Film Experience Blog Gives Cheers to My Best Friend’s Wedding (And At the Lighthouse Praises its Soundtrack)

I’ve been reading the excellent Film Experience Blog for a while now. Today the blog features an entry on 90s romantic comedy My Best Friend’s Wedding, and it’s a very interesting read. I saw that movie in the theatres with some friends in the ninth grade, and while I can’t say that I remember it as “the best comedy of the nineties” the way CanadaMatt does, I always enjoy it when people have praise for random pop-cultural stuff that critics usually look down their noses at, and I really appreciate CanadaMatt’s queer-theory-angle take on the film:

George’s final line…

Maybe there won’t be marriage.
Maybe there won’t be sex…
But by god there will be dancing.

…is transgressive in its acceptance and extollation of a non-normative union (for mainstream Hollywood, at least). The couple dance off happily, as the singer sings “forever and ever”. Here the gay man is not relegated to homosexual pet status, he is the leading man, the moral centre of the film, and ultimately its hero. The relationship between Julianne and George is one of equals, and the film celebrates that at its conclusion.

Also, I would like to take this opportunity to say that I think My Best Friend’s Wedding had a pretty great soundtrack. I remember borrowing the CD at the library after I’d seen the movie, and I really have to give it credit for introducing me to some of the more memorable love songs from the 20th century, some in cover versions, other in original versions. Diana King’s “I Say a Little Prayer” is probably the one that most people associate with the movie, but there’s also a wonderfully ironic version of “Wishin’ and Hopin’” that is used as the opening sequence of the film:

This track, along with the soundtrack’s cover version by Nicky Holland of “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself”, was what introduced me to the genius that is Dusty Springfield, and I will be forever thankful for that. After hearing the Nicky Holland version I went up into the living room and found my father’s old Dusty Springfield record and left it on the grammophone for weeks and weeks afterwards. I still think that “I Just Don’t Know…” is one of the best break-up songs ever. Just listen to that crescendo in the bridge (“Like a summer rose…”). Devastating!

In the more optimistic end of the spectre, there’s also the up-beat ”Tell Him” with The Exciters with its wonderful folk-lore-ish sound and its lyrics that directly contradict the book He’s Just Not That Into You. I tend to agree with the ideas of HJNTIY, but I still love the song:

(Dude, that is one weird video, though. Bears? And lions and swans? What?)

There’s also “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” (in a version by Mary Chapin Carpenter) which is just such an adorable song, and there’s “What the World Needs Now”, which never did much for me personally, but I suppose it’s a classic in its own right. And then there’s “The Way You Look Tonight” which Tony Bennett lends such a wonderful warmth in his version, you can almost see the candlelights and taste the dizzying red whine of a romantic dinner:

So I always thought it was a good soundtrack, but CanadaMatt’s perspective makes me like it even more. Because with his comments in mind you could say that the producers used the great love song classics from the past decade in order to tell a brand new kind of love story in the ’90s: A love story in which the hero might be a homosexual man and the heroine a loving single woman. That is a nice thought.

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is probably my favourite advent song. I love the medieval ring it has to it, the pretty melody, the rhyming of “Emmanuel” with “Israel”, and I always loved Christmas songs in minor key, because I think they tend to give a sense of something solemn and mystical that has largely been lost in the consumerist idea of Christmas that dominates the holiday in this day and age (and yes, I am aware of just how much that last sentence made me sound like a grumpy old patriarch from a play by Molière, thank you).

I went in search of a good choral version of it on youtube, but I couldn’t find any good ones. Instead I found two commendable versions by Sufjan Stevens and Belle & Sebastian, so I’ll post those instead, thus, I hope, also earning a few hipster points:

Happy advent season.

“Look, Madicken, it’s Snowing!”

Not to be repetitive or anything, but would you look at the picture that I’ve just made my blog header image for December?

It’s an illustration by the legendary Ilon Wikland from (also legendary) Astrid Lindgren’s children’s book Titta, Madicken, det snöar (“Look, Madicken, it’s snowing!”) which was my favourite Christmas book when I was little. The illustration shows the main character of the book, Madicken’s little sister Lisabet, glumly and enviously looking on as Gustav, a little boy she knows, gets to ride on the back of a sleigh and taunts her in the process, but I think the picture is such a perfect little work of art that it works, even if you don’t know the story. The look of crestfallenness in Lisabet’s posture; her arms hanging dejectedly down her sides, her little booted feet in the snow, her full cheeks that betray a defiant pout. Versus Gustav’s triumphant, scornful mien, and the robust body of the horse, making its way through the falling snow. Absolutely lovely.

“Something Something Something Dark Side…”

I cannot wait for this:

Favourite things about this trailer:

• Consuela vacuuming during Darth Stewie’s hologram
• “Aw, Jim. Robot camels.”
• The robot camel doing the standard Family Guy “hurt my knee” routine
• The fact that Yoda will be played by Carl from the drug store
• “Ooh, empire stuff! Busy with empire stuff!”

All in all it looks like this should be every bit as delightful as the 2007  A New Hope spoof. Is it December 22 yet?

…

American Dad rules my frickin’ world. That is all.

(I apologize for the fact that most of my posts are very short entries with an embedded youtube video latley. I am so tired these days. Tired, and stressed out. I haven’t had the energy to write anything particularly interesting or lengthy, but I still want to update on a semi regular basis, so these brief posts are sort of a compromise on my part.)

“Das also war des Pudels Kern!”

I am re-reading Goethe’s Faust at the moment because I am using it in my thesis. I don’t think I’ll ever really stop finding it hilarious that the Devil chooses, of all things, to assume the shape of a black poodle the first time he appears before Faust. I’m always imagining something like this:

 Which of course is not so much of an intimdating and diabolic image as it is a really ridiculous one.

“Fuck, We’re All Dead!”- Public Service Announcements from G.I. Joe

While we’re on the subject of kitcsh-y 80s cartoons, and because I can’t think of anything substantial to write about just now, I thought I’d share this video with you:

I’ve never actually seen G.I. Joe, but apparently the cartoon always ended with a useful Public Service Announcement. The editor of the video has selected his favourites among these, muted the sound and altered the voices. The video simply cracks me up, which is probably proof that I am not in my right mind, but there it is.

Maybe you’ll enjoy it, too.

November 9 1989

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

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”

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:

 

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.