12. Wish You Were Here &..

Lyrics

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue sky's from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
And how we found
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.


Out of all the great classic rock groups Pink Floyd is perhaps the most unique one. More then perhaps any other famous band they tried to experiment with their songs and do things nobody else really did. Pink Floyd is also one of the few bands I think who were more interested in rock as a form of art then as a form of entertainment. This is all very admirable, but I am not really a fan of their music. Their songs don't really connect with me. I do like Wish You Were Here a bit more then their other songs though. It's about Syd Barrett, a founding member of Pink Floyd who was their lead vocalist and songwriter. Unfortunately he had to leave them because of a combination of drug abuse and mental illness. I didn't want to choose a movie dealing with madness again though. But I think that without any background knowledge the song can also be interpreted to be about someone returning from war and having trouble to adjust to normal life again. So I chose a classic movie about men returning home from the World War II. Admittedly this is not the greatest link between a song and movie, but it was a very good movie and I don't know when I would have seen it otherwise.

The Movie: The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)

This is a very good movie that caught me by surprise. I knew that it was a classic movie about three men returning home after fighting in World War 2. I expected that it would be an incredibly dramatic film in which the returned soldiers would have to overcome enormous psychological problems and other such stuff. I expected it also to be sometimes insufferably patriotic and full of heightened melodrama. None of this is true. The movie is very down to earth, feels incredibly modern, and even finds room for some comic relief and light romance. It is also often very realistic. The scenes where the three soldiers return home to see their family again after such a long time could not be better handled and executed. They get everything right. The anxiety you have when you'll see someone again you haven't seen in a long time, the relief and happiness when you see that person again, the blissful first day(s) when you and your old friends and family come together and are just happy to be together without worrying about what will come next, and the end of the blissful days when you have to start living normal life again.

The three soldiers to return are Fred Derry, Al Stephenson and Homer Parrish. Al returns to his wife of 20 years and their children. He needs some time to get used to his wife and children (who he finds have grown considerably, both physically and mentally). Fred can't get a good job after returning from the war. This is the cause of tensions between him and his demanding wife, whom he married just 20 days before the war. On top of this he falls in love with Peggy, Al's daughter. Homers story is the saddest. He has lost both his arms in the war, but his problems are psychological. He can control the mechanic hooks he got in the place of his arms very well. He is mostly afraid of the reactions of his loved ones, including his girlfriend Wilma. He pushes her away because he is convinced she wouldn't want to marry him now. This story has some added poignancy, because Homer is played by Harold Russell, an untrained actor who really lost his arms in the war. It's not much of a surprise that in the end everything will end happily for everyone involved. Yet the movie is never boring. Mostly because these are some of the most convincingly real and pleasant characters I've ever seen in a Hollywood movie. That's quite an achievement for a movie from 1946.

The role of the women in this movie is pretty interesting. During the war the men were fighting abroad so the women at home had to keep the country running. Many of them had to do jobs usually reserved for men. They did this quite successfully and this made them feel more independent. This is reflected in the movie. The women are on the same level as, and sometimes even above, the men. They have their own ideas, they can take care of the family, they are quite simply empowered. It's noticeable for example that not only does Peggy drive a car, but she is behind the wheel even with a man in the car. In fact I don't remember ever seeing a woman being driven by a man in this film. And when the tensions between Fred and his wife become too much, it is her who demands a divorce. The women in this movie are more empowered then they are in many modern movies.

In the IMDB trivia section on this movie I read that the director absolutely hated the score composed for the movie. Well, he was right, it is absolutely horrible. It is incredibly bombastic, and it never fits in the movie. It feels as if it is composed for some completely different movie. On top of this it isn't even pretty to listen to it. This is pretty annoying and can sometimes pull you right out of the movie. Still, that should not stop anyone from watching this movie. It is really very good.

11. Clocks &..

Lyrics

The lights go out and I can't be saved
Tides that I tried to swim against
Have brought me down upon my knees
Oh I beg, I beg and plead, singing

Come out of the things unsaid
Shoot an apple off my head and a
Trouble that can't be named
A tiger's waiting to be tamed, singing

You are, you are

Confusion that never stops
The closing walls and the ticking clocks gonna
Come back and take you home
I could not stop, that you now know, singing

Come out upon my seas
Cursed missed opportunities am I
A part of the cure
Or am I part of the disease, singing

You are, you are
You are, you are
You are, you are

And nothing else compares
And nothing else compares
And nothing else compares

You are, you are

Home, home, where I wanted to go
Home, home, where I wanted to go
Home, home, where I wanted to go (You are)
Home, home, where I wanted to go (You are)


Clocks is a fairly enjoyable song, just like most other songs by Coldplay. I am a bit surprised how this song is so high and even more surprised why Coldplay is considered to be a great band. I don't really see what's so special about any of their songs. Lyrically, this is a very vague song, and I had no idea how to make a really logical link between the song and a movie. The clip doesn't help either. All we see is Coldplay performing. But I remembered seeing a clip once from a movie by Roman Polanski in which the walls were closing in on Catherine Deneuve. Besides, I thought, it looks like a movie that might be just as vague as the song So I chose that film. While the movie isn't vague it turned out to be a better fit then I expected. It is about madness and it can be argued that the song also is about someone going, at least slightly, mad.

The Movie: Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)

After The Shining this is already the second movie I discuss that deals with the subject of madness. And in both movies the characters going mad are stuck in a confined space. In The Shining it was a hotel, here it is the apartment of Carole's (Catherine Deneuve) sister. I think that The Shining is a much better and more entertaining film with more virtuoso film making. But it is Repulsion that gives, I believe, a more realistic and more terrifying representation of madness. While in The Shining there was a supernatural reason for Jack to lose his mind, there is nothing supernatural in Repulsion. Carole lives among ordinary people with ordinary jobs who worry about ordinary things. There is no reason for her madness. She is losing her mind, simply because sometimes that happens to some people. At the end of the movie a hint is given for her madness, but it is still a pretty ambiguous hint.

It is clear from the start that Carole is not completely sane. She is repulsed by men and sex. She is kind of dating someone, but she hardly ever shows up to their appointments and is disgusted and unresponsive when he tries to kiss her. She always seems unsure of herself and completely insecure. Many European directors in the 1960's seemed to love to film scenes of women walking through the city, set to jazz/rock music. Polanski does that here too, but these scenes are not pointless. They serve to show how utterly terrified Carole is of the society around her. At the beginning she is still at least functional though. She has a job as a manicure in a beauty salon and has some sort of relationship with her colleagues and her sister with whom she lives. But when her sister leaves on a holiday with her boyfriend, Carole has to stay alone in the apartment and that's when she completely loses it. One can imagine that Carole is not an easy character to play. She doesn't have much dialogue and a lot of the time she is alone. Deneuve does a great job though.

Polanski manages to create suspense and terror by doing very simple things. In the first half of the movie we get a very clear sense of the geography of the apartment. We know how big each room is and how to get to each room. In the second half Polanski simply distorts the space in the apartment. Sometimes he films in such a way that rooms and halls seem larger then they are, and sometimes smaller. But even more impressive is his use of sound. While I have never gone insane, I have obviously been home alone. And when you are home alone you are more aware of sounds around you. A surprising sound can startle even a mentally stable person. The most scary sequence in this film is a short one in which practically nothing happens. Carole has heard a sound which has scared her and now she sits still in bed waiting to hear it again. We don't hear anything either, just wait for something to happen while Carole becomes more and more terrified and eventually hallucinates. I also don't remember seeing a film in which you heard so often the ringing of the telephone or the doorbell. For Carole this sound is extra terrifying. Not just because it is so startling and unexpected, but because it is an intrusion in her personal space. The ringing of a doorbell or a telephone means that a person wants to see you or talk to you. For Carole this has become a terrifying thought. She kills the two people to enter her apartment.