Jim Jarmusch: 'Dead Man' (1995)

Jim Jarmusch, Dead Man (1995). Stars Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer with appearances by Iggy Pop, Billy Bob Thornton and Jared Harris, among several other notables. 

A frontier rite of passage in which the West is Truly Wild. Close attention is paid to period detail, and the setting is more Northwest than West, defamiliarizing the familiar. Jarmusch's use of fade to black fade-ins and fade-outs gives the film an episodic feel, like coming in and out of consciousness. 

William Blake, Depp's character, is a fish out of water everywhere he goes. When he goes West, young man, from Cleveland to Machine, a terrible place to which he's conveyed by coal-burning rail, the end seems nigh. Along the way, brutish fellows shoot at bison and anything else that moves outside the cars. In Machine, avaricious frontier capitalists forge deals with the Devil in a Hellish World. To quote William Blake the poet from "And did those feet in ancient time"  (circa 1804):

And did the Countenance Divine,

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here,

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

The hero of Dead Man is "Nobody," played by Gary Farmer. Cast out of his own homeland and left to wander, he is Blake's spirit guide and moral compass. Blake, with a bullet lodged near his heart, is pursued by psychopathic bounty hunters to the Ends of the Earth. 

From Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" (circa 1803); 

Every night and every morn

Some to misery are born,

Every morn and every night

Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,

Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie

When we see not thro' the eye,

Which was born in a night to perish in a night,

When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,

To those poor souls who dwell in night;

But does a human form display

To those who dwell in realms of day.

Nobody and William Blake arrive at the Makah village, on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, at the Edge of the World.   

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision

Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision.

The story of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and its creator is movingly charted by Freida Lee Mock in her Academy Award winning documentary film, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (1995), available in digital format. 

The scenes of veterans and vet families at the wall can't help but elicit sympathy and sadness; interviews with various vets involved in the creation of the memorial are also indicative of how deep the wounds left by the Vietnam War remain. Though there is much talk about healing, it's clear from viewing this film that for many involved, the wounds will never heal in this lifetime. Maya Lin's achievement is to have created a place where people can weep and release some of their grief, at least for a time.

Maya Lin (born October 5, 1959) was a Yale undergrad when she entered a 1980 competition to design the memorial, and almost miraculously, her radically brilliant but controversial design won. She was 21 years old at the time. At Yale, she had studied funereal architecture and wondered, as she says on film, "What is a memorial's purpose?" How has the world shifted since the great World War One memorials were designed and erected? How did they relate to their natural setting? In support of her very simple but powerful vision, she spent two months composing an essay explaining how it "focused on the individual losses" of war and steered away from the overtly political. It was to be neither a glorification of war and nation, nor a barbed condemnation of flawed policies. Still, some took it the latter way and fought ferociously to change the design from sunken, low and black to raised, above ground and white, with a giant U.S. flag at its apex. Some called it a "boomerang" design and read that as a critique of U.S. foreign policy. She imagined the concept as "taking a knife and cutting into the Earth," whereas one vet fumes on film that it is "a black scar" on all who served.

Maya Lin was attacked for being a woman, for being Chinese American (her parents, born in China, were professors at the University of Ohio in Athens, Ohio), and for being too young. But, after a pragmatic compromise was reached, her vision prevailed. The main monument area was constructed as she intended, and a more traditional "combat figures" statue was set to one side, with a large flag at the side entrance.

The result, unveiled in 1982, is stunning. It is worth the journey to Washington, DC to see and experience in person. It is very much a living memorial. People leave notes, photographs, letters, posies, dog tags, uniforms, teddy bears, and anything else you might imagine there every day.

The film follows Maya Lin's success after the Vietnam memorial, too. We see her Memphis civil rights memorial and her peace chapel at Juniata College.

Maya Lin also designed the Wave Field swales pictured above at the University of Michigan. She is very attuned to natural setting and context, and was a selection jurist for the World Trade Center Site Memorial competition. She owns and runs a studio in New York City and has a retreat in Colorado. I read somewhere that she loves the energies of Manhattan but also needs a remote place for more relaxed contemplation. Seems like the best of both worlds.

Near the end of the film, she raises the interesting question of whether there is a significant gender difference between what she calls the male eye and the female eye, and concludes, "we can only wait and see." Architecture, like engineering, has long been a male-dominated field, but as in most fields, women are making significant inroads over time, however slowly it seems.

Freida Lee Mock is to be commended for this fine documentary. She subsequently produced the excellent 1999 documentary Bird by Bird: A Film Portrait of Writer Anne Lamott.

[Note: This post was originally published on May 15, 2006.]

Today's Rune: Partnership.  

The Inferno of Dante (Pinsky Verse Translation): Response II

The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation by Robert Pinsky, Bilingual Edition, Illustrated by Michael Mazur with Notes by Nicole Pinsky and Foreword by John Freccero. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994, 1995 printing.

Let's run down a few more touchstones from Dante's Disco Inferno, shall we?

From Canto XIV (page 141): 

". . . All over the sand
Distended flakes of fire drifted from aloft
Slowly as mountain snow without a wind." 

Compare a snippet from the devilish 1969 Stooges song, "I Wanna Be Your Dog:"

"And now I'm ready to close my mind

And now I'm ready to feel your hand
And lose my heart on the burning sand

And now I want to be your dog . . ."

Dante Running from the Three Beasts by William Blake, 1820s

Tales of Brave Ulysses (Odysseus).

Canto XXVI (page 277):  

"You were not born to live as a mere brute does . . .

Turning our stern toward the morning light,
We made wings of our oars, in an insane
Flight . . ." 

Moonlight Mile. 

Canto XXIX (page 305):

"'. . . And already the moon
Is under our feet: the time we are allowed
Has now grown short, and more is to be seen

Than you see here. . .'"

Down in the Bottom / The Wishing Well.

Canto XXXII (page 341):

"It is not jokingly that one begins
To describe the bottom of the universe --
Not a task suited for a tongue that whines

Mamma and Dadda . . ."*

The Cooling Board.

Canto XXXII (page 347):

"'. . . down where the sinners are put
To cool . . .'"

The Stooges, "Real Cool Time" (1969):

"We will have a real cool time tonight,
Tonight . . ."

*"Mamma o babbo" in the original Italian (page 340). Bottom Line: the influence of Dante on fellow artists during the past 700 years is demonstrably effervescent and plentiful.  

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

The Inferno of Dante (Pinsky Verse Translation): Response I

The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation by Robert Pinsky, Bilingual Edition, Illustrated by Michael Mazur with Notes by Nicole Pinsky and Foreword by John Freccero. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994, 1995 printing.

Dante's Inferno still packs heat 700 years into its publication. A salute to Dante Alighieri (circa 1265-1321) via this lively translation by Robert Pinsky (b. 1940).

A few snippets about Hell and Writing, beginning in Year 1300.

This is pertinent to many a tale, embracing nonfiction and fiction alike:

For my demanding theme so pulls my story,
To multiply the telling would be too little
For the multitude of fact that filled my journey.
(Canto IV, page 43).

Wow. So, Less must be More, More or Less, as so, too, would say the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969). One can only provide so many telling details. James Joyce's Ulysses (1918-1922) takes readers on a crazy romp through a single day -- June 16, 1904 -- in a mere 700 pages of text. Even so, there are still gaps. Do these catch Dante's drift?

"Why do you squander?" and "Why do you hoard?" 
(Canto VII, page 67). 

Good question. We do people squander?  Why do people hoard? Human nature, very sinful. Simple as pie or a stye in the eye.

And he said more that I don't remember now --
(Canto IX, page 89).

This nifty statement covers a multitude of sins and omissions, no doubt. Handy at times in writing specifically and throughout life in general.

More to come, or in Dante's words as spoken by Virgil, refashioned by Pinsky,

". . . it pleases me
To go now; for above us in the skies
The Fish are quivering at the horizon's edge,
And the whole Wagon lies over Caurus -- and this,
Farther ahead, is where we descend the ridge." 
(Canto XI, page 115).

In the next post, we'll go deeper. 

Today's Rune: Defense. 

The Spanish Civil War: A Documentary (Part II)

The Spanish Civil War (Brother Against Brother) Written, Produced, Directed and Narrated by Mike Leighton; Cromwell Productions, 1995 (2001 DVD). The Last Great Cause. Continued.

This documentary cites four poets, all of them fatalities as a direct result of the war.

Antonio Machado (1875-1939)'s “El crimen fue en Granada / The Crime Took Place in Granada” is an homage to Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), murdered with apparent relish by a Francoist goon squad because he was gay as well as pro-Republic. 

From John Cornford's (1915-1936) “Poem” (to Margot Heinemann):

And if bad luck should lay my strength
Into the shallow grave,
Remember all the good you can;
Don't forget my love.

In the course of the film, Cornford's “Full Moon at the Tierz” is also recited.

Two poems by Miguel Hernández are featured: “Recoged esta voz  / Hear This Voice” and “Vientos del pueblo me llevan/ The Winds of the People” It's all very sad, the human condition.  

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

The Spanish Civil War: A Documentary (Part I)

The Spanish Civil War (Brother Against Brother).  Written, Produced, Directed and Narrated by Mike Leighton; Cromwell Productions, 1995 (2001 DVD). With informal subtitle: The Last Great Cause.

This is another good documentary on the conflict that's packed with archival footage. Includes interviews with British survivors of the International Brigades, and historical context by Richard Robinson, author of Origins of Franco's Spain: The Right, the Republic and the Revolution, 1931-36 (1970). An additional slant is in the use of poetry to accompany war images. As in many complementary documentaries, there is an absence of pro-Franco interview footage, something that would be equally fascinating to ponder.  

Pictured here: defenders of the Republic in Madrid, 1936. Franco's side was far more conservative in its approach to the "proper role of women in society." As of 2014 -- with the victorious Franco dead for 39 years -- one can again see in Madrid significant numbers of women in uniform: police, museum guards, transit workers and so on. Franco must be turning in his grave!

Here's a chapter breakdown for The Spanish Civil War, which runs just under an hour:

1. Introduction

2. The International Brigades

3. The Anarchist Movement

4. Franco Declares Martial Law

5. Siege of the Alcázar in Toledo

6. The Battle of Madrid

7. Las Pasionaria [Dolores Ibárruri]

8. Italian and German Air Strikes

9. The Non-Intervention Policy

10. Terrible Conditions of the War

11. The Bombing of Guernica

12. The Battle of Brunete

13. Dispelled Idealism

14. The Republican Attack on Teruel

15. The Italian Bombing of Barcelona

16. The Battle of the River Ebro

17. The Munich Agreement

18. Ernest Hemingway’s Role in the War

19. Republican Defeat

20. Credits

Today's Rune: Growth. 

Pedro Almodóvar: La flor de mi secreto / The Flower of My Secret (1995)

Pedro Almodóvar's La flor de mi secreto / The Flower of My Secret (1995) revolves around Leo Macías, who writes under the pseudonym Amanda Gris. Her marriage with Paco is an emotional train wreck: Leo's neediness combined with his distance form a wretched dynamic, one so awful that he prefers serving with NATO in Brussels and Bosnia during wartime rather than remain with her in Madrid -- whereas she (just almost) wants to die rather than be without him. 

Leo (as Amanda Gris) is a successful writer of "pink" romance novels, but her growing affinity is for "black" (as in the mood) writing. She loves "anxious" and "lunatic" writers such as  Djuna Barnes, Jane Bowles, Janet Frame, Virginia Woolf, Anaïs Nin, and so on.  And indeed, The Flower of My Secret touches quite a bit on identity, persona, pseudonym and a heady creative spirit. Even the choice of "Amanda Gris" as pen name seems to derive from the Spanish visual artist Juan Gris, formerly known as José González, a fellow traveler in stage-shifting. Then there's the matter of stealth, theft and the so-called "writer's [or writers'] well" -- there are only so many ideas to be reworked. Leo's "black" work is to be made into a film (and actually was later made into Almodóvar's own Volver ~ whoah), while her "pink" work is taken over by a temporarily secret admirer/ghost writer. Ah, life!   

Almodóvar's La flor de mi secreto / The Flower of My Secret (1995): Plaza Mayor, Madrid. Ángel and Leo after dark. Red is the color. 

Almodóvar's La flor de mi secreto / The Flower of My Secret (1995): Blanca (Manuela Vargas), Leo (Marisa Paredes) and Rosa (Rossy de Palma).

A few lines for the future: 

"Except for drinking, everything is difficult for me" (Leo).

"Jealousy is a needle that keeps me from living" (from a song in Almagro, Castile-La Mancha).

From Leo's madre (played by Chus Lampreave, always memorable):

"She hides things like a magpie" and "Like a cow without a cowbell." 

Let's not forget phosphorus supplements for "memory." Who knew?

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Sugartime

Finally checked out Sugartime (1995), the HBO movie directed by John N. Smith about the amour fou romance between Sam the Cigar Giancana (John Turturro) and Phyllis McGuire (Mary-Louise Parker) of the goody two-shoes McGuire Sisters. Inherently interesting in both the time-bound and timeless ways of the world.

And then there are the intriguing connections between Chicago, Vegas, Miami, Cuba, Fidel Castro, the Kennedys, Dan Rowan of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In -- and Frank Sinatra. Reality is a wild ride, but how closely do the dots connect? 

Of the three McGuire sisters, Phyllis is the only one still living -- she's 82 and lives in Vegas. 

Mistress mayoress complained 
that the pottage was cold;
"And all long of your fiddle-faddle," quoth she.
"Why, then, Goody Two-shoes, what if it be?
Hold you, if you can, your tittle-tattle," quoth he.
(-- Charles Cotton, 1670)

Today's Rune: Fertility.      

Butterfly Kiss

Butterfly Kiss is the ninth Michael Winterbottom film noted on this site and was his first theatrical release (1995). It's a creepy independent tale set mostly along "motorways" and "carriageways" and in and around "petrol stations" in northern England. Eunice (Amanda Plummer, who happens to be Christopher Plummer's daughter), a sort of Pied Piper of secretive mayhem, draws a neophytic devotee (Miriam, played by Saskia Reeves) into her orbit. Interesting film, particularly its psychological and quasi-religious dimensions. Also, Plummer and Reeves together are compelling.

Today's Rune: Gateway.    

     

David France: How to Survive a Plague (Part I)

If, as Frederick Douglass put it in 1857, "power concedes nothing without a demand," David France's How to Survive a Plague (2012) shows an immediate demand -- faster, more effective response to the AIDS crisis, more resources for effective treatment --  via well-organized groups ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and its 1991 spinoff TAG (Treatment Action Group). Much of this compelling documentary covers the late 1980s and first half of the 1990s. In it, one will see not only the rank and file of ACT UP and TAG and their allies, but also buffoonish conservative enemies like North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, and let's not forget the mixed response of Pat Buchanan on Firing Line. Also: see George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Charlie Rose, among many others, drawn into the maelstrom. 

How to Survive a Plague is moving, fast-paced and exhilarating all at once. Fantastic!

Today's Rune: Signals.     

Jean-Luc Godard: Notre Musique

Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique (2004) is set in Bosnia-Herzegovina less than ten years after the Bosnian War (1991-1995), a savage conflict involving three main factions: Bosnians, Croatians (Croats) and Serbians (Serbs). Sounds and images of significant contemporary documentary value depict street scenes in Sarajevo and Mostar. Without getting into the film proper (yet), a primary image that leaps out from the film is the functioning electric tram. Here it is so soon after the bloodletting, yet trams are humming along.

I couldn't help but think how Detroit used to have a major streetcar/trolley system and may again; how in Fort Worth, Texas, there is currently a discussion over reinstalling trolleys along 7th Street and other thoroughfares. In 1907, there were sixteen streetcar lines in Fort Worth. Today, Dallas runs trolleycars and other light rail, as do other North American cities such as Philadelphia, New Orleans, San Francisco, Mexico City and Toronto.

What does the electric tram represent in Notre Musique? I'm not sure, but it's worth remembering that Orpheus is a tram conductor and the god Hermes runs a tram station in Marcel Camus' Orfeu Negro/Black Orpheus (1959). Perhaps the electric tram represents a hope for the reconstruction of a well-woven social fabric after periods of mass violence and destruction, the kind that makes one think of Syria today, or the Gordian Knot of Israeli-Palestinian relations, which is another key topic in Notre Musique. Or perhaps it's simply making some of notre musique -- "our music."  

Today's Rune: Possessions.         

Lee Miller: Through the Mirror

"She worked hard for her luck." So observes, aptly, Lee Miller's fellow photographer and running buddy David Scherman in Sylvain Roumette's Lee Miller: Through the Looking Glass (1995). This documentary, running less than an hour, left me wanting to learn much more even than I'd previously read about Miller (1907-1977), who worked at both ends of a camera and with the likes of Man Ray, Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau, as well as, during the Second World War, Scherman. During her stint as a war photojournalist, she took shots in and around Dachau and Munich in 1945, and was photographed by Scherman in Hitler's abandoned bathtub as the Third Reich collapsed. 

Fascinating film, thanks in large part to the interest, preservation efforts and observations of Anthony Penrose, Lee Miller's and Roland Penrose's son. 

Here's where to go to see much more -- the Lee Miller Archives: http://www.leemiller.co.uk/

Today's Rune: Harvest.