Tread on Dreams

Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987)
Drama
Starring Gaspard Manesse and Raphael Fejtö
Directed by Louis Malle

Sometimes, for reasons unbeknownst even to myself, I hear or see of a movie and say to myself, “I will watch that.”

This was one of those movies. It’s certainly not something I would normally chose to watch. It’s something that I’d only really watch, or so I thought, if it appeared on a list. And then I’d undoubtedly whine and complain about it.

So the motivation behind watching this movie is, as yet, unclear.

Julien Quentin and Jean Bonnet find themselves at a Carmelite school for boys in the countryside of France during the Nazi occupation. The two boys forge a tenuous association over their common situation which grows into a real friendship over their love of literature and Julien’s discovery of Jean’s dangerous secret.

The antics of the boys were very reminiscent of another French movie, Les Choristes, a recent movie set only a few years after the culmination of WWII. It’s comforting to know that even in times of fear and death and war, boys will be boys.

I liked the character of Julien in particular. He seems almost half-separated from the world in the movie, always with his head in a book or lost in his own private thoughts. One of my favorite parts of the movie occurs when he says to Bonnet, during the adventure in the woods that would cement their friendship, “Do you realize that there’ll never be another January 17, 1944? Never again?”

That is something that even today, fifteen years older and more than a decade past than that moment, for that character, in that movie, I think about. This very morning. How every moment of every day is entirely new and entirely unique. There will never be another like it, there was never one before it. I thought of that line again as the final subtitles blossomed up on the screen. That moment on one cold January morning may never occur again, but for the character of young Julien, it will never really end either. Malle reminds us that the moments in our life that define us are the ones we cannot let go of.

For Malle, as the movie is supposed to be more autobiographical than not, the moment which defines him is the one in which he saw his childhood stripped from him. He very effectively captures the exact moment when the innocence of the young protagonist, Julien Quentin, is forever lost. But long before that heartbreaking scene, the movie has the feel of something slowly and tragically disappearing. One wonders if ever an innocence such as this has existed in the world because it certainly doesn’t anymore. I wonder if it can.

The movie is beautiful; tragically beautiful, yes, but beautiful nonetheless. It was perfectly complemented by the piano score, and the cool colors and soft-focus Malle chose to shoot in. There were some priceless moments–the older brother giving the German soldiers wrong directions cracked me up. I didn’t expect to laugh during this movie but I did.

When the movie ended, aside from the short epilogue of the narrator, I felt a big cheated. I wanted more. I wanted to know what the brother would do, what Julien would do, what any of them would do. I wanted to know how the events of the movie had changed or would change their own lives. Would Julien grow up to be the missionary in the Congo? Would the events of one cold January morning strengthen his faith or shatter it?

Movie Rating? B
Favorite line(s)?

Laura (1944)
Noir
Starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews
Directed by Otto Preminger

Oh, will it never rain? This is the question I’ve been asking for several weeks now. Nothing like the dry heat of August when all you want is a rainstorm. (Not for that reason, Kerry. Okay, totally for that reason.)

Well, today the weather gods finally came through. Today you could smell the rain sitting on the edge of the breeze. The temperature dropped, the dark clouds sat threateningly overhead, and the greens and yellows and reds of the radar promised a downpour.

And it did rain. Here and there and here again. But it was enough, those small showers and the remnants of Hurricane Gustav due to reach our state tomorrow, to queue up the third movie of List IV for the evening.

Before I get to the meat and potatoes of this review, I think I should make it clear that I thought Dana Andrews was Laura and Gene Tierney was McPherson until a good portion of the movie had passed. (But oddly enough, another Dana Andrews’ movie is on deck for tomorrow night.)

Okay.

Enough embarrassing anecdotes.

Oh, wait. One more. I love the barely-there Southern slur of Vincent Price as Shelby Carpenter. Love it.

If I were the type of person who liked to predict the ending of a movie (oh, wait, I am) I’d guess that Mr. Lydecker shot Laura. He seems the type; you know, the kind of guy whose appealing charm is just a thin veneer covering his barely concealed sleaze. The kind of person you’d never win an argument with, because he’s so utterly convinced of his own rationality and righteousness.

If, that is, I were the type of person who liked to predict things.

I love the beginning of this movie, though; how calm and collected, even-keel, McPherson is. He seems almost bored as he works his way through the list of suspects. As he uncovers all the corners of Laura’s life, the pretty and the sordid alike, his voice never wavers from the disinterested, monotonous tone it has taken. For McPherson, this investigation begins like any other; Laura is just another dead body and her killer just another criminal to apprehend and incarcerate.

You just know that something will happen that will turn this man’s life on its ass.

That “something” is Laura herself, the Laura he begins to discover as he delves deeper and deeper into her life. For a dead woman–and I’ll hold my suspicions on that until a more appropriate moment presents itself–she’s one of the most powerful presences on the screen. The portrait of her, the one siting above the…

Son of a bitch. I was right.

… mantlepiece, dominates the frame. Literally and figuratively. The black background, the halo of light surrounding her image, almost spotlighted. I damn well wouldn’t be surprised if her image leapt out from the canvas and into the celluloid world before her.

And then there she is. How easily McPherson slips from dreamy disbelief to intense interrogation. J’accuse! All of a sudden instead of investigating the death of the beautifully mysterious Laura, he attacks. Point after point, blow after blow. He suggests her guilt and establishes her innocence in a matter of minutes. Of course, I wonder whether he ever actually believes that she had anything to do with the death in her apartment. Nevertheless, proper detective that he is, there is a procedure to follow and follow it he must. His final question to her, demanding to know her decision regarding Carpenter, is perhaps the one indication that his interest in her life is more than purely vocational.

Can I take a minute to discuss some other elements of this movie? The way Preminger (or rather, his director of photography) shot the movie is just beautiful. Painstakingly sharp and soothingly dreamy at the same time. The exaggerated black and white contrast of the movie is something that, for so many others, could have been declared ostentatious or contrived.  But it fits here.

Narrated, as it were, by Lydecker, the movie seems half a dream, half a memory; startlingly clear and rosily ambiguous.  What is true, what can we trust?  If Lydecker, who, by his own admission, cares little for the details of the truth, can this story then be anything more than another exaggeration of the facts?  An idea loosely based on something that could have happened once upon a time, as everything else Lydecker says seems to be?  Has he cast himself in his latest fiction?  What is real and what exists only within the bounds of his twisted little mind?

Anyway, to get back to the visual elements of this movie, the contrast, for me, at least, becomes especially obvious in the scene between Ann and Laura at the “resurrection” party. Ann in her light dress and Laura in her dark one. It wouldn’t surprise me, especially after their conversation, to discover that Ann had killed Diane (it’s irrelevant whether Laura or Diane was the intended target right now) in order to secure a future with Shelby. Both Diane and Laura were obstacles in her grand scheme.  But I don’t think that’s how this mystery will wrap up.  It just struck me there, how polarized the two appear on the screen.

(Also, quite the Solomon scene upon McPherson’s accusation of Laura. In a sense, I mean. He may have some doubts as to her involvement or knowledge of the crime but clearly he’s only arresting her to gauge the reactions off the rest of the party-goers.)

The interrogation scene at the police department is just impressive. The lighting? Who could believe Laura killed Diane Redfern with that powerful light upon her? It softens her, her innocence naked on her face.

Ohhhhh. “Mark.” Can you swoon while sitting down? I think I may have swooned. Might’ve been the caffeine. I’m going to blame it on the caffeine.

The shot (pun clearly intended) of Lydecker as he leaves Laura and McPherson alone in her apartment. Pure and utter genius. The shadow dark against the wall, bigger than the man himself. How dangerous, how dark this man is, the part of himself that he keeps hidden away from the world. I don’t know if I can quantify why it appears so to me but nothing is more suggestive of Lydecker’s guilt than that moment right there.

Ohhhh.  I’m pretty sure it’s not kosher to kiss a woman who was 1). presumed dead recently, 2). a victim whose murder you were supposed to be solving and 3). only recently moved from the list of “prime suspects” to “persons loosely affiliated with the crime.”  But whatever.  Be still my beating heart. 

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

Yep.  There he is.  And, wait for it.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

Yep.

Watch out, Laura.
Oh, this will not end well.  Where is that blasted cop?

Kick in the damned door!

Hellfire and damnation, McPherson, kick in the damned door!

Oh, heart, Kerry.

Movie Rating?  A
Category Rating?   A+
Favorite line(s)?
“ To him, I, like everything else, am only half real. The other half exists only in his own mind.”

~ Gene Tierney as Laura Hunt

(Nothing like revising, hey?  Don’t think it’s finished yet but it’s closer.  It’s unbalanced somewhere still, though.)

I speak in the early light of morning,
In the most ancient of heart-languages.
Words known only to a few scholars,
Academics of emotion, lovers in bed.
Like the percussive languages of Africa,
My heart murmurs words to you,
Whispers against smooth, waking skin.
I am fluent only in your presence,
This language dancing like summer rain,
Cool against my heated mouth,
As your hands respond gradually,
My gentle interpreters, my native guides,
Talking at their own delicate pace.
In the afternoon I will look down,
And see the words you’ve traced out,
Embedded deep, burrowed into flesh,
And know, in the morning, I was loved.

So, who could be the Democratic National Party’s biggest friend this election year?

I’ll give you a hint.

Name starts with a “G.”

That’s right.  Gustav.

For several reasons:

1. Gustav will hit land right during the scheduled GOP convention
2. Gustav will steal most (if not all) of the GOP’s anticipated press during their convention (depending, of course, on how strong it is)
3. Several key GOP members will be noticeably absent during the convention (namely Bush, Cheney, and the governor of Texas (at the very least))
4. If anything goes wrong with the way Gustav is handled (before, during, after) the Republican party will find themselves blamed solely because they are currently the party in charge (whether that’s fair, I cannot say, but it’s true)

So there you go.  Gustav could be Obama-Biden’s best friend (yes, he might even be better than Oprah).

Listen to voices in my fingertips
To know all your nicknames
And that’s probably what saved me

I am just as vacant, I’m never famished

Smallness upright, losing on third try
Enormous rocks for enormous holes

where the river isn’t and you die
No one lives for auctions
Get big at the expense of a felon

Used up candles in fantasies
A fake river on this train
Countless languages eliminate many

I spit blue on my hands nothing breaks
Pandemonium—funny losing you here
By streetlight as by moonlight

An example is diamonds, or bones

~ John Godfrey

Two quotes from the Sisterhood calendar Sara gave me for Christmas:

“I don’t believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.” ~ Maya Angelou

“A sibling may be the keeper of one’s identity, the only person with the keys to one’s unfettered, more fundamental self.” ~ Marian Sandmaier

You know that list of things you’ve always wanted but can never justify spending the money on?

I have a new item to add.

I want the Great Books of the Western World series. Seriously.

Yes, yes.

It’s a 60 volume set.

And 400+ dollars (on Ebay!).

And I have nowhere to put them.

But I want them.

He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm that is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.

~ Jack Gilbert

The Neverending Story
Michael Ende
Translated by Ralph Manheim
Fantasy
(K. Thienemanns Verlag: Stuttgart, 1979; Penguin: New York, 1983)
377 pp.

Magic.

This book is pure and utter magic.

With every letter of this book Michael Ende weaves a story around the reader, a story about the power of loving stories. He captures the most essential but elusive truth about literature–that just as we have the power to shape and change the story, the story has the power to shape and change us. AURYN, the eternal circle, the two intertwined snakes, neither beginning nor ending, becomes the symbol of that power. Did we exist before the story or was the story always there, just waiting to be revealed.

Whatever the answer, Ende has provided his reader with a window into a very special world. The world of Fantastica, where names have the power to create and destroy entire lifelines. Where the biggest fear, the scariest nightmare, is the Nothing, being forgotten, becoming invisible, irrelevant, unnecessary. Where a young boy, lost to the real world, discovers hidden pieces of himself with every turn of the page.

Bastian Balthazar Bux is a nobody. Disliked by his classmates, ignored by his father, and generally unhappy with himself, he finds his only refuge in books. So one horrible day, when he discovers a beautiful book, The Neverending Story, in an old bookseller’s store, he commits the most terrible crime he can think of–he steals the book. From that moment on he is thrust into the most amazing of adventures.

Drawn into the story itself, Fantastica itself, Bastian follows the exploits of young Atreyu, a boy sent to discover the savior who will restore order to his dying world, before beginning a trek through the world itself. This journey will forever change him, in ways he doesn’t even realize until Atreyu and Falkor, the luck dragon, force him to open his eyes and seek the path back to his own world, so that he can share this story–his story–with others, and thus guarantee the safety of Fantastica for at least a little while.

There are so many elements to praise in this story. One of the best parts of the book are the “lessons” it offers to the reader. Bastian, as the story progresses, makes the journey from dissatisfied boyhood to a sort of self-actualizing adulthood. As he learns in the House of Change, quite possibly the most important location in this bildungsroman:

“You see, it’s called the House of Change not only because it changes itself but also because it changes anyone who lives in i. And that was very important to the little boy, because up until then he had always wanted to be someone other than he was, but he didn’t want to change.”

Bastian learns, as we all must learn, to become the master of his own destiny. He realizes that first and foremost, he is responsible for himself. How he sees himself. How he presents himself to the world. How the world presents itself to him.

He becomes the change he wishes to see in the world, and sets about to share the truths he has learned with anyone who will listen.

Rating? A+
Favorite line(s)?
“And the best part of it was that he was now the very person he wanted to be. If he had to choose, he would have chosen to be no one else. Because now he knew that there were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.”