I mean, really, what IS it??
Okay, technically it's a book-review, as you may have guessed from the previous chapter, but what precisely makes it so fecal? The short answer, I suppose, is that the crappy critique, dominant atop the "book reviews" page (Edmonton Journal Oct. 23, 2011) and occupying almost half of it, is the logical result and natural product of our brick-sh*thouse civilization (and my apologies to the "reasonable accomodation" folks whom will undoubtedly tut-tut this harsh judgement and/or ship my pathetic tarred-and-feathered carcass back to Saudi Arabia if I hate Canada so much).
And the reviewer herself? I'm inclined to soft-pedal her transgressions, in part because they seem typical, not invidual; in part because I'm a hopeless male with incurable delusions of chivalry; but perhaps mostly because I know that the book-reviewer pay-scale is comparable to that of a Nineteenth-Century Junior Coal Removal Facilitator. If you expect better writing, then PAY better, dammit.
In fact, although she is merely listed as "freelance reviewer" I'm pretty sure she is (or was) an English professor at my alma mater. Someone I've never met. Whatever. But her review, titled "Tale of matriarch's loss a poetic saga" is flatly dismaying and depressing, even to a pessimist like myself, whose expectations in life have been minimized by the best operant-conditioning available.
The bleakness starts with the cutline under the photo of the book's author (okay, the cutline almost certainly wasn't written by her) which announces "Playwright and novelist Sebastian Barry's latest novel, On Canaan's Side, picks up on threads he has explored in previous novels, such as the The Secret Scripture." Maybe I'm just nitpicking, but this sentence has far too many commas. It doesn't need any. And why are the two book-titles not italicized? I know I'm being a totally fossilized reactionary raising the subject of italics, but really--what was the point of chopping down entire forests to produce (over years, decades, centuries) vast heaps of style-guides, grammars and the like, all stressing that entire published works should be italicized?--so the reader knows what is being discussed--only to have some post-modern denial-of-expertise expert shrug and say, "Do it any way you like" (presumably because freedom is the ultimate criterion, baby).
Again, does any flesh-and-blood human actually "explore threads"? Even internet-threads are just browsed, right? If you go further, to systematic exploration, you are probably some kind of stalker. Nope, exploring threads, whatever that might be, is just a vague, tired, abstract metaphor, suitable only for professors and other professional dullards.
Onward to the review itself, which begins by calling Mr. Barry "celebrated." Celebrated? Well, perhaps it could have been worse. He might have been certified iconic, at which point I would have slashed my wrists. Seriously, I'd never even heard of the author before I picked up the clipping. And while I don't track all fiction (who has a lifetime to surf the deluge?) I do track book-reviews fairly fussily, monitoring at least the trends that are trendiest. So who is this guy?
But let's summarize the review, since my blog-post is plodding and dragging a wee bit. In it our reviewer delineates a novel of an Irish mother who moves to America for a better life, but loses both sons, one to an IRA assassin, one to post-traumatic stress disorder (whether the latter is a death is not made clear). There is little else regarding the substance of the novel, although my snout deduces from said meagreness that the story is somewhat melodramatic, and the remainder of the review, about 80% by my estimate, dwells heavily on style.
And this style too comes across as overblown, although the reviewer seems impressed by it. For example the book's whoop that "My heart lifted like a pheasant from scrub" strikes the reviewer as one of "those spears of poetry that penetrate the dark like shafts of moonlight." Sorry, for me the line is just a lame parody of that running joke in Little Big Man, "My heart soars like an eagle."
Have we no guffaws left for such rhetorical heaving and eye-rolling? Apparently not. There be poetics by the hectare in modern fiction, symbolism by the gallon, alliteration and litotes by the liter, hyperbole unlimited, blah blah, yet amid all our culture-heroes, none dare call it flapdoodle. Personally, I'm blaming F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby, where the whole style-over-substance buffoonery seems to have started. Let some post-modern warrior smite this pestilence of metaphor! (or is that a mixaphor?) And let academic/overeducated reviewers get down from their towers and into the semi-fresh air of the real world to clear their heads.
And that's all. I could dredge up a few more complaints, like why a book seemingly about the 60s has on its cover a 20s-ish flapper, or why a bigshot publisher like Viking bothers to publish such seemingly uninspired stuff, but let it pass. The damn lawn remains unraked. Nor is anyone reading this blog, in all likelihood. As a final bringdown, it occurs to me that in writing this I haven't manged to dump a single bolus of office-crap, as I had planned. I may even need to file that damn clipping now.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Chapter 1: The scope of the dope on the ropes
Of making books there is no end -- Ecclesiastes
I really don't have time for this. Or maybe I do...
Entering the basement "office" has become a dreaded routine; the piles of crap, mostly newspapers, clog the place. It is almost impossible to turn around, let alone walk from end of end of its thee linear rooms without gingerly traversing hurdles of newsprint, magazines, books, two storage-hassocks of old LPs...
Somewhere in my rational brain I have plans to renovate the three rooms, indeed I started the renovations soon after moving into the old bungalow in 1988, ripping out the weird/ancient pulpboard walls with a mind to putting in new drywall. The actual drywall, maybe 18 sheets of it (I could go over and count, but it would be a precarious stretch over two stacks of newspapers in the middle room where computer and I sit), this drywall, incriminatingly dated 1990, leans patiently on the exposed 2X2s along with a few sheets of plywood, making a mockery of my hard belief that I am not just a talker, but a doer. Hey, family stuff overpowered me! (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).
Waking this Sunday morning without three or four priority jobs screaming in my ear (although yesterday's lawn-raking of our large yard needs to be completed, and there is only an hour or two until the morning dog-walk) I fire up the old 2005 Dell desktop, determined to write something. The topic is not a problem. I have been primarily a critic since H. L. Mencken blasted through my brain circa 1975, and inspiration is as close as the nearest Atlantic or Globe and Mail. You can see where the problem starts, perhaps...?
Truth be told, my cognizance of the long-accumulating paper-jam has triggered a sort of initial immune-response, namely that being a clever chap I will not just clean up the mess but kill two birds with one brainstorm by writing a massively popular and profitable bestseller about the clean-up, sort of like that book The Know-It-All, by the guy who reads the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from beginning to end, shooting off witty asides regarding this entry or that as he reads them. I'd look up the author's name, but my copy is, naturally, lost somewhere. And I'm still a bit of a conscientious objector to Google.
Speaking of lost items, the title of my whiz-bang bestseller (many years in the brain-pan) is also lost in this jetsam, although I recollect it as being rather tentative. Its best part, a sarcastic jibe about "how to lower awareness" is of course unforgettable.
As the computer slowly comes to life, I hit the "Remind me later" button for the 33rd time on the Adobe Flash update (which I fear would be a death-blow, just as the update from AOL 7 to AOL 9 was a near-death experience for our 1998 Dell) my brain is percolating nicely, and I rejig the title as How to Remove Media and Lower Awareness. Good enough for now, until the original title emerges from the paper-drifts....
But 2+ hours later, I'm overdue for walking the dog, and haven't even tackled an irritating book-review clipping I found atop the heap of newspapers that had to be removed from my typing-chair. Barely time for a quick edit of Chapter 1 here...
I really don't have time for this. Or maybe I do...
Entering the basement "office" has become a dreaded routine; the piles of crap, mostly newspapers, clog the place. It is almost impossible to turn around, let alone walk from end of end of its thee linear rooms without gingerly traversing hurdles of newsprint, magazines, books, two storage-hassocks of old LPs...
Somewhere in my rational brain I have plans to renovate the three rooms, indeed I started the renovations soon after moving into the old bungalow in 1988, ripping out the weird/ancient pulpboard walls with a mind to putting in new drywall. The actual drywall, maybe 18 sheets of it (I could go over and count, but it would be a precarious stretch over two stacks of newspapers in the middle room where computer and I sit), this drywall, incriminatingly dated 1990, leans patiently on the exposed 2X2s along with a few sheets of plywood, making a mockery of my hard belief that I am not just a talker, but a doer. Hey, family stuff overpowered me! (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).
Waking this Sunday morning without three or four priority jobs screaming in my ear (although yesterday's lawn-raking of our large yard needs to be completed, and there is only an hour or two until the morning dog-walk) I fire up the old 2005 Dell desktop, determined to write something. The topic is not a problem. I have been primarily a critic since H. L. Mencken blasted through my brain circa 1975, and inspiration is as close as the nearest Atlantic or Globe and Mail. You can see where the problem starts, perhaps...?
Truth be told, my cognizance of the long-accumulating paper-jam has triggered a sort of initial immune-response, namely that being a clever chap I will not just clean up the mess but kill two birds with one brainstorm by writing a massively popular and profitable bestseller about the clean-up, sort of like that book The Know-It-All, by the guy who reads the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from beginning to end, shooting off witty asides regarding this entry or that as he reads them. I'd look up the author's name, but my copy is, naturally, lost somewhere. And I'm still a bit of a conscientious objector to Google.
Speaking of lost items, the title of my whiz-bang bestseller (many years in the brain-pan) is also lost in this jetsam, although I recollect it as being rather tentative. Its best part, a sarcastic jibe about "how to lower awareness" is of course unforgettable.
As the computer slowly comes to life, I hit the "Remind me later" button for the 33rd time on the Adobe Flash update (which I fear would be a death-blow, just as the update from AOL 7 to AOL 9 was a near-death experience for our 1998 Dell) my brain is percolating nicely, and I rejig the title as How to Remove Media and Lower Awareness. Good enough for now, until the original title emerges from the paper-drifts....
But 2+ hours later, I'm overdue for walking the dog, and haven't even tackled an irritating book-review clipping I found atop the heap of newspapers that had to be removed from my typing-chair. Barely time for a quick edit of Chapter 1 here...
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Back in the saddle...
Funny how these things start: just waking a bit early, feeling the normal crappiness of 57 years, the mind bouncing aimlessly around to old memories--a friend of my dad, also Danish-born (both now deceased) who was a cabinet-maker and made a very nice kitchen-table for us that still survives, and things that happened about the same time while living in Calgary, e.g. John F. Kennedy being assassinated. Then I mechanically rouse myself, have the usual banana before walking the dog, and somehow within a minute or two I am really MOTIVATED to write, a rare and happy impetus that should not be squandered, especially since I have a spare half-hour.
But about what? That crappy Conrad Black column in the National Post about whether the GOP can make America great again? But that would take at least an hour or two which I don't have. Still, as nearly always happens, a Mencken quote pops into the brain: "I regret that I have but one rectum to give to my country." Yeah.
Aaaaand, after all the rigamarole of firing up the ancient coal-powered computer, retrieving forgotten passwords etc., THAT will have to do. The dog and taxi await. Maybe tomorrow I'll post the "Facebook Segway" I've had assembled and ready for over a year. Let's get this creaky old blog restarted!
But about what? That crappy Conrad Black column in the National Post about whether the GOP can make America great again? But that would take at least an hour or two which I don't have. Still, as nearly always happens, a Mencken quote pops into the brain: "I regret that I have but one rectum to give to my country." Yeah.
Aaaaand, after all the rigamarole of firing up the ancient coal-powered computer, retrieving forgotten passwords etc., THAT will have to do. The dog and taxi await. Maybe tomorrow I'll post the "Facebook Segway" I've had assembled and ready for over a year. Let's get this creaky old blog restarted!
Monday, February 16, 2009
Film review: Danton outgrosses Robespierre
Preface:
As I've said, oldie writing will be dusted off and plunked blogside (at least at first; new stuff should gradually overtake it). The following is a longer review of ***A CLASSIC!!*** -- Polish director Andrzej Wajda's 1983 film Danton, a historical drama of the French Revolution, from the Cold War era.
Wow! And actually available on DVD soon! --
http://www.amazon.ca/andrzej-wajda-DVD/s/qid=1235012358/ref=sr_pg_2/191-5320215-7334014?ie=UTF8&rs=952768&keywords=andrzej%20wajda&rh=n%3A917972%2Cn%3A952768%2Ck%3Aandrzej%20wajda&page=2
Once upon a time figured this review was a choice illustration of my feisty independence and penetrating insights, but after attaching it to job applications which netted zero writing gigs, I suspect it only reveals my sneering arrogance and vanity. But hey, that's me...
PS: Despite what its lead sentence may suggest, profanity is something I usually avoid, saving it for special occasions where it is really needed. Hollywood films, however, often provide exactly such an occasion.
From the University of Alberta Summer Times, May 31, 1984:
Danton
Princess Theatre
Coming June 3, 4
Review by Jens Andersen
Jeez! The shit and corruption oozing out of Hollywood these days just gets worse and worse. The latest news is that despite the recession Indiana Jones is fleecing record numbers of morons. And Gremlins, a ridiculous horror flick, to judge from the hype, promises to perform similar miracles in a week or two.
As the old Sage of Baltimore said, nobody ever underestimated the taste of the American people.
Fortunately there are still a few film-makers to whom the word 'accomplishment' means something besides unprecedented fraud at the box office. One such artist is Andrzej Wajda, whose brilliant film Danton hit the city last month, and returns to the Princess this weekend. This is a film to see, if you are one of the civilized minority who thrills to the clash of ideas and personalities, not the witless combat of an all-American yahoo with a horde of evildoers (or sinister little furry creatures terrorizing third-rate actors).
Not since McCabe and Mrs. Miller have I seen such a magnificent film.
Its subject is the brief episode during the French Revolution when Jacobin leader Robespierre railroads fellow revolutionary Danton on trumped-up charges, and guillotines him and his followers. It begins with Danton returning to Paris after an absence, determined to unseat the fanatical Robespierre and his henchmen on the Committee of Public Safety. From there the film traces, in meticulous detail, the manoeuvering of both men and their factions, as well as the reactions of the public and the indecisive National Convention.
The film is so expertly done that viewing its scenes is like witnessing all the crucial moments this most nightmarish phase of the Revolution. Here are the breadlines full of hungry, scared and confused people, wondering who is to blame for the sad mess the country is in. Here are the government checkpoints where peasant guards in liberty caps search travellers; here the crowds cheering Danton on his return; here Danton and his followers furtively plotting; here the members of both cliques indulging in panicky speculation about each other's plans; now hired thugs trashing the shop of Danton's printer Camille; now a tense meeting between Danton and Robespierre attempting a reconciliation; that failing, Robespierre pushing the nervous Committee of Public Safety into manufacturing charges and selecting 'reliable' jurors; now the steely Robespierre facing an angry and horrified Convention and swaying them to approve the charges; now grim scenes inside the filthy prison where Danton and company are held; now the chaotic kangaroo court where Danton eloquently plays to the gallery, hoping to topple the government and save the conspirators; thence to the guillotine; shown in unflinching detail, right to the blood sopping onto the straw underneath the platform; finally Camille's widow tying a scarlet thread around her neck, and Robespierre in bed, sweating with horror at the outcome, while a young boy dutifully recites to him the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
The simple plot is only the skeleton on which Wajda fleshes out the revolutionary personalities and their ideas. What Wajda himself thinks is a bit of a mystery, since he doesn't flog his messages in the obtuse and obscene Hollywood manner, and in interviews he is reportedly rather coy. There are pearls, however, if one peers hard enough, and their significance makes them worth the search.
Curiously, the critics I read did not dig deep enough and reached seriously wrong conclusions about the film, the main one being the judgement that Danton is the hero of the film and Robespierre the heavy.
When the film ran in Toronto this January, for instance, a Sun reviewer concluded that Danton is an allegory on the current crisis in Poland (Wajda is a Pole) and that Danton himself is a Lech Walesa figure. In the March-May Princess calendar an anonymous critic notes that this sort of interpretation is widespread. Even the Polish government seems to concur, since it has delayed premiering the the film in Poland indefinitely. The Princess reviewer cautiously sees the film as a general statement about "the gaps that can occur between the public and the authorities who govern that public, adding that Robespierre is "unsympathetic" and Danton is "very human."
Finally, Edmonton Sun reviewer Tom Elsworthy echoes his Toronto counterpart, saying, "Wajda obviously wants us to think about his troubled homeland." Translating Elsworthy's weird metaphors into English is a ticklish job, but he too seems to see Robespierre as the villain ("Wajda is fuelled by his desire to rub salt in the wounds of the world's Robespierres") and Danton as a hero "championing the cause of those who have their breadline privileges suspended."
Breadline privileges????
Equally nonsensical is his summation of the film: "Some viewers will stagger away thinking the tyranny of martyrdom is terror. Others will counter that the tyranny of terror is martyrdom. They're both right."
Eh??... but I leave the tortuous rhetoric to semantic pathologists.
In reality, it can be easily demonstrated that these critics are alike wrong, that Danton is plainly the villain, more akin to the Ayatollah than Lech Walesa.
True, Danton opposes a brutal regime, as Walesa does, but any similarity ends there. Walesa is genuinely of the workers. Danton, though history buffs will recall he began proletarian, is a mouthpiece of the bourgeoisie well before the film starts. Wajda stresses this in numerous, often subtle ways. Both pro and anti-Danton people often mention that he has powerful backing from bankers and businessmen. And during the trial the people cheering him in the gallery are conspicuously well-to-do.
Again, Walesa lives humbly, whereas Danton has made a bundle from the revolution. His orgiastic feasting is contrasted with Robespierre's poverty (due to shortages he can get no sugar). Danton rides in a fine carriage. When he is arrested, one of the prole crew, torch in hand, stops to gape and paw at a showy painting in Danton's sumptuous digs. It is Robespierre who lives in in frugal quarters like Walesa.
At one point a Danton follower gently mentions to him that there are rumors of his profiteering, whereupon Danton sneers that if he likes noble poverty so much, he can join Robespierre. Then later at his trial Danton has the gall to say, "A man like me is beyond price."
Finally, Walesa is a shrewd and prudent man, as befits someone in his precarious position. Danton, also in a tense situation, is breezy and careless, a drunken gladhander with the happy-go-lucky confidence that his spellbinding oratory can rouse the people and get him out of any bind. As it happens, his magnificent voice begins to crack under the strain of the trial and he fails to rouse the crowd sufficiently.
If Danton is a Walesa, then Walesa is a capitalist tool in receipt of CIA gold, just like the Polish authorities claim he is.
Furthermore, any comparison between Danton and Robespierre is in Robespierre's favor. Even granting Robespierre's manifold faults, he is still ten times the man that Danton is. It is Robespierre, after all, not Danton, who makes two personal attempts at conciliation between the factions. To do so he must restrain his hot-headed followers and remind them that he and Danton were once friends in the same revolutionary cell. The followers jeer that a meeting with Danton is futile and suggest to Robespierre that he is a coward, but he braves their taunts and goes.
Danton, by contrast only restrains his followers for tactical reasons. He wants the showdown at any cost, but he wants to do it his way, with a grand rhetorical appeal to the people. And like a coward he uses his guileless friend Camille to attack Robespierre. When Danton meets Robespierre he treats him obnoxiously, first offering the sickly leader a glut of rich food, then sweeping the entire feast to the floor when Robespierre politely declines. Next he proceeds to get drunk and insult Robespierre in every conceivable way ("They say you've never even had a woman!"), pours him a glass of wine full to the very brim (Robespierre handles this one quite well, but I'm not divulging the details), and finally Danton falls asleep, drunk and snoring, in Robespierre's arms.
But these are minor personal vices, you say? More than offset by Danton's laudable opposition to the tyrannical Robespierre, you say?
You poor deluded sap! Addled by action-flicks! Brainwashed by too many pre-fab formula movies!
Don't you remember the brief, seemingly innocuous scene where a minor Dantonist greets his hero and reminds him of his faithful support when Danton wanted to execute the king? Do you think this scene got into the film by accident? And what about the less-subtle scene where the peasant prisoner spits at the convicted Danton and says he is glad that at least one of the authors of the Terror got a taste of the same medicine.
No, like the critics you only remember Danton's stirring defense speech -- all those noble words against cruelty and tyranny and injustice. Like the critics you sat in rapt admiration and wished that this pure, brave soul could be Prime Minister of Canada or something.
You remember Danton saying how he just wanted to retire from politics and live a peaceful private life (such a nice man!) but it never occurred to you that he desires this because he now has the loot to retire with. You forgot that this man was once (pardon the sick pun) a blood brother to Robespierre.
Robespierre has more humanity than this, and he is not for sale like Danton. Here Wajda echoes Napoleon, who said:
"Robespierre was a fanatic, a monster, but he was incorruptible, and incapable of robbing, or of causing the deaths of others, either from personal enmity, or a desire for enrichment. He was an enthusiast, but one who really believed he was acting right, and he died not worth a sou."
Compare Danton, who never once shows real revulsion at the Reign of Terror. When he says there has been "too much blood" it is stated with no real conviction. One is tempted to ask this butcher how many gallons of blood is "too much."
At least Robespierre sweats and suffers over the madness around him, although he never escapes from the double prison of his crazy followers and his own crazy beliefs.
(In one scene he tells Danton, "I don't believe in fate." Whew!)
So now we come to an interesting question: why do critics, to varying degrees, see a hero in Danton? This sensual, hypocritical, inconsiderate, blundering, profiteering, glib, vain... scumbag. This braggart who muttered that the Revolution wouldn't last three months without himself. Why is this jerk admired?
The answer lies in the critics' and the audience's Western biases, more precisely their democratic biases. Wajda has said that Danton is the West (a comment which baffled the Princess reviewer). Danton is obviously a demagogue. Hence he represents the tendency of the democratic West to succumb to demagogues. The Dantons. The Hitlers (yes, Virginia, he was democratically elected). The Trudeaus, Reagans and Margaret Thatchers.
The West is so inured to demagogues -- nay, seduced by them -- that they scarcely even notice the demagoguery. When the moron-mesmerizers unroll their silver tongues, audiences groove to the beautiful sounds and forget to examine the speakers' character and deeds. Just as the critics, dazzled by Danton's oratory, were blinded to the scoundrel behind the ringing phrases.
By misjudging Monsieur Danton so completely, these critics have underscored, in the most dramatic way, Wajda's veiled warning to beware our Dantons, lest we end up like King Louis XVI, the hapless Camille or Danton's other victims.
PS: Lest you think that I've revealed everything about Danton in this review, let me just say that there is a wealth of other insights in the movie which I haven't even mentioned. Indeed, the average scene in this film carries a greater load of significance than many entire films, than many entire GOOD films. When I go back this weekend I suspect I will be picking up on many things I missed the first two times, although perhaps not as many as some other critics.
* * * * * *
That's the review. Nearing the end of the transcription I googled a couple of reviews, one from the Nation (1983) by a French Revolution specialist, Daniel Singer. Here is a segment:
Wajda's film is based on a play first performed in 1931, The Danton Affair, by Stanislawa Przybyszewska. At the time she wrote the play, Przybyszewska was a Communist sympathizer. According to the rumor in Paris, The Danton Affair was pro-Robespierre. Wajda, however, altered it to make Danton the hero. (italic-boldface mine)
But Wajda's film does not proclaim Vive Danton; it is too busy cursing all revolutions. Also, to my mind at least, the French actor Gerard Depardieu, who plays Danton, is utterly bewildering. True, Danton too was mighty and had a stentorian voice. Yet there is a difference between an attorney having the shape of a football player and a football player playing the role of an attorney, especially if he clowns his way through the part. At the end, when he tells the executioner, "Show my head to the people, it is worth looking at," one is left wondering how this rather grotesque person became a major figure in the revolutionary drama.
But the weakness of the film does not lie in the casting. The central flaw is Wajda's omission of the historical backdrop...
...and Singer's weakness is being more ideologue than artist. Art is NOT just Ideology Illustrated, dammit. And the central issue is NOT history --although this might be a lesser flaw -- or rather , if history IS crucial to the film, the historical nub would be whether the portrayal of the VILE Danton is historically accurate, an assessment Singer never really tackles (hmm --as accurate as Shakespeare's Henry V, maybe?)
In any case, I disagree with Singer's conclusion that the film is anti-revolutionary -- again, an ideologue's viewpoint. ("For us or against us, you running-dog lackey!")
At worst, the film argues (most subtly) that revolutions can't be better than the people running them, and/or some revolutionaries have human failings. But hey, at least Singer has a vague inkling that Danton is not a clearcut hero; compare this to the view from an e-site called Allmovies:
The film (Danton) features what is often regarded as Gerard Depardieu's finest performance, as the compassionate (!!!!!!!!!!!) rebel leader who tragically fails to mitigate the Reign of Terror of his friend-turned-enemy Robespierre.
It's sub-retarded criticism of this sort that inspires otherwise sane and sober critics to abandon words and grab the cudgel.
As I've said, oldie writing will be dusted off and plunked blogside (at least at first; new stuff should gradually overtake it). The following is a longer review of ***A CLASSIC!!*** -- Polish director Andrzej Wajda's 1983 film Danton, a historical drama of the French Revolution, from the Cold War era.
Wow! And actually available on DVD soon! --
http://www.amazon.ca/andrzej-wajda-DVD/s/qid=1235012358/ref=sr_pg_2/191-5320215-7334014?ie=UTF8&rs=952768&keywords=andrzej%20wajda&rh=n%3A917972%2Cn%3A952768%2Ck%3Aandrzej%20wajda&page=2
Once upon a time figured this review was a choice illustration of my feisty independence and penetrating insights, but after attaching it to job applications which netted zero writing gigs, I suspect it only reveals my sneering arrogance and vanity. But hey, that's me...
PS: Despite what its lead sentence may suggest, profanity is something I usually avoid, saving it for special occasions where it is really needed. Hollywood films, however, often provide exactly such an occasion.
From the University of Alberta Summer Times, May 31, 1984:
Danton
Princess Theatre
Coming June 3, 4
Review by Jens Andersen
Jeez! The shit and corruption oozing out of Hollywood these days just gets worse and worse. The latest news is that despite the recession Indiana Jones is fleecing record numbers of morons. And Gremlins, a ridiculous horror flick, to judge from the hype, promises to perform similar miracles in a week or two.
As the old Sage of Baltimore said, nobody ever underestimated the taste of the American people.
Fortunately there are still a few film-makers to whom the word 'accomplishment' means something besides unprecedented fraud at the box office. One such artist is Andrzej Wajda, whose brilliant film Danton hit the city last month, and returns to the Princess this weekend. This is a film to see, if you are one of the civilized minority who thrills to the clash of ideas and personalities, not the witless combat of an all-American yahoo with a horde of evildoers (or sinister little furry creatures terrorizing third-rate actors).
Not since McCabe and Mrs. Miller have I seen such a magnificent film.
Its subject is the brief episode during the French Revolution when Jacobin leader Robespierre railroads fellow revolutionary Danton on trumped-up charges, and guillotines him and his followers. It begins with Danton returning to Paris after an absence, determined to unseat the fanatical Robespierre and his henchmen on the Committee of Public Safety. From there the film traces, in meticulous detail, the manoeuvering of both men and their factions, as well as the reactions of the public and the indecisive National Convention.
The film is so expertly done that viewing its scenes is like witnessing all the crucial moments this most nightmarish phase of the Revolution. Here are the breadlines full of hungry, scared and confused people, wondering who is to blame for the sad mess the country is in. Here are the government checkpoints where peasant guards in liberty caps search travellers; here the crowds cheering Danton on his return; here Danton and his followers furtively plotting; here the members of both cliques indulging in panicky speculation about each other's plans; now hired thugs trashing the shop of Danton's printer Camille; now a tense meeting between Danton and Robespierre attempting a reconciliation; that failing, Robespierre pushing the nervous Committee of Public Safety into manufacturing charges and selecting 'reliable' jurors; now the steely Robespierre facing an angry and horrified Convention and swaying them to approve the charges; now grim scenes inside the filthy prison where Danton and company are held; now the chaotic kangaroo court where Danton eloquently plays to the gallery, hoping to topple the government and save the conspirators; thence to the guillotine; shown in unflinching detail, right to the blood sopping onto the straw underneath the platform; finally Camille's widow tying a scarlet thread around her neck, and Robespierre in bed, sweating with horror at the outcome, while a young boy dutifully recites to him the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
The simple plot is only the skeleton on which Wajda fleshes out the revolutionary personalities and their ideas. What Wajda himself thinks is a bit of a mystery, since he doesn't flog his messages in the obtuse and obscene Hollywood manner, and in interviews he is reportedly rather coy. There are pearls, however, if one peers hard enough, and their significance makes them worth the search.
Curiously, the critics I read did not dig deep enough and reached seriously wrong conclusions about the film, the main one being the judgement that Danton is the hero of the film and Robespierre the heavy.
When the film ran in Toronto this January, for instance, a Sun reviewer concluded that Danton is an allegory on the current crisis in Poland (Wajda is a Pole) and that Danton himself is a Lech Walesa figure. In the March-May Princess calendar an anonymous critic notes that this sort of interpretation is widespread. Even the Polish government seems to concur, since it has delayed premiering the the film in Poland indefinitely. The Princess reviewer cautiously sees the film as a general statement about "the gaps that can occur between the public and the authorities who govern that public, adding that Robespierre is "unsympathetic" and Danton is "very human."
Finally, Edmonton Sun reviewer Tom Elsworthy echoes his Toronto counterpart, saying, "Wajda obviously wants us to think about his troubled homeland." Translating Elsworthy's weird metaphors into English is a ticklish job, but he too seems to see Robespierre as the villain ("Wajda is fuelled by his desire to rub salt in the wounds of the world's Robespierres") and Danton as a hero "championing the cause of those who have their breadline privileges suspended."
Breadline privileges????
Equally nonsensical is his summation of the film: "Some viewers will stagger away thinking the tyranny of martyrdom is terror. Others will counter that the tyranny of terror is martyrdom. They're both right."
Eh??... but I leave the tortuous rhetoric to semantic pathologists.
In reality, it can be easily demonstrated that these critics are alike wrong, that Danton is plainly the villain, more akin to the Ayatollah than Lech Walesa.
True, Danton opposes a brutal regime, as Walesa does, but any similarity ends there. Walesa is genuinely of the workers. Danton, though history buffs will recall he began proletarian, is a mouthpiece of the bourgeoisie well before the film starts. Wajda stresses this in numerous, often subtle ways. Both pro and anti-Danton people often mention that he has powerful backing from bankers and businessmen. And during the trial the people cheering him in the gallery are conspicuously well-to-do.
Again, Walesa lives humbly, whereas Danton has made a bundle from the revolution. His orgiastic feasting is contrasted with Robespierre's poverty (due to shortages he can get no sugar). Danton rides in a fine carriage. When he is arrested, one of the prole crew, torch in hand, stops to gape and paw at a showy painting in Danton's sumptuous digs. It is Robespierre who lives in in frugal quarters like Walesa.
At one point a Danton follower gently mentions to him that there are rumors of his profiteering, whereupon Danton sneers that if he likes noble poverty so much, he can join Robespierre. Then later at his trial Danton has the gall to say, "A man like me is beyond price."
Finally, Walesa is a shrewd and prudent man, as befits someone in his precarious position. Danton, also in a tense situation, is breezy and careless, a drunken gladhander with the happy-go-lucky confidence that his spellbinding oratory can rouse the people and get him out of any bind. As it happens, his magnificent voice begins to crack under the strain of the trial and he fails to rouse the crowd sufficiently.
If Danton is a Walesa, then Walesa is a capitalist tool in receipt of CIA gold, just like the Polish authorities claim he is.
Furthermore, any comparison between Danton and Robespierre is in Robespierre's favor. Even granting Robespierre's manifold faults, he is still ten times the man that Danton is. It is Robespierre, after all, not Danton, who makes two personal attempts at conciliation between the factions. To do so he must restrain his hot-headed followers and remind them that he and Danton were once friends in the same revolutionary cell. The followers jeer that a meeting with Danton is futile and suggest to Robespierre that he is a coward, but he braves their taunts and goes.
Danton, by contrast only restrains his followers for tactical reasons. He wants the showdown at any cost, but he wants to do it his way, with a grand rhetorical appeal to the people. And like a coward he uses his guileless friend Camille to attack Robespierre. When Danton meets Robespierre he treats him obnoxiously, first offering the sickly leader a glut of rich food, then sweeping the entire feast to the floor when Robespierre politely declines. Next he proceeds to get drunk and insult Robespierre in every conceivable way ("They say you've never even had a woman!"), pours him a glass of wine full to the very brim (Robespierre handles this one quite well, but I'm not divulging the details), and finally Danton falls asleep, drunk and snoring, in Robespierre's arms.
But these are minor personal vices, you say? More than offset by Danton's laudable opposition to the tyrannical Robespierre, you say?
You poor deluded sap! Addled by action-flicks! Brainwashed by too many pre-fab formula movies!
Don't you remember the brief, seemingly innocuous scene where a minor Dantonist greets his hero and reminds him of his faithful support when Danton wanted to execute the king? Do you think this scene got into the film by accident? And what about the less-subtle scene where the peasant prisoner spits at the convicted Danton and says he is glad that at least one of the authors of the Terror got a taste of the same medicine.
No, like the critics you only remember Danton's stirring defense speech -- all those noble words against cruelty and tyranny and injustice. Like the critics you sat in rapt admiration and wished that this pure, brave soul could be Prime Minister of Canada or something.
You remember Danton saying how he just wanted to retire from politics and live a peaceful private life (such a nice man!) but it never occurred to you that he desires this because he now has the loot to retire with. You forgot that this man was once (pardon the sick pun) a blood brother to Robespierre.
Robespierre has more humanity than this, and he is not for sale like Danton. Here Wajda echoes Napoleon, who said:
"Robespierre was a fanatic, a monster, but he was incorruptible, and incapable of robbing, or of causing the deaths of others, either from personal enmity, or a desire for enrichment. He was an enthusiast, but one who really believed he was acting right, and he died not worth a sou."
Compare Danton, who never once shows real revulsion at the Reign of Terror. When he says there has been "too much blood" it is stated with no real conviction. One is tempted to ask this butcher how many gallons of blood is "too much."
At least Robespierre sweats and suffers over the madness around him, although he never escapes from the double prison of his crazy followers and his own crazy beliefs.
(In one scene he tells Danton, "I don't believe in fate." Whew!)
So now we come to an interesting question: why do critics, to varying degrees, see a hero in Danton? This sensual, hypocritical, inconsiderate, blundering, profiteering, glib, vain... scumbag. This braggart who muttered that the Revolution wouldn't last three months without himself. Why is this jerk admired?
The answer lies in the critics' and the audience's Western biases, more precisely their democratic biases. Wajda has said that Danton is the West (a comment which baffled the Princess reviewer). Danton is obviously a demagogue. Hence he represents the tendency of the democratic West to succumb to demagogues. The Dantons. The Hitlers (yes, Virginia, he was democratically elected). The Trudeaus, Reagans and Margaret Thatchers.
The West is so inured to demagogues -- nay, seduced by them -- that they scarcely even notice the demagoguery. When the moron-mesmerizers unroll their silver tongues, audiences groove to the beautiful sounds and forget to examine the speakers' character and deeds. Just as the critics, dazzled by Danton's oratory, were blinded to the scoundrel behind the ringing phrases.
By misjudging Monsieur Danton so completely, these critics have underscored, in the most dramatic way, Wajda's veiled warning to beware our Dantons, lest we end up like King Louis XVI, the hapless Camille or Danton's other victims.
PS: Lest you think that I've revealed everything about Danton in this review, let me just say that there is a wealth of other insights in the movie which I haven't even mentioned. Indeed, the average scene in this film carries a greater load of significance than many entire films, than many entire GOOD films. When I go back this weekend I suspect I will be picking up on many things I missed the first two times, although perhaps not as many as some other critics.
* * * * * *
That's the review. Nearing the end of the transcription I googled a couple of reviews, one from the Nation (1983) by a French Revolution specialist, Daniel Singer. Here is a segment:
Wajda's film is based on a play first performed in 1931, The Danton Affair, by Stanislawa Przybyszewska. At the time she wrote the play, Przybyszewska was a Communist sympathizer. According to the rumor in Paris, The Danton Affair was pro-Robespierre. Wajda, however, altered it to make Danton the hero. (italic-boldface mine)
But Wajda's film does not proclaim Vive Danton; it is too busy cursing all revolutions. Also, to my mind at least, the French actor Gerard Depardieu, who plays Danton, is utterly bewildering. True, Danton too was mighty and had a stentorian voice. Yet there is a difference between an attorney having the shape of a football player and a football player playing the role of an attorney, especially if he clowns his way through the part. At the end, when he tells the executioner, "Show my head to the people, it is worth looking at," one is left wondering how this rather grotesque person became a major figure in the revolutionary drama.
But the weakness of the film does not lie in the casting. The central flaw is Wajda's omission of the historical backdrop...
...and Singer's weakness is being more ideologue than artist. Art is NOT just Ideology Illustrated, dammit. And the central issue is NOT history --although this might be a lesser flaw -- or rather , if history IS crucial to the film, the historical nub would be whether the portrayal of the VILE Danton is historically accurate, an assessment Singer never really tackles (hmm --as accurate as Shakespeare's Henry V, maybe?)
In any case, I disagree with Singer's conclusion that the film is anti-revolutionary -- again, an ideologue's viewpoint. ("For us or against us, you running-dog lackey!")
At worst, the film argues (most subtly) that revolutions can't be better than the people running them, and/or some revolutionaries have human failings. But hey, at least Singer has a vague inkling that Danton is not a clearcut hero; compare this to the view from an e-site called Allmovies:
The film (Danton) features what is often regarded as Gerard Depardieu's finest performance, as the compassionate (!!!!!!!!!!!) rebel leader who tragically fails to mitigate the Reign of Terror of his friend-turned-enemy Robespierre.
It's sub-retarded criticism of this sort that inspires otherwise sane and sober critics to abandon words and grab the cudgel.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Aphorism and bumpersticker
Yes, modern civilization has pummelled this blogger into being a "mass man." After all, I live a life of quiet desperation. Well, make that loud desperation. And activist still.
Make the world a better place--kill a theorist!
Make the world a better place--kill a theorist!
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Footnote to Shempnatieff
Wondering what all the Shemp/Ignatieff stuff below was about?
Check this:
http://forum.nightswithalicecooper.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=4656&PN=747
Et merci beaucoup a Vampirella de Calgarie pour le photo-recherche!
Check this:
http://forum.nightswithalicecooper.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=4656&PN=747
Et merci beaucoup a Vampirella de Calgarie pour le photo-recherche!
Monday, December 8, 2008
A cabbie editing Shakespeare?? Huh???
My projected edition of the Bard's Troilus and Cressida will have a four-part intro:
1. Circumscription. Six pages of quotations, mostly from the scholarly poohbahs, about Shakespeare's elusive religion and politics, and about this "problem play."
2. Preface. The wacky story of how I more or less blundered my way into solving the problem (for full Preface, see below).
3. Prologue I. "Shakespeare's Repentance: What to Recognize When Rethinking a 'Conservative Authoritarian.'" All about Shakespeare's allusive coding in an earlier work (the cute part is that Shakespeare never wrote anything called Repentance, overtly anyway *hee hee*). Ideally this portion will be first presented as a public lecture at my alma mater, the University of Alberta, so profs and I can go at it with hammer and tongs!
4. Prologue II. "Troilus and Cressida as Mega-Parable." How Shakespeare continued his coding pattern into a cleverly concealed satire -- at a time when satire was illegal...
1. Circumscription. Six pages of quotations, mostly from the scholarly poohbahs, about Shakespeare's elusive religion and politics, and about this "problem play."
2. Preface. The wacky story of how I more or less blundered my way into solving the problem (for full Preface, see below).
3. Prologue I. "Shakespeare's Repentance: What to Recognize When Rethinking a 'Conservative Authoritarian.'" All about Shakespeare's allusive coding in an earlier work (the cute part is that Shakespeare never wrote anything called Repentance, overtly anyway *hee hee*). Ideally this portion will be first presented as a public lecture at my alma mater, the University of Alberta, so profs and I can go at it with hammer and tongs!
4. Prologue II. "Troilus and Cressida as Mega-Parable." How Shakespeare continued his coding pattern into a cleverly concealed satire -- at a time when satire was illegal...
Preface
(To come...)Friday, December 5, 2008
Facebook asks, what are you doing?
I'm channeling Mackenzie King -- Waxing poetic if necessary, but not necessarily waning prosaic.
Any resemblance to the weaselly verbiage flying around Canada's Parliament these days is purely echoic.
Any resemblance to the weaselly verbiage flying around Canada's Parliament these days is purely echoic.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Last laugh at Parliament...
Again, me mouthing off, from Post's "Full Comment" (where the excitable are getting really, REALLY excited about the mud-wrestling in Ottawa...). I start with a quote, like all the best pontifical pundits:
"... my view of my country is predominantly tolerant and amiable. I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind."
-- Not written by a wit from Canada (although Mordecai Richler loved him), and the statement is 60 years old, but it still comprises a perfect comment upon the current, farcical power-struggle.. Regardless of political stripe, I think everyone should be laughing heartily at the clownarama...
# # # #
And I still think Ignatieff is perfect in the role of Shemp.
"... my view of my country is predominantly tolerant and amiable. I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind."
-- Not written by a wit from Canada (although Mordecai Richler loved him), and the statement is 60 years old, but it still comprises a perfect comment upon the current, farcical power-struggle.. Regardless of political stripe, I think everyone should be laughing heartily at the clownarama...
# # # #
And I still think Ignatieff is perfect in the role of Shemp.
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