I put this film on tonight, after coming back from work. It started off in a cliched meaningful film way: innocent boy being lied to by older brother, secrets of adults, a school play (which you know will be performed by the end - Brecht's gun I guess), someone who died, someone who's going to die, the family drinking and singing around a table, and it all set in the days when people were people and the spirit could move.
But it grew on me. Maybe I'm a sentimentalist or maybe just the way it ended out was full-hearted. How all the secret shames came to light or became light, and the things remained unsaid were understood. But mainly I just liked the music growing in the last scene. Very beautiful.
Here is a still from the film.. It's of the 'bird' statue in the abandoned house:
Abandoning beautiful things
When I saw this statue off a winged beast, I wasn't paying much attention to the film (it was annoying me at first, for the reasons above). They stop at this abandoned house where, Javi's brother had told him, a man went mad, killed his wife, then killed his friend. Now all'that are left are their ghosts. You can hear them whispering: because they are going mad since they want to tell a secret. Of course we don't believe any of this - this film, about kids, is not for kids - so what we see, and are supposed to see, is an abandoned house. There's nothing in there. Except this statue of what Javi calls a bird.
In fantasy books, and roleplaying games I used play as a kid, ruins have treasures and statues and such in them. But who on earth thinks people would do this, outside of wartime? This is what threw me off this film: at the end, we find the house is just an old house of someone from out of town, but for some reason they left this statue here, an ornate object left in an empty place. Why would anyone do this?
If you saw this statue in an antique shop in one of Amsterdam's Nine Streets, you'd probably think it's unusual but not particularly strange; I've seen a lot odder things for sale in those places. But seeing it on its own in an otherwise stripped-out home, one wonders why it is left. There's a story there.
So you look at the film, and wonder about the statue, and it becomes an unfired gun. No-one explains why it appears there, and what happens in the film doesn't justify why we see it.
Ruins and haunts.
If houses have people living in them, then ruined houses must have ruined people. I wonder if that's my logic about haunted houses near where I lived in Dungarvan.
Dungarvan is a small seaside town, buried deep in an enclosed bay; it used be one of the main Irish harbours. However, for decades now the harbour has filled up with sand, making the tide shallow and fast, and it is impossible for any large ships to sail in there. Now, it is a main location for speed surfing, which happens once a year near our old church.
Near my house was an old ruin visible from the road the kids in my area took from school. It was on the far side of a field owned by a guy called Frankie (and so we called it 'Frankie's Field'). Frankie used pass us every day on our way to school in his horse and cart: I remember a white-haired wiry man, his horse in blinders, with a stick-whip he used snap and say 'hyup'. But he seemed friendly. Incomprehensible but friendly.
The house on the other side of Frankie's Field scared the wits out of me. It was an empty, lightless place of dread. It's where all the things that scared me lived or floated from to the road across the field: ghosts, watchers, serpents and so on...a panoply of horrors.
It's the unlit doorways at night that do it. But also the collapsed, sagging roof, the uncertainty of why it is still up there, why it's still standing when nobody lives in it, or could. Is it still there because some non-body lives there instead?
Hegh...the tricks absence played on me as a kid. My own house terrified me during the day when I was sick. My dad would put me in his bedroom, put on the radio, give me white lemonade and toast and go out into town for a bit (never very long). When that happened, there would be no-one else in the house. But, other than those unusual days, at all other times, just as a result of having a big family, there was always someone somewhere in the house: i my sister, my other sister, my mum, my little sister, my brother, my other brother. There was always someone. Even though they weren't in the room, or a nearby room, if you waited long enough, they'd turn up in your room; or listened hard enough, you'd hear them in the garden or downstairs.
So, as a kid this is what you automatically think: there was always someone in the house because there was always someone in the house. On these days dad was out, it was no-one I knew; it was no-one. So, what was it: an alien (I'd read about aliens appearing in someone's garden during the day), a ghost (same again, but indoors) - or once, terrifying and uncalled-for, it was Doomlord (Wikipedia entry). I imagined him coming into my parents' room, the sun streaming in, while I sat helpless in bed, eating... I think, Rivita.
-------------------------------------------------------
Please note: I do not condone reading Doomlord or any Eagle comic stories, even for kids. They were, at best, imperialist trash; and at worst, they are really just stupid. Or.... it's the other way around: stupid: best; trash: worst. Many of the stories in them had a cruel and sadistic, vengeful streak as well. But I really loved them as a kid. This, however, does not mean I'll to go a film about or a revival of Doomlord, Deathwish, M.A.N.NI.X, The Thirteenth Floor, etc. *
Unfortunately, I suffered a bout of adultitus** a while back: the condition of growing out of things and, upon being exposed to them after having done so, am fascinated but have no desire to rekindle or discuss them - only because, and this is the only explanation I can give, I grew out of them.
---------------------------------------
(There are worse things in the world than ghosts of people and shape-shifting aliens. There are mechanical hungry things grown in society, that can change the shape of bodies, have no bodies of their own, but anyway kill you, suck you dry, and use your corpse. That's another story - and one so old now that any hero of it is probably a myth.)
(If we have to keep telling a story about how the world will be saved in some hopeful way, it's because it hasn't been saved in that way. And it hasn't been saved by now, it is because it can't be, because the hero of that sort, that does that heroic deed, or sacrifice, does not exist.)
*This is what I learned from Eagle: enough pudding-sized blobs can eat a whole zoo of giraffes.
**I only recently caught it. Also, given my invention of this word to describe it, I think I'm already getting over it.
But it grew on me. Maybe I'm a sentimentalist or maybe just the way it ended out was full-hearted. How all the secret shames came to light or became light, and the things remained unsaid were understood. But mainly I just liked the music growing in the last scene. Very beautiful.
Here is a still from the film.. It's of the 'bird' statue in the abandoned house:
Abandoning beautiful things
When I saw this statue off a winged beast, I wasn't paying much attention to the film (it was annoying me at first, for the reasons above). They stop at this abandoned house where, Javi's brother had told him, a man went mad, killed his wife, then killed his friend. Now all'that are left are their ghosts. You can hear them whispering: because they are going mad since they want to tell a secret. Of course we don't believe any of this - this film, about kids, is not for kids - so what we see, and are supposed to see, is an abandoned house. There's nothing in there. Except this statue of what Javi calls a bird.
In fantasy books, and roleplaying games I used play as a kid, ruins have treasures and statues and such in them. But who on earth thinks people would do this, outside of wartime? This is what threw me off this film: at the end, we find the house is just an old house of someone from out of town, but for some reason they left this statue here, an ornate object left in an empty place. Why would anyone do this?
If you saw this statue in an antique shop in one of Amsterdam's Nine Streets, you'd probably think it's unusual but not particularly strange; I've seen a lot odder things for sale in those places. But seeing it on its own in an otherwise stripped-out home, one wonders why it is left. There's a story there.
So you look at the film, and wonder about the statue, and it becomes an unfired gun. No-one explains why it appears there, and what happens in the film doesn't justify why we see it.
Ruins and haunts.
If houses have people living in them, then ruined houses must have ruined people. I wonder if that's my logic about haunted houses near where I lived in Dungarvan.
Dungarvan is a small seaside town, buried deep in an enclosed bay; it used be one of the main Irish harbours. However, for decades now the harbour has filled up with sand, making the tide shallow and fast, and it is impossible for any large ships to sail in there. Now, it is a main location for speed surfing, which happens once a year near our old church.
Near my house was an old ruin visible from the road the kids in my area took from school. It was on the far side of a field owned by a guy called Frankie (and so we called it 'Frankie's Field'). Frankie used pass us every day on our way to school in his horse and cart: I remember a white-haired wiry man, his horse in blinders, with a stick-whip he used snap and say 'hyup'. But he seemed friendly. Incomprehensible but friendly.
The house on the other side of Frankie's Field scared the wits out of me. It was an empty, lightless place of dread. It's where all the things that scared me lived or floated from to the road across the field: ghosts, watchers, serpents and so on...a panoply of horrors.
It's the unlit doorways at night that do it. But also the collapsed, sagging roof, the uncertainty of why it is still up there, why it's still standing when nobody lives in it, or could. Is it still there because some non-body lives there instead?
Hegh...the tricks absence played on me as a kid. My own house terrified me during the day when I was sick. My dad would put me in his bedroom, put on the radio, give me white lemonade and toast and go out into town for a bit (never very long). When that happened, there would be no-one else in the house. But, other than those unusual days, at all other times, just as a result of having a big family, there was always someone somewhere in the house: i my sister, my other sister, my mum, my little sister, my brother, my other brother. There was always someone. Even though they weren't in the room, or a nearby room, if you waited long enough, they'd turn up in your room; or listened hard enough, you'd hear them in the garden or downstairs.
So, as a kid this is what you automatically think: there was always someone in the house because there was always someone in the house. On these days dad was out, it was no-one I knew; it was no-one. So, what was it: an alien (I'd read about aliens appearing in someone's garden during the day), a ghost (same again, but indoors) - or once, terrifying and uncalled-for, it was Doomlord (Wikipedia entry). I imagined him coming into my parents' room, the sun streaming in, while I sat helpless in bed, eating... I think, Rivita.
-------------------------------------------------------
Please note: I do not condone reading Doomlord or any Eagle comic stories, even for kids. They were, at best, imperialist trash; and at worst, they are really just stupid. Or.... it's the other way around: stupid: best; trash: worst. Many of the stories in them had a cruel and sadistic, vengeful streak as well. But I really loved them as a kid. This, however, does not mean I'll to go a film about or a revival of Doomlord, Deathwish, M.A.N.NI.X, The Thirteenth Floor, etc. *
Unfortunately, I suffered a bout of adultitus** a while back: the condition of growing out of things and, upon being exposed to them after having done so, am fascinated but have no desire to rekindle or discuss them - only because, and this is the only explanation I can give, I grew out of them.
---------------------------------------
(There are worse things in the world than ghosts of people and shape-shifting aliens. There are mechanical hungry things grown in society, that can change the shape of bodies, have no bodies of their own, but anyway kill you, suck you dry, and use your corpse. That's another story - and one so old now that any hero of it is probably a myth.)
(If we have to keep telling a story about how the world will be saved in some hopeful way, it's because it hasn't been saved in that way. And it hasn't been saved by now, it is because it can't be, because the hero of that sort, that does that heroic deed, or sacrifice, does not exist.)
*This is what I learned from Eagle: enough pudding-sized blobs can eat a whole zoo of giraffes.
**I only recently caught it. Also, given my invention of this word to describe it, I think I'm already getting over it.
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