Social Class 9

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once.

Audrey Hepburn

Today started with a touch of innocence when I lifted the window blinds. There was a boy in the street with his mum, both waving at the passing rubbish collectors (Japanese equivalent of bin-men) who in turn waved heartily back. Such an endearing sight, as if straight from the tacky alleys of Disneyland. Except this was a show of a child’s genuine wonder. And no wonder these men in pastel-green uniforms turned at once dignified and impassioned.

Such scene would be harder to imagine in the gritty environs of, say, any impoverished country in Asia. North Korea would be an obvious exception, where I imagine schoolkids are told to wave red flags and sing songs of praise as the proud rubbish collectors cruise the streets, picking whatever meagre waste there is to pick.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous today – crisp, sunny, the air feather-light. At about 2 pm I decided to make my move. I got on a bike and cycled to downtown Kyoto. I had previously made a tentative plan to pay a visit to this particular art gallery, based on their poster which showed a urban scene from an unidentified country, presumably in the southeast Asia.

The gallery was somewhat difficult to locate as it was tucked in on the third floor of a nondescript block of flats – simply a flat converted into a gallery space. I opened the door without knocking. There was nobody inside apart from a woman at a desk behind a sort of folding screen (she was constantly on the phone during my 10-minute visit). When I entered she protruded her head from behind the screen and we smiled in acknowledgement.

The installation itself consisted of a 3-minute video loop projection (shot by a car-cam) and about a dozen of photograph prints depicting peopled cityscapes. Those taken on the streets of Vietnam (presumably Hanoi, the Old Quarter) were the most striking. The author, John Einarsen, is partial to blue-collar folks going about their daily routine – be it twiddling thumbs at a bird shop, washing pots and plastic potties, or revolving pieces of meat on a skewer.

Each (neatly framed) print actually carries a price tag of ¥20.000, that’s about €200. That these ‘photographic items’ are on sale is hardly surprising in our age of global commercialism. I imagined what sort of people would want to buy prints of the impoverished metropolitan ordinariness. The same middleclass philistine, I thought, who finds the aesthetic value in the exoticism of the under-privileged. The same sick middleclass kind who would hang these photos on their bedroom wall to glance at while having their middleclass shag in their middleclass comfy beds. That’s who, I thought.

And yet, to the casual observer like myself, these scenes also deliver a touch of colour, or at least the kind of surreal absurdity almost exclusive to the poorest stratum of any society. On one photo there is an untieable knot of umpteen electric and telephone wires that can be tolerated only by the ‘underclass’ and that makes you think how on earth they were put up there in the first place. On another there is a man’s head sticking out of a house tarpaulin cover and under him a street vendor with hands in his pockets and a body posture of someone who couldn’t care less. On another there is a cat trapped in a birdcage. On another there is laundry drying on a clothes line sponging up the smoke from a grilled meat takeaway underneath.

This kind of pathos evokes Italian and Yugoslav social satire films from the 60’s and 70’s. Directors like Fellini, Pasolini, Aleksandar Petrović, early Kusturica. But one particular film sprang to mind while I was at the gallery, that by Ettore Scola: ‘Brutti, sporchi e cattivi’ a.k.a. ‘Ugly, Dirty and Bad’ (1976). This was one of my favourites back in my formative years – I remember how we used to act out the whole scenes by heart. This synopsis from IMDB sums it up pretty well:

Four generations of a family live crowded together in a cardboard shantytown shack in the squalor of inner-city Rome. They plan to murder each other with poisoned dinners, arson, etc. The household engages in various forms of sexual idiosyncrasies, land swindles, incest, drugs and adultery.

Here we go: the (in)famous part in which the family has for once united in order to poison their miserly head of household, magnificently portrayed by Nino Manfredi. Warning: definitely NOT for the squeamish.

Turbulence

My flight from Rome to Osaka back in March was not all dozing, chomping away reheated meals and teetering inside a minuscule toilet, because I also managed to watch a couple of really interesting flicks. The first one was ‘Il Mundial Dimenticato a.k.a. The Lost World Cup’, a documentary on that overlooked, delightfully melodramatic football tournament that took place in Patagonia in 1942 and has subsequently been forgotten by everyone. More on that some other time.

Today I want to tell you about the impossibly titled Riusciranno i nostri eroi a ritrovare l'amico misteriosamente scomparso in Africa?, a.k.a. ‘Will Our Heroes Succeed in Finding Their Friend Who Has Mysteriously Disappeared in Africa?’ (Ettore Scola, 1968). How this little gem of a movie ended up on the airbus movie list is beyond me, and boy am I glad that it did. Because it really is a gem of a commedia all’italiana sort: not only did it ironically ‘inaugurate in Italy a brief vogue of kilometric titles’ but the film is a rare winner with its imaginative editing, vibrant script, and as a worthy dip into the philosophical waters concerning various aspects of the modern human condition. Plus it is beguilingly funny. Plus its decidedly Conrad-esque closing scene has to be one of the most poignant in European movie history.

On the side of mediocre civility stands Fausto (Alberto Sordi), a successful and bored magazine editor who embarks on a voyage to Africa in order to seek out his mysteriously long-lost brother-in-law, a Kurz-like character Titino (Nino Manfredi). Titino is everything Fausto is not, or possibly yearns to be: courageous, cunning, rebellious, charismatic, enigmatic, and therefore free. But something more organic, more fundamental is at stake here. Fausto for his part, is not without qualities, and yet he is so conditioned by his predicament in this increasingly complex modernity that in the end he can only sigh and helplessly exclaim: I don’t know. I’m not thinking clearly. Rarely has the familiar statement carried such weight as at the end of this movie. Have a look at the ultimate scene in which our heroes are about to catch a boat that would take them back to civilization. But all is not as it seems. Note the smart intercutting between the aborigines and the urban chant: the identical arm movements, albeit one exuding vigour the other vacuity. 

                          I don’t know. I’m not thinking clearly.

Gone Off the Rails

The other day I am riding on the train to Osaka. The train is at full speed when it suddenly starts braking and hooting and the sound of something like broken glass under our feet is heard. It feels and sounds a bit like your bicycle skidding on the gravel (now I wish I had my IC to record it). After a noisy clutter, a sudden calm. Our train has halted on the Aikawa bridge. It is a sunny, crisp winter day. Ducks are motionless specks on the river surface. Very little moves, outside or inside the carriage. After about a minute we see a driver (presumably) and a young woman in uniform run past our window towards the rear of the train.

Inside, there is pregnant silence. A single young woman breaks it: she rings up her employer to announce her lateness (talking on the mobile phone on Japanese trains is rare and is normally met with mute contempt). Commuters try to avert each other’s eyes, perhaps unwilling to recognize traces of concern. But the more one tries not to notice the more perceptive one becomes. So I end up detecting those slight body movements which are inevitably interpreted as anxiety tics, being somewhat perturbed myself.

Ten or so minutes pass. Passengers are fidgety and growing tense, expecting to hear some sort of nerve-soothing announcement from the conductor. The driver and the same young woman in uniform run past the window in the opposite direction, towards the front of the train. The announcement finally comes on. It is rather a brief one, informing us of a ‘human accident’ – jinshin jiko. This phrase is commonly used in Japan and it usually refers to a suicide on the tracks. If there indeed was one, they must have promptly dealt with the body. But how? The train nevertheless moves on to everyone’s relief. The accident though has upset both the driver’s timetable and the driver himself, as the train horn switches to its loudest mode and is frequently applied for no apparent reason for the rest of the journey.

People throwing themselves under trains is commonplace in Japan. On average up to thousand such deaths each year. These acts are normally considered a public nuisance, if not a taboo. They go unreported in the press. The train companies can claim a compensation fee from the family of a person who committed suicide for disruption in service. Most people prefer not to think about it, and are more likely to give way to their petty annoyances about the delays that these unfortunate acts inevitably bring.

As for the ‘suiciders’ (why has this word not gone mainstream I wonder), these people are supposed to be considered failures. More often than not they are regarded as a disgrace to their friends and families. One of the most common cited reasons for suicide is people’s inability to cope with the pressure at work (the pressure to succeed is probably more conspicuous in Japan than anywhere else), which can lead to one losing their job and the overwhelming feeling of insecurity and unworthiness as a result.

So I got to thinking about success and failure, and that perhaps the line between a success and a failure is much thinner than most people like to think. Who knows how many people who consider themselves successful are in fact potential failures, how many of us unbiased train commuters are potential suicide cases? Is the old adage true then, that failure and success are on the opposite sides of the same coin? Who or what has exactly gone off the rails here? The felones-de-se? The train driver gone berserk with his horn? The thick-skinned society? Or me, writing this rubbish? As Bob Dylan sings on Blood on the Tracks, ‘Everything is a little upside down’. Almost nothing is what it seems to be.

All this talk brings me to two of the most famous fictionalized train suicides: Anna Karenina’s and Celia Johnson’s in Brief Encounter. Actually only the former one is a suicide, the second a rather glorious, failed attempt. The 1935 version of Anna Karenina with Greta Garbo is still the most satisfying one. If ever an actress’s eyes were so expressive!!

The coffee shop scene in Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945) on the other hand never fails to lure a tear out of my eye.

In Memoriam: Petar Kralj (1941-2011)

Petar Kralj (1941-2011), that splendid figure of Yugoslav and Serbian theatre and film, is no longer with us. Who knows, by now he might have arrived at the Elysium café and joined his ex-Yugoslav thespian friends, feeding them the latest news from the old country. Unassuming as they come, Kralj was of that rare artistic breed who was able to project his private, almost tangible timidity and modesty into his roles, his sad azure eyes adding depth and a wistful dimension to his characters. Petar achieved one of his most memorable roles – and there were quite a few – in the film ‘Poseban Tretman’ a.k.a. ‘Special Treatment’ a.k.a. ‘What is it that attracts a human being to drink?’ (1980). Here he plays a failed actor, now an alcoholic convalescent who, as part of a travelling troupe, performs instructive sketches for the benefit of local communities. The following clip contains two great scenes. The first takes place at a restaurant where a snooty doctor, played by Ljuba Tadic, is lecturing an old man on ethics and integrity, while flirting with a blonde across the table (Milena Dravić, who that year won Palme d’Or for best supporting actress). The second scene has Petar Kralj stuttering Shakespeare (in Serbian!) while sitting on top of a cabinet, holding a carton of natural yoghurt. With English subtitles. 

My tribute for the wonderful man and artist. Click for better view:

Let's All Slow Down a Bit

Ever felt like abandoning, yes abandoning, your pointless stressful little jobs, bidding ‘goodbye to all that’, and shooting off to the white mountains, or getting yourself one of them canal boats, or perhaps settling down on a remote island, and spending the rest of your days dangerously close to nature, fighting the elements, the procrastination, the ennui? Thoughts like these are far from illegitimate for your average middle-aged gaijin teacher in Japan. As a friend of mine recently put it, ‘I've turned into a gaijin gypsy roaming from campus to campus with piles of paper and books no one is interested in’. A recent, and what seemed at first a surprising, departure of another friend to South America, coupled with my own visit to Okinawa few weeks ago, prompted me to seriously reconsider own current state of affairs. It’s not that I am in deep shit or any particular predicament at the moment. It’s all to do with ‘mid-life’ existential crisis and the usual thoughts and moods that accompany it — come to think of it I’ve always been attracted to all things existential, particularly in my formative years.

There is a Swedish proverb: ‘Those who wish to sing, always find a song’. I take this to stand as a broader metaphor, applicable to songs of various operative moods — ‘existentialist’ in this case. Well I ran into this short docu-video on the Guardian online last month, which introduced us to one Ante Vukušić, a meteorologist who has lived and worked on the mount Velebit, Croatia, for the past 37 years. In the 5-minute video we get a glimpse of this fascinating mountain range of extreme weather patterns, of the astonishing richness of wildlife (there are, for instance, over 2000 plant species — the whole of UK has 1180!), a place where you can meet a bear, a wolf, a lynx, a fox or a marten, a place where you could be snowbound for weeks on end, a mountain range where each peak has a unique view. And so, for the purely existential reasons this largely ignored clip (so far only about 70 hits on youtube) made quite an impression on me, even to the point of finding myself writing an inspired poem. Then an unexpected association crossed my mind, as I somehow remembered Auggie Wren, a character from the movie Smoke (1995), played by Harvey Keitel. The movie has to be one of my all-time favourites. Anyway, for me the link between the two men was instantly obvious and rather fascinating (despite Ante’s ‘I can’t grasp the idea of living in a city’), and so I challenge you to find it, and let me know the results — post a comment/email. First, here is the Velebit national park clip:

And here is that amazing photo album scene with Keitel and William Hurt, as the latter is perusing Keitel’s ‘life’s work’ with Auggie’s precious ‘you’ll never get it if you don’t slow down my friend’.

Mirrors

House of Mirrors
 

Tall and thin or short and fat
On the fairgrounds where it’s at
House of Mirrors is the name
Don’t you miss it be a shame
Silly shapes believe it’s true
Mirrors make a fool of you.

by Geoffrey Schmitt


My first ever visit to the house of mirrors the other day at the Kobe amusement park, reminded me of couple of great flicks in which mirror labyrinths play a big role. They are, of course, ‘The Lady from Shanghai’ (1948), dir. Orson Welles, and ‘Enter the Dragon’ ('73), a classic Bruce Lee feature. Orson's masterpiece was originally intended to run over two hours (presumably bringing much in-depth dialogue and characterization to it). That the Hollywood big shots are very good at butchering wonderful scripts in pursuit of financial profit is no news, as the following extract attests:

The early script of The Lady from Shanghai is dated August 17, 1946, when the film was still titled Take This Woman. At that point, Welles was still basing all the action for the film in New York City and on nearby Long Island, which were the same settings used in the novel by Sherwood King, entitled If I Die Before I Wake.

For anyone who knows the work of Orson Welles, this first draft also includes many wonderful references, such as this passage that begins on page 15, where Michael O’ Hara and the “notorious” Mrs.Bannister discuss Don Quixote, which naturally, was completely cut out of the film when it was finally released (at 87 minutes), by Columbia in 1948:

CLOSE TWO SHOT – MICHAEL AND THE GIRL

THE GIRL There’s a police car —

MICHAEL We’re just comin’ out of the park, the horse and cart’ll make it too simple for the cops to be findin’ us —

He pulls up to a lamp-post.

MEDIUM SHOT – THE CARRIAGE
Michael gets out of the carriage and hitches the horse to the lamp.

THE GIRL You don’t care for them very much, do you, Michael?

MICHAELThe cops? (somberly) Faith, they can struggle along without our doin’ their work for ‘em.

He helps the girl down out of the carriage, then bows to the horse.

MICHAEL (continuing) Farewell, Rosinante.

THE GIRL That sounds like my name. (smiles)

He takes her arm.

TRUCKING SHOT — MICHAEL AND THE GIRL
They start walking.

MICHAEL Sure, Rosinante’s a horse in a book. You’re Rosaleen.

THE GIRL Who’s she?

MICHAEL A girl in a book.

THE GIRL I remember — Rosinante was the old nag Don Quixote rode when he went out after those windmills. I think you’re a lot like Don Quixote, yourself Michael. You haven’t heard about the age of chivalry. It’s out of business.

MICHAEL The tough boys that went after you in the park — they didn’t look like windmills to me —

THE GIRL They weren’t. I’m sorry, Michael, I guess you’re really what you think you are.

MICHAEL Whatever’s that now?

THE GIRL A knight errant — a real live knight errant. When you were a boy, you read all about them, didn’t you, Michael? And you never got over it.

MICHAEL (with a quizzical grin) You mean I never grew up? And what, can you tell me, does a knight errant do for his livelihood?

THE GIRL Oh, he doesn’t bother much about earning a living. He spends most of this time rescuing maidens in distress. He always slays the dragon and saves the princess, and he makes the prettiest speeches. But you’d better be careful. Things have changed, Sir Knight. Nowadays it’s usually the dragon that lives happily ever after.

MICHAEL Don’t the princess and the knight ever make it?

THE GIRL Sometimes she gives him a kiss.

Michael just looks at her, terribly embarrassed. A funny little spark comes into her eye.

THE GIRL (continuing) Michael… You know what’s wrong with being a knight errant?

MICHAEL No.

THE GIRL He’s brave and bold because his heart is pure. But he’s an awful fool — He doesn’t know anything about women.

She takes his hand and leads him to the street corner.

THE GIRL (continuing) If I hadn’t seen the way you can fight, I’d say you spend all your time reading.

MICHAEL A sailor has nothin’ but time, Faith. So must a girl ridin’ all by herself in a carriage in the lonesome dark. You must have time, and to spare.

THE GIRL (quietly) No, I haven’t much time… (after a minute — she’s been thinking) You don’t like the police, Michael. Is there some reason why they don’t like you?

MICHAEL (darkly) They’ve never put me in jail — in American.

By now they have stopped at the street corner.

THE GIRL My car’s a block down that way…

MICHAEL The nicest jails are in Australia. The worst are in Spain.

THE GIRL You must be a naughty boy, Michael.

MICHAEL I’m careless.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

source: http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=858

The movie has to have one of the best-matched opening and closing lines ever:

START: 

When I start out to make a fool of myself...
...there´s very little can stop me.

END: 

Well, everybody is somebody´s fool.
The only way to stay out of trouble is to grow old.
So I guess l´ll concentrate on that.
Maybe l´ll live so long...that l´ll forget her.
Maybe l´ll die trying.

Here are the 'highlights' of the film, featuring of course the Shanghai Ladyship herself (Rita Hayworth), amidst those fateful mirrors. 

The music is provided by The Black Keys song 'Ten Cent Pistol', made more than 60 years after the movie and yet it blends well with the post-war noir atmosphere. These lyrics in particular: 

There's nothing worse
In this world
Than payback from a
Jealous girl

The laws of man
Don't apply
When blood gets in
A woman's eye

Well, she hit them with her ten cent pistol
Because they ruined her name
Well, she hit them with her ten cent pistol
And they've never been the same

April 05, 2011

Adieu, Dear Sleuth

Midsomer 

CDI Barnaby

one step ahead

of all concerned. 

There is no dead 

man’s shoe

out of his step.

A missing piece

of the puzzle

hidden in his

lady’s chamber,

in the chamber of the

missing piece.

British television has recently parted with two of the greatest and dearest sleuths in recent history. First it was David Jason’s Frost last year, now it’s John Nettles’ Barnaby. The latter’s departure has been coming for quite some time, in fact the first hints came as long as two years back if memory serves me well, which made me watch the later episodes with a sort of premature nostalgia. Yet Nettles hung in there, and his exit seemed to have been put off indefinitely. When Barnaby finally announced his ‘long holiday’ in ‘Fit for Murder’ (watched it last night) it came across as a shock.

I loved to watch ‘A Touch of Frost’ in the late 90s and the early noughties and always thought of it as being superior to Midsomer because of the former’s realism, grittiness, and of course Jason’s marvellous performance. He imbued Inspector Frost with such depth that it was difficult not to root for the old bugger scene after scene. It was much easier to love a maverick DI, an anti-hero with more misgivings than you and I both account for, constantly at war with everyone and most of all with himself, the truest fighter for justice and a carer for his fellow-man that you’ll ever see on the box. Frost the incorrigible romantic.

On the other hand, Barnaby’s by and large understated performances were harder to be impressed by, yet no less impressive. Tom Barnaby was everything that Jack Frost wasn’t: methodical, well-spoken, systematic, dependable and trusted all around, even by his superiors. He had a quiet appeal of a thinking man, yet taking action when the situation called for it. I particularly liked Barnaby in the later episodes as there was a twinge of sadness forming round the edges of his slowly diminishing eyes (maybe to do with those announcements of early retirement). That Nettles managed to keep his Barnaby engaged and engaging, and avoid slipping into a routine, was no mean feat.

He was certainly helped by the professional supporting cast and a host of splendid guest appearances, and perhaps most of all by the picturesque countryside setting. And then there were the village fetes, the societies and clubs of all sorts teeming with jealousy, greed and unspeakable infidelities, there were of course all those murders, 222 of them to be precise, ranging from the mundane to the grotesque to the over-imaginative (my favourite two: a man decapitated on the ghost train, and that impalement inside the iron maiden). In short, the world of Midsomer county confounded by its own idiosyncrasies, the world most of the outside viewers would have been hard pressed to identify with, be they white, black, or yellow (the programme is broadcast to 231 territories around the world). Perhaps Midsomer is supposed to represent, in its producer's words, ‘the last bastion of Englishness’. Well, be that as it may (pun intended), people will continue watching the show for what it is – a quaint piece of entertainment that celebrates and pokes fun at its own idea of 'Englishness', at times succeeding in passing off murder as serious art-form.

In John Nettles’ ultimate ‘Fit for Murder’ Tom Barnaby and wife Joyce take a mini-break at one of those spa ‘rehabilitation centres' where you pay through the nose for having hot rocks placed over your body, for being doused in mud with a pair of cucumber slices for your eyes (there’s an amusing scene in which Barnaby talks rather intently to a woman covered in mud for few minutes thinking she is his wife). At the spa one is surrounded by silence – silence being a pretty rare commodity these days. Silence is sacred in the ‘garden of contemplation’ where one is supposed to practise yoga while sitting opposite a ‘golden’ statue of Buddha across a small pond, while keeping one’s voice down to a whisper. Then there’s the ‘volcanic massage’ where a girl called Cloud will arrange the ‘Himalayan’ stones in line with you chakras. If for some reason you don’t feel up for it, she’ll read your mind instead, as an extra. Cash in hand.

Silly as this may all sound (especially to men: it's rather odd that in the industrially developed countries, it’s usually women who more readily buy into yoga and all things transcendental, as opposed to Buddhist monks who are almost exclusively male), it is nevertheless curious that we find Barnaby at the end of the episode announcing his retirement to friends, stating that ‘something happened recently… that made me take a long, hard look at…’. Yet we never find out what that something is. Well, it has to do with Barnaby’s fear of dying on his birthday like his own father did years ago, compounded by the sense of guilt for being unkind and refusing to join his old man for what turned out to be a fateful spot of fishing. Funny that Tom, being the man of logic and deductive reasoning, should leave the viewers wondering if his retirement decision had been brought on, in part at least, by the powers of the occult. His decision, after all, did come after a couple of impromptu sessions with a girl who dabbles in occultism.

Has the power of chakra penetrated Tom’s mind after all? Has he finally succumbed to the all-seeing third eye? Well, we’ll never know won’t we. I am probably reading too much into this anyway. The man had to retire from the show one way or the other. Well, retire he did. And rarely has there been a more low-key, if slightly cryptic, farewell by a long-standing television icon than Barnaby’s in Midsomer Murders. Thank you John Nettles.

The Desert of the Tartars

Directed by Zurlini in 1976 (his ultimate film), an epic in which hardly anything happens for two and a half hours – apart from people growing old, leaving their posts or getting promoted. So why do viewers get sucked in by films of this kind? It’s the imagery, it’s the characters, it’s the plain old suffering, stupid. Highly ponderous stuff. Existentialism at its best. The absurdity of human endeavour, crashed hopes, hardline pessimism, anti-heroism, the very malignancy of life – the stuff that makes us human. Well, some of us perhaps. Ah, and that mesmerizing desert, its beauty, its restrained cruelty.

The film follows Drogo, an officer in the Austrian army, from the moment he is sent to his first assignment as a young man to a lonely fort Bastiano, nicknamed ‘dead border station’, lying at a desert’s edge where the Tartar attack is permanently imminent. The film, among other things, is a study of the ‘four stages’ of a man’s career: at first Drogo is ambitious, idealistic and inevitably bored at the outpost, desperate to leave; after a while he begins to rationalize his inactivity by the belief that he would eventually leave at some point; when the chance finally comes certain conditions do not allow it and the man faces up to the possibility he will never be able to leave; in key decision moments his sense of duty gets the better of him, as he gradually grows more passive and obedient and is rewarded for such behaviour with absurd promotions; in the end the man has become an inseparable part of the institution and is desperate to stay where he by now wholly belongs. But it's something more than just passivity and resignation. Something more sinister, something akin to a false hope, that vague feeling lurking in the depths of our being, a feeling carrying the latent, irrational, expectation that our moment is bound to arrive. Drogo seems to have spent his entire life waiting for his most personal hour to come, however ambivalent the moment was to be (possibly a show of bravery and the ensuing military glory?). But the hour never strikes. When at last Drogo’s health deteriorates, he becomes an anachronism, a walking detritus, resembling the very blasé, ineffectual officer he would once loath to become.

The ‘inevitable’ denouement, such as it stands, will in some modern viewers likely elicit their own career paths of undeserving, miserable jobs, lifelong devotion to a company, and thousands upon thousands of hours of those arduous daily routines. One of my favourite lines: Drogo (Jacques Perrin): ‘I was sent here by mistake. Doctor Rovin (Trintignant): ‘Here or elsewhere... we're all somewhere by mistake’.

Rarely in a film can one see a single edifice exerting such overwhelming, insidious power over the fate of its inhabitants, as in ‘Il Deserto dei Tartari’. This magnificent structure, the film’s setting, is Bam Citadel, located in southeastern Iran. Arg-e Bam used to be the largest adobe building in the world until it was more or less completely destroyed by an earthquake in 2003 which, incidentally, killed more than 26,000 people (!). The then president of Iran announced after the earthquake the citadel would be rebuilt. Being the World Heritage site several countries are helping its reconstruction. For its part ‘Japan has granted some US$1.3 million to Iran for the reconstruction, and has supported this project by sending equipment and creating the 3D plan of Bam Citadel to increase the accuracy of the renovation’(Wikipedia). Right now it looks like they are going to need that money back doesn’t it. 

                                              The immense Bam Citadel before the quake

  

Woman in Chains

I have decided to start a new thing here on Kyotocacti: I'll be putting up links to various film clips, uploaded to youtube by yours truly. These will be either scenes from feature films or a short film in its entirety. The flicks I like to watch tend to be oldish, rare and thus harder to find. These films are less about narrative and more about content, be it a noirish play with lights and shadows, be it a subversive take on story-telling, be it a meditation on human condition. Or none of those, but ordinary stories about ordinary people. And then there will be silents. Animation, too.

Let's cut to the chase. Here is the first clip from Henri Clouzot's 'La Prisonniere' (1968). Saw it last night. While not Clouzot's best, the film contains some remarkable sequences marked by quick editing, the late 60's 'psychedelic' imagery and a very striking use of colour. The film successfully juxtaposes its rather bleak outlook on postmodern alienation with an almost celebratory use of colour, and in this respect evokes certain European works of the period  - Antonioni's 'Il Deserto Rosso' springs to mind.

My clip actually contains the last few minutes of the film, including the 'trippy' dream sequence (which someone on IMDB compared to Bowman's journey in Kubrick's '2001')  plus the credits with a delightful Adagio from Mahler's Symphony #4.

A breathtaking finale, a collage of striking images that somehow manages to distil the plot as well as the girl's emotional disorientation. She is hospitalized, comatose after a car suicide attempt in her brown Renault 4  - I remember the doors having a rather cute checked pattern, as if the car was wrapped in a big woollen blanket. The suicide motif is recurring in 'Woman in Chains': Clouzot seems to suggest a personal crisis stems from a loss of moral compass in postmodern art/life.

After the girl wakes she's mumbling 'Stan, Stan'. Alas it is not the erratic Stan who is by her bedside, but her rather bewildered-looking hubby. Gilbert's last lines: 'Don't worry... all will be fine'.

Or will it? 
Note: NOT for the faint-hearted.