Sing Hear on the Dotted Line

In Gatineau, flu vaccinations are free to anyone with a chronic illness, and as the king of chronic illness, I accept this tribute to my glory. So last night in the rain, I walked to a local clinic for my annual shot.

At the front table, a nice Québécoise lady offered me a medical form. When I told her that I have trouble reading print, she said, in English, "I'll help you! You can sit right here."

I sat beside her and stared hard at the form. She pointed to one section, and said, "Just write your mother's middle name."

Parental names are standard on Québec's hospital cards, but only first and last names.

"You want my mother's middle name?"

"Yes, her middle name, on this line."

In big, block letters, I wrote, YVONNE, but I still felt that something was odd about this request. And so I stared and stared at the form until I realized that what it needed was my mother's maiden name.

The Implications of Implications

"If you could understand crazy, it wouldn't be crazy."

This comment by the protagonist of Vincenzo Natali's film SPLICE refers to her mother, and to painful events in her chilhood that she never brings to mind. One implication of the film is that people who do not want children often have good reasons to be childless; another is that adults who refuse to learn from their family history will repeat the mistakes of their parents all over again.

These implications at the heart of SPLICE remain implied, nothing more. While someone like David Cronenberg digs out the implications of his implications, Natali keeps the subtext of his film in the basement while focusing on a surface of uncluttered narrative. This is not a bad way to make a film, but it does limit the scope of the film's meaning. While Cronenberg will add layers to a film like THE FLY, to explore ideas about the effects of aging or disease on a male ego, on the way a man facing death can often perceive romantic partnerships as a means of personal extension beyond his own failing body into recombinations of personality and genes in the forms of relationships and children, SPLICE never becomes more than a monster film.

As monster films go, I would call SPLICE a good one. The story moves efficiently, the transformations of both plot and creature are carefully foreshadowed, the performances and dialogue are convincing, the music by Cyrille Aufort is understated, eerie, and poignant. The film disturbs, and it lingers in the mind. If you can accept its limited scope, you might find it well worth seeing.

Are you -- Nobody -- Too?

Daguerreotype at Mount Holyoke, 1846-1847.

I have no idea of how to say this without sounding small-minded, which means I have to force myself.

Last night, while watching on Youtube a documentary about Emily Dickinson, I realized that I have no interest in her private life; instead, I want to read her images, metaphors, and phrases:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you -- Nobody -- Too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise -- you know!

How dreary -- to be -- Somebody!
How public -- like a Frog --
To tell one's name -- the livelong June --
To an admiring Bog!

Dickinson is only one among several. I have biographies of Bacon, Keats, Bierce, de la Mare, of so many others, but I never seem drawn to these books as I am drawn to their books; and while someone like Thomas Browne must have lived in a fascinating world, I would rather focus on his perceptions of that world.

People say, "How terrible that we know so little about Shakespeare, about Webster," but the truth is, we know exactly what we need to know, because we have their plays.

I would never deny that the circumstances of a writer's life can illuminate the work, but they can also distract. By the time the sun goes down and the snow hits, what matters are not the small details of a writer's day to day, but the larger patterns of a writer's words.

No Guts

Any film that stars Jenny Agutter might hold at least a visceral interest for me, but somehow I have never liked AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. Watching the film again on Blu Ray, I can see no improvements, but I can see with digital sharpness the details that undermine the story.

The film tears itself apart. It wants to be a horror film, but instead of atmosphere, it offers flat lighting more suited to a television show, and pop songs instead of a haunting score. (Elmer Bernstein could have easily provided effective music if the director and producers had given him priority.)

Worst of all, the film develops hints of tragedy that remain unfulfilled, because it cuts away quickly from its final sequence of death and loss, only to punctuate its lack of spine with another pop song.

Even the funniest films can deal with sadness and with high stakes. Keaton began OUR HOSPITALITY with a murder, to show the real threat against his protagonist, and he set THE GENERAL at the heart of the American civil war. Lubitsch refused to be a diplomat when he showed the Nazi invasion of Poland in TO BE OR NOT TO BE, and the death of someone loved is the backbone that makes HEAVEN CAN WAIT meaningful.

If, at the end, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON had not shied away from the death of its protagonist, had not wiped away its mood with a sudden pop song, but had relied, instead, on music of honest emotion, and had lingered on a final reaction shot of its excellent actress, the film could have survived anything, even its flat lighting and TV show monotony. Courage makes all the difference.

Poe Never Said It!

Portrait of Bacon by Paul van Somer, 1617. Source: Wikipedia.

I see this falsely-attributed quotation all the time on the Web, and it makes me want to bash my brains out with a didgeridoo.

"There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion."

-- Edgar Allan Poe.

Poe never said this. Instead, one of Poe's characters misquoted Francis Bacon:

"There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It is the person of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease, of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was the radiance of an opium dream -- an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen. 'There is no exquisite beauty,” says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty, 'without some strangeness in the proportion.'"

-- From "Ligeia."

It hardly seems to matter to people on the Web that Poe's character attributes his misquotation to the actual source, right there in the same sentence. Right there in plain sight!

Here is what Francis, Lord Verulam, actually wrote:

"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles, or Albert Durer, were the more trifler; whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical proportions; the other, by taking the best parts out of divers faces, to make one excellent. Such personages, I think, would please nobody but the painter that made them. Not but I think a painter may make a better face than ever was; but he must do it by a kind of felicity (as a musician that maketh an excellent air in music), and not by rule. A man shall see faces, that if you examine them part by part, you shall find never a good; and yet altogether do well."

-- From "Of Beauty," in ESSAYS OR COUNSELS, CIVIL AND MORAL [1625].

We live in a time of instantaneous access to information, yet people seem unable to learn from this information....

I'm Sick of Excuses

"It's only a film for kids."

That's right, just like PINOCCHIO, Lev Atamanov's THE SNOW QUEEN, LE ROI ET L'OISEAU, THE IRON GIANT, ZOOTOPIA.

"It's only a love story."

LE QUAI DES BRUMES, BRIEF ENCOUNTER, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, THE CRANES ARE FLYING.

"It's only a crime story."

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, GUN CRAZY, POINT BLANK, BADLANDS, BLUE VELVET, WINTER'S BONE, NIGHTCRAWLER.

"It's only a horror film."

DEAD OF NIGHT, THE QUEEN OF SPADES, NIGHT OF THE DEMON, PSYCHO, LES YEUX SANS VISAGE, RITUALS, THE BROOD, THE THING, MULHOLLAND DRIVE.

"It's only a western."

THE BRAVADOS, the original 3:10 TO YUMA, STAGECOACH, SILVER LODE, THE WILD BUNCH, THE GUNFIGHTER.

"It's only an action thriller."

LE SALAIRE DE LA PEUR, SEVEN SAMURAI, THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, FURY ROAD.

"It's only a comedy."

THE GENERAL, OUR HOSPITALITY, SAFETY LAST, THE KID BROTHER, TO BE OR NOT TO BE, HEAVEN CAN WAIT, THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT, PLAYTIME, THIS IS SPINAL TAP.

With any type of story, with any kind of film, there is no excuse for not pursuing excellence. People who make excuses waste my time, and yours.

Internet Inevitabilities

1) A stranger will compare the work of someone you praise to the work of someone you despise.

2) A reviewer will compare your work to the work of someone you would not ever want to resemble.