I’ve Seen C-Beams Glitter in the Dark Near the Tannhäuser Gate – The Blade Runner Soundtrack

(Ah, yes. Don’t you just love this blog? While other blogs deliver news from the world and interesting perspectives on current events, like the Climate Conference that’s taking place in my home city Copenhagen right now, At the Lighthouse happily brings you obscure and completely irrelevant reviews of random 80s or 90s movie soundtracks.)

Urged on by my new-found love for Harrison Ford I finally watched Blade Runner for the first time about a month ago, the director’s Final Cut version. A brilliant movie, but I’m not going to review it, at least not now, partly because I think I’d need to watch it again in order to take it all in, partly because I am not convinced that I have anything original to say about it. Be that as it may, one thing that I noticed upon my first viewing was that the movie has an incredible soundtrack, and I just bought it on iTunes this week.

iTunes is such a dangerous thing by the way, from an economical perspective. Remember back in the 90s when you had to go all the way down to a music store if you wanted to buy, say, the new The Verve album? And by the time you were half-way down there, you were already so tired of “Bittersweet Symphony” that you just gave it up and went into a kiosk and bought one of those brand new super-hip Pink Grape Fantas to quench your post-Berlin Wall/pre-9-11 thirst. So much money was saved that way. Whereas today you can buy music with just a click or two on iTunes, and it is inevitable that you end up doing quite a few impulse purchases.

The Blade Runner soundtrack by Vangelis was such an impulse purchase, but it’s not one that I’m likely to regret. It’s simply a fantastic soundtrack, and I’ve been listening to it all week. And this is where I run into my usual trouble because I’m not a professional musician nor do I have any kind of degree in music, so it’s hard for me to find the right terms with which to express my enthusiasm about the different tracks. But I’ll try my best and add youtube examples to illustrate my points, and if you’re more knowledgable than I about these things, raise your voice in the comments – I’d be happy to hear what you have to say about it.

I think my favourite track will have to be “Rachael’s Song”:

Breathtaking. Rachael is an extremely interesting character because she (SPOILER ALERT!!1!!) is of course a replicant, except she doesn’t know it, because she’s been given emotions that supply her with memories of a past that isn’t actually hers. That makes her part of the philosophical/theological arc of the movie which deals with the urgent question: What makes a human being human? And it places Rachael in an intriguing grey area, character-wise. As an audience we feel distanced from her upon first learning of her being a replicant, a sentiment that is supported by her flawless, rigid appearance in the first few scenes that we see her in. But this image of her is gradually changed as her character finds out about her true identity, and it’s hard not to be moved by her subtle anguish in the scene where Deckard sets her straight. I love the startlingly organic feel of the imagery in this scene, by the way:

Deckard: Remember when you were six? You and your brother snuck into an empty building through a basement window. You were going to play doctor. He showed you his, but when it got to be your turn you chickened and ran; you remember that? You ever tell anybody that? Your mother, Tyrell, anybody? Remember the spider that lived outside your window? Orange body, green legs. Watched her build a web all summer, then one day there’s a big egg in it. The egg hatched…
Rachael: The egg hatched…
Deckard: Yeah…
Rachael: …and a hundred baby spiders came out… and they ate her.
Deckard: Implants. Those aren’t your memories, they’re somebody else’s. They’re Tyrell’s niece’s. 

The horror of seeing biology turn on itself as a spider mother is devoured by her own offspring, the shame of a childhood game of Doctor gone awry – how could memories of such horrifying tangibility, of such intimacy, possibly belong to a replicant? It’s easy to understand how Rachael could have been fooled.

And I think that Vangelis has managed to capture this idea in his music perfectly in “Rachael’s Song”. The vocal, sung by Mary Hopkin, is luringly beautiful, like a mermaid’s or a sirene’s song, but there’s a dominant sense of something fragile, or vulnerable in the dripping sound of the accompaniment, like something melting away, or like raindrops falling – the latter fitting in well with the rain motif that is used throughout the movie.

I also really like the “Love Theme”, which I believe is the most famous part of the soundtrack. Here it is, in a version that also shows the images from the scene, where the theme is used:

The smoldering saxophone lends to the music a jazz-like vibe that perhaps serves to tie the movie in with the film noir genre that it’s a part of, but there’s also a xylophone-like sound that sounds beautifully mechanical, like a child’s music box. And then there’s an interesting development in the music around 3:10 into the track. As the images in the youtube video will show, it’s not an idyllic or uncomplicated love scene that this theme accompanies: When Deckard first attempts to kiss Rachael she resists, so he follows her, throws her up against the wall and the following conversation ensues:

Deckard: Say “Kiss me”.
Rachael: I can’t… rely on… my memories…
Deckard: Say “Kiss me”.
Rachael: Kiss me.
Deckard: I want you
Rachael: I want you.
Deckard: Again
Rachael: I want you.
[pauses]
Rachael: Put your hands on me.

The perils of this strange human being (or is he??)/replicant relationship are brilliantly pinpointed in these few lines, as is, I would say, Deckard’s character who at this time still has a lot to learn about what it means to be a person. He has learned a lot more by the time of the last scene of the movie when he tenderly kisses Rachael and asks her “Do you love me? (…) Do you trust me?”´. But his acceptance of her is immanent early on in this scene as well, as Deckard listens while Rachael plays the piano:

Deckard: I dreamt music.
Rachael: I didn’t know if I could play. I’m remembering lessons. I don’t know if it’s me, or Tyrell’s niece.
Deckard: You play beautifully.

In a different end of the spectre, there’s “Tales of the Future”. This track and the track ”Damask Rose” make me nostalgic for Syria, and they also tie in with the movie’s theme of cultural melting pot (the images of the movies showing us a future L.A. that’s culturally far from the mostly western city that we know it to be today):

Another great track is “Blade Runner (End Title)”:

The allegro tempo suits an otherwise very lento soundtrack, and the streamlined sounds of it do justice to the futuristic thriller that this movie (also) is. I also like the simple, sinister melody, that’s repeated over and over again, with its inclining notes. It’s hard to believe that this is the end credit music for a movie that originally had that ridiculous happy ending (forced on the movie by the producers who thought this would make the movie more audience-friendly):

The voice-over is also terrible. Harrison Ford reportedly despised the voice-overs, so maybe this accounts for his uninspired delivery of them, or maybe Ford simply isn’t a great narrator. In either case, if you haven’t yet seen the movie, make sure you see the Final Cut version, without the forced happy ending and the voice-over. It really is the only way to go.

The last song on the soundtrack is not the “End Titles” one – they’ve given the last word to the character of Batty, who arguably serves as a kind of replicant Christ figure in the story. The track is called “Tears in the Rain”, inspired by Batty’s beautiful final line:

Batty: I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I’ve watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die.

This last line of Batty’s is actually included in the sountrack at the beginning of “Tears in Rain”. They do the same thing on the first three tracks (“Main Titles”, “Blush Response”, and “Wait for Me”), which is actually my sole complaint about the soundtrack. The added dialogue feels a little out of place in these first three tracks and subtracts slightly from my enjoyment of the music. However, Batty’s line on “Tears in Rain” is so poetically written and so musically delivered by actor Rutger Hauer that it actually works really well on this song. Or so I think, but judge for yourselves:

Being the opera nerd that I am, I was very curious about just what exactly the “Tannhäuser Gate” is. Alas, Wikipedia informed me that it is simply an “unexplained fictional name”. But then I guess it’s more alluring this way; now I get to use my imagination to come up with an explanation of my own. I think I’m going to imagine that it’s a giant space portal erected in the future and named after Wagner’s opera, mainly because it is positioned in such a way that it relates in some manner to the Evening Star, which is of course Venus, who was Tannhäuser’s mistress. Yeah.

Anyway, there are several more beautiful tracks on the soundtrack (like the funny, nostalgic, 30s-type “One More Kiss, Dear“, or “Blade “Runner Blues“), but I’m sure they won’t benefit from my riding them to death. So go listen to them! And also, watch the movie.

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.

“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?

“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.

Top 5 Favourite Star Wars Youtube Videos

Edited because I posted the same video twice… I suck.

I was very happy to learn in the past week that Herta Müller has been appointed this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and I was planning to post an entry today celebrating an essay of hers that I’m particularly fond of. But I’m simply too busy and stressed out about my thesis today to gather up the brain cells that writing an entry like that would require. So you’re going to have to make do with a brief entry about Star Wars instead.

Despite my obvious love for Harrison Ford, I have actually never seen Star Wars, and when I confessed this to a colleague of mine a while ago he announced that that was simply not acceptable, and that he was going to have to show me the first three movies personally to make up for this lack in my education. So I’m invited over to his place tonight to watch Episode IV, and I’m really looking forward to it.

As a means of preparing myself for the event, I’ve been watching a few Star Wars videos on youtube, and they are so funny that I’ve actually been able to enjoy them despite never having seen the movies. Here are my five favourites:

5. “You’re like… family to me.” – The Star Wars Holiday Special
The first one is actually just a clip from the Star Wars Holiday Special. Apparently, this was an infamous television special set in the Star Wars universe, and it was so incredibly bad that true Star Wars fans refuse to consider it part of the SW canon, George Lucas hated it, and the involved actors were deeply embarrassed by it. Well, judging from this short clip, I sort of understand why:

I do like the moment at 1:00 when that big furry thing (a wookie? Is that what you call them?) totally looks at Harrison Ford like it wants to do him. But I certainly hope that the standard of the rest of the original movies is significantly higher than in this holiday special. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long night.

4. “Forget the dental plan. Forget sick leave. I just want a railing!”  - Deleted Scenes from Family Guy Episode “Blue Harvest”
Apparently, Seth McFarlane and the Family Guy crew have received a carde blance of sorts from George Lucas to do Star Wars jokes on the show, on the one condition that they make everything look just right. As a result, Family Guy is packed with Star Wars-themed jokes, culminating in the sixth season with the episode “Blue Harvest” - a one-hour-long Family Guy Star Wars spoof. It was a great episode, even to a Star Wars ignoramus like me, and I’d like to link to the entire episode. But of course I can’t, copyright issues and all that, so instead here is a video of deleted scenes from the episode:

3. “They blowed it up together” – Star Wars According to a Three-Year-Old
This one is just adorable. The youtube poster had their three-year-old daughter explain to the camera what happens in Star Wars. And now my ovaries are hurting.

2. “Com-Scan has detected an energ-” – Darth Vader Being a Smartass
This video is an example of how come you can come with a little editing. Brilliant! My favourite part is Darth Vader’s innocent “facial expression” (if you can call it that) at 00:35

1. “I’m going to, like, the Dark Side or whatever” - Star Wars Retold by Someone Who Hasn’t Seen it
I realize that most of the fun in this video must be going way over my head, since I haven’t actually seen the movie either and thus am unable to tell how much Amanda messes up the plot. But it’s still hilarious – both Amanda’s unceremonious account and the editor’s wonderful animation.

“Hans??”

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

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

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:

1. A cute little Amish boy named Samuel witnesses a murder
2. Harrison Ford is a cop who goes to live among the Amish
3. Harrison Ford and the Amish raise a barn in a field
4. The little boy’s mother takes a spongebath, and Harrison Ford sneaks a peek at her, and -
5. 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 (sadly, I could only find a German dubbed version):

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

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”.

“Danish Mother Seeking…” and Fast Women in Folklore

I guess since I’m Danish and a woman, I ought to comment on the infamous “Danish Mother Seeking…” video that the Danish tourist organisation VisitDenmark issued this month, in which a pretty blond Danish woman named Karen allegedly seeks the father of her infant son August whom she reveals to be a tourist whom she met during his stay in Denmark. Karen’s identity and her story were, of course, fake. If you haven’t already seen the video, you can watch it here:

I am deeply offended and disgusted by this marketing stunt, as is every Danish woman I know. The campaign has since been withdrawn by VisitDenmark who have also issued an apology for the video, but I still cannot believe that they actually went as far as to make this stunt in the first place. It is extremely demeaning towards women, and I find it utterly tasteless that a serious tourist agency would market Denmark as a country where you can go to have unprotected sex with promiscuous women.

The video got me thinking, however, about folklore and how there’s a tradition within (modern?) societies to boast of their only too willing women. We’ve in fact been doing that for decades in Denmark before Karen and her baby boy August came along, in the shape of an urban legend about a particular Copenhagen sculpture namely The Lure Players:

This monument showing too vikings playing the lure stands on a high pillar right overlooking the Copenhagen city hall square, and according to the legend, the lure players will start blowing their lures whenever a virgin (in the sense: virginal woman) crosses the square (in some versions it’s a virgin over the age of 18). The joke being of course that the lure players never do blow their lures (because they’re made of bronze…), thus indicating that Danish women are a promiscuous lot.

I always thought that this was a unique Danish legend, but I found out via Snopes.com, that I was mistaken. In the U.S.A. there are similar legends about a number of colleges, including one about the statue of a soldier who will shoot his rifle if a virgin walks by (and, accordingly, he is nicknamed ‘Silent Sam’), the statue of a university founder (Duke) who will tip his hat, and a pair of stone lions that will roar. The message is always the same: “Look! Ours is the most fun college – all our women are wild and willing!”

I’m not blind to the lure (heh) of such legends – I can see the joke, and legends about sculptures getting up and moving are always somewhat fascinating in a fairy-tale kind of way. But even so, I think it’s important that we at least consider the consequences of these attempts to equate a society’s appeal with how easy it is to get the women there to spread their legs. That we at least pause to consider what kind of gender roles legends this gives rise to. Especially when the tendency spreads beyond folklore and into the sphere of advertising and branding, as has so blatantly been the case with VisitDenmark and their viral marketing stunt video.