In case you were wondering, you should definitely go see "The Artist," the new silent French film by Michel Hazanivicius. I know, I know -- I had you at "French."
But really.
Here's why:
1. Jokes in silent movies are funnier, the way jokes in foreign language are funnier -- because the little bit of extra effort it takes to decode them pulls you closer into the circle, makes you one of the in-crowd. That's just a fact.
2. It is a powerful, affecting silent movie about the limits of the silent movie as an art form. If there's one thing I learned in undergrad (and that is a not insignificant "if"), it is that you will always sound smart if you claim that a piece of artwork is really a commentary on art itself. But this time it's true. And what it says is that all forms are limited -- that "genre" is just another word for "limit" -- but that all forms are also infinite, or at least infinitely expressive. This is a point close to my heart because it provides the foundation for a theory of translation. Yes, all languages use a limited set of sounds and follow certain grammatical rules and developed to describe certain places and peoples. But you can translate any sentence into any language: if it can be said, it can be translated.
The first time I saw the movie, all I could talk about when I left the theater was the main character, George Valentin. I was distraught. He was so familiar -- someone who slid, and slid and would not stop himself from sliding, letting pieces of himself go until you could hardly recognize him. It was painful. It was moving. It wasn't just pantomime.
But then, the very last moment of the film -- don't worry, I won't give it away -- reminds you that there are some things you can only say with sound. It's sort of stunning.
3. It tells you how movies work and then it shows you by creating a movie that works. On you. What I mean is, in the first scene, you see George Valentin acting in a silent movie within the movie -- you see him captured by the Germans, you see a comically exaggerated torture scene, you see him left in his cell, and you see his little dog lick his face until he wakes up and lead him to safety. You see the audience within the movie caught up in the drama, you see their relief at the end. And you laugh at them. You can't help it. It's so contrived! And they're so captivated.
And then, late in the story, you see the main character of the movie you are watching nearly die only to be rescued by his little dog. And you are on the edge of your seat. I swear. All you can think is that he might die and how intolerable that would be because now you are attached to him and so are some of the other characters. You might even tear up when the policeman finally arrives to take him to the hospital. It's quite affecting.
But wait. Wasn't this the exact same device you were laughing at before? Well, yes and no.
There are different lessons to take away from this. The one I choose to hold onto is that a story is not like a magic trick -- it doesn't matter that you know how it's done, it still works. And maybe that's what's so magical -- that being caught up in a story means being subject to it, feeling what it leads you to feel without knowing why. It means losing perspective, forgetting the frame of the book or the screen.
Honestly, I don't know how it works. But I'm glad it does.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Why I Love My Chorus
Members of IOC often rally late in a season by quoting the group wisdom that things always "come together" in performance. This is not the most vivid phrase -- for me it evokes something casual, unanticipated, like a fifteen-minute meal of pasta and sauce, so basic that it seems to constitute itself without the intervention of any outside agent. This phrase does not really describe what happens in concert.
What happens in concert is that, for several hours each semester, all 30 or so of us active, over-scheduled, slightly frantic individuals set aside our usual concerns and simultaneously turn our minds to the music in our hands. These are not minds easily turned away from their usual concerns, of which we all have many. When it happens, it is quite a thing to watch. Phrases clipped clean as if with scissors; consonants arriving in lockstep at the back of the hall; chords stacked neatly beneath a tower of overtones. It makes my eyes water, like those movie scenes where the whole crowd cheers the underdog or jeers the oppressor -- something about many people moving all at once, together, that just gets me.
Because in those brief moments we get perhaps the best glimpse of what it is like to be in someone else's mind. If I am thinking about the awkward page-turn at page 30 and it goes off without a hitch, I know that everyone else was thinking about it, too, and not only do I know what they were thinking but I think I have an inkling of what it was like to be thinking it, right at that moment. All the time we spend in our own heads, our own bodies. It's nice to get out once in a while.
What happens in concert is that, for several hours each semester, all 30 or so of us active, over-scheduled, slightly frantic individuals set aside our usual concerns and simultaneously turn our minds to the music in our hands. These are not minds easily turned away from their usual concerns, of which we all have many. When it happens, it is quite a thing to watch. Phrases clipped clean as if with scissors; consonants arriving in lockstep at the back of the hall; chords stacked neatly beneath a tower of overtones. It makes my eyes water, like those movie scenes where the whole crowd cheers the underdog or jeers the oppressor -- something about many people moving all at once, together, that just gets me.
Because in those brief moments we get perhaps the best glimpse of what it is like to be in someone else's mind. If I am thinking about the awkward page-turn at page 30 and it goes off without a hitch, I know that everyone else was thinking about it, too, and not only do I know what they were thinking but I think I have an inkling of what it was like to be thinking it, right at that moment. All the time we spend in our own heads, our own bodies. It's nice to get out once in a while.
Still Looking for New Year's Resolutions?
How about becoming more like this description of Thomas Cromwell in Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall"?
"His speech is low and rapid, his manner assured; he is at home in courtroom or waterfront, bishop's palace or inn yard. He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury. He will quote a nice point in the old authors, from Plato to Plautus and back again. He knows new poetry, and can say it in Italian. He works all hours, first up and last to bed. He makes money and spends it. He will take a bet on anything." (p. 25)
Cromwell's greatest talent is his practicality, which comes from a deep understanding of how people more and are moved through the world. In her portrayal, his concern is for lived experience over and above more abstract ideals -- even when, as in this passage, his thoughts follow a more imaginative line:
"Under his clothes, it is well known, [Thomas] More wears a jerkin of horsehair. He beats himself with a small scourge, of the type used by some religious orders. What lodges in his mind, Thomas Cromwell's, is that somebody makes these instruments of daily torture. Someone combs the horsehair into coarse tufts, knots them and chops the blunt ends, knowing that their purpose is to snap off under the skin and irritate it into weeping sores. Is it monks who make them, knotting and snipping in a fury of righteousness, chuckling at the thought of the pain they will cause to persons unknown? Are simple villagers paid -- how, by the dozens? -- for making flails with waxed knots? Does it keep farmworkers busy during the slow winter months? When the money for their honest labor is put into their hands, do the makers think of the hands that will pick up the product?
We don't have to invite pain in, he thinks. It's waiting for us: sooner or later. . . .
He thinks, also, that people ought to be found better jobs." (p. 72)
If only novelists wrote our inner monologues, maybe we would all be lucky enough to have these kinds of insights on a regular basis.
The scourge is a device of self-inflicted pain -- of religious devotion turned inward. But on the material plane, certainly in the marketplace (which is never far from Cromwell's mind -- how are the villagers paid, he wonders, "by the dozens?") nothing we do can be detached entirely from the communities we inhabit. We cannot inflict violence on ourselves without making others the instruments of that violence. And we cannot -- we should not -- forget that as consumers we do not just passively absorb the various objects that seem already to exist in the world around us. Instead, our desires drive the production of their own objects.
"His speech is low and rapid, his manner assured; he is at home in courtroom or waterfront, bishop's palace or inn yard. He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury. He will quote a nice point in the old authors, from Plato to Plautus and back again. He knows new poetry, and can say it in Italian. He works all hours, first up and last to bed. He makes money and spends it. He will take a bet on anything." (p. 25)
Cromwell's greatest talent is his practicality, which comes from a deep understanding of how people more and are moved through the world. In her portrayal, his concern is for lived experience over and above more abstract ideals -- even when, as in this passage, his thoughts follow a more imaginative line:
"Under his clothes, it is well known, [Thomas] More wears a jerkin of horsehair. He beats himself with a small scourge, of the type used by some religious orders. What lodges in his mind, Thomas Cromwell's, is that somebody makes these instruments of daily torture. Someone combs the horsehair into coarse tufts, knots them and chops the blunt ends, knowing that their purpose is to snap off under the skin and irritate it into weeping sores. Is it monks who make them, knotting and snipping in a fury of righteousness, chuckling at the thought of the pain they will cause to persons unknown? Are simple villagers paid -- how, by the dozens? -- for making flails with waxed knots? Does it keep farmworkers busy during the slow winter months? When the money for their honest labor is put into their hands, do the makers think of the hands that will pick up the product?
We don't have to invite pain in, he thinks. It's waiting for us: sooner or later. . . .
He thinks, also, that people ought to be found better jobs." (p. 72)
If only novelists wrote our inner monologues, maybe we would all be lucky enough to have these kinds of insights on a regular basis.
The scourge is a device of self-inflicted pain -- of religious devotion turned inward. But on the material plane, certainly in the marketplace (which is never far from Cromwell's mind -- how are the villagers paid, he wonders, "by the dozens?") nothing we do can be detached entirely from the communities we inhabit. We cannot inflict violence on ourselves without making others the instruments of that violence. And we cannot -- we should not -- forget that as consumers we do not just passively absorb the various objects that seem already to exist in the world around us. Instead, our desires drive the production of their own objects.
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