RADIO SILENCE II: A PRE-APOCALYPTIC FAREWELL

“There are far worse things awaiting man than death”

Is anybody out there? It doesn’t seem so anymore.

My most recent post, which I published three days ago, has had a record zero views. While all my posts admittedly only usually get a handful of visitors, this bleak lack of turnout feels like the final nail in my motivation’s coffin.

I put a lot of effort into those words too, as I always do. As we all should do.

While I know this may read like a petulant hissy-fit by a deranged shut-in, which I suppose it is, the intention is really more of a grim acceptance of how much the social landscape of the internet has changed since the mid-90s.

It is now clear that social media truly is dead. Search engines used to be there to promote websites, now websites are simply there to feed search engines and their AI training bots. I thought something like: “Don’t be evil”, was written into one of their mission statements. Anyway, all the people social media was invented to get away from have piled onboard and are now sadly in charge.

Which means it’s all over.

How fucking depressing.

Perhaps I shall return again in another eight years, with long hair and a luscious beard and sporting desert-friendly robes, but who honestly will be there to read my mediocre words?

In the meantime, I guess you can get AI software to write my articles for you. Those are my only readers/scanners now anyway.

See you in the wasteland, darlings.

SUBTITLES OFF: Ich - Dann eine Weile nichts (1979)

What a challenge this was! Not only did I struggle to understand what was going on due to the lack of an English dub or subtitles, which is the point of these posts, but the quality of my DVD copy is just terrible, which only served to exacerbate my poor eyesight. There are also, to untrained ears, apparently about a dozen things going on in the plot at once.

I shall attempt to interpret three of them, using only the blurry language of cinema as a tool.

My best guess is that Ich - Dann eine Weile nichts is about a short-tempered, motorbike-riding, adolescent tomboy struggling with: a) life at school, both with the other pupils and with her classwork; b) life at home with her divorced parents, fearing that neither faction wants her in their lives anymore; and c) with boys not showing her any interest, mostly due to her apparent lack of femininity. She decides to deal with the first problem by getting into arguments and being sent away as punishment to a farm for work detail. The second she deals with by stalking both parents and throwing rocks at the window of one of them. The third she deals with by trying to ditch her usual scruffy shirt and jeans for pretty dresses and tops

Fail, fail, fail.

She ends up just going back to dressing like herself, being more honest and understanding with her parents, and realising that maybe, just maybe, all those annoying boys she hates that keep following her around are actually following her around for a reason. Which makes sense, as I was just as clueless about such things when I was a teen. One boy in particular she bonds with over a similarly-disturbed home life and ends up snogging in a bush.

All pretty standard coming-of-age stuff, right? Right. Well, here’s where it gets weird. All of these plot elements are sprinkled with creepy moments where the girl is either experiencing flashbacks, fantasies, or dark psychic premonitions of the future, moments which are accompanied by truly-eerie horror music and visuals. It comes across like copies of Juno and The Shining got melded together somehow, and this is the result.

I guess an easier comparison would be to Carrie, but I’m sticking with my Juno-Shining mash-up. I mean, there are even shots that preempt Stanley Kubrick’s choices on The Shining! Well, there are elements of Brian De Palma’s own The Fury in there too, but let’s not muddy the waters any further.

Okay, just to reiterate, everything I’ve described above is based on my own ignorant interpretation of the events, so let’s go online and get some facts…

…one second…,

…ah okay, I was pretty much on the money! The only thing I didn’t pick up on is that the girl’s mum has left her husband for the family of the boy that the girl ends up connecting and becoming intimate with, which did not come across at all. This explains why the two kids end up bonding and why she feels excluded from all aspects of her daily life, not just because of the new hormones racing through her lanky body.

It still doesn’t explain the creepy visuals and music though. Or the farm stuff. Or where she’s buggering-off to on a train at the very end. But hey-ho

While released at the very end of the 1970s, it feels smack-bang in the middle of the decade that taste and style forgot, with everything just looking hideous and the fashion awkwardly leaving nothing to the imagination. Not that one would use their imagination, of course.

Overall, this is clearly a TV-movie that everyone involved put a lot of effort into, with the filmmaking in particular showing signs of great artistry. I’ll have to look into more works by the same director. Even our leading lady, Cornelia Voss, is fabulous at juggling so many complex emotions, which makes it even more tragic that this is one of only two projects she worked on. Her character “breaks the fourth wall” and talks to the screen three times in the film, which only serves to make the goings on even more unpredictable. Usually, such a technique would be used more consistently, but not here.

Oh and the only translation of the title I can find is: “Me - Then Nothing for a While”, which makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever. If there are any fluent German speakers out there reading this, I’d love to be furnished with a more accurate version.

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!

Framed to Perfection XLI

BOUND (1996)

Director: The Wachowski Sisters

Cinematographer: Bill Pope

Hot lesbians and Joe Pantoliana. That is all.

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!

The Littlest Drama Queen!

Aww, I guess we’ve all been there.

I don’t know who he is, but he’s fabulous and an artist and an anarchist who I believe will eventually create great things and change the world.

Based on some of his earlier videos, I reckon he may very well be mentally ill like myself, but he’s no less of a genius for it.

Please support him and his provocative output.

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!

Framed to Perfection XL

TOMBOY (2011)

Director: Céline Sciamma

Cinematographer: Crystel Fournier

A cute French melodrama about a little girl unsure about her gender, so uses the opportunity of moving into a new area to reinvent herself as a boy. Whether she convinces anyone or not is open to interpretation, but she does capture the heart of a local girl in the process.

While generally very sensitive with its subject, the film loses me towards the end when Laure/Mickael’s initially-sweet mother goes batshit-crazy after finding out what her daughter has been up to. The sequence where mother drags child door-to-door to apologise for just being herself, humiliating her in the process, just doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever.

No human would react this way, and the parents she encounters during her psychotic outburst would, in reality, tell her to be more understanding to her daughter and let it go.

Classic post-2000 illogical writing.

The film also has the girl actually answering the question about whether she’s a boy or girl at the end, rather than just having her lost in thought and cutting to black. It would’ve gotten a standing ovation and an extra star rating from critics if it’d done this, but hey-ho.

The tone of the film is generally very naturalistic and documentary-style, which I do enjoy, but it does have time for plenty of beauty shots, such as the one above.

A soon-to-be classic in the LGBT genre, with the fabulous Zoé Héran’s perpetually-sullen tomboy being a striking and memorable image.

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!

Framed to Perfection XXXIX

PIXOTE (1980)

Director: Hector Babenco

Cinematographer: Rodolfo Sánchez

Worryingly, it feels indicative of my collapsing mental health that the world depicted in this film now feels somewhat positive.

Being a paranoid shut-in becoming more and more sceptical of the government and people around him, I bizarrely yearn for a breakdown of public services and order.

I’ll end up naked and starving in a ditch with cuts and bruises on my body, but at least I won’t be ravaged by letters and phone calls and text messages and emails about bureaucratic nonsense each day.

Crazy, huh?

Pixote is notable, not just for its graphic depictions of poverty, but for life-imitating-art. It’s diminutive star eventually turned to a life of crime and was allegedly murdered in the street by corrupt police, like a rabid dog.

The image of a child only able to smile and laugh whilst getting high is one of many that will surely touch the soul. This moment in particular echoes my own existence these days, as I consume box after box of cheap cider and wine. You know, just to feel something and forget everything.

Pixote is a vision of the free but grimy side of life, with the film’s patina matching its theme. Or perhaps it’s just my deteriorating eyesight at play. I’m too disabled to be free anymore, with my dependancy on handouts leaving me with a sense of impending dread 24/7. When will I finally get that letter taking away my home and livelihood?! They threaten it enough. I just want to be left alone, but that’s far too much to ask in our “caring” society that wants to fix everything, whether we like it or not.

The more I push my door closed, the more they try to push it back open.

According to some, the AI apocalypse is on the way, so I guess I’ll see you all in the wasteland. Maybe then I’ll be able to make some friends and have a sober laugh and maybe even find love. The internet certainly isn’t good for that anymore.

Yikes, I really need to speak to my doctor, don’t I?!

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!

Coincidence or Conspiracy?!

The above video features an analysis of the character “James Wilson” from I Accuse My Parents, which is a film about a man who goes off the rails and blames everyone but himself and his own stupidity. The film includes denial of alcoholism, worldly naivety, and misplaced trust in human nature.

Cough.

I can’t imagine why this MST3K host segment should resonate so awkwardly with me, James Wilson, as much as it does.

Answers on a postcard.

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!