FILM REVIEW: The Day I Became A Woman

(Naturally, Kevin returns to indie-ness with nothing less than an obscure Iranian film)

Directed By: Marzieh Meshkini

Written By: Marzieh Meshkini and Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Starring: Fatemeh Cherag Akhar as Hava, Shabnam Toloui as Ahoo and Azizeh Sedighi as Hoora

Marzieh Meshkini, primary creative force behind The Day I Became A Woman, one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time, is incidentally the wife of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the notorious Iranian filmmaker/dissident/resident-of-Paris. In an ironic exercise of the very sexual inequality that Meshkini explores here, I will, of course, compare her work (although, in my defense, I do so favorably!) to her husband’s most visible work among film connoisseurs in the West: 2001’s Kandahar. For me, the most frustrating thing about Kandahar is that it unwisely ignores the centrality of the love between Nafas and her sister (which ultimately is what should ground the film) and instead too frequently descends into an ugly, in-your-face and occasionally even awkward tirade of social injustice in Afghanistan. Again, I refer to Slumdog Millionaire, the perennially overrated Danny Boyle film in which the devastations of poverty and inequality are but sidenotes to a bigger picture (NO PUN INTENDED LOLZ) that celebrates life and beauty: ultimately, what makes the film so fiercely poignant is not its unapologetic depiction of Indian slums but its tenderness and optimism. Kandahar, on the other hand, is so very utterly depressing. Nafas is constantly offered cul-de-sacs masquerading as false illusions of help, visions of handicapped mine victims begging profusely for plastic limbs from UN medical officials and obstructed by oppressive patriarchal structures; eventually, her journey is truncated and her sister presumably dies. There is no redemption, no salvation, no characteristic poetry, no momentary happiness even. Even Nafas’ friend and the film’s only beacon of humanity, Tabib Sahid, is ironically an African-American exile who lives a life of falsity.

In The Day I Became A Woman, the female protagonists are too victims of the same devastating realities presented in Kandahar, except Meshkini makes their bitterness a tangential, if palpable, sidenote; ultimately, the stories here are about their triumphs, however small, and however insignificant — and that’s what makes this film a more powerful political statement than Kandahar can ever dream of being. We live in an age where few people are unaware of the plight of mine victims in Afghanistan and Cambodia, of emaciated, malaria-stricken babies in Africa and abused child labour in China; these are inarguably open secrets. What we are seemingly unaware of, however, is how such people deal with circumstances so inhumane. What we are unaware of, paradoxically, is the reality of the situation, because the cultural context of these plights are often so very different and so very inconceivable to us who read about them from iPhones and iPads. As such, how Meshkini humanizes and fleshes out her characters, how she maps out their reactions and symbolic protests in the face of an unyielding authority (which is best illustrated in the Ahoo segment) is, I contend, of even more importance than the elucidation-of-plight stylings of Kandahar.

But what makes this anthology much more than an instrument of humanization is Meshkini’s towering ability to weave continuous streams of symbolism into her prose, her quietly effusive respect for the female enigma and her taste for subversive undercurrents. Her plots are deceptively sparse, her characters deceptively simple, her films deceptively static; for all her self-effacing pseudo-unremarkability, her distaste for Kandahar-esque in-your-faceness, Meshkini is in many ways just as critical and even as ambitious as her husband. Ultimately, it is this illusion of simplicity is what makes this film, like Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, a great one.

Hava, the first segment, is unquestionably the best. The title of the anthology automatically suggests plots involving puberty (specifically, menstruation), marriage (and in extension, sex, because Muslims are cultured that way), and motherhood, so it is extremely refreshing to find that Meshkini cleverly chooses to open her film with a segment that employs an unfamiliar, presumably Middle Eastern notion of womanhood (Hava is told at 9 years old that she is a ‘woman’), and that immediately erodes conventional/Western expectations of what ‘womanhood’ entails. Tellingly enough, none of the aforementioned platitudes are employed in any of the films 3 segments; Ahoo is about divorce and Hoora is about hedonism. But let’s talk about Hava, which is, first and foremost, utterly unexpected and subversive in its depiction of a nine year-old heroine who graciously accepts the realities of gender segregation despite her best friend being a boy, especially since the Makhmalbafs are notorious for their bitter protests against the oppressiveness of Middle Eastern society. Naturally, though, Meshkini doesn’t actually have Hava wholeheartedly embrace her fate, and subtly allows her the room to symbolically repudiate her new role as a ‘woman’. What was most subversive, for me, however, was not how Hava symbolically traded her chador for a rubber duck (an obvious denial of her womanhood and proof of the illusion of ‘womanhood’ as a social construct), but of the quasi-sexual exchange that she has with her best friend Hassan. He gives her money, she comes back with candy, and they suck frantically from the same lollipop as Hava has to return to her house before noon. On a deeper level, this exchange immediately mimics a pre-marital affair fervently anticipating marriage and thus wanting to squeeze in as much “candy-sucking” as possible, which speaks to a deeply hedonistic desire running contrary to Islamic traditionalism and eloquently elucidates the independence of Islamic society/culture from the Islamic people — which are often inaccurately conflated by the Western media. Meshkini here exposes the myth of difference between different peoples, and reveals the universality of needs and desires — a notion that is seemingly self-evident but that is constantly debunked by unwitting racists like Lukas Moodysson (Swedish lesbianism advocate in his career low-point Mammoth). Of course, there are many other wonderful symbols, like the symbolic prison that Hassan is forced to enter once he defies Hava’s grandmother, an ironic symbol of patriarchal authority, and (my personal favourite) the phallic shadow that represents Hava’s fast-depleting authority in her transition into a woman, but I’d like to think that this film is more than a masturbatory exercise in symbolism so I won’t get into it.

Ahoo, the second segment, is easily the least problematic, albeit simplest, one — although it is no less politically-charged or symbol-packed than its neighbours. What I love about this film is how the obvious political implications of Ahoo’s marriage/divorce and her husband’s/tribal member’s ramblings (“You broke his pride!”, “You have broken your tribe’s pride!”, “Our tribe does not tolerate divorce!”) are simply sidenotes to Ahoo’s wicked cycling chops, her ferocious sense of determination and most importantly, her glorious chador billowing magnificently, gorgeously, in the relentless wind. Her iPod-wielding male rival is one of the most fascinating symbols here, because he seems to be a representation of the technologically-advanced West who surpasses the Middle East but only because the latter is held back by a relentlessly oppressive patriarchy (represented by Ahoo’s eventual confrontation with her tribal members and thus detainment), and who passively, sadistically looks on as the Middle East continues to be rampaged by injustice and perversity. It is perhaps also pertinent to think about why Meshkini portrays the West as a black boy, a politically-charged figure that recalls marginalization and injustice and thus that suggests hypocrisy and inhumanity; again, I don’t want to get into it, but I think this is inarguably an important point to consider when critically interpreting this segment. In any case, can we just take a moment to swoon over Meshkini’s ingenuity? K.

Hoora, the third and final segment, is the funniest and, some would claim, the most Fellini-esque one. Here, an impoverished old woman, through unknown means, gains a ridiculous amount of money, goes to the city, and buys everything she’s ever wanted. It’s a gloriously wacky Bollywood-esque rags-to-riches fantasy, a gratuitous exercise in hedonistic excess, and a triumphant declaration of freedom. The story is, at first viewing, a straightforward fable that reinforces the mythic pervasiveness of Islamic traditionalism: Hoora only spends her money on domestic furniture and household gadgets, asks repetitively for random boys to be her son, and at one point acts out the role of the matriarch entertaining house guests. In truth, this film is much more subversive. Hoora doesn’t seem to even care about her purchases: when she decides on buying another teapot, she simply leaves everything on the beach as though she doesn’t care if people steal or abuse them; when she sets sail for her ship, she doesn’t bring any symbolic ‘son’ with her; when it is time for her to leave her ‘guests’, she never expresses disappointment or guilt at eschewing her matriarchal role. What this means is that while she genuinely understands the necessity of fulfilling traditional notions of womanhood, neither motherhood nor matriarchy is fulfilling to Hoora in any way. What ultimately completes Hoora’s journey to womanhood is neither her age nor her silly dreams about ‘cold water’, but the reclamation of her freedom, which is explained adroitly by incorporating Hava’s chador into the segment. Hava’s chador, a symbol of femininity and therefore, in an extension, womanhood, is used as a mast for one of Hoora’s numerous rafts, which reflects Hoora’s hedonism as a reclamation of her (long-lost) womanhood. This symbolism is perhaps the most important of all, because in Islamic culture, womanhood represents a journey to male acquisition, and Meshkini defies this by reclaiming ‘womanhood’ as, paradoxically perhaps, a journey to male independence (which is symbolized by the Hoora’s ship). Of course, one could argue that the ship is simply another patriarchal device (Meshkini, in true spirit of Kiarostami-esque ambiguity, doesn’t clarify), but then again this film, as said before, is very much about celebrating the small triumphs, the momentary freedoms, so such a reading would only heighten both the themes of patriarchal oppression and female triumph.

There are only two problems with this film, and both stem from Meshkini’s weak and, honestly, just plain unconvincing attempt to link the three segments together. The Ahoo link is exceptionally ridiculous. It also seems terribly unlikely that Moora and Hava are set remotely close to each other — Hava’s village is just too awfully run-down to be in close proximity to the modern metropolis that Hoora patrons. As such, I think I speak for everyone when I say that it would’ve been so much better if the three characters’ lives didn’t intersect at all. Besides, Meshkini’s thoughtful, culture-specific exploration of the feminist plight, her pensive simplicity, her preternatural understanding of mood and her knack for incisive, punchy dialogue already provide enough thematic and stylistic consistency to effectively connect the dots between the three segments.

Dear filmmakers behind Paris, Je T’aime, 

THIS is how you make a fucking anthology film.

Sincerely,

Kevin

KevinScale Rating: 4.5/5

So it’s settled: 2012 is the year of M.I.A.’s new album, MATANGI

Just an hour ago, MIA released a preview of a track entitled “Come Walk With Me” on her YouTube account, and again, it is equally a declaration of her artistic identity as it is an off-kilter club banger. It begins and ends with glitchy, trippy psychedelic instrumental breakdowns heavily reminiscent of her work on 2010’s Vicki Leekx Mixtape (a few of the beats here are lifted off of it too, but there are like 6 different beats in this 1 and a half minute preview alone), except they’re sped up and far more haphazard for extra weirdness, which is really ironic (OMG hipsters are going to freak) considering the song has a bubblegum tune that sounds almost like a Katy Perry or Ke$ha cut — which, among other things, cement MIA’s embrace of the anti-popstar identity she so defiantly reinvented herself as 2 years ago with /\/\/\Y/\.

Just for kicks, there is a self-knowing stab at self-empowerment here (“There’s nothing that can touch me now/You can’t even break me now”), which feels vaguely like a sarcastic parody of Perry’s “Part of Me”. She even deliberately, squarely subverts the recent trend of club-oriented lyrics in pop music with an ironic declaration of hipster unity (“You ain’t gotta shake it just to be with me/You ain’t gotta throw your hands in the air/Cuz tonight we ain’t actin like we don’t care”).

The “Birthday Song”-esque, poppy vibe of the song almost confirms tepid or at best lukewarm reviews from Pitchfork again, but then again Pitchfork-worshipping hipsters don’t make up much of the market; pop-lovers and music-lovers do. M.I.A. here combines the straightforward catchiness of “XXXO” with the outright weirdness of her less accessible tracks like “Meds and Feds” to produce one of the most addictive, ironic and baffling pop tracks in recent history. If this track is any indication of what to expect from her new album, be prepared for M.I.A. to take the pop charts and perhaps even the Grammys by storm. I mean, if the two are more than ready to embrace Katy Perry, why not her weirder, infinitely more talented, pop-parodying counterpart?

I’m really excited for the new album.

FILM REVIEW: Before Sunrise/Before Sunset

Directed By: Richard Linklater

Written By: Richard Linklater, Kim Krizan, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

Starring: Ethan Hawke as Jesse, Julie Delpy as Celine

So I’m not really big on romance films, but not because I don’t like sweet things. Contrary to popular belief, I do (occasionally, when it’s working) have a heart; it’s just that the writers in the genre too often and too enthusiastically throw out meaningless, obvious platitudes and predictably follow one of 3 formats:

1) Illicit lovers that look soooooooo cute together (their faces are drenched in orange light for much of the film, sensuous close-ups are generously employed, both the lead actors are ridiculously attractive, and one or both have unfairly hard lives) but are doomed to tragedy

2) The funny/adorable/awkward couple (most commonly involving a nerd and a hot girl — to satisfy the decidedly impossible fantasies of professional WoW addicts across the globe — but variations include the boss and the new employee, the outcast and the cheerleader etc.) that slowly but surely hook up. This is usually the PG13 variety so the horrifically awkward sex scenes don’t distract from the adorableness.

3) The sad, miserable couple that re-discovers their love after a tedious process of hedonistic cavorting with younger, more attractive and/or cooler people

These films, however, aren’t like any conventional romance films you’ve ever seen before. They have no plot, no contrived trials for the determined protagonists to pass. These films consist of 2 people talking. Just talking. In Before Sunrise, they talk about their hopes, their sex lives, childhoods, desires, politics, religion, feminism; in Before Sunset, they talk about their jobs, their love lives, their frustrations, age, maturity, happiness and emotions. Just talking. And these two are the best romance films I have ever seen. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy have such natural, vibrant chemistry, it’s almost like they’re not even acting. Ethan Hawke, in particular, has a preternatural understanding of his character, and his self-unconscious display of Jesse’s insecurities and obnoxiousness is absolutely delicious. They occasionally have raw, startling bursts of genuine emotion, yet one must realize that this is a performance. Their dialogues are often light and meandering, yet their personalities still manage to constantly take helm. Their conversations feel spontaneous, unforced and natural, yet everything is supposedly scripted. It really is quite bewildering. As with all great films, I really don’t know what to talk about. The acting, writing (ESPECIALLY THE WRITING), directing jobs are uniformly excellent, and save for two problems, the films are perfect.

One problem in the Linklater/Krizan-penned Before Sunrise is that Celine is made much angrier, much saucier than Delpy can handle; this makes her performance occasionally forced and her execution occasionally awkward. In Before Sunrise, however, Celine is a lot less angsty (if a lot more unstable), and this change suits Delpy’s execution perfectly — probably because Delpy wisely contributed to the script to make Celine more effortless and natural a transformation for herself. Another problem is that the ending feels rather obvious in that we are naturally convinced by Hawke and Delpy’s chemistry that their characters will meet again. But at least the obvious ending led to Before Sunset, which in every way is superior to its prequel; it unravels with even more ease, it has even more focus, and its ending demands a standing ovation.

Before Sunrise KevinScale Rating: 4.5/5

Before Sunset KevinScale Rating: 5/5

FILM REVIEW: Los Amantes del Círculo Polar (The Lovers of the Arctic Circle)

Written/Directed By: Julio Medem

Starring: Peru Medem/Fele Martinez as Child/Adult Otto, Sara Valiente/Najwa Nimri as Child/Adult Ana

Los Amantes del Círculo Polar‘s first hour, until Otto and Ana’s almost-encounter at an outdoor café-ish hangout, is absolutely flawless. The juxtaposition of narrative perspectives (namely those of Otto and Ana) expertly finds a solid middle ground between the gorgeously problematic subjectivity of Kurosawa’s Rashomon and the tiresome objectivity of Travis’ tragically awful Vantage Point; like the latter, the film captures the same narrative, the same events, except at the same time, like the former, it adds different voices and different explanations, which rapidly and effectively unravels the narrative, revealing startlingly new interpretations and beautiful depths. Here, specifically, this juxtaposition allows abundant opportunities for the intelligent script to explore the complex psychology of the two protagonists. Both characters are born to broken families (Ana’s father dies while Otto’s mother leaves when they are very young), and are left with single parents too desperate for mutual support to provide the sensitivity and care that they demand. With only each other for emotional support and to cope with loss, they project their missing parents onto each other and clandestinely engage in an incestuous relationship, and grow to become rebellious, reckless souls — Otto and Ana casually try to kill themselves, Otto suddenly, arbitrarily leaves home in pursuit of nothing, and Ana unflinchingly ends a four-year relationship to look for Otto. They’re not even portrayed in a particularly sympathetic manner, and often do crazy, offensive shit just for kicks. But Medem knows better than to impose any form of judgment on them. He knowingly describes their flaws, explains their origins, and leaves it up to us to decide how we feel about them. Even when dealing with their sex scenes, which most lesser directors would use as opportunities for moral judgment, he takes a powerfully ambivalent stance. On their first ‘sexual’ encounter when Otto enters her room while Ana is sleeping (naked), Otto even has the gentlemanly respect to leave Ana the fuck alone, even if he can’t help his teenage instinct to jerk off outside. In fact, the only overtly sexual contact they have is the foreplay; that’s how sensitive Medem is — he knows that sexploitationist sequences (which are prevalent in another Medem film Lucia y el sexo) will beg accusations of sensationalism and that non-inclusion of sex scenes will beg accusations of immaturity and/or avoidance.

However, the last 30 minutes of the film, while admittedly important and necessary to the structure and plot, feel overly tiresome and sickly sentimental, and lack the gorgeous ambivalence that characterizes the first hour. The main purpose of this part is to explain and unravel the various myths introduced in the first part of the film (eg Otto the German Pilot, the meaning of the cryptic Arctic Circle etc.), but in an attempt to bestow these enigmas with a deeper meaning, we are made to watch as the two protagonists achingly yearn for each other through their separation — every revelation we have is too invariably coupled with pain and unrequited desire. While I appreciate Medem’s appreciation for depth, the pain is too overwrought, too dramaticized here, and makes for an overly painful watch. Others might find this pain transcendent or powerful, but personally I think it’s a little too close (and overdone) for comfort. Ana and Otto’s mutual search efforts, in their schmaltzy on-the-verge-of-tears-ness, are also quite boring and irritating after a while. Okay, I get it. You miss him, he misses you, can we just move on and stop this self-pitying fuckerdom? Kthx xoxo.

Stylistically, this is a fascinating work. One major motif in the film is the notion of circularity, a metaphor for destiny, which presents the relationship between Otto and Ana as something pure and beautiful and fated. Los Amantes del Círculo Polar opens with a brief, cryptic, seemingly unintelligible narrative, and repeats the same narrative at the end of the film, except unlike its sub-par arthouse counterparts, this repetition/circularity actually helps us understand its meaning and significance in the grand scheme of things. Characteristically, the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, and Medem constantly finds a way to reveal the raw sensuality in a single glance, or a soft touch. Like Lucia y el sexo before it, this film is brimming with sexual tension, passion and energy, except it never once resorts to gratuitous sexploitation to get the point across; it’s subtle and awesome enough to leave much of the sex to the audience’s imagination.

Beyond its stylish sheen, however, this film is in many ways characteristic of classic Spanish cinema; that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. For one, the characters are inextricably linked together by an intricate network of relationships (Otto’s grandfather rescued a German soldier, who rescued a Spanish girl, had a son with her, Alvaro, who then started dating Ana’s mother and sent Ana to Finland, where she would eventually be reunited with Otto lolz), which imbues the plot with a powerfully engaging complexity. However, on the other hand, Los Amantes del Círculo Polar is occasionally weighed down by its excessively melodramatic score and its blatantly manipulative big-emotional-scenes, which together double-up as offensively helpful pointers of how the audience should act and respond to the film — a valiant but reproachable effort that undermines everyone’s intelligence and sense of discretion.

The biggest objection I have to this film is its ending, which perpetrates the notion that all forms of illicit love invariably result in death or destruction. Los Amantes del Círculo Polar is a film whose appeal banks heavily on its lack of judgment, its thoughtful ambivalence, and in killing Ana at the end, Medem too is suggesting that Ana and Otto’s love cannot result in a happy ending, that for all its purity and beauty it is still corrupt and punishable. The fantastic sequence at the 1-hour mark whereby Ana and Otto almost meet (but don’t) would’ve made a much better ending. As it stands, the ending doesn’t even tie in nicely with the notion of circularity. Medem suggests that Ana and Otto’s love will eventually find each other in the end (after they finish their circular journey of self-discovery), but the end offers only tragedy — which perhaps suggests that their love was doomed all along, or that Ana was dead all along. Either way, the final revelation seems out-of-place, and the tragic, illicit lovers bullshit is getting old. I want to see just ONE high-profile, high-budget, critically-acclaimed film about incest in which there is a happy ending. Right now, there are none. You have sex with your sister? Either one or both must die. Now, I’m not a fervent supporter of incest, but I’m also not self-important enough to judge other people for it, and neither should the few filmmakers bold enough to make films about it.

Ultimately, this film is a stunning meditation on destiny, relationship dynamics, loss and love, and manages to seamlessly incorporate Oedipal and Elektral complexes, incest, divorce and death (among other taboo subjects) without once ever losing focus on the two powerfully written protagonists. With a less tragic ending, and if the revelations in the last 30 minutes were spread throughout the film, this could’ve been one of the best films in the history of Spanish cinema. As of now, it just stands as a brilliant film that could have been more.

KevinScale Rating: 4/5

FILM REVIEW: L’Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year In Marienbad)

Directed By: Alain Resnais

Written By: Alain Robbe-Grillet

Starring: Giorgio Albertazzi, as X, Delphine Seyrig, as A, Sacha Pitoëff, as M (The characters are actually unnamed in the film, but they were labelled as such in the published screenplay. M is A’s presumptive husband, and X is A’s illicit lover)

So I just watched the trailer for the first time now, and it’s almost alarmingly funny how commercial the distribution company makes the film seem. “THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS THAT YOU, THE AUDIENCE, MUST ANSWER!” LOLS. It’s glaringly obvious that no one really knows how to market a film like this. Yet at the same time, perhaps it’s better to approach this film knowing that it’s supposed to be a mystery. When I first watched this movie, I had absolutely no prior knowledge of the plot or of Resnais’ cinematic oeuvre, and suffice to say, I felt extremely stupid for the first half of the film, in which nothing really happens, and I was convinced that I was missing out on some larger significance (which is probably true, actually, but at least everyone feels the same way).

Alain Resnais’ magnum opus Last Year in Marienbad won the Golden Lion at the 1961 Venice Film Festival (a.k.a. the quintessential embodiment of arthouse-chicness), and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, but the critical plaudits pretty much stop there, and in all frankness, it is unsurprising as to why. This film, by far, is the weirdest film I have ever watched – and this coming from one who has watched 4 David Lynch films (albeit reluctantly, because Lynch is stupid and annoying) and who has spent numerous Christmases watching old experimental films (and eating copious amounts of chocolate, but I guess this detail would only lend credibility if I ever decided to be a professional connoisseur of cheap candies).

The entire film is essentially an extended dream sequence. Characters are placed in one setting and suddenly, inexplicably, they appear in another. The palatial mansion is littered with richly costumed socialites, but they don’t even seem real; sometimes they talk, sometimes they are suspended in inaction, sometimes they turn to stare blankly, judgmentally at the lead characters, sometimes they aren’t even there. The script is brimming with gorgeous imagery, boasts a poetic vocabulary usually reserved for critically-acclaimed novels, and often reveals an undeniable, ineffable emotional poignancy, yet, when considered in the context of the film, it almost doesn’t even makes sense. The same lines are repeated over and over again, and often even by different characters. Generic proclamations are woven into emotional scenes, but we don’t really understand how they connect. Some objects cast no shadows; others cast disproportionately, frighteningly long ones. The same music plays softly in the background. Suddenly, it lurches to the foreground and blares with a vengeance, then it stops, and all is terrifyingly quiet. The camera examines the same places languidly, over and over again, yet they remain no less impenetrable, no less enigmatic, no less haunting. At times, shadows threaten to disengage themselves from their hosts, but this isn’t a film with CGI, so that’s impossible — so why is it that one is convinced they might…? MIND BLOWN.

And I could wax lyrical about how breathtaking the visuals are (this is, hands down, the most gorgeous film I’ve ever seen, maybe right behind Bergman’s The Silence or Kubrick’s The Shining), or about how gorgeous the script is, but any attempt at description or explanation would simply diminish their beauty and desecrate the gift of subjectivity. Besides, the best arthouse filmmakers don’t depend solely on stylistic inventiveness; that’s just a sidenote, and they know it. Arthouse films must too wield visceral impact, and must be emotionally relatable, because without these, they are simply empty, sadistic exercises in unintelligibility. Here, Resnais makes a powerful case for his place among arthouse gods; despite radical leaps in plot progression, opaque lead characters and impenetrable use of symbolism, he still manages to render his film’s central themes and issues comprehensible, which is something beautifully rare in the world of art film. Undoubtedly, there are vastly differing interpretations of what this film really means, but just to prove my case for Resnais’ intelligibility, I’ll just put mine out there:

The film is an extended erotic fantasy that A creates to escape from her suffocating marriage (or long-term relationship, at the very least) to M. This is why the central narrator and relationship explored is between A and X. M here is an uninvited, unappreciated presence, who appears presumably because his domineering nature precludes escape, or because A is projecting his possessive need to drive all thoughts of other men from her mind. Alternatively, he could possibly be a personification of her guilt for being an unfaithful wife, or at least thinking of being an unfaithful wife. X could be a real one-night stand that A had, or perhaps he is simply a personification of her desire to escape. Either way, he serves the same purpose; he provides her with the love and (awesome) sex that M does not. The central conflict is derived from A’s negotiation between her reluctance to cheat and her desire to escape, and Marienbad is the imaginary platform on which this negotiation occurs. The game of Nim that M and X play parallels a larger tug-of-war struggle to occupy a place in A’s imagination. M constantly wins, but X is given infinite opportunities to try again because A refuses to allow M’s authority to undermine her own, which is absolute in her own dream; the power that M wields (as exemplified in the scene where A ‘kills’ X in a bid to prevent M from hurting him) is more a manifestation of her guilt rather than a reflection of his actual authority. The richly ornate but empty corridors in Marienbad reflect the contradiction between the image and reality of marriage. Alternatively, perhaps it reflects that inherent in any relationship, which is why A is so reluctant to ‘run away’ with X. Ultimately, I see this film as a deconstructionist take on marriage; feminists would probably enthusiastically declare it a lamentation of androcentric culture, but I try not to go that far. In any case, it is clear that this isn’t just an empty exercise in strangeness; it has something to say about marriage, something to say about relationships, and does so with unabashed, incomparable style.

Part of me wishes Last Year In Marienbad were shorter and/or had more focus, but part of what makes this film so brilliant is that it takes a potentially legendary short film and boldly, defiantly expands it into a full-length feature film. Short films thrive on its brand of inventiveness and experimentalism, and it undoubtedly would be much easier for Resnais as a director if he had less scenes to work with, less time to fill, but instead he takes his time, allowing the audience to revel in the film’s many visual pleasures while allowing the central tensions of the films to naturally, gradually unravel themselves. With supreme confidence, I can say that absolutely no other revered director (I’m ignoring Francis Ford Coppola and his gloriously awful Youth Without Youth here) would have the balls to make a full-length with a script that reads like a documentary-esque monologue, and with a premise this powerfully sophisticated. Besides, every second is another opportunity to marvel at Resnais’ inexhaustible bag of visual invention, to frown inexorably in reticent decipherment — and that kind of wonder I decidedly would not trade for any irrelevant stab at in-your-face comprehensibility. The stranger the film gets, the more intoxicating the sense of helplessness, the more palpable the enigma of the human psyche, the more viscerally powerful the effect.

So many surrealist filmmakers (I’m blaming you, Luis Bunuel, whose infamous short Un Chien Andalou remains the perennial inspiration of unoriginal but erudite film students since the dawn of avant-garde experimentalism) have attempted to capture the magic of dreams, but none have quite as adroitly distilled their impenetrability, whimsicality and emotional power without once descending into all-out absurdity or cringe-inducing preciosity. So dedicated are Resnais and Robbe-Grillet to the enigma of their film that it never once feels contrived or even deliberate. They immerse themselves in it, they believe everything in it, they feel everything in it, and we too are drawn into the suffocating power of its magic. So expansive is their passion for cinema and poetry, so bold is their desire to explore the stranger, uncharted depths of relationships and love that we are left, limp and helpless, unwitting instruments of their insanity. After watching the standard Lynch fare (RE: Lost Highway, Blue Velvet), one still isn’t any closer to understanding the meaning behind it; his works are so often self-indulgent exercises in aimless opacity that the only praise-worthy feat is his cinematography – but too is the case with most arthouse films; it’s nothing special. After watching Last Year In Marienbad, though, one is imbued with an intoxicating sense of wonder, a refreshed awareness of cinematic possibility. If one is lucky enough, one might even understand why.

KevinScale Rating: 5/5

Also, in defense of my taste in films, which is bound to be deemed ‘pretentious’ by anyone who has ever watched Last Year In Marienbad and hated it (and there, quite understandably, are many): I hate almost everything from the French New Wave, and I think Godard films, while occasionally stylistically interesting, are tiresome and endlessly trite. Resnais films make up a large proportion of the few exceptions, and what I love about his films is not just their bold sense of experimentalism (a common praise for any film from the movement), but their poetic fascination with life and love, and his astounding passion for films. His oeuvre, more than that of any other director, more than Bergman, more than Welles, more than Kubrick, embodies the magic of cinema; it reflects an artist that approaches film with child-like wonder at its possibilities, and that recklessly, unthinkingly immerses himself in them, because in the face of something so magical, something so great, he doesn’t know how else to react.

FILM REVIEW: Les herbes folles (Wild Grass)

Directed By: Alain Resnais

Written By: Alex Reval, Laurent Herbiet

Cinematography By: Eric Gautier

Starring: Sabine Azéma as Maguerite Muir, André Dussolier as Georges Palet, Anne Cosigny as Suzanne, Emmanuel Devos as Josépha

So Wild Grass is the first movie I’ve watched in a week, and for all its unevenness and directorial missteps, it is a poignant reminder of what I love most about arthouse cinema and film in general. Perhaps because I have exhausted myself of my articulacy in my previous post, a regrettable, indulgent exercise in verbosity, I’m finding this review particularly hard to write, so I’ll start with the easy part: the cinematography. When watching Wild Grass, it’s fiercely impossible to not notice how beautifully filmed it is; there is, in all honesty, not a single scene that isn’t gorgeous and awe-inspiring and brimming with depth. Launching into geek mode…

The film takes every opportunity to celebrate the beauty of lighting; Gautier uses soft lenses and digitally alters the lights with feathering techniques and various enhancement effects to make them have a dream-like haziness, and the effect is calming and gorgeous. Just look at how the red backlights are glowing and surrealistically expansive. Even the arbitrary spotlight in the background transcends its tangibility and becomes a disembodied, enigmatic, watchful eye. The red almost portends danger about to intrude uninvited into the warm, yellow confines of Georges' house. Even in the dark, the various shades of turquoise and green and brown and yellow on the house are clearly visible.

Here, the dream-like haziness of the lighting we witnessed in the previous still becomes an all-embracing, expansive sea that immerses and caresses the entire frame. In most arthouse films that make use of coloured, neon lighting (Tom Twyker's Run Lola Run, Cam Archer's Wild Tigers I Have Known, Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats etc., the lighting is often harsh and abrasive. Here, the lighting is no less striking, but it is soft and gorgeous rather than excessively lurid and gawdy. It's a refreshing change, bestows an immediate stylistic recognizability and ties in too wonderfully with the disjointed surrealism of the narrative.

But the beauty of lighting is not all Resnais wants to extol; colour, as observed in the previous two shots as well, is an important visual element here, not only stylistically but thematically. The film, in its entirety, is a celebration of life in all its unpredictability and elasticity, and in this scene, Resnais passionately and sensuously captures the beauty of an obligatory house chore. It's arbitrary placement within the narrative is itself important because it is one of many instances where Resnais eschews plot linearity for a gloriously indulgent celebration of the quotidian.

Here, Resnais drenches the tired 'family dinner' scene with warm, fuzzy, homely orange lighting, painting a portrait of utopian idealism. Yet, it is in this scene that Georges has a rendezvous (of sorts) with his mistress (of sorts) Marguerite, and that Georges' son insults his father's surname. The irony is quite self-evident, and lighting is cardinal in the bestowal of this added dimension. The bigger implication is of how the world at large (represented by the half-witted policemen) falsely perceives Georges to be living a perfect life. He has a lasting, functional marriage, money, a big-ass house, grandchildren, a seemingly wholesome family, yet his life is so wrought with loneliness and ennui that he turns to an imaginary lover to satisfy his need for something different, something immediately meaningful.

But Resnais is too youthful, too romantic and too ironic to lament life's pains without too simultaneously, self-knowingly, celebrating its mundane minutiae. Even an unclean lawn mower with grass residue scattered hastily across its prodigious body has an ethereal, mesmerizing beauty. Scenes like this and the extreme close-up of paint being slathered against concrete suggest the endless beauty of life -- if only we are wise enough to open our eyes to it.

Again, this is a celebration of the little things, except this time it is (characteristically) more strange than pretty. When Georges walks to a police station, the hyperactive camera stealthily tracks his movements from his car until he steps through the police station door, at which point the camera bizarrely lingers instead on a trash can outside it. This is mostly just Resnais having fun; he knows that we expect him to follow through with the tracking shot, and purposely subverts our expectations, because, as with all of his films, he fluidly and unexpectedly interrupts conventional scenes with unexpected twists and plot progressions and transitions.

In fact, the first 30 minutes or so of the film is solely dedicated to disturbing and undermining cinematic tradition, a testament to the endlessness of human ingenuity and creativity. The narration is gloriously self-aware, continuously tempting us with slices of unoriginality but then immediately overturning our expectations with brilliant turns of phrase and often outright strange plot progressions. This part of the film, in its very deliberate, self-knowing eschewal of all predictability, is endlessly surprising, fiercely inventive, and specially catered for those who (like me) obnoxiously attempt to anticipate dialogue and plot. Also, I really love how the narration here is refreshingly unassuming and styled as a real-time stream of consciousness; it’s almost child-like in its gentle, sensual laboriousness. Arthouse films so often tend to be esoteric and philosophical, and perennially revolve around the bigger questions of existentialism and love and humanity, and because Resnais tackles something far more tangible and far more pertinent — beauty — Wild Grass at once becomes startlingly relevant and refreshing.

Again, unlike most art films, this film actually really, really fun moments. The scene where Josépha calls Maguerite out of concern for her health and Maguerite responds in a droning, deadpan monotone while the camera hypnotically documents the movements of a rocking chair is particularly wonderful. The scene where the camera focuses judgmentally on Josépha’s slutty boots. The scene where Georges dramatically reaches out to Maguerite in a pseudo-illicit embrace and the 21st Century Fox theme music emphatically swells in the foreground as the camera rapidly zooms in. The scene where Georges dramatically reinvents the encounter between Marguerite and her neighbour as a campy film noir. The scene where a farmer with extensive knowledge of aeroplanes ponders the legality of performing aircraft aerobatics in a civilian flight zone. The scene where Maguerite is dramatically recreated as the stock protagonist of an evil dentist horror show.

But this is not a particularly good movie; at least not by Resnais’ standards. To all those unfamiliar with Alain Resnais, he is one of greatest, most revered (I hold him in higher regard than his more widely acclaimed contemporary Jean-Luc Godard) directors in French cinema, and was instrumental in the establishment of the French New Wave in the 1960s (he was fucking 88 years old when he made Wild Grass, a testament to his youthfulness, vibrancy and endless ingenuity). He, along with Godard and some other obscure French directors, essentially pioneered the notion of the Auteur, one who makes a film as an author with stylistic and thematic conventions and not as a faceless storyteller. Before David Lynch took the arthouse scene by storm with his debut film Eraserhead, Resnais was the face of surrealist cinema. Resnais is the original weirdo of film. And as such, this movie, while it does have some wonderful moments, is not nearly in the league of Resnais’ best work. But even when compared to other brilliant arthouse films (Mullholland Drive, The Future even) this doesn’t really hold its own. For example, it’s not made particularly clear why Maguerite calls Georges after spending half the film chasing him away (and successfully managing to do so, with the help of some painfully stupid police officers). It’s a very nonsensical, improbable turn of events, and not the good kind either. One assumes that Georges and Suzanne are still married solely for the preservation of habit, but this isn’t really explained either; Resnais would much rather indulge himself in searching cracks in the road for random grass patches than do something necessary like that.

In true spirit of arthouse cinema, which, in its conformity to convention is inherently surprising and perhaps even uninspired — although in all fairness Resnais probably does it for the irony — the narrative in Wild Grass is interjected sporadically by numerous visual motifs (the flying handbag, the wild grass, the traffic lights, the neon-drenched roadtrips), except unlike the best art films they don’t really add much to the film except more aesthetic beauty. There scenes where Georges is seen walking backwards in a dream-like state into a cinema as a circular frame closes in on him the traffic sequences are also quite aimless. The celebration of neon lighting in the wordless driving scenes start out being wonderful and inspired, but then Resnais opts to drag them on for the longest time, and to insistently stuff as many of these as he can into the film. Again, he probably does it for the kicks, but the audience is not invited for the ride, and it just comes across as tiresome and boring.

There are a few moments where the film abruptly becomes supremely hard to follow, becomes seemingly nonsensical, but at least these moments are bursting with inventiveness and are endearing in their passionate refusal to be constrained by the modalities of logic and convention. In fact, I would have liked this film a lot more if it were a lot more whimsical and a lot more experimental with the plot progression. Resnais works best when he is being self-indulgent and optimally weird, because his eccentricities are what make his films such joyous, masturbatory romps. But, alas, too often the movie meanders aimlessly, too slow to enjoy and too repetitive to really get into it. When his characters are swept up in their ridiculous imagination or their tension-filled encounters, the movie finds its niche, but these sequences are too few and too far between, and it takes a lot of speed and whimsicality to sustain a film predicated on unpredictability. When the film does work though, it has a certain exuberance of spirit, an inimitable passion for cinema, and that, above all, is really what makes this film wonderful. Ultimately, I’m really glad that I got back into movies with Wild Grass, because more than any movie I’ve watched recently, it’s a celebration of arthouse impenetrability, of arbitrariness and creativity and possibility, and that’s a really, really special thing.

The ending sequence has a random farmer’s daughter, who we see for the first time there, ask the question “Mommy, when I’m a cat, will I be able to eat cat munchies?” It’s gloriously random, indulgently nonsensical, passionately weird. If only the entire film were executed with such speed and idiosyncrasy.

KevinScale Rating: 3.5/5

Introspection #1: Kevin, Blog Culture and the Indie World

WARNING: SELF-INDULGENT LOSERDOM AHEAD.

You’re the kind of girl I like/because you’re empty/and I’m empty/and we can never quarantine the past — Pavement, Gold Soundz

So I haven’t been watching movies in a while (and by a while, I mean > 4 days), and I had started to write an analytical disquisition of sorts (I would like to flatter myself with self-bestowed intellectual authority) about Sofia Coppola’s importance in the film industry, but I just couldn’t go through with it; I’m assuming it’s because I have a lot of things I’m sorting out in my personal life (I always do, apparently, maybe because I’m growing my hair out for the first time in 73 years. Yes, I have, in actual fact, been alive that long) and this post is to facilitate that process. Usually, my self-indulgence is strictly limited to witty banter, and on many occasions I have quite openly admonished blog culture (I refer to the ubiquitous tendency for teenagers to curse wildly at their parents, or to lament the Abril Despedacado-esque tragedy that is their lives), but I really do feel like I need to get stuff off of my chest, although you most certainly will not have the misfortune of me launching , unbridled, into a self-pitying diatribe, nor will you hear me curse or even complain about my parents, who are, without a doubt, the two most important, most wonderful people in my life. Apart from me and my Swedish alter ego, Ingmar, that is.

Ain’t it like most people/I’m no different/we like to talk on things we don’t know about — The Avett Brothers, Ten Thousand Words

(And omg yes, I have written the above paragraph in one take and without the use of a thesaurus or whatever; I have been steadfastly plowing through Angela Carter’s ridiculously extravagant Nights at the Circus and her lavish use of vocabulary unfortunately — because many show-offs I know are secretly stupid and to be affiliated with them is almost hurtful — encourages the same linguistic excess in her readers.)

Grab a calculator/and fix yourself — Nicolas Jaar, Space Is Only Noise If You Can See

We’ll start at the beginning. In Sec. 3, during BSC (Beijing Satellite Campus, this 6-week immersion program in Beijing where we were made to listen to Chinese women talk about Chinese culture and bargain with smug shop vendors), my friend Ming introduced me to the likes of Regina Spektor, Bjork, Kate Bush, Charlotte Martin, Lykke Li, Amy Winehouse, Tori Amos etc. among other artists. Before this, I was an avid follower of Billboard (and I remained so, until last year, actually) and the only artist I really listened to was Mariah Carey. I mean, I liked Prince too but I think only because he commanded a certain artistic integrity that validated my music taste. Obviously, the music videos of Kate Bush dancing provocatively on a double bass (See: Babooshka music video) and of Bjork screaming in a dark room (I forget the song…#lulz) were incredibly strange –by any standards– but were even more so to me because until then I thought that a music video meant an aimless, self-indulgent distillation of an artist’s sex appeal (Watch: Any post-1997 Mariah “My Boobs Are Fucking Hyoooooge” Carey videos). I got into some of the early Kate Bush albums (Lionheart and The Kick Inside are still endlessly surprising listens) but I mean, that was about it. I didn’t really think about its appeal in like, sociological terms and shit. Then the following year, with Ming’s ever-growing presence and influence, I started downloading indie rock playlists. I remember discovering Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea and thinking what the flying fuckkk it was so weird. There were some awesome moments, though, like “For Our Elegant Caste” by Of Montreal, “Britney’s Tears” by The Steeples, “Billionaires” by “Your Twenties”, “Letting Go” by Team Waterpolo etc. (btw you should check them out lulz), and they were so cool and infectious that I at once developed an irrevocable interest in indie music. I justified this interest with my desire to be ‘open-minded’, but in all honesty, I think it pertained to my growing relationship with my friends (I had friends then) and my need to preserve a safely impenetrable sense of self.

And says, ‘How does it feel to be such a freak’/and you say ‘Impossible’/as he hands you a bone — Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man

I think I’m probably the most introverted person I know. In primary school, I didn’t participate in PE lessons because of my eye (something that changed in secondary school, although my participation rendered me no less inept), and I spent them inventing awesome adventures for myself in which I was Firen and my best friend (I didn’t have one then) was Freeze. And then I started writing some stupid fantasy novel and made it into a cool Fighting Fantasy-esque CYOA game in which I made my friends (I had a few; turns out I was always adorable and charming) go on adventures with me. Perhaps because they too were subconsciously disillusioned by the world, they were always (I say this with pride and insistent self-validation) happy to come along for the ride. I was particularly proud of myself because a boy named Kah Khang, who was decidedly an outsider in his all-out geekiness and his tendency to cry if he didn’t get above 90 marks for a test, was part of this game and he felt happy for being included. He even wrote an essay entitled “My Best Friends” in which I was one of three main characters *smugness* But anyway the point is that I was always a person who had his head up in the clouds and who never really lived in the real world (woah Matrix reference? SO DEEP), probably because I had never really felt accepted. It’s not like I was always ostracized or anything, I’m too awesome for that, but at the same time it’s like there was no one else to discuss Charmed with or to share books with (I know this sounds zestfully euphemistic but I was fucking 12, so stop).

Do I have to scream in your face/I’ve been dodging lamps and vegetables — of Montreal, The Past Is A Grotesque Animal

And because I so desired to be accepted, I thought interests were instruments of community more than anything else, and thus I was more than willing to compromise on my interests (I only read my Charmed books outside of school, lols jk I was parading around with them by the armfuls. But srsly) because I didn’t see myself as an individual if I were not part of a community. And I think this, ultimately, is why the indie world appealed so much to me. It represents a world where people are decidedly different (“alternative” is the inescapable word in indie culture: alternative rock, alternative rap, alternative jazz, alternative neo-soul-folk-hop-electro-bash-what-hiiiiiiiyi) from the average, boring person, and are allowed to ‘belong’ solely because of that incredibly general difference. It’s a very embracing, accepting culture, and I think it’s also a very non-judgmental one. I’m ignoring hipster culture here, but then again there wasn’t really a hipster culture then anyway.

I’ve been looking for something else/duel it, duel it, duel it, juggle it, duel it, duel it — Phoenix, Lisztomania

And in Sec 4, I was feeling more at home with the people around me than I had ever felt in my entire life. The table. The gang. The BFFs. I had like a routine and a default group of friends I actually liked. And it was then that indie culture revealed itself to be something else entirely. It was an excuse for impenetrability, an exercise in reflexive self-defense. Turns out, the more the relationships with the people around me grew, the more I didn’t want to be understood, the more I shunned relatability, maybe because I wasn’t used to it, maybe because I hated myself and I thought if people knew what kind of a person I was they wouldn’t be as accepting or as nice even. I don’t really know still. I remember liking Half Nelson and Little Miss Sunshine before I really even knew why. I was just supposed to like it, so I claimed I did — not wholly untruthfully, in my defense — and over time I really did, maybe because my act was so convincing I inevitably too became convinced, maybe simply because they were such good movies (they really are — even if Half Nelson has a predictable plot and Little Miss Sunshine is occasionally bogged down by its caricature-y characters that Sundance so adores *smugness*) that they encourage instinctive rather than reasoned love, maybe because with a rich (albeit superficial) social identity I thought I could deflect the attention away from my perceived monstrosity and onto something that was far more interesting and engrossing. Regardless, I became increasingly fixated with the indie art scene, and at one point obsessed over digital surrealist art simply because it was colourful and different and begged inclusion into my numerous claims of individuality. And so the Kevin of 2010 was born, complete with a witty, interesting, insistently strange persona that was much too happy with his own creation to consider self-reflection or self-awareness. During the trip to the US for Operation Mozzie, for example, at one point I played Taylor Swift songs from my phone and disengaged myself from communal conversation — which, in regrettable retrospect, is something I did quite a lot — and proclaimed my antisocial tendencies insuperable. I think that was just another instance of staying true to the ‘insistently strange’ part. In truth, I don’t think there’s much to me at all. I overanalyze everything, I make mistakes, sometimes I make people laugh and sometimes I don’t, I like being intellectual even if my intelligence possibly abnegates that right — but that’s the kind of stuff everyone too experiences. There’s nothing particularly special about my experience, and I think I’m okay with that.

I feel like an artist/who’s lost his touch/who likes himself in his art/but not his art too much — Darren Criss, Human

And in J1, I was involved in Dramafeste and the Mid-year production, and for some ridiculous reason, I thought I had crossed the threshold from acceptance to celebration, when there was, in all frankness, very little to celebrate. So I can I say a few lines; I do that everyday. Everyone does that everyday. I don’t mean this in a self-deprecating pseudo-humble way, I’m not that noble. I just mean, what’s the point of having so many happy people around you that you don’t really know but hug anyway because apparently you give hugs when they don’t even matter and you’ve very carelessly handled the relationships that do? I really don’t want to sound like some fucking self-important teenager who knows nothing yet who necessarily has the trite epiphany: WHAT’S THE POINT OF DOING ALL THAT, IF I DON’T EVEN HAVE THE ‘THINGS THAT MATTER’ *temper tantrum*, because I’ve always been very fortunate in that nearly everything that mattered or that I needed, I had presented to me, what I never had and still don’t is the wisdom to act on this glorious privilege. In primary school, I had my fucking game. In secondary school, I had Melvin and Bradley and the table gang. In JC, I had acceptance and good friends, and at the end I even got acceptable grades, considering a lot of things that happened, that got me into UCLA, which I’m learning quickly is the home to a lot of awesome, weird people I think I would really love to be around — on top of its academic prestige and all that bullshit. I think the problem is inarguably and undoubtedly me, and I say this with self-knowing certainty and frankness, and not with self-pity. I think the only way I can approach relationships is with reciprocation, because it so clearly defines the boundaries in which a relationship functions. If you don’t wanna talk to me, I would convince myself that I too do not want your conversation. If you ask me to take time out to meet you, and then you spend most of your time with other friends you claim aren’t as important, I wouldn’t know how to deal with it, and I wouldn’t understand the terms of the relationship anymore, because, I guess, I don’t really work that way.

I’m not trying to forget you/I just like to be alone — Panda Bear, Bros

Being an introvert means that one is really careful with who one chooses to be close with, and with any sign of destabilization or potential emotional conflict one instinctively is made to retreat, because once the emotional attachment is made, it can’t be broken — for better or worse. I don’t know whether it’s something I can change, and I might if I had like a manual or something, but then again I don’t really know whether I want to. I’ve always been baffled by how some people smother their inner emotional conflicts so brazenly and so recklessly on other people in Facebook posts or in blog posts or on Twitter feeds (another reason why I’m against blog culture, btw), like don’t you want to save a little for yourself? If you’re sharing everything with everybody, how can you even differentiate between a friend and a close friend or whatever? It just doesn’t make sense. But I guess maybe I see it as a negative thing not because it doesn’t make sense, but because maybe I wish I had that kind of openness. Even in this post, in which I think I am inarguably being the most transparent I have ever been, there is so much that I could say, but that I want to preserve, to keep for myself and for, maybe, people that matter, because the things not shared are special, and besides, isn’t it just kind of vulgar to just release everything special and personal to the world? Even if not for the desire to honor that untouched, unjudged specialness, I don’t know if I even could. I mean, is it even possible to distill one’s frustrations into words, even if with the enthusiastic assistance of sociological terminology or psychoanalytical categories, without them losing their fundamental meanings — without which they would ineluctably be rendered hollow and limp and meaningless? I don’t think so, and besides, even if one could, one would only be adding unnecessary burden, to oneself because articulation necessitates an almost brutal self-confrontation, and to the people around one because confessions necessitate empathy — at least in the human ones. And for those reasons, I really do prefer reticence, and I don’t really see why anyone who respects the people around them enough to not smother them with their decidedly sadistic personalities wouldn’t either. Sometimes, I think it’s asking a little too much to want a listening ear (unless, of course, the other party is willing; but I’m referring specifically here to broadcast culture, in which the pseudo-torments of the pseudo-tortured are aimlessly pontificated in a masturbatory stab at self-consolation). There’s enough pain in everyone’s life as it is. Besides, there is so much more sincerity and power and beauty in wordless, mutual understanding, with sympathy communicable only by humanity and gentleness and kindness (I’m kind of paraphrasing Charlie Chaplin at the end lols; I expect an award for my authoritative command of unoriginality). Words are much too deceiving and too easily manipulable to mean anything anymore.

I wear a coat of feelings and they are loud/I’ve been having good days — Animal Collective, The Purple Bottle

Maybe, as numerous Facebook quizzes have smugly declared, I’m a romantic — and it’s not like I’m not particularly proud of this; it’s just a fact. I most certainly am not one of those half-wits who are like I’M A ROMANTIC SO LIKE I LIKE CUDDLING AND LIKE REALLY CHEESY POP SONGS GIGGLE GIGGLE. Btw what the fuck is up with Jason Mraz’s new single? I love Jason Mraz, and I 4shiz balked at its supreme, unadulterated shittiness. Anyway. I just mean that, I guess because I function most comfortably within my internal world, and it is so hard for me to allow people to be part of it, I naturally only expect like one or maybe two people to really understand me in my entirety, not that I’m particularly complex but I think my efforts to be impenetrable have definitely (albeit, perhaps, unfortunately) paid off, and it takes explanation from the source to really get anywhere close.

Fuck gold/I’m a platinum digger — M.I.A., 10 Dollar

And here’s where I want to talk about my internal world. Even within the indie world, I have come to learn, there are various echelons of indie-ness. There are the Little Miss Sunshine/She&Him indie pop necessities, artists and things that one knows simply to validate one’s indie-ness, and then there are the Alain Resnais/The Music Tapes-ish kind of all-out opacity, things that you know because you’re either really, really passionate about the arts, you’d like to think yourself as one like so, or perhaps just because like David Bowie you’re so consumed by your dedication to your strangeness and unfathomability (be them real or imagined) that you instinctively possess knowledge of things so esoteric that film professors and experimental indie musicians pause to consider their own artistic credibility in your presence (I am proud to declare that my taste in movies has left a film major speechless with ignorance. SCORE). I, obviously, am of the latter kind, because I think the world has become so transparent (and blog culture is definitely a testament to that) that I feel the need to construct a safe place, an impenetrable place where I can explore and feel unjudged, a place empty of unqualified opinions that invariably possess the power to destabilize regardless of validity or credibility.

I’m in love all ri-i-i-ight/with my crazy beautiful life/with the parties/the disasters/with my friends all pretty and plastered — Ke$ha, Crazy Beautiful Life

I think the progression that indie culture has made today is particularly interesting, one that I would never have expected. Foster the People, for example, have taken (OMG BRITISH PLURALIZATION OF THE GROUP WHAT) the pop charts by storm with their single Pumped Up Kicks, and the current #1 single right now is an indie pop collaboration between .fun and Janelle Monae. It’s pretty awesome, yeah, but ridiculous at the same time. Both songs are catchy (although I don’t think either are particularly memorable, but that’s just me, apparently), but they don’t really sound anything like Kelly Clarkson or Taylor Swift or Demi Lovato or any artist with Dr Luke productions and unabashedly formulaic songwriting. At the same time, Pitchfork, smug, perennial publicist of obscure, experimental indie bands since the dawn of Internet journalism, is writing reviews for the likes of Rihanna, Beyonce and Lauryn Hill, and praising them for their ingenuity. Even Drake gets away with experimental sampling and minimalist downtempo electronic productions and still manages to constantly stay on the top of the charts. Indie and mainstream cultures are gently, gradually colliding (for lack of a more unoriginal word), and soon quirky, strange indie pop outfits will be ubiquitous. I guess I kind of appreciate how people are becoming more open-minded towards different sounds (again, even if the sounds aren’t particularly good; I don’t really understand Foster the People at all) but at the same time this conflation is undermining the regolith on which indie culture stands. When indie pop outfits become mainstream pop outfits, where will those who favor impenetrability but who instinctively and helplessly repudiate the exponential strangeness concomitant with the more opaque depths of the indie world go? Or maybe that’s why hipster culture is pivotal to indie culture; in a time where the safety and smallness of the indie community is being threatened, one can defend oneself with irony: Oh but like my love for Foster the People, even after they WENT MAINSTREAM is like, ironic. Then again I really don’t want the indie world to be entirely relegated to the hipster world, which to me is the pinnacle of inauthenticity — but then again I have spent much of this post proclaiming my inauthenticity, so I’ll just shut my pie-hole. And my mouth.

I can’t do what ten people tell me to do/so I guess I’ll just remain the same — Otis Redding, Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay

So I guess I’m not authentic, and my interests are probably the walls of my safe haven, but really, is anyone respectable authentic? Isn’t inauthenticity the price to pay for self-awareness? In knowing how you are viewed, everything you do naturally feels like a modification not of the essential self, but of the perception of the self; the self is untouched, or if it is we wouldn’t really know, would we? Sure, people too obnoxious for self-reflection or too nescient to understand the meaning of ‘nescient’ (you know who you are, fuckers) might be the only authentic ones here, but who really wants to hang out with them anyway? Or even if they are, I don’t really know how that affects anything. If you’re an asshole, you’re an asshole, and I will stay the fuck away, regardless of whether or not you are authentically or inauthentically one. Maybe the only thing that is authentic about anyone is their comfort with their identity; if you’re comfortable with being a pretentious, pseudo-intellectual prick (why, honey, I most certainly am) then you’re probably really interesting. If you’re comfortable with being profanely boring, you’re probably a really chill person and we should be best friends. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the indie fixation with authenticity (M.I.A. and Lana Del Rey, among others, have been victim of this pointless obsession) is painfully stupid, and M.I.A., as she does with nearly everything else, should attack it in true iconoclastic spirit.

Why’s it so hard to tell you what I want/why can’t you just read my mind — Alanis Morissette, These R The Thoughts

A lot of the time I feel like there is so much I don’t know. I mean, I’m working towards political awareness and proficiency in Spanish, and I try to be understanding and good, and often I don’t succeed, and I can’t even point out funny-sounding cities on a map and I don’t know how to deal with (and god — without the capital G, mind you, Kevin The Subtle Iconoclast at work here — willing, love) people without hurting them in the process. I don’t know how to convey my feelings on a daily basis, and it just seems so much easier to release them in dramatic paroxysms of tears and snot…except it’s unnecessarily hurtful, and I really do try my best to avoid drama; my weekly dosage of Breaking Bad has plenty of that already. I really want to be happy, not in general because that’s a myth created by religion in a self-justifying circulus in probando to bolster the beams of conformity, but like with myself. I don’t want to be self-conscious all the time. I want to be around people whom I think are the shit and who too think that I am the shit. And I don’t want to write a fucking 4000-word essay everytime I want to convey my opinions, because whatever this post would have you believe about Kevin The Sympathetic Person Underneath The Persona, often he just can’t muster the strength nor the energy to seek the very things he so claims he wants. Maybe ambivalence is his territory. At least that’s indie enough for him *smirks*

If you wasn’t so ugly/I’d put my dick in your face/dick in your face/PUT MY DICK IN YOUR FACEEEEEEE — Nicki Minaj, Come On A Cone