#13: The Silence of the Lambs

(originally published Mar. 14, 2010)

One of the reasons I like watching movies with Matthew at home is that he’s one of the few people I know who reacts viscerally to what he watches. Case-in-point: at certain moments during The Silence of the Lambs, Matthew spoke directly to the screen. “Don’t go in there!  Look behind you!” At other times, he turned to me with a murderous look in his eyes: I can’t believe you’re making me watch this.

But this is also the guy who talks back to voice mails, so I’m not sure what to make of that.

The person who first alerted me to Silence of the Lambs was my sister, who saw it on the big screen when it came out. “How was it?” I asked.

“Great!” she said. “The best part is where she’s stumbling around in the dark while the killer watches her through night vision goggles. You can see her gun shaking and everything!”

My sister has never held back the ending of a movie just in case I wanted to see it myself.

After Silence of the Lambs won the Academy Award for Best Picture, that meant it was perfectly acceptable for me to watch it. For goodness’ sake, my parents made me sit through Gandhi and Out of Africa, so Silence of the Lambs was, in a sense, a reward. And even though I knew that scene was coming, and even though I had steeled myself for it, I remember still freaking out uncontrollably. Only silently, to myself.

The reason the scene is so effective, I think, is because of how it plays on horror movie tropes. Everyone’s familiar with the “killer cam”—scenes filmed from the killer’s point of view, ogling nubile teens from the bushes or peering into dusty windows. (Carol Clover points out how those shots are the moments when the audience identifies with the male tormentor.) It’s become such a cliché that you have to wonder if it’s even effective as a technique anymore. It’s dramatic irony on the cheap.

But in Jonathan Demme’s hands, an overused movie trope becomes potent once again. When Buffalo Bill turns on his green seeing-eye glasses, and the audience sees Clarice Starling stumbling in the dark (yes, her gun shakes), Demme taps into the deep well of feeling the audience has built up for Starling, the soundtrack silent except for her panicked breaths. Everyone, I imagine, has had a moment when they’ve been disoriented by darkness—crawling, perhaps, on their hands and knees, discovering solid walls where before there had been none, knocking their shins on sharp corners. In that scenes, our own memories of getting lost in the pitch black fire the synapses, and we’re all tense, straining for a stray sound, a whisper of light, and we’re all a girl with a gun, trembling in the dark. Matthew’s the only one with the sense to yell out, “Shoot your gun!  Shoot him!”

#12: This is Spinal Tap

(originally published Mar. 13, 2010)

As I watch (or re-watch, as the case may be) the movies for this project, I usually only make it through half of any given commentary, since the time starts getting out of hand. But I re-watched This is Spinal Tap, then listened to the entire commentary with the lead actors. It’s a testament to the film, as well as the pure entertainment value of hearing Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer riff of one another. And this is coming from someone who’s never cared for heavy metal—or rock ‘n’ roll—much at all.

(Currently on the headphones, Battles, Mirrored.)

I had most of my exposure to heavy metal at an early age, in middle school and high school. I listened mainly to the radio, and every now and then, a track slipped onto the airwaves. Quiet Riot, Ratt, Twisted Sister, Whitesnake, Guns ‘n Roses, Skid Row—ambassadors from a louder and shreddier world. I viewed them then as I view nipple clamps today: sure, I know people like it, and, sure, I know it’s a different lifestyle. I can also understand why it’d be popular, but I, myself, would simply prefer not to be exposed to it. My eardrums, like my nipples, just can’t take much punishment.

But during middle school, one of my best friends was a metal head. Her name was Jenny, and she had frizzy brown hair that only semi-poofed away from her head. They were like a pair of wings that hadn’t yet fully deployed. We weren’t friends that hung out after school or went to movies together; instead, we were the “in school” friends who’d sit near each other during class and pass notes back and forth.

My own musical tastes had not yet ossified: at the time, I still took piano lessons, and classical music made up the majority of my listening repertoire. I had made tentative steps in other directions—my brother, for instance, had years before to pop-soul—but I never pursued these avenues. (True story:  a few months ago I woke up with Maxine Nightingale’s “Lead Me On” stuck in my head. I had to look it up the next day.) What heavy metal knowledge I lacked, Jenny filled in for me.

On the cover of her spiral notebooks, she faithfully reproduced, in pen, with appropriate shading and thunderbolts (if necessary), various band logos. “Who’s Stryper?” I asked.

“Stryper. You know Stryper,” she said. Her fingers formed the metal salute:  the thumb and forefinger in an L, the pinkie extended. “To hellllll with the devil!” she sang.

She wore concert black t-shirts with iron-on decals of Poison album covers, the colors so bright they might have been radioactive. She told me about the episodes of Headbangers’ Ball that I had missed on MTV: “Last night, it was ‘Rockin’ with Dokken.'”

This was the first time, perhaps, that I realized that music was not merely something you listened to—it was an identity.

#11: The Seventh Seal

(originally published Mar. 12, 2010)

I waited to watch The Seventh Seal again until I had recovered from my cold. I wanted to concentrate on Bergman without having a sinus headache pulping my gray matter. Also, no watching films about the bubonic plague while your head feels like a fishbowl full of mucus or films about Death while you feel His cold, clammy hand pressing on your chest, creating phlegm the color of algae.

As well, Matthew didn’t feel like Bergman tonight, so, together, we watched Hot Fuzz first. The gunplay and charming English countryside distracted him as I surreptitiously opened my new Blu-Ray of The Seventh Seal.

“Look at those lovely serpentine stone walls. Is that crinkling cellophane I hear?”

“No.” Cough, cough. “Isn’t Simon Pegg adorable?” (I actually didn’t say that last part but thought it through most of the film.)

In any case, I’m not one to bite the Blu-Ray that feeds me. Both the Blu-Ray player and the new 40″ flat screen on which to watch Blu-Rays were surprises that Matthew had bought for the house while I was away in Wyoming. And while we’re still too cheap to buy cable television, we get plenty of use out of the vivid contrasts of the screen. And when I say “we,” I mean mostly me.

But I didn’t hook up the Blu-Ray player to the television until yesterday, because we don’t yet have a receiver and speaker system for the surround sound. A ridiculously-heavy expense for something down the line, I suppose. But we both were eager to see the Blu-Ray in action, so last night, I inserted the HDMI cables and popped in Howards End. We were duly impressed. And Matthew, once again, got to see beautiful English country estates in high-definition, the way God intended.

Tonight, though, instead of idyllic meadows, I got the rocky Swedish coastline and Max von Sydow at his broodingiest and most faith-wracked. And though I, like many, have lumped Bergman in with the directors who specialize in large servings of portentousness, with a side order of despair (if I’m ever trapped in Sweden, I’ll be at least able to call out, “Doom, doom, doom!” like the monk during the flagellation scene), I forget how Bergman uses humor to punctuate the more dire sequences.

I worry that my non-Christian upbringing has left me cold to movies and books with strong Christian themes, symbolism or imagery. I had to abandon Marilynne Robinson’s Home a few chapters in because I couldn’t connect to it. Boy, this cuts me out of the loop for most of Western literature and art, doesn’t it? Still, when it comes to grand existential and spiritual questions, I’m afraid I have to lean with Jöns, the squire, in this case:  “I’ll stay quiet, but under protest.”

#10: Walkabout

(originally published Mar. 8, 2010)

Denver doesn’t offer anything as particularly spectacular as the Australian outback for rites-of-passage, but that’s for the better, since I probably wouldn’t have survived, despite the best intentions of Aboriginal passers-by. But it does have some lovely brick walls, and judging from the opening and closing shots of Walkabout, I think Nicholas Roeg would appreciate them.

To each his own journey of self-discovery, though. Mine was the discovering of the 15L, the bus that ran down Colfax, the nominal heart of Denver. At my end of Colfax, the tail section of a long, straight snake, was innumerable motels, including the infamous Mon Chalet, which is a well-known “adult lifestyle” motel. Yes, where swingers go to meet. I didn’t realize this when I was 13, but I did like the Swiss chalet-style bungalows, with whitewashed walls and dark wood beams.

The 15L (L for limited) took me downtown, where my mother worked at the Federal Reserve Bank. But I was less interested in the actual downtown (up to and including tourist-grabbing landmarks such as the 16th Street Mall and the glass mall of the Tabor Center) than the nearby environs of Capitol Hill. There, just a stone’s throw from the gold-leaf dome of the Capitol itself was my two early haunts: Capitol Hill Books and Colorado Comics—only the former of which still exists.

On sunny days, I had lunch with my mother in the cafeteria of the Federal Reserve Bank, where she introduced me to her co-workers. I never knew exactly what her job was—but she was able to collect stamps from around the world for my quickly-adopted and just-as-quickly-abandoned stab at philately. I gave it up because I realized I would never be able to collect all the stamps in the world—there were just too many of them (unlike, for example, a discrete and handily-numbered series of DVDs). Plus, steaming and drying stamps seemed awfully onerous. No, comics were much easier.

So I hung out at Colorado Comics, which was run by a curmudgeonly middle-aged guy, who would be played by Danny DeVito in my biopic. He had poorly-spaced teeth and wispy black hair which circled around his bald spot. I must have spent hundreds of dollars there over the years, and yet when I became enthralled by the deluxe collected editions of Tales from the Crypt, he yelled, “If you want to read, go to a library.” There’s a scene near the end of Walkabout, where the girl and boy, having finally “re-discovered” civilization, come across a gentleman who waves them dismissively, the way civilized gentlemen do. He doesn’t stop to hear their entreaties or care about their story; there are rules, dammit, and they’re to be followed. The guy at Colorado Comics was sort of like that, except crabbier.

I should have bought those Tales from the Crypt books. They resell for a fortune now.

#9: Hard Boiled

(originally published Mar. 7, 2010)

Suffering a cold today. You know you’re miserable when you don’t want to eat fresh-baked brownies because you know you won’t be able to taste the chocolate goodness through the congestion. That, my friends, is the epitome of sadness.

A hospital full of nurses and cripple patients getting gunned down? That, my friends, is entertainment.

John Woo hasn’t gotten much love for his American-era films, and, to be honest, I’ve only seen Face/Off, which, I understand, is one of his better ones. (It also introduced me to Alessandro Nivola, so I’m grateful for that, at least.) But perhaps it’s better merely because it directly imported Woo’s best Hong Kong moves:  slow-motion dove (The Killer)? Check. Gunfight with a young child in someone’s arms (Hard Boiled)? Check. Now if they had only brought over Tony Leung, it would have been a magical trifecta.

It’s tempting to blame the big-budget American film industry as a huge, homogenizing hopper. Imagine it as a pot of boiling water. John Woo’s Hong Kong films are like raw eggs, gooey and messy and full of variations on the same string of proteins, but once he was plunged into the American pot, his films started coming out the same. Perfectly formed, yet unfortunately bland. Like hard-boiled eggs. Most are completely edible, but a few have that weird green ring around the yolk that leave a sulfurous aftertaste in your mouth.

In any case, in the ultimate Hong Kong cool-off between Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung, I’d have to give it to Tony. He’s such an expressive actor, and he brings a sensitivity to his role. Does he kill people with tears in his eyes. Why, yes, indeed he does. Chow Yun-Fat, to me, is a more physical actor—his body barrels into scenes, triggers twitching away. He must have the most perfectly formed index fingers ever. But no one can smoke a cigarette like Tony Leung can. Not since Marlene Dietrich has nicotine addiction been so sensual.

Me, I’ve never smoked a cigarette a day in my life, though before the current bans for smokeless bars and clubs, I most certainly inhaled my share of second-hand smoke. Much of it is a pose, after all—at my favorite late-night coffeeshop in Denver, Paris on the Platte, cigarettes seemed permanently glued into the fingers of the dark and dispossessed. Oh! The lingering cruelties of life. All I wanted was a pitcher of Earl Grey cambric and a tuna melt (or possibly a French dip) but never had the appropriate world-weary pose (despite the outfits of revolving Skinny Puppy t-shirts). Too straight-edge and goody-two-shoes. I longed to be yet did not have the lungs to be one of the deep, wounded souls around me, who stared into the curls of smoke like they had once killed a man and were now planning their escapes to Antarctica.

#8: The Killer

(originally published Mar. 6, 2010)

If my life were a John Woo movie, I most certainly wouldn’t be the Chow Yun-Fat character. I don’t have the necessary grace to kick a poker table so that a gun flies effortlessly into my hand. Nor do I have the wherewithal to slide myself back in a chair in order to shoot at a shadow creeping down the hall. I’d probably drop the wounded little girl I was trying to carry into the Scared Heart (sic) Hospital. Yun-Fat and I share at most the same cool, calm demeanor, the seemingly unruffled surface, even as the light of a thousand prayer candles flicker around us and white doves coo in the rafters.

No, I’d much more likely be the Danny Lee character: good-meaning, but always one step behind and one poorly-timed gundraw away from failure. I’ll surround myself with composite sketches of Chow and draw wild conclusions based on his eyes: he seems like a good guy. One day he’ll be all mine. I mean, Jenny might be cute as a bunny—and as equally useless—but she’s really only a gloss, a beard.

When we meet, we’ll be at arm’s length from each other, exchanging smoldering looks. Sure, we’ve got guns pointed at each other’s faces, but we know that guns are merely metaphors. Look at how deftly Chow plants a kitchen blade deftly between a marauding gangster’s shoulder blades; it’s like he’s opening a letter.

Later, when I touch his bare skin, I feel a spark. Sure, I’ve just poured gunpowder into a bullet wound and lit it with my cigarette but, cauterization or no, this is our moment. Why worry about the fact that I may have accidentally put the bullet there? What’s a mistake between friends? What I’m looking for, in my John Woo life, is a place for male intimacy that’s neither necessarily erotic. You could call it “bromance,” if you must, but how can two nominally-heterosexual men transcend friendship without sex?

I’ll tell you how: with guns. With violence. All the filmic tropes of romance—slow motion, soft lighting, classical music—are present when we pull out our guns. Inside the church, we move in synchronicity and as our eyes search the room for bad guys to waste, we always find each other. Jenny? Oh, she’s cowering in a corner somewhere. I’m sure she’s fine even as bullets fly about the room like hollow-point hornets. And once we pull out the machine guns–! Don’t get me started. It’s better than an orgasm—we’re covered in blood (our own and others’) and sweat (mostly ours) and we’re tired and panting and our hands are sore from clutching gun handles. And when we burst out of the church doors, ablaze with muzzle flashes, we’re now beyond friends, beyond perhaps even lovers. We’re a symphony, a ballet, one element irreducible from the next.

#7: A Night to Remember

(originally published Mar. 5, 2010)

James Cameron, 70th Academy Awards: “I’m the king of the world!”

He very might take home another Oscar for Avatar, but I hope not, since I don’t want to see any more of his assholery on display. But I will say that when I first saw Titanic, I was moved. But in an annoyed, ‘I know you’re pulling at my heartstrings’ way, much like my reaction to The Joy Luck Club. (I attribute that to years of Asian parent-related guilt piled high and steaming; it didn’t help that I saw the movie with my mother).  The scene of Isadore Straus and his wife, spooning in bed, as the water rushes in—there’s something touching about love in the face of futility, even if it’s staged and over art-directed.

I recall the incredible hubbub around the film—young girls seeing it over and over again (much like young men currently with Avatar). For me, the Jack/Rose romance worked on an overblown, visceral level—but, alas, only once. I sniffled when Leonardo DiCaprio sank into the icy blue waters the first time, but when Matthew and I watched later on videotape (the movie split over two videocassettes since it was too long to fit onto one), we skipped the first tape entirely (mostly because Matthew was much more interested in mayhem, catastrophe, and china patterns). DiCaprio blubbered again, and I felt nothing but pure, malicious joy. No one can freeze you to death quite like Celine Dion.

So I expected to go into A Night to Remember again with the same sort of distance. I’ve seen it before.  (Spoiler alert: the ship sinks.) There’s no central character apart from 2nd Office Lightoller and no determinative storyline. Instead, we see brief vignettes from the different social strata, the levels that never meet except to… you know, drown.

But I’ll be damned if I didn’t start tearing up when the orchestra continues to play on deck, even after the ship has listed, making it nearly impossible to stand upright. The violin player starts up “Nearer My God to Thee,” and the other players, who had begun walking away, return to accompany him. I knew this scene was coming, and yet it still affected me the way that Titanic no longer did. There’s a sense of real loss, of inevitable history. There was nothing forced, nothing manipulative. Well, maybe except for montage of the poly-lingual prayer right before they go down. Oh, and the little boy crying for his Mommy. But at least we weren’t subjected to him slowly sinking into waters lit like it was a Fuerza Bruta show.

Also, I’ve never had a crush on a wireless operator before, but Kenneth Griffith’s portrayal of John Phillips had me at “dot-dot-dot dash-dash-dash dot-dot-dot.”

#6: Beauty and the Beast

(originally published Mar. 3, 2010)

A Beauty and the Beast marathon: this afternoon I taught Angela Carter’s “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” to my fiction class, and in the evening, sat down with Jean Cocteau’s version. And while my students easily identified the fairy tale as the inspiration for Carter’s story, their more common frame of reference was the Disney animated version. Only one or two had seen Cocteau’s version. What, no one remembers the TV show with Ron Perelman and Linda Hamilton from the 80s?

But this is the way with the retelling stories:  one version supplants the other, even as it informs it, influences it. The original, written in the 18th century by a governess, Mme. Leprince de Beaumont, is presumed to be an allegory about arranged marriage—how a woman forced into a relationship can discover the soft, cuddly interior of an otherwise ugly husband. Bruno Bettelheim, in The Uses of Enchantment, suggests that the original story was an Oedipal tale, as Beauty must overcome her fixation on her father and move into adulthood. Cocteau emphasizes the Beast’s interior struggle as he wrestles with questions of identity: is he a man (courtly, noble) or a beast (overly sexualized, fond of ripping out deer throats and appearing in her bedroom)? Carter transforms the story into one of feminine empowerment: Beauty, after all, is the one with the power, living a full life while a shy, weakened Beast withers without her. And Disney… well, Disney used it to  help usher in the cash cow Princess marketing scheme.

Cocteau’s own vision—of flowing, diaphanous curtains; of living statues; of surreal opulence and rough country life—still enchants. For instance, where can I buy a ‘hunky arm’ candelabra? But nowadays, it reminds me of Bonnie Tyler’s video for “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” I know, I know: from the sublime to the ridiculous. But, honestly, I am more familiar with the Disney version myself. I was in high school when it came out, and at the time, my sister and I had a standing promise to see all the animated Disney movies together, and we watched a good run, from The Little Mermaid to Mulan.

So, yes, my memories of Beauty and the Beast are of dancing flatware, Angela Lansbury in teapot form, and the scene of Beauty and the Beast dancing, while a computer-enhanced constellation circles above them. Yes, that damned theme song is stuck in my head, and I’m attempting to dislodge it right now. And, yes, I might have gotten a little weepy at the very end, as Beauty hunches over the dying Beast before he transforms into, as Sir Christopher Frayling says on the commentary, “a Chippendales dancer.” But from Cocteau, I will remember the carefully framed tableaus, the fairy tale smoke and fog, the mirror effects, the tree branches opening up like a curtain. And, of course, those moving statues that seem to whisper, “Turn around, bright eyes.”

#5: The 400 Blows

(originally published Feb. 28, 2010)

My own juvenile delinquency was tame, compared to Antoine Doinel’s in The 400 Blows. I had the benefit of loving, if perhaps at times smothering, parents, so my naughtiness and rebellion never came to a head.  Conjugating verbs wouldn’t have seemed that bad of a punishment; I did quite well in English. But maybe conjugating them in French, in three different moods, would have made the task more unbearable.

That’s not to say that I didn’t raise hell in my own  non-confrontational way. My equivalent to Antoine’s Rene was Danny, whom everyone else knew as Aaron (whom I just friend requested on Facebook, since this is the first I’ve thought of him in years). He, similarly, knew me by a nickname as well. He had lived across the street from me for over a year before we became friends, but once we did, we were inseparable. Danny was always a little more wild than I was, and he’d get in trouble more often, but he liked to bend rules until they were malleable, following the letter of the law, if not the spirit. For instance, if he was forbidden to leave the house, we’d play in the doorway of his house until his father came home, whereupon Danny insisted: “But you said…”

Our hobbies revolved mainly around X-Men comic books and getting in trouble. During the summer, we walked from our house to the Kmart about a mile away. And there, we’d shoplift. Mostly Legos (me) or G.I. Joes (him). I took Lego sets into the dressing room, and under the guise of trying on an ugly t-shirt, I stuffed the component bags of bricks into my pants, while Danny stood  outside. He and I chatted loudly, asking how the shirt fit, to cover the sound of the crinkling cellophane. It itched my thighs as I walked. Danny, on the other hand, liked to duck behind the beach towel displays, a terrycloth curtain, and, there, extracted action figures, yearning to breathe free.

We nearly got busted once. Danny had already gotten his stash. He’d hidden them in the handpouch on the front of his sweatshirt. And as we roamed the toy aisle, Danny said, “That woman is following us.” I didn’t know which woman he was walking about, and he pointed her out: middle-aged, curly henna hair, chubby. “No,” I said.  “Are you sure?” We waited in an aisle and saw her pass by. She looked directly at us as she walked, true, did it mean anything? Returning the G.I. Joes would have been foolish; look what it did, after all, to poor Antoine.

So we left. And a few feet outside the door, she called out after us. “So, you guys have any toys in your pockets?”

“No,” I said, because I didn’t. “No,” said Danny, because technically, he didn’t either. We turned our shorts pockets inside-out, and Miss Undercover Security looked disappointed but let us continue on our way.

That close call marked the end of us aiding and abetting each other’s shoplifting, even if the shoplifting itself didn’t abate. Not on my part, at least.

#4: Amarcord

(originally published Feb. 27, 2010)

I admit: this is the second time I’ve seen Amarcord, and it’s also the second time I’ve had to stop the movie in the middle for some sleep before picking it back up from the beginning the next day. And while I could give several reasons why I needed a break, including having just taught a long day of classes, or the boyfriend coming down with the aches and pains of stomach flu, or the cold, windy weather that would bring down four inches of snow over the night, I’ve found that it’s usually much easier to blame the artist.

So, I blame Fellini for my inability to stay awake. I blame Federico for the fractured narrative and picturesque vignettes that make it easy to hit the stop button, yawn, and go downstairs for a shower. I place the blame squarely on his shoulders for the continual breaking of the fourth wall, Brechtian-style and for Nino Roti’s infectiously jazzy score. I blame him for sending lyrical puffballs in the air; for community bonfires that celebrate the Bakhtinian carnivalesque; for lawyers and other intellectuals interrupted with fart noises; for schoolboy crushes and urine-soaked pranks; for lusty, callipygian women and even lustier, but less booty-licious men; for crazed family dinner; for priests fussing with flowers; for automotive circle jerks; for ridiculously trumped-up and smoky Fascist parades; for a Mussolini composed entirely of flowers; for a Grand Illusion-like shoot-out (of a poor gramophone playing the “L’Internationale” instead of an fife-tooting, escaping prisoner); for castor oil toasts that signal the dark side of flatulence; for the Grand Hotel with its vampiric princes, midget emirs and Bollywood fantasy harems; for dwarf nuns from insane asylums; for Fascist steamships; for white bulls appearing out of fairy tale-thick fogs; for Grand Prix racers who lose their ears; for peacocks pluming their tailfeathers in the middle of winter; for funeral processions draped in black; for the irony of rain on your wedding day; and, once again, for those damn puffballs.

The stomach flu, on the other hand, I blame on students who don’t wash their hands before handing in papers.

#3: The Lady Vanishes

(originally published Feb. 24, 2010)

Tonight, I read from my work-in-progress, a novel, as part of the University of Delaware English Department Reader’s Series, which is a bit of a cheat, since I’ve taught at the University of Delaware for nearly four years now. It’s a cheat that goes both ways, however, since this reading counts as my requirement for a “public exhibition” of my work for my Delaware Division of the Arts Grant, on top of a modest honorarium. A cross-promotional free-for-all.

None of my students showed up, not even the students in my fiction workshop, which was somewhat of a letdown. I remember, as an undergrad at Johns Hopkins, attending at least one or two graduate student readings, and Johns  Hopkins was pretty well known for its Writing Seminar graduate program. One male grad student read a story about surfing, with intimate details of board care with accompanying hand gestures, like Mr. Miyagi, if he had lived in Venice Beach. The grad student looked like a surfer too: sandy-blond hair, walnut-brown tan, even if his body shape struck me as slightly more plump than a surfer should be. But I still have yet to read (or hear) a surfing-related story that has made me want to take up the sport, or even to take an interest in it beyond looking at trim boys in wetsuits.

Actually, that’s probably sufficient.

In any case, The Lady Vanishes proves to be relevant to my reading. The main character of the section I read was British; and the characters in the film are quintessential British types. My main character is gay; and if the two cricket-obsessed, comic relief bachelors, Caldicott and Charters, are not gay, then they’re at least proto-gay. Or ultra-British, which is essentially equivalent to gay. For heaven’s sake, they slept in the same bed together, Charters wearing only a pajama top, Caldicott wearing only pajama bottoms.

Hitchcock finds the good balance in The Lady Vanishes, with the first third of the film playing It Happened One Night-style slapstick (but with a strangling), and the rest of the film bringing the suspense (where is that little old lady?) and the thrills (shoot-out!). After my reading, one attendee mentioned my (brief) use of humor in my piece. Sure, I told her, I had to. Otherwise things would get too dire and readers would slash their wrists.

But, overall, finding this balance still befuddles me. Mass death and destruction don’t really lend themselves to the lulz. But I think I may have discovered my solution. I introduce a surfing scene. Never mind that the novel takes place in northwestern India in a salt marsh. They get typhoons, they get waves. Someone lovingly strokes and waxes his board. Salt water imagery, seagulls, kelp, the end.

#2: Seven Samurai

(originally published Feb. 18, 2010)

Wednesdays are the days between classes, and they’re reserved for killing time, avoiding class prep, and haircuts. I’ve been avoiding finishing edits for a chapter because I’ve hit that point where I dislike everything I’ve written. According to Kenneth Turan, Seven Samurai took Kurosawa and his screenwriters six weeks to write. And I’ve been working on this novel for almost two years?

Seven Samurai clocks in at almost three and a half hours, but that’s three and a half hours not spent editing, I suppose.

In any case, I knew I was being terribly verbose when I wrote the chapter so some judicious trimming is in order. It’s a matter of cutting out lines as ruthlessly as one cuts marauding bandits.  I always take perverse pleasure in the scene where the women of the village come out from their shelter, armed with spears, rakes, and other pointy domestic objects, in order to perforate a fallen bandit. For a film in which women’s primary roles are either menial labor, samurai seductresses (despite the pageboy haircuts) or bandit favors, seeing them take the initiative—as bloody as it is—is refreshing. Needless to say, I’m a huge fan of the whole pinky violence subgenre as well.

Hmm, I have drifted off-topic. Imagining girls wielding swords will do that.

This must be at least the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen Seven Samurai, and yet, strangely, each time, I can’t remember which samurais live and which ones die. Well, I know for sure that three live and that at least three die, but the fate of the seventh one is always up in the air for me. That’s a testament to either Kurosawa’s engaging storytelling or my crappy memory. As it is, I remember clearly that, when I was younger, our PBS station in Denver (Channel 6!) used to play Kurosawa movies start to finish, no commercial interruptions. And this, if anything, was my introduction to film as works of art. I eagerly waited with my fingers on the “record” button of the VCR to preserve Throne of Blood (we read MacBeth my senior year of high school) and Ran (which didn’t fit onto one tape) for posterity. Rashomon too, as I recall. Not that I ever watched any of them again once I had recorded them, but that’s the way it was in the days of VCR. Rewinding those tapes was just too onerous.

But as much as I want to say I saw Seven Samurai that way too, I can’t say for sure that it happened. Odd—the more I try to remember if it showed or not, the more the only thing that sticks in my mind is the Japanese character for “intermission.”

#1: Grand Illusion

(originally published Feb. 17, 2010)

Who doesn’t love Jean Gabin? I suppose if you’re going to start a new project, it might as well have some form of Jean Gabin in it. He exudes an effortless cool, and his fleshy face invites (or at least suggests) pinching. And, as the world-weary French officer Maréchal in Grand Illusion, he lends an earthy charm to a film that examines class, warfare, and class warfare.

Matthew and I watched the film in the evening, even though we were slightly tired from a day of teaching. For me, first days (despite this being the second week of classes), are always accompanied by inescapable feelings of awkwardness—meeting a room full of new faces that look up to you to either teach them or to entertain them for an hour and fifteen minutes. On top of that, I haven’t taught an undergraduate creative writing class for about five years, so I felt I was explaining too much and not enough simultaneously. The day I can’t think of something interesting to say about Junot Diaz’s “Ysrael”… My fiction writing students skewed heavily towards those who seemed mostly interested in fantasy and/or vampire novels. Which in itself isn’t a problem, as I was once a total sci-fi/fantasy/horror literature nerd. But I don’t remember what knocked me out of my lavender-colored gossamer space suit, but it sure as hell wasn’t Ann Beattie’s “Janus.” (Come to think of it, it might have been Nabakov’s “Signs and Symbols,” but I slogged through the Norton Anthology so long ago that it no longer matters.)

The less said about composition classes, the better.

Instead, I’ll mention my two favorite scenes in Grand Illusion. One is the obvious one: the discussion of fading aristocracy between the French POW Cpt. Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and his warden, Cpt. von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim). Their conversation about—and understanding of—their diminishing place in the world holds such poignancy. Their stiff manners and noblesse oblige might be the products of a ridiculously privileged life, but it’s what they have, and damn it, they’re going to keep at it until the end. They’re like two dinosaurs circling each other, knowing that they’re already fossils.

The other scene takes place earlier, in what I’ll call the POW camp of love. For a film that only has two actual females towards its end (a ministering nun and a widowed German hausfrau), the first half of the film has females:  1) mentioned in passing as playthings at the French mess hall; 2) pinned against the wall at the German mess hall; 3) or dismissed as Jody-fucking harlots at the first POW camp. In such a male-occupied space, females only exist as fantasies, projections. So when a baby-faced POW Maisonneuve puts on a dress in preparation for a all-prisoner!, all-singing! cabaret show, the other prisoners pause and stare as he wanders through the hall, asking, “Don’t I look funny?” It’s a moment of disbelief and misplaced lust that would almost make me fear for poor Maisonneuve, if it weren’t clear that the scene were being played for humor.