Book, movies, graphics

[tarigwaemir]

Ad Mundo Exteriore,

I want a paid account. The customized comment pages I'm starting to see around here are making me envious. Anyway, let it be put on record that I read all my backlogged friends entries, even if I didn't bother leaving comments on many of them. I'm also fighting the urge to join yet more anime communities. >_<

Finished One Hundred Years of Solitude on Monday, which was indeed absolutely satisfying to the end. I enjoyed it completely, regardless of and including the constant incest theme and the grotesque decay of house, family and town. Normally that kind of thing would end up depressing me. I mean, I couldn't really enjoy reading The Sound and the Fury, which has similar themes (also, written by Faulkner, who was a major influence on Marquez or so I hear), though I didn't dislike it, you know? The Sound and the Fury gave me a terrible headache and a dull feeling of lassitude, but One Hundred Years of Solitude was...I don't know...softer? How can I explain it? Thematically, stylistically, it has more in common with Faulkner, but in terms of my reading experience, it felt more like Buddenbrooks (Thomas Mann's first novel, basically can be described as the rise and fall of the house of Buddenbrooks). There was regret and melancholy in the decay, even sordidness, but it felt fitting, you know, symmetrical and part of the natural order/cycle of time. It had to happen, and the reader continues observing with curiosity, rather than weariness. I don't want to give the idea that I felt joyful, but it didn't tire me out, you see. Or perhaps you don't. I feel terribly incoherent.

I've also seen a spate of really good movies. Mother is on a Zhang Yimou fix, so we borrowed The Road Home, Qiu Ju and Red Sorghum, which are his more rustic films. They're poignant, as stupid as that sounds, and visually beautiful in every way. I keep remembering the sorghum swaying in the wind as Nine (played by Gong Li) falls back into the bed of trampled sorghum; the country road winding through the hills covered with falling leaves; the bright gold brush calligraphy on red paper scrolls bought for the birth of Qiu Ju's firstborn.

I also watched Time Regained, based on Marcel Proust's Le temps recherché. Sounds pretentious, doesn't it? And perhaps it is, because I certainly had no clue what was going on throughout the entire movie. ("Uh, wait, so Gilberte is married to Marcel, right? Oh no, it's Robert de Saint-Loup, who's actually gay...wait no, the gay one is his uncle, Baron de Charlus, that guy with a sadomasochistic fetish...I think.") The literary devices were expertly translated onto the screen, but I probably should have read the book before to understand it all. Anyway, the pacing was perfect, not too rushed, not too slow, and even if I had no clue what was going on, I did appreciate the sheer gorgeousness of the cinematography. Each scene could have been a perfect photograph; it was like watching a series of brilliantly colored moving tableaux, connected by the thin thread of the author's stream of consciousness. Thematically, the typical modern search to escape time through art and remembrance, basically a confrontation with death. The subtler points probably escaped me, but I understood that much.

Yesterday, we watched The Road to Perdition, which is probably the first mainstream American movie (aside from Lord of the Rings) that moved me. I should have watched it in the theater. Did it win anyting? I don't think so, and now having watched it, I'm rather surprised that it didn't. I usually associate Tom Hanks with sappy films, like Forrest Gump, but this was hardly sentimental. It did move me to tears, but not the maudlin, "look, you're supposed to cry unashamedly at this sweet scene" kind of manipulation. Perhaps the Irish music was my weak spot, considering the years I spent listening to Celtic groups. But music or no, the story was tragic without being self-pitying, and I really have a new respect for Tom Hanks as an actor. I think I'm particularly sensitive to the colors of a film: the ending taking place in that white, ghostly room was perfect. Actually, the whole movie was perfect, let's just leave it at that.

In other news, I'm almost finished with the Sai skin. I only have the minibrowser and the readme file left. Oniichan and I updated our graphics list: (1) the Eriol battle graphic, (2) a Aura wallpaper competition and (3) a Spiral skin competition. I also need to start coding the new layout in its preliminary form, without the commenting feature. >_< Why do I do this to myself? Oh yeah, that reminds me. Angelette, could you send me that Worldend Fairytale picture? The one with Yui or Rui or whatever her name was, with the ribbon in her hand? I think I'm going to try coloring it after all. >_>

...Tari

Post-script: Did you know that Darwin quotes French papers in the original language? Without translation! German, he paraphrases, but not French. Just goes to prove that French indeed was an international language. Luckily, high school AP course was more than adequate education to translate the quoted passages.

Comments

[tryogeru.livejournal.com]

You might not remember, but one time we were watching this movie at my house "The Emperor and the Assassin" or something, and I kept singing, I was singing from Red Sorgum (when the woman was on the donkey and the drunken opera singer was singing in the field). I love the songs in there. Especially the wine god song.

O.o

[troisroyaumes]

Really? Oh, I didn't remember you singing. But that's cool. We liked the songs too. ^_^

...Tari

[phoebs.livejournal.com]

...also, Solitude has the greatest last sentence (paragraph? page?) EVER.

Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.

[troisroyaumes]

Yes yes yes yes! It's perfect! (And kind of like some of Borges' stories in Ficciones, don't you think? These Latin fabulists.)

...Tari