my 10 best films – “Copenhagen”
Richibi’s Weblog
Just another WordPress.com weblog
Category: films to ponder
October 18, 2020
my 10 best films – “Closer”
“The Bolt” (c.1778)
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
________
in the spirit of recording my ten best
ever films, my favourite films of all
time, something that, at my relatively
advanced age, 71, I feel entitled to do,
however might some think me
presumptuous, others, not inaccurate,
I started last night with Closer
Mike Nichols directs, who also helmed
another of my ten favourites, Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which, having
just watched it recently, I won’t again
soon, having been, once more,
devastated, I cry from the first roll of
the credits, bawl when the music
comes on, a theme that’s reverberated
with me through the several ensuing
ages, same as just happened again
to me with this one
The Blower’s Daughter, listen, tells
the story, breathes the essence of,
anguish, the tale itself follows, four
individuals, in a tight, literary, conceit,
live out the agonies of participants in
modern emotional interactions, or, at
least, my modern, 2004, it all takes
place in London, with a brief, though
revelatory, postscript in New York, in
order to tie loose ends together, they
are called upon, the performers,
consummate in every instance, Julia
Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman,
Clive Owen, however reduced might
be their full cast, a mighty, note,
professional challenge, to display the
myriad tragedies inherent in all loving
entanglements
try to find it, it ought to knock your
socks off
meanwhile, think about your own
best list, if you don’t suppose it’s
at all too early
R ! chard
psst: stick around, incidentally, for the
final credits, to Mozart’s
transcendental Soave sia il vento,
from his Così fan tutte, aptly,
and sublimely, introspective
July 27, 2019
who’s afraid of the subjunctive
“Impression, Sunrise” (1873)
________
who’s afraid of the subjunctive
much like Elizabeth Taylor as Martha
in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”,
my answer is, I am, George, I am
the subjunctive is an esoteric mood,
even more abstruse in English than
in other languages, where the verb’s
conjugation highlights its presence,
in English, it’s nearly identical to the
indicative, the mood everybody
instinctively speaks in, facts
the subjunctive is about aspiration,
like the conditional, abstract, not
real, but its intention, rather than
the conditional’s inherent
impediment, a condition, shoots
for the stars, isn’t introspective,
but adamant, imperative
it is necessary that one be, it is
urgent that one have, it is
important that one effect, a
particular thing or event, all
subjunctives after the
doorkeeper word, “that”
one finds the subjunctive in
Shakespeare, master of grammar,
perhaps unparalleled in English,
a lot – O, that this too solid flesh
would melt, / Thaw and resolve
itself into a dew! – and follows
with Elizabeth Barrett Browning –
Pardon, o pardon that my soul
should make, / Of all that strong
divineness which I know / For
thine and thee …, for instance,
who is so profoundly indebted to
Shakespeare for her aesthetics
one wondrous day, I realized that
Proust’s entire “À la recherche du
temps perdu“, his “In Search of
Lost Time“, my Bible, was set in
the, French however, subjunctive,
the mood, there as well, of
possibility, therefore rather than
the definitive recreation of an
earlier time, Proust was
describing a sensibility, a personal
interpretation of a previous reality,
however bolstered by intimate and
apparently precise recollection of
shimmeringly imprecise, though
personally accurate, impressions
note here the similar preoccupations
of Proust’s contemporaries, the, aptly
named, Impressionists
everything, Proust was saying, as
were also the Impressionists, is in
the eye of the beholder
the subjunctive is the mood that
sets this instinct in motion
R ! chard
psst: Somerset Maugham I remember
being noteworthy as well for his
immaculate use, in his South
Pacific tales, of the subjunctive,
extremely elegant in its refined
construction, even with its
English austerities, like making
lace out of mere cloth, impressive
despite its impracticality, or
perhaps even because of it
June 9, 2019
the conditional
“If Once You Have Slept on an Island“ (1996)
Jamie Wyeth
________
the conditional mood is easy, it always
follows if
if I had a hammer, for instance
or
if I were a rich man
it is not a real event, as Classical
representation would be in art, were I
to make that synesthetic juxtaposition,
which is to say, were I to replace the
visual sense with that of letters, but
rather like Surrealism, for instance,
in that other context, a superimposed
idealization
here’s a poem you’ve probably
already heard, or heard of, through
its final, and epochal, verse, Kipling’s
“If“, a towering instance of moral
suasion on our culture
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
in the spirit of juxtaposition, compare
that to Polonius’ admonition to his son,
Laertes, upon that young colt’s imminent
return to France, where he had earlier
been, reputedly, carousing
Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, act 1, scene 3,
all, incidentally, in the imperative, the mood
of command, authority, however consequential
there, or not
a film called “If…” is also worth visiting
in this context, from the 1970s, with an
iconic soundtrack that gripped the
generation then that heard it, listen,
watch, the Missa Luba, be gripped
R ! chard
May 29, 2019
the indicative
“Grammar“
Gentile da Fabriano
____________
since I’d only recently vaunted both the
infinitive and the imperative moods of
verbs in this venue, you might’ve
expected that the indicative would
soon follow
and here it is, the indicative, the mood
of narratives, storytelling, the default
mode, essentially, where most of our
communication takes place, be it
oral or written
famous first lines of novels will attest
to that, lines you’ve probably heard
before, however only incidentally, if
not actually read
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
from Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities“
and the rest is so good, I can’t, in all
consciousness, exclude it
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was
the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the
season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the
spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
or
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
from Daphne du Maurier’s eerily Gothic
“Rebecca“, heiress to not only Charlotte
Brontë’s “Jane Eyre“, but also to her
sister Emily’s, to my mind, much more
accomplished work, “Wuthering“, and
indeed wonderful, “Heights“, whereupon
I’ll refrain from continuing to follow the
sentences, however compelling, for
lack of space and time
but
I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.
from “Out of Africa“, Karen Blixen’s
unforgettable novel, however brilliantly
translated to film, must take its place
here among towering introductory
sallies
Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.
Proust’s answer to Homer, his “À la
recherche du temps perdu“, his
“Remembrance of Things Past“
For a long time, I’d go to bed early.
which, as I read on, no less than
changed my life
but that’s another story, however
totally engrossing
everywhere above, let me point out,
the mood has been indicative, to a
very verb, so unobtrusive you
probably didn’t even notice
in music, a counterpart for the
indicative would be the allegro,
the baseline, not too fast, not
too slow, the tempo listeners
would most easily respond to
but more about that only later, after
a traipse through the speculative
conditional, then the aspirational
subjunctive
meanwhile, check this out, “The
Heart of the Matter“, the Eagles, a
ballad, mostly indicatives, but with
here and there an infinitive, and a
peppering of conditionals, however
might these be signal, to utterly break
your heart
listen
R ! chard
November 11, 2018
“A Delicate Balance” – Edward Albee
“Theatre Drama“
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin
___________
there are only a very few 20th-Century
American playwrights who’ve weathered
the rigours of time, two with several
successes, Eugene O’Neill, and
Tennessee Williams, but only one to
tower above those two with only one
work to outmatch them, Edward Albee,
his “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?“
is every inch a king
this is not an impossible feat, Margaret
Mitchell wrote her only book, “Gone
with the Wind“, a contemporary “Iliad“,
which will find its rightful place again
in world literature, note, when our own
too reverberant still times cede to the
concerns of another, less pertinently
fraught era, like reading “War and
Peace“, for instance, now that
Napoleon is long gone
“Gone with the Wind“, quick, name
another 20th-Century novel to top it,
seconds are too long, “Gone with
the Wind” is in our bloodstream,
like Walt Disney or Marilyn Monroe,
even if you’ve never read it, which
you should
but Edward Albee wrote another play
which deserves some attention, and
with redoubtable performances from
both the consummate ever Katharine
Hepburn, and from our own Canadian
tower of unutterable talent, Kate Reid,
abetted by masterful presentations
from no less than the revered Paul
Scofield and the iconic Joseph Cotten
when their supporting numbers come
up, here is a show to watch for, if
nothing else, those individual stellar
contributions
but “A Delicate Balance“, also an
incontestable masterpiece, is about
friendship, and tells a lesson you’ll
not soon forget, friendship is more
than, for better or for worse, just
knowing each other, it says, an
idiosyncratic, indeed recurrent,
Albee theme
cinematography, note, is, here,
dreadful, though actually in that
manner conceived, however
improbably, by an otherwise
noteworthy director, you’ll even
think they’ve shrunk his frame
but visual style shouldn’t let you
forego the play’s profound substance,
nor the triumphant work of its illustrious
cast, at the very top, mostly, of their
considerable, even defining, powers
watch
R ! chard
July 15, 2018
at the movies – “Phaedra”
“Phaedra and Hippolytus“ (1802)
_____________
Phaedra, according to Greek myth, fell
in love with her stepson, and, of course,
ruined, for everyone, everything
she’s been represented in music by
composers from, at least, Rameau,
1733, to, here, now, Benjamin Britten,
1976, by way of even Tangerine
Dream, 1973, however peripherally,
and the hits just keep on coming
in literature, the story goes back to
Euripides, 480 – 406 BCE, through
Jean Racine, 1639 – 1699, poet at
the court of Louis XlV, the version
that I studied in French Literature,
along with, in English, Shakespeare,
who was doing courtiers, rather,
and royalty there, then, incidentally,
instead of the Continent’s iconic
Mediterranean figures – it remains
my favourite play in my mother
tongue, next to, for me, its only
other equal, “Cyrano de Bergerac“
but I’d never seen a production of
“Phaedra“ until this searing,
modern, rendition, set in, relatively
contemporary, Greece, London,
and Paris, with the irrepressible,
the irresistible, Melina Mercouri,
torrid temptress, the very goddess
Hera, here, and Anthony Perkins,
perfect as her suitor, a youth still,
pulsing with a young man’s
unbridled intentions
sparks fly, from moment to
incendiary moment – I had often
to pause to catch my breath –
portents of an inescapable, and
eventually epic, indeed mythic,
apocalypse
watch, if you dare
R ! chard
July 3, 2018
Piano Concerto no. 5, opus 73, “Emperor” – Beethoven
“All About Eve“ (1950)
_______
while I’m on the subject of concertos,
there’s one concerto that cannot be
overlooked, the very epitome of
concerti, their summit, apex, their
very pinnacle, Olympus, compared
to other less mighty compositions,
Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto,
the piece I would take with me to a
desert island, I used to even walk
along the seashore in the privacy of
my headphones nights, after dinner,
taking in its cadences, its wisdom,
under the moon, the stars, along
the, however temperamental,
ocean waters, transported
indeed this very version of it, Glenn
Gould’s, Beethoven’s, in my mind,
oracular equal
Beethoven made literature out of
music, progressed to the point of
delivering a very philosophy,
Gould took the prevailing
Romantic aesthetic of the time,
Arthur Rubinstein being a prime
example, for instance, and gave
us the music of the Information
Age, the mathematical precision
of computers, people could hear
it, perhaps not even knowing how,
why
briefly, Gould eschews – Gesundheit –
the hold pedal, the sustain pedal, on
the piano, he’d grown up on Bach,
made him his specialty, but Bach
had no sustain pedal on his
harpsichord, Gould transferred this
process to later, more rhythmically
malleable, works, making obvious
thereby their inner workings,
something like reading blueprints,
his interpretations give us the bare,
and revelatory, bones of these later
masterpieces, without the sometimes
facile effects of Romanticism, think
of rubato, for instance, the ability to
stretch a note, not possible on the
harpsichord, but often overused in
Romantic renderings, a cheap trick,
like paintings on velvet
Gould would have none of that, he
shows you the composer’s
compositional brilliance, without
fanfare, just the facts, no pedal,
which at the time was completely
revolutionary, much like computer
science was then, and algorithms
here’s something else about Gould,
more savoury, maybe, he was called
in at the last minute to perform this
piece when the planned pianist, of
considerable renown, wasn’t able to
make it, Gould hadn’t played it in a
number of years, but showed up the
next morning to deliver, the rest is,
as they say, history
that’s “All About Eve“ up there, but
for pianists, Glenn Gould is Eve
Harrington, though without her
predatory instincts, nobody now
remembers the other pianist,
unless you were there, interested,
listening, piano’s Margo Channing,
even if I named him, however
consummately accomplished he
might’ve been, a man I profoundly
admire, remains, cruelly, essentially
unremembered
imagine
R ! chard
April 29, 2018
“Something for Everyone” – an intermission
__________
to my mind, the already formidable
then Angela Lansbury, 1970,
should’ve been at least nominated
for an Oscar, not to mention won
it, for her indelible impression of
Countess von Ornstein, an
aristocrat if there ever was one,
in the delightful “Something for
Everyone“
she has no money left after the
Second World War, but lives still
in her castle, which remains, as
stipulated in the relevant
documentation, in the family
into perpetuity
but she has trouble getting the
strawberries which she feels
are her right still, among other
threatened entitlements, out of
her sheer nobility
the young Micheal York, as Konrad,
on a bicycle trip through Austria,
sees the castle – Neuschwanstein,
in actuality, Ludwig ll‘s pied à terre
in Bavaria, standing in for the one
supposed to be in Austria – and sets
out to transform it into his own
domain
there’s yodelling, and dirndls, and
lederhosen aplenty, not to mention
a great deal of skullduggery, but it’s
a fairy tale, and, as such, leads to a
happy, of sorts, ending
R ! chard
March 28, 2018
Cello Suite no 5 in C minor – J.S. Bach
“The Cellist“ (c.1917)
______
what struck me immediately upon hearing
the bow’s very first strokes on the violin in
this Fifth Cello Suite of Bach was that the
mood was not only brashly Romantic, but
quite specifically Russian Romantic, right
up there with Dostoyevsky, and “Fiddler
on the Roof“, dark brooding colours at
first, followed by long plaintive musical
phrases, you can even hear the sound of
the steppes, I thought, stretching out into
the endless distance, this performance,
I surmised, is not, other than
compositionally, Baroque, not to mention
not even German
yet as played by Mischa Maisky, it’s one
of the best versions of the Fifth I’ve ever
heard, and if it works, who’s to complain
but more context – Bach never gave not
only textural indications, but not even
tempos to his pieces, apart from the
very dance terms that identify the
movements, so what, therefore, is the
specific pace, you’ll ask, of a courante,
for instance, you tell me, I’ll reply
in other words, the modular terms were
significantly looser in the early 18th
Century than later, when metronome
markings would begin to demand more
accurate replication of the artist’s
explicit specifications – Beethoven
especially made sure of that, by
requiring accurate renderings of his
mood or pace indications, largo,
allegro, andante, for instance, still less
strict than the stipulation later for exact
musical beats per minute – trying to
keep pace with a prerecorded tape, for
example, as in again the industrially
driven, which is to say emotionally
indifferent, context of the seismic
“Different Trains“, a masterpiece of a
more technically conditioned era
I don’t think that Bach would at all have
been disappointed that the heirs of his
fervent, though more genteel, creations
might’ve morphed into something
profound for other groups, be they
national, or of a class, or of even a
generation, of people, which is to say
that these works have superseded
their merely regional intent, and have
reached beyond space and time, the
very purview of music, to speak a
common and cooperative, indeed a
binding, language
I said to my mom the other day that if
we all sang together, we could save
the world
R ! chard
psst: Maisky’s encore,, incidentally, is from
the “Bourrée” of Bach’s Third Cello
Suite, note this contrasting, more
courtly – more refinement, more
reserve – rendition, you can even
hear, not to mention see, in this
particular instance, not Russian
steppes, but European trees on
their baronial estates, if you lend
an attentive ear
Richibi's Weblog 