58. Nine Million Bicycles &...

Lyrics

There are nine million bicycles in Beijing
That's a fact
It's a thing we can't deny
Like the fact that I will love you till I die
We are twelve billion light years from the edge
That's a guess
No-one can ever say it's true
But I know that I will always be with you
I'm warmed by the fire of your love everyday
So don't call me a liar
Just believe everything that I say
There are 6 billion people in the world
More or less
And it makes me feel quite small
But you're the one I love the most of all
We're high on a wire
With the world in our sight
And I'll never tire
Of the love that you give me every night
There are nine million bicycles in Beijing
That's a fact
It's a thing we can't deny
Like the fact that I will love you till I die
And there are nine million bicycles in Beijing
And you know that I will love you till I die

 

As I explained in my first post on this blog, Radio 2 has published a list of its 2000 best songs for every year since 1999. I use the list published in 2008, the ten-year anniversary of Radio 2's contest. In 2008 the Dutch couldn't submit a list of their 10 favorite songs, but all the votes of all the previous years were accumulated to create a sort of ultimate top 2000. As you can see Nine Million Bicycles is placed 58th on the 2008 list. I like the song, but that's a joke. It has no business being placed in such vicinity to all these classics. But it's high placement does show Katie Melua's enormous popularity in The Netherlands. Nine Million Bicylces came out in 2005, which means that it in three years it gained more votes than, for example, any Michael Jackson song did in 10 years. That is quite incredible. In any case I didn't think much about what movie to link to this song. I am really very unfamiliar with the Asian cinema, and because Bejing is mentioned quite prominently I chose to watch a Chinese movie from the early 90's, a period considered revolutionary for Chinese movies.

    

The Movie: Raise the Red Lantern (Da hong deng long gao gao gua) (Yimou Zhang, 1991)

"Good or bad, it's all playacting. If you act well, you can fool other people; if you do it badly, you can ony fool yourself" This quote from the movie sums up pretty well, what this movie is mainly about. One can discuss all day long whether this film is a critique of the authoritarian Chinese state, but in the end this is a movie about power and sex. Or more specifically, it is about the nasty games being played to obtain power and sex. And its view of the world is even bleaker than that sounds. The only reason to have power here, is to obtain sex and vice versa. And if real power cannot be obtained its characters are even satisfied with the illusion of it, even when they are fully aware that they are only deluding themselves. This is indeed a bleak, suffocating movie, but it is very good. Yimou Zhang (this is the first movie of his I've seen) is not only audaciously relentless in creating a bleak, suffocating atmosphere, he also knows exactly how to do it.  If for nothing else, the movie would be watchable because of Zhang's sheer confidence in himself that's at display in every shot.

Gong Li plays Songlian, a 19-year old woman who had drop out of college after her father's death. Out of poverty her step mother sells her as a concubine to a rich Chinese man, in the film only known as 'The Master'. Songlian will become The Master's fourth mistress (or wife), and no The Master did not divorce his previous three. While each wife has her own room, The Master, his four wives, and his many servants all live together in the same enormous house.According to tradition, each night the four wives (together with their personal servants) have to go to the central corridor, where it will be announced with which wife The Master will sleep that night. The corridor and the bedroom of that particular wife will then be lit by red lanterns. Also that wife will get a foot massage. Not surprisingly The Master at first favors Songlian, his newest, and youngest, wife. But sex means more than just sex here. Whomever sleeps with The Master has (some) control and power over the whole household. So the competition between the women is enormous. It aren't just the three other wives that plot against Songlian; her personal servant is jealous, because she expected to become The Master's fourth wife. And Songlian herself, who doesn't need really need any time to adjust to the games being played, is no saint either.   

Throughout the first three quarters of the movie all these games are being played beneath the surface. Although everybody in the whole household knows what is going on, all of them keep a facade of politeness and friendliness. But behind every gesture and every word there is a single unifying motive: the quest to gain or to show power. This is clear from Songlian's first day. She is put in the spotlight and given a special treatment, as, she is told, is the custom. But this custom doesn't serve merely to make Songlian feel at comfort. We see that there is a specific servant for every part of the treatment she gets. It is clear that every servant has a specific role, which he/she is expected to fulfill. So the special treatment serves to show Songlian, that she has a specific role with a specific purpose (most importantly, to give birth to a son) in the household. And that she shouldn't really think of stepping beyond that role or challenging The Master's power, which is at full exhibit during this treatment. Everybody works for him without him even having to say anything. He is so powerful, he doesn't have to explicitly exert his power. This is quite a chilling sequence, and many more are to follow in the same vein. One includes a sequence in which Songlian fakes her own pregnancy, just to get a foot massage. But perhaps the most shocking scene is the one when we find out that Songlian's personal servant has fully decked out her room with red lanterns. That is a meaningless act, since The Master obviously isn't sleeping with her. Besides, she is the only one who knows that the red lanterns are in her room. She has no power at all, but the red lanterns give her the illusion of it and that makes her happy. Even though she is knowingly deluding herself.

In the last quarter of the movie all these tensions that were until then sub textual, suddenly come on the forefront of the movie. Songlian is the catalyst for this shattering of the facades. The games played start being explicit and can hardly be called games anymore. The conversations become more honest and some of the women start becoming friends. That's when the Third Mistress the quote from the beginning to Songlian. And she opens up even more about some of her secrets. It will only lead to her death, for which Songlian is partly responsible. And that's not the only death Songlian is responsible for. 

Of course I watched this movie with English subtitles. But if you were to watch it without subtitles, you'd also get a pretty good sense of what it's about (especially if you happen to be Chinese!). Yimou Zhang achieves quite a lot by his editing and framing of the shots. It is quite interestingly for example that we never really get to see The Master's face. We either see him in long shot, sideways, or with his back towards the camera. At point we see The Master and Songlian in bed in long shot. In the next shot we cut to a close-up. Not only doe we now only see Songlian, it actually seems as if Zhang is making a point of not showing The Master's face. He wants us to notice we don't see his face. And we also don't ever, not even in long shot, do we actually see The Master having sex with any of his wives That could be because he wants us to show the power of The Master. To show that even while he is hardly present in the film, the mere fact of (the knowledge of) his existence is enough to hold power over the whole household. But it also could be that Zhang wants to grant some power to the women, by making this clearly a story about them. Zhang after all does seem to have some sympathy for their awful behavior. There is nothing else they can do really in this suffocating place. He represents this suffocation, by the choice of his shots. Most of his shots are symmetrical and when there is a person within the frame that person in the middle of the frame. He also doesn't really show us many things. We stay at all times in the confined space of The Master's house and even there, there are only about 6/7 places wherein he situates the story. He especially cuts so often to the main corridor, that it almost becomes a joke. I believe that serves to show us that whatever these women do, there is no escaping from this rather dull world. They always end up in the same position as if they are just walking in circles. This is made rather explicit with the final shot of the picture. Lastly it is quite interesting in this regard that there is one shot in which we actually finally see some trees, that are out of the confined spaces of the house. It may be telling that this shot comes at the beginning of the sequence in which the Second Mistress will be killed.

57. The Day Before You Came &...

Lyrics

I must have left my house at eight, because I always do
My train, I'm certain, left the station just when it was due
I must have read the morning paper going into town
And having gotten through the editorial, no doubt I must have frowned
I must have made my desk around a quarter after nine
With letters to be read, and heaps of papers waiting to be signed
I must have gone to lunch at half past twelve or so
The usual place, the usual bunch
And still on top of this I'm pretty sure it must have rained
The day before you came

I must have lit my seventh cigarette at half past two
And at the time I never even noticed I was blue
I must have kept on dragging through the business of the day
Without really knowing anything, I hid a part of me away
At five I must have left, there's no exception to the rule
A matter of routine, I've done it ever since I finished school
The train back home again
Undoubtedly I must have read the evening paper then
Oh yes, I'm sure my life was well within its usual frame
The day before you came

I must have opened my front door at eight o'clock or so
And stopped along the way to buy some Chinese food to go
I'm sure I had my dinner watching something on TV
There's not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn't see
I must have gone to bed around a quarter after ten
I need a lot of sleep, and so I like to be in bed by then
I must have read a while
The latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style
It's funny, but I had no sense of living without aim
The day before you came

And turning out the light I must have yawned and cuddled up for yet another night
And rattling on the roof I must have heard the sound of rain
The day before you came


This is the last song ABBA ever recorded. They sure went out on a high note. I think this is a really good and very interesting song.  And it's by far the best thing they've ever done. The lyrics are slightly cheesy, but in an intelligent way. Their cheesiness seems to be the whole point. The woman is aware that her life before 'he' came was cliche and stereotypically cheesy. That is precisely the reason she is telling us about her day(s) before he came, thereby implying, of course, that after he came, her life became better. I think it is quite wonderful how she stresses the importance of her lover by actually telling us nothing about her life with him, instead focusing on her life without him. I can't think of another (popular) song really with this kind of structure.

In any case, while writing this piece I became more and more in awe with the lyrics and the structure of this song. So I decided to read around a bit, and this song just became even more fascinating. I interpreted this song as it being about her lover, but that's not ever explicitly stated in the song. The 'you' who came may not be her lover. It may not even be a man. But let's say that the 'you' who came is her lover. Then we still have to deal with the fact that we don't actually know whether she is still with him. The video clip, after all, ends in heartbreak. Imagine she's breaking up with her lover. That would add another layer to the song, and some more poignancy too. Than these lyrics would be a remembrance of a sad time, that could now come back. This is not that far-fetched an interpretation. After all, it would mirror real life. As I wrote earlier this is ABBA's final song. They were about to break up. After all this, I find it quite unfortunate to say that I linked such a 'simple' movie to this song. But the character as described in the song, did (and still does) remind of the typical role Sandra Bullock played in her romantic comedies, especially in the 90's. And I am quite happy to report that the movie I chose opens with a similar shot like the video clip.

The Movie: While You Were Sleeping (Jon Turteltaub, 1995)

I suppose this will be one of the only times that I'll have more intelligent things to write about the song, than about the movie. This is a very lightweight movie that does nothing much that's interesting to write about. But there is also nothing to really hate about it. I kind of wished it was directed by the Coens, or some other like-minded directors. They could have turned the movie into a wonderful pitch black comedy or a great satire if they fully acknowledged, and engaged with, the insanity of the characters. After all, we are dealing with a plot here in which Sandra Bullock plays a woman named Lucy who after saving a man who fell on the train rails is mistakenly believed to be his fiancee. The guy, named Peter can't do anything about it, because he is in a coma. So Peter's family takes Lucy in as one of their own. She goes along with it (mostly because there wouldn't be a movie if she didn't). But also because she is single and lives alone in the big city. And because if it now turns out that she is not Peter's fiancee, his grandmother will die of a heart attack. That's at least what Saul,who finds out Lucy's secret, tells her. Saul is not blood related to anyone in the family, nor is he married to someone who is (though he is Peter's godfather). Yet he still does everything together with the family, which obviously doesn't have much trouble taking people in. I keep referring to the family as if it is a character, because it basically is here. We hardly ever see any of Peter's family members alone. All of them are always at the same place! Except Peter's brother Jack, who while his brother is in a coma, falls in love with Lucy and starts hitting on her. Despite the fact that he he thinks she's his brother's fiancee. Meanwhile Lucy is stalked by a an Italian doofus in her flat, who keeps deluding himself that he has a chance with Lucy.

Well, you can see how this could have been a black comedy. But it's not, nor does it want to be. It wants to be a silly, lighthearted Sandra Bullock romantic comedy. And it does a good job of being that. I am not exactly its target audience, but I enjoyed it. It is of course contrived, but not too much. There isn't much drama for its own sake. In fact I liked that it sometimes actively avoided unnecessary dramatics, like when Jack tells his father that he doesn't want to work for their furniture company any more, because he has started his own successful one. His dad is (surprisingly) perfectly fine with it, and they continue their pleasant conversation. Pleasant is basically the tone of every conversation in the movie. I also liked the fact that while the movie is set between Christmas and New Year, there isn't a really big deal made out of it. This is (thank God) not a Christmas movie with all the cliches that come with it. It is just pretty convenient for it to be set around that time, because it means that there is snow. And without snow the best throwaway gag of the film would be impossible. Nor would Jack and Lucy be able to fall in live if they didn't flirtingly help each other to not fall on the ice The family members are played by actors like Jack Warden and Peter Boyle, whose roles mostly consist of saying funny one-liners, giving good advice and seeming like generally nice people. They are good at that.

Everything though revolves around Sandra Bullock and she is (genuinely) very good. She always manages to come of smarter and cuter than she should be based on her dialogue. She somehow makes Lucy a quite charming character and makes us care for her. She is clearly smarter than the material, but she never even gives the slightest of hints that she is above it. She even comes of as joyous. I am not and have never been a really big fan of her (though I also don't mind her at all), but she certainly deserves some respect. She is one of the few actresses who was a star in the 1990's and has remained so. Women like Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz and Catherine Zeta-Jones are now a bit forgotten and mostly have small roles in films that are neither very good or very popular. The fates of the likes of Meg Ryan, Andie MacDowell and Minnie Driver are even worse. That's not necessarily their fault. Older actresses aren't always treated very well in Hollywood (that is a bit of an understatement). The only other actresses actually who were stars in the 90's and still are, are probably Meryl Streep (who is a star since the 70's and is probably untouchable) and Natalie Portman (who is much younger). That can't be just because of Bullock's acting ability. It takes intelligence too. There are better actresses than Sandra Bullock, but she has starred this year in the very successful blockbuster comedy The Heat, and later this year she'll star next to George Clooney in the artsy science-fiction drama Gravity. Few other actresses can/get the chance to do that.

56. Music &...

Lyrics

Music was my first love
And it will be my last
Music of the future
And music of the past

To live without my music
Would be impossible to do
In this world of troubles
My music pulls me trough

Music was my first love
And it will be my last
Music of the future
And music of the past


Music, John Miles sure does love himself some music. And he expresses it with a song I dislike a lot. Lyrically, all he is doing is making sentimental, meaningless statements about his love for music. That wouldn't be bad at all if he didn't deliver them as if he is making some sort of profound statement about music or himself as a musician. I find the composition itself also pretty uninteresting. His love for music never really shines through in this song. For all his repetitive claims about his love of music, he may as well sing about his love for, say, mathematics. The effect would be nearly the same. In any case, the movie I've linked this song to, about a man who is (nearly, and with good reason) literally in love with music, couldn't be more different. 

The Movie: Chicken with Plums (Poulet aux Prunes) (Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Parronaud, 2011)

According to IMDB one of the next projects Marjane Satrapi will direct will be The Voices. A horror movie which IMDB synopses as follows: 'a disturbed factory worker who hears advice from his pet dog and cat is implicated in the accidental death of his co-worker." Now normally I wouldn't be very interested in a movie with such a (what I would consider) pretty stupid premise. But after only two movies Marjane Satrapi has completely convinced me to see everything she does. Persepolis was already a great film, Chicken with Plums is an even better one. I had seen it once already and loved it. After a second viewing it is even better. It's achievements are incredible. It has a marvelous, logically (and even tightly) constructed screenplay, yet the space it leaves itself for freewheeling and invention is enormous. And it damn well uses that space. 

At its core Chicken with Plums feels like a film version of a traditional folk tale. More specifically, one of those tales that seems to have been orally passed through the generations by grandmothers telling it to their grandchildren. While in each telling of a specific such tale the core remains, the teller usually grants him/herself the freedom to mix up the details and add the right combination of romance, magic, and adventure to connect best with the child the tale is being told to. Of course each of these tales also has some sort of (moral) lesson. Chicken with Plums is such a tale about a violinist who decides to lay in bed and die after his wife has broken his favorite violin. But it's more than just that. It is also a postmodern mash up of many of these tales Satrapi must have heard as a child. It is also a homage to them. If that's not enough the film is also a love letter to pre-1979 Iran, before the Iranian Revolution made it an authoritarian Islamic state. Lastly the movie is also a critique of the representations of Iran and its people in both Iran and the western world. Just like in Persepolis Satrapi wants to show that Iran is more than just a bunch of evil, Islamic man in beards being busy making nuclear bombs and oppressing women. She wants to show that there is beauty there in both the geographic and the personal sense. That it is a civilization with people caring about science, philosophy and culture. That the movie achieves all of these things is a testament to how great Satrapi and Parronaud manage to mix genres and tones. The movie shifts between being a (melo)drama, a romance, a (slapstick) comedy, a satire, a parody and an adventure movie. Often it is two (or more) of these things at the same time and never does the tone feel off in any way. 

The movie begins when Nasser-Ali (the violinist) who on his way to repair his favorite, now broken, violin, recognizes and addresses a woman. She doesn't recognize him though, which makes him very sad. Still, he continues on his way trying to fix his violin. When that proves to be impossible he hears from his brother that in Rasht, a city far away from Teheran, there is a man selling a Stradivarius. He goes on a long trip to buy it and back in Teheran the next morning he starts to play it. Depressed with the sound it makes he decides to not only never play violin, but even to die. He decides to this in a 'dignified' way, by laying in bed and not eating anything. 8 days later he'll be dead. In the rest of the movie we'll learn of Nasser-Ali's life, why his violin and his music meant so much to him, and why he decided to die right now. To tell his story Satrapi and Parronaud cut between the past and the present (and even the future) and between different story lines. All of these story lines come together in the masterful final 5-10 minutes when the full extent of Nasser-Ali's tragedy becomes clear.