Wednesday, April 11, 2012

A SORDID PHASE

I MUST be going through a bit of a sordid or subversive phase- maybe too much time on my hands. Amidst doing things like creating a birthday book full of lovely, innocent images, and reading about how fiction works, and having a nice, carefree time in Bendigo in the sunshine, and trawling the magnificent LaTrobe University library like the old days, I have been reading and watching these nasty pieces of fiction and non-fiction, mostly about complex subterranean desires. First there were the films SHAME and WOLF CREEK, and then Micheal Haneke's HIDDEN, all exploring complex notions of destruction and desire, now I have recently watched the recent Australian film SNOWTOWN, another Haneke film, THE PIANO TEACHER, and a factual study of the recent manslaughter of a local multi-millionaire businessman.


SNOWTOWN was gripping, at times brilliant, but often uncofortable viewing. A much more complex film than WOLF CREEK, it explores further the pysche of an Adelaide man's unquenchable desire to inflict pain and murder on what he ses as the degenerates of society, especially homosexuals and paedophiles. The violence was graphic and a bit nauseating. In cinemas some people walked out- perhaps partly because of the 'true nature' of the events that were being shown- the notorious bodies-in-the-barrel 'Snowtown murders' of a few years ago. The violence left me a bit shaken as well, especially a bathroom sequence- I walked around the house feeling like I was covered in some sort of awful grime- but this is not what I am applauding the film for. I am applauding the film for its incredible central performance of Daniel Henshall playing John Bunting. At first a very likeable, seemingly generous chap who ensures the poor kids in the dysfunctional family are fed well and looked after, something that is desperately needed in such a sordid and squalid town. Lucas Pittaway is also very good, playing the 17 year old kid, Jamie Vlassakis, whose mind is numb most of the time and whose expression is usually blank, until it breaks occasionally into torment and pain as he witnesses the horrors that Bunting unleashes around him. The cinematography and the dialogue are exceptional, particularly in one scene that takes place in the kitchen, with the gathered mob talking about what they should do to the local degenerates, considering the police seem disinterested or ineffectual. The film has a mesmerizing feel about it and is not easily forgotten.




I found THE PIANO TEACHER to be less interesting, although undoubtedly it is a very well-made and brave film. Isabelle Huppert plays Erika Kohut, a bizarre woman who teaches music and is a target of obsession of one of her impressionistic students. She is emotionally very complex and the student who pursues her can not have predicted what he was in stall for when he encourages her advances. The poster sums up a lot of the feel of the film, depicting a stark photo of little colour of the teacher and her student locked into a strong sexual embrace on the floor of the women's toilets. There is a shocking scene of genital mutilation that is reminiscent of Bergman's Cries and Whispers, and a number of scenes of what most people would classify as bizarre sexual behavior in a peep show, at the drive-in, and even with Kohut in bed with her mother. Haneke loves extremities and I admire the four films of his that I've seen. But I found this one depressing, emotionally uninvolving and less memorable than the others.

                                     

The non-fiction book that I read is called THE DOUBLE LIFE OF HERMAN ROCKEFELLER by Hilary Bonning. If you google 'herman rockefeller' you will discover the whole sorded story. What compelled a multi-millionaire to travel to Hadfield in Melbourne's north-west to have sex on a mattress with Bernadette Denny is anyone's guess, and one of life's mysteries. The book is an intriguing read for this reason, and also for the discovery of how the police glean facts in order to find the ansers to things. The police interviews of Denny and her boyfriend Mario Schembri are very telling, and there is also quite a lot of time devoted to the court appearances, and Rockefeller's amazingly stoic wife. We don't find out exactly how Rockefeller died, beyond being bashed by both Denny and Schembri in their garage in South Street. But the disposal of the body makes interesting reading. This was not a planned 'murder' by any means. The two accomplices must have received the fright of their life when they say it was who they had been dealing with on the news stations every night for a week. Schembri didn't hide Rockefeller's hybrid car very well. When it was found a GPS expert brought in by the police could tell them that the last address punched in was 125 South Street Hadfield! Easy detective work. The suburbs are full of strange occurences. I am about to teach the film LANTANA again.



Sunday, April 8, 2012

Metaphors and other ideas in James Wood's 'How Fiction Works.'

JOHN Banville, on the inside cover of 'How Fiction Works' (2008), says that James Wood  is 'one of the finest critics at work today.' To get the most out of this book it would be essential to have a vast literary  background encompassing works of Flaubert, James, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Stendhal, Balzac, Conrad (and in more recent times), Waugh, Nabakov, Naipaul, Pynchon and Roth. All of which I either don't have, or do have, fleetingly, due to too many hours when I was younger watching television and football, and in latter years being married, working, and having children. Still there was plenty to interest me, with my fleeting understanding of works by a number of these authors. And I took solace with the beautiful references to Lawrence, Hardy, Woolf, Forster, Mansfield and others that I could easily grapple with.

My favourite sections of this book were the references to metaphor which Wood identifies as among his favourites in a vast body of reading. This includes reference to a newspaper article in the US in which he discovered NYC garbage collectors call maggots in trash cans 'disco rice.' A metaphor that after three weeks hasn't left me.

In an early discussion of metaphor, Wood makes a well known reference to King Lear- the passage in which the hideous Cornwall rips out Gloucester's eyeball, calling it a 'vile jelly', his way I suppose of dehumanising Gloucester to make the repulsive act easier to perform.

Wood seems mesmerized by a simple phrase Virginia Woolf uses in her novel The Waves: 'The day waves yellow with all its crops.' For him, the unusual phrase 'waves yellow' conveys the sense that 'yellowness has so intensely taken over the day itself that it has taken over our verbs, too...the sunlight is so absolute that it stuns us, makes us sluggish, robs us of our will.' I read- some of- The Waves several years ago and found it a very strange book. I think it's fantastic that eight words strung together in unusual phrasing can move him so much, as it shows what impact great and inventive language can have.

Wood enjoys Lawrence as well and he makes reference to Sea and Sardinia, one of Lawrence's great travel books. Lawrence refers to King Victor Emanuel as having 'little short legs.' As Wood points out, technically there is no sense in having 'little' and 'short' grouped together like this. But together they create an interesting, farcical  effect. 'Little short legs', says Wood is better than 'short little legs' 'because it is jumpier..more absurd, forcing us to stumble slightly...over the unexpected rhythm.' It is absolutely true, though I would never have picked this up on my own.

In a perhaps similar way, Jane Austen is referenced via her novel Emma. Mrs Elton is picking strawberries, and is described as dressed in 'all her appartus of happiness, her large bonnet and her basket.' Wood points out that there is a clash between the 'scientific register' of apparatus and the words 'of happiness'- he says it soundsm ore like 'an inverted torture machine than a bonnet or basket'- the point being that it reflects Mrs Elton's character in some way, her 'doggedness' or 'persistence' somehow. Again, a great example of a particular kind of advanced and interesting thinking.

Wood explores metaphors again near the end of his book when he writes ravishingly about Lawrence in Sea and Sardinia one more time - a fire in a grate has become 'that rushing bouquet of new flames in the grate'- so the unusual pairing of fire with flowers (bouquet), flames can rush, flowers cannot, and 'new flames' as Wood suggests, making a sudden third metaphor in the same small grouping of words.

Wood finds further unusual fire metaphors- from Hardy in Far From the Madding Crowd comes 'a scarlet handful of fire'- as opposed to dust, which is much more common- and Saul Bellow has 'The blue flames fluttered like a school of fishes in the coal fire'- the school of fishes perfectly capturing that idea of flickering and moving about.

A final, lovely example of metaphor I liked comes from Virginia Woolf's beautiful story To The Lighthouse. As Mrs Ramsay says goodnight to her children, she carefully closes the bedroom door, and lets 'the tongue of the door slowly lengthen in the lock.' Wood appreciates the effect of the verb 'lengthen' which lengthens the sentence to reinforce the 'slowly' part which reinforces the need to make sure she doesn't awaken the children.

There are many other great things in this book, but as usual I only have to time to reflect on a snapshot as work, family, marriage all serve to take me back to the less imaginary world.