I’m
not having a great day. To deal with it so far I have: not
had an alcoholic drink; not eaten any sugar; shaved my head;
worn three different outfits; read two books in galley proofs;
eaten tofu vegetable soup; been grumpy with everyone I’ve
spoken to in person or on the phone (nothing like sharin’
the misery); stayed out when I should have been working;
worked when I should have been eating; cleaned my bathtub
(well, it was full of hair); and been to see two films.
A busy day, you’ll admit, for someone whose first thought
on waking was, "Oh fuck, not again."
The
first film was The Women of Mount Ararat, a documentary
about a manga (band) of Kurdish women freedom fighters,
who not only fight with guns, but also with words, bringing
dialectical feminism to villages in northern Iraq and eastern
Turkey. As documentaries go, it was pretty absorbing if
not very well paced. As lifestyles go, it was hella inspiring.
Or it should have been, except I can’t really see myself
caring as much about anything as these women did about their
country and their identity. And their comrades.
I
think I used to care. Documentaries are not that good at
engaging me emotionally, because I’m just not that
into the real. It’s too specific, too not-me. I can’t
imagine myself in the position of real people. Not that
the only function of film is to promote idealised identification,
but if UC Berkeley film professor Kaja Silverman claims
that that way lies the cure by love (it’s Freud thing,
I wasn’t entirely listening) then I’m all for
it. For the cost of an hour’s therapy, I can see at
least four films — more if I hit matinees and rep cinemas.
That’s a good deal.
An
even better deal is free movies, which is why I found myself
delaying the trip back to my sofa and/or desk by deciding
to go see The Ballad of Jack and Rose for the second
time (after the tofu). I went to see it the day it came
out (Daniel Day Lewis crush-hangover from my deeply disturbed
adolescence), and the Cumberland had the volume turned way
down, and the cheesy Eurothriller in the screen next door
cranked to eleven. So, being the grump that I am, I complained
to the manager (who pretty much had to look upwards to see
my breasts, and was so thrilled that a woman was talking
to him that he didn’t listen to a word I said) and
voila, free pass. I really liked the film the first
time round, for all sorts of other deeply disturbed reasons.
I cried randomly in one scene because of the placement of
a chair in a flower garden. It’s hard to explain the
film’s affect without getting all psychological. It’s
not one of those films that’s so profound it changes
your life (or even mood). In fact, nothing much of importance
is said at all, although it has some funny lines and some
incisive dialogue, but lots of important stuff isn’t
said, which annoys people who like everything to be
spelled out in capital letters, B-A-D, but I wanted to bask
in that complicated silence.
One
of the reasons that I follow where Kaja leads is that her
book The Acoustic Mirror made me realise how infrequently
we talk about listening to cinema. It could be because most
Hollywood films are so loud that we’re all aurally
impaired, or that because dialogue is conventionally so
like conversation we just absorb it unconsciously. But see
a film that’s largely silent — or even quiet —
and listening to film takes on a new importance. In Jack
and Rose, there’s a lot to hear, like Kathleen
(Catherine Keener) tunelessly whistling the Brady Bunch
theme tune on the first morning that she and her sons move
in with Jack (Daniel Day Lewis) and his daughter Rose (Camille
Belle), as everyone else glares at each other soundlessly.
Music is of paramount importance, and not just the usual
tweedly mood muzak. Amidst the silence and slight conversations
are a number of songs that evoke the hippy era of Jack’s
commune. The songs’ lyrics act as harmony to the melody
of the film’s overt narrative. Every word, however
familiar (and the songs include "I’ve Put a Spell
on You" and "Boots of Spanish Leather"),
counts.
This
isn’t just a film about a teenage girl, but, in its
genius, a film that’s like a teenage girl. Lots
of male reviewers have been rolling their eyes and snorting
at the "obvious" symbolism — when Rose’s
tree house comes crashing down in a storm, it presages the
invasion of her real house by Kathleen’s family —
but duh, that’s how the world is when you’re a
teenage girl. When you think you’re in love, your brain
thrums with "I Put a Spell on You" and there is
no-one else in the world. When you hear "One More Cup
of Coffee" on the radio (or in your head, it’s
not clear) after your sick father has just drunk a cup of
coffee and had heart pains, you know it’s not long
until he heads "to the valley below." The drama
in your head comes with orchestral backing and a guitar
solo.
Especially
if you’re Rose. Or me. There’s something about
having a deeply disturbed adolescence that leads not only
to crushes on Daniel Day Lewis, but the persistent belief
that the world is trying to tell you something. That there
are signs and forces at work, and if you could only see
what was moving out of the corner of your eye as the train
pulls out of the station, or if you could make sense of
the order of songs playing on the radio, or the fact that
today, in the bleakest of moods, you found a book you’d
been hunting for six months, at 1/2 price, at Indigo of
all places (while a nerdy guy was checking you out by the
art magazines)… then you could make it come right.
You could read the future and your place in it. Pop music
is the divination of our times, the entrails, the tarot
pack, the dream diary. Listen carefully. It has your memory
by the balls.
he