Sick Desperation In Your Laugh: The Movies Of 1999 (Part 27, Holy Smoke!)

(Part 27 of an Ongoing Series)

The mind’s a damn mystery. Why do people believe in God? Why do people believe they’re in love? Why do I tell myself every day, ‘You’re fat, mate. Today I’m not gonna eat cake, butter, or bread.’ And by lunch time, I’ve done the lot?

Stan (Sandy Gutman)

Holy Smoke! jumps off from a millennial anxiety over the dark powers of late 20th Century cults (Manson, Jones, Koresh, Applewhite), but it ends up swimming in a trippy, sweaty stew of twisted, erotic, psycho-sexual mind games before coming up for air on a surprisingly tender shore of platonic love.

When the movie was released, some critics wrote of its “feminist” qualities (The AV Club mentioned Jane Campion’s “torrid feminism;” Ebert called the film a “feminist parable”). And while I totally see Holy Smoke! as a torrid parable, I call bullshit on it being all that feminist. This has less to do with my personal feelings on the word “feminism,” and how I think it’s a lousy word for the kind of gender equality most self-described feminists claim to seek (though I won’t get into that here, lest any Jezebel feminists come at me armed with inane Seussian analogies). No, this has more to do with Campion’s own views, like, “I don’t belong to any clubs, and I dislike club mentality of any kind, even feminism—although I do relate to the purpose and point of feminism.” And also because the whole point of Holy Smoke! seems to be that both the man (Harvey Keitel’s PJ) and the woman (Kate Winslet’s Ruth) are equally transformed by each other, each one stripped of some of their gender’s stereotypical flaws.

I can’t say I entirely buy these transformations, at least based on how these characters are initially developed. But hey, it’s a parable, and insanely seductive in that 1999 way, so I’ll cut it some slack if its characters don’t exactly follow the most believable arcs. And besides, if I was stuck with Ruth for three days in the Australian Outback, I can’t say for sure that I wouldn’t wind up sprawled on the ground in a nice red dress, lipstick smeared across my mouth, crazy from the heat, reveling in an epiphanic hallucination of a Hindu goddess. I mean, there but for the grace of Lakshmi go I…

The Funky Eternity Of Random Access Memories

Once you free your mind about the concept of… music being ‘correct,’ you can do whatever you want.  So nobody told me what to do, and there was no preconception of what to do.

Giorgio Moroder in Daft Punk’s “Giorgio By Moroder”

Yes, Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories has been hyped to Neptune and back and yes, maybe it’s far from the most cutting-edge dance music out there. I wouldn’t know for sure about that last part because I’m far from the most cutting-edge dance music listener out there. One thing I do know: More than a few opinions I’ve heard about RAM (including mine) went from, “There’s a few great tracks here, but overall, why the fuss?” to “Now I can’t stop listening” somewhere between the first and third spin. This album can go from “lackluster” to “Wow, check out all that luster!” ludicrously fast.

And usually that evolution of opinion is preceded by something like, “Once I got past the hype/ my expectations of what a Daft Punk album should sound like…” Me, I was perfectly happy to hear Daft Punk crank out awesome disco jams for the rest of their life, but once I got past the hype, I was pleasantly surprised by where they’ve decided to go instead. I mean, they’re still capable of cranking out awesome disco jams (“Lose Yourself To Dance,” “Get Lucky”) but now they’re also capable of  something more. The Paul Williams collaboration (“Touch”) is one of the most poignant tracks I’ve heard in a while, transcribing the entire spectrum of emotions a cyborg must experience when confronting love, from desire to fulfillment to cold reality. If you ask me, “Touch” is as much a testament to the soul as “One More Time” or “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” is a testament to human partying.

There will be so many opinions on Random Access Memories. I certainly don’t think it’s flawless, and I can’t argue with people who simply don’t feel what it’s doing. But I hope people won’t dismiss it merely because it doesn’t fit exactly what they expect from Daft Punk, or 21st Century dance music. Past the hype, Daft Punk has created a work of timeless beauty and mechanical sex appeal, a cultural singularity that deserves at least one of your listens. After all, we are all cyborg alien ghosts made of stars, and this is our soundtrack.

It’s My Job

Ken Cosgrove isn’t merely one of the most decent and likable high-level employees at SCDP/CGC- apparently he can also tap-dance on an injured foot (if you pump him with enough of that mystery drug that’s probably amphetamines).

 

The Frightening Majesty Of Upstream Color

Shane Carruth’s first film Primer cost roughly $47 and might be the most realistic time travel movie one could possibly make, the way it spirals helplessly from banality to chaos. Now with Upstream Color and a slightly higher budget, Carruth’s captured what it must be like to peek inside the four-dimensional blueprints of evolution. Only this time the mood isn’t dominated by Philip K. Dick-ian existential techno-terror, although there’s plenty of that; now there’s also gorgeous strokes of Terrence Malick-ish cosmic awe, and a divine reassurance that, despite whatever frightening unknowns lie ahead (or behind, or above, or below), we’re not alone in this.

Primer was one of the few movies I re-watched immediately after my first watching, and I was tempted to do the same with Upstream Color. I got about 15 minutes into my second viewing, long enough for certain images to re-trigger new ideas and shed light on a few of the myriad mysteries. But I had to stop. I realized I could’ve easily been hypnotized, ending up in a loop constructing Möbius strip paper chains, emptying my bank account, and losing myself in Walden philosophy. And there’s only so much frightening majesty I can handle in one day.

Folly

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Nowhere does Bokonon warn against a person’s trying to discover the limits of his karass and the nature of work God Almighty has had it do. Bokonon simply observes that such investigations are bound to be incomplete.

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

Monkeys Riding Goats

Why is it that a sophisticated animal like a chimp does not utilize inferior creatures? He could straddle a goat and ride off into the sunset.

Werner Herzog, Encounters At The End Of The World

Actually, Werner…

courtesy of Mark Frauenfelder, BoingBoing.net

Sick Desperation In Your Laugh: The Movies Of 1999 (Part 26, The Ninth Gate)

(Part 2666 of an ongoing series)

To travel in silence / by a long and circuitous route, / To brave the arrows of misfortune / and fear neither noose nor fire, / To play the greatest of all games / and win, foregoing no expense / is to mock the vicissitudes of Fate / and gain at last the key / that will unlock the Ninth Gate.

Boris Balkan (Frank Langella)

I can understand why one might ignore Roman Polanski’s work on the grounds that he’s likely a cowardly sex criminal. (That’s not my stance on watching Polanski movies, but I do draw the line at watching his movies in any way that might put money in his pocket. For instance, I own Chinatown on DVD, because it’s freaking Chinatown, but I made sure to buy it used.) If, however, you’re the type who’d argue that Polanski’s crimes don’t negate his artistry (just as his artistry doesn’t negate his crimes), why would you ignore The Ninth Gate? Critics and audiences shrugged when it was released, and as recently as last year, when The AV Club did a “Gateways To Geekery” feature on Polanski’s films, they didn’t even mention this movie.

Which is a shame- at least, as shameful as it could possibly be to underappreciate a movie made by a likely sex criminal. Because The Ninth Gate isn’t just pretty scary and surprisingly funny and endlessly intriguing; it also feels like a work of living, breathing, cackling magick. Polanski can claim he doesn’t believe in the occult, but The Ninth Gate still exudes the aura of a powerful spell. (Especially in the third act. I’m pretty sure this movie unlocked some forbidden chambers of my subconscious.)

Yes, until that third act, the movie’s a bit on the slow side, as many of its critics have claimed. Still, I was seduced all the way through. (Granted, I’m quite partial to stories about booksellers and the frightening allure of arcane knowledge.) Hey, you know what other movie’s a bit on the slow side? Rosemary’s Baby. Now I won’t say that The Ninth Gate‘s better than Rosemary’s Baby, but I also wouldn’t say Gate pales in comparison. The two films actually make for an interesting kind of demonic diptych: one, a tragedy of a woman who has evil thrust inside her against her will; the other, a journey of a man transformed by his voluntary quest into evil. Of course, exactly how Johnny Depp’s Dean Corso is transformed remains tantalizingly ambiguous.

Which makes me wonder what The Ninth Gate might be saying about Polanski’s personal demons. Guilty or not, he’s been accused of one of the most evil crimes we have, if not the most evil. (Christ, murderers look their noses down at child rapists.) Now here he is telling the story of a morally dubious character, skeptical of the supernatural, who flirts with the darkest evil and maybe damns himself for it. Or maybe he’s simply transcended into some other eerie realm unknown to most mere mortals. While I can separate the art from the artist enough not to outright boycott Polanski’s work, I can’t separate art from artist enough to imagine that The Ninth Gate isn’t a stealth apology, a coded confession, a shameless self-defense, or an Unholy Trinity of all three.