43. Bridge Over Troubled Water &...

Lyrics

When you're weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I will dry them all

I'm on your side
When times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you

I'll take your part
When darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

Sail on Silver Girl,
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way

See how they shine
If you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind


I am a huge fan of Paul Simon. He is a really great musician, who has written some of my favorite songs. I am not such a big fan though of his early career with Art Garfunkel. I like some of their songs, but I find many of them to be a bit bland, like this one. The song is considered to be one of the best songs about friendship, so the movie I chose is a movie about a friendship between two men. It is often considered to be not only the greatest movie about friendship, but one of the greatest movies ever made. It is admittedly not a very inspired or original choice.

The Movie: The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994)

The Shawshank Redemption, the seemingly perpetual number 1 movie on IMDB's list of the 250 best movies, is not the best movie ever made. It's also not the best movie of 1994. In fact, it is the fourth best movie of the Best Picture nominees that year. All of this shouldn't be seen as a knock on The Shawshank Redemption. It is very good. 1994 was simply a very strong year. I mean Speed, the best action movie ever made, isn't even in my top 5 of 1994. That doesn't mean that I am not surprised by it's enormous popularity. It's not so much that I am surprised that it is considered better than movies like Pulp Fiction or The Godfather part 2. I like those movies more, but I can easily understand why someone would prefer The Shawshank Redemption over those movies. No, I am surprised by how much more popular it seems to be than other similar movies that came out around that period, which I also would consider very good. By similar I mean movies about good people who try (and often improbably manage) to overcome the enormously dire situation they've found themselves in. Why, in other words, is The Shawshank Redemption so much more beloved than movies like Apollo 13, Forrest Gump or In The Name of the Father?

I don't know the answer to that question, but if I had to guess, it is because of the great empathy and understanding it has for its characters. I dislike using the phrase 'There, but for the grace of God, go I/we'. But I think that phrase does explain the popularity of the movie. The movie makes unambiguously clear that most of the people in this prison are guilty of a crime. But it understands that not everyone who is guilty of a crime is necessarily a bad, evil person. Good, decent people we can easily identify with can, for some reason, commit a horrendous crime that could ruin their (and other peoples') lives forever. That doesn't mean that we should treat them inhumanely. There is, I think, a very crucial scene at the beginning in which a warden beats up a prisoner to death. The movie asks us to be sorry and feel empathy for the killed prisoner. We don't know him much and we don't know what he did to end up in prison. But I think that's the point. It doesn't matter whether he was rightfully in prison or not, or whether he committed a serious or a small crime. He is a human being and he does not deserve to die. I have read once or twice that this is a pretty unrealistic representation of a prison. And that there are actually many bad people in prison. Such criticism is stupid. The movie doesn't want to present a realistic view of a prison. It's more a metaphor. Besides it is an adaptation of a Stephen King book. I am not very familiar with his books, but I am pretty sure realism isn't their main concern.

What I also like about this movie is that while it asks us to believe that Andy is innocent, it is left relatively ambiguous whether he really is. At the beginning we see him sitting in a car holding a gun, looking as if he is planning to do something with it. We don't see what he does next and we cut to the courthouse where he is on trial for murdering his wife and her lover. The attorney does make a pretty compelling case for Andy's guilt. Later on a fellow prisoner tells a story about how he was in prison with another man who seemingly committed the crime Andy is imprisoned for. This seems a pretty huge coincidence, and the warden's doubt that the prisoner may have made up that story is actually pretty reasonable, and very much in accordance with the character of the prisoner. This ambiguity is not only interesting because it adds a layer to Andy and the movie, but also because it is very much connected to the point I've raised in the previous paragraph. The movie wants us to have empathy for people and to believe in their goodness. The only real reason we have to believe that Andy is innocent is the fact that he says so and that he seems to be (and acts like) a very decent, good person. But he has a motive, no real alibi and he certainly is capable of doing unthinkable, improbable acts. After all, not many people would manage to escape from a heavily-guarded prison by cracking through the walls for 20 years with a small rock hammer, and then crawling through stinking mud. The scene in which he escapes, by the way, is a great scene, not so much because we are so happy for him, but because of the ingenuity and the sheer guts of the escape.

There are many other great scenes. The fate of the institutionalized Brooks who can't live anymore out of prison is quite poignant. The opera scene is pretty great too of course. And I love the fact that the not guilty Andy commits his first actual crime in prison, whitewashing money for the warden. Lastly, and I'd almost say naturally, the portrayal of the friendship of Red and Andy is genuinely moving and wonderful. We really believe that they are friends who need and care deeply about each other. But all of this wouldn't work without the great actors. This is actually Morgan Freeman's best performance I believe. And Tim Robbins had a pretty great and versatile 1994. Besides being great in this drama, he also acted in the screwball comedies I.Q. and The Hudsucker Proxy. The only thing that doesn't really work is their reunion at the end. I am glad that the movie choose to reunite them. They deserved a happy ending. It just felt a bit contrived. Red has to basically solve some sort of elaborate puzzle to find out where Andy is. Their reunion would have worked better I believe if the movie didn't make Red's search for Andy so complicated.

42. Het Dorp &...

Lyrics

Thuis heb ik nog een ansichtkaart

(I still have a postcard at home)
Waarop een kerk een kar met paard

(With on it a church and horse carriage)
Een slagerij J. van der Ven

(A butchery J. van der Ven)
Een kroeg, een juffrouw op de fiets

(A tavern, a lady on a bike)
Het zegt u hoogstwaarschijnlijk niets

(It most probably doesn't mean a thing to you)
Maar het is waar ik geboren ben

(But this is where I am born)
Dit dorp, ik weet nog hoe het was

(This village, I still remember the way it was)
De boerenkind'ren in de klas

(The farmers' children in the class)
Een kar die ratelt op de keien

(A carriage, rattling on the boulders)
Het raadhuis met een pomp ervoor

(The town house with a pump in front)
Een zandweg tussen koren door

(A sandy road through the corn)
Het vee, de boerderijen

(The cattle, the farms)

En langs het tuinpad van m'n vader

(And along my father's garden path)
Zag ik de hoge bomen staan

(I saw the high trees standing tall)
Ik was een kind en wist niet beter

(I was a child and didn't know better)
Dan dat 't nooit voorbij zou gaan

(Thinking this would never end)

Wat leefden ze eenvoudig toen

(They lived so simple back then)
In simp'le huizen tussen groen

(In simple houses surrounded by green)
Met boerenbloemen en een heg

(With farmer flowers and a hedge)
Maar blijkbaar leefden ze verkeerd

(But they apparently lived wrongly)
Het dorp is gemoderniseerd

(The village is modernised)
En nou zijn ze op de goede weg

(And now they are on the road ahead)
Want ziet, hoe rijk het leven is

(Because, see how wonderful life is)
Ze zien de televisiequiz

(They see the television quiz)
En wonen in betonnen dozen

(And live in concrete boxes)
Met flink veel glas, dan kun je zien

(With lots of glass, so you can see)
Hoe of het bankstel staat bij Mien

(How Mien's couch fits in)
En d'r dressoir met plastic rozen

(And her dresser with plastic roses)

En langs het tuinpad van m'n vader

(And along my father's garden path)
Zag ik de hoge bomen staan

(I saw the high trees standing tall)
Ik was een kind en wist niet beter

(I was a child and didn't know better)
Dan dat 't nooit voorbij zou gaan

(Thinking this would never end)


De dorpsjeugd klit wat bij elkaar

(The village youths hang around together)
In minirok en beatle-haar

(In short dresses and Beatle-hair)
En joelt wat mee met beat-muziek

(And shouts some beat-music)
Ik weet wel het is hun goeie recht

(I know, they have every right to)
De nieuwe tijd, net wat u zegt

(Modern times, as you say)
Maar het maakt me wat meancholiek

(But it makes me a bit melancholic)
Ik heb hun vaders nog gekend

(I used to know their fathers)
Ze kochten zoethout voor een cent

(They bought licorice for a cent)
Ik zag hun moeders touwtjespringen

(I saw their mothers jumping rope)
Dat dorp van toen, het is voorbij

(The village from those times, it's gone)
Dit is al wat er bleef voor mij

(This is all that's left for me)
Een ansicht en herinneringen

(A postcard and memories)
Toen ik langs het tuinpad van m'n vader

(When I saw along my father's garden path)
De hoge bomen nog zag staan

(The high trees standing tall)
Ik was een kind, hoe kon ik weten

(I was a child, how could I know)
Dat dat voorgoed voorbij zou gaan

(It would all end forever)


It is quite astonishing, for both good and bad reasons, that this song is placed so high in the top 2000. Hell, I am surprised it is placed at all in the list. The movie I chose to correspond with this song is the first Dutch movie ever to be nominated for an Oscar for best foreign-language film.
  
The Movie: Village by the River (Dorp aan de rivier) (Fons Rademakers, 1958)

While watching this movie, the thought that Wim Sonneveld's song was inspired by this movie seriously crossed my mind. I can't find if this is true, but if it is, Sonneveld slightly misunderstood the movie. Yes, the movie has a lot of love for the villagers and the village life in probably the 1930's, but this is not a purely nostalgic movie. There is a cynicism buried beneath the love. And while it gives a relatively rosy view of life in the village, it understands that this life can't and shouldn't last. Changes are inevitable and that's probably for the better. I thought it was really very good,

The movie really have a plot. It basically consists of a series of vignettes, most of them revolving around the village doctor. Which is fitting. It is after all set in a time in which doctors were considered heroes and the most important people in the community. They were highly respected and their opinion was seen as the absolute truth. If the doctor told you to do something, you'd do it. While the movie doesn't show the doctor as absolutely good/moral man, it does show that he is highly knowledgeable and doesn't make a big deal out of it when he doesn't act really nicely, even forgives him. Besides, he is presented as the best person living in the village. He is the only one to posses integrity, courage and intelligence. During a cold winter storm for example he crosses courageously (when no one else wants to help him) the river to help a woman give birth. And in his first scene we see that he knows exactly how much time he has to read his morning paper before helping another woman give birth. He is a real family man and the only one to live in a beautiful sophisticated house. While the movie loves the other villagers a lot, it presents them unambiguously as dumb, except for the mayor. But he is presented as evil and corrupt.

As I mentioned, Rademakers doesn't present a pretty rosy view of life in the village, in fact he is sometimes very cynical. But he somehow combines that with a simultaneously very warm view of the village and its people. It is very clear that he has much love for the relaxed, slow and sometimes dull life in the village. While the movie only lasts about 90 minutes, he shoots his scenes in a pretty meandering, patient way. He tries to avoid cutting as much as possible and he loves to zoom in or zoom out during the shot when he wants to go from a long shot to a close-up or the other way around. This little cutting means that the movie is 'moving' on leisurely pace. He never seems to rush anything, mirroring life in the village. In creating sympathy for most villagers he is helped a lot by his actors, who manage to convey a lot of sympathy and regret for things gone wrong. In other words Rademakers manages to convey a lot of sympathy and love for characters he doesn't really agree with. He understands them, even if he knows the life they live cannot (and should not) be sustained. Few movies do this really.

And it's quite clear that Rademakers' view of the village isn't rosy. The men seem to be utterly afraid of women and are often seen as enormous fools, who are of no help to anyone. One man even kills himself because his wife is bullying him. It's not known what that bullying entails, but the other men agree that this is a big problem in the village. Apparently lots of men are bullied by their wives and this is seen as a logical reason for suicide. And in the aforementioned scene in which the doctor reads his newspaper before helping a woman give birth, the woman is in a lot of pain, but she is constantly telling very sternly to her husband what he should do and how he should make the doctor feel at home. The terrified husband sheepishly obliges her every time, but he is so clumsy he constantly screws up even his simplest tasks. 

And when the men try to act 'masculine' their actions are either so incredibly stupid that they fail or they are exposed as cowards, whose actions don't align with their big mouth. For example, in an absurdly and darkly funny scene we see four men gathered around the corpse of the man who killed himself because he was bullied by his wife. They drink alcohol and make stupid jokes about their toughness and masculinity. Rademakers constantly underlines the pathetic nature of these jokes. There is no truth to them, these are deeply insecure men, who make these jokes to (unsuccessfully) hide their insecurity. Anyway after some joking one of them claim that he is the biggest man (or something like that) and he'll show this by taking the scarf of the face of a sickly old woman, living just out of the village (I did not get what her sickness is. I assume it was/is common knowledge that a woman hiding her face with a scarf has a certain disease. I have no idea what this disease could have possibly been). Anyway, the next day the man goes there and does take her scarf away. We don't see him do this. We just see the house of the woman from the outside and hear some screaming. And then we see the woman getting out of the house screaming some more. We see that all of this is being watched by the woman's son. In the next scene we hear that the man taking her scarf away was killed. By not showing any of this Rademakers gives even less credence to this stupid use of masculinity. And in another, much lighter and funnier scene a man hunts animals where that's prohibited so the police comes looking for him. He hides everywhere, not having the guts to confront the police. Eventually he hides under the toilet. He is not lucky. Not only does the police find him, the police finds him, because a policeman inadvertently shat on him.
 

Most actions in the village are actually represented as being only for decorum. Actions here rarely have the intended effect. They usually don't even have bad consequences, but no consequences at all. They are completely meaningless. The same can be said of the village traditions. During one scene for example a man meets a (incredibly stereotypically presented) gypsy woman. She comes into his house, hoping to get some food. The man gives her to it, hoping to have sex or at least develop a friendship. No such luck. He falls asleep and when he wakes it turns out that the gypsy woman has not only swindled him, but she also has a husband and after taking some food she leaves the village. And the good doctor can help many people, but his wife dies of a simple cold. After she dies he secretly moves her body to his birthplace. The funeral is a big, but rather meaningless ceremony, considering the coffin is empty. Another meaningless ceremony is the   'retirement party'. It's a forced retirement, because the mayor hates the doctor and sacks him. We hear the mayor saying all kinds of bad things about the doctor in a closed session with his cabinet. But when he has to talk in front of the whole village at the doctor's retirement party he says all kinds of things about how great the doctor is and how sad it is that he has to retire. It is a very cynical and great scene in a movie that surprised me a lot.

41. Sunday Bloody Sunday &...

Lyrics

I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes and make it go away!

How long?
How long must we sing this song?
How long?
How long?

'Cause tonight...we can be as one
Tonight...

Broken bottles under children's feet
Bodies strewn across the dead-end streets
But I won't heed the battle call
It puts my back up, puts back up against the wall!

Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
All right lets go!

And the battles just begun
Theres many lost but tell me who has won
The trenches dug within our hearts
And mothers, children, brothers, sisters torn apart!

Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday

How long...how long must we sing this song?
How long?
How long?

'Cause tonight...we can be as one
Tonight
Tonight (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
Tonight
Tonight (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
Tonight
Come get some!

Wipe the tears from your eyes
Wipe your tears away
Wipe your tears away
I wipe your tears away (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
I wipe your blood shot eyes (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)

Sunday, Bloody Sunday (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
Sunday, Bloody Sunday (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
Here I come!

And it's true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die!

The real battle yet began (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
To claim the victory Jesus won (Sunday, Bloody Sunday
on...

Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday...


Well, of course U2 would make a song about Bloody Sunday. How could they not? Despite this obviousness though, I was pleasantly surprised by it. I hadn't heard this song in a very long time, because I remembered not liking it. But now I've heard it again I like it a lot. It seems to be one of their more adventurous songs. And for once they've realized that a song about a serious or sad subject doesn't need to dabble in heavy-handed sentimentality. It can be joyous and still deliver its message. Anyway it wasn't hard to choose a movie. I simply choose the most famous one made about Bloody Sunday.

The Movie: Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass, 2002)

Well, in my previous post I criticized movies that desperately want to pretend that they are historically authentic and that they are presenting a specific event/period as it really was. I kind of forgot that the next movie I'd review would be Greengrass' Bloody Sunday. I hadn't seen the movie before, but I was familiar with Greengrass' style and the premise of the movie. Greengrass is a filmmaker who above all seems to strive for authenticity and realism, even in movies where that's completely unnecessary. He directed The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum in which he wanted to tell a realistic, authentic story about a super smart spy that outsmarts the whole CIA. And with Bloody Sunday he wanted to make a movie in documentary-style about the events of Bloody Sunday. While I enjoyed the movie to a certain extent, I think it is reasonable to ask why Greengrass didn't just string together two hours of news reports on Bloody Sunday and be done with it. That might have even provided more valuable insights than this movie. And this is going to be a rather weird piece. I've watched the film, but most of what I'll write here, I could have written without seeing it.  

Bloody Sunday isn't so much documentary-style film making as it is fly on the wall film making. Greengrass has filmed this movie like a series of live news reports. He wants to make is feel as if we are watching a (live) report of the events of Bloody Sunday. As if there is (or was) a camera present during the events of Bloody Sunday and we are now watching the (objective) footage of that camera. I think that this approach is ,at best, just silly. If only for the obvious reason that no matter how hard you try to make it look live, it's not. And everybody knows it's not. It's not so much that lying is immoral as it is that lying when everybody knows you're lying is just stupid. I may not have had such problems though if using this aesthetic didn't mean that you are making a deliberately ugly and seemingly bad made movie. There are for example constantly people out of the frame for no other reason than the fact that Greengrass wants to pretend he is making a news report. For the same reason he pretends as if the camera has trouble following the action. Thus he often cuts/pans away from the action disrupting the flow of the movie and showing stuff we are not really interested in seeing. I actually wonder how real news reporters see this movie. They often use the aesthetic of Bloody Sunday in their reports, but that's out of necessity, not because it works really good. If most news reporters had the possibility to stage, shoot and think their shots out like real filmmakers they'd make their news report more in the style of a classical movie. See most non-live news reports for evidence of this. Besides all this, when Greengrass restrains his style a bit, he makes it clear that he is a very skilled director. There are for example some wonderful long takes here and even a couple of really good scenes. He is just deliberately undermining his own movie.

Next to these aesthetic arguments against Greengrass' style, I think there are also some political/moral objections to be raised. By presenting the events of Bloody Sunday as an objective news report he implies that this is how it really happened. He presents it as if it is an objective account. This is not true. It is clear he stands on the side of the Northern Irish protestants and presents the British 'occupants' as evil. I don't have a problem with this in and of itself. There are (way too) many movies in which the Brits (and Americans for that matter) are presented as the clear and absolute good guys. Of course both the Brits and the Americans have done some really bad stuff through history, even in events in which we see them as the good guys. And I wouldn't have a problem with a movie that presented the Brits involvement in Bloody Sunday in a bad light, if it didn't pretend to be objective about it. In fact I do believe that the Brits acted very badly on Bloody Sunday. But it doesn't matter much what I believe. If you claim objectivity, than only the facts matter After watching this movie I've read some stuff on it. And it turns out that in 2002 when this movie came out, the official investigation about what happened on Bloody Sunday and the role of the Brits in this event was still going on. The movie cannot present what happened in such a clear-cut way and pretend it is the absolute, objective truth. Lastly I had another minor problem with these claims of authenticity. We are shown a lot of people mourning and being sorrowful about the events of Bloody Sunday and the loved ones they've lost. But all these people are actors. If you present your movie as an authentic depiction of Bloody Sunday, and then have actors portraying real people, you kind of imply that the emotions of the actors and the real people are interchangeable. And that it is just as harrowing to see an actor crying over a loved one as it is to see real people crying over their real loved ones. This is pretty problematic.