[Poe] Digging the love and cityscapes of Spike Jonze’s “Her”

Congratulations to Spike Jonze on his Sunday win of the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his latest film, Her. I just saw this movie on Saturday evening, thanks to the propensity for copious films to be available in pirated DVD forms here in China; definitely some of the best 12 kuai (the rough equivalent of $1.95) I have ever spent. This Poe does not feature an excerpt from the film since I do not dive too deeply into any sort of analysis of the film; however, my intention is to merely mention some of the elements which I enjoyed in viewing without getting overly verbose. Many of the elements of the production design (art design, costuming, cinematography…) were delightful, but I leave those to the hands of others.

 

First off, I truly appreciate any narrative that features non-normative love between beings which do not necessarily go together in some conservative, anachronistic notion of what that could mean. I recognize it as a whimsical example, but I have always loved Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat because the two beings getting hitched are a bird and feline, which on one hand is silly and fun, and on the other hand can be taken more seriously in showing us an example of a love in which reproduction is clearly not the end-game. I love that Jonze’s narrative normalizes the love between Joaquin Phoenix’s* Theodore and the “operating system,” aka Samantha, deliciously and huskily voiced by Scarlett Johansson**. The Economist magazine actually gave the film a rather negative review, criticizing both Jonze and the fictitious character of Theodore for immaturity in not moving beyond the inherent “master-slave” relationship between a human and the artificial intelligence program designed to cater to his every nuance; however, I find this slightly unfair since I feel that one of the major features of this love story is the ongoing development Samantha experiences in her being, eventually changing to such a degree that she in fact frees herself. (I do not want to give away too much!) Anyway, I viewed Samantha as a little more complex than merely being a love slave to this man. I do, however, fully admit I am a sucker for the adage, Robots have feelings, too! One of my most emotional cinema-viewing moments came at the end of the Steven Spielberg slash Stanley Kubrick mess A.I.—I was balling like a babe by the time little David became “real.”

There’s Oriental Pearl Tower!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second part of Her (discussed here, at least) which caught my fancy during viewing, most likely due to my China travels of late, is the fact that the Los Angeles of the near future is in fact the Shanghai of the present. While watching, I did not quite suspect this until Theodore takes the high speed train with Samantha on their romantic getaway (I find it charmingly optimistic that Jonze’s narrative assumes California will have got a high speed line done); after Theodore disembarks, the white, streamlined front of the train registered instantly as the same type of train on which I spend an inordinate amount of time zipping around China. With the close of the film, I studiously observed the credits to see where the film had been shot, and sure enough, it was my beloved Shanghai. (Moreover, if you did not know that I love a good train, there is ample evidence here, here and here.) Throughout the moments in which Theodore is wandering thoughtfully around his cityscape, I had kept thinking, I like how they’re doing future-L.A. I dig that Jonze turned to China, often the cliché place of the next step in development and on the cusp of its own future, as the vision of the eventual Los Angeles. As China rapidly urbanizes on a scale unseen in human history, it may be apt that Jonze shows his future metropolis through the lens of this current one, potentially displaying things to come for cities everywhere.

Lastly, on a note relating to the shooting locations and how these have endeared the film to me, I feel that Theodore and Samantha’s trip to an unidentified snowy mountain locale was perhaps filmed at Donner Lake in Truckee, California. This place maintains a special place in my heart because my gentleman friend’s employer rents a cabin on Donner Lake every winter for him and his colleagues (plus their friends) to appreciate, in rotation. I have spent many a late autumn and winter weekend hiking and cavorting around this lake, and the view Theodore gets from the pass looks just like Donner Lake to me. Maybe falsely, I also recognized the type of trees (which, of course, could be anywhere, yet the way in which the bright green moss grows looks familiar) and the cut of the railway cutting across the mountain that I glimpsed briefly in one scene. I think that visiting three (two perhaps in reality) places which mean so much to me, past and present—Los Angeles (around which I grew up and write about here), Shanghai (a metropolis stoking my big-city passions, having popped in and out during the past years of China travel) , and Donner Lake—further affords Her the means to nestle into my affections.

*I have had a little man crush on Joaquin Phoenix ever since his turn as the sinister Commodus in Gladiator. (Additionally, he was super hot as the sexually suppressed clergyman of Quills.)

**I also nurture a little lady crush on Scarlett Johansson, whom I loved in Ghost World and Lost in Translation and find to be one of my favorite mainstream actresses.

Dispatch from the People’s Republic: Fireworks Magic Time

On a relatively modest list of my favorite things in life, seeing fireworks in the sky is nearly at the top. I think of the Fourth of July in my hometown, on a hill by my parents’ house. Sometimes New Year’s Eve, depending on where I am or what I am doing. Exploding lights and colors in the sky awakens a very sentimental and romantic part of my being deep down inside, and, spending this year in the People’s Republic of China, I have had many opportunities to feel this love stir. During the Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year (celebrating the lunar new year in January of February—depending on the movements of, well, la lune—instead of the new year of the Gregorian calendar celebrated in the West), which I came back for the tail-end of after having been in California, Chinese folks certainly like setting off fireworks. And none of that namby-pamby nonsense of concentrated locales and designations for how these bursting sirens are given to the night sky; everywhere I turned, there were fireworks. Anyone in those moments could have been the Gandalf of Chinese New Year, raining down fiery goodness around us. In Beijing, for my return at the end of the holiday, each night up through February 14 featured a demonstration of evening pyrotechnics, with the most bang coming on this final night. (The previous evenings to the final night sounded like some sort of aerial bombardment—I am glad that I am privileged enough to not actually know what this sounds like.)

From the rooftop of my apartment building in Beijing, each direction in which I could turn contained a show. Electric color shimmering through the milky night—while noxious to breath, the infamous Beijing air pollution rendered this night beautiful. Running down from the roof and out to the surrounding plazas, the roar of the fireworks was absolutely deafening; eventually I retreated back inside due to a soreness in my sweet ear-holes. Some sounds were simply loud explosions, felt in the ear and in my chest. Some fireworks shimmered like thousands of tiny comets pinpricking the night, creating the sound of heavy rain hitting a window. Families were in the streets, setting off smaller fireworks to the jubilation of small kids. Slightly older kids were making little bonfires from the cardboard refuse of these wonders. Having retreated to my apartment, drinking tea in my veranda-kitchen, I attained a moment of pure fixation when a series of fireworks were set off in the street directly below me so that the radiance of light thundered directly at the level of my eleventh floor windows. I was blessed for a moment in what seemed like my very own fireworks show, enjoyed from the comfort of my kitchen table.

While this episode is recent and fresh in my mind, it did not mark the beginning of fireworks magic time in my Chinese sojourn. When I first arrived here, six months ago at this point, I needed to stay in a southern city called Ningbo for a time in order to help out by teaching in one of my company’s English programs. Ningbo is a lovely city, south and around the corner from Shanghai. The high school in which I was teaching is located in a suburban district, slightly off the beaten path. One evening after classes wrapped up, I was told that it was too late to catch the bus back to my apartment, and I would need to take a taxi. I walked out of the school to a forlorn-looking intersection of this suburban night, and not a soul was stirring. In that moment, melancholy set about me; I missed my gentleman-friend and my loved ones at home, and I felt alone with no way to get home. Standing there, waiting for a taxi that did not seem to be coming, I was bummed. Another moment passed, and I had given into the eventuality of starting the somewhat long walk to the apartment, when *WOOSH* *BANG*!!! Above the intersection, from behind a building, a series of fireworks rocketed into the night sky and cast their light upon the whole street like the flares of a shipwrecked soul in the endless sea. The red, green and yellow florescence of light burned away my despair. Moments passed, and fireworks continued shooting into the sky. I stood transfixed, enjoying the surprise and delight of the moment. However, the fireworks ceased after awhile. As the cacophony faded from the night almost as instantly as it had arrived, a taxi drove up. I flagged it down, entered, and got home.

[Travelogue] 7-year anniversary, living in SF

Seven years ago today I left Santa Cruz and finally moved up to my desired target of city-living, San Francisco. The city… as Eddie Izzard so aptly poked fun. It’s definitely my city at this point, the home to which a return is always filled with warmth; not to mention awe as I come over the bridge and see the city laid out along the waterfront before me. I feel the energetic draw of San Francisco, a major component of which is the sheer physical beauty of this particular urban landscape. It’s no joke (!); the general love so many people have for this space is understandable and right as I take it all in. I feel so fortunate to be here; here’s to seven more years!

Obama finally comes out! (in support of gay marriage…)

In winning the election on November 4, 2008, Barack Obama uttered the words gay and lesbian during his victory speech, and I must admit I was pretty juiced that such a figure on such a stage had finally recognized us queers as addressable. Since that lovely evening, I have grown less excited for the man’s work, yet I do recognize that it is most likely a tough job and there has been progress. (Yay healthcare!) [While not being thrilled for the repeal of DADT on pacifist grounds, I do appreciate Obama’s work on this issue, as it is so important to the wider community.] However, the man has caught my fancy again by making this announcement, taking the definitive stance and positioning himself in contrast to Mr. Mitt Romney. While cynical notes of the potentiality of this stance being aimed at electioneering the queers onto his side (had we gone anywhere else though?), I still get the warm fuzzies around thinking, “wow, he said it, he said the word gay, he really likes us!” Even if it’s a pragmatic feature of our political theater, I am happy that Obama’s staked this place in our public discourse. How will this impact this upcoming November’s election? What does it mean for the States? The Defense of Marriage Act? Stay tuned and we will all find out: should be exciting.

(Still) not learning poo from history?

Quickly, Octopoe returns to this concept that we (Americans as generally manifested on the global geopolitical stage) often miss those vicissitudes of history which could otherwise inform our current set of predicaments. It is my sense that our public discourse has increasingly sensationalized an adversarial duality between China and the West, some of which twinges on talk of a seemingly impending military clash. In drawing some connections between this contemporary dilemma and a time from the past, we do not have to jump back to antiquity as before to dig up a historical precedent long since missed about our devastating involvement in Afghanistan. We need only skip back about a century or so to the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, cheery years filled with fierce nationalistic rivalry for political and economic domination of the globe, intensified by the imperialistic expansion of the industrialized powers – the United States, Europe in many of its national manifestations, the Empire of Japan. Images of industrial war modeled on this period have been featured on Octopoe in the past.  In the one hundred years leading up to the end of the Second World War, nearly every corner of the world had been touched by the global economic order (via imperialism or imbalanced foreign relations) and affected by the industrial-scale wars which left swathes of Europe and Asia destroyed. While the history is admittedly complex and nuanced, one can draw simple tropes from the record, such as the reluctance of those powers in relative control of the global geo-political scene to make room for the rising players while nationalistic rhetoric fuels competition and ultimately conflict. Some writers whom I have read on the subject speak to a relative unlikelihood of conflict with the trade connections between the two and the general troublesomeness it would create for a region which will only thrive with continued stability. A country which can barely keep the top on its on kettle at times, and flinches at the mere hint of a whistle (thinking about the Western media’s recent reporting of increased crackdowns within China against artists and dissidents, such as Ai Weiwei) may desperately avoid a destabilizing war. Being an internationalist pacifist and a language educator who has nothing to gain from conflict between my people and my number one client, I hope this recent bout of nationalistic propaganda does not drum us into the horror of the trenches and camps, the aerial bombardment and atom bombs.

City College still needs help

In an ongoing, depressing campaign to keep minds learning, City College of San Francisco (CCSF) is still appealing for aid from the public. They have now developed a pretty smooth interface on their own website from which to handle donations. Our bankrupt state has slashed out $630 million from the California City College System, which means a mere 1,500 classes have been cut for this year. If you have a spare moment and dime, consider helping out your local community college in order to keep classes open and minds learning.

CCSF Donation Drive for Fall 2010 Classes

Below is the verbatim message that I received from City College of San Francisco (CCSF), which is trying to make up for the shameful lack of prioritized resources by turning to their staff and students to raise the needed funds. On the line are classes and resources which arguably need to be saved. What are the political implications for a society that cannot prioritize higher education enough to keep minds learning? Depressing! But if you have five bucks and can afford to spare them, consider helping out your local community college:

TO: CCSF Community
FROM: Chancellor Don Griffin
RE: Donation Drive
DATE: March 1st, 2010

Today, in cooperation with the Planning and Budgeting Council,  we are embarking on a community-wide City College of San Francisco (CCSF) Donation Drive. If each CCSF employee and student donates $5 or more, we can raise over $500,000 – half a million dollars! All money collected will go directly to the restoration of classes and services at CCSF for the Fall semester.

Please consider making a donation of whatever you can. Each donation matters. A little from each can make a big difference for all. Hundreds of us have already begun to donate. Please join us in this effort!

We will tally the donations weekly and keep you posted on our progress.

HOW TO DONATE?
Drop cash donations in one of our donation boxes at the Ocean Campus Bookstore or Cafeteria (we plan to expand to other campuses in the future). Or  you can mail a check payable to City College (subject reference: Restore Classes Fund) and send to:

City College of San Francisco — Bursar
50 Phelan Ave. Box E103
San Francisco, CA 94112

For more information, please email ccsfsave@ccsf.edu

A pleasant surprise in film adaptation

As mentioned in a previous post, I often feel a slight twinge of disgust when I learn that literature I treasure is going to be morphed into a film adaptation. It’s not that I dislike the act of doing so as a concept; it’s just that the current body of film adaptations does not instill any hope that new ones will be any good. So imagine the horror and despair I felt when I learned that a former fashion designer (a field for which I do not have much respect) had adapted the most accomplished novel from my most revered writer into a new film?

To my pleasant surprise however, Tom Ford’s rendition of Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man was highly enjoyable to watch. And while I reserve some criticism around his choices in bringing this devastating story to the screen, I would recommend it overall, particularly for those of you who enjoy Isherwood’s work. It was refreshing to finally see Colin Firth as George break out of those interminable tethers to his famous presentation of Mr. Darcy from Pride & Prejudice, which he seemingly represents in nearly all of his roles. Julianne Moore, as George’s boozy British best friend, is also a delight, but that is nothing new.

Ford manages to convey the power of Isherwood’s story: the ordinariness of George’s pain in losing his long time lover, suffocated underneath the cultural conservatism and fear rampant in mid-century America. In doing this, Ford seems to have done just fine with his film. What more can we ask? As originally determined from the film’s trailer, the visuals are stunning. Sometimes it almost reaches the point where I was not sure if I was watching a commercial for high end luxury products or a film. We can forgive Ford his indulgences, for he does give us imagery that is astounding overall and coaxes his actors into fine performances. I thought the New York Times review of the film did very well in comparing Ford’s work to that of Pedro Almodóvar and Wong Kar-Wai.

This adaptation was tastefully done: any changes made to the story seemed natural in the transition from written word to moving screen image. Adding the gun and George’s desire to commit suicide gave the movie some dramatic impetus, which is needed in a film but can be left out of a piece of literature. My one main criticism has to do with the hyper-stylization of the film, even though I did find it gorgeous. Art directed to the maximum effect, Ford seems to pander to the materialistic and consumptive side of our culture in needing to make everything beautiful. The characters seem to be wealthier than represented in the novel, and everyone is so fashionable! But perhaps this is what audiences want to see, why would we want to be reminded of our drab lives? It just rings a little false in comparison to Isherwood’s original story, which was not glamorous. It seems like Ford did a great job of adapting the novel, but in bringing it to the screen put the entire thing before his personal fashion panel: anything that could be made pretty was done up, the whole tableau of visuals fit together too perfectly.

Overall though, the film was a very pleasant surprise from an untested filmmaker, who managed not to crap all over a seminal work in modern queer literature. For this alone, Ford deserves praise. It will certainly be interesting to see what he does next with his new found path. Hopefully this wonderful novel will get a bit more attention now that the publishers have slapped Colin Firth’s mug on the cover for a re-print.

Not learning poo from history

Were not those that failed to learn from history doomed to repeat it? With Barack Obama gearing  up another American surge, this time in Afghanistan, we could afford to look at a bit of history. Let’s take a quick look at one of America’s most influential political, social and artistic predecessors: Rome.

And this is not the Rome of the modern European travel circuit, but Latin Rome that began as an Etruscan influenced city-state ruled by kings from 600-BC onwards. About a hundred years later, the city’s aristocracy established themselves via coup as those enfranchised with power and formed what we could call a republic with the lower classes (who were given nominal representation within this power sharing system). Anyone who was not a propertied male did not have much voice or agency at all. Rome went on to clash with its neighbors, conquering them militarily and savagely working away at consolidating the entire Mediterranean basin into an economic and political unit that became the dominant power in the Western world in the years around the turn of the previous millennium.

However, the original class based republic did not last. Hundreds of years into the republic the (in)famous Julius Caesar declared himself dictator in 44-BC based on his popular and military support, and was promptly stabbed to death by those same enfranchised aristocrats above (on the very floor of the Roman Senate – talk about political theater!), not keen on surrendering power to one member of their class alone. Military struggles between factions ensued, and eventually Augustus Caesar (Julius’ chosen heir) won out in 27-BC, settling on a new constitution that claimed to “restore the republic” but in fact gave the Roman people a monarchical government. Augustus was princeps (first citizen), and his successors called themselves imperator (emperor), and thus the Roman Empire germinates around this time.

America can take some strong points here for its own consciousness; examples that we could keep in mind as we evolve with the paradigm shift (which certainly will not be easy in proud and exceptionalism-minded America) that is coming with a multi-polar world of geopolitics: exampled by our intrinsic lock with China over finances, our historical/socio-cultural/militaristic ties to Europe, and dependence on (often hostile) oil-producing states.

The imperial expansion of Rome introduced the same paradox that the Athenian Greeks faced between democracy (Athens was in fact a class/gender based democracy) and the pursuit of empire and subjugated peoples. The United States soon followed Rome’s precedential path from republic to empire in picking fights with both Mexico and Spain, amongst many others from Asia to Africa throughout its short history — sometimes acquiring vast tracts of territory and population, sometimes acquiring subtler or non-existent gains; look at the mess we caused in southeast Asia. A country which cannot afford or prioritize giving its people healthcare, building decent transportation networks (let alone high-speed trains), or keeping its education system credible cannot afford to militaristically harass far flung peoples. We have and will continue to expend enormous amounts of blood and treasure on our misadventures, clearly stressing our current creaking economic system. Hundreds of years went by for the Roman Empire before they succumbed to internal and external pressures, seeing generals vie for influence through military power struggles, eventually buckling under the immigration influx of what history has branded Germanic tribes, around 400-AD.* As the United States continues to face old and new pressures, such as relative power decline, economic strain and a continued influx of large numbers of immigrants (Spanish speaking peoples mostly, coming back to reclaim much that was stolen during a mid-nineteenth century war?), it will be interesting to see what happens to this country.

And now back to Afghanistan, where we seem to be further investing ourselves in an endlessly violent quagmire. Here we are hideously not learning anything from the historical record. Our predecessors the British in the mid-1800s and the Russians in the 1980s, were two other foreign powers that tried to control Afghanistan forcibly, to disastrous results. Sinking more resources into forcing our conceptualization of the modern state onto a people who are not accustomed to it, let alone did not ask for it, is not going to work out and it serves to only weaken the United States further. It will function as one of the external pressures like those felt by Rome in its twilight period.

*For a hint of more context, this is when the beginnings of our ideas of France/French, Spain/Spanish, Italy/Italian et cetera develop in western Europe.

The book to movie cringe

To be truthful, I usually frown upon most literary narratives transitioned into film, as I feel that in their essence the two media are not capable of telling stories satisfactorily in a mutual way. Of course, each is enjoyed thoroughly by many people and independently of one another in their own contexts. Apparently having demonstrated our appetite for these adaptation films, numerous examples have been produced and actually make up a sizable portion of the overall mainstream film output. But gawd, aren’t most of them absolutely terrible?

Do you remember when they tried to make Philip Pullman’s interesting and severe His Dark Materials into a film franchise with lots of lights, money and beautiful hollywood faces? (And rightly failed to do so) Zzz. Not all productions from literature to film are so hideous. Peter Jackson allegedly scraped by with his rendition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic work, The Lord of the Rings. But in the wise words of the character Val Goldman from the film The Birdcage — “Don’t add, just subtract.” — Jackson’s film seems replete with images that could have been spent on more accurately transitioning Tolkien’s detailed and simple narrative. But even the sage advice above does not always hold, demonstrated by the adaptation of John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, made by Clint Eastwood, of all people. He embellished the role of The Lady Chablis, enriching and poking the story into interesting places, a rare example of a filmmaker adding some queerness to one’s work. Overall, it seems to be varied on how well the transition is made, depending on who does the work.

So I will admit that a cringe was elicited upon realization that the previously seen but unidentified film poster at the Kabuki theater* in San Francisco was in fact an advertisement for an adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man. My evidence was found in this article from the NY Times. My love for Isherwood’s written works led me to masochistically devour the article and rush to the web for the trailer. The former designer turned film auteur Tom Ford gives us a version featuring credible performers, if clearly altered (clear from the article and online trailer) and looking to lean towards high drama. Isherwood’s novel is subtle as it is emotional and devastating; it will be interesting to see if Mr. Ford can stew these down into a visual and moving cinematic experience without serving us something overcooked, drowned in a flavor of Ford’s own publicity and ego. I hope to be proven utterly wrong**, and see the delightful balance that can exist between two executions in form of a single original story. Here’s to optimism.

What will certainly be interesting to see is how much attention Isherwood the writer and his collective works receive in the release and attention around Ford’s film. Sometimes this can actually be the undoing of a piece of literature, at least in its mass-produced and marketed life. We have all seen the paperback transposed with movie poster at our local box bookstore. They have the ability to drain a lot of goodness from what would otherwise be a pleasant book experience, but should one complain if more people are reading said book? More people reading Isherwood’s writings is a great step in itself as they tend to be underread.

*I was there seeing another book to movie transition, the Wes Anderson directed spin on Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, which I found to be wonderful. But I have the benefit of not having read Dahl’s original (to be rectified soon thanks to the San Francisco Public Library), so did not have to suffer the burden of comparing.

**I feel my interest in Isherwood will compel me to see Ford’s film. At least it will be worth comparing to Bob Fosse’s Cabaret, which is based on Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin.