Birth

Genuine love illuminatingly transcends routine day-to-day orthodox trajectories, ingeniously transmitting ethereal dispatches with sincere wholesome munificent dignity. 

But alas, the blesséd union is cruelly and inhumanely torn asunder, as envious death jealously rises then indelicately vanishes with one tortured soul.

Time passes and the surviving member is once again pursued by an old sweetheart, who waited patiently year after year and never gave up after considerable rejection.

A date is set they are to be married friends and family traditionally applaud, but one unexpected mischievous guest suddenly shows up with spiritual discourse.

He claims that he's the bride's enamoured ex-husband and that he's still wholeheartedly in love, the reincarnated reanimated spirit lithe and active within a 10 yr. old.

He's initially dismissed for unfairly toying with mournful feelings and morose emotions, and disrupting an upcoming marriage with zealous uncouth disparaging diatribes.

But he knows so much so many intimate details that were only shared between husband and wife.

Has the spirit world brought their moribund marriage back to life?

Or is the euphoria immaterial and inconclusive?

Somewhat absurd yet still innocent and tender you see the trusting lovelight altruistically shining through, as the bewildered ex-wife falls again for her husband with grave awkward grace and solemn credulity.

Even though he's only 10 and won't be fit to wed for another decade or so, she still considers the traditional role she once dutifully played with authentic temperance. 

I felt bad for the hopeful new husband who waited so long to fulfill his desire, true love and the fates egregiously mocking his steadfast and true uncorrupted fidelity. 

To wait so long and have your wedding annulled after a child shows up claiming to be your bride's ex-husband, would have been a shock too much to bear as furiously related one embarrassing evening.

The contemporary nature of the film sombrely scored with classical melodies, gives it a haunting stern humble edge wherein which you might find reincarnated frequencies. 

The characters are also wealthy (or bourgeois or struggling) enough to take such things seriously without qualm or misgiving.

To resplendently fall for true love everlasting.

Through immortal time.

In eternal disregard. 

The Man from Earth

A well-liked professor announces he's leaving to his disappointed and confused thoughtful colleagues, the sudden nature of the shocking departure ruffling an inquisitive feather or two.

He tries to swiftly hit the road but they manage to convince him to stay for a party, which he begrudgingly agrees to attend without much enthusiastic pomp and ceremony.

Some people just don't like farewell gatherings and aren't habitually attuned to free-flowing emotion, but in this case it has more to do with the solemn fact that he's immortal.

His friends are naturally curious about why he's leaving and where he intends to go, and he awkwardly avoids their questions before simply telling it like it is.

Being of intellectual dispositions they're instinctually prone to doubt such claims, and proceed to effortlessly introduce highly spirited qualms and refutations. 

He's quite an agreeable chap though and is able to congenially hold his own, slowly but surely breaking down barriers intuitively contradicting his eccentric bearing. 

Dating back over 140,000 years he has clever things to say about so many different things.

Even if he needs to leave when people notice he doesn't age.

Having immersed himself in so many epochs. 

With people so formerly aggressive and much more covetous of their feudal neighbours, living for 140,000 years seems like it would have blended impossible odds with infinite distress.

To avoid so many roll calls to consistently keep head attached to neck, while learning so many languages and variable customs throughout the millennia. 

I imagine you could move to different cities and creatively remain for a century or two, and fluidly observe the dynamic ebb and flow with crafty relatable multivariability. 

It would have been cool before colonialism to have travelled to North South America and Australia, and live there for thousands of years you'd possess so much indigenous wisdom. 

The Man from Earth's a lot of fun with a cool cast of characters from old school pop culture (Tony Todd, David Lee Smith, John Billingsley, Ellen Crawford, Annika Peterson, William Katt, Alexis Thorpe, Richard Riehle), demonstrating their chops with reliable industry in a cool chillin' script straight out of Star Trek's finest.

I don't deny the possibility that such immortals may live among us.

You'd have to wonder if they ever get bored.

So much to do.

So little time! 

Meshi (Repast)

The rigid structure once naturalized since time immemorial so it seemed, the man diligently thriving at work, the wife taking care of the home.

It now appears rather out of touch with fluid non-specific schematics, which see both partners animately working while sharing household chores at the end of the day.

I'm not entirely sure how it works, but I imagine contemporary partners function multilaterally, perhaps cooking on alternate nights, and cleaning together on the weekend.

As time passes, I reckon the division of labour organically corresponds to habitual preference, within relevant temporal constraints, incorporating time and variability.

Do couples indeed function this way as time progresses and patterns emerge?

Or is it only read about in books and newspapers?

Has corresponding data been reasonably compiled?

In Meshi (Repast), there isn't much of an alternative for Michiyo (Setsuko Hara) besides the life of a traditional housewife, the socioeconomic style of the times having yet to embrace gender equality. 

She finds her life rather dull and becomes frightened by her future prospects (they live in suburbia), especially after her husband's (Uehara as Hatsunosuke) pretty cousin (Yukiko Shimazaki as Satoko) comes to visit, and he engages her in conversation.

Michiyo leaves to stay with family and her husband is left to monotonously deal, he's actually not such a bad guy though, and patiently accepts his solitary predicament.

He certainly has the more active role empirically equipped with inherent mobility, but he isn't cruel and dismissive either, he loves his wife and doesn't flaunt his advantage.

She eventually realizes he's a catch even though he's dependable and trustworthy, and the two reestablish their conjugal trajectory, director Mikio Naruse presenting their union idyllically. 

Her husband's rather chill and accepting and would likely have played a role in instigating change (Meshi's from 1951). 

And perhaps would have learned to be more spontaneous as well.

To take Michiyo out to dinner more often. 

Nattvardsgästerna (Winter Light)

I suppose when you're happy doing your own thing and you've generally created spiritually enriching films, according to improvised guidelines which imaginatively mutated over time, it may at some point occur to you to direct the saddest most despondent film ever conceived, to make a distressing point cloaked in sheer austere lugubrity. 

Pushing things past the strictly solemn to approach rarefied uncompromised misery, Ingmar Bergman's Nattvardsgästerna (Winter Light) distills utter complete hopelessness. 

It's unfortunate to shyly say that the lack of hope is derived from honesty, from a pressurized irreconcilable desire to share one's thoughts with imposing candour. 

Does such a truthful need reflect genuine social lucidity, inasmuch as the ability to freely express oneself is oft admired and sincerely celebrated?

Is the sharing of doubts and misgivings not encouraged by different cultures, to avoid pent up obtuse hardheartedness followed by shocking emotional explosions?

In Nattvardsgästerna, the individual under examination occupies a prominent position however, and people look to him for strength in difficult times of spiritual stress.

When he makes his own lack of faith apparent and expresses it with candid levity, the results are completely disastrous for his diminutive humble flock.

He attempts to ease troubled minds by modestly employing frank concern, but misjudges tortured temperaments who were seeking guidance not familiarity. 

The cultivation of ideals thus receives distraught import, through morose unrestrained melancholia blindly abandoning its lofty discourse.

It's an extreme example sheltered in woebegone obfuscation, utilizing provocative misjudgment to comment upon mortality.

If you could approach every social interaction like a French judge interpreting the Civil Code, socially, not judicially, each interaction adapted to specific circumstances, then perhaps through lauded perspicuity you could efficiently prescribe communal medication (one case at a time).

Populism has wildly challenged the establishment of wise decision making however, through realistic democratic loopholes which instinctually bewilder.

Those occupying positions of power must proceed confidently nevertheless.

As alternative rationalities clash and codify.

A bleak film.

Disposed noblesse. 

Genius

Agonizing labour mingling with the bewildered ethereal basks in potential obscured, a neverending stream of doubtful/joyous speculations as incendiary as they are preposterous, throngingly detached from the chattering corporeal, suddenly projecting auditory flashes of verisimilitude.

Acknowledgements.

Discoveries.

Versatile editor Max Perkins (Colin Firth) embraces eccentric self-obsessed writer Thomas Wolfe's (Jude Law) text with encouraging flattery and fetchingly suppressed awe, the two forging a working friendship that leads to eventual publication.

With a granite gristful, Perkins incisively vets to encourage digestion, while Wolfe thoughtfully considers his arguments with jubilant patience and restrained celerity.

Momentum matriculating.

Existential peculiarities haunt Perkins's purpose, as he wonders if his insights hold back the genius for which he dedicatedly advocates.

The director's cut of The Chronicles of Riddick isn't as good.

Mommy, is very good.

Once free, Wolfe is attached to no one, his loving support, his devoted patroness (Nicole Kidman as Aline Bernstein [it's like she hasn't aged since Billy Bathgate]), crippled by his callous insouciance.

His carefree hedonism.

Her sacrifices shut out.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (Guy Pearce) offers begrudging consul as Wolfe's spite begins to deride Perkins, Fitzgerald critiquing Wolfe's Highlander spirit, his divine gravitational pretensions.

To Genius, the film taking something as unappealing as editing a novel then turning it into a multidimensional commentary on loyalty, fame, artistic expression, family, wantonness, friendship, blending trajectories which eventually polarize, fragile confiscated freedoms, collaborative literary identities, Fitzgerald functioning as synthesis.

Editorial toil.

Sometimes you write something that clearly requires no changes for about three days, others you arduously tear a document to shreds to make the improvements you're not sure it needs, most of the time it's just patience, purpose, progress, perplexion.

I actually find writing something, then working out all day, then editing in a state of exhaustion to work quite well as a technique on occasion.

Usually, if I enjoyed writing a poem or a review it needs serious work although that's not always the case.

Fugacious formulae.

Fleeting fancies.

Rock-solid reliability.

Temporal pressures.

Fragmentary fusions.

Consumption.

Silliness.

Reserve.

Should you just let it tear you apart?

For utility's sake?

Checkered Chattanooga.

Undecided.

*I'm wondering if purchased copies will include a conversation between director Michael Grandage and editor Chris Dickens as a bonus feature.

Birdman: or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Spiralling prosaic haunting indecision, contraction instigated, distraction, procured, a play must be performed, negative emotion dominating, that voice, that voice which collegially condemns, internally and externally, belittling, haunting, there are specific time limits, the exceptional exceptionally parades, tender loving affairs, perpetual motion, angst rehabilitated, worst case after worst case, coming together, working, in unison, taking things too far, hold tight, flip, perform, do what you have always done, resolve strengthens, misgivings matriculate, swoop, soar, Silencio, glide on the currents like a nuthatched pin cushion, Birdman, Michael Keaton, what happened to Michael Keaton?, he disappeared, I thought, it's bound to be sold out, it's starring Michael Keaton, just like the '90s, purchase advanced tickets, line-up like Batman, she makes out like she did in Mulholland Drive, the soundtrack's embedded, bejewelled, it can't be extracted, necrophonic needlework, the lines, the perfectly delivered palatial lines, discursive krypton, in motion, in constant motion, assert, lose it, discuss, advocate, temporally sketched to last a lifetime, impotency notwithstanding, harness the haunting perpetual motion, aloofly pepper with speeches and scenes all of which are capable of standing alone, united to etherealize commercial artistic bedlam, for applause, for fortune, if I were Tennessee Williams I'd orgasm, Birdman, Birdman, Birdman, syntheses within syntheses, a kind word, still a movie, it's still a movie, it never loses sight of the fact that it's still a movie for entertaining, mesmerizing, a kind of charming magical cinematic awareness simultaneously celebrating and criticizing the medium, without appearing sentimental or confectionary, I shouldn't have used the word magical, a failure, I fail, flotsam flickering and flailing, taking note, sprawling to capture this ingenious tenure, this incomparable sight, this modest, coy, Birdman: or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), in the act of creation, it reacts anew.

Kon-Tiki

Since a young age I've preserved a healthy skepticism regarding whether or not Columbus discovered America.

As I'm sure many others have as well.

Noting that many of my interlocutors have always maintained a healthy degree of mistrust regarding anything people other than themselves happen to mention, and figuring that this is nothing new, that people have always cultivated such suspicions, it seems hard for me to believe that everyone agreed that the Earth was flat way back when, and that a bunch of disenfranchised trouble makers never simply jumped on a boat to sail the open unrecorded seas, forbidding prohibitions be damned.

I know there are continents on the other side of whatever ocean.

But if I didn't, yet I knew there were islands in the middle of mainland lakes, I could easily hypothesize that similar landmasses existed offshore, and confidently set out in search of their voluptuous bounties.

Thinking ancient cultures didn't travel open waters trading and communicating with each other ir/regularly is too Eurocentric a viewpoint for my tastes, too reliant on the written word, as it was for Thor Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Hagen) in Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Kon-Tiki, who sets out to prove that Indigenous Polynesians already knew, thanks to their reliable oral traditions, that some of their islands were settled from the East as opposed to the West, by ancient Peruvians bravely crossing the Pacific.

Thor boldly proceeds with a crew of 5 adventurers, on a raft, across the Pacific, with no support from the scientific communities of his day, risking everything to expand certain understandings.

Kon-Tiki congenially presents a family friendly bit too comfortable narrative considering wherein hope, faith, inspiration, and truth miraculously guide a stalwart team, with endless shots of their leader (Norway's Peter O'Toole?), and the crabby sentiments of a pesky stowaway.

Its best sequence shows how broken attachments lead to immediate retributions whose consequences, instigated after a confrontational organizational challenge, pits trust against doubt, the same doubt that Heyerdahl represents regarding established truths of his time, said trust triumphing, and said consequences, the situation demanding an immediate life saving response, prove remarkable fortuitous, if not generally foolhardy.

It also productively examines group dynamics for although Herman Watzinger's (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) doubt threatens his group's cohesiveness at times, his continuing presence provides them with the information they need to avoid disaster as they approach their destination, thereby elevating the film's conception of a critical yet devout unified team.

A contemporary established theory that I often hear referenced that seems suspect to me suggests that North and South America were populated by peoples walking across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia.

I've also heard other people suspect this theory and am drawing on such conversations (and writings) in presenting this idea.

And I mean, seriously, enough people crossed this bridge to cultivate multidimensional populations from Tuktoyaktuk to Patagonia, walking all the way, only crossing a land bridge between East Asia and Alaska?

Makes more sense to me that there were already peoples inhabiting North and South America and some eventually walked over the bridge to join them.

Does anyone dispute that Australia's Indigenous population lived there for millennia before first European contact?

Worth investigating anyways.

La Captive

Imprisoned by his theories, obsessively recycling miserable forecasts regarding his relationship's future, driven by jealousy, and tortured by ideals, Simon (Stanislas Merhar) interrogates his desire in Chantal Akerman's La Captive as Ariane (Sylvie Testud) helplessly perseveres. At least that's what happens in In Search of Lost Time and La Captive follows the text closely enough to suggest that this is what's happening in the film. Bored and frustrated by his inability to create, Simon abandons his attempts to prove himself intellectually and focuses his attention on Ariane's past. Convinced he can understand her present motivations through recourse to her anecdotes and observations, he pursues his goal of categorizing her purity. Being incapable of distinguishing fact from subterfuge, his objective investigations quizzically qualify the labyrinthine other. Leave it alone, let bygones be bygones, just have a good time. Take it easy, relax, drink some wine, she's likely done everything you're considering, twice. Without the guidance of American pop culture to rely upon, Simon sinks deeper and deeper into the abyss. In the end, Ariane does the only thing she can to allow him to find an answer as he assiduously scours the ocean searching for his peace of mind.

A lot of the depth from the fifth part of Proust's novel is lost in La Captive's translation. Françoise (Liliane Rovère) and Simon's Grandmother (Françoise Bertin) don't make an impact and Mme Verdurin's famous snub of M. de Charlus is absent. I don't know how you could have worked the later into a film that's less than three hours and doesn't include some kind of internal narration but an attempt would have been nice. At least a scene with M. de Charlus. The long empty corridors and lengthy nocturnal shots point to Simon's troubles within the novel but without more material it's difficult to capture Proust's incessant meticulous analysis (but it was still fun to write about it as if it's there). But La Captive isn't meant to relate to In Search of Lost Time religiously since it's a film that is only based on the novel. Bearing this in mind, greater liberties with Proust's masterpiece could have been taken (although it's so revered taking such liberties requires disciplined audacity! [I suppose Simon's Grandmother does die in The Guermantes Way]). But Akerman's probably sick and tired of hearing devotees of the novel complain about what's missing in her well-crafted film and it does possess a morosely anxious distraught internal consistency that's rigidly maintained throughout. The moral: don't try and ever love anyone while consistently falling in love. And have multiple extensive lies which you trust ready by your side when loving so that one day you can convince yourself that you've found something to hold onto.

The Rite

Mikael Håfström's The Rite succinctly examines a doubting would-be Catholic priest's confrontation with theological proof. After having decided not to take his vows, Michael Kovak (Colin O'Donoghue) is 'convinced' to spend two months studying exorcism in Rome. He ardently believes that the possessed are simply suffering from mental illness and doesn't respond to his studies enthusiastically. In order to challenge his beliefs, Father Xavier (Ciarán Hinds) introduces him to an exorcist, Father Lucas Travant (Anthony Hopkins), who allows him to witness his sessions. The sessions are neither mundane nor theatrical and Kovak is initially disquieted by their quotidian mysticism. A beautiful reporter (Alice Braga as Angeline) writing a piece about the legitimacy of demonic possession is hoping to exercise his scoop, thereby serving to further destabilize his conscience. Then, as his father (Rutger Hauer) dies and Travant loses his mind, Kovak must decide where his belief truly lies.

The Rite is a modest sharp-witted calling card for the Catholic faith. The troubles facing Roman Catholicism in Western countries are resignedly referred to and the arguments contradicting its dogma given free room to play. The film is modest insofar as it doesn't bombard you with passionate pleas for legitimacy and showcases several characters, many of them of the faith, possessing the same doubts as the typical disbeliever. The film's modesty generates its sharp-wit because underlying its form is the awareness that intense elevations of Catholic principles don't receive much Western airtime these days, leaving proponents in check, requiring a subtle next move. The Rite is subtle and psychological and presented in the agnostic tradition while still remaining firmly devoted to Catholicism. On a spiritual intellectual contemporary level the film works. Structurally, however, it's somewhat condensed. The film is about Kovak but the most compelling character is Travant. If more screen time had been devoted to Travant's character, examining his history and conscience more zealously, his sudden decent into 'madness' would have seemed less like a gimmick and more like a tragedy.

Doubt

John Patrick Shanley's Doubt presents a simple story layered with political complexities in a straightforward manner. Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) austerely respects the rules and regulations of her church's code but nevertheless her shrewd devotion challenges its gender based hierarchy when a Priest's conduct seems to be crossing the line. Father Brendan Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) delivers heartfelt homilies and appears to be genuinely caring for his flock but his methods become suspect and Beauvier launches an unrelenting underground crusade to have them rigorously reprimanded. But Sister James (Amy Adams) disagrees with her verdict and demonstrates a sincere degree of courage herself as suspicion and rumour threaten the integrity of their congregation. And Mrs. Miller illustrates how hard it can be being the loving mother of a child who receives contempt from both his classmates and his abusive father, Viola Davis providing a profound cameo whose impact is strong enough to momentarily distract the audience from the rest of the cast's assiduous acting.

Shanley's screenplay provides Doubt's principal characters with a stark cinescape within which to display their raw talents and they succeed in infusing potentially stale caricatures with a sincere degree of dynamically subdued emotion. With difficult subject matter displayed in a directly ambiguous fashion, Doubt deftly demonstrates the refined results of one woman's committed, determined resolve, while simultaneously pointing out how seriously problematic the maintenance of such a disposition can be.