The Change Of Heart

I've been absurdly stressed. I'm to travel to Rio next week and still I wasn't able to get my ID card, without it I won't be able to get the plain, nor the concerts tickets. All the misfortunes that has been crossing my crusade are the paradigm of Murphy Law, but I still hope things will be okay in the end... I have to hold on to that.

But in this whole stress I've become a bit sensitive about things around; especially music that reminds me of twisted parts in my life. Lately it's been Brazillian g-d Vanessa Da Mata who's been startling me about the dark side of my joy.

Don't get me wrong. I'm far from going into depression land again, but suddenly the unfinished businesses of my life have showed themselves as if the red curtain was opened up. Last weekend was Children's Day, therefore, a holiday. Dad and I went to Salvador after two nights and a day in Inhambupe, his hometown. I saw my mom again, after a month since I moved back to Conquista; it felt like an eternity and I realized how much I miss her. That cunning ache to the chest possessed me as soon as I laid eyes on her; I wanted so much she'd go out with us but she preferred not to, probabaly because of dad. And on the Monday, after we dropped my sister home, I wanted to go upstairs and tell her my feelings; she still wasn't home though and I thought the chance was missed.

So, this morning, feeling terribly tired after another unsuccessful attemptive of getting my papers I drove home listening to Da Mata's Minha Herança: Uma Flor [already on the white-box] and the lyrics made me think of my relationship with mother. How I've been neglecting her emotionally and how probably she got tired to get close and seems now to be just accommodating with my coldness. And a fierce fear possessed me as the tears rolled down my face; a fear we'd become strangers, simply relatives who let the personality differences drive them apart.

The song however has optimistic lyrics and along with the fear came a deep and honest desire to fix everything; my heart wished so vehemently that I'd become a better son. My mom has been getting into so much [emotional] trouble lately, and listening to that song made me see how cruel and judgemental I've been towards her. I suddenly saw that by turning away and choosing not to get involved not even a bit with her problems, I've been positioning myself on a higher level than hers... and uhg I now see how stupid and embarrassing it is. Me Mr. I'm-Destroying-My-Ego... turning my back to someone who I should never do so.

All culminated in Woody Allen's Another Woman, and I found myself feeling like Gena Rowlands's character. In the end she decides to change... I guess I'm supposed to make a phone call.

[Song: Minha Herança: Uma Flor - Vanessa Da Mata]

"I'll Be Anticipating..."

I'm all smiles today. After watching a deliciously funny Woody Allen movie [Small Time Crooks], dad and I sat down to look up plane tickets to my trip to Rio in the end of the month. I'm sure I didn't tell about this here before, but I'm going to Rio de Janeiro to see Björk and Antony And The Johnsons live. I don't need to say I'm beyond excited.

I still have some crap to solve, like getting all my papers and bank cards all over again until then [this is starting to freak me out, because time never goes by so slowly when you need it to], and making reservations at a hostel. But despite the weight in my chest that these little problems bring, I'm still floating with the prospect of a whole weekend at one of the beautifulest cities in the world.

And funny thing I titled a post about Björk and a trip to Rio with a line from a Britney Spears song; if I were superstitious I'd take that as a not-so-good omen.

[Song: Twlight - Antony And The Johnsons]

Resilience

Last month Mariana and I were indirectly talking about The Cigarette Club and she said how she is never able to fit in a clique. I felt kind of sorry for her. Years ago cool would be if I'd never fit in, if I was always the poetic renegade nobody could understand; this sounds very romantic in an E! True Hollywood Story way. Nowadays one of the things that got me depressed in the first half of the month was the fact I didn't fit in. I'm not an easy person to fit in. I'm snobbish [the -ish is an euphemism], but also very resilient - this, surprisingly, can drive people away.

Mariana claimed she seldom finds groups of people with same interests and ideals as hers and that she doesn't have much patience to be so resilient. I guess that's where she sins [not being judgmental, just analytic], because we [thank G-d] will never find people who perfectly combine with us; actually I don't think that's her goal, but in such a world as this, being resilient is almost a must. Sometimes it's a problem, when you lose track of yourself in the process, but being able to be in contact with different opinions and tastes and visions is not only interesting but invigorating. Especially when they're sometimes very different from yours, that's a great ego test.

In The Cigarette Club we share similar points of view and interests, but like anything else we have different minds and that adds so much to the whole that it's beautiful; from a distance if you pay attention to a fervorous conversation of ours, you might think we're totally nonsensical - I'd rather call it stream of consciousness. The other day we were speaking nonstop like mad people for hours and as I lit a cigarette I looked around and realized how Altman-esque and Allen-esque we sounded. Nothing made sense, but everything did.

Humans need to be around humans; we need to share opinions and feelings, have decent intellectual and emtional intercourse. Resilience is genius for that.

[Song: One Day - Björk]

Cinephile Vacations

Even going out every night I was still able to watch loads of movies this month. I didn't have much to do, so all that was left for me to do under the daylight were movies and books. When I packed in Salvador, I filled a huge backpack with DVDs; among them Prada, my Audrey Hepburn box, Notting Hill, Moulin Rouge! and Prime. I've watched none, instead I've been renting movies like a desperate death row cinephile. Surely I won't remember all the movies I've watched, but one thing is sure: I had wonderful and unforgetable sex with Woody Allen. I rented all of his movies that the video store had and I can say for certain that I'm an Allen freak. Bellow goes the list of his movies that amused and put me to thinking this past month. And I promise to go about them one in the course of the semester.
[Chronological order.]
- Scoop
- Melinda and Melinda
- Anything Else
- The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion
- Crimes And Misdemeanors
- The Purple Rose Of Cairo
- Zelig
- A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
- Manhattan
- Interiors
- Love And Death
- Sleeper
- Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex* *And Were Afraid To Ask
I still have to re-watch Annie Hall, Match Point and rent Celebrity.
[Song: The Modern Things - Björk]

In A Sentimental Mood

Yesterday I cried in the end of a beautiful Brazillian movie called The Year My Parents Went On Vacation. Before I had massively cried with Venus like I said a post ago.

Today I felt deeply disturbed while I watched Allen's Interiors; it's not an usual Allen film, not at least like the ones I'm used to see. Allen's movies are always so filled with music and quick dialogues; Interiors however is agonizingly silent and shady. Geraldine Page is amazing as an interior decorator disturbed by divorce; it's amazing how she performed Eve's pale perfection with such a shouting silent sadness that you can't help feeling restless about it. Such feeling hangs on as we follow the lives of her daughters Diane Keaton, Mary Beth Hurt and Kristin Griffth; Hurt is especially mesmerizing as a daughter suffering from the mother's indiference towards her cares.

The movie's constant silence was so disturbing not only for the fact Allen mostly presents himself [in our minds at least] as a musical director [the opening sequence from Manhattan and all of Everyone Says I Love You are heavenly], but also because depression [something that most of the characters seem to suffer from] has exactly the anguish of the silence that precedes the scream, which made me particularly remember of an episode I had in Salvador, when in June Red stayed a weekend at my house and as he and his friends left I was consumed with a silence that, after hours of sleep, exploded into an eloquent cry. That probably just gave me this intense heartburn that hindered any real tears.

The film that really gaves me tears were the following one: The Purple Rose Of Cairo; which is really weird because it is a very cute non-tearjerking comedy, a beautiful love letter to movies. And to have before my eyes the explanation of why I love this art so much was emotionally overwhelming. Mia Farrow is orgasmically natural and thrilling that even the most of cynics can't help loving her sweet innocence towards cinema and life. Her final shot is breathtaking and heartbreaking in levels you cannot exactly explain, which is why I cried.

Later tonight I went out and though loads of laugh filled the atmosphere I still felt somewhat melancholic. When I got home I heard on the news that the plane wreck that happened earlier today in São Paulo killed about 150 people. I cried again.

What is it? Depression I know it's not. It could be the want of romance; or maybe an after-shock from all the latest experiences. Close friends know that it's not unusual for me to cry, but lately I've been running from the easy reasons of this posture. I'm definitely not sad, so why do these tears come at night?

[Song: All Is Full Of Love - Björk]

Why I Despize Steven Spielberg And George Lucas

Probably every cinephile has a favorite decade in movie History. Mine's not an exact decade but it's a period that had its peak in the mid 1960's and started to fade a bit after the mid 1970's. Some of my favorite directors, such as Woody Allen, Mike Nichols and Martin Scorcese had their debuts or major hits during this period. Woody had his Annie Hall, Nichols did Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, while Scorcese had Taxi Driver.

Tonight I watched a film from the very end of this era [which I'll come to definition very soon] that gave me two insights about my movie tastes. The first was the one I started the post with, and the second was the final explanation [at least to me] of my hate towards Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

The movie I saw was Kramer vs. Kramer [1979, by Robert Benton with heavenly Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep]. It's a court-drama about a divorcing couple disputing the custody of their 7-year-old boy; in a first abstraction I instantly liked this movie because of the similarity with my own life. No, my parents didn't go on court to dispute my sister and I, but the reasons Meryl's character leaves her husband for are very similar to the ones my mother left my father for. But it was during the documentary on the bonus material that I had my insight.

Someone [I don't remember if Meryl or producer Stanley R. Jaffe] says that KvK was a very specific movie, about one or two characters and their psyche and very deep feelings about the situations in life, instead of a generic film with more to look at than to think about. Right then I remembered an article I once read in a magazine.

The article talked about an era in film History that sort of started in the 60's with deep psychological dramas, especially historical-dramas, but mainly psychological thrillers and comedies; the latter contained subtle comic elements that actually hid the deepness of the characters. Movies such as Breakfast At Tiffany's followed that premise and reinvented the very basis of the usual dramedy. As for the thrillers, the world saw the decade rise with the masterpiece of the genre Hitchcock's Psycho and we also had classics as Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. These films talked mostly about human behavior; but it's the way they did it that fascinates me the most. The dramatic and psychological thrillers were more deep plunges into the characters' disturbed minds than shocking and superficial sensorial exploitation. Marvelous pieces such as Alan J. Pakula's Klute and Brian de Palma's Carrie were delivered and also classics like the unforgettable A Clockwork Orange and "Taxi Driver".

But as the times and society changed, along came the 1980's with its vibrant superficiality that seemed like people didn't think that going deeper was interesting anymore. [I believe these era is still on.] But it was in the mid 70's that this new way of dealing with art and life hit the cinemas, with the catastrophe cinema. And which was the big 1975 catastrophe hit that was like a fancy exploitation films springoff? Yup, Spielberg's Jaws. A while before we had the phenomenon called The Exorcist, that was more about spinning heads, bad hair and green vomit than a deep character study. These tragic and dumb movies became a fever, along with the visually psychotic Star Wars.

I'm not by any means saying these films aren't worth a damn, after all they saved the industry from brankruptcy [said the magazine article]; but they put to an end the era of technically great films with deep content. Of course I'm not that naive by saying Spielberg and Lucas killed the human behavior movies, but I need scapegoats for society's shallow turn. So I guess it's them.

Realizing Woody Allen

As I watched Scoop last Sunday it firstly didn't come to my mind how much I loved Allen. Now I realize that and I believe I've seen enough [Annie Hall, Mighty Afrodite, Everyone Says I Love You, Match Point and "Scoop"] to raise him as my favorite director. I am very aware that there is a lot more to see, but Scoop [which some says is disposable to his career] made me laugh in a way I haven't in the theatres in a long time.

His screen presence is so stunning [stealing each and every scene he's in] it makes us miss him even if the rest of the cast is just as marvelous. He plays the magician Splendini and I realized how the part fits Allen perfectly.

When I first watched "Everyone Says I Love You", every sequence gave me if not big fat laughs, huge and silly grins. And by the end, as if it weren't enough the man simply made Goldie Hawn float as she danced! Pure cinematic magic!! In "Annie Hall" I delighted myself with those scenes I had seen a million times before in other movies and even Brazillian novelas, realizing it was a recent-still-vivid pop culture icon I was dealing with. The Greek drama inspired "Mighty Afrodite" made me cum in a moment of my life I was studying those literary classics. And in "Match Point" he was able to turn Scarlett Johansson into an even more desireable woman, as if her herself wasn't enough.

The reality in his characters is so adorable as it is tangible; maybe because he taps to the psychotic aspect of human behavior and treats it with such a fine and witty dark humor; maybe because his self-deprecatory auter-egos are simply lovely by essence; the thing is: the more fucked up the character is the more close to ourselves it seems to be. Allen and Johansson's chemistry in "Scoop" is delicious; they seem the most natural you can get in a movie, making it looks like they're doing nothing most of the times. Maybe that's why everyone wants to work with him; it must surely be very challenging to look that laid back.

As for me, I only wish to be a quarter of the genius he is. Pretentious? Maybe. But can't a kid dream?

[Song: A Good Thing - Saint Etienne]