Homeland or The Land of Nuances

A Sort-of Movie Review I've recently started watching TV series Homeland, and I find myself constantly blown away by the various themes and questions it raises, covering the drawbacks of the most glorious American civilization. The story is about a CIA agent who suspects a just recently returned prisoner of war and momentary hero has been turned against his country. Will she be right? Could he really work for the terrorists who tortured him against the country he had sworn to protect but which let him rot for eight years in his cell?

Among the obviously exciting plot twists, the series has an even greater vantage from my point of view: the virtue of showing the nuances of certain said to be black-and-white problems which ruin so many good war movies and spy thrillers, making them less than credible. Right from the first episode it shows the moral ambiguity of surveillance, the difficulty of coming home to a loving family, the impossibility to integrate and communicate with a community which knows nothing of the horrors of war.

And then there are the characters. Masterfully portrayed by their respective actors, the protagonists are full of flaws and brilliance. Carry is the driven and ambitious intelligence officer whose life dismisses the working class myth that you can be successful at your work and still have a personal life. She is a valuable asset to the agency, yet she doesn't have time or space for anything else. Brody's character is even more complex: it shatters the image of the brave yet jolly hero, who sacrifices his life in a just war and comes home to tell stories about it at dinner. He doesn't tell stories (or if he does they are either fictional or deeply unsettling), he can hardly cope with the stress of coming home, and there is no just war. There is war where soldiers kill each other, where bombers blow up children, where suicide bombers blow up officials who send off soldiers to die, or where people who like each other do everything in their power to sabotage their mission, where people understand none of their friends as well as they do their enemies, and so on.

This movie systematically brakes down all what we thought we knew about right and wrong, good and evil, and the functional yet highly arbitrary legal and social system of the world's greatest country. And that's what I like about it. It compels us to think for ourselves, to try to find the truth from out there. What is the truth? The truth is that there is no truth, only sides, opinions and ways of looking at them. There is no black and white, only a thousand shades of grey, one closer to light, the other one closer to darkness.

If Music Be The Food Of Love.... Wicker Park

I constantly wonder why meaningful, intimate and beautifully filmed movies like Wicker Park get such bad ratings at sites like rottentomatoes.com. What could they miss that critics need so much that they just can't appreciate what the movies actually do present? Wicker Park, for example is a warm, alluring film about the perfect love's haunting impression which never lets you rest, always comes back with the same wonderful memories which are even more powerful now that they are only that.

If the label you're looking for is "realistic", don't watch this movie, because the plot indeed uses fate and coincidence as an anchor to revolve its story around, but if you accept the fact that this is fiction which has its own inner rules and doesn't show us life in its fullest, then you could really enjoy it. Also, according to the main idea, searching for a long lost love(er), the cinematographic method used here indicates very well the fragmentation of how we remember and think, the way our thoughts bounce back and forth in our memory, from the present into the past and back again. And a lost and painful love story is necessarily shown in brighter, nostalgic hues, like all good memories we wish we'd still live in.

The excellent photography which makes the film so captivating is only overshadowed by the very well chosen music which gives life to the scenes. Shakespeare's appropriate quote isn't just random, it's indeed easier to get drawn into the story with powerful and original tracks echoing in our ears all the time. The music gives the movie a veritable atmosphere of longing and obsession, while another character learns about love and starts obsessing about it from one of the Master's dramas, Twelfth Night, if I'm not mistaken. 

And, dear critics, you'd love this, the film even has some messages beyond the conventional story line, in the use of media devices: Matt, the protagonist falls in love into a video taped Lisa, the phone also functions as an entity bringing together and tearing them apart again, we get a sense of distance and alienation so present in today's big cities, where places only have meanings when people are around, and finding someone by going into their apartment isn't an option any more.  So if you want to watch a powerful love thriller (strange enough, in that genre nobody ever complains about having too obvious coincidences) with strangely delightful pictures and an eerie soundtrack which will haunt you for days, take a look at this earlier masterpiece of the director who hit the jackpot with Lucky Number Slevin.

Is there a Perfect Divorce?

I've been thinking about this particular subject ever since I've read A Perfect Divorce by Francesca Clementis on a beautiful, relaxing holiday spent on a Greek beach. It seemed like an easy summer reading, but after starting it, I felt more and more how the author touches subjects too fragile, deep and painful for the pink girly cover. The story is about a bright (not so) young woman, who after living together with her boyfriend all her life, after just ten months of marriage decides to get a divorce. The novel describes in very witty and ironic, but not at all cynical language how their friends just don't get it, how they can't choose sides and how excruciating is to let go someone you love, especially if that's the only thing you were ever sure of.

The main problem with her situation isn't only the usual heartbreaking end of romance, but also, that her husband is the only person she's ever been with, she's ever known, love means loving him, he was there at all her important events, he's in all her memories. So breaking up with someone that close to you can be incomprehensibly harrowing. But then again, she's only ever known being in love with him, she doesn't know how it's like with someone else, what does a grown up relationship mean, what are the constants and the variables in being together with someone. So here comes her life's biggest dilemma: can she live without the only man she's ever loved, and does she dare to? Spoiler, but especially when she meets someone else, someone she could actually fall in love with, the light summer romance turns into a novel of deceptions, heart aches that grabs your stomach and makes you gasp for air.

Anyone who's ever had a long relationship dissolve in their loving grasps, should know the torment what I'm talking about. The sleepless nights wondering aimlessly how a blooming love could turn out like this, remembering all the wonderful moments when you felt so close to that person, the perfect unbreakable union which feels like a lifetime ago with this person who just isn't the same any more, who lost the sparkle from his eyes when he looks at you, who lets you cry yourself to sleep because he just can't do anything to stop it any more.

And the constant accidental thought: would it be like this with someone else? Wouldn't it be easier to just start over? Wouldn't it be refreshing to see sparks and desire in someone's eyes when you look in it, not depression, hate, indifference? The problem really shows in its fullness, when that someone, the other one actually appears, like taken from your dreams, the manifestation of your hidden desire, everything that he isn't, the other one is.

Though the third person who is the last drop in a dying relationship hardly ever gives a real alternative, and the love affair doesn't outlive the first few weeks after the excitement and picks of conscience of sneaking away pass, the blow isn't smaller just because there is a shoulder to cry on. So the question remains: is it worth to end a once loving relationship just to find out what's out there? Are you sure the rupture is irreparable, that there is nothing that can be said or done to avoid this? Except for a mutually said "yes" and after trying out all there is to help, there is no divorce without heart ache, and there certainly isn't any perfect divorce.

Let's Get Ourselves An Education

Growing up and realizing life in its fullest necessarily links to school in the long history of literature and the shorter but not less influential history of cinema. So when watching An Education we can't help thinking if not of David Copperfield, then at least of Dead Poets' Society or even more, Mona Lisa Smile. A bright young student who discovers that there is more to life than learning and following parents' rules is always a challenge to present, and the Nick Hornby-scrip rises up to our expectations. This movie is good because it's not as naive as the average American films: our charming and clever protagonist might be a teenager who wants to go her own way and thinks she knows it best, but she can spot the difference between dream and reality and can draw conclusions if needed. What sets this movie apart from others with the same subject (mind you, not the ones I mentioned before, those actually are the few exceptions) could be also named as the general difference between a high-budget blockbuster and an art-film: commercial movies tell you the idealized, black-and-white version of life, when the princess always marries the prince and they live happily until the "The End" title, while art-films tell one particular story, where you might have a faint guess what will happen but you can never be sure, because - the best way - characters think for themselves or at least writers and directors do.When watching An Education, one might get a vague feeling of familiarity: a story might seem a bit known, it might have clichés which you remember from other films - but then again, life is like that and, according to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, we can only name and recognize things and values in our lives which we've already seen in other people's lives. Plus, it is set in a middle-class suburban neighbourhood of London of the 1960's which most of us only know from movies so it has to have a certain recognizability, it never claims total originality. Actually, it's the conventionality of the set and the story which makes us want to watch it, the feeling of certainty, the security of our society, our lives, our stories known by heart: if someone is special, then it's okay for them to meet new and interesting people and rebel against the boring path their parents put in front of them, if it's the 60's then love should come ahead of career, if it's romantic comedy (and with an attractive female main character mostly is) then love conquers all and without second thoughts or regrets.

But this particular piece of cinema doesn't want to sell us dreams, or if it does, then they aren't the ones we expect to buy. She might be a regular child who prefers fancy dinners and Parisian trips to studying for exams and mugging up Latin words, but she realizes soon enough that just as studying is only a part of life, so is partying. And it might be natural for a young woman to fall in love with a charming older man who makes her life so much more exciting, but that doesn't necessarily mean that she has to grab every opportunity to express her affection and that the painful and embarrassing first time should turn into a transcendental experience of love.
This movie doesn't claim that it knows life, not even that it can show us a piece of it. And it is this quality that makes it seem it could. It doesn't want to charm us with the prospect of a life which could be possible in our cultural, social and economic situation, but it never quite is, it charms us with its pictures, its story, its colours and characters. It compels us to view its events and images as a movie, to think about them not just crave for them, it doesn't give us an answer, it inclines us to ask questions. And Paris... well yes, that's as beautiful as in any romantic film set in this foreign land, an epiphany of Europe, land of love. Cause it might be just across the Channel, but even for the British it is the archetypical setting for romance.

The Problem with Avatar

Hi there in the New Year, sorry for disappearing again, but I'm back, so let's cut to the chase. I realized, I'm an eco-fan. No, not the shoes, that's with double c anyway, but I love ecologically aware pop-cult items. Though you, my faithful readers, might already realized this after reading my footnotes on Knowing, which I've seen as a metaphor of our imminent destruction caused by our indifference to environmental problems, but check out this: Avatar is a movie about an egocentric but cute American everyday normal guy, who gets acquainted with a civilization which, paradoxically, actually lives in harmony with nature. Pandora looks like the Garden of Eden which a 24/7 gamer smoking pot would dream in a moment of high definition when all the best background images of the fantasy role play pc games he's ever had blur together, and he doesn't have to kill anyone. Short correction on that latest: he does, we do. Because, no mistake about that, the Na'vi people may grieve over the necessary kill of a fellow living being, but the audience shouldn't. With all its pacifistic and environment-concerned messages, the first part when the initiation into this wonderful world takes place is only a long-lasting prelude to the good old Cameronian mass-destructing battle. And by mass I mean masses of florescent flowers, frisbee-like butterflies, floating (is)lands and huge and unique bonsai trees which have icicle-like leaves hanging down on them. Not to mention human fatalities which don't seem to impress anyone any more.

So Avatar does work as a metaphor of our everyday life where we connect ourselves to a machine to experience "real" life, have interesting and exciting adventures in lively and colourful environments which doesn't even come close to our grey everyday places, or as a message which says we are part of our surroundings, we can only function fully if we stay in harmony with the living organisms around us, we're in the eco-system, so we are responsible for our actions towards them. Too bad that a blockbuster can't only have messages for intelligent people, it also has to put in a lot of stereotypes, clichés and blood. Cause without them, it would be a good movie, and some people might actually go out of the plaza and think about these things, not how a chopper exploded or the bad guy got his brains scattered all over the place. But we wouldn't want that now, would we?

Knowing... but Still Not Doing Anything About It?

Well-behaved excitement of a public holiday, in contrast with a stereotypical presentation of a scared and disturbed little girl scribbling unstoppably numbers over numbers. Knowing is part of the wide-audienced catastrophe movies which are so popular lately, mixing the invasion-stereotype with the strange-little-children-acting-spooky thriller-genre. Interesting enough, it brings some philosophy too into the whole thing, and this is what makes me feel entitled to try to read into it another story entirely.

My first point: why is this apocalyptic genre so well known and preferred lately? Of course, there was the end-of-the-world "prophecy" of the millennium, where everyone half expected to get abducted by a huge, bright and alien light while doing their last shopping for a happy new year, but since that never happened, nor did the sky crush over us, there must be some other reason for getting such nice little goosebumps all over our body when we hear of yet another movie coming out with a similar trailer.

According to my theory, apart from the well known fact that people enjoy being scared and afraid as long as they know that nothing actually could happen to them, so apart from this, we can't help noticing that there indeed exists a parallel discourse about the "near" end of the world as we know it, which also gives us the creeps, but looses its effect after leaving the premises where we heard it - just like the movies do. This narrative, however, comes from a quite different paradigm, one that is considered opposite the artistic or entertaining one, and was supposed to represent the only "real" and "objective" way of understanding our world. I'm talking about science, and the stories we hear more frequently every day about our way of life's and more importantly: our living environment's imminent doom and destruction in case of continuing our present lifestyle.

The philosophical line in the movie revolves around the question of determinism. This problem, however, isn't just of a philosophical or religious nature. One of my favourite scientists, the cell-biologist Dr Bruce Lipton developed a whole concept around how learning at school the (false) theory that genes control our bodies and lives, make us go through life thinking that we are predestined to certain (of course: unfavourable) things and can't, but more unfortunately: won't do anything about it.

So it might not hurt to take a second glance at things so natural to us as preferring movies which show humanity in danger of extinction from a force we can't fight (and unlike most of the similar movies, this one doesn't end in a "last warning" or an improbable but highly expected triumph of mankind) and accepting the message Knowing as well puts in front of us: we are perfectly contented by being determined to particular things, without ever trying to change it - and trying to understand the hidden meaning of this: are we really so dumb that we see these movies, feel the urge of warning but just "don't" understand the hint, or mainly just too comfy to act anything that would require changing our daily habits? Because there is a near peril, even if not threatened by aliens.

"I never needed you" or 3 Minutes Worth Break Up Reasons in a Pop Song

Hi there, everyone, my faithful audience, sorry for not having written for such a long time, though this particular subject has been haunting me since the hot and leisure days of summer, where one of my dear friends found this song, the Pussycat Doll's Hush Hush interesting enough to share it with us, helpless listeners, on a long journey towards water, pools, sun and bathing suits. Curious enough, these are the characteristics of a successful pop song as well. Let's take a closer look on these, apparently so harmless lyrics and see what they are saying about the "modern relationship".

The song starts with the powerful and representative voice of the group's main (and only, i might add) singer, who at that same moment begins to enlist the reasons why she doesn't want to be in a relationship with her partner. Even if the verses of this part aren't understood, the blissful ignorant can't enjoy the melody for too long, since the theme and effect of the song will develop sooner than expected: there comes the desperate, whining tone of the refrain, which none can be so fortunate as to mistake: it is a woman's last wish in a break-up, the testament of a dying relationship.
So why does she want to break up? First she's stating out what she, and let's be honest, all women detest about men, and that is: pretending they know best, and bragging about it, correcting the apparently false ideas the fair and gentle sex has about such brutal and non-ladylike things as life in general and business, money and human nature in particular. Yes, definitely, we could do without that. But then they creep in, all the other characteristics which women actually like in men, and for long centuries have valued their company for them: to be strong, to give help, to express certain things in words (as well), to be there everyday. So why are those things rejected? And isn't the whole relationship rejected with this? From an evolutionarily point of view, a study concerned with the survival of the race, there definitely is a need for couple life. The pair formed of the human male and female should stay together at least for the sake of the baby (that is: the next generation, the future of the race) for quite a long time, since not only the baby alone, but neither the mother alone is fit enough to provide for the survival of the child in the early ages.

The feminist movements, which protested about the too literal reading of this theory, indeed helped on the unfavourable status of women deserted to the kitchen and nursery by the industrial revolution's division of labour in the families. But please, let's be reasonable, we're light years form that age, if not in all the world, then on the parts where they dress as those in the video, and if not in all social classes, then most certainly in those which the singer(s) represent(s). Because in the time and place of primitive farming and grain cultivating, there were no unjust, sexist discrimination, which might excuse the fair sex from hard labour, just as there was no pretence that someone could "make it on their own".
So basically, this song expresses that its singer doesn't need any men, for any reasons there could be. Not rejecting them from a feminist point of view, refusing their unfair influence and power over them - no, this guy mentioned in the lyrics doesn't have anything on her. That's why in the extended version, the I will survive insertion seems so misplaced: that's a song about a person in love trying to break free of the unwanted relationship which still overpowers them - here there is no love, there are no bonds, nobody ever doubts that she can survive without him, so no point in proving it.

What this song seems to be saying is that there is no need for men for economic emotional or any purposes at all, and apparently no point in being together just for the sake of love, without ever wanting something from the other. I wander what this pearl of popular culture says about today's romantic relationship. Is it rushing to its end?