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selenakThe beta-read and complete version of "Five Things Which Never Happened Between Garak And Bashir" is up. Also, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
andrastewhite posted some hilarious speculation about Babylon 5 as anime and, on more multifandom terms, about the concept of soulmates. (arataxastra, there are some thoughts about the fannish use of reincarnation there as well.)
Renting two movies I managed to miss in the cinema, I watched The Last Samurai and Cold Mountain.
The Last Samurai was visually gorgeous, and for the most part a good film with many of the ingredients destined to endear it to me - a broken, messed-up hero, the willingness to take time with establishing relationships, lots of quiet scenes instead of a non-stop action thing, and of course the American-in-Japan thing pressed some Shogun buttons.
However. My big problem is that I can't stop my brain from pointing out the highly questionable ideology. The film leaves it deliberately vague what exactly Katsemura and his fellow Samurai are fighting for, other than some phrases about bushido as code of honor. Presumably because any more details would leave us with the unpleasant truth that the old feudal Japan the Samurai wanted to keep was a strict caste system, with themselves as the priviledged caste. The Meiji reforms didn't just disarm the Samurai and started to establish a modern army; they gave peasants for the first time rights, so they couldn't be killed by whatever Samurai felt like killing them. The idyllic village where Cruise's character recovers as a symbol of old Japan is all very well, but I think Clavell was more honest with his depiction of the village Anjiro, which fulfills a much similar purpose in Shogun - it's beautiful, it's peaceful, and if you had the misfortunate of offending your lord, he could execute you on the spot. (And if you're a woman, you can be given away as a present.)
On the surface, it seems that Last Samurai as an anti-colonialist agenda, since the modern weaponry is associated with growing American influence and advisors. Moreover, Cruise's character is haunted by what he did to the Indians and you can read him siding with the Samurai against the modern army as a way of trying to atone. But fighting because you don't want to loose a position of privilege (even though it is never phrased this way in the picture) is quite different from fighting because you don't want your land being taken away.
And then there is the whole question of suicide heroics. Mind you, given the Japanese attitude towards suicide and the fact that the American colonel is (much like Marcus Cole on B5) looking for something worthy to die for pretty much from the start, it's not that the characters' bahaviour rings psychologically false. However, there is an inherent paradox in letting the American describe Custer as a vain gloryhound and a butcher who was responsible for the death of his men on the one hand, while positioning that Katsamuro's last stand was something worthy and honorable on the other. It got everyone (except the fictional Colonel) on his side killed, it killed a lot of conscript soldiers who had no choice about being there on the other, and it achieved absolutely nothing. Which they knew before it began. (As opposed to the battle at the Termophylae, to which the Colonel compares it - that one actually kept the Persians back for some days and thus bought important time for the other Greek states.) (Or, to use a fictional example from a recent film and old book, Theodén and the Rohirrim riding to the rescue at Pelennor Fields. They knew they'd die in all likelihood, but they did it to at least try and help the people of Gondor survive.)
I suppose pointless suicide charges just push buttons with me. I immediately get WWI associations and start quoting Wilfrid Owen, angry at those who order them which obviously I was not meant to be in The Last Samurai.
Cold Mountain is based on a novel by Charles Frazier I haven't read, and was directed by Anthony Minghella whose films The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley I loved. Mr. Minghella is decidedly not into war heroics; at the start of the movie, you get a blood-soaked butchery of a battle which demonstrates this drastically and makes more than clear why Immon, played by Jude Law, is ready to desert.
I've read reviews complaining they couldn't buy the premise of the movie, i.e. the fact Immon and Ada, the two main characters, have only a few awkward conversations and one passionate kiss and that this motivates Immon to make his long way home, and Ada to hope for his return throughout the war. I didn't have that problem; it was clear to me that they were symbols of hope for each other, more than real people, and that they desperately needed such hope. (Now if the film had actually ended with Immon and Ada living happily ever after, I would have doubted that and at the very least would have thought they needed a lot of time to get to know each other, but this didn't happen.) Jude Law as Immon was especially good; you believed he was a traumatized, shell-shocked soldier. (Okay, the beard helped to reduce Law's natural flawless looks, but it's mostly body language which does the trick.)
I enjoyed Renee Zellweger as Ruby, though I thought the Oscar for this was a bit much. Ruby is what John Rhys-Davies, talking about his own role as Rodrigues in Shogun, has called "a fireproof part"; a take-charge extrovert with amusing lines who plays off marvelously of the straight-laced hero(ine). Now I'm a tad prejudiced, but I thought Nathalie Portman, with far less screentime, demonstrated a greater range as Sara, the young mother who takes Immon in for a while. The scene in which Sara begs for her baby's life and gets raped by a Union soldier is harrowing enough, but the deleted scene on the DVD where we see it was too late after all, that the baby had frozen to death, and watch Sara come out to Immon, take his pistol and kill herself is devastating.
Alas, my problem with Cold Mountain was an actress I usually like, Nicole Kidman as Ada. I thought Nicole Kidnman was wonderful in The Others (for which she would have deserved the Oscar - I'll never understand why they nominated her for Moulin Rouge instead), and really good as Virginia Woolf in The Hours as well, but here she simply paled, and that wasn't because Ruby was the extrovert. Perhaps it was because of that other Southern belle becoming a tough survivor, Scarlett O'Hara. It's been more than 60 years, but Vivien Leigh's performance still holds up. In several reviews I've read, critics claimed they couldn't believe Ada was getting desperate and hungry and then working with Ruby because Kidman always looked drop-dead gorgeous, her costumes neatly fitting. But I checked my memory and found that - typical for old Hollywood - Vivien Leigh's costumes as Scarlett always fitted as well, and she always looked drop-dead gorgeous, too. Still, when Scarlett breaks down and desperately searches for radishes in a former slave garden, then throws up, then rises and swears "I'll never go hungry again", I believe her. I believe she's hungry, I believe that the last of the spoiled girl dies in that moment, and that she'll do anything not to go hungry again, never mind that a screenframe would show me Vivien Leigh looking not starved. Because of the emotional power of the performance.
Ada, now. Ada's transformation from Pastor's daughter to Ruby's comrade is all too easily achieved, there is no equivalent of such a scene, and it has only positive results. (Whereas with Scarlet you can see the increasing ruthlessness and increasing selfishness that come with being a tough survivor.) So this was the one part where the film left me cold, no pun intended.
Lastly, now that I've some more icon space, I decided I must have a Xavier and Magneto icon. Will hunt for same immediately. Who needs Wolverine if you can have Charles and Erik?
andrastewhite posted some hilarious speculation about Babylon 5 as anime and, on more multifandom terms, about the concept of soulmates. (arataxastra, there are some thoughts about the fannish use of reincarnation there as well.)Renting two movies I managed to miss in the cinema, I watched The Last Samurai and Cold Mountain.
The Last Samurai was visually gorgeous, and for the most part a good film with many of the ingredients destined to endear it to me - a broken, messed-up hero, the willingness to take time with establishing relationships, lots of quiet scenes instead of a non-stop action thing, and of course the American-in-Japan thing pressed some Shogun buttons.
However. My big problem is that I can't stop my brain from pointing out the highly questionable ideology. The film leaves it deliberately vague what exactly Katsemura and his fellow Samurai are fighting for, other than some phrases about bushido as code of honor. Presumably because any more details would leave us with the unpleasant truth that the old feudal Japan the Samurai wanted to keep was a strict caste system, with themselves as the priviledged caste. The Meiji reforms didn't just disarm the Samurai and started to establish a modern army; they gave peasants for the first time rights, so they couldn't be killed by whatever Samurai felt like killing them. The idyllic village where Cruise's character recovers as a symbol of old Japan is all very well, but I think Clavell was more honest with his depiction of the village Anjiro, which fulfills a much similar purpose in Shogun - it's beautiful, it's peaceful, and if you had the misfortunate of offending your lord, he could execute you on the spot. (And if you're a woman, you can be given away as a present.)
On the surface, it seems that Last Samurai as an anti-colonialist agenda, since the modern weaponry is associated with growing American influence and advisors. Moreover, Cruise's character is haunted by what he did to the Indians and you can read him siding with the Samurai against the modern army as a way of trying to atone. But fighting because you don't want to loose a position of privilege (even though it is never phrased this way in the picture) is quite different from fighting because you don't want your land being taken away.
And then there is the whole question of suicide heroics. Mind you, given the Japanese attitude towards suicide and the fact that the American colonel is (much like Marcus Cole on B5) looking for something worthy to die for pretty much from the start, it's not that the characters' bahaviour rings psychologically false. However, there is an inherent paradox in letting the American describe Custer as a vain gloryhound and a butcher who was responsible for the death of his men on the one hand, while positioning that Katsamuro's last stand was something worthy and honorable on the other. It got everyone (except the fictional Colonel) on his side killed, it killed a lot of conscript soldiers who had no choice about being there on the other, and it achieved absolutely nothing. Which they knew before it began. (As opposed to the battle at the Termophylae, to which the Colonel compares it - that one actually kept the Persians back for some days and thus bought important time for the other Greek states.) (Or, to use a fictional example from a recent film and old book, Theodén and the Rohirrim riding to the rescue at Pelennor Fields. They knew they'd die in all likelihood, but they did it to at least try and help the people of Gondor survive.)
I suppose pointless suicide charges just push buttons with me. I immediately get WWI associations and start quoting Wilfrid Owen, angry at those who order them which obviously I was not meant to be in The Last Samurai.
Cold Mountain is based on a novel by Charles Frazier I haven't read, and was directed by Anthony Minghella whose films The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley I loved. Mr. Minghella is decidedly not into war heroics; at the start of the movie, you get a blood-soaked butchery of a battle which demonstrates this drastically and makes more than clear why Immon, played by Jude Law, is ready to desert.
I've read reviews complaining they couldn't buy the premise of the movie, i.e. the fact Immon and Ada, the two main characters, have only a few awkward conversations and one passionate kiss and that this motivates Immon to make his long way home, and Ada to hope for his return throughout the war. I didn't have that problem; it was clear to me that they were symbols of hope for each other, more than real people, and that they desperately needed such hope. (Now if the film had actually ended with Immon and Ada living happily ever after, I would have doubted that and at the very least would have thought they needed a lot of time to get to know each other, but this didn't happen.) Jude Law as Immon was especially good; you believed he was a traumatized, shell-shocked soldier. (Okay, the beard helped to reduce Law's natural flawless looks, but it's mostly body language which does the trick.)
I enjoyed Renee Zellweger as Ruby, though I thought the Oscar for this was a bit much. Ruby is what John Rhys-Davies, talking about his own role as Rodrigues in Shogun, has called "a fireproof part"; a take-charge extrovert with amusing lines who plays off marvelously of the straight-laced hero(ine). Now I'm a tad prejudiced, but I thought Nathalie Portman, with far less screentime, demonstrated a greater range as Sara, the young mother who takes Immon in for a while. The scene in which Sara begs for her baby's life and gets raped by a Union soldier is harrowing enough, but the deleted scene on the DVD where we see it was too late after all, that the baby had frozen to death, and watch Sara come out to Immon, take his pistol and kill herself is devastating.
Alas, my problem with Cold Mountain was an actress I usually like, Nicole Kidman as Ada. I thought Nicole Kidnman was wonderful in The Others (for which she would have deserved the Oscar - I'll never understand why they nominated her for Moulin Rouge instead), and really good as Virginia Woolf in The Hours as well, but here she simply paled, and that wasn't because Ruby was the extrovert. Perhaps it was because of that other Southern belle becoming a tough survivor, Scarlett O'Hara. It's been more than 60 years, but Vivien Leigh's performance still holds up. In several reviews I've read, critics claimed they couldn't believe Ada was getting desperate and hungry and then working with Ruby because Kidman always looked drop-dead gorgeous, her costumes neatly fitting. But I checked my memory and found that - typical for old Hollywood - Vivien Leigh's costumes as Scarlett always fitted as well, and she always looked drop-dead gorgeous, too. Still, when Scarlett breaks down and desperately searches for radishes in a former slave garden, then throws up, then rises and swears "I'll never go hungry again", I believe her. I believe she's hungry, I believe that the last of the spoiled girl dies in that moment, and that she'll do anything not to go hungry again, never mind that a screenframe would show me Vivien Leigh looking not starved. Because of the emotional power of the performance.
Ada, now. Ada's transformation from Pastor's daughter to Ruby's comrade is all too easily achieved, there is no equivalent of such a scene, and it has only positive results. (Whereas with Scarlet you can see the increasing ruthlessness and increasing selfishness that come with being a tough survivor.) So this was the one part where the film left me cold, no pun intended.
Lastly, now that I've some more icon space, I decided I must have a Xavier and Magneto icon. Will hunt for same immediately. Who needs Wolverine if you can have Charles and Erik?
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 10:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 10:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 10:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 10:40 am (UTC)Of the entire film I was most taken with the initial battle scene. The shots of the ground so soaked in blood as to make mud - it was as intense as the storming Normandy scene from Saving Private Ryan - brutal, dirty, chilling, and yet surreal. Having never been in battle, I can only imagine that the experience is like some sort of terrible waking dream, where everything moves too slowly yet too quickly, and everything is screaming, but silent; where the color's off and the picture's out of focus. That first scene had all that.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 10:55 am (UTC)Oh, me too. He has such a wonderful visual imagination.
I didn't realize the baby had frozen to death; I think, because of the sounds that came from the cabin before Sarah shot herself, I assumed she'd killed the baby.
Hm, now I'd have to rewatch, but the baby looked completely frozen to me, and I thought the sounds were Sarah herself. Again, will have to rewatch to make sure.
But it was an incredible scene, and I'm sorry they left it out.
I can just see some screentest person declaring it too depressing. (Because without out, you're left to assume Immon has managed to save Sarah and the kid.) When he leaned his head against the roasting pork in resignation but did not try to stop her - ouch, ouch, ouch. And as I said before, I thought Nathalie Portman was great in that role.
Of the entire film I was most taken with the initial battle scene. The shots of the ground so soaked in blood as to make mud - it was as intense as the storming Normandy scene from Saving Private Ryan - brutal, dirty, chilling, and yet surreal. Having never been in battle, I can only imagine that the experience is like some sort of terrible waking dream, where everything moves too slowly yet too quickly, and everything is screaming, but silent; where the color's off and the picture's out of focus. That first scene had all that.
Yes, it did, and the comparison occured to me, too. Actually, I think it is even more effective, because the Normandy sequence is framed by the very first scene - the veteran plus family arriving at the graveyard, flaggs prominently displayed - and the very last scene of the movie, with again flaggs and veteran whom we now know to be Ryan and family. The implication being that the Normandy sequence might have been horrible slaughter, but was worth it both on a big picture level and for saving one man's life in particular.
The battle in Cold Mountain, otoh, had no such frame, and the film never stated, in either text or subtext, that the slaughter had been worth it. It's a stark war-as-butchery depiction, and as I said - afterwards, you're so with Immon deserting.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 10:54 am (UTC)I haven't seen either of those films, but I will now check into renting Samurai.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 11:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 11:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 03:03 pm (UTC)I saw this film in the cinema and looking back on what I wrote at the time it turns out that the characters I felt the most sympathy for were Natalie Portman and...the goat. I agree that Jude Law was good and I also felt that something was off with Nicole Kidman. Her performance just seemed cold to me and that made the film a little too distant. The whole thing was beautiful to look at but I didn't feel the characters' emotions, apart from Natalie Portman's. I'm not surprised there was a deleted scene as I thought that whole section ended too quickly. It sounds completely harrowing.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 09:04 pm (UTC)You've got to watch The Others, though, to see what Nicole Kidman can do when she's on. I really don't know what was the matter with her here.
It sounds completely harrowing.
It is. Brrrr.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-22 02:35 am (UTC)No, me neither. I was left wondering if she and Anthony Minghella just didn't suit each other or something. I haven't seen The Others (it's on our To Be Watched list) but I've been watching Nicole since before she was famous (Bangkok Hilton with Denholm Elliot) and I don't think I've ever seen her be quite so disengaged in a film before.
Speaking of Anthony Minghella: if you haven't seen Truly, Madly, Deeply yet you should!
no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 05:24 pm (UTC)I think my main problem with Cold Mountain was that I was looking for one thing while they were giving me another. I had a problem with the ending of the film because I sort of wanted to see if a relationship that had been idealized to that extent could be kept up in real life and the problems that would go along with it. Obviously the author of the book had different ideas!
no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 09:06 pm (UTC)Do you still have a link?
I had a problem with the ending of the film because I sort of wanted to see if a relationship that had been idealized to that extent could be kept up in real life and the problems that would go along with it. Obviously the author of the book had different ideas!
It would have been a separate novel, and film, starting with a changed ending. As I said, since they didn't end up together, I had no problem with it, because it didn't leave me wondering how on earth they were going to deal with each other on a day to day basis now. Which I agree would have been a subject worth writing or filming about by itself.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 09:23 pm (UTC)It really would have been a separate movie... it's probably unfortunate that I went in expecting the focus to be on the Ada/Inman relationship, thanks to trailers, as opposed to a movie on war and its dehumanizing effects.