And I'm taking advantage of the Criterion Channel to watch another silent movie, in this case Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr. The second half of the film, during a huge storm, features some of the most iconic Keaton moments.
This week in my Images of Fascism class I had the opportunity to show Jia Zhangke's masterful 2006 film Still Life. I was honest in telling my students, in fact I include it on the handout, that Jia Zhangke is my favorite contemporary filmmaker. I suspect I've talked enough about this film over the years that it's not necessary to give a lot of background, but, of course, I will anyway. It focuses on Han Sanming (played by Han Sanming) and Shen Hong (played by Zhao Tao, Jia Zhangke's longtime muse) who arrive at the village of Fengjie, both looking for lost spouses. The actual town of Fengjie was being actually largely flooded by the Three Gorges Dam project, and the destruction is being captured in real time. Jia Zhangke is telling a beautiful and heart-wrenching story, but he's also subtly critiqueing the state of life in China (which is what I asked the students to focus on). It is an extraordinary film, maybe my favorite film of the 21st century, and definitely required viewing.
My friend Katheryn, who is on sabbatical, finally rolled into my office to pick up the Wanker trophy (marking her conquest of the Twin Peaks Football League). I had told her office mate that if the trophy sat in my office one more day that it would revert to the previous champion, who was, let me check my notes, me. In my popular retelling of her arrival that is the answer to why she showed up then.
I'm working my way through the Romanian New Wave collection on the Criterion Channel, and the other night I watched Corneliu Porumboiu's 2006 film 12:08 East of Bucharest. It's a comedy, and although at times it was a little inconsistent (as comedies tend to be), there were also times when I laughed out loud. It also asked the question of what constitutes a revolution. Virgil Jderescu (Teodor Corban) hosts a local access TV show, and he invites a couple friends, Tiberiu Manescu (Ion Sapdaru) and Emanoil Piscoci (Mircea Andreescu), to discuss whether there had actually been a revolution in their small town or not at the fall of Ceausescu regime. At the end you're wondering if anyone actually participated in the revolution. Recommended.
And now we've reached Spring Break, which means that everything will start picking up speed as head towards the end. My good friend Katheryn stopped by my office the other day to pick up the Championship Trophy (aka the Wanker) for her win this year in the Twin Peaks Football League. She saw this picture on my door and was horrified that I had so little time left before I walked away. She heads up the college's international education efforts, or whatever is left of them. She proposed that I give a public lecture relating to international educational education that could both be streamed (she's clearly been talking to my friends Cyndi and Mike about this, because this also part of their insane plan for my last days at Champlain) and then would give its name to an annual event. I love her and Cyndi and Mike, and am touched by their efforts, but I have absolutely zero interest in doing this. About the only thing that I hate more than being the center of attention is public speaking, so having to give a speech where I'm also the center of attention would be my personal hell. Plus, truthfully, I simply don't think I have anything interesting to say. And, finally, I'll be honest: I'm a proud man, and having to drag myself up with my cane to speak - and either stand there in pain for a half-hour, or, even worse, sit because I'm so crippled - would be humiliating. Hopefully this madness will go the way of the big public retirement soiree.
My second Harold Lloyd short this morning was actually a little longer, that is twenty minutes as compared to ten. His Royal Slyness came out in 1920, and, like Young Mr. Jazz, was directed by Hal Roach. There's a fair bit of mocking of a fictional royal family, as one might expect from an American film from 1920, although the attempted revolution might have been a subtle dig at the fairly recently completed Russian Revolution.
So, not surprisingly, I've gone down a Harold Lloyd rabbit hole. Maybe, in the midst of this Trumpian madness, I needed some joy - which the world probably needed in 1919 as well. This morning, while waiting for the pellet stove to cool down enough for me to clean it, I watched a couple Harold Lloyd shorts, the first being Young Mr. Jazz. Not surprisingly, I tend to lump Lloyd in with Chaplin and Keaton, and I guess I'm still working out my order of preference (although the very fact that I made that statement shows what a dude I am). It's funny how consistently jazz was always held up as the very definition of bad behavior - we even saw it in Japanese films noir.
