81. Mr. Blue Sky &...

Lyrics

Sun is shinin' in the sky
There ain't a cloud in sight
It's stopped rainin', everybody's in the lane
And don't you know, it's a beautiful new day, hey

Runnin' down the Avenue
See how the sun shines brightly
In the city on the streets where once was pity
Mr. Blue Sky is living here today, hey

Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long
Where did we go wrong?

Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long
Where did we go wrong?

Hey, you with the pretty face
Welcome to the human race
A celebration Mr. Blue Sky's up there waitin'
And today is the day we've waited for

Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long
Where did we go wrong?

Hey there Mr. Blue, we're so pleased to be with you
Look around see what you do
Everybody smiles at you

Hey there Mr. Blue, we're so pleased to be with you
Look around see what you do
Everyone is positive

Mr. Blue you did it right
But soon comes Mr. Night
Creepin' over, now his hand is on your shoulder
Never mind, I'll remember you this, I'll remember you this way

Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long
Where did we go wrong?

Hey there Mr. Blue, we're so pleased to be with you
Look around see what you do
Everybody smiles at you

I am not very familiar with Electric Light Orchestra, but I am not much of a fan of them based on what I've heard. I don't like this song much either, but I can see why it is so popular. It is a song made to cheer you up. It reminded me of that great scene in Hannah and her Sisters where Woody Allen, contemplating death goes into a movie theater and watches such an enthralling movie that he realizes life is worth living. I linked this song, not to Hannah and Her Sisters, but to the movie Allen was watching there.

The Movie: Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)

Duck Soup is a Marx Brothers comedy. Together with Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, The Marx Brothers, headlined by Groucho Marx, are often considered among the most important influential comedians from the early days of film. I still haven't seen anything of Lloyd, but based on Duck Soup I prefer Keaton and Chaplin over The Marx Brothers. Their movies (or those I've seen of them) are both funnier and slightly more substantial than Duck Soup. That doesn't mean I did not enjoy Duck Soup, but I did wish it did a bit more with its premise. Duck Soup tells the 'story' of Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx), who is by circumstance appointed as dictator of Freedonia. At the same time Trentino, the ambassador of Sylvania tries to create a revolution in Freedonia, so Sylvania can take it over. He sends two goofing spies to Freedonia, who mostly create chaos, while at the same time Rufus and Trentino develop a personal grudge against one another, because of Mrs. Teasdale. This leads to all kinds of funny scenes. 

Although the film is anarchic and irreverent of authority figures, its (political) backdrop is a bit random. The movie could have much of the same jokes and even much of the same plot if it was set in, say, a supermarket. That is not much of a problem, but as I've discussed on this blog earlier, I am a fan of (political) satire. It is not that the movie does not contain that at all, but I wished it would have been a bit more satirical, and that the best gags in the movie were more connected to the main premise. Still, the movie does show how vapid the ideas of the politicians are, by showing that personal gains are all that Rufus and Trentino care about. Having said that, I've read critics trying to present this movie as some sort of commentary/reflection of Hitler's rise to power. That has more to do with the fact that Hitler became Germany's leader in the same year the movie came out, than with the actual content of the movie. Duck Soup does not offer any insights into that, and is also totally uninterested in offering them. It just wants to be an entertaining comedy, and to present it as some sort of social commentary is to do it an enormous disservice. Movies do not need to be social commentaries, and they certainly need not have a special message. Sometimes just being an entertaining comedy is enough, especially if it is as entertaining as Duck Soup.

Watching Duck Soup, it struck me how much this can be seen as something of a 'transitional' comedy. It combines rather old-fashioned comedy perfectly with more modern humor. And it combines the strengths of silent cinema really well with those of sound film. While most of the actors around Groucho Marx act rather theatrically, and in a way that is now very much out of fashion, Groucho basically acts as a sort of stand-up comedian. It is very easy to see why, and how, Woody Allen was influenced by him. When Groucho speaks we often see him in a close-up, or a (medium) shot in which he is the only one of interest. The jokes and one-liners he says are very much structured in a way that is familiar to us, modern audiences. Still, the best jokes in the movie are visual jokes, which rely very much on the movement and placement of both the actors in the frame, and the camera itself. The influence of silent cinema is very much visible during these scenes (if only because spy Pinky (Harpo Marx) is a mute). In many scenes not only do the actors not say anything, but we also do not hear any music on the soundtrack. One example is a scene in which the two spies Chicolini (Chico Marx) and Pinki irritate a street vendor by passing around his hat. But the best scene in the movie comes when Chicolini and Pinki break into Mrs. Tisdale's house. Pinki pretends to be Rufus, only Rufus himself is there too. While nervously trying to hide Pinki breaks a mirror. Rufus hears something and now goes to the mirror which he does not now is broken. What follows is a wonderful scene before the broken mirror in which Pinki has to imitate Rufus perfectly, so he doesn't realize that the mirror is broken and that thus there is an intruder. It's a long and incredibly funny scene, timed perfectly by both actors.What's most exceptional about it though, is how intelligently it is timed. They realized that Pinki must react to Rufus' behavior, but he that obviously cannot anticipate his behavior and cannot react at the same time. So we see that Harpo Marx manages to react just a fraction of a second later than his brother. I have seen quite some other scenes in the same vein, but they completely forget this, and have the two subjects of the scene behave in perfect unison. Thus the scene is quite extraordinary not only for its timing, but also for its great attention to detail. 

      

80. Paranoid &...

Lyrics

Finished with my woman 'cause she couldn't help me with my mind
People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time
All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy
Think I'll lose my mind if I don't find something to pacify
Can you help me, occupy my brain?

Oh yeah
I need someone to show me the things in life that I can't find
I can't see the things that make true happiness, I must be blind
Make a joke and I will sigh and you will laugh and I will cry
Happiness I cannot feel and love to me is so unreal

And so as you hear these words telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life I wish I could but it's too late

For a long time I only knew Ozzy Osbourne as the idiotic pater familias on his on reality show. I thought he was something of a C-star who was at one time semi-successful with some long-forgotten. Basically I thought he was nothing more than a typical reality 'star'. I was thus quite surprised to learn he actually was a pretty respected musician who has a relatively important place in rock history. I should have known better, but as I've written in my entries on Metallica metal, and similar music like it, never interested me much. Still, I like this song, even though the title doesn't seem to match the lyrics. The protagonist doesn't seem to be paranoid, he seems to be more of a maladjusted manic-depressive (and the movie I linked the song to is probably the best movie about such a protagonist). But of course the lyrics aren't all that important here. The song's main goal is to rock our socks off. It does so.

The Movie: Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)

Like Rebel Without A Cause, Taxi Driver is one of those cultural touchstones I was familiar with before ever being really interested in movies. It was one of those movies that was regularly referenced around me as an important work of art even by people who are not necessarily great movie lovers. I knew about "Are you talking to me" before I knew anything else about Scorsese. I have now seen it two or three times and I can confirm it is indeed a great work of art that has been rightfully discussed a lot. The first time I saw Taxi Driver I was quite young and did not know really get why Scorsese was considered so great. I had seen Goodfellas once on an Ipod and didn't like it much, I saw half of Raging Bull and was bored to death, and I didn't like The Departed. The only Scorsese movie I liked (quite a lot) was Gangs  of New York. After seeing Taxi Driver I not only loved the movie, but I also realized that Scorsese could indeed be a director capable of really great stuff. It made me interested in his other movies. Though I still haven't seen all of them, I consider him now a truly great director. Taxi Driver, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, After Hours, and The Wolf of Wall Street are the ones I consider to be his best. And though I now understand why Raging Bull is lauded I still don't care much about that movie, nor about The Departed. I haven't yet re-watched Goodfellas, though I suspect I will love it now. 

What also helps in understanding Scorsese's movies is the fact that Roger Ebert's best writing is on Scorsese's movies, especially those he wrote a Great Movie essay on, such as Taxi Driver. Among the many great insights in that review is "that we have all felt alone as Travis. Most of us are better at dealing with it." And "the film can be seen as a series of his failed attempts to connect, every one of them hopelessly wrong". It's indeed Travis' loneliness that's indeed at the core of the movie. And the reason for that loneliness is Travis' mental instability which makes him unable to connect to people. But what's really tragic and great about the movie is that Travis is fully aware of his insanity, he knows that to have a better life he has to connect somehow with people, otherwise he'll be doomed to live his life in utter misery. And I think the movie shows that if Travis could have been able to get a little help from anybody, or if he had just a little bit more luck, he could have fixed his problems, at least to some extent. Because the ways in which Travis tries to deal with his problems aren't all that irrational. 

Why does Travis become a taxi driver for example? He is a traumatized Vietnam veteran who can't sleep and is, I believe, aware that if he just sits around doing nothing at night he will start abusing himself. Taxi driving is a good distraction that at the same time can earn him some money. The problem of course is that Travis sees New York as a hellhole filled with scum, especially at night. As he drives around New York we see the city from his point of view, and in these scenes Scorsese paints a rather dark picture of New York. Here New York is a city in which the depravity and violence isn't even beneath the surface. It's right there for everyone to see. This does not mean that Scorsese really sees New York as a horrible place with horrible people. The movie is completely shot from Travis' point of view. It's his view of New York that we see and whether that's true or not doesn't matter for Travis' psyche. Scorsese only sometimes backs away from Travis' point of view to show us that it's not all as bad as it seems. There is of course the scene in which Harvey Keitel gently dances with Jodie Foster, one of the few that's not seen from Travis' point of view. It's clear in that scene that Foster and Keitet have a much gentler relationship than Travis thinks. Which does not mean that it is a very healthy relationship.

An even more interesting scene is I think the one in which Travis goes to the place where his colleagues hang out. The scene starts with a medium shot in which we see a bunch of people chatting at a table, and then Travis comes in. First he is in the same shot with his colleagues, but gradually we see only him in a medium shot, while we only hear his colleagues on the same table talking. That's first of all a very effective way to convey Travis' loneliness, even when he is in company. It may even be a more effective shot than the famous one in which the camera pans away to an empty hall when he has the unfortunate phone conversation with Betsy. But the reason I am discussing this scene is because of the following shots. At one point Travis starts completely zoning out of his colleague's conversation and looks somewhere toward the back of the restaurant. In the next shot we then see a couple of threateningly looking (black) men. Scorsese makes clear that this is a shot from Travis point of view. In any case we then return to table, Travis has managed to focus on the conversation with his colleagues again. They talk some more, exchange some pleasantries and stuff, and as they leave Travis asks Wizard (Peter Boyle) if he could talk to him. We now see the group in a wider shot from the back of the restaurant, which means we also see the backs of the other guests in that restaurant. We see that none of them look like the men Travis saw from his point of view. They all seem to be pretty civilized people, minding their own business. It's a smart way to show Travis is mentally unstable. When asks to talk to Wizard about his problems though we again realize that Travis is fully aware he has problems and that he also has to some extent the right idea about how to fix them. He should talk to people who might help him. Unfortunately for Travis, Wizard is a good guy, but he is no psychologist. He tries to comfort Travis, but his words are completely meaningless and both men know it.


 



   

79. Year of the Cat &...

Lyrics

On a morning from a Bogart movie 
In a country where they turn back time 
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre 
Contemplating a crime 

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running 
Like a watercolor in the rain 
Don't bother asking for explanations 
She'll just tell you that she came 

In the year of the cat 

She doesn't give you time for questions 
As she locks up your arm in hers 
And you follow till your sense of which direction 
Completely disappears 

By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls 
There's a hidden door she leads you to 
These days, she says, "I feel my life 
Just like a river running through" 

The year of the cat 

Why she looks at you so coolly? 
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea 
She comes in incense and patchouli 
So you take her, to find what's waiting inside 

The year of the cat 

Well morning comes and you're still with her 
And the bus and the tourists are gone 
And you've thrown away your choice and lost your ticket 
So you have to stay on 

But the drumbeat strains of the night remain 
In the rhythm of the new-born day 
You know sometime you're bound to leave her 
But for now you're going to stay 

In the year of the cat 
Year of the cat


I hardly know anything about Al Stewart. Yet he has made two pretty good songs. This is one of them. Vincent is another. His voice and lyrics create a very evocative, melancholic mood. The movie I linked this song to has its main protagonist imagining himself being in a Bogart movie and talking to Bogart, like Stewart does in first verse of this song.

The Movie: Play it Again, Sam (Herbert Ross, 1972)

This blog could just as easily have been called Allen and the Doors. I didn't choose that, because it sounds awful, but Woody Allen's movies have been equally important to me as Tarantino's. Annie Hall was one of those movies that changed the way I view the medium. It was one of the first movies that showed that you could use comedy to explore pretty serious ideas and that comedy could be great art. Apart from that it was (and still is) one of the most inventive movies I had ever seen. I saw the movie before I studied media and culture and knew only vaguely who Marshall McLuhan was. But what Allen did with him in the famous scene still blew my mind, simply because he did what he did. Annie Hall probably had an even bigger effect because I think I saw the movie the same day I saw The Big Lebowski for the first time (and because Annie Hall reminded me of a girl I liked in high school). In any case since then I saw many more Woody Allen movies, and as I grew older I also realized how affecting they can be, and how they are very humanist and compassionate. I think Scoop is the only Woody Allen movie I dislike. Most of them I think are great or at least enjoyable.

Play it Again, Sam is one of the decently enjoyable ones. It shows how great a director Woody Allen was, because here he is 'just'' the leading actor and the screenwriter. Herbert Ross directs this film in the most banal way possible. I haven't seen any other movie by Ross yet, but he doesn't have a really great reputation. To be fair though, Woody Allen's screenplay isn't all that great either. It mostly works as a series of individually enjoyable series of scenes with some fun dialogue, than as a coherent story. Allen plays Allan, a film critic fascinated by Bogart movies, and especially Casablanca. He gets dumped by his wife at the beginning of the movie, and with the help of a friendly couple played by Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts tries to get a new girlfriend. He also imagines he is getting love advice from Humphrey Bogart (Jerry Lacy), which makes for some nice, slightly absurd scenes. A large part of the movie just consists of Allan failing to make an impression on his dates and making a complete idiot out of himself. These scenes show how really great Woody Allen was/is at physical comedy. There is one scene in his appartment wherein, because of his anxiety he keeps bumping into stuff while his date (and Keaton and Roberts) are seating there, only to get more nervous because of that, and thus even clumsier. It's probably the funniest scene in the movie. What this movie also shows is that even though Allen's jokes (not always rightfully, or intelligently) scorn other people, it is always Allen himself who is the butt of the joke. The problem here is that his character is a bit over the top, even for the standards of Woody Allen. He is a bit clumsier than usual, a little bit more of an idiot, so it is not an easily identifiable character for whom we have much sympathy. Also I hoped the movie would do a bit more with Allen's profession as a film critic and have some funny/serious observations about movies. 

Still, this is a very funny movie, and the best (running) joke doesn't actually even involve Allen directly. It's also a joke that would not be possible today. In fact I didn't even get the joke the first time it was made in the movie. (Tony Roberts) calls up someone and tells him the following:  I'll be at 362-9296 for a while; then I'll be at 648-0024 for about fifteen minutes; then I'll be at 752-0420; and then I'll be home, at 621-4598. Yeah, right George, bye-bye. I only realized the second time this joke was made that Dick is talking about at what phone numbers he should be called. The movie plays with the cliche of the busy businessman, who has to always be on touch. The joke is being repeated several times in the movie and it becomes gradually funnier and more preposterous. At one point Dick calls George from a night club. Obviously Dick is a busy man, who neglects his wife Linda (Diane Keaton), who naturally starts falling in love with Allan and vice versa. These are probably the best scenes in the movie, and the ones that remind most how good Allen is at mixing comedy, romance and drama. This is the first movie Allen and Keaton did together and it is immediately clear their partnership works. And that's because Keaton is Allen's equal at all times. She is just as much a genius of comic timing as he, and is just as much a master of Allen's rapid-fire dialogue. In every single one of their movies together Keaton completely holds her own against Allen. I think Allen's movies with Mia Farrow are overall better than his movies with Keaton, but Keaton is a better actress. Proof of that is also the fact that in 1972 she also played Kay Corleone in The Godfather. 

Soon I will discuss a film with Mia Farrow and Woody Allen on this blog. In that post I'll also talk more about the fact that Allen himself is not a very good person, to say the least. If he were, this movie would probably immediately get remade with the protagonist getting advice from Woody Allen, instead of from Humphrey Bogart. And Woody Allen could have even played himself. It would not even be a very unnecessary remake. The 'gettting advice from a fictional Bogart' part of this movie isn't explored in a really interesting way here, until the ending. Linda and Allan both realize that Linda should be with Dick, and Dick himself realizes that he has been neglecting Linda too much. This all leads to an ending which explicitly references (or basically copies) the ending of Casablanca, which Allan makes explicit. Allan tells Linda the famous final words Bogart told Ingrid Bergman in that movie, and is the happiest we've seen them. The fact that he lost the girl doesn't matter to him. The fact that he could finally emulate a real movie star is what matters to him. It's a bit too little too late. It's the only time the movie really explores how movies and fictional romantic narratives have an effect on our real life, on the way we see ourselves and on the way we think about our love life. And how it works the other way around too. The way we think about love in real life affects the romantic narratives that are being told. Allen has of course explored these ideas in other movies. I think he wanted to that here too (the Bogart conceit doesn't add much else to the movie), but he didn't yet really know how to combine it with his romantic comedy, and thus mostly failed at that level. Though he wasn't probably helped much by director Herbert Ross.





    

78. Welterusten Mijnheer de President &...

Lyrics

Meneer de president, welterusten

(Mister president, good night)
Slaap maar lekker in je mooie witte huis

(Sleep nicely in your beautiful white house)
Denk maar niet teveel aan al die verre kusten

(Don't think too much of all those faraway coasts)
Waar uw jongens zitten eenzaam ver van huis

(Where your boys are being lonely away from home)

Denk vooral niet aan die 46 doden

(Don't especially think about those 46 casualties)
Die vergissing laatst met dat bombardement

(That mistake the other day with the bombing)
En vergeet het vierde van die 10 geboden

(And forget the fourth of those ten commandments)
Die u als goed Christen zeker kent

(That you being a good Christian certainly must know)

Denk maar niet aan al die jonge frontsoldaten

(Don't think of all those young front line soldiers)
Eenzaam stervend in de verre tropennacht

(Dying lonely in the faraway tropical night)
Laat die bleke pacifistenkliek maar praten

(Let that weak pacifist clique talk)
Meneer de president, slaap zacht

(Mister president, sleep well)

Droom maar van de overwinning, en de zege

(Dream on about the victory)
Droom maar van uw mooie vredesideaal

(Dream on about your beautiful ideals of peace)
Dat nog nooit door bloedig moorden is verkregen

(That have never been achieved by bloody killings)
Droom maar dat het u wel lukken zal ditmaal

(Dream on that this time it'll succeed)

Kijk maar niet naar al die mensen die verrekken

(Don't look at all those people living)
Hoeveel vrouwen, hoeveel kind'ren zijn vermoord
(How many women and children have been murdered)

Droom maar dat u aan het langste eind zult trekken

(Dream on that you'll win)
En geloof van al die tegenstand geen woord

(And just don't believe anything your oppnents say)

Bajonetten met bloedige gevesten

(Bayonets with bloody hilts)
Houden ver van hier op uw bevel de wacht

(Far away from here they keep watch at your command)
Voor de glorie en de eer van 't vrije westen

(For the glory and honor of the free west)
Meneer de president, slaap zacht

(Mister president sleep nice)

Schrik maar niet te erg, wanneer u in uw dromen

(Don't wake up in terror, when in your dreams)
Al die schuldeloze slachtoffers ziet staan

(You see all these guiltless victims)
Die daarginds bij het gevecht zijn omgekomen
(Who were killed figthing over there)

En uw vragen hoelang dit nog zo moet gaan
(And who ask you how much longer this is supposed to last)

En u zult toch ook zo langzaamaan wel weten

(And you should now by now)
Dat er mensen zijn die ziek zijn van 't geweld

(That there are people sick of violence)
Die het bloed en de ellende niet vergeten

(Who have not forgotten the blood and the misery)
En voor wie nog steeds een mensenleven telt
(And for whom human lives still count)

Droom maar niet teveel van al die dooie mensen

(Don't dream too much of all these dead people)
Droom maar fijn van overwinning en van macht

(Dream nicely of victory and power)
Denk maar niet aan al die vredeswensen

(Don't think of all those wishes for peace)
Meneer de president, slaap zacht!

(Mister president, sleep nice)

This is a bit of a presumptuous song. I mean Boudewijn de Groot is right too criticize the Vietnam War, but this direct address to the American president is kind of tacky, considering he'll never hear it. It's a bit of a shame even. De Groot is one of the most intelligent Dutch songwriters, but here does come off as a bit of a poseur. Although to be fair, many leftist artists all over the world sang similar songs against the war during that time. The president addressed here is Lyndon Johnson. Unfortunately there aren't really any movies about him. There are about Richard Nixon though, and many of the lyrics in this song could just as well be applied to him. In fact the fury over the Vietnam War only increased with Nixon as president.

The Movie: Nixon (Oliver Stone, 1995)

Even though America wants to present itself (and is often presented as such in the West) as a great country, and the leader of the free world, it (like any other nation) has many flaws and problems. Especially the ways in which America is sometimes presented as the opposite of the 'evil' Islam/Russia/The Soviet Union/'the Orient in general, etc. Still, it can't be denied that there are aspects which really do distinguish America positively from some of these nations (just as there are probably aspects of those nations that distinguish them positively from America). A couple years ago for example the Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to New York to give a lecture at some university. That probably caused some protest among deeply conservative Americans who believed that this contributed to the Islamization of America and other such bullshit. But that doesn't really matter. Ahmadinejad came, gave his lecture and went back to Iran. Now, Iran is not nearly as savage a nation as it is often presented in the American/western media, but you won't see Obama anytime soon give a lecture at a university in Tehran. And not because he doesn't want to.

Oliver Stone's Nixon is another example of this. I really believe that there are very few nations (even in the western world) where this movie could get made, much less be made in the mainstream. One part of it is that this is a ridiculously and insanely ambitious movie. It's title is Nixon, but that heavily under-represents what this movie is about. But, you know, you can't title a movie 'Nixon: A Critical History of the American Politics and Society from 1960-1973.' The most important word of that title is 'critical.' Oliver Stone doesn't have a very high regard for Nixon here, but he does have sympathy for him. For Stone Nixon is just a product of the American political system. And that system, of which Americans are so proud, is presented here as rotten to its very core ideals. This according to Stone has a negative effect on many aspects of American society and culture. But he also posits that many aspects of this society and culture, and many American values, are also the cause for the rottenness of the system. I hardly know any works of art which are so scathingly critical of (the core values upon which) their own nation (is build). Yet, at the same time it can be argued that a nation that can allow such a movie to get made and such ideas to foster is a very healthy nation. I certainly don't know of a Dutch work of art which is nearly as critical of the Netherlands as Nixon is of America.

Though I was familiar with many of the events in Nixon's life depicted in the movie, I am not a Nixon scholar. I am sure though that a historian specialized in Nixon or in the American politics of the 20th century will find many flaws in Stone's ideas here. That doesn't really matter though, because Stone, I think, gives a lot of room for interpretation. He does not present his interpretation of this history as the only right one. In fact he directly invites us to give our own interpretation of history. Stone shows us here many of the important moments of Nixon's life, like his childhood in a deeply religious family, his loss to JFK, and of course the Watergate scandal. And throughout the movie he constantly returns to this moments, putting them constantly in a different context and making us think differently about their meanings, causes and effects. Thus he makes us constantly rethink these events and our interpretations of them. And it can be argued that Stone is even more ambitious than this. Obviously JFK and Vietnam play an important role in this movie. Of course before making Nixon, Stone made movies about the Vietnam War and about JFK. Some of the themes he discussed therein also return in this movie in a different context, and are seen from a different point of view.

Basically at times the movie plays like a feature length version of the great training sequence in The Parallax View That is quite an extraordinary achievement, as there are way too few historic movies which even attempt to do this. It also means that the movie is not only about the history of American politics during Nixon's life in power, but also that it is a movie about the ways in which we study and engage with history. And it is this more than anything that makes this a great movie. The movie also at times plays like a horror movie. The American political system is presented here as an unstoppable, uncontrollable, nearly mysterious force. Nobody ever seems to have a full idea of what's going on. There are politicians assassinated by people, and for reasons, not even the president is aware of. Why was Robert Kennedy assassinated for example? Nobody in the movie seems to know. There is the suggestion, that sometime in the past, perhaps even before Nixon's ascent to power, certain mysterious events happened that triggered a domino effect leading to Robert Kennedy's death. But what those events were, and what those fallen dominoes were, nobody knows.

The movie is not perfect. In the last 20-30 minutes the movie becomes an all too conventional depiction of the downfall of a great, but troubled man, like we've seen in many other similar movies. It also doesn't help that Stone depicts this downfall with smug moralism. But that's pretty forgivable, considering all the great things that happened before. This is one of the greatest films of the 90's and it's not even Stone's best movie. That's Born on the Fourth of July. I am not a fan of Platoon, as I discussed in an earlier post, and Savages is an absolutely awful film. It's actually hard to believe that the guy who made Nixon also made that movie. So Stone is a pretty uneven director, but when he is on fire, he is one of the most interesting American directors. There isn't anyone with who is as intelligent and as completely bonkers as him and also has his talent for making films. Lastly is worth noting that Anthony Hopkins gives his best performance here as Richard Nixon. The rest of the very famous cast does well too, although their characters are a bit too one-dimensional. I was a little irritated by Paul Sorvino who plays Henry Kissinger as a caricature of Henry Kissinger. But it's probably impossible to play Kissinger in any other way.

  

77. Summer of 69 &...

Lyrics

I got my first real six-string
Bought it at the five-and-dime
Played it till my fingers bled
Was the summer of '69

Me and some guys from school
Had a band and we tried real hard
Jimmy quit, Jody got married
I shoulda known we'd never get far

Oh when I look back now
That summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice
Ya - I'd always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life

Ain't no use in complainin'
When you got a job to do
Spent my evenings down at the drive-in
And that's when I met you

Standin' on your mama's porch
You told me that you'd wait forever
Oh and when you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never
Those were the best days of my life
oh yeeaahh

Back in the summer of '69 Ohhhhh

Man we were killin' time
We were young and restless
We needed to unwind
I guess nothin' can last forever - forever, no
Yeah

And now the times are changin'
Look at everything that's come and gone
Sometimes when I play that old six-string
Think about you wonder what went wrong

Standin' on your mama's porch
You told me that it last forever
Oh the way you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never
Those were the best days of my life

Ohh yeeaahh.... Back in the summer of '69
uhh huh...it was the summer of 69
Ohhh Yeeaahh....me and my baby in 69
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh...ho....
it was the summer....the summer, the summer of 69
YEAH

I quite like this song, but I can understand why some rock fans hate Bryan Adams. He really is one of the most generic, middle of the road, rock artists. The mysteriously popular Everything I Do is his nadir. We'll find that song later on in the list, which also means that there will be a movie connected to that song. It should not be a surprise which one it is. And also that it is just as dull and dreary as Everything I Do. That cannot be said about the movie I connected to Summer of 69, which is a very recent movie about a bunch of youngsters in the 60's who form a rather unsuccessful band.

The Movie: Not Fade Away (David Chase, 2012)

Not Fade Away opens with archival footage of early rock, followed by a television test signal. We hear a siren on the soundtrack after which a voice tells us that this is a test of the emergency broadcast system. It's 1963 so you can guess what emergency they are talking about. This image is followed by the actual opening scene of the movie, a scene shot in black and white that's completely unrelated to the rest of the movie's plot. It shows us a meeting of two kids happening to be on the same train. Turns out these kids are Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and what we are seeing is a fictionalized version of the birth of The Rolling Stones. The movie wasn't even three minutes old by then and I knew I was gonna like it a lot. Chase makes immediately clear that this is gonna be a movie about the way society and popular culture shape and influence each other, a theme I find greatly interesting. Chase follows up on his promise, although it is fair to criticize him for being too blunt about it. His framing device (the story is narrated by the hero's sister, who actually narrates from her term paper on American rock culture and society in the 60's) makes clear that he knows this and he doesn't really care. It shows that one reason he made this movie, was because he explicitly wanted to explore the relationship between society and popular culture. I did not mind this (in fact I liked it a lot), but I can see why it could bother people. What stopped this movie from being really great for me was the fact that the hero's story wasn't all that interesting. The events happening to him are the typical things you usually see in a coming of age movie.       

Coincidentally just before watching this movie, I read a blog post by the great film critic Glenn Kenny in which he discussed an idea I wasn't familiar with. Namely, that after the assassination of John F. Kennedy the 'depression' of the American people was only 'cured' when The Beatles arrived for the first time in America to give a concert there. It's probably a far-fetched idea; The Beatles are probably the most important pop band, but not that important. Still, it's not surprising how this idea came to fruition. We all like to believe that the popular culture of our time has some importance to society, beyond merely entertaining us. In any case this idea is quite directly expressed here by David Chase. Only in his version The Beatles 'save' America much faster. America here awakens from its depression only three weeks after the murder of JFK, when the Beatles first record comes out and can be heard on the radio. At around the same time The Rolling Stones also arrive at the scene and (main character) Douglas and his friends decide to form a band and be just like the Beatles and the Stones. They are not successful, because they don't really have the talent and because they don't really get these bands.

I don't know to what extent Douglas is modeled after Chase himself, but he is of the same generation of Chase. And although Chase portrays the popular culture of his time in a very positive, nostalgic light, he is very critical and cynical about his generation, or at least about Douglas and his group of friend. Douglas, played by the unknown to me John Magaro is pretty much an asshole, and also not very intelligent. He does not really get the popular culture he worships. There is a fun scene in which he watches Antonioni's Blow Up (a movie I haven't yet seen), one of the most influential movies of its time and doesn't get it. There  have obviously been many movies in which a character watches an art film and doesn't get it, but here this scene is used in a different way than in many other movies. Douglas is someone who aspires to be a great artist, and who sees himself as a potentially great artist. Blow Up is the kind of movie someone like him, living at that time should connect to. Or at least understand why/what others like him see something in that movie. In other words, he doesn't understand what the values of that movie are and why they are important to the like minded people of his generation.   

Chase absolutely believes that bands like the Beatles and the Stones, and directors like Antonioni, criticized the 'old' values because they sincerely believed these to be conservative and regressive. Douglas only sees that they fight the old generation, but at no point in the movie does he truly seem to realize what the fight exactly is 'for' or 'against.' He just believes that its cool to turn against your elders and your parents, but doesn't really know why. If his father (played by a great James Gandolfini) calls people 'niggers' or 'faggots' he protests against it. But he doesn't really understand why those words are racist or homophobic, nor does he really care that they are. They are simply wrong because his father uses them. And in a late conversation with his son, it turns out that it's actually the father who better understands what the 'new freedoms' are supposed to entail. He is not very happy about it, but hopes his son will understand his problem. When he realizes he doesn't he is more disappointed with his son than ever before.

76. Window of my Eyes &...

Lyrics

Through the window of my eyes, I can see the rainy day
Sitting in the chair of my cool room, looking for a way to be the one I am
It's useless to cry for the things I once have known, thinking it will come back and reach my home
It's like a distant, like a distant face
It's like the shadow on my wall
Something that, that I cannot touch
A heavenly past that calls
The shelter of my mind hides my laugh and my tear
I keep on looking for a reason which is not here

Through the window of my eyes, I can see the rainy day
Sitting in the chair of my cool room, looking for a way to be the one I am
It's useless to cry for the things I once have known, thinking it will come back and reach my home


Window of my Eyes is a song by Cuby and the Blizzards, a fun Dutch rock band from the 60's. Their sound is closer to a an American prog-rock band than to a typical Dutch pop-music band, which is a good thing. This is their highest placed song in the list, but to me their best song is Appleknockers Flophouse, upon which we'll stumble later on in the list. It was hard to link a movie to this song until I decided that it was relatively reasonable to interpret this song as being about an Alzheimer-ridden protagonist in a retirement home.

The Movie: Away from Her (Sarah Polley, 2006)

This may sound a bit crass, but Alzheimer's disease is a very 'convenient' disease for screenwriters. For one reason, it is a very tragic disease, both for the protagonist who suffers from it, and for the family of the protagonist. The fact that the patient suffers from memory loss is tragic enough, but even worse is the fact that at times the patient has moments of clarity during which he/she is aware of his/her memory loss. It is perhaps the most harrowing disease, which means that a screenwriter doesn't have to work all that hard to create dramatic/emotional moments. All you really need are two good elderly actors, who can convey the feelings of loss the disease causes in them. Away from Her has two such actors in Julie Christie and (the to me unknown) Gordon Pinsent. Christie plays the Alzheimer-ridden wife who has to be put in a retirement home, while Pinsent plays her husband. Both of them are good and quite affecting and make this movie worth watching.

The second reason why Alzheimer's is quite convenient for screenwriters is the nature of the disease. There doesn't seem to be a a very logical progress to the disease. The patient can have be in a pretty bad shape at a certain moment, and suddenly in a much better one the next moment. Horrific weeks can randomly be followed by days of clarity, after which, just as randomly, the disease can have even more harrowing effects than before. This means that without being very unrealistic screenwriters can present the state of their protagonist according to the needs of the plot. When the protagonist needs to be forgetful for an emotional beat, he/she can be forgetful. When he/she needs to remember something important for another emotional beat he/she can do that. This is why a movie about Alzheimer can be quite challenging for a screenwriter. When done badly this can make the movie seem a bit too manipulative and maybe even a bit exploitative. Sarah Polley is certainly not exploitative here, but I did find her a bit too manipulative. The plot should be in the service of the Alzheimer patient, while here it to often seems to be the other way around. The condition of Julie Christie is in the service of the plot mechanics, which makes us care unfortunately a bit less about the character.

I don't have much else to say about this movie, except that I found it lesser than two other movies on similar subjects I've seen recently. One is of course Michael Haneke's Amour. The other one is Still Mine with James Cromwell and Genevieve Bujold, which takes a much lighter, but no less serious and emotional approach to the difficulties of old age.

75. A Day in the Life &...

Lyrics

I read the news today oh, boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well, I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph
He blew his mind out in a car
He didn't notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They'd seen his face before
Nobody was really sure if he was from the house of lords

I saw a film today oh, boy
The english army had just won the war
A crowd of people turned away
But I just had to look
Having read the book
I'd love to turn you on.

Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream
Ah

I read the news today oh, boy
Four thousand holes in blackburn, lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the albert hall
I'd love to turn you on

As I've written in my previous entry on The Beatles, I like them, but not as much as most fans of pop music. This song though is great. It is also an example of how The Beatles weren't just musically revolutionary, but also lyrically. This song is basically a narrative about a reasonably smart dude, who essentially hangs around aimlessly all day. This kind of stories weren't all that usual around that time, but now we have an abundance of them. We now even have a word for the kind of person described in this song: slacker. Thus the movie I chose is (quite literally) about slackers, but it is perhaps interesting to note that I could have also chosen a different movie. Namely the movie referenced in the second verse of this song. It is Richard Lester's How I Won the War (1967), with John Lennon himself in the leading role. 

The Movie: Slacker (Richard Linklater, 1991)

Ha! Just two posts ago I 'complained' about Kieslowski's Red. I loved how he was willing to lose sight of his main protagonist Valentine to offer us slight glimpses of the life of her neighbor Auguste. Auguste's life at first seemed unrelated to Valentine's, until Kieslowski started to make connections between them, which I found rather unfortunate. While I loved the movie, I thought that it would be even greater if Auguste and Valentine remained unrelated to each other. Well, Slacker takes my wish to its extreme and is in my opinion Richard Linklater's best movie. I also consider it better than Red, but that's not a really fair comparison. Although I am not a fan of all of Kieslowski's choices, he has good reasons for all of them and is interested in exploring other things than Linklater here. 

Slacker is a plotless movie. It just follows the young citizens of Austin during one day, but only follows each specific citizen for a short amount of time. The movie for example starts with a twenty-something (played by Linklater himself) arriving at the Austin airport and getting in a taxi. On the ride home Linklater talks to the hilariously disinterested driver about how easily his life could have gone into other directions. If he had hopped on a bus instead of on a taxi perhaps his life could have turned out differently. After getting out of the cab Linklater's character stumbles upon a women hit in a car accident. Another woman arrives at the scene, calling the police and telling Linklater that he is not needed anymore. We see him go away in the distance and never meet him again. The camera pulls back to find a youngster entering his nearby home. We see him doing some mysterious stuff and home and then the doorbell rings. It's the police coming to arrest him for intentionally driving over (and killing) his mother. As the police leads him away, we meet two friends on the street looking at what happens and the camera decides to follow them. And they too are followed for a while until the camera meets some other people more worthy of attention and starts following them. That's the whole movie. It works wonderfully because Linklater writes great dialogue and he uses long takes in very intelligent way, something that would become his trademark in later movies.

While Linklater doesn't directly connect all these people to each other, there is an idea behind his approach. These are not just disjointed scenes involving the citizens of Austin. All these scenes together do form a relatively coherent whole. The movie amounts to a rather sad, and despairing portrait of Linklater's hometown. Most of the people we meet here are (college-) educated twenty-somethings who mostly hang out aimlessly. They cannot seem to find a job and are thoroughly dissatisfied with the American establishment. They've basically lost all trust in the American elite. Two separate characters we meet believe that the American government is involved in dark conspiracies, one of them of course about the killing of John F. Kennedy. Another guy calculates that the popular vote that elected Bush Sr. in the previous elections actually included a very small percentage of Americans. A black man protests against the imprisonment of Mandela, only no one really cares. All of these people are reasonably intelligent, but seem stuck in Austin having conversations about Dostoevsky, the nature of television, and the meaning of political actions, anarchism, life and art. Only all these knowledge is basically useless. They are stuck being slackers in Austin and there is nothing they can do about it, because they are stuck being slackers in Austin. So they talk. On top of this they cannot really connect to people. This dissatisfaction is also visible in the actions of these people, which are very often acts of frustration and despair, leading nowhere. Three dudes throw a perfectly working typewriter in the water, because it 'symbolizes the woman that broke their hearts.' There is an old anarchist who lies about fighting in the Spanish Revolutionary War, because his anarchism has mostly existed in theory. If this all isn't enough, all these people also have trouble connecting to each other. So many of the conversations here involve one person talking enthusiastically, while another one just is reasonably bored, or thinks that what the other is saying is a load of crap.

Still, this is not a despairing movie. The dialogue is filled with too much humor for that. And the unknown actors exude too much energy for this movie to be despairing. They convey to us that their characters truly believe in what they are saying and that they are hopeful that life will get better. It's not surprising that many of these actors actually were local struggling artists, or other kinds of artistic types. Which at the same time makes the movie more tragic. They are all young and full of dreams, which will most probably never be fulfilled. Unless you are of course Richard Linklater, who quite clearly has sympathy for all of these characters and positions himself as one of these young Austin slackers. He became a major filmmaker whose films often involve the same themes discussed by the characters of Slacker. There might be hope for the rest of them too!

What I also liked about this movie is that you really get a sense of the city of Austen itself and its geography. By following all these characters in long takes across the city streets, we get the sense that we are getting an authentic tour of the city. These are not the places where tourists might go when they go to Austin, but the places where ordinary Austin citizens live and work. It is quite rare to get such a portrayal of an American small town, and it is very deglamorizing. It is something we rarely see in movies and it is one of the reasons I also liked for example Jason Reitman's Young Adult, which is not that good a movie otherwise.

Lastly it is quite interesting what a secretly influential movie this has been. It launched the career of Richard Linklater (even though he had made one movie before, which hardly anyone seems to have seen) and made Austin the capital of the American indie-movement. But even more interestingly, as far as I know the characters here were considered back then as a small subculture. Now their attitudes and behavior are attributed to and adopted by what we call hipster culture, which whether you like it or not is becoming quite in an important youth subculture. This has perhaps become even clearer since the current financial crisis began in 2008. Many so-called hipsters now have become skeptical of those who have the power in our society. The current popularity of hipster culture is of course the consequence of many different societal developments and cultural influences. But there are scenes and moments in Slacker which are so prescient that watching the movie you may get the feeling the most important seeds for the current popularity of hipster culture were laid by Slacker. Of course that's probably not the case, but this remains as written earlier Linklater's best movie. Though I must mention that I am not as great a fan of Linklater as others. I haven't seen a bad movie by him yet, but I don't think he has made a great one apart from this and Bernie. I have not seen parts 2 and 3 of his Before trilogy yet though and I have neither seen Waking Life.