Must We Suffer Daily?

Tarsem’s The Fall #2 - Immersion

In this series I’m exploring the reasons why Tarsem’s “The Fall” is my favorite movie.

Seeing a movie for the first time can be awfully important because as the viewer goes along with the story they build up their attitudes, which will hardly change later. Now this doesn’t apply in all cases, since many art films heavily rely on alienation, absurdity and obscurity, all these undermining the importance of the first time, as the case is often that the conception and solidification of attitudes and a deeper understanding of the experience come later. In fact we regularly process movies after the event, however this is usually more of an adjustment in the case of genre movies.

One feature that I find overarching The Fall is its generosity and it is present and foremost here, in the field of immersion, as well as in many other places. The Fall, being an independent film with an R rating, didn’t have very much to win by being as viewer-friendly as it ended up being. My argument is that this film is enjoyable and not at all puzzling at the first time viewing but it serves an artistic purpose and not popularity.

I found two interconnected parts of the film that helped it accomplish this feat.

#1: Placing us in Alexandria’s point of view. First off, a child seems a relatable protagonist, since everyone has been one. Her being in a hospital with a broken arm seems like nothing out of the ordinary; even if one has never had a broken bone, there’s nothing predominantly exotic about it.

#2: The narrative arc is gradual. To delay the exposure of the audience to the more powerful motifs of a film is a hard thing to do because it requires confidence in the script and performances and high payoff value expectation. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the story’s starting point is very familiar and seemingly simple. When we are shown the characters and their depths, the movie follows a classic formula: we start with more mundane details and progressively move toward the more dramatic. A juxtaposition: in today’s storytelling it’s more common to try to shock the viewer early on and thus induce an immediate and strong emotional response.

The Fall follows through with this approach of gradual expansion on every layer, e.g. Roy’s story starts out as an independent tale, which is very safe and light, then it becomes inseparable with their reality and concerns the darkest and hardest topics around the end. In this narrative mode the audience is granted safety from confusion, as there’s an obvious story on the top that is entertaining in itself. At the same time, however, the more profound layers of the film, through being concentrated in the later parts, can be encountered without the deception that sudden shocks and an ensuing emotional chaos would have caused. Thus I think the art in The Fall is exquisitely genuine and can be experienced as such, which is a very rare merit.

Love and do what you will.

St. Augustine

Man has not a single right which is the product of anything but might. Not a single right is indestructible: a new might can at any time abolish it, hence, man possesses not a single permanent right.

Mark Twain

Corey's best so far...

A lot of people (myself included) get really excited about what’s possible as digital video moves forward. The biggest buzz in the past decade has been the extremely high resolution offered by some cameras. This resolution is measured in K, which stands for “thousand” (kilo).

Common Video Resolutions (width x height):

Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. “To know all is to forgive all.

 Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends & Influence People (via yesdarlingido)

Frankenstein? You Certainly Have No Idea

A while ago I wrote a similar post about Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where I explored how we’ve gradually departed from the original concept and eventually turned the whole story inside out--the way it’s usually believed to be today.

Horror and genre fiction in general are looked upon as solely entertaining literature. It is best represented by enormous fandoms around horror stories that are really the shallow water of the stream of art--yes, I’m referring to Stephen King.

Although is it not supposed to be more? Shouldn’t horror really be more than a good fright? Obviously I ventured out to write this post because I strongly believe horror can have more profound dimensions and it should. Actually, my opinion is mainly informed by Stoker’s Dracula and Shelley’s Frankenstein (and a good portion is a result of reading Poe extensively in my teen years, as it shows in the post later).

Let me begin by explaining a bit about contemporary horror’s genesis. As a branch of literature it has very little to do with books, it is only an indirect continuation to the tradition. Today’s horror comes from a set of movies, some of which were book adaptations or remotely inspired by them. Actually one name is a recurrent theme here: Bela Lugosi, a.k.a. the king of horror--much more so than anyone would have thought. His version of Dracula has proven more enduring than the written one, so the underlying themes of Stoker’s novel, which even concerned the metaphysical at times, are lost, quite tragically. Also, the popular image of Frankenstein’s monster comes from the 1939 Rowland V. Lee movie Son of Frankenstein. The shape of the creature, its mindlessness, the castle, the assistant--every bit people associate with Frankenstein is a direct result of the movie, hardly any of which actually features in the novel.

A written genre originating from a visual one is encased in the limitations of both--what could not be visually understood won’t appear, and the same applies to the written part. It is an almost unimaginable thing but originally these horror stories barely ever showed the horror. “Why, we have that today,” the ignorant reader might say but the horror of old times was not filled with the today commonplace suspense and disgust elements.

In this post I focus on the method of Shelley in Frankenstein: Her approach was what we would today call the purist. Her novel embodies horror--the dictionary’s definition of it actually. She only ever tells as much about the monster that it exists, reluctantly adding that it’s too hideous to behold and once dropping that its hand resembles that of a mummy. The main instrument of this story is a very long line of deaths but only in the purist spirit, as well.

A prolonged prologue commences with establishing the members of an extended family. They are talented, intelligent, wealthy, charitable people, who are just the dream of the era. After individually stating about every relation how enviable and admirable they are, the monster is briefly introduced. No lightning is involved here, only the statement that Victor Frankenstein, the visionary, somehow figures out how to bestow life upon things and then, once the monster is created, he instantly regrets it and falls into a state of mental breakdown over the realization of how unhallowed his work is. The monster then lives alone for a while, gradually comprehends that he is frightening to humans and feels that he is forced into a perpetual state of solitude, which he loathes more than anything--so much so that he will burn down the entire world if necessary to get himself a companion. And that’s about it. The monster asks Frankenstein to create him a mate but as he refuses he decides to avenge him as the creator of his desperation through killing everyone he holds dear. Enter the death of all characters...

The horror is how Frankenstein watches everyone he loves being killed at the unstoppable hands of his own creation. His guilt and reflections at it are horror. He is horrified. Horrified. He--along with the invested reader--is not exactly startled, nor disgusted, but profoundly horrified.

But there’s more to this story than just being the original horror. I explored that dimension only because of the framework of today’s horrible, genre-redefining novels.

As contemporary horror tries to grasp what visually equates horror, all content is lost. Shelley operates with what Poe designated as the horror-writer’s most powerful instrument: “The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” In human relations the most extreme loss is that of one’s child but the loss of someone one loves tenderly comes in as a spectacular second, with a much more elevated pathos.

The reason this is preferred by Poe and a myriad of authors is that a parent-descendant relationship is a natural one, where choice has roughly no role, whereas in a romantic relationship, while having a powerful natural component, active choice is central. This is why a parent losing a child usually goes with the line: “A parent should not live to see their child die,” when a lover’s loss comes with: “They were taken from me.” So, while the first kind of death evokes the more profound pain, the second one is the more aesthetic. It is a better case of antagonism: what one actively binds themselves to, pledges to unite their identity to, is actively deprived from them by a second actor, thus their willing choice for whom they would value most highly in life is irrevocably undone.

The peak is then the death of a beautiful woman but it can only be a real peak if the beauty of that woman is fully realized. 

An interesting juxtaposition can be made here between the book’s model and the contemporary one. The book emphasizes multiple faculties, such as intelligence, a charitable nature, intuition and nobility of character, whereas today’s model is derived from the passions of the flesh. Contemporary theories favor a simplifying approach, which marks the core of all traits the sexual of a person. However, Frankenstein is a great example of how it used to be a valid action to discrete the sexual, the intellectual and the emotional. Today it would be called repression of the true motives (the sexual), since all the faculties associated with beauty are just expressions of the deeper, truer core of identity. Feminists of the past would have pointed out that the death of the beautiful woman symbolizes Shelley’s vision of the intelligent, competent woman’s fate, as she is determined to die, even by the principles of literature (or Poe). Today’s most progressive feminists, though, would confine this story to the literal body of women, however, not only a story but women, and all people, are much larger than bodies.

But Frankenstein is not the perfect novel. Whereas it succeeds at many things and has its outstanding merits, it does fail at anticipating what the reader can guess, as Frankenstein misinterprets a supposedly enigmatic line and prepares for his own death, when his soon-to-be wife is threatened. Sadly the target is so obvious that it’s impossible to believe what the protagonist believes to come next but, as I have stated before, this is a completely marginal element of the story and perhaps even Shelley didn’t want to make it a really elaborate twist...

All in all Frankenstein is the beacon of the lost genre of horror. But beside its literary quality it might also be a reminder to the readers that there used to be a way of thinking that thought it possible to abstract from the material.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Scott F. Fitzgerald

The right answer is always figured out early on, when it isn't, it means, that you are not ready to know it.

A brief look-back to my book

I'm still working on the little extension thingies for my book. It's been over a year and a month, that I started writing it.

One night I had the weirdest dream, probably of my entire (rather short) existence, about these kids being tricked and trapped in Underworld... I remember, I was in the middle of another "novel" (which by the way I still have not finished :P), and I was just browsing among self-publishing companies. I randomly filled out a registration for one site, as to see what it would cost me to publish myactualwork. I don't know for what reason, but I clicked children's books category, and then things just got crazy in my head...

Nothing real was set in motion but the next day I was called by this publishing company. A very nice woman was politely asking me about mybook. It blew my mind. I felt like I was arealwriter. For no apparent reason I started telling about my dream, insted of the project I was making. What I said was to no extent collected or organised but it didn't bother me much, I was just speaking. Dreaming of getting published...

In one week I wrote like twenty-five, thirty pages. I was extremely thrilled. But, then my joy was soon overcome byreason. I was (and still am (for a hopefully short period of time)) monetarily dependent on my parents. The cheapest publishing package was about 2000 pounds if I remember correctly... Anyways, they said, that a book is not a good investment. So they gave me exactly 0.00 pounds to follow my dreams...

I never give up. I didn't give up then, either... In the coming two months I finished my book, had it revised by a published author, who became a very good friend of mine on the way... After that I sent my manuscript to another friend of mine, who resides in Michigan, U.S.. He used to be a professor of genetics and his knowledge is literally unprecedented. Though I hardly agree with him on anything... So he revised it, as well. He said, it's not really good but he sees some potential... This is kind of like the greatest compliment I've ever heard from him, so it was extremely delightful to me, despite its actual indifference :P

My endurance was always fueled by my beautiful Special Girl (I never know how to call her because girlfriendis kind of awkward and she's not my wife yet, so I'd feel uncomfortable with calling her my Half). She is the greatest artist I've seen, or heard, or known about. The inspiration and motivation she gave me are like this once-in-a-lifetime thing, which we always hear abot but can never truly depict... She never let me give in, or turn blue...

And now, after a year, I'm here. Still trying to make it better. But in this one year, I've learned, that I'm ready to leave my parents' house. For good. I'll write. I'll marry my girlfriend (according to my parents) before time. These are my plans and I know, that I shouldn't be crossing the bridge yet, but there's this thing, called faith. I know this is my path because I was instructed this way, by my Heavenly Instructor... I don't fear the shadows of my future, or even my present because I know, that nothing can go so wrong, as to prevent me from becoming the man, that I'm born to become.