113. Zelfs Je Naam Is Mooi &...

Lyrics

Als jij je kleren aantrekt zonder haast

(When you unhurriedly put on your clothes)
En haast zonder erbij na te denken

(Seemingly without putting much thought in it)
Kijk ik naar een omgekeerde strip-tease

(I am watching a reversed striptease)
Van een volmaakte schoonheid

(Of a perfect beauty)
Elke handbeweging een gedicht

(Each hand movement, a poem)
Elke buiging als een roos die sluit

(Each bow, like a closing rose)
O schat van mij, o hemels hoge ster

(O my love, o heavenly star)
Zelfs jouw schaduw kan mij verblinden

(Even your shadow can blind me)

Dus ga niet weg

(So don't leave)
Ga nooit bij me weg

(Don't ever leave me)
Maar als je ooit verdwijnt

(But if you ever disappear)
Laat mij je dan weer vinden

(Let me find you again)

Zolang ik jou echt bij me heb

(As long as you are truly mine)
Heb ik de volmaakte liefde hier

(I am having the perfect love)
Drink ik uit een pure waterbron

(I am drinking of a pure water source)
En slaap onder een deken van geluk

(And I am sleeping under a blanket of happinness)
Jij bent het goudste zonlicht

(You are the most golden sunlight)
Een volmaakt helder kristal

(A perfectly bright crystal)
Zo schitterend dat het licht ervan

(So brilliant that its light)
Me soms dreigt te verblinden
(Sometimes threatens to blind me)

Maar ga niet weg

(But don't leave)
Ga nooit bij me weg

(Don't ever leave me)
En als je ooit verdwijnt

(And if you ever disappear)
Laat mij je dan weer vinden

(Let me find you again)

Zelfs je naam is mooi

(Even your name is beautiful)
Mooier dan die van iedereen

(More beautiful than the namy of any other)
Die dezelfde naam heeft

(Who has the same name)
Zelfs je naam is mooi

(Even your name is beautiful)
Mooier dan die van iedereen

(More beautiful than that of any other)

Dus ga niet weg

(So don't leave)
Ga nooit bij me weg

(Don't ever leave me)
Maar als je ooit verdwijnt

(But if you ever disappear)
Laat mij je dan weer vinden

(Let me find you again)

Julia

(Julia)

The first two verses of this song are genuinely odd. Who thinks much anyway when dressing up. Also weird: how this song ended up this high. It's not bad either textually, or musically, but there are thousands more like it. I also have never actually heard it outside of the context of the Top 2000, despite the fact that it's relatively recent (it was released in 1998). I am also yet to encounter anyone who has some sort of opinion on it. Besides that, singer Henk Westbroek is not some especially beloved cultural figure in the Netherlands. It is a song though that speaks of love with an old-fashioned exuberant earnestness, making use of very traditional metaphors. Besides it is about a Julia. So it's time for a classical retelling of a classical story.

The Movie: Romeo and Juliet (Franco Zeffirelli, 1968)

I haven't seen Baz Luhrmann Romeo + Juliet (1996) in quite a long time, but I believe I prefer it over this version of the story. Having said that, it's quite refreshing to see Zeffirelli's film. Many Shakespeare adaptations try to put the story in a modern context. They turn it into a musical, or a coming of age film, or they use it to comment on modern society. Furthermore, its actors are often too aware that they are doing Shakespeare and that this is really serious art. They can't really be blamed. These are some of the most retold stories in western history, and it's quite hard to approach them unconsciously.  Zeffirelli's film doesn't have that problem. It is made as if this is the first adaptation of Romeo and Juliet ever.

Perhaps even more importantly, it's made as if its completely unaware that it is 1968. One can imagine that if they had film equipment in Shakespeare's time, the 1611 Romeo and Juliet film would look similar to this. Zeffirelli emphasizes the show. Sure, people went to see Romeo and Juliet because they wanted to be moved by the story, Shakespeare was entertainment too. They also went to see a show, to see/hear the actors saying Shakespeare's words and simply to see the actors act. That's above all what makes this film so interesting. This movie doesn't want to offer an immersive experience, to make the audience forget that they are watching a movie. Rather, the theatricality of it all is overstated. The actors don't blend into their role, but constantly make you aware that they are performing. They all savor the chance to chew on Shakespeare's words, and to play with/enjoy the rhythmic structure of the sentences. They want to awe the audience. As such, their movements are overstated too. They hurl themselves in every fight, kiss or quarrel. The audience doesn't simply go to see actors act, but also to see them performing physical feats. Consequently everybody 'overacts', but that's the point 

John McEnery, playing Mercutio does this best. And it's his fight with Tybalt (Michael York) that exemplifies best the performative aspect of it all the best. They are rivals, but their fight starts friendly. They don't intend to hurt each other. They literally go through the motions, while sword fighting. They mime all the movements, without actually trying to hurt each other. It's a show they stage for the audience on the main square of Verona. The show doesn't even end when Tybalt accidentally stabs Mercutio. Mercutio is really hurt and about to die, but pretends to be healthy in order to stage a death scene for himself.. He pretends in other words as if he is hurt and about to die, and everyone around him cheers at his great acting. Only when he really dies, everyone realizes the true gravity of the situation, and consequently Romeo kills Tybalt, and, well shit hits the fan.

This approach suits me well. I am not an English native speaker, so I often find it quite hard to follow Shakespearean speech. I tend to miss many of the nuances, jokes, and insights of his dialogue. I watched Romeo and Juliet without Dutch subtitles, but they wouldn't have added much anyway. I do not think there is much of a point to read/see Romeo and Juliet, or (some) other Shakespeare plays in any other language than English. I know the content of the story, it's not the content that matters, it's the form, the way Shakespeare tells it. I have never seen a Shakespeare adaptation that gets this more than Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.   

  

112. Heroes &...

Lyrics

I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be Heroes, just for one day

And you, you can be mean
And I, I'll drink all the time
'Cause we're lovers, and that is a fact
Yes we're lovers, and that is that

Though nothing, will keep us together
We could steal time,
just for one day
We can be Heroes, for ever and ever
What d'you say?

I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
Though nothing,
nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, for ever and ever
Oh we can be Heroes,
just for one day

I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can be Heroes, just for one day
We can be us, just for one day

I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns shot above our heads
(over our heads)
And we kissed,
as though nothing could fall
(nothing could fall)
And the shame was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever

Then we could be Heroes,
just for one day

We can be Heroes
We can be Heroes
We can be Heroes
Just for one day
We can be Heroes

We're nothing, and nothing will help us
Maybe we're lying,
then you better not stay
But we could be safer,
just for one day

Oh-oh-oh-ohh, oh-oh-oh-ohh,
just for one day

"There is no accounting for taste" can only get you so far. If you compile a list of the best pop/rock music, you really need to have a David Bowie song among the first 50, or at least the first 100. Personally I find it even stranger that Radio 2's listeners somehow didn't choose Space Oddity as Bowie's highest placed song.  

I am not a particularly great fan of Bowie, but he is without a doubt one of the most influential and important musicians of the 20th century. He was certainly one of the most progressive, I am not greatly familiar with issues of gender and sexuality, but now that queer identities become more visible in mainstream culture and society, it is pretty clear to me that David Bowie was far ahead of his time when exploring his (sexual) identity. And perhaps the same thing can be said about Freddie Mercury. These artists forced the audience to accept them on their own terms. And their identity was an inherent part of their art, which you could not escape if you wanted to enjoy/interact with it. The 'dominant' culture/society had to adapt to them. 

Anyway, I'll write more about this once I discuss one of Bowie's songs dealing directly with these issues. The movie I chose has nothing do with that. I just chose it because Heroes plays an important role in it. 

The Movie: The Perks of Being A Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky, 2012)

The Perks of Being A Wallflower is closer to Ordinary People, than to Juno. This is not a coming-of-age film, but a drama about Charlie (Logan Lerman) a deeply troubled teen, The film takes his problems seriously, and is often surprisingly dark as it dives inside Charlie's mind and tells it from his point of view. Chbosky, who adapts his own book, is not an especially great or imaginative director. Especially the flashback scenes are rather clumsily handled. Chbosky has filmed them as if he wants to hold crucial information back, waiting to reveal it at the end of the film. The reveal doesn't come as a surprise though, besides there is not much dramatic reason for Chbosky's approach. Having said that, it is quite clear that Chbosky is a really intelligent writer, who truly understands his lead character and his problems. 

Chbosky does above all make great use of voice-over, especially when Charlie tells us about his newfound friends Patrick (Ezra Miller) and Sam (Emma Watson). Charlie is a rather unreliable narrator, in what he tells us really does happen, only he interprets it quite clearly in a wrong way. When Patrick makes fun of a professor, Charlie tells us, that he did it, not because he is a 'bad guy', but to entertain the freshmen. Patrick is indeed not a bad person,  but his act was purely for himself, to forget his own troubles. He is a closeted homosexual who has problems of his own. Charlie may see that and realize it, but he needs to tell/delude himself that his friend is a perfectly normal person. Similarly Charlie tells us that Sam, on whom he has a crush, used to be drunk constantly and sleep with a lot of different men, but that he won't judge her for that. That narration makes, first of all clear that Charlie certainly does judge her for it, but is afraid someone might find out, which might ruin his friendship. Secondly, Sam's behavior may not have been quite exemplary, but it was certainly not awful. There is not that much to be judgmental about. But by making it sound more awful than it is, Charlie braces himself for a possible end of their friendship. If it does happen, he can comfort himself in the belief that he didn't lose that great a person. 

The potential loss of contact/friendship is what drives Charlie's behavior, and the movie itself. That fear informs basically every action he takes, never allowing him to truly relax, not even when he is genuinely happy and comfortable among his friends. In fact, especially not then. What if he says/does something stupid. During a game of Truth or Dare, he does and his greatest fears seem to come true. His decision is not smart. but it is one of the only times in the movie, he expresses his true feelings. If he did that earlier, he would not have to make a bad decision. Charlie's fear/insecurity is also the reason why he keeps talking about how wonderful 'the night at the tunnel was', when they elatedly listen to Bowie's Heroes, through a gloriously lit tunnel. It's the one night of which Charlie is absolutely certain that his friends loved it, so he cannot go wrong talking about it. The movie understands that this certainty is why Charlie loves that night so much, even more so than the greatness of the night itself. 

The tunnel sequence is probably the most famous one in the film, partly because it's at the beginning and Emma Watson is introduced for the first time in all her glory. She benefits from the fact that she is seen from the point of view of Charlie, so she is shot in a very flattering way, emphasizing her beauty. Perhaps over-emphasizing, as Chbosky does want to make clear that Charlie's image of Sam is a bit too much of a fantasy. But camera tricks can only do so much. It's a star-making moment, and performance. It immediately squashes any doubts about Watson career after Harry Potter. As for myself, I saw the movie once before seeing it for this post. I hadn't, and still haven't, seen any Potter-film before the third. The first three didn't catch the tone/spirit of the books, leaving me uninterested in the rest. In any case I was absolutely gobsmacked, and paid more attention to her (role) than the movie's themes. I was convinced that she was going to be a star, and she is one now. That's deserved, she is obviously intelligent, and a very good actress. She is not as great as I expected though. She needs the right role. She deserved an Oscar nomination for The Bling Ring, but she was quite frankly awful in Noah. The other main actors here are quite good too by the way. Ezra Miller's bad luck is that Adam Driver exists.

The Perks of Being A Wallflower does have some significant flaws. Charlie is a self-centered character, for obvious reasons, who does not pay much attention to his friends problems. Considering much of the film is told from his point of view, it is logical that the film is to some extent guilty of the same, but Chbosky could have cared a bit more about them. Or he should have completely disregarded their feelings and focus entirely on Charlie. Now Chbosky, is also at times unfair towards his characters, especially towards Mary Elizabeth (Mae Whitman). Once she starts dating Charlie, the movie suddenly seems to turn her into an insufferable character, just because she is not Emma Watson. Now the fact that she is not Emma Watson, is in this context a pretty understandable reason to not want to date her, but the movie would have been better if it just admitted it. Lastly, this is a weirdly self-congratulatory film. Charlie wants to be a writer, and the film constantly reminds us that he can write really well and that he one day surely will become one. At times the movie plays as if Chbosky is telling his own origin story, 'How I Became A Superhero Writer'. In this regard there is one especially cringe worthy scene between Charlie and his English teacher Mr. Anderson. That the scene is cringe worthy is especially an achievement, considering Mr. Anderson is played by Paul Rudd. Still on the whole, this is a very good film. What it does well, it does extremely well.   

     

111. Kayleigh &...

Lyrics

Do you remember chalk hearts melting on a playground wall
Do you remember dawn escapes from moonwashed college halls
Do you remember the cherry blossom in the market square
Do you remember I thought it was confetti in our hair
By the way didn´t I break your heart
Please excuse me I never meant to break your heart
So sorry I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine

Kayleigh is it too late to say I'm sorry?
And Kayleigh could we get it together again
I just can't go on pretending that it came to a natural end
Kayleigh oh I never thought I'd miss you
And Kayleigh I thought that we'd always be friends
We said our love would last forever
So how did it come to this bitter end

Do you remember barefoot on the lawn with shooting stars
Do you remember the loving on the floor in Belsize Park
Do you remember dancing in stilettoes in the snow
Do you remember you never understood I had to go
By the way didn´t I break your heart
Please excuse me I never meant to break your heart
So sorry I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine

Kayleigh, I just want to say I'm sorry
But Kayleigh I'm too scared to pick up the phone
To hear you've found another lover to patch up our broken home
Kayleigh I'm still trying to write that love song
Kayleigh it's more important to me, now you're gone
Maybe it will prove that we were right
Or it'll prove that I was wrong

Do you remember chalk hearts melting on a playground wall
Do you remember dawn escapes from moonwashed college halls
Do you remember the cherry blossom in the market square
Do you remember I thought it was confetti in our hair
By the way didn´t I break your heart
Please excuse me I never meant to break your heart
So sorry I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine

Kayleigh is it too late to say I'm sorry?
And Kayleigh could we get it together again
I just can't go on pretending that it came to a natural end
Kayleigh oh I never thought I'd miss you
And Kayleigh I thought that we'd always be friends
We said our love would last forever
So how did it come to this bitter end

Do you remember barefoot on the lawn with shooting stars
Do you remember the loving on the floor in Belsize Park
Do you remember dancing in stilettoes in the snow
Do you remember you never understood I had to go
By the way didn´t I break your heart
Please excuse me I never meant to break your heart
So sorry I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine

Kayleigh, I just want to say I'm sorry
But Kayleigh I'm too scared to pick up the phone
To hear you've found another lover to patch up our broken home
Kayleigh I'm still trying to write that love song
Kayleigh it's more important to me, now you're gone
Maybe it will prove that we were right
Or it'll prove that I was wrong

I am not a fan of modern so-called indie music. I mostly dislike the very sober, nearly timid arrangements/style. It's not surprising than that I like Kayleigh, and similar 80's songs quite a lot. You could call these songs overproduced maybe, but that's my favorite thing about them. As for linking it to a movie, I am glad it namechecks Belsize Park, which is apparently in Camden Town, London. There appears to be a romantic comedy about several people in Camden Town hooking up and breaking up.

The Movie: This Year's Love (David Kane, 1999)

IMDB describes This Year's Love as follows: "A group of thirtysomethings flirt around Camden Town, swapping partners in search of love, lust and life". This makes it seem like a typical British romantic comedy of the 90's, but This Year's Love is different, if not necessarily better, than the average Four Weddings and A Funeral. It takes its working class surroundings seriously, at least in the context of a romantic comedy. Its characters are genuinely flawed people who remain flawed at the end. It's also much less interested in dreamy notions of romanticism. Not everything needs to be nice, cute or beautiful. The movie makes this clear right from the opening credits which are set against a heavily tattooed body, while on the soundtrack we hear hard rock. I am not sure about this, but I do believe that tattoos weren't very mainstream in the UK/western culture in general in 1999, and I can imagine that quite a lot of people considered these opening credits to be relatively transgressive. 

After the opening credits we cut to two people, Hannah (Catherine McCormack) and Danny (Douglas Henshall) oversleeping for what turns out to be their wedding reception. The movie doesn't show them excitedly preparing for it, nor does it present that day as the most important one of their life. The reception nearly immediately turns sour anyway, when Danny finds out his bride slept with his best friend a couple of days before the wedding. The enraged Danny leaves the wedding, ends up at an airport and meets Mary (Kathy Burke), cleaning lady by day, club singer by night. Hannah on the other hand ends up in bed with local Casanova Cameron (Dougray Scott). Cameron is the roommate of the pathetically insecure Liam (Ian Hart), who somehow earns the attention of Sophie (Jennifer Ehle), who may be a single mom, but is also the coolest, sexiest girl on the block. During the course of the movie, all these couples will change, but at the end to nobody's surprise Danny and Hannah will end up together.        

The main problem with the movie, apart from the contrived coincidences through which all these people meet each other, is that Hannah and Danny are the dullest characters in the movie. Nothing even remotely surprising happens to/between these characters. On top of that Henshall is not a very charismatic or interesting actor, at least not here. I recently saw him in The Salvation in which he was quite good in a small role. The movie's MVP is Dougray Scott, playing Cameron. I have probably seen Scott in some movies, but never noticed him. Here he gives a wonderful comic performance. Cameron is an 'artist' who paints whatever he finds in a catalog,  than sells the paintings at auctions, and the money he earns, he spends betting at horse races. He explains in a hilariously pretentious way that he doesn't care about a career, just about the process. What is wonderful about this is that he truly does live like a liberated, 'enlightened' bohemian, only he is too dumb to realize it. He believes that he is a bum, who successfully conceals his true nature. He conceals nothing though, least of all his true problems, namely that he is really dumb and shallow. The scenes in which Cameron tries to be honest about himself are probably the film's highlight. It's helped by Scott's great performance. At first I thought he was horribly overacting, without paying any attention to his co-actors. It takes a while before you realize Scott is acting precisely in the same way as if Cameron would act if he were to portray himself on film. 

As for the other characters. Kathy Burke gives a very sympathetic performance as the slightly plump and unattractive Mary, though the movie comments way too much on how it should not be a big deal that she is plump and unattractive, thereby making it a big deal. But it's quite rare for a romantic comedy to treat someone like Mary as an ordinary woman who enjoys sex. It's even rarer for it to present her as an ordinary woman who is not pathetic or sad, because she doesn't get to have sex or find love. The film does not pity Mary and presens her as a confident, intelligent woman, who can deal on her own with aggressive men such as Liam. Liam only becomes aggressive by the third act of the movie. Before that he is a rather timid nerd, who does not really know how to behave around women. Director Kane deserves credit for showing his aggressiveness as simply the other side of the same coin. Both his timidness and his aggressiveness are born out of his extreme fear of women and sex. It's a rather dark plot point all the more so, because it is not presented as all that surprising. Liam's aggressiveness is just as natural as his timidity. 

110. Eloise &...

Lyrics

Ev'ry night I'm there 
I'm always there she knows I'm there 
And heaven knows I hope she goes 
I find it hard to realize that love was in her eyes 
It's dying now, she knows I'm crying now 
And ev'ry night I'm there I break my heart to please 
Eloise, Eloise 
You know I'm on my knees - yeah 
I said please 
You're all I want so haer my prayer 

My Eloise is like the stars that please the night 
The sun that makes the day, that lights the way 
And when that star goes by 
I'll hold it in my hands and cry 
Her love is mine, my sun will shine 
And ev'ry night I'm there I break my heart to please 
Eloise, Eloise 
You know I'm on my knees - yeah 
I said please 
You're all I want so haer my prayer 

My Eloise, I'd love to please her 
I'd love to care but she's not there 
And when I find you, I'd be so kind 
You'd want to stay, I know you'd stay 

And as the days grow old, the nights crow cold 
I wanna hold her near to me, I know she's dear to me 
And only time can tell and take away this lonely hell 
I'm on my knees to Eloise 
And ev'ry night I'm there I break my heart to please 
Eloise, Eloise 
You know I'm on my knees - yeah 
I said please 
You're all I want so haer my prayer 
You know I'm on my knees 
I said please 
You're all I want so hear my prayer

I linked this song to a melodramatic raunchy sex comedy, about a teen who is hopelessly and slightly pathetically obsessed with a girl much out of his league. So, yeah, guess what I think of the song. 

The Movie: Lemon Popsicle (Eskimo Limon) (Boaz Davidson, 1978)

Once a month Dutch director Martin Koolhoven organizes Cinema Egzotik, an event at which he shows a double feature of somehow related (cult)films. I have been there a couple of times and saw among other things Jacob's Ladder, the 1985 Fright Night (which turned out to be one of the most purely entertaining movies of the 1980's), and Lemon Popsicle. I saw that film about three years ago and remembered liking it. I now have to attribute that to the cinema setting. It's fun to see this film with an audience giggling at silly jokes. Perhaps my judgement is clouded by the fact that Lemon Popsicle was followed by its sequel Going Steady, which I remember being much more fun. In any case, watching the film now, at home, I found it kind of awful. There are some fun bits, but not much, and at times it is insufferable. 

Lemon Popsicle is a vulgar film. This is not an opinion, just a statement of fact. Superbad is also a vulgar movie, and that is one of the funniest comedies of recent times. My main problem with Lemon Popsicle, beside it not being funny enough, is that it is a vulgar movie, while somehow pretending it is a wholesome and innocent one, and pretending it is ashamed of vulgarity (not its own vulgarity, just vulgarity in general). I understand very much that the movie is a product of its time and place. You cannot make Superbad in 1978 Israel, but that doesn't make it any less annoying. And to be fair, the Israeli audiences in 1978 certainly weren't annoyed. Apparently 40% of Israel went to see this film, and it eventually got 9 sequels. In 1982 Davidson also made an American remake, The Last American Virgin. That pretty much summarizes what this movie is about. It follows three 17-year olds, Benji, Momo, and Johnny in their quest for sex, although at the beginning of the film it seems as if only Momo is a virgin. While that's on the mind of every 17-year old boy, the situations these boys find themselves in are sometimes very unusual. That, again, would not be a problem if the film didn't pretend it was presenting the ordinary behavior of 17-year olds around the world. Scenes involving a prostitute and a sex-obsessed spinster are shot in a very monotonous way and take way too much time. Although the payoff of the spinster scene is quite funny, because of its unabashed embrace of old-fashioned cliches. A sailor man with a tattoo of an anchor cannot be wanting in a raunchy sex comedy. But the adventures of the boys in these scenes is unironically presented as 'boys will be boys'. I am sorry, but that's just not true, nor do most 17-year olds get crabs.

The crabs are symptomatic of another annoying thing about the film. The film is actually more obsessed with sex than real 17 year old boys are, but it uses the behavior of the kids as a strawman argument to adopt a deeply conservative and annoyingly moralistic attitude towards sex. In other words besides being a hypocritical film, it is also patronizing and pedantic. Sex always has (bad) consequences here. Sex risks their friendship, gets them nearly beat up, crabs, or pregnant. The pregnancy mostly serves to set up the final scene of the film, which is probably the reason for the film's fame and success. The pregnant girl is Nikky, with whom Momo is obsessed. But Nikky is his best friend Johnny's girlfriend, and he is the one who has made her pregnant. Only, Johnny now doesn't want anything do with her. So Momo pays for her abortion and takes great care for her afterwards. Nikky seems to fall in love with him, and invites Momo to her birthday party next week. The following week Momo buys a ring, and all dressed up confidently arrives at the party. Looking for Nikky he, eventually finds her in the kitchen making out passionately with, you guessed it, Johnny. It's clearly an asshole move by director Davidson, but he orchestrates it with such palpable, enthusiastic glee that you cannot help but admire it. I mean he basically literally drops the mic in the scene. When Momo arrives at the party we hear a joyous 50's rock song. Once he gets to the kitchen, before we see what he sees, we almost literally hear on the soundtrack a needle being dropped, followed by a sad love song by some 50's crooner. It's genuinely quite wonderful how much Davidson seems to enjoy being evil to his characters. 

   

        

109. When The Lady Smiles &...

Lyrics

When the lady smiles, you know it drives me wild
Her lips are warm and resourceful
When her fingertips, go drawing circles in the night
Then the mood is soft and sensual, hu-u
And I love it, yeah I love it
It's the answer to all my dreams
Every time it feels like the earth is shakin'
It doesn't matter, a glass is fallin',
I hear it shatter, maybe it's raining,
faster and faster, shadow dancin',
together oh I, I'm a bettin' on the game of love
oh oh oh I, I'm bettin' that love is gonna come out
When the walls no longer shout, back at me
and I'm feelin' proud

When the lady smiles, she holds me in her hand
As a matter of fact, she could always let me down
But when the lady smiles, I can't resist her call
As a matter of fact, I don't resist at all
‘cos I'm walking on clouds and she is leadin' the way

My friends tell me, she's the beast inside your paradise
I guess you've heard it all before
A fallen angel, that has got you hypnotized
and that always needs some more, hu-u
and I love it, yeah I love it
She's done nothin' to mislead me
‘cos every time we meet, the earth is shakin'
It doesn't matter, a glass is fallin'
I hear it shatter , maybe it's rainin'
faster and faster, shadow dancin'
together oh I, I'm bettin' on the game of love
Oh oh oh I, I'm bettin' that love is gonna come out
When the walls no longer shout, back at me
and I'm feeling proud

When the lady smiles, she holds me in her hand
As a matter of fact, she could always let me down
But when the lady smiles, I can't resist her call
As a matter of fact, I don't resist at all
‘cos we're walkin' on clouds and she is leadin' the way

Oh no, oh no, oh nooooo......

Founded in 1961, Golden Earring is the oldest Dutch rock group still in existence. Songs such as When The Lady Smiles show why they have such longevity. They may not be groundbreaking, but they know very well how to make simply good, entertaining songs. They have many more like this one. The same can be said about the movie I linked it too, although that is much better, and much more entertaining, than the song.

The Movie: The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)

The Lady Eve is among Roger Ebert's Great Movies. I would not go quite that far, but it is certainly wonderful. It's the first film of Preston Sturges, one of the most lauded 'screwball' directors of classic Hollywood, I've seen, and I now certainly hope to see more of his work. Especially because after seeing this film many film folks on Twitter started suddenly discussing Sturges' Hail The Conquering Hero, mostly in the context of an apparently great static long take in that film. That did not surprise me. From The Lady Eve it is apparent that Sturges loves static long takes, and knows how to use them well. The best one discussed by Ebert in his review. It occurs when the confident Jean (Barbara Stanwyck) playfully caresses the perplexed Charles' (Henry Fonda) hair (Henry Fonda). 

The best scene in the movie occurs a bit before that though, and I was quite surprised I have never seen it be referenced by modern movies. In the scene I am talking about we see Jean looking in her mirror at how Charles, sitting in a bar, reading a newspaper, is constantly being approached by women. There is a good reason for that, apart from Charles being Henry Fonda. Namely, Charles is a bachelor billionaire heir; his father has a famous ale company. It's just quite unfortunate that Charles is not very interested in ale. He is interested in snakes, and is just returning from a year-long expedition in the Amazon, He is a naive scientist, who doesn't feel very secure around women, especially if he hasn't met a woman for a year. Jean and her father are professional con men who want to exploit his naivete, and know very well how to do that. While looking in her mirror Jean anticipates the moves of every woman approaching Charles, and of Charles himself, while at the same time predicting exactly how she will earn Charles' attention. 

It's a brilliantly conceived and shot scene, in which we learn everything we need to know about Charles simply by looking at him from Jean's point of view. Sturges hardly ever cuts to a close-up/medium shot of him and the women, shot from Charles' point of view. We don't hear their conversations. Most of what we see, we see through Jean's mirror. Besides being an original and interesting way to present a character, it is also an efficient one, After all, because of this approach we learn everything we need to know about Jean too. Of course Jean eventually falls in love with Charles, and Charles falls in love with Jean. That too is not very surprising. Barbara Stanwyck, whom I haven't seen before in a movie, gives one of the most sexy performances I've seen, and she certainly knows it. Fonda gives a great performance too, but both actors are helped enormously by the script which doesn't present their characters in a lazily stereotypical way. Once Jean falls in love with Charles she doesn't suddenly soften up and regret her criminal ways. Yes, she stops conning Charles, but that's simply because she loves the guy, not because she suddenly believes conning is inherently evil. As for Charles, he may be naive and insecure around women, but he is not oblivious to it. He knows what he should do around Jean, and knows when he is doing what he should not be doing. He is not an idiot.  

I also love how the movie is constructed. The movie basically exists of two big set pieces, one on the boat on its way to New York, and another in Charles' mansion. In between there is one scene that connects the two, before the first set piece there is a prologue, and after the second one there is basically an extended epilogue. During the the first set piece, the plot hardly moves forward. All the movie does then is set up the characters, and the problems they will face later on in the movie. The second set-piece than is the payoff. I preferred the first part, because it was very sharply written and a bit more grounded in some sort of reality than the second part, which was a bit too much screwball-y for my taste. But in any case I loved the movie's patience and its insistence that its characters are more interesting than the plot. I also love large set-pieces which do not necessarily move the plot forward and I find it quite unfortunate that too many modern movies do not even try to emulate a movie such as this one. I am not someone who believes that modern movies are in a bad shape, and I don't believe that movies used to be better. But it is to some extent unfortunate and bad for movies that these modes of film making are now all but extinct.

108. Feel &...

Lyrics

Come and hold my hand
I wanna contact the living
Not sure I understand
This role I've been given
I sit and talk to God
And he just laughs at my plans
My head speaks a language
I don't understand

I just wanna feel
Real love feel the home that I live in
'Cause I got too much life
Running through my veins
Going to waste
I don't wanna die
But I ain't keen on living either
Before I fall in love
I'm preparing to leave her

Scare myself to death
That's why I keep on running
Before I've arrived
I can see myself coming

I just wanna feel
Real love feel the home that I live in
'Cause I got too much life
Running through my veins
Going to waste
And I need to feel
Real love and the love ever after
I cannot get enough

I just wanna feel
Real love feel the home that I live in
I got too much love
Running through my veins
To go to waste

I just wanna feel
Real love and the love ever after
There's a hole in my soul
You can see it in my face
It's a real big place

Come and hold my hand
I wanna contact the living
Not sure I understand
This role I've been given
Not sure I understand
Not sure I understand
Not sure I understand
Not sure I understand

Before I linked Robbie Williams' Angels to Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire. Feel could just as easily be linked to it. In the context of that movie, these two songs compliment each other perfectly. One coud argue that Angels is about how the humans are affected by the angels' presence, while Feel, is about how the angels feel about the the humans and their own place in the universe. Luckily Wim Wenders has made a sequel to Wings of Desire. The connections between these two songs and Wenders' work are probably coincidental, but I'd be curious to know if Williams is a fan of Wenders.

The Movie: Faraway, So Close (In weiter Ferne, so nah!) (Wim Wenders, 1993)

Faraway, So Close is a mess, but I am very happy it exists. Directors should more often be given this kind of freedom to play with ideas, genres and styles. Not everything coheres, but this is clearly a personal movie by a director who had a lot to say, and wanted to say it in an original, and playful way. If nothing else Wenders should be lauded for getting Bruno Ganz, Nastassja Kinski, Willem Defoe, Peter Falk, Mikhail Gorbachev (!) and Lou Reed all in the same movie. He does waste Kinski a bit, and Reed a lot more than a bit. Kinski plays angel Raphaela, but doesn't get to philosophize much. She mostly has to angelically console Cassiel (Otto Sander) who decides to become human like his friend Damiel (Ganz) did in Wings of Desire. Reed gets to play himself and sing a song seemingly consisting only of the lyrics 'Why can't I be good/Why can't I act like a man/Why can't I act like other men can'. After that he pretty much dissapears.

Wenders has more on his mind than merely what it means to be human. Gorbachev's cameo is a stunt, but it is not here without reason. As he quotes a Russian philosopher we hear Gorbachev thinking about war, peace and morality. It's clear that we should consider these ideas in the context of the fall of the Soviet-Union, and the unification of Germany. This could partly serve as a justification for the sequel, Wings of Desire was made in 1987, and took place in a divided Berlin. Faraway, So Close of course takes place in 1993 when there was no more East and West Berlin, just Berlin, the capital of the 'new' Germany. This is constantly emphasized by Wenders, who wants to see/show how the unification of Berlin has affected its citizens. As such this is a film much more concerned with politics (and political philosophy), history and national culture than with existential philosophy, which is probably why I actually liked this a bit more than Wings of Desire. 

     

107. The Winner Takes It All & ...

'















Lyrics

I don't wanna talk
About things we've gone through
Though it's hurting me, now it's history
I've played all my cards
And that's what you've done too
Nothing more to say, no more ace to play

The winner takes it all
The loser's standing small
Beside the victory, that's her destiny

I was in your arms
Thinking I belonged there
I figured it made sense building me a fence
Building me a home
Thinking I'd be strong there
But I was a fool playing by the rules

The gods may throw a dice
Their minds as cold as ice
And someone way down here
Loses someone dear

The winner takes it all (takes it all)
The loser has to fall (has to fall)
It's simple and it's plain
Why should I complain

But tell me does she kiss
Like I used to kiss you
Does it feel the same
When she calls your name
Somewhere deep inside
You must know I miss you
But what can I say, rules must be obeyed

The judges will decide (will decide)
The likes of me abide (me abide)
Spectators of the show, always staying low
The game is on again (on again)
A lover or a friend (or a friend)
A big thing or a small (big or small)
The winner takes it all (takes it all)

I don't wanna talk if it makes you feel sad
And I understand
You've come to shake my hand
I apologize if it makes you feel bad
Seeing me so tense, no self-confidence
But you see

The winner takes it all
The winner takes it all

So the winner takes it all
And the the loser has to fall
Throw a dice, cold as ice
Way down here, someone dear
Takes it all, has to fall....

We have made it through two posts without an ABBA song, but here they are again. Look, you can make a fair argument that ABBA is underrated, and that because they made breezy songs they aren't as taken as seriously as they perhaps should have been. But the love ABBA gets in Radio's 2 top 2000 is astonishing. We are only at 107 at they have already placed 4 times (they'll place once more before we get to 200). This is obviously not a breezy song, as evidenced by the fact that the video for it was directed by Lasse Hallstrom. I did not link the song to one of his movies though. 

The Movie: The War of the Roses (Danny DeVito, 1989)

The War of The Roses is certainly one of the most famous movies about a divorced couple fighting, but it's not completely right to connect it to the ABBA song. The entire point of the movie is that in a divorce 'battle' there is no winner. And it trows everything, including the kitchen sink to make that point. Especially in its second half it concocts the most bizarre ways in which Oliver and Barbara Rose can make life miserable for each other. In doing so, it is quite funny. Few lines will make one chuckle as much as "A family tiff seems to be developing. I don't know if we should leave, but I definitely advise skipping the fish course". There is also a downright bizarre battle between a jeep and a cabrio. The movie saves the dog, but is less merciful to the cat. 

Much of what I've described here happens in the second half of the movie. While it's quite wonderful, I was a bit disappointed by it. Because the first half of the movie is really something else. It's a remorseless depiction of how a family's American dream can turn into an American nightmare, without anyone being really able to put a finger on how and why that happened. Danny DeVito is relentless in showing the marching of time, and the lack of agency the Roses seem to have over their own life. This is of course also communicated through the narrative framework of the film. Their story is told by DeVito's character, a divorce lawyer, to a client of his. They meet in Nantucket, rather romantically, and have sex. Cut to the next scene, when they are suddenly much older and have kids. Cut to the next scene, their kids are even older and are now spoiled brats. Before you know it 17 years have passed since their first meeting in Nantucket. Their children are about to go to college, and the Roses are going to be alone in their comically large house. They never had a chance to find their purpose in life or their identity. Oliver is a self-admitted phony who plays the role of a cultured man in order to become a big shot lawyer. Barbara plays the role of the satisfied housewife, until one day she sells her self-made pâté and earns her own money for the first time in years.       

What makes all of this so powerful, is that Oliver and Rose are presented here as fundamentally decent, rather ordinary people. When they meet Oliver is a law student, and Rose is a gymnast, realizing there is no future for her in gymnastics. They have no particularly ambitious dreams, and mostly just want to live happily as a family. As the good American citizens they are, they believe that the pursuit of the American Dream will lead them to happiness. They don't know any other way.  They simply follow the rules/conventions of the society they are shaped by. Yet it's those same conventions that lead them to a life of misery. They don't seem to understand how that is possible. Even worse, they don't even know how they could try to understand. This is a more chilling movie than something like American Beauty. There Kevin Spacey is miserable because he isn't living the life he wants. Here, Oliver and Barbara are miserable, despite living the life they want. And once that life falls apart, it's not just anger that fuels their 'war', but frustration too.