We saw a preview screening of Bertolucci's "The Dreamers" last night, and I'd recommend it. Although you can tell that the screenplay was adapted by a novelist (there's a lot of pedantic narration) and he used the characters as mouthpieces with some monologues, the character portraits were excellent and the cinematography and art direction was top-notch. I liked the story they were telling, even if the telling of it was unbearable at some points with all the monologues. It was a love letter to Paris in the sixties and films at the Cinematheque. The self-referentiality (which I always adore) rocked.  ¶ 07:53

 
Ray Lawrence’s “Bliss” (1985), based on Peter Carey’s novel of the same name, is about an advertising executive named Harry Joy. Harry loves to tell stories. He’s happy with the world and his place in it. He adores his wife Bettina and their two children, runs a successful advertising agency, and is unaware of the fact that he’s about to die. Harry sees his death as though it’s someone else’s. He watches from outside his body, but when he realizes that he doesn’t want to die, in a calm, clear space, he finds his way back into his body. He’d been dead for four minutes, and will never be the same again.

As Harry recovers from his heart attack and subsequent surgery, he conducts tests to determine if he’s gone mad or if he’s gone to hell. He suspects that he’s no longer living with his real family, but clever imitations placed there to torment him. He’s haunted by strange and disturbing dreams, and details about his life have changed from what he remembers. His wife is having an affair with Harry’s partner, and the two are planning to leave and start their own ad agency in New York. His son is selling cocaine, and his daughter is buying those drugs with sexual favors.

He decides that the only way out of his hell is to be good. He cleans the house, shines his family’s shoes, and begins firing his agency’s largest clients because they manufacture carcinogens. He also decides to escape his family and move into a hotel, where he meets and falls in love with Honey Barbara, who validates his theory in a discussion of Karma. His family and business partner are convinced that he’s gone mad, and decide to institutionalize him.

Harry buys his way out of the institution by selling his half of the agency to his wife, and he promises Honey Barbara that he’s going to move to the bush with her. However, Bettina blackmails him into selling advertising to petrochemical companies. The ad agency is doing well, Harry and Bettina are making loads of money, and Honey Barbara watches with despair as Harry is quickly devoured by the world he inhabited prior to his first death. She leaves him, convinced there’s no way of saving him.

Shortly thereafter, Bettina is diagnosed with cancer from prolonged exposure to petrol fumes. She realizes that Harry was right all along: petrochemicals do cause cancer, and kills herself, along with the agency’s petrol clients using a pair of super-sized Molotov cocktails. Finally freed from Bettina, Harry moves to the bush to look for Honey Barbara, but she’s not convinced that he’s any different, and refuses to have anything to do with him.

Despite that, Harry’s accepted into Honey Barbara’s community, and he chooses the task of planting trees—a love letter to Honey Barbara that will take years to arrive. Honey Barbara loves honey, but every April, her bees produce awful honey. One day, she notices that it’s not too bad. In fact, it’s pretty good. And when she goes out to the forest to see why, she realizes that all the trees Harry’s been planting over the years have been carefully selected to blossom in April, giving her bees a decent source from which to make honey. She finally forgives Harry and the two spend the rest of their lives happily ever after.

Harry Joy was fortunate to experience more than one death. He was able to realize that death is not the ultimate end, but merely a chance for a new beginning. He found the strong, timeless and enduring bones in his life. Ultimately, Harry Joy used his first death to strip away the non-essential, to re-evaluate his motives and his lifestyle, to define, for him, those enduring bones of his existence. Although circumstances prevented him from living the way he felt he needed to at first, he eventually was able to make the necessary changes to live authentically with his beliefs. Honey Barbara recognized that, was able to forgive him, and they were happy together for the rest of their lives. Because of those decisions, he dies his final death at peace, and not wishing to return to his body this second time, he spreads himself thinner and thinner, until he’d made himself as thin as a gas. He sighs, and the trees are not too busy to take this sigh back in through their leaves.

This article is the second in a series of film reviews based on the major arcana of the tarot. It was published in the Diana's Grove Mystery School Newsletter in February of 2004.
  ¶ 20:25

 
In 1971, Melvin van Peebles financed, wrote, directed and starred in “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasss Song”. He created the film as a response to what he perceived as an inaccurate portrayal of contemporary African-American life. The film was a milestone for a number of reasons.

It was the first widely released film made entirely with black cast and crew. Its success demonstrated to Hollywood that the African-American market segment was a viable one to which films could be marketed. It also marked the birth of the “blaxploitation film”.

As a genre, ‘blaxploitation’ refers to films that often present and reinforce negative stereotypes about African-Americans. Despite this, however, there was a strong message of black empowerment that was delivered with these films, and they were instant hits with audiences.

"A lot of films today are about victims, but most of the films then were about empowerment," says Pam Grier in an Entertainment Weekly interview. Grier is most noted for her role in “Coffy,” playing a nurse out for revenge against the people who made her sister a junkie.

At the time, mainstream cinema’s portrayal of black actors was limited at best. Mostly cast as criminals, there were few opportunities for black actors in mainstream cinema. Melvin van Peebles recognized this phenomenon. In the documentary “Baadasss Cinema” he says that he recognized that Hollywood wasn’t making films for black audiences, so he decided to exploit that untapped market by making a film that addressed issues relevant to African-American audiences.

At the time Peebles was working on his film, MGM was in production on “Shaft” starring Richard Roundtree, about a “black, muscular, fine-looking” private eye names John Shaft. In the film, he proves himself a worthy adversary to mobsters and kidnappers and quite a hit with the ladies. When the Isaac Hayes’ “Theme from Shaft” won an Academy Award, the market viability of blaxploitation films was further validated.

Other seminal works include “Truck Turner,” in which a bounty hunter goes on a gunfight-heavy hunt for his target, “Superfly, which romanticized the life of a drug dealer, Priest, and featured an incredible soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield, and “Blacula,” a black version of “Dracula”.

By the mid-seventies, though, the genre was on its way out. Black audiences, at first thrilled that movies were finally being created for them, were quickly disillusioned that the black heroes in the films were portrayed as pimps, dealers and thugs.

However, these films opened doors for many black actors to find acceptance in mainstream cinema and helped bring African-American themes and characters into the mainstream. The public’s acknowledgment of these films also paved the way for contemporary African-American directors such as Spike Lee (“She’s Gotta Have It”, “Do the Right Thing,” “25th Hour”), John Singleton (“Boyz N the Hood,” “Higher Learning,” and the 2000 remake of “Shaft”) and George Tillman (“Soul Food” and “Men of Honor”). There’s certainly a long way to go, but African-Americans in film have made remarkable strides since the early days of blaxploitation cinema.

MGM has released a number of films from its Soul Cinema collection. King Library on Locust and King Drive has an excellent selection, and others can be ordered from other library branches. They’re also available at various video stores around town.

This article was published in Riverwest Currents, February 2004. See the article here.   ¶ 18:55

 
In 1971, Melvin van Peebles financed, wrote, directed and starred in “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasss Song”. He created the film as a response to what he perceived as an inaccurate portrayal of contemporary African-American life. The film was a milestone for a number of reasons.

It was the first widely released film made entirely with black cast and crew. Its success demonstrated to Hollywood that the African-American market segment was a viable one to which films could be marketed. It also marked the birth of the “blaxploitation film”.

As a genre, ‘blaxploitation’ refers to films that often present and reinforce negative stereotypes about African-Americans. Despite this, however, there was a strong message of black empowerment that was delivered with these films, and they were instant hits with audiences.
"A lot of films today are about victims, but most of the films then were about empowerment," says Pam Grier in an Entertainment Weekly interview. Grier is most noted for her role in “Coffy,” playing a nurse out for revenge against the people who made her sister a junkie.
At the time, mainstream cinema’s portrayal of black actors was limited at best. Mostly cast as criminals, there were few opportunities for black actors in mainstream cinema. Melvin van Peebles recognized this phenomenon. In the documentary “Baadasss Cinema” he says that he recognized that Hollywood wasn’t making films for black audiences, so he decided to exploit that untapped market by making a film that addressed issues relevant to African-American audiences.

At the time Peebles was working on his film, MGM was in production on “Shaft” starring Richard Roundtree, about a “black, muscular, fine-looking” private eye names John Shaft. In the film, he proves himself a worthy adversary to mobsters and kidnappers and quite a hit with the ladies. When the Isaac Hayes’ “Theme from Shaft” won an Academy Award, the market viability of blaxploitation films was further validated.

Other seminal works include “Truck Turner,” in which a bounty hunter goes on a gunfight-heavy hunt for his target, “Superfly, which romanticized the life of a drug dealer, Priest, and featured an incredible soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield, and “Blacula,” a black version of “Dracula”.

By the mid-seventies, though, the genre was on its way out. Black audiences, at first thrilled that movies were finally being created for them, were quickly disillusioned that the black heroes in the films were portrayed as pimps, dealers and thugs.

However, these films opened doors for many black actors to find acceptance in mainstream cinema and helped bring African-American themes and characters into the mainstream. The public’s acknowledgment of these films also paved the way for contemporary African-American directors such as Spike Lee (“She’s Gotta Have It”, “Do the Right Thing,” “25th Hour”), John Singleton (“Boyz N the Hood,” “Higher Learning,” and the 2000 remake of “Shaft”) and George Tillman (“Soul Food” and “Men of Honor”). There’s certainly a long way to go, but African-Americans in film have made remarkable strides since the early days of blaxploitation cinema.

MGM has released a number of films from its Soul Cinema collection. King Library on Locust and King Drive has an excellent selection, and others can be ordered from other library branches. They’re also available at various video stores around town.

This article was published in Riverwest Currents, February 2004. See the article here.  ¶ 11:00