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mtnman36
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Name: ben
Country: United States
State: Texas
Metro: Denton
Birthday: 12/8/1982
Gender: Male
Interests: reading, writing, music, my guitar, going to lots of shows, having good taste in the important forms of media
Expertise: rocket surgery
Occupation: Student
Industry: Art
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  the radiant dark
Yahoo: 
Member Since:
1/17/2004
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| I'd like to tell you all a story. It's the story of my relationship with a film. Jessi has been prodding me for a long time to do something like this, and I have been resistant, but tonight I felt it necessary.
The title of the film is simply M. It's old, made in Germany in 1931 by a filmmaker by the name of Fritz Lang who, in his early days made several great films including the epic Metropolis as well as the lesser known Testament of Dr. Mabuse. The former was a silent film and was recognized by the Third Reich as a spectacular film and Lang was asked by Adolf Hitler at some point to become the official propaganda filmmaker of his regime. Lang declined and subsequently left Germany and his wife who had, at that time, recently pledged her allegiance to the Nazi party for America. He never made a highly successful film here. His career passed into obscurity and in later interviews he told many different versions of events that happened to him earlier in his life.
But this film in particular had a major effect on me. It is highly regarded by art film connoisseurs for its technical ingenuity among many other aspects. It was Lang's first sound film. While I can appreciate those things, it is not why I reflect on this film the way that I do.
Peter Lorre plays the starring role in the film. Some of you may know him as the creepy, wormy guy from Rick's that gets shot in Casablanca. He plays a child killer. The first three quarters of the film are dedicated to finding him and catching him. The police are after him but find tracking him difficult and so the crackdown on all crime because of the multiple child killings puts a strain on organized crime. So the mob starts searching for him as well. And they eventually catch him. All of the film up until this point is very interesting: it's an early procedural up until this point.
When they catch him, they take him to a basement somewhere. One side of the large room is filled with common people and people affected by the murders, particularly mothers. They decide to have a "trial." They give him defense council merely as a formality. It is this scene that causes my blood to curdle. There is no way that it can be described with language that would accurately portray the depth of what happens here. Lorre pleads for his life, as anyone would, denying their claims, knowing that he is doomed. At a certain point he accepts his responsibility but cries out that he "can't help it," that it is something inside him, something that he must run from every moment of his life. Every moment, that is, apart from when he is committing his act. I cannot convey to you the way in which Lorre delivers this performance. Suffice it to say that Daniel Day-Lewis would be ashamed to call himself an actor when seeing this part.
But even this is beside what causes my reaction to this film. It is the sheer fact that I know so intimately the feeling that Lorre speaks of when he delivers his lines during this scene. I can remember not being able to help it. I think of specific moments that I felt so ravaged by my own conscience that I did what it told me not to do only to feel a few moments of relief. Things worse than I'm sure you are imagining I am capable of. This, to me, is the magic of cinema. At times, a terrible magic for sure. But more than that, is the magic of storytelling, through whatever medium. It can connect your emotions with that of a serial killer. It can evoke empathy for an adulterer. It can make you feel for anyone in any situation given that you use the right language and if you are listening closely.
I cry every time I see Peter Lorre on his knees. There is such an understanding in him at that moment that you know that in some way it has everything to do with the missteps you make.
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| snow makes for a beautiful day.
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| i started reading swann's way today. a new translation suggested by my favorite professor who, to give you an example of his character, drew quite specific parallels between an obscure and highly sexualized czech novel and spielberg's ET.....and to my surprise it fit. (not to say that ET was subliminally sexual but that the confessions of young torless was less about sex than it was about childhood.) but proust's use of language is almost terrifying. reading just one sentence of his is like being a kid and spinning around in circles as many times as you possibly can and then trying to walk again. it makes you nauseous and thrills and makes you smile all at one. and you come to accept that thats just proust. after a class with said professor, i came home to chow down before going to work and i did a thing that is quite foreign to me now. i turned on the tv. and i don't mean for a movie or for the xbox. just to watch tv. and what i found on there confirms why i generally abstain from the practice of watching it. i tuned in right at the moment when the iranian president was just starting to answer questions at the columbia university auditorium. this is a man that not but a few months ago hosted a summit in his country to DEBATE the existence of the holocaust. the opening remarks given by the president of the university were rather scathing but ahmadinejad did much more damage to himself than anybody else's comments or questions ever could have. i wont go into it here. you should read about this man though. how the world tolerates people like this that have power is simply baffling. and now to try and bury more depressing news at the bottom so that those of you who don't read all the way through don't navigate away thinking i'm just another morose, bleeding heart, depressive. a couple of weeks ago i typed out an entry but decided to delete it after about 40,000 words. i had just been to the funeral of my uncle. he'd had cancer for some time. now that its a few weeks past i can give you the information without my annoying, over-analytical perspective of the event. i will say that there is much more to the story, especially of those around him. but i was not close to him at all. and finally, my mom called me today and told me that an old family friend of ours had died. he was very old and it was time. i hadn't seen him in many, many years, but he was a good man. i raise my glass to you bevo. | | |
| i had been meaning to see the queen for some time and i finally sat down and watched it before work today. i had no doubts that i would like it simply by virtue of seeing helen mirren on screen after seeing the likes of elizabeth I and gosford park. she certainly has a way with acting. now before i get into what i really am thinking, i should explain a little bit more about the film. for those that dont know, its about how the royal family and tony blair dealt with the death of princess diana, and the truest depiction of any character certainly came from mirren. the others i could pretty much take or leave, even tony blair. but to my surprise, it was the story i was very intrigued by. im sure all of us remember the day we heard that diana had died. myself, being a bit younger and not so interested in most things of this nature at the time, i felt awkwardly drawn to this story, not because i had some great outpouring of emotion for diana but because of the silence of the royal family. diana was never someone that intersted me and still doesnt particularly. call me cold hearted if you like. for me, she occupies the same ranks as the likes of oprah; terribly earnest in her approach (she did plenty of good things for the world) but plenty of things that did not fit with the popular image of her. it seems to me that for some odd reason there are certain people that the public at large decides to forgive for whatever wrongs or stupid things they did because they are charismatic. ive seen this on a large scale, such as diana, and ive seen it on a small scale among people i have known intimately. i have always been wary of those that display obvious charisma because ive so often seen them abuse that privilege. i am not a man of great personal magnetism as these are which is so often frustrating. we as humans have such a tendancy to grant more grace than could possibly be healthy to some and the hand of condemnation comes down so quickly for others. now im not saying all this to whine that people dont like me. quite honestly im fine with the way that i am and on the whole how people treat me. i, in particular, am equally as guilty quite often of doing the same thing only the opposite direction of condemning those with what i perceive as too much influence among people. i was just simply struck by the story of the queen and how many of her own countrymen were so quick to judge her on a very personal matter. not sure where i was really going with all that. i just sometimes feel i have to pour out the contents of my own head to see if they are worth the time in thought that ive given to them. | | |
| I had a fairly busy day yesterday. I finished cleaning out my old apartment and I turned in the key, payed the rent, did some cleaning, went to the bank, etc. Especially after cleaning out my apartment I was very sweaty and tired. So I went home and plopped down in the recliner and started a movie I got from netflix and hadn't gotten around to watching. The film was called Fanny & Alexander and after about half an hour of it I decided to pull open my laptop while i watched. So i pulled up the browser and the first thing that catches my eye is that Ingmar Bergman had died at the age of 89. This is weird to me because he is the director of the film that I happened to be watching. Bergman was a Swedish artist and one of the greatest auteurs since the invention of the motion picture camera. He was also someone that I felt deeply connected with through his films. He dealt with just about every difficult human issue out there, but primarily with the struggles of death and religion. Fanny and Alexander is a very long movie so I was only able to finish it this morning. I think it was appropriate that I watch that since it was about childhood and how scary and mysterious death is to a child, and how God so often seems distant and closed off, and where ritual takes the place of Him. It seemed to me to be more about how we always need to be conscious, aware, and willing to be defiant. | | |
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