Freedom And Order

Ok, just another scene from Sátántangó. Director Béla Tarr very much likes long monologues. I mean we all know that in a similar everyday situation there are likely to be short(er) contributions to a conversation from either parties, which can be, depending on the situation, down to the fact, or more emotionally heated, but rarely a concise statement of the standpoint or philosophy of a party on the matter at hand. But these monologues give you the feeling of such situations, because they relate those thoughts, perhaps only recognised by an outside viewer, that are there but are never pronounced. Here an artist can use his refined skills in rhetorics and turn even a drunkard into a Cicero of his own existence. The scene here is when the main characters, Irimiás and Petrina, are told that they have no choice but to cooperate in police activities. And while doing so, the police captain starts a monologue on order and freedom. Is it only me, or here and there he does seem a bit drunk...? Anyway, to me the most interesting part of it all, is the one about people being afraid of freedom despite the fact that there is nothing frightening in it, and kind of expecting order from authority despite the fact that there are many frightening things in order. I believe there is some truth to this. On an individual level, we may all look for our own solutions to a problem like that. What this is on a social level, if there is any satisfactory, is or should be open for argument. But the "beauty" of a situation as the one in the clip is that you cannot argue or even defend your individuum because you have no choice but to cooperate! When expected norms which should make living together easier intend instead to determine you, be it in the name of any ideology, I believe that is alarming...

Enrico Caruso

Enrico Caruso (1873-1921), the well-known Italian tenor was one of the first opera singers to recognise the possibilities in sound recording. His recordings cover most of his 25 year long carrier, a not unrelated consequence of which is the fact that he still has admirers, among others myself. It is difficult to choose from such an amount of material. Finally, I have decided to post two recordings, the first of which could easily be the first I heard from him, his definitive performance of the traditional Neapolitan song, Santa Lucia. In the case of the second recording, I have passed the decision to Woody Allen. Allen has used opera themes in many of his movies, so it came as a pleasure if not a surprise when I heard Caruso's voice in Match Point. The haunting recording that recurs many times during the movie, is his that of "Una furtiva lagrima" (A furtive tear) from Gaetano Donizetti's opera, "L'elisir d'amore". Caruso's untimely death was preceded by a rapid deterioration of his health after he suffered a throat haemorrhage on-stage. He was previously declared fit to perform by his doctor. Less than a year later he died at the age of 48.

A Puzzle Classic

I have recently come across a discussion of the famous Smith, Jones and Robinson puzzle, while looking for something to read in the library. When I solved this little puzzle, I remembered what I was told as a child: in mathematics, every word matters... I thought I would share this problem here, perhaps others may get tempted too, and do something completely different when they were supposed to work... :)

On a train, Smith, Robinson and Jones are the fireman, brakeman, and engineer, but NOT respectively. Also aboard the train are three businessmen who have the same names: a Mr. Smith, a Mr. Robinson, and a Mr. Jones. Here is what we know:

1. Mr. Robinson lives in Detroit.
2. The brakeman lives exactly half way between Chicago and Detroit.
3. Mr. Jones earns exactly $20,000 per year.
4. The brakeman's nearest neighbor, one of the passengers, earns exactly three times as much as the brakeman.
5. Smith beats the fireman at billiards.
6. The passenger whose name is the same as the brakeman's lives in Chicago.

Who is the engineer?

Methocha

Another video from Life in the Undergrowth. This time an ant hunting beetle larva vs. an ant looking wingless wasp, methocha. Looks like all hunting techniques have their disadvantages... Surprise for the larva, relief for the ants, and motherly pleasures for methocha...

Vincent

"Vincent" (1982) is an early stop motion short of Tim Burton, about a boy, whose childish games involve imagining himself as a Gothic hero, another Vincent Price. For one reason or another, we have the feeling of Gothic around us, and some are more sensitive to it than others. I imagine Tim Burton could have had similar childhood games... He had become one of the most talented directors to express the sort of feeling since then, and still you have to say at this point that he appears a quite cheerful fellow in his interviews. In fact even in this short you can sense the sort of humor he usually hard-wires into his stories. Acting out this darker side of our inner selves is perhaps sometimes the only way to also maintain an everyday life more approachable to our environment. Similarly, Vincent Price, who also happens to be the narrator of the story, was probably one of the happiest horror actors ever, his "secret" being as he often explained is taking it as a game. There were of course examples of horror actors becoming depressed, but if we go down on this lane, I think it is perhaps more interesting how many comedy actors ended up tragically, I would guess much more of them than horror actors...

Yellow Sticky Notes

Interesting little short from hapa film maker Jeff Chiba Stearns. It tells a period of his life through animated sticky notes... I have once tried to do a similar thing from the drawings I sometimes make at work, so I can very much appreciate this... nice music too, gives you a feeling of just how quick years go by...

Sátántangó

Well... it is a challenge to remain relatively short about a 7.5 hour-long film. Probably I will post more bits than I usually do. I tried to sit down and pick a few scenes I especially found interesting, and ended up with 13. That much I will not post here, but it may be useful to help me write up the whole thing. The film is a very epic one, the action is very little, and the plot is not too complicated either. It conveys feelings, it has an "inner language" element I have written about earlier. A very meditative movie, with extreme long takes. It does summon up in a concentrated manner the feeling I have in me, about the Hungary as it was before the end of the Communist era, that depressed struggle for nothing, which you cannot imagine without constant raining, and which is still somehow beautiful as it is told in the language of slow moving images. The visual language is influenced by its topic, and part of the story is in fact the reaction of sensitivity to that indifferent world, sensitivity which is capable of creating such a beautiful depiction of something yet so stuck in dark hopelessness. Indeed, there is still something left there today that shows the same stagnation. I feel that I even know some of the characters, the plots they have to change things but which they never carry out, the resentful way they live mixed up with some sympathy when realising the fact that all this is due to a naive simplicity on their part. The introductory sequence, first posted here, is a good example of the long takes used in the movie, sort of replacing the descriptive passages of a novel.

The film is based on the novel of László Krasznahorkai, and was directed by Béla Tarr. Its shooting was supposed to start before the fall of Communism, but could only begin afterwards due to topics involved. The title of the novel refers to the six forward and six backward steps in tango, which in turn implies the chronology of the twelve segments the film is broken down to. When Communism is about to come to an end, we find ourselves in a village where life seems to have stopped since the charismatic Irimiás (played by Mihály Víg, the composer of the film's music) has disappeared. The inhabitants are about to leave the place, when they learn that Irimiás is on his way back to them... It seems that a persuasive police captain leaves him no choice but to help the police with their cooperation... The manipulative Irimiás then starts off to rid the inhabitants of their money and involve them into the very system they want to break free from. In the above clip Irimiás describes the mental hibernation the inhabitants live in, whereas in the one below illustrates the sort of quarrels they have. How many times have I heard "THIS" speech...

There is another important subplot that I want to mention briefly, and only briefly. The film had a controversial scene where a little girl torments a cat. I believe this is symbolic, as she torments the only one weaker than herself, similarly to her own torments from her environment. She is sensitivity in the movie, whose injuries from an uncaring world lead to a tragedy that Irimiás can use for his own purposes. That episode alone would be worth a post... Anyway, I decided to add a final post from the end that echoes the structure of the movie, another long take that follows on the mysterious bells we heard of in the introductory sequence.