saw "the painted veil" this afternoon. a beautiful movie, really:
characters you really care about and feel that you grow with as the movie progresses; stunning cinematography which takes your breath away; good score and a story that has the potential to be boring, but never is.
the historical aspects are better than most hollywood films do, yet not quite accurate or truthful: the nationalists are portrayed as the "good guys" while the guys dressed up in mao uniforms are the dangerous thugs out to kill the british. very hollywood way of looking at it, really, particularly when one considers how awful the nationalists were and how they basically sold the chinese out to the japanese when they invaded. such a throw back to the simple, idiotic way it was thought of 60 years ago when truman was the president and china "turned red".
be that as it may...a film is not meant to be a lesson in history and the focus of the drama is the love story, as it should be. and well done it is.
the w. somerset maugham novel upon which the movie is based is also good, but a lot of people dislike it. maugham was certainly a man of his time and though i haven't read the book in a few years, i don't remember all the (rather feeble) cinemagraphic attempts at making the extraneous chinese characters actually real. at least they tried, but the film still veers dangerously close to orientalism and generally just objectifying the chinese. still. they are human on some level, which maugham himself could hardly muster the energy to demonstrate in his writing (the novel was published in 1925).
a running theme to my blog the last few weeks is illness as metaphor and i find it here in this film as well: in this case the disease is cholera. the book tends to use the disease (as lots of chinese literature did at the time, the only thing maugham ever consciously borrowed from another culture!) as a metaphor for the chaos and turbulence that china was experiencing at that time, the warlords, the violence, the starvation. one might see the british as being the cure, or at least maugham may have, but i might be reading too much into it (though read some of the british colonial stuff of the era, and it certainly fits in with the general approach). the movie adapts this a bit (since most Western audiences could care less or don't know enough about the era to make it matter) to make the illness be just that: an illness.
walter, the main protagonist, can be seen as representative of an earlier time, a colonial time when britain didn't feel the need to justify its role in being the oppressor. it is a telling moment when kitty and walter make love for the first time, he insists on turning off the light, while she, being a modern woman of the 20th century, is rather baffled at this. but as they grow and change, the light becomes a symbol for progress and the future: in the final lovemaking scene, the light is bold and obvious, as if to represent the brightness that the future held for them both (and, if you want to belabor the point, the british themselves). another running motif is the doll with the cock-eyed look, blindness, moving into the light. such appropriate motifs and very clever on the part of the director to work these into the story since they fit with our modern notions of our past(s).
one criticism: that final "tie up" scene is beneath the director (john curran), a really awful scene that should never have been made. i suspect the studio forced him to do it because every step of the way curran avoids cinematic cliches. but audiences want "closure" (i despise that term), so closure you get practically shoved down your throat ("you WILL take this closure and you WILL enjoy it, damn it!").
other than that, i'ts a wonderful movie and the type of film that makes you remember how beautiful and moving films can be.
so bush makes a speech today that now that saddam hussein is dead, the violence in iraq will not end.
no shit!
is he under the impression that the world thinks things are rosy cheeky lovely in iraq now? suicide bombers are packing things up, shiites and sunnis are shaking hands, people are planting flowers and getting out their guitars and strumming happy rural folk tunes at their bright futures? how stupid we've all been and thanks, bushie, for pointing this fact out to us...
having said that, though, i read an article from a student today justifying the war in iraq on the grounds that the US needed to defend itself against terrorists and avenge 9/11.
idiots still believe this, though it's been proven (over and over) that saddam hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.
don't these people even watch the news? how can they have only heard half the story. tyrant, yes. dictator, yes. megalomaniac, certainly. but let's make a list of other world leaders that fit that description. perhaps we should move in on there...
oh and as of last week, more US soldiers have been killed in iraq than all the civilians killed in 9/11. not to mention tens of thousands (maybe up to a hundred thousand according to some sources) of iraqis.
let's hope 2007 is better for the iraqis than the last 30 years have been...
I'm afraid of needles.
I'm tired of rubber sheets and tubes.
I'm tired of faces that I don't know
and now I think that death is starting.
Death starts like a dream,
full of objects and my sister's laughter.
We are young and we are walking
and picking wild blueberries
all the way to Damariscotta.
Oh Susan, she cried,
you've stained your new waist.
Sweet taste --
my mouth so full
and the sweet blue running out
all the way to Damariscotta.
What are you doing? Leave me alone!
Can't you see I'm dreaming?
In a dream you are never eighty.
--anne sexton, from her book all my pretty ones
so we had a small dinner party last night; it was nice, just four of us, though penelope had to cancel at the last minute because of some family problem.
i love having people over; it's so much more gratifying than sitting in some loud bar trying to have a conversation. i would have a dinner party every week if i could...
we didn't leave the house at all yesterday. it snowed all morning and we laid around reading and watching movies.
for christmas, masa bought me annie leibovitz's new book a photographer's life 1990-2005. what a great book! about 1/3 of the photos are of susan sontag, leibovitz's partner who died of cancer in 2004. she was one of my favorite writers and i've written about her before.
she wrote a few novels, but it's her essays that are most interesting. it's too bad that she (susan sontag) is practically ignored in academia. partly she is accused of using roland barthes' ideas as her own, though she often acknowledges him as being the inspiration and wrote a few articles on his work. i think, to be honest, it's mainly professional jealousy because sontag was one of the very few american intellectuals who didn't HAVE to work in academia to make a living. she was no fan of academia either, and more than once accused academics as working at self-serving obscurity. that must have something to do with it.
in her career she wrote about cancer, photography, leni riefenstahl, drag queens, feminism, grammar, war, drama, french cinema, european history, literary criticism and more. she was numblingly intelligent adn spent much of the end of her life working in sarajevo, trying to keep the arts alive there despite all the death and killing. this, again, was another reason for academics to hate her: she DID something with her intellect and compassion, instead of just sitting in an ivory tower writing pedantic articles that no one cares about. i admire that and feel that there is something i could learn from her life. i remember my friend paul (who is in jerusalem now--i talked to him on the phone christmas day for two hours) who also does something. it's really a matter of finding your own "thing," your own way of contributing to the world. some people are good and organizing, some at logistical support (like my friend paul), others are good at doing productions of beckett ("waiting for godot") in war-torn bosnia, like sontag. there is not ONE way of showing compassion and helping others.
also seeing life crystallized into a (very large) books of photos makes one think about how their own life might be represented in such a form. it must be gratifying to see your life lived...
so boxing day was spent reading, watching some movies and getting read for dong-hyuk and his friend. dong-hyuk and i have been friends for 10 years and we hadn't seen each other since seoul in 1997. it was good to see him and we reminisced about being young and having no cares in the world.
so a good night. next: new year's party and my birthday.
i've been reading a lot this year about how ubiquitous the trappings and accoutrements of christmas are throughout the world. there is an interesting article on thinkbuddha.org today and another on bbc about chinese students attempting to resist it all.
it's obviously so tied to consumerism and, in asia, that is the main impetus behind it all. i remember one christmas,
2003, i think, when i was in toronto until mid-december and then had to fly to china to do a seminar in shanghai and chengdu. i was surprised at all the christmas decorations and carols that were everywhere in china. the coffee shops in shanghai were absolutely stuffed with garland, lights, trees, and brightly lit packages. all the department stores played old 50s christmas carols. even in chengdu, the very heart of china, western christmas was everywhere. it struck me that year that finding all this christmas stuff and obvious displays of christmas were much more prevalent in asia than in canada or the US.
japan, too, is very aware of christmas as an orgy of western consumerism. many women consider christmas to be a real test of their success in the romance department, and it's the time of year when husbands are expected to take wives out to very expensive meals in candlelit restaurants. christmas is all about jewelry and expensive shopping sprees.
but there is no religious side to any of this. it's all the consumerist symbols: santa claus and elves and little north pole villages with fake snow. you will never see a cross or baby jesus or star of david, particularly in china where this kind of religious imagery is highly frowned upon.
i wonder what this is all about. i want to say it's all about power. in china, perhaps, it makes sense, as there is an underlying implication that with money comes power and since the world's poor consider the US the pinnacle of financial power, it's not surprising that many of its cultural relics become institutionalized as a means by which power can be attained, at least in some small part. but japan certainly doesn't need any more reason to consume since japanese are just as devoted to consuming as most western nations. there is a general fascination with westernism in japan, it's true, but it's more of a novelty than anything else. china seems more poised to resist all this ridiculousness and it's a hopeful sign that people are starting to question the value of and intent behind all the over the top consumerist craziness.
china has historical precedent for being wary of westernism influencing its culture. we can thank our ancestors: the british and americans imported opium into china (traded for tea which british and US companies refused or were unable to use silver for) and causing untold misery to millions of rural and urban poor who became addicted to the stuff. many share responsibility for this: the british merchants, american missionaries, european diplomats: at best they turned a blind eye and let opium nearly destroy the country, at worst they actively sought to enslave an entire nation so that they could make as much money as possible. it's this reason that the chinese government is so strict about what kinds of business foreigners
can set up and all the crazy and at times seemingly ridiculous regulations they impose on foreign enterprises (specific minimum numbers of chinese employees, medical, housing and insurance benefits must be paid, minimum wage requirements). there are some excellent books on the opium wars by travis hanes and dominic lee.
still. with money and interaction comes influence and though it might be possible to control what foreigners do in terms of their business and money, it's impossible to limit the kinds of ways that chinese society is changing and will continue to change as more and more westerners move there. i remember once being at an art exhibit in shanghai once and this government official was there making a speech. he said something along the lines of "while we chinese accept and welcome foreign monetary investment, the influence of western culture on our society is minimal or non-existent." an audible chuckle rolled across the crowd, struck with this silly and naive assertion that seemed completely ironic. how can the two be separated?
after all, cultures have always influenced and affected each other. probably inherent in the entire concept of culture is interaction with other cultures. though i very much doubt if we will live to see the day when chinese (lunar) new year is celebrated with as much fervor and intensity in the US as christmas is celebrated in china. i guess all we can do is accept the good things from other cultures and try and limit the bad bits. and hopefully be able to figure out which is which!
everyone thinks theirs is the cutest...
we got a short one and put it on the dining room table. masa is thrilled because he's never put one up before, but he has such japanese sensibilities towards the whole affair: i had to talk him out of a "theme" (how annoying!). then he decided that only ONE color would do. uuhhhh. no.
finally, we got it up and he was so happy about it! it's a collection of many types of ornaments but some things i can't stand about trees (which i inherited from my mom) are lacking:
- flashing lights.
- those cheap plastic-y icicle thingies.
- plastic anything
- tinsel garland
the only issue now is how we are going to keep the cats away from it. oyster ("the baby" as marie calls him) loves playing and, man, it took him about 10 minutes to figure out that batting those crystal-drop icicles is FUN! he is scared to death of me anyway because i'm the "bad" one who always disciplines him (i.e., yells at him and sprays his face with the water bottle). he adores masa because masa just plays with him all day. romeo (the black cat) ignores both of us and only pays attention to marie.
some other pics from a party the other night around the corner...
What are your top 5 books of 2006?
Not books that were published, but books I read (or re-read) this year:
a charming little tale about being who you want to be, no matter what pressures you face to be something you're not...
it makes me think of two very good friends who are exactly who they present themselves as...i find this quality incredibly refreshing, as many of us (myself included) would rather people think we are "better" than we actually are. maybe something i'm learning as i get older (sometimes cliches just sum it all up so nicely): just be yourself and if people don't like it, screw 'em.
hillary on the view this morning (i've started watching it now that rosie o'donnell is on it). it's funny all the things that are NOT said. the fact, for example, that she IS going to run for president in 2008 but won't come out and admit it.
and polls show that she is front runner, though it's far too early to give these polls much credence. i have mixed feelings about hillary. i like her politics and admire the fact that she tried so hard to FIX problems while clinton was president (mainly healthcare which she often talks about), but got shut out because of the right's paranoia or whatever. and her book it takes a village has been rereleased. it's common sense, really, or at least it is now, 10 years after its initial publication. but at least she TALKS about these issues in a rational, clear way that is not blinded by religious fanaticism. maybe this voice of common sense is what is necessary today. i think her priorities are balanced.
but she is SUCH a politician. she walks that middle line, afraid of offending anyone. i guess that's the way it is and has to be, but though i can't stand those right-wing nuts, at least they speak from conviction and not from a need to appeal to the middle. but conviction, perhaps, is dangerously close to rigid fanaticism. terrorists, after all, certainly don't lack conviction.
but to work on ISSUES is something that america needs now. instead of spending billions of dollars fighting an idiotic war, maybe hillary can get healthcare to people who need it (every other developed country in the world offers healthcare to its population and the US is dangerously close to places like china, where the rural poor simply don't go to the doctor because they can't afford it). instead of trying to force a rigid moral code on the US (and hypocritical, too: what is more immoral than killing innocent civilians for the sake of keeping "face"?), i think she would get the US back on track in terms of its true original approach to moral issues instead of letting it get hijacked by religious nuts.
but there are too many people who dislike her and dislike the whole assocation with the clinton years.
anyway. i am not necessarily too optimistic...
