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Wow, the library has THREE copies of this DVD: I’ll never have to push back a sitting in time because it’s checked out…. I guess Joe Wright is a pretty prestigious filmmaker. Of course, that one attempt he made to make a movie with a mixed-race cast, “Pan”, (2015), was kinda a crash and burn failure, right…. But among historical-literary white stories, he does seem to have talent, right: more than average…. And here it does look like he’s following the new trend of introducing actors of color into trad “white stories”, or whatever, (although to not be in denial or over-state the positive: making exotic stories simultaneously white-centric probably hasn’t mysteriously gone poof), and yeah: it can be a hard thing to do successfully, or whatever: just from the theatrical poster cover, it does seem as though there’s the possibility of introducing racial tension into the story, to replace the 100% white-centric thing, if that makes sense. We’ll see if Joe can leap over the hurdles, right.
And as for romantic stories mostly about men: they can make sense and obviously they do exist, right—but I wonder how well he tells both the good and the bad in terms of men, or if it becomes kinda a romantic delusion about men, that conceals how unromantic men tend to be, right…. I wonder….
The singing I can take or leave, but some of the instrumental music is really pretty good.
The sniping between the penniless romantic girl and the shrewd maid is good: realistic, especially for a movie.
“Children need love. Adults need money.”
Especially given the casting, “She’s well above your station”, was a great line. Who wouldn’t like to prove That wrong, eh?
“A child with a full purse is an adult.”
No commentary required.
…. “Freedom at first sight”, or…. Third-party thieving at first sight? (Ok symbol emoji)
It’s a good lyric: but we pay musicians to deceive us, lol.
…. (baroque French theatre or…. Something?)
What an odd culture….
(enter Cyrano) Wow, what a turd…. I’m supposed to like this small-time thug? OMG…. I wonder how many hundreds of pages of Victorian novel musing I would have had to suffer through to figure out I hate that diminutive…. Loser.
[Wikipedia: Actually, it was a play written in verse in 1897 by a French guy named—
Great. But I wasn’t entirely wrong.]
…. Anyway: superficially, at least, the level of artistry is very high. Visually and sonically the art is very pleasing…. It just doesn’t seem to have depth…. Like, the first few minutes: I just loved how quotable it was. But unlike say in a Nietzsche (how do you get a name like that?) book: after a while I wanted it to be less quotable, since it was saying very common things, albeit, you know, in a way very flowery and shit, right…. I don’t know if at least half of Joe Wright movies start out great to me, and then start kinda a descent into mediocrity: or whether a love story about a beautiful woman and an ugly man, is just too much, right—too much of a challenge, and not the right one, for anyone to set themselves, basically….
I do think it’s interesting how it’s basically a thriller-romance, almost, although I don’t really care for it, right. I’ll have to watch the “Jason Bourne” movie, and see which one I like better. I read the book JB, and in print it did seem like kinda a straight adventure story, right; but I have a feeling on the screen it will be similar to this, close to half-and-half, even if, if forced to choose, I’ll probably end up putting them on different sides of the fence, so to speak.
But I can’t imagine liking this better, you know.
…. But yeah: a play written in verse in the 1890s was never going to tell the most ‘brave’ story about love, you know…. All the tropes; all the feels…. It’s not Oscar Wilde: if it weren’t for the 1918 pandemic, he could have lived to a ripe old age, untroubled by the literary police, right…. The literary police probably walked with the casket, at the “normal”-style funeral, after the pandemic was over, lol….
…. (the actor with a French name) (crying) I had a successful career for decades, and I was still on top of my game, until some small-time thug threatened me off the stage with threat of violence, to impress a girl he didn’t have the courage to talk to!
(Freud) (pushes tissue box closer, but) Don’t say “small-time thug”. It’s an unhelpful label.
(the crying actor) He literally wasn’t that tall, Doctor…. (drowning in tissues) And I should be able to hold a job down without needed to knife hecklers with ulterior motives! Man, fuck that guy! (crying)
…. I mean: I hate to make it sound like it’s antipathy to the actor—I really don’t know much about him—and of course I don’t want to alienate people who aren’t tall, right: like, “you should have to be ~Tall~, Mediterranean, and handsome!” (sometimes: obviously, though for anything to ever happen even once, to a propagandist, you have to call it eternal verity, right—and obviously Hollywood doesn’t like them too “dark”, lol: blaccskinnedgangstaohnoes, only if there’s, like, no other option, right; which is why he’ll be portrayed as a tough, lol…. See the logic? (laugh emoji) …. Although the Mediterranean or otherwise exotic look comes into season, now and again….). But yeah: I never understood the thing about height, right; one girl I knew obsessed about how she was “short”: like, not only do I not perceive these subtle things about height the way that I guess people do, but it’s like, Girl, you’ve got good…. (Only I didn’t, because she had no self-esteem. Somehow, she would have found a way to hate herself, right. Skip to the part where you’re not involved.)
But yeah: I mean, as much as you don’t want to intentionally frame anybody (at all) as unattractive out of spite, I don’t think that discouraging what we now call “body shaming” was what was going on for an 1890s writer, probably to the right of Dickens and his successors, right. Not even for a man, even though it is kinda like a Nickie Sparks novel, that old shit, old propaganda: “A love story about a man…. In love, men have so much. But they shouldn’t have to….” And yet, it’s not even quite that, really…. It’s more like…. An aggressive and insecure man? Why, then—why not a short guy who stabs people to death! (OK sign emoji)
…. Yeah, I don’t believe that any girl is that stupid, basically.
Cyrano being that self-effacing is possible, I guess— a sort of pride warring with pride, right; though it would be more swimming against the current than the story shows.
But yeah: mostly, just the girl in that scene (the “confession”), is not a real girl in Middle Earth, right…. Media can be so deceptive.
At the same time, if you watched Many movies, this might strike you as being better than many, perhaps: it has potential; they don’t always have that…. It’s not gutter trash; a saying that wouldn’t always be honest, right….
…. It was briefly so cool to see the Black guy fighting white guys giving him a fraternity hazing in the 1600s…. And then, I knew it was coming…. But he’s like: I’m a dummy! I’m not smart enough to be a romantic, the way you are, Diminutive Soldier Shakespeare.
Ah, shit, right…. OMG…. (facepalm)….
…. “I’d sing pop songs; but I’m smart enough….”
…. But the choreographer deserves some award or something, right….
It is surprising like Old Hollywood, right: lots of style…. Racist…. Very fancy, though….
…. And it is like that song by The Cars, right: I’m suspicious of women; all women, pretty women; and I don’t like other guys; they get in the way: to like your friends isn’t the masculine way…. “And she used to be mine!”…. (My Best Friend’s Girl)….
Like, the wounded little man: he should have been Napoleon…. A sorta Black Snowball is on the loose…. LOL….
…. It reminds me of this novel about New Zealand, “In the Land of the Long White Cloud”, where the girl agrees to marry this guy based on letters “from him”, whereas really he just had this Austen clergyman, you know, romantic-conventional-flowery-Victorian, write them, and then she shows up in New Zealand and finds out that she’s married to a gruff laconic boar of the farmer, right.
Anyway.
…. I don’t like Cyrano-less Christian turning into a monkey with Roxanne. Even if there were no “color” thing, it’s very bad about class. Watching that, I feel like I’m being bullied by some Shakespeare professor. Maybe a philosophy teacher…. And I’ve read once through Shakespeare, and more philosophy than most people read, by some margin, really.
Roxanne and the Duke is complicated…. “I love the man for whom I fear” is a great line sociologically: I feel like it must have been spoken many, many times, with many, many meanings….
But largely it is, not an obnoxious, but a familiar bad rich man-heroic beautiful woman cautionary tale, right…. It is hard to disentangle the idiocy and neurosis of the trad rich from kinda…. Socialistic moralism, you know: lust and disgust; money is “funny” stuff, right….
It is kinda curious to think that an adventure story—with dragons and dragon’s blood, right: with probably 92% of the audience being males-running-from-romance, right—is more the type of story where the man can start poor and end rich, right…. So that the beautiful woman can have her frills and thrills without the socialistic moralists leering and jeering, Lust and disgust! Money is funny stuff, I say!…. ~Right?
…. Anyway: halfway through, I’m not sure whether I’d call it straight mediocre, or just modestly bad, right. I’m not sure that will ever be resolved, really, whatever number I end up having to pin on it, since on this site, things need numbers, right.
…. But yeah: SO weird how similar it is to Old Hollywood, right: JUST as fancy; JUST as racist…. Only it’s different, because now people have found the goodness in their hearts to explain, so that you can understand, just as they, in their great knowledges do, right—which tropes apply to Blacks, right. It used to be that they’d say, you know, But when is whitey going to ~actually meet~ a Black person in real life, right…. We’ve gotta keep our propaganda practical, know—(cynical laugh), It’s gotta sell, you know!…. And if the world changes, it won’t be because of me—print that in my obituary: I won’t exist anymore! (cynical 20s laugh)
…. Like, sometimes I wonder how much white ideology is behind so much quotidian punctilious asshat teachings, you know…. “Straighten out your car…. You don’t know me, but I’ll shoot! We have to do things the right way, if we’re to remain above the bugs and the ants and natives!” “Great, fine. I hate you, but, I’ll forget you, I guess. Not worth dying over.” “Thank you. I no longer seek your death.” “Asking nicely the first time would have been more…. Proper, asshat.”
You know: but if the person who guards the parking space on the other side of the lot/houses, feels the same way: why, then they’re right! Society can never be wrong! White Ideology tells me so!
You know, like: once there’s hierarchy, it never ends, right. “I park my car better than you.” “I didn’t even hit your car.” “That’s not the issue here. The issue is, 1890s Lit Crit Man is superior…. But I’m superior, too. I’m sorry, Neotheognis, looks like this time: ~you~ are the sacrifice to White Ideology.”
And God knows this movie is White Ideology, right….
And like, I could almost understand them
standing around gossiping about the time the cops came, but what was it this time, right? Waiting to see if someone shows up who parks “the wrong way”? “It says right here in this information booklet that being 75% off to one side is against law and custom. You can only be 5% off to one side, even if you drive a Civic…. After all, these spaces are tiny. You should look into that! Come to the meetings with the other gossips, right. Oh no wait; you don’t have money…. Never mind.”
And I mean: god knows that even when Joe Wright makes a movie, he’s more interested in the Car Parking Gossip Market, than the Quixotic Dreamer Market, right…. But you gotta have good choreography, so you can disguise that fact to all the chess club robots who sold their soul to the Cylons, right….
…. Yeah: I’ll probably give the movie one half-star less instead of one half-star more, because that lady really pissed me off, you know, and she wasn’t unlike the movie, right.
It’s also probably not going to get better, right. We haven’t even reached the Wistful Regret Of the Big-Hearted White Man Over the Interracial Relationship, Which Owes Its Very Existence To His Own GOODNESS, Right: his sad, sad, pathetic white man goodness, right….
We haven’t even gotten to that part yet, lol.
So much to unpack, OMG….
At least I’ll have my revenge on slave market capitalism, though…. Yes, I am a little quixotic…. That windmill grinds the corn of Satan, son…. Don’t buy from that miller. “All the other millers are like him, only more cruel and violent.” Hmm…. (Don Quixote contemplates his symbolic revenge on the best of all Satanic millers…. For some reason, he needs to chew on a straw of grass, to do this…. Finally….) We won’t boycott the mill of Satan; but we’ll…. Make very subtle, complicated insults about it; yes, very ambivalent insults for the best of all Satan’s sons…. Yes, yes…. I saw the answer, as though in a dream….
…. And it is kinda weird, right: I just started rereading this feminist book which, while ‘negative’ in the conventional sense, I think isn’t actually as…. Wrong, I guess: as I thought when I was very (happy-clappy Wisdom) Christian, and a little precious…. Yeah, and I know that it’s going to get into the idea of separatism, right: which is offensive to male pride, whether the desire to dominate or the idea that all women should be potential lays, or else just the kinda happy-clappy ‘Mother loves me all people love me all girls and females are nice and should help me out, and we can be happy and clappy and learn about the happy clappy future together, right….’ But I mean, if some ill man abused you, it might be healing not to have to look at every guy and wonder, out of your own woundedness, whether this was going to be another cruel, forceful dominator, right…. It would also save you, in that instance, from being, you know: from sharing the hurtfulness of the hurt, right….
But yeah: Roxanne went to a women’s salon because it was like the one place where she could read a poem and not be looked at as both unintelligent and also a potential lay at the same time, right…. And so of course, her potential lover meets her there, right: he specifically goes out of his way to invade the women’s salon so that he can get in the girl’s mind, right…. Like, “If I let her have a moment’s peace: she’ll never want to touch another man for as long as she lives; men won’t be born anymore; and life will be shit!”
~”But by 2022, children, because of Me Too, all that sexism and illegitimate gender shit had pretty much blown over…. Finally: women were safe, children. And they had flying cars, too! Have you seen (illusions and propaganda)?”
…. This is a while ago, but the “I’ll pray for your sins” line is interesting. After the opening scene where the older woman is perhaps semi-sympathetic, she kinda gets disposed of as a forgettable drudge, right: like, I almost forgot there WAS an actual woman who wasn’t dead by 42 or whatever, right…. But then she kinda has to signal her loyalty to the morality system, right: that she’s the farthest thing from a rebel, right; and then so she stuffs that in the face of the young lovers or whatever she thinks they are—and they’re only too happy for some crazy reason to dismiss her as part of the morality movement, since they’re have no use for an older woman except as a drudge, so they’re happy for an excuse not to respect her…. So she drudges off to church, where the male leadership really also couldn’t care less about the female rank and file and so on, right. I guess it’s hard to respect a “sacrifice” that was practically wrested from your unwilling hands…. Of course, since the 1970s, many Protestant churches have gone, Why not have a female clergy person defend male tradition and not care about the female rank and file. It’s not like women care about each other! This could get us in newspapers! ~And meanwhile, it’s like…. Pope Francis, Defender of Liberalism, do you think we could have a little informal get-together today or tomorrow or something, to maybe have like a regular meeting, to decide on creating a special, formal, important meeting, to take a few months at least, to decide if maybe women are as smart as men and as able to be priests and religious leaders? (Skeletor) I’m offended that you would even ask! Until next time! (runs away)
~Like, I’m not gonna lie and say women never become less attractive physically, but it’s like: maybe their OPINION about love, as still being equally ~female~, as they always were, right….? Society: No, their opinion on love counts for nothing, at any age. Also useless as experts on celibacy wisdom, although nobody wants them.
~It’s like…. Waaat?
You know: at some point you’re like—I mean, of course Joe Wright isn’t Judd Apatow making Racy Madison crap (what was his name…. looks up: Adam Sandler; I used to really like him, lol: SCARY (laughing cat emoji)), but it’s like, We get very precious and credulous about our intellectuals, right…. Is there really much evidence that Joe Wright isn’t essentially the same old English culture thinker that’s always existed, along with whatever minor alterations and modifications are unavoidable and even desirable, in any age? Like, is it just the same old England, right? And you know that England isn’t about being free, you know: that’s like, civics class nonsense, right—I’m talking about real life…. England is about England, not freedom, you know. I suppose he’s not actually a “Little Englander”, you know: like there are probably some English Rose Garden Champions who are afraid to read “Romeo & Juliet” because it happens ~Abroad~, in one of those Foreign Places, like France or Italy or Scotland or some such place—wicked places!…. Like, he’s obviously not a Little Englander, right, but kinda a…. Pragmatic Englander: which if we’re to be honest, should be sharply distinguished from someone who just happens to live in England, and maybe wants to see their soccer team win the World Cup or something, right. Like, Oscar Wilde lived in England, technically he came from like, English Dublin, or whatever, but he was basically English like in a…. Like if England was a normal country, he would be English, but it’s like he wasn’t polite, so he was brought before the Crown Committee on Un-English Activities, right…. And basically killed off discreetly, right. The Little Englander would be the guy who…. Like, let’s not even talk about Little Englanders, right. But then the Pragmatic Englander is like, looking at Mr. Little from Roseshire, England, and kinda goes, Wow…. I don’t want to be as easily made fun of, as that…. But a solid 80% of the time, give or take, it’s like: looking at Oscar Wilde and going: Right. That is NOT happening to me.
Because It COULD Happen To You, right. Brexit, British racism, the never-ending story of the snobbishness of the classical music community…. Like Joe is a Pragmatic Englander, so he puts in the pop songs, right: although it’s a very classic-style pop; you have a vague sense that the dancing isn’t exactly the same as the 1640s dancing, but the more you forget that there was ever a band called The Rolling Stones, right: the better you like it…. And although nobody actually ever shot Mick Jagger, the sorta project of Englishness is kinda based on forgetting that he was ever born 94% of the time, and pretending that he isn’t who he is the remaining 6%, right…. But yeah, it’s meant to be a movie that a middling-aggressive classical music snob could sit through without pulling out a gun and seeking vengeance, and which a “Wagner is Satan, however, opera is the only form of singing I listen to, hahaha” classical music snob could probably really enjoy, you know. It’s the new cultural imperialism, you know—it’s flexible.
…. (Christian striking out with Roxanne)
Tell me this is not some ethnocentrist’s sick fantasy, omg….
…. It’s also curious how Roxanne is like a caricature of a woman, right: she just wants to be petted and flattered with dainty language, right…. She never has like, a plan for her life, right…. It’s never like, If you lied about the Count de Crap-face, he would get arrested, and then…. (suggestive trail-off).
It’s always like: you know, I hear that (big name pop act) is in town? Did you illegally download the lyrics? Ooo, music!….
But Joe Wright thought it was a good story, lol; he put his name to it, right…. Hate is too strong a word: but so is respect…. For the Pragmatic Englander, you know….
…. (looking at credits on DVD) Like, which one of these titles is ‘choreographer’: like, that and maybe the music, definitely the dance—it’s the only good part of the film, you know….
…. (Sock-puppet Christian, or whatever the hell it is, right)
Wow, SO f-ing weird, OMG….
Like, imagine this on the Internet, right. Whoops! Just lost the opera freaks….!
Were they breaking any laws, or something?…. It seems like there should be some kinda misdemeanor on the books for this sort of thing, right…. “Misdirection (27B)”, right—six months’ community service….
…. (quoting self) “Wistful Regret of the Big Hearted White Man Over Interracial Relationship”
Called it. (ok emoji)
…. (letter) “This is your Captain speaking. Marriage or rape, up to you, over. (beep)”.
It’s like: we’re supposed to believe that Roxanne is such a caricature of a woman that she wanted the equivalent of a music concert and was obsessed by poetry, and took no thought to plotting against doofus until he was at her door, basically. (rolls eyes)
…. Nothing an action sequence can’t fix, though….
Moral of the story: men are important. They solve/create problems! Women just kinda…. Marry people and, don’t, solve problems, you know.
…. Wow, it doesn’t even work as entertainment: it’s like, we need to get the propaganda team in here, work this out, do an all-nighter…. How boring was that, right…. Just humdrum disrespect agitprop, no blood-choreography, right….
…. Life lessons: men are important….
As long as there are men, things will be ok: there will be, love…. lol.
…. (5-part harmony) Men are, important, because we’re the…. Beach…. Boys….
~I agree, men are important. Without men…. Destruction.
…. Phoo, men sure love dying. I’m glad, that I’m Hermes, lol. Hermes-Thoth-Horus says that the Dying God should just take a nap, take it easy; you might want to be the Dying God now…. Maybe in twenty minutes, after your nap…. (shrugs), Who knows, right?
~God, what an immoral story, right. And so miserably unpleasant. What was that line of Dostoevsky, I guess—I mean, I read Tolstoy; I never got around to Doestie, but didn’t he have a line, like: “The worst thing is that you have betrayed and destroyed yourself, for Nothing”?…. It’s like, you died, so you didn’t have to admit you were a liar, right!
(Hermes Psychopomp) Surprise! (naughty cackle) You’re dead! That means you gotta, esplain! (cackle)
~Right?
…. But hey: at least the actress (there’s really only one, lol: jealousy over feminism, LOL) had nice breasts; I guess if she were dying from tallness, it wouldn’t be like that for her, right…. You know: just in terms of information. Information, right: he ~nurtures~; he ~loves~…. Why not, love him, right? A-hahaha….
…. Ironically given his chauvie it is, I don’t think I’ve ever paid attention to this story before, watching it, since it didn’t meet my earlier standards about bloodiness and asceticism, right. Like, I think I saw it once with my dad, early in childhood, but age was against me, and I was mostly just curious about his strange reaction to this strange shit…. And then in high school or whatever we watched it in French class: but movies in French class, it’s like—they had subtitles, sure, but really: when did I ever REALLY decide to learn French, right?…. I just tuned it out, for the most part…. It’s amazing, maybe, how few fucks us Honors students gave for the System, right; but then, the System didn’t give an excessive amount of fucks about us, now did it…. I mean, that’s the explanation of girls’ greater academic success: girls get told more often that they’re not important, you know—a “valuable” cultural background in school, where it’s like…. It’s Not About You: It’s About Me, The System!…. Guys are just like: I don’t ever remember saying that I liked you…. ~Although obviously much female obedience is feigned, right. Female obedience is at least as likely to be an exercise in (cowardly) self-preservation as (delusional) “goodness”, you know….
But yeah: I think I know how it ends. It wouldn’t be the first second-rate romance (prestige means NOTHING; it is a LIE), to end with someone dying so that people don’t have to have difficult conversations about who lied how to whom, right….
—Oh! I thought we were going to have to talk to her!
—No. She is quite dead, my friend. It was quite sudden. The doctors could do nothing.
—I…. I thought I’d have to tell her, that…. Oh, and yet it is SO, sad….
—Yes. It is sad. But better that she should die, than she should make a female friend a little bit like me, and a little bit like you, and not date for a while…. It is better, this way.
A dream is a wish.
And yes: I realize that that is NOT LITERALLY where this is going, of course…. But the variations are but little different…. Men love to die; it is a hobby of ours. And, we hate telling the truth. ~The truth, yes…. I’d offer to tell you the truth next Tuesday: only I’ve somewhere to be. VERY unfortunate, I’m afraid….
He dies; he’s a hero. She dies; she’s…. Well, dead, but, we’ll miss her….
As long as she never learns the truth. Not while I’m alive….
…. Yeah….
Joe Wright certainly has the makings of a great guy, but he does kinda present as being garbage, quite often, doesn’t he. It’s like, propaganda, for the literate. And I’m not being ironic about the word “literate”: there’s nothing inherently wrong with film…. Though most films are either propaganda or…. Well, this was propaganda, anyway. Agitprop for patriarchy, right.
Men certainly love death. Men love to die. Is there anything men love, like they love death? Deception, perhaps? Or distortion? Yes, perhaps telling lies that distort woman’s character, is something man loves, equal to death, perhaps.
Did I say men love death? I misspoke. Men are averse to life. But they do not know death, either. They have the two ideas conflated, entire.
…. It’s like a Christian romance, you know. The perfect trad Christian romance. Death makes everything clean. You give your love to a corpse….
…. God, and that fucking “song”, right…. Like they were going to an execution!
“Bat-tles…. Are a way to get, dead.”
