Pat Robertson? Oh no.

Once again, with his Haiti comments, Pat Robertson says something which only succeeds in making him look ridiculous. If this doesn't make people run away from his political endorsements come '010, then nothing will. What I am wondering, though, is who is this hack co-anchor sitting with him? Doesn't she know to pull the camera off him or something when he says something like that?

Avatar: Film Review

At one point during the movie Avatar, I tried to brush away a fly but then realized that it was on the movie screen. This is what 3D graphics can do, and, I must say, the result is quite impressive. So are the shots of the flora and fauna of Pandora, the setting of James Cameron's new space-adventure/Cooperian-romance movie set sometime in the twenty-second century. One can always expect Cameron to outdo himself with all technical dimensions (pun intended) of the work; if only he had someone else to write his screenplays.

Anyone who follows popular culture may have recognized that Avatar has gotten outstanding reviews from most major publications: Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The New Yorker. But, in what Ross Douthat has referred to as a revolt of the fan-boys and nerds, there has been some blow-back on the internet. This is because, in spite of the film's technical depth, its characters and themes are as shallow as a water drop on oak.

The protagonist is a perfect example of this shallowness: His name is Jake Scully (given the film's ardent pantheism, something like Emerson Spinoza might have been more appropriate) and, apparently, he is a former marine. We don't know much about his service (or even if he was good at it), but the lifestyle appears to die harder than his legs do--in his human body, he's confined to a wheelchair (and, yes, if you're wondering, his skinny legs look more convincing than anything else in the movie). The only back story that Cameron provides is that Scully had a scientist brother who died at some point and that, at one point or another, he was in Venezuela (do I detect a Stone-ism here?)

Perhaps Cameron would object that he does not too overly-humanize the, well, human characters because they represent the assumed Military Industrial Complex of the Robber Barons, Corp. The problem is that when he introduces the indigenous tribe, they aren't really much more distinctive. Scully's attraction to them is predictable (after all, this movie was made after Dances with Wolves and A Man Called Horse) but also incomprehensible, given that there is nothing intriguing--or even attractive--about them. Their platitudinous speech is ridden with cliches one might expect from any Hollywood picture. However, they are unrealistic on a deeper level than their silly dialogue and cat ears would suggest. (They also have a tail, but that's not the strangest thing.)

What is least believable about the tribe is the love that all of them have for nature; this seems much more reflective of the tastes of the bourgeoisie bohemian producer of this piece than any indigenous tribe that has existed in any place in history. Love of nature is a product of urbanization; for those who depend on nature and constantly struggle against its darker side for survival, fear is the default position (and rightly so); it is true that nature yields plentifully, but it does not do so for humanity. To conceptualize of nature--as the Na'vi tribe in the movie does--as a maternal goddess is simply absurd.

To say that nature is cruel is, as Stephen J. Gould has pointed out, somewhat quaint, given that it occupies an entirely different wavelength of moral order; nature is neither cruel nor kind, but comfortably amoral and diverse (though, as Darwin argued in the Origins of the Species, it tends to be fairly intolerant of diversity within species--perhaps the reason why all of Cameron's Na'vi look pretty much the same.) Nature being what it is, humanity is almost a perfect corollary to it for, unlike nature, men progress by devolution rather evolution: the sword is made by the man who can't lift a stone, the bow by a man who can't wield a sword, the rifle by a man who can't pull a bow string and the nuclear weapon by the man who can't shoot straight. Nature is beautiful, as long as it is contained within the consciousness but the humanity which Cameron purges by the end of the film provide, by merit of being fully human, the only compass by which anyone's actions in the film could be gauged as moral or immoral.

Naturally, the most lasting feature of the film will not be these themes but rather the new technology that went into its production and created a fly so real that (as I noted at the beginning of this essay) I tried to brush it away. What can be said for this? Mainstream critics have already said it all so I will only add that I hope that filmmakers of equal technical talent as that of James Cameron and greater storytelling ability will, like that carrion fly I waved at, tear off some slice of inspiration from this production which may be tasty but also as dead as the carcasses which ultimately turn to nothing but a naked skull and rib cage.

The Gaseousness of H. Bloom

From Harold Bloom's review of Peter Aykroyd's new rendering of the Canterbury Tales:

Shakespeare's greatest contemporary, the epic poet Edmund Spenser, derived directly from Chaucer, whom he praised as the "well of English undefiled." That prompted the 18th-century poet-critic John Dryden to term Chaucer "a perpetual fountain of good sense.

Question: Is it possible to do more pretentious name-dropping in such a short space?

"Jesus Camp": Who Are These People (The Ones Who Made This Insipid Schlock, I Mean)?

The documentary "Jesus Camp" self-congratulatorily refers to itself as trying to present an even-handed picture of children and the role of faith in their lives--I'm the producers thought that would sell--but the result is a very shallow bit of drivel as seen through the broad, open vision of cosmopolitanism. I suppose that the people in the film are as much to blame as the documentarians (after all, they volunteered themselves for mockery). But they are constrained to the ethics of journalism as are documentary filmmakers. How anyone thought that they might be able to present an objective portrait of the religious rites of the Religious Right by filming a Pentacostal Bible camp which is believed by many, and with some justification, to be heretical is beyond me. Then again, you won't see the heretical charges pointed out in the film, unless it's from a member of the very safe United Methodist Church. One could just as easily make the City Year kids look like fascists. I wouldn't recommend it, though; that would be equally stupid.

A Note on "Lolita"

The Jungle Cat has recently finished reading "Lolita" for the first time. I hear say--and it is, more or less, stated in Nabokov's afterward--that the novel is actually about an immigrant trying to fit in in another culture and casting aside his natural language--embodied by Annabel--for a misbegotten relationship with the language of his adopted culture--Lolita. An odd way to think of it, but, in some ways, it does actually make sense.

On Whitman and America

I wanted to put out a few thoughts on Walt Whitman which will, hopefully, give way to a more expansive post on the subject.

For years, I had no idea precisely how to characterize my feelings about Whitman. In high school, I always disliked his verse and I ignored it for most of my college years; it was not until the end of my sophomore year and the beginning of my junior year that I read him again and, based on this second look, began to see what it was the people see in him.

There is still not a single line of Whitman's poetry which I find to be particularly memorable--with the exception of a few lines perhaps from his contemplations on "The Learned Astronomer" or "O Captain, my Captain". Nonetheless, while Whitman is not the greatest of American poets, he is certainly the most American of great poets. No poet in the American canon captures the spiritual biography of the union--before, during and after the Civil War--with the verve and feeling of Walt Whitman.

From Whitman, one gets the sense of the young optimist looking out upon an illimitable frontier, the soldier whose only music is the drum and the fief, the mourner who can only find meaning in General Sherman's phrase--both cynical and poignant--that "War is hell", the elder bard seeking redemption through the creeds and incantations that his younger heart once found to be so much foolishness.

Who can not read Whitman's work without thinking that this is not only the work of a man, but also a nation?

Agrarianism, the Suburbs and Political Incorrectness in Movies

I recently finished a book entitled "God, Man and Hollywood: Politically Incorrect Cinema from Birth of a Nation to The Passion of the Christ" written by Mark Roger Winchell. It makes an enjoyable read and I would recommend it to anyone who likes movies (though I must say that I wish he had devoted more time to the technical aspects of movie-making. One can read the entire book without encountering phrases like auteur and mise en scene.)

However, for anyone who does choose to read the book, there are a few deeper criticisms which are worth considering. Much of the book is devoted to movies that celebrate Southern Agrarianism (or at least localism) as opposed to an implied cosmopolitan North. Some of the movies in this category which Winchell praises are Intruder in the Dust, Gone with the Wind, The Trip to Bountiful and Gods and Generals. I have nothing against the Southern localism or paleoconservative Herderian sense of belonging that Winchell promotes in the book; the problem is (I think) that no one else objects to the localism either; only the nastiness with which the localism has been occasionally associated (i.e. segretation, disenfranchisement, lynching, etc.).

Winchell clearly--and rightly, I would say--does not want to defend this nastiness, but since the nastiness comprises the politically incorrect attributes of Southern localism, the title of the book seems somewhat redundant. It is true that there are far too many academics and cosmopolitans who unfairly dismiss localism as xenophobic and either wish to toss it in the dustbin of history or allowing it to remain as a curiosity, rather than actually engaging with it critically (and with a healthy degree of self-criticism). Even so, the agrarianism of the Amish is not politically incorrect; just quaint.

A really politically incorrect film would not be one promoting agrarian life, but rather one that emphasized the positive aspects of suburban existence. The suburbs have been lambasted in almost every movie that ever dealt with them--The Man in the Gray Flannel Suite, The Graduate, American Beauty, Revolutionary Road--but, seriously, what other arrangement allows people to engage in modern society while still providing them with badly needed privacy? If you want to watch something politically incorrect, watch Little Children; now there was a politically incorrect movie.

Taken: Review

No doubt, somewhere along the line, in an interview in one of the few remaining magazines that millions of people still read, Pierre Morel might claim that "Taken" is meant to promote awareness about the ongoing underground human trafficking problem in the ghettos of Western European nations. Maybe. But the movie is actually about American machismo unchained. It is a welcome tribute also (especially considering that the film is French-produced and French-directed).

For a foreign film, it does seem extremely American: The primary language of the movie is English and the Bryan Mills, the film's hero, is undoubtedly an American citizen (though he is played with remarkable fluency by the Irish actor Liam Neeson). The pace is also not unlike a John Frankenheimer thriller--a shootout followed by a car chase culminating in a knife fight, etc. But, unlike so many parallel American action flicks, the makers of "Taken" have decided to throw political correctness to the wind and have included in the cast of villains not only Americans and Frenchmen but also Albanians and Arabs.

This is no small feat given the current political context and the tepid relations between the United States and France in the recent past. But Morel (and the screenwriter, Luc Besson) manage it by sticking to common Euro-thriller motifs: a kidnapped daughter, a father looking for her and, in the process, winning retribution; this is to say that the story is not particularly original, but there is something about "Taken" which prevents it from feeling like Just Another Action Flick.

Part of this stems from the fact that it is comfortable in that role. The screenwriters do not make the mistake of making Bryan Mills into some sort of washed out cliche seeking redemption in liquor bottles or stitching relations with estranged family members. On the contrary, he appears to have been a reasonably devoted father (though he cannot outspend his main competitor, the dreaded stepfather, played by Xander Berkeley) and about his role in the CIA he does not seem in the least bit apologetic. There are no nightmare sequences about torched Sandanista villages or whatever else a Hollywood screenwriter may have felt obligated to include because the film is only engaged in its present action.

Furthermore, Liam Neeson is a perfect actor for this sort of portrayal. He possesses an authoritative presence which is not available with alternative stars (like, say, George Clooney). One has to venture back to the days of Clint Eastwood and John Wayne to find a character who seemed so unflaggingly superhuman; but Mr. Neeson is also an actor who cannot help but be human even while performing Herculean tasks. The audience is never allowed to forget that he is acting as a father first and a Hobbesian second; this is to say that the film does not provide the quintessential image of American machismo, but still, its hard to think of any movie in the last two decades which has come closer.

What a Horrible Year for Movies

To celebrate a very boring year for movies, Oscar night offered up a very boring and predictable list of winners (yes, yes, I am sure that Slumdog was a perfectly good movie; it's just that I could have said that it would win two months ago). Apparently Sean Penn got another Oscar for Milk, a movie that no one will probably remember in ten years. Kate Winslet won for The Reader a movie people will have forgotten in six months. And then there were a slew of other movies that won awards that I've already forgotten. Heath Ledger, I suppose, won an award for a great performance, but it is somewhat belittled by the fact that it probably would have gone unrecognized were he not dead. As someone said, I don't remember who, making the Best Supporting Actor award into something of a memorial is just a little tasteless. If I had a Jungle Cat Award, it would play out something like this:

Jungle Cat Award for Best Film: Gran Torino
Jungle Cat Award for Best Actor: Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino
Jungle Cat Award for Best Director: Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight

I think that would have been much more inspired than that which was actually offered up, but, what can I say: I suppose that we'll have to wait for a whole new year.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," so I am told, cost over $100,000,000 and took over two years to make. The result did not live up to what one might expect.

For those unfamiliar with the story, the title and central conceit--a man who ages (or should I say de-ages) backward--are borrowed from a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. But the movie is hardly an adaptation. Some of this is, perhaps, not to be regretted; it wasn't a great short story anyway (I don't believe one sentence which is set in antebellum Maryland), and some attributes of the story are just plain contradictory and ridiculous; how Benjamin Button--named that instead of Methusaleh--could manage to become less mentally mature while his memory remains perfectly intact is beyond my own comprehension.

That being said, the movie's efforts to separate itself from its source's themes as well as its narrative are more a pitfall than a boon. Whatever the shortfalls of Fitzgerald's earlier and shorter fiction (read: before the Great Gatsby) the novelist was always able to create an almost perfect consanguinity between his story's content and its theme, and, in the "Curious Case of Benjamin Button," this perfectly astute theme is the tragicomic struggle of the individual whose true identity conflicts with truths which are--and always have been--socially understood. Hence, the moment when Benjamin--now fifty-seven but looking no more than fifteen--shows up at a rail station during the First World War to receive a government commission as brigadier general, the ridicule with which he is met elicits the reader's tears: both of laughter and of pity.

The same does not apply for the film version, primarily because Eric Roth's adaptation never really knows what it wants to be about. Based on interviews I have watched and read--and moderately confirmed by the film itself--I get a sense that the cast and crew were trying to make a movie about mortality. Death is certainly a haunting presence in the film, slipping in and out during transitional moments. The life of Benjamin Button--who, in the film, grows up in a rest home--is one punctuated by the passing of those around him.

The problem, though, is that the film never really decides what it wants to say about mortality, other than that "nothing ever lasts," as Benjamin puts it in a not-so-profound truism. Characters drop left and right, but Roth--and David Fincher, the director--never really show how this is more relevant to Benjamin's life than it would be to anyone else who had grown up in the same rest home, but who happened to age in the right direction. Instead, so much time is spent trying to weld the primary theme to the central conceit that no one realizes that they don't obviously pair together.

The pity of all of this is that a film about a man who ages backward might actually make sense as a contemplation on mortality. The brilliance of this concept lies in the fact that it presents the central figure with an unresolvable ambivalence of life: the more alive he becomes, the more he realizes his own mortality.

A film that concentrated on that would have been worth three hours and eight dollars. Unfortunatley, "The Curious Case" chooses not to deal heavily on its protagonist's youthful 60s and 70s. Instead, we learn from a montage that Mr. Button goes on a quest not unlike Larry in "The Raiser's Edge"; beyond that there are a few scenes portraying his return and eventual retirement (which actually does result in a fine irony).

I understand that the reason for this is probably because it is much easier, cinematically, to make a young man look like an old man than it is to make an old man look like a young man; in other words, you can put all kinds of make-up on Brad Pitt to make him look seventy, but, if one wants Mr. Pitt to appear to be eighteen, the most that can be done is to put a hairpiece on him. Still, this ought not to dismiss the objection out of hand, but should rather raise the issue of whether or not they might have chosen a younger actor for the role. On the other hand, not everything can be done on film, so it might be worthwhile to concentrate more on the story's literary aspects instead.

A New Theory of Victory

I just read a book review by Michiko Kakutani (I think that's how her name is spelled) of a book by John Kenneth Galbraith's son who used to be a diplomat in Iraq. The review was lavish with praise, particularly when it points to what it found to be cogent observations about America's failure in Iraq: Nuclear proliferation, destroying a threat where there was none, etc. Interestingly enough, someone in the mid-twentieth century could have made almost the exact same case about World War II. (That it destroyed a nation which was totalitarian but not a threat to American democracy and that also could have served as a breakwater to Soviet expansionism in Europe; that it led to the Atomic Bomb project which, in turn, enabled totalitarian regimes to get ahold of nuclear weapons; that, far from reducing totalitarianism in the world, it merely traded one nation for another and left all of Eastern Europe behind an Iron Curtain) but such arguments deal in unintended consequences (which is, interestingly, the title of Galbraith's books.) I don't know when our notion of war changed; I think that it was probably around Vietnam era, but, for some idiocyncratic reason, we stopped defining victory by how a war was fought and replaced this judgmental framework with our current understanding: that victory is determined based on the ends we achieve.

"If Only . . ." Thought for the Day

If only Thomas Friedman had called his book "The Brave Flat World" or "The Flat New World" instead of "The World is Flat"

A Truism

Just came up with a truism:

"Superstition is like a loaded rifle that we can't set down and ought to be treated as such: in other words, keep it pointed at the sky and keep your feet on the ground."

Why Alexander Solzhenitsyn Matters

Alexander Solzhenitsyn died yesterday. He was probably the last Great (capital g) writer of our time, meaning that he was the last creative writer of whom I can think who people actually cared about, who actually changed the world, who really thought that art was more than just a means to obtain tenure at Montana's creative-writing workshop and, through this belief, earned a chapter in the history of freedom. This doesn't mean that everything he believed was worthy of emulation; he embraced Vladimir Putin as the restorer of Russia, for instance. This was at best naive and at worst dangerous, but what was important about this outstanding writer was not his present, but rather his past. He was, in many ways, a symbol of it; the last man who would ever proclaim that art could save the world. Ultimately, I don't think that art saved his world, but, in the future, it will always remain something of a consolation.

"The Dark Knight": When the Comic Meets the West

When the first in the new "Batman" franchise came out in June 2005, it was a few months before I started my first semester of college. Now, about a month before beginning my last semester of college, I, like so many other fans I know, felt the urge to get into the theater to watch the much-awaited (for obvious reasons) sequel, "The Dark Knight." I did so on Saturday afternoon, and to say that it does not disappoint would be a gross understatement.

Critics so far have been talking about the movie taking the summer blockbuster to a new, art-house level. They have variously (and with some qualification) praised the willingness of the director, Christopher Nolan, to take risks, hurt key characters, bring Batman down to earth (both physically and allegorically); and, of course, another theme has been Heath Ledger's remarkable performance (more on that in a moment). All of this is worthy of the praise which has been lavished upon it, but the brilliance of the movie lies in its ability to break outside of its genre and capture elements of both the western and the gangster film.

The latter of these genres is introduced in the beginning, in a scene which--as Manohla Darghis has pointed out--owes quite a bit to Michael Mann's famous bank robbery in "Heat". I think that Mr. Nolan as well as Ms. Darghis is aware of the debt. He even has William Fitchner show up as an irate bank manager with a gun to assure the robbers, with action as well as words, that they "don't know who [they're] robbing from." Unfortunately for him, the knife cuts both ways: he doesn't know who's robbing him either.

Of course, this is only the beginning. There are plenty of moments which allow for Mr. Nolan to investigate the corrupt underbelly in Gotham's upper ward. While the first movie dwelt on the down-and-out; the underground men who reveled in the mud puddles but never quite blossomed, this version is concerned more with the men and women who inhabit the upperworld: The attorneys, the bankers, the politicians, the criminal lords, the embezzlers, the perpetrators of social chaos. And, with the help of Batman, of course, the city looks newly washed and waxed, but also fragile. As the Joker says at one point, people panic if anything happens that is not "part of the plan".

This is not to say that the city does not have enough to worry about without the Joker. Vigilantes wearing halloween suits and exercising their 2nd Amendment Rights show up making fools of their discrete bourgeoisie selves on every block and in every parking garage (a nice touch) and Cillian Murphy shows up as his Dr. Crane once again, if only briefly (this was probably a loose end that didn't need to be tied), but with Batman and the new District Attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart in his best role since "Thank You for Smoking"), more things are going according to plan than one could hope for. Neither of them have met their match and, as the Joker readily points out, Batman, unlike Barack Obama, does not appear to be concerned by the forces of globalization ("Batman doesn't know any borders.")

Naturally, all of this is to provide Ledger's Joker with a job opportunity, but Nolan also uses the opportunity to bring in and play up influences from outside of his genre. The allusions to the Western--which bleeds into the showdowns in the streets and the face-offs on the roofs--are profuse; and why shouldn't they be? After all, the themes--the establishment and maintenance of civilization, the moral paradox of vigilantism, the clash of order and chaos--that make this film unique are more endemic to The Searchers than to Superman. And Mr. Bale's Bruce Wayne is a fairly archetypal Western hero: he is the sustainer of a society which he realizes will, ultimately, be unable to sustain him. Because of this epiphany, it takes away some of the possibilities for character development. The Bruce Wayne of The Dark Knight is not the conflicted, semi-threatening character of Batman Begins; he has learned to be self-sacrificial (and also sacrificing of those closest to him to do service to the greater good.)

All of this is to say that the sequel is more democratic; much more screen-time is afforded to Gary Oldman's Lieutenant Gordon and to the new characters introduced; but the world of The Dark Knight is also a meritocracy, and, if Gotham is still up for grabs, the movie, hands down, belongs to Heath Ledger's Joker. His Joker is not interesting by merit of being conflicted, but rather by merit of being driven to all means of destructiveness (including of the self). As he says, he is a man of simple tastes; these tastes include guns, dynamite and gasoline and the only time in the entire picture when I didn't believe him was when he said this was lucky because all of these things are cheap--where does he buy his gasoline anyway? This role will, I think, become the defining role of Mr. Ledger's all-too-short career, which, in truth, is both a solace and a frustration. As it turns out, the hardest irony for the audience to accept will be that Mr. Ledger died early, but his Joker is immortal.

Yet Another Trivia Question

If you were one of the following Shakespeare characters, which one would you be (be careful, because if you are answering this question, there is a correct answer to it):

A) Ariel
B) Claudius
C) Sir Toby Belch
D) The Duke (from Measure for Measure)
E) John Falstaff

New Road Movie

Apparently, the same director who did The Proposition is going to direct the movie adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road; they could not have chosen a better man for the job.

Summer Needing Reading

I haven't really been too engaged in my usual pasttime--reading--for the past week. The reason is that--since I am supposedly an ISI Fellow--I am waiting to see what sort of study or research I have to do to fulfill the responsibilities that this job entails. Also, I suppose, it is because I am at a new job as one of the Bookstore's computer guys, and, even though my manager told me that if I didn't have anything to do he saw no reason why I should stare at my desk so it would look like I was working, I still am slightly nervous that the store's main manager may catch me wtih a book in my hands and say that I might be unnecessary after all. Nonetheless, I have managed to get "The True Believer" done since finishing finals. It's a short book and, as a friend of mine said, it qualifies as real philosophy if, for no other reason, it is a work which has had a profound influence on academic and intellectual thought, but it was not written by an academic. I am also reading a book that Tom D. gave to me. It's one by John Barth called "Chimera". So far, I can't make heads or tails of the book, but Tom told me that the story begins to come together around page 150. That's around where I am now, so I'll wait and see. If it doesn't come together in my perception, it means one of two things: I am a philistine or the book is a fraud. Anyway, cheeriest of wishes to you all and have a good summer.

About Ten Years Out from "Lock Stock"

Guy Ritchie has not lived up to the promise of being the next Quentin Tarantino. But, then again, neither has Quentin Tarantino lived up to the promise of being the first Quentin Tarantino.

The Talented Mr. Minghella

As you may have heard, Anthony Minghella died yesterday of a brain hemorrhage (so wikipedia reports.) He was clearly a man of talents. The opening shot in "The English Patient," the shadows creeping across the lower sand-dunes like a ghost, captures the spirit of the novel in a way that no other director could have done. It is a pity that the movie is rarely watched, because it was one of the better movies to win best picture in the 1990s. As I have heard others say, it's a pity that Sidney Pollack will probably be directing the English version of "The Lives of Others" now. If anyone could ruin such a great story, it is they guy who directed "Random Hearts." But, this aside, there's no question as to whether or not Anthony Minghella was a man of talents, equally comfortable while filming in pre-World War II Africa, Rome of the 1950s and Civil War-ravaged America. He may have died early, but no so early that his compendium of work is not worth remembering.