Just saw Youth. Paolo Sorrentino is the new Fellini, albeit a much more likable one. I’ve always found the films of Fellini a bit pretentious and theatrical (see for example’s Fellini’s contribution to Boccaccio ’70, “The Temptations of Doctor Antonio”).
Not so with Sorrentino. This is what I want from cinema. Reveries and emotions. A mix of high and low culture. Laughter and tears. Lots of philosophy. And buckets of beauty.
P.S.: I recently saw another film on old age, by Haneke, Amour. How I hated that film, despite that Haneke has made some of the best films of the 2000s.
Chantal Akerman‘s debut film “Saute ma ville” (1968, above) turned out to be quite prophetic. Akerman committed suicide last week. Suicide continues to fascinate me. Sometimes, I get a strange feeling of comfort when yet another person commits suicide. It reminds me that I am not doing that badly. I may, at times, be unhappy, but not that unhappy.
Above is an interview with Dutch scholar Menno Schilthuizen on Nature’s Nether Regions (Dutch title Darwin’s Peep Show), a book by Dutch scholar Menno Schilthuizen on animal genitalia in relation to evolution.
Forest Xylophone is a giant musical instrument built for a 2011 commercial for a cellphone with a wooden casing. The xylophone is operated by a simple wooden ball and plays Bach’s “Cantata 147”.
The contraption and the music it produces are both extremely likable.
It is reminiscent of The Way Things Go (1987) by Fischli and Weiss which I elected World Art Classic #463[1] last year.
In the film, Kant approaches the end of his life, which is entirely punctuated by habits acquired over many years. The leaving of his butler Martin Lampe will upset this well planned routine.
In the scene above, Kant reads a letter asking for help. It is a letter by Maria von Herbert, sent in August 1791.
“the philosopher shudders mortally at marriage, together with all that could persuade him to it—marriage as a fatal hindrance on the way to the optimum. Up to the present what great philosophers have been married? Heracleitus, Plato,Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Schopenhauer—they were not married, and, further, one cannot imagine them as married. A married philosopher belongs to comedy, that is my rule; as for that exception of a Socrates—the malicious Socrates married himself [to Xanthippe], it seems, ironice, just to prove this very rule.”
Asked what would he like to see in a documentary on a major philosopher, such as Hegel or Heidegger, Derrida replies he would want them to speak of their sexuality and ‘the part that love plays in their life’. He criticizes the dissimulation of such philosophers concerning their sex lives – ‘why have they erased their private life from their work?’
Researching Nietzsche I stumbled upon the film Beyond Good and Evil (1977) by Liliana Cavani, which follows the intense relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche, Lou Salome and Paul Rée.
Referring to the horse incident, the film The Turin Horse[4] asks “what happened to the horse?”.
In director Béla Tarr’s introductory words:
“In Turin on 3rd January, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Alberto. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche comes up to the throng and puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. His landlord takes him home, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan until he mutters the obligatory last words, ‘Mutter, ich bin dumm!’ [‘Mother, I am stupid!’ in German] and lives for another ten years, silent and demented, cared for by his mother and sisters. We do not know what happened to the horse.”
Marcus Belgrave (1936 – 2015) was a jazz trumpet player from Detroit, born in Chester, Pennsylvania. He recorded with a variety of famous musicians, bandleaders, and record labels since the 1950s.
