Almodovar's The Law of Desire and Moulin Rouge

In contrast to the tranquillity of my mini break in Scotland I viewed the Law of Desire shortly before departure, an Almodovar film which engaged me more than anticipated. Having recently described how my prejudice against all things German had been forged by my childhood experience of rocket bombs, until individual encounters, spread over several decades, led me to understand the universality of human behaviour, it has taken just as many decades to discard the simplistic Freudian view of homosexuality, in part because of difficulties in understanding the development of my own sexual orientation, and need for celibacy. These are subjects for another occasion.

That the Law of Desire is a film about a selfish, creative, promiscuous, homosexual, Eusebio Poncela who juggles relationships, and does not understand until it is too late, the influence his behaviour has on a young man, played by a young Antonio Banderas, is an reflection of Almodovar's preoccupations. The specific sexual orientation is irrelevant because this is a film about the consequences of giving free reign to our instinctive passion to possess other human beings, and the destructive nature of jealousy when the object of that desire does not respond in the way we want of them. In the film the obsession leads to the murder of a rival and to suicide. Being Almodovar there are also stock diversions where the police are portrayed as corrupt incompetent fascists, and with the Catholic Church being predominated by paedophile priests. We also learn that the sister, Carmen Maura, was in fact a brother with the corrupting adults, a Father and a father. He has a sex change operation after their father dumps him for a new lover.

Usually I find Almodovar's wilder excesses, unnecessary to the point of irritating. and his work became for me that of an adolescent given too much fame and fortune for their own good, although most artists cannot resist the temptation to reproduce their successful work in continuous variation. On this occasion I was caught up and held by the performances of the main characters, in much the same way as I had on experiencing Carmen Jones again a few weeks before. During my stay in Scotland on a cold, windy and damp morning I viewed the DVD of Moulin Rouge. A film which I did not enjoy at first viewing in theatre because of the running commentary by two educated moronic youths attempting to impress their school girl friends, and because I had not read advance material about the nature of this interpretation of the Moulin Rouge as a can-can bordello turned into musical theatre where the first production is created by existentialist bohemians who believe in idealistic love and that the star courtesan can become a reborn virgin who meets a heroic end as in the best of operas. I then enjoyed a second viewing in theatre and have played the DVD and an additional material several times since purchase. I suspect just as I rate Tony Blair as a great Prime Minister, I am alone in having some sympathy for the Duke in Moulin Rouge, who has the means to buy the exclusive use of the star turn only to find that she has given her heart to a penniless poet and he like Banderas in the Law of Desire is driven to murder in order to eliminate his rival. I cannot condone the violence but I understand his feelings. Being a Hollywood movie for teenagers, he loses her body and her soul, and poet is destined to exploit his experience into a best seller. It is a good ending because in real life the poet would have sent out his conquest whoring to pay for their life style while he squandered his talent drinking with his companions and trying out the latest drugs. The Duke would have made the whore into a Duchess.

Creatives like priests should be celibate and if they must gratify sexual appetites they should restrict themselves to the occasional whore, or better still, and less expensive, to cream cakes. Today, none of my writing came easy and the rain lashing prevented the rabbits from coming above ground until hunger forced some to venture for a nibble. Fortunately the weather improved for an hour to enable me to purchase a cream apple turnover for elevenses, and a stack of Scottish pancakes, three of which I have just had for tea. They never taste the same as when I would buy what I could afford for two old pence a time, for breakfast, along with a mug of tea, on an early morning ferry between Dunoon and Gourock in the early sixties and which also seemed to take the long way round calling at Helensburgh and Killgregan, and having camped by the water in the grounds of the Youth Hostel at Strone point. In my case the wages of desire means that I stay fat

Sophie Scholl

I have a childhood memory of going to the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday and of not understanding or feeling the symbolism of the event. On the local TV in the evening some six decades later, a headline was "X rated service," and latter the explanation was that a parish advised parents not to bring children to the service because images would be shown from Mel Gibson's Passion, and the church wanted parishioners to understand and feel the reality of physical suffering and mental torment which one human being voluntarily subjected themselves to two thousands years ago on behalf of others. This is an act which many had done before and countless others since, and where few have been recorded.

One of my heroes is Sophie Scholl, a remarkable young German girl, who with her brother Hans, produced and circulated literature on truth and liberty for all in Munich as part of a resistance group against the Nazi regime called the White Rose. They were arrested in 1943 for distributing flyers around the University and at her trial, (and which fortunately, someone who was part of the event subsequently recorded for us), she defiantly continued her protest against the system. She was condemned to death, allowed to see her parents and her brother, and faced her execution with a calmness which so amazed her jailers that what happened was subsequently reported by one of them, so that her story could subsequently be shared.

I have previously mentioned that as a boy I read the official reports of the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials of those involved with Belsen and Auschwitz and how much I was moved and the extent to which it led to laying down one cold Monday morning in the middle of a road before a line of bemused policemen, and that because some of us repeated the event two weeks later we decided to spend six months in prison rather than agree to effectively admit that we were wrong and the authorities were right. When I think of the bravery which Sophie and her companions showed in going against the Nazi regime midway during the Second World War knowing what would happen if they were caught, I am ashamed.

She was a direct descendent of the event which many still witness two thousand years later. To me it is irrelevant if Jesus of Nazareth was just a remarkable man who subsequent has had a good press, or was the son of God, conceived of a virgin and who was humanly resurrected after death. What he did that day, as others such as Sophie Scholl has done since, and the list of others is endless, is not just to bear physical torture, mental suffering and death which should be an eternal lesson to all, but they did it as act of solidarity with everyone else who is persecuted and punished for what they believe and feel, and they also forgave those responsible for what was being done to them as a consequence.

Both are reported to have believed that what they were doing was not a final end, but an end to a new beginning. There are those, and again the list is endless, who bear and share in the suffering and death of others, and who do so believing that there will be no resurrection, no tomorrow, or meeting up with those who have been loved and lost. I think of the countless parents who rush back into burning houses in a failed rescue of a child, and of the soldiers from both sides ordered to advance from the cover of their trenches into a hail of bullets and a shower of mortar bombs, time and time and time and time again, and did so, and still do.

There is however one aspect of our witness to the Passion which continues to distress me and I am sure that in this I am not alone. When someone is locked in such pain whether physical or mental and can see only an ending as resolution what can one say to encourage them to continue to bear it?

Can one say that politicians will give priority to tackling the starvation and the sickness which kills so many children each and every second?

Can one say that politicians, international corporations and power group interests, will take the appropriate action to protect the planet and all its species, and habitations, from the effects of human made pollution, misuse and neglect?

Can one say that governments and churches and economic interests will unite and end disputes and confrontations which result in blood shedding?

Can I say that we will all join in giving priority to protecting children from abuse and enable them to develop their innate and acquired spiritual, mental, physical and emotional abilities to their maximum potential?

Can I say that we will all take appropriate action to protect and further the interests of the vulnerable and the dependent, especially those who reach the limits of old age?

No I think I cannot say any of that, so what can I say?

The truth is I do not know, I am unsure, and what I think I know and what I believe I can say sounds in my head so inadequate that I hesitate to share.

"I understand," how pathetic is that for how can anyone understand?

"I care," to be met with, "Great, I hope that makes you feel better than it does me."

"I want to help," when you know you cannot reach.

"I have suffered too and come through." "Well a'int you the lucky one."

I could try a little humour, I have always said we can only learn from our own mistakes and what if you are wrong and I am right you will not have the chance to learn.

Nope I don't believe any of these will do.

Is there anything else, however desperate in this moment of helplessness?

Help me, I need you and others will.


Hi ColinThank you for sharing this.I hope you also have room for hope dreams and optimism in your mind.I find that when life gets too dark, serious and even depressing, being creative is a way to lift myself up from it all and feel happy again.Hugs from Artoony Posted by Artoony on 20:04 - 20:15

Abbey and Gothic thoughts

I misused part of this evening when I was in the mood for continuing working by watching a creditable production of Jane Austin's first novel Northanger Abbey. According to research (Wikipedia) the novel was original sold to a publisher in Bath for £10, where the story is set, then repurchased for the same amount, rewritten and published posthumously. Part of my misuse of time arose because I confused Ms Austin with the Bronte sisters whose lives I have studied and visited their Yorkshire parsonage home and therefore is part of my recreating work experience. This dyslexic form of stupidity is something that I do from time to time.

Having made this discovery I decided to continue working on the issue of addiction and disorders, (personality and social), and made great progress, but forgot to save and then lost the work through a crash caused by trying to use two Microsoft word processing programmes at the same time, and where there is no prospect of recovering the fine words created. I hate unintentional repetition so I decided to write about the Northanger Abbey film anyway, because it is a good example of the lesson that we never learn from the mistakes of others, or those made by previous generations.

Wikipedia is excellent in listing the main issues in the novel which were carried forward into the film.

However if so then I believe the main point, which for me, is that if you entrust those you have responsibility for to the care of others you are taking a risk, even if you believe you know the individuals, and have checked them out, a risk which can have devastating consequences. The parents of the heroine are portrayed as well meaning and kindly parents who have misgivings about their daughter's judgement and capacity to survive in the real world. She is a naïve romantic who believes what she is told unless provided evidence to the contrary, and spends much of her time devouring Gothic melodramas hoping her life will be prove as interesting and exciting. Because she is fundamentally an intelligent person with a conscience, she learns from her own mistakes and experiences, The story ends on a high note as she agrees to marry a kind and honest man who one suspects she will soon tire of unless and she will revert to living through the lives of others, once her life became dominated by child rearing and devoting herself to supporting her husband and his work, and with no other creative or meaningful activity of her own.

It is interesting that the Wikipedia listed themes are presented in such a way that I am not clear if the writer intending to applaud the approach of Ms Austin or it is intended to be a neutral or critical presentation.

The next theme is the danger when people believe that life is the same as fiction, especially fiction filled with danger and intrigue. Clearly this is nonsense. Great fiction is able to demonstrate just how much danger and intrigue exists in everyday life at all levels of society. In my mother's lifetime she has experienced two world wars and a neighbouring civil war, the death of her parents, and loss of the family home, and then of ten brothers and sisters, and from within their families, of banishment after a traumatising experience and comparative poverty over several decades, only to then suffer the years of the illness of severe memory loss with psychosis and physical dependency, and most of her brothers and sisters had similar experiences, so that her own cannot be described as extraordinary, and where even living to 100 years has become common place. Trash fiction, just like trash religion and trash politics tries to present life as a fairy story which fortunately an increasingly education public treats with contempt.

The second stated theme is that through the process of growing up the young lose their innocence, imagination and good faith turning into sceptical adults. The UK government has recently launched a media campaign to attract people into becoming carers helping people in their own homes and residential situations, The adverts emphasis what a rewarding job such tasks can be, and which is so, as the staff concerned constantly tell me, although the financial rewards are scandalously lower than those who become doctors and nurses, and they have to cope with significant oral and physical abuse from those with illnesses of the mind, and where longevity and physical aging means dependency on the carer for bodily functions.

The myth that innocence was ever a good thing should not be perpetuated although at least in the existing developed capitalist societies it has belatedly come to be recognised that unless those with imagination and good will are nurtured, our general standard of living will quickly be swamped by the rapidly growing newer capitalist economies, especially those that command natural energy resources.

A third message is that things are never quite as they seem, and a fourth that if one is to survive, then the sooner you become more self reliant and independently minded the better.
It is with the fifth and sixth themes that we enter the realms of mythology once more. The first being that life at the top was tedious to those who experienced it, although it would have been for a certain kind of person, but who is always in the minority. However the greatest myth of all is that one should not marry unless it is for romantic love, and which unfortunately is the same nonsense which young minds are filled with two hundred years later.

People should never marry for romantic love alone, and in fact the best marriages are likely to be cleverly arranged marriages, where account is fully taken of family and individual backgrounds to bring prospective couples into situations where nature can take its course. In comparatively stable societies where generations lived in close proximity and respect, grandparents and community leaders were in the best position to "arrange" marriages, whereas to-day, specialist agencies with trained and experience staff are more likely to find good long term matches than the hit and miss of going about it alone.

It is no good preaching morality or the risks and problems of indiscriminate relationships based on fancying somebody because of their looks and appearance or trying out a succession of prospective partners. It is no good saying what if you go to bed with someone and have a great time, but decide that you do not want a life term relationship with them, or they with you, and then you cannot find someone as good again? And for bed, you can substitute any of the single aspects upon which a relationship can build up over time to survive all the shortcomings of each other which become more irritating over time, and which can become mixed up with the disappointments and misfortunes of life in general that will occur.

Sadly it is in the order of things that we do not learn from the mistakes of others, including what happened in the past. In the later 1930's people in their millions paid the price for how the victorious nations treated the German people, a mistake which the allies, less Russia, did not make in 1945. Yet having experienced the success of post war Germany and Japan, the US administration failed with disastrous consequences to apply the lessons in Iraq. Unfortunately this is not a Gothic fantasy but a documentary reality. It is not the going into war that was wrong, but in trying to deliver the peace without the required resources. However at least for the time since the blood is being shed in another land, but then those with empathy will find no consolation in this, because of knowing what it is like for the non combatants who have to experience the Gothic horror day by day. It was about empathy that I had begun the piece about addictive behaviour and the excessive enthusiast, and the difference between addictions and personality and social disorders, and which will have now to be rewritten in the morrow.

Almodovar's what have I done to deserve this?

So I am still working on both pieces and decided to continue to piggy back the work of others which has so far involved alternating between the films of Bergman and Almodovar, other cinema, recent theatre and other cultural events. Today the decision is for something self indulgent, wicked, irreverential and down right silly. You have guessed it an Almodovar film, "What have I done to deserve this? A plea which most of us make at least once in our lives, if not as frequently as once a day?

I found the film funny with delicious moments such as early on when a cleaner uses a mop to imitate an Akendo class, or when she admits to a policeman, she has screwed, that she killed her husband with a chop, he advises her not to tell anyone else. Chop Chop, get it?

The film is a joyous rant against or in favour of the imprisonment of the working class in flat block land, where goodness gracious me, there is a tart next door enjoying herself and making lots of dosh, the youngest school age son is sleeping with an older man, the eldest son is selling drugs, a relative eats fairy cakes as a main course and regards scraps of a chicken as desert while the murdered husband was a fascist nut. Mother, well. she is a works hard as a manual labourer, indulges in indiscriminate sex, enjoys prescription drugs and gets what she wishes for with help from the child of a neighbour who has the power of mind over matter, and moreover the woman appears to have none of the angst of the thinking and sophisticated classes.

I ended the viewing asking what I had done to deserve spending time viewing films about people enjoying themselves in ways which did not involve viewing films. I still cannot make up my mind about Almodovar. Is he being critical of others? Is he trying to change Spanish society in a particular direction? Or is he just having lots of fun and making lots and lots of dosh asking himself over and over again what has he done to deserve this?

Breathless

It is fair comment to say that a large part of me is locked into the late fifties and early sixties when I entered the world of traditional jazz of Soho, the non violent protest movement and prison, further education at Oxford and the university world of tutorials, becoming a dinner guest at the Union with Ted Heath at the next table, trying to convert the Labour Party to unilateralism and staying out of Europe, and getting drunk at the top of Nuffield College Tower while others played billiards.

I have previously written of La Dolce Vita and mentioned Hair. Another icon of the period was the Jean Luc Goddard directed Francois Truffautt story of Breathless 1960 with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. I had intended to watch the original film in 2006, but settled for the 1980 remake with Richard Gere in the main role of a film set in California.

I had avoided the remake, as I do in general, and was therefore very surprised by an enjoyable nonsense made serious because of its lack of pretension and a bravura performance from Richard Gere, who brilliantly captured the mixture of adolescent comic reading charm with dangerous sexuality, and which unprepared and unprotected women find so appealing.

This incompetent petty criminal hit the big time when he unintentionally shoots a cop and then looks to the girl he picks up to provide his salvation by escaping over the border to Mexico.

The girl is ambitious with a planned life but a weakness for fast men and fast cars which may have led to pregnancy by another. So what the hell is just a little murder of a policeman by the way? This is most unfair because he is persistent and she is genuinely caught between her better judgement and emotional inclinations, and for once she makes the right decision however hard, while so in fairness does the man who in other circumstances would be regarded as a harmless scoundrel apart from the odd female life wrecked and the impact on any offspring. He is one of those young men who never change even if they survive to old age. However the young can only learn from their own mistakes, so this was and remains a good way to waste a couple of hours.

Almodovar's Dark Habits

And now, (sung by Frank Sinatra and Ray Quinn, whose CD is on sale tomorrow) for something on a lighter note. My discovery of 2006 was the films of Almodovar. A serious film maker whose films must not be taken too seriously and have to be judged against a blackcloth of a Spain ruled by the generals and the church for decades after which some juvenile lampooning of everything once sacred was only to be expected. We in the UK have less excuse for abandoning all respect for authority and common sense values. In this instance I tried to watch the films without sub titles but my ear is still tuned to Gibraltarian Spanish which makes the accent and flow of the educated Spanish that much more difficult. This is not to be interpreted as saying the Gibraltarians are uneducated because they punch well above their weight but it is the difference between BBC English and Geordie. One exists among teachers, in universities, and the countryside elite, while the rest speak the language of their community and region. I was no less successful with sitting through a play performed in Spanish by a Geordie, a Mexican, a Yank, a Nicaraguan and two Spanish actors, although the reactions of the audience and sitting at the front as part of stage did help to convey the subsistence of what was happening.

If I could visit France, Italy, Spain and Greece again and converse in the native tongues I would truly die a happier man, whereas winning the lottery, or whatever other achievements accomplished are likely to bring as many new problems and it would solve others. So I make do with sub titles and film notes. This experience has a longer prologue than usual because Almodovar is reported not to be happy with what was his first commercial venture on commission. The film Dark Habits is about a group of anarchical nuns which appeals to me having Gibraltarian parents from a parish which once supported a charismatic Sister who founded her own order nut used the women of the parish to help in her schools and community work. The new Bishops is reputed to have declared those immortal words "either she goes" understandably concerned about a one woman crusading Order. The parish suggested a compromise that she should be allowed to continue during her lifetime after which her work could be taken over by a more established Order. The Bishops was not impressed and the relevant parishioners even less. He left and she stayed.

I have no doubt that the film has been secretly viewed by nuns in most convents and enjoyed over a pint or glass of wine by priests in many a parish. Rome will hate it, if it is not already banned. You get the general idea when after a young bolero singer sees her boy friend die from a drug dose, laced with strychnine, that she has supplied i.e. the drugs, she seeks refuge in a convent where the nuns have given themselves names such as Sister Snake, Sister Sewer and go collectively under the name of the Humble Redeemers. The chief organiser of the mischief is the Mother Superior who cared for the daughter of a Noble who provided the Convent with a monthly stipend which enabled their financial independence from the challenged bosses of the Order, but when he dies his wife stops the allowance.

The solution is worked out by one of the nuns who had become an international success by writing trashy novels of the kind which sell well at airports, although rather than make use of the funds these have gone to her sister and family. She bases the writing on the experiences of the drug addicted young prostitutes who are taken into the convent and saved! Fortunately the novellas are regarded critically as sociological phenomenon and make a lot of money for her sister which could more than bailed out the financially desperate convent. Another of sisters does self abusing and humiliating tricks like putting a knitting needle through her face in a stand up contest with a fire fighter at the local market where the nuns sell some of their more legitimate wares.

The mother superior is quite a character having fallen in love with the daughter of the noble who went off to Africa and disappeared. She tries to replace this love with the bolero singer whose addiction she decides to feed in order to win her over. She also tries to blackmail the Marquesa into continuing with the stipend. It is at this point that the film becomes serious and believable as we learn that Church wants to close down the Convent in order to sell the land to a developer so that the decision of the Mother superior to become a drugs courier from Thailand is to no avail, or is it? The convent has reared and kept into maturity a Tiger which is kept on by one of the nuns who stays on, as does another where the parish priest has declared his passionate love. The head of the order takes the rest of the convent with her for a new beginning and authority appears to triumph, or does it?

The Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd has excellent credentials, Directed by Robert De Niro who has a support role with Frances Ford Coppola as a producer, but who left the film after disliking the characters, it is said, and staring Matt Damon and with Michael Gambon in a good support role along with several others.

In general the critics did not like the film because for many it lacked pace and suspense, and it is long, and you are quickly allowed to understand the make up of the central character around whom the story is built and therefore much of what happens is inevitable and predictable.

The story centres on the creation and development for the C I A counter intelligence agency-people seem to forget what CIA stands for- when they come to make judgements. The film goes through the life of the main character from the circumstances of the death of his father, his love life and marriage, the birth of his son while serving the CIA in Europe and why he entered the service as a high up and went even higher on his homeland return, and on the consequences of having a secret role and a secret life on his family, progressing through the Bay of Pigs affair which is pivotal to the film and how he overcome what happened in relation to his own role and that of his dept, in order to protect his son, himself and re-establish a relationship with his then estranged wife.The film goes back and forth which some will not like but I do as this mirrors the experience of my mother and my approach to the work project, so I am in tune and the critics are not. Matt Damon is brilliant communicating all the required emotions while appearing emotionless

Fellini's Satyricon

Having posted my re-experience of La Dolce Vita I will add my only other Fellini revisit to-date. His Satyricon set in pre Christian Italy. I had little recollection of the original cinema experience except the collapsing of tenements and leaving the theatre bemused.
I have no idea if the visual package is historically accurate or the language authentic, or simply an individualistic presentation of concepts, explored to the satisfaction of their creator.

The main character is distraught, revengeful, and desperate because the slave boy he abuses was taken from him by his best friend, partner, lover, fellow student and then sold off to a notorious actor, whose performance includes chopping off some ones hand or so it seems. Caesar arrives and intercedes for the main character and the boy is returned to him because the alternative is to risk losing the theatre and livelihood. Does anyone care?

Returning to their quarters the main character turns on his best friend and tells him to leave. The Jerry built tenements rising up like some tower of Babel start collapsing with terrible consequences but this was the norm for the times, as has been the situation in the Lebanon and Iraq and countless other places throughout subsequent time.

Then man and slave boy appear to set off and experience the sights and sounds of Rome in all their splendid colours of excess but to what point and where will it lead?

It leads o the valley of death a bleak sterile landscape where one character feigns death while the body of another is used to replace a hanging man who has been removed, and whose disappearance would cause death for the lover of the woman who is burying her husband.

At this point the main character, his friend's brother and their beautiful boy slave are captured by a marauding sea captain collecting young men for the pleasure of the diseased Caesar on his island, and during which voyage the main character is married as the wife the marauding captain in great ceremony. However fortunes change dramatically when a new Caesar with forces arrives to kill and depose the old Caesar and this frees the young men who are able to continue their travels which become a mystical odyssey.

They encounter a woman afflicted with nymphomania whose husband pays them to ease the problem while on the way to visit an oracle healer who is a pale girl boy child who for some reason the trio capture/transport to somewhere, with the consequence the being dies from lack of water and exposure to the sun. They then encounter a being with the head of a creature and the body of human.

The fake Minotaur leads the principle character into an arena where the nobles sit resplendent in their robes and metal headdresses while the young man looks on from high up on rocks as if all the people of his past are there to witness. However the gladiator listens to his appeals because he is a sensitive poet and not a fighter and in turn appeals to nobles to accept the young man.

The nobles explains that this is all a joke and everyone laughs and as a reward he is given a woman, and required to perform before the multitude he fails, and she scorns him and he is left in disgrace distraught again, and goes off again with his friend when he encounters a former friend who leads him to the garden of delights where at one point he is gently whipped by gentle women rhythmically but this fails, but he is revised after meeting an interesting female who has spurned a magician who retaliates by dowsing the village fires and then these can only be reignited from the loins of the woman. They then go off on further sea voyages, his friend dies but we do not know how. The film ends abruptly leaving his portrait in stone.

The film shocked and still shocks because of some of its excesses, but I remained bemused, wondering if I had nodded off and missed bits.

I looked for enlightenment in the reviews of others. The film is based on the segments of a work written at the time of Nero and Fellini intentionally made the film that way with disjointed inexplicable changes of scene which suggest the actual reality of history chaos theory coupled with Jung theories of the collective unconscious.

My memory was of a piece of self indulgent nonsense, adding nothing to any contemporary experience. I remain to be convinced that I am wrong. I also remembered Roma which I am yet to view.

So as with my one time reactions to contemporary art judgement had to be based on more experience with Amarcord, La Strada and others. And then I discovered Giulietta Masina, who he married, and something of why Fellini achieved four best foreign film Oscars.