Philosophy Now Forum

Now this is nihilism as most imagine it.

And some folks acquire this frame of mind on account it seems to come flowing out naturally…flowing out of a combination of the world they live in and how they just sort of came to think about it spontaneously. In other words, it’s not like they spent days on end actually thinking about the meaning of life…or went on trips to the library to see how all of the great minds thought about it. It simply made sense to. You know, “given how things are”.

Then there are those [like some here] who do spend a lot of time thinking “intellectually” about what life means, who do start in on comparing what they think with what others think; and then become bent on figuring out the most rational way to decide this “logically”.

Not many characters like the latter here though. In fact not a one. The minds here are just smaller. From towns somewhere in the middle of nowhere in other words.

Actually, the “real life killer” that Kit’s based on was a hell of a lot more dangerous.

It is never revealed whether they were shot or not. Although, in real life both of them were shot and stabbed multiple times. The woman was brutally raped, as well.

The ‘Bandlands’ plot and lead characters of Kit and Holly are based on Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate, who in 1958 embarked on a murder spree that horrified the country.

The film’s tag line (“In 1959 a lot of people were killing time. Kit and Holly were killing people”) inspired the Zodiac Killer (who’d been lying low for some years) to write a letter to the newspaper denouncing their flippant attitude to violence in society by running such an ad. IMDb FAQs


Badlands

Holly [voiceover]: My Mother died of pneumonia when I was just a kid. My Father kept their wedding cake in the freezer for ten whole years. After the funeral he gave it to the yard man. He tried to act cheerful but he could never be consoled by the little stranger he found in his house.

Carrie, among others.

Holly [voiceover]: Little did I realise that what began in the alleys and back ways of this quiet town would end in the Badlands of Montana.

Next up: the badlands here.

Man: Heard the news, Kit?
Kit: No.
Man: Been in all the headlines.
Kit: What’s that?
Man: You’ve been fired.

Well, that will certainly get some started.

Holly [voiceover]: Then sure enough Dad found out I been running around behind his back. He was madder than I ever seen him. His punishment for deceiving him: he went and shot my dog. He made me take extra music lessons everyday after school, and wait there 'till he came to pick me up. He said that if the piano didn’t keep me off the streets, maybe the clarinet would.

[]iNope. To say the least.[/i]

Kit [recording a message]: My girl Holly and I decided to kill ourselves. The same way I did her Daddy. Big decision, you know. Uh, the reasons are obvious. I don’t have time to go into it right now. But, one thing though, he was provoking me when I popped him. Well that’s what it was like. Pop. I’m sorry. I mean, nobody’s coming out of this thing happy. Especially not us. I can’t deny we’ve had fun though.

He did, that's for sure.

Holly [voiceover]: One day, while taking a look at some vistas in Dad’s stereopticon, it hit me that I was just this little girl, born in Texas, whose father was a sign painter, who only had just so many years to live. It sent a chill down my spine and I thought where would I be this very moment, if Kit had never met me? Or killed anybody…this very moment…if my mom had never met my dad…if she had never died. And what’s the man I’ll marry gonna look like? What’s he doing right this minute? Is he thinking about me now, by some coincidence, even though he doesn’t know me? Does it show on his face? For days afterwards I lived in dread. Sometimes I wished I could fall asleep and be taken off to some magical land, and this never happened.

Has it never happened to you?

Holly [a while after Kit shot Cato]: How is he?
Kit: I got him in the stomach.
Holly: Is he upset?
Kit: He didn’t say nothing to me about it.

Other people would have though.

Holly [voiceover]: Suddenly, I was thrown into a state of shock…Kit was the most trigger happy person I’d ever met. He claimed that as long as you’re playing for keeps and the law is coming at you, it’s considered okay to shoot all witnesses. You had to take the consequences, though, and not whine about it later.

Any whiners here? Aside from the bots.

Holly [voiceover]: He never seemed like a violent person before…It all goes to show how you can know a person and not really know him at all.

Me? Double that. For starters.

Holly [voiceover]: The whole country was out looking for us, for who knew where Kit would strike next? Sidewalks were deserted. Stores closed their doors and drew their blinds. Posses and vigilante committees were set up from Texas to North Dakota. Children rode back and forth to school under heavy guard. A famous detective was brought in from Boston. He could find no clues…My clarinet teacher said I probably wasn’t responsible, but others said I was. Then, on Thursday, the Governor of Oklahoma sent out the National Guard to stand watch at the Federal Reserve Bank in Tulsa when word got out that Kit meant to rob it…It was like the Russians had invaded.

Of course, today, the Russians are...the good guys?

Kit [recording a message to the kids of the world]: Listen to your parents and teachers. They got a line on most things, so don’t treat em like enemies. There’s always an outside chance you can learn something. Try to keep an open mind. Try to understand the viewpoints of others. Consider the minority opinion. But try to get along with the majority of opinion once it’s accepted. Of course Holly and I have had fun, even if it has been rushed. And uh, so far we’re doing fine, hadn’t got caught. Excuse the grammar.

Or else, let's say.

Holly [voiceover]: We lived in utter loneliness, neither here nor there. Kit said that solitude was a better word, cause it meant more exactly what I wanted to say. Whatever the expression, I told him we couldn’t go on living this way.

She couldn't in other words.

Deputy: Kit…Kit, I’ve got a question for you. You like people?
Kit: They’re okay.
Deputy: Then why’d you do it?
Kit: I don’t know. Always wanted to be a criminal, I guess. Just not this big a one…Takes all kinds though.

Don't get me started.

Kit: Don’t worry, now. I’m gonna’ get you off these charges. There’s a whole lot of other boys out there waitin’ for you. And you’re gonna’ have a lot of fun… Boy, we rang the bell, didn’t we? I’ll say this, though. That guy with the deaf maid? He’s just lucky he’s not dead, too. Of course, uh, too bad about your dad…
Holly: Yeah.
Kit: We’re gonna’ have to sit down and talk about that sometime.

Of course, that ain't gonna happen.

Holly [voiceover]: Kit and I were taken back to South Dakota. They kept him in solitary, so he didn’t have a chance to get acquainted with the other inmates, though he was sure they’d like him, especially the murderers. Myself, I got off with probation and a lot of nasty looks. Later I married the son of the lawyer who defended me. Kit went to sleep in the courtroom while his confession was being read, and he was sentenced to die in the electric chair. On a warm spring night, six months later, after donating his body to science, he did.

Well, good for him.

Kit: Sir… Where’d you get that hat?
Trooper: State.
Kit: Boy, I’d like to buy me one of those.
Trooper: You’re quite an individual, Kit.
Kit: Think they’ll take that into consideration?

I rather doubt it.

"Sleep now." And wouldn’t it be great if that’s all it took?

Another tall tale from the minds of those who channel science and fiction into a world that makes you think about things you may not have thought much about before. In other words, how many different ways might there be to order a “reality”? Think The Matrix. Thus:

A number of pieces of the set, including those used for the rooftop chase, were sold to the production of The Matrix at the end of shooting. IMDb

I’ve always loved “dark” movies. Movies, in other words, that unfold almost entirely in the dead of night. The darker the better. Dark City I figured was one of them. Oh, indeed.

The plot? Well, from Star Trek to this there is always something about human beings that intrigues the aliens. We seem to have these cluttered, chaotic [ofttimes barbaric] lives that are not really all that…logical. It has something to do with “freedom” and how, to the human soul, that is the most precious thing. At least to the humans that count. The aliens may be light years ahead of us intellectually, techologically but they can never quite hope to grasp the richness of our emotional lives. Besides, we prize individuality above all things. They of course are able only to think in terms of the “greater good of all”. The difference between, oh, I don’t know, capitalism and socialism? conservatives and liberals?

And by the way, ever been to Shell Beach? Ever “tuned” there?

New Line Cinema forced Alex Proyas to include the opening narration by Kiefer Sutherland, which Proyas objected to, saying it was unnecessary. The narration gives away several key plot twists and consequently many fans of the film prefer to watch it with the sound turned off during the narration until Sutherland looks at his pocket watch. Unsurprisingly, the director’s cut omits this opening narration.

This film deals with ‘Last Thursdayism’, a philosophy described in a satiric comment by 20th-century historian Bertrand Russell, referring to the “Omphalos” papers (1857) of Philip Gosse. Last Thursdayism says that the world (with us and our own basic memories included) could have been created recently, even last Thursday, but we cannot demonstrate such a thing because the world would have been created to look like an older world." IMDb


Dark City

Dr. Schreber: You are confused, aren’t you? Frightened. That’s all right. I can help you.
John: Who is this?
Dr. Schreber: I’m a doctor. You must listen to me. You have lost your memory. There was an experiment. Something went wrong. Your memory was erased. Do you understand me?
John: No, I don’t understand. What’s going on here?

Here we go again, fumbling about the task of grasping something analogous to “reality”.

Dr. Schreber: If he were to contact you Mrs. Murdock, you must call me immediately. Wherever your husband is now, he is searching for…himself.

That and Shell Beach.

Bumstead: So Husselbeck, what kind of killer do you think stops to save a dying fish?

I've never met one myself.

Eddie: Thinking in circles. There’s no way out. I’ve been over this entire city.
Bumstead: You’re scaring your wife to death, Eddie.
Eddie: She’s not my wife. I don’t know who she is or who any of us are. See, I’ve been trying to remember things-- clearly remember things from my past. But the more I try to think back, the more it all starts to unravel. None of it seems real. It’s like I’ve just been dreaming this life, and when I finally wake up, I’ll be somebody else, somebody totally different.
Bumstead: You saw something, didn’t you, Eddie. Something to do with the case.
Eddie: There is no case! There never was!

Let's define "case" just to be sure.

John: When was the last time you remember doing something during the day?
Bumstead: What do you mean?
John: I just mean during the day. Daylight. When was the last time you remember seeing it? And I’m not talking about some distant, half-forgotten childhood memory. I mean like yesterday. Last week. Can you come up with a single memory? You can’t, can you? You know something, I don’t think the sun even… exists…in this place. 'Cause I’ve been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

Let's keep it that way here too. Or, sure, grow a pair.

Mr. Wall: Do not fret, Anna. I will give you some more pretty things soon.
Emma: I’m not Anna.
Mr. Wall: You will be soon.

Pick one:
1] Tune! Tune! Tune!
2] Shine! Shine! Shine!

Dr. Schreber: First there was darkness. Then came the strangers. They abducted us and brought us here. This city, everyone in it… is their experiment. They mix and match our memories as they see fit, trying to divine what makes us unique. One day, a man might be an inspector. The next, someone entirely different. When they want to study a murderer, for instance, they simply imprint one of their citizens with a new personality. Arrange a family for him, friends, an entire history… even a lost wallet. Then they observe the results. Will a man, given the history of a killer, continue in that vein? Or are we, in fact, more than the sum of our memories? This business of you being a killer was a sad coincidence. You have had dozens of lives before now. You happened to wake up… while I was imprinting you with this one.
Bumstead: Why are they doing this?
Dr. Schreber: It is our capacity for individuality, our souls… that makes us different from them. They think they’ll find the human soul… if they understand how our memories work. They have collective memories. They share one group mind. They’re dying. Their race is on the brink of extinction.

Spolier alert!

John: What about my past? What about my childhood? Shell Beach. Uncle Karl. What about this? This notebook was blank when I found it.
Dr. Schreber: You still don’t understand, John. You were never a boy. Not in this place. Your history is an illusion, a fabrication, as it is with all of us.

Deep, man. But how deep is it? I mean, doesn’t this narrative sound an awful lot like the Federation vs. the Klingons? Or was it the Romulans? To wit: “I” [far more superior] vs. “we” [far more ignoble] only place home exists…is in your head. Of course, that's often all it takes.

Mr Hand: I’m dying, John. Your imprint is not agreeable with my kind. But I wanted to know what it was like. How you feel.
John: You know how I was supposed to feel. That person isn’t me. Never was. You wanted to know what it was that makes us human.
[John points to his own head]
John: Well, you’re not going to find it in here. You went looking in the wrong place.

So, any tuners here?

Of all things, this is a film from the director of Oldboy, Lady Vengeance and Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance. Why of all things? I don’t know. That’s just how it struck me. It is, after all, his first English language film.

There are some people we find fascinating whether they are drop dead gorgeous or not. But only a fool would suggest that has no place at all in our calculations. Though with regard to things like this, I have often concluded that [as with most men] I am a fool.

The Stokers are a fascinating family. Very attractive. Very wealthy. Very cultured. Very strange. There’s just no point then in bringing politics into it. Or, rather, that won’t be my point here. In fact, the family veritably reeks of the portentous mysteries to come. Uncle Charlie, in particular. Where exactly does he fit into the world? I mean, when he gets out of the institution. But wherever that is you just know it is going to pale next to wherever India decides she fits in.

And that’s enough for me. Or it is now. Some parents really shouldn’t have children. Some children really don’t need parents. And, in that context, these three were made for each other.

This was the final film for director/producer Tony Scott. After production, he committed suicide by jumping off a bridge in Los Angeles.


Stoker

India [voiceover]: My ears hear what others cannot hear; small faraway things people cannot normally see are visible to me. These senses are the fruits of a lifetime of longing, longing to be rescued, to be completed. Just as the skirt needs the wind to billow, I’m not formed by things that are of myself alone. I wear my father’s belt tied around my mother’s blouse, and shoes which are from my uncle. This is me. Just as a flower does not choose its color, we are not responsible for what we have come to be. Only once you realize this do you become free, and to become adult is to become free.

A moral nihilist one suspects.

Mrs. McGarrick: India, you are as white as a sheet. Is there something wrong?
India: Yes. My father is dead.

For some, that'll do it. Though for others it doesn't even come close.

Charles: Do you want to know why you feel at a disadvantage around me?
India: Because I didn’t even know that you existed until today?

There's a pretty good reason for that.

India: You know, in Victorian times, a widow was expected to mourn her husband for two years. At least.
Evelyn [her mother]: India…
India: In Ancient China, they built a straw hut beside the grave and she lived there for three years doing nothing.

You tell me.

Evelyn: Where did you learn to cook like this, Charlie?
Charles: Madame Jacquin. She ran a Michelin-starred restaurant outside of Toulouse called L’Instituion. She always used to say: “There’s nothing a man could master that a woman couldn’t make.”
India: What do you mean?
Evelyn: It sounds better in French.

You tell me.

India: What do you want from me?
Charles: To be friends.
India: We don’t need to be friends. We’re family.

Lots of different takes on that, I'm guessing.

India: Have you ever seen a picture of yourself, taken when you didn’t know you were being photographed, from an angle that you don’t usually see when you look in a mirror, and you think: “That’s me… that’s also me.” Do you know what I’m talking about?
Whip: I think I do. So you are surprised at yourself? Does that mean you are not afraid of being touched anymore?
India: Please don’t spoil it.

He spoils it. Or, perhaps, his pecker does?

India: I saw you in the dining room today.
Evelyn: I don’t know what you think you saw but nothing happened. You were so still I never even heard you there.
India: Dad taught me that. Hunting. To wait. In silence.

Then pounce? Nope, that's not how she goes about it.

India [to Evelyn]: I always thought Dad liked hunting. But tonight I realized he did it for me. He used to say, “Sometimes you need to do something bad to stop you from doing something worse.”

Well, that is one way to think about it.

Evelyn: You know, I’ve often wondered why it is we have children in the first place. And the conclusion I’ve come to is at some point in our lives we realize things are screwed up beyond repair. So we decide to start again. Wipe the slate clean. Start fresh. And then we have children. Little carbon copies we can turn to and say, “You will do what I could not. You will succeed where I have failed.” Because we want someone to get it right this time. But not me…
[more vehemently]
Evelyn: Personally speaking, I can’t wait to watch life tear you apart.

Doesn't quite work out that way. You know, to say the least.

Charles [to Evelyn]: People disappear…all the time.

In other words, one way or another.

Sheriff: In a hurry? Know how fast you were doing?
[India speaks to him in Italian]
Sheriff: Pardon?
India [translating for him]: Effectively fast, Mister Sheriff.
Sheriff: Effective for what?
India: To get your attention.

Take a wild guess why she needed that.

First things first: Is this based on a true story? Consider:

The film is based on a memoir by Slavomir Rawicz depicting his escape from a Siberian gulag and subsequent 4000-mile walk to freedom in India. Incredibly popular, it sold over 500,000 copies and is credited with inspiring many explorers. However, in 2006 the BBC unearthed records (including some written by Rawicz himself) that showed he had been released by the USSR in 1942. In 2009 another former Polish soldier, Witold Glinski, claimed that the book was really an account of his own escape. However this claim too has been seriously challenged. IMDb

True or not, we know that historically events similar to this have in fact unfolded. People did escape the camps. And, in so doing, made it so far and endured so much. So the first thing many of us will wonder is this: What about me? What would I be able to endure in order to survive? But it might be no less true for those who remained in the camps. Think of the death camps during the Holocaust. Suffering on a staggering scale. Some had what it took to make all the way out. Some did not. In the gulags, there seemed to be three main factors: How much suffering actually had to be endured. The capacity of any particular human body to endure it. The hope one is able to sustain that an end is in sight.

And if you do manage to escape the camp, there are two more main factors: Do you have the capacity to enforce your agenda? Valka has a knife. Do you have the capacity to survive in the wilderness? Janusz spent much of his life living in the forest.

The rest revolves largely around luck and the will to survive. As for morality, here everything eventually gets reduced down to life and death.

But mostly it is still all entangled in dasein.

In one sense the “gist” of this film is captured in a song by the Waterboys–Red Army Blues: https://youtu.be/Ncgb8qBbD1U?si=Vmpb3DzubqtB2QoV

The terrible finality of the dictatorial mind when one becomes an “enemy of the people”. The danger then is totalitarianism.

Next up: Elon Trump signs an EO rebutting this.

When Janusz and the others spot the tattoo of Lenin and Stalin on Valka’s chest, he angrily replies that they were great men. Such tattoos were in fact employed by criminals in the false hope that they wouldn’t be shot there as it was supposed to be illegal to deface an image of either Lenin or Stalin; although it is well-known that the executions were conducted via shooting in the back of the head. IMDb

Fucking human beings! There's practically nothing that can't be rationalized.


The Way Back

Title card: In 1941 three men walked out of the Himalayas into India. They had survived a 4,000 mile walk to freedom. This film is dedicated to them.

Title card: September, 1939. Hitler invades Poland from the West. Several days later Stalin invades from the East. They divide the country between them.

Just for the record.

[Interrogator presents a pen for Janusz to sign confession]
Janusz: No.
Interrogator: Bring in the witness.
[Janusz’s Wife is brought in]
Interrogator: Do you know this man? His name?
Janusz’s Wife: Janusz Wieszczek.
Interrogator: Witness, what’s your relationship with this man?
Janusz’s Wife [crying]: I am his wife.
Interrogator: Accused, do you confirm this?
Janusz: Yes.
Interrogator: Witness, what do you have to say about the accused?
Janusz’s Wife [agonizing]: From his conversation, I have come to know he is critical of the Party, especially the leader of the Soviet people, Comrade Stalin.
Janusz: What have they done to you?!

And so it goes. On and on. The way the world works. Or can work. They tortured him. He wouldn’t sign. So they tortured his wife. He signed.

Camp Commandant: Enemies of the people, look about you and understand…it’s not our guns or dogs or wire that form your prison. Siberia is your prison. All five million square miles of it.

One can't help but wonder how far Donald Musk might go here, as well.

Smith [to Janusz]: Kindness. That will kill you here.

Hell, lots of things could back then. But, no doubt about it, point taken.

Khabarov: I was an actor. In my last picture, I played an aristocrat. They arrested me when the film was released. It was claimed I was elevating the status of the old nobility.
Janusz: So you got ten years for a performance in a film.
Khabarov: I’ve had better notices.

A hell of a lot better, one suspects.

Smith: Might as well have shot us yesterday. We’re for the mines.

Next up: the mines here.

Smith: It can’t be done alone. If you are really serious about making a run for it I’m with you.
Janusz: I thought you were a loner.
Smith: It can’t be done alone. Besides, you have a…a weakness. You could be useful to me.
Janusz: And what is that?
Smith: Kindness. If anything happens to me, I’m counting on you carrying me.

Of course, kindness can get you killed.

Janusz: Why would an American move to Russia for God sakes?
Irena: The Depression.

The Great Depression, in other words.

Zoran [eyeing Lenin and Stalin tattooed on Valka’s chest]: Valka, why do you have assholes tattooed on your chest? I mean, they should be on your ass so that you can sit on them everytime you take a shit.
Valka: You think it’s funny? They are great men. Don’t you know what “Stalin” means, funny man? Means man-of-steel. He takes from rich, and gives to poor.
Zoran: Yes, of course he does. Then he takes both of them, and puts them in Gulag for 25 years.

He wondered where Elon Trump will build their own gulags.

Valka: Prison is okay. Debt is bad. But there are many prisons, they don’t find me.
Zoran: What about America?
Valka: Oh, it’s not for me, freedom. I wouldn’t know what to do with it, I swear to God.

Think Brooksie from Shawshank. Or all those that Erich Fromm suggested seek to escape their freedom. And the objectivists, of course.

Irena [looking at a marker on the Mongolian border]: Mister! They’re Communists.
Janusz: So it’s here too.
Smith: This changes everything.

Of course, that was before "the end of history".

Smith: In the camps, some saw death as freedom.
Janusz: Then why didn’t you just kill yourself?
Smith: Survival was a kind of protest. Being alive was my punishment.
Janusz: Punishment for what?
Smith: I brought David to Russia.
Janusz: And now no one can forgive you. And you can’t forgive yourself.

So, who will Donald Musk bring to Russia? You know, when the two countries merge into one.

Smith: Irena told me that they tortured your wife and that she informed on you.
Janusz: Yes.
Smith: They did the same thing to my son, David. And then they shot him in the head.
Janusz: My wife is alive. She lived…and was released. That much I know. But she will never be able to forgive herself for what she’s done. You see, only I can do that. She will be torturing herself just like you. So you see I have to get back. I have to get back.

To forgive her?

Indian man: Where have you come from?
Janusz: Siberia.
Indian man: Siberia? And how did you come, sir?
Janusz: We walked.
Indian man: Walked?

Walked.

Yuval Noah Harari

It is an iron rule of history that what looks inevitable in hindsight was far from obvious at the time.

For example, fascism in America.

We cannot explain the choices that history makes, but we can say something very important about them: history’s choices are not made for the benefit of humans.

Good thing there's a God then, right?

So here is that line from the American Declaration of Independence translated into biological terms: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.

White men, anyway, back then.

What some people hope to get by studying, working or raising a family, others try to obtain far more easily through the right dosage of molecules. This is an existential threat to the social and economic order, which is why countries wage a stubborn, bloody and hopeless war on biochemical crime.

Let's run this by, among others, the folks who make hot dogs:
https://www.hot-dog.org/resources/Hot-D ... ents-Guide

Many call this process 'the destruction of nature.' But it's not really destruction, it's change. Nature cannot be destroyed.

Tell that to the Grim Reaper.

In fact, as time goes by, it becomes easier and easier to replace humans with computer algorithms, not merely because the algorithms are getting smarter, but also because humans are professionalising. Ancient hunter-gatherers mastered a very wide variety of skills in order to survive, which is why it would be immensely difficult to design a robotic hunter-gatherer. Such a robot would have to know how to prepare spear points from flint stones, how to find edible mushrooms in a forest, how to use medicinal herbs to bandage a wound, how to track down a mammoth and how to coordinate a charge with a dozen other hunters. However, over the last few thousand years we humans have been specialising. A taxi driver or a cardiologist specialises in a much narrower niche than a hunter-gatherer, which makes it easier to replace them with AI.

Something to think about. Or not, of course.

I’ve always been curious about folks who live way up [or out] in the sticks…folks who aren’t exactly like you and I. Except for the parts where they are. Curious because in this day and age of satellite TV and the ubiquitous communications technology more and more of “our world” is going to trickle in. And how will that impact on how they see “their world”? Sort of like down in the Amazon when it dawns on the aboriginal tribes that there is a whole other way of thinking about things in a whole other world very much at odds with their own. Just not with gaps nearly as drastic of course. After all, it’s not like they don’t have public education, government and “the law” here. But there are still a lot of “customs” and “local ways of doing things” that are now increasingly bucking up against [or starting to unravel in] the modern world. Especially the stuff revolving around “value judgments”…or “gender roles”. Or the part about blood kin sticking together against “them”.

Only here that gets particularly complicated. Especially when you’re poor. And in being a young woman the options can start to trickle down real fast. But this is also a world where a sister teaches her younger siblings [11 and 6] how to use a shotgun because that’s the way it is. Let’s just say Ree is fiercely resourceful.

Of course, being poor is why Jessup started in on “cooking” in the first place. Only he ain’t Heisenberg. Different script entirely here. But the relationships are pretty much the same: dope, money, the law, dead bodies, the law again.

Still, I guess you could call the ending here a happy one. Considering.

The title comes from an old Appalachian expression - “like a dog digging after a winter’s bone” - indicating someone who, like Ree Dolly, is on a search or quest for something and will not give it up.

Many of the stars (including Isaiah Stone, Ashlee Thompson, and William White) and most of the extras are from the Forsyth, MO area, and had never acted before.

Sergeant Russell Schalk, who played the Army recruiter, is a real-life recruiter and combat veteran of the 1st Cavalry Division. Jennifer Lawrence asked him questions in character, and he responded as if he were talking to an actual recruit. IMDb


Winter's Bone

Sheriff: Where you all come into this is, he put this house here, and your timber acres, up for his bond.
Ree: He what now?
Sheriff: Jessup signed over everything. Now, if he doesn’t show up for trial, see, the way this deal works is, you all is gonna lose this place. You got some place to go?
Ree: I’ll find him.

Jessup, you see, was “cooking” again. He got caught. By both sides you might say.

Sonny: Maybe they’ll share some of that with us.
Ree: That could be.
Sonny: Maybe we should ask.
Ree: Never ask for what oughta be offered.

Of course, some will just take it. All of it.

Sonya: We seen the law was out here this afternoon. Everything all right?
Ree: He’s huntin’ for Dad.
Sonya: You know where he’s at?
Ree: No.
Sonya: You sure about that?
Ree: Yes.
Sonya: All right, well I guess you din’t have nothing to tell him then, did you?
Ree: I wouldn’t tell him nothing if I did.
Sonya: Honey, we know that.

Though some considerably more than others.

Victoria: You know all those people, Teardrop. You could ask.
Teardrop: Shut up.
Victoria: None of them’s gonna be in a great big hurry to tangle with you.
Teardrop: I told you to shut up once already, with my mouth.

You know what that means.

Thump’s wife: Thump knows you’re in the valley child, with Megan, and at Little Arthur’s. He knows what you want to ask, and he don’t want to hear it.
Ree: And that’s it? He ain’t gonna say nothin’ to me?
Thump’s wife: If you’re listening child, you got your answer.
Ree: So I guess come to nut-cutting, blood don’t really mean shit to the big man.

Nut-cutting. Let's try that here.

Teardrop: Those pills helping your mama’s mood any?
Ree: She keeps takin’ ‘em. But they aint workin’.

Any of them actually work for you?

Ree: Mom, look at me.
[her whacked out Mom stares out vacantly]
Ree: There’s things happening and I don’t know what to do. Can you please help me this one time? Mom. Mom, look at me. Teardrop thinks I should sell the woods, Mom. Should I sell?
[Mom says nothing]
Ree: Please help me this one time.
[long, agonizing pause]
Ree: I don’t know what to do.

And we know where Dad is.

Megan: What are we ever gonna do with you, baby girl?
Ree: Kill me I guess.
Megan: That idea’s been said already. Got any others?
Ree: Help me. Ain’t nobody’s said that idea yet, have they?

On the other hand, look what's at stake.

Thump: You got something to say child, you best say it now.
Ree [who is all of 17 years old]: I got two kids that can’t feed themselves yet. My mom’s sick, and she’s always gonna be sick. Pretty soon the law’s a coming and taking our house and throwing us out to live in the fields like dogs. If Dad has done wrong, Dad has paid, and whoever killed him I don’t need to know all that. But I can’t forever carry them kids and my mom without that house.

Let's get back to that.

Ree [in the graveyard]: What the hell are we doing?
Teardrop: Looking for humps that ain’t settled.

There's a reason for that.

Ree: What I really can’t stand is the way I feel ashamed…for dad.
Teardrop: Well, he loved y’all. That’s where he went weak.

If you get his drift.

Ree [to Sheriff Baskin]: They’re his. Those are my dad’s hands.

Can't show up at court without them.

Sheriff Baskin: I didn’t shoot the other night cuz you were there in the truck. He never backed me down.
Ree: It looked to me like he did.
Sheriff Baskin: Don’t you let me hear that’s a story gettin’ around.
Ree: I don’t talk about you men. Ever.

That's just the way it is. Period. And then some.

Sonny: Does that money mean you’re leaving?
Ree: I ain’t leaving you guys. Why do you think that?
Sonny: We heard you talking about the Army. Are you wanting to leave us?
Ree: I’d be lost without the weight of you two on my back. I ain’t goin’ anywhere.

The End.

All over the globe – for one shitty reason or another – children find themselves the victims of one or another adult clusterfuck. Sometimes they are the intended target and sometimes they just stumble into one quite by accident.

Of course, sometimes children are the victims of other children. But the holes they tumble into here are generally nowhere near as deep as the ones that we dig for them.

Here the hole is a literal one. Michele lifts up the lid and down in the hole is a child. He is obviously being kept there. Now all we need to know is why.

Michele tries to imagine all the reasons this boy would be down in the hole. But the truth he doesn’t come close to. Not at first. And even when he discovers part of the truth, he isn’t able to fathom the whole truth. Or the part those around him play in it.

What’s important is that the tale unfolds largely from the perspective of the child. You wonder why he does what he does and not what you would do instead. But the child’s imagination comes into play here. He fits the pieces together differently from how an adult might do so. He also comes up with a different ending.

This film was loosely based on a true story of a kidnapped boy from Milan and the novella written about the incident.

Salvatores interviewed nearly 600 boys for the part of Filippo, ultimately settling for novice Giuseppe Cristiano, the son of a Fiat car worker.

One scene breaks the realism in the movie: Michele is approaching the hole, and we can hear loud music and sounds of birds. When he climbs a fence, he yells “Shut up” (or something like that), and both the music and the birds stop at once, and the scene continues in silence. IMDb


I’m Not Scared [Io Non Ho Paura]

Michele: A cave filled with gold and gems!

Or something altogether different.

Michele [aloud to himself writing down a story]: “Dad and mom are expecting a baby. But instead, two are born, one blonde, one brunette. The brunette is normal, the blonde is crazy. When she nurses him, he bites her and draws blood. The mom doesn’t want him anymore and tells the dad to kill him. The dad takes him up to a tall mountain but he can’t stab him because it’s a sin. So he digs a hole and puts him in it. He brings him water and food so he won’t die. So…he…won’t…die.”

That's how he imagines it happening. Mom and Dad, on the other hand...

Filippo: Dead.
Michele: What?
Filippo: I’m dead.
Michele: Dead?
Filippo: I’m dead! I’m dead! I’m dead!

Nope, not yet. But you're thinking that soon he might be.

Sergio: Here it is!
News broadcaster on TV: Throughout the whole region the search continues for little Filippo, kidnapped in Milan. We will now air Luisa Carducci’s appeal to the kidnappers.
Pino [Michele’s father]: What the fuck does she want?
Filippo’s mother: I’m Filippo’s mother. I’m speaking to my son’s kidnappers. I beg you, don’t hurt him. He’s a good boy, well mannered, and very shy. The sum requested is steep, even for our family.
Sergio: She’ll cough up the money.
Filippo’s mother: You threatened to cut off his ear. I beg you not to do it. And please tell Filippo that his mother and father love him very much.
Sergio: We’ll cut off two ears! Two!!

Why the “steep” ransom demand? Well, practically the whole village is involved! But now Michele knows why Filippe is in the hole. But then again not really.

Filippo [boy in the hole to Michele]: Are you my Guardian Angel?

Anyone here want to be mine?

Michele [down in the hole]: You’re Filippo aren’t you? Your mom says she loves you and misses you. She said it on TV yesterday, and she said not to worry.
Filippo: My mother is dead! So is my dad and grandma, they’re all dead and live in holes!

Let's just say he's been down there long enough to think like that.

Michele: Your mom said that she and you dad love you very much.
Filippo: Then why don’t they come and get me?
Michele: I don’t know.
Filippo: And why am I here?
Michele [shaking his head sadly]: I don’t know.

Again, he sort of knows and sort of doesn't.

Mother [to Michele who now knows that she knows about Filippe]: Listen to me. Promise me that when you’re big you will leave this place.

And we know what's behind that frame of mind. If only she could leave that place.

Pino [to Michele]: If you go back there, they will shoot him…and it will be your fault. Forget about him. He is not there.
[then more to himself]
Pino: Christ, what a mess!

He ain't seen nothing yet.

Michele [to his father]: Why did you put him in there? I don’t get it.
Pino [groping for words]: There are things that seem wrong when you…Don’t think about it. Just forget about it all.

A young boy kidnapped and thrown into a hole. Just forget about it?

Michele: Mama, he’s dead, isn’t he?
[she slaps him]
Mother: No one’s dead!
[then gentler]
You’re too young…

...to understand just how fucked up the human condition can be.

Richard Yates from Revolutionary Road

She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents nor Aunt Claire nor Frank nor anyone else had ever had to teach her: that if you wanted something to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.

Define alone?

Your cowardly self-delusions about “love” when you know as well as I do that there’s never been anything between us but contempt and distrust and a terrible sickly dependence on each other’s weakness- that’s why. That’s why I couldn’t stop laughing about the Inability to Love, and that’s why I can’t stand to let you touch me, and that’s why I’ll never again believe in anything you think, let alone anything you say.

That's how some here feel about...me?

How small and neat and comically serious the other men looked, with their grey-flecked crew cuts and their button-down collars and their brisk little hurrying feet! There were endless desperate swarms of them, hurrying through the station and the streets, and an hour from now they would all be still. The waiting mid-town office buildings would swallow them up and contain them, so that to stand in one tower looking out across the canyon to another would be to inspect a great silent insectarium displaying hundreds of tiny pink men in white shirts, forever shifting papers and frowning into telephones, acting out their passionate little dumb show under the supreme indifference of the rolling spring clouds.

On the other hand, there they are: bills that have to be paid.

Wasn’t it true, then, that everything in his life from that point on had been a succession of things he hadn’t really wanted to do? Taking a hopelessly dull job to prove he could be as responsible as any other family man, moving to an overpriced, genteel apartment to prove his mature belief in the fundamentals of orderliness and good health, having another child to prove that the first one hadn’t been a mistake, buying a house in the country because that was the next logical step and he had to prove himself capable of taking it. Proving, proving; and for no other reason than that he was married to a woman who had somehow managed to put him forever on the defensive, who loved him when he was nice, who lived according to what she happened to feel like doing and who might at any time—this was the hell of it—who might at any time of day or night just happen to feel like leaving him. It was as ludicrous and as simple as that.

And, of course, posting here.

...you found you were saying yes when you meant no, and “We’ve got to be together in this thing” when you meant the very opposite ... and then you were face to face, in total darkness, with the knowledge that you didn’t know who you were. And how could anyone else be blamed for that?

Click, of course.

That’s how we both got committed to this enormous delusion—because that’s what it is, an enormous, obscene delusion—this idea that people have to resign from real life and ‘settle down’ when they have families.

Let's exchange our very own enormous delusions.

…the things that some folks will do for their art. Or the lengths that they will go to express it. Some might even be willing to die for it. Here it is a sculptor obsessed with the female body. But obsessed in a way that separates him from others. He is blind.

He becomes obsessed all the more by a sculpture of a famous model, Aki Shima. So obsessed that in the disguise of a masseur he kidnaps her and takes her to his studio. He locks her inside. The studio is in an isolated home – an old, abandoned warehouse – he shares with his mother.

Then things get really strange. He is intent on exploring Aki’s body from head to toe. And by touch alone. All in order to create his masterpiece. At first Aki is intent only on getting free of him. She tries every trick in the book. But gradually her relationship with him becomes more…complicated. More empathetic you might say. She begins to share his obsession and not only participates willingly but wants only to takes things to even further extremes. You have to see it to believe it. It’s not for nothing this movie shocked many.

All the while we come to observe the mother’s reaction. The three of them begin to act out this bizarre triangulation of art and love and lust. Only to go on to far, far more destructive…exchanges.

The film also explores a particular narrative about being blind. Not everyone’s narrative of course but being blind is just one possible manifestation of dasein. And as is often the case with the blind, their sense of touch becomes considerably more…heightened.

And then his studio. Walls of protruding lips, eyes, noses, arms, legs, ears, breasts. Even belly buttons.


Blind Beast [Môjû]

Michio: You are beautiful.
Aki: Flattery? I’m not that pretty.
Michio: To the blind, faces don’t really matter. It’s your body and the silkiness of your skin. The blind have eyes in our fingertips. I know your body better than someone with eyes.

So, it must be just a conincidence then that she is drop dead gorgeous?

Michio: I have been blind since birth. Being blind is miserable. From listening to people and Braille books, I can picture much of the world’s beauty. The sunlight, the color of clouds, splendid scenery and the beauty of works of art. Plays, movies, even TV. But I cannot see a thing. I hate my parents for this. But that doesn’t change a single thing.

Of course, I struggled with understanding this frame of mind with Maia.

Michio: All that is left for the blind is sound, smell, taste and our sense of touch. Sounds are like winds, no satisfaction. Smells are useless. Our noses are not sensitive like dogs. Food merely fills our bellies. But what I have discovered is touch. Touch is the only way to amuse oursleves. Our one tactile satisfaction. I’ve touched everything I could…

His favorite thing to touch though is [gasp!] the naked female body.

Michio: There are many kinds of art in our world. Art for amusing the eye, the ear and the mind. Why can’t touching be an art form? I want to pioneer the art of touching. Where only the blind can appreciate it. A new art form by and for the blind. That’s my life’s mission!

I'll touch yours if you'll touch mine.

Michio: You stripped naked for that photographer! So why not me?
Aki: That’s obvious. Mr. Yamana is a great artist.
Michio: But I also create art.
Aki: That’s crap and you’re crazy. You just want to feel me up.

Too close to call.

Mother: I know very well what she is up to. She’s making a fool of a blind country bumpkin.
Michio: Is that true, Aki?
Aki: I get it now. Your mother is jealous. She’s bad-mouthing me for stealing her precious son. She sees you as more than just a son. She sees you as a lover or a husband. So she sees me as her rival.
Michio: Is she right, Mother?
Mother: I won’t stand by and watch her make a total fool out of you!

Mom's got to go.

Aki: Kill me! Get it over with! I’d rather be dead than suffer like this!

But now the mother is gone. And that turns the world upside down. And for both of them...

Aki: I have started to go blind. Here, in the constant darkness.
Michio: So, you’re blind like me now. Is it a demerit? Are you sad?
Aki: No. Quite the opposite. People pity the blind, what a big mistake. I pity those with sight! They can never know the tactile ecstasy of our caresses. My sense of touch is now so acute.
Michio: So you finally understand?
Aki: Yes. Shape, form and color can’t even approach our tactile level of artistic expression.

Maybe someone here will finally understand me, he groused.

Aki [voiceover]: The sensation at the tips of my fingers has become so acute I can almost “taste” with them. As sensitive as insect feelers and animal whiskers. Like the lower life forms, without eyes, only able to feel. Like an amoeba or jellyfish at the dawn of life. The same sensations as the most primeval creature. As if going back to the womb of human creation, so dark, so sweet and so pervadingly familiar.

Well, that is one way in which to "look" at it.

Aki: When I look with my eyes, you’re a different man from the one I feel. You look normal. But to the touch you are divine. These small depressions, the large curves and projections. As I caress your body, I perceive constant variations. Like the flow of a musical masterpiece.

Let's run this by, well, you decide.

Aki [voiceover]: As the days passed we both explored the innermost secrets of our bodies. The most subtle and shaded nuance of each other’s flesh. But in our tactile world of touch and feeling, we discovered unwritten, unrelenting, natural laws. So much pleasure only spurred an ever increasing demand for more sensation.

Again, you have to see it to believe it.

Aki: More! Deeper! Harder!
Michio [kneading her thighs]: Like this?
Aki: Not enough! Bite me! Even harder! Make me bleed! Harder! Harder!

So, he accomodates her. And then some.

Aki [voiceover]: That was the beginning. We began to take our pleasure through biting, clawing and beating our bodies in a rage of sensation. But the pain-pleasure from nails, teeth and fists gradually began to lessen in intensity. We began using various devices to stimulate each other.

I've never understood those who fiercely intertwine pain and sex. Fuck that.

Aki [bound in rope]: Whip me!!

Or what's left of her? Or him for that matter.

Aki [voiceover]: The more I suffered, the more I craved. What is within, that brings forth such ecstasy? Does it mean I was born with masochistic tendencies? Had I arrived at the point where natural law and the sensations of pleasure collide?

I was there once myself. Or so she told me.

Aki [voiceover]: We couldn’t stop ourselves…

And she really, really means it.
Next up...

Aki: We turned to knives to extract our ecstasy…

The point of no return let's call it.

Michio: You really want me to cut you?
Aki: Go ahead, do it.
Michio: Where?
Aki: Anywhere. Wherever you want. Cut me! Cut me! Hurry!

Sure, given everything else, why not.

Michio [sticking the knife into her flesh]: Does it hurt?
Aki: It’s agony. But an exquisite agony! More, more. I don’t care if I die! Cut deeper! Cut deeper and twist the knife!

Anyone here care to actually explain this frame of mind?

Aki [voiceover]: That’s when we began the rite of drinking each other’s blood. The ecstasy of it marked our descent into the abyss.

Prepare yourself...

Aki [voiceover]: The stench of the mother’s dead body begin to fill the studio. Our bodies cut and scarred, as if from battle. The loss of blood and constant pain began to sap our vitality.

That'll do it.

Aki: We won’t last much longer, will we?
Michio: All we have left is to wait for death to claim us. Do you regret it?
Aki: Why should I? I’ve feasted on a bliss that most people never even know exists.

Again, prepare yourself...

Aki: If we are to die anyway, make it an ecstatic death for me. Bring me to tears of joy.
Michio: But how?
Aki: Cut my arms off! My legs too![/quote]

Uh, come again?

Aki [now armless and legless]: The world of touch. The world of insects. The lower orders such as jellyfish. Those who venture to the edge of such worlds, can expect only a dark, dank death to envelop them.

So, any blind beasts here? Any insects?

Not exactly a well-executed film some will inform us. At least not from the perspective of many "top critics". And, well, me. But the plot is just so damned intriguing. A woman suspects her husband is being unfaithful, but she wants to know for sure. So, she hires a very beautiful prostitute to seduce him. Let’s see what happens. And, sure enough, the prostitute reports back that what she suspected to be true is in fact true. But what if it’s not? What if the prostitute has an entirely different motivation for saying what she does?

And what if she has a "condition"? With some conditions, of course, it is futile to try reasoning with them.

We’ve seen this before. The wife is smashing. She is very intelligent, very successful, very appealing. And very attractive. But not very young anymore. And some men just seem to get more handsome the older they become. And everywhere they look and everywhere they go there’s temptation. Especially when the man is successful in acquiring other things. Like social distinction and status.

Alas, the trials and the tribulations of the upper middle class. Oh, and [eventually] all the rest of us?

Come on, relationships in the modern world?! There are only two things impeding [or rending] them: sex and love. This and psychiatric problems. Nothing really works here. Unless you find something that does.

In the middle of March 2009, Liam Neeson interrupted filming his scenes in order to visit his wife Natasha Richardson in hospital after she had a skiing accident. The brain injury she received from this accident lead to her death a few days later. Just few days after her death, Neeson voluntarily returned to the set and completed his performance. The filmmakers changed the script accordingly and Neeson completed his performance in two days. IMDb

Hmm. Changed it how? Into a completely different movie?



Chole

Chloe [voiceover]: I guess I’ve always been pretty good with words. In my line of business. It’s as important to be able to describe what I’m doing as it is to do what I’m doing. When to say what. What words to select. Some men hate to hear certain terms. They can’t stand specific moves and then they can’t live without others. It’s part of my job to know where to place my hand, my lips, my tongue, my leg…and even my thoughts. What kind of pressure, for how long, when to stop. I can become your first kiss…or a torn out image from a Playboy magazine that you found when you were 9 years old. Am I your secretary or am I your daughter? Maybe I’m your seventh grade math teacher you always hated. All I know is that if I do it just right, I can become your living, breathing, unflinching dream…and then I can actually disappear.

Of course, she's only paraphrasing Bree Daniels.

Catherine: Did you find that waitress sexy?
David: Which one?
Catherine: The one you were flirting with.
David: Oh come on, I was being friendly.

Back to Harry and sally?

Catherine [to Chloe]: I think my husband would like you.

I liked her. And going all the way back to Big Love.

Catherine [to Chloe]: My husband’s cheating on me. At least, I think he is.

In other words, the husband’s not the client here, the wife is.

Catherine: How do you do this?
Chloe: I try to find something to love in everybody. Even if it’s a small thing. Something about the way someone smiles. There’s always something, there has to be. I try to make myself generous. I do things I don’t want to do. I… I think about what not to criticize. And the strangest things come back to me.
Catherine: Like?
Chloe: You.
Catherine: Me?
Chloe: Yeah. People like you walk into my life.

So, do want me to walk into your life?

Catherine: I don’t know whether to be relieved or just go hang myself.

The plot thickens. Or, for some, sickens.

Catherine [to Chloe]: This business transaction, which is what this was, is over.

On the other hand, she did sleep with her.

Catherine [to David]: You and I used to make love three times a day. And then every day. And then once a week. And then Michael was born and then we became parents and then we became best friends. I didn’t know how to go from being your best friend to being your lover.

Each relationship is unique and yet this sort of thing is now so common. What does that tell us then? Maybe that variety is the spice of life. For men, it seems to be more about new sex. For women, more about new love. Though with plenty of exceptions. If only sort of.

Materialism

"When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.” H.L. Mencken

How much though?

The Master said, “If your conduct is determined solely by considerations of profit you will arouse great resentment.” Confucius

Of course, that takes us all the way back to...the White House?

“Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is born. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call 'soul' or 'spirit,' is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the 'soul' or the 'spirit' ceases likewise. I expressed these ideas long before the behaviorists, led by Pavlov in Russia and by Watson in the United States, proclaimed their new psychology. This apparently mechanistic conception is not antagonistic to an ethical conception of life.” Nikola Tesla

To click or not to click?

“It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.” James Baldwin

That certainly explains, well, almost everything nowadays.

“How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.” Barbara Kingsolver

You first.

“Nin knew how much humans loved money, riches, and material things—though he never really could understand why. The more technologically advanced the human species got, the more isolated they seemed to become, at the same time. It was alarming, how humans could spend entire lifetimes engaged in all kinds of activities, without getting any closer to knowing who they really were, inside.” Jess C Scott

Imagine then her reaction to me.

American youth. Is it really as bad as this? In a prep school? An “academy”?! In other words, privileged American youth.

I would not know myself as I have absolutely no contact with them. Instead, I am prone toward media projects that reinforce stereotypes as I imagine them all to be: pop culture zombies. But maybe it really isn’t this bad at all. Or, sure, maybe it is even worse. But how could it possibly be worse than this? Again, I’m in the dark here.

Not that there aren’t lots of exceptions, I’m sure. But who is going to make a film about that?

Sex, drugs and [now only occasionally] rock and roll. But there is still the gap between boys and girls. They just seem [on average] to react to things…differently. Still, the important point is that in this day and age it just keeps shrinking and shrinking. In our increasingly desensitized YouTube world It all still sort of revolves around Bob Dylan’s observation all those years ago:

As human gods aim for their marks
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

So: What else can you show me?

And another confirmation that Catcher in the Rye was spot on in its depiction of the phonies. Not that any of us really know what to put in its place.


Afterschool

Mr. Burke: Good morning Miss Jameson, did you sleep all right? You just missed a little inspiring speech on announcements about you possibly being inspired to try something that will ultimately be your future, but I wouldn’t worry…McDonald’s will most likely still be hiring after you graduate.

Funny.

Principal: Our kids are good kids. Rob is a little confused but harmless.
Detective: Okay, I’m ready for the next one.

Or he thinks he is.

Guidance counselor [after the Talbert twins overdose]: Just tell me something, anything. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind?
[Rob says nothing]
Guidance counselor [sharper]: Rob. Just say anything.
Rob: My skin’s peeling.
[long pause]
Rob: It’s all dry in parts and coming off. Happy?

Not even close, as I recall.

Guidance counselor [to Rob]: I knew the girls were doing drugs. I knew a year ago. They stopped coming to see me. This year, other kids were talking about it. I hear what’s going on. Anyway, I decided to tell, you know, the school. I felt like the girls were in danger, and, uh, they told me they didn’t want to hear it, that the Talberts were too important to the school and friends with certain people and, uh, they weren’t worried about it so, nothing you can do, nothing I can do. In case you thought there was, there wasn’t.

On the other hand, politics does make the world go around and around and around. And not just in circles.

Mr. Burke: [after seeing the memorial video Robert made] Is that serious, Robert?
Robert: What do you mean?
Mr. Burke: Is there something wrong with you, Robert? I'm no editor but I can safely say that's probably the worst thing I've ever seen. You didn't even have music! I'm gonna tell Mr. Wiseman to have someone else reediting everything. You...I'm very disappointed.

On the other hand, little does he know what Robert knows. Or what he did.

Robert: Uh... your mom gets fucked for cash.
Mr. Virgil: Okay. Okay, fair enough. Right. See, that was easy. You just said what's on your mind.

Just as we do here. Except nobody actually dies doing it.

Trevor: Isn't your sister Maria, the senior?
Peter: I don't know.
Trevor: You know I fucked your sister.
Peter: Does she know that?
Trevor: Her pussy's so wet. You know your sister's pussy gets so wet? All you gotta do is brush up against it. You know, your sister gives mad good head, right? Gets the whole thing down her throat. Last time, when she was suckin' on my dick, it only took me a minute before I came all over her face. I bet you jerked off to pictures of your sister, huh? Next time we do it, I'll find you; I'll let you smell my fingers, hm?

There's been a Trevor at every school I've ever attended. And every forum for that matter.

Mr Burke: There was something else, something you kept saying. Do you remember what you kept saying, Rob? You were cursing like a madman, and you were saying, “You killed them, you killed them, you killed them!”

Of course [spoiler alert] Rob's the wrong one to be told that.

The choices you make to endure what you at least have a choice to endure. The lessor of two evils, perhaps, in a world of brutally conflicting goods? Or is it a world of even more brutally conflicting evils? Sometimes it just depends on who you ask.

But surely we can all agree that at least some things are either one or the other. Otherwise, the choice to endure living in a world where we can’t can become unbearable.

There are just times only a fool wouldn’t lie. It is only a matter of coming up with the reasons to explain the truth away.

Sometimes [here] we can become infuriated with each other just trying to determine what the words mean. But at least most of us have come to grasp that once you comprehend this, fitting the words together out in the world we live in is then bascially like fitting together cinder blocks or bricks.

Though a few of us still resist that notion.

Sophie chose to embrace her father’s anti-Semitic tirade when she thought it would put her in a better position with the Commandant of Aushwitz. She even claimed to have helped him to write it. Was her motive purely selfish or was she doing only what the Resistance inside the camp had asked of her: to get on the good side of Hoess in order that she might purloin his son’s radio? Or why not for both reasons?

Then she is asked to choose a child to live and a child to die.

And then there are the choices that Nathan makes. Turns out however that his motivation was not so much a complex and cruel world that had twisted him intellectually into knots, but a mind that was rotting from the inside out. Watching this unfold on the screen was no less disappointing than watching it all unfold in the novel. Apparently it can all be explained by way of something as mundane [and predictable] as mental illness. What a kick in the ass that was. And still is.

Stingo is the one with the typewriter and dictionary. He has experienced almost nothing in the world but he longs to be a writer. He’s young though.

Meryl Streep did the final scene (her choice) in one take and refused to do it again, saying that as a mother, she found it too painful and emotionally draining. Years later, Streep appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show and the scene of her choice was shown. Meryl was uncomfortable while the clip was playing and she revealed that she had never watched the scene before that very moment.

Meryl Streep begged director Alan J. Pakula for this role literally on her hands and knees. Marthe Keller and Barbra Streisand both tried to win the role also but Pakula ultimately chose Streep.

Meryl Streep not only learned a Polish accent but also learned how to speak German and Polish in order to have the proper accent of a Polish refugee. IMDb


Sophie's Choice

Nathan: Me, need you? Let me tell you something! I need you like a goddamn disease I can’t name! I need you like a case of Anthrax, hear me? Like “triquonosys”! I need you like a biliary calculus, palegra, encephalitis…“Bright’s” disease, for Christ’s sake! “parsinoma” of the brain! I need you… like death! Hear me? Like death!
Sophie: No, Nathan!
Nathan: Go back to Krakow, baby. Back to Krakow!

We're trying to figure out what's going on in his head during these outbursts. It turned out that...

Nathan: Did you have a good time? Did you enjoy our little show? Do you get off on a little bit of eavesdropping?
Stingo: My door was open. I just wondered what was going on.
Nathan: Your door was open? You wondered what was going on? Well, shut my mouth if it isn’t our new literary figure from the South. Too bad I won’t be around for a little lively conversation. We would’ve had great time shooting the shit. We could’ve talked about sports…Southern sports like lynching niggers, or coons I think you all call them there. So long cracker. See you in another life.

Same thing, of course.

Sophie: I mean, this is a ridiculous language! English! There’s too many words! The word for “velocity”: OK, there’s “fast”, “quick”… “rapid” and they all mean the same thing.
Nathan: “Swift”,
Stingo: “Speedy”
Nathan: “Hasty”.
Stingo: “Flit”.
Nathan: “Brisk”.
Stingo: “Expeditious”.
Nathan: “Accelerated”.
Stingo: “Winged”.
Sophie: No, no! Stop it! It’s ridiculous! Oh, in French it’s so easy. You say: “vit”. Or in polish, “szybko” and in Russian, “bistroy” It’s only in English that it’s so complicated!

Let's explain that.

Leslie [to Stingo]: Before I went into analysis, I was completely frigid. Can you imagine? Now all I can do is think about fucking. Wilhelm Reich has turned me into a nympho. I mean, sex on the brain![/b]

Unfortunately…

Leslie: You don’t understand…I can’t go all the way. I’ve reached a plateau in my analysis. Before I reach this plateau of vocalization I could never say any of those words. Those Anglo-Saxon four letter words that everybody should be able to say. Now I’m completely able to vocalize.
Stingo [voiceover]: Lesley Lapidus could now say “fuck”…but she could not do it.

Does that take you back too?

Sophie: Stingo, you look… you look very nice, you’re wearing your cocksucker.
Stingo [laughing]: That’s my “seersucker.”

He's already head over heels in love with her. On the other hand, the existential gap between them was enormous. For one thing, he lived in a world of words.

Sophie [to Stingo noticing the scars on her wrist]: I knew that Christ had turned his face away from me and that only a Jesus who no longer cared for me could kill those people that I love, but…leave me alive…with my shame? Oh, God. So I went to that church and I took the glass I knew was there and I…I’ve cut my wrist. But I didn’t die, of course! Of course, not. Stingo…there’s so many things you don’t understand. There’s so many things that I can’t…that I cannot…tell you.

See what I mean?

Nathan: This toast is in honor of my disassociation of you two creeps. Disassociation from you, coony captive **** of king’s county. And you, the dreary dregs of dixie.

Here he goes again…

Nthan: Tell me Sophie. The same anti-Semitism for which Poland has gained such a worldwide recognition…that this similar anti-Semitism guide your own destiny, help you along…protect you in a manner of speaking so you became one of the minuscule handful of people who lived…while the millions died? Tell me. Tell me why. Explanation, please! Tell me why old lucky number 11379…tell me…why you inhabit the land of the living? What splendid little tricks and strategies sprang from inside that lovely head of yours to allow you to breath the clear Polish air while the multitudes at Auschwitz choked slowly…on the gas? Explain! Explain!

Fuck you, Nathan! Well, unless, perhaps, it is all largely "beyond his control".

Stingo: Sophie, I want to understand…I’d love to know the truth.
Sophie: The truth? It does not make it easier to understand. And maybe you think that find out the truth about me and you’ll understand me and then you’d forgive me for all those…For all my lies.
Stingo: I promise I’ll never leave you.
Sophie: You must never promise that. No one…no one should ever promise that.

Back again to the part where, even in a world where bursting at the seams with free will, there are just any number of things "beyond our control".

Sophie [to Stingo]: The truth? I don’t even know what is the truth. After all these lies I’ve told…My father…How can I explain how much I loved my father? My father believed that human perfection was a possibility. Every night I pray to God to forgive me for always making a disappointment to my father. And I pray to him to make worthy of such a great good man. Then I was a grown woman. I was wholly come of age. I was a married woman when I realized I hated my father beyond all words to tell it. It was winter. And my father was working for weeks on the speech he calls…“Poland Jewish Problem”. Ordinarily I typed those speeches and I don’t hear the words, their meaning, but…this time I came upon a word that I have never heard it before. The solution for Poland Jewish Problem, he concludes is “vernichtung”. Extermination. I have not meant to go to the ghetto that afternoon but something made me go there. I stood there I don’t know how long…watching these people that my father has condemned to die. All these men, these women, these children would be “vernichtung”. Extermination.

So, can Musk trump that?

Sophie [to Stingo]: I came to work for Rudolf Hoess…Commandant of Auschwitz. The day they took me to work for Hoess I was forced to walk pass block 25. That is where they took the prisoners that were selected for extermination. The people there were made to stand for, sometimes, days. They were naked and they had no water. And their hands reached out from the bars and they cried and pleaded.

How about some here...in one ear and out the other?

Sophie: That night…I kept repeating to myself…“I have saved my son, I have saved my son”. “Tomorrow I can see him!” “And I can tell him good bye”. “And he will have been saved”. Oh, my God, I had such happiness that night! Such hope!
[pause]
Sophie: But Hoess did not keep his word. I was never to know what happened to my boy.

Multiple this by...millions.

Larry: My brother thinks the world of you.
Stingo: I’ve never met anybody more brilliant than Nathan. He’s such a breath at knowledge.
Larry: You’re right…He’s told you and Sophie that he is a research biologist.
Nathan: At Pfizer.
Larry: This biologist business is my brother’s masquerade. He has no degree of any kind. All that is a simple fabrication. The truth is, he’s quite mad. One of those conditions where weeks, months, even years go by without any manifestations. I’m not sure Nathan would forgive me if he knew that I told you. He made me swear never to tell Sophie. She knows nothing. The cruelest joke is that he was born the perfect child. He excelled in everything. Even Nathan’s teachers would speculate on what he would achieve. See, he was the kind of child everyone is prepared to take the credit for. When he was 10 we were told that the child genius was a paranoid schizophrenic. From then on, the only schools he attended were expensive funny farms.

I remember when I came to this part in the novel. I remember how pissed off I was. I wanted Nathan’s demons to reside in the manner in which he saw the world. His brilliance, in other words, not a clinical affliction of the brain.

Sophie: It’s not just the age difference, you know?...between you and me, Stingo…I’m going to tell you something. I’m going to tell you something I never told anybody.

What would we tell each other, he wondered.

SS officer [to Sophie]: You’re so beautiful. I’d like to get you in bed. Are you a Polack? You! Are you also one of those filthy communists?
[walks away]
Sophie: I am a Pole! I was born in Cracow! I am not a Jew. Neither are my children! They’re not Jews. They are racially pure. I am a Christian. I am a devout Christian.
[the officer comes back]
SS officer: You are not a communist? You are a believer?
Sophie: Yes sir, I believe in Christ.
SS officer: You believe in Christ the redeemer?
Sophie: Yes.
SS officer [looks at Sophie’s children]: Did He not say… “Suffer the children, come unto me?”
[Sophie remains silent]
SS officer: You may keep one of your children.
Sophie: I beg your pardon?
SS officer: You may keep one of your children. The other must go away.
Sophie: You mean, I have to choose?
SS officer: You are a Polack, not a Yid. That gives you a privilege, a choice.
Sophie: I can’t choose. I can’t choose!
SS officer: Be quiet.
Sophie: I can’t choose!
SS officer: Make a choice. Or I’ll send both of them over there. Make a choice.
Sophie: Don’t make me choose! I can’t!
SS officer: Shut up! Enough! I’ll send them both over there! I told you to shut up! Make a choice!
Sophie: I can’t choose! Please! I can’t choose!
SS officer [to an officer]: Take BOTH children away!
[Sophie clings on to her son while the Nazis take her screaming and crying daughter away from her]
Sophie: Take my little girl! Take my baby!

Then this part: God sees all...

Stingo [voiceover]: I was 22 and a virgin…and I was clasping in my arms at last the goddess of my unending fantasies. My lust was inexhaustible. Sophie’s lust was both a plunge into carnal oblivion…and a flight from memory and grief. More than that, I now see… It was a frantic and orgiastic attempt to beat back death.

I hear that.

Stingo [voiceover]: I let go the rage and sorrow for Sophie and Nathan…and for the many others who were but a few of the butchered and betrayed and martyred children of the Earth. When I could finally see again, I saw the first rays of daylight reflected in the murky river. This was not judgment day. Only morning; morning, excellent and fair.

I don’t buy it. Not any more. Even if that is all we’ve got.

Luigi Pirandello

We think we understand each other, but we never really do.

Of course, that Includes understanding this.

You should show some respect for what other people see and feel, even though it be the exact opposite of what you see and feel.

So, how's that working out for you?

If only we could see in advance all the harm that can come from the good we think we are doing.

Tell me that doesn't get tricky.

Inevitably we construct ourselves. Let me explain. I enter this house and immediately I become what I have to become, what I can become: I construct myself. That is, I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve with you. And, of course, you do the same with me.

Personas. Don't leave home without them.

Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.

A new thread?

It is much easier to be a hero than a gentleman.

Anyone here happen to know how much easier?

Proving yet again that who you come to think you are is who you come to be around when you are trying to figure that out. Then it all comes down to whatever you are able to experience that will either reinforce these perceptions or nudge [shove] them in another direction altogether. Then as you become more self-conscious of this you can [perhaps] begin to ponder what, say, the great philosophers thought of these things. Fortunately, you can never really be wrong regarding whatever it is you come to conclude. Or, rather, for as long as you are able to sustain any one particular story.

Here she is very beautiful but her mother [the poet] has just committed suicide. Fortunately, she has people to go to. In Italy. Very intelligent, artistic and culturally sophisticatecd people able to instill in her a very intelligent and culturally sophisticated appreciation for those things in life that very intelligent and culturally sophisticated people are able to pass down through the generations. Nothing at all, for example, like the folks that raised me.

Of course the only one more beautiful than her is him. Oh how utterly predictable the iconoclasts always are. Stealing beauty? More like bowing down and worshipping it. And not just the Kids.


Stealing Beauty

Ian: Very strange, that father of hers. He’s never cared about my work. He hated the portrait I did of Sarah. Why does he suddenly send Lucy to come here?
Diana: Maybe it was Lucy who wanted to come.

As I recall, we never do find out for sure.

Alex [who is dying to Lucy]: Go on, tell me. It’s not as though I’m going to know for very long.

You know he wants her, of course.

Diana: Off to the studio. You know, he hasn’t worked at nights for years.
Noemi: But there is now a virgin in the house.

Hmm, let's run that by the virgins here.

Michele: There is not love. There is only proof of love.

And what proof might that be?

Alex: You mustn’t let it get to you?
Lucy: What?
Alex: Us. We don’t mean you any harm. It’s just that up on this hill the only thing we have to talk about is each other.

Both in and out of bed for most of them.

Lucy: It’s my real father.
Alex: It would seem so.
Lucy: It’s not you, is it?
Alex: Can you picture me beating a viper? I don’t even know what a viper looks like.

He still wants her though.

M. Guillaume: Naughty, naughty boys. I bet they're being very naughty.
Miranda: I'm sure they've gone beyond naughty by now.

And Miranda ought to know.

Ian: You were nineteen once, I suppose, weren't you?
Diana: I suppose I must have been.

That's how it works alright. Well, if you live that long.

Lucy: Its easier to stay alone.
Alex: Lucy, Lucy, Lucy, you can't have decided that at your age.
Lucy: I haven't decided.
Alex: You're in need of a ravisher!
Lucy: I'm waiting.
Alex: Lucy, Lucy, Lucy...
Lucy: Will you stop saying that!
Alex: You're scared. What is it you're scared of? There's something else, isn't there? I can see. You seem to be...
Lucy: ...stoned.
[chuckles]
Lucy: I'm going to bed.

Not his though.

Alex: Did Lucy choose a good one?
Diana: She chose the first one.
Alex: It’s ludicrous isn’t it?
Diana: What?
Alex: About to snuff it, and still…
Diana: Still chasing tail.

See, I told you.

Ian: Have you ever actually bought a cigarette, Alex?

Let's just say he doesn't have much time to.

Alex: Lucy. I so enjoyed watching you. All that beauty. Aren’t we lucky?

Osvaldo, in particular.

Osvaldo [to Lucy]: It was my first time too.

Sure, that might actually be true.

Michele Lisca: This is the book.
Noemi: "Adolphe" by Benjamin Constant.
Michele Lisca: It's all about ideals and passion.
Noemi: Ah, a fairy tale!
Michele Lisca: Read it.

Or else?

Alex: Well, thank you for being so fucking helpful!
Diana: Miranda, you wouldn't stop.
Miranda: Me? It wasn't just me.
Ian: Or us.
Alex: Oh, she's searching for something. With those long hands she can barely control, and...curiosity. Oh, a little bit frightened. It reminds me so much of... me, somehow.
[makes dismissive gesture, goes off on his way]

Cue the ambulance.