Coffee & Cigarettes

Most memorable moment from Jim Jarmusch’s (2003) film. It consists of 11 different shots of people around the theme coffee and … cigarettes. Iggy Pop and of course the always surprising Tom Waits at their best.

Dogs in Town

Or why Dogville is the best film ever made.

Ending last week’s post about the rape in Nanking (click here) where I put into context that people are as good or as bad as the situation wants them to be; I’d like to pick up from there. There’s lots of interesting psychology and sociology literature on this topic and luckily (but not that often) art also picks up once in a while on this theme. Yesterday I saw the film Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003) again. My favorite movie all-time without any doubt, and a picture that couldn’t reveal any more brilliant certain subtle evolving layers of some group confirmation, stigma, behavior and perception.

Apart from its unique Dogma95- and theatre-inspired presentation and setting, acting talent Nicole Kidman and its anti-Hollywood production in every possible way; this film is beyond universal truth as well I believe. And for all those reasons, a MUST-SEE. If the only thing you can think of by watching this, is that you’re up for 3 hours of entertainment-torture, please go back to your Transformers, Twilight or Jersey Shore corner of the room. And don’t return.

It’s always hard to review a movie as you know people who never have seen it might be reading (and for that your core target audience) and you don’t want to spoil the surprise for them. But then again, you’re writing this to share it with people that might never have heard of it before. So actually it’s hard for me to convince somebody here due I don’t want to ruin your experience watching it.

Dogville tells the story of Grace (Kidman) who is escaping a mob gang and searching for refuge in a very small, desolated mountain town named Dogville. In return for her hiding, she offers her services as physical labor for each inhabitant of whom all claim in the beginning “they don’t need any help”. As the story goes on, the perceived danger increases since police reports start to reach Dogville as they are in search for Grace. Slowly the people of Dogville start to change towards Grace and it doesn’t take long for the viewer to realize things can get out of control.

I think this picture is utterly brilliant as it shows in a very original way what might happen with very isolated small communities such as the town of Dogville. What happens when one person is perceived as the outsider in an isolated group of insiders? How far can groups go to protect an outsider risking their own face? How far do people go when they have somebody to work for them without any legal or formal regulations and restrictions? How strong is the power of one that thinks differently in the group and how long does it last? … etc.

It Might Get Loud

I finally got to see the music documentary ‘It Might Get Loud’ (2008) by Davis Guggenheim portraying 3 well-known yet different guitar rock stars: Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2) and definitely my favorite character: Jack White (The White Stripes).

It tells the story how these individuals are driven by not only a passion for music and creativity, but also a persuading need to find the exact sound they have in their heads. With a lot of effects, improvisation and home-made tools, these are the kind of guys that wrote rock history for sure.
It’s fun to see how the movie brings three different generations together, yet they all speak the same language. I’m not that hard on U2 and it is without any doubt the true legend is Jimmy Page and the music he wrote for Led Zeppelin that brought a rock band for the first time into football stadia since venues became to small for them. But I enjoyed the movie the most for the extravagant character and the personality phenomenon Jack White. When it comes to creativity and art I’ve always enjoyed the ones who walk the border of the insane a bit more than the average man. The music and art of what Jack has written for The White Stripes is also in my eyes a bit underrated. This is not a band that should be remembered by it’s ‘Seven Nation Army’ song, but by the brilliance, vision and creativity for creating such a wall of sound, catchy every time again.

Recommended for every music fan!

Society, You’re A Crazy Breed

One of my favorite movies is Into The Wild which tells the story based on the true life of Christopher McCandless aka “Alexander Supertramp”, a young guy in search for independent life away from civilization, society and “the mass”. After graduation he donates all his lifesavings to Oxfam and starts travelling without any money, credit cards or official documents. Through trying to survive in the wild, hitchhiking and depending on some gypsies, he manages to get around for a few years without giving any sign of life towards his relatives or friends.

The movie is truly amazing and highly inspiriting and yes, after watching it does give you the feeling you should immediately jump into your hiking boots and wander off without any map or point of direction. When you search the internet you find a lot of comments from people admiring this strong will and the guts of this guy for pulling something off like this. Next to that you also find messages from other people saying how stupid he was going to Alaska without any map while he was so close to a bridge or without any hunting experience trying to survive merely on nature. And than again, you find people embarking in endless and pointless internet discussions where nobody ever wins.

I believe none of them is right. It is true that after watching the movie, it’s hard to resist the inspiration you got out of it and you feel you should do something valuable for your life as well. First of all, it’s obvious you feel that way as you have been watching a 2-hour movie, probably sitting very comfortable in your couch and so it could be perceived you have “lost” another 2 hours of your life, merely on some entertainment. This contrast already gives you the ultimate boost to do something else. But second, I sense here a social force one more. One guy is brave enough to stand out the herd, and I will always strongly support that behavior, but it does not mean everybody else has to do that, since most of the time that will brings things not only back, but probably even worse the way they were before.

If everybody would to the same as Christopher, the world would get screwed big-time. There’s also absolutely no point for everybody to show this behavior, as than it would have no value anymore whatsoever. People always tend to follow an example, as mostly that charismatic example showed them not to do so in the first place. It’s a paradox we’ve seen a lot throughout history in social-, group- and mass-behavior. The bus where Christopher stayed during his time in Alaska has now become a pilgrimage spot for hiking travelers, while that was the spot Christopher choose to be away from it all actually.

On the other hand I definitely disagree with the people who want to classify his behavior as lunatic, stupid or immature. Yes, he could have taken a map with him, or a cell phone, or some more food, or  … But that was the whole point of his personal quest: being completely independent. Free from every tool society has brought upon us to make basis life and survival more easier. Christopher was a smart guy (so does his GPA’s say), not a poor guy (he chose freely to give away all his money) and he could return at any moment he wanted but he simple chose not to.

To end briefly, my point is very simple: I strongly have deep respect for a guy who has the guts to stand out the crowd and pull off something truly amazing and inspiring like he did, but I don’t feel he set the example everybody needs to follow. He did however made us think and rethink about how we should live our lives or how to perceive life in all it’s aspects humans have found themselves in nowadays.

R.I.P. Christopher.

Exit Through The Gift Shop

Exit Through the Gift Shop is more than a documenting movie about street art. It’s the real-life story that shows you what art should be all about, as luckily most of the people still believe in, but some don’t.

In the first place, the film is really great, to see a lot of great young guys doing there own thing during the nights in the streets. The starting purpose of this movie was to make a documentary about street art. Street art goes way further then just some illegal graffiti images sprayed around the city. It’s about a whole movement of people not deliberately trying to make a valid point, but in persuading their passion and risky execution, actually do.
While the documentary was supposed to be about this street art movement and one of its key leading figures in it: the British based artist called himself Banksy, the movie takes slowly another ironic point of view, since it develops actually going about the cameraman himself who was supposed to document this movement, Thierry Guetta, who suddenly starts calling himself ‘Mr Brainwash’.

Mr Brainwash is now known in the mainstream art world as a respectable artist with roots in the pop-art and street art culture. But by going through the movie, you already start to notice that this guy barely has anything meaningful to say or to contribute, especially when it comes down to the world of the arts. It’s pretty obvious that he want to be part of something he is not yet part of (constantly hanging around street artists with his camera), that he is adoring people like an adolescent that discovers a band for the first time while those are exactly the kind of people departing from this adoring lifestyle and attitude (how he is in such an ecstasy meeting Banksy) and how he does not have any valid points of why he’s doing things (the reason for filming, the making of the movie that turns out to be a 90 minute disaster and the fact he produces such an amount of photo-shopped paintings by a paid team under his guidance).

I think anybody who watches this movie and has a certain sense for real art, passion and the generating process of original ideas, will be annoyed at the end to see the real artists remain in a dark shade while this guy goes out like the hero of a new LA-based movement. It also brings up again the old question what’s art and what’s not. The key factors of this guy’s success where merely because some valid informational sources (a magazine and some internet blogs) were pointing it out. Almost nobody had ever heard of this guy before. And in a few days people are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a work for a name they hadn’t hear from a few days earlier. It gets me pissed off …

However, this movie is very recommendable. You do get a closer look into the street art movement and how passionate these guys can be about something other conservative people would just label as “the youth has no respect anymore and way to many time on their hands”. It also brought me in more contact with the work of Banksy which I will definitely search for in the near future (that telephone cell and that Guantanamo Bay prisoner in Disneyland were genius).