Movies I Actually Love, Part I

I have mentioned time and again how much I dislike cinema. It pretends to be art but almost always fails to live up to the claim. As entertainment, it is too authoritarian for my taste. There are, however, several films that I love and consider to be as close to works of art as any movies can be. Here they are in no particular order.

1. Before Almodovar sold himself out to Hollywood and started churning out idiotic tear-jerkers of the Hable con ella and Todo sobre mi madre variety, he was actually a great movie-maker. What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984) is, in my opinion, his greatest work. Every frame, every move of every actor, every single word are absolutely amazing. I really wish we could have the early Almodovar back, but obviously that's not going to happen.

2. Before Javier Bardem sold himself out to Hollywood and became the new favorite lap dog of the egregiously untalented Penelope Cruz, he was one of the most gifted actors of his generation. Mondays in the Sun (2002) is so professionally and beautifully made and Bardem is so incredibly good in it that I can't stop watching this film. I'm now on my second DVD because I watched the first one so many times that it became useless.

3. El verdugo (1963) or Executioner by Luis Garcia Berlanga is a classic of Spanish cinema. It is a very quiet, low-key portrayal of how easily and casually one can slip into performing acts of atrocity in the most mundane way possible. In many ways, this film is very symbolic of what the entire XXth century has been like.

4. In case you think I only like Spanish-language movies, you are wrong. Crash (1996) by David Cronenberg (not to be confused with a 2004 film by the same name) is a brilliant movie. It has been criticized by prissy viewers and film critics. Nevertheless, it is one of the most insightful cinematic analyses of sexuality that I have ever seen. The movie's tone is subdued to the point of being flat which is precisely what makes it standout against the background of regular Hollywood concoctions that attempt to deal with sex. Hollywood film-makers and audiences are so terrified of sexuality that they talk, cry, babble and prattle it to death.

5. As I said many times before, nobody knew how to make movies like the Russians. It's very difficult to choose one film that I consider to be the best among the incredible production of the Soviet filmmakers. I guess, Unfinished Piece for the Player Piano (1978) has got to be the winner from the Soviet epoch. The film is based on a play by Anton Chekhov. Chekhov is obviously a genius and making a film based on his work is a huge challenge. Nikita Mikhalkov, the director, used to be so good that he created a version of Chekhov which is better than the original. This is also the only film where Mikhalkov delivers a great performance as an actor. (His acting talents are extremely limited but here he was really good.) Forget about the plot of this movie, just observe how beautifully the director creates the ambiance. The actors are phenomenal, as usual in Soviet movies. 

6. From the post-Soviet era, I recommend Heart of a Dog (1988). This movie is based on a novel by one of the greatest Russian writers of the XXth century, Mikhail Bulgakov. Once again, as amazing as the novel is, the film manages to be almost as good. Unlike the previous movie I listed here, I don't think this one exists with English subtitles. Which is a shame because non-Russian movie-lovers are losing out on something huge here.

(To be continued. . .)

So Has the Movie Atlas Shrugged Already Been Released?

And if so, then why isn't it showing at our local movie theater? I haven't been able to find it anywhere in St. Louis either. I absolutely need to watch this movie, people. Even if I have to schlep all the way to Springfield. And yes, I'm sure that the book must have been mangled horribly in the course of making the movie, but still I have to see it for myself.

Has anybody seen it? Any impressions to share?

A Weird Classification of Transgressions

The movie Sex and the City is on television right now, and I find it as mysterious as when I watched it the first time. One friend's husband cheats on her, and all her friends insist that it's not a big deal and she should forgive him. Another friend's fiance doesn't show up for some stupid, super elaborate wedding ceremony, and everybody supports her in dumping him for that. The second friend (who's in her forties, mind you) starts a huge melodrama because of this silly botched wedding and everybody treats her ridiculous suffering with respect. The first friend doesn't seem to be entitled to a similar (or any) bout of depression because of what happened to her.

Isn't it ridiculous when people earnestly see formalities as more important than the actual content of a relationship? 

The Motorcycle Diaries: A Review

The Free Dictionary offers the following definition of the word "hagiography":

1. Biography of saints.2. A worshipful or idealizing biography

Both these definitions fit Walter Salles's film The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) perfectly. I can only imagine how much Che Guevara would have hated this cheesy, saccharine movie that presents him as a Christian saint / eunuch. 

Gael Garcia Bernal who plays the young Ernesto Guevara is an extremely talented actor. However, he is the last person in the world who should have been cast as Che. Garcia Bernal has a non-macho masculinity that helped him give the performance of his life as a gay teenager in Y tu mama tambien. The first word that comes to my mind whenever I see Garcia Bernal is "sensitive." He is simply unsuited to play a super macho Che Guevara who raved in his diaries about the joys of never washing himself and developing a strong, manly stench.

Of course, like any good saint, Ernesto Guevara of The Motorcycle Diaries resists temptations and performs miracles. He guards his virtue fiercely, even though his best friend, played by the amazing Rodrigo de la Serna, tries to undermine his companion's chastity by offering an example of free and exuberant sexuality. Ernesto also walks on water and cures lepers with his touch in a scene whose Biblical motifs are so strong as to render the whole film unpalatable. The efforts of the creators of this movie to present Ernesto Guevara as an unblemished, sensitive, romantic character end up producing a cardboard figure without a shred of humanity. 

In many ways, Che Guevara is a terrifying figure. A middle-class guy with a good education, he could have practiced medicine and lived comfortably in Argentina. Instead, he chose to become a guerrillero. This man, who'd been trained to cure people, enjoyed participating in executions of those who were branded as counter-revolutionaries. He was fascinated with filth in the most literal sense. Even when his revolution won in Cuba, Che demonstrated that he was one of those revolutionaries who were only happy fighting and destroying. His attempts to inscribe himself into the peaceful process of post-revolutionary rebuilding was a failure.

Movies like The Motorcycle Diaries and books like the one I blogged about earlier today serve the goal of taming the image of the incomprehensible and terrifying revolutionary, transforming him from a figure that threatens the society of consumers into a convenient object of consumption.

The Adjustment Bureau: A Review

For some reason I never realized that The Adjustment Bureau was supposed to be a romantic comedy. I never watch romantic comedies because the whole genre is too saccharine and cliché-ridden for my taste. I thought that The Adjustment Bureau was more along the lines of Inception so I went to see it.

Contrary to what one expects from the genre, the movie is not half bad. None of the actors is particularly annoying or talentless, which is a rare occurrence for a Hollywood movie. There are some really funny jokes at the expense of politicians, and who doesn't like to have a good laugh over the politicians' hypocrisy and ugliness?

One thing, however, left a bad aftertaste. The female lead dumps her fiancé right in the courtroom where they are supposed to get married and runs away with a guy whom she met casually a long time ago but who is the true love of her life. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you can't meet a person and realize within minutes that this is the most important person in your life and that you will love them forever. Of course, you can. What bothers me, however, is this idea that a person you shared years of your life with can be discarded in a matter of seconds. Even if the relationship sucked, even if you were sick and tired of the person, it still is never easy to leave behind all of the memories, the shared experiences, the traditions, the private jokes that can't fail to accumulate over the years.

I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't dump partners who bore them or whom they don't really love for the sake of a suddenly awakened passion towards somebody else. I think they most definitely should. A loveless life is a life wasted, in my opinion. However, I can't imagine what kind of an emotionally undeveloped monster could dump the previous partner for a virtual stranger without a single pang. 

What's curious, though, is that there are hundreds of movies that insist on presenting precisely this scenario as the recipe for true passion. If this sells, that should mean people are buying it. Probably, so many people are deeply miserable in their personal lives that the fantasy of running away without a second thought proves cathartic.

P.S. I'm really hoping that nobody will leave comments of the "Relationships are hard work" bent. They are not supposed to be, and I'm definitely not trying to elicit this platitude by criticizing another one.

Why I Don't Like the Movie The Lives of Others

I know that most people adore The Lives of Others and find this movie very touching. I, however, could never get into it because of how wrong it gets many of the most basic details of the characters' daily existence. I don't like Cold War rhetoric and imagery because of how reductive and unintelligent they are. It's always the good versus the evil, and it doesn't matter which side of the Iron Curtain you are on. The verbiage is the same and the desire to reduce complex realities to a bunch of cheesy stereotypes is omnipresent. Both sides judge each other according to their own, very limited ideology, without ever trying to understand that things might be a little bit more complex.

During the Soviet times, my father always listened to the BBC (secretly, of course) at night. "They are fools, all Westerners are fools," he would fume in the morning. "Last night they said that there were human rights abuses in the USSR which consisted of people not being allowed to travel freely abroad. They have no idea about who we are and how we live. I have a PhD in linguistics and I have to leave aside my research and spend the entire next week sorting rotten cabbage. But, sure, not being able to travel abroad is my main concern."

I was reminded of this reductive Cold War mentality as I was watching The Lives of Others. The filmmakers so obviously made their film with the goal of selling it to Americans that it was painful to watch. Take, for example, that scene where the character who works for the Stasi comes to his BARE apartment, where he lives ALONE, eates a plate of spaghetti with KETCHUP and invites a PROSTITUTE over to his apartment. I mean, how much more ridiculous than that can you get? And, of course, if a movie is so careless with the minor details, how can you expect it to deliver anything more reliable in terms of the big picture? The result is this unbearably cheesy Americanized fantasy about what life behind the Berlin Wall was like. A fantasy that has nothing to do with reality.

Black Swan: A Review

The saddest thing is that this could have been a really good movie. The story, the directing, the photography, the supporting cast were very impressive. The beautiful music obviously didn't hurt. This could have been a powerful work that pondered issues of artistic awakening and the nature of creativity, a Künstlerroman in the true meaning of the word. This could have really worked. Could have - if it weren't for the imponderable decision to cast the Queen of Vapid, a.k.a. Natalie Portman, in the leading role.

For some incomprehensible reason, Portman is in vogue right now. Every other movie out there is rendered horrible by her insipid presence and annoying lisp. Portman has two facial expressions in her arsenal: blank face with her mouth closed and blank face with her mouth half-open. Every single emotion is conveyed by either mouth closed or mouth half-open. I don't know how she manages to keep her facial muscles in such a rigid state at all times: Botox? facial paralysis? natural vacuousness? Whatever it is, this peculiarity incapacitates her completely as an actress. She looks down, sees a shard of glass sticking out of her belly, mouth half-opens, a blank stare: what on Earth is she thinking? Good? Bad? Fun? Painful? Something? Anything?

The entire experience of watching Black Swan is poisoned by the need to guess what emotions Portman's character is supposed to be conveying. Trying to deduce anything from her frozen face and vapid stare is beyond painful. The scenes where Portman appears against Mila Kunis make her look even more pathetic. Kunis is no actress of the century but at least there is some acting capacity there (Ukrainians rule!). Kunis simply kills Portman in every single scene.

An alternative reading of the film is that Portman's character is supposed to be so overworked and exhausted by starvation and endless purging that she has no energy to experience, let alone express, any emotion. I wish I had been informed of this interpretation before I watched the movie. Then, I might have avoided the constant and fatiguing attempts to guess the character's feelings and intentions. I still believe, however, that the truth here is that Portman is simply devoid of any acting talent whatsoever.

Why Is Eat, Pray, Love So Popular?

We have already discussed the imperialistic and racist dimensions of Eat, Pray, Love. Today, a movie based on this book is coming out and it is predicted to be a huge success. So why is there such a huge (mostly female) following the book and movie about what one reviewer calls a "pampered princess on constant display" with a "petulant, overblown ego"?

Female life choices are still pretty limited. Marriage and babies are touted as an only acceptable path for women from the TV and the movie screens, newspaper and magazine pages. Even within this limited model there are further limitations: planning the wedding the right way, giving birth the right way, breast-feeding the right way, bonding with the baby the right way, even holding the baby the right way. Female weight, appearance, mode of behavior, drinking habits, the volume of women's voices, etc. are endlessly policed. We are routinely stopped in the street by complete strangers and exhorted to smile, lose weight, quit smoking, and (as happened to me the other day) stop reading.

It is no surprise that women are sick and tired of this restrictive model. They gulp down rubbish like Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia because it offers a celebration of an escape from the obligatory marriage and motherhood, from the ubiquitous and unattainable standards of female thinness, from the condemnation of women who put their own pleasure before the that of men and children.

What saddens me is that this female discontent is not being channelled in the direction of political activism. Feminism does not have much to offer to these women since "choice feminists" have made the movement completely toothless. "Choice feminism" proposes that the greatest freedom women can desire is the freedom to be obedient little consumers. It is terrified of questioning any aspect of the gender status quo. The two major ruling parties in the US (which are mirrored by regional equivalents petty much everywhere in the West), have no use for women. Hatred of women is part of the Republican agenda. As for the Democrats, the first thing that Obama did when he came to power was to sell out women. Politically, such topics as parental leave, accessible and affordable daycare, equal pay, etc.  are dead. If politicians talk about women at all, it is to patronize us and condescend to us. Women are needed to come to the polls, vote, and shut the hell up afterwards. Which is what women do because, as usual, the eternal female role is to do what men want them to.

Until there is a legitimate political force interested in channeling female discontent into activism, women will have no alternative but to escape into idiotic fantasies like the one offered by Eat, Pray, Love.

If You Hate the Hype Around "Eat, Pray, Love" As Much As I Do

As if it weren't enough to be bombarded by incessant advertising for Elizabeth Gilbert's insipid Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, Hollywood now made a film based on it that' starring Julia Roberts. Now one has to be persecuted by the pushy advertisement of both novelistic and cinematic versions of this cultural imperialist journey.

If you are as annoyed by the whole eat-pray-love phenomenon as I am, check out this great post that analyzes the imperialist ethos of this book/movie.

I can't resist adding a great quote from this talented blogger:

There is a vampiric assumption among white class-privileged U.S. people that the rest of the world is, variously: our backyard; our playground and war (battle) ground; our swimming pool; our diamond mine; our lumberyard; our petrol refueling station; our garbage dump; our marketplace and mall; our international cafe and restaurant; our summer home and winter resort; our sea-shell collection site; our South Pacific and Caribbean get-away paradise; out dating hot spot; our sex club and brothel; our predatory child-, transgender-, and woman-rape is-not-a-crisis centers; and our wage and sex slave trafficking post--actually there are hundreds of international stop-and-shop "trading" locations.

Read more at the link above.

Inception: A Feminist Review

Underneath all the really impressive special effects and the sci-fi content, Inception offers a replay of the archetypal male fears of female sexuality. In this sense, the movie follows the conventions of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. A dark and brooding Mr. Rochester with a daunting past is here played by a blond and brooding Leonardo DiCaprio with an equally painful past. Both men are obsessed with control. What they are trying to control so desperately is the irrational sphere of emotions and dreams associated with women.

Both Mr. Rochester and Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception are haunted by their wives who represent a raw, uncontrollable sexuality that threatens the obsession with control that drives these men. Both men manipulate their wives into what they see as 'insanity' and hide them either in the attic or in the basement. Both are helped in their quest to liberate themselves from the influence of their wives by a woman who embodies a completely different type of femininity: boyish, asexual, and fully dedicated to maintaining the world of logic and control at the expense of everything sexual, sensual, and irrational. The female lead in Inception is played by Ellen Page whose big head on a 10-year-old's body symbolizes her rejection of everything female.

Even some small details that were present in Jane Eyre  reappear in Inception. A huge knife wielded by Berta Rochester is picked up by the main character's wife. A jump out of a window plays a similarly crucial role in both works.  And, of course, the feeling of male terror that comes as a response to being confronted with the threat of an uncontrollable female sexuality informs both the novel and the movie in a very similar way.

What Inception teaches us is that no matter how many special effects you pile up, some things remain the same throughout history.

Sex and the City 2

I only just discovered that a second sequel to "Sex and the City" is coming out in May. This is very annoying. The TV show was sexist and patrirachal but at least it was funny. The movie sequel was excruciatingly boring, had way too many product placements, and was even more outrageously sexist.

And now yet another movie sequel. How many more times do we need to hear that women are pathetic little idiots who can only be happy as housewives? Enough already with the stupid Sex and the City!

Troubled Water: A Review

Last night, I watched this really great film Troubled Water by a Norwegian director Erik Poppe. As I mentioned before, I don't really like movies and I don't watch them a lot. And now I know why. The simple reason is that very few movies are as good as this one. This is definitely not one of those sad Hollywood monstrosities that aim to prevent you from having a single thought by any means possible. This film does not attempt to benumb the spectators by an endless assault of noises, colors, flashes, explosions, colorful images, etc. It actually leaves the viewers some space to think, analyze, and simply to exist. Troubled Water does not attempt to rob me of my humanity and my human agency, unlike the stupid Hollywood productions.

This is the kind of film that works through powerful acting and great directing. There are no cheap thrills in Troubled Water. No special effects, no monsters or vampires, no explosions, 3D effects, unrealistic car chases, etc. There is just life, human existence, normal people trying to figure out important stuff.

Instead of silicone-inflated cyborg-like individuals who pass for actors in Hollywood, this film has actors who actually look like real, normal people. We are so used to the assembly-line faces and bodies of Hollywood characters, that the actors in Troubled Water look refreshingly attractive. As attractive as only real human beings can be. And these actors even know how to act.

I'm not going to retell the plot of the movie here. Because great art is not about the plot. The story is never as important as the artistic means employed to transmit it. I will only say that Troubled Water is a film that makes you want to come back to it over and over.

Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story": A Review

Finally, I managed to watch Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story. Living in Southern Illinois since before the film came out made this task very hard. This is, obviously, not an area where Michael Moore's documentaries run to sold out theatres. People prefer the blessed forgetfulness offered to them by the typical Hollywood swill.

First of all, I have to say that whatever you feel about his ideology Michael Moore knows how to make good documentaries. Every frame offers a perfect conjunction of text and accompanying image. The documentary is as engaging as a good mystery film. This is simply very high-quality film-making.

Most of the things Moore narrates are sadly familiar to all of us: foreclosures, businesses failing, unemployment, economically devastated areas that look worse than anything you can find in many third-world countries, the useless and horribly unfair bailouts, the back room deals by Paulson, Geithner, Bush and Co, Obama getting bought out by the same crowd of vile criminals the second he gets close to presidency. We have seen all this unfold, and it's impossible not to recognize that everything Moore shows is true. Many instances in the movie are touching and sad, while many others are hilarious (For example, Moore says after rereading the US Constitution: "The Constitution doesn't mention capitalism. But it does talk about 'welfare' and 'union'. Wait, welfare and union? That sound like a very different -ism!")

Now, after all I have said in praise of Capitalism: A Love Story, I have to say that I disagree with Moore's central premise, which is capitalism is bad and it should be substituted by something better, namely democracy. I'm sure Moore understands extremely well that you can't substitute one with another since democracy is a political system and capitalism is an economic one. He uses the word "democracy" in order to avoid saying the word that scares the regular movie-going people, namely "socialism."

To support his view that socialism is better, Moore tells a story of a business owned by all its workers together. Every decision is made jointly by the workers in a democratic-style voting process. I'm glad this system works for the company Moore describes in the movie. However, this could never work on a larger scale. If anything, a smooth running of his business is a huge exception. I, for one, do not want to run my place of work. It's not my job and I don't want it to be my job. Some people are good at being managers, organizers, and the leaders of people. Other people are not. Working collectively on a shared project is an impossible burden for some people. There is no doubt in my mind that not having one actual owner will bankrupt an absolute majority of businesses very soon.

The reality that Moore doesn't address is that the current economic system in the US is not really capitalist. In many ways, it is eerily similar to the Soviet economy. In the Soviet Union, huge amounts of government money would go to bail out companies that could not survive on their own. If there were a real capitalism in the US, Goldman Sachs would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. The way capitalism works is that if you are inept enough to bankrupt your company, you are pushed off the market by more capable competitors. Goldman Sachs has long been completely incapable of an honest win over anybody else. They are kept in place by a complex system of Soviet-style handouts. This is as contrary to capitalism as anything can possibly be.

As a living system that exists in an ever-changing society, capitalism constantly transforms in order to adapt itself to a different set of conditions. The "wild" capitalism of the XIX and the early XX centuries did not really work. As a result, a system of checks and balances (e.g. the Glass-Steagall Act in the US) arose to help it work better. The repeal of Glass-Steagall was a profoundly anti-capitalist act aimed at allowing a small group of people an unfair and 100% manufactured advantage over their competitors.

I was born in the Soviet Union and I know for a fact that collective ownership of anything does not work. In the society where I grew up, there was an insurmountable distance between the rich and the poor. A small group of people had everything they could possibly want, while the rest was struggling to survive. And the worst part was that there was no hope for anybody from the poor category to move into the rich category. The membership in the rich category was determined by one's birth to a certain set of circumstances and by the number of indignities one was prepared to commit. Within the group of the rich people, it did not matter how bad a job they did at running their workplaces because there was also the government to bail them out with the money ripped off from the poor in the form of taxes.

Does this remind you of anything? Exactly.

So it makes no sense to discuss whether capitalism is goo for the United States. Simply because there is no real capitalism here. All we have is some weird, unhealthy hybrid of the remains of capitalism and some of the characteristics of the Soviet economy.

Does anybody really wonder why this doesn't work?

The film, however, is lots of fun. I highly recommend.

Brothers: A Review

I only go to the movies maybe once a year. So this review of Brothers with Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman, and Jake Gyllenhaal will probably be my one and only movie review of 2009.

Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD!

The movie shows a scarily typical American family that is leading a completely vapid, senseless, emotionless existence. Their food, their clothes, their pastimes are drab and boring. They are incapable of any real, profound human emotion or any thought that rises above the purely mundane. The only ways men in this family of sad, uneducated people can make a living are becoming a criminal or going into the military. When Sam, the responsible family man, is declared dead in action in Afghanistan, his widow Grace is kind of sad but not a whole lot. Sam's wayward brother Tommy starts hanging around, and Grace lets him occupy Sam's position in her life. She doesn't seem to care much one way or the other which one of the brothers repairs her kitchen,  plays with her daughters and engages in romantic interludes with her. Then Sam unexpectedly comes back, which is also kind of OK with the utterly vapid Grace, played convincingly by Natalie Portman, whose total lack of personality in real life suits this role perfectly.

Sam, who has gone through hell in Afghanistan, feels that he cannot learn to reinscribe himself into this world of interchangeable, wives, husbands, children, siblings, and friends. Everybody expects him to suck it up and resume the kind of existence he led before his horrible war experiences. However, Sam actually grew some personality during his captivity and torture. He is incapable of understanding this empty kind of life any more, let alone actually living it

The powerful and painful message of this movie is that some people can only be shaken out of the stupor they live in by something as horrible as what Sam goes through in Afghanistan. At the end of the film, Sam goes into a psychiatric facility. Apparently, he will have to undergo therapy in order to be cured of his newly found humanity. Then, he can attempt to join the world of robots represented by his family members.

Mondays in the Sun

Mondays in the Sun is my favorite movie in the entire world. I watched it a dozen   times already and still want to watch it again and again. It starts the incredibly gifted Javier Bardem before he sold out to Hollywood and became the silly Penelope Cruz's plaything of the month.
This film is not the typical Hollywood-style face-in-a-cake happy-ending fare. Mondays in the Sun is a very profound and realistic portrayal of the lives of laid-off shipyard workers in Spain and the ways in which unemployment damages their male identity. This amazing film is a reminder that movies don't have to be just one more brainless and tasteless kind of mass entertainment. It is still possible to make films that are works of art.

Every actor in this film plays beautifully and poignantly. The economy of artistic means is impressive. There are no stupid special effects, no excessive sentimentality that kills most Hollywood productions. Altogether, this is simply an incredibly well-made work of cinematographic art.

What's Feminist about Steel Magnolias?

Yesterday I felt absolutely exhasuted after all my classes and meetings. So I felt like spending the evening watching some good old feminist classic by way of relaxation.
was on, so I decided to watch it because I always heard people refer to it as a profoundly feminist film. It is also a perennial staple of "Feminist Film" courses.

Boy, was I in for a disappointment! This poorly made, boring flick is nothing if not profoundly patriarchal. The main story line revolves around a young woman who is willing to risk her life and die (which happens in the end) in order to produce a baby. Because the central goal of a woman's life is to make babies. Unless you can fulfill this goal, you are incomplete. So of course, the only reasonable thing to do is for a woman literally to kill herself in an attempt to produce a baby.

There are many other female characters who are mainly dedicated to endless hen-like clucking around the protagonist's attempts to have a baby, as well as interminable conversations about hair-styles, weddings, husbands, etc.

Since the movie was excruciatingly boring, I started investigating the reasons for why some people see this patriarchal piece of rubbish as a feminist film par excellence. The only reason offered by the scholarly articles I encountered on the subject is that the movie "celebrates female camaraderie." This is a very weird understanding of feminism. Female friendships are great but the film is obviously not about that. In Steel Magnolias, we see women of all generations inhabiting a world of their own. It's a world of babies, beauty, and homemaking. It's a world of things that the patriarchal societies always mark as exclusively female. Men are supposed to be detached from these "womanly" interests and concerns, while women have no interest in the pursuits of men. The view of genders as profoundly divided by an unbridgeable chasm of difference is patriarchal. There is nothing feminist about it. Just as there is nothing feminist about this silly movie.

Is There a Decent Male Film Director?

I understand why a nasty pedophile Woody Allen would want to defend a fellow pedophile Polanski. But why does Pedro Almodovar join the group of losers who go out of their way to defend a disgusting vile rapist? What is it with these people? Do they think that the fact of having made a couple of half-decent kind-of-entertaining flicks should get them a get-out-of-jail card for any horrible crime they commit?

Among all the "stars" who offered their support to this vile prick, Almodovar is more or less the only one with some kind of talent. Of course, this talent is a thing of the past. As we all know, Almodovar has sold out to Hollywood some time ago and for the past 10 years of so has been making very low-quality Hollywood-type movies such as Todo sobre mi madre and Hable con ella. Recently, he proved that even these silly movies are beyond him and agreed to collaborate with Fox Studios to create a suburban drama on the basis of one of his best films. Evidently, Almodovar, who is being reduced to an old and dusty myth by dozens of young and truly talented Spanish film-makers, feels that any publicity is a good publicity. He doesn't know how to make films, so he tries to make waves by supporting the vile Polanski.

The list of shamelessly clueless individuals who are defendiing the dirty rapist Polanski goes on and on. It's a condemnation of our society that we tolerate such a bunch of repugnant idiots, celebrate them, and allow them to make tons of money off of us. Money that they use to escape justice and continue raping, violating, and torturing.

I will never watch another film by Scorcese, Polanski, Almodovar, and Allen. It isn't going to be hard at all, since it isn't like they are caapable of producing anything worthwhile any more.

Woody Allen: Chauvinism and Pedophilia

I don't know much about Hollywood movies. They have nothing to do with art and as for their entertainment  value, the best you can expect is extremely mediocre entertainment. I heard Woody Allen's name, of course, but never watched his movies. When I finally tried watching one of his films, I was so shocked by his chauvinism and his unapolgetic approval of pedophilia so much, that I had to turn the movie off after ten minutes. It was painful to watch how this famous director and actor promotes his unhealthy ideas about male-female relationships. It was even more painful to consider that he is so much applauded and celebrated for it.

Only yesterday I discovered that Woody Allen's personal life does not contradict his filmic approval of pedophilia. This shoscking information is from the Wikipedia: "During the proceedings, Farrow alleged that Allen had sexually molested their adopted daughter Dylan, who was then seven years old. The judge eventually concluded that the sex abuse charges were inconclusive,[52] but called Allen's conduct with Soon-Yi "grossly inappropriate." She called the report of the team that investigated the issue "sanitized and, therefore, less credible," and added that she had "reservations about the reliability of the report... After breaking his relationship from Farrow in 1992, Allen continued his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn. Even though Allen never married or lived with Farrow,[54] and was never Previn's legal stepfather, the relationship between Allen and Previn has often been referred to as a father dating his "stepdaughter," [55] since he had been perceived as being in the child's life in a father-like capacity since she was seven years old. For example, in 1991, The New York Times described Allen's family life by reporting, "Few married couples seem more married. They are constantly in touch with each other, and not many fathers spend as much time with their children as Allen does."[54] Despite assertions from Previn that Allen was never a father-figure to her,[56] the relationship became a cause célèbre. At the time, Allen was 56 and Previn was 22. Asked whether their age difference was conducive to "a healthy, equal relationship," Allen discounted the matter of equality and added this protestation: "The heart wants what it wants."" 

After reading this, I can't help but ask myself, do we as a society really value young girls so little as to find all of this acceptable? Why is the creator of really crappy movies so admired in spite of these horrible actions? How is it possible that a society that screeches about "moral values" on every corner should tolerate such egregious acts? Is anybody as disgusted with tis as I am?

What Ross Douthat Considers Sexy

I have to confess that after reading his most recent column in the New York Times, I started feeling kind of sorry for the poor guy. It turns out that two of Douthat's most favorite movies are the pre-pubescent silly comedies Knocked Up and The 40-Year Old Virgin. The reasons why he likes these truly idiotic films is are ideological (trust it to Douthat to find ideology even in something this inane): "They’ve made an effectively conservative message about relationships and reproduction seem relatable, funny, down-to-earth and even sexy." So staying a virgin until the age of 40 and an unwanted pregnancy are what Douthat finds sexy. As we have seen from his previous columns, Douthat's sex life is so miserable that he must be really lamenting not keeping his virginity for good (I wrote about the reasons for his hatred of women here and here .)

The director of these silly movies has just released a new film called Funny People. The lack of success of this movie makes Douthat really sad. I, however, see a lot of hope in this movie's failure. Maybe people are getting tired of this mindless kind of entertainment. Maybe they feel that they can finally have an agency in this world and don't need to numb themselves by Adam Sandler's stupid jokes and repetitive comic routines.

It's funny how Douthat's language always betrays certain truths that Douthat's badly digested conservatism prevents him from verbalizing. This is what he has to say about marriage: "More than most Westerners, Americans believe — deeply, madly, truly — in the sanctity of marriage." Douthat is right here, of course. Believing in the "sanctity" of any institution is, indeed, crazy. Believing in Judd Apatow's movies (which according to Douthat are based on "endless penis jokes and all") is even more insane. These films don't have a message, political or otherwise. All they do is provide us with completely mindless, escapist entertainment that we all need every once in a while. It doesn't oocur to anybody except Douthat, though, to take them seriously and build a political agenda around them.

Feminism and Soviet Movies

For the past couple of days, I've been watching this great Soviet mini-series called "Shadows Disappear at Noon." It was filmed in 1971 and it is a great example of the image of women cultivated in Soviet movies.

At the beginning of the series set in 1915, we see Maria, an illiterate day laborer who is a lover of a rich mill-owner and a mother of his illegitimate child. One day, the mill-owner and his buddies are making fun of Maria because of her marginalized social status. The mill-owner tells his friends that Maria loves him so much that he can make her do anything for him. To prove this point, he comes up to Maria and says: "If you go into the woods right now, armed with nothing but this small knife, and kill a bear for me and bring me his skin, I will finally marry you and give you my mill."

So Maria goes into the woods and reemerges after a while with a huge bear skin. "I'm so sorry for doing this, my dear," says the mill-owner. "Don't worry, now I'll marry you and you will be a co-owner of my mill." "I don't want your marriage, I don't want your mill, and I don't want you," responds Maria proudly. She leaves the village to become a factory worker in a big city and provide for her child. Later, she becomes politically active and turns into an inspirational leader. The mill-owner keeps following her around, begging her to give him a second chance.

In the rest of the mini-series, one can observe a curious ideological consistency: positive female characters are assertive, powerful, and head-strong. Negative female characters allow men to walk all over them.

This mini-series was one of the last examples of the long line of Soviet films that presented images of strong, assertive women as positive. By the end of the 70ies, characters like Maria started disappearing from the Soviet movie and TV screens to give way to sad, pathetic, weepy women, who feel that they have to deserve male attention at any cost.

P.S. In the episode I'm watching right now, a female character suspects that her neighbor is having an affair with her husband. She confronts her neighbor aggressively but the sisterhood wins almost immediately and both women ask each other for forgiveness and have a nice bonding moment. It's such a pleasure to watch a film that shows female solidarity as being way more important than fighting for a man's affection.