A Dangerous Method

January 29, 2012

David Cronenberg’s new film, A Dangerous Method, is about the founders of psychoanalysis. Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) is asked to treat a young woman suffering from hysteria, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). Under his treatment, Speilrein starts to improve. She begins studying psychoanalysis. She eventually makes sexual advances on Jung, but he rejects her, partly because he feels it would violate his professional ethics, and partly because of his devotion to his wife, Emma (Sarah Gadon). At about this same time, Jung meets the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), who makes a strong impression on him. Freud persuades Jung to take as his patient, Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel), who is also a psychoanalyst and who advocates free love. After analyzing Gross, Jung decides to accept Speilrein’s advances. However, when Freud says that he has heard rumors that Jung is having an affair with one of his patients, Jung decides to end his relationship with Speilrein. The latter takes this badly. She eventually announces that she wants to study under Freud. This alarms Jung, who is afraid that Freud will find out about his unethical behavior.

The characters all come across as deeply flawed, and the film does not take sides. Overall, however, Jung seems more sympathetic than Freud. The latter comes across as rigid, narrow-minded, and domineering. In one scene he reveals his hand by saying that he wouldn’t discuss one of his dreams with Jung because he didn’t want to compromise his “authority”. There is also a complacency about Freud’s world-view. He tells Speilrein that “the world is what it is”, and that pyschoanalysts shouldn’t try to change it. Yet one cal also see why Freud eventually became disenchanted with Jung; the latter was fascinated with irrational ideas, such as a belief in telepathy. The revelation of his affair with Spielrein becomes the last straw.

One point this film makes is how psychoanalysis was rooted in nineteenth-century romanticism. Jung and Spielrein both admire the music of Richard Wagner. Spielrein finds inspiration in the story of Siegfried, which influences her ideas about psychology. (Themes from Wagner’s music are subtly interwoven into the soundtrack.)

The acting in A Dangerous Method is very good. I especially liked Mortensen’s performance as Freud. He subtly conveys the character’s arrogance and authoritarianism, without turning him into a caricature.

At the end of this film, we are told that Spielrein, who was Jewish, was murdered by the Nazis during World War II. This is a disturbing reminder that our lives are ultimately shaped by political and economic forces that psychoanalysis can do nothing to address.

Posted in Cinema, Freud, Jung, Psychology | Leave a Comment »

Shame

January 22, 2012

Steve McQueen’s film, Shame, deals with the topic of sex addiction. I must admit I’ve always been skeptical about whether such a condition actually exists. However, I suppose if a person can become addicted to gambling, then it’s possible for someone to be addicted to sex.

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is an executive at a company in New York. He engages in casual sex with prostitutes and women he meets in bars. He downloads pornography from the Internet. He even masturbates in the john at work. He seems incapable of having sex unless it’s impersonal. When, for example, he begins seeing a woman who works in his office, Marianne (Nicole Beharie), he ends up rejecting her.

Brandon’s life gets complicated when his emotionally unstable sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), suddenly moves into his apartment with him. The film implies that they had a traumatic experience in their childhoods, although we are never told what it was. When Sissy has sex with Brandon’s boss, David (James Badge Dale), Brandon becomes angry with her. Brandon seems to have a madonna/whore complex, which is no doubt related to his obsessive attitude towards sex and to his inability to have a relationship.

Fassbender gives a powerful performance. With his looks and gestures, he’s able to suggest complicated thoughts and emotions going on inside his character’s head. Shame contains graphic sex scenes; McQueen apparently wanted to make clear the joylessness of Brandon’s approach to sex. This film’s ending does not offer any redemption for Brandon. He seems trapped in his behavior. This is an interesting, if somewhat bleak, character study.

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Revenge of the Electric Car

January 12, 2012

This is an incredibly shallow film. It spends ninety minutes talking about how wonderful electric cars supposedly are, yet it says almost nothing about how electricity is generated. Fifty-seven percent of the electricity generated in the United States comes from the burning of coal. So it is simply false to claim that electric cars do not pollute, as some of the people in this film do. Of all the “experts” interviewed in this film, only one, Thomas Friedman, even touches upon the issue of power generation. He glibly assures us that as the power grid becomes “cleaner”, so will electric cars. (Friedman is the only person in this film who acknowledges that electric cars are not “clean”.) Considering that the government is touting the fraudulent notion of “clean coal”, I cannot share Friedman’s complacent optimism.

There is a quick discussion of solar power at the end of this film, but, if you blink, you will miss it.

The development of electric cars needs to be done alongside developing renewable energy sources to the exclusion of all other types of sources. This is the only rational policy, but our for-profit system will not allow this to happen.

Posted in Cinema, Energy, Environment | Leave a Comment »

House of Pleasures

January 9, 2012

Bertrand Bonello’s film, L’Apollonide: Souvenirs de la maison close, has been showing at my local art house movie theatre under the title, House of Pleasures. (It has also been released under the title, House of Tolerance). It depicts the lives of women living and working in a brothel in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century. Their lives are hard. One woman, Madeleine (Alice Barnole), has her face slashed by a client and is permanently disfigured. Another, Julie (Jasmine Trinca) contracts syphilis and eventually dies. Clotilde (Céline Sallette) becomes an opium addict. The fate of the other women is uncertain, since the madame (Noemie Lvovsky) cannot afford to pay the increased rent demanded by the landlord.

Despite its grimness, this film is not strictly realistic, for there are fantasy sequences. In some scenes, for example, there is late twentieth century pop music, such as the Moody Blues’ Nights in White Satin, playing on the soundtrack. In one scene, we see semen coming out of Madeleine’s eyes. This struck me as completely gratuitous.

House of Pleasures is two hours long, but it seems much longer than that. What’s really frustrating about this movie, though, is that one senses that buried somewhere in this sprawling, confused, and sometimes repulsive mess is what could have been a good film. When they’re not dancing to anachronistic pop music, the characters sometimes come across as complex and interesting. House of Pleasures does show a sense of class consciousness in that the women all come from factory worker or peasant backgrounds, whereas their clients all come from wealthy families. Unfortunately, Bonello’s self-conscious artiness and heavy-handed efforts to shock the audience ultimately rid this work of any emotional power. It simply leaves you feeling numb.

Posted in Bertrand Bonello, Cinema, France | Leave a Comment »

Martha Marcy May Marlene

January 7, 2012

Sean Durkin’s first feature-length film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, is billed as a “psychological thriller”, which is misleading, for the film is actually a character study. There is suspense in the story, but it is never resolved.

The film begins with Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) running away from a Manson-like “cult” she has belonged to for the past two years. She moves in with her sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson), and Lucy’s husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy). The rest of the film interweaves scenes of Martha living with Lucy and Ted, and Martha’s life in the “family”. In the latter, she lives with a group of men and women who live on a farm in the Catskill mountains. The leader of the group is Patrick (John Hawkes), who spouts psycho-babble and plays mind games with the others. Female newcomers to the group are drugged and then raped by Patrick. One of the disturbing things about the film is how the group’s “family” feel masks a brutal male supremacy, and how Martha and the other women find ways to accept this.

To support themselves, members of the “family” sometimes break into peoples’ houses and steal from them. During one break-in, they kill the owner. This incident is apparently what causes Martha to leave, although the film is a little bit vague on this point.

Lucy and Ted are mostly kind to Martha, although they come across as emotionally cold. (It is implied that Martha joined the cult to get away from her family’s coldness.) It doesn’t help that Martha is unable to bring herself to talk about her experiences. She also begins to suffer from a fear that the “family” is pursuing her. Her behavior increasingly causes friction between her and Lucy and Ted, and it also creates strains in the latter’s marriage.

This film is well-made, and it has some powerful moments, but overall I found it claustrophobic and frustrating to watch. Because Martha never opens up to her sister about what happened to her in the “family”, they never interact in a way that is dramatically interesting. Durkin has said in interviews that he wanted to make the point that people who go through experiences with “cults” often have difficulty talking about them immediately afterwards. (Some psychologists and sociologists consider the term “cult” to be problematic. Durkin’s casual use of this word strikes me as a bit glib.) For all I know, this is true, but it’s a small point to make in a feature-length film. The story would have been more interesting if it took place over a longer period of time, and if it showed Martha finding some way to come to terms with her traumatic experiences.

I hope that in his next film Durkin is able to tell a more dramatically satisfying story.

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Mitt Romney

January 5, 2012


“Go ahead, suckers, laugh all you want about ‘magic underwear’, but when my friends on Wall Street are through, you’ll be lucky if you can afford underwear. Heh, heh”.

Mitt Romney has narrowly defeated right-wing-nutcase-of-the-week, Rick Santorum, in the ultra-right-wing Iowa Caucus. It is clear that Romney will be the Republican Party’s nominee in the 2012 election. He has always been that party’s only serious candidate, yet the media have always refused to acknowledge this. Instead, they have subjected us to the spectacle of incessant rounds of completely unnecessary debates. One by one, they have tried to produce a far right David to take down the Mormon commie Goliath. First, there was Rick Perry, then there was Herman Cain, then there was Newt Gingrich, and now Santorum. All have failed.

This shouldn’t have been surprising. It’s worth remembering that in 2008, it was the most moderate candidate, McCain, who won the primaries. A few months before, the media had dismissed his campaign as dead in the water. Likewise, only a few weeks ago the media seemed ready to write off Romney. Most Republicans are not as far to the right as the media believe or would have us believe. When I say “Republicans”, I should perhaps say, “Republican voters”. A distinction should be made between the people who vote in the primaries and the Pod People who show up at the debates and cheer wildly whenever someone discusses the possibility of killing innocent people.

So the election will be Obama versus Romney: Wall Street’s Plan A and Plan B. Real change can only come from outside the electoral system.

We are the 99%. We will prevail.

Posted in Chicago, San Francisco, Uncategorized, WikiLeaks | Leave a Comment »

2011: A Glimmer of Hope

December 31, 2011

2011 was the best year of my life. True, this year had more than its share of tragedies, most notably the terrible tsunamis in Japan and the meltdown of the Fukushima reactors (we will be living with the consequences of the latter for generations). What I’m referring to here is that this year we saw mass demonstrations against the ravages of capitalism, beginning in Tunisia and spreading to various parts of the globe, most recently in China and in Russia. I have never seen anything like this before. The “anti-capitalist” upsurge of 1999 to 2001 was paltry compared to this.

Not everything has gone smoothly, of course. The demonstrations in Bahrain have been defeated (so far). The struggle is still uncertain in Syria. There has been an Islamist backlash in Tunisia and in Egypt. The National Transitional Council in Libya is dominated by former Khadafyites. Yet the problems that led to the initial uprisings in these countries are not going away.

The 99% movement has changed the political landscape here in the U.S. The Tea Party hoax is dead. The mainstream media have been forced to talk about issues such as economic inequality. Six months ago, all they were talking about was the need to cut government spending. What was perhaps most striking about the movement was the way it continued to grow in the face of savage police repression. The sight of cops beating and pepper-spraying people only seemed to make people want to join the resistance. The tactic of occupying public spaces seems to have run its course. However, new methods of stuggle are starting to emerge, such as occupying foreclosed homes.

This December, U.S. troops were pulled out of Iraq. This was, as I made clear in an earlier post, partly the result of the revelations provided by WikiLeaks, which also helped to fuel the uprisings in other parts of the world. We should support Private Bradley Manning as the government tries to railroad him. We owe a lot to this brave young man.

2012 should prove to be an interesting year.

Posted in 2011, Capitalism, Imperialism | Leave a Comment »

Update on Occupy Eugene

December 27, 2011

Rick Youngblood, the man who suffered a heart attack on the occupation site on December 19, died on the morning of December 23. You can read about it here. OE held a candlelight vigil for him that evening at the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza in downtown Eugene.

On December 24, OE issued the following press release:

Eugene’s Homeless Back on the Streets for Christmas

For 75 days, in one of the longest running occupations in the US, Occupy Eugene provided a legal place to sleep, three meals daily, professional medical assistance, job skills trainings, and most importantly, a community for hundreds of homeless folks in Eugene. Simultaneously, we have explored with the city how Eugene might better serve homeless people.

This week, the city of Eugene unilaterally shut down the site at Washington Jefferson Park, and after two nights of the Wheeler Pavilion being open to provide beds for those coming from the Occupation, folks are back on the street again, just in time for Christmas.

Occupy Eugene appreciates that the city has put forth additional funds, created a task force with seats for homeless people, and expanded the car camping program by adding sites and allowing tents. However, these efforts do not add up to the far greater support that was available at the Occupy Eugene site, and none of the city’s efforts are happening on a community basis among equals, which was more respectful than a government handout.

The alarming number of people who are homeless is a consequence of our deeply unjust economic and political systems, systems which Occupy Eugene is dedicated to changing. In the meantime, we are proud to have taken on the task of helping some of the people most affected – entirely with volunteered time, and as a community.

Occupy Eugene remains strong, renting an office in the Grower’s Market Building and making use of a donated warehouse on 7th and Polk. Plans to participate in the national Occupy the Courts protest are underway, and the unfair foreclosure of many Eugene homes presents another opportunity for Occupy Eugene to support people impacted by unjust systems.

We invite the community to join in our efforts to address systemic injustice while we continue to occupy the minds of Eugene.

This Press Release was approved by the general assembly of Occupy Eugene.

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, Eugene, Occupy Eugene | Leave a Comment »

Melancholia

December 25, 2011

I have never been a huge admirer of Lars von Trier. His films have always struck me as being both portentous and pretentious. (Two of my least favorite words beginning with the letter “p”.) He is a sort of bargain basement Ingmar Bergmann. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to see his latest film, until some of my friends told me they found it depressing, and others said they found it hilarious. This piqued my curiosity, so I went to see it. I did not find it depressing, but I did not quite find it hilarious.

At the beginning of this film, the prelude to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is played in its entirety. (Bits and pieces of this music will be played now and then during the rest of the film.) We see dreamlike scenes that foreshadow events in the film’s story.

Part One of this film is titled “Justine”. Justine (Kirsten Dunst) suffers from depression, but she nevertheless has just married Michael (Alexander Skarsgård). They arrive late at the reception held at the home of Justine’s sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and brother-in-law, John (Kiefer Sutherland), who are evidently filthy rich, because they live in an enormous mansion with stables and an eighteen-hole golf course. (The film was shot at Tjolöholm Castle in Sweden.) We’re told that John is a “scientist”. We meet Justine’s father (John Hurt) and mother (Charlotte Rampling). After meeting all of her family, one can see why Justine is depressed, since it would be hard to imagine a more unlikeable group of people, although Justine is no better herself. During the reception, Justine has an attack of depression, with disastrous results. By the time dawn arrives, she has had sex with her boss’s nephew, she has been fired by her boss, and Michael has left her. Although she has gotten hardly any sleep, in the morning she goes horseback riding with her sister through a foggy landscape with Tristan und Isolde playing in the background.

Part Two is titled “Claire”. Some time after the wedding reception, Justine has a mental breakdown, so she goes to live with Claire and John. Justine mopes around and cries a lot. The plot thickens when a rogue planet emerges from behind the sun and heads towards Earth. John, who reminds everyone that he is a scientist, cheerfully asserts that this planet will miss Earth, even though it has the ominous name of “Melancholia”. Claire worries that this might be the end of the world, but Justine seems to welcome this possibility. “The Earth is evil,” she says. “No one will miss it.” Justine and Claire then have a debate over whether there is life in the universe besides that on Earth. (I’m not making this up.) The ever-cheerful Justine takes the “No” position. On the night when Melancholia passes closest to Earth, Justine, John, Claire, and Claire’s son, Leo, sit in their vast (and I mean vast) front yard to watch it. When Claire experiences shortness of breath, John assures her that this is only because Melancholia’s gravity has ripped away part of Earth’s atmosphere, and it will soon pass. (Yeah, this doesn’t make sense to me either.) Before the night is over, it becomes clear that Melancholia is receding from Earth.

Ah, but you can’t have a happy ending in Trierland. The next morning, John looks through his telescope and discovers that Melancholia has reversed course and is now heading towards Earth. (I’m not a physicist, but it seems to me that this would be impossible.) John then goes to the stable and kills himself. Claire finds his body and covers it with hay. She then fixes breakfast for Justine and Leo. Oh, why the hell talk about these people any more? All you really need to know about this film is that it ends with the world being destroyed. We see Justine, Claire and Leo sitting on a hillside, with Melancholia looming in the background. You guessed it, Tristan und Isolde is playing on the soundtrack. Just before Melancholia smashes into the Earth, the volume of the music increases to an almost earsplitting level. You have to actually experience this scene to know what I’m talking about, but this is unintentionally funny. (I think it safe to assume that Trier didn’t mean this to be funny.)

If Trier wanted to make a film about the end of the world, why does he subject us to two hours of unappealing characters saying things like “The Earth is evil”? To try to answer this question, I turned to the ever-helpful Wikipedia. According to the article, “A therapist had told Trier that depressive people tend to act more calmly than others under heavy pressure, because they already expect bad things to happen.” Justine is indeed more calm than the other characters, but since all life on Earth is wiped out, it doesn’t make any difference.

It’s too bad that Mystery Science Theatre 3000 isn’t on TV any more. This would be a perfect film for that show.

Posted in Cinema, Lars von Trier | Leave a Comment »

Occupy Eugene to Be Evicted

December 21, 2011

Late in the evening on Monday, December 19, a man who had apparently been in a fight was found unconscious at the OE occupation site. An OE medic performed CPR on the man, who was then taken to a hospital. The next day, the city council held an emergency meeting about this. This certainly isn’t the first time in Eugene’s history that a homeless man has been beaten up, but it appears to be the first time the City Council has considered such an event important enough to justify an emergency meeting. They voted 5-2 that the police should close down the occupation site “soon as practicable”. The decision may have been influenced by a letter that the Eugene Police Employees Association sent to Mayor Piercy, in which among other things, they claimed that “There is open drug use and distribution. There is prostitution of minors. There are used hypodermic needles on the ground inside and outside the tents.” I have been to the occupation site, and I have not seen any of these things. (That’s right, kids, the police are not our friends.)

The following morning OE sent out this press release:

    OE medics help to save another life at W/J Park despite generator noise hampering efforts; 25 OE organizers arrive within minutes to help keep site calm for Eugene Police and Medics

    On December 19th at approximately midnight a brief altercation occurred at the Occupy Eugene site. An extremely drunk individual with a heart condition came onto the OE site and started a fight with an OE occupant. Peacekeeper calls for de-escalation assistance went unheard because of the noise made by the four generators which now surround the site since high-powered security light towers were installed last Friday. Apparently Eugene Police were on site; the unconscious and injured instigator required CPR which the OE medic administered as EPD arrived on the scene. The man is in stable condition.

    This is the 5th time that OE first responders have helped to save a life.

    More than two dozen Occupy organizers and supporters arrived within minutes of notification. After establishing facts regarding the situation, they coordinated a peaceful vigil at the crime scene. Members of OE involved in the incident were given full community support. OE police liaisons provided relevant information to EPD officers. Police Chief Kerns, Lieutenant Kamkar, and City Councilor Ortiz were also on site. Lieutenant Kamkar did not expect any arrests as of 1:30am.

    This press release has been approved by the General Assembly of Occupy Eugene.

After the council’s decision, OE released this:

    Occupy Eugene Responds to Eviction by City Council

    Occupy Eugene is saddened by the City Council’s decision to evict protestors from Washington-Jefferson Park only 5 days before Christmas. The emergency meeting and decision to evict represents a clear betrayal of the collaborative relationship established between OE and the City.

    This decision will serve as further motivation to protesters here in Eugene and around the country to continue to struggle against unjust laws and regulations that propagate social and economic injustice.

    Occupy Eugene is grateful that some attempt was made to accommodate the immediate need for a safe place for homeless folks currently living at Washington Jefferson park by expanding car camping. However, this limited action will have little long-term impact on the problem of homelessness in Eugene and does nothing to replace the ability of the community to come together to solve its own problems.

    Over the course of the occupation in Washington Jefferson Park, the citizens of Eugene, homeless and not, have created a community to address immediate problems and root causes of homelessness.

    For the first time many of Eugene’s homeless population have had a consistent, safe place to sleep, three meals a day, medical care, job skills training, and a community to engage with based around mutual respect and equality. We invite the City of Eugene to take up a similar strategy in their attempts to address homelessness.

    As was reiterated in the City Council meeting by Mayor Kitty Piercy, we hope that the eviction will happen peacefully without any force or violence. The official Occupy Eugene response to the eviction by the City of Eugene will be nonviolent.

    The Occupation will continue with or without camp.

    This press release has been approved by the general assembly of Occupy Eugene.

One point that needs to be made here is that Washington-Jefferson Park has long been a high-crime area. (It is the one area of Eugene where I do not really feel safe at night.) Some members of OE initially opposed occupying this park for precisely this reason. It was only after the city had blocked OE from other sites that the decision was made to go there.

Whatever happens at this point, Occupy Eugene will continue to grow.

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, Eugene, Occupy Eugene, Police | Leave a Comment »

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