CPHPIX day 3: When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism, Stray Dogs

With today's two writeups, I'm going to mention Deleuze for both. Because why not.

When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania, 2013)

I am a fan of Corneliu Poromboiu. His 12:08 East of Bucharest would be one of my starters choices for people wanting to get into world cinema, and I've written extensively on Police, Adjective before. He is one of the most inquisitive directors working today, constantly examining the meanings of time, words, spaces, etc. When Evening Falls... is an interesting addition to his ouvre, as it adds a bundle of questions on it's own. But as a film in itself, it was a slight dissapointment.

The film concerns the director Paul having an affair with his actress Alina. Most of the film is them talking. In the first scene, shot in one take from the inside of a car, Paul explains to Alina the importance of filming on 35 mm. With 35 mm you could only shoot for 11 minutes, while on digital, you can shoot for much longer. The new rules impact the way you make movies. I've seen reviews taken this exchange, and implying that the film supports this view. But as hopefully anyone can see, it's a bit of a bullshit argument, since nearly no films have shotlengths of over 11 min, so if that's the main difference, then the change to digital would hardly mean that much. As it is, the relationship between the form of the film, and the content, is more complex than simply form following function.

There is a later argument, which is usuable as an example. In this, Paul explains, that since the Chinese eat with chopsticks, then their food becomes more sophisticated than European food, as everything has to be in smaller pieces. This is what Deleuze and Guattari calls Assemblages. Chinese food is not just food, it is an assemblage with how you eat it, and further on how people eat are an assemblage with their cultural outlook on life. When Paul positions that his film is informed by it's use of 35 mm, then he is proposing an assemblage between an almost mystical quality inherent in celluloid, and his directorial choices. However, we, the audience, see through this explanation: He is putting a superfluous nude scene into the film due to his lust for Alina. His film is Assembled to his Libido. Towards the end of the film, after several bouts of lovemaking, Paul proclaims that he has to cut down on Alina's role, to make the political points of the film clearer. After all, something has to change in Romania. This is the surpreme artistic ideological assemblage: The mystical power of 35 mm -> flowing through Paul -> causing societal change. But then again: In reality he just wants to get laid.

This stuff, I found funny. I also found it funny to make a film about connections, and then use a quite rigid long-take aesthetic. Since normally, long-takes are supposed to be inherently impressive, not really in their connections. Paul explains the importance of the long-take in capturing reality, but the film shows how much stays out of the realm of the camera, most explicitly with the unseen person constantly phoning Alina - probably her romanic partner. In this way, we see how the filmed space is assembled to, and derives it's power from, the unfilmed space surrounding it. Also, scenes in the film do connect internally. There are a number of car scenes, there are two dinner scenes, the nude scene they rehearse is mirrored askance in a funny way later on. It doesn't really add up, though. There are fewer than 20 shots in the film, which isn't really enough to create a good Assemblage. Also, with this austere style, Porumboiu loses the short scenes which were really usually the strongest moments of his films: There is nothing comparable to the footvolleyball in Police, Adjective or the streetlights in 12:08. A further minus: The arguments of the film are pretty lopsided. His earlier films were polyphonic: There were several characters with different opinions debating in 12:08, and Police, Adjective concluded with a very famous discussion on grammar. In this new one, the discussion is constantly between Paul and Alina, and at one point Alina admits that since he is directing her, she does not feel it is an equal relationship. Therefore, Paul dominates the film. His main opponent is the style and plot of the film itself, which does undercut him quite a lot. Especially the penultimate shot of the film, mentioned a lot in writeups, funny and surprising. But that only undermines the arguments, it doesn't really bring forth an argument itself.

I like the fact that they've switched the titles in France.

This was a bit of a dissapointment. As I've said, Porumboiu might be one of the most inquisitive directors in cinema, but this time he has failed to bring his inquisition to any interesting endpoint. I like his argument, but I don't feel he takes it anywhere particularly interesting. Also, while the long-take style is cool, and many scenes are beautiful, as a whole, the style is not strong enough to support the film on it's own. And an addendum: Porumpoiu claims to have been inspired by Hong Sang-soo - whose latest I wrote about earlier this festival - on this film, which sorta makes sense. But Hong has made six films in the time since Porumboiu made his last. Hong can afford to make minor films, they Assemble into a lot. A minor Porumboiu is still interesting, and I would recommend everyone to get aquainted with his filmography. But after waiting four years, I wanted something grander and more assertive. Hopefully, the next one will come soon!

When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism is shown again Wed 4/9 at 21:30

Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan, 2013)

First of all: This was a massive masterpiece, and everyone should go see it. As soon as possible. Tsai Ming-liang is one of the grand masters of cinema, who has made personal and important features for over twenty years, winning the Golden Lion in 1994 for Vive l'Amour. This latest of his debuted at Venice last fall, where it won the Grand Jury Prize, sort of the second place. I tried to catch all of his films in preparation to this one, but didn't manage to see them all. I did see a few of his later ones, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone and the two shorts Walker and Journey to the West, which I'll discuss a bit below.

This was mainly a film about Taipei. Tsai's muse Lee Kang-sheng plays a single father, who makes his money holding a sign on the street, advertising for new appartments. But this isn't really a plotbased film, it's all about the images. And what images! The film is a breakthrough in digital cinema. It is completely unapologetic about it's digital-ness, at times it looks cheap like a soap opera. But Tsai manages to make this aesthetic look like a conscious aestethic in itself, and not just the cheap solution due to lack of 35 mm. The cheapness is furthered by some slightly wobbly camera-movements, and scenes that seem like they are shot guerilla-style. Lee parks his kids at a supermarket every day, and the camera captures them from afar, as if it is hiding. But then a shot is taken down below from a refrigerated counter, and the supermarket is mentioned as a sponsor in the credits. The shots of Lee with his sign looks guerilla style as well, but it is obviously very set up. The sign-men stand with their backs to a one-way street, so they are obviously set up for the benefit of the camera - and Tsai doesn't care that we can figure this out.

What are those guys in the back doing? Nobody can see their signs that way...

The sense of guerilla-ness is important though: This is Nomadic cinema. Yup, yet another Deleuzian term. For Deleuze, the Nomad is the person opening the stratified space, living between the lines. Sort of like a stray dog. In the city, the closest thing to a Nomad would be the homeless, which is what Lee and family are. They are using the city in a different way, using supermarkets as daycare, public bathrooms as their own, and abandoned buildings as their home. This has been a theme in some of Tsai's latest films: I Don't Want to Sleep Alone concerned a Taiwanese immigrant in Kuala Lumpur - Lee again - and his trials in creating his own spaces. The two short films Walker and Journey to the West are different, concerning a monk walking slowly, but with this ritualistic way of being, the monk creates a new temporality in the city for him to use.

But while the nomadic theme has been taken up earlier by Tsai, this is the first of his films where I get the feeling of a Nomadic image. The camera is a Nomad itself, as mentioned diving into refrigerated counters, but also hiding in corners and climbing on top of sinks. Oh, the compositions of this film! They are completely askew and offkilter, mirroring the way the characters has to find their spaces in the creaks and nannies of the city. One shot is a closeup of Lee singing an old patriotic song about the empire, but his face is a bit too much to the left of the frame, and the right is taken up by an overpass curving quite weirdly. The lines and planes of this film does not look like the lines and planes of your common film. In one of the very best scenes, Lee finds his way into a modern luxury appartment, and while it seems completely believable as a real appartment, Tsai manages to make it look 100% like a funhouse.

This is essential filmmaking, along with the Walker-shorts a good bet for the most essential filmmaking of the decade. The best film I've seen since Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee. I've never seen images like this. What Tsai manages to do with Taipei is complete comparable to what Rossellini did with opened Rome, or Antonioni with Sicily or Milano. This will hopefully serve as a beacon on cinema's voyage into digital. Yes, it's that good. And I haven't even mentioned the colours! Or the cabbage! Or the one short dive into melodrama: Tsai is not afraid to provide lacunes in his style, which Porumboiu's latest so sorely lacks. Or the, well, inscrutability of so much of what goes on. Which means I can't wait to see it again, and strongly considers catching it again at the festival. But I feel like I must mention the duration of the shots: This is slow cinema. Not a lot happen. As I find it completely captivating, it doesn't bother me one bit. But it's slow. Here's the thing, though, and SPOILERS for the ending of the film, so you might want to skip this last paragraph: 

The penultimate shot of the film is held for 13 min on Lee and the mysterious mother figure, who is played by three different women. The woman is in front, Lee is in the back, slightly out of focus, and they are staring at something, which we can guess is probably a mural we've seen earlier. Lee drinks a bit. Then, after an eternity, he moves forward and puts his head on her shoulder. Slight pause, then CUT to the couple seen from behind, with the mural in front of them. If this was a normal, very good film, then this would be the end. Duration causing tension, and the release feeling almost trascendental. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone ends in a sorta similar manner. But this time, the scene doesn't end. They keep standing and looking at the mural... and then... the woman leaves! I was devastated, the sight of Lee's back, alone in the room, is one of the saddest things I've ever seen. And basically everything in this film is as surprising and impactful as this ending.

Again and to sum up: This is a must-see masterpiece of modern filmmaking. To be watched and re-watched for decades to come.

Stray Dogs is shown again Sun 4/13 at 21:30. I'm strongly considering seeing it again.

CPHPIX day 2: Jealousy, Why Don't You Play In Hell

The festival's started slowly for me this year. Last year, I saw some of my favorite films the first two days. This year, not so much. Though one of these two were very good. Anyway, quick write ups of Philippe Garrel's Jealousy and Sion Sono's Why Don't You Play in Hell follows:

Jealousy (Philippe Garrel, France, 2013)

Another day, another 'Maestro'-selection I don't get. Who is Philippe Garrel? The name honestly doesn't ring any bells. But at least he is old. And apparantly a mainstay at Venice. Well, I found this article at Senses of Cinema, which talks about him, but it is 13 years old. Underground, auto-biographical, pared-down cinema. Well, it sort of fits with this one as well. It also claims that Garrel is the best filmmaker working today, which is a surprise to me.

Jealousy is a pretty simple film on the lovelife of the creative class. That makes it the third film sorta on this subject I've seen this year, after Our Sunhi and Free Range. Honestly, I'm getting a bit bored by it. It's very unassuming and simply build: Louis leaves the mother of his child, and moves in with another woman. They grow apart. She leaves him. 77 min. Austere but beautiful black and white. I liked how the world kept opening up, as the main characters flirted with more and more people. Louis is played by Louis Garrel, the son of the director, and his sister is played by his sister, Esther. It's a fine little film.

Thing is, though. La Jalousie is a pretty famous book in France. By Alain Robbes-Grillet. A classic of the Nouveau Roman. The film definitely recognizes this famous book, as it begins with a scene of the young daughter spying on her parents breaking up through a keyhole, just as the unseen narrator of La Jalousie is spying through a jalousie window. And, well, I can't really get over the fact that this film borrows the title from one of the most famous examples of French experimental fiction, and then uses it for a pretty ordinary and stale relationship drama. It just seems wrong, and perhaps even a bit sad. And it's not as if anyone should wonder how to do Robbe-Grillet filmically, the guy made films and wrote the script for Last Year in Marienbad. And it didn't look like this.

I have nothing against the film. The pictures are exquisite, some of the scenes are unique and brilliant, like a tracking shot of the new couple in the beginning of their relationship, which follows them in focus, while the world behind them is reduced to a blur. What I think is totally possible, is that if I saw a few more Garrel-films, if I knew more of his world, then this latest dispatch would mean more to me. Kinda like with Hong Sang-soo. But I don't, and as such, I'm a bit in the dark. If you like American indies, but would wish they were more Gallic, then this is a film for you. But other than that, I think there are better places to start in Garrel's filmography.

Jealousy is shown again Wed 4/16 at 17:00

Why Don't You Play in Hell? (Sion Sono, 2013, Japan)

Okay, this was insane. 1) Check out the trailer above. It's insane. 2) The screening of this film was completely ridiculous, there were black borders on all four side of the picture, and at one point the film started hiccuping, and we missed quite a lot of it. More on this later.

Sion Sono was one of my discoveries at last years festival. I saw his Land of Hope with no expectations, mainly because I'm interested in the Fukushima accident, and found it extremely wellmade and beautiful. I knew it was an outlier in his production, that he is normally a more extreme kind of director, so I wasn't that surprised by this films journey into complete insanity. Still: It's an extremely weird film. It revolves around two warring Yakuza-families; a group of guerilla filmmakers calling themselves The Fuck Bombers; the young daughter of the one Yakuza-boss, famous from an insanely catchy toothpaste commercial. Somehow, it all devolves into the filmmakers filming the final showdown between the two families, and carnage ensues. If it sounds needlessly complicated, well, it is, and the setup for this film takes forever. But the last half hour or so is amazingly fun.

Sion Sono is quite simply a good director, and the film is full of indelible images, many of them glimpsed in the trailer. The young girl dancing in a sea of blood, the yakuza-men squirting a rainbow of blood, loads more. And the jokes are timed and paced, so simple cuts elicited big laughs in the cinema. There is also one big stylistic gamble in the film: The first part, taking place ten years before, is filmed in 35 mm, while the main part is digital. This creates a massive amount of nostalgia, both in the film, as the flashbacks in the second part has the look of an actually older time, and just for the death of celluloid occuring over the decade, which the young filmmakers are acutely aware of. It's a great little thing. It did create problems though, as the hiccuping began when the style switched, and I'm almost certain it had something to do with the shift, though I can't explain how. Anyway, it meant that the part after the timejump became quite imcomprehensible, and that was where the main plotlines were set up, so I'm pretty sure I missed quite a bit of the plot.

Having only watched two of his films, I'd still put Sion Sono up there with the best of the Japanese directors of the new century. These two films pretty much match any Miike, Kore-eda, (late-period) Kitano, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, etc, I've seen, which admittedly isn't anything. Still, I'm going to check out the rest of his ouvre, and if you get the chance to watch this bonkers b-film action/comedy/splatter, then I'd very much recommend it.

Why Don't You Play In Hell is shown again Mon 4/7 at 19:00.

CPHPIX day 1: Our Sunhi, Free Range, Goltzius & the Pelican Company

Well, this is pretty simple: I see a lot of films at CPHPIX, and then I write about them. I did this last year, in Danish, and this year I'm going to try and see what happens if I write it in English. If I can get people to read it. I'm trying to figure out how to steer people this way through twitter, I guess I have two weeks to figure it out. Obviously, there isn't that much time to write about everything, so it might be a bit rushed from time to time. Yesterday was the first day of the festival, and I saw three films: Our Sunhi, Free Range and Goltzius and the Pelican Company

Our Sunhi (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea, 2013)

I feel like I should start the same way as last year, when In Another Country was shown at the festival: I still don't get why Hong Sang-soo is shown in the 'Maestro' section. Compared to the other directors in that section, he is young (53), his career has been short (less than twenty years) and he hasn't really won any big prizes. He won the Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2010 for his very fine HaHaHa, and this one, Our Sunhi, won Best Director at Locarno last year. That seems like his two biggest prizes, and that's not really a lot. It just seems weird to me. He is, however, a true auteur, in that his films are always uniquely his, and always the same. Some of the characters will be film-directors. Everyone will drink an awful lot, especially Soju, traditional Korean drink. And the camera will be steady, pan from time to time to follow the characters, and occasionally zoom a bit. And the lighting will at least seem pretty natural. Also, his films have been called structuralistic, and there will be a lot of repetitions. Often they will take place along the coast - though this one takes place in Seoul. Hong has made six films in the last four years - including another one from 2013, Nobody's Daughter Haewon, which we apparantly won't get to see in Denmark - so there's been plenty of opportunity to learn the rules. Sometime, the films will be very structured, as with the three different visits by Isabelle Huppert, which makes up the plot of In Another Country. Othertimes, the structure will be more lose, as in Woman on the Beach from 2006, probably my favorite of the four I've seen. Apparantly, his cinema has become looser over time, but I'm not qualified to comment on that. I've only seen four out of fifteen movies.

Our Sunhi is one of the looser ones as well. It is structured around a set of meetings between Sunhi and her three paramours: Sunhi and ex-boyfriend Munsu, Munsu and film-maker Jaehak, Sunhi and her professor Donghyun, Donghyun and Jaehak, Sunhi and Jaehak, and finally a variation which I probably shouldn't spoil. Every meeting will evolve into a sit-down, everyone but one involving copious amounts of alcohol, and everyone filmed in one-take. Small things are repeated, such as the same romantic song being played three times, both Munsu and Donghyun standing underneath Jaehak's window and calling up, and three of the meetings involving fried chicken. Also, and crucially, the same language is involved in these conversations, which mostly revolve around defining Sunhi.

The definition of Sunhi is the entire plot of the film: Sunhi has returned to her old film-making school, to procure a recomendation letter from her old professor Donghyun. The film is really, in a smart way, about a young woman trying to get an older man to tell her who she is. Munsu and Jaehak are happy to offer their own opinions as well, Munsu made a film based on his earlier relationship with Sunhi, and Jaehak seems as smitten as the other guys. And the same words are repeated in the descriptions: clever, reserved, brave, artistic sense. What develops is a drunken dance around Sunhi, but as we only hear the same stock phrases about her, she in the end becomes an enigmatic lack in the center. The problem is, obviously, that she only meets lovers or potential lovers, and is only defined by men. She doesn't talk to any other women - except one who only talks about chicken - and she doesn't define who she is herself. As such, it becomes yet another of Hong's examinations of the lopsided ways men and women relate to each other, the same as the rest of his films I've seen, and yet completely new and fresh.

I really, really liked this film. It's funny, insightful, and formalistic in an unobtrusive way. There are beautiful recurring shots of the sun through the autumn leaves, and the use of color on the main characters are really well-done, as can hopefully be glanced from the images. It's another good Hong Sang-soo film, and I can't wait to see what he has for us next year.

Our Sunhi is shown again Tue 4/8, 19:00

Free Range (Veiko Õunpuu, Estonia, 2013)

So after Our Sunhi, there was nothing on the program which was particularly interesting to me. So I decided to go for the one from Estonia. I love Eastern European cinema, but I've never seen an Estonian film before, and the program described it as cinematic 'chillwave', so I didn't really know what to expect. Turned out that, yeah, chillwave seems like an apt description. Like chillwave uses old and wobbly sounds to create a nostalgic and childlike image of the past, so did this film use 16 mm, manufactured 'splices' of mismatched pictures when the reels should connect, and old sounds to create something seemingly older than it is. Instagram was another thing that came to mind, the whole thing looked like the director had spent way too much time on Instagram. Or, with it's preternaturally beautiful young people, old soundtrack filled with Scott Walker and Pearls Before Swine, and beach parties around campfires, it all looked a film by Assayas, like Cold Water or Something in the Air.

Thing is, though, Assayas' nostalgic hipster-films actually takes place in the past. This film decidedly takes place in the present - in one of the first scenes, the main characters is fired from his job as a film-critic after he writes an explicit-filled pan of The Tree of Life, ending with: 'Fagotty God, why did you kill my son?' (quoted from memory). There are two reasons why the atemporality sort of works, though. The obvious one is that the main character lives in the past. The whole film is about him being forced to face the world and his future, as he is fired and finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. He wanted to be an artist, be a boheme, now he has to support a family. The stuntedness of the filmic language mirrors the stuntedness of the main character. However, I find that pretty uninteresting and klichéd, no one needs another film about an emotionally immature manchild. But the second reason is, that it's actually quite interesting how the nostalgia is subverted by the film being from Eastern Europe. When Fred and his friends are dancing to The Smiths and Scott Walker, they are not just mourning a past, they are mourning a past that never were. Towards the end of the film he says: 'Before, everyone lied, and everyone knew it. It was liberating.' This line seems very different, coming from an Estonian, than it would coming from someone from France. The film being Estonian also helps with what I consider one of the greatest klichés of arthouse film-making: The use of Arvo Pärt on the soundtrack. I mean, it's still cheesy to put under a fumbling sex-scene, but still, the composer's Estonian, it's not their fault that the rest of the film-world has driven the use of his music into the ground. And the second time the piece is used, when Fred wanders through town, downtrodden and defeated, the music manages to create a layer of societal decay over the images.

Also, it is quite simply beautiful music.

But in the end, the film cannot escape it's klichés. The biggest problem is a few of the supporting charcters. The girlfriend's parents are so over the top that half of it would still be way too much. And the co-workers Fred meets are unbelievably awful as well. It pretty much sinks a boy-vs-world film, when nothing in the world is portrayed realistically. And as much as the use of 16 mm creates an unusual look, the cinematography is not really strong and personal enough to overcome these issues. Except at the end. My god, the end. Here, the director lets loose with an impressionistic sequence of stunning beauty. The use of the city, the night-lights, and the intercut dream-like images: it's great, and what the entire film should have been. Also, not coincidentally, it's put to modern music, the Salem remixes of I'll Fly Away and Forever Young. This is modern filmmaking, the present repurposing the past, investigating it and reimagining it. If the whole of the film had been this good, it would have been a great film.

It's called Witch-house. Their album King Night is good, although this is apparantly from a mixtape.

Free Range is shown again Tue 4/8, 16:30

Goltzius & the Pelican Company (Peter Greenaway, UK, 2012)

Back when I was a pretentious teenager taking film-classes in high school, Peter Greenaway seemed like my kind of director. Postmodern, rigidly ritualistic, with numbers, riddles and stylised compositions. It seemed smart, and smart was what art should be. Then I saw his films... The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover seemed okay, but it didn't seem that smart or rigidly composed. It seemed like typical eighties cinema. Some years later I saw Drowning by Number, the one I had had the highest hopes for, and I was completely underwhelmed. The problem seemed to me, that Greenaway wanted to completely create his own kind of universe, but cinema isn't really that malleable a medium, or perhaps Greenaway just wasn't good enough to form it. It all looked like eighties England, slightely askew. Dull and boring. As his style fell out of vogue, as I decided his powers had probably diminished with age, and as his name seldom came up in the film-press, he became part of the pile of directors I label 'well, someday...'

So colour me surprised: This was a quite good feature, with it's own sense of style that didn't seem like a deadend. It has me intrigued to finally check out the rest of the filmography. But I think digital cinema has been good to Greenaway, the image has become malleable enough. The film is filmed almost entirely in a gigantic factory hall, with ridiculously fake CGI to make it look at times like a dungeon or a meeting hall. Pictures in pictures abound, as an older Goltzius tells his tale of how he procured financing for a printing press from the Margrave of Alsace (F Murray Abraham, unhinged). Symmetrical compositions, mirrors, water and fire, words on screen, and a spinning wooden plate acting like a place for free debate and string concerts. It does not look like England. Effects even make it look at times like an old and parched painting, though the HD-photography remains crisp and hi-def. It is really fun to look at.

The plot is a mess, though. Based on the historical Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617), who was famous for engraving erotically charged pictures, the story has him and his company acting out the six biblical stories they will later engrave, to amuse their potential benefactor. Stories like the invention of carnal sin, Lot and his daughters, the seduction of Joseph by Potiphar's wife, etc. It's kinda Porn by Numbers. These porn versions obviously stir religious debates at the famously liberal court, and it all becomes a mess of lust, torture, adultery, etc. Now, I've only seen two of Greenaway's films, but this seemed really familiar. The smart, religious men are dealt with in summerical fashion, Torture by Numbers. And the Margrave really seemed like the Thief, complete with sumptuous banquets and grotesqueries. It's all ridiculous, and we've all seen it before. Throw in some stupid accents and a copious amount of un-PC humour - as in keeping with the times, you see - and it does seem quite tired. Also, I don't think it says anything particularly thoughful on free speech, religion, sexual liberation, or anything. But still. The style is strong enough that I would recommend everyone to go see this stupid little curiosity. And I'm going to finally take that plunge through Greenaway's filmography, so that I'm qualified to say something more when his next film, on Hieronymus Bosch, comes out in 2016.

Goltzius and the Pelican Company is shown again Wed 4/9, 19:00 and Mon 4/14, 19:00.

Today I'm going to see Phillippe Garrel's Jealousy, and Sion Sono's Why Don't You Play in Hell. Hope to have something written up on them tonight. And if you made it this far: Thanks for reading, and have a splendid day!

Niall Ferguson : Cynicism VII

So, these last few weeks I've described Cynics in fiction, and how different works of fiction has used the theme of Cynicism to different effects. Yet of course, that the theme of Cynicism is useful in describing fiction is not it's only – not even it's primary – quality. First and foremost, Cynicism is one of the most powerful forces in the minds of people today. People has resorted to being Cynics because they have been enlightened enough to realize certain truths in our society, yet at present, it is not in their best interest to live after these truths. Of course, for the people in charge of our flawed society, believing in the underlining ideologies of our society is even more satisfying, and as they are placed in central position, they are even more able to discern the untruthfulness of it all. What I'm going to try this week, is to focus on a potential meaningmaker in our society, and how his meanings and actions are steeped in Cynicism.

Niall Ferguson is a historian, who's new book is called Civilization: The West and the Rest. In it, he tries to show why the west came to dominate the rest of the world over the last five hundred years, and why the rest might be catching up now. It is a provocative subject, of course, and in a long review in London Review of Books, the reviewer Pankaj Mishra took Ferguson to task for his book, including positioning Ferguson as an heir to a disreputable line of previous writers, whom we'll today call racists and white supremacists, and also pointing to political implications in the work. The review made Ferguson write a response, in which he called the review libelous. A heated, but highly interesting, discussion followed.

I should begin by saying, that I haven't read the book in question by Niall Ferguson, so I can't decide if the criticism made of it are in fact true. However, in my studies I used to focus quite a bit on the intellectual history in places like China or Latin America, so allegations like the ones Pankaj Mishra makes, that Niall Ferguson underplays the value of these intellectuals from the 'Rest' of the world, probably makes me a bit biased to Mishra's side of the argument. However, what I find interesting in the argument is the way Ferguson defends himself.

His main attack is that Mishra's review: 'not only mendaciously misrepresents my work but also strongly implies that I am a racist', and as he later states: 'At the very least, Mishra owes me a public apology for his highly offensive and defamatory allegation of racism.' And in the next response: 'he made a vile allegation of racism against me' Throughout his responses , he refers to this as 'libel' and 'libellous'. The implications seem quite clear: Apologize, or I'll sue. As he says in his last response, while on the surface spelling out good ideas from the West: 'Another was the rule of law, under which, among other things, the freedom of the press does not extend to serious defamation, at best reckless, at worst deliberate and malicious. It is deplorable that the London Review of Books gives space to a man who seemingly cares about neither of these things.' But of course, Mishra never once writes that Ferguson is a racist. It can always be hard to discern what is 'implied' by anyone, but to me, it never seemed to say that Ferguson was a racist. Parts of the writings could be called racist, which doesn't necessarily say that the writer is one.

In one of the most remarkable parts of his defense, Ferguson says that: 'Of my new book he says that I sound ‘like the Europeans … who “wanted gold and slaves”' Yet the entire quote from Mishra in fact says: 'He sounds like the Europeans described by V.S. Naipaul – the grandson of indentured labourers – in A Bend in the River, who ‘wanted gold and slaves, like everybody else’, but also ‘wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves’.' (By the way, as Ferguson is amongst other things attacked for diminishing the works of non-western intellectuals, it would perhaps had been lucky if he here and several other places remembered when he was quoting people like VS Naipul...) It is almost insane, that Ferguson would miss this, for most of his defenses hinge on that he has at earlier times written about and defended non-western themes, or as Mishra states: he claims that he has done good things for them. So for instance, Ferguson finds this quote: '‘By 1913 … the world … was characterised by a yawning gap between the West and the Rest, which manifested itself in assumptions of white racial superiority and numerous … impediments to non-white advancement. This was the ultimate global imbalance.’ This is hardly a ringing endorsement of white supremacy.” But this quote doesn't matter, if the earlier one had been quoted correctly, it again only shows that Ferguson wants to seem as if he 'does good things'. That Ferguson would be drawn to this quote from Naipul, but quote it wrong, seems almost Freudian, in the way it points to the core of his problem: He wants two things at once, to write how much better the West was, yet seem as if he remembers how good the Rest also was. He has a split consciousness. He is Schizophrenic, in the Deleuzian non-diagnostical way. And he is, of course, highly Cynical.

Mishra's response hits on this theme, without using the word 'Cynicism'. Instead, he phrases it mindnumbingly badly: 'Ferguson is no racist, in part because he lacks the steady convictions of racialist ideologues like Stoddard. Rather, his writings, heralding an American imperium in 2003, Chimerica in 2006, and the ‘Chinese Century’ in 2011, manifest a wider pathology among intellectuals once identified by Orwell: ‘the instinct to bow down before the conqueror of the moment, to accept the existing trend as irreversible’.' Hardly politely stated, to say the least, but I very much agree with part of it. A post-modern intellectual does not have to work out a world-view that is fully encompassing and without holes and mistakes, what could be called a 'steady conviction'. As science, even human science, has become more and more specialized and fragmented (like the rest of society) it has become more accepted that a scientist focuses completely on his work at hand, without worrying too much about the implications. That Ferguson reaches certain conclusions in a work on one subject, and other conclusions in a work on another subject, and that these conclusions seem to contradict each other, could be easily explained as that his focus was more on the subject at hand, than on whether or not the conclusions would help any larger ideological project of his. Also, the implication that the modern intellectual simply 'bow[s] down before the conqueror' is not only unfair, it is also unhelpful. The intellectual system is normally not subject to the political, they are intertwined. A helpful intellectual to a politician would in the long run be one with his integrity intact, one who, while having a useful ideological slant, still was dissenting on enough – minor – points, such as to seem independent.

So, as such, I'm not really against the fact that Ferguson is Cynical, or inconsistent, or that he has a different ideology than I do. Yet, where he becomes a master-Cynic is when he refuses to acknowledge his own Cynicism. To be a 'racist' you have to be anything at all to begin with, now and forever. You have to have a whole, not a split, consciousness. Racism is a question of character. Yet a Cynic does not have character. He is as he does, and he believes in what he does at the moment. What is also quite remarkable is that Ferguson makes this claim to be a non-Cynic as he is on the other hand being more than usually Cynical. He is a historian, and his mistakes and unfortunate formulations could quite probably be explained away by him having worked as a historian only, without regard for other aspects of society. Yet here, he threatens to draw in the Judicial system as well, to mitigate in what should be a question for the historical system to judge. Thus, he claims to work in two systems at once, yet he does so to preserve a sense of an unbroken and all-encompassing character. He is completely embracing his own Cynicism, even as he tries to protect himself from the allegations. It would be remarkable, if it wasn't so obvious, trite, and common. Ferguson is a Cynic, concerned only with himself. He abandons the system he works in to rope in another, as soon as it seems opportune for him.

As I've tried to show these last few weeks, almost everyone is more or less of a Cynic these days, it's not necessarily a bad thing to be. Yet the ones we should be wary of, the ones we should 'Watch', as the title of Mishra's review states it, are the ones who won't admit to their own Cynicism, even when they are at their most Cynical. They have, in the end, lost their final link to truth, perhaps not as it is, but as it should be.

[Again, the original review, and the ensuing discussion can be found here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n21/pankaj-mishra/watch-this-man]

I'll take a break for the holidays at this point. In the new year, I'll write two epilogues on 'benevolent cynicism', so to speak. Hope to see you then.

[Part I: Introduction and Mad Men]
[Part II: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance & Police, Adjective]
[Part III: Brothers Karamazov and Melancholia]
[Part IV: Apocalypse Now]
[Part V: Inception]

[Part VI: Inglourious Basterds]

Inglourious Basterds (2009) : Cynicism VI

This film isn't about the birth of a cynic. It is about the downfall of one. Which is actually a bit paradoxical. The setting of the film is World War Two, which could very plausibly be seen as the birth through victory of the modern / post-modern world. So if the cynic is the common person in the modern world, then a film about World War Two should logically show how the cynical side persevered over the old-fashioned fanatically ideological one. Yet Tarantino turns this one around. The most modern character in the film is by far Hans Landa, while the Allied 'Basterds' seem much more driven by ideology than him.



I've written earlier about the western, and how it is the essential genre to depict the birth of modernity. Tarantino uses motives from Western canon right from the first words of the film, as the name of chapter 1 is 'Once Upon a Time... in Nazi-occupied France' This is of course a play on the famous Sergio Leone film (or films, he made both ...the West, and … America) and the homage becomes even more clear as the first scene takes place, when the soundtrack contains a parody (or homage, or whatever) of the famous Morricone-music from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Except it includes fragments of Für Elise, to illustrate that Germany plays a part in this setting. That whole first segment is very similar to one of the first scenes in Once Upon a Time in the West, where a family on a secluded farm is massacred by gunmen as part of a conspiracy concerning the coming railroad. Yes, OUaTitW is a revisionist western, where the 'evil' forces are actually connected to the onset of modernity. And this film copies that. The German forces are evil modernity, and their enemies? Well, they are constantly connected to Indian imagery (I'm going to keep on using the politically incorrect word 'Indian', as the imagery the Allies draw upon is the cultural idea of Indians, rather than actual Native Americans). Aldo is called The Apache, the Basterds scalpel their enemies, and when Shosanna prepares for the great night, she puts warpaint on her face like the Indians do in the movies.



And it's like that throughout the film. The Germans are the modern ones, the Allied forces are pre-modern. Landa is, as I've mentioned, a modern Cynic. He doesn't care for truth, while speaking to the farmer he says: ”I love rumours. Facts can be so misleading, while rumours true or false are often revealing.” Later on he tells a long story about why he hates Jews, even though he knows it is an irrational hatred, by comparing it to the farmers irrational hatred of rats. Yet as he says: ”However interesting as a thought may be, it makes not one bit of difference to how you feel!” He is Cynical, he is self aware about his prejudices, yet he doesn't care. Aldo Raine on the other hand, is an ideologue. In his first speech to his men, he says: ”Nazi ain't got no humanity. There the foot-soldiers of a Jew-hating mass murdering maniac, and they need to be destroyed. That's why any and every sum-bitch we find wearing a Nazi-uniform, they gonna die!” Throughout the movie, the Germans are able and willing to play with other roles and personalities than their own, to indulge in that incredibly modern condition of split personality or schizophrenia. We see the German soldiers spending their free time by playing a game where they pretend to be someone else, and has to guess who it is. In some ways, personality can be put on your forehead, and taken away again. The Allied, on the other hand, can't play roles (except Indians or animals). They are rubbish at pretending to be German or Italian, and they don't like the German game. They believe that once a Nazi, always a Nazi, and they hate the thought that the role can be taken off with the uniform and hidden away, even though they mainly fight enlisted men. While the Germans put identity cards on their heads and take them off again, the Allies carve identity into foreheads with big knives.



Most of the film consists of mind games between the Allied and the Germans. And every time both sides play fairly, the Germans win. Landa wins in the opening scene, the German SS-officer 'wins' in the scene at the tavern, and Hans Landa seemingly wins over everyone at the end. Every time there is a contest of intelligence, the Germans win, the only exception is the scene between Zoller and Shosanna in the projectors booth, which ends in a draw (and by the way, it's a funny view on man and woman. Shosanna tricks Zoller by pretending they are going to have sex, and then Zoller tricks her back by angling for pity. For men is libido and women is feelings.) The allied win by lying and being amoral. They trick poor Wilhelm into thinking that they will let him go, and they break every convention of war at the ending of the film. But throughout the film, they are losing. And when Aldo Raine has to utter his fake Italian 'Bonjornoh', it is almost pathetic (but the game is already over at that point. The point where Landa takes control is illustrated in a marvelously cinematic way, as Tarantino employs one of his beloved circular camera movements to circle Landa, von Hammersmark and the Basterds, and when Landa employs his fake laugh and shows that he has seen through the ruse, he takes a step back while manically laughing, yanking the camera out of it's course as he yanks the agenda out of his opponents hands).



The implications of the film goes further, and is in my opinion quite political. The Allied concoct themselves as pre-modern Indians, yet today, when the film was made, they seem more like terrorists. In Aldo's speech, he exclaims: ”The German will fear us!” He could easily have said that they would be terrified. The Basterds torture there prisoners and they use suicide bombers. And the Germans don't know how to retaliate. In the end, the war is won through lies and terrorism. This seems quite controversial, to show the Allies as the schemers, and show Jews as terrorists, but Tarantino employs a few safety hatches, so to speak. First of all, he makes sure to show that Landa and Zoller is not just banal soldiers and administrators, though they claim to be. Both of them make violent motions towards women, and Landa even chokes von Hammersmark with his own hands, showing that they are in fact 'bad'. And Tarantino is not trying to say that Allied and Jews are equal to terrorists. He is trying to show how powerful fanaticism and extremism is. How powerful the extreme forces of the US would be, if they were as fanatical and willing to play 'dirty' as the opponents of 'Democracy' has traditionally been, from fascists to insurgents in Vietnam or Iraq. If we in the west would compromise (more...) on our principles, and could employ true fanaticism, we could easily win every war. But we should not. And we can't. We are cynics, and so, we have to slog through.

This film probably ain't a timeless masterpiece. For one, the digital coloring is horrible, it's focus on orange and teal will hopefully seem dated in a few years (and not just does this coloring make the pictures look samey after a while, it makes everyone’s eyes look deep blue. When you are making a film about the fight against antisemitism, employing a filter that makes everyone’s eyes look more Aryan really sends weird signals). But the 'value' of the film doesn't really matter to me. It really seems to comment quite profoundly on the problems of the Cynics in our society, especially with regards to warfare, in a pretty daring way. Plus, it's entertaining as hell.

Next week: We step away from culture and into the real world, but stay in the realm of Basterds, with Cynical Historian Niall Fergusson.

[Part I: Introduction and Mad Men]
[Part II: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance & Police, Adjective]
[Part III: Brothers Karamazov and Melancholia]
[Part IV: Apocalypse Now]
[Part V: Inception]

Inception (2010) : Cynicism V

This post is going to interpret this movie as the story of how Cobb became a Cynic. The hypothetical reader, who has also read the other posts in this series (and I'm on statcounter, so I know that that is nobody. The rest of this paragraph is going to be on theory and this blog, so if you just want to read about Inception, you can skip it), will know that this narrative of someone 'becoming' a Cynic is basicly what I've said every movie I've looked at is about. There are two aspects of Sloterdijks theory, which lends itself to this: Cynics are supposed to be the dominant and most common personality in the world today, and Cynicism has entered the world to halt the development of enlightenment. So the story of a Cynic is really the story of a normal person, who has stopped developing. It is not the best story for a film. So I've found examples, where people struggle with cynicism, and in the end embrace it. Not really how it works in the real world, but more narratively satisfying. Only in the repetetive media of tv could a Cynic really be described as he really is, another reason why Don Draper is the most masterful example.



But anyways, Inception. I'm not the first to propose, that the film really isn't about Dreams, but about media instead. The inceptors create dreams, they don't just have them, and therefore it seems more precise to compare it to filmmaking. As Salon succintly put it: '“Inception.” Is not. About dreams. Not real ones, anyway. The dreams in which much of the movie takes place are artificial constructs, rational, rectilinear simulacra designed to achieve specific ends.' Several other people has realized this, and most articles I've read, including the one at Salon, then positions that the film is about filmmaking. Which is almost true, but it misses the part about 'designed to achieve specific ends'. Inception is about affecting peoples mind to implant ideas. It is about a specific form of filmmaking: It's about propaganda. It's about ideology. And it's about marketing. Surprisingly, I've seen several negative reviews of the film walking right up to pointing this theme out, but then backing down. The review at Frieze ended with the lines: 'There is none of the weirdness, creepiness, intimacy, fun, eroticism, bewilderment or plain neurosis that really fuel dreams. Ironically, the film’s visual style looks just like one which might be used to sell fast cars or luxury hotels to the sort of big business types the film depicts. Inception is science fiction, business class.' And in a discussion at Owlsmag, the participants say, amongst other things: 'Dreams should be weird and woozy and hot and fickle. Inception plays like a two-and-a-half-hour American Express ad' and 'I was intrigued – or rather confused – by the film’s starting notion that it’s hard to plant ideas in people’s heads. Isn’t that how publicity works?' I find it weird that smart reviewers could comment so clearly that the film seemed more like marketing than like dreams, and then not look at whether or not the film might actually be more interesting as a comment on this subject.

If a Cynic is a person who willingly submits to, and tries to exploit, false consciousness, then the dream-creators of Inception are truly Cynics. They create false realities in order to change Fisher. But they seem hardly to understand what is going on. Now, Inception isn't a masterpiece, and Nolan is even less of an auteur. But in some way, the feeling that Nolan isn't in complete control of his movie, and the hardly profound yet none the less riveting nature of the film, fits the subject perfectly. That is, if the subject is ideology rather than dreams and the subconscious. The best scene in the film comes when Fisher finally finds his way into the secret vault, and finds his dying father. We know that the tableaux has been created by the inceptors, and that it is all just a lie. It is the most clear example of Fisher being manipulated. Yet the film seems to momentarily forget this. The score by Hans Zimmer is just as dramatic as it always is, and the editing of the film is used to milk the melodrama for all it's worth. It is presented just like it was the sentimental climax that would always occur in a blockbuster at this point, that it is in fact supposed to be a lie is completely forgotten at the moment. I really can't tell if it's intended as a subversive critique of big-studio moviemaking, or if the movie-producing machine just wasn't able to create a language subtle enough to convey the irony of this scene. And that is kinda why this scene is among the finest created in the last few years.



As I said, I'm not sure Nolan really knows what he is doing all the time. One of the chief ironies of the film is, that so much of the time is dedicated to people simply spelling out the rules of the film, and yet there is never a person in the film who seems to fully understand the techniques they are using. The technique was invented 'by the military' to train soldiers, none of the characters was involved in this. They do not seem to grasp completely what is going on, and we never reach a position from which we can objectively point out what is going on. Therefore, the plot of the film can obviously be interpreted in a multitude of ways (btw, this does not necessarily has anything to do with the quality of the film. Some people seem to think, that the posibility to interpret a film in different ways means that it is good, but vagueness does not equal greatness. If interpretations has anything to do with artistic value, then it must of course be based on the quality instead of the quantity of interpretations). The most discussed aspect of the film is of course the ending, and any interpretation of the film has to deal with this ending. I'm going to present a reading, which main quality is, that it most perfectly fits my theme of Cynicism.

The ending with the spinning totem is a masterful slight of hand. As we leave the theater, everyone asks each other: 'Does it fall?' Yet through out the film, that hasn't really been the question. The actual question in the film has been more like 'Does it work?' This is Mal's problem, and she ends up thinking, that her totem has lost the power to define dream and reality. I say she is right. The whole of the film has been Cobb's dream, and the totem has never really worked. It has only indicated reality because Cobb wanted it to. So what is the film about? Well, if it is a false reality Cobb has created for himself, then he sure has created a lot of sad things to haunt him. The Cobolt people are hunting him, and he can't see his children. In this reading, the men who tries to kill him are aspects of his subconscious, trying to pull him out of the unreality he has caught himself in. So the whole vaguely defined plot of the film, with Fisher and Saito, which we never really get the conclusion to before the film completely turns to Cobb and his children, is simply a deception he creates for himself. He is Incepting himself. The important thing in the final scene, then, isn't how long the totem spins. It is that Cobb doesn't care to check it before he runs out to his children. Real or not, he is going to stay with his children. If seen this way, it becomes the story of a man willingly giving up on the search for the real world. It is about a man willingly accepting his own false consciousness. It is about the birth of Cynic.

Next week: More on modern warfare and terrorism, with Inglourious Basterds

[Part I: Introduction and Mad Men]
[Part II: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance & Police, Adjective]
[Part III: Brothers Karamazov and Melancholia]
[Part IV: Apocalypse Now]
[Part VI: Inglourious Basterds]

Apocalypse Now (1979): Cynicism IV

When Sloterdijk speaks of Military Cynicism in chapter 8 of Critique of Cynical Reason, a chapter called The Cardinal Cynicism, he speaks of it in a way that seemed a bit strange to me. He speaks of three characters on the battlefield, the hero, the hesitater and the coward, and he traces these three figures from the feudal age, through the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, and up to the nuclear age. But I would have expected a chapter on warfare today, and especially in a book that seems to be very much on ideology, to have talked about insurgents, guerillas, terrorists. To me, that seems the main theme of post WWII military history: Empires loosing wars to nationalistic insurgents. Everyone has lost, Britain in Ireland and India, France in Algeria and Indochina, Soviet in Afghanistan, the US in Vietnam of course, and the wars this last decade. Big armies struggling against insurgent tactics. That Sloterdijk doesn't talk about this probably has a lot to do with his historical position: In 83 Soviet wasn't loosing in Afghanistan (and neither was the US, of course), nuclear warfare seemed a much more important subject to write about, and that the succes of insurgents/guerillas/terrorist had anything to do with their ideological strength could seem weird when the most recent groups were people like the RAF and the Red Brigades in Italy, people who seemed to have even less reason to fight than for instance the armies in Vietnam or Algeria, and who chose 'insurgent' tactics for strategic reasons. Yet now, thirty years later, I'd say that the fight against insurgents seems the most important military theme, and I think that Apocalypse Now has a lot of opinions on this subject.



Heart of Darkness, and Apocalypse Now by implication, is not about a man succumbing to evil. That is the explanation that the generals give Willard in his briefing in the beginning of the movie, and obviously, it is untrue ideology. 'There's a conflict in every human mind, between rational and irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph' This is obviously rubbish, the problem the common soldiers has is the complete absence of these concepts, and solid ground to differentiate between the two sides. When the soldiers massacres a boatfull of people by mistake, Willard gets up and executes the final wounded person, and it prompts him to think: 'It was the way we had over here of living with ourselves. We'd cut them in half with a machinegun and give them a bandaid. It was a lie, and the more I saw of them, the more I hated lies' An easy and politicized reading of the film would be, that the war was wrong and the soldiers struggled with that, but it is far from that simple.

The points of ideology and reasoning is spelled out in the scenes on the French plantation, that was restored to the film in the Redux version. The Vietnamese fight for their nation, the French people fight for their homes, the Americans fight for 'the biggest nothing in history' Keep in mind, it's not like the other sides fight for something real, they are caught up in their lies just as well as the Americans. But their lies are founded in something, so they can delude themselves. As the old man is followed out, he repeats to himself: 'I know we can stay, I know we can stay...' When Hubert deMarais explains their situation, he says at least two untruths: He claims that they created the plantation out of nothing, but they bought plants in Brazil, meaning that they created the plantation out of their own money. The Vietnamese could conceivably have done the same thing if they had had the same resources. And he claims that the plantation holds the family together, but we immediately learns that he has recently lost his wife and child, and Roxanne Sarrault has lost her husband. That they stay there tears the family apart, obviously, but they can deny that to themselves. The solid facts of the plantation and the family makes these people able to lie to themselves about why they do what they do.



The weird part of the story is then, that the thing that Kurtz and Willard struggles with is not that truth and goodness has gone, it's that they have had to stop believing in their own lies. The things Kurtz are being punished for turned out to be the right things to do. He executed four South Vietnamese officers, and it turned out that they were the traitors. Both Kurtz and Willard manages to suddenly see through the veneer of American ideology, but they react in two very different ways. Kurtz obsesses about lies and truth. He taunts Willard by reading obviosly propagandistic newsclippings to him - 'things felt much better, and smelled much better over there' - and the photographer even gives Willard a course on Dialectic Logic: 'No Maybes, no supposes, no fractions [...] There is only love and hate, you either love somebody, or you hate them!' We get to Kurtz' problem when he asks Willard: 'Are you an assasin?' 'I'm a soldier' 'You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by glocery clerks to collect the bill' The right answer is, of course, that Willard is all three of these things, but Kurtz is only able to see one side at a time. He has become obsessed with right and wrong, truth and false, love and hate, and he has become unable to function in grey areas.

But Willard chooses another path. According to the documentary Hearts of Darkness, the script originally had a scene where Willard was asked why he did what he did, and he answered that it made him happy. But the finalized film has a much better solution. Wilard has completely realized the falseness of the lies that brought him there, and he has realized the senselessness of his mission. What happens when a human being has finally awakened from Ideology? In this case, he chooses to return to the ideological world, even though he has made it through. He murders Kurtz even though he knows it makes no sense. It is brilliantly juxtaposed with the ritual slaughter of a bull, cause that's what it is. It's a ritual. American military Ideology has returned not just to the pre-enlightened religious phase, it has returned to pre-religious mythic phase. As Willard returns from the temple, he is a God, a painted apparation that the natives bows before, but he is also the new man, the true post-ideologue, who has killed and taken the place of the first failed attempt at post-ideology. He has completed his mission though it made no sense. He has taken his place in the military system, though he in no way believes it is right or good, and has as such become the exemplary soldier in the modern army. To say it as short as possible: He exits the temple as a newborn Cynic.

Birth of a Cynic

Next week: Propaganda, marketing and Inception

[Part I: Introduction and Mad Men]
[Part II: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance & Police, Adjective]
[Part III: Brothers Karamazov and Melancholia]
[Part V: Inception]
[Part VI: Inglourious Basterds]