Monday, March 4, 2013

Two Years Today




Beloved, don’t the years
Fly by? Don’t the days stream
Away like so many pearls on
Strings; violins hummed warmly
On our wedding day and you stood
By like some old man stopping
Time and I Breathed out Butterflies
Stroked my veil and said I feel like a
Bride

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Beats of the Southern Wild - A Review


           Beasts of the Southern Wild is everything I can ask for in a movie. Fiercely beautiful and sincere, this feature presents a simple story that is as exquisite as it is savage; visually poetic and triumphant.
            The film, headed up by first-time director Benh Zeitlin, chronicles the story of six-year-old Hushpuppy and her father, Wink, living out an atypical life immersed in extreme poverty and characterized by proud defiance. The tale is set in an isolated bayou, separated from New Orleans by an enormous levee. The ramshackle community, situated on the wrong side of the levee, is affectionately known as “The Bathtub,” home to a collection of human detritus. Satisfied with their derelict homestead, the residents of The Bathtub revel in festivities and teach their children to be survivors. “I am meat, ya'll asses meat,” proclaims one Bathtub native to a group of children. “Everything is part of the buffet of the universe.” Meat – and the death it takes to obtain it - is a central symbol in the film. Wink teaches Hushpuppy to catch fish with her bare hands, farm animals decay on the flooded landscape after an earth-shattering storm, alligators are shot and deep fried. And alone in her house, Hushpuppy proclaims with a raw bluntness, “if Daddy don't get home soon, it's gonna be time for me to start eating my pets.”
            The film is at first a rugged telling of a community identifying so deeply with their homeland that they refuse to leave when a great storm threatens. Parallel to this runs the story of Hushpuppy and her daddy. What at first seems to be a strange, if not downright neglectful relationship culminates into an understanding that what they have is deep. Their love is primal; a wild and natural affection one might see between lions and their cubs, or killer whales. These two stories are intertwined and consummate, blending poetic vignettes of glaciers cracking and roaming arctic beasts with stark realism. Myth and matter are interwoven. The Bathtub residents are preparing for a disaster not unlike Hurricane Katrina, and Wink and Hushpuppy have their own storms to face.
            The bold six year-old is the star of this feature, no doubt about it. Played by Quvenzhane Wallis, Hushpuppy is a thunderbolt in a community that expects nothing less of their offspring. This disheveled, unkempt child makes complex observations about the fine tunings of the universe one moment, and relishes in the sound of her own scream the next. Hushpuppy is at once a vulnerable child yearning for affection and a wild and uncanny creature quite capable of fending for herself. Her father, like many of his neighbors, relies on alcohol to brace him. His moods are erratic as a result. Early in the film Wink is hospitalized, disappearing for a day and a night. But Hushpuppy is hardly nonplused by his absence, settling for a canned cat food supper that she cooks by lighting the gas stovetop with a blowtorch.
            The visuals in this film are radiant, poetic. Swirling dust is captured in sunlight, rain is caught glinting on tin roofs and bare skin. Hushpuppy is frequently surrounded by bright, sparkling lights. She’s captured twirling amongst firecrackers in the beginning of the movie, and towards the end Hushpuppy and her band of orphaned friends are held and rocked side to side by mothering prostitutes in the soft, hazy glow of a saloon. The film constantly alludes to itself. Ancient cave-drawings are tattooed on a woman’s thigh, and Hushpuppy draws stick figures with charcoal, stating that, “in a million years, when kids go to school, they gonna know that once there was Hushpuppy and she lived with her Daddy in the Bathtub.”
            The film bears an overall emphasis on wholeness. The Bathtub residents are one with their land, and Hushpuppy proclaims that, “the whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right. If one piece busts, even the smallest piece, the entire universe will get busted.” One of the strongest scenes in the movie features a tugboat captain who saves his lunch wrappers, littering the floor of his vessel with chicken biscuit papers because it makes him feel cohesive. “I wanna be cohesive,” says Hushpuppy.  “Oh you will be,” replies the captain. “I got no doubt in my mind.”
            Aurochs, the gargantuan ice-age beast, are another reoccurring symbol in the film. At first their appearance coincides with disaster and fear. A herd rampages through the town, devastating The Bathtub between takes of a hurricane rolling in. The boar-like creatures feast on a fallen comrade as Hushpuppy soliloquies on the brutality of life. Aurochs are devastatingly powerful beasts, identified with the series of hardships that fall upon Hushpuppy and The Bathtub. Yet as the film progresses, a kinship and likeness develop between the people and the wild animals, culminating in Hushpuppy’s final encounter with Aurochs. “You’re my friend, kind of,” she says simply to the great monster kneeling before her. And this is why the movie is so fiercely tender and wonderful. The characters don’t ever escape the hardships, but they master them. At six years old, little Hushpuppy learns that trials are a necessity of life. “Everyone loses the thing that made them,” she proclaims. The wildness of the world calls to that wild part in our souls. Hushpuppy knows the call. She listens for it in the heartbeat of every creature she comes across. And this is the triumph: that in the midst of the hardships there is a perseverance that can be clung to. The film concludes with the rag-tag group of homeless souls traversing a narrow road with the waters lapping up on either side. There is no going back. And they are moving onward, triumphant.


             







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Thursday, February 28, 2013

"The Suburbs" by Arcade Fire - A Review


         The suburbs of North America carry with them a certain promise. Safety, normalcy, and a happy family life are purportedly housed within their bounds. Arcade Fire’s newest album, The Suburbs, explores these ideals and promises, their falsities and nostalgia, begetting an audio essay on the products of those promises in suburbia. The album is the best they’ve created yet. Like the Canadian band’s previous releases, Funeral and Neon Bible, Suburbs is synergistic, drawing upon the same core themes throughout the album, and repeating lines and concepts from song to song. But in this new collection of music lies a wholeness not seen before. The songs go together like pieces of a puzzle, oozing cohesiveness with every line.
            The indie rock band breathes life into a bittersweet nostalgia and angst that is often found in Generation Y. The Suburbs became their most popular album after its release in August of 2010. And in February of 2011 it won the Grammy for album of the year. The songs compiled in Suburbs vary in kind and tone. Arcade Fire never was a band to be accused of always sounding the same. Some of the darkest lyrics are given the brightest or softest melodies, establishing an understanding that however disillusioned the writer is with suburban childhood, there is still some part of him that pines for the days of his youth.  This fine balance keeps the album from growing bitter and harsh. Instead it feels straight from the heart; a refined blend of jaded hopes, angst, and yearning.
            The first song on the album, titled The Suburbs, articulates this yearning; an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for the places we’ve grown up, regardless of the pain they hold or the promises they’ve broken. “Kids wanna be so hard / but in my dreams we’re still screamin’ and runnin’ through the yard.” This is a persistent thread throughout the album. The song ends on the same line, though now with an ominous feel. “We’re still screamin’.” The last word echoes on eerily, bringing to mind a terror filled shriek instead of laughing children playing in front yards.
            Also imbibed in the album is the disappointment in and mistrust of authority. “The businessmen are drinking my blood,” groans one lyric in Ready to Start, and the same theme is echoed in City With No Children. “Never trust a millionaire .  .  . I feel like I’ve been living in / a city with no children in it / a garden left for ruin by a millionaire inside of a private prison.” Later on in the same song however, the singer identifies himself with the millionaire. “I used to think I was not like them / but I’m beginning to have my doubts / my doubts about it.” Concluding the chorus with, “a garden left for ruin by and by as I hide inside of my private prison.”
            There is a sadness evoked in this album. The children of Generation Y despised the hypocrisy found in authorities, and as adults they’ve become much like those they hated. This mistrust of authority stems from the realization that the adults who presided over their childhoods were frauds, inept and deceitful, just like the false promises held in suburbia. “All the kids have always know / that the emperor wears no clothes / but they bow down to him anyway / it’s better than being alone.” This cycle of empty promises is the fate of an ungrounded society. Modern Man is particularly evocative of this theme, as is Half Light I, a bittersweet musing on freedom and suppression in childhood. And perhaps this is the central theme of the album: suppression of ideas and purpose stemming not merely from the physical suburbia, but from the authoritarians who held onto suburban ideals and tried to force them upon the children in their care. This album chronicles a loss. The suburbs are a metaphor for a directionless culture. Boredom is a consistent theme, as is a lack of direction.
            Perhaps the most telling line in the entire album completes this idea: “First they built the roads / then they built the town / and that’s why we’re still driving around and around.” This line crops up multiple times in the album, sang with a variety of tones. And in it lies the heart of the matter. The suburbs were built on a path strewn with ideals but lacking a substantial goal. Without that teleological focus, all hopes and virtues and promises become futile and meaningless. The Suburbs articulates this disillusionment with a mastery of symbol and song, identifying with the listener and leaving them with a choice. Where will you chose to build your life?

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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Anne of Green Gables - A Review



            If I sit quietly awhile and think long and deeply about my childhood, I will see a freckled orphan face bobbing along beneath a canopy of flowering plum trees. The face is not my own – I wasn’t an orphan. It is a soulful countenance of a timeless, imaginative girl. And there I am, the wide-eyed child, wishing to have red hair just like Anne.            
          There are those memorable books that carry in their text the extraordinary ability to bring the reader back to their childhood, to when first they opened the page. Anne of Green Gables is keeper of that charm for me. I read, and all of the rosy hopes and castles in the air come streaming back, like birds flocking to their home tree at evening.             
        But Anne is no mere expression of childhood nostalgia. She is universal girlhood. And girlhood is a special, hallowed thing. The wistful yearning for love and beauty that burns within Anne will resonate with any creative and tender soul. Avonlea is home to such folk. Kindred spirits abound here. Author L.M. Montgomery understands the intricacies of human nature and childhood, and bundles these universalities into a very personal package.
            There is something inherently wonderful about this coming of age story; the redemption of an unloved orphan by a pair of stiff and ancient siblings, and the community that comes to both belong to Anne and claim her as its own.  The childhood predicaments, sorrows, and sheer joy chronicled here are both amusing and tender, unveiling the familiar thoughts and experiences every child has known.
            Unlike much of the classic fiction touted in this modern day, the world of Green Gables is not a respite from all that is wrong with the world. Rather, any idealistic naivety in Anne is gradually realized for the sweet, albeit vain, soap bubble dream that it is. The imaginative dreamer glimpses reality little by little, culminating in Anne’s first tryst with grief.
            Perhaps this is the beauty of growing up with Anne. I read the book (and the other seven in the series) many times over the course of my childhood. In the beginning the imaginative dreaming and grand quest for all that is bright and beautiful resonated most deeply with me. But now as an adult I read these same words over and see a greater, truer light. I too fell for those darling, sudsy dreams. I too learned that there is a curse that touches all, and sorrow is as integral to life as joy. As a child I identified with the search for beauty, and as an adult I understand that it is found in the heavy and the yielding. What a masterpiece Montgomery has created. Human nature is revealed poignantly, wondrous and weak. The depths the soul are laid bare and raw before my eyes. Anne is me. Anne is us all.
            At some point in life we begin to gaze back upon those days of dreaming instead of looking forward to them. The orphan girl begins to grow up, and while Anne’s imaginative ardor remains, it has been tempered by trials of body and spirit. To quote the girl herself, "I'm not a bit changed--not really. I'm only just pruned down and branched out. The real ME--back here--is just the same." And though I too have packed away my castles in the clouds, I am able to return and find them standing just the same each time I open Anne of Green Gables.

            

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A Realization


           Intent. A writer needs it, craves it. I cannot help but admit, however, that I’ve had difficulty conjuring up that kind of zeal to write this essay. Intent implies direction and self-awareness. But often I don’t know exactly where I want to go.
            As I read Atwood’s definition of “intent,” I found myself stirred with the very feelings she described: eagerness and intensity. Good writing can do this; create a maelstrom of inspiration in the breast. As a writer, I generally know the “feel” I want for any given piece. I may not know exactly where the words will take me, what they will become, but I do know how I want my reader to feel as he or she reads. Does this intuitive approach suffice for intention? I struggled with this as I thought about the kind of reviewer I wish to be. Doubt creeps in and hisses that perhaps I am only fit to read words, and not to craft them. And I respond with a small voice, “No. If I am lacking, I will learn.”
            I believe this instinctual disposition comes partially from my personality, – as an intuitive and lamentably romantic person, I tend towards feelings and abstractions – but also from a nature universally housed in creative writers. We don’t tell, we show. We let the thoughts flow onto the page with little inhibition.
            I remember, as a young girl, sitting in bed at night, weeping bitterly as I read Poe’s Annabel Lee. I couldn’t have given a sound reason for the response, but oh! The tragedy of love lost! Romantic, childish, tender heart! My notebooks then held many agonizing and italicized entries and foppish poems. But between sentimental phrases, I find myself reflected in the feel of it all, the sincere and uninhibited yielding to emotion. I may have learned to channel those emotions to greater depths, but I find that deep down I have not changed a bit.
            As a writer, be it of articles or novels, I cannot avoid imbedding a piece of myself within my words. Sometimes I feel that this is a wonderful thing. My sensitivity, deep love of beauty, and wistful feelings may all be wound up between the lines, like a golden thread. Yet there are those parts of me, those dark, or simply hindering expressions of my personality, and these I fear. My tendency to overly abstract, to drift into beauty aside from substance, to form my opinions of things from an initial, intuitive feeling without reasons can suffocate the things of substance in my writing. These habits must be weeded out and pruned back. Those things of substance must be nourished if I am to write clearly and well.
            As I write reviews I want to impress upon my reader the reasons for my critiques - and I want them to be sound reasons. I want to leave them with something substantial, leave them thought-provoked and satisfied. Reviews are all around us in this modern age, and one can scarcely avoid hearing at least one celebrity’s perspective before we read, view, or buy. We check in to get the latest Roger Ebert opinion, and browse online reviews before purchasing that new book, purse, watch, or camera. Ordinarily the reader merely wants to be informed: should I buy it/see it/read it, or not? But there are some reviews that stick and are not easily forgotten. They are the reviews that are not merely informative, but are creative themselves. Art about art. They tip the scale one way or the other, not because of poorly articulated opinions, but because their words ring deep and true. These are the reviews that enforce supple intuition with a rational punch. And this is what I aspire to.
            This goal is lofty, requiring that I channel my creative instincts with foresight and intent. And this intention must not be solely based upon the envisioned “feel.” Intention demands that happy medium between intuition and thoughtfulness. To write with intent seems to me difficult, if not downright formidable. But there is hope, just as there was hope for the young girl, red-eyed and lonesome, reading Poe in her bedroom.   
            And I am lacking, but I will learn.

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"As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, and its place acknowledges it no longer. But the lovingkindness of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children's children, to those who keep His covenant and remember His precepts to do them." (Psalm 103:15-18)

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