At the Lighthouse

November 9 1989

November 9, 2009 at 9:35 am | In History, Pop Culture, Television | Leave a Comment

Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. I wish I could tell you exactly what I was doing on November 9 1989, when I was told about the fall of the wall, and what I felt when I saw people celebrating on TV that night, but I can’t. I don’t have any memories of that day. I was six years old at the time and I guess I was simply too young to understand what was going on.

The Boyfriend and I talked about it last night and he, being a few years older than me, remembers things more clearly, although mostly what he remembers is his father being completely elated and watching television all night on that day. I guess this is very typical of my generation, the generation that were young children in the 80s: The Berliner Mauer fall was the first major historical event of our lives, but in a strange, remote vague way. Even for those of us who were old enough to understand what was going on on November 9 1989, the divided Germany had not been part of our scheme of things. We had spent our young 80s lives learning how to walk and talk and button those overalls we all wore back then regardless of our sex, and we hadn’t been longing for the collapse of the wall the way our parents had.

But the repercussions were great enough that the event didn’t go completely over my head, and the fall of the Berliner Mauer comes back to me in little fragments when I try to look back. Mostly I remember sitting in the backseat of my parents’ car, as my parents drove me and my brother to a neighbouring city on December 1989, where we would celebrate New Year’s Eve with some friends of my mother. “This may have been the most important year of your lives,” my father solemnly told me and my brother and then went on to explain to us about the wall and what it meant that it was now no longer there.

I also remember going to Germany in the summer of ‘90 with my family, and it is of course no coincidence that my parents chose to take us to our southern neighbouring country that particular year. My parents showed my brother and me both Eastern and Western Germany and the stark contrasts between them made a deep impression. We also saw parts of the old wall, and I was chilled to the bone when I saw the barbed wire and my mother told me what it was for. “Lede mur”, my brother and I started calling the wall after seeing it – “Mean wall” in Danish.

And then I have one memory of the fall of the Mauer that I hadn’t thought of for years and years until just this morning, namely the memory of a particular episode of the cartoon Alvin and The Chipmunks. My brother and I watched that cartoon religiously at one time, despite the fact that our television didn’t receive the channel that broadcast it very well. We only had two working channels back then, the Danish Public Service channel and one commercial one, but my brother and I had managed to find this third channel and it fascinated us to no end. The signal was so bad that everything we tried to watch on the channel had a double outline, making it look as if all the people on the screen were constantly haunted by an eerie ghostly doppeltgänger, but my brother and I could care less because the television broadcast a wide range of American cartoons, the likes of which we had never seen in the sober, daily 30-minute children’s programme on the public service channel that my parents let us watch. My parents disappoved of our watching these mainstream cartoons, thinking that they were in bad taste, but I guess they must have felt it would be useless to try to keep us away from it. And so ignoring the ghostly double outlines and my parents’ eyes on us, my brother and I watched Dinoriders on this channel, we watched Dungeons and Dragons, we watched Captain America. And then we watched Alvin and The Chipmunks, and I’ve forgotten every episode of that cartoon series except for one Berlin Wall episode.

When I googled ”Chipmunks Berlin Wall episode” today I found that the episode actually aired a year prior to the fall of the Mauer, but in Denmark there must have been a delay, because I know I never saw the episode until after the wall had fallen, and I could hardly believe my eyes. I don’t remember much from the story, other than the fact that it was the story of two children, a sister and a brother who had been seperated by the wall. The sister told the Chipmunks her story and how much she missed her brother, and the Chipmunks ended up doing a concert next to the Berlin Wall, singing about their hope that the wall would fall down. Amidst their singing, the wall started to crack and crumble, it fell, and the brother and sister were reunited.

My brother and I were gaping. Even at that age we felt that there was something dangerously inappropriate about a mere cartoon depicting an event that my parents had told me might be the most important event of my lifetime. But I was also deeply moved by the story. I cried when the brother and sister embraced, I thought the song was beautiful, and I think that seeing the event depicted on Alvin and the Chipmunks was one of the first things that made me realize just how big a deal the Mauer was. It was one thing that my parents were preoccupied with the wall – they were preoccupied with so many things that didn’t concern me; politics, economics, work. But the fact that the American cartoons, this childish realm that belonged so exclusively to my brother and myself, the fact that they related to the event made me begin to realize that that big, crumbling wall wasn’t just something that grown-ups in grey suits talked about dryly on the news, it was something that was going to define me and my generation and the way we would live our lives.

I don’t think I’ve ever realized how powerful that moment was to me until just this morning when I managed to find the Chipmunks clip on youtube and I damn near teared up listening to the song. In German class in school we were told about the wall endlessly and wrote essay upon essay about it, but nothing ever had as much of an impact on me as that silly cartoon episode did on that day. Is the image of Alvin and the Chipmunks breaking the wall with their singing sappy and in poor taste? Certainly! But the episode served its purpose for me back then.

“I Am a Bricklayer” – Carl Th. Dreyer’s Ordet and the Character of Johannes

November 3, 2009 at 7:42 pm | In Art, Movies, youtube | Leave a Comment

Last night I went to see my very first Carl Th. Dreyer film, namely Ordet (“The Word”). I’ve been eager to see a Dreyer film for years; so many film directors, Lars von Trier for instance, claim to be inspired by Dreyer, and he is always mentioned among the great masters of cinema, even internationally. Once I actually came very close to seeing his Day of Wrath. I happened upon it at Blockbuster and couldn’t believe my luck, so I tried to rent it, but the girl behind the counter regretted to inform me that the tape (this being back in the stone age, before DVDs had taken over the market) had gone missing. Instead, I rented a video called Comedy Zoo featuring a series of stand up routines from 1997. The girl behind the counter commended me on this decision. “I think that’s a much better choice than that sad, old thing you first tried to rent.” she said.

So my Dreyer virginity was not taken until just last night with Ordet. I have to say, though, that it was a rather bizarre experience. Intense, yes, but bizarre. I think it was the overt religious theme of the movie that freaked me out a little. I mean, it wasn’t even religious in the Seventh Seal existentialist kind of way, it was more in the sense of “GOD IS HERE!HE EXISTS!!1! ACKNOWLEDGE HIM!!!!1!”. And why would this freak me out? I’m not sure. I’m a fairly devout Lutheran myself. And I knew that the movie script was a play written by Lutheran minister Kaj Munk, so I don’t know how it managed to surprise me that there would be a religious theme in the film. I guess the whole thing was just a little overwhelming and will need to let it sink in. I’m not sure what to make of it just yet.

Still from Ordet

That said, there was one part of the movie that was immediately appealing to me: The character of Johannes Borgen. For those of you not familiar with the film, Johannes is the central character in the story. He is the son of farmer Morten Borgen, who encouraged his charismatic son to study theology, hoping that he would be able to spread the word of the Lutheran church in their local society which is becoming increasingly dominated by fundamentalists. However, Johannes seemingly suffers a mental break-down during his studies and becomes convinced that he is Jesus Christ himself.

The part is played by Preben Leerdorf Rye, which is an absolutely brilliant casting on Dreyer’s part. Leerdorf Rye has the strangest personality and really draws you in with his big, sparkling and round eyes underneath his neat centre parting. His movements are strangely slow and almost ghostly or zombie-like. And infamous in Danish cinema for his rather odd diction (I grew up with my father’s impersonations of his voice), Leerdorf Rye gives the voice of Johannes a strange, almost musically intoning and admonitory sound that is absolutely perfect for this character who lingers dangerously somewhere between the physical and the metaphysical.

Leerdorf Rye simply seems off, perfectly so, and this becomes most startlingly apparently in his relationship with the rest of the characters – or, rather, his lack of same. Because part of what makes Leerdorf Rye’s Johannes so captivating is the way he interacts with the other characters, yet never seems to react to them. His eerily slow movements and his thundering voice stay the same in the face of his frustrated surroundings who, frightened by his behaviour, turn a deaf ear to his preachings.

A good example is this scene, in which the new town minister pays the Borgen family a visit and is met by Johannes:

It’s the tension between Johannes’ presence and lack of presence in his surroundings that fascinates me about this scene. “Pick up the scraps so that nothing goes to waste,”, Johannes solemnly preaches to himself, but he demonstrates his sombre words by picking up a left-over cookie. Similarly, Johannes seems lost in his thoughts, but he still has the presence of mind to reply “Come in” (in the exact same intonation that he just used for preaching!) as the minister knocks on the door. Filled with a divine power, Johannes dwells ambiguously between this world and another throughout the movie.

The result is… well, I don’t know exactly what the result is. I still don’t know exactly what to make of the movie. But whatever Dreyer wished to achieve with this ambiguous Jesus figure of his, the casting of Preben Leerdorf Rye makes for one of the most effective and haunting movie characters I have ever seen.

“And I Feel Like I’m a Rider/on a Downbound Train”

November 2, 2009 at 10:15 pm | In Uncategorized | 1 Comment

I know that it’s probably an exaggeration to say that I wouldn’t have been able to write as much as I’ve written on my thesis by now if it hadn’t been for Bruce Springsteen. Nevertheless, that’s how I feel. For some reason writing while I listen to opera music doesn’t work for me, as much as I’d like it to. The changes in tempi make me lose my focus, and then I also tend to get caught up in the story of the opera, and have to really concentrate on not singing along on the various parts. And there’s a limit to how much work you get done when you’re busy going: “Non seeeeei mia figlia! Dei Faraoooooni, tu sei la SCHIAVA!!11!”.

So when I started writing my thesis, I tried out something else entirely, namely Bruce Springsteen, and as it turned out, it worked incredibly well. The steady beat tends to provide me with a certain drive while I’m writing, and then the mood is just perfect for thesis-writing. Bruce Springsteen writes his music for the Little Man in Society, and boy do you tend to feel like the Little Man in Society when you’re writing your master thesis. At least on the bad days. On the good days you can just tune into more optimistic songs, such as “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day”.

I wrote a post back in September celebrating The Boss’ 60th birthday, but it turns out that there’s another Bruce-related anniversary to be celebrated this year: The album Born in the U.S.A. was released 25 years ago, and Kåre sent me a link to this very interesting Boston Globe cartoon in which artist Ward Sutton explores the 25-year legacy of the album.

Ward Sutton’s cartoon, which I think is excellent, obviously displays a critical approach towards the album, with which he thinks Bruce Springsteen fell between two stools by presenting critism of society in a harmless rock n’roll attire, rich with luxurious synthesizer sounds. As a result, Springsteen fans have since viewed Born in the U.S.A. as Springsteen’s big sell-out, while people less familiar with Springsteen’s oeuvre (and liberal politics) have misunderstood Springsteen’s message and taken the title number to be a tribute to America when it is, in fact, the opposite. Most famously, repbulican Ronald Reagan misunderstood the meaning of ”Born in the U.S.A.” and used the song in his presidential campaign.

I agree with Suddon’s points, to a limited extent. I really dislike the silly “Darlington County”, I’m only slowly getting used to the rockabilly-ish “Working on the Highway”, and I don’t think never get used to the cheesy video for “I’m on Fire” in which Bruce plays a stud of a horny mechanic (which is a shame, because that song is so good. Johnny Cash also did a terrific cover of it). Suddon also critizes Springsteen’s new buff, bandana-ed looks on the album, which he compares to those of Stallone in Rambo, and yes, I’ll admit that I think Springsteen was infinitely more sexy and appealing during his earlier period, like on Darkness on the Edge of Town, where he was a scrawny, broody-looking type of guy with big, soulful eyes:

Darkness on the Edge of Town

But you will never get me to say that Born in the U.S.A. was a mistake on Bruce’s part, or even a sell-out, not by a long-shot. Suddon’s criticism is rooted in the fact that the title song on the album was originally supposed to have been included on Nebraska, Springsteen’s famousalbum, consisting mainly of demo-tracks records with very simple accompaniment, usually only a guitar and a harmonica (played by Springsteen himself). I think Nebraska is a fantastic album, and that it was an important album, but I don’t think that this necessarily makes Born in the U.S.A. a mistake. On the contrary, I think it would have been less true to the ideals that Springsteen represents, from what I know of Springsteen, if he had continued solely in the musical style of Nebraska. To me, Springsteen is an inclusive musician and that is exactly what the pop-like sound on Born in the U.S.A. is about. Springsteen is an artist who is critical of society and sympathetic towards the Little Man, almost a protest singer like Dylan, to be sure, and Nebraska serves its purpose in that respect, establishing him in this part. But he is also, I believe, a musician who wants to make music that the Little Man can kick back and enjoy after a long hard day, which Born in the U.S.A. is all about to me. Springsteen is an unpretentious musician, with all that implies, including a popular sound to his music. If the Little Man is able to recognize his own struggle in the poignant lyrics behind the cool-rockin’-daddy sound, well, all the better then.

And even if you don’t agree with me on this, I would say that there are songs on Born in the U.S.A. that are so incredibly powerful that they in themselves ought to justify the album’s existence even to its most fervent critics. Such a song is “Downbound Train”:

This song is simply a masterpiece. And the funny thing is that a friend of mine, (who is also possibly the biggest Springsteen fan I know), recently played an earlier version of the song from Bruce Springsteen – The Lost Masters, which was supposed to have been included on the Nebraska album, and it wasn’t nearly as powerful in this version as it is on Born in the U.S.A. In the final version, the synthesizers make the song sound nothing like a meaningless, harmless pop song. Instead they bring out the melancholy tune, especially in the verse about the persona’s dream and his running through the woods, trying to reach his lost girlfriend. And the drums with their steady, aggressive beat help to accentuate the over-all feeling displayed in the haunting lyrics, which, to me, is a feeling of helplessness. In typical Springsteen narrative style, the protagonist of the song seems to owe most of his misery to events out of his control – the fact that he lost his job in particular, and, by extension, the fact that his girlfriend left him. And the main motif of the train works so well to illustrate this point, I think. The main character is not steering a downbound train, he’s simply a rider on it, and there seems to be nothing he can do about it. The devestating use of the train whistle as a motif supports this theme, denoting the departure of a train that he just wants to stop, and ties together with both the allegorical level with the persona as a rider on a “downbound train”, and with the only too concrete level where the persona’s girlfriend buys a ticket on the central line, and leaves him.

If you’re skeptical of Bruce Springsteen and think of him mostly as a giddy, harmless Rambo-like pop-rock musician, and you haven’t already heard “Downbound Train”, you should do so immediately. And make sure to read the lyrics as you listen to the music. They can be found here.

Olaf Rude “Skejten” at Fuglsang Museum of Art

October 25, 2009 at 10:47 am | In Art | Leave a Comment

Last week The Boyfriend and I went to visit his parents who live in the southern part of Denmark, and we all made a trip to see the Fuglsang Museum of Art at Lolland, Denmark, which re-opened just last year in a new building by English architect Tony Fretton. I’d read an interview with Fretton about the building, in which he said some very interesting things about the architectural challenges that the flat Lolland landscape offered, so I was excited to see the place, and I wasn’t disappointed. The building blended in superbly with its surrounding and set them off beautifully – particularly breathtaking was one particular wing of the museum, the house end of which was constructed as one big window, presenting the view of a Lolland field stretching out before you. The building alone is definitely worth a visit if you should ever find yourself near Lolland!

But the art collection was also excellent. One piece that particularly stood out to me was Olaf Rude’s painting Skejten, and I thought I would post it here:

skejten_olaf_rude

The painting shows Skejten, an area in the vicinity of Fuglsang where Rude grew up. I always feel self-conscious when I’m to describe a painting since this is not really my field of expertise, so I won’t say a lot about it. Other than the fact that to me it’s really an example of a landscape painting that sums up a particular emotion or state of mind more than simply reproducing a landscape. I find the sense of gravity and perhaps melancholy displayed in the painting to be startling. The group of trees in the center of the picture have a remarkable heaviness to them which is emphasized by their reflection, painted in slightly darker colours, in the stream in the foreground, the massive tree taking up the space to the the right, and the textural effect of the artist’s technique – broad, vertical strokes.

This sense of gravity really spoke to me that day, to the point where I could almost feel the heaviness and melancholy within me, like a knot tying up in my guts, and I was so moved by the painting that it’s been my desktop background for the past week. I don’t know if the piece will have the same effect on you at all, but I thought I’d take the chance and share it with you in any case.

* Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the painting – I merely found it online. If I am violating any copyrights by displaying the painting here, let me know, and I will of course remove the picture immediately.

Strong With the Force Young Tomasson Is

October 20, 2009 at 6:57 pm | In Pop Culture | Leave a Comment

Sometimes it’s important to stop and ponder the great questions in life. Such as: Doesn’t Luke Skywalker look a lot like Danish footballer Jon Dahl Tomasson? My colleague asked me that question last week as we were watching Star Wars Episode IV together, and I wholeheartedly agreed with him. Today he made an entry at the TotallyLooksLike page, and I thought I’d share it with you guys:

jondahlskywalker

Whaddaya think? Total dead ringer, no? Well, this blogger agrees with us in any case. The link to my colleague’s entry at TotallyLooksLike is here if you want to go vote or comment.

The Gap between the Words and the Objects

October 13, 2009 at 5:51 am | In Literature | Leave a Comment

In the past week, it was announced that Herta Müller is the winner of this year’s Nobel Literature prize. As someone who is studying the field of testimony literature I was thrilled to hear that and would like to take the opportunity to recommend Müller’s essay “When We Don’t Speak, We Become Unbearable, and When We Do, We Make Fools of Ourselves” to anyone with an interest in the idea of literature as a means of bearing witness.

hertabw

The essay deals with the realm of words and Müller’s own relationship to them, with speech and silence and the difference between them, from her childhood village to her horrible experiences under the dictatorship of Ceauşescu as an adult. In the essay, Müller manages not only to bear witness to the horrors she experienced (despite a disclaimer in the introduction where Müller states that she does not think of her own writing as testimony), but to pinpoint the challenges and the impossibilty of witnessing, especially in the case of dicatorship, when censorship may turn one’s mother tongue into something strange and unfamiliar.

Below are a few of my favourite quotes from the essay. But you should really check out the essay yourself. It’s a great introduction – to Herta Müller’s writing and to witness literature alike. It’s available in the excellent anthology Witness Literature – Proceedings of the Nobel Centennial Symposium, edited by Horace Engdahl, in which Engdahl brilliant piece “Philomela’s Tongue” and Müller’s essay arguably make up the two most memorable and important contributions.

“In the language of the village – so it seemed to me as a child – the words people used were directly attached to the things they described. The things were named exactly as they were, and they were exactly as they were named. There was a complete and permanent accord. For most people, there were no gaps between the words and the objects, no holes to peep through and find yourself staring into nothingness, as if you were slipping out of your skin into the void. (…) What people do does not need to be repeated in words. Language encumbers the body and gets in the way of the handholds – I knew that much. But the discrepancy between outside and inside, between what is in the hands and what is in the head, the sudden realization, ‘I’m thinking things I shouldn’t be’ – this was something else entirely. Something that came only when fear came too.”

*******************************

“On those long days in that shamelessly green valley [while tending cows during childhood], I asked myself countless times what my life was really worth. I stared at my hands and feet and was amazed they belonged to me; I wanted to find out what material they were made of, and when God wanted me to give the material back. I ate leaves and flowers so that they would be related to my tongue and so that we would be more alike – because they knew about life and I didn’t. I spoke to them by name: ‘Milk Thistle’ was supposed to mean the plant with milk in its stalk. But the plant didn’t listen. So I tried inventing names – ‘Thornrib, ‘Needleneck’ – anything to avoid the words ‘milk’ and ‘thistle’. Eventually, these made-up names uncovered a gap between the real plant and me, and the gap opened up into an abyss: the disgrace of talking to myself and not to the plant.”

**********************************

“When, after excrutiating interrogations by the secret police, I was once again outside, walking along the street, my head chruning, my eyes as rigid as a plaster cast, my legs feeling as though I’d borrowed them from someone else – when I was walking home in this state, the plants in the gardens would show me what I was going through, which could not be said with words. To do that, all they needed were the colors and shapes they already had, and the places they were already occupying. The plants enlarged what had happened into a monstrosity, but at the same time they began to shrink things as well, which was necessary if I was to return to everyday existence. The dahlia showed me that I needed to understand the interrogation as the duty of the interrogator, that the nicks on the small examining table were made by all the others who had been questioned before tme, that I was one among many, but nevertheless unique. It showed me what caused me distress was, in his ugly line of work, mere routine for the interrogator. But also that when the routine was perpetrated on me it became something special and that I, as a unique person, had to see it that way for my own protection. How can you use words to explain that inside a dahlia there is a complete intterogation when you’ve just been questioned, or that it holds a prison cell when someone you like is in jail?”

John Book and The Crisis of Witnessing: Reviewing “Witness” (1985)

October 2, 2009 at 9:20 pm | In Art, Movies, Reviews, youtube | Leave a Comment

(Yeah, so I watch a lot of Harrison Ford movies these days. What of it?)

witness

Witness is a favourite crime movie of my parents’ and it caught my eye on their DVD shelf when I was visiting them recently, not just because of Harrison Ford’s likeness on the cover, also because of the title, “Witness”. You see, the literary theory I’m using for my thesis is the theory of Testimony and Witness. The theoretics of testimony have arisen in the wake of the Holocaust and were founded primarily by Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub in their book Testimony - Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. The basic idea of testimony theory is to debate how or, indeed, whether it is possible for literature and art in general to bear testimony of an event that is so horrible that it leaves no witnesses capable of giving testimony of its horrors (i.e. the Holocaust). I find it a most inspiring branch of literary theory because of the fact that it ties together literature with reality; it seems so meaningful to me.

As a consequence I’ve been reading a lot of books lately with the words “Witness” or “Testimony” in their titles, and that’s why this 1985 movie caught my eye. I had seen the movie once before on T.V., but I was about 15 or so, and all I remembered from the movie was that:

A cute little Amish boy named Samuel witnesses a murder
Harrison Ford is a cop who goes to live among the Amish
Harrison Ford and the Amish raise a barn in a field
The little boy’s mother takes a spongebath, and Harrison Ford sneaks a peek at her, and -
I was daydreaming for weeks afterwards about escaping from my complicated!!1!!! existence as a highschool girl and going to Pennsylvania to live the simple life as an Amish woman, taking spongebathes, and raising cute little sons with biblical names, and, possibly, getting involved with a random hot cop at some point.

So I decided it was time to re-watch it and see if the movie might have anything to contribute with in terms of the theory of testimony.

So did it, you ask? No, it didn’t, not really. That would have been a little surprising anyway. Felman & Laub’s Testimony wasn’t even released until seven years after Witness premiered. But it’s still an excellent and rather underrated movie (one of the best crime flicks there is, I’ll venture), and it did have some very interesting things to say about witnessing that I definitely didn’t remember from the first time I watched it.

Police Corruption and the Impossibility of Witnessing
The story deals with police corruption (the murder young Samuel witnesses is related to a group of crooky Philadelphia policemen who deal impounded drugs), and I’d never really thought of this before, but police corruption is a kind of crisis of witnessing in its own right. Not in the sense we see in Felman & Laub’s book, where testimony becomes impossible because the Holocaust leaves no witnesses, but in the sense that if what we witness is police corruption, then we have no one to turn to with our testimony. Testimony is a triple concept that presupposes the act of seeing, knowing, and telling about it, and as Paul Ricoeur has noted, language and society could not exist if not for this institution of truth that the credible witness makes. In the legal sense, this institution is dependent on the police. The police are supposed to administrate our testimony, but if they are corrupt our testimony is, at best, ignored, or, at worst, used against us.

This is what John Book learns the hard way at the beginning of the movie as he falls victim to attempted assasination after he has reported the police corruption to his boss. And so it becomes more than just a Hollywood shtick when John flees the city along with Samuel and his mother Rachel to go underground with them in their Amish community.

The Amish as Reluctant Witnesses
Because the Amish community may be the one place John can go where he may be able to free himself of the damning testimony that has made a fugitive out of him. I won’t claim to be an expert on the Amish, but from the way the community is depicted in the movie, it is a community that to some degree avoids being witnesses. In a poignant scene, Samuel’s grandfather Eli talks to Samuel about his having witnessed the evil and violence of the outside world. “By seeing you become one of them,” Eli says, “What you take into your hands, you take into your heart. ‘Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing’.”

The Amish community, in other words, offers John Book a chance to escape from the realm of testimony, at least for a while. That this can only be temporary goes without saying – even if the bad guys weren’t able to track down Book, the entire Amish approach to life is too different from his: John wants nothing more than to touch the unclean things – to pick them up by his hands and throw them into the trash.

Like any good crime flick, however, nothing is entirely black or white, and the theme of witnessing is twisted and turned several times throughout the movie, making the Amish the eager witnesses, and John Book the reluctant one. “You’ll see so many things!” Rachel’s Amish suitor Daniel tells Samuel with an excited smile as Samuel is set out for his first visit to Philadelphia at the out-set of the movie. Similarly, when Samuel first delivers his dangerous testimony by pointing to a picture of McFee in the police court, a shocked John Book covers Samuel’s pointing finger with his own hand.

At its perhaps clunkiest and least subtle, the theme of witnessing is also present in the name of the main character: John Book. The name is undoubtedly a reference to the tenth and eleventh chapter of The Revelation of St. John, in which John is given a book to eat and is asked to “prophesy” and in which we are introduced to the two witnesses of Revelation.

Rachel at her Bath
The differences between the Amish and John’s world come into play most obviously in the increasingly romantic relationship between John and Rachel. Love stories between two opposites are always touching, and so are doomed love stories, and of course you just know that a love affair between the hard-boiled cop and the Amish woman is bound to be a doomed one. What I especially like about it, however, is that it manages to be an erotic cinematic love story in a way that is both unconventional and ties in very well with the theme of testimony and witnessing.

There is no actual sex scene between John Book and Rachel Lapp, and I would say that it is open to discussion wether the two ever even have sex off-screen. Even so, we get a startlingly erotic scene between the two – the sponge bathing scene mentioned earlier. This is also an example of a movie scene that manages to use frontal nudity in a meaningful, rather than pornographic way.

In the scene, we see a semi-nude Rachel washing herself with a sponge. The camera lingers on Rachel, the dim lighting of the scene emphasizing the aesthetics of her body, but we only gradually become aware of the fact that John Book is actually watching Rachel in the process: Along with Rachel we see John in the reflection of Rachel’s mirror, gazing at Rachel through a partly opened door. The image of John’s face between the door and the door frame recalls the image earlier in the movie of Samuel watching the murder unfold from a bathroom stall, and it thus re-establishes the theme of witnessing: John Book witnesses Rachel’s semi-nudity in the shower.

As any art connoiseur will know, the image of a man peeping at a woman at her bath is a recurrent image within art history: There are numerous interpretations in paintings of the old testament story of the Elders peeping at Susanna at her Bath (or, indeed, of Peeping Tom looking at Lady Godiva. Or Actaeon looking at Artemis at her bath).

Rembrandt's Susanna

The image is piquant not just because of the naked female body, but because the part of the spectator is emphasized: As spectators contemplating the picture showing Susanna in her bath, we in turn become a kind of double to the peeping Elders, staring as we do at the naked Susanna. (There is without doubt a lot more to be said about this motif, but I am not an art historian, so I will leave it at this).

In the scene in Witness, however, the peeping Tom situation gets an extra dimension, because as Rachel sees John, she doesn’t turn away bashfully or try to hide her nudity as is the case with Susanna. Instead, Rachel turns and looks directly at John (and, thus, directly into the camera, facing us, and meeting us with what feminist film theorists term the taboo of the female gaze), returning his gaze and revealing her exposed and naked breasts, and this is what gives the situation its sense of something reciprocally erotic. Not only does John witness Rachel’s nudity, Rachel witnesses John looking at her, and her gaze back at him is testimony to the fact that she’s aware of what he has witnessed.

One might argue that the theme of witnessing is also there in the scene in which John and Rachel dance together in the barn loft after John manages to fix his car radio. The song that they are dancing to is Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World”, the lyrics revolving around the theme of knowing versus not knowing (“Don’t know much about history/Don’t know much about geography/[...] But I do know that I love you.”).

But the sponge bathing/peeping Tom scene is definitely the more memorable love scene, and the one that truly reveals to us how much is at stake for both John and Rachel in this budding relationship. It’s also worth noting that John never touches Rachel in this scene, and actually casts down his gaze, seemingly overwhelmed with the situation. Just as Rachel engages in an markedly un-Amish situation of witnessing, the usually very hands-on cop John keeps “separate” from Rachel and “touch[es] not.

Death by Corn and Raising the Barn
There are also plenty of scenes where the theme of witnessing isn’t especially prominent and in which the movie is allowed to be simply an exciting crime flick. The scene where the dirty cops catch up with John Book and chase him around the farm is an example of this. The scene in the silo, where one of the dirty cops finds his death in the corn is especially outstanding. A most disturbing movie moment! And brilliantly effective. Choking to death as tons and tons of corn is being poured over you has to be one of the more unusual deaths in the history of crime flicks, and there is something almost biblical about perishing in a flood of corn, so it goes well with the biblical theme of the movie.

And then there are scenes in the movie that are just so aesthetically pleasing that they transcend the genre. Kelly McGillis looks beautiful, like she stepped out of a Dutch 17th century oil painting in all of her scenes. And the barn raising scene is an absolute classic: pictures and music really come together in this beautiful scene. I’ve heard some people say that they regret that the music wasn’t arranged for a full orchestra instead of a synthesizer, but I actually disagree. I think the synthesizer lends to the scene that kind of dreamlike, transcendental touch that electronic music excels at. One might also argue that the synthesizer music combined with the old-timey images of straw-hat-donning craftsmen raising a barn establishes the conflict between 80s cop John and the old-fashioned community of the Amish. In any case, I think a full orchestra would have been over the top and kind of cheesy.

You can watch the scene here:

Awesome Ford, Adorable Haas, and a Random Viggo Mortensen Cameo
And then the movie is very well acted. John Book is often mentioned as Harrison Ford’s best performance ever, and I’m inclined to agree. Ford plays equally convincing John’s scenes as a hardboiled cop whacking drugdealers and his more sensitive ones like the one where he stands breathless and passive in front of Rachel. Kelly McGillis has a good take on the hidden spunk of her otherwise demure Amish character, and Lukas Haas is absolutely adorable as Samuel and a very appropriate cast: His big, dark, expressive eyes alone are enough to strike up the theme of witnessing.

Also, the attentive viewer may spot a very young Viggo Mortensen as one of the men inthe Amish community. Don’t blink or you’ll miss him, though. He hardly even has any lines.

Clunky German Lines
Oh, and speaking of the Amish and their lines; that’s one of my only peeves about this movie. The Amish are depicted as speaking German to each other, but I don’t think the movie was meant for an audience that actually understood the language, because the lines they’ve written for them are awful. Very clunky. The Amish go around saying ridiculous things to each other like “The man is afraid! Very bad!” (after seeing a fatally wounded John Book for the first time) or “Those are not his own clothes – those are the clothes of Jacob!” (after Rachel has lend John some clothes that belonged to her late husband Jacob). They might have hired some kind of German speaking coach to help them write some better lines. Nobody talks like that.

Natalie Imbruglia – A Mime Interpretation

October 1, 2009 at 7:30 pm | In Internet Findings, Music, Pop Culture, youtube | Leave a Comment

I haven’t been updating the blog as much as I’ve wanted to these past few days - busy week, that’s all. But until I’m ready with a more substantial blog entry, I thought I’d go for the easy youtube solution and give you a little treat. The following is a video showing mime Johann Lippowitz a.k.a. David Armand doing an interpretation of Natalie Imbruglia’s hit song ”Torn”. My mime-enthusiasm may come as a surprise to some of you, since I have in the past expressed some suspicion when it comes to mimes, but trust me, this guy is a genius!

My favourite part has to be his display of growing frustration from chorus to chorus, as expressed in his interpretation of the line “You’re a little late”.

Happy 60th, Bruce! or My Favourite Bruce Springsteen Songs at the Moment

September 23, 2009 at 10:12 am | In Fandom, Music, Odes | 1 Comment

Barack Obama once said: “The reason I’m running for president is I can’t be Bruce Springsteen.” I think that this is a completely rational line of thinking. Bruce Springsteen is The Boss, and today is his 60th birthday.

brucespringsteen

As some readers will already know, I love Bruce Springsteen, but my love for him is a relatively new thing: I only just discovered his music last year when The Boyfriend introduced me to “The River”. I fell in love immediately and just as hard as I did three years ago when I first discovered Johnny Cash, (it turns out there really is non-opera music out there worth listening to!), and Bruce has had a special place in my heart since then. I love the raw sound of his music, I love his relaxed, yet manly on-stage attitude, and I love the way his music bears witness for the little man in society, frustatedly struggling to obtain things out of his reach, and to defeat his own demons and do the right thing.

And so, in celebration of Bruce’s 60th Birthday, I thought I’d present you with my favourite Bruce Springsteen songs at the moment. Keep in mind that I’m still a bit of a Springsteen newbie, so there are still plenty of Bruce songs that I’ve yet to discover.

“The Wrestler”
I keep a list in my head of certain songs; songs that I feel I would be able to listen to, and which would make me feel better, even if the worst thing in the world had happened to me. Songs that are so convincing in their confrontation with the greatest sadness that I believe that they would make me able to enjoy them even in the face of my own self-pity. Johnny Cash has written a number of such songs, Verdi has written several such arias (most notably this and this), - and Bruce Springsteen has contributed with some gut-wrenching songs of his own. “The Wrestler” is one of these, the song Bruce wrote for the (incredibly moving) movie of the same title, starring Mickey Rourke.

“Have you ever seen a one-legged dog making its way down the street?/If you’ve ever seen a one-legged dog, then you’ve seen me.” Absolutely beautiful.

“Candy’s Room”
This song from the excellent album Darkness on the Edge of Town is my absolute favourite Bruce song at the moment. I love the rush of desire that embues the song, right down to the hectic drum beat, and throughout the lyrics: “We kiss/and my hearth rushes into my brain/and the blood rushes in my veins/fire rushes towards the sky” . But I also love how desire never turns into something vulgar and purely sexual in Bruce’s song. Candy is pretty and luscious, accepting expensive gifts from “strangers in the city”, but we get the impression that what really draws the persona of the song towards Candy is the “sadness in her pretty face/a sadness all her own/from which/no man can keep Candy’s safe”:

“In the darkness/there’ll be hidden worlds that shine/when I hold Candy close/she makes these hidden worlds mine”.

“Adam Raised a Cain”
Like “Candy’s Room”, this song is from the album Darkness on the Edge of Town, and is one of Bruce’s more heavy songs, sung with almost growling vocals, and with a dark Biblical theme in the lyrics of the chorus. When you look closer at the song, however, the theme is really as straightforward as the theme of a son struggling to free himself from the shadow of his father. Bruce is excellent at combining the esoteric symbolic with immediately recognizable images in his lyrics, and I especially love the lyrics in the bridge after the first stanza: “We were prisoners of love/a love in chains/he was standing in the door/ I was standing i the rain/with the same hot blood burning in our veins/Adam raised a Cain.”

“Brilliant Disguise”
This song is from the album Tunnel of Love, an album of love songs, mostly. The great thing about Bruce’s love songs, however, is that unlike most other songs of that genre, Bruce takes you beyond the first infatuation where everything in a relationship is great and you would climb mountains/swim oceans/fly to the moon/you name it for each other. Bruce’s love songs tend to explore the time that comes after this first stage, the phase where things inevitably become difficult, no matter how hard you work for it. “Brilliant Disguise” is one of these love songs: “Now look at me, baby,/struggling to do everything right/and then it all falls apart/when out go the lights/I’m just a lonely pilgrim/I walk this world in wealth/I wanna know is it you I don’t trust/’cause I sure damn don’t trust myself”:

“Streets of Philadelphia”
This one is another contibution to that list of mine that I mentioned when I talked about ”The Wrestler” . Like “The Wrestler” it was written for a movie, namely Philadelphia (1993) starring Tom Hanks, and like “The Wrestler” it’s got a song of great sadness. Philadelphia is a movie about a homosexual man who had aids. Homosexuals with aids and HIV were still a gruesomely stigmatised and irrationally feared section of the population, often abandoned by friends and family and left to die alone. It’s this sense of desperate loneliness that I think the song captures so well. I love how the drum starts up with a relatively neutral beat, like it could be the beginning of any old rock song, but then the synthesizer blends in (indeed, Bruce is one of the only musicians who are able to use the synthesizer without making the song sound like the soundtrack of an early 90s educational film!) with their minor key chords, giving the song its melancholy feel.

And I love the lyrics: “Ain’t no angel gonna greet me/it’s just you and I my friend/and my clothes don’t fit me no more/I walked a thousand miles just to slip this skin”:

“Waiting on a Sunny Day”
Finally, to end things on a happier note, here’s “Waiting on a Sunny Day”, a song that is pretty good in the original recording, but just awesome in this live version from Barcelona, 2002. The video does great justice to the optimistic message of the song, and then it also shows Bruce as the wonderful person he seems to be: Completely relaxed and at ease with himself in the middle of the crowd of roaring, adoring fans, and devoted to the music: