Melville; The Nerves; Renoir

Moby-Dick (Herman Melville, 1851)

Good dialogue; pity about the whaling lore. And days later, a reference book’s worth of whale info has hardly made a dent. Sort of like a book on the Fourth of July in which numerous commercial fireworks are meticulously described, gently sarcastic attempts at profundity are made, and the big night itself is a mixture of subdued awe and anticlimax, which just goes to show how hard it is to differentiate the moral implications of slaying relatively inexpressive animals from blowing shit up. I had quite a mixed reaction to this, and am curious if I’d like Melville’s other work more, but it’s not encouraging that this is considered the masterpiece.

The Nerves (The Nerves, 1976)

For 12 minutes, Jack Lee was the greatest songwriter in the world. Each song here is a concise, devastating, 2-minute hall of mirrors in which individual parts and sections subtly contradict each other. His solo material, unfortunately, is mediocre aside from, well, rehashed material from this E.P., which is realized to perfection in its original form anyway.

The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir, 1953)

My favorite ‘50s Renoir film. In some ways it resembles Lola Montes, in which archetypal male lovers are given equal weight by a conflicted heroine, but I found Coach protag Camilla’s nasty, witty allure more palatable than Lola. Riccardo Rioli—what the hell happened to this dude?—is especially wonderful as a doggedly persistent bullfighter whose self-presentation is presented as more of a personal affront to Camilla than his own failing.