Haunted by Memory

One of the compelling illusions about life is that things happen for a reason. We have this deep-seated need to find purpose in life, to take the scattered jumble of pieces that confront us on a daily basis and try to reassemble the puzzle, fearing as we do that which seems random, mysterious and ultimately, unknowable. Thus we impose order on our world, and when we reflect on our lives, we can't resist the temptation to construct narratives in which motives are assigned and certain crossroads are conveniently sketched out out. Such is the construct of memory.

A few weeks ago I had coffee with a friend who I first met in college over twenty years ago. Ours had not been a long-term friendship that could be characterized as fellowship or "brotherhood", and instead, was limited to greeting each other from time to time on campus and chatting briefly in the few classes we shared. I detected in him something of the same feeling of dissatisfaction with our chosen career, someone who knew that the world was a more vibrant and challenging conundrum than that offered by a circuit diagram. After graduation, we lost contact with each other and, as I found out afterward, our lives took different turns. Years later when we met again it seemed as if we were able to seamlessly resume a friendship that was motivated in large part by a shared nostalgia for the mutual friends and for the feeling of being young and dynamic but also disaffected and curious, when we were both in our early 20s. To be truthful, we found ourselves at that mid-life crossroads and, despite the different turns in our lives, it has been the basis for a new friendship.

My friend told me during our chat about an Argentinian film called "El secreto de sus ojos", one that had obviously impressed him greatly. It is a recent film, and was nominated for an Academy Award for foreign-language films. He stressed what a visceral impact it had on him, and perhaps because of its melancholic quality, as well as a story that seemed to stress the possibility of overcoming the burden of memory, he though it would appeal to me. He was right.

The film narrates a fictional story of an investigator named Benjamin Espositio who is obsessed with a  homicide case that reached an unforunate end. A young woman by the name of Liliana Colato is found murdered, and in the course of his investigation, he is forced to come to certain truths about his own life. Esposito is a middle-aged man who seems to find himself disengaged from life, going through the motions of a career that seems to offer little satisfaction. He is jarred into the present by the arrival of a new official, a young woman named Irene Menendez Hastings, who has obtained a doctorate in jurisprudence from the US and is assigned to head the department. He is obsessed with her, but unable to act on this impulse, and he transfers this obsession to the case at hand.

Liliana was also an attractive woman who would seem to have been happily married. Her brutal murder somehow affects him deeply precisely because of his own unacknowledged interior crisis. In the course of the investigation, aided as he is by a comical subordinate by the name of Pablo Sandoval, he manages to settle on the identity of the supposed culprite, a man named Gomez. During this pursuit, which ocassions certain comical episodes as well as not-so-comical confrontations, he is left to meditate on the nature of obsession, and this obsession takes the form of a novel which he writes and which he shares with Irene. The movie, as it happens, transpires by juxtaposing two historical moments, that of the mid 70s when the case first occurred, and twenty years later, when Esposito has retired and has all the time in the world to look back and to reflect on a case that was not successfully resolved.

It seems as if there are certain emotional needs that have never been resolved for the main characters as well. What would seem to have been a straightforward murder mystery is one that is sidetracked to investigate instead the way in which we all humans blind themselves to the patterns that characterize us. If investigators make use of the concept of a "tell", an physical sign that reveals inauthenticity, then we are left to ponder the opposite, to ponder if there are signs that are hallmarks of truth, devoid of any ambiguity. The conceit in this movie is that the eyes and, in particular, the gaze is an indication of such a connection, of a truth in need of acknowledgement. And what we have are characters who are unable to acknowledge the truth of their own needs, and the fact that, despite belonging to different generations and different social classes and different psychological characters, Esposito and Irene are madly in love.

The murdered woman, Irene, would seem to have found a husband who reciprocated her own deeply-felt obsession. Her husband, a man by the name of Morales, seems devasted by the news of her murder, and insists on carrying forward with the investigation even when the leads, pointing as they do to the involvment of a childhood friend by the name of Gomez, have grown cold. This obsession, that look of devastation, that idea of time having halted for this man who has lost a wife, haunt the investigator through the intervening years, and he will find himself returned to his department and reaching out to Irene as he embarks on his own journey through the labyrinths of time and memory. And given that memory is an unstable terrain that can easily dissolve underneath one's feet as we reflect on how we all share an elemental need to erect a fiction that will comfort us, we find ourselves sharing in the mystery of a dilemma that remains unresolved, one in which we wonder if haunted people will be able to purge themselves of their ghosts.

And this movie does indeed take a devastating turn when things would seem to have been concluded in a messy fashion. It seems that the guilty man is freed, and justice is, indeed, another quimera that escapes capture. Gomez confesses and is jailed but is then freed, Esposito's sidekick Sandoval is brutally murdered, and the main characters are also left to wonder at how to carry on with, as Esposito expresses it, the charade of an empty life. Is there any conviction that will allow them to find the road out of the respective emotional labyrinth in which they find themeselves?

The ending is gruesome, and it offers a troubling vision of the depths to which obsession and the search for justice may lead. We all write our own fictions, but at a certain point, fiction can be paralyzing because it contributes precisely to a sense of stasis, to the illusion that we can retrace our steps and avoid the feeling of crushing regret that affects so many of us, as if by having made other choices, we would have avoided the endless certainty of new misteps. And in this way, perhaps the ending seems a little too sentimental for me because it conforms one again to old Hollywood formulas (indeed, these are old human verities) of the classic "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl" story. If is a thin veneer that coats the truly frightening aspect of this story, that which will leave the spectator haunted, and which resides in the fates of Morales and Gomez.

Memory perhaps can be prison, but we all need our fictions to convince us of the possibility of escape.


Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Return to Earthsea

I had a chance recently to reread Ursula K. LeGuin's "Tales from Earthsea", a volume of short stories that represent a return to her fantasy world first presented over forty years ago in her classic "A Wizard of Earth Sea". I first encountered that book in the late 70s as a child, and was seduced by the poetic beauty of the prose and the images, at a time when most children would be deemed to be more immersed in their own vain and somewhat lustful obsession with satisfying their immediate appetives. I was an inveterate reader from an early age, and this world always seemed to be particularly akin to my own contemplative nature, for I too was an outsider. And as such, I was glad that the author decided to return to this world, publishing both the novel "Tehanu" as well as this collection of stories.

It is a world in which both the concepts of equilibrium as well as logos are supreme. As such, these are emblematic of both of limits but also, paradoxically, of power. Knowing a name confers power, and it represents a form of cognitive mastery that is frightening in this world. Characters, as ever, seek to hide their real names, and go instead by their use names, the masks that may reflect a certain quality that distingishes us (for example, the afinity of one character to transform himself into an otter), but also the need to construct a defensive barrier. There is a deep metaphysical issue at play here, for we are forced to consider more deeply what is the nature of this essence that is leaves one vulnerable, but also, when shared freely, is an emblem of love.

The stories range from the mythical past to the era that follows the return of Ged with the new king Lebannen. These stories deal with the founding of Roke and the fellowship of the Hand (this can't help but recall the title of a Michael Mann movie of many years back, Band of the Hand), but also with the search for balance and for a true home for all the characters involved. Irioth, the summoner who was overpowered by his own frailty and fear, wanders through a misty landscape after having challenged two powerful mages of Roke, a damaged man who is forced to follow through on his penance while finding the possibility of forgiveness and redemption.

Other characters are involved in similar searches, and in a sense, we have fables that relate to eternal human verities. The fact that magic is involved serves to give concrete form to a certain metaphorical depth that, as ever, resonates with the mysteries of human emotion and desires. For while magic is subject to analytical study, and spells as well as names may be compiled in books of lore, one is left as ever with a deep consideration of the way in which magic merely reflects human impulses that are, as ever, rooted in deep and primordial urges.

I find myself seduced by the landscape of a wild sea, of exotic peoples, and of dragons taking flight to the west. It is certainly a fable that points to transformation but also, ultimately, reconciliation.

 

 

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

 

 

City of Possibilities

I can’t recall how I first hear of Jason Lutes’ graphic novel, “Berlin: City of Stones”.  As I reflect now, I seem to remember that I had written the name of this work on a scrap of paper, and this scrap must have lain in my drawer for a few months before I actually decided to purchase the book.

Upon first reading it, I was completely entranced. This is a historical narrative that manifests strong literary qualities, investigating as it does the epoch of the Weimar Republic in the late 20s and early 30s. As we well know, this period was marked by grave instability and ongoing conflict in the wake of Germany’s bitter defeat in World War I. It is as such a tragic work because we know that despite this instability the country had for a time been illuminated by a hopeful light, that of the advent of the Republic that put an end to the rule of the Kaiser and his “barons”, those traditional political and economic elites that as reflected in the rumination of selected characters, had such an overwhelming influence on Germany.

This narrative follows the story of several characters to give us a multi-faceted view of life in the city of Berlin. We follow art student Marthe Müller and journalist Kurt Severin, along with many minor characters that represent different economic, social and political groups. As such, this graphic novel very much incorporates a panoptic viewpoint that is characteristic of the realist novels of the 19^th century, recalling the novels of Dickens, Galdós, Balzac and, of course, Döblin, as they examine their respective historical moments.

Throughout this work we are made aware as well of the vitality and excitement of Berlin. This is another paradigmatic city, akin to London or Paris or Madrid, in which the new processes are at work and in which new juxtapositions are evident. And we are made aware as always of the political conflict of this era, and of movements that were to assume central importance and were to lead to the tragedy of the 30s and 40s. Nonetheless, with the evocation of Berlin on a grand scale, we are made aware of similarly pivotal events, and this first book will terminate with the episode of the massacre of protesting workers during the May day rally of 1929.

The characters are nuanced, and they reflect certain ambiguities and uncertainties. They are in no way to be viewed as types, and instead we share in the doubts they feel, conveyed as they are not only in spoken word dialogues but in thought balloons that reveal intriguing contrasts. Thus, we have an old security guard who is assigned to keep public order, and who reflect on the people he sees, revealing a certain wistfulness and desire while at the same time forced to act in the role of a gruff and severe order of agent. In a scene with a prostitute he reveals the need for a certain spiritual comfort and doubt in the fact of the role he will be forced to play. He and other agents will, as suggested by other characters, be forced to entrap the protesting workers in order to cause the massacre that he could certainly foresee on a visceral level. And we feel this unease as readers.

The characters are also confronted by dilemmas. Marthe, the older woman in her late 20s who has arrived to undertake studies in an art academy, is immediately seduced by the city. She is unnerved as well, and finds herself lost by the grand scale and by the novelty that presents itself. Thus, we are made aware of her provincial background as a member of what she herself terms the haute bourgeoisie of Köln, wishing perhaps to escape from the role that would be imposed on her. In this sense, this character strikes a deep chord in myself, for I also felt similarly entranced as well as frightened by my first encounter with the big city, in my case, Los Angeles. Our cities are filled with all manner of refugees, and as such, we look for uncertain hospitality.

The journalist Kurt seems to be suffering from disorientation, struggling to overcome a dry writing spell as he reflects on the new and dangerous possibilities that are making themselves manifest. And it is inevitable that Kurt and Marthe will come together as they strive to find their own personal sense of equilibrium, even as everything else falls apart. And, in the gloom that is projected by this entire work, we know that it will not be a durable encounter.

The work as such is infused with a sense of compassion but also, at times, with a severe historical perspective that takes an unblinking look at the processes in play at this moment. We will have several story lines, and a recurring theme would seem to be found in the figure not only of refugees from the past as well as from a provincial mindset, but also of the disenfranchised and those such as the Jews who are shortly to be subject to severe persecution. The liberal view of a Germany that, however much grounded it was in the idea of empire, the conception of artists such as Heine and Goethe, was to crumble under the pressures of this era. We care about these characters, the outsiders, but I wonder at times if this work is not in need of greater balance for it doesn’t seem to incorporate more fully the viewpoint of the ideologues of repression. But then again, this novel takes not an abstract perspective but instead one that evolves on street level, and indeed, it will reflect that sensibility because so many of the events portrayed are conveyed by the movement and reactions of crowds.

I was impressed by this work, and look forward to the next few books in this series. Because we know what will happen in subsequent years, with the triumph of the National Socialist movement and the frightful spectacle of a cowed Germany, we nonetheless feel compelled to follow the narratives as they swirl and cross and coalesce as well as separate, reflecting as they do the dynamism of this city and its population as they respond to these forces of repression as well as expansion and liberation. And if the subtitle “City of Stone” suggests a social matrix that is unyielding and pitiless, it also can be taken to connote durability and resistance, as we end up ascribing to the full panoply of human characters in evidence.

 

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013