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Ludwig van Beethoven. Piano Trio in D. Op. 70.
Largo assai ed espressivo.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Movie Review: Immortal Beloved
Directed by Bernard Rose. 1994.
In the DVD commentary track to Immortal Beloved director Bernard Rose suggested the conundrum of the immortal beloved was a natural locus around which to structure a story of Beethoven. I am not entirely convinced of that observation and with the structure of Immortal Beloved, the film itself is more like a trip through the life of Beethoven featuring remembrances and reminiscing with the people who knew him. What makes the film succeed, though, is the significance it is able to demonstrate in the contrast between Beethoven’s stormy personal relationships and the degree to which he was cut off from virtually everyone, and the universality of his music.
Foremost among these characters is Beethoven’s factotum, Anton Felix Schindler, who revisits the women in the late Beethoven’s life in order to find the one the composer referred to in his last will as his immortal beloved and to whom he left his estate. Schindler comes off as the historical Schindler does in his biography of the composer (Beethoven As I Knew Him), i.e. as Beethoven’s conservator. Not just as the protector of Beethoven’s estate, though, but of his character and how he would be remembered. Sometimes Schindler comes across as noble, enduring abuse from his boss but remaining loyal to the composer because he understands the magnitude of Beethoven’s loneliness and genius. Other times he comes off an obsequious fool, hopelessly in awe of a man he permits to exist in his own moral world because of his infirmities.
In visiting the women of Beethoven’s life, Schindler discovers despite their tempestuous time with him, they remember him fondly or have at least made their peace with him. One woman, Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, was one of his pupils. In order to receive her father’s consent to marry Beethoven, she had to prove to him Beethoven could still play and support her, so she tested him, offering Beethoven a supposedly empty room and a new English Broadwood on which to experiment in private. The girl and her father spied on Beethoven as he tested the piano playing the adagio of the C-sharp minor piano sonata*. When she reveals herself to him during his playing, he jumps up and stumbles away, shocked at the violation. Outraged, he storms out shouting, “It is terrible! Terrible to rob me in this way! Of my most treasured feelings!” Such is the significance of music to the composer, of his intensely personal ability and need to express himself through his compositions.
Another woman, countess Anna Marie Erdödy, first meets Beethoven at the disastrous debut performance of the Choral Fantasia at which his deafness was made evident to all. Outraged at the thoughtless and childish response of the audience to the composer’s affliction, she escorts him out and away from their contemptuous laughter. After she loses her young son in Napoleon’s invasion of Austria, Beethoven, growing still more deaf but wanting to console her, hands her some music and says, “We will speak through music.” He then begins the largo to the Op. 70 D major piano trio for her*.
Last Schindler visits Johanna Reiss, with whom Beethoven had the most intense and tumultuous relationship after she went on to marry his brother, Caspar Anton Carl Beethoven. Despite protracted legal proceedings in which Beethoven sought custody over her son and Beethoven’s violent denunciations of her, even before sharing the letter with her identifying her as his immortal beloved, Schindler discovers she has made peace with Beethoven, a peace she discovered after hearing his Ninth Symphony. She regrettably only takes note of the final movement, but nonetheless says the Ode to Joy made manifest Beethoven’s capacity for love so much she could no longer despise him.
Thus we see again, like with his relationships with the countesses and his gift of the bagatelle Für Elise to his nephew, Beethoven was most successful in communicating through music. As he said to Schindler, music’s unique power is to transport the listener into the mind of the composer, and when others were able to be transported, they were able to know Beethoven. The final act of Immortal Beloved dwells somewhat too much on the resolution of the mystery. Fair enough, perhaps, given the title and structure, but the film’s significance lies not so much in the resolution of that particular thread as with the two larger contrasting elements of Beethoven’s life, his personal relationships in general and his music. The concept of music being so pure a form of expression that, when it is brilliant, it can emotionally affect us the way it does is more significant than Ludwig and Johanna’s near-miss at the hotel. Nonetheless Immortal Beloved succeeds in showing us both the Beethoven that struggled his whole life to achieve a communion with those he loved, and also the one who succeeded in expressing himself to all humanity through his music.
* N.B. Regarding Dedications:
1) Op.27/2. Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor. 1800-1801. Dedicated to Countess Giulietta Guicciardi.
2) Op.70/1. Piano Trio in D major. 1808. Dedicated to Countess Anna Marie Erdödy.
3) WoO.59. Bagatelle for Piano in A minor: "Für Elise." 1810. Autograph missing, but "Elise" probably denotes a dedication to Therese Malfatti.
In the DVD commentary track to Immortal Beloved director Bernard Rose suggested the conundrum of the immortal beloved was a natural locus around which to structure a story of Beethoven. I am not entirely convinced of that observation and with the structure of Immortal Beloved, the film itself is more like a trip through the life of Beethoven featuring remembrances and reminiscing with the people who knew him. What makes the film succeed, though, is the significance it is able to demonstrate in the contrast between Beethoven’s stormy personal relationships and the degree to which he was cut off from virtually everyone, and the universality of his music. Foremost among these characters is Beethoven’s factotum, Anton Felix Schindler, who revisits the women in the late Beethoven’s life in order to find the one the composer referred to in his last will as his immortal beloved and to whom he left his estate. Schindler comes off as the historical Schindler does in his biography of the composer (Beethoven As I Knew Him), i.e. as Beethoven’s conservator. Not just as the protector of Beethoven’s estate, though, but of his character and how he would be remembered. Sometimes Schindler comes across as noble, enduring abuse from his boss but remaining loyal to the composer because he understands the magnitude of Beethoven’s loneliness and genius. Other times he comes off an obsequious fool, hopelessly in awe of a man he permits to exist in his own moral world because of his infirmities.
In visiting the women of Beethoven’s life, Schindler discovers despite their tempestuous time with him, they remember him fondly or have at least made their peace with him. One woman, Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, was one of his pupils. In order to receive her father’s consent to marry Beethoven, she had to prove to him Beethoven could still play and support her, so she tested him, offering Beethoven a supposedly empty room and a new English Broadwood on which to experiment in private. The girl and her father spied on Beethoven as he tested the piano playing the adagio of the C-sharp minor piano sonata*. When she reveals herself to him during his playing, he jumps up and stumbles away, shocked at the violation. Outraged, he storms out shouting, “It is terrible! Terrible to rob me in this way! Of my most treasured feelings!” Such is the significance of music to the composer, of his intensely personal ability and need to express himself through his compositions.
Another woman, countess Anna Marie Erdödy, first meets Beethoven at the disastrous debut performance of the Choral Fantasia at which his deafness was made evident to all. Outraged at the thoughtless and childish response of the audience to the composer’s affliction, she escorts him out and away from their contemptuous laughter. After she loses her young son in Napoleon’s invasion of Austria, Beethoven, growing still more deaf but wanting to console her, hands her some music and says, “We will speak through music.” He then begins the largo to the Op. 70 D major piano trio for her*.
Last Schindler visits Johanna Reiss, with whom Beethoven had the most intense and tumultuous relationship after she went on to marry his brother, Caspar Anton Carl Beethoven. Despite protracted legal proceedings in which Beethoven sought custody over her son and Beethoven’s violent denunciations of her, even before sharing the letter with her identifying her as his immortal beloved, Schindler discovers she has made peace with Beethoven, a peace she discovered after hearing his Ninth Symphony. She regrettably only takes note of the final movement, but nonetheless says the Ode to Joy made manifest Beethoven’s capacity for love so much she could no longer despise him.
Thus we see again, like with his relationships with the countesses and his gift of the bagatelle Für Elise to his nephew, Beethoven was most successful in communicating through music. As he said to Schindler, music’s unique power is to transport the listener into the mind of the composer, and when others were able to be transported, they were able to know Beethoven. The final act of Immortal Beloved dwells somewhat too much on the resolution of the mystery. Fair enough, perhaps, given the title and structure, but the film’s significance lies not so much in the resolution of that particular thread as with the two larger contrasting elements of Beethoven’s life, his personal relationships in general and his music. The concept of music being so pure a form of expression that, when it is brilliant, it can emotionally affect us the way it does is more significant than Ludwig and Johanna’s near-miss at the hotel. Nonetheless Immortal Beloved succeeds in showing us both the Beethoven that struggled his whole life to achieve a communion with those he loved, and also the one who succeeded in expressing himself to all humanity through his music.
–
* N.B. Regarding Dedications:
1) Op.27/2. Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor. 1800-1801. Dedicated to Countess Giulietta Guicciardi.
2) Op.70/1. Piano Trio in D major. 1808. Dedicated to Countess Anna Marie Erdödy.
3) WoO.59. Bagatelle for Piano in A minor: "Für Elise." 1810. Autograph missing, but "Elise" probably denotes a dedication to Therese Malfatti.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Around the Web
For the week of Saturday, December 26 through Friday, January 1.
1) Victor Davis Hanson reviews, The Enemy at the Gate: Hapsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe by Andrew Wheatcroft.
2) "How to Improve the Culture," by Jeffrey Tucker at the Mises Daily Blog.
1) Victor Davis Hanson reviews, The Enemy at the Gate: Hapsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe by Andrew Wheatcroft.
2) "How to Improve the Culture," by Jeffrey Tucker at the Mises Daily Blog.
The culture is going to hell in a handbag, we've been told for hundreds of years, and the free market gets a large share of the blame. The observation stretches from Left to Right and everywhere in between. It is universally agreed that letting markets run loose runs roughshod over all the finer things in life, from books to arts to clothing to manners.3) James Bowman at The New Criterion Blog:
Mises himself traces this ideological tendency to 19th-century critic John Ruskin, who "popularized the prejudice that capitalism, apart from being a bad economic system, has substituted ugliness for beauty, pettiness for grandeur, trash for art." The same argument appears today in conservative periodicals, every week, as a built-in bias; everyone knows that markets have unleashed a race to the bottom.
. . . So what we need is not the overthrow of private property but more freedom for cultural entrepreneurship, and more individual initiative to do more than complain that the world is not conforming to your own values. The next time someone complains about what the market is doing to the culture, ask that person what he or she has done to enter the market and make a difference. And ask what that person has done to make the world freer for those who seek to make the world a more beautiful place.
Witness [President Obama's] reaction to the uproar over Janet Napolitano’s unfortunate comment that "the system worked" with respect to the apprehension of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before he could blow up his underwear, himself, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 and all or as many as possible of its passengers on Christmas Day.
Why, we may wonder, did he not rather insist that a non-systemic success had occurred with the heroic action of Jasper Schuringa in preventing Mr Abdulmutallab from detonating himself? The answer can only be that he is tethered by unbreakable bonds to the media’s self-serving assumption that only the systemic counts — and only systemic failures at that, since systemic successes, of which there must be many, are rarely reported.4 ) In The Journal of the American Enterprise Institute, Roger Scruton on "The High Cost of Ignoring Beauty":
. . . We should certainly recognize that the old cities whose organic complexity Jacobs admired show the mark of planning: not comprehensive planning, certainly, but the insertion, into the fabric of the city, of localized forms of symmetry and order, like the Piazza Navona in Rome, or the Suleimaniye mosque and its precincts in Istanbul. And those are projects entirely motivated and controlled by aesthetic values. The principal concern of the architects was to fit in to an existing urban fabric, to achieve local symmetry within the context of a historically given settlement. No greater aesthetic catastrophe has struck our cities—European just as much as American—than the modernist idea that a building should stand out from its surroundings, to become a declaration of its own originality. As much as the home, cities depend upon good manners; and good manners require the modest accommodation to neighbors rather than the arrogant assertion of apartness. . .
. . . I have concentrated on architecture since it provides such a clear illustration of the social, environmental, and economic costs of ignoring beauty. But there is another cost, too, and it is one that we witness in individual lives as well as in the community. This is the aesthetic cost. People need beauty. They need the sense of being at home in their world, and being in communication with other souls. In so many areas of modern life—in pop music, in television and cinema, in language and literature—beauty is being displaced by raucous and attention-grabbing clichés. We are being torn out of ourselves by the loud and insolent gestures of people who want to seize our attention but to give nothing in return for it. Although this is not the place to argue the point it should perhaps be said that this loss of beauty, and contempt for the pursuit of it, is one step on the way to a new form of human life, in which taking replaces giving, and vague lusts replace real loves.5) Julia M. Klein on Iraq's Ancient Past in the WSJ:
"Iraq's Ancient Past" situates the Ur finds in the context of modern Iraqi history, provides a history of the expedition itself, and shows how the two were intertwined. The formidable Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), Iraq's honorary director of antiquities, founded what is now the Iraq Museum in Baghdad and filled it with Ur treasures. The 1924 Iraq Antiquities Law, which she wrote, mandated that half of Woolley's finds remain in Iraq. The rest were divided between the Penn Museum and its excavation partner, the British Museum.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Many Thanks
Something about the arrival of a new year makes people uncharacteristically introspective, a phenomenon for which I am quite grateful. Those for whom such a state is in fact a chronic condition may still, though, take this opportunity to reflect. I shall do so here and now.
First and foremost, many thanks to my esteemed and excellent co-blogger Mr. Northcutt. He kindly invited me to share this space with him and I have been most honored and pleased to do so. I much look forward to his coming writings this next year and toward collaboration.
Second, thank you dear readers. We have attempted to provide you with commentary, considerations, and findings both scholarly and significant, enjoyable and enlightening. We hope you have found them so.
Expect in the future more on conservatism and liberalism and significant disagreement between your humble bloggers. Expect more thoughts on Classics and the Classical world. I intend to continue my essays in musical analysis and film reviews and welcome any suggestions as to what to review.
We have largely refrained from entering the fray of partisan politics and intend only to do so at the service of discussing a philosophical question.
I will leave Herr Mozart the last words of 2009:
First and foremost, many thanks to my esteemed and excellent co-blogger Mr. Northcutt. He kindly invited me to share this space with him and I have been most honored and pleased to do so. I much look forward to his coming writings this next year and toward collaboration.
Second, thank you dear readers. We have attempted to provide you with commentary, considerations, and findings both scholarly and significant, enjoyable and enlightening. We hope you have found them so.
Expect in the future more on conservatism and liberalism and significant disagreement between your humble bloggers. Expect more thoughts on Classics and the Classical world. I intend to continue my essays in musical analysis and film reviews and welcome any suggestions as to what to review.
We have largely refrained from entering the fray of partisan politics and intend only to do so at the service of discussing a philosophical question.
I will leave Herr Mozart the last words of 2009:
Le nozze di Figaro, Act IV: Contessa Perdono. . .
Bryn Terfel, Alison Hagley, Rodney Gilfry, Hillevi Martinpelto.
The English Baroque Soloists conducted by John Eliot Gardiner.
Filmed at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris. 1993.
Filmed at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris. 1993.
| ALL Then let us all Be happy. This day of torment, Of caprices and folly, Love can end Only in contentment and joy. Lovers and friends, let's round things off In dancing and pleasure, And to the sound of a gay march Let's hasten to the revelry! | TUTTI Ah, tutti contenti saremo così. Questo giorno di tormenti, di capricci, e di follia, in contenti e in allegria solo amor può terminar. Sposi, amici, al ballo, al gioco, alle mine date foco! Ed al suon di lieta marcia corriam tutti a festeggiar! |
Translation via Opera Guide: The Virtual Opera House.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Movie Review: Dr. No
Directed by Terence Young. 1962.
I recently revisited Dr. No, this time with the DVD commentary track turned on. The commentary features a variety of clips from people associated with the film’s production and one phrase came up with disturbing frequency, tongue-in-cheek; first from the director, incredibly referring to the first shot of Bond when he introduces himself, and then regarding the art direction. Let us add a quote from Richard Maibaum, who adapted Ian Fleming’s novel into the Dr. No screenplay:
As I have observed, the public reaction to the series has been overwhelmingly closer to the former. The situation is not dissimilar from that of the television program The Avengers, which was apparently conceived of as a parody but went onto be taken seriously by the public and likewise on to great success.[3]
In her book, The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand discussed this issue of self-mockery and succinctly summarized the contradiction:
Regardless of the director, screenwriter, and production crew’s intentions, in Dr. No James Bond is in full form and people love him. He is indomitable, getting the better of the increasingly-dangerous array of goons until defeating the arch villain himself. He is indefatigable, engaging in hand-to-hand combat, gun fighting, and working his way through the defenses of Dr. No’s island. Whether he is laying traps setting up his room so he will know if it was searched, or springing the henchmen’s traps and then turning the tables on them, Bond remains unfazed. He is irresistible, winning over several gorgeous women. Indeed, Bond is so incontestable when Dr. No, whose unlimited resources have failed to get the better of Bond, remarks to the spy, “you cost me time, money, effort. . . you damage my organization. . . and my pride. I was curious to see what kind of a man you were” we rather appreciate the praise for Bond, despite its source.
In the same article, Dirda concluded, “Bond has become as archetypal as Hamlet or Sherlock Holmes, a hero with a thousand faces — and among them are yours and mine.” [2] Indeed. Junior year in high school I was asked by a teacher what literary character I would like to be and replied: James Bond. I haven’t changed my mind.
[1] NY Times. December 13, 1964. Selection reprinted in The Romantic Manifesto. Rand, Ayn. 1971. Signet, A Division of Penguin Group. NY, NY.
[2] Dirda, Michael. James Bond as Archetype (and Incredibly Cool Dude). The Chronicle of Higher Education. June 2008. [Link] (subscription required)
[3] Rand, Ayn. The Romantic Manifesto. 1971. Signet, A Division of Penguin Group. NY, NY.
*In the Aristotelian usage.
Bonus: Six Lessons in Manliness from James Bond, via The Art of Manliness.
I recently revisited Dr. No, this time with the DVD commentary track turned on. The commentary features a variety of clips from people associated with the film’s production and one phrase came up with disturbing frequency, tongue-in-cheek; first from the director, incredibly referring to the first shot of Bond when he introduces himself, and then regarding the art direction. Let us add a quote from Richard Maibaum, who adapted Ian Fleming’s novel into the Dr. No screenplay:A bright young producer accosted me one day with glittering eyes. ‘I’m making a parody of the James Bond films.’ How, I asked myself, does one make a parody of a parody? For that is precisely, in the final analysis, what we have done with Fleming’s books. Parodied them. [1]I had, in fact, known about Maibaum’s quote before my recent viewing of Dr. No, but there was something about hearing it directly from the horse’s mouth that set me aghast. Dr. No, tongue-in-cheek. . . really? You are making fun of James Bond. . . why?! What exactly about him do you find it necessary to mock? His wit, cleverness, adaptability, strength, dashing, success? That he is irresistible to women, that he trounces his enemies with cunning and technological superiority, that he defends his country? To my mind I have yet to list something I would not consider an asset or laudable characteristic. Aside from being the hero of the plot in the films and novels, why would one mock someone who embodies these characteristics? When one hears the name James Bond what comes to your mind? Some months ago in The Chronicle of Higher Education Michael Dirda wrote:
The first words we think of when we describe James Bond — at least the 007 of the films — are suave, debonair, cosmopolitan. All those are shorthand for Bond's supreme personal characteristic, what Renaissance courtiers always aspired to exemplify: sprezzatura. That is the ability to perform even the most difficult task with flair, grace, and nonchalance, without getting a wrinkle in your clothes or working up a sweat. Bond not only is cool, he always looks cool, at ease in his skin, at home in the world. Whatever his surroundings, he's the best-dressed guy in the room. [2]Do you think of that, or something like it, or do you laugh, and think, “Oh silly James Bond, he thinks he can do those things! No one can do those things!” With the inevitable and dejected, if suppressed, conclusion following, “I certainly can’t.” And how do you feel? Exhilarated at the thought of such feats and desirous of emulating them in some fashion, or envious?*
As I have observed, the public reaction to the series has been overwhelmingly closer to the former. The situation is not dissimilar from that of the television program The Avengers, which was apparently conceived of as a parody but went onto be taken seriously by the public and likewise on to great success.[3]
In her book, The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand discussed this issue of self-mockery and succinctly summarized the contradiction:
One may laugh with a hero, but never at him–just as a satire may laugh at some object, but never at itself. . .The audacity of James Bond: taking himself seriously! I recall once reading an introduction to Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, one which went to various lengths to try to explain away the fact that title character too, like Bond, takes himself seriously, though we should not. (I tore the introduction from the book.)
In Fleming’s novels, James Bond is constantly making witty, humorous remarks, which are part of his charm. But, apparently this is not what Mr. Maibaum meant by humor. What he meant, apparently, was humor at Bond’s expense–the sort of humor intended to undercut Bond’s stature, to make him ridiculous. . .
[Such tongue-in-cheek thrillers] require one employ all the values of a thriller in order to hold the audience’s interest, yet turn these values against themselves, that one damage the very elements one is using and counting on. It means an attempt to cash in on the thing one is mocking, to profit by the audience’s hunger for romanticism while seeking to destroy it. [3]
—
Regardless of the director, screenwriter, and production crew’s intentions, in Dr. No James Bond is in full form and people love him. He is indomitable, getting the better of the increasingly-dangerous array of goons until defeating the arch villain himself. He is indefatigable, engaging in hand-to-hand combat, gun fighting, and working his way through the defenses of Dr. No’s island. Whether he is laying traps setting up his room so he will know if it was searched, or springing the henchmen’s traps and then turning the tables on them, Bond remains unfazed. He is irresistible, winning over several gorgeous women. Indeed, Bond is so incontestable when Dr. No, whose unlimited resources have failed to get the better of Bond, remarks to the spy, “you cost me time, money, effort. . . you damage my organization. . . and my pride. I was curious to see what kind of a man you were” we rather appreciate the praise for Bond, despite its source.
In the same article, Dirda concluded, “Bond has become as archetypal as Hamlet or Sherlock Holmes, a hero with a thousand faces — and among them are yours and mine.” [2] Indeed. Junior year in high school I was asked by a teacher what literary character I would like to be and replied: James Bond. I haven’t changed my mind.
—
[1] NY Times. December 13, 1964. Selection reprinted in The Romantic Manifesto. Rand, Ayn. 1971. Signet, A Division of Penguin Group. NY, NY.
[2] Dirda, Michael. James Bond as Archetype (and Incredibly Cool Dude). The Chronicle of Higher Education. June 2008. [Link] (subscription required)
[3] Rand, Ayn. The Romantic Manifesto. 1971. Signet, A Division of Penguin Group. NY, NY.
*In the Aristotelian usage.
Bonus: Six Lessons in Manliness from James Bond, via The Art of Manliness.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Around the Web
Christmas Edition for the week of Saturday, December 19 through Friday, December 25.
1-4) In The WSJ:
7) "A Tale of Two Libertarianisms" by Brian Doherty at Reason.
9) At Reason, Jacob Sullum on "the folly of a 'right to health care.'"
12-13) At Big Hollywood:
1-4) In The WSJ:
- Julia Vitullo-Martin on King's College Chapel.
- Heidi Waleson on Les Contes d'Hoffmann (at The Metropolitan Opera Dec. 23, 26, 30 and Jan. 2)
- John J. Miller on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and "The Burden of Holmes."
- David Mermelstein interviews pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, who will be playing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 KV.488 at Lincoln Center Dec. 29, 30 and Jan. 2. ("Though the repertory may seem unexciting. . ." Surely Mr. Mermelstein jests!)
. . .the noise of axes grinding could never drown out the immortal sound of Louis Armstrong’s music. To Teachout, that constitutes a “sunlit, hopeful art, brought into being by the labor of a lifetime.” Second the emotion.6) In City Journal, Guy Sorman reviews "Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era" by Jean-Francois Revel.
7) "A Tale of Two Libertarianisms" by Brian Doherty at Reason.
. . . as Rothbard makes abundantly clear here, very important differences exist between the fallibilistic, utilitarian, small-government thinking of Hayek (and Friedman, and to a great degree Mises) and the rights-based anarchism of Rothbard and many of his followers, both of which coexist uneasily under the label libertarian.8) "Impermissible Ratemaking in Health-Insurance Reform: Why the Reid Bill is Unconstitutional" by Richard A. Epstein at Point of Law.
9) At Reason, Jacob Sullum on "the folly of a 'right to health care.'"
While liberty rights such as freedom of speech or freedom of contract require others to refrain from acting in certain ways, “welfare rights” such as the purported entitlement to health care (or to food, clothing, or shelter) require others to perform certain actions. They represent a legally enforceable claim on other people’s resources.
10) Michael Ramirez on "healthcare reform":
–
12-13) At Big Hollywood:
Monday, December 21, 2009
Movie Review: The Shawshank Redemption
Directed by Frank Darabont. 1994.
The Shawshank Redemption could easily have been a banal exercise in politically correct finger-wagging or a hackneyed parable about hope. Two features elevate Shawshank, first is its intense focus on its characters; not simply their current feelings, but their natures, the men they were and who they came to be, and their journey of self-understanding. The film could have gone astray into the territory of police procedurals, legal dramas, or documentary-style exposé. Indeed, the prison’s corruption, Red’s parole denials, and the set-up that led Andy into prison are not central elements the film’s theme. Second is Shawshank does not venture to make foolish generalizations about prisons, prison life, prisoners, “the system” or anything else. Shawshank is about these men and their personal journeys.
It is actually worth noting at greater length where this film does not go wrong, given how many directions in which it could easily have veered and how many other films take those tired paths. First, the film is not mindlessly and vaguely "anti-prison." Shawshank Prison is indeed a dehumanizing place but not on account of some abstract sense of injustice but rather on account of the criminals and the abuses of its authoritarian warden and his right-hand, neither of whom represent the law but rather simple force. The warden is happy to ignore heinous acts, so long as he benefits and the prison is run well. He even uses such violence, violence that he permits, as a threat against Andy. Likewise the film is not foolishly "anti-law" either. You see when Red’s case comes up for review, he is not subjected to an objectively understandable law or criterion, but rather the whims of the review board. Consider Red’s response when asked by the parole board if he thinks he has been “rehabilitated:”
Let us now move on to what Shawshank does well. We said above the prison was a dehumanizing place, first on account of the hard criminals and second on account the corrupt officials. What Andy brings to the prison is something wholly lacking there: a sense of the sacredness of the individual, a sacredness that can only be marred by choice and not force, a sentiment reflected in efforts great and small done over long periods of time. It is something rejected by the criminals when they were free men, something suppressed by the warden, and thus something only an innocent man could have brought to Shawshank. The first example is requesting a couple of beers for his “coworkers” when they roof a nearby factory in outdoor detail. Red aptly summarizes the significance of Andy’s deed:
The scene opens with a wonderful contrast: the lame guard, a free man, condescends to read Jughead of his own free will, while Andy, a prisoner, risks his personal safety not simply to hear but to share Mozart. This particular piece of music, a duet from Mozart’s opera Le nozze di Figaro, is particularly significant here. While Red says he hopes they were singing about something too beautiful for words, the significance is how they are singing the piece. Neither voice in the piece is singing anything intelligible on her own, but rather one must piece together both parts to understand what they are saying. Likewise the oboe is essentially an equal third partner to the human voices. On the one hand this is quite simply a beautiful piece of music Andy shares with the inmates of Shawshank, and even as such the act symbolizes his growing ability to act with his emotions and engage more intimately with others. The very act of the inmates listening to the music at the same time, that very shared experience, is significant on these terms. This piece of music, though, itself is especially appropriate for its use in the film. That fact, and the unique way we experience music (as we discussed in light of Bergman and Solaris), accounts for the tremendous power of this scene.
After spending time in silent, dark, solitary for his stunt, Andy shares his thoughts on music and the sacredness of the individual with Red and his circle of friendly inmates:
Yet as Andy says of the storm above, need his redemption have gone on so long? Indeed the scenes of Shawshank roll by as do the years at the prison and we acutely feel the passage of time. One of Red’s sayings towards the end of the film, "get busy living or get busy dying," has the sense and appeal of a bromide, but is it not true? How different was Andy’s life inside prison from his old life outside in terms of his happiness? Andy's journey was one of self-discovery, as was Red's; their delays in starting that journey greatly cost them. True probably most people are not introspective by nature, but thinking of Andy and Red, perhaps we should not fritter away our free lives by not first stopping reflect. Perhaps, then, Red’s saying would have more weight if we included the above concept of introspection, which would leave us with something not dissimilar from, “the unexamined life is not worth living."
The Shawshank Redemption could easily have been a banal exercise in politically correct finger-wagging or a hackneyed parable about hope. Two features elevate Shawshank, first is its intense focus on its characters; not simply their current feelings, but their natures, the men they were and who they came to be, and their journey of self-understanding. The film could have gone astray into the territory of police procedurals, legal dramas, or documentary-style exposé. Indeed, the prison’s corruption, Red’s parole denials, and the set-up that led Andy into prison are not central elements the film’s theme. Second is Shawshank does not venture to make foolish generalizations about prisons, prison life, prisoners, “the system” or anything else. Shawshank is about these men and their personal journeys.It is actually worth noting at greater length where this film does not go wrong, given how many directions in which it could easily have veered and how many other films take those tired paths. First, the film is not mindlessly and vaguely "anti-prison." Shawshank Prison is indeed a dehumanizing place but not on account of some abstract sense of injustice but rather on account of the criminals and the abuses of its authoritarian warden and his right-hand, neither of whom represent the law but rather simple force. The warden is happy to ignore heinous acts, so long as he benefits and the prison is run well. He even uses such violence, violence that he permits, as a threat against Andy. Likewise the film is not foolishly "anti-law" either. You see when Red’s case comes up for review, he is not subjected to an objectively understandable law or criterion, but rather the whims of the review board. Consider Red’s response when asked by the parole board if he thinks he has been “rehabilitated:”
MAN #1Consider the honesty of this scene for a moment. Red does not shy away from referring to his act as a terrible crime, nor does he try to explain that he should be freed by offering excuses. He knows he deserves to be in jail, but he refuses to continue play the political game with the parole board, who themselves have no definition of “rehabilitated.” Is it supposed to mean he is sorry, that he would not do it again, that he is a “normal” person now? Why should he be, what did he do, or what is prison expected to do to him, that would make him so? What is the standard for “rehabilitation?” The definition of the word is up to their whims.
Shall I repeat the question?
RED
I heard you. Rehabilitated. Let's see now. You know, come to think of it, I have no idea what that means. I know what you think it means. Me, I think it's a made-up word, a politician's word. A word so young fellas like you can wear a suit and tie and have a job. What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?
MAN #2
Well. . . are you?
RED
Not a day goes by I don't feel regret, and not because I'm in here or because you think I should. I look back on myself the way I was...stupid kid who did that terrible crime. . . wish I could talk sense to him. Tell him how things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone, this old man is all that's left, and I have to live with that. . . Rehabilitated? That's a bullshit word, so you just go on ahead and stamp that form there, sonny, and stop wasting my damn time. Truth is, I don't give a shit.
Let us now move on to what Shawshank does well. We said above the prison was a dehumanizing place, first on account of the hard criminals and second on account the corrupt officials. What Andy brings to the prison is something wholly lacking there: a sense of the sacredness of the individual, a sacredness that can only be marred by choice and not force, a sentiment reflected in efforts great and small done over long periods of time. It is something rejected by the criminals when they were free men, something suppressed by the warden, and thus something only an innocent man could have brought to Shawshank. The first example is requesting a couple of beers for his “coworkers” when they roof a nearby factory in outdoor detail. Red aptly summarizes the significance of Andy’s deed:
You could argue he'd done it to curry favor with the guards. Or maybe make a few friends among us cons. Me, I think he did it just to feel normal again. . . if only for a short while.Sure they are prisoners and they are not free, nor does Andy argue they should be, but they need to remember the significance of the concept. They cannot forget it, as freedom or lack thereof defines their experiences. What is significant but unspoken about this scene, though, is that Andy stays apart from them. He does not enjoy the beers with his coworkers and his experience on the roof is a strictly personal one. Gradually, though, Andy’s relationships with his fellow inmates, especially Red, begin to define his life there. For example, though he maintains personal projects like shaping his chess pieces from stones, they are stones gathered by his friends as a little welcome back present when he is beaten by a group of inmates. Andy’s life is gradually having the threads of others’ woven in. Similarly, after his relentless requesting for library funds pays off and the state sends him some money and donated books and records, Andy risks much to share some of that with everyone in the prison.
The scene opens with a wonderful contrast: the lame guard, a free man, condescends to read Jughead of his own free will, while Andy, a prisoner, risks his personal safety not simply to hear but to share Mozart. This particular piece of music, a duet from Mozart’s opera Le nozze di Figaro, is particularly significant here. While Red says he hopes they were singing about something too beautiful for words, the significance is how they are singing the piece. Neither voice in the piece is singing anything intelligible on her own, but rather one must piece together both parts to understand what they are saying. Likewise the oboe is essentially an equal third partner to the human voices. On the one hand this is quite simply a beautiful piece of music Andy shares with the inmates of Shawshank, and even as such the act symbolizes his growing ability to act with his emotions and engage more intimately with others. The very act of the inmates listening to the music at the same time, that very shared experience, is significant on these terms. This piece of music, though, itself is especially appropriate for its use in the film. That fact, and the unique way we experience music (as we discussed in light of Bergman and Solaris), accounts for the tremendous power of this scene.
After spending time in silent, dark, solitary for his stunt, Andy shares his thoughts on music and the sacredness of the individual with Red and his circle of friendly inmates:
ANDY (taps his heart, his head)Later, Andy acquires a harmonica for Red, again emphasizing how Andy is trying to get Red to experience the joy he knows through music. That Red, first staring at the instrument in his dark cell before bed, only gives it a toot is not a symbol of failure, but rather that he has grown to understand its significance, both coming from Andy, and coming from Andy as his friend, and he is not emotionally ready to play yet. This gift represents perhaps the height of what Andy has learned about himself, his emotions and demeanor, and living with others. His last conversation with Red makes the development explicit:
The music was here. . . and here. That's the one thing they can't confiscate, not ever. That's the beauty of it. Haven't you ever felt that way about music, Red?
RED
Played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost my taste for it. Didn't make much sense on the inside.
ANDY
Here's where it makes most sense. We need it so we don't forget.
RED
Forget?
ANDY
That there are things in this world not carved out of gray stone. That there's a small place inside of us they can never lock away, and that place is called hope.
RED
Hope is a dangerous thing. Drive a man insane. It's got no place here. Better get used to the idea.
ANDYLike Red’s statement before the parole board, Andy is not filled with bitterness toward “the system” or anger towards his cheating wife or even the man who framed him, but regret for the man he was when he was free. He regrets that he was free but imprisoned anyway, albeit unknowingly and in a different way. As such, what he brought to Shawshank and what he did and learned when he was there enabled his redemption. What Andy brought was something Red had lost before he entered prison also, just as what Andy learned was something he had missed in life outside Shawshank. Indeed it is their friendship that becomes the touchstone of the movie and that which grows alongside their personal developments, in fact it enables them.
My wife used to say I'm a hard man to know. Like a closed book. Complained about it all the time. She was beautiful. I loved her. But I guess I couldn't show it enough. I killed her, Red. I didn't pull the trigger. But I drove her away. That's why she died. Because of me, the way I am.
RED
That don't make you a murderer. Bad husband, maybe. Feel bad about it if you want. But you didn't pull the trigger.
ANDY
No. I didn't. Someone else did, and I wound up here. Bad luck, I guess.
RED
Bad luck? Jesus.
ANDY
It floats around. Has to land on somebody. Say a storm comes through. Some folks sit in their living rooms and enjoy the rain. The house next door gets torn out of the ground and smashed flat. It was my turn, that's all. I was in the path of the tornado. I just had no idea the storm would go on as long as it has.
REDTheir reconciliation at the end achieves its weight not just from their many years together at Shawshank, but from a certain gratefulness that they should have met in the first place; that Andy Dufresne, a stolid banker who wrongfully went to jail, should have met someone there he could care about, and that Ellis Redding, a dumb kid who committed a terrible crime, should have gone to jail and had his soul reawakened by the imperturbable Andy Dufresne.
Those of us who knew him best talk about him often. I swear, the stuff he pulled. It always makes us laugh. Sometimes it makes me sad, though, Andy being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are just too bright. . . and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. . . but still, the place you live is that much more drab and empty that they're gone.
Yet as Andy says of the storm above, need his redemption have gone on so long? Indeed the scenes of Shawshank roll by as do the years at the prison and we acutely feel the passage of time. One of Red’s sayings towards the end of the film, "get busy living or get busy dying," has the sense and appeal of a bromide, but is it not true? How different was Andy’s life inside prison from his old life outside in terms of his happiness? Andy's journey was one of self-discovery, as was Red's; their delays in starting that journey greatly cost them. True probably most people are not introspective by nature, but thinking of Andy and Red, perhaps we should not fritter away our free lives by not first stopping reflect. Perhaps, then, Red’s saying would have more weight if we included the above concept of introspection, which would leave us with something not dissimilar from, “the unexamined life is not worth living."
Friday, December 18, 2009
Around the Web
For the week of Saturday, December 12 through Friday, December 18.
1) At the WSJ, Stuart Isacoff on music and the brain.
2) James Gardner at the WSJ reviews the James Tissot exhibition, "The Life of Christ," now on view at the Brooklyn Museum through January 17th.
3) David Mermelstein interivews mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe for the WSJ.
4) At Laudator Temporis Acti, on trees and the nicknames of Samuel Johnson.
5) And now for something completely different: Tim Madigan of Philosophy Now watches Nietzsche clash with Wagner.
6) Geoffrey Robertson at Standpoint makes the case for a British Bill of Rights.
7) Director of The Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies, Roger Pilon on "the modern executive state" in the National Review:
1) At the WSJ, Stuart Isacoff on music and the brain.
2) James Gardner at the WSJ reviews the James Tissot exhibition, "The Life of Christ," now on view at the Brooklyn Museum through January 17th.
3) David Mermelstein interivews mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe for the WSJ.
4) At Laudator Temporis Acti, on trees and the nicknames of Samuel Johnson.
5) And now for something completely different: Tim Madigan of Philosophy Now watches Nietzsche clash with Wagner.
6) Geoffrey Robertson at Standpoint makes the case for a British Bill of Rights.
7) Director of The Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies, Roger Pilon on "the modern executive state" in the National Review:
. . .the tale of how so powerful an executive arose is not really complicated: Congress and the Supreme Court conspired to create it. A century ago, progressives began viewing the Constitution’s checks and balances not as protections against overweening power but as impediments to enlightened government — the kind of government that would one day be used to “save the planet.” Since the New Deal, Congress has delegated ever more powers to the executive branch without much guidance as to how they are to be used. And a supine Court, cowed originally by Franklin Roosevelt’s threat to add six new members, has gone along, in the name of “democracy” and judicial modesty, even as the expanding government has looked less and less democratic.8) Now available at the British Library's Online Gallery: pages from the score of Handel's Messiah.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Movie Review: Solaris
Solaris. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. 1972.
I. Film as Dream
The reverie passages of Solaris are perhaps the film’s signature feature, but what to make of them? And what to make of Bergman’s quote above, for that matter? What is the significance of experiencing a film like a dream? While I do not assume Bergman and Tarkovsky were of one mind on the matter, I believe there is some common understanding of films as dreams. For the viewer, the most fundamental aspect of films as dreams is the manner in which we understand them, an aspect expressed in the second quote of Bergman’s above: that we experience the movie emotionally first, like music. It is then in our subsequent reflections of why we experienced the feelings we did that we understand the movie and perhaps, and hopefully to a greater extent, ourselves.
II. Self-Reflection
The theme of self-reflection and self-understanding is the central moral issue of Solaris. Each scientist on the station has journeyed there to study the planet, but the nature of the entity on Solaris forces them to study themselves. For example, Dr. Kelvin, himself a psychologist, is forced to confront deep-seated feelings about his late wife and father. First, the entity on Solaris recreates his late wife from his memories. Unable to rid himself of this hallucination, he gradually grows attached to Hari, even confessing that while he left the real Hari on earth years ago, he loves the recreated one now. Yet when he relates this to the recreated Hari, and also the fact that his real wife killed herself when he left her, she too kills herself. Though once again resurrected, she asks the other doctors to terminate her with a device they have constructed. When Kelvin is informed of this, and that “she did it for him” Kelvin says, “things weren’t working out between us towards the end.” Is he talking about the real Hari or the hallucination? Did he drive one to death by loving her too little, and another by loving too much? Kelvin goes on to ask, “Why are we being tortured like this?” Does he mean generally or is he specifically referring to “being tortured. . . by the entity on Solaris?” Dr. Snaut replies as if it were the former, “In my opinion we have lost our sense of the cosmic. The ancients understood this perfectly. They would never have asked why or what for. Remember the myth of Sisyphus.”
Is not understanding oneself what foils attempts peacefully to interact with others. It is simply in man’s nature, then, to be contesting with struggle of self in relation to others. It is perhaps, as Nietzsche said, that life is itself the price of living?
Let us look at some more of the closing dialogue:
SNART: When man is happy, the meaning of life and other eternal themes rarely interest him. These questions should be asked at the end of one’s life.
KELVIN: But we don’t know when life will end. That’s why we’re in such a hurry.
SNART: Don’t rush. The happiest people are those who are not interested in these cursed questions.
KELVIN: To ask is always the desire to know. Yet the preservation of simple human truths requires mystery. The mysteries of happiness, death, and love.
SNART: Maybe you’re right, but try not to think about all that now.
KELVIN: To think about it is to know the day of one’s death. Not knowing that day makes us practically immortal.
As Dr. Snart says, what dire questions. Is there no chance of objectivity, of an answer to such questions? Kelvin’s dissatisfaction implies he seeks some non-materialistic metaphysical answer. Kelvin’s statement about mystery is like Snart’s about Sisyphus above: our situation is simply the nature of things, and it is our lack of knowledge about our ends that forces us to make use of what we have. But does it really make us practically immortal?
Why does Kelvin stay on Solaris? Is it for the hope of seeing Hari again? To experience the reunification (however artificial) with his father? To interact with the entity? He says he could return to Earth, “But I won’t be able to give myself to them fully. Never.” Why is that?
III. Many Questions
Interaction with the alien entity is an even greater source of questions in Solaris. Are we really capable of understanding with it? Clearly scientific testing has failed to provide any insight. It certainly has some basic understanding of us, yet it does not (at first) understand that the hallucinations it is conjuring are unasked for and painful, and it does not recreate the images perfectly (e.g. the solid lake and indoor rain.) Are the scientists' interactions with the hallucinations (“guests” as they refer to them) interactions with the Solaris entity or are they solely experiences between the scientists and their own consciousness? Are we capable of understanding the Solaris entity on its own terms or only when it creates something from our body of preconceptions about the universe?
Early in the film, a scientist says, “But what we’re talking about is far more serious than just the study of Solaristics. We’re talking about the boundaries of human knowledge. Don’t [you] think by establishing artificial barriers we deliver a blow to the idea of limitless thought? By limiting our movement forward, we facilitate moving backwards.” Is it inherently limitless, or limited? Some phenomena correspond to predictions, others do not. What are the tools of predicting?
What of how technology is portrayed in the film? On the one hand man’s technical abilities have brought him the ability to travel far from home. Yet in Solaris man’s technical skill has clearly outpaced his philosophical comprehension, evidenced by the scientists’ extremely limited approaches toward understanding the entity on the planet. Is technology helping, hindering, neutral? Has it brought the scientists to this great challenge, is it what is now holding them back (compare their distance on the space station to Dr. Kelvin finally going down to the planet at the end), is it incidental?
The final scene generates perhaps the most questions of all. Does Dr. Kelvin choosing to remain on Solaris represent a tragic inability to embrace reality? Or is it a spiritual communion between man and the entity? Is it an act of supplication of man toward a being of far higher understanding or an instance of imperfectly rationalizing phenomena and ignoring the inconsistencies?
Should we infer that Dr. Kelvin may one day come to understand the entity, is it simply beyond human understanding, are we limited to understanding it only in a certain, limited, way? If it is wholly, or partially, unknowable, is the notion of the incomprehensible foolish, awe-inspiring, or terrifying? Is there a middle ground between positions of conceiving of our surroundings as inherently unknowable or inherently knowable? Does the final scene suggest a dialectical or phenomenological method of inquiry? How do all of these metaphysical questions affect the issue of self-reflection discussed above?
IV. Conclusion
I suspect for many viewers Solaris will appear an impenetrable mass of questions and vagaries, useless perhaps for suggesting both nothing and everything. I hope it is evident, though, the film raises many important questions. Indeed in raising so many questions and presenting them in a manner inviting, indeed requiring, repeated consideration, Solaris achieves what few films do, being about the questioning itself. As such, it is the philosophically-minded film goer that will get the most from Solaris, and it is the individual for whom philosophy is a necessary part of life that it should most affect.
- Quotations from the film taken from the English subtitles of the November 2002 Criterion Edition DVD of Solaris.
Other writing on Solaris:
When film is not a document, it is dream. That is why Tarkovsky is the greatest of them all. He moves with such naturalness in the room of dreams. He doesn't explain. What should he explain anyhow?
Film as dream, film as music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. –Ingmar Bergman
I. Film as Dream
II. Self-Reflection
The theme of self-reflection and self-understanding is the central moral issue of Solaris. Each scientist on the station has journeyed there to study the planet, but the nature of the entity on Solaris forces them to study themselves. For example, Dr. Kelvin, himself a psychologist, is forced to confront deep-seated feelings about his late wife and father. First, the entity on Solaris recreates his late wife from his memories. Unable to rid himself of this hallucination, he gradually grows attached to Hari, even confessing that while he left the real Hari on earth years ago, he loves the recreated one now. Yet when he relates this to the recreated Hari, and also the fact that his real wife killed herself when he left her, she too kills herself. Though once again resurrected, she asks the other doctors to terminate her with a device they have constructed. When Kelvin is informed of this, and that “she did it for him” Kelvin says, “things weren’t working out between us towards the end.” Is he talking about the real Hari or the hallucination? Did he drive one to death by loving her too little, and another by loving too much? Kelvin goes on to ask, “Why are we being tortured like this?” Does he mean generally or is he specifically referring to “being tortured. . . by the entity on Solaris?” Dr. Snaut replies as if it were the former, “In my opinion we have lost our sense of the cosmic. The ancients understood this perfectly. They would never have asked why or what for. Remember the myth of Sisyphus.”
Is not understanding oneself what foils attempts peacefully to interact with others. It is simply in man’s nature, then, to be contesting with struggle of self in relation to others. It is perhaps, as Nietzsche said, that life is itself the price of living?
Let us look at some more of the closing dialogue:
SNART: When man is happy, the meaning of life and other eternal themes rarely interest him. These questions should be asked at the end of one’s life.
KELVIN: But we don’t know when life will end. That’s why we’re in such a hurry.
SNART: Don’t rush. The happiest people are those who are not interested in these cursed questions.
KELVIN: To ask is always the desire to know. Yet the preservation of simple human truths requires mystery. The mysteries of happiness, death, and love.
SNART: Maybe you’re right, but try not to think about all that now.
KELVIN: To think about it is to know the day of one’s death. Not knowing that day makes us practically immortal.
As Dr. Snart says, what dire questions. Is there no chance of objectivity, of an answer to such questions? Kelvin’s dissatisfaction implies he seeks some non-materialistic metaphysical answer. Kelvin’s statement about mystery is like Snart’s about Sisyphus above: our situation is simply the nature of things, and it is our lack of knowledge about our ends that forces us to make use of what we have. But does it really make us practically immortal?
Why does Kelvin stay on Solaris? Is it for the hope of seeing Hari again? To experience the reunification (however artificial) with his father? To interact with the entity? He says he could return to Earth, “But I won’t be able to give myself to them fully. Never.” Why is that?
III. Many Questions
Interaction with the alien entity is an even greater source of questions in Solaris. Are we really capable of understanding with it? Clearly scientific testing has failed to provide any insight. It certainly has some basic understanding of us, yet it does not (at first) understand that the hallucinations it is conjuring are unasked for and painful, and it does not recreate the images perfectly (e.g. the solid lake and indoor rain.) Are the scientists' interactions with the hallucinations (“guests” as they refer to them) interactions with the Solaris entity or are they solely experiences between the scientists and their own consciousness? Are we capable of understanding the Solaris entity on its own terms or only when it creates something from our body of preconceptions about the universe?
Early in the film, a scientist says, “But what we’re talking about is far more serious than just the study of Solaristics. We’re talking about the boundaries of human knowledge. Don’t [you] think by establishing artificial barriers we deliver a blow to the idea of limitless thought? By limiting our movement forward, we facilitate moving backwards.” Is it inherently limitless, or limited? Some phenomena correspond to predictions, others do not. What are the tools of predicting?
What of how technology is portrayed in the film? On the one hand man’s technical abilities have brought him the ability to travel far from home. Yet in Solaris man’s technical skill has clearly outpaced his philosophical comprehension, evidenced by the scientists’ extremely limited approaches toward understanding the entity on the planet. Is technology helping, hindering, neutral? Has it brought the scientists to this great challenge, is it what is now holding them back (compare their distance on the space station to Dr. Kelvin finally going down to the planet at the end), is it incidental?
The final scene generates perhaps the most questions of all. Does Dr. Kelvin choosing to remain on Solaris represent a tragic inability to embrace reality? Or is it a spiritual communion between man and the entity? Is it an act of supplication of man toward a being of far higher understanding or an instance of imperfectly rationalizing phenomena and ignoring the inconsistencies?
Should we infer that Dr. Kelvin may one day come to understand the entity, is it simply beyond human understanding, are we limited to understanding it only in a certain, limited, way? If it is wholly, or partially, unknowable, is the notion of the incomprehensible foolish, awe-inspiring, or terrifying? Is there a middle ground between positions of conceiving of our surroundings as inherently unknowable or inherently knowable? Does the final scene suggest a dialectical or phenomenological method of inquiry? How do all of these metaphysical questions affect the issue of self-reflection discussed above?
IV. Conclusion
I suspect for many viewers Solaris will appear an impenetrable mass of questions and vagaries, useless perhaps for suggesting both nothing and everything. I hope it is evident, though, the film raises many important questions. Indeed in raising so many questions and presenting them in a manner inviting, indeed requiring, repeated consideration, Solaris achieves what few films do, being about the questioning itself. As such, it is the philosophically-minded film goer that will get the most from Solaris, and it is the individual for whom philosophy is a necessary part of life that it should most affect.
–
- Quotations from the film taken from the English subtitles of the November 2002 Criterion Edition DVD of Solaris.
–
Other writing on Solaris:
Friday, December 11, 2009
Around the Web
For the week of Saturday, December 5 through Friday, December 11.
1) On Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4 in D minor (and the issue of orchestration) at Peter Gutmann's Classical Notes.
2) On the constitutionality of a personal mandate to buy health insurance, from Randy Barnett at The Volokh Conspiracy.
3) Ilya Shapiro and Travis Cushman at The American look at the constitutionality of the "Public Company Accounting Oversight Board."
4) At Big Hollywood, Mark Tapson's, "ZINN 101: A Radical’s History of the United States."
5) Carolyn See at The Washington Post reviews, "The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of 'Proper' English from Shakespeare to 'South Park'" by Jack Lynch.
6) In the WSJ, Robert Greskovic on George Balanchine's "The Nutcracker" at The New York City Ballet.
7) At Slate, Witold Rybczynski on the "enduring influence of architect Christopher Alexander, author of 'A Pattern of Language.'"
9) In City Journal, Michael Knox Beran reviews, "The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science" by Richard Holmes.
1) On Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4 in D minor (and the issue of orchestration) at Peter Gutmann's Classical Notes.
2) On the constitutionality of a personal mandate to buy health insurance, from Randy Barnett at The Volokh Conspiracy.
3) Ilya Shapiro and Travis Cushman at The American look at the constitutionality of the "Public Company Accounting Oversight Board."
4) At Big Hollywood, Mark Tapson's, "ZINN 101: A Radical’s History of the United States."
5) Carolyn See at The Washington Post reviews, "The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of 'Proper' English from Shakespeare to 'South Park'" by Jack Lynch.
6) In the WSJ, Robert Greskovic on George Balanchine's "The Nutcracker" at The New York City Ballet.
7) At Slate, Witold Rybczynski on the "enduring influence of architect Christopher Alexander, author of 'A Pattern of Language.'"
Alexander argued that the standardized, mass-produced way in which buildings are designed and built today is wrongheaded, and to demonstrate an alternative he started to build himself. . .
Alexander's ideas have taken root in unexpected places. His early books, especially Notes on the Synthesis of Form and A Pattern Language, influenced computer scientists, who found useful parallels between building design and software design. The New Urbanism movement also owes him a debt, as a new book by Andres Duany and Jeff Speck makes clear. The Smart Growth Manual consists of 148 principles—patterns, really—that add up to a language for community design, from entire regions to neighborhood streets. "We believe that new places should be designed in the manner of existing places that work," the authors write, a concept straight out of Alexander. Curiously, the one place that Alexander, a lifelong professor, has had the least influence is in academia. The theories that are taught in architecture schools today are of a different sort, and in the belief that the field of architecture should be grounded in intellectual speculation, rather than pragmatic observation, students are more likely to be assigned French post-structuralist texts than A Pattern Language. Which is a shame.8) "I.M. Pei's National Gallery of Art East Building: An Ultramodern Building Shows Signs of Age" by Catesby Leigh in the WSJ. (from the article, "It seems pretty clear that the architect's 'technological breakthrough in the construction of masonry walls' was more of an experiment than he realized.")
9) In City Journal, Michael Knox Beran reviews, "The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science" by Richard Holmes.
But Holmes is concerned less with particular discoveries than with the mentality of the discoverers. The wonder revealed by science is not, finally, severable from the mind of the wonderer. Holmes cites Richard Feynman’s belief that science is “driven by a continual dialogue between skeptical enquiry and the sense of inexplicable mystery,” and that if either is permitted to get the upper hand, “true science” will be “destroyed.”
Even as he studies the outer world, the Romantic scientist is preoccupied with the secret of his inward existence. Banks observing the customs of the Tahitians, Davy on laughing gas, Mary Shelley wondering “in what sense Frankenstein’s ‘Creature’ would be human”: all remained perplexed by the mysteriousness of man. What laws govern his being? How do changing conditions affect his nature? Is he a creature created on purpose or a mere material accident?
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