A Textbook Tragedy (Film Review)

Vol. 1 Issue 12


While hanging out in Saskatchewan  for a few weeks I've had more than a little free time. Spending day after day reading really boring stuff I think it’s official: I might be the most boring person on Earth. Luckily, I know a few things that are not boring. And so, I am writing a film review of one of them.

Because it’s so good, after watching Canadien/French Film Incendies for the second time, I thought that it must be based on a novel of play. I needed to find out. I now know that it is based on a play by Wajdi Mouawad. Mouawad is a Canadien writer, and to my delight, Incendies is part of a series of four plays. This means I have three more Incendies-like plays still to read.

I won’t go through a run-down of the plot, talk in abstractions about arch, characters symbiosis or lack-there-of…. there are tons of proper film reviews out there already dealing with these topics. I thought I’d just talk about two things, the two things that I thought make this an outstanding film: Photography, and the remarkable unfolding of a dramatic story; better film critics than me, which is to say any real film critic, have said that this film pulls off tragedy better than the Greeks.

The photography, the photography, the photography… was just as good the second time as it was the first time I saw it. The film opens in a village that could be mistaken for Greece of Israel. At thought maybe this was set and shot in Palestine, but I think most of the film as actually shot in Jordan. Theses shots are actually set to portray a fictional Lebanon, both past and modern day. The history intertwined with the movie seems to be loosely fictional; I can’t find any information on any of the places that appear in film. My Lebanese civil war history is a little rusty. Anyone else?

There are two shots in particular that stand out. Both are shot at a distance to reveal the vastness of the landscape, unmistakably Mediterranean. Rocky, and the trees, not that I’m a tree expert, but they must be olive or fig trees, they are almost overused as prototypical symbols of the Med, but they work great.

The first shot I like is actually two shots, meaning one type of shot that is used twice, almost identically. It’s of a bus traveling on a skinny, mountainside road. At first, the camera is in close then pans way out to show the whole panoramic view, massive landscape, and tiny bus,  a common technique in World films that are shot in exotic landscapes. The other shot is similar. It is later in the film. One of the characters is driving to a modern day Deressa Refugee camp and there is a shot taken from the sky of the winding roads leading up the side of a mountain. This shot is amazing, and whatever effects of filters the photographer added to make it fit the film’s tone so well, I can’t think of a better word to use to describe them, and the shot as ‘cinematic.’ I know that’s a terrible term to use when describing Cinema, I really do, but a shot like this is so expressive and well-placed in the film, there is nothing going in the film here excepts visuals, the shot on it’s own stands out as an artistic, filmmaking achievement.

The storyline, the storyline, the storyline…unfolds with the precision of a textbook tragedy. It sets up the conflict right off the top--- find missing brother and father. As the drama unfolds the story becomes more and more complex, adding twists and turns to the plot that we never even thought possible. In the end we are left with remains that challenge Oedipus the King in magnitude of ruination, yet still manage to exit the scene with a sparkle of hope. Forgiveness lets the audience breath a little easier as the film closes, a catharsis, but even then the story, the film, will haunt your subconscious for a good while after.

Missing the Mark + Some Horrendicity

Vol. 1 Issue 11
I’m not going to talk about anything academic, and by that I mean boring this week; I want to revisit horrendicity. I have been excelling in this department lately, so much so, that it needs to be discussed. In the words of the totally excellent Wayne Campbell: “What the hell's going on? I lost my show, I lost my best friend, I lost my girl. I'm being shit on, that's all, shit on” -Wayne’s World (1992). Replace show with band, best friend with job, and leave girl as-is. I didn’t have one to lose. Is this a positive or a negative? But yea, band and job, gone.

It’s kind of hard to whine about your life sucking when your existence is a well-fed, carefree, single one in New York, when kids, just miles down from road from you are being shot at school. I’m talking about the Connecticut shootings.

By now I’m sure most people have heard the NRA’s call to arms, literally; “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” I’m not really going to criticize this ingenious, and by that I mean terrible idea; in order to stop gun violence we need more guns (in the US). I figure I’m no expert, so I really can’t sound off and say that NRA’s recommendation is possibility the stupidest solution to a problem I’ve ever heard. No, but I have fired a gun a few times, legally and illegally.

I once fired an AK-47 in Vietnam. Anyone was allowed: fire five rounds for 10 USD. It must have actually been a gun from the war-era because for very round I got off, it misfired twice. It was very difficult to keep track of the amount of rounds I got off, compared to the ones that misfired, and come to think of it, I remember arguing that I got ripped off by one round in the misfiring confusion. Suddenly the worker spoke no English, and pretended not to understand me.  Also, there were assault rifles going off all around me; they are so effin’ loud it still makes my ears hurt.

In my last blog about Horrendicity from November 20^th I mentioned how terrible my Vietnamese was, that being, for those of you that did not read that edition, very. This was about 3 months into my study of the language, and still before I learned the one and only word I’d ever learn in 6 months of study. Not only was my Vietnamese horrendous, my aim with the AK was just as bad. I didn’t hit the target once.

They had a few other serious assault weapons there even bigger than AKs, but to shoot those cost more. I don’t even know what the names were, like I said, I’m no gun expert.

I am consoled to live in a city where at least the most powerful official elected official, Mayor Bloomberg rebuts the NRA statements:“ they offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe;” he’s pretty much condemned the NRA, but the situation of Piers Morgan, the CNN Talk show host and New York City fixture makes me feel less consolation. It’s actually pretty funny.

Piers Morgan is not an idiot. When he interviews people who are idiots, i.e. fake celebrities, reality show stars, right-wing extremists, he makes a point of portraying them as such on his show. He even bans idiot guests for year spans. It is no different with gun lobbyists, saying, “You're an unbelievably stupid man, aren't you?" in a recent interview with gun-man Larry Pratt.

Now it seems nothing gets the United States united like a foreigner insulting their guns. Morgan is British. So far 48,000 people have signed a petition to deport Morgan saying he’s insulting the American constitution…. insulting the constitution by demanding that the US protect its citizens from being shot. Technically he cannot be deported for such behavior, Morgan is a legitimate Green Card holder, but imagine if they did deport him for condemning gun violence?

Does that mean that if I am an aspiring Green Card Holder that I need to get a gun? Maybe I should, just to be safe.

More on Miró- Part 2

Vol. 1 Issue 10

As I said last time I wanted to investigate this artist's stuff within the context of the Philosophy of Art. Well, this did not happen. I'm posting the second half of the paper from last week. I put all my effort into this, and now there's no time for the philosophy thing. 

I'm in my last week of classes for the semester, which means I have work due in all of them. Turns out a Master's Degree is actually quite difficult. By this time next week I'll have either completed all the work, or will have abandoned it and excepted whatever fate that action brings. Until then...

Over the next decade or so, 1946-1960, Miró’s work continues on an upward, even more abstract trajectory, and, he transitions from working on paper with various paints and turpentine as in Fig 4 in last weeks post, back to oils on canvases. All of his paintings from 1946 onwards exploit (in the best possible way) two elements that his earlier works did not, at least not as much, color and space. If it is not one, it is the other. Following the Constellations, Miró’s works becomes unmistakable indefinable as his own. As Malet puts it, “Miró speaks a language of his own which everybody can understand, but not repeat, since the speaker does not use any direct reference to the external world” (18). I would agree mostly with Malet, but I think the one direct reference of Miró’s work that does connect to the outside world are the work’s titles.

            Miró’s titles always seem to help connect the viewer to Miró’s concept of what the work may have been at least related to, or inspired by. The titles do not define what the works are about, but still, his titles never seem arbitrary, and for this reason they are very important to his works throughout his entire oeuvre. The titles add a degree of insight to the viewer’s perception that makes viewing the work a much deeper, interpretive and understandable experience than if they were all simply left untitled.

            No doubt the Constellations were colorful, but all Miró’s work post-Constellation era, in my opinion, is the era of Miró’s establishing his foundations as a Master Colorist. As his work and style progress, they becomes even less based on the reality of the world available to the human senses, as if this were even possible.

            After 1946 the works seems to emerge from a subconscious that has digested ideas taken in through the empirical reality of the human senses, transformed or transferred them into another realm somewhere in the vastness of existence, one that is governed by different sets of properties and laws than cannot be gauged by empiricism, put through some kinds of effects processors, then brought back to this world, put through some weird and wonderful filters inside Miró’s brain where the ideas are finally transformed into what they will be manifest as before he brings the ideas back out into the empirical world for us regular people to observe on canvas.

            By 1953 Miró was experiencing international recognition, particularly in the United States. He was commissioned in this year to paint a large canvas for the Guggenheim (Fig 5). This was his first departure from easel painting, and the first time that he painted directly to canvas without any kind of previous preparation, i.e. directly from his head (Penrose 120); here he “achieved a combination of spontaneous freedom with an impressive display of powerful forms” (Ibid).

            Between 1959-1960 Miró did over 100 paintings, including The Red Disc (Fig 6). This painting appears to give a macro-view of this inner universe from which Miró draws. The red disc being the focal point of the piece, exploited by its brilliant red color, it is like a planet floating in a universe, existing, for now, simultaneously with the  blackness that is the void: nothingness. But the red disc is not alone. It shares the space with the white, a representation of somethingness. The red disc bands together with the white to form a kind of gang in favor of existence, battling the black void’s attempt to annihilate.

            After the prolific year of 1959, Miró’s use of color and space becomes even more exaggerated. It is post-1960 when Miró verifies that he has firmly cemented his foundations as his work post-1960 categorically demonstrates his status as a Master Colorist. This the most exciting era of his work, and I believe his best.

            Blue II (Fig 7) from 1961 compared with Woman and Birds in the Night (Fig 9) from 1968 are shown to be polar opposites in some ways. Blue II plays with spacing and form, but obviously the emphasis here is on the color. It is almost as if Miró is showing off, saying, “look how amazing of a colorist I am. With just this one techinique, and nearly a single color alone I can sustain an entire triptych of paintings!” That being the Blue I-III series (Fig 8).

Woman and Birds is a drastic contrast the to the Blue series. Woman and Birds is almost devoid of color and relies on space, form, and the heavy use of black for its affect. In comparison to Miró’s representational realism of the 1920’s, or the Constellations series, the title of Woman and Birds seems almost arbitrary because there is not a glimmer of a woman or any birds; Malet says in this era of this work there is a ”disappearance of figure, a disappearance that was to become completely evident” (20).  For me, this is not a picture of woman or of birds, yet the title does help me at least understand the empirical concept that Miró was perhaps basing this painting on, an important function of many of Miró’s titles.

            Recalling the “artists” I mentioned at the opening of this paper, their stagnation, how they continue to create the same product over and over, never making anything new, how they fail to evolve and how their works fail to evolve, hopefully Miró’s whole operation now stands  in emphatic contrast. His ability to grow and develop, coupled with his seemingly limitless creativity and rigorous work ethic allow for any single piece, from any single era of his life or work to function in the capacity of identifying him definitely as an artist, and not as an “artist.” Like Picasso, a napkin signed by Miró could perhaps be considered an artwork because in the context of this life and work, according to a number of Art Theories that will be investigated in the next paper, his proven extraordinary talent has given him this ability.

           

More on Miró, Less on Philosophy (Thankfully?)

Vol. 1 Issue 9

In my last post I was trying to somehow connect the art of Joan Miró with various Art Theories, Art Theory being a branch of philosophy that tries to define art. I’m becoming obsessed with this Philosophy of Art business and I wanted to somehow prove, as if it were possible, and I believe it is, that this artist, Joan Miró, makes art. That is, I want this not just to be my opinion, but the truth that this work is art. Art theory helps me feel better about myself. I can use it to try and prove what I think is crap is not art. Although, I guess this is kind of exploiting Art Theory.

Unfortunately, I did not get that far for today, but I did get a pretty well rounded survey of Miró’s work done thought. I’m posting a bunch of examples of his work because I assume most people who read this, all one of you, don’t know his stuff. Please feel free to skim, or just look at the pics. This is not the most spellbinding stuff I've ever done. So, here we go, Joan Miró…

The Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, which was started in 1975, houses over 14,000 works, and the largest collection of Miró’s work in the world. (Note: not all 14,000 are Miró’s, but 217 paintings, 178 sculptures, 9 textiles, 4 ceramics, the almost complete graphic works and some 8,000 drawings are. The remaining works are from other artists.) (www.fundacioMiró-bcn.org) Director  of the Fundació, Rosa Mana Malet, was a great source of much of my information on Miró. In her book, Joan Miró she says “The various places that Joan Miró lived or stayed are of fundamental importance if we wish to understand the deeper meaning of his work” (6). As such, I will try to keep track of where Miró was working during each of the eras I survey.

He spent his early years in Barcelona where he discovered the Museum of Fine Arts and the work of Antonio Gaudi, but he also spent he much of youth in the Province of Tarragona, or on the island of Majorca. He had family in these places, so he was not stationed in one dormant environment, but stimulated by many. In 1920 he went to Paris for the first time, a city that he would return to over and over again; France would have a great impact on his work (9).

During the period between 1920-1925 Miró’s work had a very distinct style, a style the author of Miró, Roland Penrose, calls representational realism. Miró’s most famous work from this era, The Farm, (Fig 1) was finished in Pairs in 1922. 

It is immaculate in realistic detail, a characteristic found only in Miró’s work during these five years, and based on a real Mont-roig farm Miró had spent time on the early 1920s (8). The painting was not acclaimed at its unveiling. It hung occasionally, unsold, in a cafés and galleries, until Ernest Hemingway purchased it for 5000 francs, (Malet 10) after “which he declared years later he would exchange for no other in the world” (Penrose 44).

“In 1925 Miró abandoned this…[style of] painting…[and] from now the painting was to be the expression of the movements of the live being” (Malet 12). These works were more imaginative than realistic, but they were still based on realistic figures. The Birth of the World (Fig 2) is much more abstract than The Farm, but is still a worked created as a result of “chance and careful planning” say Ann Umland, a curator at MoMA. (MoMa.org) 

The background was painted with meticulous labor; and then the foreground shapes were set-up and painted in an exact, strategized, precise way. Miró had spent time constructing the foreground’s strategy in notebooks long before he actually painted it on the canvas. Umland says this work goes “beyond painting,” meaning beyond any conventions that existed in the realm of painting, and so for a work from 1925, it is quite remarkable (Ibid).

Penrose writes that in the thirties Miró was fed-up with his contemporaries “pedestrian connection which underlies their search for reality,” (65) and so he declared that he wanted to ‘assassinate painting.’ MoMA considers this period of ‘assassination’ to have taken place from 1927-1937. By examine some of the works of this period, revealed is “the extensive range of Miró’s experimentation during these years, as he struggled not simply to negate painting but to reinvigorate and redefine his own art” (Umland, MoMa.org)

Miró’s work during this period bares a resemblance to the early period of representational realism, i.e. The Farm/early twenties-era, in that, these “assassination’ era works were still based on real objects and people, but as Penrose writes, these works “evoke an experience which goes beyond purely aesthetic considerations.” (Penrose 72) They are experiments.

An extreme example of Miró’s frustration with the painting of this period is exemplified in Rope and People 1 (Fig 3) from 1935, where he implants a large piece of entwined rope in the middle of scene filled with ghoulish looking figures. 

This work, while definitely not Miró’s most aesthetically pleasing piece, is of great importance because, like Birth of the World in 1925, this work challenged again the ontology of painting, specifically, what types of materials could be used in a painting for it  to still be considered a painting. The Dadaists were dealing with the same types of dissatisfactions around this time, albeit in a much different manner; during these years is when Marcel Duchamp famously added a moustache to the Mona Lisa (65).

After Rope and People 1, Miró released a few more works in which he included random objects like nails, string, toothbrushes, and lengths of chain. This group of pictures is a subgroup within the ‘assassination’ era pieces called Peintures Sauvages, Wildlife Paintings.

Then came the wars: both the Spanish Civil War and World War 2. Miró was forced to Northern France. Trapped in Normandy from 1936-1940, he began working in a completely new style. The Constellation Series were a series of extremely meticulously crafted pieces that were done on paper as a way “to commune with nature and escape the tragedies of current events” (MoMA.org) Started in Normandy in 1936, and completed in Majorca in 1941, there is an artworld debate about whether there are actually twenty-three or twenty-four works in the series. Malet of the Fundació says twenty-three, (Malet 17) while MoMA claims, in the link previously cited above, that there are twenty-four.

The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers (Fig 4) was finished in 1941, after Miró’s return to Majorca, and exemplifies everything typical of a the constellation series piece; “Miró crystallizes the beings, the stars, and the signs of the inner universe. He rejects external sources of inspiration” (Malet 18). Compared to the previous ‘assassination’ period, the Constellation series’ forms are much less based on actual objects and people; although Miró does use real world subject matter and themes throughout much of the Constellation collection: women, birds, stars, the night, all of which appear in Fig 4, he approaches these works almost completely from within this “inner universe,” there is no attempt at realism.

To be continued...