Cry Wolf

So.

It looks like Bench manipulated your outrage after all.

Quelle, quelle surprise.

Fin

Just a day after he penned a "leave of presence" post in his journal, Roger Ebert - possibly the most famous film critic in the world - is dead.

Ironically,

"What in the world is a leave of presence? It means I am not going away. My intent is to continue to write selected reviews but to leave the rest to a talented team of writers handpicked and greatly admired by me. What's more, I'll be able at last to do what I've always fantasized about doing: 

reviewing only the movies I want to review."

Sadly, that entry would serve as his final review.

And while he did not get to do what he had always fantasized about doing, he did make his mark doing something he loved: watching and reviewing movies.

I didn't always agree with his reviews, but I made a point of reading Ebert's column as soon as I watched a film, to see where our viewpoints matched, or diverged. More often than not, he would have a few insights that escaped me, which only amplified my own post-viewing experience.

Ebert had been battling thyroid cancer for the past 12 years, and lost his voice to it in 2006. But his written voice remained strong, and until the cancer recently returned, Ebert provided an elegant, thoughtful, and humorous post-mortem to movies of all sorts. From pop dreck like Freddy Got Fingered to cinematic wonders like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ebert's was the voice that steered and guided millions along the vast expanses of what the talkies had to offer. 

Ebert was interviewed often about his thoughts on mortality, given his medical condition. One of his most poignant, yet comforting, reviews on the matter comes from one of his journal entries - cleverly titled, Ebert-esque, Go Gently Into That Good Night :

"I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe 

there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.

I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. 

I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. 

What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. 

You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip. 

I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir 

of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris."

I had just started skimming his journal a couple of months ago. It was a belated discovery, for I normally just went to his site for his legendary, occasionally harsh but never dull reviews. But now I shall relish reading his entries, and his takes not only on films, but on life in general.

And it's only poetic to end this entry with the final sentences in Ebert's last written piece:

"So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. 

I'll see you at the movies."

Protect Me From What I Want

Not usually a huge fan of gay indies - especially what passes for them in these parts - but this little gem of a 13-minute short resonated with me.

Maybe because at one point in my life - and not too long ago - I knew exactly how Saleem felt. About what he wanted. And the shame and confusion and longing and desire and everything that's part and parcel of coming to terms with who we are.

     

Enjoy.

Trés Misérables

Burn, bitches.

Like my good friend Maleficent and, probably, you, I was not invited to Resorts Worlds Manila's formal-attire only gala premiere of Tom Hooper's Les Misérables.

But fear not. There was no need to cast curses involving spindles and eighteen-year olds falling asleep for a hundred years.

Because schadenfreude is my middle name, I simply wonder - with much concern and sadness, to be sure - how tres misérable the chi-chi crowd felt at last night's disastrous non-showing of that famous film. 

Lame Misérables, as a pundit acquaintance of mine put it.

Technical difficulties, indeed. I understand Wilson Tieng looked ready to burst several blood vessels after this major major social snafu, the poor dear. All those VIPs dressed to the nines, with Christian Bautista, Karylle, Audie Gemora and other singers performing live numbers from the musical (accompanied on piano by no less than Ryan Cayabyab!) as a front act to a gala that was not to be.

Alors, alors, c'est-la vie, oui?

Et parce que plus de choses changent, plus ils restent le méme, regardez-vous cette nouvelle caravane pour Les Misérables: la nouvelle adaptation cinematographique de Tom Hooper. Avec Hugh Jackman étoile comme Jean Valjean, Russell Crowe étoile comme Javert, Anne Hathaway comme Fantine, et Amanda Seyfried comme Cosette.

Je ne connais pas la fille que joue Eponine ( Samantha Barks, en remplancement de Taylor Swift et Scarlett Johansson), mais n'en faire pas.

Oui, oui, j'adore, j'adore!

The Orbits of Obliteration

I recently made some time to sit down and watch two films that curiously echo each other. Both utilize the plot device of another planet meeting the earth, around which the characters' lives spin in smaller and smaller circles. But where the two stories diverge is the vast space between hope and despair.

I started with Lars Von Trier's Melancholia - a somber contemplation of existence on the cusp of nothingness, revolving around the lives of two sisters (Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg) as a massive rogue planet emerges from hiding behind the sun and threatens to collide with the earth.


Von Trier's film is suffused with a lingering air of anomie. It opens with surreal, slow-motion vignettes of his main characters: a bride tethered by wizened branches rising menacingly from the ground. A mother clutching her child as her feet sink in a marshy bog. A close-up of a woman's impassive face as birds fall lifeless from the sky behind her. The movie then segues into the first of its two chapters, each named after the two sisters. Chapter 1 brings us the beautiful Justine (Dunst) arriving late at her lavish wedding reception. Weddings and their ensuing receptions are traditionally joyous occasions yet Justine seems bent on destroying hers. She stares distractedly into space while guests seem desperately determined to enjoy themselves. She disappears at key moments in the carefully-planned event, leaving everyone perplexed and embarrassed. She breaks out into crying fits then alternates with giddiness, driving her sister Claire (Gainsbourg) and brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland) into angry exasperation. 

Justine's maddening behavior is made clearer in Chapter 2, which focuses on sensible sister Claire's steady descent into a mental breakdown. Claire's agitation is fueled by her dread of the strange, fearsome heavenly body bearing ever closer down on earth, while her husband John - an amateur astronomist - is giddy with excitement, and Justine, hobbled by depression, is distant and detached. 

With the exception of the terrified Claire, the characters make little mention of the incoming planet - the titular Melancholia - looming bigger and bigger in the sky, so caught up are they in the desperate minutiae of their lives. Or perhaps, the focus on seemingly trivial matters - the stubborn insistence of the main characters in steadfastly maintaining the daily, mundane pace of their earthy existence - is a defensive stance against the growing backdrop of possible annihilation from the heavens.

It makes some sense, I suppose, that the best way to defy death is to simply continue living.

The second film, Another Earth, is an independent effort (directed by first-time feature film director Mike Cahill) that won the Special Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance film festival. Here, the filmmakers explore the questions of possibilities and variances in our lives, as a duplicate Earth - along with a duplicate you, living, perhaps, a duplicate life - appears in the skies.


The mood and tone in Another Earth is bleak and dreary, reflecting the psyche of its main character, Rhoda (played by co-producer and writer Brit Marling), as she tries to return to a normal life after serving time for killing a composer's family in a car accident. Rhoda - who had won acceptance in MIT's astrophysics program just before her life-changing accident - chooses to literally live a life of drudgery, cleaning urinals in her old high school. Perhaps she hopes that with enough bleach and scrubbing she can erase her sin. Her need for atonement leads her to a chance encounter with the composer whose family she killed, now living in squalor as a drunken recluse. She misrepresents herself as an employee of a cleaning service, and proceeds to literally and figuratively clean up the composer's life. As they inevitably grow closer - much like the twin earths - Rhoda agonizes how to reveal the role she played leading to his current existence. 


All the while, the other earth hangs tantalizingly in the sky, an enigma whose mysteries start to be revealed 3/4ths of the way through, bearing the possibility that there might be another Rhoda who didn't suffer the consequences of an unfortunate series of events - and by extension, the possibility that somewhere on that other earth, the composer is living a happier life with his family intact and alive.

Another Earth is about another chance to set things right in our lives. 


Melancholia is about diminishing chances left in them.




Which makes me ask you these questions:


If you were to meet a duplicate you living another life, do you think he would be living a life better than yours ?


And, more pressingly for this banner year, what would you do if there was a great possibility that the end of all life was coming closer and closer ?

Chew On This

One of my favorite movies is 1998's "Dangerous Liaisons", adapted from the 18th century novel by Choderlos de Laclos and starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, and Michelle Pfeiffer. (I never saw "Valmont" which came out the same year, but I'm pretty sure it'd be like comparing Charlize Theron to a horse's ass.)

Considering the many games of seduction, deceit, betrayal, and revenge we play, I thought the movie could easily have featured any of us, in any or all roles: schemer, victim, innocent bystander.

There are many gems in "Liaisons", but the exchange which struck me the most was the one between Madame de Rosemonde - Valmont's doting but wise aunt - and the love-pained Madame de Tourvel:

Madame de Rosemonde: I'm sorry to say this, but, those who are most worthy of love are never made happy by it.

Madame Marie de Tourvel: But, why? Why should that be?

Madame de Rosemonde: Do you still think men love the way we do? No... men enjoy the happiness they feel. We can only enjoy the happiness we give. They are not capable of devoting themselves exclusively to one person. So to hope to be made happy by love is a certain cause of grief.
 
The ring of truth in that exchange resonates with me to this day. I chant it to myself as a shaman might recite his prayers whenever I find myself caught in the web of that four-letter word.
 
Love.
 
Love doth conquer all, and 'tis a victor that takes no prisoners.
 
Something to chew on at the start of the week.