55. Verdronken Vlinder &...

Lyrics

Zo te sterven op het water met je vleugels van papier

(To die like this, in the water, with your paper wings)
Zomaar drijven, na het vliegen in de wolken drijf je hier

(Just floating, after flying in the clouds, you float here)
Met je kleuren die vervagen

(With your fading colors)
Zonder zoeken zonder vragen

(Without seeking, without asking)
Eindelijk voor altijd rusten

(Finally resting forever)
En de bloemen die je kuste

(And the flowers that you kissed)
Geuren die je hebt geweten

(Odors that you have known)
Alles kan je nu vergeten

(You can forget all of it now)
Op het water wieg je heen en weer

(On the water, you lull back and forth)
Zo te sterven op het water met je vleugels van papier

(To die like this, in the water, with yout paper wings)

als een vlinder die toch vliegen kan tot in de blauwe lucht 

(Like a butterfly that kan stil fly into the blue sky)
als een vlinder altijd vrij en voor het leven op de vlucht 

(Always free, like a buterfly, and run away from life)
wil ik sterven op het water 

(I want to die in the water)
maar dat is een zorg van later

(But that's a concern for later)
ik wil nu als vlinder vliegen

(Now, I want to fly like a butterfly)
op de bloemen , blaren vliegen

(Fly myself to blisters on the flowers) 
maar zo hoog kan ik niet komen 

(But I can't come that high)
dus ik vlieg maar in mijn dromen 

(So I just fly in my dreams)
altijd ben ik voor het leven op de vlucht

(I always run away from life)
als een vlinder die toch vliegen kan tot in de blauwe lucht
(Like a butterfly that can fly into the blue sky)

Om te leven dacht ik je zou een vlinder moeten zijn

(To live, I thought, you need to be a butterfly)
Om te vliegen heel ver weg van alle leven alle pijn

(To fly far away from all the life and all the pain)
Maar ik heb niet langer hinder van jaloersheid op een vlinder

(But I am no more bothered by jealousy for a butterfly)
Als zelfs vlinders moeten sterven laat ik niet mijn vreugd bederven

(If even butterflies must die, I will not let my joy be spoiled)
Ik kan zonder vliegen leven

(I can live without flying)
Wat zou ik nog langer geven

(Why should I care any longer)
Om een vlinder die verdronken is in mij

(For a butterfly drowned in me)
Om te leven hoef ik echt geen vlinder meer te zijn

(I don't need to be a butterfly anymore, in order to live)

Had this video been made in 2013, it could have been seen as a perfect parody of Dutch hippie culture. Alas, it's made in 1966 and is a completely earnest object of the hippie culture in the Netherlands of the 1960's. That context is the reason for both the positive and the negative aspects of the song. On the whole, I like it though. The first couplet of the song could be interpreted as it being about Amelia Earhart. That would obviously be a wrong interpretation, but for the purpose of this blog much is allowed.

The Movie: Amelia (Mira Nair, 2009)

When I was young I was fascinated by the explores of the world, those people that you could call the pioneers of travel. I read much and even wrote some school project about them. And I liked them all From the early ones like Marco Polo and Christoffel Columbus, to others like Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott, who traveled even further to the edges of the world. And then in the 20th century, came those who experimented with flying. The Wright Brothers of course, and later on Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. And once they conquered the skies, it was time to go even further. That's of course what Yuri Gagarin and Neill Armstrong did. Chronologically, that's where my interest in them stopped. There have obviously been many people after Armstrong who achieved astonishing travelling feats, but I didn''t care much about them. I suppose I felt that after 'we' reached the moon, all other feats would be less interesting and heroic. Someone should go to Mars or something. It seems I wasn't the only one to feel this way. A major reason I was fascinated by all this explorers that came before Armstrong is the fact that the world was fascinated by them. They are presented as heroes in the books made about them, their feats are taught in schools and presented as great milestones in the history of the world. And this is exactly the spirit Amelia is made in. There isn't much drama or ambiguity in the movie. The movie posits that Earhart was a greatly heroic woman and that this is a fact about which no debate is much necessary. And I couldn't help but agree with that. The movie was much criticized when it came out. It has some (huge) problems, but I liked it quite a bit. It tries to be a slightly different biopic than most, and succeeds for better or worse.

The movie focuses mostly on Earhearts deeds and is not much interested in dramatic developments on the personal level. I liked this approach. Too many (even good to great) biopics focus a lot on the personal hardships their subject had to overcome in order to achieve their great deeds. Or they simply use the life of their subject to tell a sentimental drama/romance full of cliches, without focusing much on the things their subject did to warrant a biopic about him/her in the first place. This movie doesn't present such a view of Amelia Earhart. The movie shows us that Amelia loved to fly and did so. There wasn't much she had to overcome to do it. We are not presented with parents protesting her wish, nor with grapples with poverty. Amelia is also talented at flying, so there also aren't any scenes in which he has to overcome her failures in learning to fly. Except for some early scenes the movie doesn't even dwell much on the fact that she is a woman in a man's world. Her relationship with her husband/manager George Putnam also focuses mostly on the work they do together. He is a man of marketing and makes Amelia go to a lot of publicity events. Amelia is not always very happy about that, but that's no reason for great dramatic events in which she, for example, would leave him and than he would promise her to listen more to her wishes and than she would would come back to him. No, these are perfectly reasonable people who lare like most normal couples, except she is America's greatest pilot and he is one America's best marketing men. A nice bonus of the movie is that it shows good understanding of how the media is used to make somebody a national icon and how the icon is then used by the media and vice versa.

 It is also a pleasure to see Hilary Swank and Richard Gere as Amelia and George. They both enjoy their role and it was nice to see that Richard Gere could have done this role in his sleep but didn't. Since Boys Don't Cry Swank is often cast in roles in which she has to play some tortured soul or a as women who want to reject their feminine side. It was nice to see that here she wasn't forced to do any such things. Amelia obviously does enjoy doing (what was then seen as) manly stuff and she is a not very beautiful women with short hair. But she is presented as a woman who enjoys her life and enjoys sex with men.

Still the movie has two problems. The one small, the other pretty big. Despite the fact that the movie prefers presenting us with Amelia's working life over her personal life, it still does want to show something of her personal life. It wants to do this in a fast, efficient way. And in order to this, it ramps up the cliches and sentimentalism even more than the ordinary biopic I talked about earlier. It's good that this scenes take up such a short amount of time, because their are utterly generic and unexceptional. The second problem is bigger though. As I said the movie wants to focus much on Amelia's working life. Much of it obviously involves flying airplanes. So the movie shows us lots of scenes of Amelia flying an airplane or simply an airplane flying in the sky. This scenes are incredibly dull. We hear Amelia on the soundtrack talking about the joy and awe of flying, but Nair completely fails to convey this joy and awe. Every time we see an airplane on screen it is accompanied by the same dull and monotone piece of music. In the last scenes prior to her crash in the Pacific Ocean at least the movie does manage to bring some tension to the flight. At least for me. For some reason I was convinced that Amelia had died somewhere in the Bermuda triangle. So I expected that she would happily finish her solo flight around the world and didn't expect her to die.

54. I Put A Spell on You &...

Lyrics

I put a spell on you, because you're mine 
You better stop the things that you're doin' 
I said, "Watch out, I ain't lyin'", yeah 
I ain't gonna take none of your, foolin' around 
I ain't gonna take none of your, puttin' me down 
I put a spell on you because you're mine, all right 

I put a spell on you, because you're mine 
You better stop, the things that you're doin' 
I said, "Watch out, I ain't lyin'", yeah 
I ain't gonna take none of your, foolin' around 
I ain't gonna take none of your, puttin' me down 
I put a spell on you because you're mine, all right and I took it down


Creedence Clearwater Revival (wonderful name) is a band I should, theoretically, love. Yet none of their songs really connect with me. I can't say that there is anything wrong with this one either (and it's not even originally their own) but I don't really care about it. It did gave me a chance to watch a great movie about a man who is put under a (sort of) spell and be controlled through it to do some really awful things,

The Movie: The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

Sometimes you need to think about a movie to realize that it is great, or maybe watch it again. This is not such a movie. Right after watching it you realize that this is absolutely a masterpiece. I had before this seen the second half of the 2004 remake. I remember finding it quite enjoyable, but not much else. So, while I expected this to be a good movie (and a better one than the remake) I didn't expect it to be this good. It tells a rather complicated, entangled story in a very patient way. Frankenheimer has the confidence to show scenes and shots that don't make much sense right away, but will a bit later on. It diverges a lot from its plot, only to show us later that every diversion was a sensible one and fitted in the larger picture. And most of the individual scenes are so well conceived, written and acted that even if they wouldn't have all fit together, they would still be fascinating and wonderful. It may be the best cold war satire/drama I've yet seen.

Its basic conceit is quite fascinating and surprisingly simple. During the Korean War nine American soldiers have been kidnapped by communists who have hypnotized them to believe they emerged victorious out of a seemingly unwinnable battle. All of this, because of the great leadership of sergeant Raymond Shaw. It is Shaw himself who is actually the main target of the communists hypnosis. He is hypnotizeed in such a way that any time he sees or hears about the diamond queen in a deck of cards he can be controlled to do anything such as kill two of his fellow soldiers. The biggest strength of the movie may be the fact that it is totally uninterested in keeping this a secret. In fact, we see exactly what the communists plans with Shaw are, and how they intend to use him in what is basically the first scene of the film. The rest of the movie is about the political and personal consequences of this evil communist plot. This scene in which the communists' hypnosis is revealed is right away the best scene in the film. It also shows immediately how confident the film is in its storytelling abilities. When the scene opens we see an old lady talking about flowers in front of a bunch of other old ladies and the soldiers who we previously saw fighting in Korea. It appears we are at some sort of florist convention. And we are a bit surprised as to what these soldiers are doing here and how this can be of any possible importance to the plot. But eventually the film shows us that what we are seeing is the point of view of the hypnotized soldiers. All these old ladies are in actuality most of the evil communist leaders of the world. And the main old lady talking is a Chinese scientist who is showing off how greatly he can hypnotize Shaw and how this can be used. He shows that he can control Shaw and the soldiers so well that he can order Shaw to kill two of his soldiers and no one will be bothered by it. And when this wonderfully odd and absurd scene ends it is used seamlessly to kick off the plot, when it is revealed what we were seeing was a recurring nightmare of lieutenant Ben Marco, one of the soldiers present at the 'florist convention.' Soon realizing that this is not an ordinarily nightmare, he goes on to investigate.

Though it sounds like it from this plot description the movie is not some sort of satire on communism or an anti-communist parable. The movie surely doesn't present a very rosy view of communism, but it doesn't present a rosy view of American politics either. The movie is basically a satire power-hungry politicians. It presents the idea that the all the fights about ideology in the Cold War, were simply fights about who has the power and the money. Ideology was just a nice cover for the participants. A Russian communist spy working on cover operations in America boasts to a fellow communist that his operation is one of the few to actually bring in a profit. It is quite interesting that he doesn't mention anything about whether his operation is successfully spreading communism to America or anything. The American politicians may be portrayed even worse though. The main villains in this movie are Shaw's mother Eleanor and her husband John Iselin, who is not Raymond's real father. The portrayal of John is basically a scathing satire of Joseph McCarthy, only Iselin may be even worse. He accuses the Secretary of Defense that there are communists working in his department. But his accusations are totally random, constantly making up a different amount of communists, only to finally settle for the accusation that there are 'exactly 57 communists working in the Defense department.' But John Iselin is just his wife's puppet. She is really the one who works out his strategies and tells him exactly what to do. And (I guess this is a spoiler) she is also the American 'controller' of her son. She can hypnotize him to do exactly what she wants. And she does, using him to kill many of her political enemies. She certainly cooperates with the Russian and Chinese, but it is left relatively ambiguous whether she is communist, using anti-communist sentiments as a cover (She basically accuses every politician to disagree with her of being an anti-American communist). Or whether she is simply a power hungry politician willing to cooperate with anyone to come to power. In one of her final scenes she exclaims that ones she has the power she will bring the communists down, because when she asked them for a hypnotizable killer, she didn't expect they'd actually choose her son.

John Frankenheimer really shows he can direct anything in this movie. He can film any scene in any style that's necessary for that particular style There are naturally scenes here which play very surrealistically, and then they are (impeccably) followed by scenes which are a realistic depiction of the political games and the press' reporting these games. There is a very short scene in which we follow a car driving through the city and it seems to come straight out of a European new wave movie. Character examinations are easily followed by political satire. Thriller elements by comedy. Frankenheimer directs a martial arts/kung fu scene, which is even more impressive considering the fact that kung fu movies weren't very known or popular yet in 1962 America. There is a great scene between Shaw and Marco that starts with comic, nearly Seinfeldian, dialogue about why it is a good thing Shaw didn't get a Christmas card. This dialogue flawlessly flows into a flashback in which Shaw tells, how he lost the love of his life due to his mother. The whole flashback plays like a short romantic drama. And it adds poignancy to scenes later in the movie.

Lastly the actors shouldn't be forgotten. I don't Frank Sinatra as a singer at all. And he probably wasn't a very good person in real life either. But in his acting and his looks he reminds here very much of a young Jack Nicholson. He gives an amazingly great performance as Bennett Marco. So does Laurence Harvey as Raymond Shaw. Raymond is really a uniquely conceived character. He is basically a good man. He is just not very lovable as he puts it himself. He annoys people because he seems to take everything way too seriously, hardly ever joking. The evolution of the relationship between Marco and Shaw is one of the many great things about the film. Marco dislikes Shaw at the beginning of the movie. Not for a specific reason, but because the movie understands that sometimes you dislike someone, because of certain characteristics, without necessarily thinking that it is a bad person. As the movie progresses Marco does start to like him more, but they never become great friends, which would happen in most other movies. Their relationship is a completely normal one, basically one like you'll have with the most people you'll meet in life.   
But it is Angela Lansbury who gives the best performance in the movie. She creates one of the most memorable villains I've seen in movies, playing her Elaonor with a very cold demeanor. She is constantly trembling, always seeming to explode with anger. And when she sometimes does, it is vigorous. Her performance is even more impressive, considering the fact that I've only known her as the kindly grandmother detective from Murder, She Wrote. It is a role as far removed from her role here as can possibly be. In the remake Eleanor is played by Meryl Streep, and she isn't nearly on the same level as Lansbury. Which is not something you can often say about Streep.

53. Voor Haar &...

Lyrics

Zij verstaat de kunst van bij me horen 

(She understands the art of belonging with me)
In mijn lichaam heeft ze plaats gemaakt voor twee 

(In my body, she's made room for two)
In mijn ogen woont ze, in mijn oren 

(She lives in my eyes, in my ears)
Ze hoort en ziet mijn hele leven met me mee 

(She hears and sees my whole life, together with me)
Soms begint ze in mijn hart te zingen

(Sometimes she starts singing in my heart) 
Waar het nacht wordt heeft ze lichtjes aangedaan

(She has put the lights on, there where the night falls) 
En door haar weet ik dan door te dringen 

(And through her I manage to reach)
Tot de onvermoede schat van ons bestaan 

(To the unguarded treasure of our existence)
Zo alleen maar wil ik verder leven 

(Only like this do I want to go on livinh)
Schuilend bij elkaar 

(Sheltering together)
En als ik oud moet worden, dan alleen met haar 

(And if I have to get old, than only with her)

Zij kent al mijn dromen en mijn wanen 

(She knows all my dreams and delusions)
Al mijn haast en al mijn honger en mijn spijt 

(All my haste, and all my hunger and regret)
Als ik lach kent zij alleen de tranen

(When I smile, only she knows the tears) 
Die daar achter liggen in de tijd

(That lay there, back in time) 
Zo alleen maar wil ik verder leven 

(Only like this do I want to go on livinh)
Schuilend bij elkaar 

(Sheltering together)
En als ik oud moet worden, dan alleen met haar 

(And if I have to get old, than only with her)

Zij is meer dan deze woorden zeggen 

(She is more, than these words say)
In mijn lichaam heeft ze plaats gemaakt voor twee 

(In my body she's made room for two)
Maar wie weet een wonder uit te leggen 

(But who knows how to explain a miracle)
En een wonder draag ik met me mee

(And it's a miracle that I carry with me)

I can understand the popularity of this song, but this kind of songs just aren't for me. It was a bit hard to find a movie to link this song too. I only knew it had to be about a man who's obsessed by a woman. So eventually I chose a movie, mostly because it was made by a great director of whom I had not seen a single movie yet and was eager to. 

The Movie: That Obscure Object of Desire (Cet Obscur Objet du Desir) (Luis Bunuel, 1977)

The art of painting is probably the art form I know and care the least about. But if you were to ask me about what my favorites are, I think the surrealists would surely be among them. More specifically, I mean Salvador Dali of course. I found him interesting even before I cared much about movies, and it was probably because of him that I first heard about Luis Bunuel, who was a frequent collaborator of Dali. I really became conscious of their collaborations when in high school we were being shown some clips of Un Chien Andalou. Considering that this is one of the most famous short movies ever made, it should come as no surprise that we had to see this movie in a class in college. I liked its completely freewheeling absurdism a lot and thought Luis Bunuel was a very interesting director. After reading more on him, and realizing that many of his movies were made in the same spirit as Un Chien Andalou, my interest in him was spiked. For some reason though I had not seen a movie by him until now. While this movie wasn't as great as I expected i still liked it quite a lot and it has made me even more curious about Bunuel's other work.

It all begins when Mathieu (Fernando Rey) boards a train from Sevilla to Madrid. Mathieu is a man who wants to project that he is reasonable, respectable man of class. A woman follows him on the train and he trows a bucket of water over her. Naturally the passengers sitting in the wagon with Mathieu are curious why he did such a thing. He says that she was the most awful woman he had ever known. And proceeds to tell the story his experiences with this woman, named Conchita. The rest of the movie is the story of Conchita and Mathieu, told in flashback by Mathieu. One of the most wonderful things about it is the fact that Mathieu tells the story to compatriots in order to show them that he is indeed a classy, reasonable and respectable man. The only thing he really makes clear though is that he certainly isn't any of those things, least of all reasonable. Sure, Conchita is an infuriating woman who is either terribly naive and sexually immature or the world's greatest con artist. Bunuel wisely never offers us a definite explanation. In any case, it should be clear to an ostensibly reasonable man like Mathieu that pursuing her so wildly is not a wise idea. It comes at great expense of both his happiness and his wealth. As for being a respectable man of class? Well, that too is suspect, as his wooing mostly consists of trying to (almost literally) buy her (off).

While Bunuel has a lot of fun with the behavior of Mathieu and Conchita (The interactions between Mathieu and his butler are especially of a wonderful oddness) he makes two choices that make lift the film even more into the realm of absurdity/surrealism. First of all Conchita is played by two different actresses. Bunuel could have done this in order to symbolize the split personality of Conchita (She sometimes loves Mathieu, sometimes despises him), or he could have done it to show how Mathieu is completely oblivious to the fact that she is tricking him constantly, so oblivious that he doesn't even realize she often looks differently. Or it could just be that Bunuel thought it would a fun trick to have Conchita be played by two different actresses. Again Bunuel doesn't offer a definitive conclusion and that's a good thing. Besides it doesn't matter much why she's played by two different actresses. What matters is that this is a fun, entertaining choice and leaves us thinking about his intentions. His second absurdist choice is to set this story in a world that's constantly under threat of anarchist, terrorist groups. There are constantly explosions and violent killings and robberies. And while these are really unpleasant to the characters, there is no big deal made out of it. They just happen in a ordinary world, that functions normally apart from an explosion here and there. And it's not like the characters don't notice this, but they almost shrug them off, treating them like an ordinary unpleasantness. There is no political motivation behind these actions. In fact we hear on the radio that extreme-right and extreme-left groups are collaborating together. Bunuel has a lot of fun with this, naming for example one group the Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus. And there doesn't seem to be a reason for this scenes of social anarchy to be in the movie, except the fact that Bunuel finds them fun. And is there a better reason than that?  

52. Over de Muur &...

Lyrics

Oost-Berlijn, unter den Linden: 

(East Berlin, unter den Linden)
Er wandelen mensen langs vlaggen en vaandels. 

(People are walking along flags and banners)
Waar Lenin en Marx nog steeds op een voetstuk staan. 

(Where Lenin and Marx are still on a pedestal)

En iedereen werkt, hamers en sikkels, 

(And everybody works, hammers and sickles)
Terwijl in parade-pas de wacht wordt gewisseld. 

(While the changing of the guard is happenning)
40 Jaar socialisme er is in die tijd veel bereikt... 

(40 years of socialism, much has been accomplished in all this time)

Maar wat is nou die heilstaat, 

(But what is this utopia)
Als er muren omheen staan? 

(If it is surrounded by walls)
Als je bang en voorzichtig met je mening moet omgaan? 

(If you have to handle your opinion with fear and care)
Ach, wat is nou die heilstaat, zeg mij wat is ie waard,

(What is this utopia, tell me how much it is worth) 
Wanneer iemand die afwijkt voor gek wordt verklaard? 

(When someone who deviates is declared to be insane)

En alleen de vogels vliegen van Oost- naar West-Berlijn.

(And only the birds fly from East to West Berlin) 
Worden niet teruggefloten, ook niet neergeschoten. 

(They don't get stopped, nor shot)
Over de muur, over het IJzeren Gordijn, 

(Over the wall, over the Iron Curtain)
Omdat ze soms in het westen soms ook in het oosten willen zijn. 

(Because they sometimes want to be in the west and sometimes in the east)
Omdat ze soms in het westen soms ook in het oosten willen zijn. 
(Because they sometimes want to be in the west and sometimes in the east)

West-Berlijn: de Kurfurstendamm! 

(West Berlin: The Kurfurstendamm)
Er wandelen mensen langs porno en peepshow. 

(People are walking along porn and peepshows)
Waar Mercedes en Cola, nog steeds op een voetstuk staan. 

(Where Mercedes and Cola are still on a pedestal

En de neonreclames, die glitterend lokken: 

(And the neon sings, that lure glitteringly)
Kom dansen! Kom eten! Kom zuipen! Kom gokken! 

(Come to dance! Come to eat! Come to booze! Come to gamble)
Dat is nou 40 jaar vrijheid, er is in die tijd veel bereikt... 
(That is 40 years of freedom, much has been accomplished in all this time)

Maar wat is nou die vrijheid, zonder huis, zonder baan? 

(But what is that freedom, without a house, without a job)
Zoveel Turken in Kreutzberg die amper kunnen bestaan. 

(So many Turks in Kreutzberg who can hardly exist)
Goed... je mag demonstreren, maar met je rug tegen de muur 

(Ok, you can protest, but with your back against the wall)
En alleen als je geld hebt, dan is de vrijheid niet duur. 

(And only with money is the freedom not expensive)

En de vogels vliegen van West- naar Oost-Berlijn.

(And the birds fly from West to East Berlin) 
Worden niet teruggefloten, ook niet neergeschoten. 

(They don't get stopped, nor shot)
Over de muur, over het IJzeren Gordijn, 

(Over the wall, over the Iron Curtain)
Omdat ze soms in het westen soms ook in het oosten willen zijn. 

(Because they sometimes want to be in the west and sometimes in the east)
Omdat er brood ligt soms bij de Gedachtniskirche, soms op het Alexanderplein!

(Because sometimes there is bread at the Gedachtniskirche and sometimes on Alexanderplatz)

This song about the tragedy and absurdity of the Berlin Wall is justly this high on the list. It is one of the greatest Dutch songs. Its appurtenant movie deals with the same subject and is set in 1989, exactly forty years since the birth of West and East Germany 

The Movie: Goodbye Lenin! (Wolfgang Becker, 2003)

It is October 1989 when Alex Kerner participates in what is supposed to be a peaceful demonstration against the East German government. Soon the police comes though, starting to beat up the demonstrators including Alex. This is accidentally seen by his mother who promptly gets a severe heart attack and ends up in a coma, only to wake up 8 months later. This is great news of course for Alex and his sister, but it's not like their mother is healthy. As the doctors say, any shock can kill her. That's kind of a problem, considering the events that transpired in Germany in November 1989. Even more so, because Mrs. Kerner was a proud member of the East German communist party, who very much believed in and cared about her nation and the system. So Alex and his sister have to find ways to convince their mother that everything is still the way it used to be. What follows is a great, gentle drama with some nice comic touches that is one of the best European movies of this century. It is about what the unification of Germany means for its people and how they deal with this after being separated for so long. But is also about perception and about family relations and many more things really. I have seen it three times now, and I think it only gets better.

No matter what you think of communism or capitalism, or West and East Germany, the facts remain that there were many East Germans who lived a decent life in their country. It's a fact that they weren't exactly free, but it's also a fact that many of them had jobs and could make a decent living. And when Germany reunited and became a free capitalist state, many people lost their jobs and couldn't make a decent living anymore. While this movie sees it as a good thing that East Germany ceased to exist, it also fully understands those East Germans who mourn for the loss of their nation. Especially those who are now considered useless and jobless. It also understands that the fall of East Germany meant that a whole generation of people had to change their whole way of living and thinking in the blink of an eye. That's not an easy thing to do, even if your life is better now. Only after watching this movie now, did I realize that Alex' charade isn't just meant for his mother. It is also meant for himself. Of course, he doesn't really believe in his charade. Nor does he believe that East Germany will ever come back, but his charade does help him cope with the new reality.

As I wrote earlier, even though the movie has sympathy for those who mourn East Germany it sees it's downfall as sad, but inevitable. It understands that a reason why many East Germans, like Mrs. Kerner, put up with their country, wasn't so much because of the situation the state was in. But because of the situation they believed their state could be in. As we learn late in the film, Mrs. Kerner wasn't naive. She knew her life was hindered by the fact that she lived in East Germany. She put up with it, partly out of fear. But also partly because she believed in the dream of a communist utopia. She believed that things were better now in West Germany, but she also sincerely believed that in an ideal situation life in East Germany would be better. It sis clear that this thinking has influenced her son. And that's what makes his charade so interesting. In trying to recreate East Germany for his mother he creates the utopian nation that never existed. And that now never will exist. This is a nation to which millions of West Germans flee to seek a better life. A nation that is the true inventor of Coca-Cola. And a nation in which Sigmund Jahn, the great, heroic astronaut, is now the president of the republic, not a fairly anonymous taxi driver.

Because of all this it is certainly possible to read the ending as cynical. Sure there is a party at the end due to the birthday of unified Germany. And Alex seems happy, but his actions seem to contradict this. He may believe that his life is better now Germany is unified. But he certainly seems/seemed to believe in the dream of a utopian East Germany in which life would/could be better than in West/unified Germany (that's a bit too many slashes in one sentence, but they were necessary). That dream is definitely dead now. And he realizes this. And there is for him no new dream to replace it. He does not seem to believe in a German capitalist utopia.

Lasrly, for me as a media student, it was certainly interesting to see that the movie had a pretty good understanding of the media and its products. It knows that the current media revolution, due to which more and more people are able to create their own content started in the 70's and 80's. Film equipment became cheaper and smaller, which meant that more and more people were able to make smaller, or larger films. Alex wouldn't have been able to so successfully con, without his friend Dennis, an amateur filmmaker. But the movie (consciously or unconsciously) makes a larger point with this. The development of film equipment is just another reason why the fall of East Germany was becoming more and more inevitable. If more and more people are able to make their own films and videos, that people are less and less dependent on content by authorities. People can create their own narratives more easily, their information will come from more and more sources, etc. This is of course deadly for a authoritative state like East Germany, that needs and wants to control the media as much as possible.

That doesn't mean though that the state doesn't have any control over the media anymore. This too is understood by the movie. The movie uses the example of the football world championship in 1990, taking place in Italy. As the qualifications for the tournament happened before the unification of Germany, it was now West Germany that was officially taking part in the tournament. The movie shows though that the media treated that team as if it represented whole Germany. And it presented each victory of that team as a victory for whole Germany. It also presented that team as underdogs to win it all. (Though of course, as we in The Netherlands know, Germany is never an underdog in football) That did not just create extra sympathy for the team and thus for whole Germany, it also meant that when (West?) Germany eventually did become world champion their victory could be seen as a metaphor for how the new German state could overcome all it's problems. Thus is should come as no surprise that the movie shows Alex and other former East Germans erupting with joy when the final ends.

51. Halo of Flies &...

Lyrics

I've got the answers
To all of your questions
If you've got the money
To pay me in gold

I will be living
In old Monte Carlo
And you will be reading
The secrets I sold

Daggers and contacts
And bright shiny limos
I've got a watch
That turns into a lifeboat

Glimmering nightgowns
And poisonous cobras
Silencer under the heel of my shoe

The elegance of China
They sent her to lie here on her back
But as she deeply moves me
She'd rather shoot me in my tracks

She was a Malaysian lady
She really came as no surprise
But I still did destroy her
And I will smash
Halo of flies

I crossed the ocean
Where no one could see
And I put a time-bomb
In your submarine
Goodbye to old friends
The secret's in hand
With phony note papers
And counterfeit plans
You never will understand


What an awesome song! I don't know much about Alice Cooper and though I must have heard this song before I couldn't remember it. But it feels as if Cooper wanted to put everything he thought was musically interesting in one song. The song is completely incoherent, but also utterly surprising and unique. The lyrics don't make much sense either, but they do bring Bond movies/villains to mind. So I linked this song to a James Bond film set mostly in Asia and involving gold.

The Movie: The Man With the Golden Gun (Guy Hamilton, 1974)

I have always liked Bond movies, though it's not like I am a huge fan of them. I am a fan of all four major actors (Roger Moore, Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig) who played Bond, but I do prefer Moore and Connery.  While Skyfall and especially Casino Royale are splendid movies, I did miss the silliness and the extravaganza of the early Bonds. It is quite unfortunate that even Bond movies have adapted to two unfortunate tendencies of modern blockbusters. First of all they have become rather dark movies with a gloomy atmosphere and secondly they insist on being 'realistic.' Which just makes the Bond movies unnecessarily problematic. It is undeniable that Bond movies are rather Orientalist and sexist. I don't think that this is such a big problem when the movies are so tongue-in-cheek. It does become a problem when they insist that they (and their worldview) should be taken seriously, because they make some grand statement about the world. I may someday write more about how Skyfall, which is actually a very good movie and one I like a lot, suffers from this. For now it's sufficient to say that I hope to never see a Bond movie ever again include a scene in which we seriously watch a meeting of a realistic parliamentary commission having a serious discussion about British national security. Leave that to other movies. Which brings me to The Man With the Golden Gun. I hope they will continue to make better Bond movies than this one (though it's certainly not bad). But I also hope they will return to making the Bond movies in the style of this one. That unfortunately won't happen any time soon. Daniel Craig is just not suited for comedy and silliness and the current style of blockbuster filmmaking does seem to still be very popular.

You know from the start what kind of (Bond) movie The Man With the Golden Gun is going to be. We open with a shot of a dwarf and sexy woman on an exotic island. It turns out they work for the main villain of this picture, Scaramanga, played by Christopher Lee. The opening sequence is a very fun one full of odd lighting, odd camera positions and booby traps. We see Scaramanga exercising for a potential duel with James Bond on his island. It is probably the best sequence in the movie, followed by what may be the most lackluster Bond opening credits ever. The title song is also pretty forgettable. After this sequence we finally meet Bond being briefed about the potential danger of Scaramanga. And so the plot kicks in. For the first half or so, this is a superior Bond movie. During the first half this is more an old-fashioned detective movie with Bond following clues about Scaramanga's whereabouts and his plans. And the movie really invites us to think with him. In the second half the movie becomes a rather boring, overlong and not very inspired action movie. It is also overlong. Though there is a great car chase across the streets of Hong Kong that culminates with one of the best movie stunts I've ever seen.

Never does the movie cease being interesting though. And the main reason for that are the wonderful characters and actors. Roger Moore is perfectly suited to play a more laid back, humorous Bond. He clearly enjoys delivering the many fun quips Bond has to say here. Therefore it is even more odd that the filmmakers decided to make Bond, at occasions, a much meaner character than ever. He mercilessly hurts women physically and he rather nastily throws a child of a boat during a boat chase in Hong Kong channels. His relationship with Bond girls Ms. Goodnight on the other hand is much more charmingly depicted than usually. Ms. Goodnight plays a sort of assistant of James Bond and is oddly presented as a recurring character, though this is the only Bond movie she appears in. In any case, Roger Moore and Britt Ekland act with much chemistry around each other. They make very well clear that there is a history of flirtation between their two characters and that Bond and Ms. Goodnight genuinely like each other. It is quite unfortunate that Ms. Goodnight only appeared in this movie. The last great character is of course Scaramanga. Christopher Lee clearly enjoys his role a lot, but he plays Scaramanga with great seriousness.