More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 January
In mental-health roles, as well as those in nursing or social care, it will be quite common to encounter reflective practice, which has even become the stuff of [the obligation to undertake] CPD (or Continuing Professional Development, as, say, a practising lawyer or doctor) :
This posting is nothing much to do with reflective practice, yet - the phrase has it (which Eliot made unavoidable - ineluctable, if you are a Joycean character and / or adherent) - Everything connects.
For (1) Google® owns (2) Blogger®, (3) Amazon® owns (4) IMDb®, and Tweeting a link from (2) on (1) soon leads to potential purchases on (3) being promoted in adverts on (4)... - just try it and see !
Meanwhile, for the statistical month just gone, this indicates where visitors to this blog have come from, in a Top Five by Page-View :
1. United States ~ 29,621
2. France ~ 5,988
3. Germany ~ 958
4. United Kingdom ~ 685
5. Czech Republic ~ 664
And, for the lifetime of the blog, we have a changed perspective - as to players and priority :
1. United States ~ 200675
2. France ~ 46652
3. Russia ~ 37539
4. United Kingdom ~ 13915
5. Germany ~ 13668
Maybe more Tweets / blogging about Svetlana might bump Russia back into prominence for the month (placed only sixth, on 350)...
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Showing posts with label Amazon®. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amazon®. Show all posts
Thursday, 8 January 2015
Sunday, 28 April 2013
Box perfect[ly] - tick all the boxes !
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
28 April
Does any phrase containing the word 'box' avoid contention, or just tick all the boxes (as the phrase has it)... ?
It's a wonder that we don't say 'check' all the boxes, but I am sure that it's upcoming, i.e. forthcoming !
Let my little survey explode into life - like a jack-in-the-box (not to be pigeon-holed - another sort of box - it's in any old order) :
* Thinking outside the box, namely not responding with inertia and paralysis to a problem, but solving - or getting near to solving - it, so really just 'thinking' (instead of 'stagnating')
* Would you like to come inside my box ? - a dubious proposition of a sexual nature, calculated to make one think cheaply about the beauty of physical union
* If one did tick all the boxes, what a nonsense that would be : Are you □ Employed □ Self-employed □ Unemployed (unless you are an unpaid intern) !
* You need to box perfect - and, as we've said, Stuff the adverb !
* Tick the box on Amazon® to send a Twat that says I've ordered the Cary Grant boxset ! - thereby prove that you reject boxed set
* No, this is my cardboard box - for those who like cheap gibes at those on the streets, and wouldn't support @StreetwiseOpera by buying its beautiful single with @LizWattsSoprano, the Sacconi Quartet and Duncan Ward, available as a download straight from iTunes, or you can first watch that extract from their film The Answer to Everything before you buy at : https://vimeo.com/64050260
An unending list of derision
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
28 April
Does any phrase containing the word 'box' avoid contention, or just tick all the boxes (as the phrase has it)... ?
It's a wonder that we don't say 'check' all the boxes, but I am sure that it's upcoming, i.e. forthcoming !
Let my little survey explode into life - like a jack-in-the-box (not to be pigeon-holed - another sort of box - it's in any old order) :
* Thinking outside the box, namely not responding with inertia and paralysis to a problem, but solving - or getting near to solving - it, so really just 'thinking' (instead of 'stagnating')
* Would you like to come inside my box ? - a dubious proposition of a sexual nature, calculated to make one think cheaply about the beauty of physical union
* If one did tick all the boxes, what a nonsense that would be : Are you □ Employed □ Self-employed □ Unemployed (unless you are an unpaid intern) !
* You need to box perfect - and, as we've said, Stuff the adverb !
* Tick the box on Amazon® to send a Twat that says I've ordered the Cary Grant boxset ! - thereby prove that you reject boxed set
* No, this is my cardboard box - for those who like cheap gibes at those on the streets, and wouldn't support @StreetwiseOpera by buying its beautiful single with @LizWattsSoprano, the Sacconi Quartet and Duncan Ward, available as a download straight from iTunes, or you can first watch that extract from their film The Answer to Everything before you buy at : https://vimeo.com/64050260
An unending list of derision
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Saturday, 20 April 2013
Film reviews : Pretending to know more than one does... ?
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
21 April
I have blogged elsewhere how slips in what a reviewer, say, of films writes might make one think that he or she did not see (all of) the film in question. From which one might infer that I think that the minimum that one can expect, if the reviewer did not watch the whole film, is for him or her to say so.
What, though, about a film whose screenplay is not original, but adapted from a book or a play (most higher-budget films are such films) ? Can the reviewer meaningfully comment about the adaptation if, say, he or she has not read the book or play ?
In asking which, I recognize that, with such a film, it is one thing to criticize an infelicity or the implausibility of a character or part of what he or she does, another to locate the reason for it with the various film-makers (screenwriter, director, actor, etc.), without seeming to stop to ask Was this in the original, and what would deviating from that, if possible, have meant – and how would it have been done ?
If, of course, without having read the original book or play and not admitting not to know it, one wrote a review that gave the impression that one had, or that the infelicity or implausibility was squarely that of the film-makers alone, would one be pretending to know things that one did not ? If so, is the temptation for a reviewer to do it to seem convincing in that capacity, authoritative ? :
In the House (2012)
Anyway, let me get on to Francois Ozon's intriguing story of the unusual relationship between a 16-year-old pupil, Claude, (Ernst Umhauer) and his teacher (Fabrice Luchini).
The teacher sets his class the task of recounting what they did the previous weekend and Claude begins a sequence of writing about the home life of a classmate (Bastien Ughetto).
At first, this amounts to viewing through a window but to make the work more realistic he inveigles himself into his subjects' lives.
Gradually, the essays become more sinister and the teacher effectively becomes a voyeur, demanding richer writing from the boy who becomes his 'protege'.
Ozon has adapted Juan Mayorga's play without losing a theatrical feel to the movie (there are only three sets in the film; school, the classmate's home and the teacher's house).
In The House benefits from outstanding performances: Umhauer shows a superb streak of underlying malevolence while Luchini does a fine job as a teacher whose initial apparent naivety may be a cloak for uglier motives.
Courtesy of Neil White (@everyfilmdteled)
I am pretty sure that the Mayorga original has not been read. For one thing, the Amazon® search that I did when I was interested to find the source material suggested that it is not available (not, at any rate, in English, but instead under the name El chico de la última fila (which IMDb gives me)).
However, the reference here is vague enough to suggest that it might be known, but which of us knows whether the play has 'a theatrical feel' to lose ? I suggest that this is an inference, without reference to whether Mayorga wrote in, for example, a naturalistic, post-modern, or Brechtian mode (or a mixture of any one of these and others).
As I have already blogged, the locations are constricted and claustrophobic, but one cannot simply suppose either that the play proposed them, rather than using some other approach or device, and there are more than the three mentioned : near and at the basketball court, outside and inside the cinema, in and around the gallery, and, fleetingly, Garcia's house and a bus.
Here's another take on the film and how it has been constructed:
For a film maker to turn his gaze back on his own narrative can be risky, and exploring the nature of writing and the creative process risks alienating the viewer if not handled well, but François Ozon has a solid track record in handling such matters. In The House creates a world of moral ambiguity within which its characters’ motivations are always reasonable, if not always rational, and events are allowed to spiral gently out of control (or further into control, depending on your perspective). While the genitalia and breast themed artworks on the wall of Jeanne’s gallery suggests that absence of morality becoming more prevalent in contemporary society, the motivations of Germain and Claude are more timeless and satisfyingly shaded in grey. The script by succeeds in having its cake and eating it, cocking its nose at trite genre conventions while successfully weaving them into the plot.
In The House thrives on its relationships: between Germain and Jeanne, the couple whose relationship becomes defined by their reactions to Claude’s work; between Germain and Claude, as the line between fact and fiction blurs and the definition of their pupil and mentor relationship blurs with it; and between Claude and the mother of the family at the centre of his writings, Esther (Emmanualle Seigner), defying the age gap between the two to give an additional layer of uncertainty and ambiguity. These relationships are all sold by uniformly excellent performances from the cast, especially newcomer Unhauer, and it’s a step up from the almost forced frivolity of Ozon’s last film, Potiche. There’s just a couple of unfortunate notes, including the insistence on every French film featuring Kristin Scott Thomas feeling the need in some way to draw attention to her English roots (here a reference to Yorkshire), and the ending, an extra portion of cake too much in the having-and-eating-of-cake. But if I had to mark the efforts of Ozon and his cast, they’d be looking at a solid grade this time around.
Courtesy of The Movie Evangelist (@MovieEvangelist)
If Ozon is the 'film maker', what does he make is film of or from ? Can he be credited with the work - the 'risky' turning 'his gaze back on his own narrative' - when it seems unlikely that Mayorga, with his experience, would have been excluded from participation in the adaptation ?
At the moment, that is just a guess on my part - but is it likely, even if I gather that it happens often enough, that Ozon would simply adapt the play for the screen without seeking Mayorga's input ?
And the ending, whose closing shot The Evangelist tells me that he simply does not like ? - the grammar of the film implies that what we see is and has continued to be what Germain and Garcia are looking at, but that may not be so. Is it any better (or worse) if it is (a) in Germain's head, (b) a deliberately boggling kaleidoscopic depiction of the varieties of life that we can (happen to) see into, or (c) Garcia projecting his imagination onto the world as a creator who has Germain in thrall ?
To be continued
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
21 April
I have blogged elsewhere how slips in what a reviewer, say, of films writes might make one think that he or she did not see (all of) the film in question. From which one might infer that I think that the minimum that one can expect, if the reviewer did not watch the whole film, is for him or her to say so.
What, though, about a film whose screenplay is not original, but adapted from a book or a play (most higher-budget films are such films) ? Can the reviewer meaningfully comment about the adaptation if, say, he or she has not read the book or play ?
In asking which, I recognize that, with such a film, it is one thing to criticize an infelicity or the implausibility of a character or part of what he or she does, another to locate the reason for it with the various film-makers (screenwriter, director, actor, etc.), without seeming to stop to ask Was this in the original, and what would deviating from that, if possible, have meant – and how would it have been done ?
If, of course, without having read the original book or play and not admitting not to know it, one wrote a review that gave the impression that one had, or that the infelicity or implausibility was squarely that of the film-makers alone, would one be pretending to know things that one did not ? If so, is the temptation for a reviewer to do it to seem convincing in that capacity, authoritative ? :
In the House (2012)
Anyway, let me get on to Francois Ozon's intriguing story of the unusual relationship between a 16-year-old pupil, Claude, (Ernst Umhauer) and his teacher (Fabrice Luchini).
The teacher sets his class the task of recounting what they did the previous weekend and Claude begins a sequence of writing about the home life of a classmate (Bastien Ughetto).
At first, this amounts to viewing through a window but to make the work more realistic he inveigles himself into his subjects' lives.
Gradually, the essays become more sinister and the teacher effectively becomes a voyeur, demanding richer writing from the boy who becomes his 'protege'.
Ozon has adapted Juan Mayorga's play without losing a theatrical feel to the movie (there are only three sets in the film; school, the classmate's home and the teacher's house).
In The House benefits from outstanding performances: Umhauer shows a superb streak of underlying malevolence while Luchini does a fine job as a teacher whose initial apparent naivety may be a cloak for uglier motives.
Courtesy of Neil White (@everyfilmdteled)
I am pretty sure that the Mayorga original has not been read. For one thing, the Amazon® search that I did when I was interested to find the source material suggested that it is not available (not, at any rate, in English, but instead under the name El chico de la última fila (which IMDb gives me)).
However, the reference here is vague enough to suggest that it might be known, but which of us knows whether the play has 'a theatrical feel' to lose ? I suggest that this is an inference, without reference to whether Mayorga wrote in, for example, a naturalistic, post-modern, or Brechtian mode (or a mixture of any one of these and others).
As I have already blogged, the locations are constricted and claustrophobic, but one cannot simply suppose either that the play proposed them, rather than using some other approach or device, and there are more than the three mentioned : near and at the basketball court, outside and inside the cinema, in and around the gallery, and, fleetingly, Garcia's house and a bus.
Here's another take on the film and how it has been constructed:
For a film maker to turn his gaze back on his own narrative can be risky, and exploring the nature of writing and the creative process risks alienating the viewer if not handled well, but François Ozon has a solid track record in handling such matters. In The House creates a world of moral ambiguity within which its characters’ motivations are always reasonable, if not always rational, and events are allowed to spiral gently out of control (or further into control, depending on your perspective). While the genitalia and breast themed artworks on the wall of Jeanne’s gallery suggests that absence of morality becoming more prevalent in contemporary society, the motivations of Germain and Claude are more timeless and satisfyingly shaded in grey. The script by succeeds in having its cake and eating it, cocking its nose at trite genre conventions while successfully weaving them into the plot.
In The House thrives on its relationships: between Germain and Jeanne, the couple whose relationship becomes defined by their reactions to Claude’s work; between Germain and Claude, as the line between fact and fiction blurs and the definition of their pupil and mentor relationship blurs with it; and between Claude and the mother of the family at the centre of his writings, Esther (Emmanualle Seigner), defying the age gap between the two to give an additional layer of uncertainty and ambiguity. These relationships are all sold by uniformly excellent performances from the cast, especially newcomer Unhauer, and it’s a step up from the almost forced frivolity of Ozon’s last film, Potiche. There’s just a couple of unfortunate notes, including the insistence on every French film featuring Kristin Scott Thomas feeling the need in some way to draw attention to her English roots (here a reference to Yorkshire), and the ending, an extra portion of cake too much in the having-and-eating-of-cake. But if I had to mark the efforts of Ozon and his cast, they’d be looking at a solid grade this time around.
Courtesy of The Movie Evangelist (@MovieEvangelist)
If Ozon is the 'film maker', what does he make is film of or from ? Can he be credited with the work - the 'risky' turning 'his gaze back on his own narrative' - when it seems unlikely that Mayorga, with his experience, would have been excluded from participation in the adaptation ?
At the moment, that is just a guess on my part - but is it likely, even if I gather that it happens often enough, that Ozon would simply adapt the play for the screen without seeking Mayorga's input ?
And the ending, whose closing shot The Evangelist tells me that he simply does not like ? - the grammar of the film implies that what we see is and has continued to be what Germain and Garcia are looking at, but that may not be so. Is it any better (or worse) if it is (a) in Germain's head, (b) a deliberately boggling kaleidoscopic depiction of the varieties of life that we can (happen to) see into, or (c) Garcia projecting his imagination onto the world as a creator who has Germain in thrall ?
To be continued
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Friday, 19 October 2012
Who's Who
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
20 October
Now, for some reason, I probably had no notion of who might own IMDb (www.imdb.com), but, when an idle click on a link to jobs brought me to a page about eligibility to work in the States, and with links to Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com, it all became a bit clearer.
We may know about offers of Twitter followers or Arsebook likes (wipes?) in return for a payment - and some people must be so desperate, as for sex, that they will pay for it - and it wouldn't be an impossibility, on that analogy, for such hired hands to vote a film up (or down), or even to make a user review seem more (or less) popular than it is. It would be quite easy to do that, let's say.
But it means that, if you think of buying, say, the DVD of Midnight in Paris (2011) from Amazon and want to look more widely than its own Amazon customer reviews, you're not actually seeing anything that's independent, and not under Amazon control, at IMDb...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
20 October
Now, for some reason, I probably had no notion of who might own IMDb (www.imdb.com), but, when an idle click on a link to jobs brought me to a page about eligibility to work in the States, and with links to Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com, it all became a bit clearer.
We may know about offers of Twitter followers or Arsebook likes (wipes?) in return for a payment - and some people must be so desperate, as for sex, that they will pay for it - and it wouldn't be an impossibility, on that analogy, for such hired hands to vote a film up (or down), or even to make a user review seem more (or less) popular than it is. It would be quite easy to do that, let's say.
But it means that, if you think of buying, say, the DVD of Midnight in Paris (2011) from Amazon and want to look more widely than its own Amazon customer reviews, you're not actually seeing anything that's independent, and not under Amazon control, at IMDb...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Sunday, 6 May 2012
What Paul Said to Whom and Why
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
6 May
Perfect for all churches, congregations, chosen and cults - bulk ordering advised!
Those who care to preorder this title (as, according to Amazon®, the word has it), can do so at www.TheAgentApsley.co.uk/slushfund in the knowledge that, whether it is a gift for others or for themselves, they will make someone very happy.
Buy 10 copies and receive just eight - NB limited offer
If you don't know Tahiti, I'd be very glad - for a fee - to show you around...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
6 May
Perfect for all churches, congregations, chosen and cults - bulk ordering advised!
Paul's Epistle to the Swedish
Those who care to preorder this title (as, according to Amazon®, the word has it), can do so at www.TheAgentApsley.co.uk/slushfund in the knowledge that, whether it is a gift for others or for themselves, they will make someone very happy.
Buy 10 copies and receive just eight - NB limited offer
If you don't know Tahiti, I'd be very glad - for a fee - to show you around...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Monday, 23 January 2012
Tell your friends about your listing
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
23 January
This, at any rate, is what one place for hoping to dispose of items (maybe even at a profit) urges on its sellers:
Yes, it's that old Arsebook thing again (and / or whether I should want to tweet about it)!
If it stopped to think about it, is this forum for facilitating selling - seen, one must understand, not from the viewpoint of the corporate or business supplier, but that of the individual - actually trying to do itself out of the tidy fees (plus that VAT thing) that it charges on every transaction?
Follow me, if you will:
1. I have just acquired a very nice copy of, say, Rats of the Twenty-First Century, whose photographs I have carefully flicked through (if one isn't at odds with the other). But I never intended to keep it - my BlackBerry® told me, when I found the book on sale, that it is worth 4 to 5 times what I was being asked to pay for it.
2. Amongst other things already there, I duly list it on the web-site. I even stop to rub my hands in glee, not only at the potential profit on the deal, but at actually being able to make on the flat-rate allowance for postage: because the book is slim (and even not too heavy), it will go as a so-called 'large letter'*.
3. The web-site confirms that I have done so, and then makes this anarchic suggestion: Tell your friends about your listing. (It also does so when I have just placed an order - brilliant surprise, it must be said, if I have just bought it for a friend, who will then see that I have done so!)
4. OK, so I tweet about it and / or put it on my wall (as I understand the practice to be), and all my merry friends, followers and fans (as the case may be) are instantly bothered with tidings of this trivial happening.
5. Except what if Dave, until now, has unsuccessfully been looking for this item (or any suitable item) for his mate Dan's 'big birthday'**?
6. Now, I have something that Dave wants, but Dave and I are reasonable blokes (they do exist), and he knows that, albeit for a quick disposal, I would be losing a lot to give it to him at cost; I, at the same time, know how much, one way or another (i.e. postage, fees, and VAT), will inevitably come off the price at which I have competitively pitched my copy of Rats.
7. So Dave and I will, of course, try to work out an exchange: to have Rats, he will reimburse me what I paid for it (or more, if he wants), and also give me - then or at some other time - his time in painting the fence, stroking the cat (probably pet-sitting), or something else that he can supply to make good as much of my net loss of profit as I am inclined to recover.
8. Dave's happy, I'm happy, and I take the item out of my listing.
No fees or charges paid, though, so maybe someone - who unwisely suggested the whole thing - should be unhappy? Or is it all in the spirit of altruistic love and friendship that is behind all this social networking?!
QED
* How many real letters, as thick as 2.45cm, have you ever had?! (Were they not actually DVDs, to add to your burgeoning collection of 'The Desirable but Unwatched'?)
** How are some birthdays larger than others, and in what does the greater size both consist and evidence itself?
I believe that there may be a circularity, in that one can deduce that the birthday is 'a big one' only by how much fuss people make about it - otherwise, it seems exactly like any other one.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
23 January
This, at any rate, is what one place for hoping to dispose of items (maybe even at a profit) urges on its sellers:
Yes, it's that old Arsebook thing again (and / or whether I should want to tweet about it)!
If it stopped to think about it, is this forum for facilitating selling - seen, one must understand, not from the viewpoint of the corporate or business supplier, but that of the individual - actually trying to do itself out of the tidy fees (plus that VAT thing) that it charges on every transaction?
Follow me, if you will:
1. I have just acquired a very nice copy of, say, Rats of the Twenty-First Century, whose photographs I have carefully flicked through (if one isn't at odds with the other). But I never intended to keep it - my BlackBerry® told me, when I found the book on sale, that it is worth 4 to 5 times what I was being asked to pay for it.
2. Amongst other things already there, I duly list it on the web-site. I even stop to rub my hands in glee, not only at the potential profit on the deal, but at actually being able to make on the flat-rate allowance for postage: because the book is slim (and even not too heavy), it will go as a so-called 'large letter'*.
3. The web-site confirms that I have done so, and then makes this anarchic suggestion: Tell your friends about your listing. (It also does so when I have just placed an order - brilliant surprise, it must be said, if I have just bought it for a friend, who will then see that I have done so!)
4. OK, so I tweet about it and / or put it on my wall (as I understand the practice to be), and all my merry friends, followers and fans (as the case may be) are instantly bothered with tidings of this trivial happening.
5. Except what if Dave, until now, has unsuccessfully been looking for this item (or any suitable item) for his mate Dan's 'big birthday'**?
6. Now, I have something that Dave wants, but Dave and I are reasonable blokes (they do exist), and he knows that, albeit for a quick disposal, I would be losing a lot to give it to him at cost; I, at the same time, know how much, one way or another (i.e. postage, fees, and VAT), will inevitably come off the price at which I have competitively pitched my copy of Rats.
7. So Dave and I will, of course, try to work out an exchange: to have Rats, he will reimburse me what I paid for it (or more, if he wants), and also give me - then or at some other time - his time in painting the fence, stroking the cat (probably pet-sitting), or something else that he can supply to make good as much of my net loss of profit as I am inclined to recover.
8. Dave's happy, I'm happy, and I take the item out of my listing.
No fees or charges paid, though, so maybe someone - who unwisely suggested the whole thing - should be unhappy? Or is it all in the spirit of altruistic love and friendship that is behind all this social networking?!
QED
* How many real letters, as thick as 2.45cm, have you ever had?! (Were they not actually DVDs, to add to your burgeoning collection of 'The Desirable but Unwatched'?)
** How are some birthdays larger than others, and in what does the greater size both consist and evidence itself?
I believe that there may be a circularity, in that one can deduce that the birthday is 'a big one' only by how much fuss people make about it - otherwise, it seems exactly like any other one.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Woody on Amazon®
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
19 January
No, not Allen's opinion of Amazon®, although he probably has one and it may be a strong one (heaven help him, if he ever made a joke about Amazon® - the Keaton biographer would infer deep insecurity regarding Internet shopping!), but something that I have just read in a review of Stardust Memories, a series of eight mini-reviews of a boxed set (contrary to popular usage, they are not 'box sets').
If you want to see what K. Gordon rightly wrote, follow this link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Woody-Allen-Gift-Region-NTSC/dp/0792846052/ref=sr_1_52?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1326966006&sr=1-52
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
19 January
No, not Allen's opinion of Amazon®, although he probably has one and it may be a strong one (heaven help him, if he ever made a joke about Amazon® - the Keaton biographer would infer deep insecurity regarding Internet shopping!), but something that I have just read in a review of Stardust Memories, a series of eight mini-reviews of a boxed set (contrary to popular usage, they are not 'box sets').
If you want to see what K. Gordon rightly wrote, follow this link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Woody-Allen-Gift-Region-NTSC/dp/0792846052/ref=sr_1_52?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1326966006&sr=1-52
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Saturday, 19 November 2011
Beckettt, the alleged adherent to Buddhist thought
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
19 November 2011
Brought to you from where I posted the review on Amazon*:
One academic writer, supposed to be an authority on Beckettt's work (see my review of one of his books, Beckettt and Eros), finds - or claims to find - deep Buddhist thought, philosophy, and probably even practice in it.
I wonder if he has considered Waiting for Godot in the following way...
The play has five characters, six if you include the named, waited for and talked-about Godot, who, we are told, has sent the last of them to appear (the Boy) to Vladimir (also known as Didi) and Estragon (also known as Gogo - the full name is the French one for tarragon), who have been (one, then the other) on stage from the start, and almost without break throughout the two Acts (although the end of both is, crucially, different - please see below).
The remaining two characters, Pozzo and Lucky (the atter is also known as 'pig', 'hog', 'scum', and a number of other offensive names, by Pozzo) arrive together, halfway through each Act, but seem mightily changed between them: in fact, we actually have no direct way of knowing how time passes, in this timeless and largely featureless space that keeps the characters in it or draws them to it (or through it), such as these two.
Pozzo is grand, pretentious even, and certainly cruel. However, he may not actually have the power either in the place where we see him, or in the relationship beyond his transit of these lands with the other man, Lucky. (At one point, Pozzo asserts or implies (but he alleges many things that we cannot verify) that this is his part of his land). Even so, he openly abuses Lucky before us, whilst - in the phrase used by another Beckettt writer to describe a scene of reported dialogue in the earlier novel Watt - often employing a 'language of bizarre civility', as well as some of the accompanying manners / mannerisms. His cruelty draws out that, alluded to earlier in speech largely, of Vladimir and Estragon, too.
Beckettt calls Waiting for Godot 'a tragicomedy (in two acts)', but it is often played for pure comedy, which jars with the obvious brutality and unpleasantness of what human beings (Didi (or Gogo) pronounces that 'People are bloody ignorant apes!') do to pass the time when bored, but have to be somewhere.
Are we, perhaps, reminded of the random torture that SS officers and the concentration camps gave rise to (this play was first performed in around 1953 in what had been Nazi-occupied Paris, and Beckettt, who had served in the French resistance - is this where the references (shared by the contemporary novel Molloly) to beatings during the night by an unspecified 'they' come from?), would have had some bitter experiences / memories of the recent war.
After Pozzo and Lucky leave the stage (for the first Act), there is an exchange between the Didi and Gogo that their appearance had passed the time. The retort is that it would have passed anyway, replied to by agreement, but that it would not have passed as quickly.
Another exchange is:
What keeps us here?
The dialogue.
Ah.
This is a play of quick wits, and comments and counter-comments batted back and forth, and one character (probably Estragon) is asked whether he cannot 'return the ball once in a while'.
As has been said, Pozzo and Lucky return, much changed, in Act II - Lucky, who was loquacious on demand, is, if not mute, then does not 'think' for us again on stage as he did before, and Pozzo - we are told, anyway - is blind (so now led by his Lucky, whom he could previously lead before, and jerk quite cruelly to the ground by his rope). Yet Vivien Mercier, another Beckettt 'crrritic' (from when Gogo and Didi decide to play the game of orally abusing each other) trying to be clever, described the play as nothing happening - twice.
When had Act I been? Whenever it was, the title-page to Act II tells us: 'Next Day. Same Time. Same Place.' And this is where the Buddhism trail comes in more clearly: only Vladimir remembers - and does not (really) doubt remembering - Pozzo and Lucky from Act I, but there is scant or no recognition or recollection on the part of the other three (four, when we include the Boy - please see below). He knows that they passed this way the day before, and is appalled at the change (the Buddhist doctrine of and teaching on the transience of all things?), but all the rest muddle through.
Of them all, if he could see this for what it is, he could break through the unreality of life, of striving, of searching after the wrong things, whereas they are locked in it, so busy, seemingly, living these frantic and tortured lives that they have both little self-awareness (a step on the Buddhist path to acquire it). Since they cannot capture the keys and clues to reality, they struggle, battle and scrape on, as if that struggle, battle and scraping, rather than rejecting it as meaningless, is the essence of life, of what life is.
As things stand, Vladimir is doomed to be trying to remind others of their own (past) lives. (This play can, it is argued, be seen as a presentation of a (potential) voyage towards enlightenment - whereas people seeing the play may think that it is for their entertainment (distracting them from life), which is a further distraction, this time from what the narrative thrust (yes, Professor Mercier - there is one!) of the play is trying to focus on.) For he does not twig (yet?) what it means. So this includes interacting with the Boy, who comes (alone, and to him alone) at the end to apologize that Godot will not come that day (after all).
The Boy, as has been seen with the others, has no knowledge that he came at the end of Act I in the same way. In consequence of that, and because Vladimir only knows how to respond by just being frustrated that even this young being is blighted and trapped by not even remembering his own life, he lashes out, orally and physically, against a weaker force, with the brutal streak that we have witnessed - with a shudder? (although Lucky seemed weak, subservient, and capable of being picked on, in Act I, he proved not to be wholly so) - most clearly when Pozzo and he are on the stage.
The play does not end, though, with the frightened Boy running off the stage at what the stage-directions call Vladimir's 'sudden violence' (a contrast both to the placidity of this scene, and to the previous encounter in Act I (although Estragon did then briefly participate, laying hands on the Boy, and accusing him of lying before Vladimir intervenes). It is Didi and Gogo, again, hoping and fearing for another day, for hanging themselves, if they bring some rope, and that maybe Godot will come then, after all, and (they do not specify how) 'We'll be saved'.
Yet the words with which he has, two pages back in the text, heralded trying to grab for the Boy (as Estragon had done in Act I), and sent him running off instead, should ring in our ears:
You're sure you saw me, you won't come and tell me tomorrow that you never saw me!
He wants, at this stage to be witnessed, to be credited with existing and having existed in relation to another, but needs to let go. His search is for something else. Lewis Carroll had another faith, but wrote (for Isa Bowman, a child friend like the more famous Alice):
Is all our life, then, but a dream
Seen faintly in the golden gleam
Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?
Bowed to the ground with bitter woe
Or laughing at some raree-show
We flutter idly, to and fro
Man's little day in haste we spend
And, from its merry noontide, send
To glance to meet the bitter end
End-notes
* A kind person called M. McCartney was moved to add the following comment (on 9 March (2012)):
Fascinating review, well worth following up. But who is the academic you mention, and what is the Buddhist Beckett book? I looked in your reviews, but it isn't there.
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19 November 2011
Brought to you from where I posted the review on Amazon*:
One academic writer, supposed to be an authority on Beckettt's work (see my review of one of his books, Beckettt and Eros), finds - or claims to find - deep Buddhist thought, philosophy, and probably even practice in it.
I wonder if he has considered Waiting for Godot in the following way...
The play has five characters, six if you include the named, waited for and talked-about Godot, who, we are told, has sent the last of them to appear (the Boy) to Vladimir (also known as Didi) and Estragon (also known as Gogo - the full name is the French one for tarragon), who have been (one, then the other) on stage from the start, and almost without break throughout the two Acts (although the end of both is, crucially, different - please see below).
The remaining two characters, Pozzo and Lucky (the atter is also known as 'pig', 'hog', 'scum', and a number of other offensive names, by Pozzo) arrive together, halfway through each Act, but seem mightily changed between them: in fact, we actually have no direct way of knowing how time passes, in this timeless and largely featureless space that keeps the characters in it or draws them to it (or through it), such as these two.
Pozzo is grand, pretentious even, and certainly cruel. However, he may not actually have the power either in the place where we see him, or in the relationship beyond his transit of these lands with the other man, Lucky. (At one point, Pozzo asserts or implies (but he alleges many things that we cannot verify) that this is his part of his land). Even so, he openly abuses Lucky before us, whilst - in the phrase used by another Beckettt writer to describe a scene of reported dialogue in the earlier novel Watt - often employing a 'language of bizarre civility', as well as some of the accompanying manners / mannerisms. His cruelty draws out that, alluded to earlier in speech largely, of Vladimir and Estragon, too.
Beckettt calls Waiting for Godot 'a tragicomedy (in two acts)', but it is often played for pure comedy, which jars with the obvious brutality and unpleasantness of what human beings (Didi (or Gogo) pronounces that 'People are bloody ignorant apes!') do to pass the time when bored, but have to be somewhere.
Are we, perhaps, reminded of the random torture that SS officers and the concentration camps gave rise to (this play was first performed in around 1953 in what had been Nazi-occupied Paris, and Beckettt, who had served in the French resistance - is this where the references (shared by the contemporary novel Molloly) to beatings during the night by an unspecified 'they' come from?), would have had some bitter experiences / memories of the recent war.
After Pozzo and Lucky leave the stage (for the first Act), there is an exchange between the Didi and Gogo that their appearance had passed the time. The retort is that it would have passed anyway, replied to by agreement, but that it would not have passed as quickly.
Another exchange is:
What keeps us here?
The dialogue.
Ah.
This is a play of quick wits, and comments and counter-comments batted back and forth, and one character (probably Estragon) is asked whether he cannot 'return the ball once in a while'.
As has been said, Pozzo and Lucky return, much changed, in Act II - Lucky, who was loquacious on demand, is, if not mute, then does not 'think' for us again on stage as he did before, and Pozzo - we are told, anyway - is blind (so now led by his Lucky, whom he could previously lead before, and jerk quite cruelly to the ground by his rope). Yet Vivien Mercier, another Beckettt 'crrritic' (from when Gogo and Didi decide to play the game of orally abusing each other) trying to be clever, described the play as nothing happening - twice.
When had Act I been? Whenever it was, the title-page to Act II tells us: 'Next Day. Same Time. Same Place.' And this is where the Buddhism trail comes in more clearly: only Vladimir remembers - and does not (really) doubt remembering - Pozzo and Lucky from Act I, but there is scant or no recognition or recollection on the part of the other three (four, when we include the Boy - please see below). He knows that they passed this way the day before, and is appalled at the change (the Buddhist doctrine of and teaching on the transience of all things?), but all the rest muddle through.
Of them all, if he could see this for what it is, he could break through the unreality of life, of striving, of searching after the wrong things, whereas they are locked in it, so busy, seemingly, living these frantic and tortured lives that they have both little self-awareness (a step on the Buddhist path to acquire it). Since they cannot capture the keys and clues to reality, they struggle, battle and scrape on, as if that struggle, battle and scraping, rather than rejecting it as meaningless, is the essence of life, of what life is.
As things stand, Vladimir is doomed to be trying to remind others of their own (past) lives. (This play can, it is argued, be seen as a presentation of a (potential) voyage towards enlightenment - whereas people seeing the play may think that it is for their entertainment (distracting them from life), which is a further distraction, this time from what the narrative thrust (yes, Professor Mercier - there is one!) of the play is trying to focus on.) For he does not twig (yet?) what it means. So this includes interacting with the Boy, who comes (alone, and to him alone) at the end to apologize that Godot will not come that day (after all).
The Boy, as has been seen with the others, has no knowledge that he came at the end of Act I in the same way. In consequence of that, and because Vladimir only knows how to respond by just being frustrated that even this young being is blighted and trapped by not even remembering his own life, he lashes out, orally and physically, against a weaker force, with the brutal streak that we have witnessed - with a shudder? (although Lucky seemed weak, subservient, and capable of being picked on, in Act I, he proved not to be wholly so) - most clearly when Pozzo and he are on the stage.
The play does not end, though, with the frightened Boy running off the stage at what the stage-directions call Vladimir's 'sudden violence' (a contrast both to the placidity of this scene, and to the previous encounter in Act I (although Estragon did then briefly participate, laying hands on the Boy, and accusing him of lying before Vladimir intervenes). It is Didi and Gogo, again, hoping and fearing for another day, for hanging themselves, if they bring some rope, and that maybe Godot will come then, after all, and (they do not specify how) 'We'll be saved'.
Yet the words with which he has, two pages back in the text, heralded trying to grab for the Boy (as Estragon had done in Act I), and sent him running off instead, should ring in our ears:
You're sure you saw me, you won't come and tell me tomorrow that you never saw me!
He wants, at this stage to be witnessed, to be credited with existing and having existed in relation to another, but needs to let go. His search is for something else. Lewis Carroll had another faith, but wrote (for Isa Bowman, a child friend like the more famous Alice):
Is all our life, then, but a dream
Seen faintly in the golden gleam
Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?
Bowed to the ground with bitter woe
Or laughing at some raree-show
We flutter idly, to and fro
Man's little day in haste we spend
And, from its merry noontide, send
To glance to meet the bitter end
End-notes
* A kind person called M. McCartney was moved to add the following comment (on 9 March (2012)):
Fascinating review, well worth following up. But who is the academic you mention, and what is the Buddhist Beckett book? I looked in your reviews, but it isn't there.
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