The human lifespan is one of endless narrative exposition taken with all of its underlying revisions and subplots. That stated, our lives inevitably follow the narrative of life falling into an endless torrential downpour of other narratives that we paint with and paint over the context of our own phenomenology. Since my unexpected hiatus from I Don't Want To Miss You Anymore, things have happened; days of serenity have come to pass and as they have in less favorable times, bled painfully into months. I've done some thinking since then and for sure I won't leave any of you empty handed. Now, what narratives have I come across and to what extent have I experienced each of them in oceans, seas and in drops?
In anything and everything, humans will more often than not try to capture a piece of themselves and their context by way of recorded literature and various forms of spatial, auditory and visual art. Film is one of those mediums and as film aims to present various facets of the human condition, it follows that the same narratives we live fabricate, live through and live in permeate the said artform. In essence, film is the human narrative set to moving pictures and recorded sound. As I clearly haven't kept tabs on my personal life as a result of my horribly protracted attempts at existential escapism, I guess it would be better to start off with some downtime blogging insight set to the language of motion pictures.
I will not use pretentious art bastard films, rather I shall speak in terms of films I genuinely feel I could relate to. For lack of better words, I shall speak in Meg Ryan.
The past few weeks have been a cable car short of a trainwreck and I am absolutely appalled with how I let everything slide primarily because I was/am/tend to be paranoid and profoundly unmotivated from time to time. I have recently given up microblogging as a countermeasure and so far it's helping me reorganize myself. Since the past week or so, I have returned to one of my old hobbies which would be film torrents. I could always head over to Cinemageddon and look for some campy B-movies and/or exploitation flicks but seeing as how I've gotten back to being lonely bastard Francis, I decided I was in the mood for something to tug on my heartstrings. Instead of downloading another copy of The Hour-Glass Sanatorium or stuff by Cocteau, Godard or Bunuel I got Lost In Translation, Sleepless In Seattle and City Of Angels. Here's what I've been able to pull from each of them.
Lost In Translation is something I seriously wish I saw when it first came out on the basis of story alone. If you pair that up with the fact that the soundtrack had Kevin Shields, My Bloody Valentine, Squarepusher and The Jesus And Mary Chain, you could picture out how excited I was to finally see it. Here, the viewer witnesses how two phenomenological fields come together in the culturally alien landscape of modern Tokyo. The film isn't so much a comedy/romance piece as it is a thesis on cultural and generational stratification and inter/intrapersonal dialogue amidst the reconstruction and nurturing of egos and ego boundaries over a backdrop of ennui that defines both characters' persona on screen and in theory. Nothing could be more appropriate, to be perfectly honest. A film about establishing a deep and seemingly meaningful human connection amidst the constraints of language and culture in an unfamiliar city is just what I needed to see and solipsistic as I am or tend to be, it keeps me hopeful in doing the same for myself someday. We're all subject to our own alienation and I guess this film hit the spot with mine. Everyone wants to be found, or so the tagline says. I sure hope you find me.
Now, I'll try my best to not make the verbal diarrhea any worse than it already is. I've been gone a long time so yeah, moving on... Sleepless In Seattle on the other hand doesn't end on a sad or hanging note as Lost In Translation did. To keep things simple, let's cut the crap and go straight for the formula. Sam Baldwin's wife dies of cancer, leaving him to raise his young son. The two move to Seattle and Sam's son, Jonah convinces him to go on air with him on a phone-in advice show. Sam is subsequently flooded with mail and a letter from a journalist in Baltimore that catches his son's attention. His son sets her up for a meeting on the Empire State Building with his father on Valentine's day. Long story short, Tom Hanks finally meets Meg Ryan for the first time on top of the Empire State Building with after all the dramatic crap they've been through for the greater part of the film. This is a rather optimistic look at loss and how it may lead to the opening of countless possibilities, including but not limited to someone you've never met. It is possible though and as the tagline says, "what if someone you never met, someone you never saw, someone you never knew was the only someone for you?" Sounds too good to be true but hey, if a random person could win the same lottery twice I guess the odds of falling in love again wouldn't be too bad. Adopting this to the context of a young adult living in the mid to late 00's, the same narrative would still apply. What if someone I never knew was the only someone for me? I'll let probability decide.
The third and last film in my sappy sad bastard movie binge would be City Of Angels. The plot is simple, an angel comes across a human being that catches his interest; he shows himself, talks to her, falls in love with her, gives up his angel status to be human with her and then she dies and he's left to cope. Other than the whole gift of the magi turn of events with Seth giving up his divinity and Maggie dying on him, a major theme here would be the transcendental nature of love or better yet the human will to self-determine and its ability to carve a line straight through any notion of context (as per Lost In Translation) and distance (as per Sleepless In Seattle). Come to think of it, one would be safe to assume that Assagioli's thought on wounding as the catalyst for growth would apply as well. The whole thing revolves around the notion of transcendental will and a transformation in and of the self, really. In the end, we will ourselves whichever way we please and we are held liable to the consequences of our actions, be it traumatic or favorable. As distanced as I am from the people I end up or rather ended up loving, I am still fully aware that my will to view things through a particular perspective still makes up half the battle regardless of the circumstance. Now what would I do if I were in that situation? What if I already am?
Anyway, seeing as how this is a huge steaming pile of verbal human excrement I would like to save further insight for the next entry. Til then, this'll have to do. It's not much, but hey I was talking through my ass.
I'm glad to be back.
P.S.
I did NOT mention Joey in this entry!
In anything and everything, humans will more often than not try to capture a piece of themselves and their context by way of recorded literature and various forms of spatial, auditory and visual art. Film is one of those mediums and as film aims to present various facets of the human condition, it follows that the same narratives we live fabricate, live through and live in permeate the said artform. In essence, film is the human narrative set to moving pictures and recorded sound. As I clearly haven't kept tabs on my personal life as a result of my horribly protracted attempts at existential escapism, I guess it would be better to start off with some downtime blogging insight set to the language of motion pictures.
I will not use pretentious art bastard films, rather I shall speak in terms of films I genuinely feel I could relate to. For lack of better words, I shall speak in Meg Ryan.
The past few weeks have been a cable car short of a trainwreck and I am absolutely appalled with how I let everything slide primarily because I was/am/tend to be paranoid and profoundly unmotivated from time to time. I have recently given up microblogging as a countermeasure and so far it's helping me reorganize myself. Since the past week or so, I have returned to one of my old hobbies which would be film torrents. I could always head over to Cinemageddon and look for some campy B-movies and/or exploitation flicks but seeing as how I've gotten back to being lonely bastard Francis, I decided I was in the mood for something to tug on my heartstrings. Instead of downloading another copy of The Hour-Glass Sanatorium or stuff by Cocteau, Godard or Bunuel I got Lost In Translation, Sleepless In Seattle and City Of Angels. Here's what I've been able to pull from each of them.
Lost In Translation is something I seriously wish I saw when it first came out on the basis of story alone. If you pair that up with the fact that the soundtrack had Kevin Shields, My Bloody Valentine, Squarepusher and The Jesus And Mary Chain, you could picture out how excited I was to finally see it. Here, the viewer witnesses how two phenomenological fields come together in the culturally alien landscape of modern Tokyo. The film isn't so much a comedy/romance piece as it is a thesis on cultural and generational stratification and inter/intrapersonal dialogue amidst the reconstruction and nurturing of egos and ego boundaries over a backdrop of ennui that defines both characters' persona on screen and in theory. Nothing could be more appropriate, to be perfectly honest. A film about establishing a deep and seemingly meaningful human connection amidst the constraints of language and culture in an unfamiliar city is just what I needed to see and solipsistic as I am or tend to be, it keeps me hopeful in doing the same for myself someday. We're all subject to our own alienation and I guess this film hit the spot with mine. Everyone wants to be found, or so the tagline says. I sure hope you find me.
Now, I'll try my best to not make the verbal diarrhea any worse than it already is. I've been gone a long time so yeah, moving on... Sleepless In Seattle on the other hand doesn't end on a sad or hanging note as Lost In Translation did. To keep things simple, let's cut the crap and go straight for the formula. Sam Baldwin's wife dies of cancer, leaving him to raise his young son. The two move to Seattle and Sam's son, Jonah convinces him to go on air with him on a phone-in advice show. Sam is subsequently flooded with mail and a letter from a journalist in Baltimore that catches his son's attention. His son sets her up for a meeting on the Empire State Building with his father on Valentine's day. Long story short, Tom Hanks finally meets Meg Ryan for the first time on top of the Empire State Building with after all the dramatic crap they've been through for the greater part of the film. This is a rather optimistic look at loss and how it may lead to the opening of countless possibilities, including but not limited to someone you've never met. It is possible though and as the tagline says, "what if someone you never met, someone you never saw, someone you never knew was the only someone for you?" Sounds too good to be true but hey, if a random person could win the same lottery twice I guess the odds of falling in love again wouldn't be too bad. Adopting this to the context of a young adult living in the mid to late 00's, the same narrative would still apply. What if someone I never knew was the only someone for me? I'll let probability decide.
The third and last film in my sappy sad bastard movie binge would be City Of Angels. The plot is simple, an angel comes across a human being that catches his interest; he shows himself, talks to her, falls in love with her, gives up his angel status to be human with her and then she dies and he's left to cope. Other than the whole gift of the magi turn of events with Seth giving up his divinity and Maggie dying on him, a major theme here would be the transcendental nature of love or better yet the human will to self-determine and its ability to carve a line straight through any notion of context (as per Lost In Translation) and distance (as per Sleepless In Seattle). Come to think of it, one would be safe to assume that Assagioli's thought on wounding as the catalyst for growth would apply as well. The whole thing revolves around the notion of transcendental will and a transformation in and of the self, really. In the end, we will ourselves whichever way we please and we are held liable to the consequences of our actions, be it traumatic or favorable. As distanced as I am from the people I end up or rather ended up loving, I am still fully aware that my will to view things through a particular perspective still makes up half the battle regardless of the circumstance. Now what would I do if I were in that situation? What if I already am?
Anyway, seeing as how this is a huge steaming pile of verbal human excrement I would like to save further insight for the next entry. Til then, this'll have to do. It's not much, but hey I was talking through my ass.
I'm glad to be back.
P.S.
I did NOT mention Joey in this entry!
I did NOT mention Joey in this entry!
ReplyDelete---> YOU JUST DID, GENIUS.
lulz.