philosophy in film

Imagine being at the intersection of the American Dream and the Manson family.

How would you even begin to encompass it?

Here’s one way: Two brothers tour Charles Manson murder sites. One is a devoted family man. One is devoted to The Family.

After all, how do you really go about describing post-modern America unless you at least try to reconcile the two. Or argue that the two have absolutely nothing in common at all.

But Charles Manson [and explaining him] has always been somewhat of an obsession here in America:

Title card: In 1969, Charles Manson was imprisoned for orchestrating the notorious Tate-LaBianca murders. To this day, Manson remains a source of public fascination, receiving an estimated 60,000 letters each year.

Here are two brothers that, over the years, have become…estranged. One can hardly imagine them being more different. Nick being straight out of the heartland and Conrad being straight out of, well, it’s not the heartland that’s for sure.

Nick is as straight as they come, Conrad as crooked. Some will identitfy with one more than the other. And some [like me] will more or less identify with both. So, basically, this is an exploration into the the ties that bind. Or the lack of ties that don’t. It’s about how the past and present become inextricably intertwined in the dynamics of any one particular family. And families like this one are few and far between.

It’s that part bursing at the seams with dasein.

Anyway, can Charlie Manson reconcile the two? Or, perhaps, Blackbird and Sunshine?

On the other hand, is that something that anyone else would even care about?

Trust me: You’re gonna wonder just how much of this movie is based on what is in fact true about Manson and his followers today. For example, was the Conrad character based on any one of the children that Manson is said to have fathered? Is that part actually true?

Where are Manson’s kids now? laist.com/2007/10/30/where_are_manso.php

IMDb

[b]Was funded via a Kickstarter campaign, where it received $40,607, $607 more than the target: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickstarter

Charles Manson has been imprisoned since late 1969. Assuming 40-year-old Conrad was conceived before Manson was imprisoned, this film must take place in 2010 or earlier. [/b]

no wiki entry
trailer: youtu.be/geP6RMJRqOc

MANSON FAMILY VACATION [2015]
Written and directed by J. Davis

[b]Reporter [interviewing Manson in prison]: I’ve heard that you get a lot of letters from kids. Have you gotten these kind of visits and letters from kids that you don’t know?
Manson: Sure.
Reporter: Why do you think these kids write you?
Manson: Because I am those kids. I am a child. I never grew up. I never lived in your society. I never went to school. I never had a mother and father. I raised myself up.
Reporter: What do you think it is about you that makes people want to be a part of whatever it is you’re a part of?
[suddenly Manson leaps to his feet moving about frenetically, spasmodically]
Manson: I’m brand new. Everything I do is always brand new.

Amanda: You okay?
Nick: I’m good. Expect for the fact that our son Max is a sociopath.[/b]

Max it seems is obsessed – really obsessed – with death.

[b]Amanda: I think it’ll be fun. It’ll be the first time we’ve spent real quality time with him since…probably…well, probably our wedding.
Nick: Oh, my God.
Amanda: What?
Nick: The wedding gift that he gave us? That…thing.
Amanda: Oh. Oh, Fuck!

Conrad: You know Charles Manson?
Nick: Uh, yeah, I know who Charles Manson is.
Conrad: Well, there are these sites all around the city, um, that I was hoping we could go to. I have it all mapped out. It’s amazing 'cause, like, no one knows that, like, right there, you know, that’s the LaBianca house, you know. Or the Tate house.
Nick: Wait, these are the murder site houses?
Conrad: You… You’re acting so uptight, this is a thing people do.
Nick: No, they don’t. No, this is the thing that weird conspiracy people do. Trust me, I have friends that come into LA all the time. We’ve never…Manson has never even come up.

Nick [listening to a news report on the Manson murders]: "Charles Manson set into motion a wave of terror in Southern California. In two nights, Manson’s murderous spree took the lives of at least seven people, including actress Sharon Tate. Manson was portrayed as a guitar-playing ex-convict with a following of runaway young women, his so-called family members. The cult, or family, spoke of launching a holy war against the rich and the powerful. The Tate-LaBiance murders were bizarre and merciless. They triggered a public panic and raised the specter of drug-crazed youths slaughtering their victims at random.

Conrad [with Nick where the Sharon Tate house once used to be]: Oh, my God! This is probably the same pole that Tex climbed up. See, they thought there was gonna be an alarm, so he climbed up with wire cutters, and he snipped all the wires. He jumped over, and then right then there was this young kid driving away. He was just randomly there that night. Never been there before. And Tex, like, starts stabbing him through the window. But he scooches back, put his hands up. So Tex has to shoot him four times in the chest.
Nick: Okay. You know what? I’m gonna go back to the car.

Nick: Charles Manson killed people right here. You have to be fucking respectful about that.
Conrad: He wasn’t even here that night. He wasn’t at the Tate house or the LaBianca. He didn’t kill anyone.
Nick: Then why is he in jail for murder?
Conrad: Exactly! I mean, it was a fucking conspiracy…It’s because of his ideas. They couldn’t have someone that free being, living out amongst us, 'cause it would make everyone else feel like that.[/b]

Of course that isn’t entirely true, is it?

Conrad: So, wait, before we go, I got to tell you, um, this table that we’re sitting at…This very same table. This is the same booth that they ate at before they went home that night.
Nick: Who? What are you talking about?
Conrad: Sharon Tate and her friends. They ate here before that same night they went home. And then, Tex and the girls came.
Nick: Yeah, okay. Yeah. Got it. Got it. So that’s why we’re here.
Conrad: Oh, come on. It’s just a fun fact.
Nick: You think it’s a fun fact, but it’s not. I mean, it’s, like, really disturbing.
Conrad: Okay, I’m sorry, but I mean, it is something that I’ve been thinking about that…I mean, a lot of people ignore death, and it’s something to think about and not just shove away.
Nick: Are you… Do you hear yourself right now? I mean, you… You’re talking about not ignoring death, and embracing it.

See? How do you reconcile that?

[b]Conrad [to Nick]: This is the LaBianca house, man. Holy shit! Come on. Come on. I bet the kitchen is on this side, and the kitchen is key here, okay? Because that’s where they wrote on the fridge in blood, “Helter Skelter”.

Conrad [posing as the LaBianca’s grandson!]: I’m sure this is not a subject you’re fond of, but I was just wondering, you know, after what happened here, do you ever feel, like, you know, just creeped out, you know?
Janice: No. Not really. It is strange, knowing that Charles Manson was actually in the house.
Nick: Wait. What? Charles Manson was in the house?
Janice: Yes. He’s the one who broke in.
Nick [looking at Conrad]: That’s weird, because I had heard that Charles Manson was not a part of the murders at all.
Conrad: Well, no, he just came in and tied them up, but he wasn’t part of the murders.

Janice [to Conrad]: A horrible thing happened here! And you want to celebrate that?! Haven’t you ever lost anyone?

Nick: I personally think that you expected Dad to do everything for you as a kid. But, like… .
Conrad: No, just to love me, maybe.
Nick: He’s an army guy, all right? And he has, you know, he has that power thing, and that’s part of his setup. Like, you had to add that to that a little bit, if you want…
Conrad: That’s not love. That’s not raising someone to be their own person. That’s making a little fucking clone.
Nick: So, uh, so what, I’m dad’s little soldier? That’s basically how you see me?

Conrad [to Nick]: You know, Dad wasn’t the only one in the family who treated me like a fucking outcast, okay? You did your fair share of treating me like a piece of shit.

Manson [being interviewed in prison]: I’m just a messenger of the truth.
Reporter: God’s messenger?
Manson: Life’s messenger. But we use the word “God”. “God” hooks all the other words up. I’m the pope. I’m ten times the pope. I’m 50 times the pope. But I’m the pope in the hills and the mountains. I’m already out of here. This enclosure here? I’m out of here. My body is stuck here, but my thought is already gone.

Nick: What are you guys talking about?
Conrad: Oh, nothing, just hanging out, playing…
Max: We’re reading Helter Skelter. There’s really cool pictures of dead people.
[Nick, furious, drags Conrad out of the house]
Conrad: All right, before you start, I was just looking at the book, he asked me questions. He’s curious. What am I gonna fucking say?
Nick: You’re showing him dead bodies?
Conrad: I was trying to…
Nick: You’re showing him the Manson family? What else are you gonna show him?
Conrad: I’m sorry, but he’s the one who kept asking me questions.
Nick: He’s a child. He’s gonna want to do whatever you want to do. You just say no. If he wants to look at it you just say no. That’s what you do.
Conrad: Why? I’m not gonna fucking lie to him.
Nick: Why don’t you just open up Internet fucking porn and show him everything that’s out there.
[Conrad breaks out in a fit of laughter]
Nick: It’s not funny, dude. He’s having a really hard time and I don’t need you putting your shit on him.
Conrad: Okay. Well, why is he having a hard time?
Nick: “Why is he having a hard time?” He’s a child. Growing up is hard. People have hard times.
Conrad: Okay, yeah. It has nothing to do with like how you treat him?
Nick: You are so fucking clueless right now, you have no idea what you’re talking about…Oh, my God, dude. You are so fucking out of touch with reality. I can’t even deal with it.
Conrad: Yeah, fuck you.

Nick [after Conrad puts a CD in the car stereo]: Who’s this?
Conrad: Is it okay?
Nick: Yeah, it’s pretty good.
Conrad: It’s Charlie. That’s him singing! Oh, it was his main thing. He was so into music. That’s what he wanted to do. Like, in LA, he knew Neil Young, and like, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys really liked him. He was so close to getting a record contract…

Conrad [motioning toward a man in the bar]: That’s Blackbird. That’s him. I’m gonna check it out.
Nick: Why is this girl in the photograph wearing a Manson t-shirt?
Conrad: Is she?
Nick: Yeah. She’s wearing the same t- shirt that you had on.
Conrad: I…I hadn’t noticed that. I’m gonna just go over and talk to him.
Nick: Wait, wait a second. What the fuck is going on?

Nick: You’re coming out here to work with Charles Manson?
Conrad: Dude.
Nick: See, I knew.
Conrad: I fucking bring up Charles Manson and you fucking freak out.
Nick: Everybody freaks out! Everybody freaks out when you bring up Charles Manson!

Conrad: Holy shit. Is that what I think it is?
Blackbird: Sure is.
Conrad: Oh, God.
Nick: What is it?
Blackbird: It’s the bus. The Manson family bus.

Blackbird: Charlie drove everywhere in this bus. Drove all over California, stopped by the side of the road, picked up kids that had been kicked out of their homes, you know.
Conrad: Yeah. He helped a lot of people.
Blackbird: You know, this world is more of a mess now even than it was then. We got these guys down at Washington, can’t get out of their own way. Rich people, snacking on the poor. We got fire coming out of our water faucets 'cause of all the fracking that’s going on. We got fish belly-up in the rivers and streams. We do a lot of talking about it. But we’re not doing very much about any of those things.

Blackbird: You know, maybe you don’t know this, but old Charlie, he had quite a few kids. And they locked him up and they took all the kids away. And they put them with new families. Like yours.
Nick: Yeah, I think my parents would have known. I mean, they have to reveal that legally.
Blackbird: They didn’t reveal anything back then. Nothing. Conrad was a ward of the state and he was adopted just like a normal kid.
[he points to a photo on the wall]
Blackbird: See that baby? That’s your brother.

Man: Hey, Conrad, Charlie’s on the phone.

Nick [to Conrad]: Dad was right about you.

Nick: I wanna see my brother.
Sunshine: I don’t think he wants to see you.
Nick [shouting into the house]: Connie!
Sunshine: He went to visit Charlie. Connie’s dad.

Reporter [interveiwing Manson in prison]: Somewhere out there, there’s at least one son, that we know of, that’s your child. Look in that camera. What would you say to that kid? What do you say to your son out there? This could be the first time he’s ever seeing his father. What do you say to him?
Manson: You gotta catch it on your own, boy. Train’s hard. The road’s rough.
Reporter: And that’s it?
Manson: That’s all I knew. That’s all anyone ever told me. And you wanna hear something? He’ll do it better than me. Whatever he does. He’ll do it a little better. Kids do, don’t they? Yeah. That’s what makes them such a gas. They always seem to get through.[/b]

Billy Loomis: Movies don’t create psycho’s; movies make psycho’s more creative.

Scream is perhaps Wes Craven’s best movie. And, going further, I’d rank Scream above films like the original Star Wars and Terminator 2 (but not the first Terminator).

Two things first. This is a very long movie. Three hours and sixteen minutes. And it won the Palm d’Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. It is the longest film ever to win this award.

So, it is well worth the time it takes to watch it.

Winter Sleep: Hibernation.

Now, unlike bears, human beings do not hibernate for the winter. Not literally. But in some parts of the world the winters are long and hard enough to keep folks “shut in” – shut into the confines of one or another sense of isolation. In this instance, in a hotel located in “the steppes of the Central Anatolia region of Cappadocia, Turkey.”

And that’s all it takes for those who harbor any number of resentments towards those sharing the same “inescapable shelter”. Everything comes to the surface.

In one sense this film explores the dynamics of a relationship in which the “family arguments” come and go and are “resolved” not by the most reasonable frame of mind propounded [whatever that might be] but by the one most skilled in the art of rhetoric. And Aydin [the consummate narcissist] was once an actor. He knows his way around a stage. And, on a stage, performance is everything.

And in a world shrunk down basically to family/village interactions – interactions bursting at the seams with ressentiment – “winning” often revolves around things other than whatever the particular “truth” might be.

And then that ever ubiquitous tug of war between that which you really think and feel and how instead you are forced to embody a persona in your relationships with others. The turmoil inside and the age-old scripts that we adapt/adopt in order to keep everything from just exploding.

But: What is this but one tiny slice of the historical and cultural pie. Each of us as individuals will react to it all based on our own particular historical and cultural prejudices…on our own particular experiences reflected in [and derived from] our own particular world.

Still, it is a film in which intelligent and articulate men and women go about the business of exploring that which I think is the most important question of all: How ought one to live?

And, in particular, one gains insight into why some segments of the Muslim population today might wish to retain the ways of old. Back then there was always a place for everyone and everyone always knew their place. Not so in our post-modern world. No one is really at all sure how one ought to live. And even though the village here is way out in the sticks, modern communication technology and the internet create a whole new dynamic.

Above all, it depicts [in this day and age] the sheer futility of human communication when, in any number of contexts, we can only understand another up to a point. Then everything becomes entangled in enormously complex points of view. At least among those who venture down below the surface of human interactions.

Look for the part that is all about class. About those who have and those who don’t. And how that becomes intertwined in this whole new world.

IMDb

[b]Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan revealed that he had more than 200 hours of material and his original cut was 4 hours 30 minutes. He then “worked hard” to make it down to 3 hours 15 minutes.

Winter Sleep was inspired by the short stories of Chekhov, as well as works by Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Voltaire.

Turkish director Ceylan is being sued for alleged animal cruelty as one of the horses was tortured during capture. The Law for the Protection of Animals in Turkey stipulates various fines for those who commit animal cruelty. A draft code that was submitted to the Turkish Parliament this month calls for jail time for those who abuse animals.

Despite being husband and wife, Aydin and Nihal don’t so much as touch each other once throughout the entire film, likely a deliberate decision from the filmmakers to show how distant the two are to each other, both emotionally and physically.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Sleep_(film
trailer: youtu.be/gywsSqeABuw

WINTER SLEEP [Kis Uykusu] 2014
Written in part and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

[b]Ismail [to Hidayet]: Cut it out. You took our fridge and TV for a lousy rent. Isn’t that enough? Now you’re hassling a kid?

Hamdi: Your window is broken and we’ll pay for it. We’ll pay the rent too as soon as we can. We haven’t forgotten. God willing, I’ll bring it to you in person. We are just having a hard time.
Hidayet: We’re not here for that. That’s a a different issue. [/b]

Of course it’s not a different issue at all. And then the part where Allah gets factored in. And Marx too.

[b]Aydin: It’s not about wealth and poverty. Poverty existed in the past, too. If you only have three olives, you can place them nicely on a plate, or gobble them out of a plastic bag.
Necla: I know what you mean.
Aydin: I told you we went to the hodja’s? You know, our tenant. If you saw how filthy it was, how messy.
Necla: Did you go in?
Aydin: No, the garden. They’ve ruined it. First of all you are a man of God. You should be a model to your community. Shouldn’t you be neat and tidy?

Aydin [to Necla]: My kingdom may be small but at least I’m the king here.

Necla [to Aydin]: Sometimes on the internet some awful writers get praised to high heaven. Everyone has their fans somewhere. That’s why I think one shouldn’t take such praise from the locals so seriously.

Aydin: I must say that you surprised me, Nihal.
Nihal: Why?
Aydin: Well, because thanks to you this hotel has been run like a charity for years.
Nihal: What are you trying to say?
Aydin: Well, when a chronic philanthropist, who has helped almost every school in the area, opposes this idea so firmly, I fail to understand.
Nihal: What is there to understand? It’s a matter of urgency. There are primary school with leaky roofs and rotten windows, little kids studying with their gloves on. Isn’t it more logical to solve those problems first? We’ve been collecting donations for this for a long time now. But it never attracted your attention. So I don’t understand your sudden charity.[/b]

The trials and tribulations of the well-off: Who to help first?

Suavi: You know all this poverty and hardship is like a natural disaster. In a sense, it’s the will of God. You can’t fight destiny.
Aydin: But God also gave us the intelligence to fight such things.
Suavi: That’s true. However there are people specially created for those tasks. You should leave those tasks to them. You’re a creative man, you are an artist. Why bother yourself with such things? Stick to your own work.

Again, there is a rationalization for any behavior.

[b]Aydin: Have you asked Ilyas why he did it?
Hamdi: Yes, of course, I asked him.
Aydin: And what did he say?
Hamdi: Well, Mr Aydin, the kid was upset by the bill collector, so he went and did a stupid thing. Especially seeing his father get beaten up.
Aydin: Beaten up?
Hamdi: When the debt collectors came, Ismail tried to stop them obviously. And the police were there. So things got out of hand.

Aydin: Now, Hamdi, listen…I’ve got various houses and shops in town. If I tried to look after all of them myself, I’d have no time to work on my books and articles. So I let Hidayet and the lawyers deal with the rents and the lawsuits. I often don’t know what they are doing. And if they tell me, I tend to forget…I wasn’t even aware you were my tenants. When the rent is not paid, lawyers do these things automatically.[/b]

The part embedded in Allah, the part embedded in Marx: To evict or not to evict Ismail. Of course Aydin punts it to Hidayet and “the lawyers”. Seque then to this…

[b]Aydin [to Necla, reading from his column]: “In a country with a 99% Muslim population, don’t people deserve men of God. Men who are cultivated, neat, whose very presence is reassuring? The weekly sermon is prepared by our imams and will be heard with pleasure and admiration and will elevate the people. Islam is a religion of civilization and high culture.”

Necla: If we were to make this idea of not resisting evil the basis of our behavior, what kind of life would we have?
Aydin: What kind of life? Thieves, murderers, psychos would prosper. Chaos would reign everywhere.
Necla: What would be left then?
Aydin: Cripples and madhouses.
Necla: Maybe you’re right. But I couldn’t take the easy way out like you do.[/b]

For example by excluding the act of sending “debt collectors” out to beat up a tenant unable to pay the rent. No evil there to resist, right? To wit:

[b]Necla [at the dinner table]: Maybe we’re fooling ourselves when we’re fighting evil. As if we didn’t want to look at every aspect, we hide some.

Nihal: It’s easy to understand what Nacla is saying. She says if something bad is done to us, by not resisting, the evildoer may be sorry and give up.
Aydin: Is that possible?
Nihal: That’s not the question. I’m just saying one could try.
Aydin: So the Jews should deport themselves so that Hitler doesn’t get tired? He says, “Here they are, no point in gassing them”?
Nihal: You are joking?
Aydin: No, that is how I understand it. Help evildoers do evil so they stop doing evil. Never heard such nonsense before.

Necla: I wonder what would have happened if I had behaved differently with Nectet.
Nihal: You mean, if you hadn’t resisted all the bad things he did, he would’ve finally felt ashamed?
Necla: Yes. Exactly. You put it well. I know it sounds absurd, but it isn’t, believe me.
Nihal: I’m sorry, Necla, but I find that hard to believe. People don’t change that much after a certain age. On the contrary, all their bad habits get even worse. So being silent in the face of evil does nothing but make the other feel even more justified.

Necla [more or less to herself]: Those petty, multiple-meaning, sarcastic words…and those little cynical lip movements. I realize how sick I am of it, how much I hate it.

Aydin: Maybe she reads my articles in secret.
Necla: I believe she does. She’s an expert at criticizing by remaining silent.

Necla: In the old days, we admired you. We thought you’d do great things, become quite famous even. But it didn’t happen.
Aydin. Hmm. The elephant gave birth to a mouse. Sorry to disappoint you.
Necla: It’s obviously not your fault. It’s us who set the bar too high.

Aydin: What about “Flowers of the Steppes”?
Necla: To be honest, that’s the article that actually made me think like this.
Aydin: Really? In what way?
Necla: How can I put it? This soppy romanticism. This naive, unconvincing self-belief. Takes no risk, for one thing. It looks like the writer adopts positive values accepted by all, just to endear himself. Sometimes the disguise of lyricism makes it stink of sentimentality.
Aydin: But dear, you’re not coming up with coherent, constructive criicism. Like your remarks are always hiding something. That’s what’s annoying. So I get to thinking it’s me you hate, not the articles.

Aydin: Religion, morals, this and that. Nothing of your interest.
Necla [of Hamdi and Ismail]: Now I see. You found a victim and you’re making the most of it. Stop harrassing the poor man.
Aydin: Necla, I’m losing my temper. What does it have to do with it?
Necla: I should ask what religion, faith, spirituality have to do with you? Have you ever set foot in a mosque? Have you ever prayed?

Necla [to Aydin but more to herself]: I wish my threshold of self-deception was as low as yours. Then I could easily find things worth doing and escape this boredom perhaps.

Necla [more to herself]: I can’t believe how I left a place like Istanbul and agreed to come and live with you. My soul’s withering here.
Aydin: I feel at home wherever my books are. I feel no need for another place. You must be able to create a world for yourself…you’re bored because yoiu sit around doing nothing. Of course you’re bored. We must work, have a passion.
Necla: It depends on your definition of “working”. It doesn’t mean running around pointlessly.

Necla: Nihal. She walks around like she was a guardian angel, but in reality, she doesn’t do shit. Glaring at people with that contemptuous look.
Aydin: Are we both now guilty because you do nothing? Do something. Nobody’s stopping you.

Necla [of Nihal]: Philanthropy isn’t tossing a bone to a hungry dog, it’s sharing when you are just as hungry.

Aydin: Look who’s talking about realism. Dealing with art, struggling for people’s spiritual development…it’s “alchemy”, you say.
Necla: No dear, what I am saying is this: If all you thinkers thought about solving the big problems all this trivia you fuss about now would solve itself in the process. If you go up in a balloon to see a town, you’ll incidentally see the trees, rivers and meadows too. But no, you focus on one tiny spot. Lazy, cowardly, conservative. But no one has the courage to face the truth. If you’re looking for something more real, you’ll have to be destructive when necessary, dear Aydin. But since you’re an actor, you forget about being real, being yourself. You jump from one personality to another, like a grasshopper.
Aydin: So, you want me to be realistic? Alright, listen, then. You’re a person sentenced to loneliness and bordom for life. Because you’re a coward, because you’re lazy. You’re used to living like a parasite expecting everyone to help you. You act as though the whole world owes you something…Thinking more important than action? Ha ha ha. There we go. The age old excuse of cowards and slackers.[/b]

Nobody ever wins these arguments. And yet to be human is to engage them. And that’s more or less my point, isn’t it?

[b]Aydin: I heard that you raised funds here last night.
Nihal: Yes, we did. So what?
Aydin: Why didn’t you tell me?
Nihal: Did I have to?
Aydin: You didn’t have to, but I would have appreciated it. I might have wanted to make a significant contribution.
Nihal: I don’t think that is a good idea. We’re doing fine on our own. We don’t need you, thanks.
Aydin: Come on, one always needs more. After all, I’m a wealthy man.
Nihal: Nobody expects anything from you.
Aydin: From you neither, darling. Yet you created a huge committee in our house without me knowing. Didn’t you?
Nihal: Aydin, listen to me please. We’ve lived in peace for two years, each to his own affairs. What’s suddenly changed? Yesterday your aim was to humiliate me and my guests. Think I didn’t notice?
Aydin: Me? Never even crossed my mind.

Aydin: Nihal, my darling. You haven’t got tired of banging the same drum for years. As if I’m keeping you here by force. I’ve never stopped you, have I? Go whenever you like. Maybe you should. Try it. Find a job at the minimum wage. From 8 to 6. After work, you can go on saving the world, if you have energy left.
Nihal: I’ll do it if necessary. Much better than wasting my life living like a parasite with an arrogant man like you. Thanks to you, I’m drifting in vain here. I’m sponging off you. I spend your money. But I pay for it with my freedom and my useless loyalty. Do you know how donating even a little of someone else’s money feels?
Aydin: No, I don’t. And why? Because I’ve worked like a dog all my life not to know. [/b]

Nobody ever wins these arguments either. But it helps to be the one with all the loot.

Aydin [regarding the donations for the needy school]: Nihal, let’s be reasonable. Don’t you trust my experience, my honesty?
Nihal: I’m still not sure what you are after.
Aydin: What could I possibly be after? I’m just trying to prevent any problems for my family. I have a right, don’t I?..Now, let me see the donations and your expenses.

The gap between the best of intentions and the rigors of the law.

[b]Aydin: You once told me that if I could change some of my behavior, you would forgive me completely. Remember? Which means for you I am guilty of something. Therefore, calmly and briefly, in terms I can understand, I ask you to tell me what I am guilty of. What have I done to you? Is it that you are young, beautiful and would like to live your own life? I’m much older than you and you hate me for that? Is that my guilt? I never forced you to marry me. I never restricted your freedom. You live as you wish, independently in your part of the house. You have even set up a huge committee here. If you want even more freedom, it’s yours. No one’s stopping you. I mean it. If you want a divorce, I won’t stop you.
Nihal: I don’t want anything like that. Of course I wanted to marry you. It’s not that I’m young and you’re old…or I could love someone else if I were free. I always felt that I was older than you anyway. But you are an unbearable man. You are selfish, spiteful, cynical. That’s what you are guilty of.

Nihal: You’re actually a well-educated, honest, fair and conscienctious man. Generally you are like that. I won’t deny it. But you sometimes use those virtues to suffocate people, to crush and humiliate them. Your high principles make you hate the world. You hate believers, because for you, believing is a sign of underdevelopment and ignorance. But you also hate non-believers for their lack of faith or ideals. You dislike the old for being conservative bigots and not thinking freely. And you dislike the young for thinking freely and abandoning the traditions. You defend the virtues of community. But you suspect everyone of being a thief or a bandit. [/b]

Sounds like another rendition of my own dilemma.

[b]Nihal [to Aydin]: In the past, you stopped us splitting up, using various methods. I was too young to leave. I didn’t have the courage or the money. Or anywhere better to go. But didn’t you feel any remorse seeing a young, healthy, proud, lively woman wither away in emptiness, boredom and fear? In our first years, I felt fear. Now I feel ashamed.

Aydin: You wouldn’t know, but people like me who grew up in villages with not even electricity, understand the joy and pleasure of being in a small, warm, cozy room like this, listening to my wife, even if she is screaming in my face how bad I am. Our youth was very dull, Nihal. We didn’t know how to be happy. So we may not know how to make others happy. But as I said we had no bad intentions. We set out with good intentions, pure, innocent dreams. We wanted a better life and society.
Nihal: Sorry, but I don’t believe you. I’ve heard it all before. You’re not on stage anymore. We all start with good intentions. But as you said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So all this means nothing. All those fine words mean nothing to me now. When you start talking like this I feel you’re pulling a trick to get your way. I have never understood what you really want from me. Even so, I’ll ask you one more time. Whatever you call my activity, self-deception or feminine logic, leave me alone. Because that is my only consolation.
Aydin: Nihal, darling. You’re a good-hearted, smart, rational, sensible woman. Everything you say and do is very reasonable. It really is. But not seeing a man for what he is, idolizing him like a god, and then being mad at him because he’s not a god. Do you think that’s fair? I wish I were the successful, charismatic actor you dreamed of. But I am not. I’m a simple man. And what’s worse, I’d like to stay that way.

Aydin: I suggest you work with people who are conscientious, principled and have moral sense. One day, you’ll understand better.
Nihal: Conscience. Morals. Ideals. Principles. The purpose of life. You’re always saying those words. The words you always use to humiliate, hurt, or denigrate someone. But if you ask me, if someone uses these words this much, he’s the one to suspect.

Aydin [to Levent]: Is it fair to accuse me just because we have a few bucks? Did I create this world? That’s how the system is. This is how God created it. What can I do about it? Justice doesn’t even exist in nature. So why should it exist here?

Levent: I would like to quote Shakespeare, by way of a conclusion. “Conscience is but a word that cowards use devised at first to keep the strong in awe.
[suddenly he slams his hand down on the table]
Levent: Our strong arms be our conscience, swords are laws.”

Aydin [voiceover, looking up at Nihal]: Nihal, I didn’t go away. I couldn’t. Whether it’s because I’ve grown old, or I’ve gone mad, or because I’ve become a different man, think what you’d like. I just don’t know. But this new man inside me for a few days won’t let me go away. Please don’t ask me to do either. I now understand that nothing is calling me to Istanbul. Everything is alien to me there, as it is everywhere else. I want you to know that I have no one but you. And I miss you every minute, every second that goes by. But my pride will never let me tell you this. I know how terrible or impossible it would be to part from you. Just as I know that you do not love me anymore. I know we can’t go back to the old days. And there is no need to. Take me with you like a servant, like a slave. And let us continue our life, even if we do it your way. Forgive me.[/b]

What we are not privy to are the thoughts of Nihal. Just a shot of Aydin sitting at his desk [as he always does] and then a shot of Nihal sitting forlornly alone in a room.

There have been countless numbers of love triangles depicted on film. And the consequences of them are more or less predictable. Up to and including murder.

And yet it is when there are children involved that our reactions are often most swollen. And that is because children are always innocent. And when they are wrenched back and forth – a pawn in what can become a deadly, despicable game – it all becomes that much more excruciating.

Here? Well, remember that scene from Fatal Attraction when Anne Archer arrives to pick up her daughter from school only to find that Glenn Close beat her to it? That was another “love triangle”, wasn’t it? But not all of them involve psychopaths. Still, enough of them do involve men and women who are, for all practically purposes, close enough. The two films are very similar. Only the wolf here is particularly monstrous.

Then the part that Nietzsche made famous: beware that when you go to slay the monster you do not become a monster too.

Or, instead, is Rosa more a sociopath? And which is worse?

What we get here are “stories” of what happened. But more then just points of view because we can never really be certain if the stories being told are actually true. Which takes us down into the labyrinths that come to embody human motivation and intention. Only here the complications become intertwined in a truly bizarre trajectory. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.

The opening shot depicts [dimly, at a distance] the famous statue of Jesus Christ seeming to sweep all of Rio de Janeiro unto His bosom. But: Where He might fit into a story such as this I can only leave up to you.

This one is said to be “based on real events.” But the film is so tiny it is barely given a mention at all at sites like wiki. So there is no reference provided to the “real world”. We can only speculate on just how big the gap might be here.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wolf_at_the_Door_(film
trailer: youtu.be/egay1wVJ1eE

A WOLF AT THE DOOR [O Lobo Atrás da Porta] 2013
Written and directed by Fernando Coimbra

[b]Teacher: You just missed her.
Sylvia: What do you mean?
Teacher: Clara already left with Sheila.
Sylvia: What Sheila?
Teacher: You called, said you were sick and that your neighbor was coming to pick her up.
Sylvia: I’m not sick, I didn’t call today. What Sheila? I don’t have a neighbor called Sheila.
Teacher: What? What do you mean?
Sylvia: Where’s my daughter?!

Detective: Who was the woman who fetched the girl instead of her mother?
Teacher: Oh God, there are so many mothers calling me, all the time, there’s no way to be sure it’s really them talking!
Detective: You have to have a way of knowing if what they say is true! How can you hand over a child to a complete stranger, in a city like Rio de Janerio.[/b]

But then this:

Teacher: Listen she wasn’t a stranger, OK? The girl ran over to her, jumped into her arms, all friendly like.

In other words, the other woman. The woman that Sylvia knows nothing about.

Detective: And what is your relationship with this woman, Rosa Maria Correa?
[Bernardo just stares at him]
Detective: Is she your lover?

But then the plot really thickens…

[b]Detective: Where’s the girl?
Rosa: I don’t know. It’s the truth. I only did what I was told. God, I gave her to another woman. That’s all. She asked me to, and I did it. I didn’t so anything with that girl, I swear.
Detective: Another woman?
Rosa: Yeah.
Detective: What woman?

Woman: My man is cheating on me with some bitch. And she’s married…a real slut. And the two-timers meet when her husband is out to meet his girlfriend, and I don’t have to tell you who that is. Right honey?
Rosa: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Woman: I know you’re Bernardo’s lover, so don’t give me that. But that’s your problem, it’s none of my business. The problem is Sylvia, his wife. [/b]

It’s just amazing how many different directions these things can go.

[b]Detective: I asked you in because I need more details of your involvemnt with Rosa, a few things I don’t understand.
Bernardo: It’s a routine affair. These things happen. Sex without any involvement, that sort of thing. Routine. Men do things like that…They’re like…unavoidable. It’s what happens to us. You know what I am talking about, right?
Detective: No. No, I don’t, Bernardo.

Rosa [in a flashback]: I never knew it was so easy to buy a gun.
Bernardo: What are you talking about?
Rosa: Yeah. I thought that you had to have a gun permit, right? Should be.
Bernardo: What do you mean, you’re thinking of buying a gun?
Rosa: I already did.
Bernardo [chuckling]: You bought a gun?
Rosa: Yeah. A revolver. Real small, you know? A woman’s gun.

Detective: Bernardo, is there anything else you’d like to add, something I should know?
Bernardo [after a long pause]: There’s one thing, but I don’t think it is important…I got this call, not long ago, from a woman. She said her husband, her boyfriend…according to her, was my wife’s lover, Sylvia’s lover.That they’d meet in the afternoons when I was at work, but I didn’t give it much though. I’m sure it was something Rosa made up. That she got some friend of hers to call and hassle me.

Detective [to Rosa]: Here inside the station, things can get ugly. We get somebody innocent, beat them up and congressmen, NGOs, human rights groups, they all coming beating down the door, making a lot of noise. But then every now and then, we get lucky and get some tramp, a criminal, like you, nobody feels sorry for, no way. In other words, I can do whatever I want with you to make you tell me what I want to know. I can break a couple of your teeth, your fingers, nobody is going to complain. You know why? Because, happily, in this country, in this city, rapists, people who beat up old folks, mistreat children, abuse chldren…People will be beating at our door wanting to lynch them.

Friend of Bernardo [at work]: He left already. His wife called and he had to take care of…
Rosa: What wife?
Friend of Bernardo: His wife.
Rosa: He’s married?
Friend of Bernardo: As married as can be.

Rosa [to Bernardo]: I don’t like lies…

Bernardo: I think the whole world is going to end today.
Rosa: You think your wife is getting suspicious?
Bernardo: Yes.
Rosa: And she accepts it?
Bernardo: In a way, she won’t have sex with me at home.
Rosa: Aren’t you afraid she’ll find a lover too?
Bernardo: Sylvia? I doubt it.
Rosa: I wouldn’t be so sure if I were you.

Rosa: May I cut a lock of your hair?
Clara: What for?
Rosa: To remember you by.

Man’s voice: The defendant, Rosa Maria Correa, also stated she does not regret what she did and does not want to talk about it. When asked how she got the gun, she said that buying one was easier than she imagined. She stated that she has no interest in what will happen to her. She said she didn’t want a lawyer nor any form of defense, being aware of what she did and requests no pardon. That’s all she said.[/b]

Lives can fall apart. They can begin to disintegrate for any number of reasons. Why? Because the trials and the tribulations that might descend down upon any one of us might come from any number of directions. A crisis for example. Your health, your relationships, your finances, your will to live.

And this is but one more film in which a man is driven existentially to this particular fork in the road. He is forced to choose a direction that will either makes things better or make things worse.

And that always involves options. Or in being able to spot them. Or [in this case] being able to create them.

But that can only really be understood from within the framework of a particular context.

And this is a context like few others. One, for example, that is bursting at the seams with… controversy. Particularly in this day and age. In other words, how will you react to their relationship: He is a 47 year old man, she is an 11 year old child.

What’s appropriate? What’s inappropriate? And what is just downright creepy?

He more or less kidnaps her. And she more or less agrees to go along. She’s 11, but in many respects she is mature beyond her years. Otherwise the film makes no sense at all. And it would certainly be a lot more disturbing.

All the more spooky are the stories that David tells of his past. You’re not really sure what to believe…or how they are related to his behavior now. Or the part with Tommie in the bathtub. Or the scene where Tommie watches David and Linny having sex.

Or the ending: Does he stop the car or not?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_(2015_American_film
trailer: youtu.be/jCCGvq9QWWU

LAMB [2015]
Written in part and directed by Ross Partridge

[b]David: You can make yourself somethin’ decent to eat. Something healthy.
Dad: Meatloaf. And a little bit of gin. Gin too much to ask for a man dying alone here?

David: Hey, Dad. I need to ask you something.
Dad: Leave me alone. I got no answers.

David: You know, your friends are over there, laughing at you. You know that, don’t you? I’m gonna give you a little tip. Something that you can hold on to forever.
Tommie: What?
David: I’ll even give you this whole pack of cigarettes. In exchange, you let me play a little trick on your friend, Syd. Teach her a lesson for doing this to you.
Tommie: What kind of trick?
David: Let’s scare them. Let’s pretend I’m kidnapping you, okay?

David [to Tommie]: You should know better. I could be taking you somewhere to kill you right now. Your friends should know better. It was a very dumb thing for you to do to be coming up to me like that…Look, I’m sorry. I’m not a bad guy, but I could’ve been.

David: Maybe this should be our last outing for a while.
Tommie: Why? 'Cause it’s weird?
David: Yeah, 'cause it’s weird.

David: You really wanna see those mountains?
Tommie: Yeah.
David: I mean, you wanna go with me?
Tommie: Sure.
David: A secret trip in your secret life. You finally get your camping trip.
Tommie: For how long?
David: Just a week. Not even two Mondays. I’ll bring you back before anyone starts to worry. We’re not gonna tell anybody where we went. You’ll have to swear to God.
Tommie: Swear to God.
David: You promise?
Tommie: I promise.

Tommie [in a hotel room]: Can I come with you to the store?
David: No.
Tommie: Why?
David: I want you to spend some time here alone. You remember how to get home from here, more or less?
[he takes money out of his wallet and puts it on the nightstand]
David: That’s for a cab ride home.
Tommie: I don’t wanna go home.
David: Look, I want you to think about this, okay? I want you to take an hour, so think about this really hard, whether or not you wanna stay here and wait for me. This will look a lot like a kidnapping to other people. Right?
Tommie: Oh.
David: Here you are with a stranger in a hotel room.
Tommie: But you’re not a stranger.
David: Yeah, I know, but maybe this makes you feel a little funny.
Tommie: It doesn’t.
David: I’m 47 and you’re 11.

Tommie: What if I wanna go back, like, at a certain point…later?
David: Well, we’ll put you on a plane and get you home. All you have to do is say the word.

David: We have to do a better job of understanding the world around us.
Tommie: Don’t do that. Jesse does that.
David: Does what?
Tommie: Says “we” when he means “me.”

David: Look…I know your mom’s worried, but how about we send her a postcard, okay? It’ll be such a relief to her to know that you’re out here in the world, having so much fun. And she’ll love you more than ever and you’ll love her more than ever. Right? Hey. There’s room in your heart for more love, okay?
Tommie: Okay.

David: We have to get you to the bath, cool you down. I don’t want it to burn.
Tommie: No! I don’t want a bath!
David: I’m just gonna put you in the bath…
Tommie: I don’t want a bath!
David: We have to rinse it off. Come on.
Tommie: No!
David: Okay, look. Just gonna rinse you off so we can get you cleaned up so you can sleep better, okay?
Tommie: Go away!
David: You have to get out of your clothes so we can rinse you off!
Tommie: Go away!
David: Can you give me your shirt so we can…
Tommie: Go away!
David: Give me your shirt so we can rinse you off, Tommie. Okay? Just give me your shirt, so we can rinse you off.
Tommie: Go away. Go away! Go away! Go away! Go away! Go away! Go away! Go away! I wanna go home!

Mr. Foster: Ain’t much of a place for a girl.
Tommie: I like it.
Mr. Foster: Yeah, well, a girl don’t get to choose where she lands, does she?

Tommie: Will you miss me when you take me back?
David: No hard questions. Let’s just enjoy the morning.

Tommie: You think my mom called the police by now?
David: Honestly? Yeah. Yeah, I do.
Tommie: Are you gonna get in trouble?
David: No.
Tommie: How do you know?
David: You don’t have to worry. This is gonna be good for everybody. There’ll be a new light about you. And you’ll know about this country’s secret heart. And you’ll be drenched in it. It’s gonna get all over everybody.
Tommie: Okay.

David: What would’ve happened if I didn’t react like an angry uncle? What do you think Mr. Foster would’ve thought of a man letting his niece drink a beer like that?
Tommie: I don’t know.
David: It’s child abuse, Tommie. And I would’ve gone to jail. Then the police would’ve figured out who you are and where you belong. How do you think they would’ve reacted to that at home?
Tommie: Not good.

David [to Tommie]: When you get older you start to appreciate how short life is. And you feel it in your bones. Now, when that happens, everyone becomes ageless.

David [to Tommie]: Listen to me. This is the biggest test. Foster was nothing compared to this. If they come and go without you being seen, then I won’t get in trouble, all right?
Tommie: How did they know you were here?
Linny [from outside the house]: David?

David: You’re not even at all angry with me?
Linny: Do you want me to be?
David: I think I want somebody to be.
Linny: Well, you can’t go around and just make people angry so you know where you stand.
David: I think I might be an awful person. I think the whole world’s out there eying on something really wonderful. And I don’t know what it is. I can’t be part of it.

Tommie: Hide?
David: Hide!

Tommie [the morning after she sees Linny and David making love]: No! No! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!
David: Tommie!
Tommie: I’m just a kid to you!

David: If you discover that one day you hate me and you’re angry with me and that I’ve ruined your life, at any time, if I’m 90, you’ll tell me, won’t you?
Tommie: Gary…
David: You’ll buy a pair of steel-toed boots and you will find me all alone and dried up and sick in a nursing home and you’ll kick my fucking teeth in.
Tommie: Please don’t say that.
David: You will outgrow me. You will forget everything.
Tommie: No, I won’t.

Tommie [weeping]: Maybe…
David: What, sweetheart?
Tommie: Maybe we can tell everyone. I think… I think they would understand. Because…Because it’s love, right?
David: Oh, sweetheart. Remember what we said about keeping each other safe? A love like ours is expensive, right? Think of it that way. We pay for it by not seeing each other.
Tommie: Can’t we just… Can’t we just go get a coffee or something?
David: I’m sorry, sweetheart. This is the last chapter.

David [to Tommie]: Don’t ever forget this hurt. Don’t ever forget the things that we’ve seen together. 'Cause it’ll save you. You will be an apple tree among all the ash-colored buildings of this city. You just need to close your eyes take a deep breath and listen. Listen to the rain and the wind. All that rushing through you. That’ll be me whispering to you. I’ll be with you this way.[/b]

Nade sets out to teach her students a lesson. A lesson in honesty. A lesson in integrity. A lesson in “doing the right thing”. And that is because Nade is described as someone who is in possession of a “deep-rooted moral and ethical compass”.

But what is the source of this rectitude? Is it rooted in a particular set of circumstances that, if changed, will bring it all tumbling down?

In other words, as some learn the hard way, there is what one ought to do “theoretically” and there is what one may find they are driven to do if a particular set of circumstances becomes dire enough. For example, when your shiftless, unemployed husband has been spending your mortgage money on booze. And now the powers that be are after your home.

And Bulgaria now plays by the rules of capitalism. And having “a deep-rooted moral and ethical compass” doesn’t mean shit to the bank. And even considerably less to the loan shark.

And this is basically what we witness here: that to which desperation will drive even the most upright soul.

Let’s face it, in this day and age the most important lesson of all is the role that money [or the lack thereof] can play in motivating you to behave either one way or the other. Beyond good and evil as it were. Especially if you have the responsibility of being the parent of a 4 year old. You can will yourself to do almost anything to keep her life intact

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lesso … arian_film
trailer: youtu.be/SCIQvmTMQr0

THE LESSON [Urok] 2014
Written and directed by Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov

[b]Nade [who teaches English in an elementary school in a small town outside Sofia]: Katya, will you please come to the chalkboard and read this sentence.
Katya: “Somebody has just stolen my wallet”.
Nade: That’s right.
[she turns to the class]
Nade: Now I want you to all place your backpacks on the desks. Turn your pockets inside out. Put all your money here at the end of the desk.
[she turns back to Katya]:
Nade: Katya, check everybody’s backpacks.

Nade [to the class after Katya finds no wallet]: I’m giving 10 stotinki and I’m asking each one of you to give 10 stotinki too so that we can collect money for Katya to get a snack. This way the thief will owe the money to the whole class.

Katya [who is more embarrassed than relieved]: Miss, I can’t take it.
Nade: Take it, don’t be ashamed. The one who should be ashamed is the thief.

Nade [to the class after the thief failed to return the money]: The one who stole the money should realize that nothing will go unpunished. I’ll find out who did it and I will teach him a good lesson!

Enforcement agent: The gentleman is not paying what he owes and the bank considers his debt subject to execution. In my capacity of a private enforcement agent, I’m authorized to hold the auction.
Nade: There must be a mistake because we’ve made all the payments. We can show you the bank statements.
[she turns to her husband]
Nade: Show him the deposit slips and…
Mladen: Nade, I’ll…
Nade: Where are…Mladen, where are the deposit slips?

Nade: We have a small child and you cannot simply throw us out on the street. You realize there’s no way we can pay back the rest of the credit in two days.
Bank official: I understand but the procedure has been activated and there’s nothing I can do.
Nade: Can’t you stop this procedure?
Bank official: No way, these are the rules.
Nade: Don’t tell me about rules when you don’t observe them yourselves. You raise the interest rate as you wish. No preliminary notice.
Bank official: The bank has the right to raise the interest rate, check out your contract.
Nade: You should check out your brochure—it says it’s a fixed rate.
Bank official: I’m sorry but you have signed a contract which says otherwise. I bear no responsibility for the promotional materials.
Nade: But you bear responsibility for having given misleading information. What is more, your notorious contract says that you’re obliged to notify us when you raise the interest rate. Nobody from your bank did. So I can sue you for failing to observe the agreement.
I want to settle things like normal people. Which means you stop the procedure and I’m not…
Bank official: Look! You can file a complaint or sue the bank. I can do no more for you right now.
Mladen: Yes, you can. You can go fuck yourself!

Loan shark: What are you doing here? Brought the money early?
Nade: No, on the contrary. I’ve come to ask for a short extension.
Loan shark: Fuck! Why is it nobody can surprise me for once!
Nade: You see, unexpected circumstances…
Loan shark: Well, circumstances are like that - unexpected. If people could predict things, I would have died from hunger.
Nade: It’s not my fault. I’m a very punctual person, but I was dealt a bad hand. I expected some money and they just told me that I’m not getting it because the company I work for has gone bankrupt…The boss has disappeared.

Loan shark: Here’s what I offer you. If you give my nephew a three, I’ll give you a three-day extension. If you give him a four, a four days respectively. If you give him a five, five days. And if you give him a six, I’ll give you seven days in return - one day from me. Is it cool?
Nade: This is not serious.
Loan shark: Not serious?! Are you fucking with me now?
Nade: The one is not related to the other. They have nothing in common.
Loan shark: What’s in common is that you’ve come here to lick my ass, haven’t you? And you’re gonna lick my ass. And you’ll keep licking it until I say so. And you will lick it good! And if you don’t lick it good I’ll show you the clause in the contract which says that if you do not pay back in time I have the right to raise the interest rate as I wish. And… if you don’t lick my ass, I’ll really do it. Am I clear?

Nade: Can you repair the camper in 6 days?
[she tells him about the loan shark]
Mladen: You’re out of your mind! How could you get involved with these people? They are not human, they are real freaks. They cut people’s fingers, break legs, they’ll debone us. They’ll fuck the life out of us. Do you understand?
Nade: How long will it take to repair it?

Student: Miss, is it true that everybody got excellent grades?
Nade: Does everyone have a six?
Students: Yea-a-a-ah.
Nade: Then it must be true.
Student: How is it possible?
Nade: If you want I can start giving poor grades.
Students: No, no!
Student: We’re just wondering—why sixes only?
Nade: Well, there are many weird things in life. This is one of them.

Loan shark [after Nade brings in all her jewelry]: What fuckin’ games are you playing?
Nade: I’m giving you the house too.
Loan shark: What do I need this ruin for?
Nade: The bank appraisal amounts to 10 thousand leva.
Loan shark: Yeah, but this is my appraisal, and if I decide it won’t be worth 10 leva even.
Nade: The car too. I can give free lessons to Mitko. I can teach English to your whole family.
Loan shark: Here’s what I suggest. If you don’t pay me back by tomorrow you go and buy a pair of nice thongs, put on some makeup, since you’re rather pale. Then you come here and give me a blow job. And on and on… until you pay back in full. If you want to pay back more of your debt you must lick other dicks too.
[Nade just stares up at him]
Loan shark: What are you staring at?! You’re all the same. In the beginning you all stare, but then you kinda like it and you start earning money even…Go now, go, I’m busy.
[Nade gets up to leave]
Loan shark: Listen to me, cunt! Don’t act smart. I know about your drunkard husband and I know about your daughter, I know her health status even. Andrea—that is her name, right? Unless you want to take Andrea abroad, but in parts…[/b]

What to do?

News reporter on TV: A bank robbery took place in a small bank in Blagoevgrad this morning, said regional police commissioner Stefan Ivanov at a press conference. Police were alerted at 11 AM, ten minutes following the incident. According to initial reports, the perpetrator was a woman between 30 and 40 years old. She entered the bank with a mask and held three bank employees at gunpoint. She asked for the money on hand and is believed to have taken around 12,000 leva. The tellers were unable to press the panic button, but security cameras captured the image of the woman. Police are searching for the suspected woman.

Right now I am listening to Donald Trump react to the truck attack in Nice, France. He is all about “law and order”. He is all about crushing ISIS.

So, one can just imagine him [and his ilk] reacting to a film about four teenagers [three from the slums of Guatemala, one an Indian from…somewhere] attempting to enter the United States illegally.

Politically, they will connect the dots between the bleeding heart liberals [who allegedly want to coddle these potential terrorists] and every terrorist attack that has occurred in the past 50 years. We must seal the border! We must build the wall! We must keep them out!

Everything is always simple, everything is always black and white, everything is always “one of us” or “one of them”.

Talk about conflicting goods. On the one hand, there are folks willing to risk everything [and to leave everything that they know and love behind] in order to choose what appears to them to be the only viable option: To go north, where anything is perceived to be better than nothing at all. On the other hand, there are folks up north who find their own employment opportunities are put at risk. And, sure, it’s always possible that one of these kids might turn out to be a terrorist. Or join a gang, become a gang-banger and make life a living hell for “one of us”.

Of course the plight of the folks here is of little concern to the reactionaries. From their frame of mind any and all plights are always your own fault. Even if you are “just a kid”.

Right from the start we see the conditions that families must endure from day to day to day in a Guatemalan slum. So the first thing you have to ask yourself is this: Wouldn’t you risk a trek north to the U.S. if it meant the possibility of a better life?

Actually, they never make it to the United States. Or maybe Juan does. This is more a “road movie”. A glimpse into the experience of attempting to make the trek itself. Along with all the others [along the way] that are there to exploit them, to steal from them, to kidnap them, to turn them into sex slaves. It’s a brutal, precarious world. A world where everyone is out to either rip you off or to exploit you. It’s a world way, way, way beyond the capacity of folks like Donald Trump to even comprehend. Or, if they do, to give a damn about.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Dream
trailer: youtu.be/bgp9g9NF_x0

THE GOLDEN DREAM [La Jaula de Oro] 2013
Written in part and directed by Diego Quemada-Díez

[b]Samuel [to Juan of Chauk]: That son of a bitch wants to grab her tits, bro.

Mexican cop [to the kids]: So you wanted to become rich in the U.S.? Well, you won’t get there now. [/b]

Back to square one: Guatemala. Try, try again.

Juan [to Sara]: This Indian is an idiot, he thinks he’ll kill the chicken by talking to it.

Let’s just say among other things.

Thug [to Sara after bandits stop the train]: You, come here.
[he circles her]
Thug: This one is female. Let’s check.
[he lifts up her shirt…her breasts are bound with ace bandages]
Thug: Of course. Take a look boss.
[he fondles her breasts]
Thug: This one must be a virgin.

They throw her into an SUV. That’s the last we see of her.

[b]Juan [to Chauk of Sara]: I didn’t even see which way they took her…

Chauk [in spanish]: Brother…
Juan: So Chauk, you finally learn some spanish. But I’m not your brother.

Man [on top of train to dozens of others heading north]: Brothers. In this world no one is better than anyone else, We come from nothingness, and we return to nothingness. Don’t cry for the dead. Who are gone forever. Take care of those who stay and help them if you can.[/b]

In their world, what else is there?

Thug [to Juan after he came back for Chauk]: Kneel down.
[he drags Chauk over]
Thug: Look into each others eyes.
[he shows Juan a gun]
Thug: Now, here’s what’s going to happen. Only one of you gets out of here alive and you are going to decide who. Get that? Choose who’s leaving — you or him.
Juan: Him.

Turkey has been in the news of late. The attempted coup.

Still, that all seemed to unfold either in Ankara or in Istanbul. Two big cities considerably closer to the “modern world” than are other parts of Turkey.

The story here unfolds in a small village in northern Turkey. And there the folks are considerably closer to God. Allah, in other words.

And many of us are aware of what that can mean if you are of the female gender. Under sharia law there are any number of things that are strictly forbidden if you don’t have a penis. And for Lale and her four sisters, “who share a common passion for freedom” there are consequences.

On the other hand, the restrictions placed on women throughout much of Turkey today is nothing compared to the plight endured by women with a passion for freedom in parts of, say, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

In fact, the film seems to focus less on religion than on the politics of conservativism. And, in particular, on the traditions embedded in patriarchy. It’s more a feminist narrative than anything else. The sisters’ liberal parents are dead. Now they are being raised by their reactionary grandmother and uncle.

So: Who makes it out of the snake pit and who does not?

But then there’s this: How accurately does the film portray the reality of life in this part of the country?

Consider for example this review from arjantin78 at IMDb:

I am Turkish. I know how people behave in rural parts of Turkey. The actors do not even come close to give an authentic depiction of how people living in a village in İnebolu act and behave. The story is a disaster. The general attitude of the movie is tastelessly didactic. Don’t you ever think that you get a somewhat accurate representation of anything regarding Turkish society from this excuse of a movie. The director/writer does obviously not know how things work in rural parts of Turkey. One of the writers is not even Turkish. So, go figure. The fuss around this movie is a textbook case of westerners appreciating narratives about the rest of the world which justify their ideological preconceptions.

This movie was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Film category in 2016.

IMDb

In the scene where the grandma opens the wardrobe, a t-shirt with “#direngezi” hashtag on it is seen. The hashtag is the famous motto for the riots which took place when the government wanted to demolish the “Gezi Park” at the central of Taksim Square.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustang_(film
trailer: youtu.be/kSbbcHxJtnA

MUSTANG [2015]
Written in part and directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven

[b]Lale [voiceover]: It’s like everything changed in the blink of an eye. One moment we were fine, then everything turned to shit.

Grandma: Sonay, as you’re the eldest, I’ll start with you.

Grandma [to the sisters]: Everyone’s talking about your obscene behaviour. Rubbing up against boys’ necks. On the beach. Rubbing your parts on boys’ necks!..My granddaughters, pleasuring themselves on boys’ necks!

Grandma [watching Nur set fire to a chair]: What are you doing?
Nur: These chairs touched our arsehoIes!

Nur: Selma, what did they do?
Selma: A virginity test.
Nur: What’s that? Did you strip naked for the doctor?
Selma: Yes. He said I had nothing he hadn’t seen before.

Selma: We didn’t need to go to the doctor’s. We told you.
Grandma: If there was the slightest doubt you were a virgin, you’d never be able to get married.

Lale [voiceover]: After that, the doors to the house were always locked. Anything likely to pervert us was banned.

Lale [voiceover]: Now it was our turn to wear shapeless, shit-coloured dresses.

Lale [voiceover]: Grandma started by showing us off.

Selma [to Grandma]: If you try to marry me off I’ll scream.[/b]

She screams. And then she’s married off.

[b]Nur: If you don’t want to marry Osman, run away.
Selma: How?
Nur: Just get in a car and go.
Selma: Where?
Nur: To Istanbul, like everyone.
Selma: It’s 1,000 kilometers away. And I can’t drive.

Osman’s mother: Osman, my son, we’re waiting. Osman, are you going to show us the sheet?
Osman [searching frantically for blood]: Coming!
Selma: I swear I’m a virgin.
Osman: So where’s the blood?
Selma: I don’t know.
Mother: Show us the sheet.
Osman: Just a minute!
[he looks at Selma]
Osman: What do I tell them? Where is it?!!

Osman’s mother [to the doctor]: We just married our son and the girl didn’t bleed.

Doctor: Your husband doesn’t seem very romantic.
Selma: I don’t know him that well.
Doctor: You weren’t a virgin, then? That’ll stay between us.
Selma: I must have slept with someone and forgotten.
Doctor: Your hymen’s right here.
Selma: How?
Doctor: It happens. It’s just the way you’re made. It’ll break sometime. With your husband, or giving birth. But I can see it there.[/b]

These things actually happen!

Lale [voiceover]: When it was Ece’s turn to be married off, at first she went along with it. Then she started behaving dangerously.

Then she shot and killed herself.

Nur: What are you doing?
Lale: We’re playing hard to get!

You are a Jew. And you are sent to the camps. To Auschwitz. And now the war is over. You have returned home. And the task you set before yourself is to determine if your husband was the one who betrayed you.

But will your husband even recognize you? You were disfigured during the war and they had to reconstruct your face. So, you can return to the past more or less as a different person. You can find out things about yourself and those around you without the risk of of them finding out about you.

For example, you can find out if your husband really did betray you. You can find out if he really is basically just a slimy bastard. And, if so, you can plot your revenge.

Some have compared the film to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. In other words, the question of identity as that relates to what you [and others] see on the outside and how that impacts on your sense of self from the inside. Who you think you are and who others want you to think you are instead.

In any event, however much Nelly would like to look like she once did, she can never be who she once was. Too much has changed. And it is in reconfiguring her inner sense of self so as to be more in sync with this new set of circumstances that is particularly daunting. A part of her is compelled to will the past back into the present. And to make that the future.

And it is heightened all the more given this particular historical context.

The ending will give you goosebumps. Or it did me.

IMDb

Forty-five minutes before filming would start, Nina Hoss isolated herself from the rest of the cast and crew to reach the character’s sense of isolation.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(2014_film
trailer: youtu.be/oobs8xFO3vo

PHOENIX [2014]
Written in part and directed by Christian Petzold

[b]Soldier: Passport…Nice car. Where did you get it from?
Lene: It’s from Switzerland.
Soldier: Just like you?
Lene: Like me.
Soldier [whistles to the gate]: They’re from Switzerland. The girl too.

Soldier [looking into the car]: I want to see her face.
Lene: Can I talk to you?
[she gets out of the car]
Lene: Come on, she’s not Eva Brown.
Soldier: Of course not. The bitch got killed by her husband.
Lene: She’s from the camps.

Soldier [to Nell]: Show me your face. Show me your face now!
[Nelly struggles to remove the bandages]
Soldier [clearly impacted by her ordeal]: Sorry…

Doctor [to Nelly]: The infected wound canal is from a gunshot. They thought you were dead. You were lucky.

Lene: Your entire family is dead. And Herbert and Marie…the twins…
Nelly: Esther?
Lene: I haven’t found her yet.
Nelly: Where is Johnny?

Nelly: I want to look like I used to.
Doctor: That’s difficult. I recommend you think it over.
Nelly: Why?
Doctor: On the one hand, it’s never quite the same, and on the other, a new face is an advantage.
Nelly: How is it an advantage?
Doctor: You’ll be a new and different person. You won’t be identifiable, which means…
Nelly: I want to look exactly like I used to.

Nelly [after seeing her new face in a mirror]: I no longer exist. Would you recognise me? Would you recognise me?!
Lene: Yes.
Nelly: No.
[she shows Lene an old photograph]
Nelly: This is me. Where did you get that?
Lene: The clinic needed pictures for the reconstruction.

Nelly [looking at a photo]: What do the circles signify?
Lene: Those are Nazis.
Nelly: And the crosses are for the dead?
Lene: Yes. We need a cross above Esther, too. It’s such a miracle you survived.
Nelly: There’s no cross above Johnny.
Lene: Johnny doesn’t interest me.

Lene: When you’re better, we’ll take care of your assets.
Nelly: Is it a lot?
Lene: They’re substantial. It’ll take a while to get the Nazis out of the properties, but there’s lots of money in Switzerland. It’s the victims’ money, it brings an obligation.
Nelly: To do what?
Lene: To go to Palestine and found a state where we Jews can live safely.[/b]

And the Palestinians? Well, that’s another movie.

[b]Lene: Did you give thought to Haifa or Tel Aviv? In Tel Aviv there’s a Jewish choir run by Vera Stroux. It might suit you.
Nelly: What would I do in a Jewish choir? I’m not a Jew.
Lene: You are, like it or not. They tried to kill you because you’re a Jew.

Lene: Johnny betrayed you. You were arrested on October 6, 1944. Johnny was arrested on October 4, 1944. He was interrogated and released just after your arrest on October 6. He wasn’t put in prison. No punishment. Indeed he was allowed to play again. Now he wants your money.
Nelly: Did you see him?
Lene: Yes. Two months ago.
Nelly: Did you speak to him?
Lene: I don’t speak to traitors.

Johnny [not recognizing Nelly]: We can earn a lot of money. You look very similar to someone.
Nelly: To whom?
Johnny: My wife. Alive she was poor, dead, she’s rich.

Johnny: I can’t get her inheritance. There’s no evidence she’s dead.
Nelly: Maybe she’s still alive.
Johnny: She’s dead. You have to play my wife. I’ll instruct you. You’ll return as a survivor, and collect her estate. We’ll split it. There’s 20,000 dollars in it for you.

Johnny: What’s your name, anyway?
Nelly: Esther. Do I really look similar to her?
Johnny: No. But you will.

Lene: You saw him.
Nelly: Yes.
Lene: What happened?

Johnny: It won’t work. Here are two dollars. And a ration card. I’m sorry. Go on, take it. Now leave.
Nelly: But we wanted to practise!
Johnny: It won’t work.
Nelly: Why not?
Johnny: Because you won’t cut it.[/b]

In other words, she, his wife, is not able to cut it pretending to be his wife.

[b]Johnny [giving her a pen and a piece of paper]: Here’s a specimen. You must be able to write like her. Practice it.

Johnny: Once we’re done here, you’ll take a train from the east and we’ll meet you at the station.
Nelly: And I’ll be in a red dress and shoes from Paris? You think anyone leaves the camps like that? Nobody will buy it.
Johnny: You’ve seen the returnees. All the burn wounds and shot-up faces! No one looks at them. Everyone avoids them. But we want them to look at you and say, it’s Nelly! Nelly made it! She’s back! She’s wearing a red dress and nice shoes because she’s so glad. It’s this that’ll get us what we want.

Nelly: If I’m coming from a camp, someone is bound to ask me what I experienced there, what I…
Johnny: What?
Nelly: How it was there, and I’ll need a story.
Johnny: What kind of story?
Nelly: Something or other. Like how we sat on a beam, naked and went through the clothing of those who had just arrived, while the Kapos stood around us. We had to check for banknotes, or jewels they’d hidden, And then this…girl, this girl looks at me. She looks at me. This girl looks at me…
Johnny: Where does the story come from?
Nelly: She’s got her mother’s dress…
Johnny: Where from?
Nelly: I…I read it.

Johnny: Quit playing Nelly! I know you’re not her! It’s not me you must convince!

Nelly: I’d not have survived the camp except for Johnny. I only thought about how I’d come back to him. And when I finally got here I simply had to look for him. And when I finally found him he didn’t recognise me. And it was…Lene, it was…I was…dead again. And now he’s made me back into Nelly again. I can’t come to Palestine.
Lene: Where will you go instead?
Nelly: With Johnny…back with him.
Lene: Impossible!
Nelly: Lene, since being back with him I’m myself again.
Lene: No.
Nelly: When he speaks of her…
Lene: “Her”?
Nelly: I’m really jealous…of me!
Lene: When will you tell him?
Nelly: I don’t know.

Lene: Do you know what disgusts me? We Jews wrote, sang and slaved…went to war for Germany, yet we were gassed, one and all. And now the survivors return and forgive. The gassing ceases and we forgive all counts of cowardice and treachery.
[pause]
Lene: I won’t go along with it, Nelly.

Nelly: I know he loves her. I don’t believe he betrayed her.
Lene: When you were sitting in the dark I thought you’d shot him and needed my help. And honestly, I’d have preferred that.

Nelly: Did you betray Nelly? Sometimes…it’s not a real betrayal. You hid her…had to take care of her all that time…Then came the arrest and interrogation. Finally you are suddenly released. You hurry to check up on her. You don’t notice you’re being followed. Then it’s too late. You just stand there and there’s nothing you can do. You have to watch Nelly being taken away.

Elizabeth: She left you a letter, too. I am to give it to you.
Nelly: But where is Lene, then?
Elizabeth: You don’t know? Mrs Winter shot herself on Thursday.

Nelly [voiceover reading Lene’s letter]: “Dear Nelly, I told you there is no way back for us. But for me there’s no way forwards, either. I feel more drawn to our dead than to our living. I cannot keep this from you. Your husband divorced you directly before your arrest. I enclose a copy of the relevant document. Farewell, Lene”

Johnny: I’m afraid this will hurt a little. Prisoners of Auschwitz were tattooed with a number on the forearm. Someone will ask about your number. And you’ll whisper that you cut it out. There’ll be no further questions.
Nelly: Get out!

Nelly: I always wished to sing with Johnny again…one day…in Berlin.[/b]

“Is it true what they say about this place?”

And it either is or it is not.

But a haunted house [even in New York City] can pale next to a mind that is…spooked?

And when you put the two together the narrative can go in any number of chilling directions. For example, is it all “just in her head”?

In other words, is this a “psychological thriller” or a supernatural “horror film”?

And it has always fascinated me to imagine what it must be like to go “insane”. To “descend into madness”. Me, I am more than familiar with all sorts of mental afflictions — anxiety, depression, mood swings, neuroses, et cetera. But what must it be like to actually lose touch with reality itself? To hear things that are not being said, to see things that are not really there. To be terrified only by the “reality” that you have generated “in your head”. Or, perhaps, more accurately, by that which your “brain” is generating. The part where it all becomes “beyond your control”.

Unless of course there really are ghosts.

One way to look at it: There is all that we think we know about ourselves and others out in the world around us and there is all that we may never know. One way or the other it’s uncanny. Or sinister. Or even deadly.

And there is no real back story here. We don’t know what it is that actually led up to her behaviors. So we are unable to compare her experiences with our own. So we can’t rule out altogether that we might be next. Just as we can’t entirely rule out the possibility that someone afflicted with madness may well become a part of our own life.

And if you are a very attractive young woman, a hint of madness may not even repel some men.

On the other hand, we are curious to know where she got those gruesome scars.

So, what is behind that locked door? Darling finds out. But we never do.

Finally…

Halfway in the ending credits there is a scene with a new girl arriving at the mansion. IMDb

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darling_( … rican_film
trailer: youtu.be/l8MXgy3NdhI

DARLING [2015]
Written and directed by Mickey Keating

[b]Madame: I don’t think you realize what a godsend you are.
Darling: Excuse me?
Madame: Not many people jump at the opportunity to stay here alone.
Darling: Why?
Madame: Oh, old ghost stories. This is the oldest house in New York City. Lots of history. A few unpleasant nicknames. We’ve tried to rebuild the reputation in the neighborhood but then last the care taker…
Darling Yes?
Madame: Well I really shouldn’t be telling you this.
Darling: Please.
Madame: Well, poor girl…she threw herself off the upstairs balcony.
Darling: Why did she do that?
Madame: Hard to say really…

Darling [on the phone]: Ma’am there is one room that I can’t get into. I don’t have a key.
Madame: Don’t concern yourself with that room, my dear. Is that understood? It must remain locked at all times. Am I clear?
Darling: Yes ma’am.

Scrawled on the night stand: Abyssus Abyssum Invocat[/b]

Deep calls to deep.

[b]Darling [in a bar out of the blue]: Do you want to come back to my place?
James [whom she has been following]: What?
Darling: It’s not far. There’s plenty of brandy…It’s free.

James: Are you joking? This is your place?
Darling: Are you coming?

James: I never pictured you living in a place like this.
Darling: Why not?
James: Well, because…whoa…they have got to tell you this kind of thing before you move in, right?
Darling: That it’s haunted?
James: When I was growing up they used to tell us stories about an old lunatic who lived here who used to perform these rituals in the back rooms trying to conjure up the Devil or something.

Darling [after stabbing James repeatedly with a huge knife]: Why did you come here tonight? What did you expect? You didn’t even ask me my name. Did you want to fuck me?
[she twist the knife savagely into his belly]
Darling: Do you remember me? Do you remember me? Because I remember you Henry Sullivan. I. Remember. Every. Single. Thing. About. That. Night. Why did you do it? What did you pick me? What did I ever do to you?! Why did you pick me? ANSWER ME!!

Darling [answering the phone in a macabre voice]: Hello.
Madame: Darling, I want you to listen to me very carefully.
Darling: Ma’am.
Madame: We finally got a hold of your reference.
Darling: You did?
Madame: Yes. Dr. James Abbott.
Darling: Dr Abbott?..I couldn’t let him live with what he did to me. But Dr. Abbott, he says I’m okay…he says I’m okay now.
Madame: We’re not mad dear. We would just like you to leave the house. Take your things and leave.
Darling: I saw him walking around…Henry Sullivan. I saw him walking around the street the other day. Right in front of me. I couldn’t let him live for what he’s done to me.
Madame: What do you mean you saw him walking around the other day? Did you do something to someone?

Darling [on the phone]: Is it true what they say about this place?
Madame: What? Who?
Darling: That someone tried to conjure the Devil here once? It happened in that room, didn’t it? The one upstairs. They made me do it.
[no response]
Darling: Ma’am? I think I’ll become one of your ghost stories now. [/b]

I was once diagnosed as “bipolar” by a shrink. He prescribed lithium; and between that and the counseling it was a complete disaster. Besides, I kept pointing out to him that, if I was really bipolar, how come I never ever once experienced the “manic” phase of the disorder? In fact the only “elevated mood” I seemed to experience at all back then was getting up and leaving his office.

Still, the condition is real. Actual flesh and blood men and women [and not just actors up on the screen] have endured it. And I have personally known a few of them myself.

Often with regards to this affliction the narrative revolves around whether the cure is worse than the disease. See for example Mr. Jones above. Apparently the price that some pay for not being depressed is just too grim. They need the “highs” or life becomes even more unbearable.

Bipolar in particular is always tricky because so much of it seems to be “beyond your control”. All the anomalous “stuff” happens in your brain chemically and neurologically. You can medicate it. You can learn to control it [up to a point]. You can learn to live with it in a less dysfunctional manner. But there it is, a biological component [for some] of the human condition.

If that is actually the case. After all, where exactly does the part about nurture, environmental factors, dasein and political economy fit in here?

That is when the film more or less segues into one more rendition of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Well, sans Nurse Ratchet and the more medieval “methodologies” from back then. Though they do come close occasionally.

But still the same group therapy bullshit: be yourself but only in the prescribed manner. Only, sure, it does work for some.

On the other hand, some will argue that films of this sort can “romanticize” the affliction. Almost as though you are “blessed” if you have it. For example, linking it to all of the many great artists who were said to have had it. In other words, that it is not only an affliction.

This film doesn’t do that. Though it does flirt with the idea from time to time.

Then there’s the part where it slips in and out of the “mystical”. All of the psycho-babble New Age bullshit that can become associated with it. Or the part where it seems to reflect out and out insanity.

And then the part about the money. Carla and Marco – both unemployed poets – are really only able to make all of these transitions because of their families are able to actually foot the bills. Both in and out of the mental institutions and the hospitals. The part that really isn’t at all available for vast swaths of the population beset with this condition.

IMDb

The movie is based on the life of director Paul Dalio.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touched_with_Fire_(film
trailer: youtu.be/8RmzL-YBZwg

TOUCHED WITH FIRE [2015]
Written and directed by Paul Dalio

[b]Carla [at a book reading]: One day the sun cast onto the world to show its image in different light. All the lines were in place but in between no shape or shades, just shadows of the past cast against an aging brain, fading with the sunset’s dying rays. Wiping away all trace of yesterday.
Book store owner: Does anyone have any questions for the author?
[shot of the audience…looking blank, looking grim]

George [Marco’s father…on the phone]: So, your super told me that they shut your power off.
Marco: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
George: Why didn’t you pay the bill?
Marco: Oh, because I’m through with that. I don’t need to do that anymore. I’m going off the map.
George: What does that mean?
Marco: It means that I am through with the whole system.
George: What whole system?
Marco: The whole manmade system. I quit my job. I’m not paying bills.
George: You quit your job?
Marco: Yeah. Yeah, I escaped it.
George: How… How are you gonna eat?
Marco: No-no, I don’t need to pay for food anymore. I realized that. I can get free milk at Starbucks. I can get free ketchup at McDonald’s.
George: Ketchup?
Marco: Yeah, the body can survive on ketchup alone for a long time. At least until the apocalypse.[/b]

Next up: Marco the maniac.

[b]Carla: What was I doing when it happened?
Sara [mom]: What do you mean?
Carla: I mean, the doctors said that something has to trigger it. So, what was I doing?
Sara: No, no. There was nothing that we could’ve done. It was gonna happen no matter what.
Carla: No, no. N-N-No. I must’ve done something to trigger it because I am not the same person, Mom…I’m just trying to figure out who I am, you know, because I don’t feel like myself anymore. Even when I go off the medication, I don’t feel like myself.

George: Been taking your medication?
Marco: Um… mm… I found that they really weren’t working for me, you know, kind of constricted my emotions, you know, like a dried-up ocean. That wasn’t the potion. Don’t give me the lotion. I just, yeah, it just didn’t work, so I stopped. I stopped.

George: Tomorrow morning, let’s go…let’s go to Dr. Lyons, and we’ll ask him and just hear what he thinks about that.
Marco: Who cares what he thinks?
George: He’s an expert on your illness. He’ll know…
Marco: I don’t have an illness. Why are you bringing Dr. Lyons into this? There’s nothing wrong with…
George: He’s an expert on your medication.
Marco: No, he’s not a fucking expert! He’s a goddamned Nazi!

Doctor: Do a lot of people read these messages?
Marco: Everyone.
Doctor: Well, how do you know?
Marco: Because of my online fan base.
Doctor: Would you mind showing that to me on the computer?
Marco: There. You see that? 106 million people.
Doctor: No, see, that number is the number of people in the entire network. Actually, only 119 people have seen your page.
Marco [gaping at the screen]: What…?

Carla [at group therapy]: Could you please just stop?
Marco: You have an opinion on what’s being said here?
Carla: It’s your first day here, and you’re alienating yourself from the entire group.
Marco: Are you saying that I should hide what I think in order to become part of a group?[/b]

And boy have I been there!

[b]Nurse Amy: Luna, why don’t you color?
Marco [who wishes to be called Luna]: Because I’m uninspired.
Nurse Amy: Okay, why don’t you take a look at the books on the shelf. Maybe they’ll give you some inspiration.
Marco [goes over to the bookshelf]: Here we go. Van Gogh. Top member of the Bipolar Club. You see this?
Nurse Amy: Yes, it’s beautiful!
Marco [indicating Van Gogh’s Starry Night]: You know why?
Nurse Amy: Why?
Marco: Because it’s the painting of the sky he saw from his sanitarium window when he was manic.
Nurse Amy: Really?
Marco: Yeah. You don’t believe me, go look it up.
Nurse Amy: I believe you.
Marco: Well, when you go out tonight, and you look at the sky and you see how dull it is, think about if you would’ve medicated Van Gogh!

Marco: So Emily, can I ask you what your full fake name is?
Carla: Emily Lowell.
Marco: Is that Emily Dickinson and Robert Lowell? Those are good poets. Do you know they were both bipolar?
Carla: You think every great artist was bipolar. It’s fine if it helps you.
Marco: “We of the craft are all crazy/Some are affected by gaiety/others with melancholy/But all are more or less touched.” You know who said that? Lord Byron. One of the greatest manic-depressive poets of all time. It’s in the opening to this book, Touched with Fire by Kay Jamison. She’s a psychologist, and when she was first starting out, she, out of nowhere, had this manic episode. It scared her. So she tried to keep it a secret. But then something changed. She decided to write books about it. She did all this research, and she found all these crazy connections between bipolar and artistic genius all through history, all over the world. Instead of being ashamed of it she made it a gift.

Marco [to Carla]: You accidentally checked yourself into a mental institution?

Marco [to Carla noting a photograph of the brain]: This is a normal brain, lit up just in a few places. But this, this is a manic brain, fully lit. That’s what you call illumination.

Doctor: Is it true that neither of you thinks you’re from this planet?
Marco: Because we’re not from this planet.
Doctor: Okay, sit. Where do you think you’re from?
Marco [doing a series of bizarre things]: Would someone from your planet do this?

George: Why is he so sedated?
Doctor: He was with a female patient, and they made each other manic. We separated them and they became even more manic.
George: How long is he going to be like that?
Doctor: It’s not just the medication. Because the mania got so out of control and he went so high, he’s going to go just as low with the depression. It’s going to be severe.

Doctor: You’ve just come out of the depression. You haven’t been in a physical relationship for quite a while. It’s understandable.
Marco: No, it’s not just that. I don’t feel the emotion that I should feel for her.
Doctor: Well, you won’t have the passion you had when you were manic. You’re going to have to learn to live within a normal range of emotions.
Marco: This isn’t a normal range. I don’t feel anything.
Doctor: You’ve lived in emotional extremes for so long, you’ve no way of knowing what normal feels like.

Marco: We can’t take the meds.
Sara: Okay, well, just as I thought.
Carla [to Marco]: What are you talking about?
Marco: You know what I’m talking about.
George: Marco, listen. You know that it’s going to take time till you find the right dosage, right? Even the doctor, the doctor has said that eventually you are going to feel the wide range of normal emotions.
Marco: And how does he know? He’s not taking the meds…I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to feel life with the deepest emotion. I don’t think that’s a problem.
Sara: It’s an illness.
Marco: Well, maybe for you, because maybe you have a low emotional capacity, and so to you, it makes you feel sick.[/b]

And around and around and around they go trying to pin down what is “normal”.

[b]Marco: You don’t understand, Dad.
George: I understand more than you know. And if you think that there’s any romance in being crazy, you’re crazy.
Marco: No, if you understood, then Mom wouldn’t have left.
George: Your mother, she left because she was sick.
Marco: She left because you thought she was sick, because she was wild. And you were tame, and you wanted to tame her, Dad.

Marco: Maybe I could walk dogs. I’d be out there, I’d be working, you know? I’d be, the same time, taking everything in, the sounds, the trees, the buildings, the… just all of it, sort of just absorbing all of that, and then like, letting that sort of be infused into my poetry, you know?
Carla: We did tell our parents that we were going to try to support ourselves with…
Marco: Exactly. And that’s why I’m thinking of things to do.
Carla: I mean, I just don’t know how much you would get paid. With the baby we’re going to have diapers and blankets and food and supplies and school and strollers and the rent and, you know…

Carla: I can get him to go back on the meds.
Sara: No, you can’t.
Carla: Yes, I can. We have to.
Sara: Carla, you can’t. If he didn’t get the message after he almost killed the two of you in the river, he’s not going to get it. I don’t see how you can stay with him.
Carla: What are you saying? That I shouldn’t have this child if…
Sara: I just want to be really clear. Okay? You want to raise a child with a psychotic manic parent.

Kay Jamison [playing herself]: When I first was medicated, I was first medicated a very long time ago. Lithium had just come out on the market. I was kept at a very high dose because that’s what people did at that time, and I did feel somewhat dead, and I resisted it.
But I’m still on lithium, and I don’t feel in any way inhibited.
Marco: I just don’t know how I’m gonna make… how my creativity is going to be affected.
Kay Jamison: You’re concerned about losing your art and losing your passion. Medication’s not going to take your personality away. It’s not going to take your own gift. It’s a fire when it’s out of control. And what medication can do is to kind of tamp that down a bit without losing that gift. It took quite a while for my moods to kind of get in gear. I have felt infinitely happier. I’m more productive. I’m more able to count on myself to produce and write. In every aspect of my life it’s been a godsend.

Carla: I thought Kay was really impressive.
Marco: She’s weak. She didn’t have the strength, so she gave up.
Carla: What?
Marco: You could see it in her. She was like she wished that she could have what those artists have that she writes about. But she doesn’t have the guts. That’s why she writes about them. You know, do you think that Poe or Byron or Tchaikovsky, Melville, Hemingway, would’ve backed down and turned away from the storm the way she did? No. They rode the tides. They rode them, but she didn’t. That’s why she writes about them, because she wants to be like them in her fantasy, but she can’t.
Carla: Well, I liked what she had to say about, you know, how we can experience full emotion even more than…
Marco: I don’t want the full emotion!
Carla: Well, then what do you want?
Marco: I want the mania!
Carla: You want the mania?
[she paces back and forth]
Carla: Well, it’s fucking crazy.
Marco: Why, because of something that your doctor told you or something that your parents told you?
Carla: No. Because you’re not willing to make any sacrifices. You say you want a family. You say you want love. But you’re not willing to give anything up for it.

Marco: Why don’t you have a drink, Carla? Are you still gonna pretend, after all of this, that you still can’t drink? Because I know. Why don’t you just say it? All right. Just say it. Just say it, say it.
[he turns to his father and Carla’s parents]
Marco: Carla had an abortion. Surprise. Right? So, why don’t you just say it, Carla? Please say it, please.
Carla: All right, I did.[/b]

In this film, we are taken inside the “insular world” of a particular high school in the Ukraine. But not just any high school. Here all of the students are deaf. And if you don’t speak their language you are out of luck. Why? Because there are no subtitles. The students speak the language of the deaf – sign language – and you are either fluent in it or you are not. And they sign in Ukrainian.

Why is that a factor? Because…

The actors communicate in Ukranian sign language - anecdotally, users of western European sign languages may understand about 70% of it.

Also, to what extent are the events that unfold here a reasonable reflection of the experiences a student might encounter in a Ukrainian school for the deaf?

Trust me: I haven’t got a clue.

In any event, the film is less about the school itself than about a criminal clique that just happens to be enrolled in a school for the deaf. Thus the part about being deaf is not really a significant factor at all. Or so it seemed to me.

Tribes? And here one tribe in particular. It engages in [among other things] assaults, robberies and prostitution.

If nothing else the film depicts just how much we are able to understand about human interaction without the use of language. People behave as they do in ways that we have behaved — or in ways that we have seen others behave. We know what is going on. We just don’t have access to the reasons that people choose from in order to rationalize what they do. They tell each other but we don’t have access to that particular language. At least most of us don’t.

Consequently, there are any number of sequences when, in being out of this partiuclar loop, you really don’t have a clear understanding as to what is being communicated back and forth. And you would like to be. So at times it really is frustrating.

Now, one might suspect that since schools like this are geared to students with a particular physical affliction, they would include a broader swath of the population. Pertaining to, for example, class or ethnicity or religion or moral values.

That’s not explored at all. But there will always be those kids who more or less rise to the top of the pecking order. The amoral assholes, for example. The toughs. The thugs. The gang-bangers. They seem to be everywhere now. Hell-bent on making life as miserable as they possibly can for all the rest of us.

Still, it does probe an experience that almost all students in the “modern world” confront: fitting in. Who do you “hang with” and who do you avoid? And sometimes that can make all the difference in the world. It just seems that in our “post-modern” world there is this sub-mental “youth culture” that has snaked its way around the globe.

Originating in Hollywood movies for all I know.

The world of signing. You can start here: mentalfloss.com/article/13107/7- … n-language

IMDb

[b]All the actors are deaf and the film makes no use of any vocal language nor even subtitles, only sign language throughout. This may quite well be a first for a feature film of fiction.

Director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky does not understand sign language and had to have interpreters on set to communicate and make sure that the actors were sticking to the script. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tribe_%282014_film%29
trailer: youtu.be/ZF9VL4m9M_k

THE TRIBE [Plemya] 2014
Written and directed by Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi

You’ve decided to leave your fiance. You get in the car and go. Then you’re in a car crash. And then the next thing you know you wake up in a bunker. You’re down to your underwear and your leg is handcuffed to a pipe. Have you been kidnapped? No say the two men sharing the underground complex with you. In fact, you have been rescued. The world outside the bunker is an apocalyptic hellhole. Brought on by a terrible chemical or nuclear attack. You may be among the last of the survivors.

Of course the whole point then is to speculate on the true motivation behind bringing Michelle to the bunker. The obvious ones pop into your head. However, you suspect that it won’t be one of them. Only how far removed from them will it be? Will it something that you would never even have guessed?

Nope, not really.

Or maybe everything that Howard tells us is actually the truth. Or maybe it’s true and he still has ulterior motives.

A movie of this sort is absorbing only to the extent that the characters in it are absorbing. Since there are basically only three of them. And Howard for one is certainly…absorbing.

Note: The movie is said to be the sequel to the film Cloverfield from 2008. It’s a film I never saw and know nothing about. So I have no idea how, had I been aware of the first, that might impact my reaction to the current film. Apparently there is a “Cloverfield universe”. And [apparently] there will be a future film that ties the first two films together. Whatever the hell that means.

Look for MacGyver.

FAQ from IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt1179933/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Cloverfield_Lane
trailer: youtu.be/saHzng8fxLs

10 Cloverfield Lane [2016]
Directed by Dan Trachtenberg

[b]Michelle: Please don’t hurt me. Please, Just let me go, okay? I won’t tell anybody, I promise. Please just let me go. Please.
Howard: You need fluids. You were in shock.
Michelle: What’re you going to do to me?
Howard: I’m going to keep you alive.

Michelle: My boyfriend was expecting me. He’ll send the cops looking.
Hoard: I’m sorry, but no one is looking for you.

Howard: You’re lucky to be here at all.
Michelle: What do you mean?
Howard: I found you. And I saved your life, by bringing you here.
Michelle: I don’t understand.
Howard: There’s been an attack. An attack. A big one. I’m not sure yet if it’s chemical, or nuclear. But down here we’re safe.
Michelle: And where are we, exactly?
Howard: Underneath my farmhouse. 40 miles outside of Lake Charles.

Michelle: How, how long do we have to wait until it’s safe?
Howard: Depends on the proximity to the closest blast. One year, maybe two. And that’s if we’re, we’re talking about weapons that we know of. Russians were developing some nasty stuff. And if the Martians finally found a way to get here, their weapons will…will make our nukes look like, like sticks and stones.

Howard [to Michelle]: You think I sound crazy. It’s amazing, you people. You wear helmets when you ride your bikes, you have seat-belts in your cars, you have alarm systems to protect your homes. But what do you do when those alarms go off? “Crazy”, is building your ark after the flood is already come.

Howard [to Michelle]: I think now might be time you met Frank and Mildred.

Michelle [to Emmett]: What do you know about Howard?

Emmett [to Michelle]: You know, Howard is like a black belt in conspiracy theories. Plus, you know, how often do you get hired to build the doomsday bunker?

Michelle: Howard abducted me. He drove me off the road, and he dragged me here. So whatever he’s telling you about the air…some big attack. The purpose of this shelter, is a lie.
Emmett: No, no way. The attack, I saw it myself.
Michelle: What do you mean?
Emmett: Coming on my way from work, and, it looked like a flash. Bright red, Like an explosion, from way far off. Wasn’t like fireworks. No, it was more this like something you read about in the Bible.

Howard: Where are my keys?

Michelle [at the door to the outside world]: It’s a car! It’s a car! I see a car! Here! Here! Here!
Howard: Michelle, listen to me, don’t do it!
Woman [outside banging on the window]: Help me!
Michelle: There’s a woman!
Woman: Open the door. I just…I want to come inside.
Michelle: She looks hurt, she wants me to let her in!
Howard: Do not let her in! Look at her face, Michelle!
Woman: Please open, I don’t want to die. It barely touched me! Please, help me, I don’t want to die. Just a little, oh, please open the door…Open it, you bitch!!!
Michelle: She’s begging me!
Howard: You can’t help her! Nobody can.

Howard [to Michelle]: People are strange creatures. You can’t always convince them that safety is in their best interest.

Emmett [to Michelle]: Look, we’re here, we’re alive. And that means something. It’s got to.

Michelle [hearing sounds above the bunker]: What was that?
Howard: Quiet.
Michelle: That sounds like helicopters.
Howard: Could be military. But not ours.
Michelle: How can you tell?
Howard: 14 years in the Navy.
Michelle: What’s happening up there?
Howard: My guess, those flashes that kicked this all off. That was phase 1. Take out your opponent’s population centers, with big hits, all at once. Fast. And then for round 2. Ground sweeps. The satellite log shows an increase in coded traffic recently. Possibly extra-terrestrial signals. I bet what we just heard were air-borne patrols sent to hunt down the remaining signs of life. Like us.

Howard [the three are playing charades in the shelter]: I’m always watching. Always.
Emmett: Uh, God…?
Howard: I know what you’re doing. I see everything.
Emmett [faltering]: Wha… uh, uh…
Howard: I see you when you’re sleeping! I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING!
Emmett: …Um…
[Emmet and Michelle stare at each other nervously]
Howard [seemingly going into a fit:] I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE UP TO! I SEE EVERYTHING YOU DO! I’M ALWAYS WATCHING!
Emmett: Uh, Howard…?
Michelle [blurting out]: Santa Claus!
Howard [suddenly calm and cheerful]: … Yeah, Michelle! Except it was Emmet’s turn, not yours. I’m claiming this point.

Emmett: What’s wrong?
Michelle: He lied to you, he lied about Megan.
Emmett: What do you mean?
Michelle: I think he did something horrible to her.
Emmett: How? His family moved to Chicago years ago.

Emmett [looking at a photograph]: Wait, that’s not Megan…Yeah. Her name is Brittany. She went missing, two years back. It was on the news and everything. Most people just thought she skipped town.
Michelle: There is a message up there. It said ‘HELP’. It was scratched on the inside of the window…He said to me, he said to my face. He said this is his daughter, he said this was Megan…He took her and he killed her.

Michelle [after Howard reveals a secret compartment]: What is this?
Howard: A barrel. Move it into the bathroom. This is perchloric acid. Do either of you know what that is?
[they shake their heads]
Howard: It’s usually produced as a precursor to ammonium perclorate. Fuel. Used to launch naval satellites into orbit. It’s highly corrosive. Dissolves most biological material on contact. With humans, right down to the bone.
Emmett: Hey, Howard, ahh… What’re you showing it to us this for?
Howard: You think I’m an idiot?

Howard: You tell me what you two were planning. Right now!
Emmett: Take it easy, calm down.
Michelle: Howard, please.
Howard: I’m giving you one chance. One chance! To answer with some dignity or I swear to god you’re going into this barrel while you’re alive to feel it.

Howard [to Michelle–calmly–after he just shot Emmett dead]: He was going to hurt us. He was going to hurt you. It’s okay, this is okay. This is the way it was always supposed to be. You’re safe now. Now, it’s just you and me. It’s okay. Now, you should go to your room now. This is not part of anything you need to see.

Howard [to Michelle]: I know that this isn’t the life that you prefer, and that it’s been hard for you to come down here…but I really want us to be a happy family, you and me. The mess is all taken care of…so, I’ll go get dinner started.

Howard: Michelle! You don’t know what’s out there! You can’t run from them!![/b]

Hail Caesar!

No, not that one. This one: The Movie.

Cue Mr. Hollywood. Mr. Fix-it. The guy that gets things done. The guy that got things done back in The Golden Age.

This is one of those “film within a film” films. Also, a film that is based on folks that actually did exist way back in that “Golden Age”. So, supposedly, this is more or less how things actually “worked” back then.

But now – historically – we are at that crucial “turning point” as they say. The old “studio system” is beginning to crumble. Big changes are on the horizon. And adjustments have to be made.

So, you tell me: In the midst of yet another blockbuster Summer Season are things actually better today?

In one sense, Eddie Mannix reminds you of Ray Donovan. Either that or Ray Donovan reminds you of Eddie Mannix. Just different eras with different folks chasing different bucks. Unless of course Ray Donovan is just a thug.

And then somewhere in the midst of all this tongue-in-cheek farce come any number of references to religion. But you will have to decide for yourself the extent to which God and religion are being mocked here. Same with the Communists. They pop up too. And as well are bascially made fools of.

IMDb

[b]George Clooney was actually slapped by Josh Brolin several times. His reaction shown in the film was genuine.

The real Eddie Mannix died in 1963. Robert Taylor and James Stewart were among his pallbearers.

The big secret about Baird Whitlock, which the Thacker sisters each threaten to reveal to their respective gossip columns, is likely based on a long-established rumor regarding Gone with the Wind (1939). Reportedly, Clark Gable insisted that original director George Cukor be replaced because Gable had, years earlier, engaged in a sexual liaison with the influential director as a way to further his own career.

Most of the characters are inspired by real people:

Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), is based on real E.J. Mannix, a longtime producer for MGM and a fixer specialized in disguising any scandal that could ruin a movie production or the character or reputation of an actor.

Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) is based on three Hollywood legends: Robert Taylor, Charlton Heston and Kirk Douglas, who previously starred in the historical movies Quo Vadis (1951), Ben-Hur (1959) and Spartacus (1960), respectively.

DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) is based on Esther Williams. Her plot about a baby belongs to Loretta Young.

Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum), is based on Gene Kelly.

Sisters Thora and Thesaly Thacker (Tilda Swinton) are based on Hollywood reporter Hedda Hopper. And the theme of sibling rivalry is reminiscent of longtime columnists and real-life twin sisters Ann Landers (Pauline “Eppie” Friedman Lederer) and Abigail Van Buren (Pauline Friedman Phillips).

Carlota Valdez (Veronica Osorio) is based on Carmen Miranda.

Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) is actually based on four classic cowboy actors: Howard Keel, Dick Foran, James Ellison and Tim Holt.

Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) is based on Vincente Minnelli.

C.C. Calhoun (Frances McDormand) is based on the longtime editor Margaret Booth. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail,_Caesar!
trailer: youtu.be/kMqeoW3XRa0

HAIL, CAESAR! [2016]
Written and directed by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

[b]Eddie [in the confessional]: Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been…
[he looks down at his watch]
Eddie: …24 hours since my last confession.

Eddie [to a group of religious leaders]: Gentlemen, thank you all for coming. I know you have parishes, flocks and temples making enormous demands on your time. But I’m sure you appreciate also that great masses of humanity look to pictures for information and uplift and, yes, entertainment. Here at Capitol Pictures, as you know, an army of technicians, actors, and top notch artistic people are working hard to bring to the screen the story of the Christ. It’s a swell story.

Rabbi: You realize, of course, that for we Jews, any visual depiction of the Godhead is most strictly prohibited.
Eddie: Oh.
Rabbi: But of course, for us, the man Jesus Nazarene is not God.
Eddie: Ah-ha.
Protestant Clergyman: Who plays Christ?
Eddie: A kid we’re all very excited about, Todd Hocheiser, a wonderful young actor we found in Akron, Ohio, after a nationwide talent hunt. But Hocheiser is seen only fleetingly and with extreme taste. Our story is told through the eyes of a Roman tribune, Autochlus Antonius, an ordinary man, skeptical at first, but who comes to a grudging respect for this swell figure from the East.

Eddie: Gentlemen, given it’s enormous expense we don’t want to send it to market except in the certainty that it will not offend any reasonable American, regardless of faith or creed. Now that’s where you come in. You’ve read the script; I wanna know if the theological elements of the story are up to snuff.

Eddie: As for the religious aspect…does the depiction of Christ Jesus cut the mustard?
Catholic clergyman: Well. The nature of the Christ is not quite as simple as your photoplay would have it.
Eddie: How so, Father?
Catholic clergyman: It is not the case simply that Christ is God, or God Christ.
Rabbi: You can say that again! The Nazarene was not God!
Eastern Orthodox clergyman: He was not not-God.
Rabbi: He was a man!
Eastern Orthodox clergyman: Part God.
Rabbi: No sir!

Catholic Clergyman: Christ is more properly referred to as the son of God. It’s the Son of God who takes the sins of the world upon Himself so that the rest of God’s children, we imperfect beings, through faith, may enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Eddie [clearly perplexed]: So God is…split?
Catholic Clergyman: Yes. And no.
Eastern Orthodox clergyman: There is unity in division.
Protestant clergyman: And division in unity.
Eddie: Not sure I follow, Padre.
Rabbi: Young man, you don’t follow for a very simple reason; these men are screwballs. God has children? What, and a dog? A collie, maybe? God doesn’t have children. He’s a bachelor. And very angry.
Catholic clergyman: No, no, He used to be angry.
Rabbi: What, he got over it?
Protestant Clergyman: You worship the god of another age!
Catholic Clergyman: Who has no love!
Rabbi: Not true! He likes Jews.
Protestant clergyman: God loves everyone!
Catholic clergyman: God is love.
Eastern Orthodox clergyman: God is who is.
Rabbi: This is special? Who isn’t “who is”?

Cuddahy [Locheed corporation recruiter]: Let me show you something. Ever heard of the Bikini atoll?
Eddie: No.
Cuddahy: A test site, just a couple of rocks in the middle of the Pacific until a few weeks ago. When we blew the H-erino. Shouldn’t be telling you this. It’s the real world. The hydrogen bomb. Fusion device.
Eddie: Armageddon.
Cuddahy: And Lockheed was there!!

Herbert Marcuse [to Baird]: Man is unity, a simple economic agent. Man’s institutions are split, expressing contradictions that must be worked through. And they are worked through in a causative, predictable way: history is science. This is the essence of the dialectic.
Communist: You see, if you understand economics, you can actually write down what will happen in the future, with as much confidence as you write down the history of the past. Because it’s science. It’s not make-believe.

Baird: Me, for the little guy? Of course I’m for the little guy!..Listen. I better get back, the studio’s got to be going nuts. Can we cut it off now and pick it up right here at the next study session?
Communist: Okay, well, See. I’m afraid it’s not that simple.

Narrator: And so Baird Whitlock found himself in the hands of Communists. Meanwhile, far from the crashing surf of Malibu, Eddie Mannix, torn from his lunch with the Lockheed man hurries back to the vastness of Capitol Pictures, whose tireless machinery clanks on, producing this year’s ration of dreams for all the weary peoples of the world.

Communist: Then Dr. Marcuse came down from Stanford, joined the study group. And started teaching us about direct action.
Marcuse: Praxis.
Communist: Action.
Marcuse: We each pursue our own economic interest, we ourselves are not above the laws of history. But in pursuing our interest with vigor, we accelerate the dialectic, and hasten the end of history and the creation of the New Man.

C.C. [to Eddie]: Reverse! Reverse! Rerverse!

Hobie: Is it hard to dance with all them bananas on your head?
Carlotta [putting a purse on her head and dancing]: Oh, no. Anyone can do it. It’s all in the hips and the lips and the eyes and the thighs.

Eddie: When the studio needs someone who meets the legal standard of…how did you put it, Sid?
Sid: Personhood.
Eddie: Joe steps in and acts as the, uh…person.
DeeAnna: So you’re a professional…person?
Joe: That’s right, miss. Initial here, and here.

Baird: Hobie Doyle? You’re a communist too?!
Hobie: So, it’s Commies…

Gofer [to Christ on the cross]: Who’re you?
Todd [who plays Christ]: Todd.
Gofer: Todd…You have a hot breakfast or a box breakfast?
Todd: I…I don’t know.
Gofer: Are you a principal or an extra?
Todd: I think I’m a principal.

Baird: These Communists were pretty interesting, though. They’ve actually figured out the laws that dictate…everything. History, sociology, politics, morality. Everything. It’s all in a book called “Kapital”, with a K.
Eddie: That right?
Baird: Yeah. You’re not gonna believe this, these guys even figured it out what’s going on here at the studio. Because the studio is nothing more than an instrument of capitalism. Yes, so we blindly follows these laws like any other institution. The laws these guys’ve figured out. The studio makes pictures to serve the system, that’s it’s function, that’s really what we’re all up to, here.
Eddie: Is it?
Baird: Yeah, we’re just conrming what they call the status quo. I mean, we might tell ourselves that we’re creating something of artistic value, that there’s some sort of spiritual dimension to the picture business, but what it is, is this fat cat, Nick Schenk, out in New York running this factory that’s serving up these lollypops to the…what did you use to call the a bread and circuses for the…
[Eddie can stand not more…he gets up from his desk and walks over to Baird…he yanks him off the chair]
Baird: What?!
Eddie: Now, you listen to me, buster. Nick Schenk and this studio have been good to you and to everyone else who works here. If I ever hear you bad mouthing Mr. Schenk again it’ll be the last thing you say before I have you tossed into jail for colluding in
your own abduction.
Baird: Eddie! I wouldn’t, I would never do that.
Eddie: Shut up!! You’re going to go out there and you’re going to finish “Hail, Caesar!” You’re gonna give the speech at the feet of the penitent thief and you’re gonna believe every word you say. You’re gonna do it because you’re an actor and that’s what you do.
Just like the director does what he does, and the writer and the script girl and the guy who claps the slate. You’re gonna do it because the picture has Worth and you have Worth if you serve the picture and you’re never gonna forget that again.
Baird: Okay, Eddie, okay.
Eddie: Baird. Go out there and be a star.

Thora: Baird Whitlock, your biggest star, got his first major part in On Wings as Eagles by engaging in sodomy with the picture’s director, Laurence Laurentz.
Eddie: We’ve all heard the story. But here’s something you haven’t heard: your source is a Communist. If you print it it’ll be dismissed as a Commie smear tactic and you’ll be dismissed as a Commie stooge.

Eddie: Add a call to a Mr. Cuddahy at the Lockheed Corporation.
Assistant: Long call, short?
Eddie: Tell them, “Thanks, but no thanks.” That short enough for you? [/b]

I do not like animated movies. At all.

But I do like Charlie Kaufman. A lot.

So, I am basically stuck with this one.

But why animation? What’s the point?

Here is Kaufman’s argument: newsweek.com/anomalisa-why-a … lts-438288

Of course there is a difference between an animated character and a cartoon. But there is also a difference between an animated character and an actual flesh and blood human being playing a character dreamed up by Charlie Kaufman. I’m just not buying his rationale. But at least I recognize it for the prejudice that it is.

Still, this being a Charlie Kaufman production, you know that the characters are going to be spending a lot of time thinking about the gaps between what they do, what others do and why they either ought or ought not to be doing something else instead. Or, as one reviewer put it, “[h]is characters are always searching for something and trying to discern the meaning of life … or at least of their own life.”

Yep, one more convoluted sojourn into the human condition. And one in which, in a postmodern hellhole, almost anything goes. Or surely almost everything has already been rationalized. Only in this effort it is more the viewer’s task to input his or her own rendition of [and reaction to] the American Dream. The madness of consumption and all of the customer service reps needed to keep all of the customers coming back for more “Nibble-O’s”, " Choco-bricks", “Scroochies” and “Brownie-balls”.

And then there is this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fregoli_delusion

On the other hand, how this is related to the manner in which I construe particular aspects of our identity [re value judgments] as a delusion is anybody’s guess. I still like the notion of dasein better.

IMDb

[b]This film was crowd-funded through Kickstarter.com.

The first R-rated animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Michael stays at the Fregoli hotel. The Fregoli delusion, or the delusion of doubles, is a rare disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that different people are in fact a single person who changes appearance or is in disguise. The syndrome may be related to a brain lesion and is often of a paranoid nature, with the delusional person believing themselves persecuted by the person they believe is in disguise.

With the exception of the two leads, every character (male or female) is voiced by Tom Noonan.

Co-director Duke Johnson stated it took six months for him to animate the sex scene because of technical reasons and making the scene realistic as opposed to comedic.

Michael is in every scene of the film, except the last one. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalisa
trailer: youtu.be/B9osRGkOl54

ANOMALISA [2015]
Written by Charlie Kaufman
Directed by Duke Johnson, Charlie Kaufman

Michael reads a letter to him from his wife, Donna: “Dear Michael. Fuck you. Just fuck you. You just walk away? After all you said to me? After all we did? After all those fucking promises? After all that fucking fucking?”

Already we get a whiff of the existential glum that follows this guy around.

Michael [rehearsing his customer service rep talk]: "“It is my privilege today to talk to you about customer service, what it is and why it’s an essential component of any successful business enterprise. The front line of every customer department is the group of folks who interact directly with the public. The telephone representative at corporate headquarters, the retail associate on the floor of the regional store, the guys or gal…”

Blah blah blah: It’s all plastered right there on his face.

[b]Bella [Michael has called her out of the blue after eleven years]: This is really weird. I’ve gained some weight. Not terrible or anything, but just so you don’t look at me like freaked-out or something, because I just couldn’t handle that right now.
Michael: I wouldn’t do that.
Bella: Okay. And I have a fake tooth in the front because I fell and hit a cement bench with my mouth. But I don’t think you can tell. They matched it pretty well.
Michael: Okay. I look forward to seeing you.

Bella: Try to.
Michael: Try to what?
Bella: Try to explain why you left me.
Michael: Huh. I think I might have psychological problems.
Bella: Oh, good. That clears things up. Thanks.
Michael: It’s hard to explain. I’ve been running for a long time now.
Bella: Running? We were special together. That’s what I thought.
Michael: Yeah. I agree. But things kind of shifted.
Bella: But just like completely suddenly? I was so pissed at you. I was so fucking hurt. I didn’t get out of bed for a year. Do you realize that?
Michael: Jesus. I’m sorry.

Michael [going over the edge]: Listen, do you feel that you changed? I mean, do you feel that you changed?
Bella: What are you talking about?
Micael: I don’t know. I don’t know. Like, in any way? Like, in any way did you change? Like, while we were together. Like, did I change you? Did you change? Did anything change? Did a change occur? Did a…
Bella: Michael, you’re freaking me out. I can’t take being more freaked out right now.
Michael: I’m sorry. I’m a mess. I’m just…Do you want to maybe go up to my room for another drink? We could talk more privately.
Bella: What?! We are not going to fuck, Michael!..I can’t… I can’t believe you. Fuck you, Michael. Fuck off!!

Michael [indicating the scar on her face]: May I kiss you there?
Lisa [startled]: Oh, my god. Oh, my god. No. Oh, god.
Michael: Sorry…
Lisa: You’re not like a pervert or something? Like some weird version of a chubby chaser?
Michael: No.
Lisa: I just don’t understand why you would want to kiss me there.

Michael [to Lisa]: I think you’re extraordinary.
Lisa: Why?
Michael: I don’t know yet. It’s just obvious to me that you are.

Lisa: I love to listen to Brazilian singers. They sing in Portuguese in Brazil, a little-known fact. It’s kind of weird because it’s the only country in south America where they sing in Portuguese. It’s an anomaly, right?
Michael: Uh-huh.
Lisa: I learned that word in your book. I like that word. Anomaly. I like the way it sounds and I like what it means. I feel like an anomaly. Before I used to know there was a word for it, it made me feel bad to be different. Now I kind of like it.

Lisa: It’s just so beautiful. Life can be. Things can work out. That’s the lesson.
Michael: Sometimes there’s no lesson. That’s a lesson in itself.
Lisa: I guess so. I feel anxious, Michael. I feel something. Like you’re different-acting.

Michael [giving his “customer service” speech]: Always remember the customer is an individual. Just like you. Each person you speak to has had a day. Some of the days have been good, some bad, but they’ve all had one. Each person you speak to has had a childhood. Each has a body. Each body has aches. What is it to be human? What is it to ache? What is it to be alive?
[he scoffs]
Michael: I don’t know. What is it to ache? I don’t know. What is it to be alive? I don’t know…Uh, yes. “How do I talk to a customer?” How do I talk to a customer? These are the important questions for a customer service representative. What do I say? Do I smile while I’m on the phone? Well, they can tell, if you’re smiling, even if they can’t see you. Did you know that? Try it as an experiment on the phone with a friend. Try it. Go ahead. Watch.
[he turns around]
Michael: I’m lost…
[chuckles and turns back around]
Michael: See I was smiling when I said that? I’ve lost my love. She’s an unmoored ship and she’s drifting off to sea. I have no one to talk to. I have no one to talk to. I have no one to talk to. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to burden you with that, I just don’t know what else to do because I have no one to talk to…Be friendly to the customer. Think of the customer as a friend…
[he goes over the edge]
Michael: I want to cry, but I can’t. Is it the Zoloft, Dr. Horowitz? Is it the Zoloft? My face squeezes into that crying contortion you all know so well but nothing comes out. I need tears. It’s like not being able to come. I need tears to tear me in two and let this nightmare escape, but…
[he collects himself]
Michael: Oh. Um… Anyway, yes, don’t forget to smile. It makes a person’s day. And what does it cost you? A smile is free.
[again he turns around]
Michael [to himself]: This is not working. This is not working. This is not working.
[back to the audience]
Michael: The world is falling apart. The president is a war criminal.
Man in the audience: Boo!
Michael: America is going down the tubes and you’re talking about goddamn intelligent design. They’ve intentionally destroyed the public education system because it’s easier to manipulate dumb workers and soldiers.
Man in audience: There’s no need for that! Support our troops!
Woman in audience: I thought this was about customer service.
Michael: Uh, be personable. Remember to believe in yourself. Believe in your company. And your products or services…I sweat onto my pillow every night. I think there’s something very, very wrong with me… Be friendly. Yes, what does it cost you? Look for what is special about each individual. Focus on that during your conversation… Our time is limited. We forget that. Death comes, that’s it. Soon it’s as if we never existed…So, remember to smile. Remember there is someone out there for everyone. Someone to love. Remember every person you speak to needs love. Remember to…[/b]

Most of us become aware of characters like Allen Ginsberg only after they have already become known commodities on the cultural scene. And when that scene becomes embedded in an historical juncture – a cultural revolution – we become all the more curious about the parts and the pieces before the fame and nortoriety. What were those important factors in their lives that made them who and what they are.

Even if this only really amounts to who and what we think they are.

Still, back in the 1950s there wasn’t an intenet around. There wasn’t a Google that allowed you to just type in a name. And, then, after you clicked enter, were deluged with all manner of facts and fictions.

About, among others, Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Lucien Carr. The Beat Generation. Those folks who, along with so many others, helped to usher in that particular cultural revolution we call “the Sixties”.

And, after all, that’s where “I” [meaning me here and now] was more or less reconfigured. On the cusp between the way it’s always been and the way it might otherwise be instead. And not just pertaining to the writing of poetry and to sexual mores. But also relating to things like race and gender and war.

But that one thing invariably true for all of us – men or women, gay or straight, left or right – is this: it’s always never nothing. And though we don’t always end up hurting the ones we love, it is far, far, far from an uncommon occurrence.

This film is “based on a true story”. How true? Who really knows. It all basically revolves around this: nytimes.com/2012/04/06/books … .html?_r=0

Look for Dexter.

IMDb

Dane DeHaan revealed during a Q&A that he was actually strangling himself during the attempted suicide scenes.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_Your … (2013_film
trailer: youtu.be/AxGgkEHmHHg

KILL YOUR DARLINGS [2013]
Directed by John Krokidas

[b]Allen [voiceover]: Some things, once you’ve loved them, become yours forever. And if you try to let them go they only circle back and return to you. They become part of who you are…
Lucien: …or they destroy you.

Lucien [in a cell at the Tombs]: You can’t show this to anyone.
Allen: Then tell the truth, Lu.
Lucien: You weren’t even there! It’s your truth. It’s fiction! You wanted him gone, too. You sent him to me!!
[Allen grabs the pages from Lucien and crumples them]
Lucien: Please. You’ll kill me with that. Allen! No. Allen! Don’t. No! Don’t![/b]

Then back to the future: 1943

[b]Father: Were you gonna tell me that you applied?
Allen: I didn’t want mother to know.
Father: "Love that is hoarded moulds at last “Until we know, the only thing we have…”
Allen: “Is what we give away”
Father: “Is what we hand away” Have, hand. It’s consonance.
Allen: Give, is. Assonance.
Father: Hey, I wrote the goddamn poem. All right? Why don’t you go write your own?
[he hands Allens an envelope from Columbia University]
Father: Open it.
Allen [after reading the letter]: I got in.
Father: You got in?
Allen: To Columbia University.
Father: You got into Columbia.
Allen: Yes!

Luke [to Allen with his finger on a map: Christopher Street in the Village]: You don’t wanna go down there. It’s the land of the fairies. Head there, you never come back. Luke Detweiler, Danville, Virginia.
Allen: Allen Ginsberg.
Luke: You’re Jewish, right?
[Allen nods]
Luke: I’m getting good at telling.

Lucien [jumping up on a table in the library at Columbia]: “On a Sunday afternoon, when the shutters are down and the proletariat possesses the street there are certain thoroughfares which remind one of nothing less than a big cancerous cock.”
Librarian: What is this nonsense?
Lucien: Henry Miller.
Librarian: Get down immediately. That book is restricted.
Lucien: Which is why I committed it to memory.

Professor: The Victorian sonnet has the balance of three tenets, rhyme, metre, conceit. Without this balance, a poem becomes slack, an untucked shirt.
Allen: Professor Steeves. Then how do you explain Whitman?
Professor: Say more. Two more sentences.
Allen: Well, he hated rhyme and metre. The whole point was untucking your shirt.
Professor: What’s your name?
Allen: Allen Ginsberg.
Professor: Ginsberg? Your father, perhaps, is the poet Louis Ginsberg? He writes with rhyming metred verse. Why do you think he chose that form?
Allen: Because it’s easier.
Professor: This university exists because of tradition and form. Would you rather this building be built by engineers or Whitman and his boys at play? There can be no creation before imitation.

Lucien: Libation?
Allen: What, you drink in your room?
Lucien: How does a horrible bottle of Chianti sound?
Allen: I don’t drink.
Lucien: Freshman?
Allen: Yes.
Lucien: Excellent. I love first times. I want my entire life to be composed of them. Life is only interesting if life is wide. To Walt Whitman.

Lucien [having taken Allen to the Village]: Allen in wonderland…

Allen [after William Burroughs offers him a joint]: Uhm, no thanks, I don’t do the cannabis.
William: Show me the man who is both sober and happy, and I will show you the crinkled anus of a lying asshole.

Allen: Is he a criminal?
Lucien: He wishes he were a criminal. The Burroughs family is richer than God.
Allen: Well, he looks like a criminal.
Lucien: He’s a Harvard man. He’s going to be an amazing artist. His current medium is himself.

Lucien: Some ear job at the bar just called me kid, so I stole his drink.
Allen: That’s Ogden Nash.
Lucien: Who’s Ogden Nash?
Allen: The best-selling poet in the country.
William: Perhaps you’ve heard this one. "The girl who is bespectacled she may not get her nectacled. But safety pins and bassinets… "
David: “…await the girl who fassinets.”
Lucien: And that’s what he’s selling? I’ll kill him.
William: Aim for the throat.
Lucien: No. We’re not going to kill him. Even better, we’re going to make sure nobody remembers him.

Lucien: Let’s come up with new words, new rhythms. We need a name. How did they come up with “Dada”?
William: Tristan Tzara jabbed a knife into a dictionary.
Lucien: Shit. So that’s been done.

Allen [after his mother is taken away to in “institution”]: Complicated enough?
Lucien: At least you have her. My father left me when I was four.

Allen: I’ve been thinking about what Yeats said. To be reborn, you have to die first.
Lucien: What do you suggest?

Allen: The New Vision declares…
Lucien: "Proclaims. " It’s better.
Allen: Proclaims the death of morality.
Lucien: The expression of self.
Allen: The true, uninhibited, uncensored expression of the self.
William: Words, boys. Empty words.
Lucien: Well, what do you suggest?
William: The derangement of the senses.

Professor: Kill your darlings, your crushes, your juvenile metaphysics. None of them belong on the page. It is the first principle of good creative work, a work of fiction you will deliver as your final exam.
[he glances down to Allen]
Professor: Look. Whitman Junior graced us with his presence today.
[he reaches down and yanks up Allen’s notebook]
Professor: “The New Vision. Extraordinary men propel us forward. It is our duty to break the law.” Fantastic.
Allen: There’s more life in those five pages than in the dozens of bad sonnets we’ve read in this class.
Professor: You want life? You want the world on fire? The war awaits. What will it be?

Allen: David is not here to write it for you.
Lucien: It’s complicated.
Allen: I love complicated.
Lucien: He is a professor working as a janitor so he can be near his precious Lu-Lu. He is a goddamn fruit who won’t let me go.
Allen: A fruit?
Lucien: A queer.
Allen: Then…you know, let’s get rid of him.
Lucien: Right now’ I just need you to write us something beautiful. First thought, best thought…

William [to Allen and Lucien]: Pervitin. The Germans called it the "Wunderdroge. " Prescribed for superhuman feats. But beware of the side effects which include sudden bouts of blindness, diarrhea, heart palpitations and a severe decline in moral standards.

Allen: Why is Jack a real writer?
Lucien: Once you meet him, you’ll see what I mean.

Lucien: [on Jack’s writings]: What so you think? It’s brilliant, no?
Allen: It’s missing some periods and commas.
Lucien: It’s better than anything you’ve ever written.
Allen: I use periods and commas.

Jack: “A new vision” Sounds phoney. Movements are cooked up by people who can’t write about the people who can.
Allen: I don’t think he gets what we’re trying to do.
Jack: Listen to me. This whole town’s full of finks on the 30th floor writing pure chintz. Writers. A real writers gotta be in the beds, down in the trenches and all the broken places. Where were your trenches, Al?

Allen [reading his poem]: Be careful, you are not in Wonderland. I’ve heard the strange madness long growing in your soul, in your isolation but you fortunate in your ignorance. You who have suffered find where love hides, give, share, lose, lest we die unbloomed."
Jack: Allen, that was beautiful, kid.
Lucien: You wrote that?
Allen: You asked me to.

Allen: Where are you going?
Lucien: You know me now. I’m only good at beginnings.
Allen: What, you’re dropping out?
Lucien: Best of luck.

Allen: Fuck you! You’re a phoney. And you got me and Jack and Bill making your vision come true because you can’t do it yourself.
Lucien: No, Allen. You got what you wanted. You were ordinary, just like every other freshman. And I made your life extraordinary.

Sammy [on a voicegram recording]: "A mortar round came and found me in my tent. I can feel metal under my skin some places. Some went clean through. They’re not even trying to take it out no more. The nurses gave me the same morphine I gave to dying boys when I didn’t know what else to do. “Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep! Quench within their burning bed, Thy fiery tears, and let thou loud heart keep…”
Edie: What was that?
Jack: Shelley’s elegy for Keats.
Edie: What does that mean?
Jack: It means he’s dead.

Allen [on the phone]: Edie. Is Jack there?
Edie: You don’t know?
Allen: Know what?
Edie: The police came and took him down to the Tombs as an accessory. Bill, too.
Allen: What happened?

Lucien [to Allen from a Tombs cell]: We’re going to say that it was an honour slaying…

Allen [reading from a law book]: “Honor killing. Relating to a lethal attack committed when the accused is defending himself against a known homosexual. If the accused is heterosexual, he shall be pardoned. But if the accused is homosexual, the charge of murder in the first degree shall stand.”

William [to Allen]: The libertine circle has come to an end. Go back to the beginning.

Allen [voiceover]: Another lover hits the universe. The circle is broken. But with death comes rebirth. And like all lovers and sad people, I am a poet.

Title card:

Portraying David Kammerer as a homosexual predator, Lucien Carr pled guilty to first degree manslaughter. He served 18 months in a reformatory. He worked as an editor at United Press International, where he remained until his death in 2005. He married twice and had three children.

Edie Parker’s family bailed out Jack Kerouac on the condition that they marry and move to Michigan. Craving his friends in New York, he annulled his marriage and began a journey that would inspire his novel On The Road.

William Burroughs left his family to pursue a criminal life in New York that he documented in his novels Junkie and Naked Lunch. He co-wrote his first book with Jack, a novel based on David Kammerer’s murder. It was kept from publication for over sixty years.

After his expulsion from Columbia University, Allen Ginsberg became one of the most awarded poets in American history. He dedicated his first published collection, Howl and Other Poems to Lucien Carr. In response, Lucien asked that his name be withdrawn from all further editions. [/b]

A wonderful thing about the best films being this: They can take you to places that you have never been. And even to places you had never even imagined existed. And then they can introduce you to people that live a life so far removed from your own, you come to recognize immediately how futile it might be to share with them, among other things, a philosophy of life.

Here we are taken to a remote farming village in Iceland. And the people here earn their living [by and large] tending to sheep. Only now the sheep are sick with scrapie. So sick in fact that their very livelihoods are on the line.

And two of the farmers in particular are brothers. And the one thing that they both share in common is this: neither has spoken to the other in 40 years. In fact, they communicate now through Somo. A dog. Literally. They write notes, put them in the dog’s mouth and the dog delivers them back and forth.

Why? Well that goes back quite a spell. And we just get a hint or two about it. One got the farm and the other didn’t.

Now, that is something new, right? And it’s not at all likely that you or I would be able to sit down between them and mediate their troubles. Especially given that the dispute revolves around the center of the universe. Their universe. Subsistence itself is on the line. And these folks truly do love their sheep.

But sometimes when everything that matters is on the line [and you literally have to stave off disaster] that can act as the impetus to bring a family feud crashing down.

Especially when it’s scripted.

And here’s the thing about Iceland: there are nearly 3 times as many sheep on the island as there are people. Sheep, in other words, are a really, really important part of the lives of these folks.

In a way that, for example, they are not to most of us.

As for the ending, I’m either buying it wholeheartedly or I’m not buying it at all. It’s just too close to call.

IMDb

The sheep are credited as actors.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rams_(film
trailer: youtu.be/PWVmUVAdi5Y

RAMS [Hrútar] 2015
Written and directed by Grímur Hákonarson

[b]Farmer: In this nation none has played a larger role and survived through ice and fire. Whatever happens, resistant and tough for thousands of years mankind’s savior and friend. All year around, in joy and disagreement, the sheep intertwines with the farmers’ work and being. Bright was the outlook when our sheep felt fine. Black were the nights with the flock in decline.

Judge: Second place goes to Gudmundur Bodvarsson with the ram Garpur. He got 86 points. I must point out it was a very close call between the top two rams. The result was determined by the thickness of the back muscle. The rams are both from the same renowned stock…
[cut to Gummi’s glum face – he knows that the winner is his detested brother, Kiddi]
Judge: And the winner is Kristinn Bodvarsson and his ram, Sproti.

Gummi: Come here, Sproti. Let me see your back muscle.
[he notices that the ram is acting oddly]
Gummi: What? Something wrong?[/b]

Yep: Srapie. And then the whole world [his, theirs] is turned upside down.

[b]Hildur: Is something wrong?
Gummi: I’m afraid something is wrong with Kiddi’s sheep.
Hildur: Oh, and what might that be?
Gummi: I’m afraid it might be scrapie.
Hildur: Scrapie? Oh, it could hardly be.
Gummi: I examined him yesterday. He has all the symptoms.
Hildur: My dear Gummi, don’t you think that Katrin would have noticed if the prize ram had scrapie? Do you want me to talk to Kiddi? Get someone to examine the ram?
Gummi: Would you do that?
Hildur: You haven’t spoken to each other in forty years. Why begin now?

Gummi: If it turns out to be scrapie, wouldn’t it be likely that both of our herds would have to be slaughtered?
Hildur: I don’t believe it’s scrapie. We’ve never had any cases of scrapie. How could it have been brought here. Aren’t you just still recovering from the ram competition?

Kiddi [after firing his rifle into the window of Gummi’s house]: Take that, you bastard! You won’t get away with this! Fucking ram murderer!! He doesn’t fucking have srapie! You’re just making that up![/b]

Cut to Kiddi’s face. We know that he knows it’s scrapie.

[b]Finnur: Dear friends. Results of the tests just arrived. Scrapie was found on two other farms, at Haugi and Seljatunga. It has therefore been decided that all of the sheep in the valley must be slaughtered.
Farmer: Is this the final decision?
Finnur: They say there’s been enough contact between them, and in order to eliminate the disease, they’ve got to take the entire valley.
Kiddi: Then why not just take us, too? Finish the job!

Finnur: We need to trust the veterinarians.
Kiddi: They don’t know anything. University-educated fools from down south.
Finnur: What would you do, Kiddi?
Kiddi: I want us to put a stop to this nonsense! We just refuse to slaughter our sheep!

A sign put up at the bridge to the valley: LINE OF DEFENSE Sheep Diseases—Virulence!

Gummi: I’m no expert on scrapie, Grimur. But when I examined the ram yesterday, that was the first thing that came to mind.
Grimur: Damn it. If we have scrapie in the valley we’re in deep shit.
Gummi: Nah, you over on the east-side have no need to worry if scrapie shows up here.
Grimur: We borrowed Kiddi’s ram last winter. The creature sired half our lambs.

Reporter [on television]: A case of scrapie has come up on the farm Bolstad in Bardardalur. This is the first occurence of the disease in this valley. According to Katrin Nielson, the district vet, the scrapie was diagnosed in an adult ram, and tests are being carried out to determine whether it is present on neighboring farms. No decision has been made concerning a slaughter. It is believed that scrapie came to Iceland with British sheep at the end of the 19th century, and has not been eliminated entirely. It is an infectious disease that attacks the brains and spinal cords of sheep, and is incurable.

Katrin [seeing that Gummi had shot all of his sheep dead]: Why did you do this, Gummi?
Gummi: I wanted to kill my sheep myself.
Katrin: Is this all of them?
Gummi: Yes, 147 sheep.[/b]

Give or take a few.

Government official [to Gummi]: We pay for every sheep that’s slaughtered and you’re also paid so-called “product loss compensation”, according to average production the past three years. Payments are distributed over a two year period and then you can apply to acquire new sheep.

Socialism!!

[b]Government official: Listen. Do you think you can help me get in touch with Kristinn?
Gummi: He lives next door.
Government official: Yes, I know. But he won’t talk to us. Could you talk to him? You’re brothers, right?

Katrin: You need to clean everything. The shit, the hay, everything on the floor. Also the wood.
Gummi: And the pens?
Katrin: Yes, those too. All wood. This pitchfork here. Everything that you’ve used in here. Tools, clothing, everything. You need to destroy it all. It’s best to burn it. You also need to clean out the barn and destroy all the hay. And absolutely don’t sell it. Scrapie can be transmitted by hay mites.
Gummi: Do I need to destroy all of the hay?
Katrin: Yes.

Kiddi [after attacking Gummi and throwing him to the ground]: Well, Gummi? What do you say now? Do you know what you have done? You’ve wiped out the Bolstader stock. This is going to be a hell of a winter! No sheep. Just the two of us.[/b]

Well, at least they’re talking again.

[b]Finnur: Have you finished cleaning?
Gummi: Yes.
Finnur [to another farmer]: How about you?
Villi: No. We decided to quit. We’re going bankrupt anyway. So we’re just going to take the opportunity and leave. We can’t see living here two more years with no sheep and a pile of loans. Nor is it certain the scrapie is going anywhere.
Finnur: It soesn’t need to come again, Villi.
Villi: Have you talked to the farmers in Svarfadalur? They’ve had to slaughter their sheep three times!

Government official [concerned about Kiddi]: It’s this matter of your brother. As you know he hasn’t been cooperative. He is the only one who has not cleaned. It is causing us great concern. Unfortunately, we can’t bring in new sheep until all of the sheep sheds have been disinfected.

Government official [as to why all of the land is in Gummi’s name]: What’s the reason?
Gummi: My father did not want Kiddi to own the land. I promised my mother before she died that Kiddi would get to stay at the old farm.
Government official: You know what means? It means that you are responsible for your brother. He lives on your land and if he doesn’t follow the rules it’s you that…
Gummi: That what?
Government official: If it comes to a legal fight, you’ll be the one that’s sued. [/b]

Time to send for Somo.

[b]Kiddi [to Gummi]: I know what you have in the basement.

Kiddi: Gummi. How many are there? Is there a ram?
Gummi: What does it matter to you?
Kiddi: Well, these are the only sheep left of the Bolsstadur stock. It matters to me.
Gummi: Fucking bullshit. Those are my sheep. Don’t you dare come near them!

Gummi: Kiddi, you have to help me. They’re coming.

Katrin: Gummi? Where are they? Where are the sheep?[/b]

As war increasingly becomes a calamity that we put on remote control, we can expect more films like this. In fact there have already been a number of them made. See for example Good Kill above.

Oh, and a few more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_f … ing_drones

And now Eye In The Sky.

If nothing else, the ethicists among us can ponder the moral implications inherent in this new war technology. And, in particular, the part that revolves around “collateral damage”. To strike or not to strike. To kill or to capture. And, if to kill, how many innocent men, women and children who just happen to be within the impact radius of whatever particular explosive devise that is used.

One more rendition of “the fog of war”. And it doesn’t get much thicker than this. Even though when you think about it the casualties here are nothing at all like the casualties that accumulated in, for example, Hiroshima or Dresden.

Here of course [as with most things relating to the war on terror] there is a generally liberal narrative and a generally conservative narrative. In other words, regarding The Right Thing To Do. If, for example, a nine-year child enters the “kill zone”. Though, in there with her, are the terrorists fiercely committed to blowing themselves up. Along with [perhaps] even more children down the road.

Or: what if her death resulted in the destruction of a jihadi cell that, if not stopped, would result in the deaths of children considerably closer to us.

The targets here are in East Africa. Kenya. Which was in the news recently when Islamic jihadists, Al-Shabab, launced an attack at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi. About 70 people were killed.

We quickly learn here that everything revolves around the intelligence. If it is wrong, people who weren’t supposed to die, do. And the people who were, don’t.

One thing for sure: These fanatic Islamists and their sharia law is not something that I ever want to be around.

And then there’s the technology itself. Is this for real? Camera’s fitted into fake birds, into fake insects? It’s unbelievable what they can do. Images coming from a tiny camera in a fake beetle that is flown remotely into a house. The images are then seen by military operators and civilians around the globe. Literally thousands of miles apart.

There is one particularly surreal scene where the fake beetle is beaming back pictures of two suicide bombers being armed while the military folks are waiting for the British Foreign Secretary who is on the toilet taking a shit to give the go ahead to launch a Hellfire missile from a drone aircraft they call Reaper. It’s straight out of Dr. Strangelove.

IMDb

[b]According to director Gavin Hood, 30% of U.S. military drone operators are treated for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

When asked at a screening of Eye in the Sky (2015) about working with Alan Rickman in the actor’s final film role, Hood revealed that Rickman stayed on set for three or four days after shooting wrapped to attend the wrap party and individually thank the film crew for its dedication.

The main part of the plot unfolds in real time.

The Reaper - a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) which has been operated from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire since April 2013. They are flown by serving RAF Officers that have undergone training with the Reaper Formal Training Unit (FTU) in the USA. The FTU is completed at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, USA. RAF Officers can be serving Tornado pilots who have carried out similar missions in active service. They can be posted to either XIII Sqn RAF Waddington (UK) or 39 Sqn Creech Air Force Base (USA) and will most likely fly an aircraft on operations over hostile territory, providing persistent ISR and if required, armed overwatch.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_in_the_Sky_(2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/hOqeoj669xg

EYE IN THE SKY [2015]
Directed by Gavin Hood

[b]Title card: “In war, truth is the first casualty.” — Aeschylus

Col. Powell [to the mission crew]: Today, you will be flying a joint operation over Nairobi, Kenya, codename Operation Egret. Horn of Africa, Somalia, Kenya, Nairobi. We have intelligence of a meeting of key members of Al-Shabab in the suburb of Parklands in this house, here. It belongs to a man named Shahid Ahmed. He’s an Al-Shabab facilitator. Due to visit this house is this man, Abdullah Al-Hady. He’s a Somali, and his wife, Ayesha Al-Hady, formerly Susan Helen Danford, British national. Troubled childhood, converted at 15. She was radicalized in a West London mosque where she met and married Al-Hady…This is an operation to capture, not kill. Your job is to be their eye in the sky.

Col. Powell: So, how do we launch a ground assault if Danford’s going in there?
Moses: We can’t. Al-Shabab controls that neighborhood. It would trigger a massacre.

Col. Powell: We need an eye inside that house. I have to know if Danford is inside, and who is with her.
Moses: Ma’am, it would mean putting a man in the street, and you’d have to get close to control the beetle. It would easily raise suspicion.
Col. Powell: What, even if you use a Somali?
Moses: Every stranger is suspicious, even a Somali.
Col. Powell: Moses, we both believe that Danford is inside that house, do we not?
Moses: Yes, ma’am.
Col. Powell: And I cannot authorize a strike without a positive ID. I believe we have to accept the risk and send someone in. Moses, can you do it?
Moses: Yes, ma’am.

Man [watching Alia play with a hula hoop]: What is she doing?
Father: Alia! What are you doing?
Alia: Sorry, Papa.
Father: Never do that again!
Alia: Yes, Papa.
Father [to the man, an Islamic zealot]: I’m sorry. She’s just a child.
[the man leaves]
Father: Alia. What were you thinking? Listen to me. These people are fanatics. Don’t play in front of them.
Alia: Okay, Papa. But I can play in front of you, right.
Father; Yes, sweetheart, of course you can.

Levery: Oh, fuck, man. Fuck. Fuck.
Soldier: Matt, what’s happening?
Levery: We’re seeing suicide vests and a whole bunch of fucking explosives inside that house.
Lt. General Benson: Well, this changes things.

Lt. General Benson [on phone]: What’s the plan, Katherine?
Col. Powell: We need to put a Hellfire through that roof right now.
Lt. General Benson: I told you, they came to witness a capture, not a kill. Give me a capture option.
Col. Powell: We no longer have a capture option. Any action on the ground will lead to an armed confrontation, which we will not be able to contain.
Lt. General Benson: They’re watching. Even with the vests, we need their approval for a strike.
Col. Powell: Just tell them we’ve got Danford in our sights. I mean, that alone should justify using a Hellfire. The vests are just a bonus.
Lt. General Benson: Danford’s a British citizen. They want her alive.
Col. Powell: They cannot have her alive!

Col. Powell: So, the plan is to put a Hellfire through the roof of that house. I need legal clearance right now.
Harold: A missile from the Reaper?
Col. Powell: Yes.
Harold: So, this is no longer a capture situation.
Col. Powell: No. We have two suicide vests with explosives inside that house. So, can you clear me to a higher CDE?
Harold: Uh…
Col. Powell: Harold, this is a very time-sensitive target. Do I have authority to strike?
Harold: The rules of engagement you’re operating under only allow for a low collateral damage estimate.
Col. Powell: Yes, yes, and my weapons only invoke a low CDE. It’s the explosives inside that house that bring it to a potentially high CDE.
Harold: And since you know the explosives are there, it is incumbent upon you to take them into account.

Angela: Are we all right with launchiung the missle? I’m sure we are not. There are two British citizens and an American as targets.
British Minister: This mission has the full support of Kenya and the United States.
Angela: For a drone strike?
Minister: Yes, a missile fired from an RPA is part of an agreed contingency plan in circumstances like this.
Lt. General Benson: Do we have permission to proceed?
Angela: No. Such a plan should not have been signed off by the PM without the authority of Parliament.
General: Operational issues are not generally discussed at Cabinet, and certainly not at Parliament.[/b]

And on and on and on they go debating the legal [and the political] ramifications of blowing these people up.

[b]Col. Powell: Lieutenant. You are now our best option to take these HVIs out. Now, prepare to launch a single AGM-114 Hellfire on the target house.
Steve: Yes, ma’am.
Col. Powell: This is a friendly city, so collateral damage must be kept to a minimum.
Steve: Ma’am…I have an ROE question. Is my government aware that we are targeting a person with a US passport?
Col. Powell: Yes. Yes, it is, Lieutenant.
Steve: I didn’t see anything in the SPINS about that.
Col. Powell: Lieutenant, we have new rules of engagement. You are covered.

Sergeant Saddiq: If we target this corner room here, where the explosives are, we would expect 100% mortality rate in that room and an 80 to 90% rate within the rest of the house. The market should be safe, but this area here in the street… A 65 to 75% rate. That’s just the Hellfire. If we factor in the explosives in the vests, we’re looking at even more extensive damage way out to this area here. But I can’t accurately estimate that yield.
Col. Powell: But we would be containing that payload in the vests within those walls, right? Far less collateral damage than them going off in a crowded shopping mall.
Sergeant Saddiq: Yes. Of course.
Col. Powell: Thank you.

U.S. Secretary of State [on the phone]: No, his citizenship does not protect him. By joining Al-Shabab he has declared himself an enemy of the United States. Listen to me. Tell the British, if they really do have two, four, and five on the East Africa list in their sights, they have our full support to strike. All three are on the President’s list.

Col. Powell: Lieutenant, you have clearance to prosecute the target. Do it now.
Steve: Yes, ma’am.
[he turns to Carrie]
Steve: Prepare to launch Hellfire.[/b]

And that’s when Alia enters the kill zone.

[b]Steve [looking at the screen]: Is that a kid?

Col. Powell [on the phone]: Lieutenant, we have this one opportunity. Let’s not lose it.
Steve: Ma’am, uh, she’s selling bread.
Col. Powell: Jesus. Those men are about to disperse. Engage now.
Steve: Ma’am, I understand we have clearance. I will fire if I see the HVIs moving or when this girl’s out of the frag radius, but I want to give her a chance to get out of the way.
Col. Powell Lieutenant, you have clearance. There is a lot more at stake than you see here in this image.
Steve: Ma’am, I need you to run the collateral damage estimate again with this girl out front.
Col. Powell: The situation has not changed, Lieutenant. You are cleared to engage.
Carrie: What do we do?
Col. Powell: I repeat, you are cleared to engage.
Steve: Colonel Powell, ma’am… I’m the pilot in command responsible for releasing the weapon. I have the right to ask for the CDE to be run again. I will not release my weapon until that happens.
[long pause]
Col. Powell: We will rerun the CDE.

Carrie: Jesus, she’s going to sell them again.

Col. Powell: Are we in the clear?
Harold: Uh…Again, I would refer up.
Col. Powell: No. No. I’m asking you. We cannot hold up this operation any longer.
Harold: We need to take all reasonable steps to minimize collateral damage. If we’re buying her bread then…
Col. Powell: We’re not. We’re not buying her bread. That’s over. Many children’s lives are at risk. This is just one girl. Are we clear to engage, yes or no? Come on, make a decision.
Harold: With respect, ma’am, I don’t make those decisions. I’m here to advise you on the law! The law is not here to get in your way, it is here to protect you, and to protect your target.
Col. Powell: Don’t lecture me, Harold!
Harold: Ma’am, the legal questions of necessity and proportionality are almost certainly met. But for the protection of you, and for the protection of that girl, I would refer up to the Attorney General.[/b]

Here we go again…

Lt. General Benson: I hope the fact that she’s a sweet little girl is not clouding your judgment. Dozens of other little girls’ lives are at stake if these men leave.
Minister: I’m sorry, but we have a Miss Jillian Goldman from the White House asking to be patched in.
Lt. General Benson: Who?
Minister: Jillian Goldman. She’s a Senior Legal Adviser at the US National Security Council. She’s been briefed by the Secretary of State.
Lt. General Benson: Put her through.
Goldman: Good afternoon and thank you for allowing me to comment. As the military members of your committee know, we have a point system that takes into account collateral damage to deduce what is and what is not a legal strike. And let me tell you categorically that the existence of this new circumstance does not push us beyond a legitimate military action. We are way off what we would consider a dispute in this matter. British official: Miss Goldman, we have a somewhat different approach to the question of
collateral damage.
Goldman: Sir, you must act now. You have two men about to embark on a suicide mission. You have number two, four, and five on the President’s East Africa kill list in your sights, and you are putting the whole mission at risk because of one collateral damage issue?

Exactly: one child that will die for certain vs. other children that may die if the suicide bombers target them.

[b]James: George, do I understand this correctly? There’s a legal argument for waiting and giving this girl a chance to sell her bread?
George: Yes, there is. But, conversely, it does not mean that there is not also a legal argument for releasing the weapon now.
James: Forgive me, I’m not sure that helps me.
Lt. General Benson: Foreign Secretary, there is a military necessity for acting now. In our view, they’ll be making a move from that house at any moment.
James: Gentlemen, what action is being legally recommended to me?
Minister: James, the legal argument is that we could wait, but we need not wait. And the military argument is that we should not wait. It’s my recommendation that we should not delay in proceeding with this mission. If we don’t act now, we risk losing the lives of up to 80 people.
Angela: You can only assume those deaths. What is certain is that if we do act now, this one girl will suffer.
James: And you would save her and risk killing 80 others?
Angela: Yes, I would save her and take that risk. That is what I would do.
James: Angela, is it you or me who will be invited onto the Today program to explain why we knew of the attack on a shopping center that killed 80 people, but chose to do nothing to stop it?
Angela: You, James. But frankly, politically, I’d rather point to Al-Shabab as murderers of 80 people shopping than have to defend a drone attack by our forces that kills an innocent child.
George: James, Angela makes a compelling point. If Al-Shabab kill 80 people, we win the propaganda war. If we kill one child, they do.

Lt. General Benson: With respect, Foreign Secretary, are the lives of 80 people, including innocent children, really worth the price of winning the propaganda war?
James: General, if we go ahead, might footage of our attack be leaked?
Lt. General Benson: Sir, the footage from the Reaper is completely secure.
James: General, I would feel uncomfortable if we did not at least wait a little longer. If we go ahead and footage is leaked and this girl is killed, then, I think, the country would be most disturbed.
Lt. General Benson: Foreign Secretary, it is our task to make the right military decision. We cannot engage in an argument about possible future postings on YouTube.
James: With respect, General, revolutions are fueled by postings on YouTube.

Steve: Two loaves left. Come on…come on.

Lt. General Benson: Minister, we cannot have military decisions dictated by government committees. Nor can we put on hold a military operation at every stage for legal clarification. You tell us when to go to war, we conduct the war, you deal with the aftermath.
Minister: If only it were that simple!

Col. Powell: Adjusting the point of impact to here…
Sergeant: There is still a 45 to 65% possibility of fatality.
Col. Powell: 65%?
Sergeant: Yes.
Col. Powell: No, I need that calculation to be below 50%. Perhaps there could be an assessment of the impact of the damage right here.
Sergeant: That calculation is already at the lowest limit of what I believe is possible.
Col. Powell: What if you put the missile there?
Sergeant: I would still have to make that a 65% possibility on the upper limit.
Col. Powell: Sergeant, we need to make this work. Do you understand? We are locked into this kill chain. We have to make a decision. There are… There are many lives at risk.
[he caves]
Sergeant: Ma’am. I think…I think if I make this the point of impact, then…There I could predict a 45% possibility of fatality. That might be possible.
Col. Powell: 45%?
Sergeant: Possibly.
Col. Powell: Good man. Good man.

Steve: Three, two, one. Rifle, rifle, rifle. Weapon away. Time of flight, 50 seconds.
Carrie [gasping]: There’s a boy!
Col. Powell: Oh, shit!
Steve: Wait, he’s buy… He’s buying the bread.
Col. Powell: Forty seconds…

Angela: In my opinion, that was disgraceful. And all done from the safety of your chair.
Lt. General Benson: I have attended the immediate aftermath of five suicide bombings on the ground, with the bodies. What you witnessed today with your coffee and biscuits is terrible. What these men would’ve done would’ve been even more terrible. Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war.[/b]

So, who won?

Few things seem grimmer than stumbling adventiously upon something horrific and then needing to be gotten rid of. In other words, the only thing you did was to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. And then being expendable.

But isn’t this is how it works from the perspective of, say, the sociopath. Or the zealot. The right thing to do is always whatever furthers your own interests. And nobody is allowed to get between them and that.

Stumbling into the the grip of Nazi skinheads [and a “diabolical club owner”] just makes it all that more horrific. Especially if you are a progressive punk band. Especially out in the boondocks of the spooky Pacific Northwest. This bar’s clientele is straight out of Romper Stomper.

Here we basically have a strange admixture of the personal and the political. In part it’s just thuggery and in part it swirls around the politics of White Power. Hitler and all that shit. And then there’s the part about the heroin.

It’s all about who to believe and about what. They tell you one thing. You ponder whether or not to believe them. And they you. Back and forth it all goes until one of you is able to outsmart the other. We in the audience merely choose sides. These are the good guys, those are the bad.

IMDb

[b]The paintball story Pat (Anton Yelchin) tells is a real experience director Jeremy Saulnier had. Rick Spears is a real person, who did as said in the story.

Patrick Stewart said in an interview that when he finished reading the script at his country home in England, it was so terrifying that he locked up his house, turned on the security system and poured himself a Scotch. He then knew that he wanted to play the Darcy Banker role because a character that horrifying would be an incredible challenge and make for a compelling film.

Anton Yelchin’s last feature film to be released before his death, on June 19th, 2016[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Room_(film
trailer: youtu.be/VpJeAw2PvRc

GREEN ROOM [2015]
Written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier

The band is being interviewed…
Sam: Uh, and this is for seaside hcfm. Not for the zine?
Tad: I’ll do a print version for that, but this will run on our college station. Uh, if that’s cool.
Sam: Yeah.
Tad: So, you guys working on anything new?
Sam: Mm, yeah. A few songs. Maybe enough for, like, a seven inch.
Tad: Sweet. Will you actually press one?
Reece: Yeah, if we can afford it.
Tad: Yeah, no, I really dig the analog style. Uh, which brings me to the fact you guys are hard to find. Why no social media presence?
Reece: That’s because booking more shows, selling more records would blow. It’s not hard rock. No one wants to starve, but…when you take it all virtual you lose…the texture.
Tad: What do you mean “texture”?
Reece: Just… you gotta be there. The music is for effect. It’s time and aggression…and it’s shared live…and then it’s over. The energy can’t last.
Sam: Unless you’re Iggy Pop.
Reece: Yeah, well good for him, but I don’t think I wanna be in my 70’s still listening to Minor Threat.
Sam: But tiger does.
Tiger: I won’t live to be 70…

So, you know these guys are authentic…they have integrity.

Sam: Um, when is this gonna air? Like, maybe we should plug the show?
Tad: Yeah. Um…My last show at the muni center didn’t end well. Uh, lots of vomit, some fecal matter. County commissioner got wind and pulled my permit. You guys were already en route.
Sam: No, you gotta give us a kill fee. We went 90 miles out of our way.
Tad: I’ve got a backup lined up. Um, lunch, 50% cut on the door, and you guys would headline.
Sam: Is anyone else on the bill?
Tad: No.

How does that go?

[b]Tad: I gave you my cut. Uh, the house got theirs…split four ways…
Sam: …it’s six bucks each.
Tad: $6.87…88 if you just round up…

Tad: All right, so all set. Uh, matinee tomorrow. Door’s at 1:00, you guys are on at 3:00.
Sam: How much?
Tad: Uh, $350. Minus your tab. And, um, just so you know, it’s mostly boots and braces down there.
Reece: Skins? There’s some at every show.
Sam: What? D.M.S.? Sharp?
Tad: Uh, right-wing, or technically ultra-left, but not affiliated.
Sam: So they’re not, like, burning crosses or anything, right?

Sam: Are these guys not creeps?
Pat: They run a tight ship.
Reece: Except it’s a u-boat.
Pat: Hey, y’all…I got a dumb idea.
[Cut to the band performing the Dead Kennedys’ “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” to an audience of Nazi skinheads]

Sam: Aw, shit. My phone…
Pat: What?
Sam: My phone. I’ll catch up with…
Pat: I’ll get it.
Sam: Thanks.
[Pat walks into the dressing room. There’s a body on the floor with a knife in its head]
Pat [to the room]: Excuse me, y’all.
[He sees the body]
Pat: Oh shit.
Amber: Can you call the cops?
Werm: Fuck that.[/b]

And then just like that everything changes.

[b]Reece: You can’t keep us here, you gotta let us go.
Gabe: We’re not keeping you here, you’re just staying.

Werm: Your set was pretty good.
Pat: What?
Werm: What was the name of your second to last song?
Pat: Uh…To—Toxic Eolution.
Werm: It’s fucking hard, man. That’s the one I did her to.

Reece: All right, he’s got six bullets…if we all go at once…
Sam: We haven’t done anything!
Justin: It doesn’t matter. Okay. They’re called cartridges. The bullet is the part that enters your brain if you keep talking shit. And this gun only has five cartridges, not six, 'cause they’re big as fuck and only five fit the cylinder. So, please shut the fuck up and don’t test me.

Darcy: Now. The list. This is everybody who knows?
Gabe: Yeah. Including the band.
Skinhead: Knows what?
Darcy: Manageable. From here on out, not a single name gets added unless they have red laces.

Gabe: You think they know?
Darcy [shoving him against the wall]: I think they’re smarter than you!
Daniel: Darcy…
Darcy: I apologize. We’ll do it here. Stage it up the road.

Sam: Pretty smart for a Nazi.
Amber: I’m not a Nazi.
Pat: How do you fall for this shit?
Amber: Let’s just say the people who were gonna hurt me weren’t white.

Darcy [through the door]: Gentlemen? We’re loading you out.
Sam: Are there cops here?
Darcy: They’ve come and gone. It got a little complicated.
Pat: We’re so fucked…

Sam: How do we even know that they have guns?
Amber: They have guns. No question.
Reece: We’re gonna trust you?
Pat: We’ve got zero leverage.

Darcy [through the door]: This will be over soon, gentlemen.

Amber [after they find the bunker complex]: Heroin. It’s not about her or us.

Pat: We can’t take it so seriously. We gotta treat this like paintball.
Sam: What?
Pat: Rick Silva helped organize the paintball for Skate-o’s bachelor party. And we were short a few players to book the whole field, so they paired us up with these ex-marines. And the first few rounds, these guys just tore us to shreds. I mean, zero casualties on their side. And I just cowered behind these trees till I got shot. Covered in paint. But Rick…[/b]

Later…

[b]Amber: I’m curious. It was paintballing…You were cowering…
Pat: Yeah, Rick Silva. We were getting slaughtered by these legit Iraq vets.
Amber: It totally applies.
Pat: Full camo, thousand-dollar automatic paintball guns. They knew real war and they played real war. Tactics, hand signals, flanking. Just wiped us all out. So Rick gets fed up and says, “fuck it.” Didn’t care about getting shot. Didn’t care about taking cover. It was hopeless, man. So the last match, the whistle blows, and he just tears out there, full jackass, in–in sneakers and cut-offs and he wipes out their whole team. Doesn’t stop. Just keeps running and laughing and shooting until they’re all dead.
Amber: Pretend dead. And we’re up against real guns.
Pat: Yeah. Either way, we can’t play real war.
Amber: So, let’s pretend.

Darcy [handing Gabe red shoe laces]: For you. We’re just mopping up tonight. You already earned these. Maybe push Neal, depending on the mess, to start looking for a new house band. We’ve really gotta get back to a routine.
Gabe: You think Cowcatcher’s gonna talk?
Darcy: I’m more worried about their habits. Really have to stay away from that nigger dope. There’s a bad batch doing the rounds.

Darcy: He breathing?
Gabe: A little bit, yeah.
Darcy: Let him bleed. Later is better for time of death.

Daniel: Where’s Emily?
[Amber removes the rug exposing Emily’s corpse]
Daniel: Which one did it?
Amber: Werm did it.
Daniel: Bullshit. Which one?
Amber: What did they tell you? What? You want to know? You want him to know?
Daniel: Know what?
Amber: Werm found out that she was leaving. But she didn’t say that it was with you. “Meat grinder.” That song was their cue.

Amber [to Gabe]: Any more dogs?

Amber [after hearing gunshots]: It’s the residents.
Pat: What are they doing?
Gabe: Something you don’t want to see.

Pat: They’re making it our fault.
Amber: You were trespassing.

Amber: Why else would we walk up here?
Pat: I don’t know. And I was gonna ruin the crime scene.
Amber: Oh. I thought we’d leave a new one.

Pat: This…is a nightmare.
Darcy: For us all.
Amber: Tell me those stupid fucking words are his last.

Pat [to Darcy]: It’s funny. You were so scary at night.

Pat: I know what it is.
Amber: What what is?
Pat: My desert island band.
Amber: Tell somebody who gives a shit.[/b]

Let’s just say that not all immigrant stories are the same. This one for example is nothing at all like the folks being debated on the campaign trail here in America. For one thing, it transpired back in the 1950s. In New York City. Brooklyn. And she is white. And a woman from Ireland.

So, among things, the chances of her being a “terrorist” were rather remote.

But some things stay the same. There’s still gender bias. And racism. And ethnocentrism. And while you once lived over there in a particular cultural context, now you live over here in [in some respects] an entirely different one.

And then things get complicated. A tragedy strikes and you have to go back. And then you find yourself pulled in both directions. By two different lives. By two different sets of relationships. By two very different men.

All with very different narratives.

And in part these will revolve around conflicting moral imperatives: What is the right thing to do? Or, as likely as not, what is the least wrong thing to do?

And [inevitably] this will revolve as well around the extent to which [given the times] this might be recounted as “the immigrant experience”. As though it might possibly be reduced down to one particular individual’s trek between competing realities.

Here there is great stock put in being Irish. And there are those who take pride in the fact that they are Irish…or German or Italian or French or Spanish or whatever. But I have always seen this as just part and parcel of the way in which as children we are taught to separate ourselves in this manner. It’s just a way to mold and manipulate [and then later to divide and conquer] us all politically.

Or, sure, maybe there really is something to it. Maybe [biologically] there are actual qualities or characteristics that are passed down over the generations through the genes.

IMDb

[b]The city of Brooklyn in the film was actually shot in Montreal for budgeting reasons, as the production was unable to turn 2015 Brooklyn back to 1950s Brooklyn. Only two days of production were spent in Brooklyn, one in order to create the brownstone exterior shots and a second to film at Coney Island.

Saoirse Ronan herself was born in The Bronx, New York, but raised in Ireland to Irish parents.

While this is Saoirse Ronan’s first time using her native Irish accent, the dialect of her character differs from the one she uses in reality. In this film, she uses a Wexford accent, as her character is from Enniscorthy, while she speaks with a Dublin accent in her private life.

Received a standing ovation when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_(film
trailer: youtu.be/1ekxPFTZm1Y

BROOKLYN [2015]
Directed by John Crowley

Eilis: Miss Kelly might I to talk to you later.
Mary Lacey: Not if what you’re going to say will cause trouble for me in some way or another.

She’s reason enough to be leaving.

[b]Eilis: I’m away to America.
Mary Lacey: Whose idea was that?
Eilis: Father Flood in New York arranged it. Rose used to play golf with him. He sponsored me. He found me a job and got me a visa.
Mary: Lacey: Your poor sister.
Eilis: My sister?
Mary Lacey: Oh, mothers are always being left behind in this country. But Rose … That’s the end for her now, isn’t it? She will be looking after your mother, for the rest of her life.

Georgina [about their ship cabin] This is hell. Never again.
Eilis: Never again to America?
Georgina: The mistake was coming home from America in the first place.

Georgiana [at customs]: Stand up straight. Polish your shoes, and don’t cough whatever you do. Don’t be rude, or pushy, and don’t look too nervous.
Guard: This way!
Georgiana: Think like an American. You have to know where you’re going.
Guard [stamping her passport]: Welcome to the United States, Ma’am. Through the blue door, please.

Mrs Keogh: I saw you had a letter today, Diana. Any news?
Diana: Mr. de Valera has had another operation on his eyes, she says.
Mrs Keogh: I don’t want news that I can read in a newspaper.
Sheila: Anyway, we would describe Mr. de Valera as “politics”, would we not, Mrs. Kehoe? And we do not like politics at the dinner table.
Mrs Keogh: We don’t.
Diana: It’s not politics, to talk about eye operations.
Mrs. Keogh: It is if the eyes belong to a politician.

Mrs. Keogh: Ellis, from the look of you, you have greasy skin, is that right? What do you do about that?
Eilis: Just… Well, I wash it, Mrs. Kehoe, with soap.
Miss McAdam: There is nothing wrong with soap. Soap was good enough for our Lord. I expect.
Mrs. Keogh: Well, which brand did he use, Miss McAdam? Does the Bible tell you that?

Eilis: Sorry. Could I have the bill please?
Diner Waiter: I hope that when I go through the pearly gates, the first sound I hear is you asking me for the bill in that lovely Irish brogue.

Mrs. Keogh: We’ve never had a Bartocci’s girl living here. We might get some inside information.
Eilis: I haven’t been told anything.
Diana: I’ll bet you wouldn’t let on if you had. She’s that sort. More loyal to her bosses than to her friends. Like a Red spy.
Sheila: Oh, dear God!
Mrs. Keogh: I’ll thank you to keep His name out of a conversation about nylons. He might be everywhere, but he’s certainly not in Bartocci’s on sale day.

Rose [in a letter to Eilis]: We talk about you every evening, of course. We want to know everything. I’m sure you’re busy, but even if your letters were two hundred pages, they wouldn’t be long enough for your mother.
[cut to Eilis weeping]

Father Flood: I forget what it’s like in Ireland. So when your sister wrote to me about you I said that the Church would try to help. Anyway, we need Irish girls in Brooklyn.
Eilis: I wish that I could stop feeling that I want to be an Irish girl in Ireland.
Father Flood: Homesickness is like most sicknesses. It will pass.

Eilis [at the Christmas dinner for the poor and homeless]: How many are we expecting?
Father Flood: There were a hundred last year. There may be more this.
Eilis:They all Irish?
Father Flood: All Irish.
Eilis: Why don’t they go home?
Father Flood: If there’s nothing there for a clever young girl such as yourself, there’s gonna be even less for men like these. Some of them have been here fifty years, they have lost touch with everyone. These are the men who built the tunnels, the bridges, the highways. God alone knows what they live on now.

Patty [putting makeup on Eilis]: There. That’s better. Now you don’t look like you’ve just come in from milking the cows.
Eilis: Is that what I looked like?
Patty: Just a bit. Nice clean cows.

Tony: I’m not Irish.
Eilis: You don’t sound Irish.
Tony: I need to make this clear. No part of me is Irish. I don’t have Irish parents or grandparents or anything. I’m an Italian. Well, my my parents are, anyway.
Eilis: So what were you doing at an Irish dance? Don’t the Italians have dances?
Tony: Yeah. And I wouldn’t want to take you to one. They behave like Italians all night.
Eilis: What does that mean?
Tony: Oh, you know.
Eilis: No.
Tony: Hands.
Eilis: Too many of them?

Tony: OK, so while you’re being amenable. Can we go see a movie this week? When you’re not at night classes?
Eilis: I’ll sign up for two movies.
Tony: Really?
Eilis: Yes. Even if the first date is a disaster, I’ll give it another chance.

Miss Fortini: Eilis! You’re like a different person! How did you do it? Maybe I can pass some advice on to the next poor girl who feels that way.
Eilis: I met somebody. An Italian fella.
Miss Fortini: Oh no. I’m not passing that on. I’d rather have them homesick than heartbroken. Does he talk about baseball all the time? Or his mother?
Eilis: No.
Miss Fortini: Then keep him. There isn’t another Italian man like him in New York.

Patty [teaching Eiliis how to eat spaghetti]: Hold it. Now remember You’re getting off easy, because we haven’t got sauce.
Diana: Yeah. You have to remember that the sauce flies everywhere, so take it slowly.
Patty: I’m gonna say “Splash” anytime I see problems.
Diana: Good idea.
Eilis: Can I start now?
Patty: Yeah! Go!
Diana: SPLASH! You just splashed his mother, and his father, and the walls.
Patty: Let’s go again.

Tony’s mother: Hey, how did you learn to eat spaghetti like that?
Eilis: I’ve been taking lessons.
Tony’s brother: Lessons? Like, in a class? You can do that?

Frankie [Tony’s brother who is 8 years old]: So first of all I should say that we don’t like Irish people.
[General cries of outrage around the table]
Frankie: We don’t! That is a well known fact! A big gang of Irish beat Maurizio up and he had to have stitches. And because the cops round here are Irish, nobody did anything about it.
Maurizio: There are probably two sides to it. I might have said something I shouldn’t, I can’t remember now. Anyway, they probably weren’t all Irish.
Frankie: They just had red hair and big legs.

Eilis [to Tony]: You remember that after I had dinner at your house, you told me you loved me. Well, I didn’t really know what to say. But I know what to say now. I have thought about you. And I like you, and I like being with you and…maybe, I feel the same way. So the next time you tell me you love me, if there is a next time…I’ll say I love you too.

Eilis: Tony and I are going to Coney Island at the weekend to celebrate.
Diana: Oh, boy!
Eilis: What does that mean?
Diana: Do you have a bathing costume?
Elis: No, I was going to get one…

Patty: Do you have sunglasses?
Eilis: No.
Sheila: You need sunglasses. I read that if you don’t have them on the beach this year people will talk about you.
Mrs. Keogh [witheringly]: And what will they say, exactly, Sheila?
Dolores: That’s the thing, Mrs Kehoe. You’d never know, because they’d never say it to your face.
Mrs. Keogh: Diana’s right, though, Eilis. You need to think carefully about your costume. It’s the most Tony will ever have seen of you. You don’t want to put him off.

Father Flood [on Rose’s death]: It was sudden. I think perhaps she was ill, and she knew she was ill, and she didn’t tell anybody.
Eilis: When will they bury her?
Father Flood: Tomorrow.
Eilis: Without me.
Father Flood: Without you. You’re too far away, Eilis.
Eilis: Why did I ever come here?
Father Flood: Rose wanted a better life for you. She loved how well you were doing.
Eilis: But I will never see her again. That’s right, isn’t it, Father? I will never see her again.
Father Flood: You know that I think you will.

Mother [on the phone]: When your daddy died, I said to myself that I shouldn’t grieve too much because I had the two of you. Then when you went to America, I told myself the same thing because Rose was here with me. But everyone’s gone, Eilis. I have nobody.

Eilis: I can’t bear it, Tony.
Tony: You wanna go home, I guess.
Eilis: And how would it be for you, if I did go home?
Tony: I’ll be afraid, every single day.
Eilis: Afraid that I wouldn’t come back?
Tony: Yes. Home is home.
Eilis: I’m not sure if I have a home anymore.

Eilis [at the seashore back in Ireland]: I’d forgotten.
Jim: What?
Eilis: This.
Jim: You have beaches in Brooklyn?
Eilis: Yes, but they are just very crowded.
Jim: There will probably be quite a few walkers along here later.
Eilis: Yes. It’s still not the same.
Jim: I’m sure it’s not. We don’t really know anything of the rest of the world. We must seem very backward to you now.
Eilis: Of course not. You seem calm, and civilised. And charming.

Jim: Can we talk?
Eilis: What about?
Jim: The future. I can’t let you just go back to America without saying anything. I’d regret it for the rest of my life. So, I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay here, with me. And I know that means asking you another question. But I don’t want to bombard you. So I’ll save that one for later.[/b]

And we know what that one is. Only Eilis has forgotten to mention that she is already married to Tony.

[b]Mary Lacey: Anyway, Mrs Brady has a niece living in Brooklyn. The world is a small place, isn’t it? She had a letter from her a couple of weeks back.
Eilis:And what did it say?
Mary Lacey: Oh, only that she’d been to a wedding at the city hall, and her husband bumped into a girl from Enniscorthy who was getting married there.
Eilis: I’m not sure what you’re telling me, Miss Kelly. He didn’t bump into me.
Mary Lacey: Oh, you can’t fool me, Miss Lacey. Although I’m not sure that that’s your name any longer, is it? He couldn’t remember. Something Italian, he thought.
Eilis: I’d forgotten.
Mary Lacey: You’d forgotten! What a thing for…
Eilis: I’d forgotten what this town is like. What were you planning to do, Miss Kelly? Keep me away from Jim? Stop me from going back to America? Perhaps you didn’t even know. My name is Eilis Fiorello.

Eilis: Mommy, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m married. I got married in Brooklyn before I came home. I should have told you. I should have told you as soon as I got back. I want to be with him. I want to be with my husband.
Mother: Of course. Is he nice? Yes. He’d have to be nice, if you married him. So you are going back?
Eilis: Yes. Tomorrow.
Mother: Are you on the early train? I’m going to bed.
Eilis: Mummy…It’s not even eight o’clock. You don’t have to…
Mother [crushed]: I’m very tired. And I’d like to say goodbye now, and only once.

Eilis [instructing a new immigrant on the ship back to America]: When you get to Immigration, keep your eyes wide open, Look as if you know where you’re going. You have to think like an American. You’ll feel so homesick that you’ll want to die, and there’s nothing you can do about it apart from endure it. But you will, and it won’t kill you. And one day the sun will come out - you might not even notice straight away, it’ll be that faint. And then you’ll catch yourself thinking about something or someone who has no connection with the past. Someone who’s only yours. And you’ll realize…that this is where your life is. [/b]