THE COUNTERFEITERS (DIE FALSCHER)

THE COUNTERFEITERS (DIE FALSCHER) by John G. Kays
**** ½ stars

‘A True Tale of Bogus Bills and Shaky Scruples’

We wrestle with some universal issues here, our souls are rattled precipitously by such subhuman atrocities; what is protocol for a prisoner in a concentration camp? Are the instincts of survival exclusively at play, or should one pay homage to ethereal ethical principles? The Counterfeiters, an Oscar winner this year for best foreign film (in German with English subtitles), is a charged package of drama that puts us in the line of fire. You and I are precisely there. No escaping is possible; we are forced to confront the abominations of incarceration by a ruthless throng of bully Fascists. With a staggering story snatched from the pages of history, creditable acting, and resonating themes, I am awarding it four and a half stars out of five. The discriminating acting of Karl Markovics as Sally is a study in emotive nuance and props it (the movie) up on a pedestal. Tonight (April 27th) I will watch Nazi Scrapbooks From Hell, a documentary about Auschwitz done by Erik Nelson, that uses photographs to bring these harrowing events to life. This is a non-fiction complement to the project under scrutiny here. Some films are just for fun, while others are made of the sterner stuff; The Counterfeiters is in the latter category and should be filed in ‘the library of freedom’ under: ‘required viewing for all who cherish democracy’, if such a classification might be uncovered.

The Counterfeiters (Die Falscher) is the story of Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a master counterfeiter of currency and a forger of passports and documents. He is arrested and sent to the concentration camp Mauthausen in 1936, surely because he is a Jew, not because he is a criminal. Later he is transferred to Sachsenhausen and is commissioned by Herzog (David Striesow), the same S.S. officer who first arrested him, to create a factory for fake currency. First they perfect British pound notes and even cajole the experts at the Bank of England, then they try to tackle the dollar, but run into some complications in duplicating it. Salomon Sorowitsch recruits a consortium of talented cronies, such as printers, chemists, graphic artists, and typographers for the Nazi enterprise. Specifically, the charge is to flood the western economies with bogus bills in order to sabotage those markets, and champion the charades of The Third Reich. The drama takes place within the confines of Sachsenhausen and is a survival story blearily in the template of Stalag 17 or Bridge Over the River Kwai.

The coveted inmates, in sharp contrast to say the condemned prisoners of Auschwitz, have bed linen, running water, piped in opera, and actual food, but the sound of gunfire and screams leak into their quarters as they play ping-pong or discuss their plight during spotty idle moments. As they succeed in producing the British pound the moral question arises: are we giving aid to the Nazis too freely? They begin to stumble while working on the dollar and are threatened with the gas chamber by Herzog, who is under pressure by Heinrich Himmler himself .

A trademark of this story is its ground in history; the screenplay, written by Stefan Ruzowitzky, (he does a proper job as director too) is culled from Adolf Burger`s (a Communist with scruples) The Devil`s Workshop. These memoirs document the scheme of the Nazis to counterfeit pound notes and dollars, a top secret project called Operation Bernhard, and as proof of its existence over one billion pounds in banknotes were recovered by the allies at the end of the war. The real Salomon Sorowitsch was a Russian Jew named Salomon Smolianoff. The counterfeit operation was directed by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and its commander, Reinhard Heydrich, who is also remembered (for certain infamously) as a master architect of the Holocaust. Noteworthy in its irony is the German slogan on the front entrance gate of Sachsenhausen: Arbeit Macht Fre; translated as “work brings freedom”.

The Counterfeiters is a focused character study of Solomon Sorowitsch, who has a knack for surviving in sticky circumstance. “Sally” is ever the pragmatist, who gives the Nazis their every wish, but by contrast, Adolph Burger (August Diehl) is an idealist willing to sabotage the operation for his beliefs. Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow), the commander of Sachsenhausen, secretly protects the expert counterfeiter, but as the Russians surround Berlin, he weathers the downgrades with struggle. Hauptscharfuhrer Holst (Martin Brambach) is an S.S. psycho who sadistically shoots prisoners for little reason. One critic has compared him to Colonel Klink or Sergeant Schultz in the TV staple, Hogan`s Heroes. Actually, this is a serious, chilly portrayal of a Nazi criminal, so no trace of comedy is conceivable; Holst is a big player in making the Holocaust a reality, and so the comparison is lame and inappropriate.

The incandescent acting of Karl Markovics is a bolt of lightning; you are inside his character as he circumnavigates Nazi landmines and plucks his confederates like pop-strings under a warm June sky. His Sally is shifty and criminal-like with a greedy twinkle in his eyes. Markovics masters the ‘life-long offender’ angle of Sorowitsch with his dodgy eyes and angular face. His demeanor is crafty, nuanced, and he ambles about with chameleon-like instincts-he rides his environs with the dexterity of a high-wire acrobat-a Walinsky perchance. Early on while still at Mauthausen he paints some picture-perfect portraits of Nazi officers, gaining their confidence. At Sachsenhausen he assembles a crack-A-squad that grinds out the fake British notes like an efficient Model-T-Ford assembly line. His portrayal is multifaceted though, and he evokes humanity for the prisoner with TB by feeding him and arranging for his needed medication from Herzog. Sally is humiliated by Holst in one scene (Holst urinates on him in a latrine) and he is filled with rage-he yanks out the wash basin in the bathroom! This signals a tell-tale shift in his perspective.

His balanced portrayal is complimented by August Diehl`s role of Adolf Burger as the idealist who is willing to openly defy the Nazis. Devid Striesow as the commander Friedrich Herzog is on middle ground and he too survives through stealth and maneuvering. Finally, there is Holst (Martin Brambach) who is more of the garden variety, nefarious Nazi-robot killer, but that is not to say that just such brutes did not exist in Hitler`s real Reich. Coupled with the somber gray tones of the filming, an ambience of realism and depth projects from the screen; but as an oxymoron the acting is otherworldly!

A revelation for me is the plethora of striking scenes that freely pop into my mind throughout the day, with only a slightest suggestion. The fact that I can keep replaying the tape in my head is testament to its visual caliber. A few of the images are: the exhibition of the perfectly duplicated British pound by the crafty crew to Herzog. Another is a simple ping-pong game that is interrupted by gunfire just over the fence, when yet a further pointless execution is carried out by Holst. I can still see it, if I think on it. Next I envisage the rapid stealing of a mostly eaten S.S. officer`s apple by Sally, then his own consumption of said apple core in a flash of a millisecond. The most vivid though, is one of the final scenes, where Sally carries the dead comrade who has TB to a designated convening point after the liberation of the concentration camp. Sorowitsch`s conversion to a ‘real humanity’ is consummated in this exact scene. Did I not detect a dew-drop-tear in the eye of each and every member of the audience-yes, in just this moment of time? The director of photography was Benedict Neuenfels and kudos should be clipped in at this juncture for the starkness, the clammy grays of his camera images. I actually awoke from a startled dream this very morn with the residue of the final sequence referenced still lodged in my circuits!

The theme of The Counterfeiters is the moral dilemma that Sally finds himself in: “to be or not to be”, in a nutshell. Should he simply appease the Nazis and increase the probability of his survival, or should he defy them for his convictions (if he has any), then in short order be scurried off to the gas chambers? Just such a quandary is the focus of these ninety-eight moisture-brow minutes! My best observation is that Sorowitsch seems as if he is playing both sides of the fence, but favors ‘survival’ over ‘idealism’, in fair measure. I thought of Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons, by way of contrast, who makes very different decisions; he is courageous enough to stand up for his beliefs, and refuses to sanction King Henry VIII`s annulment to his queen, Katherine of Aragon. Thus, he loses his head to the axe man for his lofty principles. Sally ‘outlives’ the war and gambles leisurely in Monte Carlo after some very troubling days.

THE COUNTERFEITERS (DIE FALSCHER)

‘A True Tale of Bogus Bills and Shaky Scruples’

“The Counterfeiters”, an Oscar winner this year for Best Foreign Film, is a powerful piece of film in terms of its story, acting, and theme. The story is grounded in history, since the screenplay is based on the book “The Devil`s Workshop” by Adolf Burger. Salomon ‘Sally” Sorowitsch, the anti-hero master forger here, is commissioned by the Nazis (in 1944 at Sachsenhausen concentration camp) to counterfeit currency with the goal of flooding the western economies with phony bills so that they might sabotage those markets. Sally recruits some experts from the talent pool, such as printers, chemists, graphic artists, and typographers for this brazen Nazi enterprise. The better part of this drama is played out within the cold, gray confines of this “work camp”, just outside of Berlin. Three standout scenes that I must note here are: the presentation of the fake British pounds to Friedrich Herzog (the commander of Sachsenhausen), the ping-pong game that is interrupted by gunfire just over the fence, and the painful liberation of the camp, where the “Operation Bernhard” prisoners are nearly shot by some common populous prisoners.

The understated acting of Karl Markovics as Sally is a study in emotive nuance; his Sorowitsch is shifty and guileful with dodging eyes and an angular face. He wreaks, breaths ‘survival’! An example of this is the way he paints perfect portraits of S.S. officers at Mauthausen (his earlier camp) in order to placate them. Yet at other times he is compassionate and dons a conscience that guides him through his hardships. Other actors offer superb performances as well, such as August Diehl in the role of the idealist Adolf Burger or Devid Striesow as the manipulating commander Friedrich Herzog.

The theme of “The Counterfeiters” is the moral dilemma that Sally finds himself in: “to be or not to be”, in a nutshell. Should he simply appease the Nazis and increase the probability of his survival, or should he defy them for his convictions (if he has any), then in short order be scurried off to the gas chambers? Just such a quandary is the focus of these ninety-eight moisture-brow minutes! My best observation is that Sorowitsch seems as if he is playing both sides of the fence, but favors ‘survival’ over ‘idealism’, in fair measure. I thought of Sir Thomas More in “A Man For All Seasons”, by way of contrast, who makes very different decisions; he is courageous enough to stand up for his beliefs, and refuses to sanction King Henry VIII`s annulment to his queen, Katherine of Aragon. Thus, he loses his head to the axe man for his lofty principles. Sally ‘outlives’ the war and gambles leisurely in Monte Carlo after some very troubling days.

10,000 B.C. YET AGAIN??

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10,000 B.C. -A NUMBSKULL-QUASI-CAVEMAN-GENRE-SPINOFF WITH A SPOT OF SPECTACLE by John G. Kays

‘It was important for me to not over do it National Geographic style.’ Steven Strait on his role as D`Leh.

‘Lana, zug-zug.’ Grunts from Ringo Starr in Caveman 1981.

It looks like the light of day is dimming on this Easter Sunday and I am still rubbernecking the entrails of 10,000 B.C.? I replay the clip of the freeing of the saber-tooth tiger by D`Leh for parallels. Daniel and the Lion perhaps? Curiously, why did Roland Emmerich spend two years on the CGI of 10,000 B.C.; is Tony-The-Tame-Tiger and Wimpy-Wally-the-Wooly-Mammoth all he could conjure in the laboratory? Gadzooks, these cartoons are not that scary! The chomping gargantuan ostriches look like Thanksgiving Day turkeys shot full steroids and hybrid nutrients. This stuck out like a sore thumb, but was pleasant pulp inserted in these meandering (meaningless) excursions through tropical jungles; is this yet another Mayan-laden Central America of yesteryear (see Apocalypto)?

Now close your eyes, my pretty! You are getting drowsy, you are falling into a deep, deep slumber. I command you to jump through the white canvas screen and now you are literally in the movie 10,000 B.C. The plot, if you can detect one, is packaged in a frame of three periods. The first third covers the Ice Age (shot in New Zealand) and just includes some military training (see 300) and then the big wooly mammoth hunt, where d`Leh snags a big bull and gets the sacred white spear. The second third is the Amazonian Tropical Rain Forest segment (shot in South Africa), or the Jungle Book period, and includes the capture of some tribes people of Yagahl by the “four-legged demons” (Tartar-like equestrian warriors that are teeming with evil). Especially noteworthy is the snagging of the princess Evolet (Camilla Belle) whose destiny is mostly prophesized as a ‘pivotal one’.

Alright, I hope you are still drowsy. Oh, I am certain of it after snacking on this pompous piece of pie. Your eyelids could use some close-pins, I do believe. Nonetheless, the third and final portion of B.C. is the Egyptian-Desert-Pyramid-period (shot in Namibia), where stupid slaves are building leviathan pyramids with beaucoup Wooly-Mammoths at the behest of some odd anteater-looking high priests with real long, spooky claws. I don`t have the slightest idea what they are up to, I just know that they are evil critters of the highest caliber, and they seem to mirror some of the tricks of the bad guys in the movie Matrix. Go ahead and see for yourself? Oh yea, the “four-legged demons” are employed by this goofy priest cult. The finale is a Coors Light Spartacus with mostly fake violence.This is the crescendo and resembles the ‘let my people go’ loop (from The Ten Commandments), and as such D`Leh amasses an army of down and outs and commences to bust up this greedy party of golden-calf-idle-worshippers. Evolet plays a key part in the liberation too, but I am not certain just how? I do know she comes back from the dead, yea, resurrects right before your eyes, when the shaman-medicine-woman, Ma-Ma from the Adam`s Family back at the homeland, channels some magic across the universe. I know it turns out happily ever after, but the scrapping is ‘but a light affair’, as Santa Anna once said in conjunction with the siege of the Alamo. Gee whiz, that is most of it.

Anachronisms flourish like moldy fungus in and on B.C., but thrill you with their audacity. “Roland and I never intended for 10,000 B.C. to be a documentary.” Words of Kloser again. No problem, comprende senor! A few fauxpas` for ya: pyramids in 10,000 years ago? Dreadlocks on hunter-gatherers? Proper English diction? Weren`t wooly mammoths already extinct at this time? Military sailboats on this fake river Nile? Did One Million Years B.C. have as bountiful of a basket of anachronisms? At least we got to see Raquel Welch in that rockin` Flintstones` bikini! Ostriches the size of giraffes snapping at the little tickie boy? Can D`Leh cross time zones by multiple millenniums too? It doesn`t matter actually, in fact, it makes it funnier. A narcissistic comment here is in order. I was hoping to make this piece inspired, logical, and even with smooth transitions, the way good writing is suppose to be (as Judyth Piazza, the editor here, would want it, I surmise), but B.C. is so stupid, banal, irrational, historically inaccurate, and lopsided, that I don`t think it would be possible for me to apply any writing virtues in its portrayal. This is a clever rationale for the imperfections of this writing, don`t you think?

“Only time can teach us what is truth and what is legend.” Omar Sharif provides the narration that is overview for the gospel of the oppressed Yagahl, a tribe of Rastafarian cavemen with exquisite English diction. The screenplay is written by Roland Emmerich and Harald Kloser; it would be comical to read it in a script format. They created their own theology for this Paleolithic culture of hunter-gatherers. I do not need to see all the specifics, but it looks like a zany kaleidoscope (from my tree nest) of classic fragments, ransacked from say Cecil B. Demille`s The Ten Commandments or Mel Gibson`s Apocalypto, arbitrarily glued together into a tripping, fanciful collage of a B movie. I did not see Ice Age but it has been suggested that some of this was chunked in the mix as well. My own spot of gray matter senses some lifts from Jungle Book; they can be seen through the shop window, if you look hard enough.

I will be brief on the acting and music. Steven Strait, Camille Belle, and Cliff Curtis are manikins, crash test dummies for this empty caveman genre spectacle. They might as well have just twiddled their thumbs on the sets, but not that they didn`t do just that. The acting is easy to describe: it`s a polar bear in a snow storm, white on rice, lifeless bodies that phone it in. The music score by Harald Kloser contains misplaced notes, out of sync fanfares, obnoxious and intrusive; the football is greasy and squirts out of his hands, yea, he fumbles on the twenty yard line and the audience grabs for their earplugs but can not find them in the nick of time. Even Red Skelton himself is a better composer than that Kloser dude!

“Did I miss something?”, I asked myself as I exited the theater. I scratched my head in befuddlement as I pondered the convoluted theology that was generated by the flickering footage. When I got home I thumbed through the Bhagavad Gita for clues to fathom Emmerich`s vision. The Bhagavad Gita was created in 10,000 B.C. so it must contain keys to the universal understanding of say, the shaman-medicine-woman (Ma-Ma) draped in bone-beads who saw it all. I knew that D`Leh (Steven Strait) was a prophet and savior for the indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes seeking freedom from the bondage of the priest cult now ruling over the ‘new pyramid culture’. I fancied D`Leh as a Lord Krishna dictating a new philosophy to his troubled people. The blessed Lord Krishna said: “Fire, light, day, the moon`s brightness, the six months of the north-turning sun: dying then, men who are free go to absolute freedom.” Eureka, I was starting to see it now!

Surely there is something in 2001 A Space Odyssey that explains the events that unfold randomly on the screen? There is a beginning, middle, and end to both films so maybe that is the connection. Then I rehashed the tenets of eHarmony, a club that I have just joined, to divine an intersection; maybe D`Leh and the blue-eyed Evolet (Camille Belle) with the spiffy dreadlocks had met on eHarmony? Twenty-seven levels of compatibility would explain the harmonics between the two, wouldn`t it? Banality and boredom set in, then ultimately despair. I thumbed through the images again. Desperately, I turned the leafs of the Old Testament for harbingers. Icelandic legend anyone? A petrified scrap from the blind poet Homer? Come On! Reveal your secrets unto me, oh Karnack The Magnificent?

Why yet another dry review of an obvious cut-out-bin toss off, that will never see the light of day for even another nanosecond, much less a handful of millenniums? For one thing I have the flu currently and am trying to amuse myself until I recover (I will return to a more serious project in short order). Another reason is that readers love to witness shark-jawed critics rip the fatty flesh away from bone on such a paltry piece of pseudo-prehistoric fluff. B.C. is a plump partridge (probably in a pear tree) of caveman days` hocus-pocus; i.e. ripe meat for the carrion crow (film critics). The reader himself likes to join in on the act, yea, this is much appreciated audience participation; then they too can tear off a slab of chi kabob and devour it ritually, then guffaw defiantly at its .09 rating on the Rotten Tomatoes` Tomatometer. This may account for my perusal of all coverage of said film and the actual vacating of my condo to visit my local cinema for a viewing of 10,000 B.C., in person. The irony here is that this film is wracking up big receipts and the critics are receiving more reads, as dumb-down amateurs jawbone `bout the water cooler. Bravo! Everyone comes out a winner! That is cool, my fair weathered friends! B.C. is an oddity preserved in a bottle, a relic of P.T. Barnum that folk can Wow! over; it is a Hindenburg, a Tiny Tim, a Jumbo the Elephant that brushes us with a feather unmercifully. Have you seen Aretha Franklin lately? She fits in (but it is a tight fit) somewhere here, don`t you think?

10,000 B.C. The Legend. The Battle. The First Hero. Huh? This is the cornball slogan that is printed on the arcade poster that you stare at dumbly (that word is coming up a lot) as you enter your favorite local suburban multiplex, in every city known to man, in our great big country. Oh yea, Lost In Time. Duh! 108 minutes of Cheese Whiz and Ritz Crackers? Let`s try to snuff out the light here before a CGI herd of mastodons gets back up and starts charging us! Please bring closure to this thing, Mister John! Before you know it I`ll be pushing up old goat daisies! What we have here really, is a hefty bale of plastic, Pleistocene cotton candy, that gives you a whopper of a stomach ach as you wander through the Neanderthal ‘mall of life’. 10,000 B.C. is the new 2001 A Space Odyssey, April Fools, you gullible buffoon!

10,000 B.C.

10,000 BC is one of the corniest prehistoric epic flicks that I have ever seen, but I`ve seen quite a few other bloopers as well, in my time. Caveman with Ringo Starr comes to mind along with One Million BC with the rockin` Flintstones` bikini of Raquel Welch. 10,000 BC is racking up the customer count at the box office too, & this says something about peoples preferences for viewing. My guess would be a need for hollow entertainment with pretty good dinosaurs and Geico cavemen that get too much in the way of the action. The reading of 9 % on the tomatometer was shocking, I don`t believe I have ever seen such a low score! This boomeranged for me & caused me to go see it since I was curious about the disconnect between the large quantity of people who want to see it and the universal axing it`s got from the critics! What doesn`t kill you makes you stronger! Oddly, For some unknown reason (none of these could have been strong enough) I actually got in my truck & drove over to Southlake Meadows, `cuz I still had one more flick to burn off on a gift certicate. I should get the congressional medal of honor for braving this mirage of cottoncandy on the eye sockets! The special effects could not have been the draw since they were abysmal compared to say Ray Harryhausen who`s the all-time genius for dinosaur action figures come to life. The plot was one of the dumbest I have ever seen and the acting was double bogey tanker-takes that couldn`t even substitute for blooper-takes. The mamasita-shaman-medicine-woman draped in bone-beads was kind of a nice touch and the dread-lock-rastafarian-hunter-gatherers were out-a-time weirdoes with too much cake-make-up & crusty scabs & lice. Tony the saber-tooth tiger was too wimpy & didn`t devour hardly any cave-boy types. The hordes of woolie mammoths run about recklessly, but are dumb beyond belief & just fill the screen with hair and feet & tusks `til you think ya will upchuck your popcorn. Did anyone get the bit about the daddy splitting to found a new colony? I was having trouble putting that together too,…a with the Egyptian-like slave culture who were building those funky new pyramids, what did that have to do with diddlysquat? Half of the action takes place in white cold regions and half happens in hot tropical rainforest terain, & this is a good move in terms of contrast & composition. & what about that kinky ant-eater looking leader with the long claws of the New Civilization Cult? It was hard to tell what he was up to or where he came from. Was he maybe the hero`s dad? & that was weird the way the princess comes back to life after the shaman mama blows out that icy breath? I missed something…but will be able to review the chapters once the DVD comes out. It wasn`t really that violent, but I don`t know that it would be improved with more gratuitous killing…but maybe it would? It could have benefited from some meaner dinosaurs, like T-Rex, but I suppose they were extinct by 10,000BC. But why try to be accurate about the prehistoric timeline with this clunker? It doesn`t make sense but it don`t matter anyhows! Almost thirty-six million take home so far, this is the most important thing to remember at this point. I did love the costumes & make-up, the wild hairdos and grease paint galore and sandy thick cake makeup on their pusses. I will study the look again for next year`s Halloween costume. For the plot i`m wondering if they were looking at Homer or maybe retelling a story from the Old Testament, but it looks like the writers were covering their tracks pretty good. I know there was some Egyptian stuff in there, but the hieroglyphs were beyond my ken! One good thing is I`m considering putting the aforementioned titles with Ringo & Raquel to the top of my Netflix queue. I have to reconsider why this caveman thing is so appealing. Once I do that I can figure out the charms of 10,000 BC. Now that`s a stupid goal that will chew up lots of time! Oh well…I`m just that stupid I suppose. I do have a working theory as to why the caveman genre films are so popular. People want to think back to the way things were eons & thousands of years ago, & they like to channel how they would survive in the thick of things-wooly mammoths, four-legged crusaders, & dinosaurs of course. The dumber the producer makes the flick, the better the box-draw will be! That`s the formula & that Roland Emmerich knows that. In fact, if he made it series it would flop. A series loop would be 2001 A Space Odyssey, the beginning part. But this is not a pure caveman genre product, so it does not count. People want it to be corny so they can praise there own empty lives! Now you see it, don`t you? The worst the reviews, the better the draw too. This has an inverse function-formula on it that can make someone millions in receipts by recognizing the secret pattern. The pecking flamingoes are really obnoxious & this helps the movie too. The slave rebellion was cool & was kind of a Spartacus thing. The hero dude is a savior for the repressed cave-people on this bummer mission of building the city of gold or whatever it is? The theology here is illusive but one can vaguely comprehend multiple spirits at work here, but the mama mia-supremo gets it & reads the tea leaves with precision. I think everyone lives happily ever after in the end, but it`s a little hard to tell. Is that the impression that you got? Another epiphany I just had is this is Drive-In fodder, & that can translate into big bucks, but that type of outlet does not exist anymore! IE the Cinemarks of the world can absorb that business!

AND GOD CREATED WOMAN...THE SEQUEL

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Bonnie & Clyde...Bonnie & Clyde...And God Created Woman started something Dionysian for the stiff Americano. Brigitte loosens us up and Cold War paranoiac behaviors vanish into the atmosphere. The paparazzi came into being with pics of Brigitte. Maybe it initiated the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Brigitte Bardot was free and natural and visually stunning. The 1950s in the U.S. were stiff and inhibited with Doris Day epitomizing lady stardom with corny parts and bellowing songs. And God…came out in 1956 and suddenly things have changed. The superstar looked stunning to Americans, in part because she was French, and the French Riviera, and sunny, free St. Tropez was an exotic place of Americano dreams…escape from the states to romantic interludes where you play on the beach all day and cha, cha, cha in the cafes by night.
The brilliant blue Mediterranean was gorgeous beyond belief and the French language poetry to stodgy local farm boys. Bridgette silhouetted against a jukebox with lounge guitar, rolling sandy locks and green panels, cut…Roger Vadim knew what he was doing…see the connection with Jane Fonda…see Barbarella for Bardot look-alike. Big Machito jazz band sounds against Brigette strutting up the stairs, in bed, tucked into white cotton sheets and giggling. Camera through panels coastline blue waves cascading boats on the mooring. She falls on the sand cut to docks with boats and she shoots it up for kicks, laughs and fires the pistol out the window…The Phocaeans colonized Provincia 4th century BC wanders the bedroom blue pajamas jealous lover in doorway…Juliette sleeps away cut to boats again…regular at the Cannes Film Festival, rocketed to stardom…Brigitte Bardot the ultimate bikini siren, (read this discreet bikini essay) gingham becomes the rage…languorously on the beach then romance scene buttons back up the back to bed. St. Tropez king of bikini…why am I dwelling on these silly matters…watching And God Created Woman for the first time ever, behind the curves but in the shot and biography of animal rights…Will see Contempt this weekend…they`re still raving about it…shots of coastline…wonders down winding roads goin` nowhere Havas Exprinter concrete walls motorcars and cafes Coco Chanel and the bathtub revolution…Bar de Amis…Les Amis gone the Bardot of my youth? Play the café wild dance scene again with Latin afro-jazz maracas, bongos cowbell jazz and Brigitte begins to move claps twist and albums on wall Juliette pulls her hair up twirls like a wild dervish the jass swings changes syncopation pulls up skirt wilder and wilder grinds the dance floor gone further and further husband jealous takes the stage legs grind wilder and wilder sweats hair flowing bongo furry she is gone caught in passion faster and faster shot fired and the moment is gone and so am I….created more jealousy then anyone thru time…
These picture galleries of Brigitte Bardot should keep you busy for a while… Couple that with some Serge Gainsbourg ala “Bonnie and Clyde” and you will be in a cloud…Uh la la…Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) is the best artist for the Cote d`Azur for food, palm trees, hotels, ocean, & sky…the natural light floods his canvas with joy and innocence. Study something of The French Riviera too before you watch this movie…it will enrich your experience. Shot of hills and seas laundry on the lines…away on bike flowers and shops Les Batounos cage liquore will build the casino by the road…bus and blue dress Antoine!! Fun in Toulon smiles and giggles…suitcase goodbye! Boats and green hills eici de tous tems s`ccampe you`re doing the mambo…cha cha cha troubadours from a lowly lot of jugglers ..kiss me cool jass café tabacs journaux frescoes cocktails bamboo accordion frescoes…vibes and dancing the Duke of Aquitaine & Frederic Mistral verse provencal verse romance and spices cool nightclub knights at the crusades lonely ladies …you`re a nasty drunk darts industrialist makes a play for Juliette hotrod kisses are you taking the first bus…Japanese fan take you back to st. Mary`s orphanage flowing golden hair plate of fruit and red curtains rabbits galore and greens go by Socrates the rabbit flees…yachts or Mister Hale shameless impolite & lazy daily news is stale a proper young lady? Le provencal give me a big kiss boats & birds blue azure motion & business easter Sunday graveyards and chapels play games ciggies marry juliette floral wreaths leave tomarrow sad postcard racks blinds and bikes stroll away Steve Reich`s 18 Musicians in the background…got to get to Flatstock poster show…free Michel I want you married to Juliette wedding day white wedding gown bells they chime…shadows & roman arches lawful wedded husband veil of tears matrimony you`re still in love? Husbands wearing horns punch and fight Hotel kick kick poupette old castles wine & chandeliers handsome you know passion and simple sets with bouchets cakes & fruits & bread stripped robe panorama syrupy music Saint Tropez is dazzling deep blue shutters afro-jass blast cha cha cha go in the car and twist Bridgitte is bored silhouettes and seas palms and cars scotch Venetian blinds architects plans golden balustrades skinny dipping at Hippie Hollow huh?? Sprigs of green wild nights spritely days of haze and smilesteal my heart and away sweet jukebox again stagey scenes are fashion shots Bardot`s got um quick as a fax & away she`s the queen of the parking lot…gear up for tango guitar charley christianson hollow body dream riff tell me something sweet revolution is starting bundle of fire playboy foldouts started here…chauvinism spinning and trouble female trouble bubbles under later with Gloria Steinem pound spoons slap then cuddle and croon exotica born too lotta staircases smooth horns cotton sheets are cool white as lamb idle cards no brainer Juliette is made for you..poster before movie international sex star the first of her kind go on to chores but more Bardot first blue and sand stucco I`m scared to the ground romance in the cote d `azur (here`s a nice, simple map) it`s 1956 and I`m three shoots and laughs target practice on bottles squabbles Stone Age hairclips orange stucco into room diary dear god…black & white marriage snaps riffs loop over seduction buffoonery boats jeeps chatter Marseilles to do books phone ahlo ahlo…vibes piping hot bowties orange lamps casino royale princess of Monaco grace Kelly drives off a cliff…why sleeping beauty with the flowing golden hair age of innocence …camarat lighthouses blue waters calm sailboat mister dufy smoky explosion & fire woman overboard floating & swimming shoreline longshot calm breezes salt water taffy palms beige open dress saving grace foam and swirl beach pose biting kissing broken trees you`re feverish miserable stop drinking drag a ciggy `gainst white stucco walls I don`t love him maybe I wanted a friend…drunk in the kitchen blue blinds snap to super vixen in the sack again want to talk she`s fine…putting on blue/green skirt pots & pans spices arrayed songs project piano cascading down the scales hills & fortress country life is gone walks medieval corridors winding to forbidden fruit…struts the pole & into café again bar reads the paper downs a drink bar de amis again icebox in here a double oh it`s awful…moans to a girlfriend a bar where the whores go?...yesterday she was screaming in my arms?...gun fires…penny arcades of oldtimes yankee doodles where the theater was pinball machines for real unreal been a long time one million bc & rachel welch swinging jass up over swoonin muted horns alto sax dances again and finale catharsis this time sways gyrates cha cha amazons miads wild wood woman hair is swingin rhythms jam & twirl twirl twirl crescendo coils to a boil swings & sweats free love is born!

AND GOD CREATED WOMAN

And God Created Woman started something Dionysian in the American consciousness. Maybe it initiated the sexual revolution of the 1960s.; it certainly was a trigger for new ideas. Brigitte Bardot was free and natural and visually stunning. The 1950s in the U.S. were stiff and inhibited with Doris Day epitomizing lady stardom with corny parts and bellowing songs. And God…came out in 1956 and suddenly things have changed. The superstar looked stunning to Americans, in part because she was French, and the French Riviera, and sunny, free St. Tropez was an exotic place of Americano dreams…escape from the states to romantic interludes where you play on the beach all day and cha, cha, cha in the cafes by night. The brilliant blue Mediterranean was gorgeous beyond belief and the French language poetry to stodgy local farm boys. Bridgette silhouetted against a jukebox with louge guitar, rolling sandy locks and green panels, cut…Roger Vadim knew what he was doing…see the connection with Jane Fonda…see Barbarella for Bardot look-alike. Big Machito jazz band sounds against Brigette strutting up the stairs, in bed, tucked into white cotton sheets and giggling. Camera through panels coastline blue waves cascading boats on the mooring.She falls on the sand cut to docks with boats and she shoots it up for kicks, laughs and fires the pistol out the window…The Phocaeans colonized Provincia 4th century BC wanders the bedroom blue pajamas jealous lover in doorway…Juliette sleeps away cut to boats again…regular at the Cannes Film Festival, rocketed to stardom…Brigette Bardot the ultimate bikini siren, gingham becomes the rage…langorously on the beach then romance scene buttons back up the back to bed..St. Tropez king of bikini…why am I dwelling on these silly matters…watching And God Created Woman for the first time ever, behind the curves but in the shot and biography of animal rights…Will see Contempt this weekend…they`re still raving about it…shots of coastline…wonders down winding roads goin` nowhere Havas Exprinter concrete walls motorcars and cafes Coco Chanel and the bathtub revolution…Bar de Amis…Les Amis gone the Bardot of my youth? Play the café wild dance scene again with latin afro-jazz maracas, bongos cowbell jazz and Brigitte begins to move claps twist and albums on wall Juliette pulls her hair up twirls like a wild dervish the jass swings changes syncopation pulls up skirt wilder and wilder grinds the dance floor gone further and further husband jealous takes the stage legs grind wilder and wilder sweats hair flowing bongo furry she is gone caught in passion faster and faster shot fired and the moment is gone and so am I….created more jealousy then anyone thru time…

DIARY OF THE DEAD

The Diary of the Dead did not disappoint me, `twas narcissistic, a movie within a movie, & the media conduits by way of camcorders, act as mirrors to this spicy zombie gobbling fest. The documentary The Death of Death, done by one of the student filmmakers from Penn State, who are the anti-heroes in this drama-feast herein, sort of crash-test-dummies for George Romero`s outragious brainstorms, are downloaded to his blog, then seen instantly by 72,000 people through out the world. I sure wish I could get that many hits! The local nobody-guy is the only one who can provide reliable information about the cataclysmic events unfolding. Network News is mere propaganda that ruthlessly ensnares a witless public. A…this is not unlike what say, Fox News is doing now…is it? This whole project is self-conscious smoking mirrors and carnival poking fun at society, which is what George Romero does best. This one is his Interactive Dead, and stays focused on our watching ourselves watching (if it is possible to stay focused)…with lots of surveillance cameras, a panic room in one scene, and then the paranoia of phony broadcast news, where stuff is faked by opportunistic telly journalists, who get good & gobbled up like jiffyquick. There is a little scene where some African American coterie of survivors take the Penn students in for a bit, and they have high jacked all the surrounding swag into a Wall-Mart of purloined treats; now they are in power for a change. They end up being the human rights perpetrators of the story. I was seeing them as quasi-metaphors for the Black Panthers of old, but I do believe that`s a `lude in my coffee rather. The gunshots to the torsos and heads of the zombies are at point blank. For an unknown reason this is not real violence but rather ultra-violence or performance art violence…everything here is an interactive snuff film, but it is merely comic. The students are just two-dimensional, and when one of them dies you don`t give a hoot really; there are not any actual good people in the plot or anything. They`re not bad either but they`re just there. The camera jitters around a lot so I was reminded of Cloverfield quite a few times, but there is always a put down or another gag to keep your interest. The sequence with the deaf-mute Amish hay boy is something of a hoot. His demise is shocking too. Two good old boys play target practice with some zombies & blow off the head of one poor zombie lady. The Amish farm boy throws homemade grenades that detonate several of the freaks into sawdust. Just about no one gets out alive, so I was reminded of the Friday the Thirteenth franchise. It`s not that scary here though, and when someone gets it it is almost organic. This one wasn`t quite as high camp as The Land of the Dead, which was rich in social satire, but this one is more a study of where the media and the internet are going. My Space, Facebook, YouTube, blogs and the live streaming pseudo-information wars are the fodder for this cinematic clip. You are at a freak show here with trick mirrors sending you deceptive messages, where death is life, fact is fiction, and society is turned upside down! In other words it is just like our current reality. Oh…the National Guard are crooks here and the clan of brothers are heroes, because they control the swag (food & gasoline). Bravo Mister Romero! Mother & father are zombies and must be eliminated…scenes are shown first in real time, then shown again as footage on blogs and other cameras…it occurred to me that this is how we see our lives go by in reality. The same clips again & again! I do encourage you to see it and compare it to the other editions. None will ever beat the first though.

ATONEMENT

ATONEMENT SHOULD GET THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR THE CATEGORY OF ‘BEST PICTURE’ THIS YEAR!
by John G. Kays

‘Within the half hour Briony would commit her crime. Conscious that she was sharing the night expanse with a maniac, she kept close to the shadowed walls of the house at first, and ducked low beneath the sills whenever she passed in front of a lighted window…She thought how she might describe it, the way they bobbed on the illuminated water`s gentle swell, and how their hair spread like tendrils and their clothed bodies softly collided and drifted apart. The dry night air slipped between the fabric of her dress and her skin, and she felt smooth and agile in the dark. There was nothing she could not describe: the gentle pad of a maniac`s tread moving sinuously along the drive, keeping to the verge to muffle his approach. But her brother was with Cecilia, and that was a burden lifted. She could describe this delicious air too, the grasses giving off their cattle smell, the hard-fired earth which still held the embers of the day`s heat and exhaled the mineral odor of clay, and the faint breeze carrying from the lake a flavor of green and silver.’-Chapter Thirteen-Atonement-by Ian McEwan

The occasion for this review is the discovery of a movie ticket stub on the walkway as I took my morning sabbatical only a few fleeting days ago. I postulated that an anonymous senior citizen had seen Atonement on January 18th at the Arbor Theater in North Austin by the looks of the evidence; why then had he or she dropped this movie stub at this particular place and time on the sidewalk by the Convention Center will verily remain an ‘unsolved mystery’ `til we part ways on Doomsday? Yesterday I paid a visit to the public library since I was scouting out some titles on Pop Art, but as I renewed my library card, I remarked to the jocund lady-staff personage that all of the copies of Atonement by Ian McEwan had been purloined sagaciously, and I interrogated her as to whether she had already read it? She replied that yes she had, and retorted with perky enthusiasm that: “it is truly a most blessed novel”! As a result of this I lumbered expeditiously over to BookPeople and voraciously snagged up the last living paperback that rested precariously on that barren shelf.

Atonement begins in the summer of 1935, and takes place in a wealthy bucolic English manor; it is the story of Briony Tallis, an imaginative playwright at the tender age of thirteen, who is an eyewitness to three events that she gravely misinterprets. These are the critical events, the vehicle for the story be told. In the first incident she sees a casting off of clothing by her sister Cecilia, before the eyes of Robbie Turner, a colleague from the lower orders, then Cecilia takes a whimsical dive into a Bernini-type fountain. From Briony`s point of view this is a ‘ritual of erotica’, a brazen breach of morality. Little did she know that Cecilia was actually retrieving a broken vase by way of a treasured family heirloom. The second event is the delivering of an outlandish letter from Robbie to Cecilia which Briony takes a peep at, then she walks in on a romantic interlude between the brand new lovers in the library. Briony misreads this as an intrusion by Robbie, and she shades it with a dearth of consent by her capricious sister, Cecilia. The third and most profound occurrence is the witnessing by Briony of the rape of Lola, her cousin as I recall, down by a nearby lake, after the twin cousins had suddenly vanished. Briony accuses Robbie Turner of the dastardly crime and this lays carpet for the remnant of the plot.

The second phase of the movie takes place in France and is six years later; these were the dark days of the Allied evacuation at Dunkirk, May of 1940. Robbie Turner is lost and runs cautiously about the countryside of France. The exchange of heart-felt letters between Robbie and Cecilia is projected creatively on the screen in fantasy syncopation. Cecilia and Briony are nurses for the army and their hardships are put under a microscope. Especially Briony`s flaming pangs of conscience are exposed with her perpetual scrubbing of filth; one is reminded of Lady Macbeth: “Out damned spot!” Visits back in time to the Tally estate drift in and out, details are laid in nicely, however the storyline morphs between truisms and wishful thinking, yet you are not cognizant of this until the final frame. Events heat up around the Battle of Dunkirk, but much is left untold. The third phase with the elderly Briony played by Vanessa Redgrave, ties up many of the loose ends but punches you in the gullet with a bodacious blow!

I do believe that Atonement (be sure to shuffle through these 43 pics) should be awarded the Best Picture for 2007 at the Academy Awards on February 24th. I had not seen it when I wrote my ‘Best Of’ about a month ago, but it generates positive ions/vibes that I had not detected in alternative offerings for our year just gone by. The costumes are dreamy, and if you just see it to experience Keira Knightley in the exquisite green gown then that would be a fitting excuse for jubilation. Jacqueline Durran did the costume design (she did so for Pride and Prejudice [this is Jane Austen`s novel] as well) and she is up for another Academy Award, and I hope she gets it. The music is moody, stylish, and evokes chameleon-like alacrity; the composer, Dario Marianelli is up for an Oscar and jolly well may walk the victory carpet. The scenes at the manor in the English countryside reek of picturesque abandonment and whimsy; I was reminded of Lewis Carrol`s Through the Looking Glass; `tis a rare fanfare of Victorian ambience, I should think. By contrast the scenes of Dunkirk smacked of the starkness of modern war; this was a logical demarcation in the film`s evolving landscape.

The acting was carefully orchestrated with Ian McEwan`s novel and Keira Knightley was a palatable fit as Cecilia Tallis, with a proper British accent and gazelle-like forbearing, very taut and angular and emotive, but in a substantive acting role with gravity. James McAvoy is certainly competent as Robbie Turner, the educated son of a servant of the Tallis family. Even with that said the consummate achievement in acting goes to Saoirse Ronan as the youthful and mischievous Briony Tallis; she is up for an Academy Award for best supporting actress, and I hope she grabs up the golden statue. Saoisre flits about as naturally as the fairy Puck in A Midsummer Night`s Dream, and her blonde bangs are bouncing freely and stylishly as she romps through the English countryside. Romola Garai as the middling Briony in the role of a nurse, tending the wounded after the Dunkirk rout, is mostly gripping; then at last the capstone role of Vanessa Redgrave as the elder Briony, an accomplished author by that time, reflectively inserts the last pieces into the sorrowful puzzle. The editing was tricky, with the necessity of mirroring the subtle time sequencing of the novel, the many flashbacks involved, that is, but I was riveted by the scissor to celluloid. As I read the novel I recollect (I only saw the movie one week ago) the loyalty of the editing to the story in words. I am lost on my journey with regard to Joe Wright, the director, but Pride and Prejudice should be plopped in my paltry mailbox this very day.

I will briefly conjure up the issue of symbolism in the movie; this comes by way of the novel which I observe as ubiquitous within the lines. It may be discreet to disclose that I am only one-third of the way through the pages. Here is a nice review of the novel Atonement, for your perusal. The most obvious symbol observed is the illusive vase, which for me represents tradition or the heritage of the Tallis family. When it is shattered, into triangular shards, yet another symbol of the Holy Trinity, one intuits that tradition has been violated. To view this in class terms, or to give it a Marxist spin, Robbie is from the lower order and Cecilia is from the upper order. By romancing her Robbie is jumping or crossing classes. This is a societal no no of the highest caliber; this is so because it is both erotic and revolutionary. Briony sees it in just this way too, and it throws up a red flag for her, and yet it (class crossing) allows her to persecute Robbie freely based on the dynamics of class alone. The angle of class dynamics is an important one for me, how about you? The fountain overture is a mating motif; Cecilia strips down and transforms into a Venus figure, with a visible eros zone. Moreover, her dip in the fountain is a baptismal reference, but the truth be spoken, this is a sensual baptismal thing, if you can divine my meaning? At that instance Robbie and Cecilia`s love for one another becomes real, and is consummated, idealistically speaking! This is magical in nature and is right out of Ovid! Another symbol is Dunkirk, and it simply represents Robbie`s maturation into an ‘Age of Experience’(this is a moniker of my own invention). By way of contrast the experiences of ‘new love’ at the Tallis Estate in 1935 would call forth a notion that I will call the ‘Age of Innocence’; this would be a soft reference to William Blakes` beautiful poems from the 19th century that helped to inaugurate the Romantic Period in English literature. Okay, another! The hospital comes to mind also, and is a kind of sanctuary of purity for both Cecilia and Briony. They almost seem to have joined a nunnery, at least in spirit. Briony uses the hospital to purge herself of the grave misdeed that she committed, but in spite of her relentless scrubbing of hospital beds, the regret and guilt will not fly away. Finally, the wildflowers in the vase represent the bacchanalian abandon experienced by Cecilia and Robbie when stricken by Cupid`s arrow. This is not a planned or calculated feeling, but rather spontaneous, just as wildflowers spring naturally from the womb of the earth! For the author this is a no brainer, but may not seem obvious to the ‘moral majority’!

I overdosed on PPs this weekend, but am fond of this form. Last night I had an odd epiphany that Gone With the Wind was the very first PP…um, I wonder? Some have labeled the current film under review as a ‘Period Piece’, and as such this category might include such titles as Pride and Prejudice, Howard`s End, and the Age of Innocence, an unusual one for Martin Scorsese. I have not studied any formal definition of this genre, nor do I care to, but I suspect that most avid filmgoers have a clear grip on what this creature is. I should think that Jane Austen is the complimentary, canonized patron saint, and residing grandmother for the ‘Period Piece’? This is a truism that need not be further elaborated. As such, in my mind`s eye I am viewing our present film as a mere half-period-piece. Ian McEwan has been labeled as the Jane Austen of the modern English novel, but I believe he often utilizes motifs that are too modern to properly put him in this aforementioned camp exclusively! I am seeing bits of Faulkner and James Joyce, okay, and even the residue of Ernest Hemingway in his turn of phrase. Obviously, these writers were capable of writing PPs, but chose to deal with starker topics that surfaced in the early twentieth century. Enough said on that…for now, but power to the PP People!.

Simultaneously, Atonement has a panoramic, aromatic atmosphere as if you`re inside a harlequin pulp-romance book cover, a tear-jerker you see, and in addition, the sinewy true-grit of a Hemingway short story, oozing the existential inconsequence of cruel, mangling warfare. No further inquiry is required. Themes raise their tremulous visage herein; the primer is the catastrophic infraction of Briony, that haunts all her days and nights and will not vaporize, such as a bad dream! Much of this story is her attempt to purge this classic Christian sin from her soul, but such arduous efforts remain futile for her, save for the machinations of the ripe Vanessa. Another ‘platonic idea’ that comes in streams of idle reverie is the transparent cleavage betwixt reality and fantasy; Briony can exorcise demons by painting a rosy picture, wrought with confessions and tidied up lives-nay, but things could proffer for Cecilia, Robbie, and Briony herself, on another sunny day perchance? I will leave it at that as far as particulars go. The fundamental theme is the title itself: Atonement, which is a synonym for a…say contrition, or more clearly, righting a wrong, or…eureka Mister John …writing a wrong! We almost make it to the closing credits basking in bright yellow sunbeams, but unexpected cumulous clouds come rolling in, blurring the screen before we can de-wedge ourselves from our sticky velvet cushions and depart the movie house with peace of mind and spirit, for a change, or for goodness sakes! Oh,…I sure am glad that I stumbled on that stray ticket stub.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS PART I

“The Lives Of Others” is one of the best movies I have ever seen. I bought the DVD a couple of weeks ago so that I could go back over it carefully; disect it and consider all the aspects of the film. It is good idea to review the history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR-1949-1990) in order to better understand the context of this story. This will require a review of how WWII ended, and the way Europe was divvied up between the West and the Soviet Union. Also, you may want to look again at the time that the Berlin Wall was put up in 1961 during the Kennedy Administration. I recollect from my youth this striking dichotomy between East and West, this barbed wire divide, tanks and stop-points, nervous machine gun toting guards, and the heightened tensions of the Cold War in Eastern Europe. One can not really comprehend this phenomenon too clearly these days; but go back and look at some of the black and white photos of shot-dead freedom-seekers tangled in the meshed wire. Some more business on your agenda is to study the Stasi and all the new information that is coming to light about the East German Secret Police-their techniques and the very paranoid atmosphere that was created within that society. Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) lectures new agents about proper interrogation techniques very early in the film. I was reminded of the Trials of Salem, in a round about fashion, and the way that women were made to falsely confess to witchcraft in Colonial New England.

As far as the Stasi goes, there is an interesting piece in the Weekend Edition of The Wall Street Journal (9/15, 9/16). It is titled The Murder of a CEO by David Crawford. On November 30, 1989 Alfred Herrhausen, a prominent banker for Deutsche Bank, was killed by a roadside bomb. Herrhausen was an advocate of German unification, and maybe had his eye on getting control of East German banking rights. Evidence is coming out now that the Stasi may have engineered this assassination so that the Red Army Faction, a leftist terrorist group, would take the blame for the killing. It is going to be interesting, as more facts come out, to look at how the Stasi was able to accomplish this sophisticated feat of subterfuge. It looks like the Stasi had plants within the Red Army Faction, who maintained silence, but this is still being sorted out. Another thing mentioned in the WSJ article is that the Stasi may be linked to “Carlos the Jackal”. Just how far their tentacles reached in nefarious doings is a little hard to assess at this point. This is an interesting backdrop to view the movie by though. As you watch the Stasi wire George Dreyman`s apartment with microphones in the light switches, you see how efficiently they functioned. The extras on the DVD are very good, and Ulrich Muhe (in his actual life) tells how he was grievously informed on by “friends”; but was not made aware of it until he purviewed documents after the collapse of The Wall (not Pink Floyd`s Brick in the Wall) in 1990. Apparently, the Stasi kept meticulous records, as the Germans always seem to do. It is implied that some of this story reflects the life of Ulrich Muhe, whose own wife informed on him. Sadly, I`ve come to learn that Ulriche Muhe died on July 22nd, 2007.

This is just some warm-up writing for this near perfect movie, and I will make a point to go at it again with more dedication and perspiration, at a future projected sitting. This film requires careful consideration, as a result of the great amount of effort invested in it. At this writing, I see it as parallel stories of both the dissolution of the GDR and the Eastern Communist block from 1984-1990, and as the story of one Stasi agent`s internal changes from the icy Stasi bureaucrat to a more opened-minded individual who has tolerance for others. It is the story of the break-down of The State, and the melting of this political philosophy in one individual, a devotee of the highest caliber. The way this comes about is the brilliance of this story. Os the plot develops, Wiesler can gradually see the corruption of his colleagues, and specifically a minister named Hempf, who forces Georg Dreyman`s girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gideck), to engage in extracurricular liaisons. Another thing is, as he listens in on the lives of Georg and Christa-Marie, by way of electronic eavesdropping, he begins to sympathize with these people, and the way they conduct their affairs, freely and humanly. An interesting sidebar or possible theme is the way that Wiesler begins to have contempt for his supervisor, Anton Grubitz, a total yes man to the regime, no matter how wrong the policies may be. This is especially true when Hempf orders Grubitz to set up Christa-Marie for a fall, after she rejects the plump and gross Hempf, a surviving, reptilian ogre of the oppressive regime. Be sure to watch the cafeteria scene carefully when Grubitz applies some grueling psychological cruelty to a student eating his lunch. This is especially chilling, I thought! Another fascinating subplot is the gradual radicalizing of Georg Dreyman. His fellow playwright Jerska kills himself because he has been blacklisted and marginalized to a no career status. Dreyman begins to write about suicide rates in East Germany for Der Spiegel, a widely read West German publication. I am seeing the relationship between Georg and Christa-Marie as another important subplot, a splendid romance and true-love. It is all monitored by Wiesler of course, but he can see how magnificent and genuine their love for one another truly is. This may account for and contribute to the psychological changes that come about in Wiesler. There is a built-in tragedy in the plot here, regarding Christa-Marie, thus I won`t spill the beans about it here, but it is the crescendo of the story where everything comes unglued.

There is the use of Realism (that may be cinema verite) too in the sets, the colors of the film, and the props that are used in the various scenes. Just look at the clothes worn by the Stasi agents and the shadowy streets of Berlin, all in faded grays and blues, and you feel like you are there (mid 1980s). The scene where Wiesler has a very-brief professional visitor is stark and cold-what a poor lonely man really (even though he is a Stasi crumb-ball)! Lots of shots of reel-to-reel tape recorders and the rat-a-tat-tat of antiquated typewriters add a nice touch too. Often the typed pages are displayed with parts of the reports of Wiesler, with the text spoken, and I thought this was effective to make points about his mental evolution-the movement towards humanitarianism. Florian Henckel von Donnermarck stayed away from digital technology and just used analog, and this was a wise move for making things seem realistic (period specific-1980s). Everything is kept very simple and pruned, as far as sets go, and this adds to the cold ambience of a Communist State. Gabriel Yared did the music and it accompanies the mood of the plot perfectly. Sonata for a Good Man was composed by Yared for the movie and was actually performed by Sebastian Koch on piano in the film. One might swear it was written by Beethoven himself!

There is much in play in “The Lives Of Others”, and even William F. Buckley Jr. said it was the best film he had ever seen. For me, I am curious now about how the German Democratic Republic really came to an end and why it did? I am also interested in how the Stasi operated and really how far their intrigues took them down a dark road. When Wiesler sees the book in a shop window and went in to see it, a chill came over me. He could read his own story sequestered in a play by Georg Dreyman. And now I`ve come to learn that Ulrich Muhe later read of the turncoat behaviors of old friends and even his wife. In that atmosphere of paranoia human behavior was at its worse. Fortunately, some had the courage to defy The State, such as Wiesler. In our current country we must be careful to defy those who would like to spy on us, in the name of countering terrorism. This is a possible lesson of this movie, for me. Electronic eavesdropping is all the more easy with our current technology, and this scares me as I read about how the Stasi easily invaded the lives of Berlin citizens. A New Cold War is now emerging between the West (or maybe just the right-wing in the United States) and many of the countries of the Middle East (if not all of them). This may seem more like a religious division between Islamic countries and Christian ones, than a divide between Democracies and Totalitarian States...To say the least, we are treading perilously in shark infested waters!...

THE SEVENTH SEAL

******
A MEDIEVAL TALE IN CLOTH,
BUT NIETZSCHE`S “GOD IS DEAD” IN FLESH

“Yo so la Muerte cierta á todas criaturas,”
“I am Death, known to all creatures”
-A Spanish danse macabre

The charms of the “The Seventh Seal” were first manifested to me when I was a student at the University of Texas in 1972. Disciples with flutes, some medieval muses, were piping cordial chimes of mirth in our recitation hall, “Have you heard the good news, “The Seventh Seal” is offered up on Friday night at Batts Hall, I`ll be there with ribbons and bows”. Then, as if in quest of the Holy Grail I resolved to appear on the occasion. I had been meandering in the direction of medieval studies anyway, took a liking to Arthurian legend, Beowolf, or the fiefdoms of Charlemagne, and rumor was rampant that “The Seventh Seal” contained such antediluvian treasures. I took my humble presence with the hordes in the university hall that Friday eve, with great anticipation for the Swedish bard of cinema, Ingmar Bergman. Suddenly, an ethereal phantasm flickered forth; I grasped for winsome concord in the shimmering shadows of fleeting dreams, and the contemplation of spirits appeared; the shadow of Death looms as he bargains for souls as prizes to his swarthy fold. `Twas a wayfarer who had lost his way in the walls of Dis, where heretics burn throughout eternity. And the primeval forest was teeming with wolves, cunning serpents, and the most grievous plague. But the sprightly song of the comic troupe lifted me up in mirth just for a pause . Then the woeful flagellants` pouting parade lumbers lazily, the taskmaster`s scolding tongue chastises the meek. A spell was cast over me, I realized in a flash that this world was mine, the one of the Knight and the Squire, and I then vowed to dedicate my studies to the Middle Ages. My days at UT were fifteen years hence the release of this landmark work in 1957, and it was a cult film by then, fully adored and scrutinized by people seeking cosmic answers.

In those days many of the youth-culture-types would wear medieval costumes, period-fairs sprang up, and events such as midnight screenings of underground films would happen; people frequently would attire themselves as fools, jugglers, or damsels in distress, all in a spirit of fun. I participated in some such events, such as at the Festival Theater in Dallas or the early Eeyores Birthday bashes here in Austin. These were the rituals of Bacchus anew with beating drums, shaking tambours, and/or dancing dervishes, twirling `bout maypoles (that is the way I remember it). And at the Festival Theater the zany kids, pied-pipers of change, would bounce balloons and toss frisbees merrily, and a pungent aromatic smoke would tickle the air. A passion bubbled forth in me to dedicate myself to medieval studies, and the inspiration I received from this film contributed to this. The other major source of revelation was Michael Baylor, a professor in the History Department at UT, who taught Renaissance and Medieval European History. I still have my notes from his classes, and review them from time to time. Michael Baylor emphasized intellectual history more often, and inspired me to look at history similarly, as a history of ideas.

“The Seventh Seal” is anything but mod, and its black and white format is worthy for the sharp atheistic pattern that is its heartbeat to the core. As you view it on the surface you see all the trappings of Swedish medieval Christendom, but when you look closer you see something altogether different. A flailing Hegelian dialectic prevails, and two opposing forces, two fiery dragons, act as bookends `gainst one another; they hither battle ferociously, but are at wits-end simulating the role as love birds. This is essentially what was occurring in the grander history of ideas, first with St. Augustine, then with St. Thomas Aquinas; how do faith and reason combine in harmony? I am perceiving “The Seventh Seal” as a clever little allegory, an anti-morality play with medieval forms as the cloth, but nihilism as the flesh; a wolf in sheep`s clothing-innocent on the outside, but experienced within! Occam`s razor, or a simple answer is the best way to understand some of the central motifs here. An implicit theme running freely through “A Seventh Seal” is that since the Superpowers are at odds with each other, and since the world could end in a nuclear holocaust at any moment, life is senseless and absurd, there is not really any positive take on anything in this life. The decorum used in the film effectively promotes the above theme with very simple, stark sets, modest costumes, and a jagged and rancorous soundtrack; Eric Nordgren`s music is stirring, you just might think of Bernard Herrmann as a comparison. I will look at a few of the forms present in “The Seventh Seal” and try to make some sense of them.

Athens, a charnel-house reeking to heaven and deserted even by the birds; Chinese towns cluttered up with victims silent in their agony; the convicts at Marseille piling rotting corpses into pits; the building of the Great Wall in Provence to fend off the furious plague-wind; the damp, putrefying pallets struck to the mud floor at the Constantinople lazar-house, where the patients were hauled up from their beds with hooks; the carnival of masked doctors at the Black Death; men and women copulating in the cemeteries of Milan; cartloads of dead bodies rumbling through London`s ghoul-haunted darkness-nights and days filled always, everywhere, with the eternal cry of human pain.
Albert Camus-“The Plague”

Albert Camus` “The Plague” was published in 1948, and Camus was given the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. I do not know whether this is a coincidence, but that is the same year that “The Seventh Seal” was released. They are both speaking in similar tongues, and espouse the notion of the ‘hopelessness of life’ when the plague comes to town. I have not done enough research to know whether Ingmar Bergman was a devoted fan of Camus, but I do know that many critics have characterized him (Bergman) as an Existentialist. However, the setting of this movie is The Great Plague (1347-1351) that stimulated the popular imagination, and was viewed with great portend as The End. Froissart`s Chronicles give much detail of these events in France and England. Really, since so many people died, perhaps one-third of the population, it caused shortages of labor, raising the fee for a peasant farmer, and this then fomented rebellion amongst the poor, such as the Peasants Rebellion of 1381 in England. A Revolution of Rising Expectations; thus, when peasants realized they could get more, they in turn expected more. This dissatisfaction was largely due to the fiery preaching of Wat Tyler, who would incite the poor with the abuses of the wealthy landlords. The plague is more hinted at than graphically displayed in the film. The skeleton of a dead monk again comes to mind. The best obvious instance of the plague is Raval, the seminarist, dying a slow death in the forest, and the cast looking on helplessly as he writhes and shimmies, doing the dance of death for his mortal sins. Camus also uses the pestilence of the plague to portray a mortified society in North Africa on the breach of panic and denial; their despair is more a numbing and dearth of feeling, they are reduced to nothing-it`s not really despair, just hollowness. This is what the Knight and Squire see when they look into the eyes of the witch: nothingness!

Ingmar Bergman uses medieval forms to provide a compelling story of skepticism regarding the catholic vision. The occasion of this is the mid-14th century, when the Bubonic Plague took away every third person in western Christendom. At the church the Artist shows the Squire his new frescoes depicting the ravages of plague on all types of folks. Our best source for the Great Plague in Florence is given in Boccaccio`s Decameron. The appearance of black spots, vomiting of blood, the large black buboes that appear in the arm-pits and groin, and then inevitable death after the third day are vividly described in his introduction. Imagine everywhere you gaze, there are bodies of the deceased in the streets of your little village. Mothers weep (or what few are still alive), and displaced children scurry in the streets, then the corpse-gathers cry out: “Throw out your dead,” as petrified love-ones toss the departed on carts bound for quarantine and incineration. Things are getting a little unhinged in your village; maybe the wrath of God is upon us? Or maybe the world itself is about to end. Focus now on Jöns the Squire unveiling the cloak of the monk on the beach, and instead he sees a decayed skull as scary as Norman Bates` mother in the cellar.


Surely the plague must signal the Second Coming, judgment day when all souls will be granted their final verdict, eternal damnation or angelic bliss. The opening scene quotes from the Book of Revelations, and too the commons in the tavern speak of the end. The opening sequence on the beach first: “And when the lamb had opened the seventh seal…there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets, prepared themselves to sound.” Then later in the tavern rustics and clerics utter portents unto themselves: Merchant:“The plague is raging everywhere. People are dying like flies. I can`t sell anything. Barmaid: It`s judgment Day, and the awful omens—A woman has given birth to a calf`s head. People are mad. They flee and take the plague with them. Eat, drink, and be Merry! Many have purged themselves with fire and died. But better than hell, the priests say. No one dares say it aloud, but this is the end. People are crazy with fears. You`re scared yourself. I`ll warrant it. Judgment Day. The angels descend and the graves open. It will be horrible.”

The popularity of Revelations in the mid-fourteenth century is yet another of the medieval forms coveted by Bergman to frame his story. It brings immediacy and symbolism to the events of the day, such as the strawberries and milk feast, a humble Swedish take on the Last Supper. It is also a clever way to introduce the theme of skepticism regarding religion.

Early in the film the image of Death appears playing chess with the Knight. If the Knight can hold his own, he will remain alive. If Death triumphs, he will go the way of parted souls. This game is presented comically but its gravity is cunningly sequestered by casual chit chat. The entire movie is staged around this striking metaphor, and really the action takes place over only one day, as the pensive and downtrodden Knight and his trusted Squire are returning from the Crusades to their nearly forgotten home in Sweden. This image of the chess game was present in medieval art in Sweden in this work by Täby Kyrka, but in this representation Death is a skeleton and his companion resembles a merchant. Bergman`s Death more mimics an Anchorite monk with a ghoulish black cloak and oodles of white cake makeup. He is a veritable hybrid of Bela Lugosi`s Count Dracula and Vincent Price`s Egghead on the 1960`s television series “Batman”. Death keeps reminding the Knight in a menacing fashion that he always wins his games of chess.

The procession of flagellants is a distinct medieval form introduced into “The Seventh Seal” to bring immediacy and drama to the film. This ascetic movement saw the Second Coming, or the end of mankind on this earth imminent, if not in just a few seconds from now. This was a reaction to the Great Plague, and is a reasonable one given the circumstances of multiple casualties throughout Europe. This scene with the flagellants, while not an actual phenomenon of fourteenth century Swedish history per se, for the sake of histrionics, is clipped cleverly into the script, according to Peter Cowie, author of “Ingmar Bergman: A Critical Biography.” The existence of this ascetic ritual sect was omnipresent in Italy and other parts of Northern Europe at the time of the Black Death (1347-1351); and in this caliginous epoch both urban and bucolic village life was unraveling at the seams. It is also true that there were no detectable major Crusades evident in mid-fourteenth century Sweden. Nonetheless, with this in the storyline, and the implication that the Knight and Squire were fighting for Christendom `gainst the godless Saracens, their returning to a land of trouble raises the pitch of irony to a merciless, plague-ravaged Sweden. Of course, with Bergman`s background in theater, he selected only the best ingredients for his screenplay, choosing tidbits, morsels of medieval melodrama. To the scene, the somber procession breaks up the charades of the comic troupe with chants of doomsday. The bass kettle drums beat ominously, as the smoldering canisters of incense swing about like rusty pendulums, the hordes brief swagger halted. The eerie wails of raggedy clad commons resound. Humble village folk kneel in supplication, their visage racked with guilt and fear. The gnarly faced preacher with a threaded Benedictine cloak, and with the wild rag-scarves chastises; the dangling silver-crossed preacher flogs them orally and vituperates bile: “God is punishing us. We shall all perish by the Black Death…Death is behind your back. His scythe flashes above your heads. Which of you will he strike first? …You are doomed, do you hear? Doomed! Doomed! Doomed!...” The sermonizing of the memento mori or the “reminder of death” is a recurring topic for clerics of the mendicant order. Finally, a birds-eye shot of the fleeing parade, incense smoke billowing, deep voices chanting…trepidations, trembling-woe is me!

An incorporeal interlope of the Mary Cult in an early scene is a cool breeze, when Jof (Nils Poppe) beholds the Virgin and Child in a meadow, the Virgin arrayed in a flowing bliaut and period headdress. Jof has the extra-sensory talent of seeing beyond the pale; he witnesses events in the spiritual realm. Jof and Mia (Bibi Andersson) are remotely allegorical figures, mirrors of Joseph and Mary with a mystical protective force about them. The introduction of the vision early in the film firms up the celestial talents of Jof and may safeguard him and Mia from the curse of the plague. The motif of the Mary Cult, lightly dusted with eroticism, acts as an anchor `gainst the dark apparition of Death (Bengt Ekerot) as gleaned by the Knight Antonius Block, (Max von Sydow) otherworldly of course.

The burning of the witch by the soldiers leaves an indelible imprint on the mind. The entourage (the knight, the squire and his girl, Plog the Smith, Jof, and Mia with child) forge through the thick, tangled forest on horse or wagon, a dirge-like commencement undeniably. They run into the execution team, and help them push the witch cart to the rendezvous spot, a misty secluded alcove, for final prosecution. A soldier comments: “The devil is with her.” The prosecutors build up the loose firewood for the hovering conflagration. Death himself makes a brief appearance reminding the Knight of his patient circumspection, a bedeviled pursuit of his utter soul . The youthful Witch girl, played by Maud Hansson, is tied to the ladder that will be inserted in the massive pile of wood for the galling roast. The Knight has a chat with her probing for data on the eternal cosmos. “They say you`ve had commerce with the Devil?” The Knight wants to meet the Devil so that he can see God. The Witch says that he can see the Devil anytime, just by looking in her eyes. Truthfully, when the Knight looks in her eyes he sees nothing. The priests and soldiers see the Devil in her, but not the Knight. The Knight gives her an anodyne to still the pain shortly before her confirmed burning at the stake. The flames rise higher and higher as the proceedings begin. The Witch`s eyes are filled with terror; the strains of soundtrack music accent the sorted affair. The Squire postulates that the girl is discovering emptiness. He comments that there are no angels, God, or Devil-only emptiness. We see what she sees-pure terror!

The question of class structure in “The Seventh Seal” has surfaced clamorously as I have been reviewing “The Structure of Medieval Society” by Christopher Brooke. I thought it would be telling to try to observe if Bergman scientifically portrays the social classes (by the book, mind you) in their clear, original medieval forms. There are no detectable references to Popes, Kings, or Barons as such, and the Knight himself is of humble standing. From the evidence of the story all of the characters appear to be from the lower estates; such as say, Plog the smith, the Church Painter, or Raval the nefarious seminarist. As to whether this is intentional or accidental, one can only speculate? Certainly, it would be imprudent to suggest that this film has a Marxist message, nor does it comment in any noticeable way on medieval social structure per se, but perhaps there is a subconscious or subliminal message in the film that belies a proletarian ethos. Marxism is not easily traceable in the footage, but the after-dew of a socialist curry is palate-lingering. Things remain folksy and simple throughout; remember the homey meal with strawberries and milk or the terraqueous drinking raucous in the tavern scene. Keep in mind that the theme of the leveling of the social classes by the plague is clearly expressed in the common art of Tuscany, and that these references are sprinkled graciously on the movie. More than one third of the population was wiped out as a result of the plague, and do not forget that just as easily the worms would devour the flesh of the secular nobles and church fathers too. I visited Pisa in 2000, and saw the frescoes of the Master of the Triumph of Death, showing the carcasses of lords o`erwhelmed with crawling worms! I was racked by the frescoes, and realized that the Black Death had its crestfallen grip on the natives of Tuscany in the mid-fourteenth century, such that there was an omnipresent gloom that permeated all their days, and each felt as if their present moment would certainly be their last one!

In a later locale, as Death comes to take away souls at the Knight`s house, the Squire`s girl says: “it is finished”. Indeed, the end is here for the lot of them. The final instance of the movie opens with Jof and Mia together on the beach. Mia looks out angelically at the fresh morn, the birds chirp chimerically, and the ocean rays beam brightly. Jof has an interlude of clairvoyance: “I see them Mary! Over there against the stormy sky. They are all there. The Smith and Lisa, the Knight, Raval, Jöns, and Skat. And the strict master Death bids them dance. He wants them to hold hands…and to tread the dance in a long line. At the head goes the strict master with the scythe and hourglass. But the fool brings up the rear with his lute. They move away from the dawn…in a solemn dance away towards the dark lands…while the rain cleanses their cheeks, of the salt from their bitter tears. All the while a chorus of murky monks chant in the background `gainst Jof`s words.

The medieval form of the danse macabre is handled delicately by Bergman. In art and literature the danse macabre has an array of characters from the social stations. Guyot Marchand in a 1486 publication with woodcuts includes the Pope, a noble, and skeletons. The source for this was the 1424 wall painting from the Hall of Columns in the Cemetery of the Innocents in Paris (“The Vision of Death”-The Autumn of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga). Primarily these representations included Death, the pope, the emperor, the nobleman, the day laborer, the monk, a small child, and a fool. In contrast, the movie only has people from the lower estates; not to ascribe more significance to this than is necessary, but it is observable, this proletarian panoply of shadow, as the danse macabre unfolds. Also, in the art of Hans Holbein we see the smoothing down of the upper orders by Death; all will meet the same fate as the curtain falls. In the very last shot of “The Seventh Seal” we see the miraculous shot of the hand-holding caravan of silhouetted souls, and all of them are common people. This is a new take on the danse macabre, theatrical, lyrical, and cinematic too!

"The Seventh Seal" is inextricably injected with symbolism and allegory; Bergman is simply playing along with these forms that are prevalent in art and literature of the late Middle Ages. You can view the whole movie as an allegorical morality play, something akin to Piers Plowman, where every character represents an abstract vice or virtue. Let me sketch a fanciful scenario, and realize this is not etched in stone. You may want to formulate your own list of character/atributes and see what you come up with! Lisa would be Lust, Raval is Avarice, the Knight is lost salvation seeking God through Lady Philosophy, Mia is Mother Mary (duhh!), Jof is Joseph, the Church Painter is Visual Truth, the Witch represents Misunderstanding, the Squire mirrors Existential Reality, and Skat resembles the Doomed Fool etc…Bergman, no doubt, had the tradition of medieval church allegory at his command when he wrote this quirky little script. This is a very clever little film play, mostly fourteenth century, but with a twentieth century message.

When using the term Symbolism, I prefer to think of this loaded word in a visual context; that is, that images are used in the film to sharpen some medieval forms significantly in the shape of their original bravura, and this reinforces the veracity of the film as a period piece of medieval Dom. When dwelling on this term of symbolism, and while we are careful to use a remote or even mystical frame of mind, we are reminded that there is the literal aspect of the image, then afterwards its inner meaning, be it religious or at other times philosophic. By way of reference, in the flagellant scene the camera focuses singularly on the wooden Christ effigy that the devotees carry with a brutal burden. The symbolism is the suffering of Christ, revealed in the tormented eyes, crown of thorns, and trickle of blood from the forehead. Similarly, the flagellants suffer and struggle in this age (mid fourteenth century Sweden), whipping themselves in preparation for the Second Coming. The barefaced visage of Death playing chess with the Knight conjointly conjures to the surface of frail memory. The translation or meaning for the viewer would be: we struggle daily to remain alive, and we have to defeat irksome Death one pawn or bishop move at a time, but he will remain all our days to tax our souls. Truly, his scythe-toting malevolence will probably prevail at the end of the day, as the hourglass sands sift through to the final granule. Symbols are ubiquitous throughout the film, such as the strawberries and milk, the plethora of startling, white skulls on the sets, or the apparition of Madonna and Child experienced in a daydream vision by Jof. These images tend to persuade you of the authenticity of the story, that you are really in the Swedish countryside in nearly 1350. I have been marveling at the woodcuts of Albrecht Durer, and specifically: Knight, Death, and the Devil-1513-1514, where Death is holding an hourglass and his countenance gawks irreverently from the grooves of the woodcut. I would suggest that Bergman`s Death is more a figure from a Samuel Beckett play, such as the tramp in Waiting For Godot, stylishly modern in appearance, and may represent emptiness or nihilism-the threat that after you die there will be nothing for all eternity.

“Do we not wander through an endless Nothingness?” The Joyful Wisdom-Friedrich Nietzsche

The setting of The Great Plague (1347-1351) in Sweden was particularly chosen by Ingmar Bergman when constructing the screenplay. This is a very bleak landscape indeed, where plague and pestilence rule the day. The burned-out countryside, dotted with skulls, empty chapels, and wayward waifs revivifies Hiroshima, a cardinal, catastrophic event, a nightmare that had rampaged Japan some twelve years prior to this 1957 movie. When the Knight takes confession, his priest is unveiled to be Death himself, a paling irony when Antonius Block lost in the confessor`s cell, fathoms mere emptiness in his sinful soul. The infiltration of the church by Death, who here more mirrors the blasphemy of nihilism, by way of a symbolic image, rather than an evil curse of the Devil, and verily this signifies a decline of the church and religion. According to William Barrett, author of Irrational Man, first published in 1958, a primer that I have carried with me for countless years, the decline of the church and religion is the trumpet blast of the Existentialists. And so the knight is a lonely soul who seeks spiritual sustenance, but is somberly smitten with wormwood. The theme of Existentialism is rearing its gnarly coconut in these early scenes; “God Is Dead!” is the subliminal message between the cracks, craftily filtered through medieval forms, such as the crippling plague or the withering witch who only cries out in despair, solitude, and dripping with fear-no real devil curse is upon her, just the curse of idiocy and superstition. “God Is dead!” does not scream from the rafters, as such in Rosemary`s Baby, but is subtly woven in the story. My very last thought is that the character of Death represents Nietzsche`s “Will To Power”; this is his world and he presides over it. The beautiful thing about this film is that you can continue to tweak the meaning of it, it has that kind of elasticity!