2010_6_22 The Tattoo that Roared
As Kai and I were leaving the theater after seeing “The Girl in the Dragon Tattoo” an old man with a slight tremor tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I had read the book. I told I had and I had started the second installment this morning. He had read all three already. “So what did you think of this film versus the book?” Without hesitation I said, “It is a bare bones travesty of the novel; the script left off a ton of stuff that made the book a more complete experience. “Yes,” he said, obviously confirmed in his own view.
They did boil the elements of the narrative down to their major highlights, while leaving out the connecting links, the slow mechanics of research and sleuthing, and minimizing the role of some characters, for the sake of brevity and compression. Now, this is standard practice in a movie based on a novel, but in this case some relevant material went begging, leaving the film a partial tracing of something much more complex. For example, Mikael Blomkvist two other female relationships, with Erika Berger, his co-editor and owner at MILLINIUM, the magazine both of them had started, and Ceilia Vanger, One of Henrik Vanger’s nieces, are barely mentioned. Lizbeth Salander, the girl with the tattoo, had a boss at Milton Security and her first Guardian; both were missing entirely. They were all cut out to focus in a lean and hungry way on the crime pattern which is, after all, the guts of the story.
I think I see why the book, the trilogy, has had such a phenomenal success. It pits two ‘Odd Couple’ sleuths against a wealthy and largely corrupt family and a shady financier who, with diligent research and imagination, the two amateur detectives bring down, the improbable victors on the side of truth, integrity and, in their fashion, liberal values. The Odd Couple is composed of Blomkvist, an investigative journalist, a conventional guy but a man dedicated to his profession, and the other a Goth female, always dressed in black, with black lipstick, rings in her nose, covered with tattoos, 25 years old, 4’ 11” & 90 lbs, very thin, flat-chested, and antisocial, with no social graces whatsoever, with a dark past of sexual abuse and god knows what else. She also happens to have a photographic memory; she is also a world class hacker and a brilliant researcher. Blomkvist is hired by 82 year old Henrik Vanger, the founder of the fortune and ex-CEO of the company, to investigate a cold case, the disappearance and probable murder of his favorite niece, Harriet Vanger, who vanished 36 years ago. The rest of the family is unhappy about this digging into family history and bitch about it from the get-go. Henrik knows the rest of the family is waiting for him to die; he knows how low-down and greedy they are—he doesn’t know the half of it.
Actually, Blomkvist and Salander are on parallel paths and don’t come together until page 320; once they come together the pace of the investigation picks up. Some old photographs provide then with the big break and they uncover the family demons; they discover not only sexual abuse, incest, and lingering Nazi sympathies involving dead and living brothers, but a gruesome history of serial killings of young women coming down to the present, approaching 25 t0 30 victims. In fact, the title of the movie in Swedish was “The Men Who Hated Women.” The CEO of the Vanger Business is Martin Vanger and he turns out to be the serial killer, picking up from where his father left off years ago. Their money and prestige protected them for decades. When Martin talks to Mikael about the murders he is furious with him for blowing his cover. He tells the journalist how he enjoyed torturing and snuffing out the lives of young women, most of them “prostitutes and immigrants, the kind of creatures no one would miss, and now you want to ruin my fun.”
The class element that emerges made me think of the case of Leopold and Loeb, the two bright rich boys in Chicago in the 1920s who killed a boy just for the fun of it and to see if they could get away with it. They were defended by Clarence Darrow in a famous trial. Martin, another rich prick with lust and murder as a pastime,
wanted to keep on butchering the “small people’ for amusement.
But it is Lizbeth Salander who is the star of the show. The actress is Noomi Rapace and she is perfect for the part; she has created a persona that rivals the Lizbeth in the novel. There is a rumor going around that David Fincher wants to do a version of the story, with maybe Daniel Craig as Blomkvist and Natalie Portman as Lizbeth. I don’t know, right now it hard to think someone else being Lizbeth, with that skinny little body and cold hard stare. Manohla Dargis her review in the New York Times called her a “devil doll.” Well, she figured out what Martin Vanger was under the gloss of a successful industrialist and because she did she was able saved Blomkvist from certain death. She was, when all was said and done, more guardian angel the devil doll.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Foot in Mouth Disease
2010-6-19 Foot in Mouth Disease
Dear Sally,
Would you believe that Texas Congressman, Joe Barton, called the $20 billion Obama insisted that BP put in an escrow account to cover future claims due to the oil spill in the Gulf, a “shakedown” and apologized to Tony Hayward for the president’s effrontery? I’d call that money reparation for BP irresponsibility for not having a Plan B to cope with this kind of catastrophic occurrence. When reporters checked on Barton they discovered he was snugly in bed with the Texas oil Industry, which explains his disregard of BP’s responsibility. But he wasn’t the only voice on the Far Right willing to shill for BP, a Multi-National Corporation, and part of a Cabal that seems to rule the global economy.
Numerous spokespersons--actually, the usual suspects—came out with sweeping criticism of the president who, they contended, overstepped his authority. Dick Armey called it “extortion” and unauthorized by the Constitution. Laura Ingraham and Michelle Bachman agreed, calling it unprecedented and unnecessary. I heard Rush Limbaugh do a mocking voiceover on Obama’s speech that was typical of the demagogic creep. He suggested the money would be channeled into his favorite projects, not to repair of the Gulf region. The appeal he has for so many Americans is an indicator of how desperate our “Take Back our Country” crowd really is. To have Limbaugh as the de facto head of the Republican Party is to invite disaster at the polls. But in the short term he bemoans the way of life that seems to be slipping away from white, racist Americans, tapping into the panic they feel about the current transformation of our society. Charles Krauthammer was equally denigrating in his Friday column, tagging the president as “dreamer in chief”and“fake healer” who was pushing a “costly false ‘green’ nirvana.”
It’s a funny thing how the Right thinks: When Bush acted unilaterally or by executive fiat they would say he was being presidential, but when Obama acts in the public interest in a national crisis they accuse him of “overreaching his authority” and pushing the country into “socialism.” I grew up in a Midwest household where FDR was greatly admired and where it was understood that the government had to intervene sometimes to protect the national interest in an economic crisis or in disasters like the oil spill. Government wasn’t a bogeyman to my family, or the problem, like Reagan liked to say. It could even rescue us at times; even the banks when absolutely necessary.
Actually, the best criticism of the president’s speech in the Oval Office came from the Left, from Rachel Maddow, who two days after the speech did a bit she called “the Fake President.” She gave the speech she would have preferred to have heard from Obama, one with a more insistent tone, some moral outrage, and with a more progressive agenda. If you missed it, Sally, you can find the tape on the Huffington Post. Rachel also pointed out what a blunder the Far Right was making by siding with BP, a big mistake that might pay off nicely for the Democrats in November, that is, if they have the savvy to run with it. The mistake is one of those knee-jerk things that conservatives are subject to in their hatred of Obama: they can’t resist heaping scorn and blame on him, whatever the issue. They are being very short-sighted here, as they didn’t think about the repercussions of their profound identification and allegiance to an uppity Multi-National Corporation that has called Gulf victims “the small people.” Voters will measure that allegiance against what damage the oil spill has done--the despoiling of the Gulf (for how long no one knows), the coastline and wet lands, the fishing industry, the wild life, the tourist industry, the culture, and how many people will be without jobs.
Jerry
Dear Sally,
Would you believe that Texas Congressman, Joe Barton, called the $20 billion Obama insisted that BP put in an escrow account to cover future claims due to the oil spill in the Gulf, a “shakedown” and apologized to Tony Hayward for the president’s effrontery? I’d call that money reparation for BP irresponsibility for not having a Plan B to cope with this kind of catastrophic occurrence. When reporters checked on Barton they discovered he was snugly in bed with the Texas oil Industry, which explains his disregard of BP’s responsibility. But he wasn’t the only voice on the Far Right willing to shill for BP, a Multi-National Corporation, and part of a Cabal that seems to rule the global economy.
Numerous spokespersons--actually, the usual suspects—came out with sweeping criticism of the president who, they contended, overstepped his authority. Dick Armey called it “extortion” and unauthorized by the Constitution. Laura Ingraham and Michelle Bachman agreed, calling it unprecedented and unnecessary. I heard Rush Limbaugh do a mocking voiceover on Obama’s speech that was typical of the demagogic creep. He suggested the money would be channeled into his favorite projects, not to repair of the Gulf region. The appeal he has for so many Americans is an indicator of how desperate our “Take Back our Country” crowd really is. To have Limbaugh as the de facto head of the Republican Party is to invite disaster at the polls. But in the short term he bemoans the way of life that seems to be slipping away from white, racist Americans, tapping into the panic they feel about the current transformation of our society. Charles Krauthammer was equally denigrating in his Friday column, tagging the president as “dreamer in chief”and“fake healer” who was pushing a “costly false ‘green’ nirvana.”
It’s a funny thing how the Right thinks: When Bush acted unilaterally or by executive fiat they would say he was being presidential, but when Obama acts in the public interest in a national crisis they accuse him of “overreaching his authority” and pushing the country into “socialism.” I grew up in a Midwest household where FDR was greatly admired and where it was understood that the government had to intervene sometimes to protect the national interest in an economic crisis or in disasters like the oil spill. Government wasn’t a bogeyman to my family, or the problem, like Reagan liked to say. It could even rescue us at times; even the banks when absolutely necessary.
Actually, the best criticism of the president’s speech in the Oval Office came from the Left, from Rachel Maddow, who two days after the speech did a bit she called “the Fake President.” She gave the speech she would have preferred to have heard from Obama, one with a more insistent tone, some moral outrage, and with a more progressive agenda. If you missed it, Sally, you can find the tape on the Huffington Post. Rachel also pointed out what a blunder the Far Right was making by siding with BP, a big mistake that might pay off nicely for the Democrats in November, that is, if they have the savvy to run with it. The mistake is one of those knee-jerk things that conservatives are subject to in their hatred of Obama: they can’t resist heaping scorn and blame on him, whatever the issue. They are being very short-sighted here, as they didn’t think about the repercussions of their profound identification and allegiance to an uppity Multi-National Corporation that has called Gulf victims “the small people.” Voters will measure that allegiance against what damage the oil spill has done--the despoiling of the Gulf (for how long no one knows), the coastline and wet lands, the fishing industry, the wild life, the tourist industry, the culture, and how many people will be without jobs.
Jerry
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Harry Brown
2010-6_16 Harry Brown
The night before I saw “Harry Brown,” a 2009 film starring Sir Michael Caine, which finally made it to Tucson, I saw”To Paris with love,” with John Travolta, as bald as a billiard ball, and Jonathan Rhys Myers in a silly action film that was strictly a comic book fantasy, as the two of them shoot their way through hordes of bad guys, terrorists, naturally—who else? Both films have plenty of horrendous violence, but presented much differently. In “Too Paris with Love” it’s all fun and video games, a lark, an action romp not to be taken seriously. Travolta is Charlie Wax, a loudmouth and uncouth Super-Operative with the CIA who is a specialist at killing the enemy while James Reece (Myers) is a low-level diplomat who dreams of being tough and smart like Wax, but who is hoodwinked by a pretty terrorist until he proves his manhood by shooting her in the forehead before she could complete her mission as a suicide bomber. We don’t believe any of this malarkey for one second; it’s all movie-making to satisfy the American appetite for action films—period. “Harry Brown,” on the other hand, is a dark, brooding film with a social conscience and a deeper aesthetic sense. It is a serious film with some good acting, especially from the old pro, Caine, and Sean Harris, who is scary as a drug-addled addict named Stretch. It is a walk through Hell with blinders off. Everything about the film is noir-like, dismal, enveloped by a nightmare and dripping with nihilism. I left the theater impressed by the craft of the film, but also feeling put upon by a spinning insane and violent world
Harry Brown is a pensioner living in a poor working class London neighborhood. Young thugs rule the projects. The film opens with a kid high on meth shooting a mother walking her baby in a stroller. The scene is shot with a hand-held camera, chaotically jumping all over the place, an expression of the nature of the projects. In the first part of the film Harry loses both his wife and his best bud, Len (David Bradley) who he had played chess with everyday in a Pub. His wife dies of natural causes but Len is murdered by the thugs who rule a tunnel near where Harry lives. Len is killed for no good reason; he’s just a stupid old man to the rowdies; who cares about him? Harry cares; indeed, something in him snaps over Len’s brutal death in the tunnel. This quiet and gentle old man, who has always tried to mind his own business, turns into this avenging and determined mad-dog killer. He is an ex-marine so he is no stranger to violence and death, although that part of his life was long ago. He becomes a vigilante who can kill with no remorse and who gives no quarter to his quarry. He kills five of the youths. The most memorable shooting takes place in the house that Stretch and an associate live in. He goes there to buy a gun from the psychotic Stretch. When he is given a clip for the hand gun and loads the Glock, he quickly dispatching the two dealers. They were not expecting such balls in a pensioner. He also rescued a young woman drugged and obviously in trouble, taking her to a hospital, thus saving her life.
Naturally, I, like other reviewers, thought of the “Dirty Harry” films and Charles Bronson of “Death Wish” fame. But I thought of another film that deserves mention, especially when Harry remarks the hooligans don’t have a cause, like the IRA, but are into violence as entertainment, as an evening’s pastime, an attitude first articulated in a major movie by Stanley Kubrick in “Clockwork Orange.” In that film young people would go out at night to find someone to beat up or kill. It was done as if they have nothing better to do at night. Harry manages to survive his battle with the hooligans and one could even say the film ends on a positive note, as the tunnel the gang had dominated and controlled is now open and available to everyone in the neighborhood as a short cut to destinations on the other side. It’s not much but it’s something.
The night before I saw “Harry Brown,” a 2009 film starring Sir Michael Caine, which finally made it to Tucson, I saw”To Paris with love,” with John Travolta, as bald as a billiard ball, and Jonathan Rhys Myers in a silly action film that was strictly a comic book fantasy, as the two of them shoot their way through hordes of bad guys, terrorists, naturally—who else? Both films have plenty of horrendous violence, but presented much differently. In “Too Paris with Love” it’s all fun and video games, a lark, an action romp not to be taken seriously. Travolta is Charlie Wax, a loudmouth and uncouth Super-Operative with the CIA who is a specialist at killing the enemy while James Reece (Myers) is a low-level diplomat who dreams of being tough and smart like Wax, but who is hoodwinked by a pretty terrorist until he proves his manhood by shooting her in the forehead before she could complete her mission as a suicide bomber. We don’t believe any of this malarkey for one second; it’s all movie-making to satisfy the American appetite for action films—period. “Harry Brown,” on the other hand, is a dark, brooding film with a social conscience and a deeper aesthetic sense. It is a serious film with some good acting, especially from the old pro, Caine, and Sean Harris, who is scary as a drug-addled addict named Stretch. It is a walk through Hell with blinders off. Everything about the film is noir-like, dismal, enveloped by a nightmare and dripping with nihilism. I left the theater impressed by the craft of the film, but also feeling put upon by a spinning insane and violent world
Harry Brown is a pensioner living in a poor working class London neighborhood. Young thugs rule the projects. The film opens with a kid high on meth shooting a mother walking her baby in a stroller. The scene is shot with a hand-held camera, chaotically jumping all over the place, an expression of the nature of the projects. In the first part of the film Harry loses both his wife and his best bud, Len (David Bradley) who he had played chess with everyday in a Pub. His wife dies of natural causes but Len is murdered by the thugs who rule a tunnel near where Harry lives. Len is killed for no good reason; he’s just a stupid old man to the rowdies; who cares about him? Harry cares; indeed, something in him snaps over Len’s brutal death in the tunnel. This quiet and gentle old man, who has always tried to mind his own business, turns into this avenging and determined mad-dog killer. He is an ex-marine so he is no stranger to violence and death, although that part of his life was long ago. He becomes a vigilante who can kill with no remorse and who gives no quarter to his quarry. He kills five of the youths. The most memorable shooting takes place in the house that Stretch and an associate live in. He goes there to buy a gun from the psychotic Stretch. When he is given a clip for the hand gun and loads the Glock, he quickly dispatching the two dealers. They were not expecting such balls in a pensioner. He also rescued a young woman drugged and obviously in trouble, taking her to a hospital, thus saving her life.
Naturally, I, like other reviewers, thought of the “Dirty Harry” films and Charles Bronson of “Death Wish” fame. But I thought of another film that deserves mention, especially when Harry remarks the hooligans don’t have a cause, like the IRA, but are into violence as entertainment, as an evening’s pastime, an attitude first articulated in a major movie by Stanley Kubrick in “Clockwork Orange.” In that film young people would go out at night to find someone to beat up or kill. It was done as if they have nothing better to do at night. Harry manages to survive his battle with the hooligans and one could even say the film ends on a positive note, as the tunnel the gang had dominated and controlled is now open and available to everyone in the neighborhood as a short cut to destinations on the other side. It’s not much but it’s something.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Black is my color as seven is my number
2010_5_27 Black is my color as seven is my number
The following is from 1987. I wrote about the dream I called my Magnum Opus, the ‘Big Dream’ after the two Kundalini experiences. I wrote it as a piece of fiction, calling myself Jack Schell.
As soon as he got out of bed Jack grabbed a cup of coffee and the pen and notebook that he was using to record his dreams. He wanted to write while the dream was still vibrant in his head. It was obviously a special dream full of innumerable details—a dazzling accounting of what was opening to him because of his recent breakthrough to new and powerful psychic content. His instant reaction was the dream was a kind of encapsulation of his inner life and showed his preoccupation with Myth and Symbols.
The Tiger was truly awesome and its eruption out of the ground was a film clip that kept playing before his mind’s eye. Naturally, he thought of Blake’s Tiger poem, which was inevitable given his knowledge and fondness for the English Visionary. The Tiger was his new found power and awareness burning bright in the tangle of a dream—another revelation from the deeper psyche. His inner life had increased tenfold since THE INFERNO and the latest Kundalini experience. Things were happening at a furious pace, in his outer life as well as internally. He realized that the gloomy and searing drawing he had done in Vegas was connected to the Tiger’s wrath, only he didn’t know it at the time. There had been a gap in his awareness.
Then he turned his mind to the color black which played such a prominent role in this dream and in many others. Black was present in all three sections of the dream—black dog leaping, black pajamas worn, black airman shot—not to mention the Path of Darkness and black half of the pool—and, to be sure, Jack had regarded black as his color as he regarded Seven as his number. Moreover, thinking back to the first pet he had as a nine year old, it was a black cocker spaniel that he named “Inky.” That name plays curiously with what is going on in his life now—a pen and ink specialist with a passionate involvement with Black (and White.) His family back in the Midwest was fond of calling him the black sheep of the family and they would keep that up until he returned to the fold—to the Catholic Church. In Vegas black was part of a persona he adopted. He wore a black cardigan sweater like a uniform, which he combined with dark glasses. He wore the dark glasses even when he was playing basketball with his university colleagues. They nicknamed him “the Dark One.” He chuckled at that one because his favorite Greek Philosopher was Heraclitus who was known to his contemporaries as “the Dark One,” due to his cryptic aphorisms, like “The road up and the road down are the same,” or “Nature loves concealment.” His favorite author in the sixties was Celine, known for his penchant for “blackening” his fiction, whose novels were a partial inspiration, along with George Grosz, for the savage drawings he started doing in the Las Vegas in response to the Vietnam War, marital problems, and various other social ills. His vehicle to drive to class was a black pick-up trunk. And of course in post-inferno times his signature symbol was a black perfectly round sphere which he tended to put in relation to grotesqueries and chaotic scenes of blood-letting. In those days the color black hung like a grim cloud over his imagination.
Clearly, black is a forbidding color full of negative connotation due to Christian notions of sin and the devil, or at least that is so in the West. The opaqueness of black, so dense light can not get through it, is also a factor. Some people even saw his love affair with black and blackening as pathological. After reading James Hillman he was willing to embrace that idea. It was a promise of liberation, not a neurotic dead end. Actually, Jack enjoyed being a contrarian and going against public opinion. He took delight in telling people that in ancient Egypt they colored statues of Osiris and other underworld figures were black. They understood black as the proper color of the soul, the color of mystery and secrets. Jack preferred that interpretation over the Christian explanation.
The following is from 1987. I wrote about the dream I called my Magnum Opus, the ‘Big Dream’ after the two Kundalini experiences. I wrote it as a piece of fiction, calling myself Jack Schell.
As soon as he got out of bed Jack grabbed a cup of coffee and the pen and notebook that he was using to record his dreams. He wanted to write while the dream was still vibrant in his head. It was obviously a special dream full of innumerable details—a dazzling accounting of what was opening to him because of his recent breakthrough to new and powerful psychic content. His instant reaction was the dream was a kind of encapsulation of his inner life and showed his preoccupation with Myth and Symbols.
The Tiger was truly awesome and its eruption out of the ground was a film clip that kept playing before his mind’s eye. Naturally, he thought of Blake’s Tiger poem, which was inevitable given his knowledge and fondness for the English Visionary. The Tiger was his new found power and awareness burning bright in the tangle of a dream—another revelation from the deeper psyche. His inner life had increased tenfold since THE INFERNO and the latest Kundalini experience. Things were happening at a furious pace, in his outer life as well as internally. He realized that the gloomy and searing drawing he had done in Vegas was connected to the Tiger’s wrath, only he didn’t know it at the time. There had been a gap in his awareness.
Then he turned his mind to the color black which played such a prominent role in this dream and in many others. Black was present in all three sections of the dream—black dog leaping, black pajamas worn, black airman shot—not to mention the Path of Darkness and black half of the pool—and, to be sure, Jack had regarded black as his color as he regarded Seven as his number. Moreover, thinking back to the first pet he had as a nine year old, it was a black cocker spaniel that he named “Inky.” That name plays curiously with what is going on in his life now—a pen and ink specialist with a passionate involvement with Black (and White.) His family back in the Midwest was fond of calling him the black sheep of the family and they would keep that up until he returned to the fold—to the Catholic Church. In Vegas black was part of a persona he adopted. He wore a black cardigan sweater like a uniform, which he combined with dark glasses. He wore the dark glasses even when he was playing basketball with his university colleagues. They nicknamed him “the Dark One.” He chuckled at that one because his favorite Greek Philosopher was Heraclitus who was known to his contemporaries as “the Dark One,” due to his cryptic aphorisms, like “The road up and the road down are the same,” or “Nature loves concealment.” His favorite author in the sixties was Celine, known for his penchant for “blackening” his fiction, whose novels were a partial inspiration, along with George Grosz, for the savage drawings he started doing in the Las Vegas in response to the Vietnam War, marital problems, and various other social ills. His vehicle to drive to class was a black pick-up trunk. And of course in post-inferno times his signature symbol was a black perfectly round sphere which he tended to put in relation to grotesqueries and chaotic scenes of blood-letting. In those days the color black hung like a grim cloud over his imagination.
Clearly, black is a forbidding color full of negative connotation due to Christian notions of sin and the devil, or at least that is so in the West. The opaqueness of black, so dense light can not get through it, is also a factor. Some people even saw his love affair with black and blackening as pathological. After reading James Hillman he was willing to embrace that idea. It was a promise of liberation, not a neurotic dead end. Actually, Jack enjoyed being a contrarian and going against public opinion. He took delight in telling people that in ancient Egypt they colored statues of Osiris and other underworld figures were black. They understood black as the proper color of the soul, the color of mystery and secrets. Jack preferred that interpretation over the Christian explanation.
Psychic Adventure
2010_5_29 Psychic Adventurers
I saw three films the past few days, two were French and one was shot in Northern India by a Director from Bhutan, movies at a great remove from each other, to say the least; but strangely enough each focused on an exploration of the Dark Side—one could even say the occult, cryptic manifestations that are hard for the rational mind to comprehend. It is this common feature, occult occurrences, that interests me the most and prompts to attempt to write about, and then to relate the happenings in the movie to an experience I had in 1968 which was similar.
Let me start with the film about Milarepa, the 11th century legendary saint of Tibetan Buddhism. It was made by Neten Chokling, a first time Director from Bhutan and Rimpoche at a monastery in Northern India. It is called Milarepa: Magician, Murderer, Saint and it was released in 2006. The designation Rimpoche means “precious” and is generally understood to refer to a teacher of Mahayana Buddhism. So in essence it is a Buddhist making a film about a Buddhist to achieve wider understanding about one of its major figures. It illustrates what a rough time Milarepa had in his youth and how he gave in to feelings of resentment and revenge, and how he had to resort to “black magic” for his mother’s sake. Part two, which is call Milarepa: The Path to Enlightenment, hasn’t been released yet. Milarepa’s father was wealthy and he had left instructions with his brother-in-law to take care of his family after his death; but the brother-in-law ignored those instructions and walked off with all the wealth, leaving the family in utmost poverty. When Milarepa becomes older his mother sends him off to a Tibetan teacher who can teach him sorcery so he can wreak revenge on the brother-in-law and his wife. He does what his mother wants; indeed, he displays early on a penchant for super-normal powers. The son of his teacher can transport himself from one place to another as if he was on Star Trek. I have heard stories of yogis doing remarkable things. I heard Ram Das tell of the puny little Tibetan monk who remove a huge boulder from a road by merely picking it up like it was a small stone. Milarepa’s aptitude for such extraordinary powers comes to fruition when he returns to the village and evokes his magic to create a storm that destroys most of the village. His mother was satisfied but he had deep regrets over the destruction he had caused and so he decides to find another kind of teacher, a Holy Man who will help him utilize his talents and powers for positive ends. The next step in his spiritual development will be in The Path to Enlightenment.
Jean-Claude Brisseau was the Director of the two French films. I’d describe Brisseau as an avid voyeur who is obsessed with probing female sexuality. In fact, he was once arrested for having three young women masturbate for an audition in front of him. Actually, that scene was repeated in Exterminating Angels, one of the films I will discuss. One commentator on his films called them “cerebral skin flicks” which seems apt. They certainly could be called a thinking man’s porn. This was especially true of his other film, which in English was called The Adventure. In that film, besides a lot of explicit sex, there is also a boatload of Philosophy, Cosmology, Mysticism, Metaphysics, and Psychoanalysis. (But not one ounce of humor, ever. It is all very serious business.) Somehow it was all typically French in treatment. Americans would never intellectualize sex like Brisseau does. He pushes the envelope in both films, attempting to reach a new plateau of sexual experience, something that borders on Tantric sex in the East. Sexual ecstasy is a legitimate pursuit and goal. Spiritual truths can be garnered many ways, with sex being one way.
I am going to concentrate on The Adventure because it was better grounded, clearer, and a more interesting narrative than Exterminating Angels. The story started with Sandrine (Carole Brana), a young woman who lived with a guy and has a steady job but she feels unfulfilled, bored, and empty—what the French call ennui. She yearns for something else, something more exciting and deeper. Her mother tells her to bite the bullet and adjust to reality. You know, quit your bitching and get back in line. An open door presents itself when her Grandmother died and she inherited enough money to not work for at least a year. (This opportunity reminded me of Ulrich in Man Without Qualities who at age 32 takes a year off to reevaluate his prospects.) Two new men showed up right after she quit her previous scene, Greg, a psychiatrist who becomes her lover and exploratory mentor, and the “Wise Old man,” a Taxi Driver and ex-teacher of Physics, someone she meets on a park bench who becomes her intellectual guide. Two other women, one an old girl friend of Greg’s, the other a woman named Mina, and Sandrine undergo hypnosis with Greg, and the three women, at Greg’s command, made love together, as Greg watches. But the second time Greg was greatly impressed by Mina’s susceptibility to hypnosis and her ability to go to sexual extremes. Finally, his own curiosity aroused, he drops his objectivity and has wild and transcendent sex with Mina. At the end of coitus an inexplicable loud noise is heard in the walls and terrible winds suddenly whipped around the room like a tornado, and just as suddenly it stopped. Sandrine cowered in the corner scared to death. The next day Greg broke up with her because he had fallen in love with Mina and her special potential, sexually and mystically speaking.
When she finds the Wise Old man he called her sexual experimentation “risky business’” and almost as an antidote took her out into the country where he lived to refresh her with the consolations of Nature, which she responded to. His parting remarks as they sat amidst the grandeur of the French countryside were like this: “We are either a silly accident in the universe or fallen angels. I don’t know which.”
So the narrative ends on another French note, what one reviewer termed typically French “existentialist agnosticism.” I’ll buy that.
As for my related experience, it has to do with that loud crack in the wall, a noise that was inexplicable and mysterious, and obviously connected in some way to the sexual events—how I couldn’t guess. Neither could the shrink or the Wise Old Man. My experience was similar; a loud cracking noise in a block wall, but it had nothing to do with sex in my case. This is not the place for a long explanation, but let it suffice to say I was in an extreme state after a few weeks of high tension and in a spiraling mood of increasing introspection, when the wall behind me made a very loud noise. I jumped out of my chair; I went outside to take a look at the wall, which was fine and intact. Later, in a book by Colin Wilson, probably The Occult, I discover something called an “occult rap,” a signature of a psychic event. Okay, that may put a name to it, but it’s no explanation. For me it remains a mystery, one I can live with and puzzle over endlessly.
I saw three films the past few days, two were French and one was shot in Northern India by a Director from Bhutan, movies at a great remove from each other, to say the least; but strangely enough each focused on an exploration of the Dark Side—one could even say the occult, cryptic manifestations that are hard for the rational mind to comprehend. It is this common feature, occult occurrences, that interests me the most and prompts to attempt to write about, and then to relate the happenings in the movie to an experience I had in 1968 which was similar.
Let me start with the film about Milarepa, the 11th century legendary saint of Tibetan Buddhism. It was made by Neten Chokling, a first time Director from Bhutan and Rimpoche at a monastery in Northern India. It is called Milarepa: Magician, Murderer, Saint and it was released in 2006. The designation Rimpoche means “precious” and is generally understood to refer to a teacher of Mahayana Buddhism. So in essence it is a Buddhist making a film about a Buddhist to achieve wider understanding about one of its major figures. It illustrates what a rough time Milarepa had in his youth and how he gave in to feelings of resentment and revenge, and how he had to resort to “black magic” for his mother’s sake. Part two, which is call Milarepa: The Path to Enlightenment, hasn’t been released yet. Milarepa’s father was wealthy and he had left instructions with his brother-in-law to take care of his family after his death; but the brother-in-law ignored those instructions and walked off with all the wealth, leaving the family in utmost poverty. When Milarepa becomes older his mother sends him off to a Tibetan teacher who can teach him sorcery so he can wreak revenge on the brother-in-law and his wife. He does what his mother wants; indeed, he displays early on a penchant for super-normal powers. The son of his teacher can transport himself from one place to another as if he was on Star Trek. I have heard stories of yogis doing remarkable things. I heard Ram Das tell of the puny little Tibetan monk who remove a huge boulder from a road by merely picking it up like it was a small stone. Milarepa’s aptitude for such extraordinary powers comes to fruition when he returns to the village and evokes his magic to create a storm that destroys most of the village. His mother was satisfied but he had deep regrets over the destruction he had caused and so he decides to find another kind of teacher, a Holy Man who will help him utilize his talents and powers for positive ends. The next step in his spiritual development will be in The Path to Enlightenment.
Jean-Claude Brisseau was the Director of the two French films. I’d describe Brisseau as an avid voyeur who is obsessed with probing female sexuality. In fact, he was once arrested for having three young women masturbate for an audition in front of him. Actually, that scene was repeated in Exterminating Angels, one of the films I will discuss. One commentator on his films called them “cerebral skin flicks” which seems apt. They certainly could be called a thinking man’s porn. This was especially true of his other film, which in English was called The Adventure. In that film, besides a lot of explicit sex, there is also a boatload of Philosophy, Cosmology, Mysticism, Metaphysics, and Psychoanalysis. (But not one ounce of humor, ever. It is all very serious business.) Somehow it was all typically French in treatment. Americans would never intellectualize sex like Brisseau does. He pushes the envelope in both films, attempting to reach a new plateau of sexual experience, something that borders on Tantric sex in the East. Sexual ecstasy is a legitimate pursuit and goal. Spiritual truths can be garnered many ways, with sex being one way.
I am going to concentrate on The Adventure because it was better grounded, clearer, and a more interesting narrative than Exterminating Angels. The story started with Sandrine (Carole Brana), a young woman who lived with a guy and has a steady job but she feels unfulfilled, bored, and empty—what the French call ennui. She yearns for something else, something more exciting and deeper. Her mother tells her to bite the bullet and adjust to reality. You know, quit your bitching and get back in line. An open door presents itself when her Grandmother died and she inherited enough money to not work for at least a year. (This opportunity reminded me of Ulrich in Man Without Qualities who at age 32 takes a year off to reevaluate his prospects.) Two new men showed up right after she quit her previous scene, Greg, a psychiatrist who becomes her lover and exploratory mentor, and the “Wise Old man,” a Taxi Driver and ex-teacher of Physics, someone she meets on a park bench who becomes her intellectual guide. Two other women, one an old girl friend of Greg’s, the other a woman named Mina, and Sandrine undergo hypnosis with Greg, and the three women, at Greg’s command, made love together, as Greg watches. But the second time Greg was greatly impressed by Mina’s susceptibility to hypnosis and her ability to go to sexual extremes. Finally, his own curiosity aroused, he drops his objectivity and has wild and transcendent sex with Mina. At the end of coitus an inexplicable loud noise is heard in the walls and terrible winds suddenly whipped around the room like a tornado, and just as suddenly it stopped. Sandrine cowered in the corner scared to death. The next day Greg broke up with her because he had fallen in love with Mina and her special potential, sexually and mystically speaking.
When she finds the Wise Old man he called her sexual experimentation “risky business’” and almost as an antidote took her out into the country where he lived to refresh her with the consolations of Nature, which she responded to. His parting remarks as they sat amidst the grandeur of the French countryside were like this: “We are either a silly accident in the universe or fallen angels. I don’t know which.”
So the narrative ends on another French note, what one reviewer termed typically French “existentialist agnosticism.” I’ll buy that.
As for my related experience, it has to do with that loud crack in the wall, a noise that was inexplicable and mysterious, and obviously connected in some way to the sexual events—how I couldn’t guess. Neither could the shrink or the Wise Old Man. My experience was similar; a loud cracking noise in a block wall, but it had nothing to do with sex in my case. This is not the place for a long explanation, but let it suffice to say I was in an extreme state after a few weeks of high tension and in a spiraling mood of increasing introspection, when the wall behind me made a very loud noise. I jumped out of my chair; I went outside to take a look at the wall, which was fine and intact. Later, in a book by Colin Wilson, probably The Occult, I discover something called an “occult rap,” a signature of a psychic event. Okay, that may put a name to it, but it’s no explanation. For me it remains a mystery, one I can live with and puzzle over endlessly.
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