( ophir )

some scenes in melancholia are like gold--not fire because what we see there is static--made purely out of ice, gold seen through the indestructible density of crystal-clear ice. only von trier can do that, visually.

kirsten dunst is brilliant because of her blank stare, occasionally mask-like expression, and the genuinely mean streak. all of those ( Read more... )

so i've rewatched melancholia within the span of two days. i wasn't this affected by a film since... um... berlin alexanderplatz, but that was three years ago.

so i watched the white ribbon. it is indeed a lot like bergman: the space austere, enchanted, and not even violent--just cruel. it actually works well that he never offers any real explanation of what happened in the film--it begins and ends with reports on gossiping. and it's pretty much his style. speaking of haneke, i've always had warm feelings ( Read more... )

the implications of the idea that people will harm you for any weakness you show--and that genuinely good, decent people won’t even look, so you must avoid them entirely--are extremely hard to accept in any lasting way, like a highly complex language you try to master and succeed only momentarily, the language that you know to have a refined, ( Read more... )

The sheer horror of Laura’s situation is never avoided, never sanitised, the complexity of her inner struggle never simplified. She is shown to be cold and self-serving, promiscuous and uncaring, and eventually suicidal. But we are with her every step of the way, drawn into her nightmare world, sharing her fear, her desperation, her need to ( Read more... )

We can tell whether we are happy by the sound of the wind. It warns the unhappy man of the fragility of his house, hounding him from shallow sleep and violent dreams. T o the happy man it is the song of his protectedness: its furious howling concedes that it has power over him no longer.

rick's lecture on wed was just brilliant. i have such a rush of feelings when i hear things like that....
it was really interesting how he said that hegel was most successful at the reversal where the singular is *nothing* without the universal and then he talked about workers voting for reagan... it is one of the most painful enigmas--people ( Read more... )

"The subjugation of life to the process of production imposes as a humiliation on everyone something of the isolation and solitude that we are tempted to regard as resulting from our own superior choice."

"If I were a serial killer, this would be my background music. Deffinately worth a listen, because let's face it, you didn't just stumble in here. Did you."

(about laibach)