Proof; Romper Stomper; Some Came Running; Stella Dallas; Wuthering Heights

Proof (Jocelyn Moorhouse, 1991)

I was starting to like this for a bit when it became clear Martin was an off-putting, albeit disadvantaged guy, but it soon turns into a preposterous celebration of his pleasurable condescension, and gets worse with the introduction of a caregiver-client relationship absurd in countless ways.

Romper Stomper (Geoffrey Wright, 1992)

Repulsive, although Crowe has a credible moment or two. Questions of glorifying racism aside, how about the device of throwing in an epileptic fit to bring two coy lovers together? Somehow offense pales next to contrivance.

Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)

Shortly after the screening, a friend told me Minnelli had previously worked as a designer of window displays for upscale shops; a light bulb subsequently blazed directly above my head. I actually think Minnelli’s instinct to “frame” moments a certain way hurts him, resulting in theatrical gestures that bare vague relation to what’s going on dramatically. (E.g. Dave’s first kiss with Gwen, silhouetted to induce awe, or Dave cradling Ginnie at the end, which only serves to obscure the prior complications of their relationship.) I still enjoyed it, especially Sinatra’s dry, sarcastic portrait of resignation, sometimes funny and sometimes merely cranky.

Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937)

Really liked the interplay between Stella and Steve: she’s a hedonistic dreamer, he’s handsome but reserved. He gets in the way of her dreams, but in the process seems like a pretty reasonable guy. The “other man” is ugly but fun, establishing a weird, uneven dialectic. Once the film hits Stella’s later years, her daughter grows into a saintly, embarrassed but forgiving girl, and Vidor doesn’t manage to milk much from the mother-daughter stuff, aside from a wonderful ending that he might owe to the way Stanwyck anxiously bites her scarf.

Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte, 1847) [2nd reading]

The contrast between Cathy I / Heathcliff and Cathy II / Hareton forms a jagged structural shape in the mind, in which the only antidote to a curse of heartache is the joining of two souls opposed in nature, rather than aligned. Regarding the latter couple, it’s impossible to promote a healthy, symbiotic relationship between a condescending intellectual and a strong, humble idiot in any direct, sentimental way, only to suggest it works because each party receives something in the process of trying to rationalize his or her flawed position. So bad adaptations of the novel not only miss but inevitably distort the point.

Bronte isn’t unlike Pialat in her approach to hysteria as an idea-free vehicle for emotion—Cathy violently seeks out a second opinion while blindly asserting her own. Then there is Nelly, who voices an opposing pacifist sensibility that proves crude and cruel next to the material she struggles to conceptualize. In class I felt strangely defensive of the “weird” Bronte, anti-social by some accounts. Surely such a refined sensibility doesn’t discriminate entirely out of shyness, which casts doubt on the coolness of those giving the accounts.

Ten songs for the week…

Brendan Benson – "I’m Blessed" (One Mississippi)
Cardinal – "If You Believe in Christmas Trees" (Cardinal)
Jim Carroll Band – "Wicked Gravity" (Catholic Boy)
[Most of this album is affected and pretentiously intellectual (going she said that "everything is permitted" makes you picture Carroll manically congratulating himself for conflating Dostoevsky with VU), but it's a testament to his post-addiction sanity that this song exists.]
Catherine Wheel – "Delicious" (Adam and Eve)
Elvis Costello – "Blue Chair" (Blood and Chocolate)
[Aside from This Year's Model, there isn't a Costello album I consistently like. (Get Happy!! is a distant second.) Blood is no exception, but at least we get this song.]
Dire Straits – "Tunnel of Love" (Making Movies)
[The only case where Knopfler's supposedly R. Thompson-influenced playing seems to grasp the contrast of Thompson's work.]
Elastica – "Line Up" (Elastica)
[A bit of a Sleater-Kinney thing going on here: the straight punk songs don't work too well for me, but sometimes there's more contrast, more "duelling" in the guitar work, like in this.]
Brigitte Fontaine – "Le Noir c’est mieux chois" (Comme a la radio)
[I'd take Francoise Hardy over Fontaine any other day, but this is more nuanced than any Hardy song.]
Gladhands – "Kill ‘Em With Kindness" (La Di Da)
[Feels a lot like one of Jason Falkner's better songs from the same era.]
Squeeze – "Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)" (Argy Bargy)
[Amazing, as are several other songs from Argy Bargy and East Side Story.]