In praise of older stories

I have not watched anything of any great length now for several weeks. The dark nights had fled in terror of the sun, leading me into temptation outside rather than inside. And, when inside, I have a new temptation too, and so the television has stayed off, and even the DVD's of Green Wing series 1 and 2 which someone lent me are still sitting there unwatched. The last film I sat through without feeling the need to get up and do something different was "Oh brother, where art thou". I knew, within the first five minutes, that this was one of those films. After watching it, and then watching the recording once more, I had confirmed my suspicions by a-googling and a-wikiying, and knew that I had indeed spotted my old favourite framework underneath it. It was "Ulysses", Homer's second epic, first retold by James Joyce in book form, and now reworked by the Coen brothers. (My preceding post about a tour around the town for a haircut owes more than just a nod to Mr Joyce, but also to something deeper.)

I have been disenchanted with the visual offerings lately, and for several reasons. The first, which is being partly addressed by new streaming techniques, is that one cannot stop midway through a film and reflect, pop back and review what you thought you had seen earlier, to discover that you have very cunningly tricked yourself. You cannot allow your critical faculties to sit in the theatre alongside you, their mutterings and comments will spoil the show. With a book, however, they can perch on your shoulder and gibber in your ear and you can riffle through the pages, or grab another book to riffle through those pages too, and there is no detraction from your pleasure. But with visual media which advances linearly, steadily, so many frames a second on the screen or so many heartbeats a minute on the stage, you must go at the pace dictated to you.

I mentioned earlier that my disenchantment of the first reason was being addressed, in part, by the new streaming techniques, and of course, just like with video tapes and DVD's, you can stop, pause, rewind, review, and return to the point at which your curiousity got too much for your self-control and made you wriggle in your seat and rustle your crisp packet. But it spoils the flow of the film, the pace at which you need to sit and watch must not be interrupted. You must suspend your disbelief in order to appreciate the tale the makers wished to tell.

And that is my second disenchantment with the visual media, that the imagination is asked to leave the room. You are not meant to see things in your mind's eye, the producers have insisted that they are going to put the pictures there for you. Well, not a problem, you think, surely that's the whole idea? Yes, I admit, it is, but then we arrive at a more disturbing room, with a creaking door and cobwebs inside sprawling haphazard over all the strange uneasy chairs and tabula rasas. In the state of suspended disbelief, where the police enforce the minimum highway speed limits with rigor and dedication, the roadside advertising can get inside your mind without you knowing it. Not knowing it while the film is playing, anyway.

I like to know who's putting things inside my head. I don't mind when I put them there myself; say, as a result of reading a passage in a book which invites me to imagine a situation, or when the rhythm and the rhyme and the unexpected meanings of the carefully chosen words in a poem makes me cross a border into a whole new territory. What I do not like is when a producer want's me to see everything, but everything, exactly as they themselves did. Sometimes I don't mind doing that, (and the two Coen brothers films I have seen are that type of film). But at other times, I do not want to see the blood and entrails that they have spent so much time creating in the special effects department. I find the unpleasantness disturbs me too much. I cannot watch as psycho after psycho draws blade after blade across trembling flesh and lets the hidden ichor out. I mentioned this in the last post when I roamed like Mr Bloom in search of the shearing shears.

Little Petal and I have radically different tastes in what we like to watch, so much so that we now no longer sit together, and I will no longer choose a film for us to view. The last time I selected something, "Big Fish", I became enthralled at the same rate as she became bored and confused. I tried to explain to her each thing that caught my eyes so vividly, and found I was upsetting both my enjoyment, and her annoyance. And so I now leave her to her endless repeats of crime upon the satellite. Tales of "knight-faced men protecting folks like you from men like me".

I too am fascinated by the predator-prey pattern which fills most modern fiction, whether it be book, film, or television series. But I have become disenchanted with the offerings which crowd out from within the flickering screen and try to convince me that forensics will solve the most baffling and carefully concealed crimes, committed by villains who manage to combine both unbelievable intelligence with unimaginative motive and method, and wreak their wicked whims on the strangest set of victims you could ever think of as meat. It is just another circus, where the clowns wear sombre clothing and juggle things which make you all go "Ooh" and "Eek" and "Argh" and "Ugh".

"See, as I move among you, the ease with which I catch the objects that my lovely young swimsuit-clad assistant will toss to me. Do not flinch as a 12-inch carving knife streaks above your heads, for I have caught it and it is in the air. And here comes the first victim, the silly housewife, who hears a noise withing the house and calls out 'hello, is anybody there?' (Let me tell you I am not only here and frightened but too stupid to go quiet and try to listen to your furtive footsteps before creeping out to safety). Let's toss her up with the other hand, and what have we next? Oh, it's a set of razor-sharp six-inch fingernails, with which to slice you up, provided I can still open doors and manipulate the other awkward objects which are still around me. They're in the dance now, watch them catch the light as they tumble high above me. And here's another victim, I have them, up they go, the screaming teenager who will turn on the torch in the darkened room, saying 'I'm at the pointed end of this cone of light which isn't going to show me where you are because you're hiding, but let you know exactly where I am.' And what is coming next? Don't quiver, madam, I know it looks dangerous, and it is dangerous, but you are in the audience, and we don't pick on our paying customers. Yes, it's that old favourite, the chainsaw, running, I might add, (hear the putt-putt as it idles smoothly), and see me deftly catch it by the handle and spin it up to join the dance, and can we have the next victim please? Oh, I see her, it's the stupid hooker who'll take the most ominous looking customer into a dark secluded alley where nobody can intervene and then express her shock and awe when what he pulls out is rather more than six inches."

But that's enough. The intelligent amongst you have already seen my point and begin to drift away towards the next item of interest, and the stupid are beginning to salivate and slobber as I rang that cracked Pavlovian bell. Anyone with any imagination at all can see the dangers of describing too accurately an actual predator at work with actual methods on an actual victim. And, as we have seen all to sadly in the past, even the absurd offerings of the film industry have apparently inspired some real deaths. But for all that, we still have session after session of the same old bedtime stories.

There is currently a law being introduced in this country which will make it illegal to watch certain films which depict certain acts, despite such films being made by consenting actors. The law does not address those who make, distribute and sell such films, because, one assumes, there are already laws in place to regulate them, (and presumably fiscal laws as well to extract from them a proper portion of the proceeds). It simply means to target those who wish to watch some less-than-usual adventures on a screen, and is intended to stop the sort of tragic murder or four which made the news in this country once or twice. And it is just another bit of nannying from the clever animals in the farmyard who have already given us positive discrimination; let's allow recruiters to intentionally drop other candidates in favour of those who are female, black, muslim, linguistically-challenged, anything which our figures show that we have less of in our little games. Yes, they're fiddling with the rules again, but don't be too harsh on them, they're doing it with the best intentions. Applaud them, I say, wave your ballot papers high and cheer as you step into the booth.

I far prefer the older style of films in which things were often alluded to, or hidden from view by a sudden fade-to-black, letting the mind kick in. I know from my favourite films that, even as I am sitting there, rapt, following the pace dictated by the crafters who have put it all together, my mind, if tickled into life, can go rummaging around furtively beneath the surface in search of the allusion, the meaning of the muttered metaphor, and then it can suddenly pop back alongside me, popcorn in hand, whispering in my ear that it has found something and will tell me later when the show is done.

But if they show me torture and torment slice by slice, my mind cannot go scurrying off in search of buried treasure, it is transfixed, like me, by the graphic images. And when I sit up from the film, there is no following time of thoughts surfacing unexpectedly to tell me what it has realised this scene or that character meant. The film finishes with the credits. And I feel cheated. I want my money back.

The last film I watched which I would class as dark and gory but nevertheless full of hidden meaning to go hunting after, was "The Machinist". It is noir, above everything else, and it had me thinking about the implications of being beside oneself for days afterward.

The last film noir which I watched and was thoroughly entranced by, was recommended to me by my friend the Exetan, probably because he felt I was almost as obsessive as the central character. It was "Pi", and in addition to the connection with computing, mathematical patterns, and the search for hidden meanings, it also featured an amazing soundtrack. And, in true noir fashion, was shot in black and white.

What is it about the lack of colour which so entrances me? Is it just nostalgia for the past, (which I am too young to claim to really know,) when the imagination was called upon to change the shades into hues? It would fit with my thoughts about my needing my imagination to be involved in order to appreciate a film. One of my all-time favourite films, which I had to view with subtitles because I cannot speak Russian, started out in black and white as the three companions journeyed on a maintenance trolley through the dark of the night. And, when morning came and they stood in the dawn staring at their strange new world, the colour came too. It was "Stalker", by Andre Tarkov. And, because I videoed it on a three hour tape and did not realise it would last fractionally longer, I do not know exactly how it ends. As the man, back from the strange country, walks along with his disturbed daughter riding on his shoulders past yellow pools, the tape ends. I find myself often imagining what did happen next, if anything at all. And that makes the film, for me, even more special.

The last "mainstream" film I watched, (and which I watched religiously from start to finish as the makers had intended, cursing at the interruptions of the adverts,) I only decided to watch in the first place because it featured Kiefer Sutherland. I have always been a fan of the Sutherland pair, father first, then son. I don't know if it is alright for a man to state that he finds another man sexy, so I shan't say it, (I would be picked on unmercifully by two people I know, at least, if not more). But if I wanted to change myself and be like somebody else, my first choice would be to be Donald Sutherland, and if I couldn't be him, then I would opt for his son.

The film was called "Phone Booth", and it played at a pace that took me with it all uncomplaining, and it gave my imagination more of a gym workout than it had had for a long time. And, like my favourite film "The Draughtsman's Contract", it hid more than it revealed. I spent days afterward wondering how the sniper acted, what had motivated him, how he stalked and set up his target. And it didn't dwell upon the goriness of death as the bullets struck, slow-motion splatters spurting at the screen, but instead, apart from one shooting and one throat-slitting, simply mentioned them in passing. And, by way of keeping it mysterious, they never showed Kiefer until the very end, and then just a blurry glimpse of him through drugged eyes as he passed by.

There are still some good film-makers who realise that the past is not just a store of old stories to be retold with even better graphic effects or even more desirable stars and starlets to play the parts, but is instead something belonging to us all which needs to be used creatively, to stimulate the mind, not merely titillate the senses.