Descending into the Depths (Japon by Reygadas)

I had a chance to see the film "Japon" by the Mexican director Carlos Reygadas. It tells the story of an exhausted, defeated and apparently unfeeling man who takes a trip to a small rural village, supposedly with the intention of killing himself. He reveals as much in an unaffected way to a man he encounters in a field during an early scene.

The journey motif is one which is emblematic of the human condition, and in this case, the fact that this journey consists of a descent is meant to suggest not only a turn toward an almost suffocating interior reflective process, but also, a descent into a metaphorical hell. This man is furthermore wounded, and he indicates this wound with a limp that hinders him seemingly at every moment. He seems uncomfortable and detached, and wishes to maintain his privacy, although at times he reflects earnestly on the people and the sights that he encounters. His is not a search for beauty but instead, one senses, a wish to recapture a feeling that has escaped, leaving him seemingly as dry and barren as the hills.

He finds accomodation in the house of an elderly lady, Dona Ascension. She has a very weathered face and a straightforward way, and a slippery way of addressing topics that attests almost to a more direct form of existence. She is unfailingly polite but never shows much emotion, choosing instead to devote her attention to the cultivation and collection of saints. She also seems wounded, and yet she persists and endures, despite the way in which she is exploited by a surly nephew who has been in and out of jail all of his life, and who seems to be the only character full of life.

The protagonist, in contrast, observes and drinks in his surroundings with a thirst that seems to defy satisfaction. He is offered tea, and he drinks liquor, and at other times he lies in his bed, drenched in sweat while , while either masturbating or flirting with a gun. If he intends to kill himself, he is held back by a certain impulse, and he begins to cultivate a relationship with his host.

As noted above, there are family conflicts that encroach on the daily existence of Dona Ascension. Her nephew has decided to remove the blocks of stones that serve to protect the house, claiming them as an inheritance that has been appropriated unfairly by his aunt. He shows little pity, and his actions serve to awaken a sense of outrage in the protagonist, driving him to emerge from what has seemed to be an impregnable emotional carapace. He seems to be recovering, as if he had taken root in this barren landscape.

The long and languid shots of fields and stony canyons and expansive skies suggest the presence of time and of cycles that seem to give way in an eternal fashion. These deep landscapes, characterized as they are by the play of light and darkness, represents a canvass for the individual psyche, and suggest as well the way in which he moves to these same cycle of regeneration and decay. The shots indicate renewal, and represent as such a mirror to the self, one who is reaching out and who is always gazing. Other sights, such as the episode where a horse copulates with a mare while being watching by a band of schoolchildren, suggests the return of a sense of vitality. They will awaken something in the character.

Ultimately, he recuperates part of his faculties, in particular, the ability to step outside himself and find a connection with the world. It is, however, by no means a parable with a happy ending. His transformation will be accompanied by grief, and it is part of the appeal of the film that these changes are presented in slow takes that end with a journey along the railroad tracks, wherein the full scope of an accident is revealed and that, somehow, suggests as well the idea of mountains being eroded. Like the protective layers of the human psyche.

The Stone Age (H.G. Wells)

(Here is one of many essays I wrote last summer on selected short stories of H.G.Wells. I will need to rework it extensively in order to obtain a publishable essay, but I thought I would include the preliminary version here.)

In this collection of short stories H.G. Wells explores new perspectives in his analysis of human society. By means of extending his stories and projecting them both into the distant evolutionary past as well as the future, he reveals a preoccupation with time and with evolutionary processes. These techniques will be evident as well in novels such as “The Time Machine” and “In the Days to Come”, in which it is postulated that there is a fundamental unity in processes that will lead to natural consequences that are anticipated from the very beginning. Rather than conceive of evolution as a directed movement towards greater mastery and development, as was implicit in a doctrine such as Positivism, it is revealed that evolution is curiously circular. The eternal cycle of conflict and stress will play themselves out in a group dynamics in which class consciousness will slowly come into play, thus curiously leading to new cycles of exploitation that are part of the natural order. For all the conceits of civilization, humanity is never able to completely escape this order, as will be evident by these stories.

In the first case, we are projected into the distant evolutionary past, to a time in which humanity existed in a primitive form, in a virginal European landscape fifty thousand years ago. As the title indicates, it is “A Story of the Stone Age”, before the advent of technology and, indeed, settled life. This story is structured as struggle for succession, in which a leader, the grizzled Uya the Cunning, will be challenged by the younger Ugh-lomi, thus making evident pressures that will reveal the basis for the conflictive social dynamics that continue to characterize human society.

This group of hunters lives in a much different landscape than that which is apparent in modern days. Although they appear to be situated in a primordial English landscape, the features seem to echo more closely those of a vast western landscape, in which plains alternate with hills and mountains. There are mastodons, tigers, bears and horses inhabiting this landscape, as well as monkeys, and while these might suggest at first glance an African savannah, the sheer variety of the landscape and the species indicate a conflation of different habitats, whereby it will be apparent that this is a region subject to much more variation in temperature. Indeed, it is stated that the tribe is the first to reach this northern latitude, and is thus in the position of pioneering the settlement of this region.

The fact that these are primordial humans is revealed in the description of their physical features. As stated in the stories, “They were narrow in the loins and long in the arms. And their ears had no lobes, and had little pointed tips, a thing that still, in rare instances, survives. Stark-naked vivid little gypsies, as active as monkeys and as full of chatter, though a little wanting in words.” (p. 291). They lack not only words but also clothing, although they are familiar with the use of weapons that consist of sticks and antlers, among other items. They are primitive, although they do have a conception of order and society that seems to be grounded in a warrior ethic. Their leader is one who exhibits hunting prowess, and as a consequence, has access to several females, in the manner of a dominant pack leader who controls through the use of fear. It is a primordial society that stresses valor and cunning as well, and these are made evident in continual combat displays, something that will become evident as well in the description of the workers in the subsequent story of Wells set in the future, in which that working class will engage in frequent combats to maintain a hierarchy. Thus, we may say that we have a primordial society in the Stone Age story that is grounded in a pack mentality of dominance and survival.

The leader, once again, has privileges that do not accrue to other members of the pack. Rituals dictate that the lead needs to organize and direct the daily hunts, and that the leader obtains the choicest cuts of meat, but the leader also is able to distribute the rest of the food resources according to a hierarchy, one which is enforced by power and brute display. It is in this circumstance that we may understand that the leader also has his pick of mates among the tribe, and that these “wives” serve as an emblem of power. The favored wife of the moment wears a necklace of shells, and the leader himself has a special weapon consisting of a set of antlers. These are objects that are invested with immense symbolic power.

It is curious in this story that the primordial beings are so lacking in language. They can communicate with basic words, but in a curious reversal that heightens the ironic potential of the story, it is the animals that appear to have a much more developed vocabulary. It is the animals that can speak in complete sentences, such as the squirrel that says to the woman Eudena “What are you doing here (…) away from the other men beasts?” (p. 292). The position of the primitive tribe appears to be much close to that of the other beasts and, indeed, by virtue of their limited access to language, is subordinated to that of the other animals.

There is a melodramatic rivalry in which Eudena will serve as the object of dispute between the leader, Uya the Cunning, and the young man-in-waiting, Ugh-lomi. They will both pursue her out to the wilderness, after she has fled from the tribe, and both she and her young lover will escape, setting off as pioneers in a story that will stress their vulnerability in the face of the dangers posed by this environment. The pair seems to communicate in a primitive and compressed fashion, with words that frequently struggle to capture the concepts they wish to convey. They are barely verbal, much less so than the animals that surround them, and this accentuates their isolation because, although they are together, they lack the full comforts of domesticity that language and a suitable rhetoric of communication enable. As an example, at a future moment when there are in a cave pondering how to defend themselves from an attack by bears, the stark and simplified form of language they use becomes evident: “Presently she put forth her hand timidly and touched him, and made the guttural sound that was his name. He turned over and raised himself on his arm. His face was pale, like the face of one who is afraid. He looked at her steadfastly for a moment, and then suddenly he laughed. ‘Waugh!” he said exultantly. ‘Waugh!’ said she – a simple but expressive conversation.” (p. 306). In the same fashion, after the couple in H.W. Wells’ subsequent story of the future, find themselves living in a state of despair at the degree of labor and exploitation they encounter as members of the working classes, they are also reduced to a pre-verbal state of communication, one that is dictated by exhaustion and despair.

There will ensue a narrative of compressed evolution that is punctuated by many firsts. In the midst of play, Ugh-lomi will manage to insert a stick into the hole of a rock, thus inventing what will be termed in the story the “first axe”. In such primitive circumstances as theirs, in which every day is a fight for survival, a situation rendered more precarious by the new threats they will encounter, these innovations are a much needed survival tool that will help to compensate for their vulnerabilities. As ever, they are grounded in Ugh-lomi’s identity as a warrior, and his conception of life as an eternal combat for survival, a combat that is not masked with social niceties and a language of paternalism as will be the case in the subsequent story about a pair in the future. Indeed, there are many elements that seem to be much closer to the surface, and in the Stone Age, these humans have an appreciation for the value of symbolic power. This is a constant in human consciousness, and in the case of these Stone Age people, it is translated into a catalogue of totemic import, in a way which seems to parallel the belief systems of primitive, non-Western cultures in the nineteenth century of Wells’ conception, and the twenty-first century of his subsequent story, where the laboring classes wear blue to mark them as separate from the other social classes. Symbolism is tied to a scheme of perceptual reality and to identity, for it serves as the projection of human consciousness on our surroundings in a way which constitutes an alternative, more vivid and, frequently, more visceral mode of perception. It is also substantially pre-verbal, and this Stone Age couple, as are all the primordial humans in that narrative, are little removed from that stage of human development. The full symbolic import of the axe will not be grasped until it is first processed subconsciously by the warrior, thus signaling the way in which conceptual barriers are broken in the same way in which the blue clothing of the working classes will indicate the truth for the future couple in Wells’ subsequent story, a story in which they will descend into a vivid struggle for survival.

The male, Ugh-lomi, as all males in this hunter-gatherer tribe of the past, is a warrior who is aware of the importance of symbolism. He relies on unspoken forms of communication, on gestures, on visual signs, on patterns and on sensory clues, and his repertoire of culture signals is all the more vivid. For example, he is conscious of the fact that the “death word” has been used against him, and this seems to weigh heavily on him, as a reminder, perhaps, of the indignity of having been excluded and hunted by his former tribe. He is also obsessed by dreams in which he fights with his rival: “Whenever he dozed, his spirit went abroad, and straightaway met with the spirit of Uya, and they fought. And always Ugh-lomi was paralyzed so that he could not smite nor run, and then he would awake suddenly.” (p. 299). If dreams are the conduit to the subconscious, then these dreams take on a concrete form that impels him to make use of the discoveries he has made, in particular, that involving his use of the axe, which opens up new possibilities. In a subsequent moment he will imagine using this weapon, one which by its novelty will break with the perceptual barriers that had hindered him, and allow him to conceive of the possibility of a positive resolution: “And in their sleep Uya’s spirit came again, and suddenly, while Ugh-lomi was trying to fight vainly, the foolish flint on the stick came into his hand, and he struck Uya with it, and behold! It killed him.” (p. 300). He has now internalized the possibilities open to him by this new weapon, and because he is burdened by the weight of these dreams, he bids leave to return in order to kill his rival, which he does.

This narrative of compressed evolution will be punctuated by other firsts in addition to the invention of the first axe. For example, other innovations will include the use of this weapon to repel a bear attack, and the conceptualization of new strategies to hunt larger animals that had up to this point been outside the scope of human endeavor. The existence of this couple will be punctuated by a series of new and exciting possibilities that one imagines arose slowly and serendipitously during a time scale of thousands of years, and not necessarily within the lifespan of one primitive human being. It is a form of accelerated evolution that is akin to the launching of a rock from a hillside, one that will trigger a landslide that will bring about entirely new transformative possibilities that will lead, eventually, to the massive cities of the future, in a social landscape that will incorporate verticality and distance as part of a scheme of hierarchy. If a hillside allows for the release of kinetic energy, so these processes of social evolution will build up a form of energy that will be harnessed in many ways, and will lead to instabilities that will form part of the very framework of human (and evolutionary) society.

This discovery of kinetic energy begins innocently enough, in the midst of play. Ugh-lomi and his companion are playing with flints while sheltered on a ledge, and will suddenly take to launching these off into the distance, rather than hurling them as projectiles against prey that they are hunting. This will lead to a game that will saturate their imagination: “They spent all the morning dropping stones from the ledge, and in the afternoon they discovered this new and interesting pastimes was also possible form the cliff-brow. The next day they had forgotten this delight. Or, at least, it seemed they had forgotten.” (p. 300).  From such an innocuous activity the seeds will be planted for a new conquest, a new tool for survival that they will apply in their struggle against the bears that will confront them.

Another first that will be noteworthy involves Ugh-lomi’s ride on the horses. This moment is one that begins innocently enough, although it is invested with pathos and social criticism, for it harbors within it the seeds of a form of enslavement that will be inherent in domestication. This serves to signal, once again, Wells’ preoccupation with evolutionary pressures in which predation and exploitation are serves as the fundamental aspects of history. As expressed in the story, “And in those days man seemed a harmless thing enough. No whisper of prophetic intelligence told the species of the terrible slavery that was to come, of the whip and spur and bearing-rein, the clumsy load and the slippery street, the insufficient food, and the knacker’s yard, that was to replace the wide grass-land and the freedom of the earth.” (p. 310). The ride will incorporate an element of adventure and novelty that will serve as an entertaining episode, elements that punctuate all of the Wells’ fiction regularly. It will also serve as a convenient narrative device to return his protagonist to the tribe that had excluded him, where he will find their circumstances much changed, afflicted as they are by a new threat.

It seems as if, during the intervening period in which Ugh-lomi and Eudena have been absent, a lion has arrived to prey on his tribe. As is evident to the warrior, “…it was certain that there were fewer. The men might be away, but there were fewer women and children. He gave the shout of home-coming. His quarrel had been with Uya and Wau – not with the others. ‘Children of Uya!’ he cried. They answered with his name, a little fearfully because of the strange way he had come.” (p. 316). The tribe is now in a fearful state, for not only are they being preyed upon by a lion, but their fears are not being manipulated by an old and bitter woman, the first wife of Uya the slain leader, who has convinced the tribe that Ugh-lomi is the cause of the lion’s wrath. Thus, he now faces a new threat, one that derives not from the landscape or from unfamiliar animals, but from a cunning adversary who will marshal the forces of the tribe to renew their pursuit of him and his lover. Pursuit and the hunt will always serve as indicators of vulnerability in these evolutionary tales in which predators, whether they take the form of a grizzled leader or a bitter old woman or, in the case of Wells’ subsequent story, of a jilted fiancé, reenact a melodramatic spectacle of amorous rivals who interfere with the achievement of domestic bliss and with the possibilities for reproduction and survival.

Under the incitation of this old woman, one who has lost her own reproductive powers but who nonetheless has achieved a new form of authority as the figure who is most able to lend ideological coherence to the situation of vulnerability of this tribe (thus giving birth to a new outlook that harmonizes and directs the activities of the social unit), the warriors of the tribe are sent out to capture Ugh-lomi and his bride, Eudena. Their capture and death is necessary for it is conceived as a way of protecting the survival of the group, a survival which is rendered all the more vivid by the disappearance of the children. As described in the story, “So the old lion waxed fat and thanked heaven for the kindly race of men. Two of the children and a youth died while the moon was still new, and then it was the shriveled old fire minder first bethought herself in a dream of Eudena and Ugh-lomi, and of the way Uya had been slain.” (p. 318). The old woman is now a surrogate mother, competing against Eudena for the survival of the family, and struggling to achieve a form of renewal and a state of continued protection, especially now that the leader of the tribe has been killed. These group dynamics in which an older generation resists the subversive actions of the younger individuals who incorporate a vitality that is missing otherwise, is a recurring element in these evolutionary dramas. The young lovers represent rival social units that are in control of productive elements that the older generation lacks, namely, the ability to procreate and give rise to new families and, possibly, competing social units. The procreative fecundity of the young must be countered with the institutional and ideological fecundity of the older generations, specifically in this story, with the cunning of the old woman.

In the concluding episode of this story, in which the events seem to proceed in an accelerated fashion, a hunting party is sent out and manages to capture Eudena, but fails to kill Ugh-lomi or, indeed, to find him. However, she is brought back and in a terrible confrontation that serves to assert a certain form of social hierarchy that had been disrupted by the pair of fleeing lovers, Eudena is beaten and insulted. For this, the old woman uses all of the ideological tools at her disposal, and these include, first and foremost, language: “The old woman had more words than any in the tribe. And her talk was a terrible thing to hear. Sometimes she screamed and moaned incoherently, and sometimes the shape of her guttural cries was the mere phantom of thoughts. But she conveyed to Eudena, nevertheless, much of the things that were yet to come, of the Lion and of the torment he would do her.” (p. 320). Language, thus, is also a form of productivity, and she makes use of this ability in a display with her rival, the much younger Eudena who had been slated to become the old leader’s newest wife, but has escaped the channels of authority and procreation.

Eudena is tied to a tree and awaits the arrival of the lion, while the rest of the tribe celebrates on the outskirts, awaiting as they are a form of symbolic deliverance. The sacrifice will serve, after all, to consummate a failed marriage, for the lion is thought to hold the spirit of the failed leader, Uya the Cunning, who had been killed by Eudena’s lover, Ugh-lomi. As with a typical Victorian novel of the period in which Wells was writing, a story will conclude with a marriage that will be consummated, thus signaling the harnessing of the productive energies of the period towards a conservation of the prevailing social order. However, this outcome is to be frustrated once again in this story.

While waiting, Eudena will suddenly note the arrival of another entity. Expecting it to be the lion, she will be surprised to discover Ugh-lomi, her lover, in a wounded state after having killed the lion. His arrival is noteworthy not only because it is unexpected, but because it signals a new first in this story of firsts, in which a man is able to kill a lion. As noted in the text, “All his body was covered with dark smears. She saw he was dragging his legs, and that he gripped his axe, the first axe, in one hand. In another moment he had struggled into the position of all fours, and had staggered over to her. ‘The lion,’ he said in a strange mingling of exultation and anguish. ‘Wau! – I have slain a lion. With my own hand. Even as I slew the great bear.’ He moved to emphasise his words, and suddenly broke off with a faint cry.”(p. 323). The imagery of this scene, as well as the words, is powerfully suggestive of a form of birth, because not only has the warrior Ugh-lomi managed to save his lover Eudena, he did so by confronting a lion which wounded him deeply, leaving him smeared in blood and weak on all fours, as if he himself had given birth. While he is still carrying his axe, a virile phallic symbol, it is still nonetheless noteworthy that he has lost his spear, a similar phallic symbol, which he has plunged into the lion and been unable to withdraw. Thus, his encounter with the lion was both a manly act of vanquishment of a threat as well as a fertile act in which he himself has been bloodied and lamed, and will need to recuperate in a hidden and vulnerable state while his lover, Eudena, obtains food for him.

In the end, there ensues a ritual in which the tribe celebrates the apparent appeasement of the lion, without being aware of the continued survival of the pair of lovers nor of the death of the lion. It is in this circumstance that a confrontation will be provoked when Eudena, in hiding and watching the tribe carefully, will have her maternal instinct awakened by the spectacle of the old woman punishing a little child by the name of Si, someone who could be her surrogate child: “Then something stirred in Eudena; something that had never stirred in her before; and thinking all of little Si and nothing of her fear, she sprang up from her ambush and ran swiftly forward. The old woman did not see her, for she was busy beating little Si’s face with her hand, beating with all her heart, and suddenly something hard and heavy struck her cheek.” (p. 328). This ending of this posture of concealment will signify the beginning of a brief struggle, where Ugh-lomi will emerge to give battle to the tribe who will fan out to find and confront the pair of lovers, and after a spectacular display of valor and martial display, using his axe as well to kill many rivals as he asserts control of this tribe. Order is restored, and the member of the tribe are all ultimately reconciled, to begin again a new cycle, one in which renewal has been guaranteed.

Thus we have the story of an evolutionary cycle in which primordial humans are engaged in a struggle for survival and renewal, facing as they are dangers that are inherent not only in the precarious landscape they inhabit, but also in confrontations with external predators as well as with violent and unstable social pressures from within. The new leader, Ugh-lomi, will assume control of this tribe after having vanquished his main rivals, the grizzled former leader Uya the Cunning and his wife, the old woman who had instigated his persecution at the end. After the elimination of the main threat embodied in the lion, the tribe will inaugurate a new period of production in which they will be able to procreate and ensure the survival of their social order, one that had been threatened with extinction. This process is cyclical, as ironically serves as the groundwork for the subsequent story in which the narrative of human struggle will be fast-forwarded to the future, in which the same elements of struggle and of conflictive social dynamics will be evident. The presence of violence will form a bridge between the stories, for it will serve to indicate the presence of a primordial element of existence, one that cannot be disguised by social niceties. Future societies will displace many elements of these evolutionary struggles into a framework of class-consciousness that will serve to be just as oppressive and brutalizing as that which is evident in this fable of the past.

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2011
Copyrights ORomero 2011

Voyeurism and manipulation

According to a Romantic conceit, we project ourselves on our surroundings. If we are unhappy, we find an echo for this sentiment in the things that we see, from the weather to the play of light and dark. Perhaps one could say that it is difficult to distinguish whether it is our surroundings that cause our moods, or whether our mood alter our perceptual filters so that everything that we see is colored according to it. Of course, we could just as easily maintain that it is a confluence of the two, however, I've have prolonged and extended periods of gloom that attest to something more durable within me. I tend to respond more to darkness than to light, and I am more inclined towards reflection than to action.

Today I was able to see Hiroshi Teshigahara's 1962 film, "Pitfall". I was first made aware of this director approximately twenty years ago, when I saw his classic "Woman of the Dunes" on a local PBS station. It presented an intriguing commentary on modern life, and was heralded as part of the Japanese New Wave of films of the 1960s. It made an impression on me, in particular, in the spectacle of a man who was imprisoned in a house with a woman, and who was given the endless task of clearing away the sand that enchroached ominously every single second. It was a premise that couldn't help but lend itself to symbolic interpretation, for the nature of the struggle which seemed to suggest the human condition. It was also not a heroic struggle, and this pointed as well to certain basic contradictions in human nature.

Pitfall raises different issues, but it continues with this line of speculation with regards to human identity and the limits to solidarity. I was able to benefit as well from the video essay that accompanied this film, one that was prepared by James Quandt from the Cenematheque Ontario, and which presented several stimulating interpretations that I would like to address.

First of all, I am struck by the idea of how this film represents a critique of modernity. Yes, modernity is always associated with the celebratory discourse of freedom and individuality. To be modern is somehow to have reached a pinnacle, but as we all well know, there is nothing necessarily positive about these ideas. Freedom also entails responsability, and this need to choose is also, in its deepest essence, a terrible burden, one that is iluminated by existentialist philosophers. We choose, and in the end, we suffer from the most suffocating loneliness possible, one that underscores again and again how alienated we are from our institutions and from our need to establish connnections with others. And, alienated from ourselves.

This is a process that is much associated with Capitalism and, in particular, with the hyper-Capitalism of the 20th century, in which the discourse of individuality is once again used to repress certain mediating tendencies that seek to addres the extremes of this mode of development. We have this pretence that we as workers should function as free agents, and that we somehow have the ability to resist the aggregating and burdonsome pressures that are put upon us by corporate entities. And in this film, we are immersed in a situation in which these pressures are illustrated.

The protagonist is a poor miner who lives in a condition of perpetual want. He seeks any kind of subsistence employment that he can obtain, and it is evident that he has not been able to integrate himself into any organized labor force that would offer him or his son protection. He is thus forced to flee, as are other workers, from job sites that become too punitive for him to resist, and this is the first indication of how the condition of modernity has led to a divestment of any protective mantle that would have been conferred on him by an institutional affiliation.

What is noteworthy is that this is an environment in which there are labor unions, but these entities are still steadily being challenged and broken up by corporate agents using all manner of tricks and ruses. One thinks as well of current news, for example, the saga of Wisconsin wherein the new Republican governor, a Tea-Party favorite named Scott Walker, can gerrymander the legislative apparatus to divest state workers of their collective bargaining rights. All of this done while claiming a fictive mandate, one that supposedly validated austerity measures over the fulfillment of agreements, cynically using austerity to justify completing the Bush agenda that, ironically enough, provided the cover for this argument of "austerity" because it produced an economic crisis.. Corporate agents, with their unrestricted greed and their financial manipulation, bring upon us one of the worst economic crisis seen in the last fifty years, and then use it as a cover to further their agenda of attacking labor unions, as if the unions were behind this economic mess and not their culture of financial deregulation and speculation.

It leaves one shaking one's head in disgust, as if basic human rights were subject to withdrawal depending on the political whims of sectors who are able to harnass popular discontent and channel it in their favor. And this is precisely the "pitfall" (to borrow the title of this film) that progressive sectors have fallen into in this country, a trap that is anticipated in this film in the story of this labor union that hides within it not only a warning and critique of unrestrained Capitalism but also an earnest reflection concerning the nature of the human condition. Why is it that men have this compelling impulse to prey upon each other?

This film, of course, was prepared during the Japanese economic boom of the early 1960s, after the massive post-war destruction of Japan, and it highlighted conditions of hightened labor strife. Japan had shed its official militarist institutions, but these impulses to segregate and isolate were coming to the fore in the wake of this period of economic expansion. The ideal, as always, is to subordinate the rights of the many to the demands of the few, those few who claim prerogatives when it comes to the mission of development. And yes, development is a mission that is tantamount to a discourse, one that seduces even those that is exploits, in the same way that religion does with people who find themselves in moments of crisis and fall prey.

This worker is led to believe that he will be hired at another location, and he leaves his job and embarks on a trek through a wilderness. In the course of this trek he will find a ghost town, one that has been abandoned by the workers because of uncertainty surrounding the mining enterprise in which they were involved. To wit, there was a report that the shafts were under imminent threat of collapse, and thus, they had to flee. One wonders who issued this declaration of unsafe conditions, and whether it favored the management of the enterprise, who thus might have profited by not having to pay the workers who had invested so much of their time in digging those shafts.

In the course of looking for this location, the worker will encounter a sinister man dressed in a formal white suit and white gloves. This man in white will murder him, an act that seems incomprehensible to us, and with this act, we will have a shift in tone from the gritty realism that had been likened to "socialist realism" to a crime drama with elements of fantasy. From now on, the murdered worker will appear as a ghost, one who is naturally invisible to the living, and who provides in a sense a voice for the questions that we viewers have. Why was he murdered? Why will the candy seller give the police a false story of what she saw? Why does this society seem to be balanced in favor of narrow interests?

The ghost element represents one of many voyeuristic elements that distinguish this film. After all, the ghost can no longer interact with the living, and can only observe or provide commentary. When joined by other ghosts, all of whom realize their predicament and who have become more meditative as a result of this change, having been removed from their immediate circumstances, they do fulfill the role that reminds one of the Greek choruses of old. But this comparison must be hedged for the choruses are share in the questions of the characters, and do not hold any special claim to knowledge even though they do encapsulate the prevailing morality of this society, those ideals that are part of the "rule of law" that is championed by the union workers, but that is all to deficient when it comes to implementation.

Voyeur are those who observe while remaining hidden, and who fail to act to defend those ideals. To act would be to make manifest a claim of solidarity, and this claim is not easily manifest in these characters. The union that represents the miners, for example, has been divided into two units that are in a state of constant conflict. They fight with each other, and further the cause thereby of the corporate and managerial element that seeks to divide them. This state of disunity is also paradigmatically evident in the conduct of the murdered worker's son, a small child who witnesses the murder and lapses into silence, preferring instead to peer from the shelter of wild vegetation, from behind buildings or indeed, taking the cover of walls to peer instead through openings. Thus, the symbolism of the movie poster image.

This voyeurism is shared as well by the murdered candy seller, who watches the murder, then consents to give a false story to the authorities. She could have spoken up but didn't, and instead parrots what the murderer pays her to say, even though she will later be murdered herself. And, the union members themselves peer into the shack of this candy seller once she has been murdered and come to different interpretations, ones that demonize their antagonists (in this case, their rival union head and not management), and thus reveal the depth to which their view is itself obscured. For it is a truth that the voyeur had no priviledged vantage point, and is privy only to a small part of the big picture. The voyeur represents the view of the individual, and as an individual, this view is limited.

Thus, in the course of the development, it becomes evident that this murder is part of a setup, but one whose ultimate author remains hidden even as we see its consequences. The consequence is that the union leaders will be discredited as they are instigated by the inexorable logic of events to murder each other, and it is the mysterious man in white, the one who rides the motorcycle and who has the aid of an air of respectability (he looks out of place among the workers by virtue of his attire) and by his priviledge of surveillance, one that is afforded to the ghosts in the end, but which is divested of any possibility of impelling change because ghosts have no ability to affect outcomes in this world. Nor, it might be added, do individuals who have been seduced by this message of modernity that entrusts them with responsability but at the same time with profound anxiety and fear of the other. of their fellow workers, of their families, of themselves. The condition of modern man is one that is hidden by masks of conformity, and it is strangely like the vanity of the murdered woman, who lives in squalor but who takes comfort from viewing herself in the mirror.

In the end, it is said by the essayist in the supplementary material that is included with this film that the final movement, that wherein the boy is able to once again express his emotions after having spent the entire film watching from behind hidden screens, and in which he runs through the ghost town, escaping along the road to a future that is yet to be revealed, that this ending is far from unambiguous. It might have been seen as a mark of liberation, but it must be said that he will carry with him inner demons that have not been exscorized. We must imagine that the ghosts will remain, weeping at their inability to discover the cause of their misfortune, and suffering under the perpetual hunger that will characterized the murdered miner, at least, who is told that the physical circumstances that defined him at his moment of passing will stay with him for eternity.

The boy has been deprived of a family (one wondered if economic circumstances of privation had deprived him of his mother, or if this was due to illness, or any myriad form of misfortune), but he has also been imprinted by what he has seen and, one may well wonder, has been contaminated. One obtains this impression as a consequence of viewing his prior inability to respond to circumstances, as if he himself has been converted into a ghost, condemned to watch passively as the agents proceed with their play. To be a ghost is to be inactive and to find oneself unable to respond, and in the end, this impassivity is akin to that of nature, one that is indifferent. Is this the final other stalwart that props up the discourse of modernity and individuality? Does this involve either being vain to the point of self-centeredness, or indifferent? Does this make him indifferent to suffering, as is emblematically portrayed in the boy's skinning of the tadpole?

The boy runs along the road at the end, perhaps seeking a different place to haunt, no more consequential than the modern consumer who has become a statistic, an inventory of tastes, shaped and marketed by commercial forces while under the illusion of self-reliance. As an ad for an investment broker that specialized in self-originated broker transactions proclaimed, "Trust yourself". As if you are any match for market conglomerates.

 

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2011
Copyrights ORomero 2011

An unbalanced adaptation

I had a chance to see Goro Miyazaki's "Tales from Earthsea", the Japanese anime adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea novels. I was expecting an adaption of one of the books, specifically, of the first book, "A Wizard of Earthsea", that had so captured my imagination when I was in Junior High School. This novel captured my attention from the very beginning, and I can still recall the cover, one which featured an earnest, copper-colored boy who was looking off into the distance. It had many poetic qualities, foremost among which was the slow and seductive pace that was predicated on meditation on the ways in which a person from such a humble background, a goat-herder, was able to move up in this world while coming to grips with himself. It spoke to the difficulties of adolscence and finding a place for oneself, and it spoke to me at a crucial moment of my life.

In this case, the film is not particularly true to the books. We have a film that perhaps draws inspiration from Le Guin's works, making use of characters and situations and of the archipelago that constitutes the world of Earthsea, but it also distorts and modifies it in significant ways. It is a deeply flawed work that doesn't draw from the plots that were developed by the author, and has none of the introspective, meditative nature of the original. We have instead a series of conflicts in a plot that is simplified, in which wizard will battle wizard while the protoge, the boy Erin, will step in to save the world. It seems very conventional and as such, distorts the subtlety of the orinal series, and the way in which it was revealed that it was the boy wizard, Ged, who was battling with himself all along. (A modicum of this conflict is reflected in Erin, as he wishes to reconcile with his shadow, but it is strictly secondary.)

The landscapes are beautiful, with visions of magnificent, dynamic cities teeming with life and with characters, as well as wild land, sea and airscapes that reflect the grace of the elements. It is wonderful to see the way in which the winds ripples across the fields of grass, or the way the clouds parade in a never-ending pageant across the skies, echoing the spires and towers of the city. It is undeniable that Studio Ghibli, that organization that has helped Hayao Miyazaki produce such wonderful and memorable films as "Spirited Away" and "Howl's Moving Castle", among others, counts with a wealth of talent. Furthermore, from what I was able to determine after viewing the bonus materials on the DVD, Hayao himself drew the initial drawing that was to provide the visual inspiration for the look and feel of this world. But that was all that he contributed.

This is a world that is pre-Industrial. As noted by the critic Charles Solomon, it has in many ways a Byzantine look, one populated by formidable stone fortresses with graceful spires and domes, where marble and rocks present a comforting facade even as we see a world that is afflicted by social scourges such as drug-addiction and slavery. This landscape furthermore recalls other elements of continuity, as does the Byzantine world in general, by allusions to the classical age, evident in the ruins of even older landmarks, such as graceful Roman aquaducts. It has a Mediterranean feel, the sea is featured prominently even though little of the action takes place there.

 

However, the people are not as I imagined them. The characters have been whitewashed, despite the fact that Le Guin had explicitely populated this world with people who did not have specifically European features. They were copper colored, as was Ged, the wizard who was to be the main character. There were people of the East, in the lands of Karg, who were more European in appearance, but they were also more warlike, less civilized and thus, less likely to live in bustling cities such as that which is featured in the film. The phenotype of the people and the message it conveyed with regards to the overturning of cultural stereotypes has itself been overturned and rendered conventional.

Also, the story is much too simplistic. It involves a quest by the Arch-mage, Ged, who encounters a fleeing boy, Erin (Aron), and together they continue on a journey to discover what is causing an imbalance in the world. This balance is an allusion to the underlying order, to the constituent spiritual but also physical forces that underlie the world. The balance is necessary, and it is part of an interplay between differing, dynamic, almost binary elements and experiences. It is part of what brings together light and darkness, shadow and reality and life and death. Without this interplay, and the balance that is necessary, the world loses meaning.

But the story does not follow the plotlines written by Le Guin. It is more of an adventure story, one in which everything leads up to the confrontation between the wizards. This confrontation will eventually be overshadowed by the play of loyalty of Erin, who will try to rescue Sparrowhawk with the help of the dragon-girl named Tenar, as they battle the evil wizard Cob, he of the androgynous appearance. However, it is frustrating to see how the beauty and the grace of Le Guin's plot has been shorn by this adaptation that draws little from the original material.

I can unerstand why Ms. Le Guin was so upset by this adaptation. She had originally authorized Hayao Miyazaki, the father, to adapt this work, after having denied him permission several decades ago. Back then, as she states, she knew little of the power of anime, and Hayao was just starting his career. In this case, she was hoping for a more meaningful adaptation, but recognized that an auteur such as Miyazaki needed to have some room to expand and adapt the material. She had delineated periods in which the artist could fill in the material, while hopefully conserving the contours of the original narrative.

Well, it turns out that the adaptation was not carried out by Hayao but by his son Goru, and it was a contentious process. Hayao himself expressed his misgivings, saying that he felt that his son was not yet prepared for this project. Thus, underlying the film was this conflict between father and son, and I thought that part of this conflict would provide a certain tension to the film. It would certainly make an appearnce in the film, as we see the character of Erin, the young prince, murder his competent and much-loved father, the king, in the first few minutes, an act that can't help but resonate with the conflict between the Miyakis.

And yet, the film is very unsatisfying. I disliked the plot simplification, and the idea that it all had to revolve around this duel between wizards. There was so much in the original novels of self-struggle, and trying to learn the lessons of restraint and control. This messages are present, it must be said, but only in pronouncements that seem to be pro forma, as Sparrowhawk counsels the young prince who has become his protoge. And, of course, the talisman of the sword that the prince carries with him also rings false. I don't remember it in the original series of books, and it seems artificial in this film, although one well recognizes the symbolism of swords and the way they serve to indicate a rite of passage.

I hope that eventually we will have a truer adaptation of Le Guin's works. This film has some wonderful landscapes, both urban as well as rural, and sunsets figure prominently throughout the epic. In fact, so prominently that one might be tempted to say that the film takes place at moments of eternal sunset or sunrise. The convention, then, was overused, and the choice of actors for the voiceovers was also somewhat infeliticous. The voice of Cheech Marin, known primarily for his comic talents, seems out of place in this film as the voice of one of the guards. However, my chief criticism lies in the fact that the plot has shifted to one that underscores the question of succession, of a protoge who emerges from the shadow of his father.

In this case, there is still much to be wished for this emergence.

Campus Visit

And here are a few videos from my trip today. I loved this Japanese Garden. Too bad it is next to the Cashier's office, so it will undoubtedly be very crowded during the school term. However, it is a truism that we all find our inner peace.

This is where I will be teaching. I am pleased to see a nice and roomy classroom, one that seems well kept. It is hard to believe that we are on a public university, where the conditions tend to vary from the unkempt to the derelict. It was certainly the case at the university where I obtained my degree.

Springtime on campus

We are in the middle of Spring Break. It would be reasonable to assume that it would elicit quiet murmurs of dissapproval on the part of those of us who are more wizened, if not necessarily with age, at least with occupational exhaustion and the ennui that affects us in later life. It is, after all, that week of frenzied and unrestrained recreation for young college students, where they formulate unrealistic plans to congregate in mobs in places where rules and modesty don't apply, giving way to a modern day Bacchanalia. I call it a mobile fraternity row, and it is understandable that it is viewed with the same amount of terror as a hurricane or a looming tornado. It leaves, after all, a wide swath of destruction in its wake.

I never joined these revelers when I was of that age. My circle of friends didn't either, and for some reason, I never could give credit to those impulses, that need for shameless exhibitionism, and for rampant groping and mindless drinking that seemed to suggest, if anything else, the idea of luxury for those who came from more priviledged social classes, and not for working class types such as myself. It didn't fit with my background nor with my view of myself as an intellectual. I was more happy reading a science fiction novel than engaging in compulsive drinking.

This is still nonetheless an idyllic time for those of us who remain behind on campus. It coincides with amazing vistas of wild flowers at our local parks and wilderness areas, even as we are continually reminded of how these spaces are under continuing enchroachment by developers. This is also the period when the weather starts to change, and it becomes more pleasant to engage in outdoor actitivities, visiting local landmarks that are so much more pleasant when purged of juvenile revelers (yes, college students are juvenile, despite the fact that many of them are in their twenties).

I had a chance to walk around a local college campus as I made preparations for the next academic term. It provided me with the lovely vistas that I crave, those that provide comfort for those of us who prefer peace, solitude and quiet. The campus was deserted, and it had an almost soporific effect on me. Almost like my lectures on my students. (I couldn't resist!).

Here are a few photos. They reveal the main local landmark, a building with a fascinating architectural feature, as well as the Japanese garden. I hope to find cause to spend much time near this place as I spend time on this campus, where I will be teaching for the first time.

View from the parking lot. It looks very Avante-Garde. Almost like a modern day Ziggurat.

View of the pond, with koi and with select architectural features such as the small island and the restrained use of ornamental plants.

What follows is another view of the campus centerpiece, as I proceed to look for the department office.

It is a peaceful campus. Too bad it won't last.

Lunatic Fringe

I saw the bigger-than-normal moon this past Saturday. It was an eerie but also exhiliarating experience.

This was filmed on Saturday evening at about 9:00 p.m., after I was returning from an event held in South Gate, CA. It was filmed in the parking lot of a Walgreens Pharmacy. I knew I needed to frame the moon next to some architectural features, and this lighted trees seemed like a good option. To show scale, you need to compare the feature with other known objects.

The moon, as was continuosly explained on the news, is at its closest approach to the Earth. It will next be in this proximity in another eigthteen years. Where will I be then? And, will humanity have returned to the Moon by then? Will the Chinese have sent their first astronaut to this celestial body? With all the triumphalism that seems to accompany the description of China's rise, this may be so.

And lately, this triumphalism is applied to Brazil as well, a country that President Obama has been visiting lately. It seems that under Luis Inacio da Silva, Brazil has grown at an amazing pace these past few years, a process that seems remarkable given the memory of the crushing debt crisis of the 80s and 90s that I recall, and the way in which the region, with the exception of Chile, has been mired in a crushing legacy of underdevelopment. Brazil was even profiled on NPR today because it is said that they are poised to become a new scientific superpower because of their investment in their scientific infrastructure, reversing decades of brain drain.

Mexico, of course, lingers in a deadly morass of drug violence and limited growth. While the rest of the emerging powers have given up their dependence on the USA, and look to other countries such as China, Mexico seems as saddled as ever to a dying giant. Free trade has not worked, despite all the proclamations and the breathless hype of the 90s. The only growth industry is narcotrafficking, and the titans of industry are the drug lords who launder their money lavishly, corrupting the entire country's institutions.

Brazil looks to the rest of the world and thrives. Mexico looks only to its neighbor to the north and continues to dig its own grave.

The War between the States

I had a chance to see Ang Lee's film, "Ride with the Devil". It tells the story of a friends who join the fighting unit known as the Bushwackers, fighting on the side of the Confederacy. The Civil War as fought in this area of the country was a much different struggle than that fought in the eastern portion of the country, It involved mainly guerilla tactics, and it was a much more protracted affair, in which the seperate groups frequently inflicted heavy suffering on civilian populations. This was in large part due to the irregular nature of this fighting, which involved struggles against large segments of the populace who harbored the rebel bands.

The story, however, remains much the same when it comes to warfare. We have long cherished the ideals of the Union side and the valor of Lincoln, but in this film, political ideals do not assume center stage. Instead, we have several groups of friends who struggle to survive and endure. The Toby Maguire character is named Jake, and he comes from the immigrant German population that was sympathetic to the Union. He,however, fights to defend the Confederacy, a fight that is impelled more by friendship than any other consideration. His friend, needless to say, will be killed midway through the film, leaving him to struggle with his own ideals and find the motivation to continue.

Jake is befriended by a black man who, incongruously enough, is also fighting with the Bushwackers. This man is a study in contradictions, but he is also a steady and stalwart person who also fights out of loyalty to a friend. As stated before, ideals do not seem uppermost in their minds, and Jake seems to shrug off the entrenched and vicious racial attitudes he encounters on the part of his band of guerillas.

The countryside, with flowing plains interspersed with forests, offers a seductive landscape. It is far from my memories of Missouri, as I travelled from west to east along Highway 70 in the early part of the last decade. The sight of open terrain seems to provide a vast scope for the expression of human sentiment, and in this case, loyalty comes to the fore.

Jake slowly comes to an understanding with regards to the futility of his cause, and this movement of reevaluation is instigated by the famous Quantrill raid on the city of Lawrence, Kansas, in which a defenceless civilian population suffered heavy casualties. It was a depraved episode among many that were committed by both sides, and it was meant to suggest the way in which warfare assumes its own unstoppable momentum, one that leads to a casual disregards for life.

Jake is wounded, and is sent to convalesce with a family sympathetic to the rebel cause. He meets once again with a female character, played by Jewel, who has been twice widowed, and has given birth to a daughter. There is an aura of inevitability in their approach and their growing intimacy, and when forced to marry each other, Jake finally comes to an awareness of the precious quality of life. He gives up his intention to rejoin the irregulars.

This is a straightforward film, and it shows the transformation in the character of Jake, who slowly becomes more humanized as he reflects on his losses and on the opportunities for redemption. His marriage to the widow is an opportunity that signals an end to adolescent yearnings, and it is almost comical to see how he grows to understand his responsabilities. He will now be the father to the child that was fathered by his dead friend, and the cause will come to seem like an adolescent venture that is tragically mistaken.

I lived in Lawrence for several years, and was aware of the resonance of the Quantrill raid. Yes, the Jayhawkers harbor deep memories, and this period was one that resonates deeply still, as does the Southern defeat for many in that region.

I enjoyed this film. It didn't have the emotional resonance of Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm", but it showed a director who was comfortable with spectacle, as evident in the sprawling nature of this period piece, as well as with basic stories of human interaction. As with the fundamental stories that underlie our Western civilization, we have, as with the saga of Gilgamesh, a story of friendship and loss. And what is most refreshing, no glamorization of lost political causes.

A temporary reprieve

Yesterday I should have spent my day grading the massive piles of exams that I had collected on Tuesday, but I couldn't do it. It was just too dreary a prospect and, after all, this isn't a perfect world, nor am I a perfect worker. There are world events that are affecting everyone, and I am profoundly uneasy and upset by events such as the fact that a dictator in Libya is shooting at his own people, a nuclear reactor is in the process of dramatically melting down in northern Japan, and a group of radical extremists are asserting their will virtually unhindered in Washington. It takes all my energy at times to make it through the day.

Thus, I took a reprieve and saw a film that was released in the early nineties. It seems like a different era, and in reality, I was making a new beginning at the times, having just begun graduate school. I remember when the film was released, but I don't seem to recall how it was received by critics back then. All I knew was that it was a Kevin Costner film, and that his star, so to speak, was already in decline.

I wanted to see this film because it was directed by Clint Eastwood, and I have undertaken a project to watch all his films. I appreciate their meditative nature, and have come to appreciate the maturity of his films and the way he has metamorphized as an artist. And I wasn't disappointed.

In this film we have a story that configures itself as a tragedy. We have a character with good qualities, evident in his strong nurturing instinct, but who also has faults. Perhaps his fault is rooted precisely in his positive attributes, and he becomes too protective. As I recall, Aristotle had specifically made this connection in his "Poetics", and it leads to a special form of poignancy because it reflects on how we all carry our own "hamarcia", our own seeds of destruction. It leads to his downfall, despite his attempts to escape his fate.

This is a road movie, and the road has always been a symbol for life. Movement seems to project a sense of progress, and this character is obsessed with finding a better place. He elaborates on this symbolism, calling his car a "time machine", always pointed forward to the future while the past receeds in the rear-view mirror. It is a seductive vision, and his future would seem to be pointing to Alaska, a vast, idealized landscape that is perfect for a romantic hero, one who looks for sweeping, solitary landscapes. The problem is that he is headed in the meantime for his home in a small town in western Texas, and our instincts always lead us in contradictory directions. And the fugitive is taking with him a hostage, a small eight year old boy who was forced on him by the mayhem caused by his escape partner, a psychopath who mercilessly drops out of the movie at an early stage.

The year is 1963, and the atmosphere seems resonant with the promise of idealism that wasn't redeemed. Kennedy is president, and by now we have all been powerfully seduced by the aura of Camelot and the vision of a young and idealistic president who promised a new form of leadership. Here was a president who proclaimed a new connection with the world, who understand the movement of decolonization that was sweeping across the world and giving birth to new nations in Africa and Asia, and who understood the need to offer a new and uplifiting vision of America to counter the influence of the Soviet Union. The mythology has obscured his mistakes, and we no longer remember him for the "Bay of Pigs" invasion or for his escalation of America's involvement in Vietnam.

The chase is bound to end tragically. He is being pursued by the Texan authorities and, in particular, by a crusty and implacable sheriff played by Eastwood himself. It is wonderful to see how the fugitive and his hostage bond together as they reflect on their own respective needs. The boy needs a father, someone to help him escape his own stifling circumstances, his own "prison" in which he is burdened by all manner of restrictions. His mother is a good woman but will not tell him the truth about his father who, in all probability, has abandoned them, and instead she holds devoutly to many restrictions that inhere to being a devout Jehovah's Witness. The particular religious affiliation does not really matter. The appeal of these road movies is that they encapsulate a desire to escape from all manner of stifling circumstances. It just so happens that so many of these escapes occur in the southern states.

In the end, the bond between the two characters, the fugitive and the hostage, is broken by a moment of violence that is extremely disturbing and constitutes an abrupt change of tone. At one moment we have the portrait of a man on the run, treating his hostage as a son and nurturing him while they both try to evade the pursuing officers. And then, abruptly, there is a change, and something sets him off. He has been identified, and the private demons that seem to drive him come suddenly to the fore. He proceeds to attack the family that has been unknowingly hosting them, tying them down and threatening them with escalating violence. It is abrupt, and it changes almost completely our perception of him.

He would seem to be purging all the anger he has felt about the absence of a father, an absence that, fittingly enough, was engineered by the pursuing sheriff (played by Eastwood, as mentioned before), who is still torn by guilt about this but who justified his act as a way to save the young boy, extracting him from his sordid and unpromising family circumstances which would seem to doom him to succumb to the violence and anti-social impulses of his family. It is all the more ironic that the Kevin Costner character has grown up and still succumbed, despite this intervention. It would almost seem to be fated, as in a Greek tragedy, and the more that is done to evade this fate, the more it is perversely engineered. In this episode, consequently, it is the young boy, crying in desperation as he witnesses the acts of this character whom he has come to trust, who rescues the family under attack by grabbing a gun and shooting the Kevin Costner character in the abdomen.
Perhaps curses, as in the old Greek vision, do persist to haunt entire families and communities.

There is a very emotional parting moment at the end, and then we are left to reflect on the dream that bound these two people for a short moment. "Enjoy it while you can", was the advice that the fugitive had given to the boy at the beginning of their journey, in a prophetic statement. It was a reverie, a temporary escape, and the two found comfort in each other's company before it all unraveled. There were private demons that couldn't be excorcised, and in the end they couldn't escape the strictures of society, one that needs to reassert its own conception of justice.

The movie ends as it begins, with a poetic scene in which the fugitive is lying on a grassy field, looking up at a pristine blue sky, feeling the breeze and enjoying the sunlight, in the process of dying after having received two gunshot wounds but enjoying for a brief but, strangely enough, eternal moment, the dream of a perfect world.