I went to a play tonight called ReEntry, based on interviews with US Marines returning from Iraq. The play was decent, quite compelling at points, if politically safe.* The audience talkback afterward was infuriating.
There is a section in the play where soldiers talk about how they feel when random people come up and thank them for their service. It's actually a pretty interesting part of the play. But for some reason the discussion got on this track where people were talking about saying thank you to soldiers and how words weren't enough to express their gratitude.
Out of nowhere, I started to get viscerally angry. I mean really, deeply furious, in that way that makes you afraid to speak up because you're not sure what will come out. I was trying really hard to form a coherent thought so I could raise my hand, but the talkback was short, and before I could get my shit together, it was over. Then I was just more angry at myself for being unable to articulate what was pissing me off.
The play, honestly, was good. But the perspective in the discussion was so limited. I am all for the voices of US soldiers getting heard--I'm writing a screenplay about one--but let's be honest. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not natural disasters that US soldiers happen to have survived. They are military occupations, and the soldiers who carry them out are occupiers. They are also brutal counterinsurgency campaigns--the type of war that virtually guarantees torture, military terror, and the slaughter of lots and lots of civilians. That doesn't mean we can't sympathize with US soldiers and try to understand their experiences. Nor does it mean we should let the war criminals who call themselves our government off the hook--they are ultimately responsible. But the least--the very least--we owe to anyone who's suffered because of these wars is to face the truth about what they are. They are massive crimes, organized by our government, but carried out on the ground by thousands of working class men and women, who are made into perpetrators in a war they have no interest in and then abandoned to deal with the consequences by a government who doesn't give a shit about them.
I understand why, if you participated in one of these wars, this position might be a hard one to adopt. It's not easy to admit you risked your life, and possibly killed people, for a swindle, a crime, a lie. It is much, much easier not to question, and the US government relies on that. It's much easier to be proud, to say you were defending your country or even just your comrades-in-arms, to believe you did your job and conducted yourself honorably, than to face the truth that there is no honorable way to conduct yourself while forcing your government's will on other people at gunpoint.
And what about those other people--the Iraqis, in this case, who were completely absent from the discussion that followed? I know the play was about US soldiers, but the discussion could have been about anything. And yet to hear these people talk, the Iraqis didn't even exist. The war was all about us Americans--our experiences, our suffering, our trauma. By the end of the discussion I was fairly disgusted. No, alienated. Alienated is the right word. Because I realized how differently I see war from most Americans.
I now know a substantial number of people who've lived--and continue to live--through wars and military occupations as civilians. I've traveled to places that are occupied and places that have been recently bombed. I've had a few brushes with occupying soldiers myself. And even those small, temporary experiences have profoundly altered the way I look at war. I know enough people on the other side of the guns--some who've lived their whole lives there--that I can't not see that part of the picture. And, on the whole, I find it much easier to identify with those people than with the ones doing the occupying.
In talking to a US soldier, I might say "I'm glad you survived." Or "I hope you didn't see or do too many things that will damage you for the rest of your life." Or even "I'm sorry that I and the antiwar movement I'm part of have not yet been able to stop our government from sending you over there to kill people who never did anything to either of us." But I'd never, ever say "thank you" to someone for occupying someone else's country.
And, while I generally defend Americans as victims of the unfortunate circumstance of living in a superpower, moments like this talkbalk sometimes fill me with despair, because my worldview has been shaped by direct experience that I know not everyone can have, and at times the gap between my view of the world and that of those around me seems like a chasm. I've dedicated a substantial portion of my life to bridging that gap using both art and activism, but at times it just feels unbridgable. (Those are the times I dream about moving out of the US, despite the fact that that feels like giving up.)
Watching ReEntry, I couldn't help thinking of the brilliant play Aftermath, also based on interviews, but this time with Iraqi refugees who had lived through the war as civilians. I remembered their anger--so intense, boiling off the stage, that it made some people in the theater uncomfortable. As it should. Americans get off the hook far too easily when it comes to reckoning with the unsanitized reality of war and the grief and anger of its victims. I would love to see these two productions staged back-to-back. I wonder what the talkbacks would be like after that.
On a side note: The play was underwritten by Northrop Grumman--that's right--a weapons manufacturer that makes, among other things, the B-2 bomber, F-35 fighter jet, and a variety of drones, missiles, and other killing machines. They had a full-page ad "saluting the troops" on the back of the program and were mentioned in the opening announcements. I know funding theater ain't easy, but this seems deeply unethical to me on the part of the theater, the playwrights and anyone else involved in making the decision.
*Side note #2: ReEntry is a perfect example of how trying "not to have a political agenda" is a political decision in itself, usually in favor of the status quo. Talking about how we all support and honor the troops--and agreeing to be sponsored by a weapons company--are not neutral, apolitical positions. As I've argued before, you can't make an apolitical piece of art/media about war, so why delude yourself into trying? Take a stand and be honest about it.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
harry potter and the deathly hallows, part 1: initial reactions
WARNING: This post contains spoilers for the book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.
I saw Deathly Hallows on Friday night in IMAX. My initial reaction was along the lines of HOLY CRAP THAT WAS AWESOME. Or possibly something like AGAIN, AGAIN! I really wasn't surprised--Hallows is my favorite book of the series, Yates is my favorite director of the franchise, and the actors, production values and effects get better with each film.
These are some initial, loosely collected reactions from a first viewing. I'm sure I'll see it at least once more in theaters, so I may write more as more thoughts occur to me.
LOVED IT
1. The Tale of the Three Brothers. Beautiful, fluid and poignant, this unexpected delight of an animated sequence in the middle of two and a half hours of grim live action should win some sort of prize.
2. The Trio's acting skills. It's sometimes easy to forget how far Dan, Rupert and Emma have come in ten years. As late as Phoenix, they still felt like child actors with a stiff moment here and there. Not so here. All three deliver seamless performances without a false note among them. They don't act; they inhabit their characters. Most importantly, they finally capture the chemistry that's held these three friends together through what must be a very statistically unlikely number of near-death experiences even in the wizarding world.
Dan Radcliffe is the only 20-year-old I can think of who can look like a teenager one moment and an old man the next. Some of his best moments are when he isn't doing anything at all, just sitting, feeling the weight of the wizarding world on his shoulders and knowing that is doesn't matter whether he thinks he is up to the mission he's been given, because there isn't any choice.
Emma Watson's Hermione blossoms into a quick-thinking, logical, hard-nosed survivor, proving her book learning can be put to practical use and demonstrating just as much Gryffindor courage (and considerably more emotional maturity) than the boys she heads into battle with.
Ron has been the most underwritten of the Trio in the films, and sometimes it's hard to see his appeal. Yet here some combination of writer, director and actor magic gives his comic-relief moments enough genuine sweetness to feel like a vital asset in dark times. In the post-Horcrux-destruction scenes, Rupert and Dan feel like real buddies in a way they haven't since Chamber of Secrets.
3. Everything in the Voldemortized Ministry of Magic. This is when we see most clearly what a world run by Voldemort would look like, and it's a brutal, ruthless, terrifying place--a wizard police state that echoes all the worst dictatorships of the 20th century, yet somehow feels totally authentic to J.K. Rowling's world. Add to that the fact that I wanted to pause the film every five seconds so I could look at everything--the propaganda pamphlets, the files in Umbridge's desk, the Magic Is Might statue, the emergency lockdown system you never knew the Floo Network had. Just one of a million examples of the unbelievable production design that breezes by in an imagined world this rich.
4. Wizard combat. I knew we were in for a treat when I saw how Yates handled the Department of Mysteries battle at the end of Phoenix. Long gone are the ridiculously stagey duels of Chamber of Secrets days. The filmmakers have figured out how to make wizard fights feel lightning-fast and deadly.
5. Rhys Ifans as Xenophilius Lovegood. He's got two scenes in the whole movie and he fucking owns them. His fear and desperation when Luna is kidnapped is heartbreaking and shows the price the whole wizarding world is paying under Voldemort.
6. Harry and Hermione's dance. It was sweet and tender and a little silly. It didn't seem out of character for two people who probably feel like the loneliest people in the world at that moment. It worked. I loved it.
NICE SAVE, DAVID YATES
1. "Hi, I'm Bill Weasley." None of the other films bothered to introduce me, and I'm about to get married to someone you saw for five minutes in Goblet of Fire, but in my three seconds of screen time I still manage to sound like a werewolf-battling badass.
2. Dobby's reintroduction at Grimmauld Place. I was pretty sure they were going to do something like this, since we hadn't seen Dobby at all since film #2. They pulled it off smartly, Dobby was relatively un-annoying, and we got what we needed for an important moment later in the film.
REALLY HOPE THEY'RE SAVING THIS FOR PART 2
1. Wandlore. Pretty sure the necessary exposition is going to be in there, but otherwise non-book-readers will sure be scratching their heads about why Harry's wand acted on its own back in that Seven Potter chase.
2. Dumbledore's backstory. The thing is, I could see the plot working with most of Dumbledore's mysterious past omitted. But we'd really be losing something thematically. So I'm just going to tell myself that Harry didn't hear those tidbits about Dumbledore at the wedding and Hermione didn't pick up that copy of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore for no reason and hope, somehow, Yates & Co have something awesome up their sleeve on this one.
3. An explanation of Harry's magic mirror fragment. Hey look, an important prop that was never introduced at all! I am really curious to see how they solve this one, because I'm sure non-book-readers have no fucking clue what that business is about.
4. The Harry/Lupin parenting fight. This could so easily be worked into the scene when Lupin drops by Shell Cottage to announce Teddy's birth...a scene I'm pretty sure they have to have...a scene I'll be really friggin' pissed if they don't have...no, what am I talking about, they have to show that. Right?
5. Clues to what the other Horcruxes might be. Cause right now we have none, nada, zero, zilch, and the one important clue about the Lestranges' vault didn't exactly make it into the Malfoy Manor sequence. Which leads me to...
ABOUT THE MALFOY MANOR SEQUENCE
When I walked out of the theater last night, I really thought I had no complaints about this movie at all. Overall it was an enormously enjoyable viewing experience. But no complaints? Come on, you knew that wasn't going to last. And so we come to Malfoy Manor.
There are many, many frightening moments in Deathly Hallows, the book, but the sequence in which Harry, Ron and Hermione are held prisoner at Malfoy Manor just blows them all out of the water. It is goddamn bloody terrifying. Voldemort isn't even there. It's just Bellatrix, running the show and being her batshit crazy torture-loving self.
There's a moment, when Harry and Ron are locked in the cellar, listening to Hermione being tortured in the room above them, that is one of the scariest in the whole series. This is a moment that could have come straight out of any real-world torture survivor's testimony. It's so horrific precisely because J.K. Rowling knows what the scariest position in this scene is: not the person who's being hurt, but the person who's trapped, helpless, while someone they love is screaming in pain.
In the film, the Malfoy Manor sequence is all right. But it's not the drawn-out, bloodcurdling horror show that J.K. Rowling delivers for us in the book. It goes by far too quickly and frankly, Helena Bonham Carter's ability to play a total psychopath is just not used to its full advantage. I think one of two things happened. Either the movie was running too long and this scene got sliced and diced for time. Or the filmmakers put together something as spectacularly sadistic as what's in the book and decided it was too scary for the film's desired PG-13 rating.
The problem, of course, is that the Harry Potter stories left PG-13 territory some time ago. By the time Hallows opens we are most decidedly in an adult world. And, much as I love so many things David Yates has done with the series, there are moments when he backs away from some of the very darkest material of the series. (Dumbledore drinking the potion in the cave at the end of Half-Blood Prince was another scene I thought could have been pushed further into creepytown.) One thing that can't be denied about J.K. Rowling: she respects her audience enough to take us right up to the precipice of terror without backing away. I only hope that when it comes to the final conflict coming in Part 2, the filmmakers have the guts and the wisdom to deliver.
Update, 11/23: Second viewing tonight. Malfoy Manor seemed a bit scarier this time, perhaps because my brain wasn't completely overwhelmed by the visual onslaught coming from the giant giant IMAX screen. And Bellatrix does mention the vault. Once.
I saw Deathly Hallows on Friday night in IMAX. My initial reaction was along the lines of HOLY CRAP THAT WAS AWESOME. Or possibly something like AGAIN, AGAIN! I really wasn't surprised--Hallows is my favorite book of the series, Yates is my favorite director of the franchise, and the actors, production values and effects get better with each film.
These are some initial, loosely collected reactions from a first viewing. I'm sure I'll see it at least once more in theaters, so I may write more as more thoughts occur to me.
LOVED IT
1. The Tale of the Three Brothers. Beautiful, fluid and poignant, this unexpected delight of an animated sequence in the middle of two and a half hours of grim live action should win some sort of prize.
2. The Trio's acting skills. It's sometimes easy to forget how far Dan, Rupert and Emma have come in ten years. As late as Phoenix, they still felt like child actors with a stiff moment here and there. Not so here. All three deliver seamless performances without a false note among them. They don't act; they inhabit their characters. Most importantly, they finally capture the chemistry that's held these three friends together through what must be a very statistically unlikely number of near-death experiences even in the wizarding world.
Dan Radcliffe is the only 20-year-old I can think of who can look like a teenager one moment and an old man the next. Some of his best moments are when he isn't doing anything at all, just sitting, feeling the weight of the wizarding world on his shoulders and knowing that is doesn't matter whether he thinks he is up to the mission he's been given, because there isn't any choice.
Emma Watson's Hermione blossoms into a quick-thinking, logical, hard-nosed survivor, proving her book learning can be put to practical use and demonstrating just as much Gryffindor courage (and considerably more emotional maturity) than the boys she heads into battle with.
Ron has been the most underwritten of the Trio in the films, and sometimes it's hard to see his appeal. Yet here some combination of writer, director and actor magic gives his comic-relief moments enough genuine sweetness to feel like a vital asset in dark times. In the post-Horcrux-destruction scenes, Rupert and Dan feel like real buddies in a way they haven't since Chamber of Secrets.
3. Everything in the Voldemortized Ministry of Magic. This is when we see most clearly what a world run by Voldemort would look like, and it's a brutal, ruthless, terrifying place--a wizard police state that echoes all the worst dictatorships of the 20th century, yet somehow feels totally authentic to J.K. Rowling's world. Add to that the fact that I wanted to pause the film every five seconds so I could look at everything--the propaganda pamphlets, the files in Umbridge's desk, the Magic Is Might statue, the emergency lockdown system you never knew the Floo Network had. Just one of a million examples of the unbelievable production design that breezes by in an imagined world this rich.
4. Wizard combat. I knew we were in for a treat when I saw how Yates handled the Department of Mysteries battle at the end of Phoenix. Long gone are the ridiculously stagey duels of Chamber of Secrets days. The filmmakers have figured out how to make wizard fights feel lightning-fast and deadly.
5. Rhys Ifans as Xenophilius Lovegood. He's got two scenes in the whole movie and he fucking owns them. His fear and desperation when Luna is kidnapped is heartbreaking and shows the price the whole wizarding world is paying under Voldemort.
6. Harry and Hermione's dance. It was sweet and tender and a little silly. It didn't seem out of character for two people who probably feel like the loneliest people in the world at that moment. It worked. I loved it.
NICE SAVE, DAVID YATES
1. "Hi, I'm Bill Weasley." None of the other films bothered to introduce me, and I'm about to get married to someone you saw for five minutes in Goblet of Fire, but in my three seconds of screen time I still manage to sound like a werewolf-battling badass.
2. Dobby's reintroduction at Grimmauld Place. I was pretty sure they were going to do something like this, since we hadn't seen Dobby at all since film #2. They pulled it off smartly, Dobby was relatively un-annoying, and we got what we needed for an important moment later in the film.
REALLY HOPE THEY'RE SAVING THIS FOR PART 2
1. Wandlore. Pretty sure the necessary exposition is going to be in there, but otherwise non-book-readers will sure be scratching their heads about why Harry's wand acted on its own back in that Seven Potter chase.
2. Dumbledore's backstory. The thing is, I could see the plot working with most of Dumbledore's mysterious past omitted. But we'd really be losing something thematically. So I'm just going to tell myself that Harry didn't hear those tidbits about Dumbledore at the wedding and Hermione didn't pick up that copy of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore for no reason and hope, somehow, Yates & Co have something awesome up their sleeve on this one.
3. An explanation of Harry's magic mirror fragment. Hey look, an important prop that was never introduced at all! I am really curious to see how they solve this one, because I'm sure non-book-readers have no fucking clue what that business is about.
4. The Harry/Lupin parenting fight. This could so easily be worked into the scene when Lupin drops by Shell Cottage to announce Teddy's birth...a scene I'm pretty sure they have to have...a scene I'll be really friggin' pissed if they don't have...no, what am I talking about, they have to show that. Right?
5. Clues to what the other Horcruxes might be. Cause right now we have none, nada, zero, zilch, and the one important clue about the Lestranges' vault didn't exactly make it into the Malfoy Manor sequence. Which leads me to...
ABOUT THE MALFOY MANOR SEQUENCE
When I walked out of the theater last night, I really thought I had no complaints about this movie at all. Overall it was an enormously enjoyable viewing experience. But no complaints? Come on, you knew that wasn't going to last. And so we come to Malfoy Manor.
There are many, many frightening moments in Deathly Hallows, the book, but the sequence in which Harry, Ron and Hermione are held prisoner at Malfoy Manor just blows them all out of the water. It is goddamn bloody terrifying. Voldemort isn't even there. It's just Bellatrix, running the show and being her batshit crazy torture-loving self.
There's a moment, when Harry and Ron are locked in the cellar, listening to Hermione being tortured in the room above them, that is one of the scariest in the whole series. This is a moment that could have come straight out of any real-world torture survivor's testimony. It's so horrific precisely because J.K. Rowling knows what the scariest position in this scene is: not the person who's being hurt, but the person who's trapped, helpless, while someone they love is screaming in pain.
In the film, the Malfoy Manor sequence is all right. But it's not the drawn-out, bloodcurdling horror show that J.K. Rowling delivers for us in the book. It goes by far too quickly and frankly, Helena Bonham Carter's ability to play a total psychopath is just not used to its full advantage. I think one of two things happened. Either the movie was running too long and this scene got sliced and diced for time. Or the filmmakers put together something as spectacularly sadistic as what's in the book and decided it was too scary for the film's desired PG-13 rating.
The problem, of course, is that the Harry Potter stories left PG-13 territory some time ago. By the time Hallows opens we are most decidedly in an adult world. And, much as I love so many things David Yates has done with the series, there are moments when he backs away from some of the very darkest material of the series. (Dumbledore drinking the potion in the cave at the end of Half-Blood Prince was another scene I thought could have been pushed further into creepytown.) One thing that can't be denied about J.K. Rowling: she respects her audience enough to take us right up to the precipice of terror without backing away. I only hope that when it comes to the final conflict coming in Part 2, the filmmakers have the guts and the wisdom to deliver.
Update, 11/23: Second viewing tonight. Malfoy Manor seemed a bit scarier this time, perhaps because my brain wasn't completely overwhelmed by the visual onslaught coming from the giant giant IMAX screen. And Bellatrix does mention the vault. Once.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
movie review: 127 hours
The best thing about writing a review of 127 Hours is that I don't have to include a spoiler warning. If you're going to see the movie, based on the true-life survival story of climber Aron Ralston, you probably already know that it involves watching a dude amputate his own arm after five days pinned under a boulder at the bottom of a canyon.
The clever thing about the movie is that it uses this foreknowledge to its advantage. In the film's opening montage, completely quotidian snippets of Ralston's pre-hiking routine--filling a water bottle, fumbling around for a Swiss Army knife--vibrate with tension, because we know what's coming. In the first act, director Danny Boyle (who has hereby redeemed himself from the spectacularly improbable and wildly overrated Slumdog Millionaire) plays with this tension with an almost sadistic glee, faking us out with trips and spills until we reach the final, fateful slot canyon in which man and boulder meet.
A movie where the protagonist spends two-thirds of his screen time alone, immobilized, in a single location, is the kind of thing that tends to get described as "unfilmable." And yet 127 Hours doesn't have a slow microsecond in it. If the movie were a person, it would have 0% body fat. The film zips through its hour-and-forty-minute running time with a frenetic energy that mirrors its protagonist, a happy-go-lucky daredevil so overconfident, or self-absorbed, that he thought nothing of going on a solo hike in a remote area without telling anyone where he was going to be.
Much of the credit for keeping the film moving goes to James Franco's exceptional performance, and the smart, deftly-written script he has to work with. In the middle of a landscape of epic proportions, his character's journey is really all interior, and he takes us through it with a naturalistic performance that never feels overwrought in the most dramatic of circumstances. But equally important is Boyle's willingness to slip effortlessly between reality and Aron's thoughts, dreams, memories, fantasies and hallucinations, creating a highly subjective landscape in which we're maybe as close to being inside someone's head as you can get in a movie. Never again will you take things like water and sunlight for granted in quite the same way.
After hearing all the hype about the amputation scene, I was bracing for something stomach-churning. While it's certainly very bloody, I didn't feel it was unnecessarily drawn-out. It's true that I have a fairly high tolerance for gore, but honestly, there was never a moment I wanted to look away--because the filmmakers had successfully made me care enough about the character that I wanted to see if he could do it. I think this is a very important point about showing any kind of violence or pain on screen: the more invested we are in the characters, the more likely it is to feel earned and not gratuitous. I kept watching because I was rooting for him, and I wasn't the only one. When the amputation is complete and Ralston finds himself suddenly, finally, separated from the boulder that's been his nemesis for the past five days, the audience in the screening I went to cheered. It wasn't the reaction I was expecting, but it was pretty awesome.
In fact, the dominant feeling the film leaves you with is one of euphoria, the pure joy of seeing someone triumph in a seemingly impossible situation and get another chance at life. Here we have a perpetual limit-pusher, an adrenaline junkie who is always flirting with the prospect of death until the day a real life-or-death scenario meets him smack in the face. And, when push comes to shove, he finds himself not only equal to the challenge, but humbler and wiser for it. Even if you're the kind of movie-goer who's not sure you can handle the arm-severing scene, this is one that's worth pushing your own limits for.
The clever thing about the movie is that it uses this foreknowledge to its advantage. In the film's opening montage, completely quotidian snippets of Ralston's pre-hiking routine--filling a water bottle, fumbling around for a Swiss Army knife--vibrate with tension, because we know what's coming. In the first act, director Danny Boyle (who has hereby redeemed himself from the spectacularly improbable and wildly overrated Slumdog Millionaire) plays with this tension with an almost sadistic glee, faking us out with trips and spills until we reach the final, fateful slot canyon in which man and boulder meet.
A movie where the protagonist spends two-thirds of his screen time alone, immobilized, in a single location, is the kind of thing that tends to get described as "unfilmable." And yet 127 Hours doesn't have a slow microsecond in it. If the movie were a person, it would have 0% body fat. The film zips through its hour-and-forty-minute running time with a frenetic energy that mirrors its protagonist, a happy-go-lucky daredevil so overconfident, or self-absorbed, that he thought nothing of going on a solo hike in a remote area without telling anyone where he was going to be.
Much of the credit for keeping the film moving goes to James Franco's exceptional performance, and the smart, deftly-written script he has to work with. In the middle of a landscape of epic proportions, his character's journey is really all interior, and he takes us through it with a naturalistic performance that never feels overwrought in the most dramatic of circumstances. But equally important is Boyle's willingness to slip effortlessly between reality and Aron's thoughts, dreams, memories, fantasies and hallucinations, creating a highly subjective landscape in which we're maybe as close to being inside someone's head as you can get in a movie. Never again will you take things like water and sunlight for granted in quite the same way.
After hearing all the hype about the amputation scene, I was bracing for something stomach-churning. While it's certainly very bloody, I didn't feel it was unnecessarily drawn-out. It's true that I have a fairly high tolerance for gore, but honestly, there was never a moment I wanted to look away--because the filmmakers had successfully made me care enough about the character that I wanted to see if he could do it. I think this is a very important point about showing any kind of violence or pain on screen: the more invested we are in the characters, the more likely it is to feel earned and not gratuitous. I kept watching because I was rooting for him, and I wasn't the only one. When the amputation is complete and Ralston finds himself suddenly, finally, separated from the boulder that's been his nemesis for the past five days, the audience in the screening I went to cheered. It wasn't the reaction I was expecting, but it was pretty awesome.
In fact, the dominant feeling the film leaves you with is one of euphoria, the pure joy of seeing someone triumph in a seemingly impossible situation and get another chance at life. Here we have a perpetual limit-pusher, an adrenaline junkie who is always flirting with the prospect of death until the day a real life-or-death scenario meets him smack in the face. And, when push comes to shove, he finds himself not only equal to the challenge, but humbler and wiser for it. Even if you're the kind of movie-goer who's not sure you can handle the arm-severing scene, this is one that's worth pushing your own limits for.
Monday, November 8, 2010
oh yeah. i live in new york city now.
I moved back to New York last week, after two years and two months away. It's fucking sweet. I haven't even been doing anything all that spectacular: hanging out with friends I haven't seen in a while, eating yummy food (although in moderation, as I am rather poor at the moment), knowing I can get anywhere on my own at any time of day/night. But sometimes I'll catch myself walking down the street with a little smile on my face, just basking in the awesomeness: the city's energy, its pace, its diversity, the way it can seem tough and welcoming at the same time. What more can I say? New York is my home.
I'm going to write more about my new temporary neighborhood, Washington Heights. But for now, in celebration of my return, I give you a pitch-perfect New Yorker post from the Village Voice, 50 Reasons to Be Pretty Damn Euphoric You Live in New York City.
UPDATE! The 50 reasons have a follow-up post, which is almost as awesome.
I'm going to write more about my new temporary neighborhood, Washington Heights. But for now, in celebration of my return, I give you a pitch-perfect New Yorker post from the Village Voice, 50 Reasons to Be Pretty Damn Euphoric You Live in New York City.
UPDATE! The 50 reasons have a follow-up post, which is almost as awesome.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
notes from joe sacco at nyu
Joe Sacco is one of my artistic and literary heroes. Although my work tends more toward historical fiction and his toward journalism, if I had to make a list of influences he would definitely be near the top. So when I found out that he was speaking at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, I was there.
I hope that excerpts of the conversation between Sacco and NYU professor Zachary Lockman will be up on the Primary Sources website soon. The interview was fascinating and could have gone on longer, and the questions from the standing-room-only audience were sophisticated and thoughtful. In the meantime here are some notes I took from the event:
- Sacco considers himself "a cartoonist who works in the medium of journalism"
- He talked a bunch about growing up in Australia (where he lived from age one to age twelve) among a mishmash of European refugees in the '60s. His parents had lived through the bombing and siege of Malta. Everyone around him talked about the war. When friends got together they would tell stories about living through World War II. "War didn't seem like such a foreign idea; it seemed like something that could happen in people's lives." He contrasted this to the US, where war is a distant and totally abstract idea to a large percentage of the population. "The US is fighting two wars right now, but you'd never know it, unless you know someone who is over there."
- Questioning mainstream/corporate journalism and learning about Palestine went hand in hand. Once Sacco realized the only thing he'd ever heard about Palestinians was "terrorist," he started becoming seriously disillusioned with the US mainstream media. "This [journalism] was what I had studied, but it didn't give me what I needed" to understand the world.
- He hates the concept of "objectivity" as it's frequently talked about in mainstream journalism and said he prefers to strive for honesty instead. He talks more about this idea here, and his good friend Chris Hedges elaborates on the theme here.
- He said that he did not always enjoy drawing Footnotes in Gaza. He found drawing some of the scenes of violence "repellent," and says he may step away from war comics for a while in the future. At the same time, he discovered that no one had really investigated the massacres described in Footnotes, and felt that if someone didn't record the stories of the now-elderly survivors soon, they were at risk of disappearing from the historical record forever.
- He had a very insightful thing to say about drawing versus photography. He talked about how the best images from photojournalism are arresting because they capture the action at the exact right moment. (He mentioned this photo specifically.) Well, in comics, every image can be at the "exact right moment," because you're drawing it. He said that this is a powerful tool and that you can overuse it, that you can "bludgeon" the audience with it if you use it too much.
- I asked why he so frequently draws Israeli soldiers from a perspective where we can't see their faces. I had kind of assumed this was a conscious choice, a la The Battle of Algiers, to tilt our sympathies toward the humanity of the occupied people. But his answer somehow managed to be both more interesting and more humane. Referring to Footnotes in Gaza, which depicts two massacres of large numbers of civilians, he said he couldn't actually imagine what was going through the minds of the soldiers at the moment they pulled the trigger. "I couldn't draw their faces because I didn't know what they were thinking, and I didn't want to assume anything." Other than "a few sadists, who always come to the fore in situations like this...these were ordinary men." And, since this was 1956, it's very likely that some of these soldiers were themselves refugees, survivors of occupation and genocide. He said after drawing Footnotes, he realized this was something he needed to understand, and is "working on a project now" that will help him get more insight into this particular element.
- As you might have guessed from his self-depiction in his comic books, Joe Sacco is really self-deprecating, humble and approachable in person. He signed and drew something for everyone who brought a book, and when I mentioned I was writing a film about Gaza he asked questions about it and wrote "Good luck with your work" when he signed my copy of Palestine. Which means he was actually listening to my somewhat nervous babbling instead of just pretending to listen while he drew something.
I hope that excerpts of the conversation between Sacco and NYU professor Zachary Lockman will be up on the Primary Sources website soon. The interview was fascinating and could have gone on longer, and the questions from the standing-room-only audience were sophisticated and thoughtful. In the meantime here are some notes I took from the event:
- Sacco considers himself "a cartoonist who works in the medium of journalism"
- He talked a bunch about growing up in Australia (where he lived from age one to age twelve) among a mishmash of European refugees in the '60s. His parents had lived through the bombing and siege of Malta. Everyone around him talked about the war. When friends got together they would tell stories about living through World War II. "War didn't seem like such a foreign idea; it seemed like something that could happen in people's lives." He contrasted this to the US, where war is a distant and totally abstract idea to a large percentage of the population. "The US is fighting two wars right now, but you'd never know it, unless you know someone who is over there."
- Questioning mainstream/corporate journalism and learning about Palestine went hand in hand. Once Sacco realized the only thing he'd ever heard about Palestinians was "terrorist," he started becoming seriously disillusioned with the US mainstream media. "This [journalism] was what I had studied, but it didn't give me what I needed" to understand the world.
- He hates the concept of "objectivity" as it's frequently talked about in mainstream journalism and said he prefers to strive for honesty instead. He talks more about this idea here, and his good friend Chris Hedges elaborates on the theme here.
- He said that he did not always enjoy drawing Footnotes in Gaza. He found drawing some of the scenes of violence "repellent," and says he may step away from war comics for a while in the future. At the same time, he discovered that no one had really investigated the massacres described in Footnotes, and felt that if someone didn't record the stories of the now-elderly survivors soon, they were at risk of disappearing from the historical record forever.
- He had a very insightful thing to say about drawing versus photography. He talked about how the best images from photojournalism are arresting because they capture the action at the exact right moment. (He mentioned this photo specifically.) Well, in comics, every image can be at the "exact right moment," because you're drawing it. He said that this is a powerful tool and that you can overuse it, that you can "bludgeon" the audience with it if you use it too much.
- I asked why he so frequently draws Israeli soldiers from a perspective where we can't see their faces. I had kind of assumed this was a conscious choice, a la The Battle of Algiers, to tilt our sympathies toward the humanity of the occupied people. But his answer somehow managed to be both more interesting and more humane. Referring to Footnotes in Gaza, which depicts two massacres of large numbers of civilians, he said he couldn't actually imagine what was going through the minds of the soldiers at the moment they pulled the trigger. "I couldn't draw their faces because I didn't know what they were thinking, and I didn't want to assume anything." Other than "a few sadists, who always come to the fore in situations like this...these were ordinary men." And, since this was 1956, it's very likely that some of these soldiers were themselves refugees, survivors of occupation and genocide. He said after drawing Footnotes, he realized this was something he needed to understand, and is "working on a project now" that will help him get more insight into this particular element.
- As you might have guessed from his self-depiction in his comic books, Joe Sacco is really self-deprecating, humble and approachable in person. He signed and drew something for everyone who brought a book, and when I mentioned I was writing a film about Gaza he asked questions about it and wrote "Good luck with your work" when he signed my copy of Palestine. Which means he was actually listening to my somewhat nervous babbling instead of just pretending to listen while he drew something.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
haifa, part 1
I have a few half-completed posts from my trip to Palestine with IFPB that I'm trying to turn into completed posts. Here's the first one.
The day after I was interrogated at the Allenby Bridge, I got up at the crack of dawn to go to Haifa. It was the end of a three-week trip and I was pretty exhausted. But we hadn't been anywhere in the north of Israel, my friend M wanted to go with me, and more than anything I wanted to talk to M about what had happened at the bridge, because she's Palestinian and has been interrogated many times by Israeli border officials. So I dragged my luggage up the Old City steps and onto a bus.
She asked me how I was, meaning were there any lingering effects from my border adventure the previous day. I told her I was fine. Of course I was. They'd let me in, right? They hadn't hurt me or anything, and I had never been worried that they would. I knew it wasn't that kind of situation. The worst they were going to do was try to scare me. And in the grand scheme of Israeli repression, what was a little psychological roughing-up, really? It was nothing, I said.
Really, I wanted desperately to talk about it, to pour out the whole story, every detail. I wanted someone to commiserate, to tell me I'd made the right choices, to say, "those bastards," with the shake of the head and the wry half-smile that says, "I've been there." But she said we should be careful what we talked about on the bus, so I held in the story and we talked about other things.
I spent most of the day in a haze of cognitive dissonance, wandering through the stunning ordinariness of Haifa. I got out most of the salient details over coffee in a shopping area that felt oppressively normal. I kept thinking about that quote from Joe Sacco's Palestine:
"Make no mistake, everywhere you go, not just in Marvel Comics, there's parallel universes. Here? On the surface streets: traffic, couples in love, falafel-to-go, tourists in jogging suits licking stamps for postcards...And over the wall behind closed doors, other things--people strapped to chairs, sleep deprivation, the smell of piss...other things happening for reasons of national security."
Okay, yeah, my experience wasn't nearly that dramatic. But still. I'd spent a few hours in that other world--or at least in the first circle of it--and today the ordinariness of the normal world that covered it up seemed unbearably criminal and sick.
Throughout the day, little things kept setting me on edge. The soldiers that seemed to be on every bus. A woman's voice with a particular accent. The bag search at the bus stop, which two days ago would have been a minor annoyance, but today felt invasive and icky.
By lunchtime there was a cold twisty knot of anxiety in my stomach, almost enough to keep me from eating. This wasn't a final-exam or a night-before-the-big-pitchfest nervousness, but something deeply wired into my body's emergency response system, an elemental fear. It wasn't the kind you could channel into a burst of adrenaline and focus, but the kind that paralyzed, the kind that made you want to curl up in a ball and hide somewhere. I realized the source of this fear was the thought of going through another Israeli-controlled border terminal (Ben Gurion Airport) in less than 24 hours. I had to do it because I had to get on the plane to go home, but I really, deeply did not want to.
I realized maybe I was not as fine as I'd said I was.
Then I started to get angry. I was angry at them for having so much control over me, and angry at myself for letting them. It felt like something that had been done against my will, this installation of fear. No matter how many times I told myself I wasn't afraid of them, that they didn't intimidate me, that my non-Palestinian identity kept me safe from actual physical harm, it didn't matter. My emergency responses were doing something else.
I was ashamed, too, at the thought that I'd let them get to me. I felt I wasn't living up to the Palestinian standard of toughness. Because what they did to me was so minor, really. Barely a blip on the radar compared to the repression they dish out against Palestinians. But it had still left a mark.
I also felt a kind of backhanded awe for the enormity of the oppressive power Palestinians have to face every day. And I realized why everyone always says they're fine. Because there's always someone who has a worse story. Because everyone feels a responsibility to be tough for everyone else, to shrug it off with a defiant grin and a flash of bravado. Because you don't want to admit how much of a hold they have on you, because if you admit it you might never get out.
I admitted to M that I was feeling really nervous about the airport. "It's helpful to prepare for the worst," she said. This didn't seem like very comforting advice at the time, but it actually turned out to be quite useful. After preparing myself for a strip search and more questioning, the quick bag check and pat down with clothes on, and the fact that the airport security people were merely bored and not hostile, felt like a gift. But that made me a little angry too. Because being only mildly harassed by airport security shouldn't feel like a fucking gift.
The day after I was interrogated at the Allenby Bridge, I got up at the crack of dawn to go to Haifa. It was the end of a three-week trip and I was pretty exhausted. But we hadn't been anywhere in the north of Israel, my friend M wanted to go with me, and more than anything I wanted to talk to M about what had happened at the bridge, because she's Palestinian and has been interrogated many times by Israeli border officials. So I dragged my luggage up the Old City steps and onto a bus.
She asked me how I was, meaning were there any lingering effects from my border adventure the previous day. I told her I was fine. Of course I was. They'd let me in, right? They hadn't hurt me or anything, and I had never been worried that they would. I knew it wasn't that kind of situation. The worst they were going to do was try to scare me. And in the grand scheme of Israeli repression, what was a little psychological roughing-up, really? It was nothing, I said.
Really, I wanted desperately to talk about it, to pour out the whole story, every detail. I wanted someone to commiserate, to tell me I'd made the right choices, to say, "those bastards," with the shake of the head and the wry half-smile that says, "I've been there." But she said we should be careful what we talked about on the bus, so I held in the story and we talked about other things.
I spent most of the day in a haze of cognitive dissonance, wandering through the stunning ordinariness of Haifa. I got out most of the salient details over coffee in a shopping area that felt oppressively normal. I kept thinking about that quote from Joe Sacco's Palestine:
"Make no mistake, everywhere you go, not just in Marvel Comics, there's parallel universes. Here? On the surface streets: traffic, couples in love, falafel-to-go, tourists in jogging suits licking stamps for postcards...And over the wall behind closed doors, other things--people strapped to chairs, sleep deprivation, the smell of piss...other things happening for reasons of national security."
Okay, yeah, my experience wasn't nearly that dramatic. But still. I'd spent a few hours in that other world--or at least in the first circle of it--and today the ordinariness of the normal world that covered it up seemed unbearably criminal and sick.
Throughout the day, little things kept setting me on edge. The soldiers that seemed to be on every bus. A woman's voice with a particular accent. The bag search at the bus stop, which two days ago would have been a minor annoyance, but today felt invasive and icky.
By lunchtime there was a cold twisty knot of anxiety in my stomach, almost enough to keep me from eating. This wasn't a final-exam or a night-before-the-big-pitchfest nervousness, but something deeply wired into my body's emergency response system, an elemental fear. It wasn't the kind you could channel into a burst of adrenaline and focus, but the kind that paralyzed, the kind that made you want to curl up in a ball and hide somewhere. I realized the source of this fear was the thought of going through another Israeli-controlled border terminal (Ben Gurion Airport) in less than 24 hours. I had to do it because I had to get on the plane to go home, but I really, deeply did not want to.
I realized maybe I was not as fine as I'd said I was.
Then I started to get angry. I was angry at them for having so much control over me, and angry at myself for letting them. It felt like something that had been done against my will, this installation of fear. No matter how many times I told myself I wasn't afraid of them, that they didn't intimidate me, that my non-Palestinian identity kept me safe from actual physical harm, it didn't matter. My emergency responses were doing something else.
I was ashamed, too, at the thought that I'd let them get to me. I felt I wasn't living up to the Palestinian standard of toughness. Because what they did to me was so minor, really. Barely a blip on the radar compared to the repression they dish out against Palestinians. But it had still left a mark.
I also felt a kind of backhanded awe for the enormity of the oppressive power Palestinians have to face every day. And I realized why everyone always says they're fine. Because there's always someone who has a worse story. Because everyone feels a responsibility to be tough for everyone else, to shrug it off with a defiant grin and a flash of bravado. Because you don't want to admit how much of a hold they have on you, because if you admit it you might never get out.
I admitted to M that I was feeling really nervous about the airport. "It's helpful to prepare for the worst," she said. This didn't seem like very comforting advice at the time, but it actually turned out to be quite useful. After preparing myself for a strip search and more questioning, the quick bag check and pat down with clothes on, and the fact that the airport security people were merely bored and not hostile, felt like a gift. But that made me a little angry too. Because being only mildly harassed by airport security shouldn't feel like a fucking gift.
Monday, October 18, 2010
movie review: budrus
Sometimes I forget that the Palestine I know and love is so very different from the view of Palestine and Palestinians that gets presented in the mainstream media and is absorbed more or less uncontested by most Americans. Anyone who wants to see my Palestine--the real Palestine--should watch Budrus.
Budrus is a good documentary by any standard, but as an education tool it is simply superb. It shoots down so many myths about Palestine and Palestinians all at once--that Palestinians are unreasoning violent terrorists; that Israel is just defending itself; that there is too much ingrained hatred for Palestinians and Israelis to ever live and work together; that Palestinian women and girls are meek and submissive and play no role in the struggle. All these stereotypes and more are soundly demolished in the film's slight one hour and eighteen minute running time.
When the residents of the West Bank town after which the film is named learn that Israel's apartheid wall will slice through their town's land, cutting through the cemetery and separating villagers from most of their agricultural land, they decide to resist, using classic tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience. The Israeli army, predictably, responds with disproportionate, punitive violence. The struggle unites local activists from Fatah and Hamas, men and women, young and old, Palestinians, internationals and Israelis. Lead organizer Ayed Morrar's teenage daughter Iltezam is a force unto herself.
The scenes of Palestinian and Israeli activists defending each other against the army are some of the most inspiring moments in the film. You can see two groups of people learning to trust and care about each other like family. "They don't all hate us," realizes Iltezam Morrar, speaking about her new Israeli friends, which is striking because it's usually framed the other way around. You can see the change in the Israeli activists too, how someone from an oppressor settler-colonial society can be transformed by switching sides and throwing their lot in with the oppressed. In those moments, you can see how the whole apartheid system could collapse.
For those already familiar with the history of unarmed resistance in Palestine, Budrus won't present tons of new information. Visitors to the Occupied Palestinian Territories now have the choice of attending one of a dozen or so protests of the type seen in Budrus on any given Friday. What the film does do is tell the story of nonviolent resistance in one West Bank village incredibly well. The filmmakers were there at the right time, and in the right places, and they reveal the transformation of the village through struggle in such an uncomplicated, straightforward way that the film's power doesn't really hit you until some time after you've left the theater.
Budrus is currently playing in film festivals and limited release around the world. Look for a screening near you here.
Budrus is a good documentary by any standard, but as an education tool it is simply superb. It shoots down so many myths about Palestine and Palestinians all at once--that Palestinians are unreasoning violent terrorists; that Israel is just defending itself; that there is too much ingrained hatred for Palestinians and Israelis to ever live and work together; that Palestinian women and girls are meek and submissive and play no role in the struggle. All these stereotypes and more are soundly demolished in the film's slight one hour and eighteen minute running time.
When the residents of the West Bank town after which the film is named learn that Israel's apartheid wall will slice through their town's land, cutting through the cemetery and separating villagers from most of their agricultural land, they decide to resist, using classic tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience. The Israeli army, predictably, responds with disproportionate, punitive violence. The struggle unites local activists from Fatah and Hamas, men and women, young and old, Palestinians, internationals and Israelis. Lead organizer Ayed Morrar's teenage daughter Iltezam is a force unto herself.
The scenes of Palestinian and Israeli activists defending each other against the army are some of the most inspiring moments in the film. You can see two groups of people learning to trust and care about each other like family. "They don't all hate us," realizes Iltezam Morrar, speaking about her new Israeli friends, which is striking because it's usually framed the other way around. You can see the change in the Israeli activists too, how someone from an oppressor settler-colonial society can be transformed by switching sides and throwing their lot in with the oppressed. In those moments, you can see how the whole apartheid system could collapse.
For those already familiar with the history of unarmed resistance in Palestine, Budrus won't present tons of new information. Visitors to the Occupied Palestinian Territories now have the choice of attending one of a dozen or so protests of the type seen in Budrus on any given Friday. What the film does do is tell the story of nonviolent resistance in one West Bank village incredibly well. The filmmakers were there at the right time, and in the right places, and they reveal the transformation of the village through struggle in such an uncomplicated, straightforward way that the film's power doesn't really hit you until some time after you've left the theater.
Budrus is currently playing in film festivals and limited release around the world. Look for a screening near you here.
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