I fixate too much on the inalterable past. Everything ends so does that deepen or nullify everything that came before?
The signs on Interstate 84 pointed to Troutdale, where billboards mention the opening of their first dispensary. Progress comes in many forms. Aislinn and I were headed to Multnomah Falls, the site of Oregon’s tallest waterfall. It was our first full day of a much-needed vacation where we decided to hike up the 11 switchbacks to the top of the falls. The moist November air had us wearing several layers, with each turn of the trail requiring some article of clothing to be removed. It rained, torrentially, on our way from Seattle to Portland, and the soggy remnants were there the following day.
We zigged and zagged our way up. The cascading 620 ft. waterfall drowned out everyone’s labored breathing as we climbed upward, where traversing each slope created an unmistakable tightness around my thighs. Children would dart up the slippery, narrow path. I admired their courage, but with two left feet I took my time with each stride. Six legs in and I could feel a trail of sweat developing on my back; an obscene rarity if you know me.
We made it to the top but opted to continue a little further downward, where the moss-covered maple, grand fir, and alder trees made it feel like we were entering a cottagecore fantasy. The sound of the waterfall grew distant; we were far enough from the highway not to hear any cars, other hikers had already turned back and opted not to continue the taxing trail, and gone were the eyesores of asphalt parking lots compromisng our scenic view. Foliage littered the path as my head remained pointed upward toward the denuded tree branches, where I was mentally deciphering an image, a message, in the same way people read tea leaves or stare at clouds. The gentle hum of a stream transported me to an unfamiliar but welcome place; the present.
The cacophony of the past faded away as we returned to our starting point. Sure, my ass and quads felt the burn but after a stressful few weeks compounded by the usual day-in-day-out agony of merely being, to disconnect and embrace nature, if not momentarily, was positively transcendent. I’m acutely aware that this all sounds annoyingly granola and quintessentially privileged. I don’t care. I felt good for the first time in a long, long time and moments like that, shared with Aislinn, are the sorts of things that make each rotation around the sun all the more bearable.
It’s an ironic twist of fate to begin embracing literal waterfalls just as I’ve discarded the metaphorical ones that TLC (or if you’re like me: Ben Gibbard) sang of. The vices, ghosts, errata of my past have weighed me down and obliterated my spirit. To be engulfed in a pocket of benevolence, a place with glossy hues of blue, green, and yellow polished by rain as the damp soil expanded to welcome the sole of my boot with each step, permitting me a moment of peace… my brain and its knowledge of the English language are terribly insufficient in articulating just how important that moment was to me.
With our eyes on the exit, I took another glimpse at the gorge. Families gathered to take photos, as children on field trips expressed their awe. I tried to imagine what an eight year-old Daniel Nava would’ve thought of it all. I tried to imagine what an eight year-old Daniel Nava would’ve thought of his 35-year old counterpart.
Back on Interstate 84, the four-lane highway saw cars veer away from the center. We caught a glimpse of a bald eagle, sitting perched on the yellow lane divider. A man is sprinting on the shoulder of the highway, clearly attempting to get the bird off the road. It must have been a half-mile run as we saw his white pickup truck pulled over on the shoulder further down the road, hazards on, with the snout of a dog peeking out of the rear cab window. Our vacation will provide us with ample waterfalls & hikes, abundant libations & culinary delights but above all, it provided me with the salient and unmistakable feeling of being present. Within the noise & within the silence, the goal is to remain centered, present, and unapologetically alive.
10.
Fallen Leaves
(Aki Kaurismäki)
Life can be bleak, but then there’s Aki Kaurismäki bleak. Hungarian novelist Magda Szabó once suggested that with the passage of time, we trade our youth not for wisdom or serenity or sound judgment but rather, only the awareness of our “universal disintegration.” That’s the kind of thing I should get tattooed (alongside a Jinro soju toad with a long straw sipping from a grapefruit, but I digress.) More importantly, that’s the general vibe you get when walking into a Kaurismäki film; the world is a dire place that’s chipping away at us.
Set in Helsinki, we observe Ansa (Alma Pöysti) eke out a meager living. She works in a supermarket as a cashier, where she stows away expired goods into her satchel, avoiding the prying eyes of security. She turns on the radio to hear reports on war and death in Kyiv as she’s eating her microwave dinner alone in her fluorescently lit apartment. Then there’s Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), a construction worker, who takes a swig from the bottle every morning, stowing away his liquor in various locations around the work site. Ansa and Holappa will meet, at a karaoke bar of all places, and form a connection. It’s not one of those insanely passionate affairs. There’s no grandiose gestures. It’s just two lonely people, finding something in one another that fills the loneliness in their hearts.
For a long time, I found it harder and harder to understand what my physical existence actually means. I think Ansa and Holappa feel the same way. They’re spokes on the wheel, both fired from their jobs and forced to fit in somewhere else. They’re durable, but it comes at a great cost; they sacrifice their agency for daily, dead-end monotony. What breaks that cycle is companionship. Whether it’s toxic masculinity or his toxic beverage of choice, it takes Holappa longer to come to that realization, where his vices get the best of him. He shuts down, shuns Ansa, and has to drag himself from rock bottom to understand what he's lost. I sympathize. In the meantime, Ansa endures. The two reconnect in the sort of deadpan way that Kaurismäki has made a career out of. What could have been observed as a grand gesture takes place off-screen because that’s not what this is about. It’s about what happens after. The quiet moments, the stillness; sometimes you just need someone to be there to sit with you in silence. At that point, the filling of silences is left to those with voices, and these two have endured a litany of setbacks and personal failures to last several lifetimes, effectively rendering them mute. To wit: the leading cause of death is life, so why not try to make that life worth living.
09.
The Killer
(David Fincher)
To paraphrase Edward Norton in David Fincher’s other film about misguided masculine ennui: what kind of trauma defines me as a person?
In The Killer, Fincher swaps out the IKEA catalog for a Nemesis Arms Vanquish assault rifle. We observe our nameless Killer (Michael Fassbender) waiting. He provides his coda - a potpourri of trendy 21st century nihilism melded with quotes from Aleister Crowley and Popeye the Sailor - in monotonous voiceover as he proceeds with an elaborate stretching routine in an abandoned WeWork office space. In a world of convenience, how can we streamline murder? Make it as easy as swiping right or purchasing something off Amazon. It gives new meaning to the concept of hustle culture. But buyer beware of user error, as this man of discipline, motivated by capital and insistent that his worldview yields a life of value, botches the job. As he listens to Morrisey’s baritone to drown out the noise in his head, he pulls the trigger and misses. In moments like that, where we fuck up, life can be sped up too much and it falls on us to slow it down. It takes a lot of effort to not give a fuck.
It is simply a miracle of this world that someone like _________ ever enters it. Or at least that’s what it seems like the Killer is communicating when his only loved one, Magdala (Sophie Charlotte) is sent to the hospital as a result of his mistake. The Killer’s worldview places intrinsic value on being “one of the few” rather than one of the many. He proceeds to exact his vengeance on the people that hurt Magdala, a clear reflection of that coda in practice, only to return to his tropical paradise, retiring and essentially accepting that he’s one of the many. He mercilessly murders anyone involved in hurting Magdala, with exception of the bankrolling, Sub Pop shirt-wearing client Claybourne (Arliss Howard). Skipping him, permitting him to live, allows the Killer to completely disengage from his worldview. He yields his advantage and breaks the cycle.
Here’s where personal and professional collide, and where our codas, belief systems, faith in God, Allah, Wiccan mother goddesses, and green paper all crumble in the face of love. See, the Killer’s cold, detached belief system ends up losing its persuasive powers when confronted with someone that effortlessly makes him want to be the best version of himself, where he involuntarily mimics them, not because they’re controlling but because they’re compelling and generous in spirit and mind. I’ve experienced that. And I’ve experienced the feeling in its negation. I’ve chased, and performed the literal and metaphorical gymnastics of trying to achieve an idealized life. Fincher and Fassbender’s suggestion at the end of The Killer presents this rejection of the chase as defeat; as joining “one of the many” in complacency, detached from the world and its chaos. But like so much of the Killer’s worldview, it’s bullshit. To be free from want, to be content in the present, is enough. Whether it’s a trail of dead bodies or a litany of broken hearts, eventually we have to let go of the self-deception and have the willingness to accept responsibility for our own lives. Reaching that conclusion, I think, makes you distinctly one of the few.
08.
John Wick: Chapter 4
(Chad Stahelski)
“Second chances are the refuge of men who failed,” says Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård). The glib proclamation comes from a man afforded the luxuries of life at birth, fed with a diamond-embroidered silver spoon, and provided with the societal blessing that comes with an absence of melanin. He murders Charon (the late Lance Reddick), the Continental’s concierge, and the calm ferryman doesn’t ask for a second chance, but instead recedes into the periphery of life’s frame.
John Wick 4 reads like a eulogy, a statement on the Sisyphean journey of finding peace, and the agonizing reality that a good death can only come after a good life. We all strive for it, and like with Fincher’s The Killer, John Wick 4 captures its multifaceted, violent protagonists in the moments of their greatest failures. The film examines those who remain by John Wick’s (Keanu Reeves) side. There are those that sacrifice parts of themselves, keeping Wick accountable for his litany of mistakes, but also steadfast in their loyalty, in their friendship. “Everything he touches dies” says Akira (Rina Sawayama), when protesting the safe harbor that her father, Koji Shimazu (Hiroyuki Sanada), provides for Wick. Koji would later remark that “friendship means little when it’s convenient.” That sentiment spoke to every one of my experiences over the last few years. As Wick attempts to make a deadline before the sun rises in Paris, he confronts faceless enemies at the Arc de Triomphe, finding himself navigating the sewers before coming above ground, where he has to make the long walk up the steps of the Sacré Coeur.
Like many, I’ve walked those steps. And as Wick thinks he’s survived the onslaught of his past, he finds an army waiting. Just as he’s about to reach the summit, he tumbles to the very bottom, back at the start. It’s a deliberately grim outlook, the Eisenstein effect of knowing that time is chipping away, and no matter what you do, the bottom gives way and you’re back to square one. We’ve just swapped the Ukrainian Odessa Steps with a French landmark. But then Caine (Donnie Yen) extends his hand. The blind mercenary offers Wick friendship at his lowest, as the two make their way up to the Sacré Coeur.
Maybe I’m continually resisting reality. And maybe I’m giving an ultra violent sequel too much credit. But even at my lowest, and believe me, my lows get low, I firmly believe that my enemies aren’t meant to last. Whether they fade into the periphery or offer their hand in peace, I simply must have faith in second chances, forgiveness, and redemption. Because if I didn’t, then what point is there in climbing up those steps, and to miss the sun rising?
07.
Past Lives
(Celine Song)
Sometimes you fall in love with the story more than the person. Maybe it’s your high school sweetheart, a woman that you were crushing on for months before mustering up the courage to talk to her. Days turn to weeks turn to months turn to years at the blink of an eye and all the incompatibilities and frustrations that surface during that time seem to blend in with the long shadow of how you first met. Or maybe it’s a new year, a new you, and you’re trying to do things the quote unquote right way and you meet someone in a karaoke bar and immediately hit it off and feel a freedom that you hadn’t felt before. It’s as if you’ve discovered a new voice, where you cover up each other’s poor pitches to create something harmonious. But the music stops, arguments pile up in a tone-deaf sort of way, and what you expect from one another becomes increasingly difficult for either of you to realize, leaving the whole thing to end on a minor key. Or maybe the present is a dumpster fire and you’re running from your past and find a clean slate elsewhere, where you lift the gauze from your eyes and look to find someone that thinks and talks in a way that you rationalize is a cosmic calling. But you still have to come home to all the things that you were running from in the first place.
Nora and Hae Sung (Greta Lee and Teo Yoo) were not meant to be lovers. They grew up together in South Korea before Nora’s parents emigrated. “When you leave, you lose things, but you also gain things, too” says Nora’s mother as they prepare to depart. Still children, Nora and Hae Sung go their separate paths. Years pass and through social media, the two reconnect before being confronted with the painful reality that a long-distance relationship is not something either of them want. And so more time passes, and Nora gets married to an American writer named Arthur (John Magaro, in what may be my favorite American performance of 2023). 12 years pass, with Arthur and Nora building a life together. It’s at this pivotal time when Hae Sung decides to visit New York City, where he hopes to reconnect with his childhood friend and unrequited love.
I think about what I’ve gained since losing so much. Call it a defect of my kind, but I often dwell on hypotheticals, wondering how narrowly I missed or avoided living a radically different life. A symptom of capitalism or patriarchy, maybe, but ultimately what I have in front of me is so much more than I could have ever imagined. Song cites the concept of inyeon, whereby the suggestion is that in this life, Nora and Hae Sung may not be together, but in a future one it’s possible. This Buddhist riff on reincarnation makes me think of the concept of sabbam dukkham, whereby we all experience the pain of being alive. Alive in the present or in the future, our hearts will hurt. That inevitably, that reality, took me a long time to understand. But now that I do, I’m able to live a better life for it. And I think Nora and Hae Sung do too.
06.
Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros
(Frederick Wiseman)
Frederick Wiseman’s documentaries have always been important to me. 1987’s Near Death made me consider a life in medicine. 1997’s Public Housing made me acutely aware of the disenfranchisement of so many of the inhabitants of the city that I (sometimes regrettably) call home. Crazy Horse led me to Paris and well… I enjoyed that. There’s not a more important documentarian alive, and he stakes a legitimate claim to being the best active filmmaker on the planet.
Seeing Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros in a crowded theater on a gloomy Saturday afternoon at the Gene Siskel Film Center, seated front and center, left my heart full but my stomach rumbling, reminiscing of some of the best dining experiences of the year. I would grab a glass of a red blend immediately after the four-hour runtime.
Sushi Suite 202, Chicago, IL: A birthday present from Aislinn. A 17-course omakase experience, combined with a sake tasting. Several servings of Kikusui’s Junmai Daiginjo sake were consumed, as I shared the anniversary of my 35th rotation around sun with a young Northwestern couple and sisters also celebrating a birthday. We had free reign of the soundtrack for the evening, which ended with an unrehearsed but impeccable karaoke rendition of Sisqó’s power ballad Thong Song. I would refund a portion of that dinner later in the evening. I bring refinement everywhere I go.
Gaijin, Chicago, IL: My first experience with okonomiyaki, a savory Japanese pancake, composed of crisp cabbage and mixed with pork belly, bacon, and kimchi. We were seated at the bar as we observed the chefs shape our meal, sculpting the pancake with such effortlessness. Only thing smoother than their griddling was the sake flight that accompanied the meal.
Bible Club, Portland, OR: “PRAISE THE LORD & pass the booze” is inscribed on the menus for this lovely speakeasy, where the libations included a staple sazerac and a hot Westward whiskey mixed with vanilla, pineapple, and cinnamon. Both were the sort of subtly complex cocktails that demanded you to sit and contemplate everything on your palette.Following a lengthy day of hiking I saw this refuge as a spiritual calling. It seemed like the sort of place where Lucy Dacus would’ve begun writing her next album.
Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery, Woodinville, WA: I was reminded of Eyes Wide Shut as we entered the premises, with the driveway leading up to the fairgrounds possessing a casual opulence that, under the cloak of darkness, seemed primed for an orgy. We, however, opted for a lunch wine tasting. It was our extracurricular option, a grenache, syrah, and mourvèdre blend that their website refers to as having “earthy minerality”, that really won me over. I’m no closer to understanding what earthy minerality actually means, but I’ll take a bottle or five.
Joule, Seattle, WA: A Korean-fusion restaurant that commemorated its anniversary with a collection of their most celebrated dishes; you can’t arrange fate. Whether it was the delicious bourbon, amaro, aperol, yuzu & soju concoction (tastes better than it sounds), their signature spicy rice cakes, or the impeccable sous vide octopus, such decadence could only be followed by a trip to the dive bar across the street, the surreally blue-tinted Pacific Inn Pub, where Aislinn and I split a cheap beer that we could not finish.
As I watched Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros, I was taken aback by the profound complexity of everything involved in creating a menu, gathering the necessary, environmentally-conscious ingredients, and the sheer volume of details required in every facet of their business. I’ve been in operating rooms for brain surgery that were more laidback. Was that attention to detail there in every one of the restaurants and bars I’ve cited? Maybe not. But in their own unique way they afforded me an experience unique from one another, all centered on food and community. Someone I used to know would often tell me that “food is life.” I’m inclined to agree.
05.
Anatomy of a Fall
(Justine Triet)
"Sometimes a couple is kind of a chaos and everybody is lost. Sometimes we fight together and sometimes we fight alone, and sometimes we fight against each other, that happens."
It’s story time with Daniel Nava, baybay.
Sara and I were working from home during the height of COVID. The dining area and living room were a shared space and I was my usual aloof self, chowing down on breakfast and scrolling through my phone. She had been arguing with her roommate lately, regarding breaking their lease. The finer details on the matter always seemed sketchy to me and it wasn’t until much later, when the reasons became abundantly clear. Her roommate had to take a Zoom call and requested that we leave the shared space. I didn’t protest. But Sara did, staking a claim on the area and suggesting that the roommate take it in her room. She did. A half hour later, the roommate’s boyfriend would then arrive unexpectedly, setting a workspace up for himself at the other end of the room. It was a tense situation, made all the more awkward by the boyfriend’s need to blast Willie Nelson on a Friday before noon. We had an appointment for later in the day and I figured we would just wait it out, but Sara opted for confrontation. Loud confrontation¹. Nelson’s baritone had nothing on Sara, who met the boyfriend’s arrival as a personal affront. Her roommate emerged from her room, as she and I attempted to diffuse the tumultuous situation. We left and Sara vowed to leave the apartment as quickly as possible, reaching out to friends about changing her living arrangements. Later in the day, I commented on how I would never want to cross Sara. Call it an omen, but it’s a casual reminder that I should take my own advice.
Before we broke up, I was slated for the second dose of my Pfizer COVID vaccine. Her friend was inoculated the preceding day and felt terrible. Keep in mind that this was all novel at the time. I was among the first to have the shots to begin with and looming skepticism and fears were exceedingly prominent. When confronted with this reality, Sara suggested that we cancel our plans for the day. When asked why, she was honest: she didn’t want to have to take care of me if I was going to be bedridden. Can’t fault that honesty. I was understandably sore about it as we went about the day with a sense of resentment before going out to dinner in the West Loop, where arguments about the future, what we meant to one another, etc. ended up boiling over. We broke up the following day after what was supposed to be our first day of couple’s therapy. We dated for five months. Regrettably, that’s not how the story ends.
Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is on trial for the murder of her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis). Both writers, Sandra enjoyed greater success than Samuel, leaving him to rear their blind child, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). We’re first introduced to Samuel as an interruption, as he blasts an instrumental reggae version of 50 Cent’s P.I.M.P while Sandra is being interviewed by a literary journal. We don’t know much about Samuel until we see the two have a confrontation in a flashback, an argument that seemingly has boiled over after years of resentment.
It’s an argument that I’m familiar with, more or less, on both ends of the spectrum. One partner is achieving a greater degree of notoriety or professional success, and it leaves the other to pick up the slack in that relationship. It’s the give-and-take of any serious relationship and it’s finding that sweet spot, where schedules and lifestyles complement each other, that is key to something meaningful and enduring. But like with all bad arguments, we see Sandra get chastised for her lifestyle, where tangential details are presented in a courtroom to deny her the complexity of being a human being. Arguments fester. Ideologies don’t align. Let’s not talk about jealousy. Sandra and Samuel’s big fight was recorded for a public audience to hear and interpret, and out of that, a microcosm is afforded macro importance. The prosecution even cites Sandra’s writing as acts of autofiction, as if piecing words together is a gateway to premeditated murder. None of it serves to illustrate the innate depth of Sandra’s inner life nor does it get anyone closer to the truth. But people do this, compile data so as to define you as a collection of salacious details. I know this too well. In Sandra’s case, the details are extracted from 20 minutes of her life. Twenty minutes out of the millions of minutes that she has left. For the remainder of her minutes, Sandra will reflect upon this moment, day-in, day-out. I know this too well.
A knock at my door in the middle of March on a rainy evening in Chicago. I was in the bathtub, soaking, despairing, ruminating. Sara made her way to my home. She got it all out, in that familiar loud-confrontation-when-life-is-not-working-out-my-way kind of way, reprimanding me for my litany of infidelities and lies. At the time, I thought it was pretty rich coming from her. I still do, frankly. I asked her what she wanted. I made my peace with the reality of our situation and saw no future with her. To Sara, I was the same person that she read about in a Twitter thread². I know that’s not true but a whiplash happens when you go from experiencing love from one person to unmitigated hate. Your brain doesn’t know what to do with the change so it begins to connect the two. The sad³ thing is that this very thing happened many times over the course of the few years that I knew her. There are many kinds of intimacies. We just swapped one for the other. Sometimes we fight together and sometimes we fight alone, and sometimes we fight against each other, that happens⁴.
These days, I actively avoid the intensity of those polarities. The vehemence of those emotions are just too overwhelming. The ending of Anatomy of a Fall has Sandra emerge from the chaos with the suggestion of staging a comeback to normality. But I think what the film expresses in its closing moments so exquisitely, and what makes it speak so profoundly to me, is that there’s no “comeback”. There’s no consolation prize for surviving. Which begs the question that I’ve been asking myself for months now: If that was me then, then who am I now? If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I am more than a collection of salacious details. We all are.
¹ Like really loud
² Reader, this hurt like hell
³ WC: Difficult to differentiate between sad or pathetic
⁴ And that’s how this story ends, as a penciled-in footnote
04.
Killers of the Flower Moon
(Martin Scorsese)
“The apple rots according to the ailment of the apple tree, and not the sickness of the Earth,” says José Saramago in Journey to Portugal, a quote that I feel is tested to its brink in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. This film, about the exploitation of the Osage Nation, their slow drip massacre and the subsequent takeover of their land by American oil companies, centers its narrative on Leonardo DiCaprio’s rendition of Lennie Small. As Ernest Burkhart, he’s the embodiment of white nationalism; a dimwitted pawn, exploited yet on the oppressor’s side, and capable of reaping the benefits of aligning with history’s quote unquote victors. You’d take pity on him if he weren’t actively murdering his Osage wife, Mollie (Lily Gladstone). Those upset by what this film is - a gangster movie made by the preeminent American filmmaker of my time, a filmmaker that etched his reputation on stories of violent white oppressors - probably aren’t paying close enough attention to what he’s doing here.
Whether we’re contending with genocide in Palestine or ethnic cleansing in Sudan, it’s what William Hale (Robert DeNiro) contends, the puppetmaster behind the Osage murders, that sums up our history’s treatment of this and all exploitation, “There might be a public outcry, for a while. But then you know what happens? People forget. They don't remember, they don't care. They just don't care. It's just going to be another everyday common tragedy.” The reality is that these stories are compromised, from the start, as narratives reflected by the hegemonic elite. They are the storytellers that dictate how we perceive history’s great atrocities. Scorsese is reckoning with this concept. To bring it back to another Saramago quote, “Flushed with shame, and therefore, by this very fact, capable of redemption.” There’s no shame in Burkhart. There’s no shame in Hale. They’re in separate prison cells and impossibly maintain their loyalty, not necessarily to each other, but to their own selfish preservation. Mollie, who’s offered her loyalty to Burkhart, stays with him until he fails to give her the one thing she asked from the beginning: the truth. Left with nothing, Mollie gives nothing in return. Or in essence, the leitmotif of American history.
03.
May December
(Todd Haynes)
I often remark that I peaked in high school. It’s followed by a laugh and greeted with a “You’re not serious” but there’s a lot of truth to it. Fact is, high school was the last time I remember being happy. At least in a prolonged, uninterrupted sense. Or that’s how my brain remembers it. It’s a silly thing to say seeing as how my life now has its spells of intense bliss. I’ve accomplished plenty. I’ve experienced plenty and then some. But the comfort of my youth, the ease with which I would interact with friends and go about my daily sabbatical walks, reflecting on the day, afforded me the joy of embracing the present. It’s a feeling that I have to actively chase now, and the mere act of chasing after it, as if engineering comfort or some facsimile of it, seems to disqualify any positive result it could yield. I’m stunted that way.
Tabloids of the 90s meet cancel culture of the now in Todd Haynes’ new film, May December. Watching the film at a sold-out Chicago International Film Festival screening at the Music Box Theater, I was left disoriented by an audience that seemed to be clued into some underlying joke. Whenever Marcelo Zarvos’ score would drop, the audience would burst into laughter. I get it. Haynes and Zarvos disarm the audience with humor to welcome us in. But this is a deeply unsettling and complex film about stunted men, calculating women, and dispassionate culture vultures. Having the benefit of rewatching the film at home, I have to say that if you’re still laughing by its end, I’m left to wonder if we’re watching the same movie.
The film centers on an actress named Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) as she meets Gracie (Julieanne Moore). Elizabeth is slated to portray Gracie for her next role and is looking to prepare, to get a sense of her character. Gracie lives in Savannah with her husband Joe (Charles Melton) and their teenage twins who are set to graduate high school shortly. Elizabeth arrives as Gracie and Joe are hosting a barbeque. What follows is an encapsulation of the film itself, wherein Elizabeth picks up a discrete brown box that’s been left at Gracie and Joe’s front door. The two accept the package, disappointingly, and brush off its contents. See, someone left Gracie and Joe a piece of shit in that box. Elizabeth is understandably aghast. But to people who have experienced this, on a day-in, day-out basis, it’s merely part of the daily tapestry of living. “It’s feces,” says Gracie, with a casual indifference that pales in comparison to her concerns about having enough hot dogs for the day.
The reason why Gracie is the subject of Elizabeth’s upcoming film is that, years ago, Gracie was caught having sex with Joe while he was in the seventh grade. Following incarceration, the two married while Joe was still young, and she gave birth to their twin children. May December’s first half is divided into the tenuous relationship between Elizabeth and Gracie. Elizabeth attempts to uncover more material about Gracie, learning about her past marriage and the son that emerged from that. But it’s when Joe becomes a focal point that the film changes shape, shifting from its All About Eve/Persona qualities, and mutating into a profoundly tragic story of arrested development.
Joe is complicated. He’s a product of intense grooming and was stripped of the childhood that even his children are struggling to obtain. The shadow of his past, the past that he shares with Gracie, is mammoth. Gracie is almost impossible to read, tip-toeing between either delusional or profoundly calculating. There seems to be little room for both, but as these things tend to go, there’s something deeper than what her character permits us to know. She’s encased, perhaps selfish, but as the axiom states: hurt people hurt people. And so there’s Joe. Naive, profoundly wounded Joe. He’s thrust into adulthood before he even becomes a teenager. His attempts to build a relationship with his son, by smoking weed, have him confused as to whether they’re making a positive memory, or if he’s freaking him out. That kind of transparency and openness is practically pathological. You get the sense that he hasn’t questioned his place in the world until now when he meets Elizabeth, a stand-in for the Gracie that he first met, and now comprehends the magnitude of their actions. He attempts to get to the bottom of his new feelings and is immediately shut down, reduced to collateral damage in tabloid fiction.
It’s the steady stream of things. We progress from hushed rumor to creation myth to personal fact to ritual truth, forming our origin stories and leaving little room for anything in between. As Gracie and Elizabeth contemptuously use each other, there’s Joe, standing behind a fence, passively watching his children graduate with the hopeful promise of a future that he was never afforded. It’s positively soul-crushing. That may be the difference between Gracie and Joe, in the end. One is completely indifferent to their fate, while the other must passively observe; a grown man made diminutive by the quote-unquote grownups around him. I’m not proud to consider him a patron saint.
When I have my children, I can’t pretend they won’t have hurdles to contend with because of me. I hope that they don’t grow up stunted, and see a peak that extends far past their teen years. But that’s something I can’t promise.
Sadly, I don’t think there’s anything especially funny about that.
A one and a two…
About Dry Grasses
(Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
&
Afire
(Christian Petzold)
There was a time in my life, up until fairly recently, where I considered every slight against me as a personal affront to my integrity. I valued what others had to say about me, and found no way to calm my agitated mind, creating a paradigm whereby false accusations can justify cruelty; I’ve been cruel and the subsequent cruelty that I’m dealt is my karmic penance. But I returned to a quote from James Agee’s A Death in the Family, a novel I read while laying on my firm twin mattress with its itchy, stained white bed sheet from my second trip to the psych ward, that inspired me to keep going, “Just do your best to endure it and let any question of worthiness take care of itself. That’s more than enough.” My 30s have been an endurance test and I have the scars to prove it.
The two best films of 2023 are seasonal complements to one another. They center on male characters overcome by their perceived lack of control, believing the world owes them something. They’re easily identifiable men, like holding a mirror up to myself and noticing something familiar in their features despite the distortion. The winter hymnal of the two, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses details the life of Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), a teacher putting in mandatory time in a provincial village of Anatolia. It’s a civil service of sorts, and despite the personal and professional relationships that he’s fostered during his years, he’s excited to leave. Frankly, he thinks he’s above it, finding the provincial life meager and insipid. Much of the milieu during the three-hour plus runtime are in the snow capped mountains of Pontic and Ararat; terrain that’s as inhospitable as it is gorgeous. They loom over Samet, as the weight of mountains corresponds with his bitter and antagonistic personality, where the remedy to his despair is rooted in pursuit of a future that’s certain. A future in the city. A future not rooted in the present. Patience is not his virtue. But he soon becomes the subject of an investigation, where his closeness to an underage female student is called into question. His re-appointment is subsequently delayed, leaving him to wonder what his life will become now that his plans are derailed.
Christian Petzold’s Afire is the summertime interlude to Ceylan’s work, a comparably breezier film at nearly half the runtime. It features a frumpy writer named Leon (Thomas Schubert) vacationing with his art school friend Felix (Langston Uibel). They’re heading to Felix’s parent’s summer home, a German cottage alongside the Baltic coast that will serve both artists nicely as they attempt to make some progress on their work. But from the start things get rocky, when their car breaks down, forcing the two to meander through the forest with their luggage, attempting to get to their destination before the sun sets. For Leon, such an inconvenience is barely endurable. One possible horror film situation is swapped for another when the two discover that the summer house has an occupant that they’ll have to share with. As Leon and Felix attempt to get some rest, Nadja’s (Paula Beer) moaning can barely be muffled by the paper thin walls. Felix is unbothered by their guest, whereas Leon can only think of how the interruption in his sleep will affect his capacity to write.
Thing is, Leon can barely get a word out. He’s miserable, yes, and after one successful novel, he is experiencing a severe case of writer’s block. His inability to produce leaves him to lash out at Felix; as Felix is excitingly struck with an idea for his photography portfolio, something he passionately shares with Leon, he’s met with Leon’s cynicism and misanthropy. Similarly, the bike-riding, red-dress wearing Nadja is the clear object of Leon’s infatuation, but like a schoolboy, he rebuffs her kindness with cruelty. He looks down on her as a philistine. When she attempts to connect with him through his writing, suggesting that she would be curious to see what he produces, he accepts, thinking that it may be an opportunity to flex his intellect. Instead, he discovers that she’s an academic and absolutely eviscerates his work. Leon is a man that constantly believes he’s one step ahead, believing he has the answers to everyone’s questions, but that foolhardiness is a shortsighted, insofar that he doesn’t give the people around him enough credit, and conversely, the smartest man in the room is left to feel small.
These tortured, miserable souls are imprisoned by their own machinations. For Ceylan’s Samet, he’s cut out for failure, lashing out at students yet content with permitting the rest of the world to chew him and spit him out. This is the response of a man who once saw his future through an aperture that is now closed. For Petzold’s Leon, it’s not until he experiences real, genuine tragedy when he’s able to grasp the importance of the present. But that present can only be observed through the past, where he writes about his summertime experiences as a piece of auto-fiction. He writes of lovers on Pompeii, connecting it with his own tale of woe, but just like the charred remains of the past, it’s all too late. Leon experiences life in retrospect, Samet through visions, conversations on hypotheticals in dimly-lit rooms. This all occurs in their heads. I think what both filmmakers are imploring, through their candid and cutting deconstruction of both men, is to consider living a life outside of the confines of their mental prisons.
Last year, I wrote about hate. I wrote about how anger gives the illusion of warmth, but ends up burning you up. I still believe in it. But now I ask myself: what fire dies when you feed it? I fixate too often on the inalterable past; that fire is kept alive by this fixation. Living in the past, mourning my future, I embodied the men of Ceylan and Petzold’s films. I was encased and embittered, singed by a prison of my own making. But what I see in these men seems to be fading in the periphery as traits and qualities of a bygone era. Maybe it’s wishful thinking. I’m certainly failable. But for now, the old flames of the past have been tempered, doused by the slow and steady pitter-patter of the present.
And I’m happier for it.