Over the course of many months, I spent almost 50 hours retouching the above photograph. It's one of about 80 Polaroids I took during my time in Japan, all of which have been painfully neglected, stuffed inside a small and disheveled cardboard box. Each day they fade and accumulate scratches, and soon I'll forget what they were ever supposed to represent.
In an act of unexpected confluence, I've been set upon by three works, each a separate appendage from that holy trinity of Art & Entertainment (cinema, literature, music), each having much to do with the Christian faith.
My spider-sense is tingling.
The Son came first, out of order of course, in the form of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Critically acclaimed by friend and foe alike (peers and non-peers), it bore a heavy burden to impress me, though I was in a state of spastic (American usage) excitement to read some modern fiction. Thoughts on the novel taken from a missive to a friend:
He writes well, so any comparison from the Higher-Up should only be interpreted as "meaning well",
though there were a number of times where I squirmed at his outrageous ornamentation,
embarrassed via recognition of my own excess. (<- Damn'd by my own hand)
Often his conceits seem trite, the syntactical games of the "Orison" segments ("nikes" for shoes, "sony" for computer-things, "ford" for car, etc...);
the Joycean degradation of language for the post-apocalyptic apex;
epistles for the European Romantics;
but I'm leaning away from my cynical self and assuming that it all ties into the greater conceit of eternal recurrence.
Plus, corpocracy just made me think of Idiocracy.
I failed to mention my irritation with the use of a Jesus-figure, unaware that that very same would tie in so well with this blog entry; the gods are on my side.
Next came Father in the guise of Gavin Castleton's Hospital Hymns EP. I've had a burnin' yearnin' to hear this album for some time, having missed my chance to acquire the physical copy and deigning it not worth my while to purchase it through itunes (fuck yo' 192kbps bullshit!). Thankfully, the new Integer's Only store opened up and he's selling it for 4$ at 256kbps. I can dig it if that's the best I can get from the man himself.
Billed as modern arrangements of classic hymns (I can't attest to his adherence, having never been to church), the music on this "disc" shares a lot of similarities to other work he's done, drawing equally from R&B/soul (Stevie Wonder in particular); the glacial glitchin' of Vespertine-era Bjork, or rather, her producers (Matmos?); as well as the actual hymns themselves (I presume). Though his voice has developed considerably since his early days in G.M., he still holds a great amount of fragility in his voice that always adds a sense of emotional resonance and sincerity to his songs that I don't often hear elsewhere in modern pop. Lyrically, he conflates matters a bit, drawing from his own experiences working menial labor in a hospital but writing/singing from the perspective of an aggressively spiritual elderly man. For a record that is musically personal and innately spiritual (similar to A Love Supreme though they're not comparable by any other means), it's counter-productive to distance yourself, the creator, from your own work by speaking through a fictional voice. That doesn't detract from the music, however, except on a speculative plane, so Hospital Hymns gets all my gems and mineral deposits.
Lastly, there was the Holy Ghost. What better a vessel than PT Anderson's There Will Be Blood? Before I begin, I'll briefly run through my thoughts on previous PTA sermons:
Sydney/Hard Eight: Haven't seen this. Haven't heard anything about it either.
Boogie Nights: Haven't seen this, but hear John C. Reilly knows how to "stick it".
Magnolia: Frog rain was some bullshit.
Punch-Drunk Love: Mostly made me uncomfortable. Also: I hate Adam Sandler.
That was just so I don't get confused with some kind of PTA-Fellator.
There Will Be Blood is a monster of a film. Like, it roars. Similarly to how I felt about No Country for Old Men, I'm struggling with how I might begin to detail it's finer qualities.
- Acting is superb across the board, from the child that plays H.W. Plainview to dude-from-The Mummy in role of Daniel Plainview's "brother". The only small deduction goes to Paul Dano, not for performing poorly, but because there are times where his youth and eccentric presence evokes the modern era more so than the turn of the 20th century. But that's a small price to pay when the other choice would be to have not casted Paul Dano. Also, time is treated somewhat abstractly anyway; example: Paul Dano never ages.
- The cinematography is beautiful, but perhaps much more traditionally so than one might expect. Nothing overtly flashy, just precise composition and minimal extended tracking shots. Expert use of lighting and set design.
- I wasn't too keen on the score, which had received a lot of press, presumably from the Radiohead connection. The dissonant horror-strings were too common place, both in the sense that they occurred often and in that they weren't especially interesting. There were two pieces that played for great dramatic effect, one during the derrick explosion and the other during the long shot over Bandy's ranch. These used a lot more percussive elements that seemed better suited to the mood, though I suppose I wouldn't have enjoyed them as much had they been the dominant mode either. Still, wasn't impressed.
- Daniel Day-Lewis' character is immensely fascinating, his manner of speech, his stilted walk, his honesty that transforms into brutal irrationality, all are but a few of the things that compose one of the most human cinematic characters I've seen. A mega role.
- And though I've put it last, the story is certainly not least. Empathizing with/understanding the father/son relationship between Daniel and H.W. is vital to your appreciation of this film. If you're just waiting for Plainview to slap Eli Sunday some more, you're not going to like this movie. The title is almost literal, in that though there are violent acts spread throughout the film, you never see any blood until the very end. This movie is all about the emotional weight contained within a man isolated by money, mistrust, and a malignant self-hatred. Be careful, this shit could destroy you.
I assume this sort of righteous (in the Gleaming the Cube vernacular) aggregation of seemingly-related experiences is common to all of us (humanity), something to do with our personal Web of Influences (is that a pun?) combined with overwhelming egoism that causes most to feel like the sun.
Would anybody like to share their own?
