100. Aan de Kust &...

Lyrics 

De zoute zee slaakt een diepe zilte zucht.

(De salty sea lets out a long, briny sigh) 
Boven het vlakke land trilt stil de warme lucht.

(Over the flat land, the warm air vibrates silently) 
Iemand slaat soms onverwacht maar zeker op de vlucht.

(Certainly sometimes somebody will flee unexpectedly)  
Alarmfase Twee is hier nauwelijks nog berucht. 

(Alert 2 is hardly notorious here anymore)
Maar men weet het niet en zwijgt van wat men hoort en ziet

(But one doesn't know, and keeps silent about what one hears and sees). 

Hier aan de kust, de Zeeuwse kust 

(Here at the coast, the Zeelandic coast)
Waar de mensen onbewust. Zin in mosselfeesten krijgen

(Where the people unconsciouscly feel like having musselfeasts) 
En van eten slechts nog zwijgen. Als ze zat zijn en voldaan 

(And they keep silent about food. When they are drunk and satisfied)
Dan weer rustig slapen gaan. 

(They go to sleep)

Hier aan de kust, de Zeeuwse kust

(Here at the coast, the Zeelandic coast) 
Waar een ieder onbewust 

(Where everybody unconsciouscly)
In het Duits wordt aangesproken. Waar de ketting is gebroken. 
(Is adressed in German. Where the chain is broken)

En alle schepen zijn verbrand. 

(And all the ships are burnt)
Maar er is niets aan de hand

(But everything is OK). 

Vlissingen ademt zwaar en moedeloos vannacht. 

(Vlissingen breathes heavily and despondently tonight)
De haven is verlaten, want er is nog maar een vracht 

(The port is abandoned, because there is just one freight left)
En die moet in het donker buitengaats worden gebracht. 

(And it has to be brought ashore in the dark)

Gedenkt de goede tijden van zuiverheid en kracht. 

(Remember the good times of purity and power)
Maar men weet het niet 

(But one does not know it)
En zwijgt van wat men hoort en ziet.

(And keeps silent about what one hears and sees) 

Hier aan de kust, de Zeeuwse kust 

(Here at the coast, the Zeelandic coast)
Waar de zomer onbewust. 

(Where the summer unconsciously)
Met een noodgang wordt genoten. 

(Is enjoyed immensely)
En waar wild en onverdroten

(And where wildly and assidiously) 
Iedereen zijn gang kan gaan. 

(Everybody can do what he wants)
Tot men zat is en voldaan 

(Untile one is drunk and satisfied)

Hier aan de kust, de Zeeuwse kust

(Here at the coast, the Zeelandic coast). 
Waar de liefde van de lust 

(Where love will keep on)
Steeds maar weer zal gaan verliezen.

(Being beaten by lust) 
Omdat ze nooit kan kiezen

(Because she can't ever choose) 
Tussen goed en niet zo kwaad. 

(Between good and not so evil)
Maar het is zoals het gaat. 

(But it is at it goes)
Hier aan de kust.

(Here at the coast)

Holy hell. Blof is famous for writing gibberish lyrics, but this is horrible even by their own standards. At a most basic level, they seem not to know how to use conjunctions in a proper way. They also try to be poetic by juxtaposing or connecting two terms that are opposites of one another. It can obviously be poetic, but not in the way Blof does it here. "Certainly sometimes somebody will flee unexpectedly" is an example of how this attempt at poetry only produces nonsense. That lyric is also pretty exemplary for another reason. As it is the case with many other lyrics, it is entirely unclear what the purpose of it is in the song as a whole, or what they really want to say with it. Having said that, I find this a pretty enjoyable song, and musically it is probably Blof's best. I linked it to a movie about the most famous event involving Zeeland. 

The Movie: The Storm (De Storm) (Ben Sombogaart, 2009)

De Storm was marketed as the first Dutch blockbuster. It's quite fitting than that the so-called Watersnoodramp in 1953 was chosen as the subject for it. On the night of January 31 the province of Zeeland was struck by an enormous flood, that eventually caused the deaths of 1836 people in the Netherlands (about 300 more died in England). Unsurprisingly this has become a defining moment in Dutch history. Not only because it was one of the biggest natural disasters to struck the nation, but also because it led to the Dutch becoming the leading experts in the world on water protection. The disaster led to the construction of the Delta works, a series of, to quote Wikipedia, "dams, sluices, locks, dykes, levees and storm surge barriers" that serve to protect the Dutch coast from the water of the North Sea. The Delta works are technological marvels, and are considered one of the most important and revolutionary technological constructions in modern history. So if one Dutch event deserves to get a blockbuster treatment it is this one. It's therefore quite unfortunate that De Storm isn't a better movie. It's certainly not bad, but there was clearly potential here for something much better. 

To be fair though, the movie achieves what is most important. It manages to convey the enormity of the disaster. And especially the opening scenes are quite exceptional. One of the opening shots is a simple one of a resolute, spirited young woman (main character Julia, played by Sylvia Hoeks) riding a bike through the storm. It's a rather perfect image to start a movie such as this. It's a distinctly Dutch image. At the same time it's a simple and straightforward evocation of the Dutch national identity, or rather of what the Dutch believe the Watersnoodramp says about their national identity. It doesn't take long until the storm really severs, and we see a rather impressive scene in which Julia, her baby, her sister and her mother hide in their farmhouse trying to hide from the rising water. They fail, the water rises up to the upper floor, and Julia's sister and her mother drown. In the next scene marine Aldo, stationed in the north of Holland (Barry Atsma) flies in by helicopter trying to find his mother and brother. We get a couple of helicopter shots showing the devastation of Zeeland. It's quite a chilling scene especially once the pilot exclaims that 'Zeeland has ceased to exist'. Obviously Zeeland still exists, but the movie shows that this was a not unreasonable thought to have at the time. Also in just two scenes the movie has very effectively shown the devastation of the flood both on an individual and a national level. So the start is promising especially once Julia accidentally floats away from her baby, nearly drowns, and is saved by Aldo, who doesn't realize she has a baby. She is taken to a hospital, and when she gets to her senses, she starts searching for her lost baby together with Aldo. This is basically the perfect, simple setup for such a film. It also has two sympathetic, good actors (Hoeks, more so than Atsma), so nothing can go wrong you think. Unfortunately a lot goes wrong, especially at the end. 

The movie complicates stuff needlessly. Besides just being a blockbuster it also wants to say something about life in the Zeelandic village communities in the 1950's. It presents a society which is still very much ruled by Protestant norms and values. So Julia, as a single mother, is shunned by the other villagers and seen as a disgrace to her family. This is why her father refuses to speak to her or look at her baby. Matters become even more complicated when it turns out that Aldo is the brother of the father of Julia's baby, who was to be her husband, only left her the moment he found out she was pregnant. All these people eventually meet at a hotel where many of the survivors are being sheltered. It becomes immediately clear to the audience that Julia's baby is here too, and who has it, and why. Yet the movie keeps sending Julia and Aldo out in a boat to search for her baby all over Zeeland.. This leads to very dull scenes, which mostly consist of Julia and Aldo bickering/making up while rowing aimlessly in a boat. Eventually Julia and Aldo give up the search, only for the movie to cut to 1971 and a ceremony where the heroes of 1953 are ordained. In these final 10 minutes of the movie the exact things happen you expect to happen, in the way you expect them to happen. It's clear that the movie wanted to be a dramatic/romantic epic and a blockbuster. For a blockbuster it's needlessly complicated, and for an epic it is heavily underwritten. The movie should have gotten rid of the dramatic developments and be a simple story of survival, or it should have fleshed out these developments more. Now it tries to be two things at once, and (although it's always engaging) it doesn't fully succeed as either.

99. Have I Told You Lately &...

Lyrics

Have I told you lately that I love you?
Have I told you there's no one above you?
Fill my heart with gladness, take away my sadness
Ease my troubles that's what you do

Oh, the morning sun in all it's glory
Greets the day with hope and comfort too
And you fill my life with laughter, you can make it better
Ease my troubles that's what you do

There's a love that's divine
And it's yours and it's mine, like the Sun
At the end of the day
We should give thanks and pray, to the One

And say,
Have I told you lately that I love you?
Have I told you there's no one above you?
Fill my heart with gladness, take away my sadness
Ease my troubles that's what you do

There's a love that's divine
And it's yours and it's mine
And it shines like the Sun
At the end of the day
We will give thanks and pray, to the One

Have I told you lately that I love you?
Have I told you there's no one above you
Fill my heart with gladness, take away my sadness
Ease my troubles, that's what you do

Take away my sadness
Fill my life with gladness
Ease my troubles that's what you do

Fill my life with gladness
Take away my sadness
Ease my troubles that's what you do

This is not one of my favorite songs, but it's one that's impossible to hate. Especially after you've seen the clip. I had not seen it before and thought that Van Morrisson was a smooth, slick dude, something like Sting. He is in fact much closer to Brendan Gleeson. I did not know that before linking the song to a movie, which means I chose a lighthearted Hollywood romantic comedy that involves religion and faith. 

The Movie: Keeping the Faith (Edward Norton, 2000)

I had seen Keeping the Faith a long time ago, and liked it very much. I was a bit surprised, and happy, that it still holds up. It is not a great movie, but it achieves exactly what it wants to, it makes you care deeply about the three main characters, and it has a very good heart. I am also a big fan of Edward Norton. He is one of my favorite actors, and I think he is the best American actor of his generation. I think his run from his debut up until Death to Smoochy is pretty impressive. Although American History X and Fight Club are not nearly as good as their popularity/reputation suggests, Norton had not made a movie that was less than good during that period. And he himself was great in every one of them, though I haven't seen The People vs Larry Flynt yet. Norton's confidence in those early roles is also quite impressive. If you didn't know better you'd never know you are watching someone who has just burst on the scene. At the same time he comes off as very sympathetic, and decent actor in all his roles, even when his character is vile. So, now that Birdman came out I was quite surprised, and a bit disappointed to find out that Norton is considered a bit of an asshole by many in the film business, I must say though that in the end I don't much care. I think he is still a great actor, Besides, I don't think you can play a role such as Scout Master Ward (Moonrise Kingdom) or Monty Brogan (25th Hour, Spike Lee's best film, and one of my absolute favorite movies) if  you are a complete asshole.

Having said that, it is quite clear that Norton can be self-indulgent and a bit narcissistic. Keeping the Faith has a completely gratuitous scene that only serves to show that Norton can speak Spanish.  And although Ben Stiller eventually gets the girl here, it is Edward Norton's character who is presented as the true hero of the film.  That scene in which Norton speaks Spanish is all the more noticeable, because it is one of the few scenes in Keeping the Faith that's neither a payoff or a set-up for something. Norton doesn't seem to care much about throwaway jokes and scenes. This is not a compliment. Based on Keeping the Faith Norton is not a great director. This is not a crisply directed movie, you can basically feel the thinking that Norton has to do to guide this movie to the end. It's laborious in a very obvious way. Also no movie should waste Eli Wallach like this. Yet it works because of the really good screenplay (by Stuart Blumberg) and because the three main characters are really given depth, and the tree main actors (Norton, Stiller and Jenna Elfman, who based on this movie really should have beem/become a star at the level of Stiller and Norton) all give very good performances.

            

98. Fragile &...

Lyrics

If blood will flow when fresh and steel are one
Drying in the color of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our mind will always stay

On and on the rain will fall
On and on the rain will fall

Perhaps this final act was meant to clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star
(Like tears from a star)

On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are
(How fragile we are)

If blood will flow when fresh and steel are one
Drying in the color of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our mind will always stay

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star
Like tears from a star

On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are
How fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
The rain will fall
(How fragile we are)

The rain will fall
(How fragile we are)
The rain will fall
(How fragile we are)
The rain will fall

I think Sting is a really great artist, whose music is nowadays hated a bit too much, because it is becoming more and more clear that the guy is a bit of a douchebag. Based on Fragile clip, posted above, he is also clearly unaware that he comes off as a douchebag. That does not change the fact that Fragile is a brilliant song, though how it is ranked under Fields of Gold, or Russians I don't understand. The fact that Radio 2 doesn't even allow you to vote for Stolen Car, Sting's best and sexiest song, is even more ridiculous. Fragile especially made a big impression on me when I heard Sting sing it during the memorial concert for the victims of 9/11. I thought it was very appropriate. In fact now I actually cannot remember any other performance of that concert, even though I am sure I watched it whole. This also explains the movie I chose to link this song too. 

The Movie: United 93 (Paul Greengrass, 2006)

In a previous post I wrote about my distaste for Greengrass' aesthetic in Bloody Sunday. United 93 has some of the same problems, but is a far better movie. That's partly because his style is much more understated here. This movie does not look like a live news report of the events on 9/11 as they unfolded. Greengrass makes it pretty clear that he has staged everything, that what we are watching is Greengrass' recreation of what happened on 9/11. But, let's be fair, his aesthetic here is still very close to that of Bloody Sunday. I didn't like United 93 much more than Bloody Sunday, because Greengrass' stylistic choices here are all that significantly different. This is no Captain Phillips, which is by far Greengrass' best film, and one of the best films of last year. No, I probably like United 93 much more, because I am far more interested in 9/11 than in Bloody Sunday. That has simply made a much bigger impact on my life. 

9/11 was as far as I can remember the first truly major event of which I was conscious that it was a major event, and that I could think about and discuss with some intelligence. And well, that's what we did in high school. It is rather dumb and cliché to say it, but the event was an icebreaker for us, freshmen. The terrorist attacks happened in the first month, of my first year at high school. We were all still rather confused by these new surroundings and new people we met. 9/11 was the first thing to give us some common ground, and to create some sort of connection between us. That the event was so interesting for us, at least for me, certainly also had something to do with the fact that it mirrored our lives. It was clear that high school was the beginning of something new that would have an major, but uncertain effect on our life. It also seemed clear that 9/11 meant pretty much the same for the world as a whole. In other words, it made the beginning of high school even more exciting and confusing than it would have been on its own. I am aware that this sounds like the set-up of a rather dumb coming of age movie, but I couldn't help it. In any case as I grew older, I realized more and more what a truly important event this was. Many of the big political and societal developments of my teenage and adult life can in some way be traced back to these terrorist attacks. Lastly, as a Media student I of course learned about how much of an impact the attacks had on the media landscape as a whole. I will probably discuss that in more detail in some later post.

What I liked most about United 93 is how it showed how sudden the attacks, and the change they caused, were. The movie takes its time. It starts by showing what an ordinary day 9/11 seemed to be. It basically starts as a documentary about the ordinary labor necessary for modern air travel to function. We see the low maintenance workers at the airport helping the travelers, or fueling the plane. We see the pilots preparing for their flight. And in the various air traffic centers we see various technicians working to ensure that every plane's path is as smooth as possible. At the same time, the movie puts the viewer in the position of an air traveler. This is really the most authentic movie about how it is to be at an airport. We hear snippets of conversation, see faces we'll only half remember later, and that would under ordinary circumstances be forgotten the next day. As the day progresses, and it becomes clearer and clearer that something is wrong, it is very interesting to see how these ordinary people try to solve and readjust to the new situation. All of the other movies about 9/11 look back at the event with the knowledge that 9/11 happened. United 93 does not do that. It is not interested in symbolism at all. It just wants to show how the events unfolded, and how bizarre and shocking they truly were to the people who were most closely connected to the attacks. Therefore the movie, despite us knowing the outcome, becomes a very tense thriller. At least until the hijackers kidnap the last plane, United 93, and we focus mostly on the passengers in the plane. The movie now becomes far lesser. Partly because it becomes an action/disaster movie and Greengrass' style is not very suited for that. I thought the hijack itself was a very badly directed scene. And partly for the same reasons I discussed in Bloody Sunday. There I wrote that 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. Here that becomes even more problematic, because whenever he can Greengrass does not even cast actors. Ben Sliney, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) at the time, is playing himself for example. I think that this, and other examples, have rather problematic implications for Greengrass ideas on authenticity, which is why I'll never really like this film very much.