Ashes & Diamonds

With the joyous end of World War II comes further political conflict to Poland, as opposing ideological viewpoints daringly clash in the chaotic foreground. 

The communist regiments seem poised to take power after having gallantly helped dispose of Hitler, the surviving citizens reminding the elite that they've already seen far too much dismal bloodshed.

But the traditional league of orthodox clemency bellicosely seeks to thwart their ambitions, and hires assassins to grimly dispose of a high ranking Secretary poised to take power.

The courageous target hasn't been sighted due to anything specific regarding his character, but rather because his dead wife's sister has fascist pretensions and simply can't stand him.

With him gone, she can raise his son however she sees fit at the end of the war, the spiral of violence and subjective intrigue awkwardly infiltrating domestic reserves. 

As the man hired to kill him finds himself enamoured with a stunning luxurious barmaiden.

And begins to consider the married life.

Forbidden for so many years.

The tragic irony accompanying the victory so widely celebrated around the world, of the further continuation of hardhearted violence emphatically leading to civil conflicts.

Rather than festively enjoying the victory and considering alternatives to gruelling strife, the carnal urge to interminably fight recklessly drives so many soldiers.

Ashes & Diamonds brilliantly covers the provocative feisty post-war ground, with internal struggles and diabolical hypocrisy seamlessly co-existing through determinate grit. 

Multiple characters and distinct scenarios effervescently mingle with manifold whimsy, with more resonance than even Doctor Zhivago as it convincingly humanizes intriguing dysfunction. 

The old school duke, the whelp climbing the ladder, the drunken attendant, the maître'd, the inaugurated minister, the jaded cleaning lady, the tragic victims, the belligerent son, so many substantial and spirited characters imaginatively populating a volatile world, none less intriguing indeed than the would be couple who meet mid-conspiracy.

Domestic bliss presenting itself as an option.

As world weary indelicate tensions flare.

Decisions made, consequences reckon. 

On the eve of the postmodern dawn.

*Excellent film.

Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front)

Ideological exuberance devastatingly clashes with abysmal import, as new recruits head to the trenches mind-bogglingly eager to do their part.

The crushing realities having been kept generally tight-lipped amongst the influential, the daily terror and the resounding menace not quite as romantic as old school sword-fighting (see MacBeth).

But the adoring dreams jingoistically cultivated with envious furor and imperial venom, have concretely created joyous optimism overwhelmingly destined for chaotic discord.

How could those responsible continue the campaign, when only children were left to call up to refill the ranks that were clearly suffering?

How could monotonous ideals still stubbornly endure amidst the reckless bombardment, of mechanized condemnatory contradiction uniformly proving just recalcitrance?

But they do, they still do today, and they've once again become widespread and persuasive, notably within the war in Ukraine where Russia has clearly been deluded.

With a widespread dismissal of alternatives and a unilateral focus on master and slave, the fascists cruelly and abominably wage woebegone destruction with merciless rancour.

Fortunately, the free people of Ukraine are capable of multilateral thought, which inevitably outwits absolutism with inherent character and formidable verve.

People will argue that a cultural focus on the needs of the many is yet another form of absolutism, but how does food to eat and multivariable pastimes lead to a singular demarcation?

If manifold businesses with corresponding counterparts judiciously compete within a regulated sphere, antitrusts eventually level the field to promote newfound trajectories while nurturing tradition.

Thus, there is no absolutism, the absolute cannot coercively materialize, the checks and balances ensure constructive fluid motion and the liquidation of totalitarian trusts.

Do you really want only one store to buy clothes in, and only two or three restaurants where you can eat, and to accept what they provide with neither question nor critical infrastructure designed to inspect them?

Do you not want the liberating option to try new things regardless of race or income?

Do you want to transform a brilliant world full of life?

Into dull autocratic inertia?

The Butler

Periodically piecing together various volatile historical tracts, intergenerationally sketching a people's hard beaten path, sustained successful service slowly evidencing sophistication and ingenuity, facets which for some archaic reason required proof, proof that wasn't that easy to come by due to multileveled systemic oppressions, which persist, and committed confrontational activism, manifesting different variations on a theme, familially questioning particular forms of engagement, Lee Daniels's The Butler functioning as a practical ideological switchboard, easy to follow yet deep and hard hitting, well suited to wide audiences, proper.

Considering the potent surge of what's being described as the new racism, this is an important film.

The Butler's a good starting point for young secondary students interested in learning more about 20th century American history as well, since it broadly condenses many important developments and personalities, thereby making them accessible, while setting them up with oppositions to avoid having things appear too simplistic, these elements serving to encourage further study.

It also demonstrates that your occupation or income doesn't necessarily limit your ability to play a role in the world at large.

Imagine what could have been done with web 2.0 back then.

Out of sight.

The Berlin File

Setting a new standard for fast-paced intricate multilayered action packed films covertly concerned with international relations, Seung-wan Ryoo's The Berlin File's depth frantically conceptualizes a practical competitive bellicose ideological maelstrom, wherein interpersonal integrity can trump engrained national antimonies, as the ambitious pretentions of a jealous privileged communist usurper stereoscopically attempt to remagnify its vortex.

Good communists and bad communists.

Respect for North Korea?

Deconstructive hypoallergenic hyper-reflexive expedition.

And a remarketable union.

The issue of trust gravitationally staggers through myriad ulterior transitional focal points until a specific set of exceptional checks and balances produces an ephemeral allegiance, an amicable diplomatic extract.

The film's tight chaotic suction implodes near the end as a protagonist and his principal enemy square off like traditional martial marionettes.

Still pretty cool.

Both of the main male communist characters can be thought of as members of North Korea's materialistic pantheon, but the bad one's father occupies a high ranking influential yet corrupt position in the country's militaristic elite.

The other is an extraordinary citizen whose unyielding belief and support have strengthened his iron constitution.

Whether or not he can continue to exercise his commitment to his country, even though an everlasting magical freedom guaranteeing surplus seems somewhat fantastical, not that one shouldn't attempt to realize aspects of it through parliamentary means, depends upon that country's commitment to him.

Hoping there's a sequel.

Sort of like the anti-Die Hard 5.

Lincoln

Providing an in-depth warm yet demanding account of the overt and back room executive and legislative steps taken to both legally abolish slavery and end the American Civil War, even though the contemporaneous achievement of both goals seemed unattainable, Steven Spielberg's Lincoln avuncularly yet sternly examines a pivotal point in American history and the roles played by many of its leading persons.

It's very practicable.

It lays out the complicated dynamics of the Republican Party as it was structured with Abraham Lincoln at the helm during his 2nd term, and, while often employing an elevated vocabulary, patiently divides the party into collaboratively oppositional groups whose interests each need to be moderately assuaged.

Thus, differing internal ideological commitments and approaches to the same set of principles are coherently represented by sensible counterintuitive arguments.

Expediency and opportunism become necessary factors due to the inextricable contingencies of their political matrix.

I have no idea how closely the actions depicted in this film match generally agreed upon historical realities within prominent objective canonical yet malleable enclaves, but the film did remind me that back when I cared about trivia and avidly watched Jeopardy!, I could rarely knowingly answer its myriad American Civil War questions, and wanted to learn more about it.

Lincoln's (Daniel Day Lewis) exceptional gifts for finding applicable amusing pedagogical anecdotes capable of being pleasantly yet instructively presented to whomever his audience happened to be affably ties things together.

Trying to make the passage of an amendment into a dramatic film was a great idea.

Being able to vote for the people who pass such amendments is a right that was/is vehemently fought for.

If you're jaded about the results of your voting, which everyone is at some point, Spielberg's Lincoln does exemplify how difficult it can be to coordinate the passage of legislation, which will often (probably always) contain cumbersome particulars which are themselves the product of advanced democratic pluralities, who have progressed in varying degrees, over the centuries.

Cloud Atlas

Reincarnating a diverse sense of individualistic multiplicity, wherein manifold acts see their transhistorical countenances ambiently 'serialized,' as circumstances determine varying degrees of personal expedients and collective commitments, the most powerful of which are preconditioned by love eternal, of the other, an ideal, Cloud Atlas draws poetic intertemporal parallels amongst 'distinct' narratives to progressively decentralize teleological discourses without sacrificing their forward thinking critical cores, thereby generating a hardwired interdisciplinary mutlivaliant transistor.

As history comes to life.

It's as if the process of taking forms with myriad malleable landscapes and inter'connected' representational layers and populating them with breathing socio-political contents is itself materially manifested, through a vivacious, ethical engagement.

It doesn't shy away from using science-fiction to situate the cannibalistic nature of shortsighted grossly counterproductive characterizations of workers as one-dimensional subservient automatons being sinisterly force fed their own collectively suicidal divisive tropes in the present, from suggesting that aesthetic realms beyond our current epistemological methods of comprehension can be artistically realized (through music), from attaching an everlasting quality to the bucolic/urban dialectic, from elevating humanistic strategies for combatting the pervasive influence of unfettered capital, or intimating the ways in which capital can profit from events which never had to take place.

At the same time, it's not that serious.

Didn't like the whole inevitability dimension, but still, there's enough diegetic material here to create/continue the development of its own subgenre and it reminded me of Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel, Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, and Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry.

And Keith David's characters have great responses to the role he played in Crash(2004).

Sympathy for the Devil

Showcasing The Rolling Stones (1968) as they record different versions of "Sympathy for the Devil," Jean-Luc Godard's Sympathy for the Devil tamely presents the to-be-legendary band while interspersing footage of the Black Panthers, a verdant interview, and an idealistic book shop. Political verse read from different texts is interjected throughout as graffiti artists championing the left take to the streets. Rich with ambiguous irony and multidimensional interpretive layers, Godard phantasmagorically makes several points which, as far as I can tell, seek to establish, amongst other things, a Marxist film industry in the West and a legion of intellectuals who pursue their activity by abandoning traditional paradigms, creating new compelling forms to provocatively distribute their countercultural content, i.e., The Rolling Stones's "Sympathy for the Devil," communism being demonic in Western eyes precisely because it attempts to politicize the teachings of Jesus Christ while giving birth to monsters like Stalin. Are artists using the internet to create a politico-economic infrastructure that can effectively sustain Marxism in order to promote a more peaceful egalitarian culture that doesn't pervert its altruistic ideals while specific outlets continue to foster a divisive mainstream capitalist agenda? In Sympathy for the Devil, Godard sets up culture and art in opposition so the aforementioned could lead to a material synthesis of some kind (a Dharma Punx video game?). The verdant interview depicts a woman named Eve Democracy (Anne Wiazemsky) being asked wide ranging questions in a forest to which she only answers "yes" or "no," which, according to my interpretation, states that 1960s women were politically situated within a wild uncultivated box that limited their productivity to monosyllabic replies which men preferred and ignored because they possessed no elaboration but still provided the illusion of a voice. The Black Panthers make sharp points concerning language and communication etc., notably in regards to semantics and the ways in which different groups can speak the same language and have no idea what the other is trying to say. A lot more could have been illustrated in the film if The Rolling Stones weren't consistently brought back to the forefront, although, since they're one of my favourite bands and their consistent return represents form working hand in hand with content, it's not such a bad thing. Whether or not they forged and continue to forge a countercultural realm in line with Godard's vision could be the anti-intellectual subject of a poetic montage worked into the chorus of a new podcast.

Masculin féminin: 15 faits précis

Answers and questions. Definitions and commitment. Meaning and possibility. Love. Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin féminin situates and interrogates his uncertain conception of Parisian ideology within a diverse realistic quotidian brand of surrealism which effectively simulates a dynamically fluctuating resolution. Practically searching for truths and realizations in accordance with predetermined principles can have a disillusioning affect when trying to place them within one's expectations of an other, based upon interpretations of historical interactions, especially when such principles are being simultaneously synthetically analyzed. But this doesn't prevent Paul (Jean-Pierre Léaud) from continuing to interact with and observe his community as partner Madeleine (Chantal Goya) becomes a pop star. Many scenes are robust, showcasing differing points of view quickly and acutely yet calmly and pensively, while eating breakfast in a café for instance, the actors eating and drinking throughout, like a well-executed preplanned orchestration of randomly improvised daily life, with just enough absurd happenings to make sure it isn't taking itself to seriously. Stop analyzing things and you may have an easier time unless analyzing things makes you happy (assuming happiness is a possibility). Cultural tropes (interviews for pop magazines . . .) are subtly satirized and recast to reelevate their "insert your adjective" recognitions. I have no idea what this film is about. And I used a lot of big words.

Yes Man

Peyton Reed's Yes Man depicts Carl Allen (Jim Carrey) as a reclusive non-committal introvert who retired from social life after the break up of his first marriage. Fortunately, he meets Nick (John Michael Higgins), a 'yes man' who subscribes to Terrence Bundley's (Terence Stamp) cult of the 'yes,' whose members say yes to everything in order to invigorate their lives. Carl reluctantly joins and discovers that life can be more exciting if one opens their mind to limitless possibility. But the excitement is countered by responsibility and the contradictions eventually engender a cathartic crisis.

Reed's comedy mixes reality and fantasy in a simplified narrative layered with internal complexities. Obviously saying yes to everything causes all kinds of problems many of which are absurd yet concretely founded. He didn't have to accept an international pseudo-bride, he could have said no to an alley fight, and there was no need to start learning another language (although he picks it up in something like three weeks). But by opening his mind to these opportunities, he learns when to say yes and when to say no, making several new friends, and beginning a relationship with the quirky musician Allison (Zooey Deschanel).

It's like Groundhog Day meets Along Came Polly while listening to 54-40. Solid performances from the cast congeal with the perspicuous pacing to present a fun romantic comedy wherein the cynic turns affably stoic through ironic hedonism. Jim Carrey's solid and competently demonstrates a wide range of emotion while still providing glimpses of his subdued chaotic sprightliness. Some of the situations don't make much sense, and certain scenes could have been cut to the improvement of others, but the overall affect is uplifting and aptly demonstrates the brighter side of life.