The Romance of the The Village

I quite liked Shyamalan's The Village. I guessed the "secret" but then, unlike Unbreakable and Sixth Sense, I don't think the secret/twist was really supposed to be that much of a secret. Shyamalan says himself that after he heard the music (beautifully orchestrated with a lovely solo violinist), he decided to cut the movie more for the romance than for the horror/shock.

And that's what I like. The whole mileau--village, Ivy, her father, sister, Lucius-were entirely believable as a real (if idealistic) community. 19th century living was never that innocent (although a surprising number of people seem to think that it once was), but the ease of the villagers with each other, the hint of backstory (not just in the "towns" but in the village itself) of many years together came through strong. This is one of Shyamalan's greatest abilities: to convince you that families and communities have real, ongoing relationships. In the DVD documentary, a number of the actors remarked on the closeness they felt during the shooting. Unlike many movies, The Village was shot all in one location. And I do think that Shyamalan's ability to get extremely good, sometimes high profile actors is due to his creating a pleasant work environment. Sometimes, audiences forget that to the actor this movie was a 9-5 (or 6-10) job, and if you don't like your boss or your boss (director) is a jerk or the other actors are jerks, it can be a very, very long 6-10 hours.

Back to the romance, I thought Ivy and Lucius entirely believable within their context and between each other. They were sweet without being sappy. Joaquin Phoenix is a mighty fine actor, although from Shyamalan's comments ("He doesn't want me to tell you, but I wrote the part for him") one gets the impression that this character was rather close to Joaquin's actual personality. He made the cane for Byrce (Ivy) himself and was, apparently, most bashful when he presented it.

After the romance, the movie does falter. (WARNING: I give away plot points.) The deux machina of Noah finding the costume in the floor of the quiet room was, well, just silly. It was less silly the second time around because I accepted it as a deux machina. Still. The argument William Hurt has about guilt could have taken much further, and the real problem (face it, without proper medication, these people are going to perish from some minor disease in only a few generations) neatly shelved.

I also thought Shyamalan could have gone further with the initial argument: that escaping from the "world" doesn't prevent pain and anguish from occuring. The problem is, I don't think Shyamalan himself was sure what his point was; he wanted to write about the subject, he just didn't know what to say about it--is it good for the village to continue? Bad? Is there such a thing as innocence? Can it be captured in earthly terms through escape? Can it be captured by a lie? Is Noah's death, in fact, murder by the Village elders? (Yes, I say.) Exactly how long does the village have until it burns a witch? (About ten more years, unfortunately. If you study colonial America, you realize that Nissenbaum and Boyer [Salem Possessed] and James Madison were right: enclosed communities fester with the same resentments year after year after year. A community needs to be big and diverse to prevent witch trials.)

I think Shyamalan is enormously gifted. His ability to create suspense over small events is truly awesome. In The Village, the scene where the young security guard retrieves the medicine (by the way, that's Shyamalan at the desk) got me more worried and strung up than any other part of the movie.

But I do think Shyamalan needs to rethink his game plan if he's going to go on. He has the talent, the ideas, the visual eye, the whatever, and I've thought all his pieces fine works. But he's treading water, and he could do better.

CATEGORY: MOVIES

Hallelujah

If you read this blog, you will know that I don't publish many posts about music. When it comes to music, I belong to the "I may not know much about it, but I know what I like" category of listeners. I do not, that is, consider myself to have an educated ear.

What I mean by "educated" is not, in this particular case, being school taught/trained; I don't mean that in order to appreciate music, I need to attend classes or read lots of books. My father--who would really prefer not to know the background to certain operas--has, I consider, an educated ear. But this example may be misleading since I don't mean "educated" to refer, either, to a particular kind of music.

Rather, I perceive someone with an "educated ear" to be someone who listens to a lot of music, much in the same way I watch a lot of films and television and read a lot of books. And this isn't something that I do. I usually listen to books on tape at home, although now and again I stick in a music CD (or tape).

Now that I've said all that, I'll tell you about my favorite song: Rufus Wainwright singing "Hallelujah." In the first Shrek movie, it's the song that is sung right after Fiona leaves and Donkey and Shrek fight. It was on House two weeks ago during the season premiere, right at the end. (And I'd like to say that music on T.V. has vastly improved over the last five years.) It was sung at the end of, I think, the first Without a Trace season (before I stopped watching the show; I have a real problem with Anthony Paglia's character, for some reason. He just grates). And everytime I hear it, I want to burst into tears. Especially, if it is used in the right moment about the right stuff.

An example of using songs at the right moment about the right stuff would be that Rolling Stones song, "You Can't Always Get What You Want." That is a serious case of a song that must be used appropriately. Using it to introduce a reality/makeover/game show (seriously) is just too too ironic, like having someone sing, "The sun will come out tomorrow!" in the middle of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The chorus of the Rolling Stone song is sung at the end of the final episode of House, Season 1. There's this great shot where House throws one of his pain pills into the air. (The entire show is really about House coming to terms with his leg). The combination of song and image is total perfection.

So, I guess, if I were to describe my music preferences, they would be: soundtrack.

CATEGORY: FARES

Imperialism

One of the bonuses of attending college is that occasionally the assignments supply a blog entry. I was assigned to look up the history of a word, using the Oxford English Dictionary. My research follows:

The word "imperialism" is used almost incessantly: about the war in Iraq, about Puritans, McDonalds, pioneers, trade agreements, environmental issues, culture wars. The word alone produced 5,632 responses in the Academic Search Premier. (For the sake of trivia, Google produced 641,000 hits.) It appears in articles on narratives, George Orwell, humanitarianism, archaeology, television, linguistics, soccer, architecture, Victorian shoppers, and detective novels. Article titles proclaim, "Naked Imperialism," "Closed-Door Imperialism," "The New Imperialism," "Female Imperialism and National Identity," and "Justice and
the Return of Imperialism."

I confess to a jaded response when I hear the word. It is applied so frequently and across so many topics that I no longer register it as anything more than an indication of the speaker's mood. "Oh, I guess they don't like that," I think. "They blamed it on imperialism."

So, I went to the dictionary to discover if the term ever did mean anything other than, "I hate whatever or whomever I am discussing."

It did. In 1603. Or rather, "imperialist" meant something. (Note: the word "imperial" is older than both "imperialism" and "imperialist" and appears to have been used mostly as a proper noun.) "Imperialist" referred to "an adherent of the (or an) emperor (usually 1600-1800, of the German Emperor); of the emperor's party." That is, the word once denoted a particular (proper noun) faction or group. Imperialists would have been troops or bureaucrats working for the Hapsburg emperor, who was historically linked to the Holy Roman Empire. The term was used accordingly until about 1670, when it seems to have disappeared until it surfaced in 1800 alongside "imperialism."

Ever since, both words have been used as bludgeoning tools.

To return to "imperialism," the word itself has an innocuous definition; innocuous, that is, if you don't consider words politically pulverizing in and of themselves--not that is until people throw them at you like flying piranhas and accuse you of single-handedly deforesting North America because you belong to an organized religion. The first definition is "An imperial system of government; the rule of an emperor, esp. when despotic or arbitrary" followed by the second definition, "The principle or spirit of empire; advocacy of what are held to be imperial interests," at which point the Oxford English Dictionary gets coy and admits that the word is often applied to America, American people, their rule and influence as well as their "acquiring and holding distant dependencies, in the way in which colonies and dependencies are held by European states."

Now considering the linkage with words like "despotic," it isn't surprising that "imperialism" doesn't have much of a positive connotation. What is surprising is how infrequently it has been used to actually refer to emperor-run systems of government. It was used censoriously about the (ancient) Roman Empire in 1861 and negatively about France in 1870 (Bonaparte was currently in power). But mostly, it was been directed at constitutional or democratic governments. In 1858, it was used to refer negatively to the British Empire. In 1873, Britain was excoriated again; in 1881, the Tory government, in particular, was reproved with the accusation of "imperialism."

At the end of the nineteenth century, "imperialism" went through a brief renovation. Americans, who don't much care for other people's bandwagons, no matter how much they like their own, decided to give the word a positive twist. In 1899, "imperialism" was used to refer to the American "empire of industry." In the same year, "sane imperialism" was differentiated from "wild-cat imperialism."

And then socialism came along and the word was reduced to an epithet once again. In 1918, 1939, and 1957, it was used to reproach the West. The cousin-word to imperialism, "imperialist," showed up in a 1967 reference to "imperialist-minded businessmen . . ." The West countered occasionally. The 1970 World Book Encyclopedia, which is far less coy than the Oxford English Dictionary, states under Imperialism, "Russia used communist subversion to gain 'satellites' in Asia and eastern Europe, but claimed that Western moves were 'imperialistic.' This claim won wide support among the peoples of Asia and Africa who oppose colonial imperialism, in spite of Russia's imperialistic actions." This is fairly tepid stuff when compared to Communist accusations like that of 1973: "a typical Western imperialist plot."

"Used disparagingly," explains the Oxford English Dictionary, which is something of an understatement. Unlike other words whose meanings vary over time (from positive to negative to positive) or who gain or lose sub-meanings, "imperialism" and "imperialist" have always been used, more or less, as verbal weapons. They are the signature of ultimate disgust: "It's so
imperialistic." Three hundred years from now, the words may even show up on a list of swears, completely devoid of all meaning (as they have already become to me).

CATEGORY: HISTORY & LEARNING

The Oddness of Smallville

I watched the first Smallville episode late, late Saturday night and realized why I've never been able to get into the show. I'd like to; I think it is a cool idea. But I can't.

It was possibly the strangest plotted episode I've ever seen. There's that probability concept where a million monkeys typing in a room can produce the works of Shakespeare in a thousand years or something like that. That's how I feel when I watch Smallville, like the monkeys just decided to have the characters do THIS. Now, THIS. Now, THIS. Clark gets into an argument with his father, then goes to the graveyard, then has a long conversation with Lana, then returns the keys to Lex, then we see more of the dangerous kid with the electrically powered body. Now, Clark sees the wall of weird stuff in Smallville High School. And he saw the space capsule he arrived in, but he certainly isn't doing anything about it.

Very weird.

Also, my credulity is strained by his being a sixteen-year-old. Or a teen at all. I'm willing to believe that Clark is big for his age (cause he's a superhero and all), but the fact that no one seems to notice that this devastatingly handsome, hunky, 20-year-old looking guy is waltzing around High School strains the imagination. At least, on Buffy, they all kind of look the same. (Actually, Whedon's casting for Buffy was extraordinarily astute; teenagers are a lot weedier, a lot younger and lot more gauche than T.V. teens, but Buffy "teens" manage to bridge the gap between real teens and faux teens very effectively.)

Lex, on the other hand, is a believable 21-year-old, however power-crazed. He is possibly the most interesting character on Smallville (love those ambiguous villains) but there just isn't enough of him to make up for the haphazard plotting and the much too beautiful man. Christopher Reeve, however handsome, had the ability to blend when he needed to. The actor who plays Clark just isn't blendable. And for a superhero, that's kind of a problem. (Note to producers: think Tobey Maguire.)

House and Bones

Season premiere and series premiere. House was, as always, spectacular. Setting aside the superb acting of Hugh Laurie, not to mention LL Cool J, the script, as usual, was excellent: well-written, well-structured. Although the subject is quite different, House scripts remind me of Whedon's perfect set-up and pay-off. They also prove that popular television can have layers (according to my thesis, viewers will give it layers even if it doesn't have them). House's "grief" list worked on so many levels: for Cameron, for Foreman, for House, for the prisoner. Yet, thankfully, without being spelled out. Show don't tell! Show don't tell!

House is one of those shows that I think improved over its first season. Not that the early Houses weren't good, but the pace, Laurie's sense of the main character, the scripts, with their interwoven themes, evened out over 22 episodes. The shows feel more solid, and the individual episodes hang together nearly without flaw.

Bones is, unfortunately, competing with about a billion other cop/forensic shows. And that isn't counting cable T.V. It has a good premise. David Boreanaz plays the same character he played on Angel and Buffy, except this guy can walk around in sunlight. He plays the gruff guy with a heart who will defend/protect the (shorter, slighter) heroine, who also happens to be good at martial arts and have a chip on her shoulder. Well, well, well. I think the characterization is deliberate. At the very end of the episode, Brennan asks the FBI man (David Boreanaz), "So, what, you think there's some kind of cosmic balance sheet out there?" Now, if that isn't deliberate . . .

It could last. The writing is okay. The scoobies are fun. It's in with a chance.

CATEGORY: T.V.

Tey's Grant

Josephine Tey is a mystery writer. I admire her greatly. Her writing is sardonic in the extreme (although not quite as steeped in sang froid as Catherine Aird). The best description of her novels is a comedy of manners. She has a number of cryptic things to say about newspaper reporters and novelists. My favorite of her books is To Love and Be Wise in which she lightly, but elegantly, satirizes modern novelists in a small village, including the super profound novelist, Silas Weekly, who writes about manure and adultery and corruption in rural locations. A character remarks that the literary press adored Silas until he became popular, when they decided he was old hat.

Anyway, what I like best about Tey is her detective Grant, and the reason I like Grant (Alan is his first name) is that Grant is imperfect. I don't mean imperfect in the "let's deconstruct his flaws" sense, I mean imperfect in the sense that Tey herself stands apart from Grant. She doesn't defend him. With Ngaoi Marsh, one feels that Marsh is always trying to convince you what a truly nice guy Alleyn is. Christie is more detached from Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, but in terms of detection, they make no errors. And Sayers was invested in explicating Wimsey's personality, which is entirely appropriate to the kind of novels that she wrote. But Grant is simply just, this guy, ya know (as somebody says of somebody else in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). He might be her next door neighbor. Maybe her cousin.

He is fully admirable, being intelligent and diligent. Like Alleyn, he is looked up to by his sidekick, but Grant comes right out and admits that he likes a little adulation. (Alleyn has to pretend that he isn't being worshipped, which must be a strain.) Grant himself is also rather detached. His cousin, Laura, can never get him to marry, and Grant misses several opportunities simply because he isn't paying attention (he isn't absent-minded; he is too self-absorbed). Anyway, Grant doesn't want to get married. He is more Archie Goodwin than Wimsey. His female love interest (sort of) is Marta, an actress, who doesn't want to get married either and scares men. She latches onto Grant, probably because he has no fear.

In fact, Grant has tremendous confidence. He is somewhat prideful, not in the "I'm better than others" sense, but in his sureness about his own abilities. He has a "flare" for odd situations, but he isn't even remotedly the insightful, thoughtful, concerned, all-knowing, tortured detective of so much detective fiction. You get the impression that he is a bit self-centered, that he knows and doesn't care. Yet he isn't dislikable. And I think that is a remarkable feat of fiction writing.

Tey books in order of my preference:

To Love and Be Wise (Grant)
Daughter of Time (Grant)
Franchise Affair (Grant has a cameo appearance)
The Singing Sands (Grant)
Brat Farrar
A Shilling for Candles (Grant)
Man in the Queue (Grant)
Miss Pym Disposes (I don't like this one: too sad)

CATEGORY: BOOKS

The Wonkas

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is not one of my favorite books, Roald Dahl not being one of my favorite authors. After watching Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, however, I was so non-plussed by the film that I read the book and watched the earlier version with Gene Wilder. And I came to the conclusion that the earlier version is much closer to the book than Burton's version. In fact, I'm not altogether sure what Burton was trying to do.

The most marked point of Dahl's book is the idea of candy. The plot is supposedly a child's dream come true: entrance into the greatest candy factory in the world, a garden made of candy and so on and so forth. I was never enamoured of the idea, mostly because I don't like hard candy. If it had been the greatest cake factory in all the world . . .

In any case, the earlier version focuses on satisfying that dream. There is a plot: all the other children are horrible and Charlie is wonderful (I think it is interesting that the greedy children are disposed of first; the more complicated and aggressive Veronica is disposed of third and surprisingly enough, the violent, TV-corrupted yet daring Mike TV is saved for last. In my version, I would turn Charlie into a corporate wonder who decides to utilize Veronica's pushiness and Mike's brashness by making them vice presidents, but then, I'm somewhat less cruel than Dahl). The earlier movie sacrifices the family aspect of the story (no dad) to emphasize Charlie's intrinsic integrity.

The newer version correctly places Charlie's family loyalty at the center of the tale, adding the correlating (but non-book inspired) story of Wonka's dentist father. Unfortunately, this gives the movie a lopsided feel. The beginning parts of the film are excellent, and the boy who plays Charlie (Freddie Highmore) is an actor to keep your eye on. (He plays Peter in Finding Neverland.) The story of Wonka's dentist father is pure Burton, with a hint of Dahl. Unfortunately, after all that, the factory portions seem, well, rather pointless. There is no joie de vivre in Burton's version, none of the loony Monty Python-like joke-making of the 1971 version. Oddly enough, it isn't even as bizarre as a Burton film. (See Beetlejuice.)

In fact, it's really a movie about Freddie Highmore as Charlie and Johnny Dep as Willy Wonka. Which actually makes it worth the theatre price. Freddie Highmore is a talented child who completely sidesteps the sweet-innocence persona and remains likable. Thank goodness. In the 2004 Five Children and It (which is, more or less, the beginning of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe combined with E. Nesbit), Highmore portrays a sturdy brat who keeps the audience's sympathy--just barely but he does it. A little older and he would have made a magnificent Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Johnny Dep is well-worth watching in just about anything and is becoming progressively more and more well-worth watching. There are few actors in this world who could pull off the Willy Wonka that Johnny Dep depicts while keeping the audience invested in Wonka's fate. This Wonka is not the quixotic Gene Wilder (whose Wonka was much closer to the book version), this Wonka is J.M. Barrie, except that Dep's J.M. Barrie from Finding Neverland was played more like the quixotic Gene Wilder (with a much too real accent; so Dep is good, but good grief, he didn't have to be that good!). Dep's Wonka is the true boy-who-never-grew-up. Dep has captured the ageless, emotionally stunted and altogether unsettling persona which unnerves people about Michael Jackson (possibly why the connection between Dep's performance and the singer has been drawn). Dep's mastery of this character must be appreciated. It just doesn't have much to do with candy.

My assessment is that Burton took on a script that he had little interest in, a setting he had even less interest in, but the bare bones of an idea that he had a great deal of interest in. From that, he created a showcase for the impressive talents of Highmore and Dep. Since, as I mentioned, I never cared for the book, I don't consider this a loss. I don't regret seeing the movie in the theatre, and I will watch it again on DVD.

CATEGORY: MOVIES