KNOWING -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448011/

Knowing is Everything, says the publicity...

" Shit Happens" states John Koestler , the character played by Nicholas Cage in the film Knowing [Directed by Alex Proyas]...a bland statement of the obvious that sometimes is proclaimed as a Universal Truth...

Knowing too much can be very disturbing ( and as a warning, if you don't want to know too much about the film, avoid reading the last paragraphs of this blog-posting... )

This Latest of Apocalyptic scenarios, one of dozens to have graced or disgraced the screen , especially since the year 2000 ( and the 2001 september 11th mediatised mini-apocalypse certainly did not put an end to our end-of-the-world fantasies, though to some it was The End ) ....may well disappoint the more exigeant of jaded film goers, or fail to satisfy the intelectually hungry who have already read philosophical treatises and elaborated for themselves prophetically meaningful doomsday scenarios of great complexity ...

But , as with many Nicolas Cage films , no one was trying to fool the viewers with any false intelectualism or with pedantic over the top : the plot and script were simple, deceptively so. The age old conflict between determinists and the proponents of absolute randomness is certainly not solved by this narrative , which , if it may fail to be Beautiful remains quietly powerful. Nor is the "World of the Unknown" unknown to Nicolas Cage , who amongst other things executive produced the very intriguing if moderately succesful television Show "The Dresden Files" , and who starred in the archeological mysteries National Treasure and National Treasure , Book of Secrets as well as other psycho and psychically inclined dramas such as Bringing out the Dead, (another Easter story from 1999).

The filming is stark and tense, and we are spared a happy ending . We are given nonetheless a message of ultimate hope, in a strange mix of pessimism and of optimistic triumphalism.

The horrible reality of death and it's inevitability , the sometimes inexplicable synchronicity's of life, the hints of pre-cognition and the mathematical beauty of the universe are neatly served up in an entertaining thriller .

Much of life is random, at least it seems to be so... and we cling to whatever semblance of structure we can---for life, in essence is about maintaining structure where there ought to be chaos : it is about fighting entropy, the eternal principle of inertia that sucks the energy out of all systemic forms.

There were some very simple images in this film..The fine line between insanity and sanity, the whispering voices that haunt the children, hinting at another reality were pleasant brain-teasers.

I must say, that as a fan of Science Fiction I was very pleased by the wonderful representation of spacecraft that the filmakers imagined--- and the visually satisfying maelstrom showed the extent to which CGI can now hyper-realise some of our worst imaginings..for none of us can imagine truly what being at ground zero of the equivalent of a 1000000 megaton explosion could be... but some of the scenes must certainly rank as amongst of the best aproximations of what the experience might be like .

I liked that this film was simple. I liked the simplicity of the emotions that it evokes. If you need answers, avoid this film. If you want to be tortured by ambiguity and ambivalence because you enjoy existential angst , go see an Ingmar Bergman film at your local Repertory cinema, or if you want something absurd and inexplicable , rather than an exposé of the Unexplained, choose a Fellini film and watch it while smoking pot.

If you want to dream a nightmare with and ending that is not too ghoulish, bitter sweet ,without being too overwhelmingly sad , this may actually be a film for you to see.

I guess this was definitely an Easter story, because it ends with bunny rabbits, symbols of eternal fertility of nature , and a tree which Is also an old symbol of resurection and also identifiable as the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil. But it is a film that can be watched anytime, as it s not limited by strictly christian symbolism.

A friend of mine at one of the local bookselling nooks ( of which the logo is, gues what : a tree , http://www.co-opbookstore.ca/index.html ) will tell any one who will listen ( and also those who refuse to ) that there is no price to awareness.Well, I am not certain that awareness and Knowing, or Being "In The Know" , for that matter, are priceless. Certainly knowing, (which implies direct experience ) something is not necessarily the same as being aware ( etymologically related to the latin fearful, to the act of seeing in greek , or of being careful in old english ) .

Being aware of the ever present possibility of an Apocalypse is not the same as knowing it is inevitable...There is a price to everything, and knowing too much could be costly to us. If we knew with certainty of the Apocalypse and of it's time, we would cease being motivated to live...most of us would simply, reduced to anomie , sit down , and cry.

or would we....???

VALKYRIE, THE FILM THAT IS NOT ABOUT NAZISM

[ A mere few minutes after first posting this entry I wandered into a Downtown Montreal eatery and picked up a copy of THE HOUR , one of the downtown papers which seems to be very scarce these days--- perhaps succumbing to haphazard distribution .I was excited to see an article on Valkyrie featured on the cover, which I read with delight and interest.It includes an interview with the Producer.

See : http://www.hour.ca/film/film.aspx?iIDArticle=16289 ]




Quote from Valkyrie :


THIS IS A MILITARY OPERATION ...NOTHING EVER GOES ACCORDING TO PLAN !



Through a strange concordance of circumstances , yours truly,(The Book Fool) , was priveleged to attend the Montreal Premiere { the third public showing ever if I correctly understood ,of course Los Angeles and another American city were the favoured test-screening areas for the studio's first showings} of the historical Drama VALKYRIE.


This was the first showing of the film attended by the two writers of the script. Also present was one of the world respected authorities on the subject of the German Resistance , who also participated in the Q&A at the end of the screening, Proffesor Hoffman, of Montreal .



( He is the Author of a seminal work on World War Two : THE GERMAN RESISTANCE )


To briefly tell what I gathered from the question and answers : I think many of the audience were spell bound and speachless, thusly there were few questiopns.The writers seemed to answer the questions with one voice, though one of them spoke much more ( I sadly did not manage to place a face to the name of which one of the two was most voluble-- )


They spoke at length about the difficulties encountered by the production team, about the problems surrounding the efforts at historical exactitude-- as much informtion surrounding the events were obtained from third and fourth hand sources and as many of the protagonists died soon after the attempted coup ( last of thirteen ) , many others dying soon after the war ended. There were problems which serendipitously seemed to solve themselves with access to certain locations and in obtaining Nazi paraphenalia for filming in Germany , where such items are still illegal and considered incitful of nefarious tendencies.


This film is filled with details of the daily experiences of Germans , and of the Managers of the Hitlers war machine. It is not a mere war drama-- it attempts to show the human experience of war.
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Quote from film :

Hitler : " One cannot understand National Socialism unless one understands Wagner "
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The film is a rich visual lesson of how human passions can so cleverly be harnessed to serve sometimes obscure ends, and of how these passions blurr the distinctions we make in pedestrian life between good and evil. The complicated birth of Modern Europe and the genesis of the messy two World Wars , are all reflected in this film. All the tangled , psychologically complex and tumerous nature the Rattenkönig, for lack of a better metaphor , of Western civilisation, of which we find many indications in Nietzche"s writings
(for example : Beyond Good and Evil :

http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/beyondgoodandevil_tofc.htm )

are glimpsed in the mere two hours this film lasts.


True, all humans falter and fail, we are all weak : but when a collective weakness becomes transformed into a strength, the devastating results are frightening.

This film serves the purpose well of re-awakening this fear in us: of what we are collectively capable of, given the necessary political and social elements. We of the post 9-11 world, the Past-Post Modern world , are jaded to the possibilities of mass murder and genocide...there has been so much mayhem in living memory, from Vietnam, to Bosnia and Rwanda, to the various small scale atrocities in the Balkan states and various Eastern Asian states...
All of the contadictory feelings which the present-day conflict between western liberalism and the various fundamentalisms ( reminiscent as they are of fascist purism ) are pleasantly absent when viewing a film that shows a conflict that is rapidly moving out of the field of Living Memory and which only a small handfull of us still actually remember anything of.


THE RATTENKONIG ( THE RAT - KING )


War , sadly , continues to (apparently) be the mainspring of human history...we seem to not be able to live without conflict.It is absurd, and yet we placidly accept it.

The seeds of the world Geopolitical situation as it is now , were sown in the conflagration which detroyed the old imperialism constructs , forming the new corporatism we know today. It is important to remember that Fascism, once a political movement that ( however misguidedly )sought order and structure, was one of the parents of corporatism, and the new imperialism of multinationals.

The film makers were perhaps more concerned with producing an interesting and entertaining film...Nonetheless, they created a masterpiece of educational and instructional use, a film that all young students should see : the result was an almost-documentary.

It is a tragic story , to be sure, with a very sad ending , for the failed assassination and coup ( the last of 42 attempts ) only served to strengthen the Hitlerian inner circle and their resolve: had Shauffenberg been succesful, The Invasion of Normandy , the enormous expense and ever so high cost in human lives of the final months of the war , would have been avoided- perhaps Europe would have been a much different place , and also, America would not have gained it's foothold for future hegemony by becoming the Superman of the world.

Shaufenbergs failure helped , by default, to create the new form of Liberal-Fascism that now controls much of our lives.


Who can say...Is the world a better or worse place than it would have been had the assassination and Coup not failed ?
We are , for now, enjoying , in some parts of the world , a level of individual freedom and cultural prosperity that is unprecedented in history ( Although this is such a fragile freedom and is superficial at best )
Beneath these somewhat frail freedoms still rumbles the war machine that was brought forth in the age of industry...


I was planning to post this entry when the 100th Canadian fell in Afghanistan..Sadly, the tally has actually reached 103 by dec 14th ... and today, 5 days before the end of 2008 and supposed the scheduled withdrawl of Canada from Afghanistan , we can expect more deaths. A mere 103 men fallen , less than nothing in the cosmic scheme of things. Our lives go on-- few of us question the irrationality of this new world war in the making.

War, the artificial human machinery of death , is , to this day, omnipresent. We have not found the key to unrooting its deep hold on us. Why we need so badly to speed up the march of death, when Nature does such a good job of doing so independantly of us , is one of the greatest mysteries of the Human Phenomenon.

For us who have never lived war, never felt the fear , the absolute terror of the cold ,bitter wind of nihilism, the film offers a solid look at war from a comfortable distance -- it is much more real than any documentary could be , much more real than any CNN footage from Irak or Afghanistan.


There have been lukewarm reviews for this bit of cinema...I will be very interested to see what judgement the court of public opinion will render , now the film has been released. Tom Cruise did an extaordinary job of portraying how "human" a Nazi can be , and though her role was incidental, the charm and style of Carice van Houten , the -as yet - relatively unknown European actress, added a little ' je ne sais quoi' to the visual feast.



This is a film we must all see twice. The first time to better understand the Twentieth century and the generations of men and women whose lives are now gradually leaving this earth, and once more to better understand the twenty-first century, of which the first decade and it's birth pangs is ending so dismally.

How the Book Fool was Trance-Fixed by Music

It has been quite a few months now, thirty and counting ...Long enough for time to have wrought it's wisdom in the tumult of my feelings...

At some point in february 2006 , sometime before my friend John George shed his mortal coil ; leaving this earth, one dares hope , for better clymes ; I wandered the streets of Montreal despondently... I had spent several nights and afternoons in his company as he slowly disappeared before my eyes, battle weary from his fight with cancer...

I sought refuge in a small Urban-Legendary Bistro, the Casa del Popolo on St. Laurent Blvd, Montreal. A hot cup of Café au Lait and a sandwich was all I hoped for... Instead I encountered the healing and soothing sounds of Hunter Eves voice and electronic keyboard... Truth be told I remember little of that night, other than that I left strengthened--I even bought the C.D. as I recall...thought perhaps I purchased it at the next show I was able to go to, a few months later...

In a sense the sequence of events matters little. The weeks up to and following my friends death are somewhat of a blurr... I cannot help but sense that perhaps his otherworldly hand guided me to the Casa not only that first night, but on several others as he patiently waited for death, and after his departure as well... I saw a klezmer band , and a presentation by some master storytellers , as well as some poetry readings...all of which he would have liked . His presence as well as that of his his Bookshop had been a lighthouse ( For he and the Argo on rue Ste. Catherine in Montreal were as one ) and had unfailingly guided me time and again , as They did many others , to safe harbour , through years of my navigating the darkness .

I have forgotten the details of most of that period of time except this : On to the small stage of my life burst the cosmic sounds of Hunter Eves.

What must be underlined is that in the years ending the old millenium and beginning the new , music was not much of a reality in my life... Years ago I had stopped listening to any thing ressembling music... let alone live performances. With the closing of the Golem Coffee house, the sporadic venue wherein I occasionally served coffee and which hosted many fine singers such as Garnet Rogers, Odetta , Rory Block and many others , my encounters with music were suspended ... There followed some years during which John George and his Bookshop remained my lighthouse , during which time I wandered the Dark Night of my Soul.

However , The two concerts of Hunter Eves I saw that year are Bookends to a time in which much happened (perhaps without happening ) in my life, and of which I frankly must say I remember little.

In this world of Sensory Feasting, we are bombarded everywhere by sound and visual stimuli-- much of which is pollution : but the fact That I remember Hunter Eves and her music and that I continue to listen to it, (at live shows whenever possible ) , is precisely the point herein. It may seem trivial to some that I forget much of everything that is thrown at me, this being a mere symptom of this worlds tendeny to create short attention spans and to encourage instant gratification.
That Hunter Eves I did NOT forget then- and do NOT now forget - is not so trivial to me, especially in light of this contemporary tendency -- It means, I think, that her music is qualitatively different from much of what we hear .

My friend was not fond of modernity-- Technology and all it's trappings bothered him. I think that despite his hungry and open mind he was suspicious of all things scientific, considering them faintly touched by Evil. "I don't like all this technology" he said at one point in his last few days, as I tried to distract him from his pain with some sort of CNN documentary... He wisely asked me to instead read to him from the Times Literary Supplement . The electronic music of his youthful neighbour whom he was fond of bemused him...

Yet , I think he would have liked the music of Hunter Eves, for in her style is found a pleasant conjunction of the classical with the new electric sounds of the sometimes alienating Cyber-world that is being brought forth daily. She demonstrates , in her performances, that the Muses of old continue to Be present , although the instruments may change.

Her shows, usually held in small venues are uncomplicated , and do not overwhelm. If her music lulls and soothes you as it does me , then I am sure you will be as enthusiastic a fan as I .

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To see where her next shows are and to hear some of her music visit her MySpace address :

http://www.myspace.com/huntereves

also : http://www.isound.com/hunter_eves

ANIMATED AMERICAN

THE BOOK FOOL GOES TO THE MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL....

I had the good fortune to see a couple of films at this years edition of the Montreal Film festival. One 15 minute short pleased me ... so here is a small tribute to this little work of Directors James Baker and Joe Haidar . Of course , this was a 'HIGH END " big budget" short...[ How else could such eye-catching and breathtaking talent as Bree Turner and such excellent acting as that of Jason Marsden appear--unless they donated their time ? ]
In some ways , it may not deserve attention, as such a budget may perhaps exclude the film from the category of " Forgettable , Insignificant & falling through the Cracks" , the somewhat muddled criterion I use to choose what I write about.
That it was slotted, perhaps intentionally(?), preceding the showing of a documentary film is perhaps what redeems this film and gives it status in the pantheon of the obscure. The film it served to introduce was " The Price of Pleasure " by Documentary producer CHYNG SUN coincidentally also co-creator of the 2001 documentary film " Mickey Mouse Monopoly , Disney, Childhood and Corporate Power" ( Which -perhaps not so strangely - happens to NOT have a page on IMDB, and which Animated American , the subject of this review does ) , [ Visit : http://www.thepriceofpleasure.com/ ] ---

If the showing of the film was as a sly reminder that Comics have the edge on reality- as witnessed by the several Comic Book inspired films from Ironman and The Hulk to Hellboy and Batman that were offered to us for summer viewing by the studios-- then this Reality Denying Fool considers it noteworthy, if only because understanding why these films have such influence is an important exercise in mental gymnastics. ( Though the films were not Animated , they certainly show the power of the Comic and Animé media... Why else would studios spend the big bucks ?]

That said, despite the dominance of the Comic in the Real World , there are definitely conflicts within World of the Comic itself , which the short film obliquely develops.

In this lighthearted film the theme of technology's encroachment on the world of the Cartoon is humorously portrayed.

" TWO WORDS : C.G.I !!! "

shouts Max Rabbit at the arrogant high powered executive who , bewildered , asks

WHY?

as he becomes the disgruntled Cartoon's plaything ...

The Old penciled ' Toon ( and Roger Rabbit understudy ) takes matters into his own hands to save his Two-dimensional existence from the invasion of Digital Life Forms into the world of animation. Devious and cunning tactics , which exploit well known human weaknesses [ the Lust for beautiful property both as brick and mortar and in shaply two legged form] lead to the defeat of the Executive and to a Table-Turning dénouement . The old penciled Cartoon, once the offspring, becomes the new master in an act of castrating parricide.

Reading a satirical subtext into the theme of the film and interpreting it's title as a critique of American self-aggrandizement remains a delicate question of subjective judgment . It does not stretch the laws of probability, though , to see parallels : The conflicts within the American Psyche are certainly reflected in the' Toon world-These Mythic stories are the dark glass of our passions and most obscure motives.

America is definitely very Animated in the Heroic theater of geopolitical hegemony---whether America will in the long run be a Good old Penciled 'Toon, or completely succumb to the C.G.I. Disease ( Technologization , along with Pornification are infectious World-Views ) , remains to be seen-- for the conservative windstorm sweeping the world has not ended it's whiplash .

As the ancient Greek chronicler Herodotus ( No, sadly not Homer, the other illustrious Ancient One ; nor his Geek incarnation as the All American Patriarch of the the 'toon - world ) said :

"...the Gods love to thwart whatever is greater than the rest . They do not suffer pride in anyone but themselves. "

Our modern day Archetypal incarnations of the gods,the beloved Comic Book Super Heroes , will perhaps render judgment on the ones who portray their adventures .

Geek Hubris will only be tolerated so far...



NOTA : For anyone who doubts the power of C.G.I. : I suggest you arrange a screening of The Price of Pleasure above mentioned, in which - amongst other things -the American Supreme Court ruling , on the constitutionality of C.G.I representations ,of Children in Pornography , is carefully exposed - showing how our pornified world view and the Comicalisation of Reality have infested even one of the better institutional examples of human enlightenment to have ever existed.
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you can See the Animated American film web page on IMDB :
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1271967/
and:
The Price of Pleasure
http://www.thepriceofpleasure.com/

X-Files-- The Darkness is Out There-or In Here.

The X-Files flirts again with the Lord of the Flies..( I should resist the dyslexic pun : The Lord of the Files) -- this to the disappointment of some of the audience whom I heard muttering : "There Were No Aliens" ....

Many of the more than 200 episodes of this series which were for several years my only connection to the un-reel world of television-[ having no such machine in my home I was fortunate to be invited ,often,on Sunday evenings , to a friends home to watch the show]- were thematically about human alienation , deviance , freakishness and , why not say the word : Evil.

Indeed , part of the shows mystery was it's continuous probing of the reality of Aliens as they live amongst us , Alien - Humans , those homegrown on our world.

I was therefore neither surprised nor disappointed. The film was not an over dramatic exposé of some of the more intangible and painful aspects of human lived experience-- rather it was carefully understated . ( This I say , despite the gore which was carefully served up for the audiences horrification ). It was also mercifully devoid of the special effects overdose which films have much of these days. It stood firmly in the tradition of the x-files series in that it raised more questions than it answered, leaving loose ends galore and sparing us none of the horribleness mixed with wonderment that much of life paradoxically presents us with , every day.

There was no great novelty in this film, I will grant you this. But that was part of the point of making the film.. Chris Carters obsession , with evil and suffering , which I share in my own limited way, is suitably realistic .By this I mean : the fact that Evil is in some ways very unimaginative and thus repetetive, as in a sense the original Show was , is part of it's somewhat banal reality, to paraphrase the Jewish Philosopher Hannah Arendt . Because the Devil is in the Details, the sameness within many episodes and within the film loses it's importance...because it is with the differences of detail that the Devil fascinates and distracts us..

or, dare I ask : is it God ?

Human organ harvesting and pedophilia , both subjects which till recently were sufficiently Taboo to be avoided by most Directors are bravely mingled in a plot which sports a fair amount of Freudian allusions to the innocence of children and to the ways in which we fill our inner voids with searches for the unfindable , undefinable and the unattainable.

Dana Scully complains to her partner and intellectual opposite that she is tired of looking into the darkness...She hopes they can close the book on this - with usual aplomb Mulder responds :

" I don't think it works that way , I think the Darkness finds you "

Of course , as the title states, the film is all about faith, about wanting to believe. Both Scully and her Lover are sorely tested. As within the T.V. Series Mulder ' s Belief system is tested by the frustration of never quite getting tangible proof with which to clobber his detractors--and Scully is frustrated because her skepticism is never given the full satisfaction of reason. The duality , if it should be ever resolved would perhaps ruin human experience...Within the rationality of one the kernel of faith never ceases to germinate...and within the belief system of the other the seed of doubt forever finds a small nook or cranny within which to grow.

Is God using Evil , as the Pedophile tragic anti-hero feels ? Or is Evil, the omnipresent force within and without , playing with us, toying with our desires, one of the strongest of these being our desire to believe.

Certainly Chris Carter does not have a simple answer. I fear he would cease making films if he did...

The minuscule gold cross which was a frequent appearance around the neck of our loverly heroine in the X-files shows, seemed absent in this film, but she carried it nonetheless...At the end of the narrative , against a backdrop of three nuns she performs an Act of Faith that may be as cruel as the act of scientific brutality which the faceless villains ( Russians, no less ) perform throughout the story. It is however , qualitatively different , infused with love.
( How I have missed you Scully, the tenderness you represent. -- Ok, I forgive you Gillian Anderson, for not really being Scully and for actually having a life outside of the television set... I admit it , you have long been an inspiration and the source of a few wicked dreams to this poor soul. )

If there is a moral to the story , then, it is perhaps this : that it, the story , never ends. As the very last scene makes explicit, we are all very much at sea on very small boat.

Although, we seem if (Dana and Mulder are seen as our representatives ) to have a couple of oars.

At least for now.

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Duffy --- A Blonde with Morals.

The title of this short review betrays some of the predjudices that I , as many males of our society, am plagued by. There is something about Blondes embedded (oops, sorry Freud ) in our conciousness : They are both desired and feared , they are a source of envy , considered dangerous and, as most fearsome beings, they are put down--who hasn't laughed at a Dumb Blonde joke ? So to title a review "A Blonde with Morals " betrays a holier than thou superciliousness that only a chauvinist can be guilty of. I hope the reader can forgive this fallibility.

Our culture is permeated with music about Love-- or at least romantic love , which is the most accessible form of this mystery-emotion. My access to popular music is limited to what I hear in public forums , namely my work place or shopping spaces...This because I have a tendency to shut the world out -- Musical choices are extremely personal and usually the forgettable songs that make the airwaves are chosen for mass -listening through some unknown alchemy of the music business . Pop is just that: Popular. What determines Pop-ularity is of course an extremely complex ' averaging process ' for lack of a better term.

Much of the music that gets insidiously thrown at us , chosen for us by the alchemists who choose play lists goes in one ear and out the other of this particular Fool... Occasionally however, something sticks.

I have not listened to any other songs by Duffy ( yet) . I first heard " Mercy" when I went to the cinema and the music-video played at the beginning, before the film started--I forgot the film, but not the video. Then I started noticing the song played often during the night hours during which I work-- ( the Radio stations my co-workers allow vary a bit, but I could not help but notice that Duffy's song pop-ped up almost everywhere on the dial.

It's a catchy tune. No doubt about it. Subtly explicit about the painful issues of seduction and sexual dominance, captivity and release , without being crass, it is a simple yet strangely beautiful song . There is a refreshing frankness to its style.

Perhaps I am not the best judge , as I do not know the music scene well : but an erotic song that has reached popularity in the charts AND has the word 'Morals' at it's core seems to me to be a unique happening.
( Of course if one could discern the subtext of words that stream in the background through parts of the recording, the meaning of the song might be altered-- that would be too easy , perhaps ? )


Hats off Duffy. I don't think it's my morals that have ME on my knees.

I'll try not to dream of you too much. I may even purchase your C.D.

The Book Fool.
( The lyrics and soundtrack are accessible , to the right of this page , thanks to the miracles of modern technology and countless geeks ).

Review of the film : Gunshy.

Gunshy

A Study of Ambiguity and Evil

William Petersen, known for his long lasting role as Grissom in the CSI television series , did some feature film work in the nineties. He is remembered by some for his role in Manhunter , the first [least glamourous ,though probably best] film in the Hannibal Lecter ark...and he is perhaps not remembered at all for his role in an amazingly well written Noir film released in 1998 in which he played a washed out writer Jake Bridges , a broken man in search of a story and of renewed creative vitality . Gunshy has everything a cult movie should have : Sex- or rather , controled lust - brutality, death , and yes , love and renewed life and birth . But this production fascinated me mostly for it's careful delineation of the timeline and stepping stones that bring our heroes closer and closer to self-annhilation. This etiology ( to use a medical term) , of the illness that afflicts the writer and the others -- until good sense , or a semblance thereof, is restored , is instructive.

The Legbreaking enforcer who plays the 'Bad Guy ' in the film, ( Frankie , played by Michael Wincott ) has grown up in a culture of violence. His loyalties and loves are all determined by this environment. He feels comfortable in it, though he does have thoughts of leaving this behind. The " Good Guy " has lost his footing in the world that he knows , one of semi-glamourous writer working for mainline newspapers, one in which his writing is known as exemplary. The interesting thing about this plot is that the archetypes which govern most plots involving good and evil have been reversed. Here the figure of Christ the saviour is actually played by The Gangster Frankie, The figure of Judas is filled by the one who would normally be perceived as good- the writer with a sick soul. The serpent in this paradise is played by a somewhat Satanic police officer, he who should in fact be the paragon of virtue.{ He says to Jake whom he is using , as only the devil incarnate could :

" You're mine, Your eyes are mine, your ears are mine, your dick is mine ..the fact is every step you take you take for me" }

Diane Lane in the role of the lovely Melissa plays The loving figure of Mary ( or one might say of the two Mary's in one , both mother and whore ) : she who will love whomever needs her, perhaps giving of herself too indiscriminately in the hope of saving what she loves. ....
All of these characters are flawed and undeniably intertwined by complexities of need and want that leave them faced with decisions and compromises that can only be seen as painful from the observation booth of the cinema seat.

Frankie has simple ethics, but they work. These are summed up basically as : An eye for an eye, or at least, Break bones for Dollars owing.

" I like to hurt people who deserve to get hurt "

The Father figure,( played by Michael Byrne --shiver me timbers, this is 'good' acting of Evil ) arguably the most primally evil character of the plot , protector and nurturer of Frankie , sends him on missions of avenging . These he performs unquestioningly. The writer, with his complex ,somewhat dysfunctional morality and intelectualised view of the world starts a wobble in Frankies unwaverng orbit. Both men admire the other and both envy the strengths of the other. Frankie asks Jake to be his teacher-- and so is introduced into the story what is perhaps the most important Character of this film -- The book Moby Dick, a novel by Herman Melville.
The theme of reading , and of the healing nature of books is a counterpoint to the writers story of his failure at his craft.

Foreshadowing the choices that will ultimately be made , Jake tells his student , as they discuss Moby Dick :

" I mean that caring about someone and loving someone , that connection , is more important than whether we live or die , whether we're rich or poor , whether we owe someone or not. "

In the end, Frankie must commit the one act he has prided himself in avoiding all his life. He must kill . Parricide is his only salvation from the knotted complexities of his perceived uncomplicated world.

All pay a price to the carnally uncompromising world we live in. Melissa betrays her love for Frankie by allowing the seductive spinner of words to lure her into his world so he can satisfy his creative needs... Frankie will lose the illusion of loyal bonding, both to his father figure whom he kills and to his Melissa whom he almost kills, when she admits to having transgressed-- though the actual act of lust is never acknowledged, merely alluded to as a feeling of caring. And Jake will lose his freedom, at least temporarily , the price for his transgression of luring Frankie into a setup and abusing his trust. This apparently altruistic act of giving affords his new friend the chance to escape from the labyrinth of the cold streets of Atlantic City.

The Good guy is bad, the Bad guy is good ---It is hard to decide which, if any of these puppets in the circus , is the least slimy. The only figure with an untarnished view of the world [and who evokes a somewhat reluctant admiration from this reviewer, for his authenticity] - is Pops, the one who unquestioningly embraces Evil in it's purity--if the reader will allow the oxymoron . The Woman is , in the end , the one whose life is the most coloured by the two very opposite males to whom she gives of herself. Amongst all the death and mayhem there is a noteworthy reference at the end , of a new life to be borne as in the final minutes of dialog we learn she will be bearing Frankie a child. As Pops , Evil as he is , recognises in the film :

"There is nothing like a sons love for his father."

Ultimately the peacemaker in the Drama is the female, the Mother figure. She will risk losing one man to whom she is bonded by life history, To save the other. Yet this very sacrifice, this 'pound of flesh' is what ultimately saves her Frankie-- for the morally bankrupt writer gets a taste of goodness in her arms and finally sees that the words he spoke to Frankie [ as quoted above] , must apply to himself as well . What she does , although the flattering attentions of the seducer do appeal to her, she does for love. Interestingly, she saves them both, for in the end Jakes love for her which began as a fixation { Melissa you are the one thing in my life that makes sense to me } progresses and becomes selfless enough that he will relinquishes his desire for her :

" Everything I said to you I meant- you've got to believe that "

Prosaically, one might say : Life goes on. As Jake says at the end , as he reflects in his prison cell :

" It's funny - people you don't expect to love are the ones you never forget. "

The english-linguistic melting pot has created three categories to accommodate the ambiguities that surround Evil and the many flaws of humanity. From within the English language We speak of The Good, of The Bad and of Evil. The two main protagonists struggle with the polarities of Good and Bad, the one purely Evil character, terrifying in his unwavering belief in his view of things is the Crime-boss, Pops. The one character in the film who is perhaps closest to the logic of nature , is of course the Female, Melissa, who, though she could have been a femme fatale and embraced the dark side , manages instead to bring two men out from beneath the shadows of corruption and Evil with a finesse that the actress Diane Lane so admirably portrays.

The film ends on an understated cliffhanger , as our redeemed gangster asks his intelectual mentor : "What should I read next ? I'm looking for a good book to read..."

I do wish the writer Larry Gross had suggested something for us to dig our eyes into.

BOOKS RULE !!!


This film is available on DVD and if Movieland ( 1972 St. Catherine Street West ) don't have it in their collection --- they certainly ought to .