The Real Glory

The title and soundtrack may be incongruent, but Henry Hathaway's 1939 adaptation of The Real Glory, a 1937 novel by Charles L. Clifford, sheds a lot more light on American foreign policy than was probably intended at the time. Though set in the Philippines in 1906, parallels to American frontier fighting and US military adventures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan shout out to be heard. But is anyone listening?

The Real Glory stars Gary Cooper as a sort of action-doctor, along with David Niven as Lt. McCool. They are based in a small village enclave on Mindanao, part of a cadre training "native troops" (as they are called in the movie).  The biggest threat to happiness apparently comes from the Moro* people, Muslims who'd fought against the Spanish for nearly four hundred years, and now (in 1906) the Americans, and later the Japanese, and later still, the  Filipino central government (through the time of this post). 

One American officer complains that he could not possibly train the local "constabulary force" in ten years, let alone sooner.  Another quips: "From now on the little brothers will have to stand on their own feet -- if they can."

Other interesting stuff to watch for: Moro strategy and tactics. The Moros, even as portrayed in the movie, are relentless guerilla fighters and raiders. They gather intelligence about the American enclave, assassinate officers with suicide attacks. They set ambushes and traps and use punji stick pits. They cut freshwater supplies to the village in order to force small contingents out into the jungle and then attack them on rough chosen ground. And so forth. The American commander responds by fortifying the village with sandbags, putting up barbed wire, and rounding up village Moros, forcing them into the village stockade. What happens to the prisoners after that we are never told.      

Another line from The Real Glory: "If you believe in marriage, never say 'yes' to a soldier." The great San Francisco earthquake is referenced, and a cholera epidemic figures prominenently, as does a wise Spanish Catholic padre. The music soundtrack is very lame, but otherwise, interesting film.

*Moro sounds like Moor and Moors, and derives from the same Spanish Christian nomenclature for Muslim historical adversaries in Spain.

Today's Rune: Harvest.   

Dominique Deruddere: Everybody's Famous!

The story in Dominique Deruddere's Everybody's Famous! / Iedereen beroemd! (2000) is like a melding of John Waters and the Coen Brothers, only gentler and more Flemish. It ruminates on public adulation of and desire for celebrity status, but is more concerned with humanizing social relationships. In a light but engaging way, Everybody's Famous! works in the manner of several other successful independent films -- modestly.

Jean, a struggling sad-faced middle-aged father (played consummately by Belgian actor Jesse De Pauw) hates the dreary factory job where he's worked for more than half of his life; he is also a musical composer who dreams of seeing his seventeen year old singer-daughter Marva (Eva van der Gucht) become a star using music he writes for her; but his relationship with Marva and his wife Chantal is rocky at best.

Things take a wild turn when Jean is laid off. Out of a chance encounter and economic desperation, he kidnaps a pop diva and everything goes haywire. Where the Coen brothers would go sinister here, Deruddere proceeds, more like John Waters, playfully forward, commenting on celebrity and wealth along the way.  Much hay is slyly made of mirrors and masks, such as when Jean meets the pop diva's comically smarmy manager wearing a bizarre Michael Jackson mask, until the manager reveals that he already knows Jean's "real life" identity: he can take off the mask. Everybody's Famous! is also notable in its use of mobile phones as an essential plot device -- "way back" near the turn of the century.

Today's Rune: Movement.       

Andrei Codrescu: The Disappearance of the Outside

Andrei Codrescu's The Disappearance of the Outside: A Manifesto for Escape (Ruminator Press, 2001, with new preface; original edition, Addison-Wesley, 1990) does a lot of things at dizzying speed. For one thing, it discusses a lot of literature, particularly Romanian, but also Eastern European in general, and Latin American, with some on North American, too, including from the perspectives of Walt Whitman and William S. Burroughs. There is a lot about Dada, Surrealism and the Beats, about authoritarian society, communist dictatorship and also advertising, technology, propaganda and globalism.

Hopefully, more on this in the future. But in the meantime, one of my favorite lines in this dazzling text is also one of Codrescu's simplest: "Here were books."

This copy signed on March 13, 2002, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That was a real cool time. Anne Waldman was there, too.

I've been co-reading Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space / La poétique de l'espace, translated by Maria Jolas (1994 edition; orginally published in 1958). Right now, it's as if The Poetics of Space is having a conversation with The Disappearance of the Outside -- right down to "the dialectics of inside and outside" (Bachelard, page 84). A nest, a space, a house, a place -- go, dream cats, go!

Today's Rune: Signals.     

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Philip Kaufman's 1988 adaptation of Milan Kundera's novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) begins by introducing us to a setting -- Czechoslovakia, 1968 -- and three main characters, Sabina, Tomáš and Tereza. A small handful of other characters float through the story, including Karenin, a dog.

Kaufman's film has the strong feel of a novella or novel -- it has nuance, complexity, depth and breadth. It is also visually elegant and interesting. Social relationships are explored, within the backdrop of the Prague Spring of 1968 (from which the Arab Spring of 2011 derives its name) and during and after Soviet reassertion of control with soldiers, tanks, police and repression -- including periods of exile. The Unbearable Lightness of Being has substance, and it's absorbing.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is particularly cool in how it considers personal freedom of choice and political freedoms; freedom of action and freedom of speech; and social connectedness. Existence and existentialism -- life, being, responsibility, choice and action. 

Today's Rune: Strength.    

Freedom of Assembly in Action and Contested

The Occupy Wall Street movement -- or civil uprising -- has been unfolding for a couple of months now, spreading around from NYC. It's mostly peaceful. Responses have been mixed. Legal skirmishes have been ongoing -- city ordinances, permits, tents, parades, signs, police raids, social media, celebrities, writers, bread and circuses. It's gone global.  

So far, compared to simultaneous protests in Syria, Yemen or Somalia, there has not with the OWS movement been much violence from either direction. Compare, so far, to the 1960s -- when there were countless bombings, assassinations, and numerous instances of police and vigilante brutality.  Around the OWS happenings, constitutional rights are more or less intact and well-defended. But it's a big game of hit or miss so far. Some of the protesters are goofy, and some of the "official" response is heavy-handed at the local level. I dread the possibility of vigilante violence.

My impressions are not strictly from the perspective of a distant observer. I have participated directly if moderately, carrying signs, talking with OWS people, giving encouragement, that kind of thing.

It's clear what the movement is saying: social priorities are important and they are presently askew.  Improvements can and should be made. It's really that basic. The message is more important than the messengers, or even the tactics.  

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.    

Serious Midnight

So many conflicts, so little time. If you're in the line of fire, knives and bombs, so much time. The situation in Syria pits protestors against the Bashar al-Assad regime, civilians against soldiers and internal security forces.  Yes, there is war all over the planet, from Sudan to Somalia and spinning all around the globe, and this is just one of them. 

The countries neighboring Syria are being sucked into this particular disaster, too. Syria's population: 23 million -- more than live in New York, fewer than in Texas.

How this Syrian cycle ends, nobody knows yet; but more will be killed by the next sunrise, and, by the following midnight, more will be killed after that. There but for the grace of God or luck or kismet go the rest of us.   

Today's Rune: Joy.

Alejandro Jodorowsky: El Topo, Part 2

A little more on Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo, (1969-1971). In yesterday's post, Sergio Leone was evoked, and there is definitely strong imagery that seems directly related to Leone's films. Others were added to the mix. After going through the second half, I'd expand the comparison and influences (across time, before and after) to Hieronymus Bosch, John Waters, all sorts of Medieval distortions of ancient myths, the Grimm brothers and David Lynch.

El Topo also reminds me of The Canterbury Tales / I racconti di Canterbury (1972), which was created with evidently scabrous delight by Pier Paolo Pasolini, adapted from Geoffrey Chaucer's influential late fourteenth century fragments and tales. For The Canterbury Tales, Pasolini employed Ennio Morricone, who also worked on the Sergio Leone films, to do the soundtrack, proving once more that everything is connected one way or another. 

Finally, after the nightmarish surrealism of El Topo, I'm happy to return to a more mundane reality, as least for a while!

Today's Rune: Initiation.