Ghost in the Shell
River's Edge
The Internet's Own Boy
Shifty episodes 2-5
One Piece episodes 53-61
The Kingdom I
Penn & Teller: Fool Us
Jeopardy
Olympics (just some snowboarding)
I haven't watched much in February. I wrote all of the following a week ago. I was going to add to it, but here it is "as is". I've now finished all of Shifty, all of The Kingdom I, and all of One Piece's first "Saga", the East Blue saga.
Adam Curtis' Shifty is a Ghost Story. I've been listening to many interviews with him and it's clear that he knows that he's playing with Ghosts in the middle of a culture that won't let its Dead stay Dead. All of us fools obsessed with old movies are watching Dead People who we won't let die. We resurrect them repeatedly for our own amusement. We're just another symptom of a culture that keeps replaying its own Greatest Hits.
Ghost in the Shell is a Ghost Story of another sort. What are human persons? Whatever they are, there is something Ghostly about them, something Spiritual.
River's Edge, one of my Life Movies (a movie that I've chosen to watch repeatedly throughout my life; or maybe it has chosen me), is a yearning-to-be Ghost Story. All of the characters want some meaning in their life, but are navigating a world that has no shared meaning, no shared culture, no shared story, no shared loves. Individuals in this film struggle to understand what their part is in a world that insists there are no Ghosts. Can one be haunted by the absence of Ghosts?
I've been thinking lately of the Ghost of Aaron Swartz, a young man who understood the Internet and wanted it to be Free. That title, "The Internet's Own Boy", is just such a lovely title. As I've continued to download and upload whatever I want to on the internet, I often think of Swartz. Unlike Swartz, I can live without a computer and without access to the Internet, but like Swartz, as long as I'm here, I am committed to an Internet in which open sharing of everything is a reality. Following Nina Paley, I really do believe that copyright is brain damage and that copying is not theft.
What about The Kingdom? Well, it's obviously and explicitly a Ghost Story, but I'm not sure yet if the Girl Ghost actually matters or is a bit of a MacGuffin to draw us deeper into caring about the history of a place and the ways that the histories of places affect the people currently inhabiting that place even when they don't consciously know it. The Kingdom is also a ridiculous self-aware medical melodrama that is both serious and silly. It debuted the same year as ER and is the medical show that should have been a sensation. I love everything about it so far and it has re-invigorated my love for von Trier, a man who I have championed in the past despite having serious issues with most of his work. Most of his work is Noble Rot. I don't want to be too generous to The Kingdom yet without finishing it, but I think that this might be von Trier's just plain Noble work, a motion picture that presents humans as all ridiculous and maybe a little bit lovely and loveable for being so ridiculous.
Can I fit One Piece into this artificial Ghost Mold that I've created for this post? Maybe not. The appeal of One Piece is in how absolutely vibrant and alive it feels. Luffy, our protagonist, is delighted by life and rushes into every new challenge confident that he can and will overcome it, which of course he does. Sometimes I think we fall into a trap of thinking that "realism" means accepting that bad things happen, that the worst will happen, that everyone is corrupt, that it's all shit. But there's something about One Piece (and much of fantasy adventure) that is a High Realism that rejects the Everything Sucks Trap and points to a world in which we just do the outrageously fun thing even if it kills us. Be true to our friends and don't compromise at all with oppressive systems of power. Luffy gets rescued from the guillotine by a miraculous lightning bolt, but the whole point of the matter is that he goes to the guillotine joyously and defiantly. Part of the title of Episode 52 is "The Man who Smiles at the Execution Platform!"
Being alive means facing Death daily. We are always the Man at the Execution Platform. Are we able to smile?
Since writing all of the above, I've also watched: Formula of Love (1984) White Sun of the Desert (1969) Rebel (1973)
Two films for Soviet Club and one film for Hoopla Classics. I don't feel strongly about any of them. The two Soviet films are both good, but I didn't love either one of them. Rebel is probably the worst film I've seen so far this year.
In March, I'll be celebrating March of the Mammoths and attempt to watch as many 3+ hour movies/series as I can in the month. I've made a watchlist of 72 hours worth of motion pictures. 3 full days out of the 31. It's the sort of foolish challenge that I'll inevitably fail at, but it has provided me some delight just thinking about it.