The Green Knight

Born of lofty rank yet lacking bold chivalric industry, King Arthur's nephew lounges and carouses as the dolorous days pass by in Camelot.

Age has greeted the King with kind and pleasant noteworthy grace, his deeds admired and celebrated his rule enduring just unchallenged. 

His days of colloquially questing have fondly passed into history however, yet he still considers ornate pageantry when congenially conversing with younger generations. 

His nephew's mother grows weary of the reckless ill-composed dissolute inconsiderate debauchery, and embraces witchcraft to conjure a trial which may bring honour and widespread renown. 

The King recognizes the stately spirit of bygone days in the cynosure sorcery, and grants his nephew torrential tidings illustriously reckoned with regal resonance. 

Thus, when an agéd knight of ancient legend arrives in court on Christmas day, and courageously challenges the solemn round table to a mystic exchange of bombastic blows, Arthur tasks his unproven nephew with urgently responding to the murky mischief, and uncertain of his honourable objective, he proceeds to cut off the Green Knight's head. 

But the challenge indeed firmly stated that that very same blow would be returned the next year.

At which point Gawain must head to the countryside.

And seek the Green Knight alone.

It's classic mismatching temperaments resoundingly radiating obscure elasticity, as a profound misjudgment unwittingly leads to upright disillusion and serpentine sentiment. 

Bravely challenged in front of the council whose habitual deeds had been highly praised, Gawain thought it wise to respond in epic fashion and diabolical display.

Nervous regarding his status and intuitively seeking his uncle's regard, he reacts with far too much ferocity to awkwardly fit in with ill-suited surroundings. 

Had he wisely announced that he had no quarrel with the mischievous knight, and refused to thrash him or exchange blows his humble recognition may been rewarded, he would have risked the gawking discredit of the emboldened nobles within the room, but many others would have noted how brave it indubitably was to refuse the challenge.

That wouldn't have been much of a film nevertheless I sedately and sensationally suppose, although it would have snuggly fit his reliable personality as it had been cast.

A maladroit meander through the surreal bewildering lands of legendary England therefore awaits, the knight becoming more and more distressingly confused with each passing unassuming spirited day. 

Pay close attention and make sure to catch the extant grizzly amidst the whale bones.

Mirthful macabre mayhem. 

A comedic foil in the superhero age. 

Sleepwalk

Can books harness immaterial authenticity possessing atemporal spiritual substance reified through literary practicality (reading)?

Can extant abstract imbroglios mischievously contextualize the present, without relying on ideological intervention (tricksters) as their readers extensively ponder?

Probably not, although indirect corresponding parallels may seem uncanny if not somewhat mystical, but had the material in question never been covered, would the events have still seemed otherworldly or enigmatic?

As you encounter variable idiosyncrasies (in books and films) it's only natural to narratively apply them, to whatever you happen to be doing at the time or as similar occurrences present themselves.

But are you simply randomly applying ideas chosen at random for different texts, to random storylines inevitably generated as you freely interact with others?

Or is there something beyond coincidence ethereally aligned like Jurassic Park's chaos theory, which attaches seemingly supernatural significance to disorganized interconnected (enticing) ephemera? 

Probably not, in terms of personal history as opposed to applied math.

But if you're ever bored it's a fun game to play.

As long as you don't take your wagers too seriously.

But at times you have to seem as if you're vigorously engaged, nevertheless, in order to inspire confidence in significant others early in life.

Logic aside, some people prefer elevating the absurd to inviolable levels, regardless of relevance to applicable rationalities out of an instinctual preference for determinacy. 

Without comedic reckoning.

Was never able to research the subject that much.

But I imagine there are many people who have.

Sleepwalk follows a bright translator/jack-of-all-trades as she's asked to translate an ancient Chinese text (Suzanne Fletcher as Nicole), the events from the forbidden parables uncannily haunting her life thereafter.

A cool independent low-budget examination of harrowing contemporaneous histories, it's chill yet still discerning much like birdwatching or métro station discovery.

An indirect advocate for libraries and archives, along with historical context and animate consistency, Sleepwalk presents its playful syntheses with less gravity than The Lord of the Rings.

Co-starring Tony Todd, Steve Buscemi and Ann Magnuson. 

Cinematography by Frank Prinzi and Jim Jarmusch. 

Napszállta (Sunset)

Dreamlike exploration observing radical tradition, patient determined movements discovering reticent clues, modest celebrity cultivating passage instinctual grace establishing ties, temperate precipitation intuitively encompassed, like Napszállta (Sunset)'s surreal backgammon, and curious Írisz Leiter (Juli Jakab) keeps rolling double sixes.

She would have been an heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire's most prestigious millinery shop if grand misfortune hadn't necessitated alternative fortunes.

The new owner still supplies elegant hats to fashionable royals, and one of his resident artists will perhaps serve at court one day.

But it's not that simple, not quite so clear cut, so homely.

It's a different time, just before the outbreak of World War I, and the aristocracy and the people are expressing themselves confrontationally, neither group willing to accept the other's terms, destructive conflicts having arisen consequently.

The film and myriad other sources truthfully suggest the upper crust was none too kind to its workers of the day, and the people had no means to hold them to account.

Írisz's brother, in hiding and displeased with the corruption, has abandoned peaceful methods of persuasion; she's caught between his anger and the traditions of her artistic heritage.

She's just moved to Budapest and doesn't understand what's happening, wandering somnambulistically between the two parties, accessing highly secretive and exclusive realms without censure, maladroitly assured that peace is ecumenical.

Even though her family was well thought of, and her name is widely known and respected, it's still quite improbable that she would be able to proceed so freely, to go wherever she wants at whatever time.

Thus the dreamlike qualities of the narrative, the intense nightmarish revelations accentuated by obsessive close-ups.

Napszállta's more like grim realistic fantasy than lively magical realism, its chaotic combative testaments composed in dismal haunting fairy tale.

Mátyás Erdély's cinematography creates sombre phantasmagorical confusion that asymptotically incarnates horror, thereby reflecting the terrifying nature of the times, wherein which nothing seems concrete or stable.

But it's still loosely grounded inasmuch as you know where you are and what's transpiring, or at least know as much as Írisz, who knows close to nothing at all.

The total absence of concerned mediators intensifies the conscious anarchy, as does the lack of conversation or explanation, as if a child's on its own for the first time, lost and leading in Twin Peaks's Black Lodge.

Napszállta's bewildered sincerity magnetically draws you in, substituting nausea for lucidity with morose desperate conjecture.

The effect is nauseating at times so it's difficult to take the whole way through, but that doesn't mean its aesthetic isn't uniform, nor its ambivalence, inarticulate.

Bold filmmaking.

Grizzly style.

L'Écume des jours (Mood Indigo)

Assembly lines randomly recite a literary legion of improvisationalists who immediately harness their impressions ensemble with the goal of creating a tale of romantic note.

As the awareness of being written gesticulates limitless extraneous sensual amenities suddenly enlighten, becoming subjects of study or being callously yet festively disregarded, foreshadowing the genesis of love's interest.

The amenities coalesce with a practical and ingenious array of irresistible logical displacements whose metaphoric merits urbanely defy any sense of symmetrical cohesion.

What a world, what a world.

A tragic plot does take shape however whose voluminous sorrows, intricately and in/tangibly elaborated upon and refined, bear witness to the indoctrination of the real, whose vice-like grip expedites decay, within.

It's pointless to say that L'Écume des jours (Mood Indigo) should have been more surreal due to its experimental necessarily incoherent design, since its residual plot provides enough relational factors to make its aesthetic accessible, truly as a subject of beauty, and, if I'm not mistaken, Michel Gondry's saying that a minimum layer of consistency and logic enables radical indulgence to support its erratic spontaneity, although the internal despondency was disquieting as the film progressed.

Don't think I'll ever think of indigo again without thinking about this film, or stop searching in vain for a neat pianocktail.

Terraces in the afternoon.

Nothing but time.

Cosmopolis

A brilliant young billionaire, having maintained his fortune by grammatically applying the mathematical rhythms of nature to the metaphorical constructs of his social interactions, something like that, philosophically travels throughout New York in his cork-lined limo, calmly discussing various subjects with his astute personnel, occasionally stopping to chat with his literary wife, protests pulsating outside, historical echoes allusively gyrating, definitive risks annihilating his wealth, the pursuit of pleasure conjugally detected, security forces requiring guidance, meaning, substantially, trying to break its way through.

On his way to have his hair cut.

Operating within a conscious surrealistic intellectual structure spatially adorned with sudden startlingly ephemeral enactments (momentary dreamlike logical displacements), wherein questions of tangibility become remarkably fluid before alternatively reverting to their previous states, David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis examines an individual's steady response to a shockingly increasing barrage of multilayered financial, cultural, and, derivatively, psychological derailments, whose consequent disruptions cannot be experientially sublimated.

Mr. Packer's (Robert Pattinson) unaffected emancipated solution attaches a horrific qualification to the concept of freedom.

Even when Cronenberg zeroes in on the cerebral, he can still find other ways of exemplifying his roots.

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.

My Winnipeg

Guy Maddin's surrealist tribute to his dementedly prosperous relationship with Winnipeg is both a sustained reformulation of documentary motifs and a comedic critique of the techniques of Freudian psychology. The principle theme is identical to that found within Brand Upon the Brain!: a troubled man tries to find himself by reliving his childhood in a quest to discover his moment of castration, after which, he hopes to overcome it, or, doesn't. Maddin uses this theme to comedically/idealistically/awkwardly/ironically depict an interminable void within which the tortured learn to know that they cannot know themselves without attempting to discover that which no longer (and perhaps never) exists(ed), the picturesque and demonically productive consequences of never ending introspection: a tethered martlet. The principle trope throughout is that of meaning layered upon meaning, Native peoples believing that beneath the Red and Assiniboine rivers run parallel spiritual rivers, a complementary structure of back-roads and alleys (not listed on any map) are used to traverse the city, a bridge destined for the Nile ends up in Winnipeg, longing for its sunny paradise; when a demolition company attempts to destroy the Jets's former stadium, the original hull survives their first blast; actors are hired to play Maddin's family in a film shot in his childhood home, the goal being to discover his identity while indirectly delineating that of Winnipeg, and so on. His film challenges the conventions of the documentary by using a frame wherein it's difficult to tell whether or not anything he mentions is realistic or fantastic, while concurrently seeming quite truthful and frank, concretely mythologizing iconic Winnipeg citizens, groups, buildings, and traditions, as he travels throughout the city by train, always in winter, with bio-magnetic buffalo, wondering if he'll ever leave. Obviously, if he continues to relive his childhood in his childhood home with his overbearing mother he will never leave: he is quite aware of this. Obviously, documentaries attempt to supply a version of the truth while their styles distort it. Maddin responds to this tendency by overtly twisting the truth in order to unravel it, turning the genre upside down to pull its concrete insides out, outside of the cold, inflaming traditions, thereby donating to his community a host of peculiar legends, reminiscent of Greek and Norse ambition, within and without their culturo-historical austerity.

Winnipeg is very nice in Summer.

Inland Empire

Just finished David Lynch's Inland Empire and here are some initial impressions: the film begins by settling us into a darkly surreal landscape, reacquainting us with Grace Zabriskie who plays Laura Dern's portentous neighbour. She sets up the film's phantasmagorical relationship with linearity before fading into the background. Zabriskie is one of several characters whom I would have liked to have seen provided with a bigger role. In fact, my principle critique is the quality that I usually love so dearly within Lynch's texts: its weirdness. Rather than taking the time to firmly develop a number of characters throughout, Lynch introduces several characters, has them utter mysterious one-liners, and then trail off into the dreamscape. The mysterious nature of the film's compelling, kind of like an ontological detective story; but it would have been more so if we didn't lose Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, Jeremy Irons and Grace Zabriskie half way through (Irons and Stanton return briefly near the end). Instead, Laura Dern liaises with a number of identities before disappearing and reappearing in a variety of different puzzling contexts, the realities of which are difficult to penetrate to say the least (do her multiple identities reflect an artistic actors torment, the feeling they acquire from trying to BE so many different people correctly, in the context of their various stories?), and the rest of the cast is forgotten. What made Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Mulholland Drive so mesmerizing were the different characters caught up in the enigma, the different opaque perspectives within. Inland Empire suffers by not providing more of its principle characters with a chance to flesh out their identities, while, fittingly enough, the lead character experiences a severe crisis regarding her in/abilities to do so.