its time) at the same time. Medea would have never been a classic if it hadn't been so modern when it was written. Hamlet would have never become a classic if it hadn't shattered the norms of theatre, with the introduction of the ultimate anti-hero, the reluctant prince, when it was first written. There is no way something will become a classic if it is not also painfully new and modern.

Massive attack's music is, for me, the ultimate '90's music. Unfinished sympathy is often labelled the song of the decade (like Paranoid android is the song of the '00's) and the band itself had been the pioneers of the quintessential '90's movement, trip-hop. In that sense, when you listen to blue lines or protection, some songs might sound dated and essentially yesterday-ish. But I think, this is what makes Massive attack's music so classic, it is a product of its time and yet it was ahead of its time. It defined and decade and can therefore classically represent this decade forever.

Holden's father is dead

What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse. ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 1



Anyone who knows me, knows that I adore 'the catcher in the rye'. I read it when I was 15ish and Holden has been my friend ever since. For some time, obsessively he was my best friend, I kept reading the book again and again, thinking that i would find something new each time i read it. The funny thing is that I did, I found new things all the time: a sentence that i had missed, a detail that made the story better, a line by Holden that was better, more intense than the previous one. I never read another book by JD Salinger, i am not sure why. Probably I was scared i wasn't going to like it as much and i would feel bad about catcher in the rye as well. Or because I thought that what on earth can ever be better than Holden Caulfield?

I remember being intrigued at the mystery of JD Salinger, his self-imposed seclusion, his aversion to the press, his life outside the limelight. And now that he died, all I can think of is that he will not have to hide anymore.

I don't even know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it. ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 1

Bored of the previous post

I have no time to write - I am too busy letting my life pass me by - but I couldn't stand seeing my pathetic new year post for so long.

When i return from hibernation I will write about all the things i am thinking about: the new movies i saw (nine and the road - each of them imperfect in a different way), the books i am (not reading), the gigs i missed (bonobo) and the ones i am looking forward to (go gaga for gaga), the weather that is changing, my white hair that is multiplying, my diet that is not working, the beneficial results of spa (galgorm rocks) and other tales from the new year. Ah yes, and the lists of 'bests of 2009' that I never wrote. Perhaps because the only thing i wanted to put in is the film 'Let the right one in' and the old, reread and beloved book by Σώτη Τριανταφύλλου, 'Σάββατο βράδυ στην άκρη της πόλης' that makes my insides warm just by thinking about it. Perhaps not because it's so perfect but because it is familiar. Familiarity though, and other deep and thoughtful topics are not for now, not for a Monday morning at work with a long list of things to do, the longest in a long time.

A bientôt!

Happy new year - for the lazy!!!

What is that we want from the new year, any new year?

Change, I guess, and something better than the last one...

Sometimes I think of the years passed and I confuse one with the other: my last birthday with the one 5 years ago, last christmas with the one of 2005 and so on and so forth. So, if there is one wish I have for the new year is to remember it more. I want to do things that are interesting and distinctive enough to remember. And possibly worthy enough to write in this poor blog, that I have neglected so much over the last few months.

In any case, happy new year people, whatever 'happy' means...

P.s. I hope to write a 'best of 2009' post soon... But this means i have to stop being lazy. Oh well....

Lazy

Being lazy is a must not a luxury. We live in this stupid, über-fast world where we need to do things all the time (or in my words - I live in a world of constant list-writing. Today I stayed home to do some marking (yuk!) and since I woke up, I've done nothing: I have talked to d/a on the phone, wrote a card to an upcoming bday girl, sluggishly made coffee and then indulged myself into my guiltiest of pleasures: watching trailers of romantic comedies on apple.com. I love this shit, really. Soon I go to cut my hair and then maybe, just maybe, I might do some work. But you know what? Enough with the pseudo-catholic guilt, you know? Fuck it! I am lazy and loving it.

On the nature of the critic

Η σχέση μας με τον Άλλο αφ΄ ενός προϋποθέτει, αφ΄ ετέρου συνεπάγεται την καλύτερη γνώση του εαυτού μας. Το παραδοξολόγημα του Ουάιλντ υπαινίσσεται, παρόλη την υπερβολή του, κάτι που οι πιο υποψιασμένοι κριτικοί γνωρίζουν καλά: ότι το πραγματικό θέμα μιας κριτικής δεν είναι τόσο το κρινόμενο βιβλίο όσο ο ίδιος ο κριτικός. Με άλλα λόγια, η κριτική είναι μια μορφή αυτοβιογραφίας· η μόνη πολιτισμένη μορφή αυτοβιογραφίας, όπως έλεγε πάλι ο Ουάιλντ, «πιο συναρπαστική από την ιστορία, επειδή ο συγγραφέας εξομολογείται, πιο απολαυστική από τη φιλοσοφία, επειδή το θέμα της είναι συγκεκριμένο και όχι αφηρημένο, πραγματικό και όχι αόριστο».

The gist of the above comment in Greek can be roughly summarised as follows:
The real topic of a criticism (a piece of work with your opinion on a movie, a book or whatever) is not the thing itself - rather it is your own self. In other words, criticism is a form of autobiography.

Reading this, i felt suddenly relieved as I finally understood what i have always been trying to do, when i write: I am trying to understand myself. It always made me feel weird how i started a piece that was supposed to be about a movie and ended up talking about my views on life. I thought i did that because i was a self-centred bad writer, but in the end, it seems that everybody is self-centred. Or perhaps, we are all self-centred but not because we are necessarily bad, but because this is the only way we can be. Perhaps the only topic we will ever be able to discuss in some depth and some sophistication, is ourselves. And perhaps the only reason we do anything in life - the books we read, the things we study, the movies we watch, the people we hang out with - are just means for us to understand ourselves better.