Campion; Roeg; slasher movies; Austen; Handel and Beethoven

Sweetie (Jane Campion, 1989)

I’d seen this before, and vaguely remembered its stilted, poetic tone. It’s bizarre: whimsy bent on flagellating itself, Amelie gone depressive. It’s a mystery how Campion went from this, the edifying work of someone who finds herself unforgivably cold, to the pat, foregone Holy Smoke! in a mere ten years, one I plan to cease dwelling on as soon as I finish writing this sentence.

Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971)

Meh. Liked certain behavioral bits, especially the lead girl's irritated impassivity in the face of trauma. But Roeg's editing, while vague in its intentions, is vague and not exactly subtle. Sometimes it appears that We Are Like Them; sometimes We Are Different From Each Other. Got it. But why limit yourself to that register, aside from pleasing symbolism-hungry film studies majors?

Friday the 13th Part 2 (Steve Miner, 1981)

Not good. But I’m beginning to appreciate experiencing these films as social rituals a la getting drunk. Not all appreciations are healthy—see also the way Laura Mulvey’s execrable ideas seep into my consciousness, not unlike an extended hangover, for a period of several days following forced repeated readings of her stupid fucking essay.

Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen, 1817)

Uh, forget what I assumed about Udolpho: this is a precise indictment of both Radcliffe’s faults and her detractors’ careless exaggerations. Can’t think of an equivalent to the Gothic novel that I naively embraced at age 17—I dunno, Mystic River?—but can relate to Austen’s impulse to explain, over the course of a standard, albeit brilliantly plotted and observed, comedy of manners, why her tastes evolved out of a need to bridge the perilous gap between art and life.

On Handel and Beethoven

I’ve been wondering lately, in the process of briefly checking out a bunch of classical composers and concluding that I only really dig Handel and Beethoven, a) if there are some equally great ones I’m missing out on, and b) how sorely isolated those two must have felt, considering the distance between them and seemingly everyone else. Beethoven’s fabled social ineptitude makes almost too much sense: aside from problems w/r/t hearing and women, genius can only be disgruntled by a glut of mediocrity. (Apparently, if randomly Googled sites are to be trusted, the latter was a big fan of the former.) I can’t imagine ever liking Bach, who I find so diffuse that any emotional continuity fizzles out every two or three measures. I have the opposite problem with Mozart: complexities feel telegraphed, big, obvious. I find Haydn and Mendelssohn more intriguing, but both are working in a mode of counterpoint that leaves me instinctively cold, as if I’m either supposed to be sitting back and coolly observing, or making a strained attempt to feel something. The beauty of H and especially B is roughly a gazillion times more natural and fluid to me. But I’ll update if I find someone else I like.