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Tagebuch einer Verlorenen / Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), directed by G.W. Pabst and starring Louise Brooks, delivers on Margaret Böhme’s hugely popular 1905 novel, Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, Von einer Toten.
Against the backdrop of socio-economic class and gender roles, it follows Thymian (played by Louise Brooks) on her zigzag arc. This is a real cool silent movie, beautifully shot (and restored).
Thymian's diary is like a character in itself, and well-employed in moving things along.
After she is impregnated by her father's assistant and refuses to marry him, Thymian is cast from her father's house largely at the behest of his new housekeeper-girlfriend. Her baby is taken away and she's sent to reform school for wayward women; next stop, a bordello. And on from there.
Diary of a Lost Girl works as entertaining drama with comic touches and as a biting satire of the kind that would resurface in novel-based talkie movies like Peyton Place (1957) and hit songs like "Play with Fire" (1965) and "Harper Valley P.T.A." (1968). Primary target: social hypocrisy. Relevance: universal.
Today's Rune: Harvest.
Fare-thee-well, Christopher Hitchens, always a joy to see in action, to read, to often disagree with. My favorite recent quip of his that springs to mind: "Cheap booze is a false economy" (Hitch-22, 2010).
Gore Vidal landed the last good shot in their back-and-forth quibbling: "Hitchens identified himself for many years as the heir to me. Unfortunately, for him, I didn't die" (2009). A salute to them both.
Today's Rune: Protection.
Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966) takes you through a funhouse mirror of person-to-person interaction. Where does one end and the other begin? How many layers of personality and personae are we made of?
In Persona, Elisabet (Liv Ullmann) and Alma (Bibi Andersson) become alternately intertwined and unspooled through a maddening but effective technique: the half-talking cure. One talks and talks and the other remains virtually silent, responding with looks and mostly non-verbal gestures and movements. The result, combined with sections of fast cuts, semi-subliminal images and bursts of wild music and set against a backdrop of changing light and ambience, stuns and makes you wonder.
Personae shift and shimmer depending on circumstance. A lot of times this has to do with audience. For instance, I'm not going to use profanities in front of undergraduate (or younger) students, whereas in much freer (and therefore very limited) circumstances I swear like a sailor -- and enjoy it.
Life is theatre: keep stage and audience in mind wherever possible. Life is a movie: there are things like flexibility, lighting, presentation and various effects to consider. Choices. Options. Actions. Let's roll it. Alma: "To change oneself. My trouble is laziness." To change yourself, it helps to know yourself; sometimes it's easier to know someone else's contours better than your own. Consider photos and mirror images vs. our interior mutterings and self-conceptions -- there's usually a disconnect there somewhere, or a no-connect, which is probably why it's so exciting when we do connect, or reconnect, or make entirely new connections, with other people as well as with ourselves.
Today's Rune: Harvest.
And so the US is seemingly pulling its last combat troops out of Iraq after nearly nine years of invasion and occupation. It's been so long many were born into this debacle and have no idea how it all happened.
After the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991 -- in which Iraq's military was badly defeated in response to its invasion of Kuwait -- no fly zones (NFZ map above courtesy of wikimedia) were created by the US, UK and France to keep the battered Saddam Hussein regime's remaining armed forces in check. One aspect of the NFZ: Kurds were to be more protected in the north and Shiites in the south from continued Hussein regime revenge attacks. Hussein's Iraq had earlier fought a brutal eight-year war with Iran and was still its primary enemy, so its eastern flank had to be covered, too.
Into this mix -- which had the effect of keeping Hussein's government penned in while remaining a counterbalance to Iran -- came the events of 9/11/2001. The George W. Bush administration decided to invade Iraq, even though there was no direct link between Iraq and 9/11; the attacks had been devised and managed from Afghanistan, where bin Laden was based under the auspices of the Taliban.
France, Turkey and several Arab states refused to participate in the invasion of Iraq (France did and does participate in Afghanistan operations). The US-led invasion of Iraq by a "coalition of the willing" removed Saddam Hussein from power, but emboldened (and made nervous) the Iranian government, which is still even now moving toward a nuclear weapons capability and engaged in a shadow war with its opponents.
Was the 2003 invasion of Iraq a wise move? Could the US afford such an adventure? Was it worth the cost in blood and treasure? Five and half years after the start of the invasion, the US economy took a nosedive, as did the economies of many of its allies. Today, the Obama Administration welcomed home some of the last US troops to be pulled out of Iraq.
Looking back, Turkey's position has risen. Some may not now remember or know that Turkey refused to allow US ground forces to invade northern Iraq through its territory. Now the Turkish government is in a stronger position to influence events in the entire region, including Syria, Israel-Palestine, Egypt and Iraq. The Turks and Kurdish elements continue to fight along the borderlands, as well. The Iraq War -- wiser to avoid than to plunge into.
I was opposed to an invasion of Iraq in 2002 and 2003, protested in the streets along with many many others to no avail and continue to think it was a terrible decision.
Today's Rune: Strength.
At times jarring but with occasionally merciful interludes, Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend (1967) is probably not the movie you'd want to see when seeking pleasant entertainment or respite from the world-as-it-is. In fact, Weekend is often brutal, a focused reflection of the modern world (right up to now), a devastating critique, an assault on the senses epitomized by noisy traffic jams and discordant honking, kicking and screaming people, burning vehicles and sporadic gunfire. Tortuous, but thoughtfully so, underscored by a memorable soundtrack and dynamic intertitles.
Now that I've gone through Godard's and Luis Buñuel's films of the 1960s and 1970s, it's striking to me how much the two directors seem to play off each other's imagery and verve. Buñuel's "search trilogy" -- La Voie Lactée/The Milky Way (1968), Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie / The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and Le Fantôme de la liberté / The Phantom of Liberty (1974) -- come across as meditations and visions inspired by Weekend, which itself was at least partly riffing from Buñuel's earlier El ángel exterminador / The Exterminating Angel (1962). Buñuel is a little less harsh in delivery, if not content.
Today's Rune: Protection.
Heterodoxy, any challenge to orthodoxy, the accepted status quo. Usually, rebels -- and people with a lust for life, to hell with the accepted rules. Joan Jett's "I don't give a damn about my bad reputation." Artists, thinkers and those who prefer to be more than to have. Often (usually), just my type. As long as mass murder isn't part of the heterodoxy, I'm usually willing to at least listen to such ideas. How about you?
Today's Rune: Harvest.
I've always liked the traditions of Saint Francis of Assisi. Not only did he (Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone, who lived between circa 1181 and 1226 A.D.) develop a peaceful and open worldview, but it turns out his appreciation of the environment and its animal denizens may be as scientifically valid as it is valid philosophically, poetically, ethically and spiritually.
Have you seen or read about the recent studies of birds and rats? The bird studies (of crows and pigeons) indicate facial recognition -- these birds seem to be able to detect familiar human faces and can determine between friendly and hostile based on earlier interactions, while rats empathize with other rats, helping them escape miniature prison cells and generally lending a paw to those in need.
Not that strange, really, but certainly cool to think about. I can attest that birds in Texas seem "happy" (and relieved) every time I fill up a bird bath during the ongoing drought. They are watching from nearby trees and bushes, no question. There's little doubt they'd have been very happy to see Saint Francis coming around -- something anyone can emulate at least to some degree even now.
Saint Francis reminds me of the Buddha in his consistently kindly actions, something to consider for a future post.
Today's Rune: Movement.
