I’ve seen quite a few people ask this question: why, in the west, do we view explicit violence in film differently (or, more the point, take less offense from it) than we view explicit sex? And I suppose there’s an answer, but that’s tangential.

When I was kid, my dad used to watch Bond flicks; I always wondered what he saw in them. I still do; the Pierce Brosnan period of the franchise was a very silly time indeed, and he always looked a bit too much like a French waiter for my liking. Never mind the techno-obsession each movie took to a new and ridiculous hight.

However, I just finished watching Casino Royale. And it was good. Very good. Maybe even the Bond film by which all future Bond films will be judged.

That is all.

Ever have that feeling after you worked out that maybe that last push was a bit much? I’m right there right now. And despite feeling like decorating my furniture with the insides of my stomach, it’s good. Weird how two separate and opposite dispositions can exist at the same time in the same person.

There’s a lot I’ve been thinking about recently, but I’ll save that for later. Right now I have to watch the movie Laura so graciously loaned me. I believe it’s called Bambi… so I’m going to go for the tissues before my eyes flood with tears this time.

I am going to weigh in – like every other blogger in the world, and his cat – on the Da Vinci Code. But I’m not critiquing content or combatting conclusions. I’m looking at the violence of encounter, or the clash of worldviews, or the soft words of tolerance as their own encryption.

The book itself is for idiots to believe. A work of fiction, yes; also, a bad work of fiction (that is, insult to injury, being fleeced with a cheesegrater). No need to argue that point.

Rather, what underpins the argument? I think this determines what terrain you choose. My personal leaning is the conflict between objective and subjective historicity or its sythesis, but even that is too far from centre.

Deeper: how do I confront the book’s assertions and its rails? This is essential, to know what to do. I can do several things, not all of which I’ll spell out, but one of which is ignore it and go my own way. Some would see this as ceding ground, and others would see it a being tolerant. Others would fight a surface battle of assertion/counter-assertion while making history object/subject or trying to do both at the same time.

But let me ask you: are you afraid of what will happen at the collision of these two opposed visions? Will you try to squeak them by eachother or try to throw each a bone? You know in the heart of you each encounter is a thing of violence. Either I am right or you are right. In this place there cannot be both. But there’s a third dimension of the casual nihilist trying to just get along with a fake smile and such.

That’s the guy you want to kick in the ribs. While the screaming Dan Brown army is obvious, the snake-oil tolerance salesman is not, though he should be. You can ignore the crowd with pitchforks and torches trying to loot the gold between the bricks of the church; Jesus Christ has bee victorious over Nero. Dan Brown is the poppy seed inbetween God’s teeth.

Tolerance, on the other hand, is like mainlining those poppies: easy to fall asleep. But it breeds its own problems. (Aside: I am not speaking of grace, and peace, and longsuffering, and humility; I am speaking of that sort of slimey you-have-you I-have-me that won’t stand for anything except when it inexplicably stands for something.) The idea is an excersize in futility. The world wasn’t designed so that all poles of a magnet are equal forces. Tolerance – obviously – can’t tolerate intolerance, for instance. But more to the point, tolerance won’t tolerate land mines, genocide, female circumcision, or neon pink leg-warmers.

And in this age where tolerance – a concept lost on our father’s fathers – is the catchphrase on every goody-two-shoes lips, one has to wonder if the concurrent rise of rigid fundimentalism isn’t at all exacerbated by the inherent internal conflict of tolerance as a culture watchword. Or more to the point, does the internal violence of the postmodern lack of metanarrative breed the sort of insane fundimentality we see both in our cultures and others? Can we even imagine an age where men had grand passions?

This is the Da Vinci Code to me. It’s a cultural polarising agent. It will breed five types of people: followers, detractors, rabid detractors, the supposedly tolerant, and those who just don’t care. And there will be an inherent violence to the confrontations between those groups: when they encounter, people retreat licking wounds. Even the tolerance brigade will at some point have to oppose something.

I just watched a really, really good movie called Stay. You all should know what sort of movies I like based on what sort of books I read and what sort of stories I write: I like wankery. Sorry, but it’s true. Movies that give my mind a good shake and leave more questions than they answer. Even The Sixth Sense in its suprise ending but more importantly the foreshadowing that accompanies the ending.

But I also like movies with style. Multi-layered films with texture and subtlety: stories that use the medium they inhabit to tell the story as much as the script and actors themselves do. The Matrix did this with its symbology and cinemography.

Beware that if you continue reading this, I present spoilers galore. If you’ve watched the film already, you’ll probably come out with a better understanding of what’s actually going on. If you haven’t, the story will probably be subsumed in your attention to detail while viewing it.

First off, the entire movie happens as the protagonist is prostrate beside a burning vehicle in which his mother, father, and fiance have all perished; he himself is mortally wounded. Most of the film is the story of him choosing whether or not – as he lies there on the pavement – to live, or to die. It is secondarily concerned with his guilt over killing his family (though it’s not his fault).

The film, every bit of it, takes place in that limbo: the traditional life-flashing-before-your-eyes moment before you actually kick the bucket. But instead of seeing his life – although you will see his life in various places throughout the film – he halucinates, dreams, whatever you want to call it, melding things he sees before going unconscious and the important people in his life.

His psychiatrist, for instance, is the doctor who stands over him on the road; the doctor’s girlfriend in the dream is a nurse who he works with.

Throughout the film, you’ll notice the odd transition between segments: they blend into eachother un-naturally, they cut and weave, and as the film progresses, they become more eratic and disturbing. Audio elements start intruding on the narrative in places, like when the psychiatrist visits the young man’s mother in the disturbingly empty house.

All of these things are indicative of the mental state of our protagonist: as he dies, the narrative becomes more fractured; scenes repeat and the camera shifts awkwardly.

This is all fine and good. But there are some other significant factors that go unexplained. For instance, the significance of the number three. In one scene, the young man and his psychiatrist are walking through a college after an art lecture; as they progress around the building, there are sets of triplets in just about every corner of each shot. In another scene there are three out of focus metal globes; they appear in the next shot as well, though it’s in a different room. The psychiatrist’s girlfriend has three scars on her wrist from attempting to commit suicide. It is three days from the time the young man tells his psychiatrist he’s going to commit suicide till the day he says he’s going to it. Personally, I think these groups of three refer to the three other people in the car. Or perhaps it’s an allusion to the entire film taking place during the three – admittedly hypothetical – minutes he spends dying in real life.

The main characters, as well, exhibit characteristics that are, frankly, bizzarre but at the same time understandable in context. The psychiatrist is the side of him that doesn’t want to die and seeks to save him; his previous psychiatrist is the side of him that doesn’t care. The girlfriend is a sort of neutral ground. She has no real good reason not to die – other than that there’s so much beauty in the world – although she’s tried to kill herself (not to mention the three scars on her wrist from self-inflicted wounds, as if to say that even if he lives he’ll bear the scar of those three people dying in the car forever). The man he calls his father, who he heals of his blindness is his own understanding of what’s going on: when the blindness disappears, it’s a signal of his mental grasp of what’s going on. Shooting himself is his way of launching himself out of the dream and back into reality to finally die.

Do I agree with the film’s point? If it has one, not really. But on the other hand, you will have to watch this at least several times to get it down pat. It may even freak you out a bit. But at the end of the day it’s an excellent, excellent movie, and deserves to be seen.

I don’t generally watch a lot of non-English movies, with the exception of some Anime, some French films, and several Russian titles. But I heard about a South Korean movie called Yeopgijeogin geunyeo, which translates roughly into “My Sassy Girl” and just had to see it. Which I did.

And it’s good. Really good. In fact, if there were more American movies like this, I might go to the theatre more than once a year. This is my advice: if you have a chance, rent this movie. You’ll like it.

I was at home sick from work and I watched “Lost in Translation” again, considering how I own it. And I just have to say, if you don’t like that movie – you’re insane. Except for a couple scenes, it’s pure genius all the way through. Slow, yes. But a character study with the concurrent themes of being lost in life and being lost in a foreign country, as if to say, “Hey, these relationships, they’re like visiting a foreign country where everyone’s speaking a different language; we lose so much meaning crossing over.” Excellent. And beautiful.

dan (am I right or am I right?)

Well, I finally broke down and saw the movie Serenity. As well I should have, as it turns out, because it’s an amazing film. And unbelieveable film. Maybe the best scifi film I’ve ever seen, bar none. Certainly the best scifi-western. I would urge you all to go out sometime and see a matinee showing of it in a nice uncrowded theatre, just so good films that deserve to be winners actually are.

You know what’s interesting? Hollywood funding distribution is funny, that’s what. How so many banal films are made with money ranging into the hundreds of millions of dollars is beyond me – and why people go to see them is even further. In fact, so much of the movie-going populace is turned off by what HWood is producing these days that they don’t even bother to watch those top-ten grossing films anymore, if they even watch movies at all. I, for one, haven’t watched a single “blockbuster” movie this year unless I was with friends and had to seek the lowest common denominator in what movie would appeal to everyone.

Which is part of the industry’s problem. They cater to big audiences and leave the small ones behind. But is it so strange to imagine that you’d make the same sort of money with four small films that cost $25m in lieu of one film that costs $100m+? Not only that, instead of having hugely expensive films that go bust, you’d have minorly expensive films that go bust, and sleeper hits that basically cost only a tenth of what they’ll gross in theatres alone. Even out the money distribution. It doesn’t work anymore. We don’t like your stupid movies that focus on making us covet lifestyles while ignoring plot. We’re not drooling idiots with money flowing out of our pockets, waiting to spend it on whatever film has “adrenaline” or “octane” in the description.

Well, most of us aren’t.

dan (hates movies. loves movies)